Ranch Newsletter | December 2024

Originally sent to subscribers on January 1st, 2025

Farm Update

Well, we did it! Another year in the books.

We started the year off with the following goals/projects:

• Finish the irrigation line in our field that extends beyond the pond where the rock piles used to be.

• Seed the field that had been disturbed by the pond build, the moving of dirt/rock piles, and other construction.

• Build a second chicken tractor and use the chickens in the field to improve soil quality.

• Get more chickens. (or hope a chicken or two goes broody)

• Have an excellent CSA season.

• Release my super secret project I've been working on.

• Increase our goat herd. (Fingers crossed Reba is pregnant!)

• Be able to make 2 extra house payments with the income from the ranch.

We finished the irrigation line and seeded the field.

We did not build a second chicken tractor and decided one was enough, but we did get more chickens.

I didn't have any complaints about the CSA season, but we had weather and bug issues that left me unsatisfied with how the season went.

I did release my super secret project which was the children's picture book about goats. (If You Give A Goat A Flower).

We did increase our goat herd, but not in the way we'd hoped. Honey got pregnant rather than Reba.

And finally, we met our goal of being able to make 2 extra house payments with the income from the ranch.

December has been a busy month. The Millcreek Common Market ended on Christmas Eve and I was busy keeping up with the demand for lotions and lip balms.

We also brought home a new puppy! His name in Milo and we are uncertain what mix of breeds he is, but we think some kind of shepherd/collie mix. We've sent in a dog DNA kit to find out for sure, but we don't have the results yet.

Oreo, one of our young goats, had a bit of an accident earlier in the month. He got his foot caught in a hole in one of the spools and couldn't put weight on it for a couple of day. I drove him to a vet in Tremonton and thankfully, it was only a bone bruise.

Amazingly we don’t have any new projects lined up for 2025 at the moment. I would like to bring home another female goat, but I have to sell the three boys first and I’d like to see how our hay field does this spring as well, so any plans I have for the goats are on hold for the moment.

In CSA news: Registration for the 2025 season is open. We are using GrownBy again this year. If you want to register you can do so here: https://grownby.app/farms/julbud-ranch/shop

I made some changes to the upcoming CSA. Here are the changes that will be made for next season:

• I am switching to bi-monthly memberships only. This seems to be what the majority of families sign up for and it's easier on me.

• I have increased the number of memberships to 20!

• I'm switching from a model where I select what items you get in your bag each week, to one where I will stock our fridges with what is available, and your membership will determine how many items you can select each week. Right now the options are going to be 4 items, 6 items, 8 items, or 10 items. This way you'll always get exactly what you want. And you will be able to select multiples of items if you wish.

• There will be a pricing structure based on the number of items you sign up for.

In goat news: The person who reached out to me about purchasing our three boys stopped communicating with me before we could make final arrangements, so they are available again.

I have also decided to try and breed Reba one last time with our buck, Caspian. I will do a pregnancy test near the end of January as long as she doesn't come back into heat.

In natural skincare news: Much of my soap stock was depleted with my last two markets of the year and I'm working on restocking, but I won't be fully stocked again until the end of January.

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