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Garden Seeds – GMO, GE, OP, Heirloom, Hybrid – What’s It All Mean?

I can remember when you went to your local feed & seed supply store to buy garden seeds; and your choices were limited to a few – how things have changed! Today there are numerous seed catalogs available with hundreds of offerings, and you can also order from thousands of varieties online – but the choices can be confusing. What’s the difference between GE, GMO, OP, Heirloom, Hybrid, Organic, Pelleted, and Treated seed? Here’s the explanation:

OP (Open Pollinated) – open pollinated seeds are those that are produced by pollination from wind, insects, or self-pollination. You can save seed from open-pollinated varieties and [...]

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Garden Greens for Goats & Chickens

Tinker Bell Eating Pea Vines

Each time I work in the garden and consider bringing back some garden trimmings for the goats and chickens; I have to stop and look through my reference books – to determine whether that particular plant is safe for them to eat. So, I decided to make a list of garden plants that are safe for goats or chickens, and that they’ll benefit from eating. That way, I can just refer back to this list, rather than dragging out a bunch of books.

This is what I know about today that they can eat (chickens may [...]

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It's A Farm!

Our 10 acres is officially Bramblestone Farm! The paperwork from the Ohio Secretary of State arrived yesterday confirming Bramblestone Farm as a “for-profit” LLC. I also reserved the domain name bramblestonefarm.com on the Internet and a herd name of Bramblestone has been registered with both the American Goat Society and the American Dairy Goat Association.

It’s been an interesting journey since acquiring this land – we’ve built a house and barn, acquired a tractor and chicken coop, created a garden and pasture, installed fencing, and started raising chickens and goats. Every step of the way, we’ve complained about how many big [...]

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