Hello from Upstate New York!

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  • March 21, 2011 at 1:45 pm #42549
    sean518
    Participant

    Hello everyone!

    I’ve recently purchased the acreage still left of the farm that I grew up on after spending nine years in Brooklyn. Having grown up around my father’s Belgians, which were used mostly for pleasure, I’m very excited to have finally purchased my own team, a pair of blue roan 50/50 Brabant/American Belgian half sisters. They’re almost a year old now, and I cannot wait until they’re a bit older and I can start doing some work with them.

    Most of my experience with driving horses has been with my parents’ miniature’s & ponies (they downsized after retiring from the dairy farm). But they just don’t compare to the full sized horses.

    We do a limited produce CSA that we’ll hopefully be expanding soon, have a few Nubian goats for dairy, and recently purchased our starter flock of Jacobs Sheep. I also started growing hops last year to sell and use in my homebrews. Please check out our website in my signature for more details and pictures.

    My wife and I are both still working full and part-time jobs for income, but someday we hope to be able to get our income from the farm.

    The Brabants have really become a passion for me. I’m an active member of the American Brabant Association, and I’m working out the details of starting a breed registry for them. If anyone has any experience with registries, or just wants to talk about Brabants in general, feel free to email me!

    Looking forward to benefiting from all the great resources at this website and doing what I can to help others!

    March 21, 2011 at 2:07 pm #66408
    near horse
    Participant

    Hi Sean,

    Welcome, or maybe I should say “welcome back to draft animal power”. Be sure to take full advantage of all the experience gathered here on DAP as well as those teamsters who are in your area of NY. There are plenty of helpful folks from DAP in NY. Where are you in upstate NY?

    Geoff

    March 21, 2011 at 2:48 pm #66409
    dominiquer60
    Moderator

    Welcome fellow Upstater,

    Feels good to have more company from Eastern New York:)
    Montgomery County is beautiful, I was seriously considering some land in Ames before I got engaged. Your fillies are gorgeous, I look forward to seeing them progress with you. Stop by the Schenectady Greenmarket sometime, we’re there every Sunday. Good luck with your CSA and everything else, sounds like a nice variety of things going on at your place.

    Be Well,

    Erika

    March 21, 2011 at 3:36 pm #66406
    goodcompanion
    Participant

    @sean518 25806 wrote:

    I also started growing hops last year to sell and use in my homebrews.

    Just starting larger-scale hops plantings here too. Also barley, if (being a brewer) you get interested in that, I have 16 old european landrace barleys I am propogating seed from. Maybe one will be the northeastern beer of the future, who knows.

    Anyway, welcome.

    March 21, 2011 at 4:06 pm #66410
    sean518
    Participant

    @near horse 25807 wrote:

    Hi Sean,

    Welcome, or maybe I should say “welcome back to draft animal power”. Be sure to take full advantage of all the experience gathered here on DAP as well as those teamsters who are in your area of NY. There are plenty of helpful folks from DAP in NY. Where are you in upstate NY?

    Geoff

    Hey Geoff, thanks for the welcome! I’m located about halfway in between Albany and Utica just north of the Mohawk River.

    I’m a member of our local Draft Horse club, plus I’m surrounded by Amish (I’ve got a wheelwright and harness maker within a mile!), so I’ve got lots of people to ask for help with things thankfully, because I’ll probably need it. We used tractors for just about everything when we were dairy farming.

    – Sean

    March 21, 2011 at 4:12 pm #66411
    sean518
    Participant

    @dominiquer60 25808 wrote:

    Welcome fellow Upstater,

    Feels good to have more company from Eastern New York:)
    Montgomery County is beautiful, I was seriously considering some land in Ames before I got engaged. Your fillies are gorgeous, I look forward to seeing them progress with you. Stop by the Schenectady Greenmarket sometime, we’re there every Sunday. Good luck with your CSA and everything else, sounds like a nice variety of things going on at your place.

    Be Well,

    Erika

    Thanks for the welcome, Erika! We usually do produce dropoffs on Sundays in Albany, so maybe we’ll stop by the Schenectady market sometime.

    – Sean

    March 21, 2011 at 8:38 pm #66405
    Carl Russell
    Moderator

    Sean, glad you were finally able to get on. Nice looking fillies. I had a Brabant gelding for 15 years, although not blue roan, bay roan, looked very similar to them. Good luck with them, and enjoy yourself here.

    Take care, Carl

    March 21, 2011 at 10:29 pm #66407
    Jean
    Participant

    Welcome! Mini driver here too. Do you allow visitors?
    Jean

    March 22, 2011 at 1:41 pm #66412
    sean518
    Participant

    @Jean 25820 wrote:

    Welcome! Mini driver here too. Do you allow visitors?
    Jean

    Hello Jean. We’re always happy to have people visit us! We’ve got four mini’s and one mini jack donkey (hoping to have some mini mules at some point). I do have to add the caveat that we’re still cleaning up/tearing down/building things, though, and slowly, so some places on our farm just look like a big mess! Anyway, PM me if you’d like to come by and we can work out the details! We’ll have Jacobs lambs in June, they might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen…

    – Sean

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