Welcome, Welcome, Welcome
The view from the back deck when our house was first put on the market.
You’re here, and we appreciate you. Thanks for allowing your curiosity to pull you in to this little corner of the internet. My name is Jake Miller, and together with my wife and our 5 beautiful young children, we’re in the thick of rebuilding a small run-down farm on 10 acres in Ohio. What you see here we accomplish on a part-time basis, as I work a normal 9-5 during the week and my wife, God bless her, has challenged herself with the unforgiving and highly rewarding task of homeschooling our children.
We purchased this humble cape cod nestled in the big timber at what can only be described as its lowest point. The details are dusty, dirty, and gross, but 6 months later we had a place fixed up well enough to be comfortable living in. Dressed in a fresh coat of paint throughout and sporting an entirely new network of ROMEX wiring, and upgraded circuit board, new supply and waste line plumbing, an optimized second floor bathroom, refinished original hard wood floors, 2 brand new closets upstairs, and a cozy functional fireplace, I’m pretty sure this old 1950’s home is living her best life.
A before and after of the upstairs landing.
That is to say nothing about the state of the 10 acres of outdoor bliss we had at our disposal. And by bliss, I mean dead ash trees endangering the house, a barn in disrepair, a pasture and fence in buried, unusable condition, a thick fog of mosquitos, and a boatload of potential. To be completely honest, we didn’t even really walk the property when we placed our offer on this home in 2022, but our imaginations were running wild and free (one can do a lot on 10 acres if one puts his mind to it).
Two years on and we have more projects to tackle in the house, but a lot more confidence in our ability to bring them to life, and we have a good start on molding the outdoor acreage into something that fits our fleeting fantasies more abundantly than we could have imagined. Today we run a flock of 35 laying hens, a breeding pair and a pair of Kunekune feeders, a couple batches of broiler chickens, some deer, turkey, and small game hunting, PLENTY of firewood, and often more adventures for me, my wife, and our children, bargained for. And we love every second of it.
We’ve also burned nearly 3 full winters of firewood (about 4-5 cords a year) straight from the property. We had about 20 trees taken off for timber sales and another 3 long dead ash trees removed that provided us with plenty of tops and large limbs to make firewood virtually indefinitely if we wanted. I have my work cut out for me (haha) but I’ll chip (haha) away at cutting and splitting that as time allows. There are also some dead and dying large pine trees on the property that I have some big plans for, so check back in the coming months to see that project unfold. And lastly, this past winter, we’ve decided to add to that firewood for harvest by clearing out some of the trees in the side yard to open up the canopy and let in some precious sunlight to improve the drying time of our clothes line and the fruitfulness of the garden we have planned for this coming spring.
Lastly, I’ll talk about my sweet little piggies. My wife jokes that sometimes I pay more attention to them than I do her, though I believe our 5 children stand as all the evidence you need see the jest in that statement. Pigs are NOT something I ever saw myself raising. In fact I never saw myself as much of a farmer at all, though I’ve always been drawn to country living. Give me fresh air, green grass, and the occasional waft of manure and I’ll be a different man. I didn’t grow up around livestock outside the brief months my siblings and I raised market goats for a local 4H chapter, and I guessed that’s probably what would be in store for my own children as well when the time comes. However, animal husbandry really seems to be one of the great arts lost on most people in “comforts” of modern society.
Meet Bacon, aptly named, one of our Kunekune feeders.
Kunekune’s in particular are, in my quite biased and inexperienced opinion, one of the most fascinating creatures on God’s green earth. A heritage breed hog native to New Zealand (I didn’t know anything was actually native to that strange isle country), these pigs are a lard pig, which means they’ll readily grow a thick layer of back fat, in addition to the leaf lard coating the inside of the ribcage, ideal for rendering down to lard for things like soaps, lotions, skin balms, as well as traditional cooking oil. They provide a deep and rich red colored meat full of beneficial nutrients and, from what I’ve heard, tastes more like a flavorful beef steak than the pork flavor (bland) we typically think of from grocery store pork chops and the like. In fact, the reason pork is referred to as “the other white meat” is because the large pork producers in this country bred the pigs to be so large and raised them in such tight, and frankly inhumane and unjustified, quarters that the meat dulled in color as well as flavor. They had to come up with a clever way to convince people it was still meat from a pig even though people 150 years ago would have scoffed at the comparison.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, bless her, wrote about her father fattening a hog in the big woods of Wisconsin on native forage, tree nuts, roots, and berries and I guarantee they’d have turned a frown to see that dry grey meat we call pork today. I suspect many things we eat and do today would make their skin crawl and stomach churn if they could see it. All that aside, I do enjoy having pigs on the property. Kune’s are incredibly gentle and do not grow to near the size of commercial hog breeds. They thrive on grass, though we’ve found that they do like to root occasionally especially if green grass in not available as is the case during winter months. We’ve constructed our own feed blend based on recommended dietary nutrient consumption by the breed registry as well as by other feed manufacturers. We get it mixed at our local mill, with grain from local producers, and then grind it and, in the warmer months, ferment it on site to improve the bioavailability of nutrition.
Pigs nestled in the woods beneath a couple of the pines
We move them on pasture and through the woods contained inside electrified netting using a solar-powered fence energizer. That chore takes place about once a week, usually on weekends to accommodate my normal 9-5. To anyone interested in exploring smaller livestock, I cannot recommend Kune’s enough. They’ll greet you with proud vocalizations, nuzzles, and looks of gratitude and appreciation as much as any dog, let me tell you. And they provide the added benefit of home-grown bacon! With any luck, we’ll welcome our first litter of piglets from our breeders in June, so keep your fingers crossed and check back to see how things are going.
Well, at times this felt like rambling nonsense and, at others, like deep philosophical revelation. Regardless, I’m glad you’re here, I can’t wait to share more with you as we continue to process of fixing up our humble 10 acre farm, and wish blessing abounding to you and yours. Take care, and I’ll chat with you next time.
Cheers,
Jake Miller