Rock N Root Farm Tour

It has been a long, cold winter and we are eagerly preparing for spring. We headed on over to Rock N Root Farm for a winter tour and some inspiration on how we can expand our homestead in the upcoming year. We took plenty of pictures so that you can admire the amazing work they do there and hopefully get some ideas yourselves!

 After you go down the steep driveway and past their beautiful hand built home, you come across the chicken coop! Their chicken coop is a cattle panel hoop house. They free range their chickens, and you will notice many roosters and hens clucking about with the goats and hanging around the yard.

 Right next to their chicken coop is the goat house. This structure is beautiful, made mostly of reclaimed materials (a theme you will notice around the farm- they are VERY resourceful!).

If you open the right side of the house you will enter the spacious goat barn. 

 Here were a couple of cool features that we plan to implement in our future goat house: Multiple "goat proof" latch systems, hanging bucket waterers,  double doors (for extra goat durability), and a creative handmade hay rack (modeled by a lovely miss Genevieve),

The back of the goat barn opens up into a nice sized play yard enclosed with cattle panel fencing, which reportedly keeps the goats in very well.

Rock N Root Farm has three lovely does who are as sweet as can be; Layla, Genevieve, and Abby. These girls all came from commercial dairies, so when they were newborn they were not properly kept from the cold and got frostbite on their ears. One of these three beautiful girls will be the mother of the baby goats we will be welcoming to Blue Hollow Homestead!

To the left of the barn is the milking room. I was unable to capture the size in photographs (it was quite spacious and insulated). They keep this awesome blackboard with all of the goat and milking information on it. 

Here are a few things from the milking room that were dubbed goat necessities: 

Past the milking room is the new set up they have for piglets. In the past they kept turkey there. Past the piglet set up is their hoop house greenhouses. They said after a few times trial and error they found 7 ft wide the perfect size to handle snow loads.

If you continue the walk (we were now joined by the farm dog pug, Amelia and their sweet farm cat) you will come across their awe inspiring hay barn. The picture doesn't really do it justice- this thing is huge! Definitely would be a dream to eventually build on our homestead.

Past the hay barn is a nice walkway to the buck/ram and sheep area. They raise Icelandic sheep, a very hardy breed of sheep that are great for the harsh Vermont weather.

They have the section in between the sheep and bucks fenced in as well. This is where they store food, easily catch escaped animals, and bring animals who need medical attention. In the future they said they would like to add a space like this to their goat house.

The sheep shack is just stunning. I am always amazing by how beautiful and functional they can make re purposed material look!

The sheep are definitely very timid. As soon as we came over they left the house and moved into their forest pasture. It would take a little walk to go see them. Can you see the sheep hiding among the trees?

The boys were not as timid. The goat buck Barnabus lives with the sheep ram so that they have company. They have a hoop house as well (do you see a theme here?) and a double door to prevent escape. They were stunning creatures, but Barnabus definitely was a stinky guy.

That concludes our tour of Rock N Root Farm! We had such a blast seeing everything they do and it is always fun to get new homesteading ideas. We can't wait to get goats from them and tour their farm in the future to see how much it grows. Stay tuned for an updated farm tour of Blue Hollow Homestead in the upcoming months- we have a lot of great things planned!