Home Sweet Homestead

Lebanon, Oregon

To contact us:

Phone: (541) 258 7045

Cell: (503) 689 7889

Email: Farm@YankeeAcres.com

WELCOME to Yankee Acres where Shelties and English Shepherds are raised along with chickens for eggs, rabbits for meat, and soon goats for milk and bees for honey. There are 3 major areas of interest….Yankee Acres (YankeeAcres.com) about the homestead in general and the various livestock, Yankee Shelties (YankeeShelties.com) and finally, Yankee English Shepherds YankeeEnglishShepherds.com). Links are to the left.

Yankee Acres Mission Statement:

To create a humane environment for the animals that provide us food. To allow them to express their natural instincts within as minimally restrictive environment as can be envisioned. To provide as natural a feed for livestock as possible to provide maximum health. To allow for NATURAL growth and production patterns, so that there is minimal stress until an animal’s last days (which may not be the same as maximum productivity, for the longest duration, at the lowest cost) .

Not because I know better, but because Nature knows better.

“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood

of creation. When we do it knowingly, lovingly, skillfully,

reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly,

greedily, destructively, it is a desecration.”

Wendell Berry

The Gift of Good Land

All chickens are pastured once old enough to have feathered out and no longer in need of a brooder environment. They are placed in pens that are moved daily to provide clean pasture until they grow to mature size. Once they are of mature size they are allowed to free range over several acres of pasture, and fed a home mixed SOY FREE diet in addition to all the grass, greens and bugs they can forage. Egg yolks from these Yankee Acres hens are a deep, rich orange and a taste that can’t compare. I’ve been told that some folks allergic to soy and who are unable to eat store bought eggs, are able to eat these eggs.

After several years of experimenting with different prototypes for raising rabbits, I’ve renewed my efforts and am experimenting with a new system of pasture pens. They live in a small colony style set up and are moved thru a series of stationary pasture pens to give access to fresh grass and greens. Water, supplemental grass and alfalfa hay as well as wheat straw are also provided. I am attempting to wean them off the pellet food and use natural hays, grasses, greens and veggies.

Goats are given access to yummy (to them) browse, such as blackberry bushes with some supplemental organic minerals, Celtic sea salt, grass or alfalfa hay.