Ausra Farms - Updated

Alexz7272

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So I officially registered the farm as a business! I now have two companies in the great state of Colorado :)
As some of you know, I was born in Lithuania but raised in Washington DC. I am taking Lithuanian traditions and practices and applying them to my farm. I thought maybe some people would be interested to maybe learn some about our culture or at least our name as we are a small country in Eastern Europe, haha!
So the name, Aušra means Dawn in Lithuania. We thought it would be a fitting name for the farm as I am up at or before dawn most days taking care of my animals. Plus my little cousins Milda & Daina agreed on the name :D

So right now I have Turkeys, Chickens, Quail, Ducks, Sheep, Pigs, Goats and Alpacas. I had Pheasants before for their feathers and meat, just havent gotten back into them yet.
Chickens & Ducks are for eggs. Quail are for eggs and meat. Sheep and Alpacas are for fiber (making traditional Lithuanian textiles). Pigs are for meat, specifically smoked Lithuanian meats. Goats are for milk & making cheese.

So the property! We are on just under 5 acres and got it as a foreclosure. We were really lucky that my Bf's parents are well off and gave us 100k as a down payment otherwise in the super competitive market of where we live, we would not of gotten the property. The previous owners were none too happy about their horse property being foreclosed on so they destroyed as much as they could. They took out all the fencing, destroyed all but one building, left scrap EVERYWHERE and poured paint and other chemicals all over in random places :somad I wont even go into detail what they did in the house. Just happy I live with an Electrical and Mechanical Engineer. We have renovated the kitchen, living room and master bathroom, also added a reading nook in the attic space for me! But we still have the rest of the house. :barnie

We have been in the house for 3 years this august and it took us a good 1.5 years to get it back to a good, clean and healthy pasture. However, we are still figuring our fencing and how we want the property arranged. We want to get a legit barn but I am working, running 2 businesses now and going to school for Paralegal. Gonna have to wait another 2 years to get that barn :hit

Random Fun Facts!
I learned Lithuanian, Russian then English as a kid. My three dogs understand Lithuanian and Russian but not English. All my livestock responds to Lithuanian only. My boyfriend speaks NO Lithuanian or Russian, so it is alot of fun to mess with him :lol:
Like I mentioned before my bf is an electrical and mechanical engineer. Meaning I get cool inventions he creates for me and the animals as well as a full machine shop on the property. We both weld MIG & TIG, we have a CNC Mill in our garage so fabricating parts is super easy, we have a lathe, plasma cutter w/ table and every other tool you could imagine! When we started fencing the perimeter of the property with t-posts, he created an automatic t-post driver to save us time instead of buying one for hundreds of dollars, it was AMAZING! :weee

While he is very tech oriented, I am more back to basics as that is how my relatives and parents grew up. So hopefully this is the start of sharing my adventure to mix old culture with new and modern with traditional.

Here's a picture of my two little bucks as a reward for reading :D
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babsbag

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Ahhh, aren't they cute.

It sounds like you are one busy lady but when you love what you do you will love doing it. About the t-post driver...we bought one for 100's of dollars and it never worked right. I think we have used it on about a dozen posts and just gave up. If he has a good plan he should patent it.
 

Latestarter

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We don't have the rocky soil here like you have to deal with Babs... Mostly sand and clay out east of the mountains... When you actually get up into the mountains of course... then there are plenty of rocks.

Nice name for a farm. Looking forward to reading your journal as you go along. :)
 

Baymule

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Are you planning on developing customers for your smoked Lithuanian meats? It sounds yummy and I don't even have any idea about Lithuanian cooking.

A foreclosure....what a shame that the previous owners destroyed all they could before they moved out. We bought a foreclosure also, a 1500 square foot double wide mobile home on 8 acres. We moved out of a 2500 square foot brick home on a city lot and had to get rid of most of our furniture because it was oversized. This place was a garbage dump. I don't think they EVER paid for garbage pick up. My husband stayed at his job while I came up for 4-5 days at a time to work on the house. Thankfully, it wasn't destroyed on the inside like yours was. Every time l left to go back home, I carried bags of trash out of here. Any and everything a family could consume was thrown out in the woods. There was even THREE sofas thrown out in the woods! Heavy on the beer bottles and beer cans. Broken glass was picked up by the buckets. What morons. :somad

It will take you time, but you will get it all cleaned up and make it truly yours. You will make your house beautiful-just the way you want it. You will get the fencing built, the out buildings and the barn, too. In the mean time, you can start assembling materials. You might want to build a 3 sided run in shed for future use by your animals, but used now for stacking building materials in it. I am a scrounger and jump on deals when I find them. Did you know that most lumberyards like Lowes or Home Depot have reject racks? They mark down to half price or less the less than perfect lumber and if you are building a barn, a bow in the boards here or there doesn't hurt a thing.

We built a 36'x36' barn using mostly used lumber I scrounged and reject lumber from Lowes. The poles were telephone poles that were taken down and we bought them from the contractor for $80 for all of them! I did have to buy 22 brand new 2"x6"x20' for rafters....it sure hurt my feelings! LOL We also sucked it up and paid for brand new metal sheets for the roof and sides, plus the trim pieces. So if you start watching for sales, reject racks and look on Craigs List, you can buy your barn, a piece at a time.

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Mike CHS

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It is going to be interesting to follow how you grow your place. The description of your place could have been a cut and paste that many on BYH have gone through. We know it is a labor of love and the challenges are something that we enjoy sharing with each other.

I'm also looking forward to hearing more about the Lithuanian sausage. :cool:
 

Alexz7272

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@Baymule That barn is amazing! I think that is what I will need to do, just slowly collect materials over time. We also have a Engineering contract company we own and run, so I have access to a lot of metal places. I should see if they have any contacts for wood people. Genius! I'll have to look into the building codes and permits in this county as I live in the 'communist' county. You need permission to do ANYTHING here. If you ask anyone in the state of Colorado, they know that Boulder is known as The Peoples Republic of Boulder. We live just outside of the city in Longmont but still in Boulder county. It can be very frustrating and expensive. :mad:

I do already have people wanting to buy my Lithuanian goods. I posted in the Lithuanian-American Facebook page and website when I was trying to think of a name. I already have a bunch of people asking when I will start selling. As Lithuania is such a small country, there are not many places that sell traditional foods so it is actually a decent market here in the USA. Plus I am hoping some others try it too! It is obviously in the early stages and I am no where near ready to sell the meats but I have a dozen or so people that have asked me to let them know as soon as I do!

I am lucky to not have found any couches :lol: I feel you on the beer cans and broken glass. The dogs were none too happy to be restricted from the acreage for the first 3 months. I got a nail through my boot only 2 times though and luckily never any glass but I did get a new tetanus shot! :D =D
 

misfitmorgan

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Our farm was not a foreclosure but the owner were/are hoarders and the place is trashed, they think it is treasure and everyone else thinks it is junk us included. Maybe some day i will get pictures.
 

Alexz7272

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Here is what we are working with. This image is from 2014, so it looks a little different now. That was before I had any of my livestock.
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I have all my fowl/birds to the right of the 3 car garage, there was already a decent sized fenced in area and we just created a coops and pond for the chickens & ducks. If you can see in the picture the roof is grey and then there is a 'blue' roof. That is a lean to-ish that was open on the back. We created the quail and turkey/pheasant pens on the first third, hay storage on the second and I will be enclosing the 3 side closest to the right side for a kidding area for my goats. So to the right of the 3 car garage is where I have all the animals right now until we figure out fencing for the whole front.
I'd LOVE to have the area where we plan to get place an additional road but our agreement is that he gets his machine shop and I get the rest of the land. We are saving up for the machine shop through the company, so it wont happen just yet.
I've struggled with the odd shape of the property. It is very elongated and has come odd corners or bends. The front and the left side are the only straight lines. So fencing is alot of fun! Going to follow how the previous people did it and put a gate directly when you enter the driveway to the right as we already have the posts there to support it, fence along the driveway, just outside the trees, back close to the 3 car garage to attach (with a large gate there again), along the rounded bit all the way to the corner and connect with the existing front t-post fencing along the road. Sooo lots of fun :D
 

Alexz7272

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@misfitmorgan We definitely would have some foods in common, specifically meats! I don't know too much about Prussian culture honestly, do you ever cook any traditional foods?
The former homeowners were hoarders of a sort too. Found odd stockpiles of random things. We actually found 80+ rabbit trophies and guessed they did show rabbits. The weird thing is, we keep finding trophies in the oddest places! The attic, the crawl space, down the cement holder that a post use to be in. So odd :barnie
 
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