OUR FARM

Our Farm…

Our ten-acre farm is located in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland.

We are approximately two miles from the Maryland-Delaware State Line.

Dover, Delaware’s State Capital, is a short 15-minute drive from our home.

Our land once was part of a much larger parcel that encompassed an expansive family holding of land, which was used for agricultural endeavors ranging from raising dairy cows and farming corn and other grains, to it’s use just prior to our acquisition: raising a clean herd of meat goats and sheep. We’ve been told that at any given time, the acreage was home to upwards of 300-350 sheep and goats. Just before we purchased the property, the owner hauled his herd up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania for auction and/or slaughter, and he tore down all the fencing on the property. At settlement we told him we wish he had left the fencing up as we intended on raising livestock ourselves, to which he responded that the only reason it was torn down was on the advice from his realtor.

(So folks, the lesson of the day is: don’t listen to all of your realtor’s advice.)

Regardless, we settled in for about a year with just our dogs and cats, and a couple of fish tanks, but eventually we heard the calling… if you own a farm you must have……….. chickens!!!

We purchased a large assortment of chicks from a nationally known hatchery in the mid west and when the shipment arrived, much to our surprise, instead of receiving the 35 chicks we had ordered, we actually received those 35 plus an additional thirty 37 straight run chicks of differing breeds at no additional charge. Sounded like a great deal, right? Think again… most, not all of those freebies, were, as you may have guessed by now, roosters!!! We were daily attacked by the gang of roosters and the poor hens were being mounted dozens of times a day by multiple suitors. We realized pretty quickly that we needed to intervene, so we took some of the birds to a local bird picker to put in the proverbial soup pot, and the rest we packed up and took to a local auction venue that operates every Wednesday evening in season. So with a thinned flock, we were able to maximize egg production (the hens had been beat up so often by the roosters that laying had fallen off) and we were able to balance out the flock with birds that produced a variety of egg colors (white, light brown, dark brown and green and blue) while retaining breeds we deemed more community minded and who had shown us behavior desirable around our farm. The chicken breeds that we currently concentrate on are the tried and true Rhode Island Red, the Majestic Black Austrolorp, and the uniquely crowned Sicilian Buttercup. We maintain other breeds as well, but for the purposes of propagating eggs for hatching, these are the ones we specialize in and sell.

Once the chickens took up roost, Danielle received a gift from a client while working for a local equine veterinarian: an unregistered Quarter Horse Mare named Riley. She proved to be a mild mannered lady, however, once Danielle received her second Quarter Horse Mare (Twig, who is AQHA Registered), also a gift from a client of the vet, Riley exhibited her true “alpha-tude” and made sure that in no uncertain terms she was the boss of the barn, the run in and the pasture. Riley died in 2006, but Danielle enjoys riding Twig when she has the time and takes very good care of her. We attempted to breed Twig in 2006 but she did not conceive. We’ll give another go sometime in the near future.

After the horses, we were gifted two beautiful Pygmy goat does, Pogo and Nani, and later adopted a Boer Whether named Frankie. Next we attended a 4H auction and purchased a number of Yorkshire Hogs, which eventually met the butcher. We later received a couple of peacocks (males) from a friend, however they escaped the farm and took up residence with a flock of local wild turkeys. We receive reports regularly at our restaurant and country store from friends, neighbors and customers alike of sightings and testimonials of their seemingly good health and spirits with their new family. The same benefactor provided us more recently with two mating pairs of peafowl, and in August 2005 we hatched our first successful baby. In 2006 we hatched three peafowl eggs, and in 2007 after receiving a invaluable feeding tip from one of our Udderly Ez Milker customers in Arkansas, our two peahens laid over 40 eggs this season and we had a record hatching season! In early 2006 we established, our herd of Registered Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats. After purchasing a high quality existing herd of approximately a dozen breeding animals, we began slowly and thoughtfully adding new members to our herd. In just under two years, we have been fortunate to add breed stock from sixteen different herds/breeders. Additionally we already have placed several reservations on kids from select breeders across the country for kids to be born in Spring 2008.

In early summer 2006 we bred one of our beautiful dogs- a Registered Australian Shepherd named Luna. She welped a litter of 7 puppies on October 13, 2006. She had 6 girls and one big handsome boy whom we’ve named “Sport” and decided to retain. All of his sisters were sold and are in loving, happy homes.

At the end of 2006 we added a black miniature horse gelding, “Cole” and a Paint/Mustang Cross Mare, “Baby” to our farm.

Our Spring 2007 Nigerian Dwarf Goat kidding season was our best yet with 20 beautiful kids hitting the ground. Although we did not show our goats this season as we had planned, our customers who purchased goats from us in 2006 had great success in the show ring in 2007. Every goat that came from Avolino Farm that was shown in 2007 placed first in their class and/or received Grand Champion for their respective show/division. We couldn’t have been more pleased!

Our annual herd testing results arrived in Spring of 2007 and as expected, every goat on our farm's results were 100% negative.

We were honored in 2007 to be asked by the University of Maryland’s Cooperative Extension Service to use a photo of one of our does, Flat Rocks Emma, as an exemplar of the breed for their spotlight article on Nigerian Dwarves in the summer edition of their quarterly newsletter, “Wild and Wooly.”

We were also pleased to be promoted by Stone Manufacturing from Authorized Dealer to Authorized Distributor of the Udderly EZ Milker and numerous other livestock supplies.

At summer’s end, we chose to skip our routine Fall Mini-breeding season for 2007, deciding instead to breed for our biggest, consolidated breeding season ever for Spring 2008. See our kidding schedule for more information, but we expect 70+ kids to be born in 2008!

We have lots of plans for 2008 and will be updating and enhancing our site often.