Fields Of Home
Cottage Stand

2025-2026 Update

We have really been working hard on the homestead building infrastructure, gaining a
solid understanding of the state of the farm, and creating a good plan to restore the land
to rich pastureland moving forward.
Once the website was created, we weren’t able to provide many updates because we
entered a very busy season: our kids showed laying hens, meat birds, and pigs in the
Chisago County Fair with varying levels of success. Our oldest son was the only
competitor in our county selected to show his pig at the Minnesota State Fair. This was
a learning experience but was also a fun experience for him and me because we got to
do this together. We look forward to improving our results in both the county fair and
hopefully the state fair this 2026 year.
After the fairs we really bore down on the homestead infrastructure to be ready for the
2026 season. We had many projects to complete before winter. The first of these was a
high-tensile electric fence which runs around the pasture we planted last year and the
sacrificial area for the animals when we cannot put them on the pasture. We wrapped
this up late fall - just in time to get work started on the next project. Next we expanded
our chicken coop to be able to start breeding lines, have electricity in the coop, and
provide more space for layer chickens to increase our egg production. During this build
we were blessed a couple of nights to see the aurora borealis aurora illuminating the
sky as we built. This may have led to a little delay in building as we got to stand in awe
of God’s paintings. Fortunately, we got the coop done just in the nick of time for the
snow to fly. The birds seemed grateful for the solid walls around them with the snow
and wind setting in.
Over the winter our oldest son built a brooder box we can use to help with breeding the
chickens and had a go at hatching some chickens. We had limited success due to a late
start after the coop expansion and some learning experiences along the way. But all the
knowledge will help moving forward.
We also went into planning mode, started researching and learning about the next
project we as a family are hopeful to take on, which is beef cows. We are looking to see
if we can get into them this 2026 season. More to come…

Now taking 2026 orders: ½ and whole Pigs, Meat Birds
We are excited to begin taking orders for the 2026 season. Since we are a small
homestead focused on raising quality meat with few hormones and antibiotics and
raising what our land can support, supplies are limited. If an order is placed we will
provide an acknowledgement that we can support the order.