Red Robin Homestead

06/05/2026

The lambs are growing strong, and the mamas are doing great. We’ve got three more girls due early August and a second pasture has been planted.

This post has been approved by Hattie the bantam ameraucana, who lives on me like she’s a pet parrot.
☀️

05/29/2026

The Artisan Gold turkeys and Cornish Cross chickens have started venturing outside this week. The chickens prefer the front of the barn, and the turkeys are gone out back into their own pasture.

The chickens approach everything with a “what the heck is going on” attitude and exercise extreme caution, and the turkeys rush into every new situation with reckless abandon. I save their lives almost daily.

The vegetable garden is almost planted, the lambs are growing strong, and the quail are staring to lay eggs again.

Life is good ❤️

05/29/2026

05/26/2026

I got a lot done today, but my greatest challenge was convincing Willow to come out of the spruce tree.
Not sure what that was all about. Weird turkey.

05/23/2026

The store opens in two weeks, and it’s time to introduce myself for the season 👋

I’m Bernadette. I was raised by urban homesteaders and married into this farming family nearly 20 years ago. I’m a registered reflexologist, herbalist, nutritionist, and PSW, so “natural and nurturing” is kind of my thing.

The homesteading skills my parents taught me, along with the support of my husband Greg, have been passed down to our daughter as part of our combined farming life. 4 generations of Robinsons have called this place home at one time or another, and the name Red Robin has been attached to the family farm longer than that.

This year, while the store is open, we’ll be prioritizing the farm. Feel free to browse our store at your leisure, and wave one of us down when you’re ready. You can also grab a coffee and have a seat somewhere, it’s peaceful out here.

We’ll be offering our frozen-fresh pastured chicken, fresh rainbow eggs, quail eggs, local products, kitchen wares, homesteading supplies, and other country living essentials. We will also be taking orders for pastured lamb and turkey later in the season.

We look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones this summer.

Store opens on June 6 🥰

05/23/2026

The kittens are 6 days old and growing fast now. Poor little mama had a hard time the first few days and only three kittens have survived, but she’s actually doing a great job.
The big question everyone asks me is, “what will you do with them?”
So here’s my plan:
Ophelia will be spayed once the kittens are weaned (same as all of our barn cats).
I’ll keep posting the kittens and if someone falls in love, then great.
If not, well I’m already in love… so then they’ll be vet checked, and they will join the rodent control brigade.
At the moment, I think we have two females and one male ❤️

05/20/2026

There were so many ways this could have gone wrong. She’s a bit high strung, super stubborn, and gets freaked easily.

Nighean is the only dam to ever give me a bottle baby (Nola, my ewe lamb), and I was worried about breeding her again this year. Last year she had twins and only wanted one. She was a great mom to one, and a terrible one to the other, so it wasn’t that cut and dry for me when it came to deciding what to do with her.

This year, she birthed twins again. Unlike with the others, I made the decision to step back and watch through the camera instead. First baby, she bathed and began the bonding process immediately. Then the second came, and she left it in a heap on the floor and went back to the first.

I’ve spent my winter reading, and I’ve learned that some sheep are so hormonally confused and traumatized by the birth that they can’t divide their thinking at first. Thinking back, I remember how I intervened when she gave birth the first time, and part of me started to wonder if I triggered the rejection of the second baby. This year, I was resolved to hang back as long as I could.

For 10 minutes, I watched on the camera as the second lamb, cried, learned to stand, and searched for his mother, all on his own.

I started to prepare a bottle. Another five minutes went by, and I watched the lamb find her, move towards her, and I saw how she took the first lamb and tried to back away from it.

I gave it 10 more minutes after that, which was agony, and then grabbed my gloves, a towel, and the warmed up bottle when I realized the crying had stopped. I looked down at my screen and there she was, washing her second baby and talking to it 🥰

It’s been a week now, and she’s been a good mom to both. I’m so happy I held back, and that she got herself under control ❤️‍🩹

05/20/2026

The parent storm, a tornado, watching our tower get torn from its concrete base and fall, the double rainbow that followed and one very shocked and soaking wet chicken we found outside afterward.
She has stories to tell.

05/18/2026

Our little foundling cat had her kittens yesterday while we were away. She birthed 7 but two didn’t make it. She does have 5 beautiful little kitten babies to love and mother though, and I am obsessed.