About our place

Hi! We are Chuck & Angela Miedema. We are owners of a small homestead with just a few head of beef and dairy cows (all Dexter breed), a whole bunch of heritage laying hens, meat birds, heritage turkeys, barn cats, gardens and our precious Livestock Guardian Dogs, Elsa & Charlie. Charlie & Elsa are experts at keeping coyotes at bay, and Elsa and her daughter Indie have killed 2 possums and a skunk thus far in 2024. Our goal as homesteaders is to live sustainably, and to pass those old skills on to our children and anyone else who wants to learn the same skills we've worked so hard to attain. We also are working to raise livestock to sell to others who want to live this life. In order to facilitate that we are breeding our animals, including our LGD's every 18 months or so, with the goal of breeding and training LGD's to share with others who want to homestead. Elsa had her first litter in November of 2023 of 4 healthy pups. Then in the spring, we had a little oops and Charlie broke into her confinement area and bred her again and thus 4 more pups were born on May 30th. At first we were very upset about the breeding, but about 3 weeks after Elsa was bred a 2nd time ...Charlie was killed in action. He died protecting our farm from would-be thieves. They broke into our pasture gate to steal a trailer and Charlie chased them out while Elsa stayed with the cows who would have otherwise left through the open gate too. In the pursuit, they ran my sweet, gentle but fiercely protective Charlie over and killed him in cold blood. Local law enforcement was on the scene before I (Angela) got home and they were shocked at the nerve of the thieves and grieved with us the loss of our sweet, brave protector. I am forever grateful to the deputy who helped me to move Charlie's body off the road before more vehicles came ... we were both crying. The thieves have not been caught, but we learned our lesson and our property now has 24/7 security cameras, and motion detection at the gates. Elsa will not be bred again until late 2025 to give her body time to rest, and to give us time to find her a new partner to protect our livestock. We are not professional breeders, but we know what makes a good LGD, we've done hundreds of hours of study, hands on training and we love our homestead animals. We would never give a family an LGD that we didn't think was right for their specific needs.