Tag Archives: homesteading

No Rest, All Play!

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Last Saturday was so beautiful! It was sunny, warm, very little wind… just perfect! It was one of those days where you wanted to just spend the entire day outside just resting, relaxing and soaking up the sun. Of course, around here, there’s always something to do or something that needs to be done that it’s hard to go outside and just do nothing. And Saturday was definitely one of those days! We all headed out with plans of just sitting but we found plenty of things to do to keep us busy…


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We Did It, We Survived the Winter!

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Summer before last we decided that we needed to get a fish or two to keep in the stock tank. I remember putting a few goldfish in a stock tank when I was a kid and enjoyed watching them grow big. I figured my kids would enjoy that too. So one day after chores were done, we headed out of town for a day of fun. On our way home, we stopped by the pet shop and the kids picked out a couple of koi. We brought them home and added them to the stock tank by the barn. One did really well and the other didn’t survive the summer for some reason.

The following winter was a tough one; there were endless days of freezing temps and more snowfall than normal. We were feeding a couple pigs that winter, so we got two de-icers, one for the tank out by the pigs and one for the tank by the barn where the goats stayed. The wiring in our barn is really old, and so the breakers couldn’t handle the amount of electricity both de-icers used. We had to move the goats out to the shelter by the pigs so they could all use the one tank. Unfortunately that meant the tank that had our little fish in it froze over. There was a period of several weeks where the temps were so cold and the ice froze so thick that it was impossible to break it. We all worried about our little fish and hoped he’d make it even though it seemed his chances weren’t good.
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Indoor Garden Update

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Things have been so busy lately that I’ve been kind of neglecting our little indoor garden we started a while back. The seedlings have grown lately and are pretty root bound. Plus I’ve been bad at remembering to water them so I’m actually surprised they’re doing as well as they are.

I had planned on getting them transplanted to pots a few weeks ago but my potting soil was outside. At that time, it was snowing and blowing out, so it was one big frozen blob. I brought it in to thaw out but I’ve never had a chance to get it done. My niece is out of school on spring break, so she’s hanging with us some this week. I decided transplanting the tomatoes and cucumbers would be a good project to keep her and Miley busy for the afternoon.


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Last Kid Has Arrived!

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I’m a little late sharing about this, but several days after Sugar had her kids, Nutmeg kidded out. Now kidding season is over for this year. Yay! This kidding season was really short lived because we only had two kidding, which made it pretty nice. Not that I don’t like kidding season, but it’s just a relief when all the kids are here, safe and sound, up and running and doing great.

Nutmeg only had one this year, which is a first. She’s always had twins all the other years we’ve had her. This time she had a little buckling…
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Mysterious Funk

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With all the endless projects we’ve got going on around here, there’s times when our house can become over taken with funk. Sometimes that funk can be mysterious and we have no idea what it’s from; other times it can be pretty obvious and easy to remedy. Like recently for example, we had the baby chicks in a brooder with a heat lamp in the house. For the first week it’s fine; they’re small, don’t eat that much and their brooder can be changed every few days without becoming too smelly. Then once they reach a week old, things start getting a little stinkier, to where the litter needs to be changed once a day. Then, with each day that goes by, they grow bigger, eat more, poop more and by the end of the week… wowzers… no matter how many times a day you change the litter, there’s that never ending, lingering little chick funk. At that point, it’s a sign that the chicks should have been moved out of the house like 5 days ago.


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Lost a Special Friend

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When you live on a farm and have lots of animals, occasionally experiencing the loss of one is inevitable. No matter what, the loss is always tough. It’s especially tough with you lose an extra special one, one that’s been around through the thick and thin, and all the ups and downs of life over the last several years. We lost Miley’s cat, Dusty. He was a good one.


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First Chicks of the Season

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Several weeks ago Brooke got out the incubator and prepared to fill it with the first batch of eggs for the year. Trying to gather enough eggs was a little slow going at first. The weather was super cold during that time, so it was very tricky trying to get the eggs before they got too cold. Brooke would run out to the coop every half an hour starting in the morning until early afternoon, or until the eggs were gathered. At the time her group of chickens, which has 5 in the group, were only averaging two eggs a day. Between the chickens not laying any some days to the eggs getting too cold by the time she got to them, it took her a week to get nine eggs. Out of those eggs there were a few that were questionable on being too cold, but she decided to go ahead and use them.
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The First Kids Have Arrived!

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Well, Saturday night I thought for sure we’d wake up Sunday morning with some new kids in the barn. I got up early Sunday morning and saw there were no kids yet, so I let Sugar back out with the other goats. The rest of Sunday and all day Monday we checked… and we fretted… and we wondered… and we checked… and we paced… and we checked…. then we checked… and we…. well, you get the point. There were still no babies yet.
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Feeding Animals and Keeping Costs Down

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No matter how much you plan, or how frugal you try to be, most of the time it takes experience and trying things before you can actually learn what will or won’t work when it comes to keeping animal feeding costs as low as possible. Lowering costs is one area that’s become really important for us, especially since at this time, we mostly produce food for ourselves and don’t make an income on it. We do sell eggs and a little milk on occasion, but if we’re lucky we just break even, so that mostly just helps offset costs for feeding the chickens.
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Bowl of Chili to Celebrate

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The fifteenth of November has become a special day at our house. It’s a day we cook chili, gather around the table and remind ourselves how truly thankful and blessed we are. We reflect how far we’ve come in just the few years we’ve been here, and reminisce about the giddiness and excitement we felt on the day of November 15th, 2011 as we retell the story. The story never gets old, the excitement never dies and the chili always tastes extra good, just as it did on that night.

So, what exactly is so special about that day you ask? It’s the day we moved. But it wasn’t just any ordinary move; it was a very special move ….
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