Life happens

It does and then you look at your blog and realize it's been several months since your last post.

Life is good. Kids are good. Homestead is good. Can't ask for much more than that :-) 

This guy right here. The caboose. My sweet little bundle of joy is getting bigger everyday. 

My beautiful daughter is growing into a young lady before my very eyes. 

  

The oldest just gave his girlfriend of 3 years a promise ring. 

My sweet pnut continues to grow and change everyday. 

Vacation

After working like crazy in the yard and garden I added a small business into the mix a couple months ago that allows me to stay at home but it added stress. That coupled with the man of my dreams work schedule led us to conclude a vacation was in order. So we took one! We are having fun with the kids, enjoying each other's company and recharging. 

Deck Finished!

Its been done a while, we love it, it is a great addition to our backyard!

Babies, Kids and Garden.....All Growing Up

Our American Blue meat rabbits have babies, she is a first time mom and doing fabulously!

 

The oldest at his formal, when did he grow up????

 

I needed more babies so we got 5 cuckoo maran chicks, one died the first night so we are down to 4. They are straight run so some won't be staying.

 

The teenage girls roosting, they are approximately 10 weeks old, we started with 10 but are down to 7.

4 leaf clover in the garden, I had to take a picture :-)

The blueberries are growing! The raspberries and blackberries are in bloom too.

Garden progress:

Ducks don't stay still for pictures, Howard is doing great and got some friends. We do think Howard is a girl though.

This guy right here, this cutie pie....he turned 1, WHAT?!?!? What a great year it has been. He completes and blesses our family.

 

The roost for the new chicks on the block

Mother Earth News Fair and Progress

All chicks should roost on the clothesline and ignore the roost that was built for them.

 

 

Baby Peaches

 

Garden Progress, the green house has been completed. Most of the garden is planted with the exception of corn and beans:



Hoop house that grew greens all winter long for us, it is now uncovered and cleaned out for strawberries to come up.



Herb garden:



Raspberry bed:



Pallets have mostly salad greens in them








This will be a good bug house eventually, slowly working on filling it with things to attract those good bugs.



We had the opportunity to attend the Mother Earth News fair in North Carolina last weekend. We left early in the day and got home late the same day.

We had the kids with us and brought a backpack for the baby. It went well and it was inspiring to see everyone's informative booth and great products. 

We made a ton of progress on the yard. It looks awesome and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

 

Eeeeek! Opportunity!!!

Exciting news coming soon!

Now for the boring stuff. I moved the ducks outside to the brooder so my bathroom is no longer a duck house. The big chicks are out of the brooder and with the hens, the two smaller chicks are in with the ducks in the brooder but they appear to be segregating themselves and not co-mingling.
I am a little worried the chicks wont stay in the coop but we will see, they are definitely too big for the brooder.

We are getting a dozen or more eggs a day. Amazing! That is enough for us and enough to sell to help offset feed costs. Love that!

This month has been a little weird for me, last year at this time I was in the hospital for what would turn into a 7 week stay followed by a 7 week NICU stay for my little guy. I missed the entire Spring/early Summer last year so this year I feel out of sorts. Having experienced the preemie thing twice and a near death pregnancy more than once I certainly feel like I have a little PTSD from it all. Slowly finding joy in the season :-)

80 degrees? Yes Please!

The weather this week has been beautiful and we are in full swing garden planning and yard work. Trying to tie up loose ends before it gets hot.

The gardens need tilling one more time, planting will start soon. I am considering ordering a row seeder but have yet to make a decision. Seeds have been started and plants purchased.

The chicks are ready to be moved to the coop with the big girls which means the ducks can move out of my bathroom and into the brooder. We made the decision to get freedom ranger chicks for meat so a meat pen needs to be built for them.

I have slowed way down on my ebay/etsy listings because sales were kind of slow but I need to get back on track with that.

Goat School, Cows and Chickens

Today we went to goat school. We learned the basics, a little about the different breeds and milked a goat. We also saw some freedom ranger chickens which are the breed of chickens we are considering for meat, cows and lots of beautiful sunshine

it was a productive day. The kids had fun and enjoyed goat school! 

Our free lumber transformed our backyard



When we moved in a lot of our focus was on gardens and the front yard so the backyard was truly neglected and ugly since the house had really been abused by the previous owners before the house entered foreclosure. This was the back corner we worked on this weekend. 

 

 

Before:

 

After:

 

 

It is not complete, we need more rock and the railing is not up yet but I am excited by the transformation, best part is other than the $15 spent on pavers/rock and $15 on nails this was FREE!

 

This is Howard, the feed store had him set aside with a crooked neck and the cashier who we know well gave him to us to see if we could nurse him back to health. He moved into my bathroom and we gave him vitamins a few times a day. Within a few days he was on the mend and today just has the slightest bend in his neck so we got him some friends. Howard, Donald and Daisy will be moved outside this week :-)

 

Free

A friend wrote saying she had wood from a deck demo and would we like it. Seriously? Did she need to ask? Thousands of dollars worth of lumber FREE! So we took a break from our regular scheduled program and loaded up wood, two truck loads and  trailer full of wood in excellent condition.

This wood will allow us to complete a project that was previously put on hold. An outdoor kitchen area. It should take a weekend to complete but that will wait, TURKEY season opens tomorrow and the man of my dreams will be in the woods.

Garden Planning and Babies

We have been working from sun up to sun down to get the yard ready after it was neglected last year. It has been work but the weather has been glorious!

Our hens are laying again, we are getting between 5 and 8 a day which is great for our old girls. We culled a sick hen last night and added 10 new chicks to the yard :-). I ordered 6 more for delivery in May and then in the Fall we will turn over our flock completely and say goodbye to all of our old girls.

We are awaiting the birth of rabbits, any day now hopefully. Breeding two others today.

The garden beds are ready and I have started some planting. We pulled honey suckle vines out of the blackberry patch and it is ready to start blooming.

Spring! Finally

10 new chicks

 

Happy free range chickens starting to lay lots of eggs despite being old girls

My gardening partner:

 

Garden beds, phase 1:

 

Exhaustion

Teething baby, potty training toddler and two know it all teenagers have made for an exhausting Mom.

I have not started seeds yet.
I have not been sleeping.
Not been eating right.
Not been able to focus on anything through the fussiness. Theirs and mine. Something needs to change and soon.

The good news is progress is being made in readying the garden. The man of my dreams has spent hours of his time thinning brush so that we have more useable space. I cannot wait to see the yard progress over the next couple years.

Spring?

Maybe? Hopefully!

We have enjoyed temps in the high 60's and 70's this past week and it was a welcome sight! We did a lot of garden/yard work this past weekend and it shows. After neglecting the yard last year because of me being in the hospital for 7 weeks and Pystol's early arrival the yard and garden beds were in desperate need of attention.

We are readying the yard for a fence which will probably go up slowly over the next couple months. Seeds will be started this week and that will give us some time to finish readying the garden.

I am attending an Organic Growers conference in early March and am excited to bring home new knowledge to put to work.

I just started selling on etsy. The selection is small but will increase over time. The link is on the right hand side of this page.

Ice

Our house, yard, vehicles and chickens are covered in 2" of ice. The "snow storm" brought us ice instead. 

The animals are doing amazingly well but us humans not so much. I have been worried sick about losing power. Being trapped with four kids (two teenagers, a four year old and a baby on a heart monitor) with no power is simply not my idea of a good time. Shocking, I know. 

We have lived here two years and don't have a fireplace or wood stove. Last year we purchased one to install but with baby stuff cluttering our already small living quarters we decided to wait until next year to install it. Clearly this was not my best move. 

We are prepared for most things but an ice storm we were not prepared for. It won't happen again but obviously living in GA this may not even be an issue again for ten or twenty years. We do have a generator but with news reports saying power could be out for weeks I am not very optimistic that the generator will see us through. 

Being stuck inside has given us a chance to be together and has forced some relaxation so all is not lost. 

Snow Days and Sick Days

between snow and some sickies in the house its been a quiet week. Hoping to get back to real life soon!

Store offerings

I had some free time, the booth where stuff us homesteaders make and sell was a little empty so I gathered some goodies. Vanilla extract was a must:

I finally got around to making these soap dispensers. This is a project I started thinking about when pregnant with the little guy if that tells you how much I procrastinated on it. 

Busy

I made dog treats from chicken livers and hearts:

Sprinkled them with garlic salt and tossed in the bowl.

Put them in the dehydrator and after 8 hours they wee ready for Bo. He approves!

 

I also made blueberry sourdough bread for the humans.

Cinnamon sourdough:

blueberry sweet rolls:

and the man of my dreams made a light for my kitchen: