Thoughts For 2014

Ah, another year. I must be getting old because they fly by way to fast. Now, let's get one thing taken care of... I don't do resolutions. Many do and feel it is a meaningful part of life. Personally I find them a complete waste of time. I am always trying to save more and spend less, lose weight and attain rapidly evolving goals. I do not need a date on the calendar to signify I have begun or failed (cause lets face it, we all fail one or more of those resolutions). Nope, I just don't need that kind of pressure! But, I do enjoy and encourage making both a mindful and realistic picture of your coming year in your minds eye. This year a certain word comes to me when I think on it. Surrender. Oh, what a loaded word and one I struggle with so much. Surrendering to God and his will for our life as a family. Surrender to unknowns. Surrender to situations not in our control. Just surrender!

With this concept in mind, I will share some projects I am planning to work on this year. Notice I said work on not accomplish! If I accomplish them then I can grab a hard cider and kick my feet up in celebration. If not... eh.

photo creditA new garden! The joy of a new home. I have been working on this post for a couple days (because I have interruptions every 5 minutes) and in that time I have discovered a new style of gardening! Back to Eden gardening is a concept born of Creation. A man moved his family to a new home so he could grow their food but was faced with the challenge of not enough water. So through prayerful exploration and listening he was guided to 'covering' the soil and letting the Father do the rest. It's a fascinating and simple concept. For many reasons I want to use this method but the largest one is because I feel called! I have always worried about failing at growing, the hard work, the time, the weeds. Making this discovery was the Lord taking the worry out of my hands and replacing it with something I know will work... because He designed it, not me. Please watch the free film through the link above!

Housing for all animals. Ok... this might be a must. By next fall we would like to have the barn up and operational although that really depends on the progress of the house. By April we need to have shelter for the dairy goats which doesn't need to be fancy or large by any means so that is easily do able. We will build a good sized chicken coop so we can increase our flock and our horse will be using his trailer as a run in once again until he has a stall in the barn.

Increasing the chicken flock. Now that we have had chickens for the better part of a year now, I have learned a bit and think I can confidently say chicken do not come naturally to me as well as I do not enjoy them! Nevertheless I find them extremely useful and productive. After some more research I have decided on trying out a few different heavy breeds that have certain characteristics of broodiness, meat production, egg production and winter hardiness. Basically I want as much bang for my buck and not much to fuss with. My plan is to place an order with a couple of people who also want to order (so to split our shipping costs) and also get a large number in a straight run. This will allow me to add layers but have roosters to slaughter for meat in the fall. Then the following spring I can allow a few hens to brood the next generation and start all over again.

Learn to make cheese, yogurt and butter. As of April I will be milking one Nigerian Dwarf, two the following spring. Although we will be drinking most of what she gives us I would love to try my hand at making some cheeses and yogurt. I may wait on the butter given I need a cream separator to get a good yield. I will breed them both in November/December for spring kids!

Continue to increase our pantry stock. Currently we could comfortably live a month or two with what is in our pantry and not suffer nutritionally. I would be much more comfortable at a years worth or more. So, canning our garden's and local produce, raising chickens and pigs for meat, hunting, stocking grains and other dried goods and maybe? making a root cellar. The fun part about this is that I get to design and build a pantry in the basement to fit our needs and keep our stock safe from spoilage and theft.

Get my hunter safety certification. I have put this off for years and this year I am GOING to do it! One more odd to getting free meat. We as a family appreciate venison and pray every year someone will get a moose tag! The men may make a trip out to Montana to hunt in the fall. I hope they do! I would love a elk or caribou as well.

I could go on and on about the things I'd like to do. Again, though, I need to pace myself and stay within the realities of my season. Sure, I could bang out a bunch of stuff this year and I probably will! But, I will not let it get me down if I don't do everything right now. I am looking forward to this year!

Any of you care to share your hopes for your homes, lives, homesteads this year?

Til next time!

Farming With Small Children (video!)

When I first started really entering into this homesteading journey I had one small child but he was old enough to stay with me and being only him I could easily keep and eye on him while I did chores or rooted around in the garden. Then number two came along and I inwardly panicked. What was I going to do? How was I going to get basic chores done let alone keep adding to the barnyard? Let's face it, kids are a huge time/attention suck. Some days just taking a pee break is precarious in this house. So how do I get chores done twice a day, every day?


First of all I will say that my kids come first. Coffee comes second. Then comes chores in the morning. I don't kill myself (at present time) to do chores at the crack of dawn. Heck, I don't get out of bed until at least 7:00. Puzzle Boy always is up before me but he plays quietly(ish) for about a half hour until I wake up enough to get out of bed. I am not a morning person, can you tell? So, after we have all had our morning sustenance, I then do chores. Some mornings I am leaving first thing to run errands or pick up my friends baby to watch him, etc. In this case I would load the kids up in the car first and then do chores while they sit safely buckled up in my preheating car. Other mornings I will put Mini on my back and just take them with me or put them in separate contained places of safety while I run out to do the bare minimum. A lot of times the later is the case and I will just save the bigger more involved chores for when they are napping or supervised with someone who is not me. Like my mom. Or the dog. Just kidding.

Set yourself up for success! Honestly, when you are farming with small children there need to be continual reality checks. Do you really have time to milk three cows? Or, would just two or three goats be more manageable? 100 chickens? Geesh, that's a lot of poop everyday! Think realistically. Start small and know your own limits about what you can handle without outside help. Currently my weekday chores take less than 10 minutes twice a day. How is that you ask with a horse, a laying flock and a meat chick flock? I set it up for success!

My horse lives outside, not in a stall and he poops outside. The most his stall needs is a sweeping of the dirt he drags in every couple weeks. Time saved: 30 minutes of poop scooping. Throwing him his hay and giving a quick check over for ailments takes about two minutes.

The laying flock and rooster need to be fed once a day and the eggs collected. I collect eggs in the morning and feed at night. I clean the laying area every other day or as needed. They take about 3-5 minutes to care for.

The meat birds, while temporary are in my current schedule and take about the same time as the laying hens. They also get cleaned every other day and this seems to work well right now. * I will be doing an update on them soon.

On the weekend when Montana Man is home I will do what big projects need to be done while he watches the kids or we work together as a family like we did this weekend while we made a larger pen for the meat chicks. I had Mini in the Ergo and PB sat on a hay bale and safely watched us from there. Really, I do like having them tag along when MM and I are doing a project because not only does it show them farm skills, it shows them mommy and daddy working together (which we do very well!). Life skills all around!



In the spring we will be adjusting to a new schedule and ways of getting things done as things pick up in the growing season. With this I need to plan carefully and stick to that plan. I have just sent my deposit for two Nigerian Dwarf goats, a milking doe and a maiden yearling doe. I will be adding milking to my morning chores! But, again, I chose an animal that requires smaller increments of time to care for. I will only need about 20 minutes to milk total including sanitation steps and milk prep. I will be milking only my lovely Scarlett next spring, but the next year I will be milking both. Organization will be my friend.

Also next spring, the greenhouse will be full of seedlings to tend and cold weather veggies. New raised gardens beds will need to be made... next year will be a busy one. And, I will probably need to enlist help from a sitter to get some of these things done. For now though, we manage. Farming with kids can be fun, rewarding and enriching for both child and parent. Just remember to know your limits and theirs, have a plan and work together as a unit.

This video was one I did for a lady in LA that approached my about being in a reality show. Nothing ever came of that and I have forgotten I even made this! But, now I see it's true purpose... to share how I got stuff done this summer.

Summer!

This afternoon has turned rainy (which I welcome heartily!) so I thought I would catch up and do a little blogging. I have not written for a while, for this I apologize. Life has kind of been coasting for a bit with not a lot of documentable change. But now I have a few things to share as summer takes off.

First is that the house will be started... really soon! We have as of now accumulated our refrigerator, range, bath tub, kitchen sink, kitchen cabinets (sitting in the barn), and a dishwasher that we have yet to pick up. We are almost ready to commit to a house plan and submit that plan to the town. We have decided to dig a well instead of drill it, and also due to major structural hurdles we are going to be building a slightly bigger house than we had planned, but it will be about 1000 square feet... small by most peoples standards! More on this in the future.

The chickens are still growing and maturing, we have about 6-8 weeks left until they will start to lay and I will greatly enjoy passing the egg section at the store when they do! When they get closer to laying I will switch them to an organic feed, currently they are on a standard growing feed. Next year I plan to add a few different breeds to spice up the flock, all the girls are the same! I would love some colored eggs to break up the brown as well as have enough to sell regularly.

Next up I have a trip planned to a local dairy goat farm where I am planning to buy my goats from! I will be buying 2 doe kids next spring to start a small milking herd. Ah, the thought of crossing off the dairy section of the grocery list is a sweet one! I would like to pasture them in the spring-fall seasons so we will get the great benefits of grass fed milk, but we will see what we have to work with. I will take pictures and do a post on the farm tour!

Today, as you can see from the picture above, I made planter boxes for the greenhouse to plant my tomatoes and peppers. This was an adventure for sure! I went to Home Depot with the kids this morning and picked up my materials and organic potting soil. After Mini was down for a nap and Puzzle Boy was playing well on his new swing set, I got busy with making the boxes. I cut everything to size and then assembled one box before PB wanted to go in for lunch. I got him settled with that then finished the rest of the boxes on the walkway so I could watch him in the house. Later, I carried them out, rearranged the greenhouse, lined the boxes with plastic (I used pressure treated wood, can't have the chemicals get in the soil), and filled them with the potting soil. Planted the tomatoes, peppers and two dill plants and then pruned all the tomatoes quite heavily. They have started blooming and need only a good 3-4 strong branches under the blooms to thrive, all other leaves are just a energy suck. I want tomatoes not leaves! After all the pruning I arranged my remaining plants on the spare table outside to catch the rain and cleaned up.

I am also focusing on knitting in my spare time and keep wanting to tackle the barn... although I think I have to resign to the fact that it might be best to wait until we move to bother.

Oh the anticipation of our future once we are in the house and can build up our own land with orchards, gardens and livestock! My dreams come true, to raise my kids in such a wholesome environment of life and nature! All it takes is constant puttering, haha! Ok, maybe a little money too. You get my point right?

Til next time!