We are not the only ones that suffer from the heat outdoors, with temperatures soaring into the 100s throughout much of the US many of us are watching as our animals struggle with the heat as well. We can keep our dogs and cats outside but when you have a large flock of birds that is not an option and yet the temperatures that our nation has seen this week can have a serious affect on your flock if you are not prepared. I have never had to deal with heat and chickens before this ... [ Read More ]
How to Make Chicken Sausage
A couple of weeks ago we had our first adventure in sausage making, this process was not nearly as hard as I would have thought it would be, however I do have a small disclaimer with this tutorial. I am not a sausage making expert, although I have canned, dried, preserved and cooked for many years, sausage making is one of the things I had never tried until this year. Still I thought a good step by step of what we did would be in order. The desire to make our own sausage ... [ Read More ]
Our Harvest is Starting to Come In
All the effort that I made to getting my garden put in early is really paying off, our harvest is starting to arrive in and most cases it is a few weeks earlier that most around here. We have had all the usual spring crops and also have baby carrots, zucchini, cabbage and Cauliflower and the first signs of cukes and tomatoes. Our corn is waist high already and I have baby peas and green beans that we are anxiously awaiting. The onions have reached the stage where we can start ... [ Read More ]
First Harvest of the Year,Garden is In, keeping busy With New Puppy
It has been a very long time since I have given an update on my progress here, as well as being a long time since I have updated this blog. I have had very good intentions to update it every week and would love to do much more frequent posts, but I am still trying to figure out how to manage my time. There are so many things demanding my time between planting, butchering and our business not to mention a brand new puppy but more about him later... that I have a hard time keeping them all ... [ Read More ]
Keeping Prepping in Perspective -Do You prep and if So Why?
My husband and I have talked about prepping a lot lately and as happens my daughter has been drawn into the conversation a few times. We talk a lot about self-sufficiency too, which is just on the other side of prepping, but as with all 11 year old children my daughter worries. I worried about nuclear war at her age with the cold war, and now she hears all this talk about prepping and wonders if she will face a disaster in her life time. Here is What I Told Her I struggled to teach ... [ Read More ]
Homestead Update: Planting Season is Here and Does anyone Want any Eggs?
It has been a while since I have done one of these and I have had plenty to report too! I really want to get into the habit of updating this blog more often and along with it these updates. I am trying to keep a photo journal of everything we do here, as we go along, to go with my updates as well. An early spring has put planting season into full swing, our neighbor brought over his tiller as promised and to my immense gratitude tilled up my garden for me. The garden is not huge, and I am ... [ Read More ]
Making Self Employment and a Hobby Farm Work Together
Many people would look at the life my husband and I have chosen and see it as the ideal American dream. We work at home; work for ourselves, are in complete control as to how much money we earn, where our business goes, and when we work. We have our small 2/3 of an acre plot which the jury is out on whether this will be big enough for us or would we want to upgrade in the future. We are on the road to practicing self-sufficiency, growing as much of our food as possible and working on renewable ... [ Read More ]
Preparing For Winter Storms in the Country
This post has been an idea on a sticky at my computer for some time now and may be a little late in coming but it is a topic that has been much on my mind lately. It has been 20 years since I have had a place in the country where I have needed to worry about power outages and while I still know the basics I have decided that just the basics are not good enough anymore. I will probably write this post in two parts, because I can already tell as I write that it is going to be a long one, I want ... [ Read More ]
Homestead Updates – Our First Egg and it’s Time to Start Planning
I have had a lot of people ask me for updates on my homestead, to which my reply has been that things are a bit slow right now because of winter. This really is not much of an excuse because it has been a mild winter but much of our plans right now do center on spring arriving. This DOES not mean however that we have not been doing at least a bit of planning. I have a lot of projects in mind for the spring, but before I say anything about that I wanted to share that after all of our hard work ... [ Read More ]
Taking Care of your New Baby Chicks
Getting Ready If you have just come home from the feed store with a box full of baby chicks you may not know how to take care of them and while most hatcheries may give you lots of information about your chicks if you need more information then I hope this helps. Getting ready for your chicks before they arrive is very important, your chicks will likely be stressed regardless of where you got them from and bringing them into a warm place that is already set up for them can really help to ... [ Read More ]