Category: Around the Homestead

We were so blessed to have a spring for the first time in YEARS. Much needed rain and mild temperatures made the month of June a much needed reprieve from the drought we have been enduring.

A bittersweet time came for us when our sweet Jersey and calf were sold. She went to a wonderful home and all is going well, as I get periodic updates, but still hard to let her go.

We have had the incredible experience of continue to raise Aspen’s baby budgie from egg to an adorable, feathered-out, little cutie.

We’ve had goats in the garden.

Goats in trees.

Cows in our sheep shed (where they don’t belong).

Adorable rescued cats!

More goats where they don’t belong.

There was still time for some “homesteady” things as well We processed our roosters and got them tucked away in our freezer. There has been butter making, mozzarella making, yogurt making, and I even got up the nerve to water glass eggs.

We’ve had time for swimming.

And lounging on the back deck.

Annie, our new Hereford-Scottish Highland cross.

June has brought the blessing of rain, of baby birds, baby calves, and a garden full of produce. The grass is growing and giving us beautiful yellow butter instead of the white, hay-fed variety of winter and drought. We are working hard and using this bumper year to put back for the lean years to come.

The garden is in, minus sweet potatoes. I planted 50 pounds of potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, beets, carrots, green beans, and herbs. My raised beds are in disrepair after years of heavy use, but I am hoping to get at least one more season out of them. The cold frames Randy built me from repurposed wood and glass worked amazing. I was able to grow lettuce, spinach, and kale through the winter and early spring months. I also started some cucumbers in them.

It has also been calving season this month. We calved out heifers this year which was a new and slightly scary experience for us. Our first heifer to calve was Tina, our registered A2/A2 Jersey (sold). Randy and I were able to assist her in having a healthy little bull calf. He is half Scottish Highland, half Jersey.

Next was old faithful, Lexi, our registered A2/A2 milk cow. We kept a close eye on her when we saw her start, but were pretty sure she could manage on her own until we saw one, rather large, back hoof coming out. We gathered the meds and chains, called dad, and headed out to assist. It took all three of us pulling, but mama and baby are both doing well.

Raising Savanna goats on Jersey milk

And at one week old, Aspen’s adult budgies decided to attack the baby that had hatched. Mama disowned the baby after the attack, so we have been faithfully feeding this little guy/gal every two hours for the past couple weeks.

And for the record, I did say know to the offer of a kitten last week. A monumental event for me to utter the words regarding an animal. Truthfully, it had already found a home or it would be here. But my initial answer was, “no” if that counts for anything.

Randy mowed stickers in our pasture just in time for the rain to nourish the grass below. As I walked through our over grown lawn the other morning, admiring the green pastures, I thought about the way we manage our farm and life. Our yard may get overgrown, but our pastures will be well tended. The flowerbed may get weedy, but the food will be harvested on time. My house may not get dusted regularly, but the little lives inside (2-legged and 4-legged) are well loved, fed, and cared for. My priorities may not suit the modern, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses world of today, but when I step back and look around. I am able to see the beauty and blessings through the weeds and the dust.

We are entering June with VBS, reading lists, new journals being created, the garden in place, and care packages being put together. We have had unbelievable rain and are so grateful to God for his blessings.

The garden produce has been collected, the firewood hauled to the house, the chimney is clean, the fire is lit. Autumn has finally arrived on our homestead. We absolutely love this time of year.

We are preparing for a season of celebrating. We have cozy fall books stacked a mile high, boxes of apples, jugs of apple cider, and candles lit.

It is finally cool enough to work on the school bus some more. We are getting close to having it insulated.

We took our last trip to a local zoo with our cousins before it closes for winter.

Collected the last of the herbs before the first freeze.

A broom Canyon and I made from catmint.

Willie Nelson helping…

Sage

Bandit curled up sleeping in a nesting box.

First fire of the season. We love this time of year.

Hope everyone is enjoy the changing seasons. After a really hot and dry summer, we are enjoying the cool days ahead. A time to curl up with a good book and a mug of something warm to drink.

Without the hassle of cooler weather or misty, rainy mornings! It’s officially fall!!

Everyone around here is just trying to stay cool and survive.

The girls and I have decided that regardless of the brutal upper 90s-100 degree temperatures and the endless drought, we are celebrating fall. I have Cozy Cabin from Edens Garden diffusing, pumpkin spice hand soap in the dispensers, and a batch of hot cocoa mix ready and waiting.

I also whipped up some of this cleaner to spray the dining room table and counter tops.

Our library books are stacked high because we don’t intend to be outside in the afternoons unless we absolutely have to be out in the heat.

It’s time to celebrate. We have one single pumpkin purchased so far, afraid they will rot in the blazing heat. But today is the day we will bake something warm and delicious and curl up with a autumnal book and a cup of something warm. Hope everyone enjoys the first day of fall and create your own rhythms and traditions wherever you live.

We have a lot of things going on around our homestead. Besides being in an incredible drought and an intense heatwave, we are also expanding our farm endeavors.

We are currently on a waiting list for a starter flock of registered Finn sheep. We are halter breaking our Jersey heifer, Tina, who will be for sale once she calves in the spring. We will soon have Scottish Highland-Hereford crosses growing on our farm. Rachel, Aspen’s Savanna goat, went to mom and dad’s to be bred to a really nice Savanna.

The Araucana-Barred Rock chicks we hatched in the spring just began laying. So we now get about a dozen eggs a day. The girls, Randy, and my dad processed the roosters together, so they aren’t terrorizing our hens anymore.

Last but not least….

We just bought a registered male llama, Dante, and are in the process of buying females so we can begin breeding guard llamas. We have wanted to do this for a long time and everything just kind of fell into place for us to make this happen. He is adjusting really well, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for our llama herd.

The girls and I have a pretty good routine to manage all of our chores. Randy is good to do the bigger projects as needed, fencing, hay, hauling feed bags from point A to point B. Our barn is full of hay, our bins our full of grain, and we are ready to begin another season on our farm. We are so excited to see what the future of our farm and family holds.

They are growing up so fast. They have disagreements, but for the most part are the best of friends and playmates. As different as night and day, but so special to us. I thank God everyday for bringing these precious girls into our lives.

We have a new baby Jersey on our farm and are overflowing with milk!

We plan to have a Jersey cow ready to sell by next summer after she calves in May.

This morning we had temperatures in the upper 30s which warranted our new favorite our-cow-is-dry-so-we-have-no-milk drink. Hot cocoa made with dry milk powder.

Hot Cocoa Mix:

1/3 cup THM gentle sweet or powdered Monk Fruit sweetener

1/3 cup cocoa

1/4 cup A2/A2 milk powder

1/16 t. Himalayan Pink Salt

Combine and mix well. Add 2 T. to a mug and top with hot water. We don’t do super sweet at our house, so if you would like your cocoa sweeter, just increase the sweetener to your liking.

We warmed our water on our wood cookstove, topped our mugs with Dandies marshmallows (again no cream for whipping), and began our homeschool day together.

As afternoon approached, our temperatures were climbing into the 80s. This called for fresh-squeezed lemonade sweetened with honey.

Honey-Sweetened Lemonade:

1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 cup honey

5 cups of ice water

Combine lemon juice and honey into pitcher and stir until honey dissolves. Add water and chill in refrigerator or serve immediately.

We tackled our science lesson on the front porch with a ice cold glass of lemonade and a handful of cats lounging and napping all around us.

What I’m Diffusing:

My favorite essential oil site oneessentialcommunity.com

California Coast:

2 drops cedarwood

2 drops orange

2 drops lavender

1 drop spearmint

1 drop frankincense

What I’m Wearing:

Happy Mama:

1 drop each

Peppermint

Patchouli

Lemon

What I’m Reading:

Anne of Green Gables-L.M. Montgomery

We are praying for rain here as we are as dry as we can possibly be here. My early garden is planted and growing, just waiting for some April showers. Hope your day is filled with simple pleasures too!

You never know what the weather will bring here. We experienced a 90 degree day and woke up to giant snowflakes falling from the sky the very next morning. I love the changes in our weather. You never have the chance to grow weary of the same thing day after day. I love winter and the excuse to snuggle up with books and warm drinks, but I also look forward to spring and the May, one of the prettiest months here with the green wheat fields and all the trees and bushes coming back to life.

We enjoy some sunshine. We enjoy some snow.

On cold mornings, we snuggle.

And on sunny days, we play!

Kidding season at Dad’s.

Our garden is nearly all in and growing now. I have cold-frames full of greens (kale, spinach, and lettuce). The raised beds are full with potatoes, peas, carrots, beets, and brassicas. We west garden is still waiting for warmth and then we hope to fill it with sweet corn and okra.

The season is slowly changing and with it our daily life will change. Our menu has already started to change to a simpler fair and things harvested from the garden. The asparagus is popping up, the lettuce is ready for picking, and the green onions are oh-so-close.

Happy Spring!

We decided this year we would try to hatch our own eggs instead of buying more chicks this year. We haven’t kept a rooster in a long time, but we took on a rooster from a friend who had way too many.

The girls and I were on our way home from a fun outing to a museum, in our “good” clothes, and decided it was time to stop by our friend’s house and grab our rooster. We had a shepherd’s hook, a large cat carrier, and determination. In a few minutes we had a barred rock rooster loaded in a cat carrier in the front seat of our car and off we went for home.

After 21 excruciating days of anticipation…a tiny Araucana/Barred Rock chick appeared in our incubator.

We literally all worried.

The cheeping was almost to much for her. She just couldn’t quite figure out why the box was cheeping.

We ended up with 13 adorable little chicks and couldn’t be happier with the experience. We are already talking about hatching more in the fall.

We don’t know if they will end up being roosters for hens, but hopefully they are mostly hens. Some of our hens are really old, so this will help our egg production having some younger hens coming up the ranks. We also are trying to focus on breeds that are good foragers since the cost of grain and the availability of feed is so hard to predict for the future. We want hens who not only can forage, but prefer to forage over bellying up to the food trough.

We had hoped to purchase:

Leghorns, Black Minorcas and/or Light Sussex

But do to cost, availability, and the Avian flu just decided to try hatching our own. We are so glad we did. What a fun experience for our whole family!