Spring around the Homestead: Part 2- Animals ( chicken overload)

Don't miss yesterday's post: Spring Around the Homestead: Blooms and Flowers

Today I wanted to show you a few of our animals. Chickens are just fun and I ended up with a ton of pictures from them. We are up to about 30 or so chickens. While we do sell a few eggs here or there ( maybe $10-$15 worth a month) we mainly keep them for fun, for our own eggs and my kids show some of them at the fair.

This is our frizzle rooster. He is so fuzzy! He is a bantam breed so super small. 

This girl is a bantam breed Golden Seabright. We have a pair of these girls. We used to have a rooster in this breed but he got so mean we had to give him away. 

These honestly are just the cutest!

Not a great picture but this is a Golden Campine. We have a pair of these and the girls show them at the fair. 

And we can't forget the goats. Clifford we've had for gosh probably 10 years- he's just like a puppy dog. The one in the front is Trail Mix and my oldest showed her last year. Now she is just a pet. If my kids decide to show this year we will need to be getting some new ones soon.

We do have 3 rabbits right now as well- they didn't make the photos somehow. How are things around your homestead? Any new babies? Expecting anything soon ?

Teaching Giving at Christmas

I strongly believe that giving is something that can be encouraged and taught at a young age to foster a giving spirit when older. You may recall that my husband and I are trying to pay off our debt and really focus on family, fun and memories. Even though we are paring back our Christmas overall ( as far as gifts, wow did we buy the kids too much!), there is one tradition we love keeping.

We give goats. Or chickens. Or geese- to people in need through Heifer.org. 

We've been giving to this organization for a while ( 15 years maybe?) and when my oldest daughter started Kindergarten, she wanted to give a goose in her teacher's name for Christmas. Talk about making this momma proud.

To backup just a bit, according to the website Heifer's mission is to:

We empower families to turn hunger and poverty into hope and prosperity – but our approach is more than just giving them a handout. Heifer links communities and helps bring sustainable agriculture and commerce to areas with a long history of poverty. Our animals provide partners with both food and reliable income, as agricultural products such as milk, eggs and honey can be traded or sold at market.

When many families gain this new sustainable income, it brings new opportunities for building schools, creating agricultural cooperatives, forming community savings and funding small businesses.

I love that Heifer promotes "passing the gift" meaning that when a family accepts a gift, they are trained on how to care or manage that gift, then are expected to give the knowledge to others around them. They have projects all over the world, even right here in the United States. They help provide everything from actual heifers.... to ducks, geese, goats, sheep, rabbits, vegetable gardens, bee hives and more. It's a great way for us to teach our kids about sustainability as well. 

Once you donate, you can order free "honor cards" in a variety of beautiful prints, to give to whomever you are honoring. 

This year both of our older daughters decided to get this: USE THEIR OWN MONEY to purchase a gift for their teachers. One "bought" a flock of geese, the other a flock of ducks. I also purchased a gift of a gardening project in honor of my boss who has been extra amazing this year. 

We love to give at the holidays, I think this is an amazing way to share our blessings with those that can benefit from it. It's not a handout, anyone that has hand milked a cow twice a day, or made goat's milk cheese, know that these families work hard, but just giving the initial gift of an animal can make such a difference in their world. 

Happy Homesteading Y'all!

Of Chickens and Pears...

Just wanted to update you all on our chickens. And I just added pears in there also, because they are about ready to start chowing down on.

Chickens:
So we have 8 adult chickens, of various breeds. My daughters will show some in the fair. The hens are giving us about 6 eggs a day. Thanks girls!

The little ones are heritage bantam breeds and we may try to start selling some eggs for folks to hatch. Or we probably won't, but they are super fun to play with. They have a small run that we can move around, with an enclosed roost and nesting boxes, but then during the day when we are home we let them out to free range. Chickens are fun. If you are thinking, should I get chickens? I would say YES!

You do need to have a place for them, and they need to be free from predators, but honestly a few hens don't even take that much feed. They love watermelon rinds and greens and things like that also.

We have two large pear trees on our property. Every year they bless us with beautiful fruit. I normally can some preserves and pie filling, and we just eat a lot of fresh pears. I also make cobblers and crumbles and sweet bread ( oh my) . They look to be on par to deliver again.

 What's going on in your neck of the woods? Are you seeing the signs of Fall? ( To me pears signify the approaching Fall season).

Our goat saga

Not really a Saga I suppose. But a somewhat sad story, with an ending that could have turned out much worse.

We have 4 goats. Three Nigerian Dwarves and 1 Spanish Boer. The Boer is a show goat my daughter *was* going to show at this year's fair.

 This isn't the best picture, but shows three of the four goats. The black ones are sisters and the brown and white one, we've had for about 4 years now. Clifford.

We live out in the country. We have one tiny little fluffy dog that stays inside. No outside dogs. Two Saturday mornings ago, we wake up to a crazy racket. Dogs barking, the goats were making whatever noise it is they make. It was just about daylight. My husband and I run outside and find two large dogs running from our property. We go check on the goats and find two injured. One ( the little showgoat Lizzie) quite injured. She was crying like a baby, bloody and overall just pitiful. The other one just acted like his leg hurt and wouldn't walk, and had a few small knicks on him.

 ( Cupcake)

So over the last two weeks I have given antibiotic shots, cleaned the wounds twice a day, given them topical antibiotic, and for the first week we put an umbrella over Lizzie because it was so hot and she couldn't walk to get shade.

You might not can tell by this picture but they have about 3 brushed acres fenced in. There is a small shelter they normally sleep under, but we added the dog pen with the barrels for Lizzie , because if the dogs were to come back there is no way she could protect herself.  We also added another row of barbed wire around the top.

So, the good news is that Lizzie is recovering. She can now stand up to pee (YAY!!) and can walk a few steps at a time to get into better positions, go to bed etc. The vet said nothing was broken or dislocated and she was likely just sore from having her legs and tail pulled on by the dogs.

So we set up a game cam and saw the dogs again the next night. They didn't bother the goats this time. I have no idea who the dogs belong to, and have asked around and no one seems to know. But maybe someone did know because it's been about 10 days with no sign of the. Crossing my fingers.

Lizzie may not be able to be shown this year. But we all learned a lot through this, we love our pets. We took turns giving her shots, sitting with her, petting her, holding the water bucket up to her mouth to drink. Positioning the umbrella so this silly goat would have shade. Rubbing her down with a cool rag. No, perhaps my daughter isn't going to show her this year, but in my book she has learned a lot about life, about living on a farm..


Happy Homesteading Y'all!

Baby Birds need to eat too!

Baby birds are so fun to watch. We have several fun birdhouses around and this year have had a lot of fun watching them. Here is a picture ( although a bit blurry) of a momma bird feeding her adorably cute babies. I love how they open their mouths so wide, just knowing mom will put something good in it.

 

Keeping it real: Realistic expectations about your homestead Part 3.

Keeping it Real: Realistic Expectations about your Homestead Part 3

I've written two other posts about this subject, you can find Part 1 here  ( about Working, Land and School ) and Part 2 here ( about Food)
This post will focus on animals, and I'll have to have a Part 4 about Frugality.

I want a huge farm. I really do. I have always loved animals, and even as a child dreamed of marryinga  rancher and moving to a secluded farm in Montana and my job would be to feed the animals and keep lambs have babies.... Of course I didn't realize what hard work that actually was, but hey I was like 8.
I think that as a homesteader wannabe, I envision rolling meadows with frolicking goats, and a beautiful barn with an old milk cow named Bessie, a flock of chickens that stay at my feet when I'm hanging out the laundry, a couple of sheep I can shear and make my own yarn, maybe some turkeys gobbling in the distance. Ah yes..... that is what I want.

REALISTICALLY though we don't have the time or space to deal with that many animals. We have a flock of 18 chickens which give us plenty of eggs for our family , plus enough to share and even sell a few dozen every now and then. We've had guineas and a peacock or two through the years, and have tried our hand at ducks, but for now we are happy with the chickens.

I honestly don't even like goat's milk or goat's cheese. I do like the goat's milk soap though, so I might could justify having that I could make some lavish soap with goats but honestly I don't know if that is justfication enough. We do have a goat. His name is Clifford and he is a Nigerian Dwarf. He's a fun pet, but that's about the extent of his contribution to the homestead.

Here is a picture of him out in the snow this past winter.

We have 2 rabbits, but again they are pets. They are fat and lazy and won't hop away even if they have a chance. We have guinea pigs too. And a dog... and a cat.

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is OKAY! Not every little slice of homestead heaven has to have a milk cow, you don't have to produce all of your wool, you don't have to raise pigs ( which is fine with me by the way). It's important to realize your limitations and just start small.

I think chickens are a great place to start when looking to be more self sufficient. They really do make nice pets, and the eggs from free range chickens are amazing. Plus I probably have one of the only 6 year olds on a planet that begs me for boiled eggs and takes one to lunch everyday despite the other kids at school telling her it smells funny...

So what have your experiences with animals been? Are you to your "threshold" yet of animals on your place? What are you looking to get in the future?

Happy Homesteading.....

This post is linked up to the Monday Barn Hop and the Morris Tribe's Blog Carnival.

Getting Busy around here

It's certainly beginning to get very busy around here.

Once a month Shopping
One thing that several of you have been asking me about is my once a month shopping. I am happy to report it is doing quite well. I was successful in January and so far everything is set to be working out for February. This is great for several reasons. The first reason is that it keeps me out of town! We live in a rural area and it would take half a Saturday morning to drive into town, do all the grocery shopping and drive home. By only going one day per month I am saving gas money, and allowing myself to be around the house more. I'm also finding that I'm saving money by buying in bulk and sticking to my list. This past month I really tried hard to design my meal plan around the freezer and pantry since I still had a ton of stuff I had canned or frozen from last year. It's about time to start putting up new fresh goodies, so I need to make sure we eat up what we have on hand first. So this month we have had lots of deer meat, soups, corn on the cob ( I froze I think 24 bags last year, each bag can make 2 meals for us), and salsa and tomato based dished from all the canned tomatos I put up last year. March will be another clean out the freezer and pantry month, so my food budget then should be lower also.

Gardening:
My uncle lives a few miles down the road and has a nice tractor, this weekend he came and plowed up the 3 different plots we use for gardening. We planted 2 new blueberry bushes in the yard and I can't wait until they start producing. These are rather large bushes and are supposed to already be 1year old, so hopefully we might see some fruit from them this year. I put up only 2 gallons of blueberries last year ( in addition to the jam, and what we ate fresh) and that was no where near enough for our blueberry loving family.
We also planted 8 brussel sprout plants, 4 cabbage, 4 ice berg lettuce, 8 brocolli and 8 cauliflower yesterday. I have several things started inside also.

Animals:
My oldest daughter is trying to decide what kinds of chickens she wants to show for 4H this year. She wants some "really fancy ones" so I've let her sit down with my chicken book and pick out a few options. She keeps coming back to the Silkies so I'm thinking we'll be the proud new owners of several of those soon. The other chickens are all doing fine. It's beginning to get warmer here so our hens are starting to lay a little more regularly again. We are getting 6-7 eggs a day, which in all honestly isn't enough for our family of four, considering most mornings we have scrambled eggs, and then for lunch my daughter wants a hard boiled egg or two, then whatever baking or cooking I do normally requires a few. But we are making it work for now until they all start producing again. Clifford ( the goat) is enjoying the nicer weather also , as are the rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs and cat.

Cooking:
As always, cooking keeps me busy as well. Our family loves to eat and thankfully aren't picky. I've really gotten into homeade ravioli, and we have it at least once a week, same with homeade pizza. I've discovered how delicious homeade pretzels are as well and those are a welcome treat around here. I love the magazine "Hobby Home Farm" and they always have some great recipes in them. Every time I get my issue I pour over it. They had a recipes for chocolate Meringe cookies that were outstanding. That recipe and pick will be coming in a different post.

Well that's probably enough for today. Happy Homestead hopping!!!