I have 184 things to update you on!
It’s been a BUSY week on the homestead.
If you follow me on instagram - you’ve seen the bulk of it. But for those that haven’t, I’ll just rapid fire some of the most recent happenings from the last two weeks to catch you up!
- One of our new does had 5 baby rabbits! They are 10 days old and doing so well. Doe #2 hasn’t delivered so we will likely try rebreeding her in the next week.
- My father in law made me an awesome new garden tool I’ve been waiting for years! (More details on that below)
- All my brassicas (Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, kale) are planted in the garden. I’ve also started planting potatoes and hope to get carrots in this weekend.
- Batch #1 of meat chickens are officially on pasture and loving the fresh forage and air!
- Our layers made their first move in their portable coop and are now working on cleaning up the big crop garden before planting in a few weeks!
- All our baby piglets from this spring are officially weaned, castrated, and off to their new homes. It was a great farrowing season!
- Our milk cow is home! She had a 24 day visit with the bull and showed some strong signs of heat, so we’re praying she was successfully bred! We can test her near the end of the month to see for sure
- We are officially grazing!! After Casey (our milk cow) came home, we started opening them up to pasture a few hours each day and yesterday they officially starting grazing on the big summer pasture! We will be rotating them every two days to a fresh paddock just like last year.
I think that’s the bulk of it! We also celebrated two kiddos birthdays in there and are still balancing finishing up our schoolwork for the homeschool year.
Everyday preparedness - for animals?
Every fall we gather up pumpkins leftover from local retailers to supplement our pig and chicken feed (the cows even like them sometimes too!).
We’ve been talking a lot lately around here about what it takes to truly sustain our homestead. We can’t grow food without seeds and we can’t grow meat chickens without feed.
And though saving seeds vs. buying them every year isn’t a new concept to us, we’ve been looking deeper at our needs to outsource so much of our animals feed. How much are we willing to rely on the local feed mill week to week to keep everything alive and thriving? Are we really securing our family’s food source if we can’t grow it without buying dozens of 50# bags of various grain?
I talk deeper on this topic in a bonus video for my member’s area - including what we are doing this year to close that gap/reliance on outsourcing things and some honest realities you also may want to consider.
If you are not a member yet - you can find more information to join here! Your membership not only gives your exclusive bonus content, but it also help support our family!
Also on that topic, this week’s FREE homestead handout is a list I’ve complied of 30+ foods you can easily grow or forage for to supplement your animal’s feed (chickens, pigs, cows, rabbits, etc!) and lessen your reliance on outside feed a little bit more! Download it here and consider adding a secondary plot to plant some just for animal feed this summer!
Check out my new toy!
My wonderfully talented father in law is at it again with his welding skills!
I’ve dreamed of having a broad fork for many MANY years - basically since I committed to doing no-till gardening. But they are quite an investment and not something I ever could justify budget-wise.
Well, over Easter, I discussed some of the specifics with him - he has welded us some incredible things in the past - like our wood rack & epic pig scraping table - and last weekend he delivered this beauty for me (complete with a “can’t-lose-it-in-the-yard-red” paint job!)
If you are handy (or have someone you know who is) I made a full video about it here and even showed how it works in our awful, compacted soil in the big garden!
This weekend is all hands on deck getting the rest of our wood processed and stacked in our overhang for next winter. We have about 6-7 cords of 8’ long logs we ordered last fall to get through, but if we can finish, it will be so worth it not having to rush to do it next fall.
Hoping you have a wonderful May so far!
Blessings from our little homestead,
Beth
