If you live in the South, you should already have planted your garden. Northerners can wait until June for more cold sensitive plants. The Plan • This is the fun part. Think about what you like to eat or flowers you like to see on your table. What fruits and …
It’s been a busy Spring but I got most of my outdoor jobs (or as I like to call them, my exercises in futility) done. 🙂 In the past month, I relocated hundreds of irises, started a dozen pots of new herbs, and landscaped the front of Greg’s shop. All …
There is nothing more traumatic than disbudding a baby goat only a few days old. I dreaded it all during Pan’s pregnancy because I knew if she had a daughter, we’d be keeping her. And if we kept her, she’d have to be disbudded. For the uninitiated, disbudding is the …
We heard a woodpecker hammering away at a tree and Greg says: That’s the Machine Gun Kelly of the bird world. I laughed so hard, I had to make a meme for it. It really did sound like a machine gun going off. At least he wasn’t on on my …
It’s that time of year again. Time to bruise shins, fraggle fingers, and blister hands. The knees aren’t doing too good either. Ah, Spring, you destroyer of ligaments and punisher of muscles. You lure us with promises of fresh strawberries and plump snap peas, but we always forget the price …
This is a year of transition. We’re simplifying and streamlining. We should’ve had a few more weeks of ‘winter’, but it looks like that one day in January was it. We’ve started turning over my raised beds and fixing or adding drip irrigation. For the last two weeks, I’ve been …
Our latest arrival is this little buckling. He’s a pure bred Nubian, future mate for my Nubian girls. We call him Captain Jack (named after Jack Harkness for Dr Who fans). Jack’s sire was named Captain America, so I thought it only fitting that Jack be a captain too. Poor …
Other than my Sunday menu posts, this will be my last regular post of the year. I generally take off and recoup between Christmas and New Year’s Day. 2016 was a fairly good year. Greg was home. We got lots of homestead projects done. Made a little money with the …
You wouldn’t think I’d have much to report being November, but we’ve had a very mild fall. Winter for us is usually January and February. December is cold, but it’s the kind of cold that makes Northerners laugh at us. Garden: After numerous deer attacks on my garden, I’ve …
On the Homestead: We sold our two bachelor bucks last week. They went pretty fast, but people hammer you for the first few hours after the ad comes out, asking the very same questions I already answered inside the ad. We had intended on holding back “Freezer Meat” for the …
We’re in the middle of a deer population explosion. Worse yet, they’re so used to seeing people, they don’t even have the decency to run when they see humans. They know we can’t catch them. They’ve decimated my garden. I tried netting and that thwarted them for a couple …
You don’t have to grow your own food to dehydrate fruits and vegetables. I had a dehydrator for years before I started using it regularly. Part of me couldn’t believe that such a small amount of heat could make food edible let alone more delicious than before. It’s true! …
I was browsing through Amazon Prime’s movie list and came across Pioneer Quest. It’s an old documentary/reality show shot in Canada in 2000. The producers screened thousands of people who applied to live one year in the Canadian ‘wilderness’ as people would’ve lived in the 1870s. Two couples were chosen. …
Despite the heat, the homestead goes on. The garden is nearly spent except for the hardiest of vegetables–the ones not tasty to deer, rabbits and raccoons. Here’s the rundown. Garden: Every year it gets better. More compost in the beds, better weed barriers around the plants, and more permanent walkways. …
We’ve been binge watching a fascinating series about English farms throughout history. They’re historical reenactments where Ruth Goodman (historian), Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn (archeologists) live a year in as close an era based farm as possible. Tom Pinfold appears in Tudor Farm. I tried looking for these videos on …
Time again for another update on the State of the Homestead. The weather continues to be pleasantly weird. Last year we had an exceptionally mild winter. This year we’ve had consistent rain. Not that I’m complaining. Most of the rains were brief showers, though we did have a couple of …
Our old house in SE Texas has finally sold! The irony was that it didn’t move at all in the beginning, but things happened fast in the last three weeks. People were FIGHTING over the property at the end. Unfortunately, we had already accepted an offer from the man who …
We finally made it to Trade Days in Canton, TX. If you’ve never been to a Trade Days event in your area, you’ve got to try it at least once. Canton Trade Days, or First Monday as it’s called locally, covers over a hundred acres. It’s so vast it …
I think it’s kind of cool that ancient Egyptian honey is still edible. Today of course, there’s fake honey that’s made from corn syrup. (The sun god, Ra would throw a hissy fit.) There’s also filtered honey which is honey, but it’s ultra processed so it doesn’t crystallize so easily. …
Here is a layout of my garden for 2016. With so much going on I don’t think I’m going to get a chance to till the secondary garden for my tall plants, but if I have time, I might try planting loofas in the back forty. The tally for …
