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June Garden Update
A belated wish of Happy Independence Day! We had a wonderful time, celebrating with family and friends this weekend. With so much work to prepare for the big day, I’ve been a little too preoccupied to sit down and write my June garden update. Heads up, this is a picture-heavy post! I’ll keep future garden updates more condensed, but there’s a lot to show this time! After spending nearly the last 6 years figuring out how we wanted to transform the homestead and set up our gardens, we’ve finally begun to make the progress that we’ve been striving for. The secret garden is finally beginning to look like the vision…
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Animal Update
Eighty-five. I think that’s the number of animals we have on the homestead right now. That might sound like a lot, but we’ve had more than that in chickens alone in past years. Yet it’s the most diverse group of animals we’ve ever had. Since June is done and gone, I’m about due for an animal update. On June 23rd, the last of the animals we intend to add to the homestead for the year arrived. Our Cornish cross. Thirty birds that eat through feed like no chicks’ business. These little cuties will get big and ugly in no time flat. They outpace the rate of feather growth around the…
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What Day is it?
As usual, we’ve been pretty busy in recent weeks. I’ve had a few restful days, and I have needed every single moment of them. My thoughts have been deeply enmeshed in gardening, animals, and housework, to the point that I nearly forgot about three different scheduled events. I continually find myself thinking “What day is it?” Since I last wrote, I built a rabbit hutch with a run for the kids’ rabbits. Adam’s bunny, Sonic made a surprise reappearance by the produce stand while I was working on building the new hutch, and thankfully, the kids were playing by the stand and noticed him! We set a live trap the…
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Streams, Gardens, and Animals
Well. If I thought we were productive the last time I wrote, it’s nothing compared to what we’ve been up to the last two weeks! We’ve worked on streams, gardens, and adding animals to the homestead. I didn’t expect to get so much done, but I am thrilled with this latest round of progress! On Mother’s Day, we made major changes to the landscape around the property. I wanted to finish working on the flower beds in the Secret Garden, but I started to poke around at the stream because I was trying to decide if I needed to change the length of two of the beds based on where…
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Piggies
Since this is our first venture into pigs, I’m going to be keeping extra notes. Things to know or remember for future use. The piggies are doing well! It took awhile for us to really see it, but they are definitely bigger. They actually lost a little bit of weight in their first week here, because we had such a drop in temperature that we were not prepared for. Thankfully, they appeared healthy otherwise, and since they have not only gained weight, but definitely grown bigger. The weight loss, I suspect was solely from being cold. They didn’t eat a lot the first few days after we brought them home.…
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Springtime Productivity
I love this time of year, and how productive we are. Before the heat sets in and the bugs become unbearable, we spend as many good weather days as possible working on our to-do list. Any cleanup we want done for the year needs to be done before the grass gets too high, and there is always a rush to get things in order for planting time. Springtime productivity is so different than summer, fall, and winter productivity. There has been a lot of bustle around here this past week, but for the last month, we’ve seen a lot of great changes! Scott has been able to spend a lot…
