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Six Years and Counting
It’s six years and counting since we signed the papers on the homestead and moved in! Some days it feels like a lifetime ago, and I suppose, in some ways, it is! Two of the kids were born after we moved here and have known no other home, so for them, there was no “before” the homestead. So much has happened in those years, and I’m very grateful that I’ve kept the blog up throughout that time so we have a record of much of what has gone on. The progress we make each year has been amazing and deeply satisfying. We’ve made a lot of aesthetic changes in 2021,…
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Satisfactory Exhaustion
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of satisfactory exhaustion that sets in after a long day putting up food that you’ve spent months growing and tending. This past week has been filled with long, exhausting days, but with each passing day, we’ve added to our store of food for the coming year. The house is filling up with all kinds of food, flowers, and herbs, and I love it. Thursday began with a hurried run through the garden, doused in bug spray while picking as many veggies as possible before running back into the house to escape the clouds of mosquitoes. I picked all of the remaining purple pole beans,…
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Sauerkraut and Blue Corn
After feeling bogged down by potatoes and turnips the past few weeks, I’ve finally been able to turn my attention to some fun food preservation! I picked 3 large heads of red cabbage this past week, and I harvested all of my blue grinding corn. We even pressed our first batch of apple cider! I’m sure I seem weird to my family and friends, but I get so excited about all of the strange or different things I can do by growing my own food! My last sauerkraut endeavor was the year I sliced the tip of my thumb off. The kraut turned out just fine, but I was always…
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Potatoes Everywhere
It's that time of year! We're swimming in produce over here. Some days are a little overwhelming, but the end product is so satisfying and worth the effort!
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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…
