HOME Sweet Homestead

 We made the move to the country because we wanted to grow/raise more food. 

Well, food is overflowing at the homestead right now. 

Yesterday, we had our meat birds processed. 

Our pastured rainbow rangers went from this...

 to this.

 Tonight we cooked our first chicken and it was amazing!! All that hard work paid off and we are already preparing for the next round of 25 chickens. Our goal is to raise enough birds to have about a chicken a week.

 Our ducklings are growing by leaps and bounds each day. We lost our mama duck (to a fox, we think) not long ago, so we are keeping two of the females from the flock of ducklings and getting a new drake. The rest we will process ourselves at the end of August.

  

Our bees are thriving! This week we added a super to each hive.

  

 And then, there are the vegetables. 

We have to harvest vegetables every few days and come in with baskets full. This is the first year in three years we didn't sign up for a CSA and our trips to the farmers' market look a lot different these days. Our bags are no longer full of veggies and fruits because we have so much at home.

 

I also harvested the garlic that I had planted last November. I was so proud of this armful of garlic.

 We also found a patch of garlic that the previous owners must have planted. I let the scapes grow in this patch, just because I wanted this photo. The garlic flower is my absolute favorite. The bulbs aren't as big from this patch, but it was a sweet surprise to have this extra garlic anyway.

 

Speaking of favorite flowers, the other morning I caught an okra flower open.

 I just think they are so beautiful.

The passion flowers are also in bloom in the pastures. I love them, too!