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! 

{Ducklings}

Last September, we welcomed three ducklings to our homestead. Once they reached maturity and we could distinguish their gender, we actually had two drakes (boys) and one hen (girl). So we sold one of the drakes on Craigslist. We were left with a pair (Goliath and Charlotte) and Charlotte started laying eggs. The eggs are oh so tasty! But, we decided to let our hen give mothering a try and so we started leaving the eggs when she laid them. We were hoping maternity would suit her and she might raise a little family. After she laid 16! eggs she finally started sitting on them. Then we waited. And waited.
Then Thursday morning I saw our little mama shuffling around in her nest. I ran out to see what was going on and saw the first two little ducklings peek out at me. For three whole hours I sat and watched the rest of the flock hatch from the eggs. The mama would help them out of the shell and she and the drake would eat the shells.

The next day they went out for their first stroll together as a family and there were 15 ducklings!

 

 Over the course of the weekend we found four of the ducklings dead, 

but there are still 11 happy and healthy ducklings 

 that follow their mama all around the homestead.

HOME Sweet Homestead

Boy, oh boy, do we have a lot going on at our sweet, little homestead! 

It is definitely Spring around here! 

We've been busy planting and still have more to do, but we've also been harvesting, too.

 Flowers are popping up all around in some unexpected places.

 

Our Muscovy duck is sitting on 16 eggs! We will have ducklings very soon.

 

In the last month, Bryan built our laying hens a new eggmobile. Our chickens could already move around in the pastures, but not very easily in the very heavy coop that we had from the city. Now we can move the chickens so much easier and it can hold so many more chickens.

 We used metal that we found in the barn to cover the sides and a trailer for the base. 

We still have a few finishing touches to do, but it is now in use.

 Our first batch of 25 Rainbow Rangers came last week. These meat chickens will only live for about 11 weeks and then they will be processed and added to our freezer. We are hoping to raise another batch of 25 this summer. We are raising our own protein!

 We pick up our bees (2 hives) this coming Saturday. So we've been painting bee boxes!

 Mabel has been moved in with the sheep in electric fencing, and they get moved to a new section of grass every other day. She is a year old and slowly, but surely, she is growing into adulthood (thank goodness). She is now a Livestock Guardian Dog!

  

And....

today our first lamb was born!!! 

Her mother, Harley, gave birth to her shortly after 5 a.m. 

She is healthy and strong and her name is Victory.