My life this week in pictures

My first ever batch of mozzarella. It was good not really any flavor but the tomatoes and the basil from the garden gave it a little something ☺

My pumpkins are starting to come on! I have several of these little Cinderella pumpkins and a pie pumpkin. I've got a lot of blossoms. I'm going to fertilize this patch to make sure I have jack o' lanterns for Halloween!

My cherry tomatoes are overwhelming! Enough said!!!

My mother in law brought me three barn stars today!!! I'm so in love with them! I've been wanting some since I painted the barn but since I never leave my house and refuse to pay retail for most things I haven't found any. Luckily MIL is a yard saler and remembered that this girl was wanting some barn stars ☺

I harvested all my cantaloupe to make room for my Fall garden and had more than we could eat so, I've started a batch of cantaloupe wine............. I will let you know if it's good :/

Have I ever mentioned my LOVE of compost! We have the worst soil here it's all rock and clay so I add my compost to my gardens whenever I can. Right now it's going in the strawberry patch that I'm trying to de-weed and put to bed before Winter. Homegrown dirt makes me happy, happy, happy!

 

Have a great week ya'll☺

 

 

 

3 more

Babies are hatching!

I'm soo happy! I think this first baby is a giant Cochin. I will take a picture with my Giant Cochin rooster just so you can see how huge he is! Anyways, this hatch isn't like my others, there's new breeds in this one, and this mamma is excited ☺

Little white Silkie

Remember my little white Silkie chick I got in Febuary well he's all grown up now. This is Boots ☺

 

 

Homestead News

I'm just getting over my first ever case of Salmonella poisoning. It's been a painful week but I'm finally on the mend, just not 100%. In the midst of being sick I planned and hosted my daughters 8th birthday party. I was worried I didn't invite enough people or have everything together but I did and it was a great party!

I'm still milking Miss Lady twice a day. I was getting a full gallon every day but now I get about 3/4 gallon. My neighbor purchases a gallon/week which is great since we have so much. I would like to just give it to her but she insists on paying me. I've made my second batch of chevre. Everyone in the house loves it, my new favorite seasoning on it is French onion, it tastes like dip, yummy. The rest of the family likes garlic and dill.
I plan on breeding my girl again either in November or December. We usually have a pretty good snow storm in March so I don't want her to kid until April at the earliest. I hope she has a girl this time ☺

My garden was doing fantastic but we haven't had a good rain in awhile and now it's a dried up dreary mess. I'm still harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and cantaloupe. This weekend I harvested the last of the green beans. I am late putting in my fall garden but I think it's a good thing. The heat we have had would've killed anything I planted. I'm going to plant it this week.


this was one of my gardens in all it's glory

 I finally got meat rabbits!!!! One buck Peanut Butter and three does. I am excited about this project. The lady I got my buck from has workshops on how to butcher rabbits, she even tans the hides. I plan on attending her next one.

Peanut Butter


 

I've got turkeys now!!! Meet Tom and Tilley. They came from Rocky Oak Homestead, we did a little critter swappin' the other weekend. That's where I also got two of my female meat rabbits ☺ I really like Tom the best for some reason he is friendlier than Tilley. I need to learn how to clip wings, they are flying over fences and having their way with my gardens. Mrs. Puff my black Silkie is broody. I gave her some eggs to sit on, they should hatch this weekend. I'm so excited, I ♥ baby chicks! I sold five more chickens last week. My chicken count is 33 as of today ;)

Tom and Tilley

I totaled up how much I have spent so far this year on feed and hay. Whew! It's a lot! It's time to get serious about making some money off these animals and making them self sufficient. I figure if I could make $100/month. That would be enough to take care of the feed bill. Now I just need to figure out what to sell to make this money.

TMI

My little baby buckling needed to go bye bye. He has been hogging up the milk for the last two months and now is obsessed with mating with his mother. Not good!!! So I put him for sale on Craigslist at a price that everyone else had on their bucklings. Well no response so I lowered the price about $15 and put on the ad that I would also trade him for a trio of meat rabbits, still no response. Panic started to set in, he has to go and quick! We started discussing eating him. As "homesteaders" we need to be able to eat any animal we can't sell so it only seemed logical. Except he was my first baby and as many of you know much anticipated LOL and I loved that little guy. The hubs wanted to eat him but didn't want to kill him or butcher him, I think he loved him too. Here comes the TMI. The hubs talks to numerous people about it, I watched a gazillion videos, and by the end of the night my brain hurt. The fact is we got goats for milk not meat so we weren't mentally prepared for that. I lowered my price another $20 and a few hours later baby boy was gone. It broke my heart to see him go but I'm so relieved he won't be able to impregnate his mamma and guess what! I'm back in milk!!!!!!!

August 22nd!

My girls will all be in school and I will be back!

I didn't mean to take a summer vacation from blogging. I've been crazy busy, I miss reading everyone's posts and sharing what's going on around here. I'll be back in my blogging groove soon. Until then ya'll enjoy the rest of your Summer ☺