Oops, I’m the first to admit this blog is going nowhere fast. Life seems to always be too busy to find the time to post… lots of content that just hasn’t made it up here 😦
I’m hoping to update this with some of our past and current projects… be back soon ladies and gentlemen.
-Bonny
Well I will be the first to admit that this blog is no where near as done as I hoped it would be back when I started it. Life got far busier than I anticipated between me working, being pregnant, having a baby, getting animals, the garden, and everything else that happens with life. I’ll be attempting a blogging schedule of two posts a week, and if I can manage that then maybe I’ll try and do more…
So we have had a little change to our herd of goats over the last few months. First off, when the hay was cut back in July, it drove the mosquitos out in full force and they attacked our animals. They ended up having severe allergic reactions to them, and the vet had to put them on steroids the help with the inflamation. Everyone was better within a week.
In November, we butchered one of the wethers (stimpy), leaving the other wether (Ren) and the mother (Isobella) for the winter. We decided to do this so that Isobella wouldn’t be left alone all winter. Isobella then went off to another farm within the valley to be bred to ‘Prince Charles’ a pure bred Alpine buck. We left her there for a whole cycle to make sure she took. Upon returning for her, the goat herder that allowed us to use her buck said our payment was to take one of her goats off her hands. This goat is a doe that was born this year, and is the smallest of a set of triplets. Her name is Penelope. I’ll post a picture of her soon. Now that we have two does, I’m not sure what Ren’s fate will be, as he is a really nice goat (Hubby is thinking of keeping him around and training him to pull a cart, but we will see…)
We have ended up doing some modification to the goat house since it was built. Namely, asvault shingles and kleets on the ramp (so I don’t slip), the tarp roof came off so it was replaced with tin. Also we have installed solar lights both inside and outside of the house. Sometime this next week I hope to get the heated stock tank installed and filled (packing frozen buckets 2-3 times a day sucks!).
It works with an Angelcare Monitor!
Attaching onto the bed. You do this at the head and foot of the crib.
What you see from the doorway.
Oops this is upside down... shows the other end of the bungie. Again you would do this at the head and foot of the crib...
The pillow pushes the mattress against your mattress, the bumper is tied to the crib to hold it up.
So this post is horribly out of order, but thats the general state of my life right now… Found this on here.
i did lots of research before doing this here and here and here.
oh and as for our reason to cosleep? he was only tiny but he would toss and turn in the bassinet, causing it to almost flip. I felt he was too little to be in his own room, and his crib didn’t really fit well in our room unless it was there anyway! Oh, and we sleep great, much better than when he was in the bassinet!
So its been forever since I’ve wrote here. We are still moving towards our homesteading dream, slowly but surely. I’m posting here to let you know what our updates have been…
Update #1: We ended up having a beautiful little boy on Sept. 1, 2011. On the blog he will be referred to as “S”. Be prepared to see lots of this little fella!
Still in the hospital, 1 day old.Finally home,
Finally home, about 5 days old.
Giggly boy, at about 2 and half months.
Update #2: I’m still using the norwex stuff, but have moved my laundry solution over to ecosoap nuts. Am working towards making wool dryer balls as the cooler weather has made it so my cloths are all staticy!
Update #3: my grain shares have come in so I’m experimenting with using them to bake and cook.
Update #4: Lets talk about goats. Over the course of the summer they ended up ill (not sick) so I got the vet out to look at them. Turns out they were having an allergic reaction to the AWFUL mosquitos we were battling. Some steroids cleared up the reaction. It also ment I had to milk out the doe so she didn’t get mastitis (as the kids were still nursing but not feeling well enough for a few days to do the job). I had originally planned on letting her dry up this year and freshen her next spring as I didn’t think I’d have time to do it with the newborn, so that is the plan. She has a “Date” later this month with an adorable nubian/alpine buck in the next town. I’ll write a post about this later. Last weekend we actually butchered one of the kids (Stimpy), and are keeping the other one (Ren) as company for Isobella until she kids in the spring. Thank you to my brother-in-law for helping/teaching us with this.
Update #5: We did Hay this year over on the inlaws property. We figure we got about 800 bales off of the field. Some we are keeping to feed our own animals, the rest we are selling.
Update #6: I decorated the baby’s room, and will be making a post up about that shortly! I also will be writing a post about sidecarring his crib to our bed…
I want to start out by apologizing for not posting these last few weeks. I’ve been very busy with year end activities in my preschool classroom, and between that and finishing up my OWN year end schooling obligations, and caring for our property/house, I just plain havn’t had the time to post!
The last few weeks have had really awful wet rainy weather. Not downpours, but a heavy enough drizzle that it makes it difficult to work in the garden without damaging the soil (we have really heavy clay soil that if you walk on it, you get a cement like spot when it dries out. Today was the first day of sun in a while, and I used it planting more stuff in the garden, and weeding. Oh, and the vet came today and checked out the goats, and gave them their booster shots for tetanus. He said the little guys are now officially neutered.
One of the other things I got done off of my to-do list was I bottled my peach and my red grape wine (which turned out like a rose coloured wine). This is the first time I’ve made fruit wine from scratch, and it smells so good. Now just to age it for a bit, and then I can taste it (well I can taste it AFTER the baby is born).
Tomorrow will be spent working in the garden, and getting my flowers planted. Oh, and finishing up an assignment (hopefully!).
Cheers until next time,
-Bonny
So, with the impending baby, I’ve been looking for ways to cut stuff out of our budget, and pare down on what I have to spend. One of the things I’ve always hated was using chemical cleaners! After doing alot of research, I’ve uncovered more and more about what I DON’T like. Did you know that companies are only required to have 10% of a cleaner to be organic or natural to be able to label it as such. AND they are only required to put 10% of the ingredients on the label? Hmmm, sounds like they would most likely put the 10% natural ingredients on to hide the really bad stuff. So not only are you paying more for a ‘natural’ cleaner, but ultimately you are still cleaning with some really nasty stuff!
One of the investments I’ve made is a hand-held shark steam cleaner, and a shark floor mop. I LOVE these products! With just these two steamers, I’ve done away with 90% of my cleaners. True I had to spend some money to get them, but I’m no longer worried that the chemicals are harming my family and myself.
The other investment I’ve made is getting some of the Norwex System. I find that the envirocloths and the window cloths are the two most used items, but I’ve also gotten the dryer balls, magnet balls (to help with the hard water), and a few of the other items. True this was also an investment, but now I can clean my whole house in 2-3 hours (its a BIG house), and still feel like I can be indoors if needed afterwards. I got the laundry detergent, to try and see if it really would make a difference, and I can feel the difference in my fabrics, and they don’t smell of perfumes or scents (which I’m sensitive to). I also bought the toilet system, after seeing it at someone’s house, and the rave review that my mother-in-law gave it. It seems to work well with our hard water, so this is what I’m going to use from now on.
So now the only cleaners I have to buy are the dishwasher detergent, liquid dish soap, and thats it. 🙂 I think I’ll keep my bleach, as it comes in handy for those tough jobs… And now that I’ve made this transition, what do I do with all the partly used bottles of cleaner that I have here? Any ideas? I’m going to keep my Swiffer Handle, as I can put the envirocloths on the swiffer to wash walls and ceilings.
Oh and FYI, the shark (either of them) will kill mould and mildew. Our bathroom has a chronic issue with this problem because of how the ventilation works in there. One zap of the steam, and a scrub with an envirocloth, and I haven’t seen ANY mould or mildew in over 2 months.
So last year at this time I had all my plants outside hardening off. This year? I have them still hiding inside (in my indoor greenhouse)! This is because last year I lost ALL my pepper and tomato plants in a late and unexpected frost. It was their 3rd full night outside, it wasn’t supposed to get colder than 15 degrees C, so I thought they would have been fine. I woke up early the next morning and without getting out of bed, I KNEW it was too late… I went out to our garden to a bunch of crispy freeze dried plants. 😦 I had to go to the local greenhouse to replace all the plants I lost, and it was expensive!
This year, when the talk of seed catalogs came up, I flat out refused to order a single itty-bitty seed, unless I had some form of outdoor protection for them (for hardening). We ended up getting a portable pop-up greenhouse from Flowerhouses.com (we got the Springhouse model). I had my doubts that it would stay warm enough during a cold spell to keep anything warm, but I didn’t want to end up buying bedding plants from the greenhouse when I had grown all of mine from seed since February, and then lost them.
This weekend we set up the springhouse. I put my digital thermometer inside to see how hot it got, and then to monitor the night time lows. I opened the vents because it was 110 degrees F by 1PM yesterday, and I left the shade cloth off to see how it would effect the nighttime cooling. Then a storm blew up and the outside temps got cooler. I closed the vents at around 7:30PM, thinking it would be too cool in the morning anyways. I checked the temps again this morning, and the springhouse held enough heat through windstorm and rainstorm to maintain a minimum temp of 65 degrees F.
I’m going to let the temperature gage measure the highs and lows for the next few days, but I think it actually might be safe to start moving some stuff out. I’m so excited! I’ll be moving my cool weather crops out tomorrow morning, as they can handle a cooler night.
We hopefully will get our actual greenhouse built soon, but for the time being, I think this option will work. It definitely would work as a season extender.
So, with me being pregnant, I’ve decided to look for healthier options for food. Cows milk has always bothered me to some degree, and I’ve had goats milk before and liked it. After doing some research, I’ve also found that goats milk is actually BETTER for you than cows milk too. It is all about how the fats in the milk curdle when they hit your stomach. With cows, they form a ball shaped glob, but with goats it forms flake shaped. Your body then mechanically breaks these down to make it so the enzymes can effectively make it so your body can absorb what it needs. Its far easier to break the smaller flakes down, than the balls. There is also a bunch of literature out there about the proteins in the two types of milk (I’m not going to post any deeper on this, if you want to know more, ask).
Mamma Isobelle and Ren. Mom is the one with the collar.
So, knowing this now, I’ve decided to make our first big move towards our homestead and get a herd of milk goats. After searching locally for almost 3 months, I found a beautiful 1 doe, with her 2 buck kids. Her conformation is great. She is a mixed breed milker (Alpine, Toggenburg, Saanen), and this is her second kidding, so she knows what milking is all about. Great first goat. We bought her, and the boys the week before Easter Weekend this year. Mamma goat’s name is Isobelle, and the boys were not named. I’m the one to call them Ren and Stimpy.
Stimpy standing in front of the goat house
During this time, I had also been doing research on the care of goats, and feed requirements. I was ready for this, except I needed to build some housing for them. Easter weekend, my brother-in-laws and father-in-law came over and helped us build this beautiful goat house. Its built up on patio stones (to allow for drainage, and to make it so no building permits would be required). The house is 7’X11′. It is panneled on the inside and the outside, and is insulated with R20 fiberglass insulation. The roof is sloped so that water/snow will slide off. The roofing material is lumber tarp (scavaged from one of the local lumber plants). On the inside of the house we have a water pail, hayrack, and a salt-lick. To exit the building, we built a ramp, as it was alittle high to expect anyone or anything to jump.
The house is located at the end of our huge garden. The pen it sits in measures 25’X40′. I’ve seeded this pasture with a mix of grasses, clovers, and alfalfa (which is now really starting to come up. The perimeter fence of the garden is made up of 8′ game fencing (to keep the deer and elk out). Around the back end of the garden (where the goat pen is now), I ran chicken wire overtop of the game fencing to prevent the kids from crawling out. On the inside of the pen I ran 1 strand of electric fencing (to prevent mom/kids from scratching on the fence and bending it). Where the T-post cross fencing is (to prevent the goats from the rest of the garden), I have 4 strands (set at 8″, 16″, 30″ and 52″) with a gate. This seems to be keeping them in just fine. Total cost for the pen and house construction was quite reasonable (considering we had to get the fence charger, Â all the assorted hardware, the feeders and buckets, insulation, the electric wire, and the insulators).
One of the first things I had to get done after we brought the goats home and they had calmed down was to get the boys castrated… which I had help doing from a farmer friend. Other than that, they are happy and healthy goats, and Mamma Isobelle is starting to wean the babies, so I’m going to start milking her soon.
The pictures belong to Heidi over at fooddoodles.com. I still can’t find my camera connector to get my own pictures up here.
Ok, so I think I have this figured out now…
I’ll start with our story, as its the beginning. Olin and I have lived with his parents and younger siblings on 32 acres for almost 4 years now. This past christmas, they moved to an additional 10 acres nearby. Over the past years we have done some improvements to the property, like putting in a 120’X40′ garden that is fenced with 8′ deer fence, converting the sandbox turned herb bed into less of an eye-sore, raised bed for strawberries and other goodies, putting in berry bushes, and many other projects.
This year we are working on putting the finishing touches on past projects, changing some of the layout around the garden area (to make it more user-friendly), and maybe even getting into the haying of our property (which the neighbour has been caring for). At his parents place we are working on getting the berry bushes and fruit trees cleaned up (they’ve been neglected for the past few years), we are planting potatoes, and Olin is going to attempt to have a small grain plot over there as well. There will be more posts on these projects as we finish them, hopefully with pictures!
Already this year we’ve gotten some stuff done, like planting our asparagus (in one of the previously built raised beds), we got our trellis up for the grapes, and the soil amended with well rotted cow manure in our garden. We have also divided the back 25’X40′ section of the garden off to house my milking goat and her babies which involved our family getting together and building a goat house (pictures to follow, but for now you can check out some pictures at my sister-in-laws blog fooddoodles.com, here is a link to the specific post http://fooddoodles.com/2011/04/28/wholesome-baked-oatmeal-and-baby-goat-pictures/). I’m using electric fencing with them, and it seems to be doing the trick. Of course, if I leave the gate open, they will go in to the garden 🙂
Also this year, I’ve started most of our plants for the garden in my indoor greenhouse that Olin built me last year. I’ll take pictures and make a post just about it, as there is alot to the design (not really!) and the reasoning of why it was built where and how it was. I HOPE to get a traditional outdoors, solar heated greenhouse built sometime in the next few months, but this may have to wait until next year…
So, sorry for the long post, but there is alot I want to say (I honestly didn’t realize there was this much as is, and there is still so much more!
-Bonny
Regrowing Our Roots 