May Homestead Challenge

 2021 Goals!

I dream plenty - now it is time to take action!

My goals for this first year of retirement is to transition from filling my days with working for someone else to working for myself. Whether my day is filled with all sorts of projects or just a couple, my goal is to be cool with being home full-time. 

It's a big thing to work away from home for 26 years - working in an office environment and serving the public. Always representing the fire district well during while at work and sometimes when away from work.

These days I just want to be me and represent the Lord well. I'm working on relationships right now and with that I'm making myself healthy. It is slow going, because I want to be a hermit, but that's allowed. If I allow myself to become a hermit then my retirement will not be as full as I would like. I would be home doing all the farm things that I like, but that in itself is not fulfillment. There is no balance. I have to be intentional in allowing others into my world. Even if it's just a couple of people walking past our house and asking about the critters. Sometimes I have to reach out and ask someone for a coffee date or whatever. If I can get into the habit of asking other people how they are doing and how I can pray for them or how I can support them - that would be a step in the right direction. 

People are not the problem (not totally at least) just me in this transition from 40 hours per week away from home to being home all the time. At least once a week I ask Tom if I'm doing enough, because I don't feel like I am. The irony is that I may have filled my day with doing inside chores, baking bread, working on a sewing project and then helping with the outside chores in the evening. If I could just realize that doing all of those things ultimately make me feel content and somewhat accomplished, then I would feel better about being home. 

It's a perspective thing. It's a lot to be around people all day long, day after day who just want the latest new shiny thing or "need" to go on a big vacation. I've done my share of wanting and traveling. Now I need to be home and grow this space into something special to share with people around us. People who are neighbors or people who are friends.

My other goal is to have a kick-ass garden. Last year was so bad - I thought I would just give up growing a garden forever. So far I have plants that I started from seed to plant in the garden and I'm hopeful. Anything going forward will be much better than last year! 

May Homestead Challenge

Favorite Homestead Meal

Had to think about this one for a minute. In the last few years we have shifted our view on where our food really comes from and that it is better to grow as much as we can. There is all sorts of satisfaction in knowing exactly what went into growing the chicken or vegetables that we put on our plates. Anytime we can sit down and eat a meal that incorporates veg from the garden and meat from the field we feel pretty good and are so very grateful for this farm and that we CAN do what we are doing. 

So, when we do a roasted pasture raised chicken and beans and potatoes from our land that would definitely be my favorite. Now that we have our own home grown pork that will make meal time really special

Our first real meat grown here on the farm - Victor Chops

A couple of weeks ago I was rooting around in the fridge looking for something for lunch and I came up with this...

Eggs from our chickens and jowl meat from Victor. This was a few days after we had Victor slaughtered. So very tasty!

So anything that we grow is my favorite!

May Homestead Challenge

 Day 5 - What is my favorite mock/cocktail?

Since I don't drink that often - only when we are out in a restaurant - I really don't have a favorite.

Although pre-covid there were a group of us that liked to go out for happy hour at a local restaurant (which closed last summer) and get pitchers of Sangria...OH MY! They had the BEST! However, I think I'll stick to this:

It's not bad for a bottled sangria.

My other "drink" of choice would be coffee. How could I not include coffee? We ARE in the Pacific NW. 

May Homestead Challenge

Today's homestead challenge topic is fences. Where do I start?

In the beginning, before there were critters we decided to build a Privacy Fence. This would allow us to work in the yard where I had four garden boxes without anyone checking out the activities in the yard.

This is the privacy fence a couple of years ago - when we added a fence around my garden to keep the feathered creatures out. 

Once we added chickens and ducks we found that we had some free range chickens and my goal was to keep them away from the garden. I first used some short fence/netting that I ordered from Premier1 fencing. It worked fine for the first season, but I really needed a real fence that meant business and would keep the chickens and ducks out. So a couple of years ago we (Tom) put in this welded wire fence around the garden. I think it looks pretty good. 

We also need to use a variety of Premier1 fencing products to keep the chickens/geese/pigs within their areas. For the most part the fence works. Especially if we use the solar chargers on them. The Premier fencing/netting is great because it allows us to move our critters around the farm and installs and pulls up pretty easily. This is like an advertisement for Premier1 - check them out they have all sorts of stuff!

The latest fence project would be along the front of part of our property to keep the stinker-marinker piggies on our side of the road and not on the other side. 

This fence also extend on the other side of the driveway and in front of the house. It's pretty effective and it was worth to time and money to get it installed. We are more at peace with leaving the house to run errands and what not. The perk is that I no longer receive texts from neighbors saying that some critter is out and about wandering around.

I'm thankful for our farm, but even more thankful for fences!

Spring Babies

 #mayhomesteadchallenge for May 3rd Spring Babies...

These are our new White Holland Turkey poults. This year I got myself a Brinsea incubator and hatched out these three. We could have had four poults, but for some reason #4 just quit. I think these three were too much and jostled the egg around too much. Which is just as well since I don't think that we could negotiate more than three chicks as they grow bigger and get more adventurous. 

Also, this might be upsetting to some, these littles are destined for freezer camp come fall. Until then we will treat them well and give them the best life that we know how to give them. In return they will bring joy just as their parents do now. It's hard to watch these littles and not smile. They have the cutest little personalities - which will turn into fun big personalities.

#farmlife

May Homestead Challenge

Okay, so I'm a day behind AND on the wrong sharing platform. This is a thing on Instagram and today is supposed to be Spring Babies - but I'm going to do a catch up post for May 2nd's Intro day, then Spring Babies...

So, this is me on a good day post morning chores. Actually, this was from last year as now that I'm retired, I stay inside during morning chores and do the post breakfast clean-up. 

May is the beginning of month 5 of my retirement and I have to say that I am finally into a little bit of a groove. I spent 26 years at the Fire District and it took a couple of months to get used to not going to work. I think I have needed to retire for several years - like when we started this who farmy-farm thing. If you read back in my posts you'll see how long ago we've been doing the Pigs and Poultry thing. 

My overall bio has been:

Brain Tumor Survivor-Triathlon& Duathlon finisher-Wife-Friend to Many-Supreme Smart Aleck. I'd like coffee and a book please. It's still me, but I came up with that bio a few years ago when life was much more full and less farm like. Now that I'm older I like life to be uncomplicated - on the farm and in relationships. I've quit doing multisport and my friend circle has gotten a little smaller (thank you COVID). Our overall goal is to meet the people who come by to look (gawk) at the animals. We ARE a spectacle!

If I could just be on our farm and leave only when necessary I think that would be my happy place. 

Visit my Instagram pigs_and_poultry_farm to follow our farm adventures there.