Full-Time

Farmer! Now that I am officially one month into retirement, I thought it was time for a post here.

January was a month of rest and relaxation as well as trying to figure out life without a work schedule. Not gonna lie, it's been little rough. It never occurred to me how hard it would be to quit work cold turkey. It's hard, like really hard. It took a little while for me to NOT think about the stuff that I started and hoped that it would be done. Not just done, but done well. In the first week I woke up thinking about whether or not the apparel for the new hires would be done in time for their first day (which is today).

ANYWAY

SLEEP

Sleep is something that I don't do well. My goal for January was to make sure that naps happened. So almost everyday I took a nap. A nap that was as short as twenty minutes or as long as an hour or even just a little longer. Amazingly, I was still able to get to sleep at night. Even now, on this first day of February, I might still need to take a nap. In the last week I don't feel nearly as tired as I did in the first week of retirement. 

PROJECTS

There were some things that I wanted to do and made the time to do them. While a lot of the things that I wanted to do was indoors, I did help Tom with a couple of outside projects. Tom wanted to replace the pet carrier nesting boxes that we have used since 2017. After a couple of days we ended up with - 

New and Improved

Same Cart different set up

Once we put the finishing touches on the cart I wheeled it out to the chicken run and most of the older girls immediately had to check it out. The ironic thing is that the older girls are from our original bunch of girls from 2017. They may have slowed down their laying or completely stopped. I think we'll find out for sure in a few weeks. 

FENCE

In the last week and a half Mr. Victor has been breaking out of the safety of our yard/property. A couple of neighbors sent texts to me to let me know that someone was out. One day Victor and Little Momma found their way down the path a bit and close to the private road between us and the church next door.  STINKERS! Last week we had at least two neighbors text or knocking on the door and another time our friend Robin sent me a text saying that her neighbor asked to let us know that there was a pig out. The only problem then was that WE were out...blah blah blah...

Now we have fence materials and started working on getting the fence installed.

Thirty Feet done

This fence is 36" high and will go across along the road on the garden side of the house as well as on the other side in front of the house. This should help keep the swine where they are supposed to be.

BAKING

January was also the month for baking. French bread, sandwich rolls, pizza all the good stuff. My goal was to make bread of some sort for sandwiches and I succeeded! 

So many fun things in my first month of retirement and I am feeling pretty good about being retired. As I look ahead I can see that a lot of work that will be done from now until forever. Just writing this makes me pretty excited about the possibilities that are on the horizon. Things that I could only dream about. Things that I would have to cram into a weekend or a week of vacation. These days I can make goals for the month and not just the weekend. If I don't get something done one day, I don't have to feel bad - there is always the next day. 

I'm going to go ahead and end this post and go do something fun or take a nap or play a game or read a book...

Farm Life, Best Life

It's Vacation Time...

With my vacation time comes lots of projects and things that I want to get done around our little farm.

Over the weekend we started one very important project - building new nesting boxes for the hens. The pet carriers are functional and all, but they are a bit haphazard and kind of janky too.

How the egg cart looked at the beginning.

The first set of nesting boxes were as you can see above. A couple of pet carriers and an old hooded cat litter box that we found at Goodwill for cheap. Over time we add three more pet carriers and it worked for a while. The whole system is not a bad concept...just looked...well, janky. Especially since the litter box is now on top of a pet carrier and, since it is so large, will have at least two hens sitting in it. That's not a bad thing if they both lay an egg. Anyway - with the addition of several more hens we decided an upgraded system would be good. I might still hang on to three of the pet carriers and the so that there are options. It would look nicer for sure.

Today is Monday and I have an outing planned with a friend so there won't be nearly as much happening as we'll be going for coffee and Pokemon catching opportunities. Lunch may be part of the outing, but I'm not sure yet.

Tomorrow is our meat chickie pick-up day - so we'll be heading south to Tanget to do that. I love that there is a hatchery so close to where we live. So today we'll need to get the brooder all cleaned up and ready for new tenants - 30 of them!

I will be posting here each day and sharing what we have accomplished each day. Right now, I need to employ good time management skills. My list of things to do is a mile long and I only have a week off.

Here's to farm life!

Winter Mode

It has been a few months since my last post...and to be honest, I don't feel so bad about it.

The ladies on the garden.

A lot of life has happened since that last post, the garden has been cleaned up and the chickens are now working their magic for the upcoming season. Honestly, the chickens LOVE the garden! There is so much for them to do...there are all sorts of treats to be had in there.

Ms. Fiona 

Fiona is quite possibly pregnant. It has been a while since we last witnessed Rex hassling Fiona, so she might be with bacon bits. So for the past couple of weeks I've gone out to the pig pen to observe the two of them and really study Fiona. It's hard to say, kinda like the first time she was pregnant - I just stood there looking at her and wondering until all of a sudden there she was putting herself in an impossible situation. So the answer for now is a strong possibly.

Seed catalogs are slowly trickling in the mail...oh how I love a seed catalog! I have received catalogs from Seed Savers Exchange, Baker Creek, Territorial, Johnny's and a couple of others. My favorite is Seed Savers...love everything about that company! Check them out!! I want to love Baker Creek, but the seeds just didn't work for me for some reason. They do have a really nice Whole Seed Catalog that I purchased last year, I don't think I'll be getting it this year. Johnny's is great for garden tools and cover crop seeds. Territorial is local (Cottage Grove, OR) and I would LOVE to visit their store. That would be quite a trip though, just far enough away to not be a day trip. It would be more of an overnight trip. Overnight trips are out of the question right now - we need a farm sitter.

And I'm starting to do a few more indoor activities. Last week I broke in the new kitchen work table and baked some cookies. Last night I watched a quick tutorial on crocheting and learned how to do a single crochet properly. This coming weekend I'll be baking something and sewing.

the addition of this table makes the rest of the kitchen look really bad!

So yeah, I'm settled into winter mode alright.

As I look back on last year's gardening effort, I feel pretty accomplished at all that went well (beans squash and tomatoes) Then I think of what did not go well (onions). As I start planning for the next garden I am thinking about doing more - nothing new there. However doing more requires more time, and I don't have more time. This year I will learn time management!

I'm also thinking about how I need to replace some of the laying hens as they are starting to really slow down with their egg laying. The original girls are nearly two and a half years old and even though they are still laying, it's not nearly as much. In fact, we had to suspend our egg sales to our few friends due to the girls starting to get broody or just not laying much.

We have already got some chicks back in September, Sicilian Buttercups...

These little girls are so cute!

Also, there is an opportunity to gain a few young hens from one of my co-workers who lives not far from us. He and his wife have quite a flock of chickens and they have experienced some loss due to a predator and he is thinking of downsizing. This will be a good thing even if we have to pay a little bit of cash-ola for them. He said that they haven't started laying yet, so this would be perfect! We'll see though...nothing is for sure.

This winter I'm going to try to rest up for all of the activities that I have on my agenda for the spring and summer. Lots of things are on the list already - Freedom Rangers will be on the farm again in March, new hens, need to build another chicken tractor...chicken harvest in June. Hopefully there will be a puppy in May. All that AND getting seeds started for the garden and possibly for sale.

AND there needs to be time for....

POKEMON!

Ever Get The Feeling...

that you might be the weird one? Not only are we the "weird" ones, we also live in a very unique situation.

When you think of homesteading or homesteaders what do you think of? Up until about four or five years ago I never had the thought of either homesteading or homesteaders or considered myself in those categories. Actually, I wouldn't have considered myself a farmer or think of us as living on a farm. In my mind I was growing a garden and it was mostly for fun, but we did enjoy plucking ripe tomatoes off the vine and harvesting some beans or whatever for a meal we would cook later. So, no, not a farmer - not even a little. Farmers have animals and big gardens and maybe even a tractor. What we have is a riding lawn mower...which usually requires the tires to be filled and the battery to be charged. In fact I didn't even know any farmers!

Until...

Tom discovered Justin Rhodes YouTube channel and he thought that what they were doing was pretty cool. It took me a little longer to see the value in those videos. After a few videos and Justin saying that he was the Permaculture Chicken Ninja (or something close) I got an idea.

You see, I've been wanting some chickens for a little while, but couldn't convince Mr. Tom that it would be a good thing. He was well aware of the amount of chickens my mom had accumulated during our time on the house in Fern Prairie. I assured him that I would not be that crazy - our house was the landmark for anyone giving directions to go somewhere, "Yeah, you know that house with all of the chickens?"

Anyway...

So, now we are watching this guy name Justin Rhodes who is living on a farm (homestead) with his family. They raise chickens and have cows and have a vegetable garden. We watched a lot of his videos and I was getting the bug...I could see chickens in our future. I don't know what happened, probably a lot of me saying "you know, we could get chickens" and still assuring him by saying,  "I won't be the crazy chicken lady, like my mom." The next season we started building a Justin Rhodes chick shaw, because I not so secretly found the plans on his website and presented them to Tom. I'm not that sneaky, but I do know what I want. After a few weeks we had 95% of the coop ready to go - we were waiting on something, but I don't remember what. It might have been the wheels. Anyway, while we waited on those, Tom built a brooder and we were off to Pioneer to pick up some chicks.

I'm pretty sure I had an idea of what I wanted for our first chickens which were Australorps, but Pioneer did not have them. What they did have were Jersey Giant chicks - they would have to do, since they were the only ones that were less than a week old at the time. Go HERE for that post. Since half of the chicks turned out to be little roos, we "had" to get some more chicks. Yeah, I'm still not a crazy chicken lady...

A search on craigslist and I connected with a woman who raises chicks on her farm in Woodland and the pullets would be closer to laying age AND she had Australorps. SCORE! We made arrangements and met her at the Safeway and completed the transaction like a drug deal going down in broad daylight...hehe...and we were on our way.

Thus was the beginning of our farm.

That season we added a gosling and duckling. Some people might just stop with chickens and waterfowl. Nope, not me...the following season which was last year, we added more chickens, pigs and more ducklings. We even grew our first batch of broiler chicks last year.

All of this would make sense for someone who might live out in the "country" someplace more rural at least. We live in a house on a piece of property that was once a farm many years ago. Our portion of the original farm is 2.71 acres. I'm unsure how much property made up the farm in the beginning. The fortunate thing for us is that we are just beyond the Urban Growth Area of Clark County and we are not bound to the rules of those who live within that area. In a way it feels like getting into this house/property was part of a greater plan.

Our home sits directly across the street from a newer subdivision of 15 or 16 cookie cutter homes. In more recent years we had been trying to figure out how to make this property more interesting and to connect to the world around us. More simply to our neighbors. Having neighbors is a fairly new thing for us as we have not had neighbors that we could actually observe from our front yard or from our living room at least.

Because these neighbors have witnessed the transformation of our property from a house on a couple of acres to a small farm. We truly are a spectacle. Anyone who walks to the mailbox at the corner across from our house can clearly see what is happening over here and will comment on it if we happen to be walking down their street.

The folks that live across the street are an interesting mix of retirees with grandchildren and families with young children. All with very different goals in life. Some are enjoying life without the daily grind of work and others just growing up their families as best they can.

We have connected with a couple of the families and have invited the kids across the street (along with Dad) to come observe/help with our last chicken harvest. One of the boys was a little traumatized at first and the other totally into helping - albeit brief. In time I hope that there might be just a little more interest - at least with the younger neighbors. An interest to learn exactly how their food is grown.

There is so much more to this story that I can't even begin to address in one blog post. Stay tuned and maybe learn a little more of what drives us. It's all very exciting for me...the reluctant homesteader.

Farm Life...it really is the BEST!

It's Time to Go Back a Year!

Yeah, so I didn't have a post on this blog a year ago, but there is a great GAFT video from this day one year ago! This was from Full Circle Farm in Florida. This is titled "When Organic ISN'T good enough..." as well as "The BEST way to cook pork chops"

We have been trying to eat better, that is make choices when we grocery shop. Having a steady supply of eggs really does open up all sorts of opportunities for creativity. This is something that I blogged about a few posts ago. Since our eggs are fresh as fresh can be the option to hard boil them is really a no go option. We would have to use older eggs if we want to peel them without taking half the white part away, we don't usually keep eggs around that long. I had forgotten that from my time at home and all the eggs that we had coming out of our ears then. I suppose we would have to buy eggs, but why would I spend money on eggs that are not as good as our own?

Oh, while we are kind of (not really) on the subject of chickens I came across a fun little Safety Tip Sheet on the NFPA website - I'm not sure that I have mentioned that I work for a local fire district. Anyway, as I was looking at Safety Tip Sheet to display on the counter on the National Fire Protection Association website they had a NEW tip sheet for...get this...Chicken Coop safety! Go HERE to check it out. 

So, of course I have to take a look. To be honest it seems like the stuff listed on the sheet would be no brainers, but I guess there is always someone who just doesn't get it. 

You'll have to go to the website to get all of the tips!

I just don't understand. Chickens are pretty hardy creatures and they do alright when the temperatures go down at night. In fact, now that we have our first winter with chickens on our farm behind us, they did pretty good. Granted we didn't have any crazy winter snowstorms - which are rare anyway, but there were a few days here and there where we woke up to snow on the ground. Which was fun watching them contemplate leaving the coop. In the end the chickens did just fine. So did the Dudes. Why risk a fire by putting an electric heater in the coop? We wouldn't even think to do that since the coop we built is the Justin Rhodes chick-shaw. It really wasn't designed to hold a heater or heat lamp anywhere.

In other happenings - we are getting closer to getting those piggies on our farm. I was in contact with Cascade Meadows Farm yesterday (via text) just to get the bug in Jason's ear. In another couple of weeks I'll probably send an email to get the ball rolling. We have the tote to use as a waterer, pallets to make a shelter and Premier 1 hog electric fence to help keep them contained. After watching Art & Bri's video this morning I'm pretty excited to see how the piggies will help with our garden spots around the property. Check out their video:

It's almost weekend time! The next couple of days should be decent as far as the weather is concerned. Easter Sunday might be a little rainy. The forecast is ever-changing so I guess we'll see when we wake up that morning.

March 20, 2018 - Chicken Tractor Build Day 2

Tractor build started a little later today after running a couple of errands and me getting a haircut. First stop of the day was for coffee, then off to Shur-Way for some special screws and some gussets/brackets. Afterwards we made our way to Wilco for rewards day. Pretty much everything was on sale and I already knew that I wanted to get some of their potting soil - professional grade no less. Two cubic feet for $6.50 - yes please! That's a big ol' bag, I'm set for the 2018 garden season.

Today was all about getting the lap joints all cut out. What is a lap joint you ask? I had to ask myself - Thank you Wikipedia!

photo credit Wikipedia - I had to edit it myself - not bad eh?

Construction Zone

Basically Tom did the cuts and I chiseled out the little pieces -

Before the pieces were chiseled out

All smoothed out

I finally got tired bending over at the old stump and moved to sitting in the driveway - it's totally normal

Our big accomplishment for the day - it's celebration time!!

Before I started helping out with the tractor project I got some more soil blocks made and started an entire tray of Lavender. I had a tray started last year, but I ended up neglecting them and they died. So, this year is the year that things will work! The other tray is all Seed Savers Exchange seeds, flowers, cukes and filderkraut. I have a few other things that I would like to get started, but nothing is critical at this point. I'm going to focus on making the garden a success and not trying to do too much this year. We already have enough happening anyway, I don't need to stress out about growing flowers and veggies!

Perfect day playing in the hoop house

So far this has been a relaxing vacation. I don't feel like I need to accomplish everything during this week. It would be nice if we could get the chicken tractor nearly done and ready to use when the Javas are ready to go out. Anyway, we are making goals as each day comes and if I don't get something done, no biggie...I will get to it another time. Hopefully the next day. If I could stay home and work on our mini farm I would be one happy farmer chick!

While we were out chatting while the hooligans were out and about I was commenting on how having fresh eggs really make a big difference in how much of our own food that we grow ends up as a part of one of our meals. Eggs are like an essential ingredient in so many recipes and dishes. We have been making more breakfast wraps, scrambles...fritatta, baking bread etc. It's awesome! So really eggs is helping us eat more healthful (most of the time) and eat at home more often.

I have to say that today was a great day to be on our mini-farm.

March 18, 2018

Another project has been started and is done!

Today is the last day that Tsugawa's Nursery will have bare root stock. So right after worship service we made our way out to Woodland.

When we arrived and looked at the trees that were still available. There were 5 or 6 different apple trees available so we chose King, Liberty and Braeburn. The last apple tree that we had was a Braeburn, but we never took care of it and ended up taking it down a couple of years ago. In all of the time that we had that tree I didn't use many of the apples.

Now that we have a couple of new varieties, I am looking forward to when we will have a harvest of them to process and make pies and applesauce.

The method that we are trying is from the Mother Earth News website HERE. I like that the trees are of a manageable size and it will be easier to take of them if we start them off small.

Before the trees got whacked and planted

The main thing we had to do is cut each tree down to around 18" they may be closer to two feet. We spent $24.99 a tree just to cut it down to about two-thirds the original size. You would think that it would bother me to do that, but not so much. I'm going to have mini fruit trees!

  

Making a Difference

Here's another video from the Great American Farm Tour - I liked this one a lot, this guy had a lot of different things growing in his front and back yards. Granted, this was in Florida and it was also one year ago. One year ago today we had a VERY NICE DAY. After several days of rain, showers, downpours...we had sunshine! 

I want a food forest...(she said in a whiny voice)

Yesterday I was cruising through YouTube checking out what videos were recently uploaded and I came across this title: Can One Family Make a Difference? Once I read that and saw whose video it was attached to, the only family I could think that the family would be the Rhodes family.

We started watching their YouTube channel a couple of years ago...back when they were doing their 100 Days of Growing Food challenge. The truth of the matter is that Tom is the one who had discovered them. At first I wasn't impressed...homesteaders? I don't know. I kept with it though and after awhile watching their videos was part of the evening routine and I loved the family! Seriously their Chiddlers are pretty cute!

It's because of those early videos that my dream to do something more with our property started to percolate. So much so, that soon after we started watching their vlogs I promptly visited their website and signed up to receive emails and also saw that we could get the plans for the chick-shaw. The plan was to get some chickens sooner than later...as it turns out it was after they started on the GAFT when we got 10 chicks from the feed store and started on our own journey ourselves. Before the chicks came I took a staycation and we worked on building the coop. Let me tell you - there are about a million pieces that go into making that thing! We used Justin's model of having a guard goose and since we were told he would need a pal then the duckling happened too.

Then things got a little crazy with watching all of the really cool farms that were on the tour. The one that really stood out was John Suscovich - you may have read about him in an earlier post. He's all about the chickens so that was a no brainer...I got the book, then a sweatshirt for Tom and a mug and another sweatshirt for me.

Anyway - back to the original question: Can one Family Make a Difference?

Yes, they can and boy did they ever. This tour really opened up my eyes to the different types of farms that are out there and just how many people are homesteading. The bottom line is that all of these people are really no different than me. They had a vision and they went with it...and that is an encouragement to me. There were a couple of people that actually got into a homesteading lifestyle a little later in life, so that was good for me to see. Not that I'm that terribly old, but I'm not in my 30s or 40s and getting started on my dream. My dream did start a few years back, but the timing is just right now.

So, if you want to check out the series of videos that were created as a tribute to the Rhodes start with this one:

From this one I believe that you will see the other ones.

As of this moment, I am in vacation mode! Bring on the projects!

DST and All Around Busyness

Man oh Man! We did so much around the house this past weekend! And it was Daylight Saving Time?!

Saturday - we were out and working on getting the chickens and the dudes moved to the new area. Instead of just letting them roam half of the garden at a time as we did for December & Janaury we got them set up to work the WHOLE garden and the grassy area all the way to the road which also included the wood chip pile. This took both of our Premier poultry netting (one is 100' and the other 160'). I don't gauge distance very well and I'm not spectacular at thinking out things ahead of time, whatever I got set up was taken down...booo. However, it was good for me to figure out exactly where we would have the opening, so not a total fail. 

What things looked like before the big move:

The back yard has been officially fertilized by the feathered creatures

They get another opporunity to poo up this area before we plant in a few months

I took zero pictures of my other Saturday activities which included:

• Weeding a garden box, broadcasting some cover crop seeds and getting the cover over the top of it. 
• "Working" for Mr. Shelly by digging up worms for snacks while he "supervised" and offered quality control by eating all that he could find. 
• Getting some onion seeds started in a small tray and doing some general clean-up in the hoop house. It will need to be organized since I'll be getting the trays out and starting all sorts of stuff while I'm on vacation next week!
• A trip to Freddy's to get my 99 cent cereal! There was a special download coupon good for Saturday - so Honey Nut Cheerios baby!
• Tom worked on splitting some wood and stacking it up.

Sunday was a more relaxed day - kind of...maybe not:

• Worship time - I was on the Info Desk schedule for the morning. I like it because I just stand around and talk to people. Which I could do every week, but don't. The introvert in me goes and sits down and waits for the service to begin.
• After we got home I made another loaf of egg bread and tried making egg noodles.
• While the bread was in the first rise I made some soil blocks and got my tomato seeds going. The other seeds I got out were Shishito peppers, cucumbers and I think some sweet peppers.
• Small group time was all about games last night. So good to be with our people and playing together and laughing together. So. Much. Laughing.

Thought I would try making noodles - it's really a messy project, hence the bowl

My noodles are a bit thick, but I think they'll do just fine

Making bread just doesn't get old

Another thing that we figured out is just how smart Mr. Lenny is. We have been known to not always eat the crusts off of the toast that we have for breakfast at times. Those crusts go out to the chickens. Well, they are supposed to. Lenny actually gets to the treat first and eats up the tasty bits first.

SO - last night we sat out in the yard and ate our sandwiches (late lunch = easy dinner). Well Lenny & Shelly were out and about foraging when Lenny spotted the sandwiches and came right up to Tom and stood as close as possible. He was filled with so much excitement about the bread that he begged and begged and begged. Worse than a dog! That goose - he knows what he likes and he doesn't miss anything! Again I didn't have my phone, so there are no photos proving that this actually happened. It was pretty funny actually. At one point he was next to me, but I just kept eating and he just kept watching. Ever hopeful. 

Note to self: Don't let the dudes out to forage while enjoying dinner on the lawn!

I would rather see this:

Now that Spring is really just around the corner we have all sorts of projects in the queue for the next few weeks.

Here's another Great American Farm Tour video for your viewing pleasure. This one is titled "Turning Rotten Coconuts Into Eggs"

Throw Back Thursday - February 18, 2017

The freebies that I got a month ago

Just over a year ago I was looking at seed catalogs and thinking about the things that I wanted to get into the garden that season. Go HERE for that episode :) Last year's garden was a fail on my part, but I'm not going to dwell on that, I'm going back to the basics.

This past Tuesday I placed an order with Seed Savers Exchange and it has shipped! I should be getting a box in the mail tomorrow!! Alright!! So excited - I'm going to go a little more simple and do the things that have worked in the past - I may have tried too many new things last year.

What will be featured in this year's garden? Here are the two collections that I have decided to go with:

The Cut Flower selection:

• Amish Cockscomb - this one hasn't made it into my flower garden - so this is a first.
• Blue Boy Bachelor's Buttons - I love Bachelor's Buttons and so do the bees!
• Love-in-a-Mist - another new one for the garden
• Globe Amaranth - I am pretty sure that this one was in one of my first gardens when I chose a bunch of flowers for dried arrangements.
• Spider Flower Mixture - First time for this one!
• Sensation Cosmos - These are a favorite and I have had them in almost every garden. Love them!
• Summer Pastels Yarrow - Another new flower in the mix.

So, as I was going through the list (as if I didn't realize before) it appears that there are more "new" flower varieties that I have not tried before. I'm not going to let this get to me though, I will succeed this year!

The Beginner Gardener Selection:

• Provider Bean
• French Breakfast Radish
• Green Arrow Pea
• Velvet Queen Sunflower
• Early Fortune Cucumber
• Black Beauty Squash
• SSE Lettuce Mixture

All of the vegetables that are coming are not necessarily new. Like I said before going back to the basics. 

And, because I wanted to try at least one other thing got some Good Mother Stallard beans. A couple of years ago I planted a short row of drying beans and they actually grew and I got a few beans. Not enough to do anything with, but they worked! Planning for a bounty of beans to store for winter.

AND as a bonus, orders that were $20+ would also include a Bee Feed Mix for free. I like free!! I have plans for that packet...so many places to choose from. 

I love seed catalog season and ordering seeds to grow special vegetables and flowers!

Today my happy quotient has been filled!

Life Before the Farm

For the first few years living in our house I didn't have any aspirations to do anything other than grow a garden. A big one. All the while, not really take advantage of all of the produce that we were growing. I am pretty sure that we ate a fair amount of the tomatoes, beans cucumbers, zucchini...but at that time I did not really have the time or energy to preserve anything. So we just ate what we could and gave some of it away or composted a lot. When we lived at the last house I did make the effort to freeze a bunch of green beans - there were so many...the freezer was full of beans! At least I know that I can get it done. 

Anyway, I always had flowers in the garden. This was before it became a thing to pay attention to the pollinators in the garden. Well, maybe it was a thing, but it sure wasn't with me. There were so many flowers one year that someone stopped and asked if they could harvest some of the Cosmos for an upcoming event (it may have been a wedding). It was so surprising that someone would ask...I said yes, of course. That may have been the time that I thought about doing a flower market garden. I even had books and everything. 

I had a little obsession with Dahlias!

So we continued on spending the summers working the garden growing food and flowers and the winters indoors doing indoor stuff. 

After a few years my life changed in a big way - I was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Dealing with that took away a lot of my desire to grow a garden. We continued with gardening though, but it wasn't as enjoyable as before. Actually, my focus was to get through the surgeries and the treatments that followed. It was all of the energy that I could muster and continue to work through all of the cancer stuff.

During that time the size of the garden grew smaller and my mentality turned to keeping active by cycling. Then after some more time, we were running...and the garden still continued on, but now in boxes that we had built during one of my fall vacation times. 

That seemed to be the turning point and I was starting to get interested in growing food and flowers again. I can't believe how long ago that was! It was September 2008, which would have been four and a half years after my diagnosis. Go HERE for the mini post of those boxes. Since then, the garden started to get bigger again and I started looking at different places to grow things. I have four garden boxes in front of the garage and have been expanding ever since! 

During those years from the first big gardens to what we have now we did a lot of cycling, a little bit of traveling - nothing exotic - then running. My days were spent working Monday thru Friday like everyone else. On Thursdays we would ride the Bicycle Club time trial series and a lot of days I would bike commute to and from work. Saturday was our long ride to somewhere day, anything over 10 miles usually. Running entered the mix a few years ago. These days we still try to get out early in the morning, but snow...and my bad back. Not to mention a lack of motivation. 

Now I'm dreaming again. This blog was created when those dreams of having a hobby farm full time started to fill my mind again. I knew that I needed to start a blog as a journal of sorts to see where we started and how far we are getting along in our dream. 

When this garden season comes around I'll be pulling up the Winter crops and getting the boxes prepped for the Spring veggies. This year I am planning to focus on vegetables that we can grow a lot of to preserve or store.

Waking up to mornings like this helps me to remember that there is a lot of time to plan and to consider what will be happening on our farm. 

I'm so glad that the snow really doesn't stay for long! It sure is pretty to look at though. 

President's Day Snow

Yesterday's weather forecast was for snow. There wasn't much during the day, not enough to cause any problems. However as we were heading home from our mini small group meeting it was starting to snow steadily still not enough to be concerned about. This morning we woke up to a "skiff" of snow on the grass...just enough to change the landscape. I took a look at the 10-day forecast and it appears that there will be several days of snow/rain mix. Swell.

Back to this morning...the chickens had NO interest in "playing" in the snow. The two hooligans, on the other hand...well...if they get a chance to get out of the hen pen, they will gladly take the opportunity. For those two it is business as usual foraging must go on! So, Lenny & Shelly went touring around the yard and had a grand ol' time. When it was time to return to the chickens they (Lenny) happily returned without much coaxing.

Before there were chickens and a duck and a goose, I spent very little time outside. The only time I would go out was when the the weather was decent or at the very least not raining. The only other time I would head out in poor weather would be when we were running more regularly.

Since adding the girls and dudes we spend more time doing outside stuff, almost like we live on a farm of sorts. Most weekends I find all sorts of things to do while letting Lenny & Shelly forage fresh grass.

Now that the days are getting longer again we (I) let the dudes out one last time after I arrive home from work. They like to go into their pools and splash around while Tom and I will chat about the day we each had. As far as the weather goes, I find myself outside even if there is light rain.

These days make me long for this farm life more and more. One day, sooner than later, I hope to be home full-time running our small hobby farm with chickens, ducks, pigs and the Goose of course.

When we add the girl ducklings and the pigs I might have to start camping outside...

Building Up A Library

Books, I have always liked having books...novels, non-fiction, how-to's you name it. For awhile we would go to the local bookstore on Friday night to hang out and thumb through the latest magazines, bargain books...new releases and everything in between. Ever since our two favorites closed - Barnes and Noble and Borders we don't really go out on Friday night anymore - Amazon Prime Video has filled that void now. That in addition to the fact that we are both early risers, which means bedtime comes early too.

The one thing that I have been thinking about is creating a space that would be specifically for researching, planning and looking at a variety of literature on gardening, animals and homesteading. I don't like homesteading per se, but the books I have looked at have excellent information on a variety of farmy things.

Once all evidence of Christmas was packed up and put away, I decided it was time to get my space put together. I've got an okay set up: a couple of easy chairs, the coffee table and my bookcase. The bookcase was emptied of all the books that were not related to gardening, animals and homesteading...and then the few books that I do have were put on the shelves. There are a few special issues of Mother Earth News that could also go into the bookcase instead of in the magazine rack on the floor.

The library is looking sad....

This just makes me want to go and look for more books whether they are instructional or just have a good story...I might have to start checking out the second hand stores for gently used books. At one time I did have more garden books, but eventually got rid of them. For awhile it appeared that my dream to be a flower farmer wasn't going to go anywhere. So anything remotely related to gardening was donated. That also included an early edition of Eliot Coleman's The New Organic Grower book - sadness. 

OOP - just ordered Welcome to the Farm by Shaye Elliott of the Elliott Homestead. She's a "local" living in north central Washington state. She was also featured on the Great American Farm Tour so you can check that out...

While I sit in my new space and dream about the future and what we need to accomplish this year, I'll be waiting for my book to arrive ~ it should be delivered Sunday.

Bringing Home The Bacon...

Or pigs to become bacon!

This is where I would like to create a paddock for the pigs

Now that we know where we would like to purchase the pigs, we have to get an area ready for them!

We already have invested in the Pig QuikFence Starter kit which, like the poultry netting includes the solar energizer and corner posts. Both kits were purchased from Premier 1 Supplies. We really like how easy the fencing is to move to other parts of our field/garden/yard. I made a minor mistake when I got the 160' netting for the chickens though - I ended up ordering the single spike...ooops. Oh well, it works just as well and we are able to give the girls and dudes a lot of space to forage. The pig netting is 100' and we'll move them maybe on the same schedule as the chickens, which is once a month, we'll see though. We can't be sure until we have them and see how much work they can do in a month. 

We'll need to put together some sort of shelter for them too. That might be as easy as a small hoop house. Although, I would like to have something a little more substantial for them, like a 3 sided shelter - maybe something that we can put a couple of wheels on to make moving it easier. Especially if we could hook it up to the lawn tractor.

Something like this could work for a little while

This is a bit fancy, but I like the idea of it

There are so many possibilities for our little hobby farm. A couple of weeks ago we put together a vision board to keep us motivated. AND to keep us looking forward and not lamenting that we didn't start this dream sooner. Now that Tom is semi-retired working part-time, he can take care of the chores during the winter months.  When spring and summer come around again I'll be out there messing with the chickens and the two hooligans everyday! It's possible that in 3 years or so I'll leave my job and we'll do this farm thing full time. It's a plan that I want to stick to!

Oh yeah...we got vision!

All I Can Think About...

photo: Cascade Meadows Farm, Sandy, Oregon

Meet the American Guinea Hog. There are so many reasons why these pigs are so great.

Here's a few:

• Size - A fully mature hog can weigh from 150 - 300 pounds - that's depending on their sex, body type and their genetics. They can be approximately 22-27 inches tall and 46-56 inches long. That's a pretty compact pig! 
• Temperment - they are very friendly and docile. They like attention from their owner's and people who might be nearby. They like to have a belly rub every now and then too. 
• Excellent breeders! Litters can range from 1 - 14 piglets with the average being 6 in a litter.
• They are excellent foragers. What the what?! A pig that prefers to forage rather than root? Okay...this could work out well. They could be garden clean-up! Well, the big stuff anyway. I see squash in the garden for future pig food.
• They have excellent flavor and produce a lot of lard! 

We are all set to visit a farm in Oregon that raises livestock for small properties - that would be us. With just under two and three-quarter acres, we don't have a lot of space a lot of animals, but we do have room for a couple of these compact swine. So next Monday we'll be taking a little road trip and visiting Cascade Meadows Farm and getting as much information as possible.

Time to get a list of questions put together...