Homesteaders

[Jkm0518]

I have almost 2 acres with a really small garden. Any advice? Please don't hold back

 

[MountainMamaHST]

Great thread! We are very into the "homesteading" lifestyle. Our farm is a full quarter section (160 acres) so we have lots of opportunity! Right now we still have lots of snow but it's melting at least Our garden goes in mid-May. We are expanding on it this year and going to start some tomatoes and peppers inside this week. I started canning and freezing last year and will again this year, and maybe dry some herbs too. We have 6 hens and a rooster, and 2 baby Silkies in the brooder right now, and I plan to let my hens hatch out their own babies. Keep the pullets and eat the Roos like we did last year.

It's just hubby and I. We own our own company so I just do books from home and look after the farm. We have one little inside/outside dog (Shih tzu mix). I just bought my starter flock of sheep. 20 bred ewes due to lamb in June. I'm planning to build up by keeping ewe lambs until I have 100-150 ewes. I'm very excited about this new endeavor! We also just got a Great Pyrenees pup (14 weeks old now) to guard them. He's been guarding the chickens too! He's great already!!

We also have 2 horses. Arabian geldings, I do endurance rides with them and hubby and I like to camp in the mountains and trail ride. Every year we buy a steer and toss him out with the horses on grass and butcher in the fall. I've decided I want a milk cow now and have been reading/researching and we are hoping to buy one this summer. I'm a certified AI tech so I plan to AI her every year and we'll raise her calves for our freezer. I already make butter and yogurt at home so it'll be great to have our own milk to do it with too!

Oh and we also buy a couple weiners (piglets) every year to raise and butcher too. Hubby wants to buy some sows now to breed and sell the extra piglets. He worked in a pig barn for a while so he knows how to AI them and all the care they need too.

Our home is a little old farm house we love We have a big wood stove in the basement for supplemental heat. It's amazingly cozy! And works out great for us as we just go cut dead fall off our land and my in-laws farm to use for firewood. Helps out with the heat bill a lot. I have a clothes line which is great in summer, and in winter I use a rack by the wood stove a lot.

We love homesteading! I've got hubby talked into building me a root cellar this summer. Fingers crossed he had the time!

I'm in love with your life!

 

[MountainMamaHST]

I have almost 2 acres with a really small garden. Any advice? Please don't hold back

What do you want to do? I'd suggest getting a book on small acre homesteading. You'll be blown away!!!

 

[primalchick]

I'm in love with your life!

Thank you!! LOL! Me too We worked our butts to buy this place and now that we have it we are very much enjoying it!!

A couple days ago I started some peppers and tomatoes for the garden! We have a short growing season up here, last frost date is May 16 so gardens go in mid-late May. I'm planning my flower beds and counting down to lambing in June!

What do you want to do? I'd suggest getting a book on small acre homesteading. You'll be blown away!!!

Yeah! There's a lot you can do on 2 acres Way more than you think!

 

[ElleLovesDucks]

I just saw this, I realize no one has posted for awhile, but I'm hoping to start up a good conversation here. I'm attempting to be a vegetarian homesteader. We grow most of our vegetables, we just got chickens for the eggs, and we raise the hens and vegetables 100% organic. I'm hoping to chat with everyone. We normally just grow outside and cope with losses from deer, rabbits, and slugs, but in a month or two our greenhouse will be built and the veggies will be more protected. Oh we also have an apple tree that gives us a great amount of apples. Last year I made apple butter, apple pies, and even peanut butter apple cookies. What I don't grow myself I try to buy local (like honey, tea, milk....) because I live in a great community for that. Even our chicken feed is produced locally (about a 50 minute drive from our home). How has everyone else been coping? I had a few issues with the unpredictable weather, but most of the plants I really cared about have kept going strong, I'm expecting a great harvest of Zucchini, Yellow crookneck squash, butternut squash and hopefully some spaghetti squash. Of course I have my "salad garden" with lettuce, tomatoes and a couple herbs. Then I have a huge collection of peppers for my husband to make his homemade salsa, I have a ton of Walla Walla onions (We live in WA and I LOVE these sweet onions), and a couple planters of different kinds of mint. What else is everyone growing?

 

[Raech]

Hubby and I, plus 2 kids, live in an apartment still, but I have plans to expand into the homesteading/self sufficient lifestyle once we start the great house shopping journey. Right now we have 20 tomato plants, a couple of bell peppers that were an experiment and now I don't know when to pick them lol. We also did 8 Walla Walla onions, they turned into 9 somehow in the pot they were planted in, we also did about 20 Spanish red onions, they didn't do as well but we got a bunch of golf ball sized onions out of it so it was worth it. We got a couple of volunteer squash/pumpkin plants that are finally starting to do something, my son wanted to plant some flowers so we have sunflowers, that will be turned into bird seeds since he likes to feed the doves and sparrows in a bird feeder he made. We have a second garden at my dads house that has tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, corn, butternut squash, and a banana squash that has taken over the garden, he has planted onions as well but they aren't doing as much as my onions are, I think its because I water more since its in my backyard instead of across the property. Next year we are planning on planting more Walla Walla onions then reds like we did this year, adding green onions, carrots, radishes, garlic and more large tomatoes instead of all the cherry tomatoes that I did this year. We might also be adding more strawberries as mine did not do so well this year, buying some grape plants and adding more fruit trees to my dad's property. He is also considering adding a calf to go with our horses this year and butchering the calf in the fall next year instead of buying a friends cow and getting it butchered. He has a couple of acres in town so he has more room for animals than my household does, so the fruit trees would be over at his house, as we are removing the Striped Astrid tree and buying a dwarf apple, and maybe some dwarf peach and cherry tree as our original cherry tree is higher than the house and the sparrows get most of the cherries.

 

[Hippie Chicks Mom]

Love this forum. I am interested in homesteading and started a blog. Hippiechickhomesteader.wordpress.com to log my homesteading process. I garden, can and freeze our own food, we use wood for heat and hubby hunts for meat, we have chickens and I make my own laundry detergent, just a start. We both still work, but would love to concentrate on this full time at some point. Would love to hear from like minded people.

 

[Raech]

I got started to on the homesteading "wagon," so to speak, just to cut back on some of our bills since we are only renting right now. My family loves tomatoes and pears and cucumbers to high heaven, so it would help to cut back on some of our grocery bills. I love to garden and it seems that what I grow never makes it to the house or freezer before my oldest gets it, I picked a pear from the tree today and it didn't even make it to the backyard before it had a bite out of it. In some ways I have seen a cut in my produce bill, and I love making my own bread and canning but hubby is worried about the future bills for when we start having to add "water" to our stack of bills. What was your reason for starting to go back to basics? And if any difference in "cost" was noticed is it worth it(say buying a store bought chicken vs buying a raising a chicken then processing it)?

 

[UnlabeledMama]

I find my work is cheaper then buying. I'm not sure chickens and rabbits really are cost effective, but they are fun and I know where they come from opposed to it being from China with God knows what chemicals in it. I find gardens are cheaper - if the plants grow. I got 24 spaghetti squash and 22 acorn squash from 2 packs of seeds that were $2 each. $2 for 22 acorn squash? Yes, please!

 

[Raech]

I love finding seeds at the end of the season, my only problem is that I can never find strawberry seed packets. I get most of my garden from packets, if only I had more window space and didn't get sporadic burns from my 4 shelf patio greenhouse. I ended up having to buy my tomatoes from Walmart because the seeds that I had growing burned, on a weekend that we were at a car show, in the greenhouse, I was so upset. My seed packet cost $1.99 and 1 tomato plant from Walmart was $3.99, but I guess there was an upside, I found a community garden plant sale that had 6 inch plants at 4/$1

Hubby's coworker and his wife have an apple tree that is just massive and they gave us some apple juice and sauce they she had canned over the last couple of years, her kids don't drink much juice anymore, they invited us to pick apples and now I have 20 pounds in my freezer waiting for my juicer to get here so I can multi task my apples and get 2 out of one. I wish we lived close to a milk farmer so I could get my milk from them since we go through a gallon of milk in 2 days. My family has a drinking problem I guess