DogwoodMtnFarm
Chirping
Greetings Ya'll! We finally achieved our nearly 40 year dream of starting a homestead when we bought a beautiful house on 24+ acres on top of a mountain in NW Georgia. I'm a Mississippi girl who went to Colorado for school and met a boy and got stuck there. The "Crazy" came to Denver and the rare Colorado native Hubster finally had enough of it so we decided to find property and build a house. We downsized and stored our possessions, bought a big 5th wheel RV and ginormous F350 Dually Diesel, sold the house after 28 years (yeah, that was hard), packed us, our elderly Keeshond, Maya (RIP 10/23 at 15.5+yo) and 2 cats, Stella and Bubba, in the RV and hit the road. It was only supposed to be 6 months but we both fell in love with it and just kept going for the next 2 1/2 years. The Hubster is a remote IT consultant so he worked while I fished as I'm an avid fly fisher and angler. I was an accountant for a CPA firm in previous life but couldn't take my job on the road; I may get back into it now.
We weren't looking for a house because we wanted to build our dream home but God kept throwing this one at us so we moved our rig from the nice weather in Gulf Shores, AL and took a look. We bought this house in late February 2023 and moved all our stuff from Denver into it, upgraded the security, added "Smart" everything, a gate on a solar panel and started repairs and upgrade work on it. We lived in our RV next to it while we accomplished what we could. 3 months later we needed a break so we locked the doors, set the alarm, locked the gate and went back on the road for 3 months. Maya became ill so we cut our trip short and headed home just in time to say goodbye to her in "barge" - Keeshonden are known as Dutch Barge Dogs and she LOVED her American Barge! We absolutely LOVE RVing and decided to keep the RV so we can take off on weekends.
We finally moved in the house Oct of '23 and started the at-times overwhelming task of updating and repairing the house and turning the property into a homestead. We're not even close on either yet but we're working on it! We have peaches, pears and apples in our orchard and we created a large veggie garden, kitchen herb garden, a medicinal garden and lots of places for me to plant flowers to make it truly "home." I haven't canned since I was a kid and helped my farm-raised Mom but I have the huge kitchen of my wildest dreams and am adding Mason jars, dehydrating, smoking, etc supplies for long term storage every week. My goal is to grow 90% of what we need and trade with other homesteaders for most of the rest.
We lost our elderly Keeshond, Maya, in October to a 3rd cancer and added a now 15 month old rescued Keeshond boy, Remy, in February, which made me reevaluate what we feed our pets. We've always fed ultra-premium foods but I came to realize it's still highly processed and not something I want to feed them any longer. I've always cooked from scratch with whole foods and I want to do the same for the pets in the near future. Eggs and chicken are great protein sources so chickens and quail have been on the short list for years.
We have incredibly aggressive ticks on our mountaintop and after the Hubster contracted STARI last year I started searching for a natural method to control the ticks. I discovered Guinea Fowl and their ability to nearly eradicate ticks, crickets, caterpillars, small snakes, mice, etc. I spent loads of time on the farms of my family and was always around chickens and peacocks but no one had had Guineas; my my Grandparents did back in the 50's but there's no one left who knows about them. I've seen them growing up in the South but never thought about them. We've researched and watched YouTube videos until our heads ached about the best way to raise them and train them to come back to the coop at night since we have lots of predators in the 4,000 acres of forest surrounding our rural homestead. I know we know very little at the end of the day but we're willing to try!
I wanted 5-6 keets to start with but after I found a tick on my stomach the Hubster ordered **16** keets so we could reduce the risk substantially. I'm very chemical adverse and I have some serious health conditions that are fine if managed and that means no more ticks and the risk of the diseases they carry! They were hatched 5/28 and arrived 5/30 healthy and active. It's an assortment of colors and I'm excited to see them grow! We put them in a large wire dog kennel with cardboard on the sides and paper towels on the floor with food and water, a heat lamp, and put them in an empty bedroom to stay warm. They grow like weeds! They already have feathers on their wings and their personalities are coming out.
Unfortunately one of the smaller keets slipped tendons on BOTH legs, which is how I found this wonderful group of folks. The little one has been in tape and Nerf bullet braces, sitting on a chick chair for 2+ days complaining but eating and drinking well. We'll probably take a look at the tendons tonight or tomorrow morning to see if our interventions have been successful. If not, we'll have to let it go so it doesn't suffer. It will break my heart because I've spent so much time with it and the other keets but it's the right thing to do.
Our 20 chick brooder plate arrived a couple of days ago and we're getting a large stock tank tomorrow to move some or all of the keets into it, depending on the final decision on the injured keet. The bigger keets are already jumping up and one got on the injured keets head to eat its food. The injured keet and a few others are so much smaller than the others that I'm concerned they might not be able to eat or drink enough with the larger keets. I'm considering splitting the flock since we have 2 heat lamps, a brooder plate, etc. The smaller keets can stay in the 2' X 3' crate while the bigger ones will get the large 2' X 6' stock tank. We monitor our keets via a camera so we'd need another camera as well. All totally doable, just expensive.
I can't thank ya'll enough for the advice and I look forward to hearing from, and maybe meeting, more of ya'll!
God Bless,
~Trish
PS: My Avatar is our sweet, now 15month old rescued Keeshond, Rembrandt, aka Remy the Goof.
We weren't looking for a house because we wanted to build our dream home but God kept throwing this one at us so we moved our rig from the nice weather in Gulf Shores, AL and took a look. We bought this house in late February 2023 and moved all our stuff from Denver into it, upgraded the security, added "Smart" everything, a gate on a solar panel and started repairs and upgrade work on it. We lived in our RV next to it while we accomplished what we could. 3 months later we needed a break so we locked the doors, set the alarm, locked the gate and went back on the road for 3 months. Maya became ill so we cut our trip short and headed home just in time to say goodbye to her in "barge" - Keeshonden are known as Dutch Barge Dogs and she LOVED her American Barge! We absolutely LOVE RVing and decided to keep the RV so we can take off on weekends.
We finally moved in the house Oct of '23 and started the at-times overwhelming task of updating and repairing the house and turning the property into a homestead. We're not even close on either yet but we're working on it! We have peaches, pears and apples in our orchard and we created a large veggie garden, kitchen herb garden, a medicinal garden and lots of places for me to plant flowers to make it truly "home." I haven't canned since I was a kid and helped my farm-raised Mom but I have the huge kitchen of my wildest dreams and am adding Mason jars, dehydrating, smoking, etc supplies for long term storage every week. My goal is to grow 90% of what we need and trade with other homesteaders for most of the rest.
We lost our elderly Keeshond, Maya, in October to a 3rd cancer and added a now 15 month old rescued Keeshond boy, Remy, in February, which made me reevaluate what we feed our pets. We've always fed ultra-premium foods but I came to realize it's still highly processed and not something I want to feed them any longer. I've always cooked from scratch with whole foods and I want to do the same for the pets in the near future. Eggs and chicken are great protein sources so chickens and quail have been on the short list for years.
We have incredibly aggressive ticks on our mountaintop and after the Hubster contracted STARI last year I started searching for a natural method to control the ticks. I discovered Guinea Fowl and their ability to nearly eradicate ticks, crickets, caterpillars, small snakes, mice, etc. I spent loads of time on the farms of my family and was always around chickens and peacocks but no one had had Guineas; my my Grandparents did back in the 50's but there's no one left who knows about them. I've seen them growing up in the South but never thought about them. We've researched and watched YouTube videos until our heads ached about the best way to raise them and train them to come back to the coop at night since we have lots of predators in the 4,000 acres of forest surrounding our rural homestead. I know we know very little at the end of the day but we're willing to try!
I wanted 5-6 keets to start with but after I found a tick on my stomach the Hubster ordered **16** keets so we could reduce the risk substantially. I'm very chemical adverse and I have some serious health conditions that are fine if managed and that means no more ticks and the risk of the diseases they carry! They were hatched 5/28 and arrived 5/30 healthy and active. It's an assortment of colors and I'm excited to see them grow! We put them in a large wire dog kennel with cardboard on the sides and paper towels on the floor with food and water, a heat lamp, and put them in an empty bedroom to stay warm. They grow like weeds! They already have feathers on their wings and their personalities are coming out.
Unfortunately one of the smaller keets slipped tendons on BOTH legs, which is how I found this wonderful group of folks. The little one has been in tape and Nerf bullet braces, sitting on a chick chair for 2+ days complaining but eating and drinking well. We'll probably take a look at the tendons tonight or tomorrow morning to see if our interventions have been successful. If not, we'll have to let it go so it doesn't suffer. It will break my heart because I've spent so much time with it and the other keets but it's the right thing to do.
Our 20 chick brooder plate arrived a couple of days ago and we're getting a large stock tank tomorrow to move some or all of the keets into it, depending on the final decision on the injured keet. The bigger keets are already jumping up and one got on the injured keets head to eat its food. The injured keet and a few others are so much smaller than the others that I'm concerned they might not be able to eat or drink enough with the larger keets. I'm considering splitting the flock since we have 2 heat lamps, a brooder plate, etc. The smaller keets can stay in the 2' X 3' crate while the bigger ones will get the large 2' X 6' stock tank. We monitor our keets via a camera so we'd need another camera as well. All totally doable, just expensive.
I can't thank ya'll enough for the advice and I look forward to hearing from, and maybe meeting, more of ya'll!
God Bless,
~Trish
PS: My Avatar is our sweet, now 15month old rescued Keeshond, Rembrandt, aka Remy the Goof.
