how things are coming along

It has been a couple of years since I started this blog, and in that time we've gotten married, moved to the farm and taken on quite a few new projects and challenges. We've had some fairly lofty goals for ourselves all along and I thought it might be a good time to take a look back at our efforts and give an update on where we are now. If you're new to homesteading, or still just dreaming, understand that it isn't a race, and that it will take time. Don't beat yourself up if it's your third year of gardening and you're still not getting a bumper crop, or your bread didn't rise, or your hens have stopped laying and you haven't the faintest idea why. Some of the things we've set out to do have gone pretty much just as expected, while others brought big surprises. Some things we assumed would be no-brainers have proved to be surprisingly difficult, while things we were sure we'd screw up have been remarkably problem-free. Here is a brief synopsis of the things we've aced and the things we've buggered up over our first three years:

1. Vegetable Gardening: the obvious place to start for most homesteaders
The Goal: to grow (almost) all of our own vegetables
We've now planted three spring gardens and one fall garden (at two locations). While the results have been very mixed, our overall yields are gradually improving. I've learned a lot about growing veggies in general and about the nuances of gardening in Texas. We've had great success with greens regardless of season but still haven't managed to grow tomatoes or potatoes despite their reputation for being easy. They have become the holy grail of our gardening efforts - not because we even like them that much, but because we hate being denied. We also live on a long-neglected cattle pasture and have had to struggle quite a bit to build any sort of workable soil. As it stands now in our third year, we're probably growing about a quarter of our own produce, and expanding each season. We knew this would take time, and I'm not unhappy with our progress so far.
Biggest Success: homegrown greens on our table at Thanksgiving
Biggest Failure: those pesky potatoes
Biggest Surprise: digging under our HUGE potato plants at harvest time to find not. one. spud.

2. Rabbits: our first foray into livestock
The Goal: meat for ourselves and the dogs (with extra to sell), fertilizer
What a ride this has been. Rabbits were the first animals we ever bred and butchered. They were billed as easy keepers, which they mostly are - quiet, low space requirements, low feed requirements, low upfront investment. They do make copious amounts of wonderful fertilizer as promised. What they do not reliably make are babies. After three years, six breeding animals and countless litters, we have successfully raised only four baby rabbits, and have only eaten one animal in all that time - an adult that we had to cull early (the four babies were passed on to other people in barter arrangements). We also learned that they do very poorly in our extreme summer heat. They are, however, easy to keep around and easy to process. We really want to make rabbits work for us, so with some tweaking, we continue to persevere. This year they will be moved outdoors and we're transitioning them to a mostly foraged diet with supplemental hay and very little pellet feed. If things don't improve this year, we may be scrapping rabbits.
Biggest Success: loads of fertilizer
Biggest Failure: loads of babies that haven't survived
Biggest Surprise: rabbits just don't breed like, well...rabbits...in captivity, apparently

3. Laying Hens: the golden egg
The Goal: all the eggs we can eat, plus extra to sell and the occasional chicken dinner
This project has gone extremely well. Chickens are very hardy, unfussy and generally dependable. They are also wonderfully scalable, in that it's no more work to take care of thirty chickens than three, so if you have the space you really might as well go bigger. The return on the extra eggs is more than enough to pay for the cost of keeping them, so we actually do make a little bit of a profit here, which is nice. We get all the eggs we want, plus lots of extras for the dogs. A retired laying hen or extra rooster makes the best chicken soup we've ever eaten, and the dogs win here too - they get necks, organs and other throwaway bits. The fact that we can generate our own replacement stock makes this an all-around win. This project hasn't been without its setbacks, but they've been comparatively few.
Biggest Success: turning a (tiny) profit
Biggest Failure: unknowingly sending a batch of new chicks to bed (and to their demise) with a rat snake - boy, do we feel bad about that one, still
Biggest Surprise: the books don't tell you all the things that will cause them to STOP laying

4. Other Poultry: ducks and broilers
The Goal: meat supply for ourselves and the dogs, with extras to sell
(You may have begun to notice a theme here - our goals tend to center around food production. Our over-arching aim, the one that all other goals tie into, is to be totally or nearly self sufficient in as many areas as possible. That means fulfilling most of our needs ourselves with as few external inputs as possible, and in a way that still allows us to live fairly well. We've started with our food, since that seems to be the easiest place to start and the area where we can make the biggest impact right away.)
We acquired our ducks as a breeding pair, free of charge, from a friend. They were reported to be quite prolific and it seemed like a good way to add extra meat to our freezer. Much like the rabbits, we have yet to eat a single duck, but that's not got much to do with their performance. They do perform as advertised, and are extremely low maintenance. They lay and set large clutches of eggs, eat very little feed and prefer to sleep out in the open. In short, they require virtually no care. We've had some failed hatches due to things such as cold weather and egg-thieving predators, and the ducklings that have hatched have so far all been sold or traded away before they met the chopping block. They're unexpectedly charming, and as easy as they are to keep around, we'll keep them whether they ever do anything productive or not. Raising chickens strictly for meat is a project that's still in its infancy here, so it's a bit too soon for a progress report. Our first batch was a group of heritage breed roosters, which turned out bland, small and a bit tough, without much to recommend them. We're almost to harvest time with a batch of proper broiler-type birds, but as they're still on the wing, the jury is still out on them.
Biggest Success: too soon to declare
Biggest Failure: losing over half of a batch of about sixty-five broiler chicks (although this wasn't technically our fault)
Biggest Surprise: duck eggs make world class egg salad

5. Goats: the sweetest milk trucks on earth
The Goal: keep dairy goats for milk, cheese and soap, for our own use and to sell
Keeping goats was probably the undertaking we most feared - it involved LARGE LIVESTOCK, a considerable upfront investment, a significant learning curve, and holy crap we'll have to birth babies! We've only had goats for one year, which is really a short time in the scheme of things, but honestly this one has been far easier than we imagined. Books, websites and other goat raisers filled our heads with all sorts of fears and conflicting advice, and in the end we just had to get zen about it and go with our gut. We've adapted our methods to suit our individual circumstances, and keep our goats in good flesh largely through attentiveness and good management. We've brought forth three babies to two first-time fresheners, learned to disbud and give shots and are milking about a gallon a day. I'm making good chevre, feta and ricotta, with other cheeses and dairy products in development. Other goat milk products such as soap and cajeta are in development right now as well. They also provide us with good fertilizer, good company and loads of entertainment.
Biggest Success: killer feta whenever we want it!
Biggest Failure: umm, none really
Biggest Surprise: how much we adore them

6. Bees: the littlest army
The Goal: honey, beeswax and related products (with extra to sell), plant pollination
Even though we've been trying to establish some honeybees for a couple of years, this one still feels too early to call. Our first attempt was a swarm that just never would play ball, and the following year we ordered some package bees that arrived dead. Not to be deterred, I ordered and received another package this year, only to have them FLY OFF just three days after moving them in. I've finally got two colonies going that are looking good, but since they've only been around for a few days, it's just impossible to rate this one yet. I will say that I find them intensely fascinating, and apparently enjoy them enough to keep throwing money at this hobby even though it has so far yielded nada.
Biggest Success: finally getting some colonies established (so far, fingers crossed)
Biggest Failure: watching our third attempt at bees fly away right before my eyes
Biggest Surprise: how much I'm willing to invest in this before giving up

7. DIY: not buying it
The Goal: to supply many of our own needs, such as pet and animal feed, household products, repairs and maintenance, construction, etc.
We're doing rather well here so far, although it's a long road. We're making compost, we've built a combined chicken coop and shed and I've begun making our soap. we're supplying more and more of our animals' diet from on-property - between wild edibles, kitchen scraps, butchering waste and excess eggs, milk and whey from cheesemaking, our overall feed bill continues to decline and almost nothing goes to waste. With the exception of onion skins and orange rinds, pretty much everything gets eaten by someone, and if not, it goes to the compost. We do still have a long way to go in this area, though, and we realize we will always have certain needs we can't fulfill on our own. It's a process.

8. Financial Independence: freedom, in a nutshell
The Goal: to need as little actual cash as possible, so we can work as little as possible
This ties in closely with DIY, and again, is a lengthy process. We've made some significant steps forward - paying off the car, paying off the mortgage, dramatically reducing our debt and finding some non-conventional income streams. The downside here is that we still have some debt to whittle away at, a brand new mortgage, and we still need hard cash for quite a lot of things, although we're closing the gap more and more all the time. Each new endeavor requires an upfront cash investment, but eventually translates to one less thing we have to buy on a continuing basis. We'd like to reduce our needs to the point where we can comfortably live on roughly half of what we earn today (or even less) and take back a large chunk of our time.

Well, there you have it - the biggies. There have been other small victories and disappointments, too numerous to mention, but these are the things that have made us elated, made us cry, kept us up nights, brought us peace and made our bones ache. For all the times you haven't seen us, or we haven't called, or we just couldn't make it...this is what we have to show for it. We've come an awfully long way in two years and yet have so much more ahead of us.

the secret life of boots

I am deeply devoted to my work boots. As you can see from the pair on the left, they've seen quite a bit of action. That's about a year's worth...maybe. What you really can't see in the picture is that my beloved dogs found something extra tasty on the bottom of my beloved boots and decided to eat the soles. I mean that literally - there are large areas where the soles are just...gone. They each took a boot and went to work. When I made this discovery, they informed me that they were simply cleaning them for me ("Yes, that's it! Cleaning them!").

Harumph.*

After searching everywhere within a reasonable distance of my house, I finally had to order new boots, because apparently women around here don't do any actual, real work. ??? Not one store had any ladies' steel toe work boots. Not one. Ahem...FIX THIS, retailers. At any rate, a new pair of beloved boots arrived yesterday. I've been limping along with the old ones and figured I'd have them resoled when the new ones showed up. I was thrilled when the box arrived!

And then I wasn't. Make no mistake, I'm still happy to have new boots, but now I'm deeply conflicted. I suddenly feel a strong allegiance to the old pair. They're the same exact boots, and yet, this old pair knows their way around. They know the route I like to take to feed the animals, and the holes I don't want to step in. If they could carry a bucket, they could probably go out and do chores by themselves. They never complain when they get wet or dirty or scuffed. I know the new boots will be just as faithful, but to put them on now almost feels like betrayal - like remarrying when the corpse is still warm.

I have to go do chores now, and I already know in my heart that those ratty old boots will be the ones on my feet. I may let the new ones make occasional trips to town, but I think mostly I'll keep them waiting in the wings...waiting for the old guard to finally kick off...waiting for their turn in the power position. Where I'm sure they'll do just fine.



* Believe me, in the moment, I said things far more colorful and varied than "harumph".

the great blizzard of 2010

It may sound laughable to call this a blizzard, and to those of you in other parts of the country that have been especially hard hit by snow this year, it is. But please understand that this amount of snow is completely unheard of here where I live. In fact, we set a record for the most snowfall in this area in a 24-hour period. I miss this kind of snow, and it is breathtakingly beautiful.

white on white

in case you were wondering...

This is why I don't post more pictures of the goats....

spells of nothing

I know I've been rather remiss in posting lately, and I would love to tell you it's because there have been loads of really exciting things happening. I would love to fill pages and pages of this blog with stories about our beautiful autumn weather, my bumper crop of fall greens, poultry antics, adorable pictures of the goats...but I can't.

I'm afraid that sometimes...nothing happens. Oh, it's not that nothing at all happens, just nothing worth telling about. Every day I do chores, I work, I do laundry and cook dinner, I run errands. It rains. It rains some more. The dogs sleep. And that's all. I don't even have any earth-shatteringly deep musings. It just is what it is. We ruralites, living the dream as it were, have our share of ho-hum, ordinary, run-of-the-mill days too. And there's simply no way I can blog about vacuuming and make it sound interesting. I'm just not that good.

Please be patient. Exciting times are always just around the corner here. Only this time, it's a very broad, sweeping curve, and not so much a hairpin turn.

P. S. Did you know that dogs can suffer from tonsillitis? It's true. No, it does not mean they get to eat ice cream. It does mean, however, that crunchy kibble is painful to swallow, so I get to cook TWO dinners every night for awhile.

bad dogs and the suckers who love them

Big Stan is a Bad Dog.

No, strike that. He's a good dog, with a Bad Habit. When he sees a chicken, he becomes The Terminator. He is a four-pawed, furry killing machine. Something deep in his brain clicks, and he will hunt down poultry wherever it hides and DESTROY IT.

You can imagine the conflict of interest.

After a particularly stressful day involving a lengthy plumber visit, and being shuffled back and forth between the bedroom and the backyard, Stan needed to blow off some steam. On one of my trips outside, he pushed past me out the door and went straight for the meat and potatoes - fifteen of our feathered finest, who were strutting their stuff all over the yard. Chaos ensued. He bore down on those birds and they scattered in every direction. I broke into a sprint and tried to head him off around the ccop, around the tree, around the patio - anywhere I could try to cut him off - but I'm out of shape, and he's a young, spry German Shepherd. I just couldn't catch him, and ultimately he chased a pullet into the underbrush and had her in his jaws, feathers flying.

Did I mention that he is a German Shepherd? The Achilles heel of every German Shepherd is his desire to be as close to his human as possible (he would be up your nose if he could find a way to fit). This effectively prevents them from running off. Once they have Destroyed The Threat, they will snap out of it, and look around for you, as if to say, "Look! Look what I did! Aren't you proud of me?" I seized this opportunity to take him to the ground and pry the pullet from his mouth. She fled - thankfully I got to her in time. I rewarded my most dedicated servant with the...ahem...most stern reprimand he's ever received in his life* and dragged him by the collar into the house.

I caught my breath. I took a headcount. I assessed the damage. One, two...six, seven... Slowly they reappeared in pairs and trios. After some time had passed, it was apparent that Winston, the rooster had a limp and two birds were still at large. The violated pullet turned up later, seemingly unharmed. The "rooster who is not Winston" was discovered in a tight corner outside the back door, behind a derelict refrigerator, literally playing dead. I myself was quite convinced. So much so that I cursed, went inside for some gloves and returned to remove his carcass but when I reached for him he bolted as if shot from a cannon, very much alive and in good health.

With everyone accounted for in the poultry yard, I went inside and implemented The Shaming. Stan was (temporarily) dead to me. He was not to be spoken to. He was not even to be looked at, except in a menacing manner. He became quite distressed by my attitude and slinked off to his fenced yard to make himself scarce. As I cooked dinner, every few minutes, he would poke just his face through the flap of the dog door...just a nose, and an eye looking at me tentatively. I'd flash him the biggest stinkeye I could muster. His big nose would disappear back out into the yard.

Repentant German Shepherds Who Know They Are In Deep S*** are adorable.

I finally had to relent and tell him it was okay to come inside. He's a smart boy. He was inside in a flash and found a place to take a nice, non-troublemaking nap.

* This is a nice way of saying that I pretty much threatened to beat him within an inch of his life. (Threats only - I don't beat my dogs.)

welcome to our place

In Loving Memory

Our girl Lucy left us today. She was an outstanding dog, a tireless worker, and a wonderful friend. Her life was long, happy and well-lived. We miss her terribly.

We love you, Lulu.

Shame On Me.

We caught this guy last night, dining at the Baby Chick Buffet. Seems he'd already been through the line quite a few times.



For days now I've been wondering how the chicks have been disappearing, and why they look so...bad. Not only have their numbers dwindled, but they've been really high strung and scrappy looking, and I just couldn't figure out what the problem was. Turns out the "problem" was a 6-foot rat snake living under the pine shavings in their house. Poor babies. Who knew I was putting them to bed with a monster every night?

Now, before you rake me over the coals, I understand that snakes such as this one are generally a boon. We owe them a debt of gratitude for keeping the rodents in check. I'm afraid, though, that even the most well-meaning critters sometimes overstep boundaries, and eating our livestock is one such circumstance. Since a snake can't very well be reasoned with and asked politely not to dine at our establishment any more, he (she?) had to be dispatched. All the same, there's just nothing like finding something like this at 11:00 pm in boots and a nightgown.

Shame on me also for something else. I realized lately that I've begun to only share our troubles on this blog, and neglect to give our triumphs equal time. Good stuff DOES happen here, and it makes us happy. The goats are thriving, Caspian the Bumble has settled into his role as Protector of the Caprines, the ducks are downright adorable, we have beautiful lettuce in the garden:



We ate some of these homegrown baby greens for dinner, topped with homemade, marinated feta cheese. THAT was quite a triumph, and so satisfying.