I’m all in.

I feel like it’s finally time to fully commit to this farming lifestyle and in the back of my mind I keep hearing “go big or go home”.  But I am home, so….

Right, don’t end sentences with “so”.

So?  What now?

Hubby still works most of the summer, and sometimes pretty long days.  That leaves me and the kids to do the majority of the work and am I ready to take that all on, with his extra help on the weekends.  The kids both want to go to summer camp so that’s going to be times when I’ll be here by myself and am I ready to do it all completely by myself?

I’d like to say an emphatic YES to those questions but in all honesty doing it all by myself scares the daylights out of me.

Doesn’t seem like a lot of work right, but when I say “go big” I really mean it.  A real garden (in addition to the container gardening I’ve been doing), preserving what we get from the garden, many more chickens than we’ve had before (layers and meat), pigs, meat rabbits,  and if we can manage the fencing this year and a decent price at the auction, some sheep.

All that while still making sure we get some beach days, the kids get to spend time with friends, we get a few day trips in to do some touristy things that we like, go berry picking,  4H and cadet activities, and still have a bit of downtime so we don’t burn out before exhibition week when everything starts getting crazy busy again.

Oh I didn’t even mention my desire to have bee hives…but I think that’s going to have to wait until I’ve researched a LOT more than I have already.

It’s all a dream for now, since Hubby is out clearing the driveway with the snowblower.  I do need to make plans though.   I think he’d have a fit if I hastily shoved my cell phone in his face again to show an add for pigs and say “can I have them please?????” like I did the first time we ended up getting pigs.  This time I’ll have lists and costs and more logistics. Or maybe he’ll tell me to stop watching farming documentaries and be content with chickens and container gardening for one more year.

 

Sprout Update

The sprouts have had two full days of growing and all four trays have signs of seeds coming to life. There are three different kinds of trays; a brassica blend, a sandwich booster blend, and wheat berries.

After I soaked them I decided to do another tray of wheat berries and I can see the difference already. The bottom two pictures are the wheat berries.  Left, no pre soaking.  Right, soaked for 3 hours.  

Ah, dreaming of piggies…again!

I was just rereading some of my old posts and realized it’s been 5 years since I wrote about my dreams of owning pigs.  Wow!  I don’t remember writing about the actual pigs but man, getting them onto our property was a story in itself and one I should probably write about.  This is a picture of Josie.  She was one of our potbellies.

It was pretty funny story now that I look back on it but man it felt like a nightmare in the moment.   I’ll think about adding that to my drafts list.

 

Anyway, Ive been watching different documentaries on Netflix, thinking about our little farm here and what we have/haven’t been doing with it. There is so much potential.   Just on our 2 acre property we could realistically produce enough food to last us the entire year.

We were doing really well with our chickens and ducks.  For several years we had enough chicken to last us nearly the whole year and we processed some ducks here and there to thin out the flock.  Hubby hunted a bit so that was some red meat to add to the freezer.  We raised rabbits one time to see how we liked that and it went well.  We even got an incubator and hatched out some of our own birds.

Our trips to the meat section in the grocery store were few and far between. The prices were steadily rising and we were glad we didn’t have to shell out money for meat we didn’t really trust.

Now that we have gotten into a routine with the birds, and have had the experience with pigs for a summer, I think I’m ready to add to the farm again.   Hubby would gladly get sheep and our daughter has been bugging for goats for a few years now so I suspect one of those will be added before too long.

The gardening has been slow to develop for me.  My parents always had a nice garden and I envy that so much but I don’t do well in the heat and find it hard to be out weeding and working in the garden when it gets really hot.  We have a few weeks of very hot humid days here and the one summer we did a decent sized garden it just got away from me.   Last year we did container gardening and it was fairly good so that, and maybe some raised beds, is the plan again for this summer.

One thing that we did start to do a while ago was grow our own sprouts.  I bought a seed sprouter for a really good price and found some seed mixes at Halifax Seed Co.  It’s super easy and not much work at all.  We have 4 little trays and that makes a good amount sprouts in just a few days.  I’m going to sprout some heat berries for the rabbits this time too to see if they like that.

I realize now it looks like some of the trays are filled with water but that is just condensation after being rinsed.

I started a new batch of sprouts around noon yesterday.  Soaked them for 3-4 hours in water and then put them in the trays.  There are lots of ways to do this so ask Google about growing sprouts and pick a system that works for you.

At lunch time today I rinsed them and the wheat berries have already started to sprout.  Getting a few mason jars of pea sprouts going will be good for us too and it will be a fraction of the cost of buying them anywhere.  When we are back into the swing of things I will post our progress and a few recipes or ideas of what we do with them.

For now, since there’s still snow on the ground and more coming down today, I’ll do my research again into pig breeds and gardening methods…and maybe look into some sheep or goat breeds “just in case”.  The longer the kids are in 4H, the larger the animals they decide to work with.

They have gone from rabbits their first few years to sheep last year to goats and dairy cows this year.  Thankfully they can borrow the bigger animals. One day I guess we will have to own more than the rabbits they show.