Getting our first chickens

They say that chickens are the gateway animal for homesteaders. I have to say that is totally true.

We got our first 5 chicks from answering a local Craigslist ad. The chicks are half Silkie and half Silver Spangled hamburg. They are really pretty birds. Bantams, so they are small. Because Silkies are are very hard to sex, we had no idea what sex we were getting. We ended up with three roos and two hens.

This was them on the way home from getting them. All I had was a little box with a towel in it. Heat was on in the car and the box sat on my lap. I always run hot. I think they were like a week old or so at this point.

Our ghetto brooder box. I didn't see the point of buying a expensive box that the chicks would only be spending a short time in. I did upgrade to a larger bin later when the chicks got bigger. I will use that bigger bin from now on. The bin worked wonderful. Only problem I had was when they started to climb and test their wings. I put a wire bin on top of this bin and then used a baby gate on top of the larger bin. Worked very well, until one little accident involving the chick brooder, Abby and a window. You will see all that in another post.

One of the littles as I called them. This one is the smallest (and still is) so we named her Little, as in Chicken Little.

A little baby roo. Not sure who this one turned into though. Hard to tell before all their grown up feathers come in. Our alpha roo, Harry (named after my dad who passed away a little over a year ago), is covered mostly white feathers now.

At this point, they are all outside. Taking a nice dirt bath here. You can see the Silver Spangled feather coloring good here.

Our two hens and one of the roos. You can see the Silkie poof on the hens. Because they are a cross, their poofs didn't get as big as a full Silkie.

More dirt baths. At this point they are fully feathered out and full grown. Harry our alpha roo is in the front.

Woot! Laying for the first time! Notice our ghetto bucket nesting box. Works really great for the little hens. Hoping they will work well for our newer bigger girls.

We ended up re-homing one of our roos. Having three was a bit much. They two we have left are great.

We, as in me, named this bath of chickens, Harry, Chickaletta (the other roo named after the chicken on PAW Patrol), Little and Henny Penny.

All the chickens follow me around everywhere! I was trying to get into my car and the four amigos (as we started to call the first bunch we got) decided they wanted to come to the store too. Sorry guys, I'm not one of those crazy chicken ladies who push their chickens in a stroller. Not yet anyway. You can see two of the second bunch of girls we got in the picture too.

Clearing the land.....Part 2

It is nice to have a brother in law that has access to machinery. He borrowed a small excavator from his boss to help clear the back "jungle".

This is what it looked like before we started in the back:

I was standing on the back deck. All sorts of vines and trees that had fallen during a wind storm in January. All this came right up to the house. There was maybe a two foot space, but that was slowly being taken over.

Another view of the over grown backyard jungle. Hidden in all this mess is three or so large dog crates, what looks like a chicken coop and other random crap. Our neighbor told us that the people who were here before had a puppy mill going on.

Backside view. Our house is to the left in the picture. So many thorny vines and forsythia. I hate forsythia. It takes over if you don't take care of it.

Let the games begin! Brother in law was scraping away all the vines and other jungle stuff. Hubby was cutting up the tree that fell down so his brother could move it with the excavator.

This was the spot that we were thinking the access door to the septic tank was at. He had to dig it out. The darn thing had not been emptied in almost 10 years! We called a septic company to come the next day and take care of it.

The hubby spent the day cutting down trees and cutting them up into manageable pieces. We gave the wood to a friend of ours. Nothing went to waste. All the brush and vines and crap we brought to our neighbor across the street. He has a huge fire every Friday night, so he was okay with us adding to it.

It's getting there! The trees to the right are covered in poison ivy vines. A neighbor down the street said he will cut them down for us in exchange for the wood. He has beef cows, so I asked him for some manure as well. Works for me. He gets wood to sell and I get poop to make the bad soil here better.

This was 8 hours of work. We still had little saplings and vines to remove, but the big stuff was gone. Well, in that huge pile in the upper middle of the picture. Look, you can even see the septic door too! So sad when that has me excited.

We have so much more work to do. Removing all this jungle revealed a ton of broken glass, beer cans and shotgun shells. Our neighbor said that the people before us would sit out back drinking beer and when they finished, they would toss the bottle in the air and shoot it. Now we have the joy of cleaning up after them.

It's funny seeing everything getting green now. I figured that nothing would grow where we cleared, but we have a bunch of wild violets and strawberries growing there. The plan is to make this cleared spot (and more of what we didn't get to) our garden. It won't be this year, so hoping it will be next year. I miss playing in and planning my garden.

Clearing the land...Part 1

We bought our new place at the end of February. We had a bunch of snow on the ground, so we really couldn't do much of anything. Although, Mother Nature was in a odd mood one day and it was in the 70's. That's when we started clearing the land in the front of the house.

This is what it looked like before we started the front of the house:

This is the tree line behind our rock wall, which needs to be fixed as well. If you look close, you can see little saplings between all the big trees. I didn't want them there.

There was also lots of thorny vines and poison ivy on one tree. I found out the hard way that poison ivy is still active even if it is dead or dormant. I had it on my pant line and my lower back. I had forgotten to take my gloves off and I pulled my pants up. Yup, that sucked!

This is the end of the tree line, near our nice neighbors. You can see an apple tree right in the middle. The hubby was trimming this tree over the summer, fell and broke his knee. He was out of work for like 4 months during the busy time, so paying bills sucked.

Oh, we are friends with one of the sisters that was selling our place. Matt was mowing the lawn for them and Steve was asked to help trim up some trees.

This tree fell down during a wind storm before we bought the place. Thank the Lord, it didn't hit the house! It landed in that pine tree and a lilac bush. It was our neighbors tree, so he felt really bad. It took out the phone line, but honestly, who uses landlines? We may be out in the country, but we only have cell phones.

Now that you see all the work that we had to do, here is what it looked like during the clearing:

Steve got a new Stihl chain saw, so before the hard tree removal, he decided to cur down a maple that was leaning over the driveway. I hated to see a maple getting cut, but we have a bunch more.

Steve got his revenge with the apple tree. It was in a bad spot in the yard, so it had to go. We have two or three very overgrown apple trees out back. We are thinking of planting Mac and Cortland trees anyway. We aren't sure what the tree are out back either. I did save most of the logs from this tree. I want to use the wood in my smoker. Yum, apple wood smoked meat!

Matt cleaning up the mess from the apple tree coming down, It landed on one of the benches for our picnic table, so that broke. He thought it was funny watching Steve take this thing down.

This is the tree that fell being cut up. You can see the pole that our electric meter is attached to. The tree also took down the cable line, but the cable guy just put up a new one instead. You can see the phone line that stretched across.

Still cutting up the tree. We gave all this wood to a friend of ours, who happened to be our realtor. She will use it next year to heat her house. Nothing went to waste while cleaning up this yard.

Here is part of the front tree line cleared of little saplings and vines. I will be raking up all the leaves and put them into a compost pile. Lots of them are starting to break down big time. The dirt under the leaves is very nice dark dirt. The rest of the yard is sandy, ugly brown soil.

Next post will be the before of the back yard. Lots of changes happened there.

Let the adventure begin!

This summer, the hubby and I started a new chapter in our life. For the past 8 years, we have lived and homesteaded in a mobile home park. We had a decent sized plot where we had a good sized garden. But we wanted more. We decided to look for a property with land and move. I didn't want to move. Mostly because we have so much crap and it would be up to me to pack it all. Our house went up for sale in September and we finally passed papers on it the beginning of February this year. Lots of issues with both the title on our place (which of course were never caught when we bought it and were never caught when the person we bought it from bought it) and title issues with the place we did move to. All issues have been taken care of and we finally passed papers yesterday! We were able to move into the place we are buying and rent it till we pass papers, which is awesome!

We moved 10 minutes away from where we were in a smaller town than we were in before. It has the same zipcode as the town we moved from, so that makes it easy to remember. Plus Matt is able to stay in the same school system. He is still homeschooled, he just attends a local tech school to learn welding and auto mechanics. We are still in a mobile home, but that's okay. We moved here for the land and the opportunities is has. We now have 5 acres of very overgrown land. Good thing we have family who are just as itchy to clear it out as we are. The hubby's older brother is coming over with a machine with start scraping and clearing a bunch of stuff. It's in fact where everyone has told me to put my garden. I can't wait to get started. Well, I get to watch. I hardly doubt the brother in law will let me try the excavator. These pictures are of where my garden will be. Lots of overgrown trees, vines and whatnot.

There is a ton of deer sign every where. The hubby's younger brother already has a deer stand and some trail cams out. It will be nice to have the hubby just walk out to our own yard to hunt. We also have a ton of wild turkey (I almost hit them the other day driving down my street). According to one of our new neighbors, there are also moose, coyote and a big cat. The moose will be nice to see, but the coyote and big cat freak me out. I plan on having chickens and goats. I will just have to be a little proactive to protect them from the predators. Let the fun start!

It's that time of year again

It's that time of year when I order any seeds and plants I need for the next year. Abby just had to help me while I was going through all the seeds I have.


Like I have the past few years, I will be ordering the Super Sauce Tomato plants from Burpee. I ordered 12 plants last year and am thinking of getting 18 plants this year. I'm going to get my green pepper plants at a local farm this year however.


I believe the only seeds I need this year are herbs. I need more Oregano and Spearmint. For some reason my Spearmint never survives through the winter. That's okay, seeds are cheap.


I already bought some more Butter Bush Squash seeds. Hubby loves butternut squash and this seed makes the perfect sized plant for small spaces. I've had good luck with it the past few years.


I also went through my garden journal binder and printed up some new pages and took out all of last years notes. I still keep the past years notes just in case I need to look up something like the weather patterns or germination and harvest yields.


Now I just need the garden to thaw out and the temperatures go up a little more.

What I have been up to

It's been crazy here in the garden and kitchen. It's been really hot and humid too, which bothers my RA a ton, so I didn't venture out to the garden much. The crazy weeds show my lack of attention too.

I've also been canning beans up like crazy too.

This is when the bush beans were almost ready to be picked. A few days later, I was snippin n snappin them.

My small but productive bush bean plot. Got tons of beans from this little bit of plants. Jade bush beans are wonderful.

Abby inspecting the beans after they were cleaned. She likes to take one and bat it around the living room. This was part of the first days worth of beans. I pulled just shy of a 5 gallon bucket that day.

56 pints of green beans all ready for winter suppers.

Pole beans are now starting to come in, so I will be canning even more beans. Tomatoes are starting to ripen as well. I freeze them as I pick them and can my sauce when it is a bit cooler out.

Crazy busy times here on the homestead

It's been one crazy month and a half. Between planting all the veggies, the weeds that came up like nuts in the garden, finishing up the homeschool year and getting our camp all set up, I haven't had anytime to work or type for my blog. I feel so bad for neglecting it. That will be changing starting now.

We have had a ton of strawberries come in that we pretty much ate all. I did give some away to a neighbor though.

I got a few blueberries off one of my three plants. Another is loaded with berries, so I am hoping I am able to have enough to make some muffins or pancakes with. If not, I will be hitting up the farmers market to buy a few pints.

My sugar snap peas are producing a ton as usual. I have had three gallon sized bags picked so far. I gave away half a gallon and still have tons and tons to pick. I go in for my infusion tomorrow, so I may have to bring some in for my nurses. I am also thinking of pickling some. I see all sorts of veggies pickled, but not snap peas, so who knows.

I had to have my sister help me to weed my garden. It seriously got taken over by crab grass and some really tall weed that I have no clue what it is. I have never seen the garden this over taken before. It all started once a new mobile home was put in three homes away from mine. The person putting the grass seed down used some cheep crap that ended up in my garden and it just took over. I lost all my carrots because of it. I will be planting a fall harvest that had better make it or I will be really ticked. Yes, I know that this has gone to seed. It is all gone now, but I had to use loppers to cut the stalks.

My dad has been down the past week and kinda sorta helped me weed the garden. He left lines of weeds unpicked around what he cleared out. Looks stupid to me, so I have been going back in and picking what he hasn't been. He also likes to keep all the picked weeds in the garden bed as well. I don't want them there at all. Kinda the point of weeding the garden is to keep the weeds out, picked or not.

Next up is to fix the tomatoes. The Florida weave way of trellising up the tomatoes is totally not working. My plants are loaded with heavy fruit and they are now laying down taking the twine down with it. No matter how tight I wrap the twine or how many times I wrap it, the plants still fall over. So, I give up. Pruning the bottom of the plants and attaching them all to the stakes that I have the twine wrapped around is on my to do list next.

Strawberries and Blueberries

My strawberries are growing like nuts. Right now they are loaded with a ton of flowers and a ton of little greenish strawberries. I can't wait till mid June when they should be ready to eat.

My "little" patch has taken over the raised bed and now covering my gnomes. There are three there, somewhere hehe.

I am excited this year because two of my three blueberry bushes have flowers and the start of baby blueberries. This has me totally excited. We planted these almost two years ago and they were supposedly already two years old when I ordered them. I hate paying the price for blueberries at the store and sadly at the farmers market. I may not have much this first year, maybe just enough for one batch of muffins, but it is a start.

Top picture shows the flowers on one of my blueberry bushes. They are so dainty and kind of remind me of the top part of a jelly fish. The bottom shows the starts of the blueberry themselves.

Busy times in the garden ~ Tomato and Pepper planting time!

I'm sorry I have been away from my blog for a couple of weeks. It's been busy here between getting all the veggies and seeds planted as well as fixing up some of the flower beds and working on the remainder of our homeschool year.

Not to mention, this past weekend, we opened up our camp site. It is almost all set up, but still need to get the screen house up. It will be our home away from home on the weekends. Can't stay away longer than a few days because of the cats and gardens.

I got my shipment of the tomato and pepper plants I ordered through Burpee a couple of weeks ago. I ordered 12 Super Sauce Tomato plants and 6 California Wonder pepper plants. They came in one big box through UPS. When they were delivered, my UPS guy asked what was in the box, which turned into me showing him the big veggie garden. He was pretty impressed with what I can do in my mobile home park.

The plants are packed 3 to a pack and look like this:

I planted the tomatoes first and then the pepper plants the next day. I did it this way because I was so sore after bending over to plant the 12 tomato plants. Thanks to the RA, I don't push myself unless I want to be in bed for days.

I dig a nice sized hole for each tomato plant and add some crushed up egg shells that I have been saving all winter long.

Then I lay the tomato plants on their side in the hole, not straight up and down. Tomatoes will grow roots on their stems. so putting the plants on the side makes them more stable, stronger and gives them more access to nutrients in the soil.

Then I fill in the hole, being careful not to break the stem. Then I give them a deep watering and surround them with straw. I ran out of straw after planting 8 of the tomato plants. I also have straw covering my onions, snap peas and carrots. I use the straw to cut down on the weeds. What weeds do show up are easier to pull up.

My tomato plants look lost in all that straw, but they will get very tall really soon. My pepper plants look tiny too. Last year they filled out very nicely and we got tons of peppers from them.

I found some random squash or cucumber plants growing while I was planting the pepper plants. I managed to find 12 of them. My dad kept burying the over grown veggies in my garden, which annoyed me. I thought I managed to get them all dug up, but I guess I missed some seeds. I did take out all these seedlings and planted them elsewhere.