The White Family Homesteaders

     Well we've had Lily and Belle for two weeks now and they are doing wonderful.  I had a bit of a scare when we picked them up from the eccentric goat breeding lady.  The lady picked up one goat and Casey picked up the other one and when he put them in the back of the car Belle let out this horrific scream, the goat not the lady.  Casey says I froze up and my eyes were all bugged out..I don't recall this but he is still getting a kick out of it.  I did stop for a second because I thought she was hurt.  She was just pissed we were taking her away from her family. The car ride home.            When we got them home and let them lose onto the back of our property they dashed for the fence and wanted nothing to do with us.  They relaxed more as the day went by and will come up to us and sniff us.  All the work we put into making them a comfy shelter/bed and they wouldn't sleep in it...they are using it now. The first few days was like bringing home a baby, we'

     I recently put up two photo collages that had been put away since we moved, going on 4 years now.  I love the idea of them and  there's so many older pictures on them from before the digital camera came along.  My only issue with them is that they don't fit in with our decor, plus we've out grown them...we aren't in our early 20s anymore.  They don't say grown up to me they say dorm room or just starting out. But I love displaying our pictures without having to empty my wallet out for 100s of frames.  I came up with what I have to say was a brilliant idea. This last spring I found an ad on Craigslist for a ton of old windows for free and I was lucky enough to snatch them all up. Some of  the windows were missing their glass or broken so I chose one of them.  It took me most of the summer with five minutes here and there to remove broken glass and clean it up a little.  Here's what window looked like, the BEFORE.      While we were fixing up t

     One day into fall and I'm loving the weather change.  Summer has always been my favorite season since I hate being cold but I think fall might be my new favorite season.  It might have something to do with the fact that we have a homestead and most of our time is spent outside and with the summer heat it's hard to do much for very long.  Plus I've found a new passion this summer, canning.  Our home doesn't have AC so it's quite miserable to have the stove on to boil water, we just about melt while preserving.  This year I have welcomed fall with open arms.      I made a trip to our local farm supply store and picked up eight new chicks to add to our brood.  When I got home lil man got a huge smile on his face when he heard the chicks chirping.  Papa had their new home all ready for them, we just had to get their food, water and grit in the brooder.  Lil farmer boy gave each one a tiny pet as I took them out of their box.  They've been doing good so far,

Our homestead made a big decision this week, we put down a deposit on two baby boer goats.  The hubby and I put up hot wire in the back of our house recently but I was dragging my feet about actually making the decision of when to get some goats.  I'm all about planning and making sure we are up for any decision we make before giving the green light.  Homestead papa likes just jumping in and figuring things out as we go.  To be fair though he does a lot of research before hand.  But with me I need to know every possible challenge and that we can overcome it and I need to know that we can financially handle a new responsibility.  If it was up to me though it would take me years before I said yes, I'm just a bit of a scaredy-cat.  Casey's best answer to make me agree is to say that if it doesn't work out we can sell what ever it is...we've yet to sell anything.  I found a great deal on some cross Boer baby goats on Craigslist and sent the link to papa to look at.

My kitchen table is being swallowed up by zucchini. I was about to drag it all to work and leave it with a free sign on it, I didn't know what to do with it. Then someone mentioned that I could shred it and freeze it for some zucchini bread down the road. I didn't know there was such an easy way to preserve it. I was just itching to get it done and stored but I had to wait a few days. I pulled out my food processor which has been putting in some overtime lately. Before this summer I maybe used it a handful of times. I had to locate all the parts so I could use it for shredding. I had to hunt down the manual to figure out how to work it, but I've got it now. The one thing I knew I wanted to do was save the seeds for next year's garden so I let some zucchini grow and grow and grow some more.  The result was enormous zucchini, there were two that were almost as long as the depth of my stove. I halved the zucchini so I could scoop out the guts and then cut it up f

Our Facebook fan page is approaching 100 likes and we want some help getting there faster. To do this we are having a drawing for the chance to win an 8oz jar of peach and strawberry jam and jalapeno jelly made with love by us.  That's right 3 jars of appetizing jams and jelly.  We are hoping in the process to attract more readers to our blog.  All you have to do to be entered into sweepstakes is to like and share the link to our fan page. Once we reach 100 likes a winner will be selected. 

Our Lil boy shared his cold with us so we were laid up on the couch for about a week. While we were under the weather we didn't get out to the garden like we should have. Some how the pesky deer knew our defenses were down and snuck into the garden. My heart shattered when I saw half eaten zucchini laying on the ground and my tomato plants chomped on.  I'm about to go all World War III on their asses.  Papa put up some more wire where the fencing wasn't as tall. One of our friends also passed on an article about sprinkling Irish spring around the perimeter. So I picked some up and grated some with a potato peeler. I threw it out along the fence line but our oh so helpful boxer decided that it looked delectable and cleaned some of it up. Strong scented Irish Spring My poor defenseless jalapeño plants didn't see those deer coming their way and got a bit of a trim job. I had to barricade everything vulnerable as best as I could with bits and pieces of chicken wir

We've been enjoying our delicious rewards from our garden.  It's hard to explain the feeling you get when you feed your family food you've grown.  To know we started all of our plants from seed and have taken care of them and they've grown into these beautiful plants and are now providing us with food makes me a bit speechless.  It's pretty awesome to provide our lil farmer boy with food we've grown and he's having a blast helping us.  Going out every day to the garden and finding a new surprise, whether it's finding something new producing or just seeing lil man get so excited about it warms my heart so much. The other night I prepared dinner from a Rachael Ray recipe I've been using and adjusted it by adding more veggies.  Our broccoli was ready and used some our endless supply of zucchini, it was pretty delicious, the boys devoured it.  To use up more of the pile of zucchini we have I spent the day with my sis baking zucchini bread.  We needed s

We are extremely happy with how the garden is doing. Plants are producing vegetables, flowers are blooming and we have a big grin on our face.  Our peas are producing a lot and so are the zucchini plants.  Little farmer boy is in love with the peas and picks at least two every time we go to the garden to nibble on.  One of the many sunflowers in the garden, I'm in love with them. The zucchini row growing steady. Our goal this summer is to can more of our fortunes from our garden along with some delicious pickens from local farms.  Last summer we canned some peach jam and we wanted to try strawberry jam this year.  We found a recipe from Certo and picked up some strawberries and had a day of canning jam.  Luckily we did it on a day that wasn't in the 90s, cause boy was our kitchen hot.  There were a few incidents of burning our   finger tips but nothing too serious. Our other challenge was our two year old wanting our attention and needing a nap.  Doing any task

I'm trying to catch up on here, we've been so busy lately.  We get going on the homestead with chores for days then we have to go back to the real world of our actual paying jobs and then next thing I know it's a new week.  Last week we did some much needed maintenance on the homestead of trimming up some trees. That was an all week project with a little work on the garden. We have at least a handful of trees that are in need of some desperate trimming. We got to two of them and the process is still continuing. We still need to take what we trimmed off to a local tree limb drop off site. It's amazing how much better and happier the trees look.  Besides trimming them up for landscaping reasons we also did it to discourage the deer from hanging out under them. We don't want them getting comfortable on our property close to our garden. The first tree was pretty simple of just cutting limbs down. The second tree was more challenging, it didn't want to let go

Wow our weekend went by fast for us but we managed to get most of the things on our "to do" list done. I'm starting to lose it...I can't recall what we did on Tuesday. So I guess onto the rest of the week.  I picked up a new skill this week that I'm stoked about. I learned how to engage the PTO on the tractor so now I can mow the pasture. It takes some caressing here and there of Colonel Mustard (our tractor)  to get the brush hog going but I believe we've figured it out now. It took a few hours one day and an hour or so the next to get most of it mowed, I still have one patch to do but I'm pretty proud of myself. While I did that the hubby was on wood cutting duty.           My view on Colonel Mustard.  We had his mom come over and watch the kiddo since we had to do some chores that took focus. But of course since we had a plan of divide and conquer something had to go wrong. This time it was the chainsaws...darn things didn't want to work. The big ma