The White Family Homesteaders

     The hardest job besides being a mom is being Papa's right hand gal or assistant.  Now don't misread what I wrote it isn't him that makes it hard it's all the duties and responsibilities that come along with the job.  Since we've been a couple I've been helping him with all types of jobs be it car repairs, plumbing, carpentry and the list goes on.  I truly love helping him because it makes his life easier and gets the project done faster but I also learn new skills along the way.  So here's my insight on being a good assistant and what comes along with it. Helping spread out soil.      The most important skill you can bring to this job is anticipation.  So what does that mean?  It means knowing what he/she will need next, be it the drill with a screw or the next piece of lumber.  Me being on my A game and just handing it to him without him telling me, I believe and I know he'll back me up is the most helpful...

     I'm not sure about everyone else but we are extremely busy right now.  There is so much on our to do list that it seems we may never get everything checked off.  The days seem to fly by and then before you know it our homestead week is over and it's back to the paying job.      With so many chores that need to get accomplished we had to come up with a way to prioritize our to do list a while back. Our solution was what we call a stoplight list.  So first we wrote down all things that need to be completed, not everything is necessarily homestead related, but this way we don't forget anything.  Next we went through the list and determined when each item needed to be completed by.  Then next to each chore we put green, yellow or red.  Green items are no rush, yellow needs to be done within month or so and red needs to be completed within week or two.  This has helped us tremendously because we often forget the small pr...

     Things aren't always smiles and sunshine on the homestead, there are devastations and setbacks.  Being a homesteader is a trial and error game and sometimes things go really well but at other times there are heartbreaks.  I'm hoping that this life we are providing for our kids teaches them to take mistakes as a learning tool.  I've always had a hard time making mistakes or failing as some might put it but the more farming we do I realize that mistakes aren't the end of the world and you can learn from them.      The weather finally warmed up so we were finally able to open up our bee hive and we were heartbroken with what we found.  All our bees were dead, which left us with no bees that was our 2nd hive.  After looking over them, our own bee autopsy...my own version of CSI...we've come to the conclusion that the hive no longer had a queen, which led to their demise.  After the shock wore off we had to decide what we wou...

     Watch out when our calendar tells us what to do, we get it done.  It does get difficult with two small kiddos but we've come up with some unique ways of involving them so we can accomplish some not so kid friendly tasks.  This week we got so close to finishing the fence, about 75% of it is complete.  With so many rainy days lately we were thrilled to have the sun come out for even just one day.  Since we knew only one day would be good for fence building we brought in reinforcements for the kiddos, the homestead NiNi (my mom).  Being the assistant to the muscle requires all my attention and with one of our kids being under two I'm constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure she isn't endangering her life.  With NiNi's help Papa can have all my attention and the kids are safe. Getting the gate set into place.      No unexpected plans came up so we were able to get to the beginning process of building th...

     All we wanted to do was put up a fence you wouldn’t think it would be so hard but calling 811 was a pain in our booty.  We needed to dig some big holes for the posts and papa had to say that he thought that there were possibly power lines in line where we were going to dig.  After that all I could hear was that darn commercial “call before you dig to be safe”.  The hubby put the work order in online and we had to wait 48 hours for the utility companies to come and find their lines.  Well two days came and went and no one showed up, I immediately regretted following the rules but that’s what I do.  I called and asked why it hadn’t been done and we got the reason that we didn’t give them good enough directions to our marked address.  I didn’t know it would be so hard for them to find our house, well they finally were able to locate us and the lines and we were able to move on with our fence project. Look at my favorite people work...

     It's been way too long and I've missed telling our story so I'm making the commitment of writing every week.  I want to stay connected and let everyone know what we are doing or maybe what we aren't because sometimes life happens and nothing gets done.  This week we got some play time and papa got some garage time in.  With the cold weather and kids getting antsy we hit up one of our local kids museums to let out some steam.  It's a science museum so learning and fun is a win win.  We are wrapping up the holiday season so we put away the Christmas decor with the exception of the tree.  Lil man isn't ready to see it go so we compromised and decided that January 1st it will go out the door.  With a half hour here and there papa was able to get into the garage and fabricate.  The wings are on the splitter and will make splitting firewood a bit smoother. You can check out our Instagram page for pictures  here.    ...

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...