The White Family Homesteaders

     I know I know it's been like two weeks and trust me I would have rather been blogging than what I was dealing with, the cold from hell.  I've had colds before who hasn't, but this isn't like any other cold it has like super powers.   It started on Memorial day with lil man just having an itty bitty cough, next day full cold and since it's trickled down the whole family.  Little lady was second, then myself, and now it has taken over poor Papa.  Of course when it took over me it was the beginning of Papa's work week.  Being a mom is a hard job but when you're sick and the kids are sick it becomes ten times worse plus you add the chores of the homestead and it feels like I'm being asked to climb a mountain. Plants keeping growing even when we're sick.      I've found myself jealous at times of some of the bigger homestead/farms we follow on Instagram until I felt like I was dying then I was so happy we're just starti...

     Growing season has begun and my dining room corner has become our temporary greenhouse.  Trying to start seeds in the rain with the kiddos running around can be somewhat challenging and not very productive.  At times I found myself getting frustrated when every 2 minutes or so I hear "mom watch this, mom watch this", but then I would turn around and see lil man sliding down a muddy hillside with an enormous smile and it made me realize I have to go with the flow.  Sometimes we are constantly trying to check things off our chore list that we forget we need to be flexible and goof off.  On my own I was able to get half a tray of seeds started so I waited for our weekend with Papa to get the rest done. Of course before I could get started I had to clean up chicken poop, thanks ladies.      Planting goes so much faster when there's two people.      Since we don't have a long growing season I try to get ...

     The garden planning is a continuous process and I've made more progress on it.  Remember how I organized my seed album, well at least I thought I had.  We were hanging out in the garage and I found my plastic bin I take to the garden when we plant and I had forgotten that that's where my main stash of seed packets were.  That evening while we caught up on our tv shows on Hulu I laid out all the newly discovered packets and went over my order list.  As it turns out I've got more seeds than I knew so I won't need to shell out as much cash or what will probably happen is I'll find other seeds to spend it on.  My eyes become bigger than our garden capacity when I'm looking at all the pretty pictures of what could be in my garden.  I did place my first order of seeds through Territorial seed company.  I'm a bargain shopper and am always looking for sales or coupons so I've found out that when you place an order they send you a coupon. ...

     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 o...

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...

We had a busy week of planting and finishing up fencing in the garden this last week.  Not sure if I mentioned that the deer ate all our tomatoes for dinner before we put up the sprinkler scarecrow.  It made me so sad, we put so much time and love into growing those plants from seeds.  My hubby keeps reminding me though that gardening is a trial and error process.  We are definitely not professionals but we are constantly learning. Luckily we do know someone who is amazing at gardening and she gave us some of her extra tomato plants she started.  She's a giver and usually gives us some of her starts every year.  She also gave us some more of the plastic raised beds we put in last week. It was time to put transplant some more of our starts into the garden so we loaded up our homestead rig and headed for the garden. I worked on the tomato plants while the hubby worked on the swiss chard, bok choy, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli.  I k...