Mommy! Daddy! Come quick! These are the words that I hear from my littles a few hundred times a day. Nearly every scrape is an emergency and every drawing must be viewed AT ONCE or it may disappear altogether. So -sigh- I will go look at another “emergency”. My husband walked out with me to […]
Why starting seeds in pots is better than direct sow
When I started gardening six years ago, I didn’t know much. Thats an exaggeration, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know how to bury potatoes over and over to get the best crop, or how to trim tomato plants to yield a sweeter harvest. Fast forward to now that I am a little older and […]
Time for sale
So as we all know, gardening is a hurry up and wait game. Hurry get your seeds in, wait forever until harvest. But now, as I am trying of making money on the homestead, have realized that people buy time. A seed packet that costs $3 and contains 25 seeds will equal 25 large plants that sell […]
Food for thought
I recently had a request via craigslist for balut. To be perfectly honest I didn’t even know what they were requesting, I had to google it. This is what I learned. Balut is chicken or duck eggs that have been partially incubated so there is a small chick inside. It is then hardboiled and eaten, […]
Wish we had a good mother chukar
We hatched our first baby chukar. It was adorable. But at about half the size of a baby chicken, it seemed frail to begin with. It died 3 days after it hatched. Hence, I wish we had a good mother chukar. So what went wrong? Human error strikes again. The first ever egg was laid […]
This is how we wattle
Wattle fencing is a very old concept. It was put into use before post hole diggers, chain link fences, and barbed wire. It was used when people knew how to make things off the land. This fencing was used for livestock, predator protection and proper lines. It is basically a stack and weave technique of […]
Quail Babies!
Today is hatch day! We purchased some quail eggs from a local breeder (you can check them out at kckennelsandlofts.com) This also where we got our day old quail and pheasants. Let me walk you through the incubation process. We put 49 eggs into the incubator 18 days ago. Temp is set at 99.5 F […]
Taters are in! How we plant potatoes
One of my favorite vegetables are potatoes. They are very versatile and the kids don’t complain as much at meal time(how many more bites?)This is how we plant our potatoes. Step one: till.The garden gets a good tilling, the thing to watch out for is the soil moisture, if it is too wet it gets […]
Slimy yet satisfying
The next latest and greatest on the farm is the aviary, it is only days away from completion. It will eventually get filled with a menagerie of birds.These birds will need to eat. Baby birds especially need a high level of protein. So at Christmas, I decided to get some mealworms. In attempt to grow […]
The trouble with organic gardening: We grow delicious bug food
I can picture a beautiful vegetable garden, in lovely weeded rows. Where everything is nearly trimmed, and all the home chief has to do, is go out and select this beautiful organic produce, take it in the house to put directly into their homemade meal. The reality of this for us, is slightly different. We […]