Tag Archives: Homesteading

Happy Thanksgiving

Chickens, Fall, Firewood, Reflections, Splitting Wood, ,

As far as weather goes, Monday was our best day of the week leading up to our Thanksgiving holiday. I took this opportunity to get out to the farm and work with my husband.

The sky was gray and the wind was brisk. I appreciated my winter coat.

Most of the trees are bare now and the pond level is still very low indicating that we are still in a drought. According to the US Drought Monitor we have moderate drought conditions.

The sun unsuccessfully tried to break through the clouds.

The chickens spent the day out and about. They don’t mind the wind and cold so much but when the snow comes they will spend most of their time in the coop.

They have been going through their molt and most have stopped laying eggs. I always feel sorry for them when I see them molting. They look so disheveled.

Many of them have gotten their new feathers in but won’t start laying again until the days become longer. For now we are still getting one or two eggs every other day. I’m thankful that my daughter and son-in-law have a new flock this year who won’t molt and should continue to lay through the winter. Hopefully I can get my eggs from them.

There isn’t a lot of work to be done at the farm this time of year but my husband has been working on cutting and splitting firewood. The large maple logs have been seasoning for two years so are ready to be split and burned. He had a stack cut and ready to be split.

We worked together – he placing the log on the splitter, me operating the lever, both of us removing the split logs and tossing them on the pile.

We also worked together to stack the wood once we had it split. We are so thankful for the gas-powered log splitter we purchased two years ago. It makes short and easy work of the task of splitting firewood.

Now as my husband and I prepare to watch the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day Game, I wish you all many blessings and a Happy Thanksgiving for those of you who are celebrating today.

GO LIONS!

Planting Potatoes and Happy Chickens

Chickens, Eggs, Planting, potatoes, Reflections,

We planted potatoes on Tuesday. It was a beautiful spring day.

The chickens love the freshly worked soil. Lots of bugs, grubs and worms. Yum!

My husband tilled the area then measured, marked and dug the furrows. Then I placed the potatoes in the rows. He came back later and covered the potatoes with soil. Before leaving we fenced in the area so the chickens couldn’t scratch up the seedlings. There are plenty of other things around to keep the chickens happy. We planted about 160 row feet of potatoes.

Chickens don’t spend all of their time scratching and pecking. They also like to dust bathe as these girls were doing. Dust baths are actually how chickens clean themselves. It sounds counterproductive but it works for them.

Rex is our only rooster – I think that makes him happy.

Chickens, chickens everywhere!

Made From Scratch 🙂

Happy chickens give the best eggs. We are getting about 15 -17 eggs a day right now – that makes me happy.

Thanks for visiting.

Keeping Busy

Aloe Soap, Chickens, crochet, Daffodils, Forsythia, Killdeer, Making Soap, Reflections, Starwberry Jam, , , , , ,

Hello and welcome! Spring has been very gradual in getting here this year. It seems like we go two steps forward then one step back. No quick warm up this year. I suppose the slow warm up is good in some ways – it means that trees and plants are slow to bud thus reducing the chances of fruit trees being hit by late season frost/freeze. We have had some rain as well but so far nothing extreme. There have been a few outdoors chores that I have been able to get done, but while I’m waiting for gardening and grass cutting season to arrive, I have had spring cleaning (indoors) and some other projects to keep me busy.

Making Soap

A few weeks ago, my sister told me that her husband wanted to go back to using natural soap. She asked if I would make them a batch. Of course I was happy to do it. When I asked what kind of soap she wanted, she asked for “the shaving soap” or aloe soap which makes a really nice soap for shaving. So, on April 1st I made a double batch of aloe soap. I want some to keep for us.

The above picture is the soap in the molds after several hours. The outer edges are hardening but the center is still a thick liquid. It was in the mold for about 30 hours before it was hard enough to remove. It will be a couple more weeks before this soap is ready to use but I am looking forward to it. I haven’t made this soap in a few years.

Below is my recipe for any soap makers who might be reading.

Aloe Soap Recipe

This recipe is a large batch – 32 bars of soap. It could be halved or quartered to make smaller a batch.

40 oz. Coconut Oil

70 oz. Sunflower Oil

8 oz. Olive Oil

16.95 oz. Lye (NaOH)

45 oz. Water

about 1/4 cup – Aloe Juice (Scrape out inside of aloe leaves and blend in small blender) added at trace.

For soap making instructions see my Soap Making Page.

Making Jam

When I realized we only had one jar of strawberry jar left in the pantry I decided it was time make some more since strawberry is both my favorite and my husband’s favorite. Fortunately, I still had three packages of strawberries in the freezer.

We should now have more than enough jam to last until this year’s strawberries are ready. My husband has worked hard on the strawberry patch, so we are hoping and praying for a great crop this year.

Crocheting

In a previous post I mentioned that I was making an afghan to donate to the humane society for a raffle.

I completed that project. It’s difficult to see in the photo but the puppy paws print run through the burgundy stripes as well.

I then began a new project.

This is a cat pattern that I have not made before. Can you see the cats? I began making this using some partial skeins of yarn that I have. I really just wanted to learn the pattern. I’m not sure yet if it will be a small blanket or a pillow.

A Few Spring Pics

At last, the daffodils are blooming.

Forsythia just beginning to bloom.

I finally got a picture of a killdeer. Rarely have I seen one stand still long enough to get a photo. This one was unusual because it was all alone. Usually there are a pair in the area. I did a little research and learned that migratory killdeer will generally mate for a season and males usually return to the same area each year. They may mate with the same female as the previous year. Non-migratory killdeer may mate for life. So, I wonder, since I didn’t see it’s mate in the area, if it is yet to find a mate for this season.

Our hens like to roost in the lower branches of the spruce trees. I thought it was a picture worth sharing. 🙂

Looking Ahead

The weather is supposed to be warmer this week, and my husband plans to get potatoes planted. As for me I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself cutting grass for the first time this year.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you have a wonderful week.

Tracking the Stork

Chicks, Reflections

If a stork delivers human babies, could we deduce that a stork delivers baby chicks as well?

It was yesterday afternoon, Tuesday, March 21, when I received an email from Townline Hatchery where we had ordered our chicks. It looked like this:

ALMOST READY!
Please allow 24 hours for most tracking updates.

I immediately clicked on the tracking # and learned that at 3:28 P.M. a shipping label had been created.

Since the hatchery is less than two-hour drive from our home, I assumed our bundle would arrive today, so I continued to check the USPS (United Stork Postal Service???) tracking number for updates. Here is the route and timeline the stork service took to deliver our bundle of 28 chicks.

3:56 P.M. accepted at USPS office in Zeeland, MI

5:11 P.M. arrived at USPS Regional facility in Grande Rapids, MI. Estimated delivery was before 9:00 P.M. on 3/23/23 *Note they are going in the wrong direction as Grand Rapids is to the west of Zeeland while we are to the east. Apparently, Storks don’t adhere to ‘as the crow flies”.

That was the last update before I went to bed last night.

When I got up, way too early, this morning there was another update.

3/22 12:20 A.M. arrived at USPS Regional facility in Pontiac, MI *at least they are now traveling in the right direction*

Then:

6:59 A.M. arrived at our local USPS office.

7:10 A.M. Out for delivery *This was a bit disturbing as it was my understanding that we would have to pick up our bundle at the local office. We didn’t want them riding around in the stork mobile for half the day when we could bring them home and assure that they were warm and well. I tried calling the office but only got a message that they were not open yet.”

8:39 A.M. My phone rang. A terse voice said, “you have chicks at the post office.” I asked if they could be picked up now and which door to go to, and my husband was on his way out the door as I hung up the phone.

9:00 A.M. my husband returned home with our bundle of peepers.

Awww! So cute and so many peep, peep, peeps… I noticed black spots on the heads of a few of them and was a bit concerned because buff orpington chicks, the breed we ordered, are solid yellow. I then realized that the three with black marks on their head were the roosters we ordered, and the hatchery had thoughtfully marked them so we could identify them.

For some reason I thought that we had only ordered 18 chicks (getting old or something). After we had them in their new home, I began trying to get a beak count (not easy as they were all moving around) and quickly realized that we had way more than 18. When I looked up my receipt from the hatchery, I discovered that we had ordered 28 chicks – 25 pullets (females) and 3 roosters.

Since they were continually moving around I didn’t a full count until I saw the picture below.

We got all 28 +1= 29! Feel free to count for yourself but I have counted them at least 6 times and keep counting 29.

Ranger was quite excited to see the babies. He has checked them out several times during the day. I wish you could see how fast his tail is wagging as he watches them. It’s so funny. He did bark at them a couple times which sent the whole flock into a tizzy, but he seems to have gotten over the need to do that. We are a bit surprised that Ruby has not paid them any attention as of yet. I guess she will just meet them when she is ready.

Thanks for visiting and happy spring!!

Rehydrating Potatoes and Our Garden Meal

potatoes, Recipe, Reflections,

Hello and welcome!

We dehydrated a second batch of potatoes over the weekend. This time rather than slicing them we decided to do shredded potatoes – like would cook up into hashbrowns. After peeling them my husband boiled them until they were nearly done. He then used the food processor with the shredding blade to cut them up. It took about 6 hours at 125 degrees in the dehydrator to dry them.

We packaged the shredded dehydrated potatoes in two-ounce packages.

I had found instructions online that said when rehydrating vegetables, a rule of thumb was to use two parts water to one part vegetable so that’s where I started. I’m not sharing the link because I found out it was inaccurate.

I put the dehydrated potatoes in a metal bowl on the scale. It read 1.9 ounces.

I then reset the scale to zero and added twice as much boiling water as I had potatoes – 3.8 ounces. (I know the scale says 3.9 – .1 ounce over is acceptable.) Hot or boiling water speeds up the rehydration process. I stirred the potatoes and water together and found that once all of the water was absorbed some of the potatoes were still too dry. I again zeroed out the scale and added another 1.9 ounces of water.

I again stirred the mixture and once all of the water was absorbed I had perfectly rehydrated potatoes to make into hashbrowns.

I learned that in order to rehydrate these potatoes I need a 1:3 ratio of potatoes to water.

I put some butter in the cast iron skillet and cooked up these wonderful hashbrowns that tasted as fresh as if I had just dug the potatoes.

It was a breakfast for dinner night, so I cooked up a garden omelet to go with the hashbrowns and sausage. It’ not pretty but it was delicious.

I started, of course, with farm fresh eggs. Added some sautéed Swiss chard, a diced banana pepper, a diced jalapeno pepper and a diced tomato. I then topped it with American cheese which did not come from our farm but was the perfect finishing touch.

Yum!!!

Thanks for visiting.