Author Archives: Janelle

Straw Bale Building

Posted on October 14, 2015 | 3 comments

 

hay2
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When we moved to our homestead a year ago, the plan was to build a house sometime in the near future.  After a year full of building infrastructure and adding animals to our homestead, it’s time to focus on the house!  We did a lot of research, reading books, watching videos and talking to people in the area before making our decision on what kind of house to build.  Let’s start on another adventure, and build a straw bale house!  Since this is a new way of building for us and there is a lot to learn, we decided to start small and build a guest house first.  The idea being that we will get all of the kinks worked out before we start on our house.

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It’s Been One Year on the Homestead

Posted on October 8, 2015 | 2 comments

field

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It’s been a year since we moved from our hobby farm just outside a city to our beautiful homestead in the holler!  We’ve gotten a lot done, yet the to-do list is still a mile long.  I have a feeling that the to-do list is going to be constantly growing as we think of more things to add and make improvements to what we’ve done.  We’ve learned a lot this past year and will continue to learn as time goes on. So what have we learned?

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Spring Update

Posted on June 1, 2015 | 1 comment
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Spring is a busy time of year on the homestead.  It’s time to start the outdoor projects that have been dreamed up all winter long.  This is the first spring on our homestead, which means a long to-do list.   Here’s what we’ve been up to lately.

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Purchasing an Existing Homestead

Posted on April 2, 2015 | 10 comments

barn2

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We purchased an old farm in 2014 and are working on getting things up and running again.  This farm hasn’t been functional for quite a few years. The pastures were rented out for grazing, but the buildings have not been used.

When we were looking for properties, we were looking with our mind on permaculture design.  While any property can benefit from applying permaculture principles, there were certain elements we were particularly interested in.  Having water, pastures and trees all designed carefully is a high priority for us.  While there are advantages to buying an older farm with existing buildings, we are finding there are challenges as well.

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Raising Chickens: A Kid’s Perspective

Posted on March 3, 2015 | 6 comments

hen

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As a homesteading, homeschooling family, we try to include our kids in what’s going on around the farm.  Our son has been watching all this blog stuff with great interest.  He finally asked us if he could write his own article.  So, here is the kid version of raising chickens.  It is really quite interesting to see what things are perceived as the highlights (by this kiddo anyway).  Just to make things a bit clear, here is some background:

Chick Mobile: several years back, my husband built a brooder in the pole barn in CO.  It was roughly 4’x4′ and when he finished, he set it on a wheeled frame he used for working on arcade games.  It turned out to be handy to be able to easily move the brooder around the barn, so now our son thinks a brooder should be mobile… and hence the “chick-mobile”

Egg Mobile: we can thank Joel Salatin for this.  Joel is always so creative with his naming, so we called our first mobile coop an “eggmobile” as well.  Ever since our son can remember, we have moved our little layer flock around our property.

Scraps: all our plate scrapings and such are shared with the chickens.  Don’t worry, we provide plenty of layer feed as well. 

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Posted in Animals, Farm Life

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Why We Love Nigerian Dwarf Goats

Posted on February 17, 2015 | 24 comments
Why we love Nigerian Dwarf goats
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Goats are a fun and useful addition to your homestead. They are a lot of fun to watch and the fresh goat milk is great! There are a lot of different breeds of goats to choose from, all of which can give good milk. However one breed of goat that is consistently overlooked for milk production is the Nigerian Dwarf.
Nigerian Dwarf goats are often considered pets and overlooked as a good dairy goat because of their small size. They may be smaller than a full sized goat, but to us, that is just one of the many benefits!
Here are some reasons why we love Nigerian Dwarf goats and chose to keep some in our herd.

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Living without Trash Service

Posted on January 22, 2015 | 23 comments

living without trash service

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Before moving out to the Missouri Ozarks, we lived just outside a large city on an acreage.  This meant that we had the privilege of a trash service coming out and picking up our garbage once a week and our recycling every other week.  We totally took advantage of this service, watching our garbage and recycling magically disappear week after week.  Sure, we fed food scraps to the chickens and had a compost pile going.  But the bulk of our waste was being carted away by a trash truck.

Then we moved to the beautiful Ozarks.  We live in an area that there is no trash service out here in the country.  Our trash no longer magically disappears.  In fact, we realized just how much trash our family of five made!  Holy moly!  It’s very common to see people burning their trash in burn barrels around here, so we tried it once.  It was effective, but it made Travis’s allergies flare up, he was stuffed up for days!   Not very pleasant.  So we decided to recycle as much as possible and try to get our trash output as low as possible.

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Posted in Farm Life, Recycling

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Chores with a Baby

Posted on December 14, 2014 | 8 comments

Chores with a baby

 

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While Travis was driving back and forth from Colorado to Missouri, having adventures like this, I stayed home and held down the fort.  I did as much packing as I could and cared for my 6 year old and 6 month old.  There were also rabbits, chickens and dairy goats to care for.  Chores were done twice a day, every day.  With a baby.  Alone.  For the entire summer.

It sounds challenging, but really it wasn’t.  My 6 year old is an animal lover and loves to help out, so she was easy.  How did I manage with a baby?  Baby wearing.

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Poison Ivy

Posted on December 7, 2014 | 3 comments

poison-ivy

 

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Poison ivy is something that you typically look out for in the summer.  However, you need to be cautious in the fall as well.  The poison ivy plants still retain urushiol, the oil allergen that can cause an allergic skin reaction, even when the plants are dead.  In fact, even the roots have urushiol on them.

I found this out first hand when planting our fruit trees the beginning of November.  Most of our fruit trees were planted in a grassy area.  But some were planted in an area from which we had cleared out brambles.  Apparently there was poison ivy growing somewhere among the brambles, as a day later, I noticed a couple angry red streaks on my right forearm and the back of my hand.  I didn’t see any poison ivy during the planting, but we had had a couple hard frosts so everything was rather brown and dead.  To keep myself from scratching the spots, I covered them with a bandage.  No big deal.

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Posted in Wellness

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Homeschool in the Holler

Posted on November 9, 2014 | Leave a comment

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As some of you may already know, we homeschool our kids.  Yes, we are some of those people.  Somebody recently told me that our kids must be getting a great education in washing the dishes, cutting wood and taking care of the goats.  Yes, our kids are learning life skills and how to work, but aren’t all kids learning that?  That, however, isn’t school.  School here includes the subjects that would expect to see, math, reading, grammar, etc.    Homeschooling takes time and dedication, but all very worthwhile.  After all, these kids don’t stay kids for long.

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