Get real

In an attempt to be real, even though I don't care to share my name and where I live, here's a bit about my real life.  It's messy.  Always very messy.  Having five kids and being a pretty laid back housekeeper makes for a messy house.  I do typically clean it up with the help of the kids Monday through Friday but, Monday through Friday the house is still always a mess.  I guess when you live life that's how it usually goes.  On weekends, I don't clean much.  There just isn't time or sense in it when your better half is a tornado.

Yesterday I showed you some of my mess and I did get it all spic and span including doing two full loads of dishes and then being left with another sink full after dinner.  Here's how it all looks this morning.

This is taken from the hall.  The kitchen, dinning, and living area is about 22' by 20' total.  It certainly doesn't sound ideal for a family of seven but it works for us.  It makes cleaning pretty easy too.  We have a rule that says no toys downstairs (except for the baby and toddlers toys...they only have a few.)  That helps more than any other thing we've ever tried.  This area is a bit of a mess right now but I bet I could get it tip top including dishes in about 30 minutes. 

Here's a view from the other side by the fridge.

I'd love to cover the couches and chair in a lighter colored fabric (white!) to lighten up the place, but that won't work with my family due to the cost of such a project and having children who live outside in the dirt all day every day.  I'd have to make a no playing outside rule and that just wouldn't be any fun.  Plus they'd be inside all day bugging me.  Ha!  I love my kids and I love having them around me everyday, but mine talk a LOT (nonstop...to me) and it's not usually about anything I'm real interested in, plus, they make messes.  I really enjoy my quiet time while they're outside.

As I said yesterday, we're building this house with cash so it's far from finished because we don't have and abundance of the green stuff laying around or an abundance of time to work on it.  We just do what we can when we can.  That ladder will eventually be replaced with a ship style ladder and it leads up the the kids room.  Right now the entire second floor is unfinished, the walls and ceiling are even paper backed insulation but some day it will be two bedrooms and a half bath...hopefully. 

Once the baby wakes up from her nap, I'll clean the house real quick.  My bedroom is already done and the laundry is all washed and waiting to be folded and put away so hopefully I can keep it fairly clean this weekend.  My two youngest girls are sharing a birthday party this weekend which is good motivation for me to stay on top of things.

We homeschool too and this year my one and only boy will be starting kindergarten so I'll have three in school.  I'm looking forward to it.  We plan to start on Tuesday, I like to stretch summer vacation out as long as I can.  As far as curriculum goes, I don't use any particular one.  I just mix and match and use what I have and that has worked for us so far just fine.  My oldest is starting sixth grade.  I'm not sure what I'll do once she gets into the harder math but so far I've found lots of resources online as well as some pretty good work books from places like Mardel's book store.  Wal-mart carries some good work books on several subjects for kids up to grade four (I think...can't remember for sure what grade.)

I hear the baby babbling in bed, so it's back to work I go!

Before and after

I didn't do any housework yesterday so I'm a bit backed up.  It rained all day and I just had zero motivation.  Today, however, I'm rebounding so I'll give you a little before and after.  I must preface these pictures with this:  Hubs and I are building our home from scratch with cash and we're a one income household and we sit right on the poverty line of annual income.  We're pretty thrifty and have very little debt (grrrr...I wish we had NO debt) so we don't feel poor but these pictures probably paint a very different picture to plenty of other people who live more "normal" lives.

Kitchen with a day and a half worth of mess:

This is the skeleton of our future kitchen cabinets and counters which are, for now, covered in contact paper.  I used one entire role that was $5.00 or maybe it $5 and some change...I don't remember.  Not the prettiest, but functional.  Back to the mess, scary, I know.

After:

I didn't notice that water bottle on the floor until I added the picture to blogger, but it's put away now.  The dishwasher is full and running and I have a little better than a half of a load left in the sink but things are looking a whole lot better.  Since I don't have cabinet drawers and doors, I've covered a couple of the holes with a dish towel and a small embroidered table cloth that used to belong to my grandma.  It's better looking than the junk behind the towels.  I also don't have a pantry right now but have plans to add doors to a book case that's just out of sight and to the right of the dishwasher.  I use it to hold my everyday dishes for now and keep the food on the temporary open shelves and lower cabinets.

Next up, the stove. 
Before:

Aaahhhhh!  Of coarse, it isn't original to the house being that the house is less than a year old and the stove is from the fifties.  It's a shame any time it gets this messy because it is such a cool looking stove.  We bought it for $70 and hubs refurbished it with new wiring, burners and insulation as well as a good scrubbing.  Eventually, we'll have a half wall behind the stove (right now a love seat backs right up to it but don't worry, it's not a fire hazard) and we'll build lower cabinets on either side.  For now, I have a small white credenza on one side that is being used for food storage and a small white sewing table on the other side, so I do have some extra works space around it, but I actually do ALL of my cooking and prep work right on the stove.  It's HUGE!  It has a lot of space in the center between the burners.

After:

Pretty stove, huh?  The door on the right is the oven and all the others are drawers, so there's lots of storage for my cookware and bakeware.  (The living area's a mess too, but I'll do a quick touch up as soon as I'm done here.)

Last, but not least, the table.
Before:

We're a family of seven and the table comfortably seats everyone for now (baby goes in the high chair.)  There's a bench next to the window that three kids can and often do sit at and four chairs, a couple of which are strewn about the house, sigh.  I'd love to paint it white and paint all the chairs and bench a soft accent color or strip them down to bare wood.  Put that on the to do list too.

After:

Bad picture, but I'm in a hurry.  Sorry.  It's clean and two year old is having a little snack.  I still need to round up the other chairs though.

In other news, hubs and I (by far, mostly hubs) finished the electric fence for the goats and we even bought a calf from one of the neighbors the other day and tossed him in with the goats too.  Yipee!  I didn't think that would happen this year.  We've experienced a lot of losses with the chicks (seven so far) and have twelve left...probably all roosters.  Oh well, Saturday is chick days at one of the local farm stores so we're going to get a half a dozen or so more then.  The laying hens laying strike is over and production is better than ever because the younger hens have also started laying.  We now get 10 to 15 eggs a day!  We love eggs!

There's  a mole in my garden ransacking the place.  It's tearing right through my turnips and radishes that were looking so good!  Gotta dig through the barn and find the mole trap.

Back to work I go!

Have a good one!

Life in August

It's been a while since I last posted, kind of.  My last post got was very long with lots of info and pics and it got deleted because of some kind of Internet error.  That was frustrating.  Since then, my mom has had a stroke (last week) but has been blessed to make what appears to be a full recovery.  It was minor and she caught on to what was happening very quickly so she only had to stay in the hospital for four days while they tried out different blood pressure medicines to find a combination that works for her.  This all most likely could have been avoided if it weren't for some troubles she's had with her insurance and her doctor but then, it's always too easy to point fingers and play the blame game.  I just have to remember that God is fully in control.  It reminds me of something my mother told me several years ago, "If God wants to kill you in a tornado, there's no place you can hide to keep it from happening."  Now, strange as it may sound, for some reason that's actually very comforting to me.  I tend to be a worrier and try to control and prepare for every possible crisis and that just isn't always possible and everytime I start to worry, I remind myself of what she said because only God is fully in control and I would want it any other way.  It doesn't keep me from trying to prepare though...it's just in me to keep working without giving up until I'm exhausted.  I really enjoy the process most of the time too, it isn't just fear that motivates me...thankfully.

The chicks are growing like weeds and are no longer little fuzz balls and have a good start on their adult feathers.  They're outgrowing their tote too.

I plan to make caged outdoor area for them inside my garden fence.

I have unused space in there and it would be pretty easy to put some stakes and chicken wire in a section of it for them.

This will most likely become our new chicken coop this fall.  Our friend who loaned us his incubator has this on his land and doesn't use it for anything and wants to get rid of it.  I'd really love to make a cabana or fun little guest quarters out of it, but I don't know that that would be the financially responsible thing to do right now.  I think it's super cute!

The goats are finally pretty much fenced in.  Hubs put up an electric fence around an area in the back that's about an acre or so except it's only currently three sided.  The goats are finally afraid of the fence after running through it a few times but every now and then they manage to wonder off to the side that isn't fenced yet (they don't usually go over there) and then they're free.  They stay pretty close to the house though.  In fact, before they were fenced off, they would spend every night sleeping on the front steps leaning against the front door and just poop the night away.  I'm pretty sick of goat poop.

I made shampoo bars which are all natural but they turned out to leave a strange kind of heavy, waxy like residue in my hair that made it unmanageable.  The baking soda and vinegar didn't work either so I'm back to using my toxic shampoo until I can figure out something else that works.  I might try making a soap from just coconut oil and see if it leaves my hair cleaner.  This one will make a great body bar because it's very gentle and moisturizing...too moisturizing.  I do love homemade soaps.  They're the best.

I have a laundry basket full of green apples waiting to be turned into applesauce and apple butter.  Hopefully I'll be getting to that in just a little while.

Hatch day!

Late Wednesday evening, one of our chicks began the hatching process and by Thursday morning several others followed.  Thursday was day 20 in the process and today, day 21, we've had several more hatch.  So far we have ten and another chick that's working on hatching.  That's from the first clutch of fourteen eggs.  If you remember, I started originally with 25 eggs but I took out eleven eggs that I presumed to be duds only to find upon cracking them open to investigate that three of them were alive and well...if only for a short while longer.  The second clutch that I put in the incubator to replace those should be hatching this same time next week.  There are eleven of them.  I've thought about getting another twenty or so going as soon as the incubator is available again.  If I have a 60 percent hatch rate and half of them are roosters than I could end up with 13 or 14 new hens.  That's about what we need to be able to eat as many eggs as we would like to.  The most eggs we ever ate in one week was NINE dozen.  That's back when I was pregnant with number five and the only thing I could eat was eggs.  Still, we eat a dozen per meal and would like to have them for breakfast just about every morning.  I don't get tired of eggs.

Right now, we have ten "hens a laying" ♫♪ and five up and coming layers that should start laying in the next month or so.  They're free range range so other than the up front expenses of a coop and the supplies needed for the chicks, they are free.  The goats are always eating the hens feed so we haven't feed them any for a while and they seem to be doing fine.  We get six or eight eggs a day and, so far, that hasn't gone down.

We'll soon be building a larger coop to house all these hens at night out of a metal grain bin that our incubator friend is giving us for free.  It's fourteen feet in diameter so it ought to be big enough for a good number of chickens.  I'd also like to start raising our own meat birds soon and in the name of keeping it simple, I imagine we'll house them all together.  We'll see though, hubs may get other ideas.

Now, I haven't read this recommendation anywhere, but I figure if I didn't interfere and let nature run it's course, these little chicks would be outside 24/7, so, we took them outside for a little while this morning when it was already in the nineties to meet the other animals and what did they do?  They all huddled up under oldest daughter who was squatting on the ground next to them.  Momma.  heh.

Here's what was going on this morning...chicks, chickens, goats, cats, kittens, dogs and kids (human variety.)  A few of the hens were curious about the chicks (a.k.a. THEIR children) and they acted afraid of them when we'd try to show a chick to them up close.  Silly chickens.

We just checked the incubator and we have two chicks hatched and another one just starting (and it's the BIG one ☺.)  That will make twelve.  Woohoo!

Oh, and just a note...There is at least one egg that I now know for sure from regular candling that's a dud and it's from the first clutch of eggs so it's been in the incubator for 21 days now and up to a week in a bowl on the kitchen counter prior to that and it has not exploded.  Myth?  I don't intend to keep it or any other duds longer than 25 days in the incubator so we'll see what happens.  It makes me think of when Templeton the rat took the gooses rotten egg off her hands, I mean wings, for her in Charlotte's Web.  P.U.

Cardiopulminary Resuscitation aka CPR

Yesterday, hubs and our 5 year old son went to Lowe's to look at weed eaters and when they left the store they heard a woman in the parking lot screaming, "He's gone!  He's gone!"  She was in the car next to them so hubs ran over to help her.  There were already a couple of employees standing around her car calling 911.  Her husband was in the drivers seat of the parked car unconscious.  He wasn't breathing and hubs couldn't find a pulse so he said, "We need to lay him on the ground and start CPR."  The employees were just looking on and one replied, "I'd do it, but my certificate just expired."  Fortunately (I guess) hubs knew CPR and had been a volunteer and part time fighter fighter for a couple towns we've lived in and while his certification was also "expired" he didn't let that stop him from preforming CPR.  The man would occasionally gasp for air even while he had no pulse they could find.  Hubs thinks he was dead before anyone ever got to him and as awful as this sounds, he's had a lot of experience with the death of animals via hunting and butchering our own animals as well as his experiences as a fire fighter and had seen similar gasping behavior after they were clearly dead.  None the less, he continued CPR, taking turns with a woman who volunteered to jump in after a few minutes in case hubs was tired.  When the ambulance arrived, hubs and son went back into the store to wash up and give me a call to tell me what had just happened.  When they went back out to the truck, the ambulance and fire fighters were still there and the man was on a gurney and it looked as if they had used the defibrillator on him but they didn't appear to be in a hurry to get him to the hospital.  At some point, hubs talked to his wife and found out that he was 54 and had already had some open heart surgery and when hubs suggested that she call her family she said, "I can't, they're all mad at me."  The women was heartbroken and kept crying to her husband, "Don't leave me." while hubs was previously doing CPR.  So sad.

We don't know what happened or if he lived, it was quite an experience for hubs though.  Life is short and fragile, don't waste it.

As for our son, he's fine.  He sat in our truck next to them and could only see his daddy pulling the man out of the car.  Hubs did talk with him about it on the way home and so did I and he seems fine.  We've never sheltered our children from death with the exception of Hollywood's versions of it which only desensitize us so this wasn't his first experience, although it's never been quite so up close and graphic before.  That makes it sound like if our son hasn't been desensitized by Hollywood than he should have a very strong reaction to what he witnessed, but again, that's Hollywood's interpretation of what our response should be.  His attitude is what it is.  For me, I'm saddened for the wife and family left behind and hate to think of him suffering alone in the car while his wife, unaware of what was happening, was doing a little shopping in the store.  That's very sad.  I do have the hope of Christ and we teach our children that as well.  Hopefully this teaches our children that we MUST help care for everyone we possibly can, even strangers.  We must cherish every life, particularly human life and recognize that God is the giver and taker of life.  We also try to pass these lessons along to our children through our animals and the sacrifice they some of them have to make in order to feed us.  Even though we're raising animals for food, we still must take great care of them while they're alive because all life is precious and if an animals life is precious, how much more is a humans life whether we personally get something from them or not?

My husband was "fine" while it was going on and a bit shook up afterwards when he called me, but overall, it's a valuable life experience that I'm sure he wouldn't erase for himself if he could.

I hope the man lived.

Tough lessons

It's been a rough few days.  I mentioned before that we "threw out" the dud eggs from our incubator, or at least what we thought were duds and when my daughter and I cracked them open to learn about them, we found that three of them had living chicken fetus kicking around in them.  It was very sad and my poor daughter put them down so they didn't have to suffer anymore.  Well two days later, our two oldest girls were outside playing with our kittens in the grass (they're around 4 weeks old) when our nine year old tripped and landed on one of them.  It was very severely injured and very obviously going to die so my oldest came and got me and asked me to put it down for her.  When I got out to the yard, Petunia was licking her injured baby.  It was heartbreaking!  I did what I had to do and hope I never have to do that ever again, then I buried it.  I wouldn't allow the kids to be anywhere near while I did all this.  It was too much.  On the other hand though, the way my oldest came running and screaming into the house, I thought that one of my own children had to be dead which just about scared the poop out of me.  So, it could have been something far worse.

"Tiger"

Hubs is clearing the fence line around the back of the property and plans to take down some of the already existing 4 foot fence to use around the goat pen that never seems to be penning any goats.  They are more curious than cats and almost as destructive as children.  That's quite a combination.

We're thinking about leasing the land behind us that's about 60 wooded acres, to raise goats on.  It could be what gets us through the coming depression.  Even if we're wrong about the depression, I'd still like to get into goat farming.  While beef is my meat of choice, goats just make sense for us and the land around us.  They're also in higher demand than what's available, so I hope it's a win win situation.

The kids and I harvested and shelled our cowpeas today and we've all learned that we love raw ochre.  I have avoided planting ochre because I hate the mess of preparing fried ochre from scratch even though that's one of hubs all time favorite foods and he practically begged me to plant some.  While at the store back in June, I found ochre plants for just a couple of dollars for a pot containing ten plants, so I thought, why not.  Now we're starting to harvest some and when they're about finger length (3 inches) they are super delicious.  I love the way the seeds taste and I even like that weird, somewhat slimy, texture they have.  I also passed on planting any cucumbers, although I did buy seeds, because they aren't one of my favorite veggies since they instantly give me the worst indigestion ever in the history of indigestion.  Some friends, however, gave us a few of they're cucumbers and I made refrigerator pickles out of them and they are AWESOME!  They're a lot like bread and butter pickles with more crunch.  They make a good side dish as well as a sandwich topper or snack.

So, I'm learning what I need to plant in the future and I'm learning a lot of other lessons that might come in handy if times really get hard.  For example, I think I'll put peas near the bottom of the list for a while because they just don't seem to be very prolific or hardy.  I definitely need to start my garden sooner for things like my beets.  Mid summer harvested beets = yucky beets.  I need to plant a LOT of beans.  LOTS. 
And, I need to learn about squashes.  Last year was my first year gardening and I didn't have any trouble with most of the things I planted, especially the squashes.  This year my squash plants are dropping like flies!  They aren't producing much either.  I have two measly spaghetti squashes out of 4 or 5 plants, two pumpkins out of 3 or 4 seeds and one of them is almost dead from bugs.  Zero butternut and acorn squashes...plants all died and while the watermelon and cantaloupe plants are alive, zero melons developing.  I don't want to use any chemicals and I'm pretty ignorant still about gardening, so I have a lot left to learn.  Trial and error teach me better than anything but I think I need to put more effort into the books if I'm ever going to get the hang of clean gardening.

Egg update:  As best I can tell of the eggs I can actually see through the shell, they're all developing (of the new bunch (clutch?) that is.)  My first group of eggs should start hatching by Friday if not sooner.  Hopefully not too soon though.  The thermometer reads 99 most of the time but occasionally gets up to 100.  I don't want to mess with the temp anymore though because I'm afraid I'll really mess things up for sure.

Rainbow and blue skies after a big storm this past week.

Homemade soap and toiletries

I'm making hot process soap today which is a lot of fun.  Ten or twelve years ago, I had a very short lived soap making business that I quit when I got pregnant with number two.  We rendered fat for tallow to use in our soaps and the smell was revolting to me.  So were all the smells of the fragrances.  I hated the smells so bad, in fact, that that's why I didn't make another batch of soap or lotion up until a couple of months ago.  The smells were still nauseating to me.  To this day, I can't stand the smell of Tommy Hilfiger cologne.  It's what hubs wore before I got pregnant with number one and it's the one thing I still haven't gotten over.  I loved it before that so it's kind of funny to me.  Anyway, I have a bunch of supplies that are still good so I've had some fun with it here recently.  I used to make cold process soap which seemed like such a huge chore looking back because the information I got all came from books which really stressed the exact timing and temperature of every single stinking step.  Now, after revisiting soap making and the wonderful Internet, I know the process isn't such exact science and there's room for errors.  I like the hot process better only because I can use the soap right away.  It does get a little harder and gentler with age, say at least another 4 weeks of cure time, but even using the soap within the first 24 hours it isn't bad soap.  I've made several recipes including cold process which is just now ready to use...finally, and I've used soapcalc.com to make them up myself.  We just finished up the first batch of hot process soap that I made roughly 2 months ago (one pound.)

I also have a fresh batch of homemade lotion.  I feel a lot better about using it over commercial products because I know exactly what's in it and that it safe.  Our skin is our biggest organ and it's very porous and absorbent.  All the toxic crap that gets absorbed goes right into our bloodstream, so I've read.  That has lead me to try using baking soda in my hair rather than shampoo.  Today was my first time using it and I was pretty impressed.  My scalp is EXTREMELY oily and needs to be washed daily to keep from looking like a total grease ball.  It's usually oily looking by the end of the day too.  It supposedly takes a couple of weeks for the scalp to adjust to the new routine and once it has, it should look just as clean and healthy as regularly shampooed hair.  Or, even better according to people who've actually tried it.  This being the first time, I was surprised at how clean it looked.  It wasn't perfect because I could see a little bit of oiliness in my hair, but it looked more like it was working its way down my hair and not so much on my scalp, which looked fine.  I pulled it into a ponytail, so you'd never know I did anything different.

Okay, I've also made and have used for years, homemade toothpaste and within the last couple of months, we've also started using homemade deodorant.  It works way, WAY better than any, ANY commercial deodorant I have ever used in my ENTIRE life!  It's safe and aluminum free too!  The key ingredient is baking soda which you have to dilute greatly or it's to harsh on the skin.  I mixed mine as 1 part baking soda and 4 parts cornstarch and it probably could still stand to be weakened further.  I also mixed it into a lotion bar formula and scented it with sweet orange essential oil.  That way I could pour it into an old deodorant bottle and apply it like usual.  Well, almost as usual.  I literally just lightly touch it to my underarm and then rub it in with my finger.  It's almost like nothings there at all but I guarantee it's there and it's working overtime on me.  I sweat way more than my husband and have always required stronger deodorant than him which needed to be reapplied every single day.  This stuff works with just one very light application for at least 48 hours...that's the longest I've gone without a shower and therefore reapplying.  It's awesome!  Hubs likes it too.

I probably sound like a crunchy granola, but if you ever ran into me in person, you'd never guess I was into such things just by looking at me.  It's nice that it all saves money, but I only do this for our health.  It's nice to know that there are so many alternatives to the chemical laden commercial products that work just as well and often better that only cost pennies to make.  And yes, I also make my own laundry detergent.  I'm happy with how well it seems to work although I have noticed a slight buildup starting to show inside my washing machine that looks like soap scum.  It may be building up in my clothes too, but I really can't tell a difference if it is.  They appear just as clean as they would with commercial brand detergents. 

Egg trouble

Two evenings ago, I candled the eggs again and set out all the eggs that didn't appear to be developing according to the information I found on the Internet including pictures.  The next morning my oldest took them outside to crack them open to see what they looked like on the inside.  Out of eleven of the eggs there were live, well developing chicks in three of them.  They had even survived a night out on the kitchen counter.  I can't tell you how upsetting this was!  Daughter was heartbroken to see the little bitty chicks (week old) now dieing in their broken shells.  It was sad for me too and frustrating.  I suppose I should count it up as a learning experience. 

What went wrong?  I made my judgements based on info and pictures from several sources on the Internet which made it clear to me that exact temperature is of utmost importance...life or death importance, and it took me about 36 hours to finally get the temp to a steady 99 degrees.  It had jumped up and down between 96 and 103 degrees (at least.)  The thermometer is on the top shelf and is actually cooler that the bottom shelf while the heat is on (it has a thermostat to kick the heat on and off as necessary) so the bottom shelf of eggs actually got even warmer than that.  So that was, in my mind, problem number one.  Then when I candled them, comparing to pictures of good and bad eggs on the Internet, I separated what I thought were good and bad eggs.  The pictures are not totally accurate.  In some of the eggs that clearly have a developing chick kicking around inside, a few of them also appear to have a blood ring around in them too which is supposed to be a sign of bacteria and the death of the chick in early development.  Another suggestion made on one or two of these sites also stated that a bad egg (rotten) would explode if you left it in the incubator, so it's important to get rid of them asap.  In my mind, I know my eggs are fresh from the chicken and they can and do keep very well on the kitchen counter for two or three weeks so why shouldn't I just leave them in the incubator for three weeks?  It's not like we have exploding eggs in nature when a mother hen is sitting on the eggs herself, is it?  Oh, and most of the eggs I removed were from the bottom shelf.  The eggs on the top shelf were very easy to candle and I hung onto a few I wasn't sure about and glad I did.  They are probably just fine too.

Another thing I think I've learned is that these little eggs are a lot tougher than what I had read.  The temperature and humidity don't have to be exactly perfect at all times.  I also haven't washed my hands before handling them most of the time.  I do wash my hands throughout the day before and after cooking, dishes, bathroom, diapers etc but I usually have forgotten to wash them before turning and candling them.  There's a big learning curve in all this homesteading business.  Especially when you don't have someone along side you helping who has experience.  It's almost a lost art and I fear Americans are really going to suffer because of it.

Back to the eggs.  I could, in the future, just put eggs in the incubator and skip candling them altogether as long as I'm turning them, but I enjoy seeing the little critters in there kicking around, it's pretty amazing.  I did decide to add eleven fresh eggs to the incubator so I will have two hatch dates.  They'll only be a week apart so I know (from experience) that won't be a problem when we put them together in the brooder and I don't see why having the different aged eggs in the incubator at the same time will be a problem either.  You're supposed to stop turning them on day eighteen so the chicks can get their bearings before they hatch and you're also supposed to increase the humidity.  Maybe for some reason that's optimal, but I don't know how a mother hen would increase the humidity for her eggs so I'm not going to worry about it.  Our friend (who owns the incubator) never checked the humidity level at all.  He kept an eye on the temp, turned them and kept a tub of water in the bottom and he's never had any problems.

I've got less than two weeks before my first clutch (is that the right word???) begins hatching so I'm pretty excited.

Ron Paul: What if the People Wake Up?

Gerald Celente Moving to Farm Land to Survive the Depression

Voluntary simplicity...google it.

Egg development

I just candled the eggs which have been in the incubator for four days now and I can clearly see development in the lighter colored eggs.  I can't see much of anything in the darker brown eggs.  I've read that it will be around day eight when we can see wether or not they're developing. 

Our friend who loaned us the incubator says that if 70% of the eggs hatch, that's considered a 100% success rate.  I'll be super excited if half of them hatch.  That would be a dozen chicks.  We need one more rooster and the rest we'll take in pullets please.  Thank you.

Candling

I'm going to try candling the eggs tonight to see if they are all ruined.  Today is day four and they are all brown eggs except for one green one.  I tried candling it this morning (the green one) but there was too much light in the room to tell anything for sure.  I do think, however, I may have seen some veins.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I've been reading and watching a lot of YouTube about the coming depression which according to some is already here and we've been trying to get our heads wrapped around what all it will mean for us specifically if indeed the US dollar does crash and how do we prepare for that.  "They" are saying things like we'll become anything from an undeveloped nation to a third world country.  It doesn't sound so good.  They're predicting all sorts of terrible things and truthfully, I'm inclined to believe a lot of it because it just makes sense.  We had been worried about not being able to put much into our 401K and now we're concerned that there won't be any 401K to worry about at "retirement time" and retirement will be a thing of the past.  Even with all this desperate and gloomy talk, I still have hope that a lot of good can come of this.  This will effect the most of the world in so many ways.  Hopefully this will be a stepping stone up to something good.  I don't know if I'll live to see the good, but again, I hope so.

Stubborn old goats.

Goats are curious and a bit naughty.  They keep getting in the chicken tractor to eat the chicken feed and today they even knocked it over.  Tsk, tsk, tsk.

I had a heck of a time getting them out too.  That poor chicken in the background was pacing back and forth as fast as she could, looking for a way out.  She was scared out of her little mind by the goats.

I don't know what these wild flowers are, but if I could bottle it up and make soaps and lotions from it, I would.  They smell heavenly!

Shade tree mechanic

Hubs has been working on his truck today under a shade tree as we currently don't have a shop for him to work in.  He's not employed as a mechanic but I think that's something he could easily fall back on if times get hard enough for us.  Hopefully his day job is depression proof or at least somewhat resistant.

I think I've probably ruined all the eggs by now.  I know I should have had the temperature well established before I put them in the incubator, but I can't help but just jump right into things sometimes.  I guess we'll know for sure in a few weeks.

Adventures in incubating.

I finally got around to setting up the incubator and managed to save up 25 eggs in the mean time.   I made a small calender for the kids and me to mark off the days as well as when we rotate them.  Right now, I'm having a hard time finding the perfect temperature and I've got the bottom of an old sour cream tub with water in it for the humidity.  Our friend said it worked just fine for him, so we'll see.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, the incubator served time in a local hospital.  I'm not sure what the hospital was incubating but I doubt it was eggs.  Hopefully in about 21 days it will be full of little peeps and at least half of them will be females.  Hopefully.

This morning, my oldest came running into the house to inform me that she found "the baby!"  Seeing that we were in the rabbit business up until a couple of months ago and we've had chicks around a couple of times and we had just bought a couple of baby goats and I have a baby of my own, my mind raced around in circles, confused for a few seconds, trying to figure out what she had really just said and suppress my now rushing adrenaline.  Once my head stopped spinning and I realized I had no idea what she was talking about, I asked her, "What baby?!" not knowing that we had previously lost a baby.  She said, "Petunia's baby!"  Then shouted for me to quickly get my camera so I could take a picture of it.

Petunia's our six or seven month old barn cat.  We were shocked when we noticed her belly beginning to swell up about two months ago because she was still a kitten herself.  Because she's such a young mother and this is her first litter, I figured she probably would be very good at it and if any survived it would only be one or two kittens.  I also assumed she'd have them in the barn where there are lots of safe little hidey holes.

The girls were positive this was her only survivor because it came crawling out of the briary bushes behind the barn meowing and alone.  They didn't see or hear any others and I figured it was a only kitten too.  That was about three hours ago.  The children had just finished all of their chores and were wanting to play the Wii but I told them to first go and double check for any more kittens just in case.  Once again, my oldest came running up to the house shouting "Get your camera, Ma!"  (Yes, she calls me ma.  Isn't that cute?? ☺) 

Just look at what they found.  Four more kittens.

At some point in the day they found this little baby too.

☺☺☺

A sad story about a chicken.

Two years ago we were living in a small suburban town when we decided we needed to prepare for the failing economy by taking our family in a new direction towards self sufficiency. We decided to start with buying rabbits. Meat rabbits. This story isn't about them, I'll save that for another time. This story is about what we got into next. Chickens.


The town we were living in was small, very small. Directly behind our house was a large family cattle ranch and just a couple of blocks away was the central part of town. We had one, lone flashing red four way stop light and on one corner was an old house with a young family that kept goats tied up in the front yard. After having success with the rabbits we decided to try chickens. A few months earlier, we were planning to build a large storage building in the back yard and we called the city to get permits and find out what the restrictions and setbacks were. The lady on the phone was totally bumfuzzled because in all here years working there, no one had ever called to ask about these things. She told us there were none. So when we decided to buy chickens we went the don't ask don't tell route and set up twelve pullets (female chicks) in the building. Eventually they moved to a coop and while we were careful not to mention the chickens to any neighbors, one of them eventually started crowing. We tried hard to hide and muffle it by keeping them cooped up till later in the morning, but it turns out roosters don't crow only in the wee hours of the morning. Most cities around here, including the big one (160K population) that allow city chickens don't allow roosters because of the noise and we assumed the same for our small town. We still didn't want to ask because we were in the process of building out in the country and it would only be a few months till we were able to move into the house and take our chickens with us. We didn't want to risk them telling us they were not allowed in the city because we had no place to take them and our land was an hour away, one way. We did what we had to do with the rooster and got rid of him. He was beautiful and sweet and in the few weeks we kept him after he began to crow, none of our neighbors said a word to us about it. We were all used to hearing cows lowing at all hours of the day and night and we liked it. We did, however have one very pesky neighbor with a personality disorder whose husband didn't mind going out into the yard in nothing but his underwear and yell at children while he was drunk. He was actually pretty nice otherwise but his wife was crazy I tell you. CRAZY!


Fast forward to one week before our moving date...


We had been without our rooster for two or three months by the time we received a letter from the city stating that they had been informed that we were keeping chickens and we must remove them immediately because chickens aren't allowed in the city. So, late that night after hubs had worked all day on the house we loaded up the hens onto our trailer and took them out to the land in freezing cold temperatures. Hubs had taken time off of work to get the house ready for us to move into and would be out at the land everyday so he could care for them. We didn't have a chicken coop to put them in however. Fortunately, my hubs is a gear head and happened to have an old van sitting in the woods (he had taken the motor out for one of his projects and hadn't taken it to be crushed yet...also fortunately.) It turns out that the big old van was the perfect temporary chicken coop and the hens loved it. At night they would all pile on top of each other in the drivers seat like they were fixing to drive off somewhere. (Even now, in the heat of summer, they pile on top of each other in the coop to sleep at night.) We don't know who told on us and truthfully, I don't want to know. I'm just thankful to be out of the neighborhood and tucked away in our own little oasis where chickens and goats and cows and horses and whatever else we want is definitely allowed.


There is supposed to be a revival of the city chicken going on, even in some of the biggest cities across the nation, it's too bad there are so many other backward towns that won't allow it. I imagine, however, that a time is coming when more and more people will be raising chickens in their backyards whether or not it's allowed. Hard times are coming.

Fast forward to today...

We have fifteen hens and one huge, frisky rooster and all is forgiven.

I'm home

I'm back on blogger after only 24 hours. Wordpress just wasn't working for me. Ahhhh.
Home Sweet Home!

Day two for the goats.

This is my second time around and it makes me very unimpressed with WordPress.  I was down to the last paragraph in this post and my little 9 month old erased every single word and every single picture.  Gahhh!  Isn't there an undo button???  pppfffft!

As I was saying before munchkin pushed buttons...

It rained all night but the goats managed to stay pretty dry thanks to this little shelter that was already here in a pen that was already here when we bought the place.

[caption id="attachment_17" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Eleven week old male kiko goats."][/caption]

The goats seem to have sweet temperaments for the most part except that the brown headed one likes to rare up on his hind feet and try to head but our little chihuahua, Chili.  It would be a sad day if the goat were ever successful.

[caption id="attachment_18" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Goat pen."][/caption]

The pen is probably 50x50 feet and looks pretty rough but it's actually in decent enough shape and full of food they love to eat.

[caption id="attachment_19" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The shelter the goats hung out under all night."][/caption]

The shelter is about four feet tall with a simple corrugated metal roof on four posts.  Better than what they had at the place we bought them from...nothing.

I looked around the pen today which is FULL of blackberry bushes and you can tell they've been chowin' down.

[caption id="attachment_20" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Nibbled up blackberry bush."][/caption]

If only we could survive on what the goats like to eat, we'd have it made.  This is my garden today and if we had to survive on it, we'd all starve. 

I'm learning though and things are growing and baring fruit despite me and my ignorance.  It appears, though, that we have a mole problem.  A couple of my squash vines (spaghetti and pumpkin) have suddenly shriveled up and died while everything around them and the other like vines are doing great.  Our lab likes to dig up moles around the outside of the garden fence so I assume that's our problem.  We just put down cardboard between most of the plants to keep the weeds at bay and help retain water.  The garden did look like nothing but tall, tall weeds just a couple of weeks ago.  I got too busy to keep up with it, but good old hubs helped me out and we reclaimed it with little to no harm done all in a weekend.  He's enjoyed gardening this year even though he doesn't like veggies.  I've learned I need to grow more staples like beans and we could use some fruit too.  I ordered some seeds from a local heirloom supplier and received twenty new seed packets yesterday, including three or four new varieties of beans.  I'm using heirloom so that I can hopefully save seeds for planting from year to year. 

[caption id="attachment_21" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Some of our young, pretty hens."][/caption]

Yesterday, hubs also brought home this incubator we borrowed from a friend.  It's actually an old hospital incubator, but our friend has had success with hatching eggs in it, so as soon as I can make a spot in the house for it we're going to put all the eggs we have on hand in it which is probably only a dozen or so. 

[caption id="attachment_22" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Incubator"][/caption]

I figure we ought to get four to six new laying hens from this first batch, assuming the other half are roosters.  The chickens we have now aren't broody at all so this is how we're having to do things.  At least it won't cost anymore than the electricity to operate it for the next 21 or so days.

[caption id="attachment_16" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Hens looking like they want in the house. Silly chickens."][/caption]

 Earlier in the spring, hubs built a chicken tractor for them which he would move to a new patch of grass everyday but now we just let them run loose every day.  There's just nothing better than grass fed chicken eggs.

[caption id="attachment_23" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Chicken tractor."][/caption]

On another note, we're always working on our little bitty house trying to finish it up as time and money allow (both are few and far between.)  The house has 800 square feet on the first floor and one bathroom, small master bedroom, living room, kitchen dining area and laundry.  It's small but efficient.  The second floor or loft (accessible only by ladder) will add another 400 square feet once it's done including two bedrooms and a half bath.  Right now it's nothing more than a roof with insulation between the studs.  The kids sleep up there on mattresses on the floor with all their stuff.  At least without the walls it's extra roomy right now.  In case you're thinking we're hillbillys that just don't know any better, we used to work hard to keep up with that silly Jones family.  We lived in a very, very nice house in a very, very nice neighborhood and hubs was a fine home builder.  When the housing market crashed, we knew we had to jump ship.  Now hubs "works for the man" and we qualify for government programs like food stamps and WIC but we're surviving.  In fact, we've reduced our debt from goodness knows how high to $41,000 and I like to see the amount continue to fall.  We've always wanted to live in the country for the quite and the privacy but now I couldn't imagine living a life I love more than this.  I enjoy the challenges that come with homesteading.  I even enjoy working on a small budget.  I would like to have a bigger budget since the world is coming to an end as we know it, but what do you do?

I wish I could get my blog out there to like minded people right now, because I'd like to know what you all are doing to prepare for the upcoming depression.  Are you storing food, moving to the country, buying gold or are you possibly living the same as you would if it weren't coming.  Need some motivation to get ready for it?  Try watching youtube videos of Gerald Celente.  His track record speaks for itself so don't assume he's just an excentric loon.  Get ready 'cause it's coming.

-Mrs. Homesteader

Two timing

I'm not new to blogging.  I have another blog on blogger that I've kept for about a year and once it started to grow I became intimidated.  I didn't want to blog whatever happened to be on my mind at the moment because my followers had developed expectations from me.  Followers can be fickle and I'm okay with that.  I can be fickle at times too, like now, I want to be anonymous and say whatever I want whenever I want.  It's funny, on my other blog, when I would go a while without a new post, family members would assume hubs and I were having marital problem or something terrible and secret was going on...heh, heh.  I love to keep 'em guessing.

I don't know where this blog will go.  My other blog went in a direction I didn't expect so we'll see.  How about I start with an introduction.

I'm new to WordPress and I'm confused by it so far, but I'll learn.  I'm also a wife to one very hardworking, loving, christian man and I'm a mother to our five children ages 11 years down to 9 months.  I homeschool them and we homechurch...for now.  That's a challenge and we'd love to find a good local church that's for real.  A year ago tomorrow we bought some land (five acres) and started building a little house with cash which means it's not finished and may never be but I think that's better for us right now than a mortgage. Speaking of money, we are those people who are fully expecting the U.S. dollar to crash very soon which leads me to what I think this blog will be about.  Homesteading.  I named the blog "Trailblazer homestead" because we've never had any experience with homesteading of any sort except for the two tomato plants I grew from seed in my suburban back yard two years ago.  We're growing and changing and learning all the time, little by little.   We now have two goats, sixteen chickens and a 25X25 foot garden. 

[caption id="attachment_8" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="This was just after we finished the fence earlier in the spring. The garden is now bounding with big green vegetable plants"][/caption]

We had rabbits for about a year and a half, but grew tired of them and once we got move out onto our land we decided we were ready for something new. 



Tonight, as a matter of fact, we got our first to goats...kiko's to be exact.  Two bucks that have just been weaned so we'll see what happens with that.  They're in a good sized goat pen right now browsing the wild raspberries and weeds.  I just hope they don't get out. 

[caption id="attachment_7" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The goat on the right is our chihuahua who's meeting one of the fellas for the first time."][/caption]

We'd like to get a calf soon, but we need to put up more fence first.  Hubs is also bringing home an incubator so we can hatch some more chick's. 





We currently have ten laying hens that give us six to eight eggs a day which just isn't enough for us.  We also have one big rooster and five up and coming laying hens.  I'd love to eat lots of eggs (and onions) for breakfast most mornings, but I'd need a dozen plus a few for other recipes like our Rocky yogurt smoothies.  They have frozen fruit, stevia, vanilla and raw eggs mixed in with the yogurt and they.are.awesome!  Yum!

I've become obsessed lately with the current U.S. and world economic situation.  I'm, of course, worried about our well-being a little, but mostly I've become consumed with preparing for the worst as best we can.  We aren't rich by any means but we are working as furiously as we can to get ready for this world depression that's predicted to be worse than the Great Depression.  We're not able to stock up on huge amounts of gold and silver and we don't have a nice family farm that's been functioning for years and years.  In fact, our extended families think we're a bit on the overzealous, excentric side but I love them anyway.  We've been trying to convince them that the world is coming to an end as we know it and they should sell all their stocks and cash in their bank accounts and cd's etc...in exchange for gold, and food stores.  They either don't think it will be that bad and they'll be fine because they have plenty of money and this is America...OR they think this has been predicted in the bible and they won't be here to suffer through anything that's coming. 

That leads me to this...I am a christian but I don't anticipate Armageddon and the reign of the antichrist in God's temple...hmmm....if the Jew's rebuilt the temple, God's temple, would they go back to animal sacrifices???  And this would be seen as God's temple?  I don't think so.  Then we're supposed to believe the antichrist...(Satan incarnate?) will come and set up camp in God's temple???  Ahem.  I think not.  And don't try to tell me it's in the bible.  I know what's in the bible and I happen to see that the "end times" coincide with history and the fall of Rome and have come and gone.  Yes, I'm a preterist.  Look into it if you want to know more.  My only point is, I'm getting ready for a depression that is without a doubt already here for so much of the world and it's coming for us too.  I can only hope that my Savior will come get me first, but I'm not banking on it.

I am all over the place, but that's okay.  It's my blog.