New farm, new beginning

I know it's been a few months but I have an excuse.  We have been moving to a new mini-farm.  In July an opportunity came up to relocate and we took it.  It wasn't very far, only 12 miles to be exact.  It wasn't because it was more beautiful or a bigger house.  In fact, it's not as treed and the house is about half the size of our other one.  So why move? Well, we have an opportunity to buy this place.  It's in the right county, it's affordable and has more room (land wise) for growth.  We have so much more space for doing the things we enjoy, like gardening.  I took a few pictures of the land.  We haven't done much to it yet but I wanted to show the beginning so everyone can see the progress.  First up....Justin clearing the land:

This is our temporary chicken pen:

 

This will be our new garden area.  It is to the right and behind the chicken pen.  It will give us triple the garden space as the last property did.

 

And this is the other side of the property where we intend to plant an orchard!!  I am so excited about that!

 

The biggest downfall to this place...is the house.  We have worked hard to make something dingy, liveable and cozy.  I'll post pic's of the house, inside and out next time.  Our plan is to see how we like the place and if we are happy here we will buy it.  Once we do we will start plans to build a new home, preferably out of rammed earth.  This house is only temporary.  (or at least I keep telling myself that!)

Some other changes other than the obvious is that we have a new litter of 5 kittens.  This is seriously how mom nurses them:

I know...she is weird!

We also have adopted one of our chickens as a pet.  When she was just a little thing, she was seriously attacked by an older hen.  She was beat up pretty bad.  We took her into the house and nursed her back to health, and now she is our little friend, Chickadee!  She roosts by herself in one of the mesquite trees outside the chicken pen.  She is our little sweetie!

You can still see some bald spots on her head.  Not sure if the feathers will ever grow back but we will love her all the same!

We also have and addition to our chicken family.  Dot became a Mom:

She is just as we hoped.  A wonderful mother hen!  I love to watch how momma is with her baby.  It's truly heartwarming to see her care for the young one.  She lets her ride around on her back and always makes sure she shares her food.  I just love it!

Well that's it for now.  I felt like I needed to update my blog and get started with our new adventure.  I only hope we find it to be rewarding here.  So far, not too bad, other than the fire ants who have taken up residence INSIDE the house!  But like the fleas...we will prevail!

Food Storage

Well its already the middle of June and over 2 weeks since my last blog.  I find it hard sometimes to sit down and write about all that we have been doing, but I've felt the push to do it so.....here goes:

Since May we have been busily canning and freezing.  Since we started this canning venture here is a total to date of all we have put away whether canned or frozen:

83 quarts of pickles
21 pints of green beans
13 1/2 pints of jalapenos/serranos
17 quarts of squash
5 quarts of tomatoes
5 quarts of pinto beans

We can't take credit for all the cucumbers coming out of our garden.  My best friend's father has a huge garden and he let us come and harvest as much as we wanted.  I would contribute about 50 quarts from his, so 33 came from ours.  Not bad!!  The cucumbers still keep coming but I think we have enough pickles to last a while so we have been using them for salads, snacks and giving away the rest.

We have run out of room in our pantry so I have boxes of jars stacked in my dining room.  One of hubby's next projects....shelves and canning table for my kitchen.  Pictures will follow as soon as that's done!

 

So as I stated before, we have put up 5 quarts of pinto beans.  This has been my favorite item from our garden.  We have had lots of fun shelling beans as a family.  I even got my teenage daughter to help...how cool is that!

 As you can see on the bottom left of my collage, our garden is looking pretty bare where we harvested the beans.  But...that's the point right?  To harvest.  We still have more out there so I'm hoping to put up about 5 more quarts.  Next year we will definitely plant more pintos now that we know how much it takes to produce what we want!

 I have to remind myself that this is all a learning experience for us and to be grateful and pleased with whatever our garden produces for us.

So not only are we harvesting beans but lots of tomatoes as well!!  There are so many out there that we need to do something with them quick!!  I have frozen 5 quarts of whole tomatoes that I blanched...which by the way is lots of fun.  I still have more in the fridge and more and more and more on the counter in bowls and tons on the vine outside....yikes!!!  It's time to break out the salsa recipe!  My plan is to have a bunch canned by this weekend.

 I have tons more to share about some of the outside projects and fun we have been working on but will have to blog about it another day...maybe tomorrow!  All in all, its been a great month of canning and gardening and the elation we feel building up our food storage is huge!

Always Busy

Well I know its been awhile but it's because we have been so busy.  Sometimes it is hard to sit down and take time to blog.  Here is what we have been doing these past few weeks:

So far we have put up 24 quarts of pickles, 17 pints of green beans, 7 half-pints and 5 pints of pickled jalapenos/serranos, and 17 quarts of squash.  This is only the beginning.  Our garden is still going strong, out of control in fact.....

We have watermelons coming on and tons of tomatoes just waiting to turn!! Plus our green peppers are taking off....its so exciting!!!

I never realized how much work a garden really is.  We have spent countless ours planting, weeding, watering, harvesting and now canning.  It is definitely time consuming but well worth it.  The feeling of being self reliant is very gratifying indeed.

So on top of all the gardening projects we have been working on moving around our chickens.  The 3 week old chicks have been moved out of my house and into the brood house outside.  We also relocated our mama hen who is nesting into that house as well. We moved her at night and set her up in a box rather than leaving her in the nesting box that is about a foot off the ground. We separated her and the other chicks with a wire partition.  You can see it in the pictures below.  We also have a new addition as of today with more peeping each hour. We have 18 in the incubator. Here's to hoping they all hatch healthy!

Side note...we have fleas in our house....yay!!!!  Not.  We have been defleaing all of our 9 baby kittens on a regular basis.  They aren't old enough for frontline or any fleas shampoos so they have to be washed in dawn detergent and their fur run through with a flea comb.  Luckily pest control is coming out Friday.  I hate fleas!!!

Rain, Rain Go Away

Of course we really do like the rain, especially for our veggies.  Everything is so happy and healthy looking. It does however make working outside a little challenging.  The garden gets somewhat muddy and out come the fire ants!!  So once the rain died down today, we harvested some more cucumbers, beans, and squash.  And yes, I am sporting about 10 ant bites on my feet!

Our original plan this evening was to can the squash we had cut up on Saturday and put up more pickles, maybe even can some beans.  But as usual, time flies when your having fun and we ran out of it.  So we....

It wasn't much but it was something. This is definitely a new lifestyle change for us and we are learning that we have to make more time for the canning season.  Life gets busy when you've got 4 kids!  Not to mention hubby works and I am nervous about doing any canning on my own. But this is a learning experience and one I am thouroughly enjoying.

By the way, sad news.  Our Sussex hen, Dot abandoned her nest and is no longer brooding! 

 It's our fault.  We moved her nest to a safer location and apparently went about it the wrong way. Hopefully she will get the inclination to brood again and we will have an opportunity to do it right.  Our chickens free range all day but are put up at night because of the raccoons, possums, owls, coyotes and neighbor's dogs.  You wouldn't believe how many we have lost in the last few years to these pests. Gotta keep our chickies safe!

Canning Day

So Saturday was our first day of canning.  Before we got started we had to put up our chicken eggs for selling and for our own personal use.  We get about a dozen a day so they add up quickly:

After putting up eggs we harvested some more veggies.  We plan to pickle cucumbers and jalepenos first in our water bath canner.

We put up 8 quarts of pickles and 3 half-pints of pickled jalapenos.  Then we

began pressure canning our beans.  We haven't harvested most of them yet. They should

be ready in a few days, but we were able to can 2 pints.  It gave us a chance to use our pressure canner for the first time.

We planned to can squash but ran out of time.  Trying to figure out how this canning process works was really time consuming.  We will hopefully get those done tomorrow night.  All in all, it feels great to be building up our food storage with veggies we planted, making all the hard work really pay off!

Side note:  Two of our hens have decided to set, so we will have lots of baby chicks running around in a few weeks.  Can't wait!

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Unexpected Project

So today hubby had off and we decided to work on an unexpected project.  Last Monday a storm blew through here and knocked down some very large branches.  We think the biggest one was struck by lightening and as it came down, it took others down with it.

So Justin got out the chipper and we've been slowly but surely working through it!

After three hours we got quite alot done:

The sun came out and it started getting hot, so we took a break and worked in the garden.

Looks like we will start pickling tonight!  I have never pickled on my own so this is gonna be a new experience for me...I'm super excited!!  We will pickle the cucumbers and the jalepenos.  We may even can some of the squash.  Pictures will be posted tomorrow!

On another note we have started another batch of chicks in our incubator:

We actually started them Wednesday night, 18 eggs.  We should have some baby chicks in 19 days! (It takes 21 days to hatch).  We just hatched out 14 chicks the beginning of this week:

All but 1 have feathers on their legs.  Looks like we'll have some bantam cochin cross breeds!

  We also have 9 little kittens added to our slowly growing farm. I love this time of year when we are surrounded by baby animals.