Scenes from the Homestead

We’ve been busy getting things prepared for winter around here. It is a busy time, but it feels so good.

I’ve been cleaning up the shelf in the root cellar. I always try to keep a stock of food on hand. I can’t wait for the day that it is full of home-canned food more than grocery store cans. I recommend that everyone has some extra stock in their home. You never know when you may fall on hard times and be grateful for the extras. I’ve heard the advice to buy one can for now and two for later. We’ve been trying to buy a box of canned veggies each time we go to Sam’s Club when they are in stock.

The Music garlic bed is all planted. I can’t wait to harvest this next year!! If it goes well, we should have 25 heads of garlic. We realized we can fit more here, so we may do more next year. We planted 6 inches apart and 2-3 inches deep. (We got our garlic from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.) When the weather cools off, we’ll cover the bed with mulch to protect it.

Scott finished building the nesting boxes. Our oldest chickens are around 20 weeks old, and hopefully will start laying within the next month. It could be as late as 48 weeks, so I’m trying to keep my hopes low. It can also be as early as 24 weeks. We will put some cushion in them soon just in case we get lucky. I’m so anxious for that first egg! The roosters have learned to crow, which is so fun.

Speaking of cushion, this is how you pick up hay bales when you live the minivan life. HAHA! This is bedding for the chickens. It will help to keep them warm on these cold nights and in the coming months. It took me quite a while to vacuum all of this out, but it’s all clean now.

Happy Autumn!! God has blessed us so richly, and I pray that you receive blessings as well.

Favorite Family Games

We are a board-game playing family. Do you play games? I feel like board games are dying out in many homes, and it makes me so sad. We have two areas that we keep our games, and they are pretty full!

UNO– obviously. Our youngest is 6, and can mostly play this without help now. We have taught our children that there is no mercy in UNO. haha! We also just bought the waterproof version for when we camp.

Spot It!– There are so many ways to play this game and so many versions to choose from!!

Rack-O — This one is an oldie but a goodie.

Clue— another classic! The kids love playing this, and so do we!!

Monopoly, Jr.— This one is fun because it is much easier for the kids to play. It’s still tons of fun, but doesn’t take one hundred years to finish a game.

Yahtzee — Our older girls can play this really well. They haven’t quite figured out the strategy, but they have tons of fun with it.

Battleship— This is one that the kids love, and that Scott and I will play by ourselves. We bough the original version off of ebay. It felt wrong to have anything but the blue and red boards.

I hope everyone dusts off an old game and plays it this weekend!

Reflecting One Year In

It has officially been one year since we moved into this home. I distinctly remember this day. We had been slowly moving some things in to get them set up while we waited for the carpet to get put in. I had to leave for work that evening. When I got off, I pulled up the driveway and cried. We were home. It felt like home. It felt like a hug at the end of some really hard years… and is continuing to hold me as I lost my Grandpa suddenly on Sunday.

Living on a farm has been a dream of ours for quite some time. I don’t really remember exactly when it started. In 2010, my dad had open heart surgery right after I became a mom. I remember learning all that I could about eating healthy, because I was told that heart disease was coming for me, too. (Who knew I already had it!) I remember trying to make healthier decisions for my family. I wanted to plant a garden and grow our own food. I got really into watching food documentaries.

Somehow all of this evolved into discovering homesteading. I read as many blog posts as I could about homesteading. I checked out books and watched YouTube videos. It became a dream that Scott and I wanted so badly. We would drive around the country in the states we lived in and dream. We knew it was a far, far off dream. We couldn’t afford to buy even a tiny house. We’d never be able to afford land.

But, God.

It’s amazing how tiny decisions can lead to huge results. Let that be a lesson– good or bad. The tiny decision to strike up a conversation with a library patron lead to this massive shift in our life. We get to rent this beautiful home with this beautiful land. We get to plant gardens and raise chickens. The dream has been far better than we expected.

In the past year, we have baked countless loaves of bread. We watched the leaves change colors and fall to the ground. We’ve gathered around the threshing table for Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. We’ve squealed with delight over waking up to snow on the ground. We watched the world come back to life in the spring. We put our blood, sweat, and tears into creating our garden. We worked hard to expand the chicken run and make sure that they had a safe coop to be in. We’ve lost animals that we love.

It’s harvest time! We are so thankful that most of our plants have done well. We were gifted a huge box of tomatoes, so I canned those yesterday. Canning is such an awesome skill to have learned, but it also feel so stressful because I don’t want to mess it up!

It feels so good to go to the garden to pick vegetables and herbs to cook with. I also FINALLY made some candles out of beeswax! Traditional candles are so harmful to burn, but I love the warm light that they offer. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years! Learning these new skills has been incredible. It feels good to use the gifts that God has given me. There are so many skills that are disappearing because they aren’t used anymore. I don’t want to lose them! I want to pass them on to my daughters.

One year in, and I’d say that we are official homesteaders of the renting sort. (I just reached for my coffee, and there is a gnat floating in it. So, that’s a definite yes.)