I'm really surprised that we are already in the month of May! It truly is a surprise but that apparently means we have been busy. So with that I figured it's time to catch everyone up on what has been going on in the homestead. We've been working on lots of items and theres a high chance that I will repeat some projects that I have previously stated. Oh well!
Honestly I am not fully sure where to start so we will be all over the place with talking about when everything took place! I personally am going to go by the layout of our homestead and work on remembering that way. It started back in March when Jeremys parents were so kind and gave us some pieces of walls, floor and lap siding from old cabins that were in need of being taken down. We were able to turn some of that into a new brooder house for when we hatch baby chicks. Instead of a lot of bins in the house to keep the chicks we have moved everything out to the brooder house. We also have been able to use this space for storage of food and its been a lot nicer to not have to worry about any bags of food getting wet!
One of the sort of adorable happenings have been baby bunnies! We are on our second round from the same three mothers. From these birthings we have been keeping mainly the females and will soon have 24 females at the house for bunny production. I can not wait for the babies!!! We have also had a lot of chickens from hatcheries arrive. My favorite would have to be the Blue Laced Red Wyandotte because of the fact that they always seem to have a different pattern from each other. We have also tried hatching many different types of animals like ducks, turkeys, and chickens. It has been a tad bit difficult to get the hatches just right so we sadly have lost more than we would prefer. Let's be honest loosing any is not what we prefer at all. Its sadly part of the whole ordeal but still not what we want to see.
The garden is slowly coming along. Currently we have 3 big beds and one small one for our kids. We are almost done filling one of the big beds but we have a little work left to do. In the mean time we have used the beds that are ready and started to plant some seeds. It hasnt been long since we planted seed but we were very excited to see that we have some radishes sprouting! Im a very new planter, as in I have never started any plants from seed.... ever! The fact that I decided to try almost 75% of the garden with direct sowing seeds is probably not the best idea. But how else will I learn?!?! My plan is to document everything! I will be writing down exactly what I planted, what day and if it was direct sow or not. I want to try to write out as much detail as possible for future years. Then once anything is ready to be picked I plan to write out when I picked them, quality, and how did I use them. I have lots of canning ideas but there are so many more options to add to the list! We have also taken the time to plant our Lemon and Lime Tree, blackberry and raspberry bushes in the garden space! There is definitely a lot of time until we will see any sort of fruits from these trees and bushes.
Last thing that we have been able to add is to our goat collection! Jeremy managed to purchase 4 more female goats at our local livestock auction. One of our top plans is to have goats milk to make soap for our daughter. She is allergic of coconut and sadly coconut is in a lot of the soaps and beauty products that are out there right now. While researching recipes there was also a lot of recipes that called to use coconut oil. With that we had to do a lot of research to figure out what we could substitute in place of coconut oil. Finally we found a recipe! When Jeremy came home from the auction he noticed that one of the goats seemed to be in milk. Thank goodness he noticed because we managed to get a week and a half of milk from this amazing goat. After filtering the milk we portioned it out and put them into the freezer. Just today we managed to try our first round of soap making and we truly pray this turns out well! If so then I can already tell I will be enjoying my time making soap and all the scent combinations.
While we have truly manage to finish a lot at the homestead we have a few more things to finish. The top two priorities would be our chicken houses and the goat house. The chicken house will house a lot of our current types of chickens and help provide the ability to keep breeds together. The goat house will be a place where we are able to have a milking stall, maybe two, and two birthing stalls for our girls. We have one goat that is due in June plus lots of chickens that need to be moved. Hence these are our top projects. From there we have many more projects in the plans but once we get past these we will update everyone!