Hey everyone. Just a quick post, after almost 9 hours in the car yesterday my shoulder is on fire and typing doesn't help! I will say that every minute of that time was worth it; because we were bringing home the 2 new additions  to the farm...
 
TA - DA!!

Meet Pepper                                                             and Fawn

Are they not just too adorable?
Yesterday Reiley and I had the privilege to meet  Alicia and Dan of Backwards Brook Farm in Upper Stewiacke. They have a great homestead started up there, and they were the breeders of these two adorable babies.  One of these adorable little girls will be Reiley's  4-H goat for the year, and both will be milking goats in our herd for many years to come. 

So as you have gathered we are in a building phase here. Since the move we have had to rethink our plans for the future. At the other place, the plan was to help Matthew, our oldest son, establish the market garden. Matt and the other boys would be there to help Gary with the pigs, Reiley and I would have the goats. We had been raising all of the vegetables, milk eggs, pork, chicken and turkey to feed ourselves. The sale of the young pigs and goats was enough to help care for the stock, and if Matt or one of the other boys wanted to get more intensive with lifestock that potential was there also. A large part of that plan was teaching. Teaching others the skills we had learned over a lifetime of farming and keeping animals. Matthew and I would do the administrative and organizing and most of the teaching. Gary to be there when he could. (The most frustrating part of Gary's injury is never knowing how he will be from one day to the next.)
Now that we are here, things have obviously changed. We have spent this winter adjusting and planning what we can do and what we want to do.
 The first priority is still to produce as much of our food as possible. It is healthier, better for us and ultimately cheaper. Not to mention mostly fun!
We also want to continue to teach and help others achieve a self sufficient lifestyle.
So to those ends we have a working plan; or we did until we found out that Matt and his longtime girl friend are considering moving to Digby also. They are looking at options and properties. (See, never make concrete plans)
So the revised plan is to turn this year into an infrastructure building year. We need to impliment the drainage plan for this property. With the warmer weather and sun this week the swales and ditches we have put in place have already dried out a considerable amount of territory. We will be watching for the rain this wekend to see how quickly things dry up afterward.
 We need to clear land for pasture, rebuild the stone walls that border the land, and build a permanent goat barn. We are going ahead with the planned goat herd expansion, slowly but still expanding. I really want to have milk production year-round. I am mildly lactose intolerant and I found it really hard to make the switch back to cows milk this year.
Gary and Reiley have worked pretty much all the bugs out of the fodder system they have been working on all winter. All of the animals heve been getting yummy fresh fodder everyday for several months now. It makes a huge difference in their ability to maintain body condition and it makes a big difference in the feed bill also.

So we will be expanding this over the summer.
Top priorities for the next 5 months or so will be putting in pasture, building better pig pasture huts, adding bees to our brood, and getting my herb gardens built.
I am launching Hand- Forged Herbals this summer. I have been making yummy artisan goats milk soap, and making some great all natural skin care products. The herb gardens will allow me to add tinctures and herbal tea blends to my products.. so stay tuned for more information on this.
Long term plans still include a large vegetable garden, a greenhouse, a multipurpose building for workshops, it will also double as an outdoor kitchen. We want to ditch NS Power. There is great micro-hydro potential here as well as solar.
 So this promises to be an eventful few years. My goal is to share it with you .As I have said before it is almost impossible to be self sufficient on your own. You need community. Lets build a community here, one where we can share ideas and skills. Let me know what you want to hear about, have you done any of these things yourself and want to share? We can build a virtual homestead here. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Just a quick note:  Reiley and I will be picking up a couple of new additions to the farm tomorrow, so  no post tomorrow. But check in on Saturday and I'll introduce you to the new additions.

       Yesterday was one of those days when you just shake your head and say "why am I doing this?" Sugar, our youngest goat aborted the triplets she was carrying. Now anyone who has kept livestock or pets for that matter, has had to deal with death. It is the price we pay for having them in our lives.  However when you involve children in the mix; it can be especially difficult.
         The goats here belong to Reiley. Our youngest child, 13 years old as of a week ago. Reiley has grown up on farms. He knows how things work. He is there when they are born, he is there when they die, either from old age or when it is time to graduate the animals to the freezer. He has no problem with this really. But he has not yet in his life had to deal with an abortive pregnancy: especially in one of 'his' animals. He was upset and needed to know that it wasn't something he had done that had caused it to happen.
        As a parent, I have worried about  my sons at times. After slaughtering 30 or 40 chickens in a day they seem unaffected, I worry that they might be a little too desensitized to death. So, from a strictly analytical perspective, it was good to know that he does understand the difference between an animal passing after a long good life as a  pet. That an animal being raised for food deserves a comfortable life and a quick humane death at the appointed time. (I'm sorry if this offends the  vegetarians who are reading this). I think he was rattled because this is the first time he was dealing with a death that seemed senseless to him. So as I said,  from a strictly analytical perspective it is good to know that this affected him. As his mother however, my heart was breaking for him.    
         Now I am quite proud of our children. I am proud of the fact that we were not “helicopter” parents. We gave our kids a certain amount of freedom. Working and  living on farms we were fortunate that they could have a lot of outdoor time
with no one actually standing over them watching their every move. This taught
them that we trusted them, that sometimes they would make decisions that were
wrong, and then there were consequences. They learned to trust their abilities,
to know that certain situations were dangerous and mostly to trust their own
judgment. 
        When we decided to home school the kids we realized that we were taking on the  resposibility not just for their academic education, but that making sure we  were raising critical thinking, well rounded adults. We spent a great deal of time and money making sure they had experiences out side of the house and farm. We were incredibly lucky that most of the adults our children came into contact with: coaches, mentors, family friends were wonderful, exceptional people who helped to form our kids into the adults they are now. Looking back, we have come to realise that some of the most important things we taught our kids were lessons they learned by including  them in the 'adult world'. 
       Our kids were asked for their opinion, and listened  to when they gave it. We included them in decision making, they usually knew  most of what was going on with our family and why. The older four had to grow up  a little too soon after Gary's accident but they did understand that there are hardships in life and that sometimes even though you did everything right; it  can go horribly wrong.
       I am not trying to convince you that we raised perfect children, far from it. I am fully aware of all their shortcomings. However, I am proud of the adults they have become. They are kind, helpful, loving people who know right from wrong and how to stand up for what they know is right. They know how to work  and they understand the value of hard work. Their word is as solid as a signed contract, and they will give you the shirt off their back if you need it.  Sometimes they take far too many chances for my liking, (Graham & Jason); but at ages 19, 21, 23, and 24 they all support themselves, have great people in their lives and I am proud to call them friends as well as my children.
       So no matter how hard it is to watch them suffer through a loss like Reiley had yesterday, I guess it more important to guide them through it than to shield them and let them believe horrible things never happen. (But it doesn't reduce the number of grey hairs on my head).
     On a completely different note, the five little piggies were left for  their new home today. They are off to  Joe and Stephanie's at Sweet Earth Farm.
One little piggy tried to run home, but Joe tackled him in the end! 
 
      

Love you guys!

As I mentioned last time, the property really was a wreck when we purchased it last June. Here is a 180 degree view from the door step..

Can you see the potential?  No? It took us a few hours to see what it could be. First, sort the garbage and mow the grass.
 The sorting took a full 8 days of heavy work. And remembering we were coming down for a couple of days at a time.. this was how we spent last July. 

I know.. but that is homesteading.. vacations are a day at the lake. Literally.
Now throught the magic of the internet... and hindsight, we fast forward to early October. We have been living in the house for about 6 weeks, and this was about 1 month post shoulder surgery for me

Putting in my garden.. well at least the start of it

   Last fall and winter we concentrated on a couple of things. First was
getting our animals settled in. With no existing barn structure on the
property we brought the pasture shelters we had from our previous place and
these were weather proofed. The pigs were fine. Their shelters were pretty
much bomb -proof and they made short order of excavating the interiors.
Pasture shelters work best when they have a roof that is about 12- 18 inches
taller than the animal they are housing. You then dig out about 6
inches inside the shelter. The extra room allows for a deep pack bedding.
With a deep pack you remove the wet bedding and add to the pack. The
decomposing lower layers give off heat, (think compost), and actually warm
the animal from below. The low roof keeps the heat down at the animal's
level. All you need is a door, facing south if you can mange it, that does
not fit tight to allow some fresh air to circulate in.
As I said the
pigs settled in comfortably, the goats I was more concerned about. They
had their shelter but as they are grazers, they spent their days eating hay
and were not as comfortable as the pigs. So we put one of those portable
garage shelters up. Their pens were at the back and there was room for them
to stand outside the hut and graze at the hay rack while out of the
wind.
 
Second was getting familiar with our new community; locating
services and people. We also had a bit of a PR job to do here at the house
as the people who were here before us had some issues with the neighbours,
apart from the mounds of garbage.

Third was water control. Water is a huge issue here. We have a great
artesian well, water is almost always pouring out of the top of the well
cap. In addition to that there are a couple of springs on the property, and
previous owners have filled in some natural drainage areas that handled
run-off from the neighbours property. To add insult to injury when the house
was lifted and put on it's present concrete foundation, the basement
entrance was placed at the back of the house and an entry was cut into
the slope creating a 12 ft channel that was dumping every ounce of
run-off from the property into our dirt floor basement.
The first thing
we did was dig a trench from the corner of the basement out to the ditch.
There had been an old french drain there but it had collapsed at some point.
(On the pictures above that is the dug up area in the picture with the
weather vane) We put a 26 ft drain pipe about 6 feet below ground that lets
water flow from the basement to the ditch. This alleviated the standing
water problem in the basement but we were still faced with a small river
running through the basement. What we needed to do was stop or decrease the
water coming into the basement. To accomplish this we dug a drainage ditch,
on contour, across the back of the house to carry water away from the house
and into a more natural drainage basin. We began lining this with stone
and have a temporary bridge across as this is our access to the animals.

Then the snow hit, and all work came to a screeching halt. A further
reminder that homesteading is about planning and working with mother nature.
Sometimes though we just need reminding that we can't control nature and its
just better to sit back and watch the show.


 

We  have purchased a property!  Not the property we have spent the past year developing and believed we would be purchasing, but a different property.
    As many of you know we rented the property we moved to in May of 2012. We had a handshake agreement to purchase the property at market value the summer of 2014.

Most of you know that we have moved to Digby county.. many of you have asked
why. Well it's a long story. 

     The synopsis is: we had a verbal agreement with the landlord at our last
place to purchase the property in the summer of 2014. So we spent a year making improvements to the property; building penning in the barn, running
electricity to the barn, building a 2 acre market garden, planting an extensive
herb garden, putting in fruit trees etc.
    Then last spring the landlord told us he wanted to sell last summer. We
agreed to talk and potentially purchase last summer.  The landlord had the property appraised and sent a note to us via our 12 year  old son naming a price. In the note he said he would be over in a couple of days  to talk. Well he never showed up, the asking price was about $100,000 over the  price we were given  when we had the property appraised.The owner never came over to talk and basically implied the price was written in stone. So despite the fact that we had spent the past year improving the place and setting it up the way we wanted, we made the hard decision to look for something else.

     We knew we wanted something with at least 15 acres, there needed to be a house of some description, preferably outbuildings already in place, and a good water supply on the property. We weren't ready to borrow a huge amount of money, preferring to have the money we had saved pay the majority of the asking price. A huge mortgage payment is definately not inline with a self sufficient lifestyle.  We were looking primarily in Lunenburg County as it was close to our daughter, and the older boys had their lives there.  Then out of the blue an opportunity to purchase here in Digby County.

The positives: there was four times more land here, and we would have a small
mortgage for a short time, then it is ours.

The negatives: the place was a wreck. The land was being reclaimed by forest,
the house, although solidly built, had been neglected and let go. The entire
property, both inside and out, was covered in garbage. 

    Well, we are not known to back - down from a challenge (have you met our 5 home schooled kids??), we decided to go for it. We closed on the property on Gary's birthday, June 21st.

    We began coming down for a couple of days a week to work on the property
it took until the middle of  August to get it even a little habitable.
We hadn't intended to move in until early October. We wanted to let Reiley get ready for and attend 4-H Pro show and  make sure everything was ready for us and the animals we were bringing. 
    However, true to the adage that making concrete plans is the best way to discover that the gods have a sense of humour, I was given a surgery date of September 5th.
    We moved in on August 25th, and I had surgery on September 5th. Reiley did attend Pro-Show the last week in September and we have all survived the winter. That LONG COLD SNOWY winter.

    Join us and share the building of our homestead, house renovation, and land reclamation.  I promise it will never be boring... kind of like trying to spot three white goats in a blizzard.