A new blog

Had some complaints about the old site being an "attack page". I like the server and the price is cheap so I'll keep that domain name on there for other things and see if blogging over here works any better.

Been a long time since I've done any updating but we've been under some stress.
Still haven't found a job.
Had a loan approved and was ready to buy a herd of organic cows and rent a parlor to milk them but due to some problems I had to back out of that, which was really depressing.
We got rid of a few of the goats and all of this years crop of kids. I have had second thoughts about that but will have to live with it. Bought in a new Oberhasli. She's a bit skinny but looks like she'll shape up well. We should have 7 or so milking if Scamp get the job done ;-)

We have a few laying hens around yet, and 80 or so big fat meat birds ready to butcher. We have a Cuckoo Maran and some sort of Polish Banty as well. The Cuckoo has been spoken for by the chicken judge from the fair. I think Chris will make what we paid for her on that deal.
Told the neighbor kid he can have 1 big meat bird for every 5 he butchers for me. He wants to buy all the layers as well. It would be nice to not have any birds over winter for a change.

We have 4 nice looking calves out back. I was able to run them through the 4 paddocks and actually had enough grass that they didn't need any extra hay this summer. I have them on the last paddock now and since it's a bit smaller I have thrown a bale in there just yesterday. They get half a bucket of grain twice a day as well. I have 1 steer (Bo), 2 bulls(Jack and Big Money), and 1 sweet little heifer (Fireball). I will be shipping on of the bulls before winter and hope to breed the heifer next year. The heifer comes from one of the organic cows I was going to buy. She was a sweet little thing that gave maybe 30 pounds a day. Perfect animal for a homesteader. I am hoping Fireball will be the same.

Tammy bought 3 feeder pigs a few months ago and we had all of our remaining corn ground into something that we could feed them and our calves as well. It seems to be working OK. the pigs are almost ready to go to the butcher. They also get the goat milk which they absolutely love. We have never had pigs before but they worked out quite well. If I can get a couple of the back paddocks into corn again, we will be doing pigs for sure.

Chris took goats and chickens to the fair this year and did quite well. Got reserve Grand Champion again with Brigette. Pearl took a first and Cindy took a second. His Cuckoo Maran took a second as did his pen of two CornishXs. But the single CornishX pullet took a first! He took a bunch of other stuff as well. His sheaf of alfalfa and recycling project (shopping bag from a feed sack) took firsts.


 We made hay on the neighbors little patch and got around 200 bales of nice grass hay with both 1st and 2nd crop. I helped another neighbor make hay on his vacant lots. His daughter took all that for her horses.
We have made 1st and 2nd crop off the 20 acres we seeded last year. Not impressed with the alfalfa but we had quite a clover stand show up. The hay was not heavy but very good quality. The goats love it. We stored the hay in the small machine shed this year because the roof is better.

Got a bit more done on getting the old turkey shed torn down but it's a slow process by myself. Took a bunch of the tin in for scrap and made a couple of bucks. Took some of the wiring in too.
Got a load of gravel on the driveway by the house so we wouldn't loose any cars in potholes.....

Been busy the last few weeks getting firewood around. Got a bunch in but there's more to make.

Tammy's garden did pretty good this year. We scaled back a bit since I was busy with getting ready to milk cows. We planted some stuff called Country Gentleman corn this year....Holy cow that stuff grew tall! It is an heirloom variety. The kernels are not in regular straight rows, but it was tasty and we will probably plant it again. The peppers did OK, we planted eggplant and go at a few to trade around the neighborhood. Tammy canned a bunch of tomatoes and beans. We ate kohlrabi till we were stuffed. The rabbits took care of a lot of the cole crops after we set them out but at least we saved the Kossacks...

So we are still working at the homesteading thing and enjoying it immensely. Have a few resumes out and hope to land something soon but the market is pretty slim at the moment.