New rabbit kit born on the homestead

That should actually be FIRST rabbit kit born on the homestead. We bred our black Lionhead rabbit to our brown Holland Lop back in March and on April 23rd two little Lion Lops were born. Unfortunately the black one somehow got out of the nest area and got cold and didn't make it. Here is "Peanut", our first little Lion Lop.

Surviving Off Off-Grid Book

I'm currently reading Michael Bunker's Surviving Off Off-Grid book. It has taken me WAY too long to read this book. Partially because it is a book that really makes you think and wonder. I end up reading a chapter, or even a partial chapter and putting the book down (or closing the Kindle app actually) and letting my mind absorb what I just read for a while. There are lots of great points in this book. I just finished chapter 7 which is called "Cool Stuff". Its about ways to maintain cooler temperatures in your home or food storage areas without electricity. Very interesting and has given me several things to think about. The last section of that chapter is quoted below. This paragraph really stood out to me and really sums up the book (of what I've read so far anyway). I pasted it here as partially a ad for the book to say you should go buy it, and partially so I could revisit it here when needed to be reminded of the things this book has taught me.

Old Paths

   Looking towards the old paths is not a melancholy dream, or some fantastical wish for a mythical bygone paradise. We don’t look to the past as if it was the perfect, idyllic, pastoral utopia. We know it wasn't perfect. We look to the past for a few great reasons: Because the Bible tells us to (Jer. 6:16); because there is wisdom and reason in learning these old and valued skills; and because the way the world has chosen, though it seems to be right for a time, has wrought nothing but damage, destruction, intellectual and spiritual entropy, and mental colonization. The product of the modern way of doing things is spiritual emptiness and sadness, is fraught with disappointment and unrealized expectations, and creates a crazed urge to fill the void with consumption and "stuff".

   May we all start looking backwards with hope and joy. Our political mottos might be "Building A Bridge To The Past, or, Agrarianism: Change We Can Believe In... Because it Worked Before."
-Michael Bunker, Surviving Off Off-Grid

May God bless,
-Matt

5/10/13 - Log

We've had a rainy spring so far. More than double the amount we had last year by this time. Due to the rain (and a few other things going on) I haven't been able to get more than two and a half raised beds ready for planting. So far in them I have sugar snap peas, red potatoes, broccoli and mustard greens. I picked up some tomatoes, peppers, a watermelon plant and four strawberry plants today at a roadside stand on the way home. Lord willing I will get them planted in the next week. After Sunday it is supposed to start drying off a bit.

Other happenings on the homestead, we had one of our chickens get killed by the neighbors' dog so we are down to one. I'm looking into building a cheap/quick fence for the chickens (we'll get more I'm sure) so they can have a little room to run without getting.. you know... eaten.

'til later, God bless
-Matt

Bees!

After years of research and putting it off I've finally moved into the world of beekeeping. My bees arrived this past Saturday the 13th. "Hiving" or installing them was a little bumpy. Normally the queen is located in a small cage inside the package. Her small cage's entrance is blocked with a piece of candy and a cork. You pull the cork out of the cage and affix it somewhere inside the hive. Well, I pull the cork out and bees came out of the queen cage. The candy had fallen down out of the hole and she was released at that point. Going forward on future packages I will have a small mini-marshmallow ready to plug the hole should this happen again. After that I had some issues with the feeder. I set it down over on the side of the Top Bar Hive that the bees weren't installed into, but could get over to if they needed to. I set the little quail feeder in there and turned it the wrong way. Its a gravity fed system and since my hive isn't exactly level all of the sugar water poured out. I *think* that has been fixed now and I've added more sugar water.

I've started documenting my beekeeping on my YouTube channel

Installing first package of bees - Top Bar Hive
First beehive inspection
Bees active at 7:30am

Thanks,
Matt

Garden Update: Week of Jan 29th

This was supposed to be done last week but other things got in the way.

• 30 Broccoli seeds planted (this is probably too much, but my son who will hardly eat anything will eat broccoli like its candy.
• 42 Onion seeds (bunching type)

I purchased Burpee mini greenhouse seed starters this year instead of Jiffy brand since they have individual compartments for each seed. They come with these little compressed pellets that expand when you water them. I really can't reccomend these at all. They all expanded at different rates, so some of the pots are overflowing while others are only 1/3 full. But, the good thing is that the next batch of seeds I start in these I don't have to use those little discs. I can just use seed starting soil from bulk bags. With the Jiffy pots you have to use their discs again since the tray is just open and doesn't have individual compartments.

Compost Tumbler and other stuff

The homestead has a new addition! I've very excited about this item. I was gifted (in exchange for some of the (hopeful) bounty of this year's garden) a large ComposTumbler composter. This thing holds A LOT of compost. I look forward to filling this up with kitchen scraps and yard trimmings as well as the old bedding from the chickens when I change it. I still need to look into how to best use your compost in your garden. I hear of organic gardeners using compost but I've never read exactly HOW they use it. Right now I'm thinking I'll dig the furrows for my seeds and fill them in with compost, if I have enough that is.

I have heard these things have a problem with rusting out and becoming useless. This one already has some signs of rust. I may have to find ways to curb this before it gets out of hand. Perhaps sanding down the rusty areas now and applying some spray paint. Although the inside that is in constant contact with the moist compost is going to be nearly impossible to control.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Herrick Kimball, author of The Deliberate Agrarian blog, has another blog (one of several) that I like to read each week called Agrarian Nation. He updates this first thing on Friday and Monday mornings. These blog entries are excerpts from old farmer's almanacs and other agrarian writings from long ago. A recent post contained this picture that I liked:

The text below the picture was this:

-1878-

If you can pay off all debts, so as to start with a clean bill, you can let the world wag. Debt is the load that drags so many people down. No man will be apt to fail if he takes care not to run into debt.

[Thomas’s Farmer's Almanac]

I really liked that picture. You can just see the pride in the man as he holds (presumably) his young daughter up and looks at her. Its possible that I like it because I have a young daughter and I feel the same kind of pride when I look at her. :)

As far as the text goes, getting debt free is something I would like to work hard towards in 2012. I'm not calling it a "New Year's Resolution" just because those have a terrible failure rate with me...

Blogging & More

I haven't done much at all on this blog since starting it. That's because I haven't done much homesteading at all since I started it. We currently live right next to the downtown area in the town where we live. We have about 3/4 of an acre of land most of which is so steep and shaded the only thing that grows there is weeds. I have had a small raised bed on the side of the house that we've had some success with this year. So basically I've not had much of anything to say related to "homesteading". Hopefully that is about to change. We're in the process of buying just under 5 acres of land out in a rural area on which we will build our homestead.

I've spoke with another homesteading blogger today about the apparent drop in the number of people maintaining blogs that relate to this topic over the past year or so. It used to seem that there were several out there, now most of the links are dead and send you to "squatter" pages. This is disturbing and I hope that it just means that these people have moved and I've not gotten their updated links or that these people are just not blogging about the rural life and not that they've stopped living the homesteading lifestyle. On that note, I'm going to try to update this blog more often as we move forward with our little plot of land in the country.

-Matt