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.

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

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...

Homesteading "to-do" list

Here is just a quick list of homesteading things I would like to get started in the next year or two. This is pretty much a list for me personally but if you have an interest or would like to make suggestions please do so. (I've set this post to remain at the top of this blog.)

• Get debt free
• Save up cash to cover 3 to 6 months worth of expenses
  
• Increase my garden (and garden knowledge)
• Increase my cheese making knowledge
  
• Setup a place to keep chickens for eggs (and if I ever get that brave, for meat as well)
  
• Setup an apiary (bee hives) and learn about beekeeping
• Find a way to make some of my money off of the homestead
• Raise Goats for milk/cheese and manure
• Solar energy? or other "off grid" energy (Probably not in the next year.)
• Setup a rain barrel/rain collection system to water the garden with
• Plant an orchard
• Plant a vineyard
• Raise Guinea Fowl for insect control in the yard and garden
• Build a mud oven
• Build a block smokehouse (Like this)
• Build a cheese "cave" (Like this)
  
• ...I'm sure there's more.
  

Our future homestead

We went out to the "garden" this Memorial Day weekend. Didn't do any gardening though. Actually we planned the destruction of the garden to be honest. Where my dad plants his big garden is where we'll eventually be putting our house in a couple of years. We went out there and walked the area and visualized where we'd put the house, I then visualized where I'd put the workshop, the smokehouse, the chicken coop, the goat pen, the garden, the storage building, the earth/mud oven, the apiary, the orchard, the vineyard, the compost bin area and the picnic table. My wife is on board with the house, the garden and probably the picnic table. I think she's with me on the chicken coop too but the other stuff, not so much.

I really hate the idea of destroying the garden to build a house. Especially since there seems to be no way around building the house on the most fertile plot out there. Its where my grandfather had a brush pile when he owned the land and had cattle on it. All that rotted organic material has made that area very rich. I was amazed at the various soil types in the different plots in that little 2 acre field. The plot up next to the road that doesn't get much use has hard red clay just a couple of feet down. That is where I got the idea, or at least it persuaded me to build an earth oven. I watched a 10 or 12 part video on YouTube about a family building their earth/mud oven last year. They called it a "cob" oven. From what I can tell the difference between an earth/mud oven and a cob oven is that a cob oven has manure in it. I don't like the idea of cooking stuff in a manure structure even though I do know it would be perfectly safe since the ovens get very hot. An earth oven is basically the type of oven in which you can cook a pizza in about 3 - 5 minutes. You build the base out of rocks or concrete then you put a layer of fire bricks (whatever those are) and then you pile sand up on top of the bricks. Around the sand you put a layer of mud and let it harden. Then once it's dry and hard you cut a hole in it and remove the sand and it forms the interior of the oven. You then start a fire inside to further cure the mud making it rock solid. There's a little more to it than that but that the gist of it. I bought a book on making one a couple of weeks ago but it's not come in yet.

I may start building my little homestead before we start building the house itself. By that I mean I may go out there and setup the compost bin area or build the smokehouse or setup an apiary or even start on the mud oven. We think we can salvage the blackberry bushes that are there as long as none of the construction equipment gets into them while the house is being built.

Another DIY project we're going to try is we're going to attempt to self-contract this house ourselves. Instead of hiring a company to build our house we're going to hire the plumber, the roofer, the foundation people, etc and do the contractor job ourselves. You can save up to 25% that way. We have a friend who builds houses and we're going to try to bribe him for advice as often as we can. He builds very nice high end houses so I don't think we could afford to have him do it even if we wanted to. It'll be stressful I know and we'll probably regret trying it but it's worth attempting just to save that much money.

Homesteading tools #1 - Whizbang Garden Cart

As we move further down the line towards modern homesteading I would like to make a regular post on this blog on the topic of homesteading tools that we come across and decide to use. So, I suppose this is the first official posting on such topic. For my first topic I'm going to talk about the Whizbang Garden Cart. Now, I will admit I do not own this cart but I did purchase the plans for it this weekend. You can pick up the plans here if you would like to give them a try. To me the cart just looks like a huge improvement on the wheelbarrow's single wheel design. I've almost dumped several wheelbarrow loads because the weight shifted one way or another. With the Whizbang cart's dual wheels it seems like that would be practically a non issue. You can buy similar carts online made of aluminum tubing and thin plywood but Herrick's design seem much more sturdy and reliable with it's 2x4 framing.

Here's a few pics:





























*Also, if you would like to read Herrick's blog you can find it here: The Deliberate Agrarian I highly recommend it!

The What?

In this introductory post I'll try to explain the title of this blog. First off, a definition.

home·stead

n.

1. A house, especially a farmhouse, with adjoining buildings and land.
2. Law. Property designated by a householder as the householder's home and protected by law from forced sale to meet debts.
3. Land claimed by a settler or squatter, especially under the Homestead Act.
4. The place where one's home is.

That is the Answers.com definition of Homestead. The first definition, I think, comes closest to my personal definition of what a homestead really is. Take all of that, the 'farmhouse', the buildings and the land and add to it a garden and some livestock. That is the image of what a "Homestead" is to me. You can add to and take away some of that and still have what could be considered a homestead. For example, you could eliminate the livestock and still have a homestead. Although I believe at least a few chickens should be on any homestead. They provide protein rich eggs for eating, manure for the compost pile and later for the garden and, if you can free-range them, a natural and effective pest control. Yes, I think that is the ideal homestead. And its what I dream of having one day. A homesteader is what I'm aspiring to be some day very soon. In my mind a homesteader is someone who is 100% self-sufficient. Someone who gets all of their needs from their little plot of land. In other words someone who's job it is to maintain the homestead and works there full time. Now, you may not agree with me on that and I can give some slack on the exact definition but to me that is the ultimate definition of a homesteader. Which is why I named this blog "The Aspiring Homesteader" as I will always be aspiring to be more of a homesteader than I am at any point in time. I don't believe I will ever be able to quit my job and work full time at my home. Maybe when I retire that will be a possibility but for now I need the income as well as the health insurance. So, I submit myself to being a part-time homesteader. And I'm ok with that. At least I will get to spend sometime on the things I enjoy about homesteading like working in the garden and such. Right now the 'Aspiring' part of this blog's title is more fitting than the 'Homesteader' portion. We currently live in a suburban area on about 3/4 an acre of non-fertile land. Our front yard is a the size of a postage stamp and our backyard is completely shaded and on a very steep angle. So we plant a garden out on some land my parents have. Land that we eventually want to build a house on so we'll be closer to my parents as well as the garden.

I plan to post projects and updates on this blog from time to time. I even have considered setting this up as a vlog (Video Blog) and posting some videos. I may do that sometime as well if I can get the equipment and the process figured out. So, please check back soon and check back often. I will try to keep this blog rolling since I don't like it when I find an interesting blog (not saying mine will be interesting to anyone but me) and then it never get updated.

Thanks,
Matt