A little of this and a little of that

I worked on the field discing for about a wheat and then our good friend offered to come for a couple of days and finish it. We disced 3 acres and with a old style borrowed seed grain we planted 3 acres of wheat. Now we are starting plowing another 2.5 acres that will be for corn and other animal and people food crops. Weeding will be a major task this summer, but in some of these fields I will leave a rotortiller sized spacing for easier weed control.

I have been slowly transplanting cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. Frankly my seedlings do not look great. Their root development is fantastic but their leaf growth is slow. I switched seed companies and am using new varieties. My tomatoes are just coming up and I am feeling a little nervous. I keep telling myself that I usually feel nervous so this is normal. We have had such a warm spring that everything feels out of whack.

I have not planted anything else in the main garden, but in the coming week we will begin tilling again to prepare for planting. With the weather being extra warm, I plan to direct seed many items that I often start in the greenhouse. I also started another box of garlic. We never seem to have enough garlic considering we use so much for the animals.

The turkey's new house was built yesterday except for the roof. We had to order the metal for the roof. It should be done next week. It looks like one of the turky hens may be brooding a nest. What a blessing that would be.

Why We Do It

I use to work in a stressful job where I made big decisions everyday that affected lots of people. I managed other people and worked long hours. Now I am spending hours every day driving a tractor and discing fields. It gives me lots of time to consider why we do what we do.

I don't believe industrial food production is sustainable. It takes lots of manufactured inputs to create the food people eat today. Food is eaten out of season by shipping it around the world. The result is that food is not what our ancestors ate and I believe it is the cause of the enormous health problems our population experiences in our current age.

We started growing our own food about ten years ago. We started slowly and it was a fun hobby to see what we could grow and preserve, but over time we became more and more invested in growing more and more. Our family size has increased and the more of our needs we are able to meet, the more work it has become. So why do we continue working so hard. Here is what we have discovered.

1. It is a challenge, both mentally and physically. We get our daily dose of Vitamin D, we get some exercise, and we stretch our muscles. It is a constant mental challenge to do the planning and research crops and ways to get better production. It requires attention to details and problem-solving skills on a daily basis. 
2. It reflects our spiritual beliefs. As Christians we believe God created the universe and when he placed us here on earth he gave us all the resources to feed and cloth ourselves. We believe that natural and as close to creation as possible is better for us. We want to be good stewards of God's creation and our lifestyle lets us appreciate everything He has created. 
3. It teaches good values to our children. Our children learn the value of what they consume and they are learning important money lessons. They are learning to work for the things they want. They learn teamwork and self sacrifice. They are learning how to care for others and have empathy. Our children appreciate the little things in life so much more. 
4. We get to eat healthy. We know where our food comes from and what goes in to it. It is not always perfect, but we make educated and informed decisions and we discuss those decisions as a family.

We love this life, but we are constantly evaluating - should we keep doing it, do we still enjoy it, is there balance between work and fun, should we make changes. We continue on because it meets our needs and we believe we are making the best choice for us and our family. 

A disappointing loss

We have anxiously been waiting for our first beef cow to drop her calf. Well she did, but it was stillborn. Such a disappointing loss. It is sad to see an animal dead but it is harder when you were counting on that meat in 18 months. We will try and get a holstein calf to graft on to the cow as her udder is quite full and she would feed it well. This is part of being a farmer and a Christian agrarian - we do our best but ultimately all life and death is in the hands of God.

When it rains ...

Today started out rainy so there was no discing today. Instead I focused on the children's school work. We finished up a nice history lesson and spent some time on the basics. Fridays we do some cleaning before the weekend. We also went to a gathering of some firends of mine at a local church.

I need to update the animal count around here. We lost one of the broody hens chicks. We aren't sure why it died. We also lost one of the poults we purchased. An owl actually was able to get in the chicken tractor and killed it. The others hid behind the box we put in there to protect them and the owl could not reach them.

We have both duck and turkey eggs in the incubator. Hopefully they were viable and we will have both real soon.

Tomorrow we are going to do some shopping for some equipment we need. I will update tomorrow with what we were able to get.

Discing the wheat fields

I spent most of the day on tractor. I got most of the 1.5 acres disced at least once. I think have another 2 days on the tractor to finish up. We are scrambling to try and find a cheap old grain drill that works. We plan to plant this 3 acres to spring wheat to provide grain to the pigs and chickens this year. We have planted up to an acre in the past by hand broadcasting and the results were spotty. We need a drill to make sure we get a thick crop.

We will harvest the grain either by hand hand or with a sickle bar mower. We have done both in the past. We will then store it in the loft and thresh it out during the rainy fall/winter days. This will be too much grain to thresh by hand so we will either build or buy a treadle thresher to use. We will winnow it some, but because it will be soaked and sprouted before use most of the schaff will float off.

We also are planning a 1/2 acre of corn mostly for the milk cow. The corn is dried by hanging the corn in the barn along ropes in the loft. Then in the winter we shell the corn and grind it by hand for the animals.

This should greatly reduce our animal feed purchases on the farm and leave only hay for us to find. We are working on arranging to hay at several friends places. This would mean we don't have to pay for the hay but we will need our own hay equipment and a way to transport it.

The kids got a few more things planted in the greenhouse. During the days on the tractor I have been praying for the Lord to show me how to feed my family better from the farm. One thing we need to do is to plant something every day. Yesterday we started tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. They also transplanted some lettuce in the hoop house and planted a few zucchini plants. I am hoping the early start of the zucchini will help us have some fresh veggies before the main garden is producing.

Queso Fresco cheese got made as well as some survival bars. We had homemade noodles and chicken for dinner along with green beans and apple cheese biscuits.

A Real Woman's Journal

 I use to blog all the time and I loved it. When my old blog home stopped working, I just gave up. What I miss most is the usefulness of having a journal of what was done when. A good farmer keeps good records and blogging can be a fun and creative way to keep records. So here is to trying to blog more and have a record of what is happening around here. This is as real and truthful as it gets, so be kind. 

I awoke a little late this morning because I was with two of the girls at a 4H meeting last night. To be honest I skipped reading my Bible so that I could get DH's breakfast ready on time. Two eggs, two pieces of toast, three pieces of bacon every morning almost. Delved righ in to morning chores. Aly is on restriction from animals for lying and has been required to switch chores for 2 weeks. She is not my kitchen girl, so I need to help her more with her morning chores. Got the kids breakfast made and a batch of cheese started. Got my room cleaned and by 8 AM we had all the animal chores, tidying, and other morning chores done. 

Today we went straight outside after clean up. We are trying to finish several fencing projects. We finished a new turkey pen last week and this week we are fencing in the berry area and hoping the geese and ducks can use the pen as additional area to forage. I had to spend the majority of the day discing the wheat field. We have been planning to plant 3 acres to wheat as the grain for our animals this winter. Today I finished the discing of 1.5 acres. Of course it is suppose to rain. We have to get the wheat planted soon or we won't get a crop. 

So where are we at with our little farm. We are scaling the garden back this year, but the pigs did an excellent job initially ploughing it and we have quite a bit planted. In so far - potatoes, onions, peas, kale, beets, and carrots. We have lettuce, herbs, and brassicas started in the greenhouse. We planted 4 new blueberries and 4 new grapes. We have 2 small orchards that are both mostly planted although a bunch of trees do not look great. 

In terms of animals we have a jersey dairy cow who is suppose to calf in August, an angus beef cow who is suppose to calf in May, an angus bull, and 3 steers. We have 2 LaMancha does and a buck.  One doe kidded already to 2 doelings and 2 bucklings. We have 3 Icelandic ewes, an Icelandic ram, and 3 shetland/Icelandic ewes. Three ewes have lambed and given us 3 ewe lambs and a ram lamb. We have 2 quarterhorses. We have 2 sows and a boar and 1 sow just had 6 piglets and we lost one. We have about 10 additional pigs we are raising to butcher. We have 3 black Spanish/red bourbon turkey hens and a red bourbon tukey tom. We have a 4 ducks and 2 geese. I refuse to count how many chickens there are. We have a bunch and 15 new poults were purchased - rhode island reds, brahmas, and wyndottes. Then a broody hen came out of the forest with 10 chicks. 

Our farm goals are to provide for ourselves as much as possible and to spend as little money as possible. We are trying to make the most of the land we have.