Homestead Haven Beginnings

A much better day!

I have been feeling a bit under the weather the last few days, but today was much better!!  I have been holed up in the house this week and needless to say, the kiddos (and myself) have been going a bit stir crazy.  So, today, I went to clean Hubby's shop, and there the kids have plenty of space to burn off a little bottled up energy!  Then we came home and planted a few of our herbs.  We planted just the ones we use frequently as a family: Oregano, Basil, Thyme, Mint, Lavender and Parsley.  I have them in the kitchen window, and can't wait till they are growing...they will look so pretty up there!  I will have to post a few pictures here soon.

Other than that it was a relaxing day...well if you count that I have to chase a dog and a chicken aalllllllllll day long.  We have a Border Collie, and my hubby and I can't agree on whether she is smart or not-so-smart.  Phil thinks she is smart b/c she has learned to open the chicken pen no matter what I do to secure it....I think Lucy is not-so-smart b/c after chasing, scolding and putting her in the garage for a good time out, she has still not learned not to do it!!!  You tell me?!?!?!

Hope you are all having a blessed weekend!

Rossie

A great all natural lip balm.

I have this great recipe for natural lip balm taken from one of my favorite books,  Mrs. Dunwoody's Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping.

Lip Balm

1/2 cup almond oil

1/4 cup cocoa butter

1/4 cup coconut oil

1 tablespoon qure honey

2 ounces pure beeswax

1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla

Heat the almond oil and stir in the cocoa butter and coconut oil.  Stir in the honey and wax and test for firmness.  Add a little more wax if needed.  Then, stir in the vanilla.  Pour into small, round containers.  Allow to cool and harden before using.

It makes quite a lot, so you can cut the recipe or make them as gifts.  Hope you all have a blessed morning.

Rossie

Could I really have been a pioneer?

Well...for starters, the answer to the question, "Could I really be a pioneer?" was answered this weekend.  I could most definetly not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  My computer crashed on Friday and I have been so very close to sheer and utter heart failure!  I am "IN LOVE" with my computer!  Terrible I know, but I really use this beautiful piece of technology for EVERYTHING!  I couldn't do my Thanksgiving unit study (by the way thankyou Amy over at Home Sweet Simple Home Blog for directing me to Amanday Bennett's unit studies!)  I couldn't e-mail or check e-mail's, I couldn't blog or read blogs, I couldn't print out my menu for the week...I couldn't do anything!  Which brings me to another, mabey even more important, question...Should I really "need" a wonderful, beautiful, smart, glorious and thrilling piece of technology soooooooooo much?  Hmmmmmm...that's a tough one!

Blessings all!!!

Rossie

Chicken update...

Our chickens are doing fantastic.  We have a total of 5 and named them:  Goosey Loosy, Henny Penny, Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Lucky and Foxy Loxy.  I have yet to figure out which is which, however my children all know exactly who is who, and get quite irratated with me when I call out the wrong name.  What can ya do??  As I shared before that my DH was not exactly excited about getting chickens (he is a major city boy), he is a little more on the wagon now b/c he has found out that you can sell a dozen "organic" eggs for $5.00 at the farmers market!!  I did not even know this!  Anyhow, we are having a great time with our chickens!  I will try to get some more pictures of them and their "chicken castle".

Blessings, Rossie

Pictures!

The beginning stages of the "chicken castle".

I am in the process of putting chicken wire on the front and making the nesting boxes.  Hopefully I will have pictures of the finished product very soon.  It's not a chicken tractor, but it will be easy enout to move it when we need to.  It is just a 6x6 box.

Our chickens!!  We'v got Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Lucky and Henny Penny.

This is DS3's chicken Ducky Lucky who will definitly be luck if he survives being owned by my son.  And if you look closely you will see his mohawk...matching his owner (who no longer has any hair at all because he took daddy's clipper to his head!)

I'm married to a farmer!

I had to share that the other morning DH and I were observing the chickens, and I told him that now I can tell everyone I am married to a farmer.  He replied," Don't you tell anyone that."  Poor guy doesn't know what hit him.  He was born and raised in San Francisco, CA, and his parents run a rescue mission in the innercity, and now here he is in Bakersfield.  Wife to a homeschooling mama, father to 4 children and farmer of 4 chickens!!!!  After he made his reply, he quickly turned and left the kitchen, but not before I saw him crack a smile!!!!!!!  We're making progress!

Blessings, Rossie

We have our chickens!

We now have four chickens!  After reading the story "Henny Penny" my DD7 convinced the other children that these would be great chicken names.  So we now have our first hatchling, the only yellow one, is Goosey Loosey, then we have our three red ones: Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Lucky and Henny Penny.  They are so much fun to watch!  Did you know that chickens have personality too???  I didn't!  We have them under the light to keep them at 95 degrees and then each week we will lift the light so that the temp goes down 5 degrees at a time.  After about 6 weeks, they will be ready for the "Chicken Castle" which I have yet to post pictures...for sure I will post them in the next couple weeks!  Gabrielle has been journaling about them, and I am going to post one of her entries in a couple days, hopefully I will be able to scan and post the picture she has drawn to go with it!  DS5 loves his little chick, she has a problem where her poo is sticking to her bottom and so if we don't clean it off every couple days, my understanding is she could die.  He takes such good care at watching her little bottom and when I have to wash it, he makes sure the water is warm and gets nervous if she starts chirping too much.  DS3 just wants to pick his chick up by the neck to kiss it, what he doesn't understand is that his loving could be fatal...poor chick doesn't even have a chance!!!  Just kidding, I have everyone on watch to make sure he isn't getting to it.  The funny thing is that DS3's chicken has a black mohawk!!!!!!!!  If you haven't seen in my right hand column the picture of my son's mohawk!  So true that we start to look like our pets!  Well, as you can probably see, we are all very excited around here to have these girls, so hang with us as we will probably be talking a lot about them!

Blessings, Rossie

Our chicken eggs!

Our eggs are due to hatch in approx. 1 week!!!  Next Friday is the 21st day.  We candled our eggs last friday and we had to throw out 2.  They had blood clots in them, and I have heard that if you don't throw them out, they may explode into a stinky mess.  Since the incubator is in my room, I know an accident like that would not go over well with DH.  He is already going above and beyond what his common sense it telling him by letting us have chickens at all.  I wouldn't want to push it!    We are so excited and can't wait to see if we will get any chicks! 

We have an easy day today.  It is my gardening day, but since we just had a party for DD7, my yard looks fantastic, so we are just going to do school!  This is a very good thing, b/c I had such a hard time getting out of bed this morning for some reason.  Hey, I think we will just stay in our PJ's!  Gotta love homeschooling!  Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Incubation

       Incubation Schedule

Incubation start:  Friday, August 5th

Incubation end:  Friday, September 15th

21 day incubation

Temperature: 100 degrees

7 chicken eggs

We marked an X with pencil on one side of each egg for turning purposes.

Turning times:

6am

1pm

9pm

Fertility testing:

7th day of incubation...1st

14th day of incubation...September 17th

Wanted to post this in case any of you pro hatchers have any advice or correct me if I am doing anything wrong!!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings, Rossie

The saga of my chickens continues...

Well, I have been informed that my chicken eggs will arrive any day now!!!! (clap, clap, giggle)  Okay, yes, I am very excited!  I try to contain myself in the home for fear that Phil will think I have totally lost it, but on here, I feel more at ease expressing my true emotion!  (If only you could see me jumping)

Enough of that...so my eggs (really the kids eggs) will arrive any day, and so we have begun to prepare for them.  The incubator is all ready and keeping a steady temp.  How am I ever going to wait the 21 days until hatching????    I have also been looking into chicken tractors and what we are going to do to house them, when a light popped into my head!  Boy are those chicken in for a treat.  A castle for a home.  I built a 6x6 playhouse for the kids not too long ago.  It is plywood on three walls (painted sage green) and the inside of the back wall has a fairytale mural I painted on it.  The front is totally open, so I thought I would just put chicken wire there.  And one of the walls has a mini door on it.  My kids don't really play in it any more, so I am going to transform it into a chicken coop.  Will this work?  I'm going to try and take a picture of it.  I'll just need to put together some sort of nesting boxes.  I have to research how to do that...anyone have any suggestions?

And so it continues...I will keep you all posted in this very exciting step torwards our homesteading dream!

Blessings, Rossie

My chickens...

I am so excited...previously I had posted that my DH had finally consented to having a couple chickens!  I took that to mean that I could have 4 (one for each child of course!)

So, my wonderful Secret Sister from "The Family Homestead" is sending me eggs so that we can hatch our very own chicks!  She is giving me all the direction I need because I have never done this before.  She let me know what kind of incubator I need, and I just got it all set up.  I put it in my bedroom because that is the "safest" spot.  DH hasn't noticed it yet...should get interresting!!!!

Anyhow, I am so excited, and I need to start building some sort of coop...any suggestions?

Blessings, Rossie

Yeah...a break!!

Yes...a break from the weather, and a mini vacation!!!

It has been over 100 degrees for the past two weeks here in Bakersfield, and we have been not so gracefully getting through it...but the end to the 3rd heat wave here has come to an end.  Today was ONLY 98 degrees (Praise the Lord) and it is supposed to stay under 100 degrees for at least a week, we'll have to see!

We are also going on a mini vacation...to the lake tomorrow!!  Hip hip horray!!!!!!!  I am so excited about this because DH doesn't get away from work very often, so this is almost unheard of!  Actually we have not been to a lake together ever.  This should be fun.  We have friends that have a boat so we will be water skiing (I have not done this since I was 15 and I told my DH to please come on and inform you all should anything happen or if every muscle in my body is by chance unmoveable due to doing something I should never have attempted!)  I have been packing and organizing all day...I want it to be a peaceful (okay, as peaceful as can be with 4 kiddos in tow) retreat for him.

Hopefully I will have some pics to post!

Blessings, Rossie 

Addition to the family!!!!

No, I am not with child...I wish!!!  We got a new puppy!  She is adorable, a full border collie, that the kids first named Sally, however, they never stop with the first name, so after Sally came Jesse then came along Suzy...a few others...until it landed on Lucy!  She is our ideal farm dog although we have no farm to speak of just yet.  So for now she will guard with her life our lil city homestead!

Chickens, Chickens, Chickens on the brain!!!

Praise the Lord, I'm a gettin chickens.  We live in the city, so DH could just not understand that as a country gal in the city I needed chickens when we have a grocery store right down the street where we can buy eggs!!  But finally agree he did, so now I am getting my chickens...

Does anyone know how to go about buying chickens???  I want them as a learning tool for the kids, but I also want to benefit from the eggs...any chicken info would be much appreciated.  Do I buy eggs to hatch, my sister did it that way, or is it better to get them as chicks?  If I only have two, do I need a coop or just a little cage, or can they go free??  Like I said, I would greatly appreciate anyone expertise in this area!

Blessings, Rossie

Five Resources

Name 5 websites or books you go to time and again for Family/Homesteading information...

1.  My Bible

2.  Back to the Basics

3.  The Folk Remedy Encyclopedia

4.  The Family Homestead (website)

5.  No Greater Joy (website)

6.  The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

7.  Large Family Logistics  (website)

8.  Women of Simplicity  (website)

9.  Emilie Barnes (books and website)

10.  Historical Fiction Books (this is where I get a lot of motivaion believe it or not!!)

I knew I wouldn't get away with only 5, so these are my top ten.  There are so many!!