Begining our homesteading journey

Growing up I always lived in the city, although we moved a lot I was never able to live on a farm. I always had that calling that I was to enjoy the country life and I hated the city. I was very much into animals especialy horses and had always had big dreams of showing in national shows with the horses I would someday own and raise. I was able to have small animals growing up, a dog here and there, the occasional rabbit or parakeet, a little fuzzy hamster but that was the extent of my animal husbandry growing up.

When I was finaly able to move out and begin my own life I wanted horses, after a mean little pony and a QH that was to much for me I found a trainer that showed arabians and she helped me find my gelding Ollie. He was untrained but she trained him and gave me lessons. Over the years I have goten more arabians and I keep them on my in-laws land that is just up the road from my house. I have 5 mares and 1 stud and of course our 2 riding geldings. I had bought young mares since I could not afford the quality I wanted in older brood mares but now that they are old enough to breed the market has gone down and with the world economy going down the crapper I am holding off breeding anyone.

At the begining of this year We finaly purchased our 15 acres of land. There is no house on it and all the fencing needed to be put up. It was a long summer as neither me nor my husband Michael had ever really had to start from scratch and put up fencing. We fianlly got most of it done and my mares are happily grazing it now. My stud and my geldings are still up the road at the in-laws till we get a good pen built out there for my stud, that is the next project.

My plans have changed over the years from wanting a big fancy horse breeding operation to tring to live a more simpler homesteading life. I have obtained a trio of NZW rabbits that will be used for breeding meat and Also have been hatching out lots of poultry, I have chickens, ducks, cotornix quail and button quail. I dont think I will continue to hatch out the cotonix quail exept maybe a few of the jumbos but I dont want to get very big with them. The white Texas A& M quail I hatched with my jumbos I have found to be meaner and a lot more prone to pecking each other and they are always tring to peck at me when I am in their cage for some reason, the Jumbos dont do that. I also have 2 goats, 1 pygmy/boar cross and one La Mancha cross. these are my first goats but Im hoping to add a few nubians to my herd to start my dairy herd with. I am also awaiting my trip to MO the end of this month to pick up my trio of Silver Fox bunnys that I have been waiting a long time for. I will also be picking up an angora buck and will be looking for a mate for him. i will get rid of a pair of NZW when I get the new bunnys and eventualy fase out the NZW completly. I also have plans to add bees in the spring as well as a orchard and some berrys on the homestead. We are planing on buying a small cabin looking shed in the spring to put on our land and will convert it to living quarters to live in untile our land is fully paid for and then we will build a nice log cabin.

So these are our plans and Im sure everything will not go as smoothly as we would like but I will blog our journey here and will also be posting pics of our progress. Keep posted I will be posting things we have learned the hard way and how to hopefully make them easyer.