I've got embryos!

I candled some of my eggs tonight and out of the 2 doz I checked all where growing right on schedual. Looks Like I will have lots of peeps before to long. I also placed an order with Ideal hatchery for some black astrolorps and buff brahmas. I have also added some OEGB eggs to my incubator in the colors Self blue and Spangled. Wow those are tiny eggs. I will begin working on some coops here in the next couple of weeks. I am planing on having individual pens for selling hatching eggs of the variouse breeds and also have plenty to hatch out myself.

My worms are growing like weeds and Im hoping the Africans will be big and fat for fishing soon. My plants are growing like weeds, we will have TONS of tomatoes this year. Im ready to plant outside. The weather keeps teasing me though.

I will be planting some fruit trees and berry plants on our 3.5 acre lot in the fall and get them started. This lot will be used only for growing food. We have decided just to wait anouther year and build our house out on our 15 acres.

Hatching eggs, im geting spring fever!

Update I just added a doz blue turkens (naked Necks) to hatch with whats already on its way. So I should have if all goes well blue turkens and marans for my 2 pens of purebreds. and then of course Ill have my mixed flock, not sure yet if I will keep a pen of RIR and bared rocks also or put them in my mixed flock. Just depends how much time and funds I have to make new pens.

So I wanted to hatch some eggs and get ready for spring, I was only going to pull out one of my Little Giant incubators but you know how that goes, I had to pull them both out. I use the basic LG modle no fan and no tuner so its all by hand but I have pretty good hatch rates in them. So I am geting a doz B/B/S marans eggs, a doz Cuckoo marans eggs, 18 barred rocks, 12 RIR, and 2 Dz heavy breed mixed eggs. Im going to be buisy here. They should all be ariving in the next couple of days so I hope to have them all set by Mon. The count down is on! Over 6 doz eggs I should end up a 3-4 doz chicks with in the next month. Also I decided I want some Buff dewlap Toulouse geese eggs so when they become available around March or so I will be tring my hand at hatching goose eggs.

I also got my order placed with Cackle Hatchery so Ill be geting some Naked Necks, Easter Eggers, Blue sweedish ducks, toulouse geese and Narragansett tukeys. They will be here in April so I have plently of time to work on my waterfowl pen and get a big kiddy pool for them. I will also make a sepret pen for the turkeys. Any extra males will go in the freezer so It looks like Goose and Turkey for christmas.

Trip to sutherlands

Today I went to sutherlands to spend my gift card, only ended up spanding part of it, still got $35 left for when they get in more planters. I did get gobs of seeds, even got a bunch of flowers this time to spruce up my yard. Seeds were.05 cents a pack and I think I got almost $5 worth. Also got some gardening knee pads and about 150 jiffy pots. Got 2 more shoplights and some growlite bulbs and some chain to hang them with, that is this weekends project. Going to clear out the spare room!! OhMy what have I got myself into!

I did get some broccli, spinich, and cabage started, cant wait to plant outside.

Made a compost bin!

Its amazing just how much "homesteading" I can do on my city lot. I am doing so much right here I don't know what I'm going to do once we move over to the 3.5 acres we bought. I put up a dog pen around my back door today to let my 2 yorkies out to play. this way they can be outside even if we are not. I think they love it. We also got my compost pile started. I had about a 25 ft 6ft tall piece of wire mesh fence that I used to make 3 sides of it. the other side was left open to make it easier to turn and mix the pile. I added a bunch of dried dead leaves and rabbit droppings mixed with sawdust. I wet it down and stood back to admire my work, never thought Id be excited about a pile of leaves and manure.

My seedlings are starting to pop up, Think I planted way to many tomatoes for 2 people, I have about 50 big boy tomato plants started as well as several cherry and tiny tim tomato's. My blue lake bush beans and Kale is starting to pop up also.

I got a check in the mail for sutherlands for 86$ the other day to be used at sutherlands from our Friends reward card. Was a nice little surprise. I went in but they did not have their garden stuff in yet, said it would be in this weekend and they are having a big sale on it starting Tuesday so I know where Ill be Tuesday! Going to get a couple more grow lights also to transform my spare room into an indoor garden until spring arrives.

My worms will be sent out on Monday and I called and added a lb of African nightcrawlers. I know when we fished last year we paid 3-4$ for a doz bait worms so I thought it would be nice to grow our own and sell to local folks around here.

It had got up to 70 degrees today and I'm hopefull it stays nice enough tomorrow to get some more stuff done outside. More city homesteading to come tomorrow!

Geting my Worm bin ready and starting seeds

Well I ordered 1 lb of red wiggler (Eisenia Foetidas) worms. I got a rubbermaid tub, drilled some holes in the bottom and around the top. First I put a peice of cardboard in the bottom then added some compost from my horse manure pile and some leaves and shredded newspaper (only black and white, no color ink). I then wet it down to moisten and set it by my plants where it is awaiting its new arivals. I chose this worm becouse Im just interested in the vermiculture and not in fishing worms. Just eating machines.

I have also started some more seeds. Some of my seeds such as the bush cucumbers and Tigger melon are an experiment to see just how I can or if I can get them to grow well in containers. We will see.

I will be going to Sutherlands tomorrow and will be geting a couple more shop lights and grow bulbs to get my spare room set up and ready when the seeds start to sprout. I will also be geting a shorter long tub to seed with radishes and carrots and anouther for spinich and kale. I will be doing more research to find out what can be planted together in the same tubs. Once I do Ill post about what and why I planted what together. I will also be updating with pics as I go. Here is my table with my starts on it. I also have a heat lamp as well as grow lights on it. the room they are in is cold so thats the reason for the heat lamp. I am also going to find a longer chain so I can lower my growlights and raise them again later. The long tray in the back ground is wax beans, left them siting in a window with little light for too long. Finaly got my grow lights and they look much beter than they did, I still have hope for them.

As you can see I made mini greenhouses with 1 gallon baggies, Very cool Idea I got from pioneerliving on youtube. I marked what is in the seed trays as well as the date planted.

Where we are now.

Welll its been a few months since my first blog but nothing much has happend. We did change our plans a bit. We bought 3.5 acres right next to my inlaws and will be waiting patiently for the winter wheat to be harvested off it in June or July. I will be puting a bunny barn on it and fencing it for my goats and a couple sheep. Our plans are to put a trailer on it untile a time in the far distant future that we can build a log cabin on our 15 acres. This puts us to almost 19 acres of total acrage.

I have bred my first angora doe and am waiting not so paitently to see if she took, she would be due on the 19th of Feb. Im keeping my fingers crossed. I also just aquired a trio of blue Silver fox rabbits. The does are only 3 months so I still have awhile to breed them. But the buck is 6 months so Ill be looking for some kind of meat doe to start my meat breeding herd.

In waiting for spring to arive I have decided to start an indoor container garden. Found some very usefull youtubes to help me on my way. I have started severel herbs, bush beans, tiny tim, patio, and cherry tomatoes. I also started a couple of Tigger melon seeds and some bush cucumbers, these will be watched to see just how container gardening works for them. Other seeds I got for my garden are some unusual yard long beans and yard long cucumbers. I like the rare and unusual so we will see just how well they do, Come on Spring!

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.