Catch Up!

Well, shoot- I have been so busy doing, I forgot to post what’s been going on around here! I promise I will try to post more often, even if it’s not a long post.

So what’s been going on?

I put 21 eggs in the incubator, and 16 hatched. I ended up with 8 hens and 8 roosters. These chicks (now chickens) were healthier, friendlier, and bigger than the chicks I bought at Tractor Supply last year. They are all still alive and getting big- the roosters are crowing, and the hens should start laying in just a few more weeks! We did slaughter 5 chickens once I knew the eggs hatched- I plan on canning these guys for both meat and broth. Right now I have 12 hens and 9 roosters. I will kill of all but 2 roosters, and we’ll be good to go.

My neighbor came over with his tractor and tilled my garden twice in about 30 minutes and the planting began!

I planted: potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, carrots, radishes, green beans, tomatoes, corn, zucchini, acorn squash, cucumbers (pickling and slicing), pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloupe, and honeydew. I also tried to plant some raspberries along the perimeter, but once again, no luck. Oh yeah, I forgot about the gourds that I planted last year and came back- they’re taking over my garden and I may have to go into the gourd business!!

I had intended to plant an herb garden, but I ran out of time. Up until today, I continued to think about planting it this year. I have now decided that the herb garden will wait until next year, and I’ll plant my fall crops here instead (green beans, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, and carrots). So, while I have already started clearing it, I’ll spend this week getting the rest cleared and planted.

As far as canning goes, I have canned almost 60 pints of jam- strawberry and strawberry rhubarb. I am trying to capture enough wild blackberries to make some jam, and my sister is picking Concord grapes for me to make jelly.

I have also canned green beans, using a pressure canner for the first time- tricky business. I am canning some beans right now. My experience is to hot pack for success. And yes, this comes after two previous failures.

Anyway, I guess that’s what’s been going on here! Like I said in the beginning, I plan on checking in more often from now on, so see ya soon!

My Hens are on Strike and My Roosters are Making My Mouth Water

Spring has finally happened here at the homestead. It’s always a busy time, full of babies, and garden chores.

We purchased an incubator, and will be trying to hatch our own eggs for the first time. My hens, who have been laying beautifully all winter must have caught wind of my plan and some of them have decided to go on strike. My 3 White Leghorns are still laying, but my 2 Rhode Island Red hens are striking. I also have a Buff Rock hen, but since she was injured, she hasn’t laid anything, and even if she was laying, she’s not letting the roosters anywhere near her. So, instead of the 6 eggs per day I was hoping for, I am getting about 3 per day. Not as many as I wanted, but the hatch will go on as planned.

If you know me, you know that I hate my roosters. I have 4 Rhode Island Red roosters and each one is meaner than the other. They are the product of buying a straight run of reds so that I could have 1-2 rooster, but 4 of the 6 chicks turned out to be roosters. As soon as I have chicks from the eggs, these roosters, yes, all 4 of them will be culled. I will admit, I have never done this before and I am a little intimidated by it.

So, with the Leghorn hens, and the Red Roosters, I was wondering what our chicks will look like. I googled to see what the chicks may look like and found this- a black chick?! Too freakin' cool!

image from: http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=230028


We are definitely keeping our fingers crossed for at least one black chick.

Coming up on the Homestead: I’ll be starting my tomatoes and peppers in the house, my spuds are sprouting and ready for planting, and I will be making my own laundry detergent for the first time. I also want to talk about the herbs I have chosen for the herb garden and why.



P.S. We had 5 kittens the other night from our resident mama Sheba. Too Cute- Here’s some pictures!

Survival Food for Thought

In this blog, I don’t want to go in depth too much over “survival”. By working my homestead, I am creating a self sufficient lifestyle. It’s a simple fact that the less you depend on civilization, the less you suffer in a survival situation. Agreed?

I want to mention it now because I have been hearing a lot of talk about preparation and creating a survival food cache. This is all well and good (and necessary), but what disturbs me is that a lot of “survivalists” have a fantasy about hunkering down in a bunker eating MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) and beans and rice. Is this REALLY how you want to survive?

To me, the entire notion of preparing ahead of time is so that you can store what you want to eat, what you like to eat, and what your loved ones (picky kids) like to eat. This way, when a survival situation arises, there is less stress (especially among children) when there is comfort food.

MRE ‘s are easy to store and have a long shelf life, but have you actually ever eaten one? Do your kids like them? Beans and rice, while extremely nutritious, are fine, but do you want to eat them day after day? My kids won’t eat any of that now, what makes me think they would be fine to eat them in TEOTWAWKI? People think that they have to be miserable in a survival situation. Why prepare ahead of time then?

In every survival food book you will see, “STORE WHAT YOU EAT, EAT WHAT YOU STORE”. It baffles my mind that more people don’t listen to that. There are so many simple steps you can take now to not only survive, but to thrive. The whole purpose of survival caching now is to make sure life can go on as close to normal as possible. This is especially true if you have children.

For instance, we love bananas and apples. In a world crisis, you would be hard pressed to find a banana in my neck of the woods, and unless you have apple trees on your property (given we’re not talking about anything nuclear), apples would not be easy to find. In one weekend, you can dehydrate bananas and apples, and can apples and/or applesauce. Done. Good food, set for the future. Yummy and flavorful in times of stress or not.

The same goes for your survival garden. Last year, I got what I thought, was a really good deal on a survival bucket of seeds. The problem, I learned, was that most of the seeds were foods we don’t eat. Hey, if you like turnips and rutabagas great, but I personally don’t even know what to do with them. I wasted time and money on things I would never use. Plan your garden around what you love to eat fresh, canned and frozen. This year, I am only planting what I want. I bought non-hybrid seeds of things I actually want to eat again. It ended up costing me $30 less than the “great deal”.

Gardening will be a big topic of this blog, so we will most definitely talk more about that at a later time. This post is to remind you all on how important it is to use this time now to make sure you and your family can live as stress free as possible. And I step off my soapbox.

P.S. DON’T FORGET TO STORE SOME CANDY!

Dehydrating Eggs

I have too many eggs in the fridge, and since the power can be tricky around here, especially during the spring storms, I try to can or dehydrate everything. The directions I have followed for dehydrating my eggs are here: http://www.dehydratorbook.com/dehydrate-eggs.html

Since I have so many eggs, one fruit leather tray, but 5 dehydrator trays, I chose to scramble the eggs (without milk), and cook the eggs on the griddle w/o grease or butter. Then off to the dehydrator. DO NOT RUSH THIS PROCESS!!! If your eggs are not fully dehydrated, they will mold and ruin the entire batch. At this point, Abbey says they look like corn flakes. I have a small table-top dehydrator, and loaded to capacity, this takes between 16-18 hours.

(right out of the dehydrator)

(This is powedered in the blender)

Once they are fully dehydrated, put them in the blender and powder them...This should only take a few seconds. If they don't powder quickly, you may have to dehydrate them some more. The last step is to store them. The website said to store them in a jar or container. I am going to vaccuum seal them in bags marked with how many eggs are contained. And you're done!

To Use: 1 Tbsp egg powder = 1 egg....to reconstitute, mix 1 part egg to 3 parts water. Obviously you can't fry them again, but will be great in baking of all sorts.

In the future, I would like to dehydrate just the egg whites (perhaps dehydrate the yolks separately). I may also scramble both the reconstituted eggs vs. Fresh eggs to see the differences in taste and texture. Until then, Stay Tuned!