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Homestead Evolution

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I’ve had chickens for about a year now. I keep waiting for the big occasion to come up on Facebook memories and I’m just sure it will be any day now. (I just looked back on the blog and it looks like the first post I wrote about them was on May 28, 2018..so over a year ago. I wonder why it hasn’t come up on Facebook memories. Regardless.)

During the time I’ve had them, I have refined my routines of caring for them.

For instance, I bought a feeder like the one above when I first got them. Then I abandoned that feeder because where I had it it just wasn’t staying dry and I was wasting a bunch of feed. Not to mention that the girls were scratching their feed on to the ground constantly. There was another feeder that came with my Omlet Eglu Coop that I thought was ridiculous but as it turns out, it keeps the feed completely dry and is hard for the girls to spill. So, silly feeder it is!

My girls enjoying their daily feast.  This is feed, fresh herbs a pumpkin left over from halloween and some dried mealworms.

For most of my time having chickens I have prepared a tray of food for them consisting of feed, some dried mealworms, scratch grains depending on the season and cut up fresh herbs from my garden. Then I noticed that all of the wild birds in the area would gather to my pasture whenever I pulled up in the morning. I was feeding all of the birds in Texas! So, I took that big feeder that I had stopped using before and I bought a length of chain and I hung it from the ceiling in the building on the pasture. They still get some food on the ground, but not as much. And the wild birds aren’t as willing to walk into the building to steal food. That, and my life got one step easier when I’m not delivering trays of food out to the pasture each morning.

Another way my chicken keeping has evolved is the addition of my automatic chicken door. Rather than being a slave of sunset times, my door automatically senses the light and closes up the coop. You can read more about my wonderful door here. My door also means that when I am out of town I only need someone to visit the girls once each day to collect eggs, count beaks, make sure there is adequate food and water and just make sure all is well. That makes it much easier for me to find people to help when I’m gone.

So the longer I do this, the better I get at it. I learn what to be concerned about and what to not worry about. (Most things fall under the “do not worry” column.) Isn’t that just the way with life too? The longer I’m around, the more I learn to stop worrying.

Tell me about how your chicken keeping has evolved!

Garden Goals for 2019

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If you follow my page on Facebook, you might remember that I LOVE going to Mother Earth News Fair every year. I love sitting in classes and workshops all day learning about these hobbies that fascinate me.

Every year I use it as a time to evaluate what I’m doing gardening and sustainability-wise and what I’d like to attempt for the coming year. At the 2018 fair I decided that I would be getting bees and chickens. Keep in mind that I had nowhere to put them at the time, but I resolved that I would indeed be getting bees and chickens. And I did. I also started seed starting with soil blocking which I had never done before at all. That was a LOT for one year. So what about 2019? What new endeavors am I undertaking this year?

Well, this year is largely about improving what I’m already doing.

Bees: I seem to have gotten through the winter with two thriving hives. We aren’t quite in the clear quite yet, but so far so good. I really want to actually have a honey harvest this summer. If I’m able to harvest honey, I will consider that a success.

Chickens: I’m going to add three hens to my flock and start to sell eggs.

Financial: I sat in an extended workshop led by Joel Salatin about homesteading and he touched on the need to keep specific financial records about your farm and it got an idea stirring around in my head that my endeavors should be at least somewhat self sustaining. I did some quick math and if I get three more hens and I sell my extra eggs, at least my chickens would be self sustaining. I also want to find somewhere to sell the honey I am hoping to harvest in July.

Cheese: I have been interested in making cheese for a while and this is on my list 19 things I want to do in 2019. I want to make mozzarella and I want to make a hard cheese.

Kombucha: I went to a hands on workshop on brewing kombucha and currently have some brewing in my pantry.

Seed Starting: I really want to up my game on seed starting. I’d love to really minimize the number of plants I buy at the garden center, both flowers and veggies. Home gardening struggles to break even anyway, and then if you’re buying plants for about as much as you could purchase the food at the store anyway then it really doesn’t make sense. (Except for the love of doing it, of course.) So far I’ve been really happy with how things have been turning out. The main challenge for me in seed starting is thinking enough in advance to get them started before it’s too late. It’s all a matter of planning.

What about you?  What’re you planning in 2019 for your garden?  How will you kick up your game a notch?

Managing Your Homestead While Traveling

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As I write this I am sitting in a beautiful hotel lobby in Mexico waiting for a group I am escorting to come check out and head home. My best friend of 40 years is arriving later today and we will spend three days together catching up and relaxing.

At home we are having what I hope is the last freeze of the season. I have many seedlings under lights as well as my 5 hens out on the pasture. I have two bee hives enduring the winter and I have a batch of kombucha fermenting in the pantry. Now, I love my family dearly and they lovingly tolerate what many would consider my strange hobbies. They don’t have the same enthusiasm for them that I do. I don’t generally ask them for help when I go out of town except in very limited circumstances.

So what happens when I go out of town? My husband and I have owned Legacy Travel since 1989 so we travel more than the average person. A couple of weeks from now we are on a cruise, later this year we are in Italy, another time this year we go to Africa for a safari. We are both elite travelers with our hometown airline. We travel ALOT.

So what happens with the bees, the chickens, the seedlings, the kombucha SCOBY and the garden when I travel?

You’ve heard the saying “It takes a village to raise a child”? Well, it also takes a village to keep my operation running. I have managed to knit together the help required to keep things humming while I’m out of town. Of course, I also try to plan when I plant and start seeds around when I’ll be home, but that isn’t always possible.

Here’s my team at the moment:

I have a friend who loves to take care of my chickens when I’m out of town. This requires driving out to the pasture twice per day every day as well as worrying about them when they manage to escape their fencing. If I’m gone for more than a few days, I have a young lady who is a local FFA officer who I pay to take care of them.

Then for my seedlings, If I’m just gone a night or two, my husband will water my seedlings. For longer trips, I have hired a middle school girl who lives right across the street from me. I gave her a garage door opener so she could get in and water the seedlings. I showed her what to do and put signs on each tray to remind her of the requirements of each one.

As the season continues, I suspect that I can show her how to harvest things, check to see if something needs additional watering, etc.

All of this to say, “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. Perhaps you have a more willing interested family than I do. If you look around, I’m betting there are solutions. Like everything gardening related, if you take the attitude “I know there is a solution here…what is it?” the solution will eventually become known. Gardening is pretty much a series of solving one problem after another. This is just another one waiting for your ingenuity!

Seed Starting With Soil Blocking. A Basic How-To

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So now you’re convinced that you need to try seed starting by soil blocking. How do you get started?

I mentioned that I started after going to a class by Lisa Mason Ziegler at Mother Earth News Fair in Belton, Texas last year. She has a cut flower farm and is pretty much the queen of this. Her website, The Gardener’s Workshop has complete instructions for the whole process. She has even added online courses.

For me, I started by clearing out some shelves in my garage. I figured I already had shelf space and there was really no reason to purchase more shelves and try to figure out where to put them. Besides, who can’t stand to clear out a garage a bit. My garage is not heated or anything, but it is insulated and it doesn’t get that cold in Texas anyway.

After that I went on my old pal Amazon and purchased gro lights and heated seed mats. Also, be sure to order your soil blockers. These are the ones I chose:

Then next you’ll need to assemble the ingredients for the soil blocking mix. 

16 cups sifted peat moss or coco fiber
4 cups sifted compost
¼ cup greensand
¼ cup rock phosphate powder

I use the coco fiber rather than the peat moss because it is a renewable resource. I also use worm castings rather than the sifted compost because I have a worm bin so it is something I have available.

Here is a video from Lisa where she shows you how to actually make the blocks.

Lisa’s FAQ about seed starting with soil blocking.

Lisa’s “All Things Soil Blocking”.

If you just avail yourself of these resources, you’ll be successfully starting seeds and filling your garden with plants!

Five Reasons You Should Try Seed Starting

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Preparing here to start some zinnia seeds. The soil blocks are ready and I'm about to insert the seeds.
The soil blocks here are ready for the zinnia seeds

I have grown to love seed starting using the soil blocking method and you should too. Read on for five reasons why.

At the Mother Earth News Fair last year I took a workshop by Lisa Mason Ziegler on the subject. I had never really done it. Not successfully anyway. I either bought starts at a garden center or stuck seeds in the ground and hoped for the best, with varying (mostly bad) results.

While I was still in the class I got on the Amazon app on my phone and ordered soil blockers that were waiting for me when I got home. The next weekend I assembled the ingredients for the soil blocking mix and got started. My maiden seed blocking voyage included zinnias and marigolds.

It was fascinating to watch the seedlings sprout. The germination rate was amazing. Pretty much all of the 16 blocks resulted in a flower.

A Tray of Broccoli and Brussels Sprout seedlings
This is a tray of broccoli and brussels sprouts seedlings.

The thing about starting seeds inside in controlled conditions is that almost all of the seeds germinate (assuming you have good seeds) and do so quickly. When you put seeds in the ground, you can’t control the temperature and light that they receive. In fact, this year two of the things I have started are lettuce and spinach. A couple of weeks before I started them indoors, I had put some seeds outside in the garden. They are currently just barely visible above the soil. The indoor seeds have surpassed the outdoor ones despite getting started a full two weeks later. What a waste of time and garden space! Why wouldn’t I just always choose to start them inside, and move them when they’re ready to thrive outside?

A couple of trays of seedlings under lights in my garage.
I have these trays on top of other things so that they are closer to the lights.  I don’t want them getting too leggy.

Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

In summary, starting seeds indoors is better than starting seeds outdoors or buying starts because:

  1. You can control conditions indoors so that seeds germinate quickly and well.
  2. You can get a “jump start” on your growing season by creating optimal conditions indoors for seeds to get started.
  3. You will save money vs buying plants at the garden center.
  4. You can choose from a much greater variety of plants when buying seeds vs whatever is available at the garden center for plant starts.
  5. It’s just as easy to start more seeds than you have room to use. It takes no more work at all. So, you can share with friends and family or even sell the plants!

This year I have been eagerly waiting for the time to start seeds this year. So far I have started tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, brussels sprouts, basil, sweet pea, zinnias, bell peppers, lettuce and spinach. As I write this, my area is having what I hope is the last freeze of the year. When I get back I will be planting these seedlings outside.

All of my current seedlings. Ready to go outside as soon as this last freeze passes.
All of these seedlings will find a home in the ground as soon as our frost date has passed.