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Early August Garden Tour
At 7300 feet, August is when the garden starts to come alive. The spring crops of radish and peas have since been pulled out. Spring carrots are ready for harvest. Squash is finally starting to flower, and there are tiny tomatoes, peppers, and green beans hanging on the plants. August is when it finally starts feeling like a garden. By the end of the month, the garden summer vegetables will be ready to begin harvesting, and there will be days with a fall chill on the air. So here at the beginning, I thought I’d give you a tour of the garden in photos. It won’t look the same as…
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DIY Seed Tape – Make Your Own Carrot Seed Tape at Home
Do you have a hard time planting carrot seeds evenly? Feel frustrated by how many carrots you end up having to thin? If so, the answer to your problems is seed tape! Seed tape is a biodegradable strip with seeds you plant in the ground. This is an easy way to minimize seed waste, thinning, and get nice straight rows (if that’s important to you.) Small seeds like carrots or radishes can be easier to plant when in seed tape form. It can also help you get better spacing of small seeds in square foot gardening. The problem with seed tape, however, is it can be quite expensive. Especially if…
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10 Essential Items for the Beginning Homesteader
There’s a lot of information out there for the beginning homesteader. A quick Pinterest search yields dozens of results on items you need, mindset to have, crops to grow, easy first animals, etc. As a fairly new homesteader myself I know how overwhelming that all can be. Here you’ll find a simple list of ten “items” that will help you along your way as a homesteader. We’ll assume you already have a place to homestead, even if it’s a small back yard in the city. These items will help you on your journey regardless of if you have 100 acres in the country or live on a small lot in…
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Getting Ready for Ducklings – Setting up the Brooder
Pinnable picture showing food and water containers as well as bedding for the brooder.
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DIY Duckling, Gosling, or Chick Brooder
*This post is part three in a multi-post series on raising ducks and geese. If you missed part one, click here. If you missed part two, click here. When raising ducklings, goslings, or chickens, one of the first things you need to decide is how to brood them. They will need a place where they are safe and can be kept warm for anywhere from three to eight or more weeks of life. There are several routes you can choose when creating a brooder. Many people use a large tub or cardboard box as a brooder. This works well if you are brooding two or three ducks or geese, and…
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DIY Duck Brooder Water Solution
*This post is part 2 in a series on raising ducks and geese. For part 1 click here.* Ducks LOVE water. A LOT. They love water so much that they will make a gigantic mess with their water which will soak into their bedding and make your brooder stink to high heaven. There are a lot of different ways people have found to combat this issue, from creating something to sit the water on to brooding outdoors on the ground where it doesn’t matter so much. Our ducks and geese are part pets, part farm workers so we wanted a solution that would allow us to brood in the house…
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Our Decision to get Ducks (and Geese)
*This post is the first in series about raising ducks and geese. My husband and I first started talking about getting ducks years ago. If you haven’t noticed, ducks are adorable, and are reputed to make good pets. However, we were living in town and having even one or two ducks wasn’t an option for us at the time. Fast forward seven years to buying our homestead. Last year, when we put in the garden, I didn’t really know what to expect. Until then, I had been gardening in raised beds that had been filled with a garden soil/compost mixture from the local sand company. Things grew alright here for…
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Welcome to the Homestead
This blog has been a long time coming. I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a blog off and on for the past several years and now is the time. A little about our homestead. My wonderful husband and I bought our homestead back in 2018, and after a few months of paint, fixing things up, and making the place ours, we moved in in October. It’s hard to believe that we haven’t even been here two years; it seems like this is where we’ve always been. If you’ve ever had a house that felt like home the moment you stepped over the threshold, you’ll know what I mean. After…
