Around the Farm- An Update

It’s been way too long since I sat down and spent some time really focusing on my farm page. Things have been happening on the farm and life in general has drastically had a glow up. To say life has changed since December of last year is an understatement, but it has been for the better in a lot of way.

So, farm wise- we gave our rabbits away to a very good friend of mine. He needed a project and I needed to focus on my growing cattle herd. Butters the heifer is soon going to be Butters the cow. We are watching her bag up and get wider by the day. Hopefully within the month I will be milking her and calf sharing so that I further my homesteading skills. The rest of the cattle are doing great. The calves are getting rather big and aren't really considered calves anymore at a year old. Benny the bull is showing his bull side but is still not turning mean- just pushy.

The rabbits are flourishing at their new home. The friend who took them is doing great with them and has even had his first litter. One day I may add them back into my herd. At this point it just wasn't a good fit anymore. That being said, I still can get quality meat from them anytime by just a phone call (and probably for a bag of feed).
N has become quite the little cowboy when it comes to his interactions with the critters. R has been learning how to keep house and sewing basics with me. We have been making nightgowns and dresses for her and her doll Samantha. In lieu of focusing on digital pandemic-schooling, we are focused on learning how to raise
our animals, grow our food, feed ourselves with wholesome food and sustain ourselves and the land we are blessed to live on.  Teaching the kids how to live life.
As for me, I am back on overnights at work. Dreading the shift but loving the job. Dreaming of a day when I can live exclusively off the land without having to have a day job. Slowly gathering plants to turn into medicine, singing songs to my babies (both human and animal), and dreaming of the day when I'm free
from the constraints of modern society. You know- the simple things. I'm finding myself pulled deeper into learning about the way my ancestors lived, maybe even incorporating a lot of the Volga German traditions into our household along with our Norse pagan rituals/traditions. This year is going to be a big focus for us on living simply, below our means and with intention in all things we do.

The pasture is finally seeing progress. We even went and picked up seed the other day for our planting. P was able to get to drag the disc through the pasture after the plowing fiasco last year and the tractor that has been sitting in the pasture for over a year is finally out. I could not be any more excited about it being out and us looking at putting in a summer bumper crop until we plant our horse blend this fall. We chose German foxtail millet for this summer as it is ready to graze in 30-ish days, is a low sugar/decent protein mix and is easy to grow while setting up a good root structure for our fall planting. This fall we are looking at horse mixture with brome, Kentucky blue grass, timothy, clovers and maybe a small amount of fescue. Pretty excited to say that our total hay bill will end up being less than half of what we expected and the no till seeder comes with a refundable rental fee.

The horses and mule are doing okay as well. We have trimmed everyone and even got an x-ray done on Bertha. They say her hooves are fine and that it's in her upper leg. We just need to give her time. I plan on taking her for a second opinion once some of these restrictions begin to lift from this shelter at home order. Domino is doing great. The kids are doing well training him. I'm back to riding Daniel and I'm looking into getting his teeth floated. His teeth are going to be what causes me to lose him, not his age or build.

Around the house/family- as everyone else is experiencing, school is out and has been since spring break. For the most part it has been utterly awesome. The first couple weeks we were on quarantine ourselves due to P spiking a crazy high fever and not knowing if it was due to SARS-cov-2/covid-19 or leftover infection from his hernia repair surgery a couple weeks before. Speaking of that, he had a successful hernia repair surgery that has him almost back to normal. Minimal pain now, minus when he overdoes it around the farm. It's nice having him back to what we consider normal.

So many changes are coming, including this blog and website, which has been a long-standing goal of mine that I have not kept my promises on. Instead of focusing on what I think it should be, I'm going to create it as more of a living diary of what we do on our little slice of land and how we are living towards a more sustainable life in our daily gatherings and maybe eventually a bigger picture where we can host guests on our farm.

Until then, I'll keep dreaming of ways I can share what is going on in our little world