I think we are finally past any weather for planting. I have planted alot of the garden already but still have some to complete. I was out in the garden yesterday and i noticed i already have baby squash on! They have only been in the ground for 2 weeks, but i did start with plants instead of seeds. This year i am going larger than last year.so far i have planted the following.

108 cucumber plants
108 strawberry plants
72 tomato plants
36 okra plants
36 squash plants
24 jalapeno plants
36 bell pepper plants
36 banana pepper plants
12 sugar baby watermelon plants
12 cantaloupe plants
loads of onions
50 garlic
12 leeks
plus broccoli and cauliflower plants!


I also planted a new Texas fig tree this year.

I think that we will be swimming in produce this year but i so cant wait!!

The time has come to take the plunge on finding Rennet. I have never made cheese before but with 5 goats in milk i think it is time! I had no idea Rennet was so hard to find! Nowhere local sells it, so i took to the Internet.

 I started with the cheese making companies but the shipping is so high on these places that i decided to check out Amazon. Since Amazon seems to be my shopping place of choice here lately. I found just the place i was looking for while scanning thru all the pages on Amazon.


www.Myspicesage.com They carry rennet and shipping is FREE!!Now if you order less than $10 they do charge you a $3 spice it up fee, but i found my Rennet! 34 tablets for $13.00 shipped.


What made it even better was that they offered a FREE 1 oz spice sample just for ordering. Now if you are going to order i recommend ordering $25 or more as they are also offering 4 whole black garlic bulbs FREE!

Now i admit i didn't see the 2nd offer till i had already submitted my order for the rennet so i didn't get the free garlic but if i had known about it i sure would have added more stuff to my cart to get to that $25.


If you are looking for spices they have a HUGE selection in all sizes!!

Here at the farm we are gearing up for spring planting season!! As you can tell by most of the pictures that we use raised beds or large tubs. I have 30+ large tubs that i have been using for several years but they are starting to show wear and tear on them as they don't age well in the sun all the time.

So we started with closed ended 55 gallon blue barrels. To cut them we put this furniture dolly upside down like this.

We then sat a barrel on top of this to get it ready to cut.

you can see the black line around it that is the mark we are going to cut on.

See that nice lip at the top of the barrel? I sat down in a chair and turned that with my hands so he didn't even have to move the saw. We did 15 barrels like this, it worked well and went very fast. Here is what we ended up with.

These have already been moved to where they need to go and filled with compost just waiting to be planted in. Now the barrels cost me $6 each so each have cost me $3. The cutting was all on us.

By the way last time i posted i said i was waiting on babies! Well we have 5 babies and waiting on another doe to kid!Here is a few pictures~

 

Spring is approaching so we have been busy with garden stuff. We finished up the potato bin and planted 7 lbs of yukon gold. I checked yesterday and we have some coming up already! I planted Garlic and multiplying onions last year and we covered them and they are doing great. Now the chickens found a way into the garden and ate all my broccoli and brussell sprouts! Darn chickens anyway!!

Went to a local greenhouse that usually just sells herbs and they are expanding into garden plants this year and he gave me 2 6 packs of leeks so i also transplanted them. I decided to do some work for him in exchange for plants, works for him and works for me. I was needing to replace some of my herbs this year anyway! Glad i got in on this as i also needed to get veggie plants this year as the greenhouse needs some repairs. Nothing like getting veggie flats at wholesale prices!!

Our nanny goats are getting close to kidding! We have 5 nannies due this year and looking at the sizes of them we may have 10 babies this year. That is way more than the 3 we had last year. I cant wait and sure will post pictures of them!


The 5 calves that we purchased at 24 hrs old 18 months ago are now 18 months old and will be leaving to go to the butcher in a few days. Wow we will be rolling in the fresh meat soon!!

Egg orders have been rolling in just as fast as i can gather the eggs.Yesterday sold 9 dozen!! Glad orders are starting to come in it sure helps to pay for the chicken feed.

We have also gotten back into rabbits and hope to have some babies soon!

Hope this find everyone holding out for spring!

Wow how time flew by over the holidays! Now we are in gear for planning our spring garden. Oh how I love going to the mail box and seeing all of the seed catalogs! Whats even better is the SALES that they offer! Now of course i have already ordered most of my seeds before the new year arrived but i drool over some of the new seeds that they have come out with in the new 2013 catalogs!

I have already purchased my seed potatoes but with all of this rain we have been having i haven't gotten the potato bin ready yet. I need to go to the compost facility and buy 10 yards but when it rains i about need an airplane to just hover over and suck it up with a hose. Their yard is a mud hole!

I know in some areas its to early to start anything but i hope that you are in the planning stage!

I have already planted onions, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower and brussell sprouts. They are all doing great.

I am already dreaming about cucumbers, tomatoes and squash OH MY!

Since we just past the New Year i also bought some cabbage and have a quart jar of sauerkraut fermenting, nothing tastes better than fresh Kraut!!

Have you ever sat down and just looked through craigslist? Its amazing what you can find that people don't want to deal with anymore. Saturday i wanted to see what guinea keets were selling for and i get hit with this FREE ad. I clicked it as i love looking for free stuff, but this one was one that i never expected. Here right in front of me was a free ad for 34 broiler chickens already grown out and ready to butcher! I mean talk about the right place at the right time! Mr ingenuity and I loaded up cages and drove an hr to go pick them up. After getting their we also scored 2 Californian doe rabbits and 1 buck Californian, talk about great timing these will be added to the breeding stock so we can raise more meat rabbits. I know alot of people don't like to think about eating rabbit as they are cute and cuddly. Well that is partly true when they are small and like to be handled. When they get larger and decide to leave claw marks the size of Texas all over your arms, face, chest they aren't so cute and cuddly any more. Rabbit meat is the best meat out there for you and I bet if you looked closer at your grocery store you would find that they sell it.

The weather is starting to get cooler here and the fall garden is pretty much done. We did put in cauliflower, broccoli and brussel sprouts. I had heard about multiplying onions but until last month had never seen any. I found them at a local feed store for $1 a lb so we decided to give them a try. Also 30 garlics went into the ground. Now it is getting time for me to start thinking about what i want to put into the garden for spring. I will start seeds in the greenhouse in late January.

This is Hershey the goat and this was her Monday face. She and the other ladies are 100% Nubian's and We hope to have a good crop of doe again this year. Last year we had just 2 nannies and one had twin does and the other had a single doe, this year we will have 6 does kidding so i hope it all turns out well.

I think that most people have really good intentions when they start a blog.I know is sure did! I wanted to post things that i knew would help people in there quest for self reliance, right now fall in in the air and winter is approaching. We are doing alot of farm maintenance. Cutting, splitting and stacking wood for the winter. Making sure that we have hay on the farm. We still need to prep the rabbit barn for winter. We totally wrap it in cardboard then wrap it in plastic to help protect the cardboard from rain and or snow. We may do something different this year and cover it in some old OSB as it goes up alot faster than the cardboard and plastic. This year we will also have to enclose a chicken house! We have never had cooped chickens so this will be a first for us. What is on your prep for winter agenda?



Well Mr. Ingenuity struck again! He was called by a friend  that had a problem. He had a large tree cut down and way to large of logs to move on his own. Mr Ingenuity got right on trying to figure out how to move them easily and as fast as possible. He came up with something very fast! He took his bale mover that he had built and added parts of his cherry picker to it. With a steel plate with holes it in we could lag bolt the plate to the large logs and connect a cable to the cherry picker boom and tada we had a log mover! it worked very well and paid for all the modifications in one job! Here is a picture of his work.

We decided that it need a hydraulic lift on it as your arm gets really tired trying to pump it up far enough to get a 500 lb log onto a trailer! we also thing that we need to make it swivel at the top somehow, but that is a later project.