Farm Life Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Our Homestead Adventures

Corn Success Despite Adversity

1st corn crop brings less than an ear-full but more than “needed”. We are celebrating, knowing that we can check off one more item from our Homegrown Thanksgiving Menu! Corn! This success will taste so much sweeter come Thanksgiving when you consider how much adversity we faced with our crop this year. Second time is…

Volunteer Pumpkins, Better Than No Pumpkins

Our pumpkins are poppin’, just not where we planned. It’s like Halloween in July! Exciting times hit this weekend as we checked on the volunteer pumpkins that were growing in a wild, weedy, area where we had a pumpkin patch last year. We noticed about 6 plants sprouting in the early spring, volunteers from last…

Count ‘Em? Never Before They Hatch

And now we know why you never count your chickens before they hatch. For the past few weeks we’ve anxiously awaiting the arrival of chicks. We’ve counted down… and kept counting… and counting. Nothin’. Nada. Zip. It’s been a bit frustrating and worrisome. The Black Australorp hen began sitting on eggs more than a month…

Canning Made Easy

How to do boiling-water processing or water bath canning If you’ve never preserved fruits and vegetables by canning, this is a really easy way to get started. You just need a boiling-water canner, which is a large pot with a lid and a rack to help you manage those hot jars. You can also purchase…

Restoring Order in the Chicken Coop

Order in the Coop Last October we hatched our first chicks in the coop, “Thursday” and “Friday”. It was extraordinary to watch our little chickens grow-up. We discovered at about 4 months of age that our distinctive young chickens were roosters. We knew we would not be able to keep them, especially since we still…

Unearthing Farm Artifacts in the Garden

An evening planting digs up questions and farm artifacts. This evening over an hour was spent digging two holes to place a couple of melon plants. Breaking ground was easy. It was when the earth was turned over that remnants, artifacts of moments long forgotten where discovered buried several inches to a foot deep into…

Meet Amy + Chris

We are Amy and Chris, parents of 4 children, learning by living, taking a homestead adventure that many of our friends and family think is crazy… even if they secretly envy us. We do not shy away from adventure & trying new things but even this is not what we would have imagined just a…

When Your Chicken Gets Frostbite

Roostavo the magnificent Rhode Island Red Chicken had a rough winter. Roostavo, Roostavo… you have filled our mornings with the trill of your Rhode Island Red cocka-doodle-do for a month in the back room of our home. You crazy chicken! Amy has turned into a morning ninja, creeping across the kitchen floor in the dark…