First day of blogging about our little farm

Posted on Friday, November 7, 2008 at 02:42

I have been interested in homesteading ever since I started reading Little House on the Prairie books as a kid. I always wanted to live off the land. My husband is a dairy farmer and works for some German Baptist families 6 miles from our home. We enjoy all the free milk! I make butter from the cream and want to try my hand at making cheese soon! We homeschool our children with the Robinson Curriculum so they learn alot of the old ways of reading, writing and arithmatic.. Last year we studied the homesteaders and wagon trains. We did a full week of living that way! It was wonderful and they want to do it again with new challenges. We used kerosene lanterns and cooked outside, did laundry outside by washboard and lye soap and heated water for dishes which were a small set for camping, and pots and pans. We even to baths by heating the water outside and hauling it in.

We have chickens which we get a few eggs from and when they are not producing good we purchase or barder from my friend down the road. I make our own bread every few days for our meals. My husband hunts deer for meat and we have a garden that is 30 by 100 that we grow various veggies and corn we barter for from the German Baptists at the dairy. We have 20 rabbits and one goat (angora) some milk and beef cattle and a horse. I would love to get a couple of sheep..

I can pickles, applesauce, and some other items. I am not  as experienced with canning. I do alot of freezing items. I would love to have a spinning wheel and loom to do my own weaving but finances dont allow us to. We live on one income and I try to make the best of what we have. We do buy items from auctions that help.

My next goal is to grow rye and my own wheat and oats. I would love to be able to be self sufficient within a year.We are putting in an outside woodstove to pipe heat in... Propane was killing us last winter and the Good Lord supplied a means to do it more efficiently.

Well I will tell more later..

Untitled Comment

Posted by Kitty on Friday, November 7, 2008 at 06:09 - Link

Welcome to the blogger. I hope you enjoy it here, I believe you will. Pickles and applesauce is about all I got accomplished in the canning area too. And if I was getting free milk, (I wish) I would be saving $520 + per year. Yep, two gallons a week at $5 a gallon. I never figured it out before, wow. And that is not me drinking any of it, LOL...........Kitty