I am definitely not a farmer

The beginnings of another blog

Posted on Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 07:10

I am not much of a blogger but with the findings of the spell check that is on the toolbar of my browser, I am feeling that this might be a little easier.  Too bad it wont correct my grammar too.

 

I figure that this blog may actually have a purpose.  I am going to tell about our experiences trying to homestead.  We have been trying to do small stuff for the past couple of years but until we bought the place we live at now, anything we did was mostly just for fun.

 

In 2003-2005 we knew we would like to homestead.  What a fun idea.  Watching homestead shows or videos, ah...  we could do that.(little do we know, I am sure)  The only problem was that we rented and had no money.  My wife for some reason thought it would be great to buy Chics...  So she bought a few with the kids...  They lived for a couple month and then became chew toys for our dog.  We tried again only smarter this time (or at least what we figured was smarter).  After the months inside the house in a box I built a light weight easy to move chicken coop out of 3/4 PVC pipes and chicken wire.  Worked pretty good and the Chickens live for a while until something managed to stretch open a hole in the side and have chicken al cart. 

 

My sister-in-law had this great idea to move out to Tennessee...  (what was she thinking???)  We had been looking to move but hadn't had any opportunities.  In my mind I had a line from Sacramento, CA to the White House and wanted to move some where above that line.  Tennessee is not above that line.  So we ended up moving to Tennessee.  I praised God that we at least had the opportunity.

 

After seeing Tennessee in 2005 I was very excited about living her.  In 2006 we bought a house on a rolling 10 treed acres with a good sized pond and several small structures.  Not the best place to try and homestead but certainly a beautiful piece of land and a good place for us to start to learn.

 

So the idea's begin to form.  I hope you enjoy this blog and reading about our endeavors to homesteading.

Welcome!

Posted on Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 08:17 by Purewater
I'd like to welcome your new blog here!

You do not need to be a "great blogger" to record your experiences and memories of your new homestead, and I am looking forward to what you will be sharing! You are off to a great start, already.

Welcome, Welcome!!!!

Posted on Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 08:29 by LittleHouse
How exciting for you to live on 10 acre's and start homesteading! I can't wait to hear what you all plan to do:)

Welcome!

Ma

Hey Geoff!

Posted on Friday, March 2, 2007 at 12:05 by HSBFrontPorch
Nice to have you joining us. Now I can find out all the details about what you all are doing. Jen keeps talking about you all hatching chicks. What kind are they? I was wondering if they were the meatbirds or just regular layers.

Someone gave us a bunch of hens. He told us about how he was getting all these eggs from them. Of course they had just molted and we haven't gotten nary an egg from those creatures. They were solid white and I thought they were white giants or something. A friend came over the other day and she says that they are the cornish cross that we use for meatbirds. GO FIGURE!

So now I'm wondering if we can shack the girls up with a fella and get some baby meatbirds out of the deal. No telling....

To HSBFrontPorch

Posted on Friday, March 2, 2007 at 08:52 by geoff
Hello! Your making me jump too far ahead. lol I am starting at the beginning and working my way to present. Figured that would give me a few things to blog.
We have Dark Cornish which are a lot different than Cornish Cross. From what I understand they are a duel purpose bird. Our Dark Cornish seem to be very smart. We have 13 Hens and are getting about 6 eggs a day. They were not laying when we got them so I put lights up with a cheep timer and made sure they had 15 hour days. Not sure if it was the lights or them just getting used to their new home but they started laying about two weeks after the lights went up.
We have incubated two sets of eggs now each set being 46 eggs. In the first batch only 6 hatched and 5 lived. In the second batch 24 hatched and 17 lived. If they make it past the 3rd day they seem very strong and live. We are working on our third batch now but you will have to wait till I blog to find out more.. hehehe
Our last Cornish Cross that we were trying to raise to breed finally died. I don't know if we will ever try that again. They are so dumb and this one seemed so unhealthy. It was the strongest out of the 25 we started out with.
I am thinking about getting some white egg layers.

Edited by geoff on Friday, March 2, 2007 at 08:54

Hey Geoff!

Posted on Saturday, March 3, 2007 at 10:53 by UnlikelyHomesteader
Thanks for the info. Leave it to me to get you skipping ahead in all of your blogging material. Ha! I'm just trying to figure out why these doggone hens aren't laying and if we can manage to get baby chicks and not have to place an order with a hatchery. ;)

I'm glad you & Jen are blogging over here. UnlikelyHomesteader is my personal blog (for obvious reasons) and yea that was me from the Front Porch. Sometimes I just get lazy going back and forth from sign ins. I noticed you didn't turn your RSS feed on yet. It's in your settings. Turn it on for all of us Blogline junkies.
~Nancy

RSS Feed

Posted on Saturday, March 3, 2007 at 07:57 by geoff
RSS feed is on. HTML Yes... Is that ok? I am so not up to date on RSS feeds although I used to have some programs to manage them.

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