Season Of Dreaming

The spring seed and chick catalogs are arriving my friends. All the temptation!

My daughter gets as many hatchery, seed and plant catalogs as I do…possibly more. At 6 years old she really has the dreaming aspect down pat. And also the planning as well. She wanted to know how long her Cochin hen will lay before she slows down so we went on an egg laying information research spree while my preserves and canner came to readiness. From what we read; her hen will slow down to 50% of her laying capacity around age 5 so my daughter wants to get a Standard Cochin rooster in 4 years and try to breed her for her second generation hen. My Faverolle is the same age so I am thinking I will have to split the hens and get a Mahoghany Faverolle rooster for her at the same time or fairly close.

My daughter has also settled on the next chicken breed she wants to try and big surprise-Mama wants this one too for the same reason-it is Marans, she isn’t sure yet which flavor but dark eggs are the goal.

This would of course be after we move…to that undefined place in the future. My mother has no interest in having any roosters or breeding anything really. So it is not something we can do here. This is also contingent on a) the hens living that long, because we all know predators are out there b) the 6 hens I got coming with us instead of staying with my mom’s 6 she got from North 40. And c) My now 6 year old holding her obsession for 4 more years. She has held it for several years already so chances are good. Oh, and d) being able to find the roosters and Marans when the time comes. Perhaps if we had an incubator we could order hatching eggs? Hmm…talk about season of dreaming lol

Then there are all the plants and seeds….aaagh…I am looking for sorrel starts come spring or seeds as I love eating it. I want to set up a compost pile for ongoing composting. First thing upon thawing we have to get that chicken coop up. It froze solid as we tried to put it up and has been solid since. Fencing in the run and starting to plan a lean to roof off the side of the coop for my rabbit cages. I could only hope and pray there will be rabbits in those cages while we live here. Me and the kids eat rabbit but my parents and sister are not in to it…like they think it akin to eating your cat or dog. Eating a pet mentality. Yup. I won’t eat a cat or dog or horse but everything else is fairly open season.

My mother isn’t totally against starting a small garden so we will likely have one…practice for when I have my own place she says 🙂 I am down with that! The kids love gardening as well. We just have to deer proof the yard…which will be challenging as it has to look nice and deter those deer. Otherwise it is a futile waste of time effort water and seeds. We have a huge in town deer population. Seriously. Year round with a mass of gorgeous bucks around every corner hunting season and on into breeding season.

I also plan to transplant my rhubarb and my mother’s out of pots and into the ground so they are happier. And after reading about asparagus being an arsenic magnet and it being a possibility to get arsenic poisoning if it absorbs to much and you eat it…well let’s just say we need to move the asparagus we planted last year to be safe.

What are you dreaming of as those catalogs hit your hands?

6 out of 12

We had a 6 egg day yesterday! That is pretty exciting considering we have 12 chickens.

The first 6 were gotten in summer and starting to lay before snow fell. The second 6 were gotten a month or more later due to a local feed store mix up and a little paper “Coupon” with a chicken sketch my mother brought home to my daughter when she brought home the first 6 chickens from North 40. She told my daughter it was good for any one chick she wanted any breed etc. My 5 year old had been obsessed with chickens since age two when she met my late Grandfather’s tiny egg layer flock. So she had been watching chicken videos and I read her magazines and kids books with chickens and…naturally? She had picked out Standard Cochins as the breed she wanted and it took forever and an amount of failure and mishap to get her her Silver Laced Cochin chick. Along with the 4 Welsummers, and single (supposed to be a Salmon but is actually a potentially iffy marked Mahoghany) Salmon Faverolle chick that made up our second 6 chickens. I think it is safe to say we are both thrilled to see those eggs appearing!

Sammy the Faverolle, and June the very dark Welsummer-her black is actually iridescent green toned-so pretty!

There is something so very satisfying about getting eggs from your own flock. Buying from a local with a laying flock in definitely cheaper then having your own chickens. Once you factor in the coop, food, bedding etc. But the satisfaction level cannot be beat!

Why Farmstead?

Why Farmstead? Why not Homestead or Farm?

I tossed this question around in my head for quite some time. Homestead implies a more self sufficient place, a balance of garden and livestock to support your family, certainly not at all a bad thing! I do not know what our future place may look like; I am saving to buy it and know the area I want, and I feel like having an existing living structure would be best, be it barn, trailer, mobile home, cabin or house. I have no building experience and building a home by myself with just me and the kids seems like a fairly illogical choice at this time. But beyond that I am pretty fluid. I wouldn’t mind having acres to work with, my son wants pigs and cows and my daughter wants a horse so having a pasture would certainly be nice. Having land outside town limits frees up so many restrictions on having livestock so that would be great.

And yet, my family lives in those town limits; being close to them would be wonderful. The town is also the most likely place to get and maintain a steady job instead of living off unstable contract work. So living close would be great. That leads to the next question; what about urban homesteading? An Urban Homestead is doing it on a small-to-tiny scale within city or town limits. I had always found this idea fascinating-how much people could do with just their backyard-how inspiring! I can definitely get behind that idea! Though I must admit, I do not see why those same principles that make urban homesteading so fascinating to me could be applied on a larger scale.

So that brings the next question: why not call this future place a Farm? Well, I don’t know if it will be one. Farm bring up a mental image of acres rolling pastures and numerous outbuildings full of animals and tractors surrounding a white farmhouse. What are the chances of that being something I could afford for my first house/land/home purchase? Pretty unlikely. So what to call this dream? I was leaning towards homestead…but the thought of jumping right in and calling it that honestly is a little daunting when you think about all the facets of aiming for self sufficiency. Couldn’t I just ease into it? Dip my toes and gradually work towards the full monty? I wanted a name I loved for this blog, to document my goals and progress to making it reality instead of a hopeful someday dream. Mostly because I think better in writing and track life with lists, so written word sure helps! And partly…because I have been in a place in my life where this was the farthest impossible seeming dream. If I could inspire someone else in that place in life to dream big and work to get it, how could I not want to do that? This Post by Thoughtful Food helped lay all this term comparison out there in a much more pared down logical way and introduced me to the term “Farmstead” let us look at their definition for a moment.

“Farmsteading: Producing food to support your family and for sale. Think the farmer with a part-time or full-time non-farming job.”

Okay, doesn’t emphasize size or location or goals…sort of freeing and open to interpretation. Yes I can go with that! My goal is a better, healthier life for my family. Growing food and raising our meat. Am I opposed to the idea of raising market crops or having a farmers market stand or booth? Certainly not, my daughter wants to sell eggs from her chickens, and my son wants those cows, pigs, and has talked about having an apiary for honey and the possibility of selling it. Toss in my lifelong love of rabbits and knowing there is a meat rabbit market in my area…well sounds like we have a good dream cooking right? And this is the story of why I chose Farmstead.

Do you have a name for your place? What did you choose and why? Leave a comment and let me know, I love hearing the stories of others about how they chose their place’s name!

The Ms.

Savory Sausage and a Happy Find

So several years ago I stopped by a thrift store/resale shop to browse and I came across a complete manual cast iron sausage grinder! *Happy Dance* it isn’t a higher end brand or fancy really but it has a great size grinder plate/die for standard size ground meat. I was so excited I cleaned it immediately in bleach water and soap and tried it out that very night! I decided to try my hand at some sausage with what I had available and it turned out delicious, extremely moist and in general-a fabulous success with my family, and me as well I will admit. I know these may be odd measurements but I winged it and added what I had after weighing it and it came out great!

The Savory Sausage Recipe

14.6oz hickory smoked bacon

1lb 11.5oz boneless pork chops

1 huge honeycrisp apple, cored

5 tsp Weber roasted garlic & herbs seasoning

5 tsp onion powder

3 tsp Johnny’s Seasoning Salt

2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Grind your meats and your apple, mix in your seasonings and fry in patties or how you would any loose ground meat. This turned out savory; not really breakfast sausage like, but it would be good for both breakfast and dinner.

If you try this recipe leave a comment below and let me know how it went, did you make any adjustments? What did you serve it with?

Happy Cooking!

The Ms.

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me! I am a single mom of 3 children. I grew up a bit wild and a bit lazy in a very rural area in Washington, moved to the Willamette Valley for my teens and early 20’s. Got married, had kids and got divorced. Moved back to that rural area into my parents house with them and my kids. I am now trying to get back to basics, work much harder, slowly learning an heirloom way of life so that I can sustain my family with good old fashioned values and skills. This is my way of documenting our slow journey to a better life while living with my parents. If I can do it, you can too!

I intend this to be a sort of journal of progress-trials and tribulations. I have tried various platforms for the same thing and have found this one to be the easiest. That being said, I didn’t update the others much and they faded fairly quickly even though life certainly didn’t stop. Part of that I attribute to my marriage falling apart and partly to being a mother of 3 young children. Life happens to us all right? No stopping it. I am hoping this will illuminate goals and dreams to work towards for me and help track the progress a long the path to finding my way to a better life with my children.

Along the way, my mother brought home 6 chicks: 2 Brown Leghorns, and 4 Americanas. And a hand drawn “Coupon” for my 5 year old daughter-who is completely chicken obsessed-to get any one chick of her choice. And that led to an order with our local feedstore for a Silver Laced Standard Cochin chick, a Salmon Faverolle chick, and 4 Welsummer chicks. As of now, the first 6 are laying sporadically and all of the chickens are ready to transition out of the make do coop we built. I will try to take pictures of it and update on the progress of building the final chicken coop and run as we do it. I am also hoping *fingers crossed* that eventually I can get rabbits again. I got rid of my meat rabbits during my divorce. I had to reduce stress at the time so it made good sense. My parents and sister don’t eat rabbit and have no desire to eat rabbit soooo…while I would love to have a breeding pair to work with and fryers to practice deboning and cooking different ways; I am not allowed to have any at this point, though I do have a lovely cage stockpile going for that miracle day where it might change. Cross your fingers for me? I would appreciate it certainly!

Are you on a journey as well? Leave a comment below telling me about it and how you found me.

The Ms.