Its been a while..

I'm trying to get back to posting again, and just haven't had the time or initiative to write in some time.

I'm sorry I haven't posted and I know I have some readers quite often but just haven't felt like writing; which, is the entire reason I could never monetize my blog. But that is far and between anything at this point.. So let me catch you up to speed.

We bought the farm, got animals, and attempting a more simple life.. the garden was a big flop this year.. perhaps next year it will be better, I've been dropping fertilizer on it often from the chickens and rabbits the last 2 months.

Chickens completely quit laying because of some night visitor (the sad side of this is that the person took my porcilin eggs and then brought them back the following night, not just once but 3 times) that was stealing eggs, and we had no eggs for about 2 months. And if you don't know, its just so horrible to have to eat store bought eggs once you have been eating eggs that you have collected from your own chickens..

The same visitor took 4 full grown turkeys as well.. Everyone as in neighbors around here keep trying to say its coyotes; however, what they don't see is that a shoulder high fence was pushed all the way to the ground at a fence post which I had to disconnect and pull back up. Also there were no signs of struggle and no feathers spread about.. it was almost like they were completely abducted and never existed, an animal attack would not be like that.

Anyways, time to get ready for work.. Have a great day!!

~B

Working the land still

I still have not gotten as far as I wished I would, in the last 2 weeks we have lost a car due to the transmission going out however after a fee days of prayer, those prayers were answered and we have a running car that will get Sandi back and forth to her jobs. I set the tiller on fire, I had just gotten it to run and was going good then it bursted into flames that were a few feet high. I still have not gotten the garden in; however, I did manage to get seven 12 ft rows of corn planted, 5 mounds of watermelons and also 3 mounds of pumpkins planted too. I hope to soon have some others planted soon as well since the rain should have my ground wet enough that I can get some tines down into it. I'm using a garden weasel pro claw so its very time consuming.

The chickens are getting bigger and smarter, the bunnies are bigger too. Also one of our other rabbits had babies Thursday, but out of the 3 she had on one survived. She was a first time momma so I'll let her slide this time  but if the next ones are the same way then I'll need to have a different breeder I'm guessing. I'm writing this over breakfast right now, and finally the rain has stoped so I can go out and take care of the animals without getting wet..I will try and get some newer pictures posted later today.
Take care
~B

Winter is back with a vengence

Cold cold days, been busy working a lot lately and just haven't felt up to posting anything as of late. 2 days ago I woke up with my knee giving me lots of issues and was in a lot of pain and went ahead to work anyways... Oh the pain! But I still felt with it. Yesterday on the other hand, I could barely walk and I kind of recognized the pain a little with the pressure making the pain subside a bit and hurting more when pressure was released... Needless to say I spent about 2 1\2 hours in the hospital ER just make sure it wasn't anything more serious than it was. With the grace of God, its the disease that He has blessed me with, gout and can deal with it. Its keeps me in check and causes me to live a somewhat healthy lifestyle. It is very painful when it flares up and I would not wish it on my worst of enemies, but I can deal with it through the Grace of God and through the many homeopathic remedies that I seemed out in the past. Luckily I use these quite often because as it seems with the dark past of my ex wife who was a drug seeker, I too was tagged and I'm typically not prescribed narcotics and I am actually glad for this because it makes me more reliant on God to take me through the pain that I have been given. Anyways, yesterday I missed work because of the tremendous pain and could not even bend my knee, today I can bend my knee and no pain but I am completely snowed in by 6 inches of snow on our little farm with a quarter mile from the nearest cleared road. Ironically our "private drive" is plowed by the Amish man that has the saw mill at the end of our "private drive" and he does it so his customers can get to him, but he hasn't done it yet..

Our bunnies are doing great, we bred JoJo and Rosey back on valentines day and are expecting babies on or around the Ides of March, and plan on breading one of the other girls about that time as well and then will wait another month and breed the other one, this way we dont have tons of rabbits ant the same time.  I still dont have the other hutches built as of yet and am still debating on how I want to build them as of yet.

Monday I went and looked at chicks to see what was available and how much they would cost me.. I'm looking at about $24 for 6 chicks and thinking we will go with closer to 12 to start out with so that we have a better chance to have more pullets that roosters.. I still need to build the coops and had planned on starting on that had it been warmer this weekend, I planned on going to and talking to the guy who owns the saw mill at the end of our drive to see how much a load of rough cut would cost me, but it seems I can never catch him working on my days off. Looks like I may just end up having to buy lumber at one of the lumber places at a higher cost :-(  but it is what it is. I know for a fact I can build something similar to what is sold at some of the stores for over $1000 for less than half the cost.

Looks like that's all I have for today..
God bless you all, and have a wonderful day
~ B

Spring Cleaning

Today has been warm and so we have been cleaning around our little farm. We have 2 existing barns on the property and we put our rabbits in one of them for now. The people before us that lived here had horses and didn't take care of the barn which was full of manure which was dried for the most part, so today we went out and cleaned the majority of it.
   We cleaned out the rabbit hutches and feed them, as well as made sure everything was clean for them. I believe I will build all new hutches and design them so that they will be a lot easier to clean and give us better access to the rabbits as well.

We plan on also having chickens soon as well and I will need to start building the coops for them soon before we get them. I really cant wait to have fresh eggs all the time and cant wait to have our little farm become more and more self sustaining. some of the next things we are also planing on is getting other set ups for power as well. We get a lot of wind out here often so I am really thinking of putting in a couple windmills perhaps and possibly even some solar power. we have gotten our power down to about $10 or less per day and I'm thinking it will be even lower in the summer.

Today I also took my bike out (it was Christmas present from work for going to the Christmas party) and rode it to the post office which is about a mile from our house, so its not a long ride but was a nice one. the wind is only blowing today enough to make it a little hard to ride especially for some one as out of shape as me.. but at least I'm going to start getting back in shape by riding.

New Beginnings...

There's been a lot going on in the last few months. First off we moved to a piece of land that we are are buying and are working to turn it into a "farmstead". that being said, we now have livestock .. Rabbits to be exact. we answered an add about a breading pair that was being given away and received them plus 2 more that they didn't know what they were cause they just had been too busy to mess with them. a few days after receiving the rabbits we found that the other two were also females, so it looks like we now have a complete breeding set for right now.. We will be hoping to get another male for breeding out of the new kits when we breed them this time around.

We have worked a lot on the house since we have been here, doing such things as replacing floors, rerunning electricity, and lots and lots of cleaning. I only was able to cut the grass on one half of the front yard before the weather started turning cold and wet, so first warm dry day and i will again start mowing the yard both front and back. there is a whole lot more to be done, but it is now our home and I fully plan on retiring here and be able to enjoy the rest of my life on our little farm.

We love getting to see the sun rise every morning

and the spectacular sunsets as well