Homesteaders unite!

[LizzzyJo]

Anybody out there trying to begin homesteading or grow your lifestyle? What's something that you did this year to advance your goals? Did you have any failures?

I had a few wins and some losses - my wins were doing meat chickens for the first time and making good money off of rabbit sales. My losses were getting too lazy to compost kitchen scraps (that the chickens wouldn't eat) and not canning a single thing! Agh!

How about you?

 

[Peaches Lee]

I am in no way a homesteader, but I was lamenting just this morning about how I grow this beautiful, large garden and don't can or preserve a thing from it!

So, this year, my goal is to improve that and save what I grow.

 

[AGeese]

I failed to save eggs for winter.... I have Heritage breeds rather than production birds.

 

[LizzzyJo]

I only have like 6 eggs left from my heritage breeds as well But I love my girls I’ve thought about the long-preserving idea with Lyme or whatever, but I know that my ick factor would prevail and I would avoid them.

I need to can more and freeze more!

 

[AGeese]

I hear you can oil eggs to preserve them longer. I assume this is what you would do if your eggs have been washed.

 

[Sally PB]

I tried water glassing for the first time this year. I'm out of eggs now, but I will definitely do it again. I just need to save more eggs to get through the winter. I'm counting this as a big win.

I have only one more jar of canned tomatoes in the basement that are NOT homegrown. I can 50-60 quarts every fall, and had a good enough crop that I didn't need to buy very many last August. Best I've done so far.

Next year, I hope we get some cherries from our trees. They'll be 4-5 years old, so any time now. Last year they had a lot of blooms, but didn't set fruit.

 

[SunriseChickers]

Hello! It seems this thread has fallen asleep a bit, but I couldn't help myself.

My family and I have never done a lot of homesteading, but this year is set to change that! We will be getting a brand new barn very soon, which will kickstart operations.
We've always tried to do a bit of gardening, but this year we're really stepping it up in terms of variety and plans for the produce. We've got quite the list of seeds. Unfortunately, when we did starts earlier this year, all of them died or failed to come up, except for one sunflower. Hopefully the next phase of starts has better luck. We tried eggshell starter "pots", and we think the soil was just too little and too dry, so lesson learned! We'd never used shells before. They sure we're cute. We've also expanded the useable garden space.
We've got new chicks, with even more coming in May, to bump our flock up to 14(after having lost all but two out of nine over time). We are also aiming to start with quail in a couple of months.
In another several months we are hoping to get some goats for milk(if my family allows me, I think I'll try my hand at making goat milk soap eventually).
We have a pasture that was mowed in February and we're just waiting for the milkweed to come up so we can pull(and eat!) the shoots in order to make the pasture horse safe.
We have fairly young Apple orchard that isn't quite on its feet yet, and some naturally occurring stands of blackberry cane that produce berries fantastically. We also have some black raspberries, and can even forage mulberries from the dozen+ trees just growing on our property. Lots of foraging opportunities here, come to think of it. Plenty of mushrooms, dandelions, and plantain for nice mid year salads.
I'm very excited for this new chapter of our lives and look forward to carrying these skills on with me when I have my own family someday! I can't wait.

 

[LizzzyJo]

Hello! It seems this thread has fallen asleep a bit, but I couldn't help myself.

My family and I have never done a lot of homesteading, but this year is set to change that! We will be getting a brand new barn very soon, which will kickstart operations.
We've always tried to do a bit of gardening, but this year we're really stepping it up in terms of variety and plans for the produce. We've got quite the list of seeds. Unfortunately, when we did starts earlier this year, all of them died or failed to come up, except for one sunflower. Hopefully the next phase of starts has better luck. We tried eggshell starter "pots", and we think the soil was just too little and too dry, so lesson learned! We'd never used shells before. They sure we're cute. We've also expanded the useable garden space.
We've got new chicks, with even more coming in May, to bump our flock up to 14(after having lost all but two out of nine over time). We are also aiming to start with quail in a couple of months.
In another several months we are hoping to get some goats for milk(if my family allows me, I think I'll try my hand at making goat milk soap eventually).
We have a pasture that was mowed in February and we're just waiting for the milkweed to come up so we can pull(and eat!) the shoots in order to make the pasture horse safe.
We have fairly young Apple orchard that isn't quite on its feet yet, and some naturally occurring stands of blackberry cane that produce berries fantastically. We also have some black raspberries, and can even forage mulberries from the dozen+ trees just growing on our property. Lots of foraging opportunities here, come to think of it. Plenty of mushrooms, dandelions, and plantain for nice mid year salads.
I'm very excited for this new chapter of our lives and look forward to carrying these skills on with me when I have my own family someday! I can't wait.

Sounds awesome!

 

[BeefQuesoritto]

I guess I'm sort of a homesteader. My wins for this year are the chickens and some quail. May have rabbits, too! I came real close to buying some dairy sheep, but then had to go deal with some car trouble that ate up that cash. Sad!

Don't really have a whole lot going on for now, as I'm on a broke college student type of budget. I'll have a windbreak started up and hopefully providing some relief from this crazy wind. Then I'll be doing a whole lot more outside. Can't wait!

I'm trying to get some native foods going on here too. I've been looking at the North American Ethnobotany Database and looking at the tribes I know used to live in the area, then cross referencing with the iNaturalist site to see if there's any research grade observations of the plant reported nearby to where I am. I've found a couple ornamental banana yucca plants this way! Can't wait until later in the season when I can harvest some fruit and seeds from them and from prickly pears. I've got this vision of a predator proof run bolstered with some sprawling prickly pear. Plus their fruit's pretty good, too.