The end of one chapter

Wow oh wow has it been a year. The last few days have been doozies.  We found out that one of our nieces had an accident and was on life support. Was being the word. She is off the ventilator but still unresponsive and has brain swelling.

I'm a bad news first kind of person. So as I sit here eating a few of the 82 peanut butter cookies I made yesterday drinking a gallon of sweet hot tea I will give you some good news.
We have some new additions to the homestead. Some new chickens when I say some I mean like 17. 7 of them are roosters and destined for the stew pot in the spring. We also got 7 new geese to help with the population of the freezer. Our 2 ducks are now massively out numbered and we will remedy that as soon as possible. My hope is when my female start laying her eggs I can slip them under a goose to hatch out. We had good luck with that this last summer, but the girls were inexperienced with the crows and we lost the babies.

We did get a truck this summer too. I am so happy with it. 4 wheel drive in Oregon is the only way to go, but that means another bill as we are trying to cut down on them. Its a catch-22.

The garden did produce well this year, but we froze a month earlier then we should have so a greenhouse or hoop house is on the list to get done this year. Pork chop (one of our freezer destined pigs) is growing well. Pigs on the pasture grow so much slower then pigs on commercial feed. We almost lost a pig too commercial feed last spring and haven't used it sense.
Christmas was good for the family this year. We have decided that we will be growing our own turkey for next year though. We are really trying to get more to having things from our homestead in the freezer and only needing the basics of groceries from the stores.

Well I think you are pretty well caught up on everything I can think of.

Rain

Well it finally happened. We got drenched with rain. It is a much needed relief from all of the dust and heat, but it will dry out to quickly and we will be a heat soaked dust bowl again. The show that came with the rain was awe inspiring. The lightning was so bright it would light up a whole room even with the lights on. The thunder shook the house a few times. It even wiped out the power for a good 8 hours during the night. Our lady bug is terrified of the dark and woke up screaming in the middle of the night because she couldn't see. She had lost her flashlight in her bed that is full of books and stuffed animals and couldn't find it anywhere. Luckily we found it within minutes of her waking up. She ended up on the couch with her light and bunny along with her dog. She was well taken care of. I wish I could say she went right to sleep but she didn't every so often you could see her light beam sweep around the walls.

The boys on the other hand can sleep through a monsoon right out their window....

In other farm news the pigs are finally shedding, they will end up losing their hair in time to grow it out for winter. The chickens have started molting. Our egg production has taken a serious beating. Some days I get no eggs at all.

We started an Amish bread starter and that is going well. Don't worry I won't send some to any unsuspecting innocents. I have found if I make it and throw it in the fridge and only take 2 cups each time I want to make bread then I'm not overwhelmed. I still follow the replenishing directions but I just put it in the fridge after about an hour of setting at room temp. We get about 2 loaves each time.

The dogs have been shedding. I think I vacuum at least 4 times a day. Between the dust before it rained and all the hair, lets just say it sometimes looks like the house has been abandoned. 

We have all the materials for the hay barn now. We just need the time to do it. That's an all hands on deck project.

The goats are looking awesome,  all sleek and shiny. They have been out grazing a lot this year. Really enjoying the run and play and eat till the burst moments.

Ok I think your almost all caught up. I need to go make some hungry farm kids some breakfast.

Be blessed.
Dusty Rose Homestead

Chores

Oh the chores never stop. I think they actually grow when it starts to thaw.
Grass seed thrown, seeds for the garden started, feet trimmed, pens cleaned.....
If your curious about just how many that is (which considering we are a small farm it's not that bad) we have
four pig pens
The rabbit cage (we had a whole pen of them but that's another story)
The goats pen
The chicken coop
The geese pen (ever try to get an egg from geese? Its not fun.)

We will be moving our three girls to the back pasture so they can run and play and just be happy pigs. We are moving the boars next to each other so that way they can talk as pigs do.

We have a hay barn to build, as much snow that we got this winter was not planned for. We made that mistake and now we won't make it again.

Fruit trees to plant and a garden to move. Flower beds to finish. Fencing to finish. We want to get the property completely finished fenced in this year. I want to get the gates up and my sign hung.

We have a milking parlor to build and a milker to buy.

We've been pricing sheds so we can start the farm store. That's what I really want to do and I'm getting excited about it.

The boys will be teenagers this year. So their daddy and I made a deal with them that we will get them a project to work on but they have to do extra chores to earn the money to put into it.

Oh come on already....

This snow has got to STOP. I mean really here we are almost the middle of April and its still going.

Snowy (the goose) had a nice little clutch of duck and geese eggs, but sense the snow hit the other night she gave up on them. So sad to sense she was about halfway through the whole thing. We did decided last night to pull her and ethels (the duck) eggs until this weather would be more reasonable. Meaning it would stop snowing every night.
Yes, we woke up to snow again. So much for having the things we need done before the heat hits. Running fence in the sun sucks but it will be done. Good thing we are getting so good at it.
I was able to hide some strawberries from the kids so I could try my hand at a strawberry tea bread recipe. I'll share it with you as soon as it gets made. With Easter in just a couple of days its the perfect time to try. Well on to boiling some eggs for the annual Easter egg hunt if I get it done now its one less thing to worry about. 😊

Blessings from Dusty Rose Homestead.

Spring.

What's that old saying?
Spring has sprung.
Well sort of. The tulips are poping up and the grass is getting green, but the snow can go away now. It snows then it melts and turns into a yucky mud.  We all have wellies thank goodness, but I'm so tired of the moisture. So tired of snow. We moved to Oregon to have different seasons and I'm ready for spring.
On another note ladybug had a birthday a few weekend's ago and got some money. She spent it in baby chicks. So we have six new babies chirping away at all hours, morning and night. They are cute though and she is happy with what she got so far. She was even nice enough to buy her boys some chicks that they wanted.
We spent alot of time on my honeys last day off planning things out. Sense our family is growing, not more just bigger. We need to move and expand the garden. We also looked at fruit trees so we could get an orchard going. I took on a side job to help get the things that will be extra and fruit trees is something on that list.

We got the boy piglets neutered finally. They were finally big enough. Our awesome vet didn't want to stress them any more when they were babies because their mama had died so we waited. That was an experiance. I never realized their wibblets were so BIG. Sorry just still in shock about that. They are healing nicely and have forgiven us. Treats helped with that. They are die hard green apple fans. Good thing we stocked up before this happened.
Everyone seems to be doing really well considering the weather being retarded. Even the kids are able to go out for a little while and play or do some of the projects they need or want to do.

Be blessed!
Dusty Rose Homestead