Our Homestead is Growing

I know that I haven’t been posting a lot over the last few weeks but the Homestead here has been growing and as it grows my outside hours get longer and longer.   Our living expenses here are not very high but we pay the difference in hard work and time.

Our wood furnace is merrily keeping us warm and toasty in the midst of the Alberta Clipper.  Cutting, splitting and gathering wood for the furnace occupies a couple hours of each day.  We try to get ahead but with Randy’s disability, he can only do very little at a time.  It’s a combined effort and we do manage to stay ahead by a couple of days.  It’s actually work that I enjoy as the woods are beautiful and peaceful even in the cold winter months.

In addition to the normal every day work, we have decided to branch out into some family livestock.  I have had dairy goats for about a year and one of my does just gave birth to two of the cutest babies you will ever see.

Brand New Baby Goats

The mamma goat will provide us with milk and the babies will be some extra income for the farm.  The little brown and white one has already been sold and that will pay his mamma’s  upkeep for most of the year.

Our next project is the veal calves pictured below.  We will keep one of these babies and sell the other two when they get to be about 500 lbs.  The two that we sell will pay the feed bill for the one that we keep and he will provide meat for us for most of a year along with some for the rest of the family.

Big Boy

Foot Long

Foot Long got his name because he cost the same as a foot long sub from Subway.

JR

These babies are high maintenance right now.  They need to be fed 3 times a day from a bottle.  Just like any baby, they need to be kept clean and warm.  They are inclined to get upset stomachs in the first few days and have to be monitored to make sure they don’t get dehydrated.

Once they are old enough to start eating solid food, the milk will be gradually replaced with grass and grain.  By springtime, they will be eating primarily grass and from there until the time they are sold, they will be cost free.  We are guaranteed to have grass fed organic beef because we have raised it ourself.

The downside right now is that I am in the barn at 6 am which used to be my time to write.  By the time, I get the milking and feeding done, it’s time to start on other chores around the farm.  This is leaving me little time during the day to write.  I am working on changing my computer time to evening when it’s dark but it is going to take me a week or so to get in the swing of things.

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