I have a confession to make. I am not a big fan of mowing a lawn. Oh sure, it was one of my first businesses when I was a kid, and I did plenty of it for my own family as well. I just don’t feel it’s a great use of my time, and I […]
With all of the yogurt and cheesemaking we do around here, we have a LOT of extra whey. If you’re not sure what whey is, there are actually two types of whey. Acid Whey: When you make cheese that uses lemon juice, vinegar, or citric acid to curdle the milk, the leftover whey is acid […]
There is a saying in the goat community – “Goats are like potato chips. You can’t have just one.” It is so true! We have definitely found that our herd has grown to more animals than we really need because it is so hard to decide to sell any. Mostly because of the children. Each […]
I’m not a big fan of our chickens in general, but I really don’t like roosters. Our biggest rooster is a Barred Rock and he is particularly annoying. He likes to run, as fast as he can, towards anybody that he thinks is inferior to him. Basically, anybody other than Dad and Colter. I recently […]
I have been experimenting with sourdough bread for about a year now. I’ve finally figured out how to consistently make a great loaf of bread that my family loves. If you’ve read the two previous sourdough posts you better understand the health benefits of sourdough. You also know how to feed your starter and keep […]
Building a house was not something our family had ever planned to do. But with the growth of Goat Milk Stuff, we needed a new farm and soaproom. And since the property we purchased did not have a house, we needed a house too! The construction project took almost two years from start to finish. […]
We’ve already given you the tour of our main barn, but that barn is only for the female goats (does) and baby goats (kids). We had to build two smaller barns for our bucks, dogs, chickens, and rabbits. This is the buck/dog shed. The concrete walkway leading to it is now lined by the female […]
In years past, we have spent many hours canning, dehydrating, fermenting, and freezing our fruits and vegetables. Lately, the children are eating more and more of the produce straight from the garden, so I find there is less need to preserve. Strawberries almost always go straight into everyone’s mouth. If there are extras, they get […]
Having access to our own fruit is absolutely wonderful. In our orchard we plant not only tree fruit, but berries as well. At the new house, we’re working on establishing our orchard. It’s still in the early stages and looks rough compared to my “dream garden“. But it will get there. Afterall, the first apple trees […]
In the past I’ve had a greenhouse. But to be perfectly honest, I always found it a lot of work and I never enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed gardening the rest of the year. Right now we just have our outside garden beds and we garden in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. Gardening […]
Jim and I have built many, many raised beds in our time. But for my “dream garden”, we had our contractor do the work! First we decided to make use of a low spot that was very conveniently located, but not good for much else. Brandyn broke out the spray paint and we talked about how wide […]
I have gardened for most of my life. It’s something I love and something I teach my children to love. Right now, the kids (especially Emery) do a lot of the work in the garden. But when I was designing my dream garden, I wanted to make sure that I would be able to maintain […]
Not only do we have goats and chickens, but we also have rabbits. We keep the rabbits because we use their manure in our vegetable garden. Periodically we let them breed and we get a litter of kits. We do this purely for the joy of playing with baby rabbits. They grow so quickly, […]
When people come to our house and see our eggs, they are generally very surprised by the variety. We have different colors and very different sizes. Most of our chickens lay brown eggs. Some of the brown egg laying breeds we have are buff orpingtons, barred rocks, black stars, and rhode island reds. White eggs […]
With this insanely cold winter we’re having, I’ve been even more excited than usual to get back to gardening. Gardening around here (zone 6) usually starts with my birthday. My birthday is St. Patrick’s Day, so March 17th is when I always try to get my cold weather seeds planted. It’s colder than normal this […]