Tag: homesteading

January- A Season of waiting…

February 2, 2019

Here at Splitrock January is for lack of better words stale, it is the month we hunker down to stay warm, the month we plan and reflect on the year before but mostly it’s the month of waiting.

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January can get cold here, frigid cold in our little valley in the highlands. We have seen -45 this January, school cancelled do to extreme cold. It is the month we keep the fires roaring, drink hot tea and get lost in good books, great conversations and our thoughts…mostly our thoughts.received_477177792792977.jpeg

January allows us time to reflect on the past year. Things we changed like the layout of the barn or the pig pen 3 times and not yet satisfactorily permanent. Things we did well milking our first time around, square-foot gardening and it’s abundant harvest. Things we royally failed at moving the chicken coop so it didn’t flood for the 3rd spring in a row ( which it will), doing the grand barn addition we planned and planned and planned….and put off save for a lean to off one side.Things we added Solar on the house only 10 days of generator power all month! A beautiful well natured cow, 2 horses a baby ( a human one). You win some you lose some you try again.20190202_174338.jpg

January is the month we make plans of the things we hope to do for this new year, Move the chicken coop!, add to the garden, fence the cow some good pasture. Dare I say a pumpkin patch is in the dream works. Raise some chicks and some ducklings, make more syrup. Dream realistically instead of outrageously ( at least out loud).Work out budgets and cash flow and time lines, scratch half the list and try again.20190113_150744~2.jpg

Mostly though I find we are stuck in waiting…. waiting for the goat to kid, waiting for the sow to farrow. Waiting at the window for the sun to peek out, for the temperature to rise. Waiting for there to be some color at the bird feeder, don’t get me wrong I love the chickadees ( we should have called this place chickadee ranch) but a little red or even a little blue  to stir up all the grey would be awfully nice right about now. We wait for the seed order to arrive, for the chicks to start hatching for the pantry to be stacked again. We wait for ours plans to unfold, for the windows to be open and the days to get longer, the hens to lay again. Waiting to start the work in February milking, pruning, wood stacking….A time to sit in the waiting and reflect, to remember we are blessed.

In the morning quiet

March 13, 2018

The silence is broken as the alarm sounds of in the darkness that is our bedroom.

It is 5:45 one of my days off as I have this week booked off from work. I have slept in till this point as normally I am already at work.

I let Amanda stay in bed this morning as she normally gets up to milk the rest of the week (even on days that I am home she typically gets up to milk and let’s me sleep in a little longer or just so we can hang out while we milk).

Our youngest got up to help me with milking (he enjoys the homestead life).

Once again the silence of the night is broken as the snow crunches beneath our feet as we walk towards the barn with milking bucket in hand.

As I enter the barn I am met with quiet darkness which is broken with a bleat from Millie and some answering bleats from her kids (who are in a separate pen over night).

I lead Millie over to the milking stand. She steps right up as she has become accustomed to our new morning routine. The sound of her hooves upon the wood disturbs the silence even further.

Our youngest is sure someone is at the barn door but it is just Blaze in the next stall over scratching his head on the partition wall.

Spray down Millie’s teats and udder to make sure she is clean the sound of the spray is loud in the stillness.

Pat her dry and place the milk bucket under her and gently milk her into a strip cup to check that everything looks good and she is healthy. The youngest takes a turn stripping out some milk from Millie into the bucket. We switch who is milking as his attention wains. The sound of the fresh milk against the side of the stainless steel bucket has a satisfactory ring to it and is almost relaxing as I get into a rhythm.

Millie relaxes as the swelling in her udder receds. She starts to munch away on her grain chewing loud enough that you know what she is doing even though her head is out of the circle of light produced from the flashlight.

Milk collected the youngest and I reunite Millie with her kids. Headed back to the house the snow crunches under our feet once again.

The house is quiet as everyone else is still sound asleep. The clock ticks on the wall. We get out the filters and the funnel. Put a filter into the funnel/strainer and pour the fresh milk through it sounds almost like coffee dripping in a brew cycle.

Put the milk into the fridge and wash everything up.

The youngest decides to go back to bed. I sit down to drink a cup of coffee.

Finally some quiet in the morning.

Tapped in!

March 6, 2018

Sugar bush time is upon us! I have tapped our pipeline (which is a first for us). Up until now we have always used buckets. Mind you up until now we have lived in town. Last year we tapped with just a few buckets because that is what we had on hand.

This year we will use those same few buckets and the small pipeline we have set up. The reason we went with a pipeline for sap collection is simply less work and less loss of sap. Buckets can only hold so much and then they overflow (this isn’t a major issue if you have time to collect throughout the day). Where a pipeline pipes the sap to a larger tank so as long as you size it accordingly to the amount of taps, in theory you won’t lose a drop of sap.

Now we didn’t tap lots just a large handful as this year we have been busy doing all sorts of things and there is no point in putting out so much effort to not collect the benefits of it. So by limiting our taps we can add to it next year and the year after and continue to do so until we reach the number of taps that we decide we are able to do and willing to do.

This will be an interesting year as we have a better boiling system (Thanks Dad). I will highlight the evaporator system we have when we start boiling in a separate post.

Happy sugaring everyone!

Milk…it is a journey

March 4, 2018

Well this morning we milked Millie for the first time. We have stripped her out here and there just to make sure she was used to the idea and to make sure that the kids were able to get the milk that they needed.

To get to this point has been a journey.

Last year we got a miniature horse (who isn’t a mini now but not a pony…probably a class all of his own… if you remind me I will write a post about that another time lol). Now you can’t have a horse (mini or pony or whatever he may be) and not let him have a friend. So we got a few bottle baby goats. We had them wethered (castrated) and brought them home. We had them castrated so we wouldn’t be dealing with a Billy/buck who can be real jerks. After a few months it was evident that one of the two had been missed for castration.

What do you do with an intact Buck? You find him a girlfriend. Along came Millie. We had chickens at this point and I know we had some bees bumbling around…so after some conversations I am sure that the goats must of had with the birds and the bees…we ended up with kids…

Now that we have kids we have a supply of milk.

We have built a milk stanchion. (I found plans for this at fiascofarm.com).

This stanchion is a well thought out plan all the designers ask is for a donation for using the plan (which I still need to send to them).

We have left the kids with Millie up to this point. Now that we are going to be milking her we will be separating them overnight. This allows her to bag up so we have a supply of milk in the morning to tap into. Once we are done we put her back with the kids for the day and we will separate them again in the evening.

This morning we went out and put Millie on the milk stanchion and washed her uder and teats with a wash solution. A solution that Amanda made from a recipe she found from 104homestead.com.

We put the milk bucket under her and started milking…if only it was that easy. She was a little nervous being a new thing for her but with a few close calls of hooves and buckets we managed not to loose any milk.

We came in from the barn complete with a milk pail of fresh milk and smiles upon our faces.

We filtered the milk through a stainless milk strainer with filter that we purchased on line at shenandoahhomesteadsupply.com.

And now we have milk cooling in the fridge.

This is just a quick overview of how things went. There is more to the process of milking and at some point I may write a detailed post about how to milk. There is lots of good information around sometimes it is just weeding it out.

We have used fiasco for information as well as https://www.weedemandreap.com

Once again there is always information to be had you need to sift through the information and make the best choice for yourself and for your family and animals. I don’t know everything even with Google.

Have a great day everyone and happy milking!

It has been a while…

July 3, 2017

Well I suppose it has been a while…you might be thinking that we dropped off the face of the earth…but that is not the case…we have been busy here on the homestead. We have been working on settling in with homestead life. 

We have moved the pigs from where the garden site is located to a new location where they will most likely spend the rest of their summer until they fatten up for our winter meat. 

I have built a new generator shed (roof and posts) I plan on wrapping it with straw in the near future as that will dampen the sound of the generator while it runs. Currently the generator is housed over 100 feet away from the house. It will now be closer to 30 feet from the house (getting moved tomorrow if everything goes smooth).

I have passed my rough in electrical inspection of the electrical work I have completed. I rewired the complete house. I hope to have my final done this week. That means once that is complete I am able to start buttoning things back up in the house. 

We have a banty hen sitting on a clutch of eggs so in about 21 days from now we should have a bunch of chicks. Now we don’t want to have a huge flock of banty chickens however we want her to learn to sit and brood a clutch as she will be one of our incubators. In the long term plan we plan to use them to incubate the silver’s eggs.

We have been getting and eating quail eggs from our quail. I hope to build them a new run shortly. Their eggs taste good it is just a lot of work to do anything fancy with them.

We have planted part of our garden and will expand on it for next year. This year has been too busy and too wet to get everything in on time with starting from scratch and with other stuff that has come up. 

I know reading this that some of it doesn’t seem like much (some of it is a whole lot on it’s own) but between working full time and commitments to family, friends, and events on top of all of that I feel like we have been busy. Real. Busy…

I will try to post more again as we settle into our new crazy and find ourselves again. 

Until the next time…happy trails…

“Sit tall in the saddle, hold your head up high keep your eyes fixed where the trail meets the sky and live like you ain’t afraid to die and don’t be scared just enjoy the ride” – Chris Ledoux

Quest for power….. part 1

April 10, 2017

I am going to apoligize now if this post gets a little long, so far we have learned lots, and had quite the adventure in the process.

We looked at this off grid paradise in December, covered in snow we went home that evening knowing 2 things.

1) We had to have it, it was the perfect mix of highlands rocks, flat fields and an abundance of water. The cozy house would accomadate our family of 5, and it was already off grid so we didn’t need to try and convert it.

2) We knew the 3500 watt generator wouldn’t meet the things we knew we needed for ourselves and we would need to upgrade to constant power and still maintain our desire of being self sufficient and thus produce our own.

This story our dear friends is the start of our journey for point 2.

We researched some and then some more and then lots more. We talked to people who are  living off grid, we talked to people with solar micro fit attached to the grid. We talked to Haliburton Solar and Wind(HSW) the solar guy himself.

HSW sent us a plethora of information the most important being how on earth to complete the dreaded load analysis. ( I will warn all you wanna be and future off griders this is at least a solid 2 week task) 

Step one you make a list of everything you own that uses power and I really mean everything even the things you don’t use often or forget you have ( your sons remote control recharging truck that you had safely packed away until spring). Then you make a list of all the things you may possibly want in the future ( because let’s face it spending thousands of dollars on power to then find out it won’t run the fun new gadget you just picked up is going to suck)…don’t forget every light bulb you use!

Step 2 figure out how many hours per day you run each item ( like when was the last time you notice your fridge kicks on approx every 1.5 hours for 13.574 minutes?)

Step 3 figure out how many running watts each item uses which has about 3 different mathematical ways I will allow you to Google yourself ( math isn’t my thing)

4. Does it surge? If so how many watts does it surge at? And how long? ….more math.

We complete this project and luckily enough for us the wonderful team at HSW sent us a fancy little excel sheet that totalled all our running watt, surge watt, daily running watt hour math stuffs for us. I send the fancy sheet back and presto that part was easy.

HSW worked out a beautiful system for us and it came with a beautifully unattainable price tag….. Back to the drawing board. After cutting everything we could cut good bye lava lamps, hair dryer, 2 light bulbs in 1  room, and forgoing the actual solar panels for now, We have a system design that fit our budget and our needs.

It’s a simple little plug and play kind of system, 8 batteries holding 21 kilowatt hours of power a tiny 3500 watt inverter and the current generator we already own. 

Our plan early spring installation…….

Blazing saddles!

March 15, 2017

So over night we find ourselves full into homesteading! We have goat kids (both bottle kids) living in the front hall. We felt the loss of piglets (to coyotes) a few days before we were to pick them up.

We are a homestead, to me that means that most things we bring onto the homestead needs to have a purpose, needs to add to our life, needs to have a job. 

We have chicks coming end of the month…they will contribute through eggs and meat, as well as keeping insects down around the outside of the garden and will help out as they range eating pests that others will not.

Goats can provide meat, dairy, and cashmere. They also will browse through the brush rather than graze (so this may be a good introduction into what may become a staple animal here on the homestead).The two we have are both castrated so one will become meat or go to the sale barn to offset cost of the other. The other has a job to do which will be a long term job of keeping our newest addition company.

That’s right we have added a new member to our homestead! We picked up over the weekend a large miniature horse. I laugh myself at the sound of that. I never intended on owning a mini. However we have one. He is a good boy. He is about 5 years of age and has been loved greatly by the place he called home until this past weekend.

His name is Blaze.

Now I never intended to own a mini because what do you do with a mini? They are small you might even say they are mini…however cute they are I don’t intend to feed a hat burner for nothing. So this mini horse has a job once he is broke to drive (he is broke to ground drive he just hasn’t been hitched yet). 

His job will be two fold. 

First he will teach our kids how to drive, as well as horsemanship. This is a good job for a mini. They read body language just like a larger horse. They respond the same. They are less intimidating for smaller children to get their experience with leading and picking feet up and the basics of horse care.

His second job will be to haul out firewood from the bush. Firewood that will heat our home in the winters…firewood that will be used to boil sap in the sugar bush…and firewood for sale and for camp fires around home when we visit with company. 

I look forward to seeing what he can do and to the enjoyment he will bring to our family.

Busy balancing the busyness

February 27, 2017

Life here on the homestead has been busy. Most people can relate to bring busy.

I have been busy at work due to the amounts of snow we have been “blessed” with this year. I have been busy with bedrooms (the house came with one finished bedroom and a few that were in various states of being started or being completed). So I have added framing, drywall, mud and paint. It has been busy and that’s okay. It is an important task that needs to be done for all of our families sanity. We love each other dearly but we all need our space. We all need a spot to retreat and to regroup. So we have been making it a priority to acomplish these rooms so we can help create a better balance for our family life.

Part of this has been a hard struggle for me.  I can be focused on getting the task done and not want to be bothered by the kids and therefore lose out on teachable moments. One reason for moving to the homestead is so we can speak into our children’s lives and to equip them with tools and skills to succeed in life. This means that even if I might be able to get this done sooner on my own it might not be the right thing to do. So…I have had to remind myself to include them so they can learn. What better time to teach some simple skills by involving them in finishing their bedrooms.  

In number ones bedroom the screws in some parts of the closet aren’t burried quite deep enough that you will notice them for years to come (he put them in on his own) some he got perfect, some I fixed and some I didn’t as a reminder to both of us down the road that we all learn somewhere, and it might not be perfect but you can improve over time. 

Number two helped measure what cuts we needed to make for sheets of drywall to be hung…not sure how many extra cuts I made or how much extra time I spent going over how to measure.  But in the end it was worth it. Number two has learned some skills and learned that we need to stick through it and that we aren’t all perfect off the top but that we need to be taught and practice our skills to get better at them. 

All the kids have come up with their own ideas of how they would like to paint their rooms here is number two’s finished paint.*

We haven’t started on Number three’s bedroom yet. However Number three has more interest in helping with construction even though younger it is his personality. And he has always been this way.  I remember roofing a friends house a few years ago. The house was just behind the school so number one and two would walk over after school and play outside until Amanda came to get them while I continued my days work. Number three was in Daycare, Amanda would pick him up and come see the progress of the roof and take the other children home. One of these times she came up on the roof to talk to me and see where things were at. So while I was talking to her I heard a small voice asking what could he hammer! Looking over I saw number three standing on the roof holding a hammer, he had climbed the ladder by himself because he wants to be involved in the job in the work at hand. We calmly talked with him and got him safely down on the ground again.  The other children said later that they didn’t realize they were allowed up on the roof. It didn’t even occur to them to try it out. Number three is our risk taker who is ready to plunge into whatever you would allow him to (if your ready for it or not).

I am so glad to see our children learn new skills and confidence in their ability to learn new things. They have all been adjusting well to these changes in our life here on the homestead. I have been learning to balance getting it done and getting it done a little slower but empowering our children through the process. I think it is worth the wait. 

Amanda is so much better at having them involved in the things she does (I think it is a mom thing) than I am.  Thank you Amanda for doing that and reminding me of the importance of taking the time to do that.

And so we continue to be busy balancing the busyness with priority of enrichment of our children’s lives compared to the speed we could accomplish the task at hand.

*I will post pictures of the other bedroom paint schemes when they are finished.

Shane

Farm aches….already 

February 18, 2017

I love pigs!

We had a little pot bellied when we lived in town and I adored her. I mean that cute kissable snout how could you not.

So evidently pigs are in our farm plan- year 1. We looked and researched and found the ideal breed for our heritage farm- Berkshires on the critical list according to 2015 numbers from rare breeds Canada conservation with less then 35 sows being registered a year. Its a dark pig so not prone to sunburn, docile in nature , excellent meat quality and adaptive to different surroundings. Yup that sounds like our pig. 

In January before we moved I started the search purebred berkshire piglets, something weaning early spring. Oh the joy when I found just what I was looking for, born Dec 4th 2016 ready to go mid February ” Shane look that even gives us 3 weeks to settle in!” We dicussed back and forth and placed a deposit on 3 gilts 2 for the freezer and 1 for love …oh I mean breeding. I’ve been counting down the days until we get to pick them up.

The next challenge….. Where to put them in February on land we have never seen without snow that is currently waist deep? Well we have this.


It has alright bones and a steel roof it will get us through to spring. We purchased boarding for the sides, house wrap to keep the drafts out, plywood and 2x4s to make a floor off the ground.

Then I researched and researched feed settled on a premade organic for now, got a fun ball for boredom and was all set.

Saturday is our day and I am counting them down…At least I was until Thursday.

Thursday I got a message from the breeder and my heart sank alittle. Our piggies are coming from the Barrie area, they were born outdoors in weather similar to ours an ideal situation, the Barrie area however is struggling with a slight coyote issue. And alas our livestock isn’t even here and already we are dealing with predators. We lost our little piggies to a pack of coyote on Tuesday night. 

My exciting Saturday has now been put off until spring, nicer weather and new stock. 

 We are experiencing our first farm-ache.

We made it!

January 22, 2017

After a long day of impatiently patient waiting and a day and half of slugging we are here.

There is still lots to do currently everything is literally just thrown in the door.

And the generator won’t start so we are bucketing in water.

But the fires are warm, the dogs are beyond happy, the coyotes are serenading us. And tonight I get to sleep on a bed instead of the floor. 
It already feels like home.