{Out the Front Door: An occasional series featuring snapshots and snippets of homestead life, right out our front door.}
Spring has officially sprung in NE Missouri. The grass is growing, the whippoorwills are calling, and the ticks are crawling. In the upper garden, overwintered garlic is coming up strong, and I’ve started a row each of fava beans, peas, and a variety of my favorite spring greens.
This year we experimented with a rye cover crop. It grew marvelously, and we just initiated the process of tilling it into the soil – by hand, starting with a digging fork! You can see the overturned beds in the photo below. Now I’ll let it sit for a week or two before hoeing it into the soil.
In the lower garden, I am attempting to remove every square inch of this highly invasive grass. Mostly, we’re using cardboard and the oh-so-abundant cow barn bedding (straw/hay/manure/pee) to build new sheet mulch beds on contour. I’ve also decided to completely revamp my perennial flower and herb bed, transplanting it to new beds around the property. Many of the perennials came with me all the way from Oregon!
Creme Brulee turned two years old this week, and her belly is growing bigger and bigger! We expect a calf sometime between early May and early July. I can’t even tell you how excited I am to drink her raw milk and cream, and to make cheese and butter (this post is one of my most popular, and shows you how EASY it is to make butter at home!)
And in the chicken coop, our favorite hen has once again gone broody (her fourth time since we got her two years ago). Some chicken owners prefer not to have broody hens because they stop laying eggs for a time. But because we don’t have enough solar power to run an incubator or heat lamps for chicks, broody hens are the easiest, cheapest, and most sustainable way for us to increase the size of our flock. We snuck 11 eggs underneath her, hoping most of them were fertilized by our studly rooster!
What’s happening out your front door? Share in the comments below, or on the Homestead Honey Facebook page. And if you love Instagram too, you can find me here.
Hi Teri,
This question is a bit wierd but I live in Australia and have no way of knowing the answer besides asking you.
Is there a real threat of bears,wolves moose and the like and if so how do you prevent them from coming near you’r house/family.
Cheers. From Jack.
Hi Jack,
We don’t live in an area where there are wolves, moose, or bears. In Oregon, we only had one homestead encounter with a bear and it ate our honey and bees! The threats around here are coyotes and raccoons for chickens and livestock, and perhaps occasionally a mink or bobcat. We have electric fencing around our animals and lock our chickens in the coop at night.
Ok thanks for answering
I recently found your blog and have enjoyed looking at! We are currently trying to homestead in Oregon, and the cost of living here is terrible. I am curious where in Oregon you came from? How did you make the decision to move to Missouri? What do you guys do for a living? Your way of life is so enticing, but it is so hard to think of making the change! Thanks!
hi Katie,
Thanks for your message! We came from south of the Eugene area of Oregon, where we lived for 14 years. I have to be honest, the decision to move to Missouri was excruciating. It took us 2 years, with countless visits and conversations with our friends who lived in Missouri. We knew two families and a few other friends in Missouri, so it wasn’t a blind leap. And then land opened up right next door from our friends.
Making a living has perhaps been our greatest challenge here. We both are self-employed and cobble together a diverse homestead income from virtual work, teaching theater, blacksmithing, an etsy shop, and blogging.
I’d be happy to share more with you… feel free to email.
Hi my name is katie. Im new to your blog my husband and i have a five year plan we live in massachusetts . We really want to homestead and have some land where its quiet. Do you have any pointers you could share. Ive read alot about small houses and homesteading but still id love to puck your brain. We have a very modest income i sew and make homemade soap and body care products my husband is an iraq veteran who is not working at the moment but i know we could make it work. We would like to live basically off the grid. We just need reassurance that its possible. 🙂
Thanks for any advice u could offer
Hi Katie,
Yes, it’s possible!
Homesteading is amazing and such a fulfilling way of life, but my experience has been that there are sacrifices required. In my early years of homesteading, I was in my 20’s, and when my friends were out at a show, or late at a party, I was at home milking the goats. Later, we prioritized purchasing animals over expensive plane travel. A few years ago, we opted to move across the country to buy land in Missouri, where we could purchase in cash, instead of staying in Oregon where we would have had to go into serious debt.
So, my advice is to keep your eye on the prize! Make a list of your priorities, and go for it! Figure out what is most important to you – do you have family or close friends that you want to live near? Are you open to moving somewhere to take advantage of cheaper land? etc.
The homesteading part is probably the easy part, as it’s joyous hard work. But I find that the big life decisions are harder and take a lot of thought and visioning!
Good luck!
Teri
Hi Teri
Well my Jersey has been fresh for 6 weeks, and she is giving 7 gallons a day. More milk than we can keep up with. Her milk increased with all the green grass. We sell milk for $3.50 a gal, but seems hard to get enough customers for all of it. Guess we will have to get some pigs. If any of your readers live close to Ava, and need milk. I have plenty. I am on K hwy.
I had bred Polly A I. and she gave me a Jersey Bull calf. He is growing fast. But will make good freezer meat. I was hoping for a heifer.
Good Luck with all you do there. Sounds like you stay pretty busy.
I just can’t believe how much milk you’re getting! Amazing! One of my lofty homestead plans this year is to get pigs for any excess milk. Without a refrigerator, I just don’t see how we’re going to keep a lot of excess. Of course we’ll be making cheese, yogurt, butter, etc…
Thanks for the update!