The dream was to raise Angora rabbits, pluck their wool, spin it into yarn, and sell it. And rake in the money. After all, Angora fur sells for $6 – $8 per ounce! I stumbled across a purebred French Angora doe for $30. She quickly produced an equally purebred litter of eight kits. I fought… Read More Even best laid plans must have room to change
In high school a friend and I had a saying to help us remember something in English Literature class. It was “We be tillers of the soil, we be diggers of the earth. We be dirt farmers!” What it was intended to help us remember I have no idea – the phrase is stuck in… Read More I am a dirt farmer
I read once that having livestock was publicly announcing your willingness to run outside, at any hour of the day or night, in any state of dress or undress, to deal with whatever emergency happened. I scoffed at that. Certainly there is time to put on pants or a jacket, right? Nope. Hubby and I… Read More Midnight adrenaline!
Compost is wonderful. I can think of almost no other tool I’d rather have around my homestead. It beats wheelbarrows, hammers, even my favorite cooking pot. If I did not have compost, I would have a more expensive garbage bill. If I did not have compost, I would have a more expensive chicken feed bill.… Read More The power of compost
I love real butter. Whole, fresh butter made from lucious raw cream. Lightly salted. Especially when it has been spread over a thick slice of multigrain sourdough bread that’s been lightly toasted. Yum. Personally I think the best butter is is butter you’ve made yourself. It’s really easy. Put a few cups of heavy cream into a… Read More Real butter
A friend of mine recently said that reading my blog makes her tired because of all the things I do. So today, I think I’ll give her a good reason to go to bed early! Here is what today is like in my life… When I got up this morning, my dear husband had already… Read More A day in my life
It feels soooo good to be home. I really enjoyed the Philippines, and expect to go back at some point. But home is home. We left Manila at 9:30 am on Tuesday, and landed at San Francisco at 9:30 am on Tuesday. Weird. Had a 4 hour layover, so one of my husband’s relatives who lives… Read More We’re home! Update on animals, sunburn, sea snakes, and more
It is NOT easy to find a housesitter when you have 29 animals to take care of. On the one hand, regular pet sitters are often overwhelmed by those numbers, and don’t wish to deal with the issues that livestock type animals can bring. On the other hand, farm sitters can charge too much, and… Read More Finding a housesitter
I have been wondering about this a lot lately. Most of my self-sufficiency attempts are working well. I had no problem adding chickens to my lifestyle. Doing a compost heap worked almost textbook perfectly. The mealworm farm produced lots of bugs for the chickens to eat. Even after moving from Colorado to Oregon and not… Read More When to throw in the towel?
One thing I disliked about working in the world of rectangles was that regardless of the season, the work was always the same. Get up, get dressed, go to work, work for 8 hours, go home. Hope for good weather on the weekends so you could do your yard work and play a little. It… Read More Whether weather allows…
