Ok, this is it, our first blog post. This has been a lot of hard work to be able to get to this point. I (Sam) had to basically force myself to get my act together and just write it, I always thought, ” Who am I to give advice? I am not an expert in anything! Why would anyone even want to read about what I’m doing?” all the usual negative self talk when something is new and scary!
So I figured I need to get out of my pity party, suck it up, and do it! If I can help and encourage people then that is awesome! And if no one ever reads this, then that’s ok! At least I have tried and stepped out of my comfort zone!
So, how this all started and how we got here. My husband Aaron and I welcomed our third child on March 11, 2020 and brought her home 2 days later. As you all know, that is the time it seemed that the whole world shut down because of the corona virus. Well, I had thought that I had planned for the food that we needed well enough that I wouldn’t have to leave the house for a couple weeks. I was very wrong, and I needed to go like 3 days after we got home from the hospital….. pregnancy brain is great peeps.
At The Stores
As I’m sure everyone else did, I went to multiple stores. They we’re all pretty bare. I got what I could in my panic. When my husband came home from work we decided that we needed to do something to make sure we were not in this position again. I mean, we weren’t going to starve, but we definitely didn’t like the idea of relying on the grocery stores or other people to provide the food that our family needed.
So we ordered some seeds, and got to making our raised beds in our first garden. we had no clue what we were doing! by the time we got the beds done to put the seeds in the ground for our first planting, it was late May – early June. It was pretty late in the season for direct seed planting, but we did it and we actually got to harvest a good amount of veggies from what we planted!
And then there were chickens
So, while we were figuring out our garden, we got chickens, like 30…. and a couple turkeys, and some ducks to go with them. Then a couple months after we bought those chickens, a very nice co worker of Aaron’s gave us most of his chickens, and we can’t forget about our first 10 meat birds. That’s a lot of birds! if you have never owned chickens before, they are pretty simple and easy to take care of. just make sure their coop and yard area are secure enough to keep the predators out and the chickens in. If the chickens get out, they can wreak havoc on a garden in no time! But, the fresh eggs are unbeatable.
The Three little piggies
Aaron happen to stumble upon free feeder pigs one day. They were too small for the pig farmer to keep, so he was giving them away. I was not ready for pigs yet, and I was really unsure of moving on to such a larger animal so quickly. Aaron convinced me that it was too good of an opportunity to pass up and that we should just go for it. So, we brought home 3 piglets.
There was Hogzilla, Chop, and BB short for bacon bits. Our first mistake was naming them, just don’t do it! Unless of course you will be keeping them and they will be considered more of a pet. Our second mistake was not having their enclosure secure enough so they couldn’t get out. Pigs are very smart and if they can find a way out, they will escape. It is no easy feat getting a 250lb hog back into it’s pen, they are very strong, and quite intimidatingly big. Especially trying to get it to do something it doesn’t want to.
And that’s how we go to our first post
And that is the short form of how our family got here today! We sold two of the pigs and the other is in our freezer. We still have about 30 laying hens, 20 meat birds, and are the proud owners of 2 Nigerian dwarf goats. Our family hopes to have our first kidding in fall of 2022. Also, we have partnered with my parents and have started to sell pastured raised chickens and turkeys! The first batch of chickens will be ready to go on June 19, 2021,
Thanks for reading! We hope you continue to follow along on our journey and that we can help or encourage you to follow your dreams! You can also follow along with us on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube!
See you around the farmstead! – Sam