CSA is short for community supported agriculture. We joined our first CSA about ten years ago back in Flagstaff, AZ. We heard about it and were immediately intrigued. We had no idea what we were in for but it was an amazing experience. We loved knowing we were getting food raised right within the community […]
Canning Fairytale Pumpkin and Sweet Meat Squash
We drove up north last week to retrieve our award winning produce from the Duquoin State Fair. Nathan wanted the experience of entering stuff in the fair so that we could show our daughters what it is all about (they have been eager to enter stuff at the fair but have only recently become of […]
CSA News Week 5
We took a road trip to secure some delicious fruits from our dear friends & fellow family farmers over at High Hill Orchard this week. They had quite the blackberry crop this year so we braved the rain yesterday and picked lots of blackberries for you. We also snagged some still firm and highly coveted […]
CSA News Week 4
Greetings CSA families! The green beans, collard greens & swiss chard are coming along slowly still. I promise we planted more than what you have been getting. I’m personally feeling impatient about the garden progress. I usually have loads of beans and squash (my favorites) by this time and I go out each day […]
CSA News Week 2
This week has been full of progress in our CSA garden! The garden is finally dried out a bit after the brutal rains and flooding we just had. Luckily everything has survived. I know many folks have lost crops due to the rain and floods, we were worried but lucky. The main issue we had […]
Southern Illinois Seasonal Eats: Early July
We are really excited that this week is our first week for our CSA deliveries. We have been tending plants, collecting eggs & making goats milk soap for our five special CSA families. The harvests are in but we also wanted to compile several recipes centered around the produce that will appear in […]
2015 CSA News- Week 1
Isn’t this weather beautiful?! I was just out pulling weeds in the garden and the mild temperatures were so nice to enjoy. The weather sure has our plants confused though. To us it feels like it has been a very slow growing spring here. I don’t know if it is because I’m impatient and overly […]
Ch-ch-changes…
Some big things are in store for the site. Some of you feed subscribers got wind of some changes thanks to the automatic feed that went out with lots of dummy giberish text after we did a website makeover *facepalm* Many apologies for that. Its also been a while since I posted an update. The […]
Electric fencing is a pain in the ASS!
I’m really unimpressed with electric fencing. We already decided that we wanted permanent fencing for our “barnyard” where the barn animals will have free rein. Heck, we even invested in the rolls of fencing and it’s laying out in the grass near the area that needs fenced in.
Meeting Winnie, running over a lamb and shock fencing…
Last week was a roller coaster, we are still reeling from it. You see we were pointed in the direction of a homeless livestock guardian dog. We’ve known we needed one since our beloved family dog lost her life last fall. Luckily we’ve only had one farm predator issue since losing our farm guard dog, […]
Wildlife Encounters on the Homestead: The American Mink
My little farm girl found a mink this morning… a live one in our chicken coop.
The kiddos milked our dry goat, we got 1 pint!
Yesterday my three and five year old girls joined me at the milking stand. “I want a turn!” they each announced. You see, I had our Alpine goat, Pop tart, up on the milking stand. She was out enjoying pasture earlier in the day when I noticed her udders and teats looking kind of full. […]
Life, death & kids…
Country life is full of life and death encounters. It’s one of the great perks of farm living in my opinion. Some would disagree I suppose but either way it brings perfect “teaching moments” for the kids.
Our goat herd grows…
We found ourselves another milk goat, one in milk! I was getting pretty panicky after getting a confirmatory negative pregnancy test on our Alpine dairy goat recently. Buttercup, our new goat, found her way to our home a week ago. Her two newborn kids also came along! I happened to see a craigslist post for a […]
My experience with a sudden lump on my dairy goat- It’s NOT Caseous Lymphadenitis (CL)!
Caseous Lymphadenitis (CL) is a chronic contagious disease affecting mainly sheep and goats This disease is also called pseudotuberculosis or often “abscesses,” and has been referred to as the curse of the goat industry throughout the world. The locations shown in the photo are where CL lumps typically appear. On Feb 11th I noticed a […]
Crazy chicken lady in the making?
I’m pretty excited about my chicken breeding program. So excited that I went and got 22 more chicks this week for the homestead. Our total number of chickens is now 59, yep fifty nine chickens! Nathan still doesn’t think I have a problem…
The Double-Toot That Went Flat
A fun & very funny way to ask for a replacement product… My husband wrote a letter about a defective product. He read it aloud to me this morning. I had to share it, it’s too funny!!
They were wrong…
Some people think animals, especially livestock animals, lack intelligence… What do you think? I agree that some animals are certainly smarter than others. Some animals are more trainable than others, some are more instinctual than others. I’ve not been sure what I thought about sheep and lambs. This winter we became bottle baby lamb owners. Our […]
What Sam the lamb taught me…
Somewhere along the line I became convinced that information you needed to know could be found if you looked hard enough. I value the infinite resource that is the internet. I’ll wade through personal opinion posts on forums, I’ll read blog posts and articles to find the info I seek…
The island of orphaned farm animals & more…
The girls are both at school today (well they were, then one came home sick!) and I’ve amazingly had a few spare minutes so I figured I’d sit down and try to write a blog post! Terrible intro huh?! Lets try again… There’s lots going on here at Homestead right now. One of the most exciting […]