It is always busy around a growing homestead, but spring really ramps up the pace. We have been having some gorgeous weather on our days off from our FT jobs so a lot of things
It is always busy around a growing homestead, but spring really ramps up the pace. We have been having some gorgeous weather on our days off from our FT jobs so a lot of things have been getting done. These posts are a quick summary of what we have going on, upcoming projects for our homestead and budding small business. We hope you enjoy reading them and following our journey. Please feel free to check out our other posts and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when we add new posts.
Chicken Tractor
We have decided to pasture raise meat chickens and plan to use a combination of a chicken tractor and elctro-netting. For the chicken tractor design we decided to forgo designing our own and bought a set of plans and instructions. After hearing John Suscovich of Farm Marketing Solutions on The Survival Podcast and watching a bunch of his Youtube videos we were sold on his setup. On his website he offers both digital and paperback copies of a full how-to manual for building his design. We have a copy on order and plan to document my experience with it. Here are links to all sites mentioned:
Comfrey Bed/Propagation
We wanted to start growing comfrey on the property for a variety of reason. Mainly for supplemental nutrition for our rabbitry and chicken flock. We ordered our comfrey cuttings from Coe’s Comfrey in Topton, NC. It came very quickly in the mail and when it showed up we had a pleasant surprise. Included in the package beyond what we had paid for was an extra ten root cuttings, an instructional pamphlet, and a stack of DVDs.
Adding the extra root cuttings to the fact that we had already ordered more than would fit into our intended bed space we decided to try progating comrey for sale. We planted all our our extras in pots and place then in between the permanent plants in the bed. From the propagated root cuttings we plan to expand our permanent beds and also offer extras for sale locally and via the internet.
Until we are producing roots for sale we would highly recommend using Coe’s Comfrey for any cuttings you need. They can be found at: Coe’s Comfrey
Fodder
We continue to feed our chicken flock fodder we are growing from wheat seed. There have been 3 versions of our DIY fodder rack so far and a few more tweeks and changes to go. Keep an eye out for a summary of all the versions and what we end up sticking with long term in the projects section of our site. We also plan to follow up with a how-to for final system.
Starter plants for our garden and for sale
Starter plants for our garden did not fill up the grow light rack setup that
we put together this spring so we decided to fill it up with a variety of plants to sell. Plants seem to be coming along nicely although we may have started a little early and might have to transplant them into larger pots.
Incubating Meat Chickens
Our second attempt at incubating chickens to raise for meat birds is set to hatch around 4/30/17. The first attempt did not go well with a 0 hatch out if 18 eggs. There were several likely causes for this with my suspicion lying with humidity problems at lock down. Once we get better at hatching and get a decent hatch rate we plan to do a How-To post and a product review on the incubator we are using.
We will continue to work on all of these projects for the next few weeks and also will be starting up a few more. Coming soon we will be exploring microgreens, building some more raised beds for our garden, building a waterer system for our chicken coup along with expanding our current chicken run and adding a second off the other side of the coop. We are also planning on focusing a little harder on online presence including our website, Facebook, Twitter and adding on Youtube videos.
Thanks for taking the time to follow our journey. Be sure to check out the rest of our site. We look forward to reading comments.