It has been just over two and a half years since we made the leap from city to country, moving from our urban life with homesteading hopes, to the rural spread where we can fulfill our dreams. The first thing we did, was have a baby, and since then we have been trying to "homestead" and grow our own food. Here is a quick summary of a few of the homesteading-esque types things we are doing...
Read moreThings we make and not buy
Whether it is because we want to be self sufficient or because we are curious and thus want to try our hand at something new, I have been driven this past year with a desire to make as many things we need from scratch. Once you really start to think about it, and basically after you read Little House on the Prairie where they make virtually everything from scratch, you start to view the items you buy on a daily basis as things you could easily make yourself. In Little House on the Prairie, people learned how to make so much from helping and watching their parents, and now, so much of that has been lost that we find it impossible to fathom making some of the simplest things. So this winter, I really enjoyed putting my google muscle to the test and finding a way to make it all. Well, quite a few things...
Read moreLittle Bo-Peep Has Lost Her Sheep
This is the true story of how I lost my lambs.
Let's start from the beginning. My lambs are Willie and Nelson (shhhh I know, we also have a willow tree called Willow Nelson, it is a thing), and we got them as bottle fed lambs because their mama passed away when they were three weeks old. Wilf and I brought them home in the dog crate in the back of the van and I started bottle feeding them three times a day. Gosh, thinking back to those early days, I would get so stressed with every feed because they would guzzle their bottles right down and then get so bloated. I would try pacing their feeds or spreading out their feeds, but they always got bloated. And for those that don't know, like I didn't before I had lambs, bloating can kill lambs because they can get so bloated that they actually suffocate. Crazy and scary. So of course I was a wreck about it on a daily basis, but they grew up and started to eat more grass and such and were off the bottle after a couple of months and were totally fine. Anywho, back to the story...
Read moreWe did it: Moving from the city to the homestead
It's late, almost my bedtime late; the house is dark, the dogs are asleep, and I can hear sawing downstairs. Yes, Cameron is in the basement sawing some handcut boards (made from trees on the property) to make a bench/shoe rack since the boots seems to be falling all over each other and driving him bonkers. Evenings now are so different from a year ago, when Cam would be coming home from a long day of work and we would have a few moments to chat before going to bed exhausted from the work days we had just had, now we have made it down to the property, we had so long dreamed about living on full time, and our evenings are relaxing and quiet, with the exception of the sound of a saw or a baby crying... right, yep, I said a baby...
Read moreWeekend in Vavenby: One Year Anniversary Visit
A few weeks ago, I decided to make a last minute trip down to Vavenby; it was going to be a long weekend and the garden had just been weeded, so there was almost no excuse not to go. With the car packed and the dogs in tow, we said goodbye to Corbin-the-cat, and hit the road. I didn't realise until I got down there, that this weekend would be the one year anniversary of when I first visited the property.
Read moreWhy Wouldn't You Make Your Own Laundry Soap
Well, I never thought the day would come would I would see the bottom of my five gallon pail of laundry soap and yesterday was that day. I had made my own liquid laundry soap a year and a half ago after reading The Green Guide that had a simple recipe in it for making your own detergent. Now, I didn’t end up using their recipe, but it inspired me to make my own and I used a recipe from The Wellness Mama. And did it ever last. I can guarantee that each load of laundry cost less than five cents. It took less than twenty minutes to make. And I could use it in my front-loading high efficiency washing machine. It’s basically magic.
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