# JHP Homestead’s Journal



## JHP Homestead (Jun 11, 2019)

I LOVE reading through everyone’s journals and I like the idea of having a convenient location to document things DH and I do on the homestead, so I thought I’d start a journal of my own. Here goes nothing...

1. What state/province/country are you in and what is your climate like?
SW Michigan. The climate is perfect in my opinion. 4 seasons, each one just long enough to enjoy and by the time I get tired of it, we’re moving onto the next one.

2. How many people are in your family? Marital status?
4 - Me, DH, our 3yo DS, and 2 month old DD. 

3. How would you define your farm?
I dunno, a work in progress maybe

4. What would you do with your spare time if you had any resources you needed?
Camp, fish, putter around the homestead

5. Have you ever built a house, barn , or other types of building? Do you want to?
DH and I built an extension onto our pole barn.

6. Can you weld? Steel, aluminum, MiG, TiG, stick, Oxy-
No, but DH can

7. Who or what inspired you to be a farmer/rancher, hobby farmer?
I grew up with horses so I knew I wanted animals when I grew up and DH is big into survivalism. Homesteading is the perfect combination 

8 Is it a hobby or an occupation?
I am a SAHM, so kinda both. We’re hoping to get each aspect of the homestead to at least pay for itself, if not make a profit. We still have a ways to go on that though. For now my wonderful DH’s day job pays the bills. 

9. In what areas are you knowledgeable and in what areas would you like to learn more?
I know just enough to be dangerous in many livestock and gardening areas. I want to learn more about all of it 

10. In what types of farming will you never choose to do?
Not sure

11. Are you interested in providing more of your own food supply?
Yes! We currently provide almost 100% of our meat supply, we only buy some lunch meat and specialty stuff like pepperoni. We’re starting to dabble in smoking/curing our own meat though and made some delicious brats last fall, so I think we’ll have those areas covered soon. 

We don’t grow a ton of our own veggies, I’d like to do better in the garden here in the next couple years. I don’t see us ever growing our own wheat for bread and pasta and what not, so I think we’ll always rely on the grocery store at least a little. 

12. Where do you end up when you sink into yourself, away from the outside world?
Our homestead. I love to think about new projects, improvements to make, accomplishments we’ve made, etc

13. Can you drive a farm tractor or a semi?
Tractor yes, semi no

14. Do you make crafts or useful items? Would you want to teach others how to do these?
I crochet. I’d be willing to teach it but wouldn’t seek out students. 

15. Can you legally have all forms of livestock where you are at? Do you have any? What kinds?
Yes and Yes. We have cows, a horse, a pig, chickens, rabbits, cats, and 2 dogs

16. Can you operate a lathe? Metal, wood?
Nope

17. Do you like to garden? If so, what do you enjoy growing?
Yes. I am amazing at growing green beans. We usually can and give away tons of them.  Other than that, I enjoy growing the usual veggies, I’m not much of a flower gardener. 

18. Do you fish? Bait or explosives?
Sometimes. Before we had the homestead DH and I went fishing quite often. 

19. How much space/land do you have or rent? City farm? Country?
We (and the bank) own 40 acres in the country. About 30 of it is wooded and 10 semi cleared. 

20. Are you a Novice, Technician, degreed?
I have a BS in Computer Science but quit my job as a Software Engineer working in Avionics to raise our kids. 

23. Do you do wood work? framing, finish, cabinet?
No

24. Are you interested in herbal animal medicine?
Sure. I’ve recently been learning about plant remedies for rabbits. 

25. If you could live any place you chose, where would it be?
Right where I am. Maybe with 10 or 20 more acres of pasture so I could have more cows. 

26. Do you use a wood stove for heating or cooking?
We have a wood stove that provides about 75% of our heat. 

28. Are your family or friends also interested in animals?
My family is into horses. Not so much other animals though. Don’t really have any friends. 

29. Do you like to cook? Are you interested in whole foods and natural foods? raw milk? farm fresh eggs?
I view cooking more as a chore then as fun. We do use our own farm fresh eggs and have a 2 year plan to have a milk cow, although I’ve never actually had raw milk. I love the idea of making our own butter and cheese though. Just one more step to self sufficiency 

30. What was your best animal experience? Worst?
Not sure on the best, maybe our first calf born on the farm. There’s been a lot of good moments though. 
Worst is probably the disease sweeping through my rabbitry right now.

31. Do you forage or hunt for part of your food needs?
We used to hunt deer. Haven’t the last couple years though. I hope to get back into it once the kids are a little older. 
We forage for blackberries and red and black raspberries. Black raspberries especially are growing all over on our property. 
We also tap our maple trees and make syrup, if that counts 

32. What skills do you have that help you be more a self sufficient farm?
A willingness to work hard and frugality 

33. Do you process your own meat? Can or preserve?
Yes. DH and I have butchered our own steer and a couple pigs (and of course rabbits and chickens) We freeze most of the meat but also can some of it. 

34. Do you use alternative energy sources on your farm? Would you like to?
No. I’d like to try solar out one of these days. We have a couple places where it’d be handy. 

35 What is on your to do list?
Tons. At the moment, fix the leanto roof and put up fencing for a new horse pasture. 

36. Have you ever lived completely off what you produce? Would you like to?
No. On one hand I’d like to, then on the other hand, I don’t really want to grow my own sugar and flour (and other staples like seasonings, etc) and I do enjoy items made from those things. Although we did make maple sugar once, which was awesome. So I can maybe take sugar off that list, if we got enough maple syrup to make enough sugar to last. 

37. In what do you trust?
God

38. Do you make and fix things yourself to save money?
Definitely Yes, whenever possible

39. Has the experience with animals changed your attitude or habits?
Maybe, but I can’t remember not having animals, so who knows who I’d be without them.


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 11, 2019)

Here’s a few pictures of our animals:
The cows - matriarch Rosie is in the middle, her 2yo daughter Patti is in front, and our hopeful future milk cow Sadie is in back. Sadie is 5mo and is half Jersey.




(Please excuse the leanto in the background, the bull we had over the winter was determined to destroy it)

Buddy:


 

Gert:




A cute picture of some of our baby rabbits, I don’t seem to have any pics of the adults on my phone:




And our 2 awesome Boston Terriers, Ace and Dos:




I don’t seem to have any pictures of the chickens so I guess that’ll do for now.


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## B&B Happy goats (Jun 12, 2019)

and so the journal begins......congratulations,  your place sounds wonderful   
I LOVE your animal pictures....


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## AmberLops (Jun 12, 2019)

Great pictures! And I love your homestead...animals are the greatest aren't they?


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 12, 2019)

AmberLops said:


> Great pictures! And I love your homestead...animals are the greatest aren't they?


Thanks, they sure are!


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 13, 2019)

The strawberries are in full swing here. We’ve picked two big bowls so far and have a bunch more out in the strawberry patch. I usually just make jam but we still have a bunch from last year, so I’m trying some new things.  
I made strawberry sauce yesterday and am going to try drying a bunch today.


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## AmberLops (Jun 13, 2019)

YUM!!!


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## frustratedearthmother (Jun 13, 2019)




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## B&B Happy goats (Jun 13, 2019)

Oh how delicious  they look......... ...........


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## SA Farm (Jun 13, 2019)

Those strawberries look tasty. We were going to have some, but DH left them outside overnight before it was warm enough for them  
We’ll try again next year...perhaps go to a pick-your-own place this summer


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## greybeard (Jun 13, 2019)

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. I do love strawberries!!  Your strawberries look much more appetizing than these strawberries:


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 14, 2019)

SA Farm said:


> Those strawberries look tasty. We were going to have some, but DH left them outside overnight before it was warm enough for them
> We’ll try again next year...perhaps go to a pick-your-own place this summer


Haha, whoops. I see you’re in Canada. Is it too cold for strawberries to be a perennial up there? Or was it just that the plants weren’t acclimated to the cold?


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## SA Farm (Jun 14, 2019)

JHP Homestead said:


> Haha, whoops. I see you’re in Canada. Is it too cold for strawberries to be a perennial up there? Or was it just that the plants weren’t acclimated to the cold?


The plants weren’t acclimated to the cold. We don’t have a strawberry patch yet, but once set in they shouldn’t have too much trouble weather-wise


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## Baymule (Jun 14, 2019)

Nice batch of strawberries.


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 16, 2019)

Had a pretty good weekend. Saturday DH trimmed our horse’s feet, then butchered a few rabbits for the dogs. Froze most of it, so the dogs are set for a few weeks now. During this time I had our 8 week old in the baby carrier so I just puttered around a little. 
Saturday afternoon it was DH’s turn to carry the baby, so he brushhogged our pasture with her in the carrier, while I picked 10 more pounds of strawberries. It rained in the evening so we watched a movie and played with DS. 

Today it rained off and on all day, so other than going to church and checking on the pig who’s about to farrow, we stayed inside. I made a small batch of strawberry jam and made some Angel Food cake to go with beef short ribs for supper tonight. I hulled the rest of the strawberries from yesterday but didn’t do anything else with them yet. I think I might try making some fruit leather with them tomorrow. I think there’s probably 10 or 20 more pounds of strawberries out in the patch. Any recommendations of other ways to process them?


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## AmberLops (Jun 16, 2019)

Strawberry sorbet? Strawberry lemonade/limeade?


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## SA Farm (Jun 17, 2019)

There’s always freezing them. My Mom would cook them up with rhubarb (and sugar!) and can it for a dessert dish. Went really nicely with tapioca pudding


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 24, 2019)

It’s been a busy week. Our pig Gert farrowed but had a stuck piglet. Neither of us or the vet could get it out, so we ended up butchering her for meat and are raising her 5 live piglets ourselves. 

We process our meat ourselves, which is much easier when planned in advance. We usually do it in the cool weather, on a weekend, after sending our 3 year old off to relatives. This makes it so we can do a whole pig ourselves in less than a day and a half. This time, since it was an emergency with hot weather and we had several previous obligations, it’s taking about a week. 

We have the ribs and pork chops to cut up, then will be done until next week when the hams and bacon are done curing. 

30# maple sausage:



 

Temp fridge. This is most of the pig minus the hams, which are curing in coolers with ice. 


 

We’ve still been picking strawberries from our patch too. I think DH picked 15 pounds or so the other day, several pounds of which I gave away to a friend. Then I made some more fruit leather and popsicles. Also freezing some in ice cubes to put in lemonade. After the unplanned pig butchering, I don’t have much space in the freezer, but I think I’ll freeze some too, for making mixed berry jam when the blackberries are ready.


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## Genipher (Jun 24, 2019)

JHP Homestead said:


> It’s been a busy week. Our pig Gert farrowed but had a stuck piglet. Neither of us or the vet could get it out, so we ended up butchering her for meat and are raising her 5 live piglets ourselves.
> 
> We process our meat ourselves, which is much easier when planned in advance. We usually do it in the cool weather, on a weekend, after sending our 3 year old off to relatives. This makes it so we can do a whole pig ourselves in less than a day and a half. This time, since it was an emergency with hot weather and we had several previous obligations, it’s taking about a week.
> 
> ...



Sausage! 

All this talk of strawberries reminds me... I think I missed strawberry season here on the Oregon coast.


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 24, 2019)

Genipher said:


> Sausage!
> 
> All this talk of strawberries reminds me... I think I missed strawberry season here on the Oregon coast.



I don’t know if Michigan and Oregon have similar weather, but our strawberry season is about 2 weeks behind this year. Maybe there’s still a chance.


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## Baymule (Jun 24, 2019)

Maple sausage? What is your recipe? How do you cure your ham and bacon? Recipes and process, please?


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 25, 2019)

Baymule said:


> Maple sausage? What is your recipe? How do you cure your ham and bacon? Recipes and process, please?



Yep, maple sausage. DH and I are maple fanatics. We have made regular breakfast sausage once and still have most of it left.  Here is the recipe, which we originally found online and modified to our tastes



 



 

There’s also our maple bacon and ham recipes. I order the curing salt (Prague Powder #1) from Amazon. We just mix up the cure and salt/seasoning mixture and put the meat in it. The type of cure we use for these is a short cure, so we only cure the meat for up to 2 weeks. Usually we smoke on the weekends, so it cures between 1-2 weeks. We had a big ham once that we only cured for a week and you could tell. The far inner part of the meat wasn’t pink like you see with the cure, it was still brownish, which means that the cure hadn’t quite reached that deep yet. It still tasted fine, was just more like a pork roast in the middle than ham. 

When I remember to I stir the cure or flip the meat in it, but I’ve forgotten before and it doesn’t seem to affect much. 

After the meat’s cured, rinse it really, really well to get all the salt off. Then cook or smoke it if you want. I don’t like my bacon to be already cooked coming off the smoker, so we’ve smoked it at a lower temp before and not gone all the way up to 150 degrees, which is fine as long as it’s cured. In my experience it fries up better that way but my experience is pretty limited and I’m sure others would disagree. Either way, it makes for delicious meat 

This is the bacon with the cure in it. We’ll probably smoke it next weekend.


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## Baymule (Jun 25, 2019)

Looks and sounds delicious. Can you take pictures of your smoking process please? Thanks for the recipes! Do you ever make stuffed smoked sausage?


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 26, 2019)

Baymule said:


> Looks and sounds delicious. Can you take pictures of your smoking process please? Thanks for the recipes! Do you ever make stuffed smoked sausage?



Sure, I’ll get some pictures when we smoke the bacon and ham. 

We’ve made brats a couple of times. We actually have some cheddar and pepper jack brats curing now from this pig. I’ll get some pictures tomorrow when we stuff the casings and get them on the smoker.


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## Baymule (Jun 26, 2019)

We processed 3 hogs a couple years ago when I couldn’t get a closer slaughter date. I made stuffed sausage and my husband smoked it on the pit. I brined bacon, he smoked it, I sliced and packaged it. It was darn good! 

I have a LOT of pork from a 820 pound boar we had processed. I want to make smoked sausage from some of it. Your recipes are inspiring!


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 26, 2019)

Thanks!

The smoked sausage we made a while back was from rabbits meat, with pig lard added. We made Polish, Chipotle Cheddar, Andouille, and BBQ sausage. The BBQ flavored ones turned out pretty bland, but the others are awesome. 

Funny story with that, the Andouille and BBQ sausage looked the same and we got them mixed up when we smoked them. We thought we had it sorted out and forgot about the mix up. Cue a couple months later when DH’s buddy came by and brought his 5 year old daughter. We grilled some of the Chipotle Cheddar and BBQ brats, since his daughter didn’t like spicy. Turned out we gave the poor girl an Andouille sausage instead. She took one bite and that was it. We couldn’t figure out why she said it was spicy until her Dad finally ate the rest of it for her and said it was really spicy. Whoops.


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## Baymule (Jun 26, 2019)

Many moons ago when I had rabbits I made rabbit pan sausage and bunny burgers.


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## AmberLops (Jun 26, 2019)

Baymule said:


> Many moons ago when I had rabbits I made rabbit pan sausage and bunny burgers.


Bunny burgers...it sounds so un-appetizing when you put it that way ha ha!


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 27, 2019)

Haha, I was thinking bunny burgers sounded good. I’ll have to try that with the next batch we grind


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## Baymule (Jun 27, 2019)

AmberLops said:


> Bunny burgers...it sounds so un-appetizing when you put it that way ha ha!


Well it ain't like they were wrapped in fur!


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## AmberLops (Jun 27, 2019)

Baymule said:


> Well it ain't like they were wrapped in fur!


Ha ha furry burgers with ears and all


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 28, 2019)

After letting the sausage meat cure for a couple days, we stuffed the sausages into casings yesterday. I didn’t realize that we were almost out of the large casings, so we had to put most of it in the breakfast link casings. Whoops. I meant to get them smoked today but didn’t get to it early enough in the day, so that’s now moved to tomorrow. 



 

Sausage!


 

I also got the last of the strawberries picked. Got another 8 pounds, which puts us at 51 pounds for the season. That’s more than double we got last year, so our patch is growing despite being overrun with weeds. I’m planning on weeding and mulching it this fall, and moving a bunch of the runners so we actually have rows again. This year it was just a huge block of strawberries with tons of weeds, so they were not fun to pick. 

In animal news, I bred a few rabbits today. 2 does lifted good but the third refused and just ran the buck around. It’s all of a sudden hot here and he’s a big boy so he got tired of that quick. 

She’s a doe I thought we were going to lose of coccidiosis a couple weeks ago though, so I might hold her off another week or two, in case she isn’t fully recovered and that’s why she didn’t want to breed. That means she won’t have a breeding partner for fostering, but she usually has smaller litters though, so it should be ok.


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## AmberLops (Jun 28, 2019)

Yummy!!
And i'm glad you'll have 2 litters of rabbits. It's always nice when they actually want to breed ha ha!


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 29, 2019)

You got that right. I couldn’t get them bred for anything last winter. We finally strung some lights up to give them more “daylight” hours and that seemed to work.


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## AmberLops (Jun 29, 2019)

JHP Homestead said:


> You got that right. I couldn’t get them bred for anything last winter. We finally strung some lights up to give them more “daylight” hours and that seemed to work.


That's great!
Sometimes they can just be impossible...'breed like rabbits' my foot


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## Baymule (Jun 29, 2019)

That sausage looks good! Do you use hog casing?


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 29, 2019)

The bigger ones are hog casing. I’m not positive, but I think the smaller ones might be sheep. We bought them a few years ago and don’t have the original package.


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## JHP Homestead (Jun 30, 2019)

I have some chicks hatched! Two of our silkie chickens have been broody all spring. The first batch of eggs we set under them got kicked out of the nest and broken for various reasons, but we reset them with more eggs and now we have chicks! There’s at least 3 under the one silkie. 

I usually do a couple batches in the incubator but with having a baby this spring, I didn’t feel like getting the incubators out. Figured we’d let the chickens do the work this year instead. 

DH and I did a bunch of brush hogging, mowing, and weed whipping this weekend. Also cleaned out the rabbit shed and set the raccoon traps out. They’ve started getting into the rabbit area and chicken run, so it’s time to cut down on the raccoon numbers again. 

DH also got the piglets castrated. It was his first time doing that but I think it went well. Luckily we only had 3 boars/barrows so it wasn’t bad. 

This evening we got to try out our new fishing boat. My 3yo DS has been wanting to fish all year and DH happened to find a cheap boat for sale. We had to order a life jacket for DD, local sporting goods store doesn’t carry life jackets for infants. It arrived today though (Amazon delivers on Sundays now, weird) and we got to go out on the water. We went bluegill fishing and probably caught half a dozen in half an hour, which made it pretty fun for DS. Afterwards, pizza for dinner rounded out a pretty awesome weekend.


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## Baymule (Jul 1, 2019)

Your family will have a lot of fun with that boat. At one point in my life, I lived close to the coast and went fishing a lot in the marshy areas. Fresh fish has a lot going for it, fish frys with family are the best!


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## Baymule (Jul 1, 2019)

JHP Homestead said:


> The bigger ones are hog casing. I’m not positive, but I think the smaller ones might be sheep. We bought them a few years ago and don’t have the original package.


I've always used the hog casings, pretty sure the smaller casings are sheep. Nothing like smoked sausage!


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 1, 2019)

Unfortunately our smoked sausage got cremated in the smoker. We started them in the evening and was planning on adding smoke until bed time, then just letting them gradually cook overnight, keeping the heat low so we didn’t melt out the fat. 

It was fine when we went to bed but when we woke up, the smoker must have spiked temp badly overnight. It had an error code on the readout and the sausages were charred. 

We just smoked a Boston butt overnight a few days ago, so I’m not sure what happened. I’m going to scrub it out good today then do a test run. We have a bunch of bacon and ham to smoke next weekend, so I need to make sure it’s working good.


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## Mike CHS (Jul 1, 2019)

What is your smoker setup?  You may have already posted but I don't recall.


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 1, 2019)

Mike CHS said:


> What is your smoker setup?  You may have already posted but I don't recall.


It’s a 30 inch Masterbuilt electric smoker. We just got it this past winter and have used it probably a dozen times without any problems.


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## Baymule (Jul 1, 2019)

Aw that is terrible! I hope you get it figured out.


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## Baymule (Jul 4, 2019)

I made your maple pan sausage last night, it was good! Thanks for the recipe!


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 4, 2019)

Baymule said:


> I made your maple pan sausage last night, it was good! Thanks for the recipe!


Awesome. I’m glad you liked it!


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 9, 2019)

Boy, this last week sure went by quick. DH and I got all the ham and bacon from Gert smoked, it turned out delicious. I’m not sure what happened to make the sausages get cremated, but the smoker worked fine two days in a row to smoke the bacon and ham. Guess we’ll just keep an eye on it. 

Bacon!



 

Sliced ham for lunch meat:


 

In animal news, the chicks hatched by my silkie mix hen are doing good. She’s the best mother hen we’ve had by far. Our full silkie loves to sit on eggs but is a terrible mother once the eggs actually hatch. The fence in this picture is our “creep feeder” for the chicks, which the grown chickens can get into too, but they usually don’t bother. 


 

I lost a young rabbit and was worried about Coccidiosis (I made a separate post about it), so we weaned and treated the other kits that age. Either it was a fluke death or we caught the Coccidiosis in time, because no others died. 

The orphaned piglets are doing well. We’re working on weaning them now. Hoping to have them completely off the milk replacer by the time this bag is gone, which should be in a few days. They’ll be 4 weeks old this Sunday.


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## AmberLops (Jul 9, 2019)

That bacon looks sooo good!
Good news about your piglets and your rabbits! Kits die pretty easily and usually it's for no real reason...they're pretty strange critters!


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## Baymule (Jul 13, 2019)

That is a gorgeous pile of bacon and sliced ham! Yum!


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 14, 2019)

We got our hay for the year! We are blessed to be able to buy hay from our neighbor across the street, which is very convenient. It still took a couple evenings to get it moved to our place, 8 bales at a time. 

We are trying a different way of storing it this year. It seems like can’t find a good, convenient location and method of covering the hay, but I think this year we’re onto something. 

We put it in one of the larger pastures, temporarily fenced off so the cows and horse can’t get it. It’s up on blocks and landscape timers to get of the ground, and covered with tarps. Once winter hits and we start feeding hay, the livestock gets locked into the dry lot, so we’ll be able to remove the temporary fencing for easier access. We’ll see how we like it come winter


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## Mike CHS (Jul 14, 2019)

We put all of our hay on pallets last year and covered with tarps. Where we used expensive tarps the hay was fine but where we used the fairly cheap blue tarps the hay was all moldy.

This year we worked it out where we pay in advance for the hay we want for this coming winter and they will store it till we come to pick it up.


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## AmberLops (Jul 14, 2019)

Yay! Glad you got your hay 
That's such a beautiful picture too!


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 14, 2019)

We had some of our hay tarped last year and some not, but we didn’t know the “right way” to stack un-tarped round bales so I think we accidentally accelerated the mold. A couple of the bales we fed this spring were almost half rotten. I’m hoping not to waste money in that fashion this year.

Being able to store it inside would be nice. Our supplier/neighbor stores their unsold hay inside but doesn’t have enough storage or willingness to store our hay for us. Maybe someday we’ll be able to add on to our pole barn for indoor storage.


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## Baymule (Jul 16, 2019)

What type roof does your pole barn have? Is it a metal roof, new or old? R panel or corrugated? Near us is a metal business, they sell roll ends for a dollar a foot. It is any color, any pattern, but you can buy what best matches what you already have. Maybe there is a metal business near you? It would be worth contacting them to ask about seconds or end pieces. I have a pile of used corrugated roof tin. I have used a lot of it on things like chicken coops, the Pig Palace and other projects. I just plug the holes with roofing tar that comes in a tube. I am somewhat of a scrounger. When the electric company went through here replacing poles, we got 3 of them and a neighbor has given us another one, they are about 40 feet.


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## Baymule (Jul 16, 2019)

A neighbor built a front porch and got roll end prices for the roof. We went over to help him put it on. It wasn’t braced real good to support neighbors weight, so I went up and put on the radiant heat barrier and the tar paper, just in time before it rained. Then neighbor braced the roof better and we both put the metal on, my husband leaned it against the roof for us. Those end pieces saved a lot of money, they were 12’ long.


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 19, 2019)

@Baymule Our pole barn roof is the R panel style. We usually attend an Amish consignment farm auction around here a couple times a year. We’ve managed to snag quite a few pieces of metal roofing for real cheap from there, but we keep finding uses for it so we don’t have enough of a stash for building a leanto off our pole barn for hay yet. 

I’m also not sure it’s the best solution. Our pole barn is 32x48, so if we added 8’ off one side, we’d have storage for ~24 bales. We bought 50 bales this year, which should be about 10 more than we need, but I don’t ever see us buying 24 or fewer, unless we trim our large livestock numbers way down. 

It might be that we just always end up tarping them outdoors. We never had indoor hay storage when I was a kid and I don’t think we even tarped our hay. DH and I are just trying to cut down on how much we have to buy, since hay is twice the price now as it was when I was a kid.


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 19, 2019)

As far as work on the homestead goes, we’ve been working on building a 2 acre pasture for our horse, which I’ll detail one of these days. 

It’s also black and red raspberry season. I haven’t been out picking a lot though. Mostly just letting DS eat them fresh by the handful. 
 
There’s quite a few red ones out there, so I think I might pick a bowl tonight and make some red raspberry jam. We still have a lot of black raspberry jam from last year, but don’t have any red.


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## Baymule (Jul 19, 2019)

JHP Homestead said:


> @Baymule
> 
> I’m also not sure it’s the best solution. Our pole barn is 32x48, so if we added 8’ off one side, we’d have storage for ~24 bales. We bought 50 bales this year, which should be about 10 more than we need, but I don’t ever see us buying 24 or fewer, unless we trim our large livestock numbers way down.
> 
> ...


 
You must not be very  old.....I'd be delighted,  jumping for joy,  whooping,  screaming and   hollering if things were ONLY twice the price.


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## Bruce (Jul 19, 2019)

Or if income kept up with the price increases over all those years!


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 19, 2019)

Haha! I’m only 29, so I guess I don’t have as much room to complain about the price increase of items as some do


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## Baymule (Jul 19, 2019)

I remember gasoline at 15 cents a gallon--AND the gas station attendant pumped the gas for you, checked your oil, tire pressure and washer fluid. I was 21 when it went to self serve and hit a crisis when I was almost out of gas and didn't know how to put the darn gas in my car! I learned really quick.


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## AmberLops (Jul 19, 2019)

Baymule said:


> I remember gasoline at 15 cents a gallon--AND the gas station attendant pumped the gas for you, checked your oil, tire pressure and washer fluid. I was 21 when it went to self serve and hit a crisis when I was almost out of gas and didn't know how to put the darn gas in my car! I learned really quick.


Wow...can't even imagine!
I wish gas was still 15 cents a gallon...


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## Bruce (Jul 20, 2019)

JHP Homestead said:


> Haha! I’m only 29, so I guess I don’t have as much room to complain about the price increase of items as some do


No but you will see it some more! WAY back when I was a kid, I thought being a doctor was good because they made the big bucks - $20K a year. Which is why all you youngin's should be putting away money for retirement now because everything will be WAY WAY more expensive than they are now.


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## Baymule (Jul 20, 2019)

AmberLops said:


> Wow...can't even imagine!
> I wish gas was still 15 cents a gallon...


And minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. My first job at 16 was at J.C. Penny for $1.70 an hour, I thought I hit the big time! I got a nice apartment at 17, it was $135 a month. A loaded out Ford truck was $5500.


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## Bruce (Jul 20, 2019)

First job I think was $1.39/hr. teenage dishwasher. Back then trucks were work machines, now they are luxury vehicles.


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## Mike CHS (Jul 20, 2019)

Where I lived, the only work was on farms.  Most farmers paid 40 cents an hour for most things like tractor work.  Picking peaches in late summer was awful work because of the heat but you got 50 cents a bushel.  Pitching watermelons paid $1 an hour and many of those melons were 50 pounders.


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## AmberLops (Jul 20, 2019)

Baymule said:


> And minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. My first job at 16 was at J.C. Penny for $1.70 an hour, I thought I hit the big time! I got a nice apartment at 17, it was $135 a month. A loaded out Ford truck was $5500.


I wish things were still that way...it'd be nice!
I knew a guy who bought a Ford F450 for almost $100,000 and he wouldn't let a speck of dirt get on it...crazy if you ask me. Trucks are made for hard work and getting dirty!


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## Bruce (Jul 22, 2019)

I agree but it seems today they are as much (or more) a "luxury vehicle" as a work machine. Probably a status symbol for some.


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## AmberLops (Jul 22, 2019)

Bruce said:


> I agree but it seems today they are as much (or more) a "luxury vehicle" as a work machine. Probably a status symbol for some.


Definitely!
I don't understand it though...It takes away the whole purpose of a truck


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## Bruce (Jul 22, 2019)

Not if your purpose is to show everyone how much money you spent on a luxury truck


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## AmberLops (Jul 22, 2019)

Bruce said:


> Not if your purpose is to show everyone how much money you spent on a luxury truck


True! I asked him once if I could borrow his truck to pick up some pallets and he told me never to ask him again


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## Mike CHS (Jul 22, 2019)

Bruce said:


> I agree but it seems today they are as much (or more) a "luxury vehicle" as a work machine. Probably a status symbol for some.



My status symbol is a 2004 Tacoma with 260,000 miles on it all of which I put on it.


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## Bruce (Jul 22, 2019)

Ah, the badge of honor that goes with doing its job well for a long time! I guess when you need to replace it, you won't be getting a $100K all options including leather seats and sunroof F350


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## AmberLops (Jul 22, 2019)

Mike CHS said:


> My status symbol is a 2004 Tacoma with 260,000 miles on it all of which I put on it.


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 28, 2019)

We’ve been working on fencing in a pasture for our horse, Buddy. He’s currently with our 3 cattle, but they’re only on about 3 acres of fairly mediocre grass, so it’s way overgrazed. Step 1 in the plan to fix this is to fence in a new area for the horse, since he grazes so much lower than the cattle. 

The new pasture is about 2 acres, about half good grass and half woods and brambles.



 

To save on fence posts and be able to utilize more area, we’re using the pine trees that border our property as two sides of the pasture. That’s the blue lines in the picture.  We had to dig fence posts for the red and green side, which was fun. We’re in a former glacial area so one hole is sand, then the next hole over is nasty red clay. There’s also a natural gravel vein that runs through, so a half dozen or so posts are in rock and gravel. Digging holes around here is “like a box of chocolates” as Forrest Gump would say 

We’ve been working on it since the beginning of July and finally have all the posts dug and corners braced. We also have the wire strung on two sides. Only two sides of wire and 4 gates to hang, and then we’ll be done!


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## CntryBoy777 (Jul 28, 2019)

Well, I know ya wouldn't like having to dig those holes here in all this sand....it's too predictable, and just too plain easy for ya....and not near the "adventure" ya got going on there in the Wolverine.....


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## B&B Happy goats (Jul 28, 2019)

Baymule said:


> I remember gasoline at 15 cents a gallon--AND the gas station attendant pumped the gas for you, checked your oil, tire pressure and washer fluid. I was 21 when it went to self serve and hit a crisis when I was almost out of gas and didn't know how to put the darn gas in my car! I learned really quick.



Same here, And they washed your windshield too !


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## Baymule (Jul 29, 2019)

Having already run a fence attached to trees, the voice of experience says, DONT DO IT! When a tree dies and falls over, there goes your fence. Tree posts are not a good idea. If a tree is on the fence line, you are better off to cut it down and run your fence. Trust me on this. 

If you need this pasture like, 3 months ago, run a hot wire on those sides and continue to work on a real fence line. Don’t settle for second best. Do it right the first time. Do it right now, you will be glad you did. I promise. Don’t repeat the mistakes I made.


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 29, 2019)

Baymule said:


> Having already run a fence attached to trees, the voice of experience says, DONT DO IT! When a tree dies and falls over, there goes your fence. Tree posts are not a good idea. If a tree is on the fence line, you are better off to cut it down and run your fence. Trust me on this.
> 
> If you need this pasture like, 3 months ago, run a hot wire on those sides and continue to work on a real fence line. Don’t settle for second best. Do it right the first time. Do it right now, you will be glad you did. I promise. Don’t repeat the mistakes I made.


I agree that it’s going to be bad if a tree dies and falls on our fence. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) we live “out in the woods”. The few acreage there is for grazing is all carved out of the woods, and is lined on almost every side with trees. 

In order to prevent the possibility of a tree falling on our fence, we would either have extremely small areas only fit for drylot, or maybe a small animal or two. Or have to cut down hundreds of live, healthy trees.

Since the fence is in the trees anyways, it doesn’t seem any riskier to have the trees themselves as posts. Either way we’ll have some work to do if they die or get torn down by a tornado. 

We have had one tree fall on our fence a couple years ago, but that was a long dead ash tree. We’re hoping to lessen the risk of it happening again by removing trees from around the fences quickly if they die.

I know we have a lot of risk from it, and there’s a good chance I’ll be coming back and saying you’re exactly right, but I don’t really see any other path.


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## Bruce (Jul 29, 2019)

The tree the fence is attached to could fall on the fence, or the other way. Only one of those directions will take the fence out. You can make a lot of hotwire fence with step in posts that will hold a horse.


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## JHP Homestead (Jul 30, 2019)

Well I had originally only posted the things I thought we did fairly “right” with our new pasture, but since trees as fence posts are not good, I guess I might as well post all the things we did bad as well   Then this can be a lesson in what NOT to do for fencing 

We used the cheap wood “landscape timbers” as fence posts where we didn’t attach to a tree. Except for two t-posts that we used in the tree line where the gap was too big between trees and it was too dense of woods to get the tractor w/ auger in. 

We’re also using barbed wire and electric fence on 3 sides. The 4th side is adjacent to the chicken coop and garden, so we’re using no-climb horse fence there. The reason being that I think it’ll be a few more years before my young children have the sense to stay out of the horse pasture, so I want the barrier along where they’ll spend a lot of time to be more of a physical barrier. 

Here’s some pics of the highlights:



 


 


 

All that being said, we have reasons for our “bad” fencing (not that I’m saying they’re good reasons, just saying we have given it thought). We live on one income; money is not tight but that’s because we’re tight with our money. Except for the no-climb fence, insulators, and nails/staples/etc; all fencing, gates, and posts were collected over the last 5 years at great sale prices or dirt cheap at auction. We probably have $200 into building this fence (not counting the no-climb) versus $1000+ (not counting any fencing but electric) if we did it the “right” way. 

The barbed wire is mostly to keep the deer from breaking the electric fence, which happened almost weekly when we had the same area fenced in with temporary electric 2 years ago. The horse is level headed and smart enough to stay off it, being that there’s also a strand of electric. 

The landscape timbers will probably need replaced in time, especially the ones in clay, since clay holds a lot of moisture. I expect the ones buried in sand should last a pretty long time. 

Long term, I expect we’ll continue to stockpile t-posts cheap from auction and replace the landscape timbers with them as needed. I also plan on continuing to buy a roll of no-climb fence here and there. That way when the horse dies (he is old and probably only has 5 or so years left ) we can maybe put goats out there, which the area is better suited for anyways. 

Well, there is it, feel free to lay it on me .  I know we did lots of things “wrong” but it’ll be done this weekend so we can’t exactly change it now. Hopefully I’ll be journaling for many years here and can post about how it’s still looking several years from now.


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## Bruce (Jul 30, 2019)

JHP Homestead said:


> Well, there is it, feel free to lay it on me


Thanks for the "invitation" 
I'm sure the landscaping timbers will last a decent amount of time. They are a smaller diameter that "usual" for fence posts but I think they will do. How long are they and how much is in the ground?

In the second picture, I'd say you have the brace wire too high. The brace post is usually 4/5 the height of the post out of the ground and the brace wire goes from that height down to the base of the other post.  You don't want too much of an angle or it will try to pull the base of the other post up out of the ground. The ones going up the hill look about like mine. I puzzled over that for a bit.

I ASSUME you are planning to put a gate to the right of the lower right side brace? That is the only reason you would need brace wire in both directions, one to hold against the fence pulling one way and one to hold against the gate pulling it the other. ASSUMING that is true, in that picture the fence would only be on the 2 H braces and really put little tension on the posts given the short span.

Edit: I forgot to add, nailing the barbed wire to boards rather than directly to the tree will at least keep the tree from incorporating the wire into itself.


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## CntryBoy777 (Jul 30, 2019)

Everybody has to do "what" they can, as they can, with the best that is available at the time....ya have a Great "start" and have "learned" from the experience, and that is "knowledge" ya can apply in the future....everybody has stood in those shoes and that is why many give the advice they do....when I put up a fence I used 2"x4"x5' welded wire....it was all I could afford at the time, but soon found that it wouldn't hold up for very long with our goats....so, had plans to replace the fencing in a couple of yrs....the were family "difficulties" after my dad passed and my ex-sister took the land and kicked us off, so we moved....was sure glad at that time I didn't use more expensive wire.....something ya could do in the future is to buy a few 5"x8' treated posts at a time and have a few on hand to use if some of the timbers start failing....what will happen is they will be subject to water damage/rot from the end of the timber below ground and the top...and depending on the pressure of the stretch on the wire, they will begin to warp in the direction in which ya stretched the fence....they will last for a few yrs, or should....tho, it will depend on snow cover and the length of time the ground is frozen there....cause the constant moisture will promote the rot.....just have a few posts on hand to switch out with just in case....ya have to start somewhere, and it seems ya have a really Good start!!....I for one certainly won't "rake ya over the coals"....my wife is from Michigan....


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## JHP Homestead (Aug 15, 2019)

Whew, it has been awhile. It seems like I’m on here all the time, but I get so caught up in reading others’ journals, I never make time to post on my own.  There are some great stories here!

Anyways, we finished the new pasture for our horse. He seems happy in his new area. The next big project is trenching water and electricity out to our chicken/rabbit area. I’m so excited to not have to haul 10 gallons of water out there every day in the winter!

I had 2 litters of kits born 2 weeks ago.  The one doe lost about half of hers (probably due to the heat) but the rest are doing well. 

My limited garden is doing well despite being mostly neglected. I’ve canned up 26 quarts of wax beans. I don’t know much about beans and don’t remember what variety these are, but supposedly they’re a halfway decent black bean. So I think I’m going to let the rest ripen and dry out.


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## Bruce (Aug 15, 2019)

I'm the same way, I post on other's journals much more than mine. 

Don't know beans about beans?  Me either. The only reference I have to wax beans is that they are yellowish (and DW doesn't like them). Not sure how those would make black beans.


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## Mike CHS (Aug 15, 2019)

Bruce said:


> I'm the same way, I post on other's journals much more than mine.
> 
> Don't know beans about beans?  Me either. The only reference I have to wax beans is that they are yellowish (and DW doesn't like them). Not sure how those would make black beans.



I grow Black Turtle black beans and the pods are yellow.


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## Baymule (Aug 15, 2019)

Do the best you can do. That’s pretty much what we all do. How do you keep your faucet from freezing in the winter?


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## Bruce (Aug 15, 2019)

It would have to be one of those that are 4' in the ground and drain back down when you shut it off.


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## Baymule (Aug 15, 2019)

Heck, water lines here are only buried 2 feet deep! I'd have to dig a pit for that thing!


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## CntryBoy777 (Aug 15, 2019)

Baymule said:


> Heck, water lines here are only buried 2 feet deep! I'd have to dig a pit for that thing!


Paris and Trip would help ya out with that job....


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## JHP Homestead (Aug 15, 2019)

Bruce said:


> I'm the same way, I post on other's journals much more than mine.
> 
> Don't know beans about beans?  Me either. The only reference I have to wax beans is that they are yellowish (and DW doesn't like them). Not sure how those would make black beans.


Haha, nope! I do not know beans about beans. I had to go take a look at the packet and these are Cherokee wax beans. I don’t know if it’s going to taste like a regular black bean but I don’t really like wax beans so it’s worth a try. Next year I’m going to stop being cheap (buying whatever seeds I find on clearance) and buy beans I actually like the taste of. 



Baymule said:


> Do the best you can do. That’s pretty much what we all do. How do you keep your faucet from freezing in the winter?


Yep, we use the frost-free hydrant like what @Bruce posted. The trench is a minimum of 4’ deep and is pushing 6’ in some spots. Praise the Lord for a tractor with a backhoe!


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## JHP Homestead (Aug 15, 2019)

Sigh, ran into some issues this evening. We need to put some pea stone in our trench for the water to runoff from the frost-free hydrant. I priced it out and for 1 cubic yard of pea stone, we can pay ~$125 from Menards, or $15 if we go get it ourselves from the gravel pit. Hmm, not a hard decision. So we built some short sides for our flatbed trailer to make it so it will hold gravel. 

Just as we’re fixing to go get the gravel, DH noticed that the (almost) brand new front driver side tire on the trailer looks half bald already. It’s probably an alignment issue but in the meantime, we’ll just swap it to the passenger side. Only when DH took the passenger side tire off, the axle half fell off! Apparently the bracket holding the leaf spring to the trailer frame was busted and has just been just hanging on by a thread for who knows how long! DH, being the man I love, is working on fabricating a new bracket, so maybe we’ll be able to get gravel tomorrow evening. Or next week the way things go around here


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## Mike CHS (Aug 15, 2019)

it worked that way much better than if you had been pulling it at 60 mph and it came apart.


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## JHP Homestead (Aug 15, 2019)

Mike CHS said:


> it worked that way much better than if you had been pulling it at 60 mph and it came apart.


Definitely! 

Thinking of that reminds me of the time in my teens when my folks, sister, and I were driving back from going camping with our horses. All of a sudden we got passed by a tire! Turns out it was a tire off the horse trailer! Fortunately the 2nd tire held the trailer weight and we didn’t get in an accident. It sure was nerve-wracking limping along until we got to a spot we could safely unload the horses though. 

Although I think in this case we’d be losing a whole axle rather than just a tire. I don’t think we’d be getting out of that so easy. Especially not with a couple tons of gravel.


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## Bruce (Aug 16, 2019)

Tons?? How many cubic feet do you need for the hydrant?



JHP Homestead said:


> Next year I’m going to stop being cheap (buying whatever seeds I find on clearance) and buy beans I actually like the taste of.


Good plan, seeds are pretty cheap anyway



JHP Homestead said:


> Praise the Lord for a tractor with a backhoe!


And apparently a dearth of rocks! Lucky you. Nice looking trench BTW, looks like you have an 8" trenching bucket?


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## Mike CHS (Aug 16, 2019)

Our feed store sells the basic seed supplies in bulk so you might see if you have one there.  I bought a pound of turnip seed the other day for $5.50.  Most things like radishes, I can get from them for around 50 cents an ounce and that is a LOT of radish seed.


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## JHP Homestead (Aug 16, 2019)

Bruce said:


> Tons?? How many cubic feet do you need for the hydrant?


I think we only need 8-10 cubic feet for the hydrant, but for the price of the gravel and the price of gas getting to/from the pit, we might as well get as much as we can. We’ll have a use for it at some point. 



Bruce said:


> And apparently a dearth of rocks! Lucky you. Nice looking trench BTW, looks like you have an 8" trenching bucket?


Yeah we haven’t found many big rocks around here. Which doesn’t hurt my feelings at all. I’ve read your journal and don’t envy your rocks 
The bucket on our little backhoe is 12”.


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## JHP Homestead (Aug 20, 2019)

DH got the flatbed trailer fixed. Just in time to go “up North” and get a load of pig feed. There’s a grain elevator near my folks’ house that sells better pig feed for $2 less per bag than what we can buy it for where we live. It’s a 2 hour drive but we were going there anyways to go to my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary, so just lost a little gas mileage hauling the trailer. It still works out better in the long run. 

We finally got our load of stone for the water line trench today. Now DH can resume work on our water line!


 

In the meanwhile, I haven’t gotten much done around the homestead. Mostly playing around with the kids and puttering here and there. We did have a couple litters of rabbits born a couple weeks ago. They’re growing well. 


 

Here’s the Mama rabbit, Yennifer, looking for treats.


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## Senile_Texas_Aggie (Aug 21, 2019)

Just caught up!


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## RollingAcres (Aug 21, 2019)

Luckily you found out about the trailer issues before you had all the peastone loaded up. 
Glad you were able to get it fixed and got the stone. Your rabbits are very cute!


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## JHP Homestead (Aug 21, 2019)

Senile_Texas_Aggie said:


> Just caught up!


Thanks! Your journal is next on my list to read, once I get through CntryBoy777’s.


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## JHP Homestead (Aug 21, 2019)

RollingAcres said:


> Luckily you found out about the trailer issues before you had all the peastone loaded up.
> Glad you were able to get it fixed and got the stone.


Yeah definitely! I like to think the leaf spring would have just bounced a bit where it touches the frame if the connection broke but I don’t know anything about trailer suspension/axles/whatever so I don’t know what bad stuff could have happened   Probably for the best, otherwise I’ll just worry. 



RollingAcres said:


> Your rabbits are very cute!


Thank you!


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## CntryBoy777 (Aug 22, 2019)

JHP Homestead said:


> Thanks! Your journal is next on my list to read, once I get through CntryBoy777’s.


Hopefully ya won't be bored to tears........and yeh, been thru your neighborhood up there, too!!....made deliveries in Holland, Edwardsburg, Grand Rapids amongst others....and I even have a petosky stone.........my wife, Joyce, is from Cadillac and Gaylord areas....


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## JHP Homestead (Nov 26, 2019)

Whew, it’s been awhile since I posted here. We finished putting in the water/electricity out to the rabbitry and chicken coop. Also painted the house and spent several days/weeks cutting our wood for the winter. 

I finally got some blue baby rabbits out of my blue buck! One of my does apparently carries the blue gene. I am pretty excited about that. 





Our cow, Rosie, calved last Saturday. We’ve only had a couple calves, so I’m still a novice, but this calf is really spunky. Sadie, last years calf, was really calm and we could walk up to her no problem until she was a couple weeks old. This calf was brand new and still jumped up and tried to run off when I walked up to it. So I don’t know if it’s a bull or heifer yet.




And my 7 month old DD just woke up, so I guess that’s it for now


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## Baymule (Nov 26, 2019)

Congrats on the blue bunny and the new calf!


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 2, 2020)

Happy New Year! 

We had another calf born December 31st at 10pm. This calf is from the heifer that has been due anytime for the last 6 months, so I’m really glad she finally calved. Another heifer calf, which means we’re 4 for 4 on heifer calves. Hopefully at least one of the 3 more recent ones born will end up a decent milk cow. That’s the plan anyways. 




DH fixed the walls of our leanto in the cow pasture that the bull knocked down several months ago. He cut 1x10 boards with his chainsaw mill and put them up where the bull had knocked the cheap OSB down. You can see them in the picture of the calf above. 

Other than that, I don’t think we’ve had much homestead related stuff going on. Butchered a couple pigs just before Christmas, but they weren’t for us, we just did the cutting up and what not. They were a couple of the Herefords that we had born here and were orphaned though, so it was good to see how well they dressed out. They were 250 and 240 pounds live and dressed out to 190 and 180, respectively. The meat looked really good too, so we’re happy with that. I didn’t get any pictures of the two we did, but we still have one left that we’re going to butcher for my in-laws in another month or so. I’ll try to remember to get pictures of him beforehand.


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## Baymule (Jan 3, 2020)

New Hereford calves are so cute. 4 heifers! That is great. I would love pictures of your Hereford hogs. I finally found some around here and raised 2 Hereford hog feeder pigs in 2018. They finished out nicely and were to pretty to look at while we raised them LOL


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## Bruce (Jan 3, 2020)

JHP Homestead said:


> This calf is from the heifer that has been due anytime for the last 6 months, so I’m really glad she finally calved.


That is quite the "calving window!" I take it you didn't know exactly when she was bred. Congrats on the 4 for 4. Maybe they will ALL be excellent milkers.


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 3, 2020)

Baymule said:


> New Hereford calves are so cute. 4 heifers! That is great. I would love pictures of your Hereford hogs. I finally found some around here and raised 2 Hereford hog feeder pigs in 2018. They finished out nicely and were to pretty to look at while we raised them LOL


I love the look of the Herefords too. We started with the Hereford cow, so when we decided to get a breeder pig, I thought it’d be fun to get a Hereford, so then we had Hereford cows and Hereford hogs. 

DH is pretty turned off from the Hereford hogs after our bad farrowing experience though, so I don’t think we’ll get another Hereford when we decide to get another sow. 

Here’s a picture of the feeder that we still have:


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 3, 2020)

Bruce said:


> That is quite the "calving window!" I take it you didn't know exactly when she was bred. Congrats on the 4 for 4. Maybe they will ALL be excellent milkers.


Yeah, she was with a bull from June 2018 until May 2019. I have no idea why she didn’t calve several months ago. We didn’t pregnancy test her until this fall and we were going to sell or butcher her if she was open, but luckily for her she wasn’t. 

Haha, I think DH is afraid I’ll want to keep and milk all of them. We don’t have the pasture for that though, so we’ll have to make some decisions once these two get older.


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## Bruce (Jan 3, 2020)

Hopefully you can make some feed money from selling the extra heifers.


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 7, 2020)

Bacon!





I smoked and sliced the bacon from my folks’ pig today. Then we had bacon cheeseburgers for dinner with the trimmings. 

This bacon was surprisingly not as good looking as the bacon on other pigs we’ve done. Some areas of it were way meatier than expected, while other areas were solid fat without the expected later of muscle in between. Not sure what’s up with that, but it was still tasty!


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## Baymule (Jan 8, 2020)

NOTHING beats home smoked bacon! I had a package of bacon ends from 2 years ago that I hoarded until New Years Day, then I put them in a pot of purple hull peas, gosh darn those were good! That's some beautiful bacon you got there!


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 14, 2020)

Haven’t done much worth noting in the journal the last several days. It’s been really warm for this time of year, but it’ll hopefully be getting down to more normal temps soon. A good cold spell will help the maple trees have a better season.

It’s not really homestead related, but DH and I have been working on remodeling our basement this winter.  We’re turning a good chunk of the basement into an awesome master suite. Then DD and DS will each have their own room in he main level of the house.


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## Baymule (Jan 15, 2020)

Remodeling your basement IS homestead related! It is not always about where the ANIMALS live, you gotta live somewhere too! LOL


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 21, 2020)

I have some baby bunnies in the house now. 2 of my does are due tomorrow and Thursday, but one of them, Yennifer, delivered today. She had 2 litters last winter with no problems, but didn’t do a good job putting them in the nest this time. She had a great nest of fur in the back of the nest box, but had all the kits up front, exposed to the cold. 

I’m not against tucking 1 or 2 in my bra, but 7 is too many for that (at least for me 🤣) so they are in the bathroom on the heater vent.

5 of the 7 were cold but still moving sluggishly, and the other 2 were cold and still when I brought them in. Hopefully they perk up and maybe 1 of the still ones will come back to life. That’d be cool.


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## Bruce (Jan 21, 2020)

You just have to get a larger bra!


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 21, 2020)

Well 1 of the seemingly lifeless kits came back to life, which was pretty awesome. That’s the first time I’ve actually had success reviving a “dead” kit. 

They’re back out with Yennifer now. She’s acting very weird though, so I’m kind of worried about her. She’s usually very laid back and is a seasoned mom, but she’s acting distressed and is grunting a lot. I hope she’s ok and takes care of the babies.


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## Baymule (Jan 21, 2020)

Good job on warming them up. I hope the momma steps up and takes care of them.


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## Bruce (Jan 22, 2020)

I wonder if she's out of sorts since she isn't in her regular housing.


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 22, 2020)

Baymule said:


> Good job on warming them up. I hope the momma steps up and takes care of them.


Thanks! They look to be doing ok this morning, although I’m not 100% sure she’s nursing them. The nesting box looked a little rearranged though, so I think she went in there at least. 



Bruce said:


> I wonder if she's out of sorts since she isn't in her regular housing.


I didn’t bring her in with the kits, so her housing was the same. I did move a couple other rabbits around a few weeks ago, so she now has a buck in the next cage. I’m wondering if maybe it’s the close proximity of the buck, combined with birthing hormones, or something. I’ve had other does next to bucks during birthing before with no issues, but he’s acting pretty stirred up too, so I don’t know. She isn’t bleeding anymore and got herself all cleaned up, so I think she’s ok health-wise. 

My Californian doe kindled this morning. She only had 4, so I should be able to foster at least a few of Yennifer’s kits over if it turns out she isn’t feeding them. One more rabbit due tomorrow, then our winter kindling will be all done!


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 24, 2020)

Rabbits are doing good. My 3rd and final doe to kindle had at least 5. 

We finally got around to getting the tractor chains put on. Of course, it was after we got 4 inches of slippery snow with the tractor parked several hundred feet and down a steep hill from the pole barn 

20 minutes later, we got the tractor up the hill by using the backhoe to push it. 

Once we got the chains on, we tested them out by skidding some logs out of the woods for DH to mill into boards for our barn. The chains worked great as usual, its amazing how much extra traction they provide.


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## Bruce (Jan 25, 2020)

What size tractor and are the chains on the front or rear?


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## Baymule (Jan 26, 2020)

Snow chains are not in my vocabulary. LOL LOL


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 26, 2020)

Bruce said:


> What size tractor and are the chains on the front or rear?


It’s a 30 HP Branson tractor. It’s 4wd but we only got chains for the rear. We just got them last year, after 2 years of struggling to put hay out and get wood in the winter. They are amazing.


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## Senile_Texas_Aggie (Jan 26, 2020)

Miss @JHP Homestead,

I am really glad that they are working for you.  On the YouTube channel GP Outdoors, Gordan, who is in central Ontario, bought chains for his tractor as well (a Kubota BX26 I think).  He loves his as well.  There was a steep part of his driveway that he could not get up, even in 4WD, when he tried to clear the snow.  Now he has no problems.  I wonder if @MtViking has been able to clear his driveway with just a 2WD tractor.

Senile Texas Aggie


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## Duckfarmerpa1 (Jan 26, 2020)

Yesterday Chris used the skid steer to clear the driveway...but usually the snow plow.  He was just Chipping a lot of ice. I do like those chains!  Gotta love a tractor!


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## Bruce (Jan 26, 2020)

JHP Homestead said:


> We just got them last year, after 2 years of struggling to put hay out and get wood in the winter. They are amazing.


Similar frame and tire size to my 34 HP Mahindra. How do you even get that much chain laid out and attached to the big back wheels? How much do they weigh? I have a hard enough time getting the chains on my little garden tractor tight. Also, what brand are they? They look like they have nice "spikes" to move on ice. I would think a set on the front would be good for steering.


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 26, 2020)

Bruce said:


> Similar frame and tire size to my 34 HP Mahindra. How do you even get that much chain laid out and attached to the big back wheels? How much do they weigh? I have a hard enough time getting the chains on my little garden tractor tight. Also, what brand are they? They look like they have nice "spikes" to move on ice. I would think a set on the front would be good for steering.


The chains weigh about 75# each. We put them on by laying them out, then lifting one end to the top of the rear tire from behind and tying it on with a string through the rim. Then just drive forward real slow and let the tractor pull the chain all the way around the tire. 

They’re hard for me to lift and move around, but I can manage if I have to. DH is a lot stronger, so he usually gets the pleasure of moving the chains around and lifting one end onto the tire. 

The chains are Aquiline Talons Tractor chains We bought them from https://www.midwesttraction.com/

Front chains would be helpful, especially for steering. Sometimes it’s really hard to turn in the snow and ice. I dunno if we’ll buy any for the front though, maybe some cheaper ones. The talons are about the best we could find, and had the price tag to go with it.


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## Grant (Jan 26, 2020)

JHP Homestead said:


> It’s a 30 HP Branson tractor. It’s 4wd but we only got chains for the rear. We just got them last year, after 2 years of struggling to put hay out and get wood in the winter. They are amazing.
> View attachment 69296


M
i own basically the same tractor the Branson 2910.  Same everything they just give a little more fuel to it so it gets 1 more hp then it’s all new and improved.


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 26, 2020)

Grant said:


> M
> i own basically the same tractor the Branson 2910.  Same everything they just give a little more fuel to it so it gets 1 more hp then it’s all new and improved.


Funny how they change one little thing and now it’s an “upgrade”. 

How do you like yours?


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## Grant (Jan 26, 2020)

I like it. The weight of the Branson let’s me do more work with less horsepower.  It doesn’t just spin on the surface.


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## JHP Homestead (Jan 28, 2020)

My rabbit kits are 1 week old now. One of the ones I brought inside died, but all the others are doing well. Most of them are boring white (except one tort! I’m really excited about that) but I took a couple pics anyways. 











In other rabbit news, DH butchered 3 growouts that were ready. I think I’m going to make hot dogs with them, since DS has decided he doesn’t like “spicy” stuff and refuses to eat the other sausages and burgers I made.


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## JHP Homestead (Feb 5, 2020)

We haven’t been able to work much on our basement. We bought a new-to-us car in order to save money on gas; driving my Excursion around at 10mpg just to get groceries and go to church is overkill. We also have at least one trip to Illinois this year, and probably one to Virginia too, so we did the math and assuming no major issues with the car (yeah right   ) we’d have broken even on the price of the car vs gas savings in less than 2 years.

Enter our new car, an 01 LeSabre. It seemed great when we got it, had new tires and was in good shape. The steering was a little wonky, but that was just due to a loose steering rack, so we got it home and fixed that in less than an hour. Great, now we have a nice car that’ll get more than 2x the gas mileage of the Excursion. 

Except now it has some random electrical short affecting about half of the interior electronics, and IT WON’T START!! 

So we’ve spent the last week or so tracking down a short among the 8 zillion wires in the car. Last night, we finally (praise the Lord!) found a ground wire that is shorted to voltage somewhere. Now just to take the front seats out, find and fix the short, and Pray that it actually fixes the problem 🙏 

I can’t wait to get this fixed so we can go back to working on remodeling our basement. It was supposed to be a winter project but at the rate we’re going, winter will be over before the project is


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## Bruce (Feb 5, 2020)

I can't be happy about the car problems and I'm glad you found the problem, electrical problems are a bear. Nice that you weren't paying a mechanic $100/hr to chase it down. But 2x the MPG of the Excursion is "good"?


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## JHP Homestead (Feb 5, 2020)

Bruce said:


> I can't be happy about the car problems and I'm glad you found the problem, electrical problems are a bear. Nice that you weren't paying a mechanic $100/hr to chase it down. But 2x the MPG of the Excursion is "good"?


Yeah, it wouldn’t take very long before we’d pay more to the mechanic than the car is worth. 

2x the mpg of the Excursion still isn’t very good, but it seems like a decent compromise. I used to have a Ford Fiesta, which got 40mpg. That was awesome at the time, because I was driving 45 miles each way to work and we lived in a rental house. After 1 kid, quitting my job, and buying a homestead, the car just became a huge annoyance. With the car seat in it, the front passenger seat was so far forward that DH couldn’t even get in it and I was sitting with my knees in the glove box. An adult couldn’t really sit in the back either. It just made any sort of traveling downright uncomfortable. 

So, we swung way in the other direction and sold the Fiesta and got the Excursion. We love it, it’s great for hauling stuff for the farm and for when family visits. The gas mileage is awful though and we do quite a bit of traveling to visit relatives (2.5 hours away) where we don’t need a vehicle that large. 

The “new” car is supposed to be a compromise of large enough to make DH happy and comfortable, and small/fuel economical enough to make me happy. And we bought it for a great price, if we can get it running right


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## Bruce (Feb 5, 2020)

Sounds like DH knows his way around cars, it will get running right!


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## Baymule (Feb 5, 2020)

Congrats on the new car. Hope you get everything all fixed up on it and can go on down the road!


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## JHP Homestead (Feb 5, 2020)

Thanks! DH found the problem wire this evening! We didn’t have the wire crimps in order to fix it, but he’ll get some tomorrow, and hopefully that’ll be the only problem.

In animal news, the rabbit kits are 2 weeks old now and mostly doing well. A couple have been getting out of the nesting box already, so I’ll turn the boxes on their sides soon.


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## JHP Homestead (Feb 12, 2020)

So we’re still sorting out car problems. DH fixed the wiring problem under the front seats, but the car still doesn’t start. It looks like maybe we were a little aggressive shoving the test leads into the starter relay holes, so we’re going to try putting in a new fuse/relay block and hopefully that fixes it. That part will be here by Friday, so maybe this weekend we’ll have a running car. 

DH and I took advantage of the ground finally freezing up and hauled some dead trees out of the woods. It looks like it’ll be back above freezing during the day in just a week or two, so we’ll be getting as many trees out as we can while the ground is solid. We have a lot of dead standing Ash trees in our woods that are starting to get rotten and fall on their own, so we’re trying to get some of those cleaned up.


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## Bruce (Feb 12, 2020)

Liked that you could get the wood out, not liking that you still have car problems.


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## MtViking (Feb 15, 2020)

Senile_Texas_Aggie said:


> Miss @JHP Homestead,
> 
> I am really glad that they are working for you.  On the YouTube channel GP Outdoors, Gordan, who is in central Ontario, bought chains for his tractor as well (a Kubota BX26 I think).  He loves his as well.  There was a steep part of his driveway that he could not get up, even in 4WD, when he tried to clear the snow.  Now he has no problems.  I wonder if @MtViking has been able to clear his driveway with just a 2WD tractor.
> 
> Senile Texas Aggie


I haven’t had to plow with the the tractor but a couple times at the beginning of the season. I have a little plow truck to use, but haven’t had to use it either. We’ve had a mild dry winter, I’m dreading what this summer is going to be like. Last year at this time it was snowing everyday and was -20 most days. We had 3ft on the porch by the first week of February last year. It’s been warm everyday this year in the upper 30s most the time we even hit sixty a couple weeks ago.


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## thistlebloom (Feb 15, 2020)

MtViking said:


> I haven’t had to plow with the the tractor but a couple times at the beginning of the season. I have a little plow truck to use, but haven’t had to use it either. We’ve had a mild dry winter, I’m dreading what this summer is going to be like. Last year at this time it was snowing everyday and was -20 most days. We had 3ft on the porch by the first week of February last year. It’s been warm everyday this year in the upper 30s most the time we even hit sixty a couple weeks ago.



Do I remember correctly that you're in MT? We've been reaching the 40's some days, it's been a lot of up and down, but overall not anything like I heard we were going to get. Of course it's not over until you'ved mowed the grass at least twice right? Last year it was Feb when we got that phenomenal dump.


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## Bruce (Feb 16, 2020)

MtViking said:


> I’m dreading what this summer is going to be like


Doesn't sound good for snow in the mountains and full lakes/reservoirs.


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## Duckfarmerpa1 (Feb 16, 2020)

JHP Homestead said:


> My rabbit kits are 1 week old now. One of the ones I brought inside died, but all the others are doing well. Most of them are boring white (except one tort! I’m really excited about that) but I took a couple pics anyways.
> View attachment 69367
> View attachment 69368
> View attachment 69369
> ...


I had to look at the pictures three times...they look like my bunnies!  The only way I knew the difference is the little batch of white ones....  congrats on the bunny baby kits!!


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## MtViking (Feb 16, 2020)

thistlebloom said:


> Do I remember correctly that you're in MT? We've been reaching the 40's some days, it's been a lot of up and down, but overall not anything like I heard we were going to get. Of course it's not over until you'ved mowed the grass at least twice right? Last year it was Feb when we got that phenomenal dump.


Yeah I’m in Montana. You are correct February last year here  was brutal. I’ve seen it snow in July before so I’m definitely not counting my blessings yet. As much as I enjoy the mild weather we need the moisture so I hope it’s a rainy spring


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## JHP Homestead (May 4, 2020)

Hello again!

After a long winter, DH and I are finally back to projects that are fun to post about again. 

We’ve been working on putting in a berry patch by the house. We have blackberries, raspberries, and black raspberries growing rampant in several areas around the property that we want to mow down; so we decided to clear out a ~45x50 area near the house and move the berries there. 

We fenced it in last fall and put our feeder pigs in it for a few months to take it down to bare earth; and then DH leveled it with the tractor and we spread weed barrier (aka cut up feed sacks) and mulch out. Then we transplanted a bunch of berries into it. We found a really good deal on mature blueberry bushes from a local blueberry farm that went out of business to, so we planted a few blueberry bushes in that area too. 

I can’t wait to be able to walk down the nice rows and pick berries.





Also, to keep it herds related, here’s a couple pictures of my “herd” of rabbits


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## Baymule (May 5, 2020)

What a nice berry patch! It’s perfectly ok to post about your garden, most of us have gardens, fruit trees, berries or something growing. There are pick your own blue berry farms here, so we go picking every year. We pick wild plums on fence rows. Our favorite tree is in a fence row of an old man, we always give him jam. When the county crews were clearing back forest growth from the roadsides, he hung red surveying tape on the trees and told them not to cut his trees! The fence was grown up in all manner of briars, saplings and a mess. He had it poisoned, but protected the wild plum trees. He has torn down the fence to rebuild it. It will be wild plum picking season soon. He deserves a double batch of jam this year!


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## JHP Homestead (May 15, 2020)

We have pigs again! I was looking around for feeders and found a couple bred sows for sale. They’re both basically culls from a local small pig farmer, but hopefully they’ll farrow ok and we can get a gilt or two to raise up and breed. The black one has a pretty messed up looking teat. I don’t know enough to know if it’ll affect her other than that I assume a piglet wouldn’t be able to nurse it. 

They’re both due around the beginning of July.


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## Baymule (May 16, 2020)

That’s great on the sows! I love a good deal. If you want to slaughter them after weaning the piglets, put them on a soured corn and hay diet. The roughage will help clean up the meat and the soured corn will put a great finish on them. Basically line up 5-6 buckets with lids, put in however much corn they can eat in a day and cover with water. Let it set and get stinky, they will love it. Use a bucket, refill and put it at the back of the line. About 6 weeks and they will be tasty!


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## JHP Homestead (May 16, 2020)

Baymule said:


> That’s great on the sows! I love a good deal. If you want to slaughter them after weaning the piglets, put them on a soured corn and hay diet. The roughage will help clean up the meat and the soured corn will put a great finish on them. Basically line up 5-6 buckets with lids, put in however much corn they can eat in a day and cover with water. Let it set and get stinky, they will love it. Use a bucket, refill and put it at the back of the line. About 6 weeks and they will be tasty!


We’re going to butcher at least the black one after weaning, so I appreciate the advice!


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## Senile_Texas_Aggie (May 16, 2020)

Miss @JHP Homestead,

The folks at the YouTube channel "Red Tool House" raise pigs (among other things).  They feed fermented feed in the mornings and let the pigs out into silvo pasture for the day.  Here is where they documented how they fermented their feed:

Senile Texas Aggie


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## JHP Homestead (May 18, 2020)

Senile_Texas_Aggie said:


> Miss @JHP Homestead,
> 
> The folks at the YouTube channel "Red Tool House" raise pigs (among other things).  They feed fermented feed in the mornings and let the pigs out into silvo pasture for the day.  Here is where they documented how they fermented their feed:
> 
> Senile Texas Aggie


Thanks for the video! I made fermented feed for our chickens a couple years ago, but haven’t the last year or so. After watching that video I think I might have to start up again.


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## JHP Homestead (May 18, 2020)

I now have a milk goat!!!! 

I’m really excited about this. We’ve been working on our homestead for 5 years now and have talked several times about getting a dairy animal. We kept putting it off though, for various reasons. We have a Hereford/Jersey mix heifer that we’ll be breeding this summer and hopefully milking next spring. In the meantime though, I’ve been getting impatient to have a dairy animal, so DH suggested a goat. It must have been destiny, because the next day I went to TSC and saw a flyer for does in milk on the bulletin board. 

I don’t have any pictures yet, but she’s a 4 year old Saanen/Lamancha mix. I’ll get a few pictures tomorrow when I milk her for the first time. I’ve never milked an animal before so it should be fun


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## Bruce (May 19, 2020)

Time to watch some YouTube videos!!!! I gather some goats like hand milking and others prefer machine. And of course there are a lot of different machines.


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## JHP Homestead (Dec 18, 2020)

Hi again!
Feels like it’s been forever since I was here last. Summer on the homestead was as busy and fun as always. 

Right now is the time for beef! We spent the last couple weeks building a hanging shed made with cooler panels I got cheap at an auction. It needs a lot more work to get it how we want, but it is working for now to hang our beef. Last weekend we killed our 3 year old cow that has been slated for beef since birth (with a small detour of having one calf) and have her hanging in the shed for a week or so. 

Monday starts DH’s vacation for the rest of the year, so we’ll start the task of cutting up the meat. We don’t have enough height in our current setup to see how much the carcass currently weighs, but I know she’s several times larger than a hog  🤣 





One of the best parts of cutting up our own beef - hanger steak! I’d never heard of it before we butchered our first steer and it is delicious. Like a bonus tenderloin and a great reward after skinning and gutting for several hours.


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## Baymule (Dec 18, 2020)

Where do you find hanger steak?


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## Senile_Texas_Aggie (Dec 19, 2020)

Baymule said:


> Where do you find hanger steak?



My guess is at the same place as you find prop wash.


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## JHP Homestead (Dec 20, 2020)

Baymule said:


> Where do you find hanger steak?


It’s inside the gut cavity running along the spine from about the kidneys to the diaphragm.


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## Baymule (Dec 20, 2020)

JHP Homestead said:


> It’s inside the gut cavity running along the spine from about the kidneys to the diaphragm.


That sounds like the tender loin. Same cut, different name?


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## JHP Homestead (Dec 21, 2020)

Baymule said:


> That sounds like the tender loin. Same cut, different name?


No, it’s not the tenderloin, I think I just described it’s location badly. It’s kind of like part of the diaphragm. Basically, when gutting the beef, after pulling all the guts out there’s this muscle that is now visible. The tenderloin is still hidden behind all the leaf fat and kidneys.

I can’t seem to find a picture online of where it actually is in the carcass, so I’ll take a picture of the inside of my cow tomorrow to show where it was.


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## Baymule (Dec 21, 2020)

Thanks! I have heard about hanger steak, but never butchered a steer myself. We have a steer now that goes to freezer camp in March. I wonder if the owner of the slaughter facility has heard of hanger steak. 

LOL we took two Hereford Hogs in one time and he asked what breed they were. I kinda figured that somebody that had spent his life in the slaughter business had seen Hereford Hogs before. I was wrong, ours were the first.


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## Senile_Texas_Aggie (Dec 31, 2020)

Happy New Year, Miss @JHP Homestead!


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