Well, here we are. Now where to begin? This whole crazy idea began one day when several of us decided we needed a garden. From the simple we need herbs, potatoes, and other veggies we some how lost our brains for a moment and thought we should add chickens and maybe some rabbits, oh what about a goat. Yea.... we lost it. None of us have ever taken on something this big before. Very overwhelmed Brittany and I sat down and went over how much money we needed to put into the start up year. We budgeted for everything, dirt, seeds, chickens, rabbits, fencing, feed, and the runs, hutches, and coops. We had to rule out a few things like our nifty goat idea, but that was ok we can expand next year. Our first major buy was all of our seeds dirt and seed trays. After about two hours of us looking at seeds we got only the veggies we use the most. Keep it simple became our motto that day and has seemed to stick. To our surprise the seeds and dirt were very cheap. We budgeted a lot more to that section of our homestead, but we still had to get the fencing. We loaded up my car with all the seeds and dirt. The seedlings we were going to start at my house because I had the garage to store everything until March when we could plant. I sat down that night on the phone with Brittany and we went over what seeds had to be started when and how. Long and annoying process that I am glad only had to be done once. Looking at the calendar we noticed we have seeds that need to be planted several weeks ahead of time indoors before going in the ground. Panic time kicked in we didn't have that kind of time. We were two weeks out of when we could start to plant. The rest of that week I spent every spare moment I had planting seeds in trays that now covered my kitchen table. A few weeks pass and the weather starts to warm up into the 60s. We start to think about plowing and actually plan to do it several times, but Mother Nature had other plans. Out of nowhere the weather changes from the 60s to snow. Plowing is put off until the next week. Then it rains, Plowing again gets put off another week. After a few weeks of mud and rain we finally get a good weekend to plow and come to find out the plow is broke. While this is going on our lovely seedlings are starting to get cramped in the trays. With the plow not working we turn our attention to the livestock of our homestead. We found a local breeder of chickens and meat rabbits and a cheap coop, run, and hutch. We get the stuff built and ready for the animals and let the breeder know we were ready for them when ever and he asks if we want to pick them up in a few days. Ummmm. Did I mention anything about food for the animals or all the bedding? Yea we didn't have that yet. It was time to go shopping again. We thought we would have more time, but we managed to get everything pulled together in time. Brittany went and picked up our lovely ladies and our three cute rabbits. Our only worry was how the kids would take the whole eating a cute bunny. After a few days we slowly started to name the animals. Mac our buck was the first to be named. He is our playful rabbit and has been caught tying to play with Brittany's dogs. We noticed we had two very mischievous ladies in the hen house and they were named Lucy and Ethel. Those two were always trying to escape, and a few times they succeeded. This left us with three hens and two rabbits who didn't have names. Tracy came up with Scarlet, Natasha, and Merida for the rest of our hens. Merida is our moody one. She puffs up whenever you go in their coop and after they all got their feathers clipped, so they could free range a bit, she let me know that she wasn't happy about going back in the coop by going after my feet with wings out and her head down, running at me full speed. One thing is for certain, never and I mean never piss off a hen, they are scary fast and they go for toes. We are still working on names for the two female rabbits we have. I say the rabbits should be Mac, Cheese, and Strawberries. Brittany can't figure out why all of us want to name them after food. I still think one named bacon would be awesome. With our ladies laying eggs and our seedlings now in a makeshift hydroponic like set up to try to keep their roots from binding up and the plants dying before we can get them in the ground, we have another set date to hopefully plow tomorrow. Then on Saturday we hope to have our fence in and the posts so we can plant the seedlings before they give up on even trying to hold on to life. One thing from this year so far that we have learned is to check our equipment to make sure it is working before we start seeds and you can never have enough chickens.
~Colleen
~Colleen