When and Why did you decide to "homestead"/farm?

This was the question that was posed to a group that I am in on Facebook. I have quite a long answer, so I decided to blog about it......

My husband and I have been married for almost 22 years. The first 5 were tough. We were so young but we made it through. We were saved by the grace of God when our oldest daughter was about 2. We then proceeded for the next 15 years to live the "American Dream". You know the one where you make more money to buy more stuff. That was us. My husband was a local building contractor and he built the best, most beautiful houses for others and for us. We would build a house, sell it and then build a better one. We always had a nice house, in a nice neighborhood, with the best car in the driveway. Then May of 2004 hit us......

Let me start here by saying that my husband joined the Army at 17 years old in 1986. He served 3 years in Germany and then came home and joined the Ms. Army National Guard. Even though he was making plenty of money he still stayed in the following years, one, because he loved it and two, because he always felt we needed the retirement plan. Well, in 2004 his number was called. We always knew it could happen. He was called up for an 18 month deployment to Iraq. For most that means you go in and tell your employer you'll see them in 18 months and they have to honor that. Not so, for the self employed.

For us this meant he had to hurry to finish the houses he had started and then figure out what to do. We were some of the few families who made more at our real job than we would during deployment. So we ended up selling our really nice house, selling my husbands really nice truck, and down sizing big time. We rented a small house out in the country on 10 acres. All I can say is the bug got a hold of us big time......

While my husband was gone both of us started reading about all of the things we could do with this land. Neither one of us had ever lived in the country. It was freeing in a sense and so peaceful. When he came home from Iraq, we weren't quite sure what we were going to do for a job. He really didn't want to start from scratch in the building trade (it was so tough the first time) and about that time the housing market took a nose dive.

God was so good to open up a position full time with the Guard and it has been a blessing for our family. We moved about an hour and a half away from our home town and bought a small house on about 8 acres. It's not quite the beauty that we had become accustomed to but it is my favorite house!! My children say really??? when I say that but it's true. We have done lots of work to it and have lots to go.

Soon after coming home, my husband bought our children their first horse. Then came a handful of chickens. With the chickens, came the desire to live a more self sustained existence. It has been a slowwww process but it is a process nonetheless. Now, we grow a huge garden, ofwhich, we can and freeze the surplus. We have 27 chickens and 2 roosters. I get to gift friends and family with a ton of eggs in the spring. We raise 2 feeder pigs every year for our freezer. We cull our extra roosters for our freezer. We have just gotten our first cow, MaeBelle. She, Lord willing, will be our milk cow in about 18 months. We have our first St. Croix ram and hope to get him a couple of ewes in the Spring. The men in our family took a bee keeping class last spring and added 2 bee hives to our little farmette. Hopefully, we will be harvesting honey this spring/summer. We hope to add meat chickens to the homestead this year and a couple of steers. We also hope to add a rotational grazing system. The new challenges and experiences here on the homestead are never ending and we love every minute of them.

It may not be the "American Dream" but it is the dream we never knew we had until the unexpected happen. We are so thankful for the unexpected!!!

*****I will be linking this post up to Barn Hop #44*****

It's been over 2 months and......

Things have been crazy busy around here the past couple of months. We have been dealing with a rather personal medical issue and then it just seemed like one thing after another and here we are.
The farm animals have been growing and life is just moving along.

Out of 15 turkeys we had 5 to live. I just could not imagine processing any of them after having such a hard time keeping them alive. We ended up sending one gobbler and 2 hens to my mother's and keeping 1 hen and 1 gobbler. However, we have decided to go ahead and process the one gobbler and take the remaining hen to my mother's. We are just not turkey people. One thing is they will not stay in confinement and we do not have fences high enough to keep them in. The other thing is they are a huge mess when they get on my porches. I know that sounds petty but it is what it is and I like clean porches when I rock in my rocking chair and overlook my little farm. :)
They are beautiful though!

Here's Phoebe. She is still our favorite farm animal and we love her!

Ramsey is doing his funniest move here. He is sniffing the air. Cracks me up everytime.

MaeBelle has been growing by leaps and bounds. She is still just as tame and loves us. Don't you love the hot pink halter?
And there's a snippet of one of our little pink pigs. They seem to be filling out overnight. They are still just sweet, sweet, and I can't imagine processing them but Lord willing, they are going to get nice and fat and we will be ready for them to leave. :)

Our chicken who had babies, have all grown up. Six out of the seven babies lived and 3 of them were roosters. Needless to say, we needed no more roosters around here. So 3 of the roosters were processed for our Thanksgiving dressing. They served our family well.

Here's the main man getting the water ready to plunge the chickens in to loosen their feathers.

This is our "make do" killing cone.

One thing that is taking up a big chunk of our time is our little local homeschool group started a boy's basketball team. We were looking for something more local for our son to participate in sports wise. We feel sports are very important for him. Learning to be part of a team and leadership skills are invaluable but we will still want to keep the integrity of our homeschool lifestyle. This has been a blessing.

The Scott County Flames
Our Peyton is #4. They aren't winning lots of games but they are having a great time. :)
Here's a snippet of our Christmas decorations.
Our Tree

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care......

This would be my all time favorite nativity scene. I love it!! It sits on top of my grandmother's original singer sewing machine. I need to put that thing to use.

The kids got together with some of our local homeschool friends and made gingerbread houses. It was a ton of fun and we all had a great time.

I am linking this post up to Barn Hop #40.

Sometimes Dreams and Plans do Come to Fruition.....

After years of research and careful planning the day has come.......

Checking things out.

The horses were quite curious as to what we have managed to bring home now.

My honey brought the kennel in the barn and you would have thought the little girl would have run out after her long ride but no. She was timid.

Here's the man of my dreams trying to coax our new little addition out of the kennel. I tell you that kennel is getting quite the work out and it has yet to see a dog. :)

Whew, she finally came out and immediately started sniffing out her surroundings. She is a curious little thing. So far she seems very bright eyed and energetic. She is only 5 days old but was with her mom for 4 full days. Lord willing, she has gotten a good start and we will have no problems.

If you look real closely you can see the sweetest little tongue. Oh, she just melts my heart. By the way, she doesn't have a name yet....... Any suggestions? I always wanted a Jersey Cow named Butter Bell but she doesn't look like a Butter Bell. Our short list right now is Heidi, Bell, Elsie, and Anna Bell.

Oh, wow, isn't she just beautiful? I can't tell you how excited I am about this little missy.

As many of you know, we are all into self sufficiency and preparedness. Well, most of the animals have been things that my husband has been really excited about. For the last 2-3 yrs. I have been researching keeping a family cow. I have really wanted one, but for a good tame family cow, they are quite expensive. So it has always been on the back burner. Then today, we drove about an hour away and picked up this little beauty. She is half Jersey and half holstein. She will eventually be our family milk cow. It will take probably 2 yrs. but in the mean time we will be training her to be the best most gentle milk cow ever and I could not be happier!!! This little farmstead is really starting to take shape.

***** Don't forget to give us your name suggestions******

Old McDonald had a farm......

Today, we added the second of two pretty pink pigs (Large Whites) to the farm. We got the first one last week. The big draw back on these little sweeties is they are male...... Which means one day this week my honey and my boy will be castrating little piggies. They have never done this themselves before and I will be doing some serious praying!!
In the past we have kept our pigs in a pen and have fed them out before processing them.
We are excited to have this portion of pasture fenced in and our little piggies are now out rooting it all up. Our goal is to have everything we raise here and everything we eat, to be free range grass fed. Here are all of the reasons why: The Amazing Benefits of Grassfed Meat

And here's our little Ramsey. He is definitely becoming all male. I don't really like that part but I guess that's what you have to have if you want to breed sheep. UGH......

And here is the true Old McDonald had a farm or what we affectionately know it as, Mr. Ronnie's farm. We love it!!! We fenced in a pasture right behind the garden area and we now have the turkeys, pretty pink pigs, Phoebe (pot belly), and last but not least Ramsey our St. Croix ram living back there.

We don't intend on keeping them all together forever. We plan to put the pink pigs in their own pasture behind the barn in a few months. Most of the turkeys will be making it to the freezer in October/November. Ramsey will also get his own little pasture, as soon as we get the ewes in the Spring. However, having them all together right now really works, not to mention, it is so entertaining out there. You can see our Retriever/ Lab mix, Daisy, wishes she could join in on the fun. We have been giving them all of the rotting left overs of the garden. They are loving it. This evening they got some watermelon, pears, and muscadines. As soon as I get everything I want out of my garden, which is going to be real soon, I hope to put the little pigs on the garden spot for a couple of months. I want them to root up all of the weeds, to their little hearts content. I am hoping that will help out our weed problem, which has been TERRIBLE this year.

I plan on linking this post up to the Preparedness Challenge and the Barn Hop over at Homestead Revival, one of my all time favorite blogs.

How do you spend Father's Day on the mini farm......

You drive 3+ hours to Louisiana to bring home a 3 month old sheep in a pet carrier. ha ha

This is the beginning of our St. Croix sheep breeding program. He is a registered St. Croix sheep. His name is Ramsey and he is finally home. He is just another step in our overall plan to be as self sufficient as we can. We hope to breed for selling and whatever we can't sell, process for our freezer. We decided to go with St. Croix sheep for a number of reasons but mainly we were looking for a heritage breed. Heritage breed animals do not have a lot of their natural instincts for breeding and mothering bred out of them. The St. Croix is also on the threatened list. So we feel good about helping to conserve the breed. They are also extremely parasite resistant, which tends to be a big problem with sheep. We want to do things as naturally, as possible and would prefer not to use commercial wormers. They also thrive on pasture.We are really hoping these two become fast friends. That is until we get Ramsey a girlfriend or two or three. We did not realize at the time that St. Croix sheep are such a rare breed. There are no breeders in Ms. and the ones that we found in Louisiana had already sold out of all of their ewes. So it looks like it will be next Spring before we get our ewes. We are on the waiting list now for next Spring. However, after we get our ewes, we will be the only breeder of registered St. Croix sheep in Ms.

I couldn't leave you without a picture of Phoebe. We got her her own swimming pool and she spends a good bit of time wallowing in it. This is one spoiled pig!

The end of May already, here's what's been keeping us so busy

~~Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. 1 Corinthians 3:8-9~~

This is the biggest cause of our busyness. Our very large garden. It rained and rained and rained and we were about 2 weeks late even getting our garden planted. Now that it's in the ground, it quit raining. UGHhhhh So for now we are water sprinkling it. It's not coming up great but my tomatoes look really good.
We are doing a lot of this......

My girls are doing their fair share of weeding, as well. Lord willing, we will have a bounty for all of this work. Working in the garden and putting up the harvest is one of my favorite parts of homesteading. Oh and by the way, the outfits below are not something we would ever wear outside of the garden! We like modesty!!

Our newest advenuture is beekeeping. My husband and son took a beekeeping class a few weeks ago. My son is hoping this will be a little side business for himself. He is so excited about it and loves his bees already. He has been in his hives every other day so far.

Here are the girls working hard.

My boys in their bee suits.

Smoking out their bees so that they can release their queen.

Another major project at the Spencer Family Farm is raising 15 Bourbon Red Turkeys. We have had them about 3 weeks and let me tell you, it has not been easy. We did not realize that turkeys are not the smartest of animals. We got them as day olds and thought it would be like the many chickens that we have raised in the past. However, turkeys we soon found out will starve to death standing beside their feed. They have to be taught to eat. Which we did for over a week. It has been tough and we have lost 3 but they are all eating well now and it seems they are doing good.

We plan to keep 3 hens and 1 Tom for future breeding. We are giving 2 to my mom and will process the rest for the freezer. They are so cute but aren't growing as quick as chicks either.

Here's Mrs. Phoebe. We have moved her to the big pasture to free range too. She has lost so much weight since having a bigger area to run around in. We are so crazy about this little missy. She gets two eggs at the end of everyday and now she is in the habit of running when she sees me heading to the chicken house. Who would have known that a pot bellied pig would be so much fun?

The girls are busy laying in their new Hen Pals Nest Box. I have to say I love this thing and the girls do too. We are getting about 20 eggs a day.

They also love the big new area that we have fenced in for their free ranging.

I hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day and remember those that have given their lives so that we could have freedom!!

Newest member of the Spencer Family Farm

Here is Ramsey. He is a 15 day old St. Croix ram and he is beautiful. He will be one of the stars of our breeding program and we are so excited to get him home. We will pick him up around the middle of June. There are many reasons why we decided to go with the St. Croix breed but the main reason is their ability to thrive on forage and their resistance to parasites. Here is some other info.: St. Croix sheep

Our intention was to breed 100% registered St. Croix sheep. Well, during the planning process, we did not take into consideration that it would be very difficult to acquire a St. Croix ewe. They are rare in our area. So we are #1 on the list for one next year but this year we may have to get a Katahdin and have a St. Croix Katahdin cross. It will work out fine. Once we get our St. Croix ewes we can always sell the Katahdin if we want to.

Oh, those eyes. They are just magnificent.

This is just another step towards us growing and raising all of our own food free of chemicals, antibiotics and growth hormones.