For the homestead, it means the same but with an effort to move forward, learn and remain positive even when I learn the lessons the hard way. I do have to step back and remember that I didn't grow up doing this, I don't have a direct mentor to learn from and I don't have much help and I do still have to work full time and attend school. And most of all, to remember the goals... I do all this because I believe whole heartedly in my goals, they have become a part of who I am and a big part of my spiritual responsibility... living closer to earth. My goals are simple, to live a simple life eating real food, knowing how my food is raised and to step as lightly on Mother Earth as I can. In order to accomplish this goal, I am learning to raise my own food both vegetable and animal and with it comes many frustrations and heart aches but also comes satisfaction of goals attained and movement forward. I have only been doing this a few years and if I think back to how I started... I really have come a long way.
Sometimes that is hard to remember when things are going wrong, when I lose a favorite animal and particularly a bunch goes wrong all around the same time like last month. There are two things that have kept me going recently besides that I love my animals and I really don't want to think about being without them. (one of my personal goals is to remember to take time to hug Big Tom and watch the crazy antics of the Polish and the ducks... Farm TV is the best entertainment!)
One of the things that has givien me encouragement recently was the outpouring of support when my turkey tom went missing... that meant a lot. The other was something my father said to me in an email... he said that he was really proud of me with my homesteading and that he really thought it was a great thing I was doing. My father and I have not often seen eye to eye but this simple statement meant a lot to me.
So, my goals for the homestead are simple...move forward. Specifically I want to be sucessful at breeding and raising my birds and rabbits and to expand my garden so I am providing even more of my own food and food for my animals. I provide about 40% of my own food now, another 40% is local and the rest is mostly things that aren't grown around here like citrus, flour, etc. I want to be at 60% grown myself by this time next year. I want to grow more of the animal feed too, I already supplemented quite a bit from my garden and local this fall but I want to be able to do more, meaning buying less feed which is helpful money wise but also to get away from GMO grown crops which I am sure have made their way into the poultry feed.
My biggest challenge is raising the animals. My thought of letting the turkeys, ducks and geese raise their own young last year didn't really work well. None of the turkey eggs came to term although I know they were fertilized and started, I think my 3 hens fighting for the nest and the heat did them in. The duck and goose eggs were taken by a snake I believe. The chickens managaed to hatch a couple chicks but the mothers didn't keep track of their babies and they were lost to the weather and/or predators. This year I will be incubating. I have a decent incubator so hope to be successful with that and if I am then I will let my broodies raise some later in the season.
I have settled on breeds that I will be concentrating on:
Ducks: I already have a couple pairs that were given to me (Daffy and Donald are the Pekins and Ivanhoe and Rowena are the Roens so I will raise a batch of each)
The two breeds I am concentrating on though are the Muscovies and Khaki Campbells. The Muscovies for meat and the Khaki's to sell the babies and for eggs. I have my breeding groups with a group of black and white muscovies lead by Lancelot II and Gwenafar and a couple other girls and a group of brown lead by Cynric and Sabrina with the rest of Charlie's brood (Sabrina is the brood's mama).
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| Daffy and Rowena |
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| Sabrina and a young Cynric |
Turkeys: I am concentrating on the Standard Bronze and Buff breeds. Big Tom is my stud for the Bronzes with Spring and the young girl who doesn't have a name yet. Beowulf is the stud for the buffs and he has 2 Buff girls and a Royal Palm girl because I didn't want to keep the royal tom, he was a jerk.
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| Beowulf |
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| Big Tom |
For Chickens:
I have Henry and his girls but some of them are getting pretty old, particularly Henrietta (Astralorp), Buffy (Buff Orpington) and Lucy (RIR) and Vivienne and Merlin (Americauna). So, I have decided to concentrate on the Buff Orpingtons, Astralorps and Americaunas. I have some babies growing right now and hopefully they will survive to adulthood and I will be breeding them.
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| Henry and Buffy |
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| Merlin |
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| Henrietta |
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| Vivienne |
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| Lucy |
