How To's

How To Make A Brain Dump List

November 22, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

If you have never heard of a brain dump, I HIGHLY suggest it. Especially, if you have ADD/ADHD or get overwhelmed easily. A brain dump list is extremely helpful when you have a bunch of things running around in your brain and you can’t figure out what to do next. A lot of times it can lead to paralysis and you end up getting absolutely nothing done.

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Using A Brain Dump List

There are a ton of reasons to use a brain dump list, but my biggest reason is to put on paper the things that are overwhelming me. Whether it is because my brain is going a million miles an hour or because I know we have this huge list of things to do, setting up a brain dump is the first step to getting a plan together.

It’s also a great tool to use when you are transitioning from one project to another. When the animals got into the fall garden, I struggled to switch gears because that was my project for the rest of the year… Until there wasn’t a garden to work on. With my brain dump, I was able to switch gears easier because I knew I had other things I could work on.

What Is A Brain Dump?

Simply put, a brain dump is writing out all of the things that are running around in your brain. There is no order, rhyme or reason. It is simply trying to dump all of the things in your brain onto paper so that you can focus.

For those that struggle with stress and overwhelm, this is a great tool for dealing with it. Lately, I have been using it every time I come home from work. I’ve got 3 major projects in the works this winter. Plus work, running the homestead and fitting in the boys homeschool in there somewhere.

When To Use A Brain Dump?

There is no bad time to use a brain dump. But if you are struggling to make decisions, pick a direction or dealing with decision fatigue, grab a sheet of paper and make a brain dump. I’m going to go over my brain dump below.

Even if you are not having any issues, a brain dump is great to just dump everything out and get it organized.

Does It Really Help?

Yes! There are times when I am stressed, overwhelmed, exhausted and just mentally not able to do another thing. When that happens, I sit down and start my brain dump. Sometimes, I start my day with it. Especially, when we are dealing with a transition period. When there is a project that is coming to a close, or is done, I tend to feel stuck or struggle to switch gears into a new project.

A Brain Dump List In Action

Step one is to grab a pen and piece of paper.

I usually use a sharpie and blank piece of computer paper. I don’t want any distractions and if there are lines on the paper, I will make a list of things that need to be done vs a brain dump of all the things that are circling my brain. This is going to cause problems because when you are struggling to make decisions, prioritize, or dealing with overwhelm.

Step two is to organize all of your tasks

This can look very different for everyone. But for me, it means organizing this mess into columns or categories. Some of this stuff is clearly business related. Some is homesteading or personal. So I want to make sure it goes into the right categories.

Also, I want to make sure I’m not giving a ton of space and energy for things that just don’t matter right now. Or things that I WANT to do, but we all know isn’t going to actually happen. By making sure that we are being realistic with our time, it really does help us from becoming overwhelmed.

Step 3 is prioritizing your list

Making goals, steps, and all that is incredibly important and even satisfying, but if you can’t prioritize, you’re going to end up spinning your wheels. To be honest, before you start making your goals or steps, you should be prioritizing them anyways!

To give you an example from the Homesteading section, there are somethings that just aren’t that important. Blowing all of the leaves for example. I don’t really care if the leaves get moved into the compost. I would LOVE if it happened, but I’m not going to make it a huge priority. Having leaves covering the yard really isn’t on my radar of concern. Plus, it’s my favorite time of year, soooooo.

Using A Brain Dump List To Make Your Goals

When we start working on our 2024 project list, we will use a brain dump list. We will also do this when it comes to finding sponsors for the podcasts or brainstorming content. A brain dump is so helpful for a ton of reasons and these are just a few

It allows you to see all the things you need to get done and prioritize the ones that are more important, can wait or just don’t need to be handled right now.
A brain dump allows you to create an action plan with steps and deadlines because you start with the end goal in mind.
Allows you to see how much, or how little, work you have in one area vs another. This means you know how to structure your time.
A brain dump gives you a strange piece of mind because if it’s not on the page, is it really that important. If it is, add it in. But if it’s not? Cross it off and move on. Here’s looking at you leaves!

I hope this helps you stay organized and a little less stressed!

Comment below on how you stay organized and how you reduce stress!

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How To Not Eat Fast Food

October 23, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as saying, “Don’t eat it, duh”. We have been conditioned to believe that from scratch cooking is hard, time consuming and not for you. Clever marketing has made fast food a trillion dollar industry. And we are just trying not to starve. So here we stand, trying to figure out how to not eat fast food, while also trying to figure out how to feed our family. Well, I’ve got some tips that have served us well over the last 15 years.

How to not eat fast food

It isn’t always as simple as not eating fast food. I am a paramedic in real life and I can honestly say that I eat fast food occasionally. I ALWAYS bring my meals to work and have for the last 10 years. Simply because eating 3-4 meals out every shift would break the bank. If I spent $10-15/ meal out every meal for 12 shifts per month, I would spend about $360-$540/ month in meals.

Jared is also a paramedic and the way our schedules work, he cooks dinner one out of three nights and I cook the other two. So I follow the 70% rule. For us, we eat home cooked meals 70% of the time.

Why We Don’t Eat Fast Food…. Much

Don’t get it twisted, we still eat “fast food” but we don’t eat at the typical fast food restaurants. We only eat at 3; Chick Fil A, Zaxby’s and Arby’s. The reason is because those foods will rot. If I were to leave them out, bugs will eat them. That means it’s mostly real food. We also eat there because it’s the lesser of two evils. We’ve got to eat and I can’t whip up a meal while driving down the highway.

Also, it’s not just about the money. I feel like crap every time I eat fast food. It disrupts my gut in ways I won’t mention here. So I try to limit the amount of food I buy on shift. But sometimes you need food while you’re out and about. Or the thought of cooking a meal is going to send you over the edge. Here’s what I do to limit the fast food trips.

Ways To Limit Eating Fast Food

Plan ahead- This is probably the most important which is why it’s number 1! By planning ahead you can limit your need for grabbing a quick meal at a fast food restaurant. Every week, I put the proposed meals on our weekly board. I pull out about 3 days worth of meats and put them in a bowl in the fridge to thaw. We don’t have to have the meal that’s planned for that particular day, but having the meat out, limits the 4 o’clock, what’s for dinner questions.

Grocery shop your pantry- A well stocked pantry (or food storage room in my case) is an absolute necessity when you are trying to put meals on the table. I use Azure Standard to help keep my pantry stocked.

Double it- This is my tried and true hack for always having a home cooked meal. I make HUGE meals and we put up the left overs. We’re talking 4 boxes of spaghetti and 16 boxes of left overs. We use these containers because my kids still break EVERYTHING.

Freeze it- This goes with doubling it. There are many times were it is easier to cook a whole chicken, eat some, then shred and freeze the rest. Or I’ll double or triple a biscuit recipe then flash freeze them. Then I can just take out however many I need for the next dinner. I don’t even thaw them. I just give them a little more time and they are just as good as fresh made.

Soups- I can’t tell you how many times soup has saved the day. I use this cookbook and make a big (HUGE) pot of one of the soups. Then I can the left overs. This has literally saved my bacon more than I care to admit! Especially when we have gone out for dinner and I don’t have ANY food to take to work the next day.

Coochie boards- Yes, I know it’s charcuterie but Jaxson couldn’t say that. He called it coochie boards and it stuck. I’ve always got some sort of deli meat or salami type meats and cheeses. I can make crackers in a pinch so this has been a fall back many nights too.

Crock pot meals- Throw it in the slow cooker and forget about it. And it’s not just for roasts! Whole chicken? In the crock pot. Tacos? In the crock pot. I’m not afraid to say dinner is in the crock pot if it means that my sanity stays mostly intact.

Family Cooks- As the boys have gotten older, they have helped more and more in the kitchen. This has a two fold benefit: it takes the load off me and it teaches them to cook. Chase can make spaghetti, mac and cheese, toast tortillas, and brown ground beef. He has amazing knife skills and for the most part could feed himself. Jaxson? He’s got the attention span of a cracked out gerbil and the knife skills to match. But we’re working on it.

Make Your Own- This has been a lifesaver when I am absolutely exhausted. Everyone makes their own dinner. Whether that is a bowl of cereal or a steak, everyone makes their own food. And before you tell me that you have littles and they can’t do this? My kids have been doing this since they were about 3. Granted Jaxson wanted a “Daddy” sandwich consisted of two pieces of bread and mustard and ketchup…. No one really knows how that works because Jared doesn’t eat ketchup on his sandwiches but whatever.

Grace!

Give yourself grace. This is not a change that will come about over night. Nor should it! You’re not a robot. You are human and that means that you can’t be perfect. But by pulling out enough meat for 3 dinners or doubling a meal up, you can limit your need to eat out or eat fast food.

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Dehydrating Foods: My New Hobby

April 24, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

This series is going to go over the ins and outs of dehydrating foods. We are going to look at the last 9 months of work, from dehydrating and reconstituting to mishaps and successes. As always on this blog, you will get the real story about dehydrating foods, not the glamorous jars and packages of foods. You’ll see our mistakes and failures but also the successes! Welcome to the first installment of my new favorite hobby: Dehydrating Foods.

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Dehydrating Foods Journey

I always shied away from dehydrating foods, though I’m not really sure why. It’s a pretty simple process, but I’ve always stuck with canning. I’ve owned an Excalibur dehydrator for over 10 years and used it a hand full of times, usually making small patches of yogurt. About six months ago, I ordered dehydrated peppers from Azure Standard. It was a game changer! No longer having to go out and buy peppers for taco night? Having an item on hand that doesn’t take up space in my freezer? Sign Me Up!

Last year, I had quarts of peppers coming in every day from the garden. Most of them rotted before we could use them. Then I realized that I could roast them, grind them and turn them into a seasoning powder. But I used my oven instead of my dehydrator…Why? Because I didn’t feel like getting my dehydrator out. Let’s not talk about a waste of electricity. But this year? I have so many plans for that dehydrator.

Dehydrating Foods Save Money On Pantry Staples

Onions are a staple in my pantry. I freaking love onions. Onion powder, chopped onions, diced onions, you name it. There’s usually onion in 75% of my dishes. Because I buy big bags of them, they tend to go bad before I can use all of them. If I buy smaller bags or single onions, it’s never enough. Plus, I don’t want or need an entire onion in some dishes. So what did I do? Freeze the other half of the onion, or fed it to the chickens. While it’s not necessarily wasted, I usually forget about the other half of the onion in the freezer and spend the money at the store for more.

Another pantry staple is celery. In the depths of winter, we eat a ton of soup. But celery doesn’t can or freeze well. Usually it turns to mush in either of those two preservation methods. And buying an entire bunch of celery isn’t economic when you need a cup of chopped celery.

Dehydrating Foods Reduces Waste

One of the things I hate the most in the entire world is wasting food. It drives me insane to dump food in the trash because it rotted, gets freezer burn, or we were just too lazy to do something with it. I go back to onions and celery. We don’t eat either of those raw. One for obvious reasons. But there is still a far amount of food waste when you lose food in the freezer. Dehydrating these foods helps make sure that waste is minimized.

How many times have you bought limes only to have them rot before you get a chance to use them? Or thought for sure you would use that entire batch of potatoes for mashed potatoes? Throwing them in the dehydrator is a great way to reduce food waste.

Dehydrating Foods Help Clear Out The Freezer

For the last two years, we have purchased a half or whole cow from a local farm. The first year, a half cow lasted us a little over 8 months. This year, we purchased a whole cow. Let me tell you, we struggled to find enough freezer space and end up buying another freezer. I talk more in depth about buying meat in bulk in this post.

But dehydrating food helps to clear out the freezers from that bulk purchase of frozen corn, or random bag of onions that you forgot about. I don’t know about your freezers, but in our house, they become a jumbled mess of food. We try to keep our freezers “separated” by animal, but the reality is that doesn’t always work. Especially when veggies aren’t animals and most creamer is not actually dairy.

Should You Learn How To Dehydrate Food?

In short, yes. Dehydrators are relatively cheap, when compared to canning setups and the DIY options for building your own dehydrator are endless. I also think that having a well rounded approach to preserving your garden harvest is a must. Some things just aren’t going to freeze or can well like peas, celery, melons, zucchini, and summer squash.

Is Dehydrating Foods Sustainable?

Meh. Take this from someone who *gasp* reuses canning lids that are in good shape. Dehydrating foods really isn’t sustainable DEPENDING on how you do it. It usually requires electricity and sometimes requires a steady influx of mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. But canning sometimes requires electricity (you can can on a wood burning stove if you can get it hot enough or a propane camp stove), and after the initial purchase of jars, doesn’t REQUIRE additional purchase unless there is damage or a lot of use.

I don’t know that there is a truly sustainable food preservation method, except maybe fermentation, that ALL food can go through. So I think the question should be what food method is the most sustainable, but whatever.

What Do You Need To Get Started?

Pretty simple list here:

Dehydrator- with trays I like my Excalibur but I would recommend one with a door that actually shuts.

Mylar Bags– I would recommend different sizes. Also grab a heat sealer while you’re at it. It’ll make your life easier

Oxygen Absorbers– This one is based on the size of the bags or jars you are using. So again, I would get a multi pack if you can.

Mason Jars– This is what I use. I’m not a fan of the mylar bags only because I’m set up for jars. I’ve got 8 storage units built in the basement that are the perfect height for jars. Plus I have a bunch of jars and I don’t want to spend more money.

Silicone Mats– These are the mats I use for things that are a little gooey or rollie (like peas). They are great!

Funnels– If you’re a canner, you have funnels. If not the link provided are the ones I have.

Dehydrating Foods Is Easy

This is literally the most set it and forget it way of preserving food. While not technically forget it, it allows you to not be chained to your stove, in a hot kitchen for hours. Over the years, I have spent hours and hours in my kitchen, every summer and fall, canning hundreds of jars of food. Please don’t misunderstand, I absolutely LOVE it. Especially in the winter when I have quarts and quarts of soup at the ready. Or on days when I come from a 24 hour shift and hit the ground running for another 12 hours on the farm, having beef stew on standby is amazing.

I will always be a canner. But now? Now, I’m a food preserver. I can, freeze, and dehydrate.

Reaching into my cabinet for a colorful jar of dehydrated mixed veggies, adding it to a soup, and serve? Yes, please.

Seeing more food in my basement, knowing that no matter if the entire world crumbles, or just my own, we have food.

Knowing that I am teaching my children the value of nurturing a garden, harvesting the bounty, and not wasting food? Invaluable.

How To Build A Successful Homestead

March 18, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

This is a loaded question that is personal, individual, and can only be answered by you, your family and your land’s capability. At the end of the day, every single homestead is going to look different. You may not want a lot of animals or you may not want huge gardens. You may have to work off farm or on a fixed income. There are so many variables to building a successful homestead. But here are my thoughts on how to build your successful on the homestead.

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What Is A Successful Homestead?

Before you start the first project, buy the first piece of land, or anything else, you need to determine what will make your homestead successful to YOU. Is it being 90% self reliant? Raising 100% of your own meat? Surviving or Thriving? It’s so important to have a definition of your success so you can measure your progress. And it’s okay if that definition changes or evolves. But if you cannot figure out the benchmark for your successful homestead, you won’t be successful.

Defining A Successful Homestead

If you already know what your successful homestead looks like, congratulations! You are ahead of the game by a LOT. I didn’t really understand that I needed to define what my vision of success looked like until I had been homesteading for a couple of years and realized that I was spinning in circles, getting a lot of things done, but nothing that was moving us towards “success”.

So Jared and I sat down and really thought about how would we define the success of our homestead. The question we needed to answer was, “What is THE thing, that when it’s done, we can say we were a success.”

For our homestead, we define success as growing 75% of our food and our animals food, that means meat, dairy, and produce for us. It also means fodder like corn, oats, BOSS, squash/pumpkins and other veggies. Success also means building as much of our infrastructure ourselves whenever possible. Finally, I will deem the homestead and this blog a success when it not only supports itself financially but also allows us to retire early.

Measuring Against Your Definition Of A Successful Homestead

Every single goal, project, expectation, or purchase needs to be measured against your definition of success. That doesn’t mean that you can’t do that project, set that goal, or make the purchase. But the KNOWING is the most important thing.

To give you an example, I want a greenhouse so badly. I want to grow coffee, citrus, and other heat loving plants that my zone gets too cold for. Towards the bottom of the blog post, I have listed out our definition of success, but one of the big ones is growing 75% of our food. Measuring the want of a greenhouse against growing 75% of our own food, the greenhouse would be a good purchase and project. If I build a greenhouse, we could start our garden plants in the greenhouse which would greatly improve their chances of surviving Blu. It would limit the amount of citrus and coffee we purchase from the store. Win.

Another example would be buying a milk cow right now. This would definitely help us with grow/ own 75% of our own food because we would save a ton of money on dairy products and potentially meat. But if we do it now, before we have solid pastures set up, we would not be working towards success because of the amount of hay we would have to purchase. Lose. BUT it’s something that can be done later.

So before you start doing things to or for your homestead, make sure it’s getting you closer to success instead of further away.

Setting Expectations For Success

A long time ago, I heard someone say that the #1 relationship killer was unmet expectations. I thought it was a crock, because everyone knows it’s communication, right? But when he explained it further it makes total sense. Let’s say you expect your spouse to always do the dishes, but you never said “this is your chore” and they never agreed. They can’t meet your expectation. Or if you have told your spouse a million times that you can’t stand roses. But they get you roses all the time, you have the expectation that they will not buy you roses because you don’t like them. That expectation is not met. Overtime it causes immense frustration and anger that ultimately can kill a relationship.

It’s the same for homesteading. If your expectation is to have all of your infrastructure in place within one year, and it doesn’t happen, you’re going to be upset. If you keep failing to meet your expectations, you could hit burnout and give up.

Unrealistic Expectations

One of the things that every single homesteader is guilty of is setting unrealistic expectations. We think that we have to have everything done, RIGHT NOW! The reality is that unless you have the capital to buy a farm that is already where you want it, it’s going to take years of work and a ton of capital to get you where you want to be. And if you don’t have a ton of capital, it’ll take even longer.

It’s saying I’m going to buy a cow with absolutely ZERO grass to raise them on. Or I’m going to heat only with the trees harvested from my land and there isn’t a single tree on your property. Or my favorite, I’m going to grow 100% of my yearly food needs in an unproven garden with no experience.

These unrealistic expectations will not be met. Sure, you can get a cow, but you will be buying TONS of hay. You can’t heat with only wood from your farm if you have zero trees on your land. And trust me when I say, you won’t grow a year’s worth of food in an unproven garden if you have zero experience.

Realistic Expectations For A Successful Homestead

Setting your expectations for a successful homestead should be in line with your definition of success. For example, if you’re definition of success is for the homestead to feed you and your animals, maybe don’t get animals before the garden. Which ALL of us do, no matter how many times we say we won’t.

Your expectations should be worked into your goals. There is a huge difference between a goal and an expectation. A goal is something you are striving for, while an expectation is something you expect to happen. If your goal is to grow 75% of you and your animals feed, the expectation is that you are going to put in a garden.

Having a realistic expectation of what you are able to do, the capital available to do those things and a clear set of goals will set you up on the path to a successful homestead.

Your Land’s Capability

I feel like this is very important when it comes to homesteading, that you really look at what your land is capable of. I mentioned that if you have an expectation to heat with only wood harvested from your own land, but you have zero trees on your property, that is unrealistic. But I wanted to take it one step further because I don’t think new homesteaders truly understand what they are getting into.

If your land is steep hills, mountains, etc, it is not necessarily capable of supporting a cow. If your land is mostly trees, you are going to have to do some major work to get a garden in. I want everyone to homestead in SOME capacity where you are right now. But at the same time, you have to be realistic in what you can and can’t do base on what your land can do.

Neighbors may not want to listen to your goats scream all day. Local ordinances may not allow more than so many chickens. Before you start defining your successful homestead, you have to be aware of what land you are buying and what it can actually do for you.

Our Successful Homestead Plan

For Jared and I to feel like we have been successful in building our homestead, it has to have 3 key points:

The homestead grows 75% of the food for us and our animals.
We build, create, or source from our property as much as we possibly can.
Our homestead (and blog) would be considered a success if it can fully support itself and allows us to retire early.

Let’s break this down

75% Of All Food

This is a big expectation because it’s a lot of food. But I don’t expect that overnight or even in one year. We learned a lot in our first garden and we’ve learned even more since. But we have realized that we have to grow slowly so that we don’t end up packing too much work on ourselves. Since we both work fulltime, we have to be aware of how much we can actually do. This is where that homestead flexibility comes in.

We also have a ton of trees on our land. Which is great for heating the house, but sucks when it comes to sunlight and garden space. This year we installed a kitchen garden in this weird lawn space in between our driveways. It’s a lot of space and a great place to have veggie plants, flowers, herbs, and lettuces. We can even put in our potatoes, carrots, garlic and onions. But I forgot that in the summer, there are a ton of trees that block the sun. This isn’t a big deal because those trees need to come down anyways. But our garden may not thrive because of them.

Our gardens are a process and that’s okay. 75% of our food doesn’t need all be done right now.

Being Self Reliant

Jared and I are both city kids and we don’t have anyone teaching us how to do these things. Because of that, it’s really important to both of us that we learn how to do stuff for ourselves. I didn’t know how to make bread before I started this journey. Now, I can make sourdough!

Jared had never felled trees before coming to the homestead. Now? He’s really good at it. He didn’t know how to sharpen a chainsaw. Now, he does.

Leaving behind a legacy is really important to me. I’m not going to get my great grandmother or grandmothers cast iron pans. I didn’t get cooking skills from my mom, grandmother, great grandmother. Jared and I didn’t learn how to butcher animals or put in gardens from our family. And that’s okay because that’s not the life they lived. But because this is so important to us, we are also teaching our kids how to do these things. We are teaching them how to repair toilets, install light fixtures, build chicken tractors without plans, put in gardens, sharpen chainsaws, and so much more.

That’s a legacy I am proud to leave behind.

Financial Freedom

I started this blog and our homestead with one single end goal: Retire early. That’s it. We are putting in the work now, while we are young, so that we can have systems in place for retirement. When the homestead produces 75% of our food, that puts approximately $900/mo back in our pockets. When it produces 75% of our animals food? That’s $600/mo!

While this blog is not currently making a lot of money, the reality is that it is getting to the point of being self reliant. Thanks to you guys!

Walking into retirement with virtually zero bills or debt allows us to not worry so much about a crashing economy. Knowing that we can garden and sell the produce or sell goat kids? That brings more options to the table than praying my 401k and social security will still be there.

Building Your Successful Homestead

At the end of the day, your homestead is not going to look like anyone else’s. You’ve got your own hopes, dreams, capabilities, resources, and needs. But if you can define what a successful homestead looks like to you, and then start setting expectations and goals for it, you will get there so much faster.

How To Raise Goat Bottle Babies

March 6, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

If you are purchasing a bottle baby, have a momma who rejected a kid, or are planning to sell a bottle baby, there are some things you should know and be prepared for. Bottle babies are not for the faint of heart, there is a lot of involvement with them. You become their momma and in turn you end up with a creature that is so attached to you, it’s almost like your own kid. But to raise goat bottle babies, there are a few things you should know.

Before we get too far into this, I have a great course on the basics of goat care. I call it Goat Crash Course: Goat 101. In this course, I explain things like types of shelter, types of feeds and hays, basic assessments and so much more! Check it out!

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First, let me preface this with: I am not a vet. I am simply a goat farmer that has done a ton of research and “experimented” on my herd. There has been a lot of trial and error…. a lot of error. This information is from my vet and from my experience, as well as the experience of other goat farmers. I encourage you to speak with a vet or find a goat mentor local to you.

Why You Have Bottle Babies

If you bought bottle babies from a reputable breeder, there should be nothing “wrong” with them. This should be the easiest bottle baby you have. But unfortunately, there are a fair amount of situations where you may end up with a bottle baby that are not ideal.

Momma Rejected Or Died

While it’s a very sad situation, when momma doesn’t want to or can’t take care of her babies, you may have to pull the baby from her. Or on the other side of the spectrum momma has died and you now have babies to raise.

It’s Just Too Cold Outside

Sometimes, you have to make the decision to bottle a baby based on weather. Which is weird, I know. This late winter/ early spring has been extremely rainy. We are having weeks of rain with a day or two of sun. That means that our barn and pastures are a muddy mess. Not a great environment to raise babies in. We are also in this weird weather pattern of cool/cold nights and 75* days. Because of that, we had to bring Bailey inside after she kidded because it was just so dang cold and wet. We seriously considered raising one of her kids inside just to give her some relief and to ensure that she could care for the other two better.

Momma Had Too Many

Bailey gave us triplets this last season. If this had happened to almost any other goat, we probably would have been okay. But Bailey has tiny udders and doesn’t produce a ton of milk. We had to supplement with milk we had put up. If your doe birthed quads, quints, or sextuplets? Be ready to bottle raise some of them.

A First Time Freshener

Another reason you may have to raise goat bottle babies is because momma is a first time freshener and doesn’t have a clue what she is doing. Jade is struggling a little bit with her kids because she is really unsure how to handle them. She’s away from her sister for the first time and these things are smashing their face into her udders for milk. We had to catch/pull and then clean the babies because she was totally unprepared. This is all totally fine and normal, but you do need to be prepared.

How To Raise Goat Bottle Babies

Now to the meat and potatoes of this post. Raising goat bottle babies is probably no different than sheep and maybe cows. But I don’t have those creatures so I can really only speak about goats.

Dam Raised or True Bottle Baby

The first thing you have to decide is whether you are going to pull the baby from momma completely or supplement feedings. Our goal is to keep kids with mommas for as long as possible. With Bailey, we “let” her be momma and we just supplemented. We started with 3x a day feedings and then dropped to one “big” bottle at night. If we had taken one of her babies to raise inside, it would have been a true bottle baby.

Bottles

There are some people that think the red teat nipple is the way to go. Others think a cheap baby bottle will work. Personally, I think fed is best, so do what you’ve got to do to get that baby to eat. We have the red teat nipples and our goats just don’t like them. We use cheap baby bottles and they work fantastic. If you are purchasing a bottle baby from a breeder, that breeder should be able to tell you exactly what bottle they are using and you can purchase that.

Replacer vs Whole Cows Milk

Whole cows milk is the replacement of choice for goat kids. Period. Actually, the replacement of choice would be goats milk. But if you can’t get that, cows milk is the best. There is a ton of research out there on the milk replacers vs whole cows milk but at the end of the day, cows milk is easier for your goat kid to digest. Whole cow milk is an animal milk but milk replacer is usually a bunch of different additives that may be too hard for your kid to digest and use.

How Much To Feed

There is a TON of information about how much to feed your bottle baby and how often. But first you have to start with a weight. The ratio is about 1#= 2.5oz. So if your goat kid weighs about 5# you would feed approximately 12.5oz per day.

Also the age of your kid factors into how many times per day to feed it. A kid that is just born and is 3# would get 7.5oz of colostrum over 12 bottles.

Week 1: 6 Bottles

Week 2- 4: 4 Bottles

Week 5-8: 3 Bottles

Week 9-10: 2 Bottles

Week 11-12: 1 Bottle (start weaning)

****Weaning would be giving 1 bottle per day with less and less milk. I usually start reducing the bottles by 3oz and see how the kid does****

For example: Your goat kid is 3 weeks old and weighs 8# you would feed approximately 20oz over 4 bottles. Each bottle would contain 5oz.

Over Feeding vs Underfeeding

Goat kids will absolutely over eat if you let them. Momma’s have this instinct that tells them when the kid is done eating. But if you are momma, you may think that your kiddo is starving. They’re not. Trust me. If you are using the formula above and they are gaining weight steadily, they are just fine. The biggest thing to watch for after a feeding is done, their belly should feel full-ish. It shouldn’t feel hard and it shouldn’t be sunken in. My suggestion is this: feed like the formula says for the first couple of days and feel their stomach. If it’s hard or rounded? back off the milk just an ounce or so. If it’s sunken or they aren’t gaining weight? Up it an ounce or so.

Temperatures: Milk and Kid

When it comes to goats of all ages, temperature is probably the most important thing you can master. If your goat is too cold or too hot, bad things can happen. Kids are no different and in fact it’s probably more important. When kids get too cold, they cannot digest the milk. If they can’t digest the milk? It will rot in their stomach. So make sure you are checking their temps before feeding. Before feeding, their temps should be between 101-103. If they are not warm enough, bring them inside to get warm and then feed them when they are at least 101*.

When it comes to milk, the temperature should be 103*. This is about the temperature that momma’s milk would be. Too cold and the kid could become hypothermic (cold). Too hot and the kid could scald their mouths. We check on the inside of our wrists, if it’s warm to hot (not burning) it’s the right temp. If it burns us? It will burn them.

Pro-Tips and Hacks To Raise Goat Bottle Babies

Transitioning

If you are getting your bottle baby from a breeder, the kid should already be on either milk replacer or whole cow milk. If they aren’t, that breeder should send goat milk home with you to transition. When I sell our bottle babies, we send goat milk with them to start transitioning if we haven’t already transitioned them to whole cows milk. When we sold Bailey’s triplets, we were not anticipating selling them that quickly. But we sent a gallon of goat milk with the buyer. Then we dropped off another gallon and a half gallon because we wanted to make sure the transition was as smooth as possible.

Preparing For A Bottle Baby…. Just In Case

After our does kid, and depending on how many she gave us, we bring a pint mason jar with us every time we go outside. When we get singles, we milk out the colostrum of ONE teat over the next 24hrs. We do this so we have back up colostrum and a couple of times it has saved our babies. If we have twins or trips? We still bring out that jar and a bottle just in case one of the babies isn’t nursing great. Sometimes we do it at night to ensure that the kids go to bed with a full belly. But being prepared is key.

Enjoy It

Much like raising human children, raising bottle babies flies by. Next thing you know, they are jumping off the roof of your car… the goat kid not the human one. Unless you have a Jaxson, then it may be the house and not the car. Regardless, it is such a cool experience. That kid will become a pocket pet for you and watching them get so excited to see you is pretty cool too. Not to mention when you are feeding them and that little tail is going a million miles a minute? Ridiculously cute. And while it’s a TON of work, it’s so worth it.

How To Prepare Your Vegetable Garden

March 3, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

It’s March, y’all! In just a few short weeks, we will be planting our first plants and I am ridiculously excited. There is not much more thrilling, mood enhancing, joyous, and prideful moment then harvesting your first vegetable from your garden. When you plant a bunch of peppers, dehydrate them, and use them in your dinner? It’s an indescribable feeling. But in order to get there, you have to do some work to prepare your vegetable garden.

Before we get too far into this post, I wanted to give a suggestion about keeping a garden journal. A digital garden journal is a fantastic way to keep track of past, present and future gardens. Our Digital Garden Journal is a great way to keep up with everything without getting too overwhelmed.

Buy Now

Before You Prepare Your Garden

They say that the first thing you should do on your homestead is start with a garden. They would be right, unfortunately, most of us start with animals. We get attached to our critters and then end up with a poorly producing garden, or no garden. But your garden has the potential for being the most money saving thing on the homestead! So there are a couple things I like to do every year before I prepare my garden.

Check Last Years Journal/ Notes

Every year, I keep a garden journal. Mine is multi-year so that I can look back and see what we did, how it worked, etc. This really helps because there are a ton of finer details of a garden that sometimes get missed. Like how much you watered your peppers? Did you use pig, chicken, goat manure? What variety of melon did you hate? This information is important to make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes, but also so that you can make sure you are doing the “right” thing for your gardens.

Look At What You Preserved

If you are using a garden for fresh eating, then I would take notes on what you are eating, how much you ate, etc. If you preserve your garden, go to your pantry and figure out what all you have eaten, used, etc and determine how much you need for this years gardens. For example, I know that we average 2 quarts of spaghetti sauce a week. That means that I need to make sure that we have at least 100 quarts of spaghetti sauce by the time my tomatoes are done for the year. This will help you determine how many plants you need.

Consider Your Animals Needs

If you have chickens, goats, pigs or other livestock, you should consider how much of their feed you could grow. This will look different for everyone based on the space they can dedicate to a garden and how many and the size of their animals, but this is something to consider. We have the space to have a fairly large garden, that means that I can absolutely grow a fair amount of feed for my animals. I know that pigs and chickens can eat basically anything in my garden. The goats require a little more care to make sure that whatever they eat, won’t make them sick. But I know that all of my animals can eat corn, beets, tomatoes, peppers, etc. So I will plant extra for them.

How To Prepare Your Vegetable Garden

On to what I know you are interested in.

Depending on your philosophies for gardening, you will want to go ahead and clear any debris, weeds, or other things you don’t want in your garden. Our garden is roughly 58ft by 108ft, the 8ft is just to account for gates and walkways. That is just over triple the size of last years garden. We are going to be producing more of our animals feed this year which is why we are taking up more space.

Clearing The Garden

Because we are making the garden much, much bigger, we have to go in and clear a lot of debris from the previous owners, as well as a couple of dead trees that are in the way. We also have to pull a lot of briars and other browse that the goats didn’t get to last year. This actually works out well because we can actually replant the briars in an area that we are leaving for the goats. Win, win.

Lay Out Fencing

Now, you don’t have to put up fencing around your garden. In fact, a lot of people don’t. But we free range a lot of our animals and the goats and pigs would absolutely DESTROY the garden if we didn’t protect it. Last year the ducks ate all of the garden and the goats used our baby fruit trees as scratching posts. So we learned to protect our food. Because we are expanding our garden, we removed the old fence and reused it when we put up the new one.

Consider Additives

I consider anything that I add to my soil (including more soil) an additive. You should have a soil test done every year to make sure that you are only using additives that you need. Too much nitrogen will kill your plants, even nitrogen loving plants like corn and tomatoes. You should also make sure that you aren’t adding hot manure straight to your soil.

All hot manure should be composted to make sure that it won’t burn your plants. Hot manure comes from pigs, chickens, horses, etc and should be aged or composted because they are so high in nitrogen. Cow, sheep, goat and rabbit manure are considered cold and could be put right on the plant with minimal adverse affects. However, I still allow my pig and chicken manure to compost in their bedding before adding it onto my plants. Just to be safe.

Other additives would be liquid fertilizers, pesticides, etc. This is where your philosophies will come into play. I do not spray or add anything to my plants. The reason is because I don’t feel like it’s necessary. I compost regularly for fertilizers, add mulch for weed protection and have chicken tractors in my gardens for fertilizer, weed control, and pest protection. I’ll be posting a whole post about our chicken tractors in the garden here soon.

Sourcing Your Plants

No matter what plants you decide on, either starting your own seedlings or buying starts from the store, the simple fact that you are starting a garden is amazing! Don’t freak out about not having the “right” things. Starting a garden is the best part.

Starting Your Own Starts

This is hands down the most economical approach but it definitely requires patience and some start ups. I use 1020 trays and 2in pots. Each 1020 tray will hold 50 2in pots. After soil, pots, trays and seeds, each tray costs me about $15. ~~I usually don’t transplant into bigger pots because I feel it’s unnecessary but you do what you need to.~~ Since my garden is so large (again 58ft x108ft) I need 100’s of starts.

Uh…Remember that I offer full disclosure in every single post….. Well, let me tell you, the pots I used last season did not do well. I’m not 100% sure what caused the issues. It could be soil, the pots were too small, Blu wanting to look outside, not enough sunlight? I don’t know but out of about 1000 starts, only about 200 made it into the garden. Out of the 200, ALL of them were stunted, if they grew at all.

Now, I use these pots, inserts, and 1020 from Bootstrap Farmer and I have had MUCH more success. I would highly recommend using these. Out of about 4 trays of starts (128 pots) in this system, I have only had 1 not make it…. and there’s a really good chance we forgot to put a seed in it….oops

The best part about starting your own seeds is that you have the ability to get a bunch of different varieties. I have 5 different tomato varieties and at least 8 different pepper varieties. I buy most of my seeds from True Leaf, Eden Brothers, or Territorial Seed Company.

Buying Starts

Buying plant starts can be a great way to start your garden. Again, just starting a garden is fantastic, so don’t think you HAVE to start your own seedlings. Last year, my ducks ate ALL of my starts. I found a local nursery that only charged me $2/ 4 pack tray. That’s a great price! Especially because big box stores charge $3-6 per plant.

The biggest downside to buying plant starts is the lack of variety. When you go to the store, you are probably never going to see luffa gourds. That’s sad because not only are they amazing sponges but luffa is great for goats!

Prepare Your Beds

Whether you are planting in raised beds, in the ground, or in containers on your patio, you are moving in the right direction! Playing in the dirt is one of my favorite past times and it makes me unbelievably happy. There is nothing like it. I am very excited that you are getting ready to start on your gardens. Big or small doesn’t matter. Starting does.

Building Your Beds

If you are using a raised bed system, you should be building these in the late winter or early spring. For us, March is the last push to get any infrastructure for the garden done. This means building beds, sourcing soil, moving compost, etc. If you are building beds, you don’t want to run out of space half way through planting season and then get bogged down having to make multiple trips to the store for supplies.

Laying Out Your Garden

If you are planting in the ground, you should have a plan of what you want your rows to look like. Where are you putting the peppers, tomatoes, rosemary? Are you going to work on companion planting? All of these things are very important to figure out BEFORE you get too far into planting. So do yourself a favor and spend a few minutes planning your rows.

Irrigation

For some reason most people think about watering their gardens last. I don’t really know why since it is possibly THE most important thing. But I am equally as guilty of this. Last year, it was a last minute, oh crap moment that resulted in 4 trips to Lowes to get more irrigation hose. So do yourself a favor and put your garden in close to your water source, and figure out how much hose or water you need first. This year, the cost of drip hoses was going to be ridiculous, so we are toying with the idea of a sprinkler system. We haven’t decided yet. Because again, we are waiting till last minute….oops.

Get To Planting

This is the best part of any garden. Personally, I absolutely LOVE my kitchen gardens and raised beds. I don’t know what it is but when I get to play in the raised beds, it brings me indescribable joy. The big garden? Not so much. I love it, but I’ll hang in the kitchen garden thank you.

Whether you are planting in rows, raised beds or containers, the big thing to remember is spacing is important! You don’t want to stack your tomatoes too close, but peppers should be a little closer. Zucchini needs room, but beans can be 4in apart. Just remember to keep your spacing in mind as you plant.

The most important part of preparing your vegetable gardens? Enjoy it!

Planning Your Garden

February 3, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

At this point, I am going stir crazy to get my gardens going. I desperately want to get my hands in the dirt and get back outside. We only have about 30-45 more days of COLD weather before we will start warming up. To be honest, that is mind boggling. Our last frost date this year is around March 23rd for our zone 7b. I couldn’t be more excited! But now is the time to start planting our spring seedlings and long summer plants. But how do you know what to plant? You start planning your garden.

If you are looking for a great way to keep track of your gardens for years to come, check out our Digital Garden Journal. It’s a digital spreadsheet that helps you manage not only your seedlings but also your seed inventories, soil testing, orchard, harvests and so much more. Check it out here.

Planning Your Garden

There are a ton of things that go into planning your garden. It’s not just “I want tomatoes and peppers.” It’s much more involved than that. But the good thing is, it’s not really a lot of work. Right now. As we go through this post, I’m going to show you the questions we ask and how we set up our plans to make sure we, and our animals, have plenty of food in the gardens.

What do you eat?

The first step in planning your gardens is determining what you want to eat. New gardeners will usually plant all sorts of things without really asking what they like to eat. They’ll take up huge beds or rows thinking that they MUST plant cucumbers, even though they HATE cucumbers.

But you? You are going to really think about the foods you like to eat, and plan accordingly.

Do you like tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, or berries? Figure it out and start working on how much you think you’ll need. I’ve got a post on what to plant in your veggie garden, to read more about this.

How much do you eat it?

The next step is to decide how much of that plant you want. There are somethings to keep in mind here. Let’s take cucumbers and tomatoes here. Let’s say you absolutely LOVE cucumbers, but hate raw tomatoes. BUT you eat a ton of tomato sauce and you want to can it.

You should look at how much fruit a plant will give. A cucumber plant will yield approximately 10-15 (or more) cukes depending on when you pick them. Don’t need or want 100’s of cukes? Don’t plant a bunch of plants. A tomato plant will yield approximately 8-10# of tomatoes per plant. A quart jar of tomato sauce needs approximately 5# of tomatoes, roughly. If you are trying to put up a lot of tomato sauce, maybe plant a lot of plants.

What kind of space do you have?

This is where I can’t really tell you how much or how little to plant. You’ve got to make those decisions based on your garden size. But I will tell you that you can absolutely get creative with your space. Tomatoes grow well in containers, so you don’t have to “waste” garden space on tomatoes if you can put them in pots on the back porch.

Planting plants like marigolds, mums or basil will not only help keep bugs off your plants help keep the soil healthy. When we are planting our raised beds, I plant something high, something low, and a root. For example, I will plant peppers, carrots and oregano in the same area.

Lastly, look into vertical gardening. Running a couple cattle panels or other trellising could save you a ton of space and allow you to use more of your beds!

Companion planting

Usually, I will plant a row of tomatoes, peas, and onions or garlic. The tomato plant shades the peas. The peas put nitrogen back in the soil. And the garlic or onions will help deter pests. This idea is called companion planting and is really beneficial to your gardens.

I will also plant things like oregano, basil and catnip, along with other herbs, around the garden in hopes that it will also deter pests. Flowers do a great job of not only repelling insects but also attracting them. Japanese beetles will eat my marigolds but leave my vegetables alone.

Another option is planting multiple plots of the same vegetables in different areas. Or even planting things you don’t like, like cucumbers. Let the cucumber beetles, squash bugs and other pests that LOVE cucumbers, squash, melons, etc, eat the cucumbers that you don’t like in hopes of protecting the plants you love like your cantaloupe.

Let’s Get Planning

Draw it out

Drawing out what you are planning is a great way to visualize your space. First, let me apologize for the the horrible photo, but it’s what I’ve got. This is our plan for our main garden. As you can see it is scaled at 2ft per square.

This plan really helped because I was able to figure out exactly how much space I have and how much space can be used for plants, walkways, gates and more.

Space

Another big thing to remember when planning your garden is space. You need space to move between the rows of your garden and your plants need room to grow. A lot of new gardeners will cram as much as they can in their row or bed and then wonder why everything is stunted. They will put their seedlings in the ground and then think, “It looks so bare” and plant more…. I am SUPER guilty of this, even now.

But if you stick to the recommended spacing, it won’t look bare for long.

Using the chickens

So one of the things that we are doing this year, per our plan, is to get our chickens in the garden. Here in Georgia, we have a ton of bugs and a ton of weeds. Last year, our garden wasn’t amazing for a couple of reasons but the two biggest where bugs and weeds.

We plan to “plant” our chickens in the garden to help with bugs and weeds. We are building chicken tractors that will be 4ftx8ft. They will also have roosting bars, nesting boxes, feeders, etc in these tractors.

We noticed that we have had a lot of poultry loss over the last several years. We’re not 100% sure if it is from predators or the chickens just wandering off. So we will be putting the chickens in their tractors and then rotate them through the gardens. We’ll see how it works.

Order your seeds

Once you have figured out what you are going to eat, how much, and where you are going to put it, it’s time to order your seeds. It is always preferred to save money and save your seeds, but sometimes you can’t do that. Either because you don’t have seeds to save, hybrids, or it’s just easier for you to buy them. I will usually place my seed orders in December or January, so now is the time to get this done.

I recommend Eden Brothers or Territorial Seed Company. I’ve had really great success with their seeds. They’ve also got some great flower bulbs as well.

When your seeds come in, start looking at when you need to plant them according to your last frost date. Mine is March 23rd so I’ve started planting my peppers, pumpkins, and other slower maturing plants. This will save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

Start your seedlings

So there are a million different ways to do this. The first time we tried to start seedlings, we had poor germination and what did germinate, we didn’t know what it was. Now, we use this shelving unit in our living room next to the windows. Our living room stays warm and gets a lot of sun. Stay tuned for our greenhouse build!

The tray above is simply a 1020 tray that does NOT have holes. We do not water from the bottom. We mist and use domes to trap moisture and heat until they are established. The little pots inside? Simply amazing! I love these little pots. They have held up very well and I highly recommend them.

Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough. LABEL EVERY SINGLE PLANT! Don’t think for one second you will remember what plant this is! Seriously, trust me.

That’s pretty much it! I know it’s a lot but the biggest things to remember is this. Only plant what you will eat, unless you are using it as a companion or sacrificial plant. Leave plenty of room for your plants to grow. Start your own seedlings so you have more options and save money. And last? Remember, playing in the dirt is good for the soul.

Are You Interested In Learning How To Cook From Scratch

January 23, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Have you looked at your grocery bill lately? A blue box of mac and cheese is $1.50+. A box of flavored pasta is $2. Let’s not get started on the rising cost of bread, haha see what I did there? Have you looked at the label of those same things? It’s filled will all sorts of ingredients that don’t really exist in the natural world. But you’re pressed for time and dinner is a hassle, right? A lot of people are intimidated by from scratch cooking. That’s okay, so was I! But in the last five years I have made the decision to not only cook at home more, but to stop buying boxes and cans of junk that is not good for my family, but actually takes just as long (if not longer) to cook. So if you’re interested in learning how to cook from scratch, I got you.

Common Misconceptions About Cooking From Scratch

There are a million reasons why people don’t want to cook from scratch. While some of them are valid, I don’t think people realize how much easier from scratch cooking it actually is.

Time

The most common thing I hear from people who are interested in learning how to cook from scratch is time. They just don’t have it.

They come home from work and the very last thing they want to do is stand in front of a stove for hours cooking. Or they’ve been out in the fields all day working and the thought of getting out the yeast, flour and salt is just too much.

Fear

Some people are afraid of learning how to cook from scratch because they just don’t know how. And fear may be a strong word, but some people are just too afraid of failing to take the leap.

Do you know how many times Jared has eaten some dish that I have concocted that was freaking TERRIBLE!? Can you guess how many times we STILL go scrounge in the basement for dinner when we just can’t stomach whatever I made? The amount of times we eat shark-coochie boards for dinner is kind of amazing. Yes, I know that’s not how you say it but that’s how Jaxson says it and it stuck.

Knowledge

If you grew up anything like me, everything came in a box or can. From sides to muffins to entire dinners. That I’m aware of, the only time my mom ever cooked from scratch was when she baked. PS I’m still waiting on my banana bread, Mom!

I didn’t learn how to cook from scratch at my mom, grandmother or great grandmother’s knee. I really didn’t learn how to cook from anyone. Sure, I helped my mom cook occasionally, but I didn’t really KNOW how to cook until really the last ten years.

Convenience

This is probably the biggest reason why people never learn how to cook from scratch. When it’s easy to reach for a jar of tomato sauce, why on earth would you EVER want to spend six plus hours making tomato sauce?! If I want a sandwich, why would I take the time to make a loaf of bread? A tube of biscuits costs $3+ and takes minimal effort and little clean up.

I totally understand! I’m busy, too! I have three jobs and one of them I work 24 hour shifts. Sometimes the last thing I want to do is make a loaf of bread or a batch of biscuits. Don’t get it twisted, I have boxes and cans of over processed food in my pantry and cupboards. But I can’t tell you the last time I made a blue box of mac and cheese. Because cooking from scratch is actually really easy.

What Is Cooking From Scratch

Sometimes, cooking from scratch is as simple as melting butter, adding some flour, milk or cream, and then cheese. Bam! You have a cheese sauce! Other times, it’s realizing that you have no buns for burgers and you whip up a batch of rolls.

Or, if you’re like me, it’s making a HUGE batch of biscuits and putting them in the freezer.

But learning how to cook from scratch has to first start with what your definition is. If you’re definition of from scratch cooking is whipping up dinner every night like Ma Ingalls? I’m definitely not your girl.

If you are looking for ways to reduce the number of boxes, jars and bags in your trash? This I can help with.

Taking Your Time Back

You don’t have to spend hours in front of the stove. In fact, you can make an entire batch of yeast rolls in about 20 minutes. Making burgers only takes an extra 5 minutes on top of their cook time. Pork Carnitas takes no more time than browning ground beef.

It takes planning to cook from scratch. The first step is a meal plan. When you know what you’re supposed to be cooking, it makes everything easier. By having a plan, you will not only save money because you are only buying what you need, but you will also save yourself a ton of headache.

Meal Prep

Before anyone jumps on me, because a surprising amount of people are TOTALLY against the term meal prep, really look at how you are spending your time. For the sake of not upsetting the masses, we’ll call it cooking in batches.

There is absolutely no reason to make one meal at a time. Seriously! If you are having ground meat three times this week, you could absolutely make all three batches at the same time! The only differences is usually seasoning.

Let me give you an example of a good meal plan.

If you are making breakfast for dinner one night, you could legitimately cook three dozen biscuits and freeze the left overs. Then you could make four pounds of bacon and have breakfast for the rest of the week. If you don’t mind the taste of “left over eggs” you could scramble up 18 and be done.

But if you look at Day 2 dinner, you get three meals out of that one roast!

Dirty Rice? Same thing. Not to mention turning spaghetti and meatballs into meatball subs? Delicious.

Manage Your Expectations

At the end of the day, you need to manage your expectations of what you are trying to accomplish. Yes, cooking from scratch 100% of the time is amazing. But sometimes that just not going to happen. I’m here to tell you that while we cook at home 95% of the time, only about 70% is from scratch.

I have blue boxes of mac and cheese in my pantry. Easy noodle kits? Yup, got those, too. I buy tacos from the store. That’s OKAY! Sometimes a pizza from the store sounds better than ANYTHING I could make at home.

But when you make an entire meal from scratch? That feeling of pride is addicting.

The Point?

Cooking from scratch doesn’t have to be a long drawn out process. In fact, you could easily cook 100% of your meals from scratch every day.

If you are interested in more of my recipes, and the cookbook coming soon, subscribe below!

How To Handle Power Outages

January 15, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

With the state of our electrical grids, weather and rolling black outs, knowing how to handle power outages is a big deal. If you live in an area prone to outages, you may be a little more well versed in this. If you deal with winter storms that take out the power, you are probably okay. But what happens if you aren’t equipped to handle power outages? Today, I want to show you what we do to prepare for those outages and some things you can do too.

Preparing For Power Outages

When the power goes out, it causes massive issues. Not just on a local or state level, but inside your home can turn to complete chaos if you are not prepared. We know that a power outage doesn’t have to be storm related. Sometimes it’s rolling blackouts or the power grid became overwhelmed. Or you simply forgot to pay the bill…. guilty.

By no means is this an exhaustive list. You need to make sure that you’re prepared. This means getting whatever medications you need, food, and more. But there are somethings you can do to prepare for when you lose power.

Food

I am a big believer in being prepared. Food is a big one for me. You should have two weeks per person of food stored in cases of emergency. There’s a ton of different options for this. For us, we choose to can, dehydrate, and freeze our food. But there are really great emergency food companies that have freeze dried food that will last for 25+ years.

We will get a freeze dryer at some point, but today is not that day.

Food Equipment

There is nothing worse than thinking you are prepared to handle power outages, only to realize that the only can opener you have, is electric. So do yourself a favor and make sure that you have manual tools and know how to use them! I am a big fan of learning out to do things manually and then introducing the electric version later when I know how to do something.

Blankets

I’m not talking about regular blankets here, either. Blankets not only come in handy during winter outages, they can also be used to insulate.

We have these blankets after a move from Texas back to Georgia. These are great to have on hand for many reasons. We use them to wrap up freezers. They are a little pricey but if they keep my freezers from defrosting? I’m game.

They are also great to hang on entry ways and windows. This will help keep warm air where it needs to be.

Coolers

I’m not talking about the itty bitty coolers here, but they will definitely work. You really want to keep your freezers closed and insulated as much as you can during an outage. But if you are on day 5 of a power outage? That top layer of food is going to go bad.

You’ve got a couple options. You can either plan to eat that food first, can it (not always possible), or throw it in a cooler with ice. You can then wrap that cooler in blankets to try and keep it insulated. This can buy you a little more time depending on how thawed, cold, or hot everything is.

Firewood/ Fireplace

Always, and I repeat, ALWAYS have a way to heat your home if you have no power. If the temperatures dip too low for too long, you will freeze to death. No amount of blankets will save you when it’s -20 and you are without heat. In fact, in a lot of places, if the temperatures drop to freezing, communities will set up warming shelters. These shelters are not just for the homeless, but for anyone without heat.

That being said, you should have at least a fireplace in your home. Regardless of whether you have ever used it, you should be keeping it at least maintained. Finding out at last minute that you have a chimney full of bats? Not great.

That being sad, make sure you have about a cord of firewood off the ground and dry every winter. I wrote a couple posts about firewood here and here. Since we heat with wood only, we try to make sure that we start winter with at least 5 cords of wood and then we continue to chop as we go throughout winter. We may not be able to use that wood that winter, but we can at least get started for next year.

Heaters

If the power goes out, you aren’t going to be able to heat unless you have a wood stove. BUT if your stove relies on a blower to move that warm air around? It’s not going to keep your house warm. My suggestion is a propane heater like this one. We also have one like this, it works pretty well but not great in large spaces.

Some words of warning. You need to have a working carbon monoxide/ smoke detector and good air flow. You don’t want to be one of those people that catch their house on fire because these things can be dangerous if not used correctly. Or worse, die from carbon monoxide poisoning because you didn’t let vent properly.

Fans

Whether your power goes out in summer or winter, having fans actually helps a lot. Yes, I know it’s weird. But in the winter, if you are using a fireplace, wood stove, etc, you need to get the air from the heat source to the rest of the house. We don’t want to move it quickly, just enough to get air moving.

We like these fans because they are rechargeable and are not that expensive. AND it’s got a lamp, so it’s a two birds, one stone thing which I really like. It will last from 6-36hrs. Of course, if you’ve got it on high with the highest setting lamp, it’s only going to last the 6 hours but still that’s a lot.

I feel like I don’t need to explain the need for a fan in the middle of summer when the power goes out.

Well Pump

While some of you may not have this problem, having water is vital to all living things. If your house runs on a well, having a way to pump that water is a must if your power goes out. This manual hand pump is great for emergency situations where you must have water, and you can’t get it.

There are many, many different ones you can get but my suggestion is to get one that is manual and not solar powered. If you run into a situation where you can’t get power for many days, and it’s raining? Your solar powered pump isn’t going to work, either.

Water Jug Dispenser

When it comes to water, you can never, ever have enough. The general rule of thumb is 1 gallon per person per day for drinking. Or about 5 gallons for daily use. Livestock need about 5 gallons a day depending on the size of your livestock, obviously. For us, that would mean 20 gallons of water per day for our family and another 70 gallons for all of our animals per day.

That’s a lot of water and if you don’t have IBC’s or other water retention devices, you could be in trouble.

We have a bunch of 5gal jugs that we keep filled and in rotation. Then we use this dispenser to get the water out. It’s a great little pump that works pretty well.

One of the other ways we make sure that we have enough water stored is to fill our canning jars with water when not in use. The way I see it is this, empty jars take up as much space as a jar filled with water. So why not fill that empty jar with water and store it?

Power Banks

Another great way to ensure that you can handle power outages is to have power banks. There are a ton of different options to get and any of them will work well. I do recommend making sure that you have a couple that are solar like these. You want to make sure that you have the ability to recharge them if you run out of power.

Handling Power Outages

A power outage is usually more mentally draining than physically, as long as nothing goes wrong. Make sure you’ve got some relaxing things to do to keep your mind off being without power. Take care of your animals and enjoy being unplugged.

How To Create A Digital Seed Inventory

January 5, 2023 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Every year, it’s the same problem, “What seeds did I buy last year?” I have yet to meet a person that only buys exactly what they need. But most people forget what they purchased last year, if they liked it, how much they still have, etc. Every gardener, farmer, or homesteader, needs a seed inventory. There are about a million ways to create a seed inventory, from paper to digital to mental. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter HOW you keep track of your seeds, as long as you do it. Today, I want to show you how and why I have a digital seed inventory and how you can do it too.

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Why A Seed Inventory

I want to say this first, you don’t have to have a digital seed inventory. In fact, if you want to keep it old school with a pen and paper? Go right ahead. I’m not here to judge. I just want you to be able to keep track of your seeds. In my garden planner, I’ve got several charts that help me track everything from seeds/seedlings, orchard information, pests, and more. This is my printed planner that helps me keep track when out in the garden. But I prefer my digital seed inventory for a lot of reasons.

First, when I order seeds, I am on my computer. Rarely, if ever, do I go into a store and buy seeds that I NEED. Those seeds are the seeds I saw and thought, “Hmm, that looks interesting.” And they get thrown in my cart. The seeds I need for my garden are bought online. That’s because I know exactly what I need, the amount I need, and I can usually get better deals that way.

Second, it helps me save a TON of money. I am an impulse buyer. No matter what I try to do to stop that, I am going to see something and snatch it up because it looks cool, could solve my problem and so much more. But the reality is that having a digital seed inventory on my phone tells me EXACTLY what I have on hand, and which storage bin it’s in.

Third, it helps me keep track of start times, harvests, and more. I enjoy being able to quickly look back at a seed in my inventory and see that it germinated well, produced a ton, and, probably most importantly, how many seeds I have on hand right NOW.

One of our five year goals is to feed ourselves and animals 75% from our land. That’s a ton of food. But to get to that goal, I need to make sure that I am only buying or saving the seeds that I know will work.

Creating A Digital Seed Inventory

A simple spreadsheet is really all you need. It can be as fancy and in depth or as simple as you want. My seed inventory is pretty in depth because I want to make sure that I can track as much information as possible. But sometimes there is a need for simplicity and I that is where my garden journal comes in.

If you are choosing to start your own digital seed inventory, then you need to write down the things that you want to track. Do you care what color the pepper is? Do you care if it’s a transplant or direct sow? Where you bought the seeds?

You also need to think about how you are going to access it when the time comes. Are you only going to use it at home? Then it probably doesn’t need to be web based. Are you looking for seeds from a local farmers market? Probably should be web based like Google Sheets.

Make sure that the things you want to know are easily accessible within that spreadsheet.

If you aren’t quite sure what you want in your spreadsheet, I have my digital seed inventory that you can purchase in our general store. This is the same one I use. The cool thing about it, is that while it is in depth, you can delete the things that you don’t want or need.

Need Help Organizing Your Seeds?

In my digital seed inventory, the first column is “location”. Pro tip? Get yourself a couple of photo storage bins like this and put your seeds in it! This is seriously the best garden purchase I have made to date. These storage bins have 18 4×6 storage containers.

On the outside of the bin, I write which bin it is A, B, C, etc. On the inside 4×6 bins, I write A1, A2, A3, etc of the corresponding bin. This way when I look at my inventory, I can see that corn seeds are in bins C12-C18. That way when I go to plant that corn, I don’t have to go find it, lug out a million seed packets, and risk losing a couple packets. This has been my hack for the last 10 years and I will always use it.

No matter if you are using a box to store your seeds, a pen and paper to keep track of how many seeds you have, or going all digital and super organized. The reality is that if you are buying seeds, using them and growing food? You’re doing pretty amazing!