Goats

Spring To Do List For Homesteaders

February 18, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

As winter comes to a close, homesteaders and farmers brace for the spring race. The sunshine lasts a little longer each day. Livestock is giving birth. Chicks are in the stores. Plants are ready to be put in the ground. All of this means that homesteaders have a spring to do list that is a mile long. But instead of being overwhelmed by it, we are going to eat an elephant one bite at a time.

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The Spring To Do List

The goal of our spring to do list is prepping for summer, but also deal with all the things that come with spring itself. The reality is that we are just not going to be able to get to some things done once the garden is in full swing. That means that we have to get as much of this list marketed off. But what should YOUR list look like? Below is how we break down our spring to do list into categories.

Garden
Livestock
Poultry
Clean/ Organize

Everyone’s to do list for spring is different because every homestead is different. Some people focus on firewood during spring, others their garden is their only focus. But everyone can agree, spring is a busy time for any homestead.

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Spring To Do List: Garden

For us, putting in the garden is the highest priority every year. The first summer we were on our property we couldn’t get a garden in. We just had so many other things going on that it just wasn’t feasible. Last year, we got our garden in, but even with the woven ground cover, there was a ton of weeds. Which is scary because what would it have looked like without it?

We are expanding our gardens this year to include a kitchen garden. The original garden was great and produced a surprising amount of food, but it just wasn’t was I expected. The tomatoes we had just didn’t wow us with big tomatoes or even a decent harvest. BUT we did grow tomatoes which is always awesome. This spring we will be installing our kitchen garden and turning the original garden into our “bulk” garden.

The biggest project for spring in the gardens (after installing the kitchen garden) is to get the pigs and chickens in the gardens and let them root, till, and poop in the gardens. We are hoping that will boost our harvests and keep down the weeds.

We are also going to be starting all of our own seedlings this year. Which is going to be intense and we will probably run out of room in the basement, but that’s ok. We built a greenhouse to hold all the seeds. To put that into prospective, we plan on starting at least 100 tomato plants. Yes, 100. That may seem like a lot, but we eat tomato sauce in some form at least once a week. Then there’s ketchup, BBQ sauce, sloppy joes, etc. We need a ton of tomatoes.

If you haven’t already, I suggest getting your seeds now. You can order online or you can stop by pretty much any big box store and get your seeds from them. Personally, I order my seeds from Territorial Seed Company and Baker Creek. I have also ordered from other sites but I prefer these two.

Spring To Do List: Livestock

Kidding season for the goats is pretty intense. Mainly because I am a nervous wreck. These girls are my favorite and I don’t want anything to happen to them. Plus, getting to see new favorite creatures born is amazing. But to prepare for it takes some effort. On my list is making sure that their birthing kits are ready and I have everything I need.

If anyone is interested, we filmed our most recent kidding. Be warned, it’s a goat giving birth so it’s pretty graphic. Bella gave us two beautiful babies; Mavrick and Goose. We will be retaining both of them and I’m so excited!

Spring To Do List: Poultry

Chickens, ducks and turkeys get their own category because we are placing a HUGE order this spring. We are talking 60 laying hens, 100 meat chickens and 15 turkeys. Why?

Spoiler alert There are cons to raising chickens…. Just so you know.

We have had a lot of issues free ranging the chickens. The chickens will wonder off or we can’t find their eggs. It’s been one thing after the other. My previous flock of 60 chickens and 25 ducks is now down to 16 chickens and 9 ducks. Though we did butcher 6 meat ducks. So I have to get the various brooders ready to go for them.

I’m going to do a blog post on why free ranging the chickens didn’t work for us and what we plan to do different this time. But the reality is that true free ranging has cost us a TON of money. Between the initial costs of buying the chicks and then having to rebuy plus the lost income of selling eggs and chicks? It’s sickening how much money was spent or lost. So we are working on some strategies to stop the bleed.

Because we are raising some chicken for friends and family, we are going to be raising 100 Freedom Rangers. We realized with our last batch of crosses that we just weren’t feeding them enough which led to them not gaining enough weight. That led to us having to wait to butcher them, making the meat tougher. This time we plan on moving them to a different area that is full of bugs, grass, and other yummy treats as well as feeding them all the feed they want.

The goal is to get all of this done before summer really kicks in but we will see what happens.

Finally, We Clean and Organize

This is another long spring to do list for our homestead. We have slowly but surely been working on getting the property cleaned up and things moved around. It’s been a long process. We usually wait until fall/ winter to start working on the outside because the weeds and grass will hide a lot of the debris. When all the grasses die back, we can find these things and get them in the pile for trash.

Come spring, it’s the final push to get the unusable stuff off the property. Also on our spring to do list is gutting the basement to allow us to get our food storage room built and the rest of the animal storage done. It’s a tall order.

Also, I am a terrible cleaner. I have ADD and I go through crazy, spastic cleaning urges and everything MUST BE CLEAN. And then I squirrel out or get too busy and the house cleaning falls apart. Every late winter/ early spring, I try to get as much of the house cleaned and organized. I know as soon as summer hits, I’m going to be in the garden.

These are just some of the things we are doing this spring on the homestead. I would love to hear about what you are doing!

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Don’t Be Afraid Of Being Prepared

February 1, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Years ago, the propaganda surrounding being a “prepper” got a lot of people scared of actually being prepared. For a long time, being called a prepper was this horrible thing that made a lot of people scared to talk about things like storing food, medicine, and other essentials in the face of an emergency. But over the last couple of years, we have realized that maybe being prepared isn’t such a bad thing.

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Don’t Be Afraid Of Being Prepared

I could write a huge blog post on all the ways you can start preparing your household for the worst case situations. And I have. You can see how I cook during power outages, handle our food security, and even emergency gardens.

In this post, though, I want to talk about the fears surrounding being prepared. It’s not just the fear about being called a prepper. It’s also realizing that you don’t have to prepare for emergencies from a place of fear. So many people fear the unknown and it causes them to do nothing. Instead, let’s talk about what emergencies are and why being prepared for them is important.

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What Is Prepping?

Simply put, prepping is just preparing for situations that may arise. This could be anything from meal prepping to disaster planning and everything in between. Today, I am talking about preparing in a home sense, and yes, this includes disaster planning.

When we got hit by hurricane Helene, we realized that while we were okay, there were things that we could do better. That lead to a list of things that we needed to start working on before the next big thing hit.

Our preparations don’t come out of a place of fear, but comfort and thriving versus just surviving.

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Prepping Out Of Fear

Prepping out of fear is the biggest issue I have seen so many people struggle with when it comes to prepping. Most of the “bad preppers” (and I use that term very loosely) are so into prepping for Armageddon that it scares the hell out of those that are just trying to figure out how to put up food for the winter. What a lot of people don’t understand is that there is a middle ground where most of us live.

I’m not preparing for Armageddon. I am preparing for another Helene. I’m preparing for the probability of power failure when we get another winter storm.

While you shouldn’t prep out of fear, you should be aware of the inherent dangers of not being prepared. It’s not fun trying to cook dinner when you have no power to work your stove and no other way to heat food. A job loss can come out of nowhere and you don’t have rice and beans stored. Or you have no idea how to start and care for a garden, and you have no ability to buy food.

These are all situations that are probabilities, not just possibilities. Having a way to thrive during hard times can make or break you mentally or emotionally. So have the hard conversations now, not during an emergency.

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Preparing Where You Can

I said I wasn’t going to get into the weeds on how to prepare, because I’ve already covered it. But I wanted to touch on a couple things.

I know that a lot of us grew up in an age were it is normal to only purchase enough groceries to last until the next paycheck. Also, I know that some of us are not able to stockpile huge amounts of food. Financially, it can be really hard to get a good food storage system in place. But there are some things that you can do.

Instead of buying a couple cans of beans, purchase a bag of dried beans. Purchase a 20# bag of jasmine rice instead of the boxes of ready to eat rice. Then learn how to cook those things. Just buying a bag of dried black beans is about $2/# instead of 4 cans of beans saves you about $2. A 20# bag of jasmine rice is about $16 instead of 7 3# boxes of instant rice, and saves you about $26.

Another thing to consider is how you are going to get water. This could be filtering rain water, or a manual pump for your well. If you can figure out your food and water, everything else is pretty easy…. ish.

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Having Hard Conversations With Your Significant Other

I think this might actually be the hardest part of emergency preparedness and being prepared. It’s easy to convince ourselves that we need to pick up an extra bag of rice or flour at the store. Sometimes, it’s incredibly difficult to bring it home and explain to your spouse why you bought it. Now, I’m blessed beyond measure because Jared is like, ok whatever about a lot of things.

The biggest thing to remember is grace, kindness and patience when it comes to having these conversations, at least with your significant other. Because if they don’t live with you, they don’t matter. I’ll get to that nugget in a minute.

When you are having the conversations with your SO, you need to really look at where they are coming from. Are they anxious about this kind of thing? Because I get very anxious when talking about these types of situations. Not scared anxious, more of a there’s so much to do anxious.

Are they more of an optimist and struggle to see the merit in spending money on things that probably won’t happen? Maybe they get scared by the possibility and just avoid the conversation.

I can’t tell you how to have this conversation with them. You know them better than I do. But if you come to them with kindness, grace and patience, you will get a lot further.

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What To Do With The People That Don’t Matter

You may get a lot of push back from relatives or friends, or you may not. This is something that you get to choose to tell them. Obviously, if you are storing 100# of rice in the coat closet, they may get curious if they come over. But over all, and one of the hardest things I have learned as an adult, is that if they don’t live with me, they don’t matter.

And I’m sure they do matter to you. But if they aren’t spending their money on your food, medicine, shelter, or anything else, their opinions don’t matter.

And yes, it’s still hard not to worry about the reactions of others. Especially, if you are a recovering people pleaser. But at the end of the day, what matters most is you, your family, and your home. Everything else should be secondary… or not matter at all.

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Don’t Be Afraid Of Being Prepared

If the last 8 years has shown us anything, it’s that the world is one crazy place. We are all struggling with something. It could be food, health, finances, or something else. But there is a certain level of comfort in knowing that I have enough food to last us a year. And in that year, we won’t just be surviving. We won’t be stuck eating rice and beans to try and survive.

This level or resiliency was created with hard work, dedication and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But you can absolutely do this too!

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Infrastructure And Self Reliance

January 21, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

When Jared and I sat down to go over our infrastructure for 2025; the projects, plans, and goals, we really wanted to get us to a place were the projects were done. That way we could focus our finances in other areas. Now, we all know that projects on the homestead are never truly done. But if we can get some of these bigger projects out of the way? We will be well on our way to self reliance and that is huge.

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What Does Self Reliance Look Like To Us

The best way to set up goals is to ask yourself some questions. Like WHY do you want to be self reliant? What does self reliance look like to you? How are you going to become self reliant? These questions will have answers, but more often than not, they lead to more questions. But to give you our starting off point, we see self reliance as a way to decrease spending, reduce off farm hours, and create a eco-system here on the farm.

The more we become self reliant, the less we will spend at the feed and grocery store. The less money we spend at the grocery and feed store, the quicker we can pay off the farm and any debt we have. The quicker we pay off our debts, the more we can reduce off farm hours. If we can create an eco-system where our garden and land feed our livestock, and we can harvest our garden and livestock. Then we will be back to reducing our need for the feed and grocery store.

This symbiotic relationship with our land and livestock are paramount in not only becoming self reliant, but being good stewards to our land and shepherds to our herds.

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Setting Up Our Infrastructure

As I’m sure you can tell, Self Reliance is the keyword for our lives for the next few years. It is the cornerstone of every single thing we are doing and planning. So we are starting the first year with infrastructure. I talked in depth about what infrastructure is in this blog post. But the point of that post was to get you to think about your own infrastructure and what that means for your homestead.

When it comes to our homestead, we are really trying to focus on self reliance. Keeping in mind that the 3 big dreams are spending less money, reducing off farm hours, and creating an eco-system are the most important things. We created our infrastructure list and plans around that.

The goal of the year is to set up the homestead with those three big dreams in mind. For example: we have made the hard decision that if we can’t sell our bucklings, they will become meat goats. We’ve also made the decision that we will no longer buy chickens because we like the way they look, or how many eggs they lay. All chickens will be a meat variety instead of dual purpose. The gardens are going to go be overhauled into a “bulk garden” and a “kitchen” garden. We are going to start working on water movement so that we are no longer laying hoses throughout the property to get water to animals and gardens.

Meat

Then there’s closing the holes in our food security. One of the things we decided was to focus on heritage breeds. While they take more time to mature, they are more efficient with what they eat. We recently purchased 2 American Guinea Hogs so that we can stop relying on other farms for our pork. We are also going to be purchasing several Bourbon Red turkeys to further reduce our dependance on the grocery store or other farms.

The caveat to these animals is that we are also only going to buy animals that can work as well. One of the things that we learned at the HOA conference in Virginia, was that the animals should work for you too. Pasture rotation is a thing we knew about, but when listening to the lectures, we learned about what pigs can do for revitalizing the soil.

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Gardens

Our gardens are going to look very different then they did last year. We are going to bring the pigs and chickens into our side yard and allow them to root, scratch and poop on that area and will turn it into another garden. That garden will hold all of our squash, cucumber, melon, herbs, etc. Then we will turn our old garden into the “bulk” garden for corn, tomatoes, peppers and food for the animals.

We are making lists of what we buy at the grocery store and of that, what can we grow? One of the things we can grow to spend less money growing cumin. We use a TON of cumin and at $20 a container, that’s a lot of money every year. It’s the same thing with lettuces. We feed our bearded dragons mustard, turnip, collard greens. At $4 a bag, and we by 4 bags a month? That’s a huge savings if we grow those things ourselves. Not to mention, that the pigs will eat the excess turnips.

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Animals

We already discussed the hogs, turkeys and chickens. But to go a little more in depth, every single animal on our homestead is going to have a purpose. And if they require additional feed that the farm can’t produce? That is something we need to look at or they aren’t going to stay long. This has led to some hard decisions when it comes to our personal animals.

We aren’t going to just get rid of them. But this thought process has shown us the amount of money spent on the dogs, cats, dragons and snakes for pleasure, hurts our bottom line of spending less. That means 1) no new animal will be brought to the homestead unless it serves a purpose and the farm can sustain it. And 2) has made us really look into how we can feed animals alternatively without affecting their health.

Another point with the animals is keeping around animals that are not producing. The animal lover in me struggles with the idea of just butchering an animal because it is no longer useful. But the homesteader in me says, but that’s their job. It’s very conflicting and confusing.

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Permaculture And Self Reliance

This word has been rattling around my head for the better part of a month. One of the things we have been talking about pre-conference was that while we could afford our $600/mo feed bill, we didn’t want to. After the conference, we realized that we could grow most of the food our animals need without having to use as much feed. This lead us to the idea of permaculture.

The plan, and resulting infrastructure, is that we are going to use electric netting to rotate the pigs and chickens throughout the property. We’ve had a lot of predator problems with our chickens and we are hoping that by giving them a safe space, with electrified netting, this will keep the predators down. For the pigs, we are planning on giving them a large space to root and poop in hopes that they will break the soil and allow the good things to get into the soil.

After they have worked the soil in that area, we will move them to the next area and let them continue through the property. The area that they worked will be seeded with a variety of grasses, legumes, and other plants that will help the soil and feed the livestock.

While I love my compost, and we will always have and use it, the idea of schlepping wheelbarrows up hill and all over the property is not my idea of a good time. BUT I can take bedding waste, wasted hay, and other compostable-s and just put it in where the chickens are. They can spread it around and the soil can break it down there. I talked here about other uses for goat bedding and we are doing that as well.

Another part of permaculture is instead of ripping out gardens when they are done, we can put the pigs, chickens or goats in there and let them “rip out” the garden. This will reduce our work load, feed them, and put them to work. That seems like a win to me.

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Bringing Self Reliance Into The House

While at the HOA conference, we were told that the house is not as important as the land. I, wholeheartedly, disagree. While the personal how’s and why’s of that is not important, what is important is that having a safe, secure, and comfortable home, is just as important as the land. And yes, part of it is vanity on my end. While I don’t want the best of the best and need designer things. I do need my home to be safe, secure, and comfortable.

We have to update our electrical panel, breakers, and some wiring. We need to take down some trees that would absolutely demolish our home if they fell. Then there’s the fire safety aspect of putting in tile accents in front of the fire place. We have to paint the exterior of our home because cedar siding will be damaged if it is not taken care of property. Oh, and our back deck is about to fall of the house. So while yes, the land is important so is the house.

I understand what these other homesteaders were talking about in regards to making sure that the land is the priority. But at the same time, so is the home. I know that they don’t mean, “Don’t worry about the electrical panel! You need to put pasture rotation into effect first.” But at the same time, me being comfortable in my home is equally as important as the land. And to be honest, we can do both.

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The Food Storage Room

One of the other ways we are going to work on our self reliance is to finish up our food storage room. While most will call this a pantry, it’s going to be much more than that. In this storage room, we will have all of our canned goods, garden harvests, coffees, etc. It will also have a dehumidifier and vents on a thermometer to help control the temperatures. It will be insulated and have a door to keep animals out. We will also be storing our crockpots, stock pots, and other larger kitchen appliances in there so that we can reduce the amount of space they take up in the kitchen.

So I will be working on making the house comfortable for my family, while Jared is out there cutting down trees and replacing the electrical panel. I may even help him paint the house.

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What Is Your Self Reliance Infrastructure

At the end of the day, you have to do what is right for your family, your land and your animals. It’s not about them or me. It’s about you and what you are trying to accomplish with your life. I hope this post has opened your eyes to what you want to do with your homestead.

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How To Deal With Cabin Fever

January 18, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

The days are short, the nights are cold, and you are probably bored out of your skull. If you are like many new homesteaders, you are chomping at the bit for spring and summer. There is no big garden harvests and sunlight is at a premium. But there are a ton of ways to deal with cabin fever as we wait for spring and summer.

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What Is Cabin Fever

My definition of cabin fever is simply being stuck at home, inside for too long. For someone more outgoing, it’s probably spending a day or two at home unable to leave. For those of us at prefer to be home, it’s usually the boredom that comes with winter. There’s not a whole lot to do in the winter because winter is a time of rest.

If you think about the seasons, spring is the season of new beginnings. Livestock is laboring. Plants are starting to sprout. We are ALMOST ready to put the gardens in. Summer is the season of rush, rush, RUSH. There’s gardens to plant, fertilize, harvest, and preserve. Animals are getting fat for butchering. Fall is the mad dash to get everything finished up. Livestock is being butchered. Gardens are in their final stages before buttoning them up for winter. Kitchens are completely taken over by canning supplies, produce, and complete insanity. Firewood is being stacked for the cold months ahead.

But winter? That is the time to sit back and reflect. It’s the time to sit in front of the fire and enjoy time with your family. It’s the time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

It’s also the time where I am ready to go insane. I am a very type A person and I don’t do well with idle time. I always want to be doing something. So I decided to share the things I do to deal with cabin fever in hope that you can take advantage of them and not go insane.

How To Prevent Or Deal With Cabin Fever

Plan

I am a planner. I love to sit down, organize my thoughts and goals. I like to use Bullet Journals to keep me on track with what I’m doing. Since they are fully customizable, they are the only planner that I use. That way when spring comes around, I can just start doing. This is also the time that I start looking back at my garden journal to see what did well, what didn’t and so on.

Also, I will start looking at various seed companies like Territorial Seed Company and Eden Brother’s to see what seeds they have, and when to order. I will also make lists of things that need to be done, things that worked or didn’t, and all the other type A planning that goes with a homestead.

Interior Projects

Since winter is the best time to do in home projects, I start looking at our infrastructure list and see what I can work on. Usually it has something to do with filling cracks in the paneling and painting, though this year it’s probably going to be flooring. Another project that we will be working on is organizing the basement… again…. yay…. I’m not super excited about that one.

Livestock

At this point in the year, I usually have several goats that are pregnant. So I hang out with them and make sure they are doing ok. This really helps to deal with cabin fever simply because they are amazing and are very expensive therapy. I also check on their hay levels and our feed stores. Since I’ve been tracking how much hay they have used, I can start planning on what they will need for next year. I will also keep an eye on their bedding and pine shaving stores to see how much we are going through.

Organize

I try really hard to keep everything organized throughout the year but let’s be real, the only downtime I have is winter and the first part of spring so I usually organize the house and declutter sometime in December and again in March. I call it my winter and spring cleaning.

This is also when I put up or bring out the flannel sheets, heavier blankets/ curtains, etc. Another thing I do is organize my deep freezers so that I know how much meat we have, used, and how much more we need for the following year. Lastly, I go through my canning jars and supplies to start looking at what was eaten, how much and how many jars I have left.

Canning

Lastly, I can to help pass the time. Usually I will get about 50# of beans and can them so that I don’t have to mess with them later. Since dried beans are shelf stable on their own, I don’t have to worry about them in the height of canning season (July through September). I will also can soup left overs so that I have extras on hand. And I work on breaking down any bulk purchases of flour, sugar, mesa and rice.

I don’t push canning hard throughout the winter. It’s mostly to help myself out come summer when the very last thing I want to do is deal with what to make for dinner.

Hobbies

One of the best ways to reduce boredom that comes with cabin fever is to work on your hobbies. I am a reader and consume (physical, eBook, and audio books) about 300 books a year. During the spring and summer, I’m not reading as much unless I’m at work or listening to books while in the garden. But come winter? My butt is planted on the couch and I’m reading like crazy.

I also crochet during the winter to keep my hands busy to give my eyes a rest if I’ve been reading a ton. Plus, who wants to be under a huge blanket in the heat of summer…. not me.

If you don’t have a hobby, I highly suggest getting one. It’s not healthy for your entire personality to be a homesteader. Trust me.

Whatever you do to deal with cabin fever, just remember it’s temporary. The spring and summer rush will come and you will be praying for the boredom of winter. Be sure to leave a comment below about how you deal with cabin fever!

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Can You Free Range Goats

January 14, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

The short answer is no…. ish. I say ish because we are able to free range our goats, but it’s not something that I would recommend for most people. In fact, I would say the rule is that you can’t, but the exception is that you can try. I know, I know, that’s clear as mud. But let’s talk more about how we free range goats, and what you could do to see if it works for you.

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Our Free Range Goats

As you can see, our goats are obviously not in their fence. The reason was because they ran out of grass in their pastures and feed is expensive. And to be honest, I couldn’t fathom spending hundreds of dollars a month of grain, pellets, and hay when we have an emerald forest full of tasty and delicious browse for them.

But getting to this point was a huge stress for Jared. We all know how much I love the goats? Well, he is Papa Bear when it comes to these creatures. He was so freaked out at the thought of them being outside the fence, that he would stand and watch them for hours…. Y’all, HOURS. Man, I need you to do chores, not watch the goats!

But the reality was that because he watched the goats, he was able to direct them and keep them on the property. So okay fine.

How Did We Get Them To Successfully Free Range?

First and foremost, it was accidently on purpose. Yes, I know. But there was never ANY intention on free ranging these goats. Jared wanted long term lawn mowers but after figuring out that we were going to have to fence them, that idea went out the window. We simply can’t afford to fence in our entire property. So we fenced in three pastures and seeded them for grass. Well, that grass didn’t take very well and the grass that did? They don’t really eat it.

When we realized how poor Champs body condition was just prior to her kidding, we started giving grains and alfalfa pellets. But that shot our feed bill to over $600 a month. Which may not seem like a lot for some farmers, but that’s a lot for us. I started brainstorming on all the things I could do to get them out of the pastures and eating the weeds, briars and other yummy things that they love.

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Electric fencing?

At first I thought our magic bullet would be electric netting like this. I’ve heard great reviews on it and a lot of fellow farmers swear by it. But it’s also expensive and some of the areas we would put them doesn’t get a lot of sunlight for a solar energizer and is too far away to run electricity. We had a poultry net and I figured, let’s try that. It didn’t really work. The goats chewed a few of the strains and effectively shorted out a $250 fence. Thanks guys.

At this point, I was/am milking every morning and the goats have learned that when Mom comes out? She usually has yummy things, and it’s usually in a bucket. Without even trying I started training them to come when I shook a feed bucket. This really helped because they would come when “called”.

Once I figured out that they were following me around because I had feed or they thought I had feed, a lightbulb went off. If they come when I have a feed bucket.

Maybe I can let them run loose?

Enter Champion and Stella. These two girls are my most friendly. Jade and Sapphire are friendly, but Champ and Stella seek me out. So I said, screw it and let them out one day. Then the next, I let out Champ, Stella, Jade and Sapphire. A couple days later, I let out those four plus Oakley, Bailey, Bash and Finn. By the end of that week, I had 12 goats running loose on the property and coming when I shook the feed bucket.

Thankfully, Jared was at work because when he came home? He threw a fit when he saw his girls running a muck in the yard. He wouldn’t come inside unless they were back in the safety of the fence.

It has taken about a month or so for him to finally be okay with the girls running loose. The emerald forest, what we call the briar and weed choked property, has never looked better.

We have never looked back. Now, they have run of the property from sun up to sun down.

So Can You Free Range Goats?

Uh, maybe? I would definitely not go into purchasing goats with the expectation of free ranging them. The biggest thing I noticed with our goats is they want our attention and food. If we had a herd of Bella’s, this would be laughable. She is still extremely skittish and the only reason why she free ranges now is because all of the other goats are able to free range. Since goats are herd animals, they will follow the leader (Champ) where ever she goes. Including Bella.

Potential Steps To Take

I’m not saying that these steps will work. What I am saying is that this is what we did and it worked for us. The key here is making sure that your herd is capable of free ranging. If they are going to take off and never come back? I don’t know that anything on this list will work. But we have worked hard to make our homestead a place were animals don’t want to leave. But that doesn’t mean that the urge to take off will go away.

Make sure they know where their barn is. If they know their safe place is in that barn, when the spook they will run to the barn. Same thing with their fencing. This will take time!
Start making noise with that grain bucket and “make” them come to you. I say make, but really goats do what they want. The grain just helps things along.
Bond with your goat! I am 100% positive, with proof, that if you take the time to bond with your goat and they are happy to see you, there is a chance you can let them free range. My proof is Bella. We have had her from the beginning and if the other goats had not bonded to us, she would have run off the first time we let her out. But because we have bonded with Champ, Stella, Oakley, Bailey, Jade, and Sapphire, they will come when we call them.
Get to know your goats, preferably over winter. This goes along with bonding, but timing is important. If you spend time with them throughout the winter, giving them hay, grain and other yummy things, come spring they know that you are the bringer of yummy things. They will follow you into the gates of hell…. But only for yummy things.
Do not let any new to the farm goats out of the fence until they are 100% accepted into the herd and listen to your established herd queen. This is really important because if your herd queen will follow you or come to you, this will show the other goats that they need to do the same thing. Bella will follow the herd and the herd follows Champ.
Do NOT let your bucks loose. They will either get into your doe pen or they will take off to find girls of their own. Maybe once they are out of rut it could be okay. The caveat to this is that our bucks also love us and want yummy things. In the height of rut, we cannot let them loose. But when they are allowed to be with their girls over winter? They can all free range together.
Predator load is also very important here. If you have an extremely high predator load? This is probably not a good option for you. While our load is mild, we only let them out when we are home. If we are going to be gone, they are locked in their pen.
Probably the most important on this list, make sure that anything that could un-alive these goats is put up. Nails, paint, loose deck boards, you name it, they will try to die from it.

Since we sit on 8 acres and that bucket doesn’t make a ton of noise. I started working on training them to a dinner bell. Weird, I know. But if I ring the bell when they are close and give them a feed bucket, in theory, they should come to expect feed when that bell is rung. It worked for Pavlov’s dog right? Well, it’s also working for the goats. They usually haul ass to use when the hear that bell because they know mom’s got nom noms.

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50 Homestead Goal Ideas

January 4, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

With it being the start of a new year, a lot of homesteaders may be struggling to figure out exactly what to do with themselves and their homestead. Some people have already set their goals for the year and are chomping at the bit to get going. Others are still trying to figure out where last year went. But in either of those situations, here is my guide for homestead goal ideas and how to make your own.

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Homestead Goal Ideas

Before we get into my homestead goal ideas, I want to talk to you about how we set goals around here. First, we are going to talk about the do’s and don’ts of setting homestead goals. Then we are going to talk about actually selecting and timing your goals. Finally, I am going to give you my master list of how I come up with yearly goals. As always, I will explain everything below.

Do’s and Don’ts Of Homestead Goals

The very first thing that you need to do when you are figuring out your homestead goals is to be kind to yourself, family, and animals. If the stomach flu wipes out your family for the whole month of May and all of your plant starts die? Don’t panic. Just step back, be thankful that it’s over and do what you can. Be kind to yourself because getting down on yourself, your family or your animals doesn’t do any good.

Another don’t is to space out your goals. It’s very easy to set up and jam pack your entire year. And let me tell you, that will lead you to burnout faster than you can blink.

DO make sure that you’ve got back up plans in case something goes sideways. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

DO make sure that you pick some Finish Line Goals (which I will explain more in a minute) to give yourself that little boost to push through the hard stuff.

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Selecting Your Homestead Goals

One of the things that I love to do is create a brain dump for the year. This is a list of all the things I want to do or get done for the year. This is where I allow myself to dream big and go wild. There is nothing too big or too crazy to go on this list.

Once you have made your brain dump, start going through and, realistically, mark out anything that really can’t be done this year. For example, I want a new goat barn. This can be on the brain dump list, but cannot actually be done this year because we just don’t have time or materials for it.

After you have worked through your brain dump list, now we turn our goals into tasks and start scheduling them.

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Timing Your Goals For Maximum Potential

There’s a saying that a goal without a deadline is just a dream. Well, this is where we turn our dreams into goals and our goals into tasks.

As you look at your revised list of goals and dreams, I want you to really think about when the best time to do it would be. To give you an example from last year, we wanted to expand our big garden and install raised beds. We had two options, do it before planting season, or after.

Me being stubborn, I wanted it before. So this is how we did it; January we took down the old fencing and started cutting down trees. February was finishing the trees and putting the fence back up. March was building the beds and starting to fill them. April was filling the beds and starting to plant.

Timing your goals is extremely important in making sure that not only that you have enough time to get the goals done, but also making sure that you’re doing that goal in the right season. A good example for us is doing house projects in the cold months.

We do not do any upgrades to the house when it is warm or hot. The reason for this is because there are so many outdoor projects that need to be done that wasting time inside isn’t worth it. The other side is that we aren’t going to be spending a lot of time outside when it is too cold.

Another good reason to time your goals appropriately is something like building a shelter for your animals. We want to make sure that these types of projects are done BEFORE bad weather sets in.

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What Are Finish Line Goals

I wanted to give you my hack for not only setting goals but also something that helps my mental health on the days when I just can’t fathom going outside. I call these goals Finish Line Goals or FLG. These are small, easy to hit goals that make a big impact, either mentally or physically. These goals are a quick dopamine hit that really get me motivated to get moving.

FLG’s are great for those dreary days that you can barely get out of bed, let alone go feed the animals and they will look different for everyone. But in the list below, I will give you a bunch of my FLG to pull from or help create your own.

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Master Homestead Goal Ideas

This list is off my master list that I use when I am floundering to figure out what I want do. Because a brain dump is great when you have a bunch of ideas floating around in your head. This master list is great when you either have no idea where to start or so many ideas that you have become paralyzed with options.

The point of this list isn’t do answer the questions but to use it as a prompt to give you some ideas about what other goals you can do for the year.

Chickens- Is their watering system working?
Chickens- Does their feeding system work for them?
Chickens- Is their shelter suitable for the weather?
Chickens- Is there a new system that you want to try this year?
Chickens- Is raising meat chickens “worth” it?
Chickens- Am I getting enough eggs?
Goats- Do they have access to free choice minerals that actually works?
Goats- Is their shelter secure and keep out the weather?
Goats- Do you have a section of your property that you want cleared?
Goats- Do you have your breeding plan set up for the year?
Goats- What is your plan with kids, milking, etc?
Goats- Do I have time to milk my goats?
Goats- Do I want to raise any meat goats?
Garden- What did you grow last year that didn’t work?
Garden- What did your soil tests say? What amendments do you need?
Garden- How is your soil doing?
Garden- Are you preserving your garden well?
Garden- Do you need to expand or reduce your garden space?
Garden- Is there something you want to change with the garden?
Garden- Did we save seeds?
Garden- Are you actually enjoying your garden?
Garden- Are you tracking your garden with a journal, spreadsheet, etc?
Food Storage- Did we use what we put up?
Food Storage- Was there a preservation method that didn’t work well?
Food Storage- Is there enough storage for the amount of food we put up?
Food Storage- What can be improved with our food storage systems?
Emergency Prep- Was there a power outage that we did not do okay with?

Emergency Prep- Did we have what we needed in an emergency?
Emergency Prep- Is there something that we could have done better?
Emergency Prep-Did we run out of anything during an emergency?

Emergency Prep- Where there any medical situations that I wasn’t prepared for?
Emergency Prep- Where there any situations my animals didn’t do well with?
Home- Is there anything within the home that we want to change?

Home- Are there systems within the home that isn’t working?
Home- Are there any big expenses that are coming up that need to be handled?
Home- Is there a skill that I can learn that will help reduce the costs inside the home? (Think learning to do tile, plumbing, etc)

Home- Can I reduce any monthly expenses without sacrificing comfort?
Finances- Can I pay off any small debts?
Finances- Is my budget working?
Finances- Am I putting enough back into savings?
Finances- What am I spending on subscriptions every month?
Finances- Is my emergency fund big enough?
Personal Goals- What is my reading goal this year?
Personal Goals- Do I really want to become even more physically active?
Personal Goals- Am I doing any self care?
Personal Goals- Do I need any mental health care?
Finish Line Goals- Repair hoses
FLG- Hang new curtains, blinds, etc
FLG- Change the blankets on the couch
FLG- Deep clean one thing: bookshelf, desk, seed box, etc (one small thing that isn’t overwhelming)

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Homestead Goal Ideas

The list above is just a quick way to jog your creativity and give you something to use as a template. But feel free to use all of them. At the end of the day, your homestead is yours and you’ve got to figure out what works best for you and your homestead. I will tell you that you need to make sure that you work some sort of self care into your goals.

This could be something as simple as grounding in your garden or taking time off farm to do something for yourself.

Burnout is real and even though you love homesteading, too much, too quickly will lead to frustration, guilt and anger really quick. So make sure you are taking time for yourself.

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How To Build Raised Garden Beds

December 28, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

While it’s definitely easier to just buy a raised garden bed, kits or other premade/ prefabricated beds, I do think that building them from scratch is a great way to go. I’ll explain why in a minute. The idea of using raised beds was, at first, a ridiculous idea to me. I’ve got great soil, why do I need a bed? But after our first garden flopped, maybe learning how to build raised garden beds is a better idea.

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What are raised garden beds?

Simply put, it is a structure that sits on the ground that you add soil, compost and other organic material to grow things. That’s it. But it is definitely more than that. You see, our soil in Georgia is usually red clay. But there’s a reason why Georgia is a huge agricultural state, we can grow just about anything in this soil. That also means that our weeds are super plants, too.

A raised bed is a great way to keep weeds from growing and stealing water and other nutrients from your plants.

Raised beds also help those with ailments or disabilities that can’t be on their knees in a garden.

Also raised beds help create a designated spot for fruits or vegetables that you want to save seeds from.

And they look prettier.

Susan over at Learning and Yearning as a great guide to raised beds. I took a lot of inspiration from her and Kathi over at Oakhill Homestead when I was brainstorming, designing and building our raised garden beds.

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To Buy Or Build A Raised Bed

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? There are somethings you need to consider when it comes to building a raised bed. Things like your skill level, cost of materials, and customization. If you are not handy with tools or don’t have any skill, building a raised bed may not be a good option. The cost of lumber is extremely high in some parts of the country and that makes building one out of reach for some people. If you are looking for certain dimensions, building one may be a better option.

When we were looking at raised beds, I wanted to conceal the area in front of our front porch. The gutters get overrun when it rains and creates a lot of issues with run off.

Our dogs like to dig and wreak havoc in the front yard. The goats like to hide under the porch and the chickens like to lay their eggs under there too.

So I wanted to help hide some of this as well as keep creatures out. In front of the front porch is a 12ft section on each side of the stairs. And one side has a walk way to the porch, and the other side is wide open. The raised beds/ planters had to be tall enough to keep goats from walking right up to it. Trying to find something that was prefabricated was going to either be insanely expensive or not the right size.

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It Was Better For Us To Build Raised Garden Beds

We found a couple of prefab’d raised beds like this one, and this one. But those are really expensive and still not the right fit for what we needed. So Jared and I brainstormed what we could do. I told him what I wanted: 2.5-3 feet wide, 12 feet long, and about 24 inches tall. He got to work designing and sketching and handed me a material list.

I went to Home Depot and got 45 dog ear pickets and 6 3x4x 8ft posts and he went to work. We also got some lattice to discourage the critters from going under the deck on the sides that would be open until we could build more beds.

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How To Build Raised Garden Beds

It was pretty easy for Jared to build the beds and he got them both done in a day.

He stared with cutting all of the lumber to size.

Cut List

Pickets- cut off the dog ear. Then find your half way point (should be 5′ 5″) and cut there. If you are doing a custom size, cut to that number

3×4- Cut in half

Take your extra pickets (we bought 5 extra) and cut those to 18 inches

Instructions

On a flat and level surface (unless you want your beds to follow the contour of the ground), screw each picket onto a 3×4 timber.

Do this with the front and back of your bed.

Line them up so that you can attach your side picket. Do the same for the other side. You should have a rectangle.

Then start attaching pickets all the way up until you have your desired height. Ours was four pickets high.

Then go in and screw those 18in pickets half way between the 3x4s to help stabilize the pickets to help keep them from bowing when the bed is filled with soil.

Prepping Your Garden Beds

To start, I highly recommend using a liner. Katie over at The Homesteading RD has a great article all about different liners and why you should use them. Now, we didn’t use the cedar like she suggested for two reasons; one, cedar is still pretty expensive and two, because I didn’t to go BACK out to the store. Instead, I used our woven ground cloth.

If you are going to use any kind of plastic or cloth for your beds, I suggest stapling it to the sides of your pickets. But make sure you use plenty of slack in your liner, the weight of the soil, compost and other filler will tear it.

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Filler

Since our beds were 12 feet long, 2.5 feet wide and 2 feet tall, we needed a TON of filler. Now, we could have gone and gotten a bunch of soil, but that’s expensive AND the soil will get compacted over time. That’s not what we want.

About 2 months ago, Jared went through the property and cut down a bunch of mountain laurel. If you don’t know, mountain laurel is extremely toxic to pretty much everything. But our goats didn’t get that memo and without fail someone always eats it and gets sick.

So I had this giant pile of laurel that needed to go. After a ton of research, including calling the Arbor Foundation, I found out that laurel doesn’t leach toxins as it decomposes. Score.

I filled the beds with as much laurel as possible. We cut down big branches and stuffed them in the bed, being careful not to puncture the liner. It took about half the pile but my beds were about 80% full.

I talk here about ways to fill your garden beds for cheap.

Compost

Next, Chase filled the beds with compost. He’s in that wonderful teenage stage where he likes to pick things up and put them down. Repeatedly. But hey, it works for me. He did a fantastic job and the beds were about 90% full….. Or so I thought.

I ordered my soil, peat moss and the rest of the things I needed for finishing off the rest of the area. Including Halloween Decorations.

I wish I would have realized before buying all of this that it was heavy. I knew it was heavy, but I guess I didn’t realize HOW heavy it would be.

Driving home, on curvy mountain roads was a test of not only my driving skills but also my patience. But we all made it home in one piece and nothing fell off the back of the truck. Score.

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Soil

What you fill your beds with is totally up to you. As I said above, I would highly recommend using some sort of filler that is decomposable and a liner. When it comes to soil, we used regular top soil since we were adding peat moss and already had compost and the laurel in the beds. Also, since we aren’t 100% sure what we will be planting in these beds long term, I didn’t want to put in something that was going to be highly acidic or alkalotic.

Plants

What does well in raised beds? Literally everything. I want these beds to house our garlic, onion, and carrots. I may even put our regular potatoes and sweet potatoes in there. Again, I’m not entirely sure. But for now, I threw in some great fall plants and we’ll see what they can do.

Our Take Away

We figured out that raised beds are a great way to go to help conceal the disaster of the front porch.

It takes a TON of soil and other filler to fill these beds so take that into consideration when building these things. Not just height but width and length too.

Run hardware cloth around the top if you want to keep chickens and goats out.

Do not compact the soil in these beds! As you add soil, spread it around so it can fill holes in your filler but don’t cram it in there.

The beds themselves only cost about $60 each to build but ended up running us about $100 each to fill. Keep that in mind when you start this project.

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How To Can Corn

December 21, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

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Whether you got a great deal at the grocery or your garden has exploded, learning what you can do with surplus corn is great. There are so many uses for corn; feed for livestock, food for people, dry it for popcorn or dry it for corn meal. The options when it comes to corn are endless. But today, I want to show you how to can corn.

What do you need?

Corn- We had approximately 120 ears of corn and it didn’t take us long to get it all processed. It also yielded us 32 quart jars

A Pressure Canner– we have two of these that run pretty much non stop since they only hold 7qts each

Canning Tools

Jars– Pints or quarts will work

Either a corn de-cobber like this or a knife and a bunt pan

Salt is optional. We don’t use it but if you want to, make sure you have enough salt for the amount of corn you have

Don’t forget to add these items to your Walmart cart and have them do the shopping for you! It saves time and a ton of money.

Shucking Your Corn

120 ears of corn is a lot and I absolutely despise shucking corn. I will snap green beans until my fingers fall off, but shucking corn? No thank you. This is usually Jared’s job because he really enjoys it. It’s his version of green beans. If I had two bushels of green beans to go through, and he had two five dozen bags of corn? We would be in heaven. We both turn our brains off and let the beauty of our homestead take over.

After he shucked all the corn, he put it into our huge cooler filled with water. The husks and silks go to the chickens and compost for the garden. I guess we could have given it to the goats but they weren’t interested in the husks.

De-Cobbing Your Corn

There’s a million ways to skin a cat, and getting kernels off a corn cob is no different. We have tried a ton of different gadgets over the years. To be honest, the best one we have found is a knife. Those gadgets may work for a specific size of cob, or only once. The knife is going to work 100% of the time. So if you want to “waste” your money, any of those linked will work…. maybe.

We use a knife and bunt pan or just a knife and a cookie sheet. Nothing fancy. The downside of using this method is that it can dull your blades because you are constantly smacking the knife into the metal. But I like sharpening my knives so that’s not a deal breaker.

As you are getting all those delicious kernels off your cobs, keep in mind that the corn milk will spray EVERYWHERE. Don’t keep open drinks, electronics or anything that shouldn’t get wet anywhere near where you are working. Oh, and it’s extremely sticky.

As we de-cob the corn, we put all the kernels in a smaller clean cooler filled with clean water. This starts the soaking process.

After the corn has soaked for thirty minutes to one hour we will either change the water and let it soak again or we will go ahead and get it into jars. The reason we would resoak is if the water was completely white. If you don’t want to soak, don’t mind the milk, etc. Don’t soak or resoak. It won’t hurt anything.

Prepping For Canning

Once your kernels have soaked, it’s time to get them into jars. The first step to this is to make sure your jars are clean with no chips, cracks, dings, or dents. Usually, I just give them a quick wash and let them dry while I’m getting my canner ready.

I have two Presto 16qt canners and they hold seven quart jars. So when I can corn, it’s a multi day process. I also have a three burner camp stove that I can on to help keep the heat down in the house. I’m hoping to get one of these bad boys soon, but at $500 it’s a little steep right now. The trade off is the ability to stack quart jars in it.

Getting my canner ready simply means making sure that the canner is safe to operate per my manuals instructions. Mine uses 3qts of water and once that’s in, I put it on the camp stove to get it boiling.

Back to the kernels, I start draining/straining out the kernels from the water and adding them to my jars. Once filled to a 1″ headspace, I add fresh water, wipe the rim with a damp vinegar rag and place the lid and ring. Remember only fingertip tight. That means you should only use your finger tips to tighten the ring, not your bicep.

They go into the canner as they are ready. Once my canner is filled and the water is ALMOST boiling, I will put the lid on and lock it. I usually let me canner vent for 5-10 minutes depending on how full it is. Meaning, if it’s filled with pints, I usually go 10 and quarts 5. But follow your canners instructions. Place your weight and wait for your weight to jiggle or rock. Then slowly start to lower the stove temp until the weight is barely moving. We don’t want the weight to blast off into space.

Corn is processed at 55 minutes for pints and 85 minutes for quarts at 10# but if your elevation is over 1000 feet, go with 15#.

I also have a quick reference guide that you can download get in my members only section. Sign up below and you will be emailed the password.

It’s Done Processing, Now What?

Depending on your set up, you can just turn the burner off and let the canner depressurize naturally. Or if you have a camp stove and the other side is in use, you can CAREFULLY move the canner somewhere it can cool down. When I say careful, I mean be friggin careful! Seriously, no one needs to have their face melted off because the weight moved. If you’re using your stove at home, do not slide it. Pick it up. If you can’t pick it up. Just don’t even touch it. Seriously, it’s not worth the risk.

After the canner has cooled and the pressure valve has dropped, you can crack the lid and allow some heat to escape. I usually wait 10-20 minutes and then remove the lid completely. Once the contents have stopped boiling, I will unload the canner and place all the jars on a toweled surface.

That’s it!

It’s not hard to can corn at home. And it definitely beats store bought every day. But I’m sure you have some questions. So…..

How many ears fit into a quart or pint jar? It takes approximately 4 ears of corn per quart or two per pint…. Ish

Do you use salt? We don’t, but that’s only because we choose to season our food when we cook it.

Is there a zero waste method? Sure, you can boil down the cobs and make corn cob jelly. You can also drink the milk. Our zero waste method is to give it all to the animals. They love it.

What if I don’t like canned corn? You can absolutely freeze it instead. Just layer a cookie sheet with parchment paper and do a single layer of corn. Once frozen, put into a freezer bag.

What if I have extra jars but not a full canner? You can put them in the fridge for immediate eating or you can freeze them. Another option is to can water. This will give you sterile water in case of emergencies.

What if I don’t have coolers? Or a big cooler? Work in batches. If we know that each jar takes approximately 2-4 depending on the jar, then only do a full canner full at a time, and store the rest in the fridge. You can also use a clean sink.

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Canning Corn on the Cob

This is the fastest and easiest way to can corn on the cob

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Ingredients Equipment Method

Ingredients

1 Corn on the cob
1 Tbsp Per Quart jar Optional

Equipment

1 Pressure Canner
1 Canning Tools
1 Jars Look in the post above for the rough conversions on how many jars you will need

Method

Start by shucking your corn and getting as many of the little hairs off.
Grab either your de-cobber or knife and start cutting the corn off the cob. This can be tricky so watch your fingers.
Place corn in clean water to help get the milk out. You may have to rinse and repeat if your corn was really milky
Using funnel, scoop corn into jars leaving 1" headspace
Fill with water again, leaving 1" headspace.
Remove any bubbles with chopsticks, straw, or other debubbling tool
Wipe rim with damp vinegar towel.
Add lid and ring and put into canner
Fill canner with water to manufacture recommendation. Ours is 3 quarts
Set it on the stove and get the water heating, we usually put ours on high as we are loading it
Once the canner is loaded, place your lid per manufacture instructions.
We let our canner vent for 5-10 minutes then place the weight on the vent pipe.
Once the weight starts rocking, slowly decrease the stove temp until the weight is just barely rocking.
Let this process for 85min for quarts and 55 for pints
Once the time is done, remove from heat and let the canner cool and depressurize naturally. This usually takes about 30-45min depending on processing time
Once the canner is safe to open, remove lid and, if the contents of your jar are not obviously boiling, pull the jars out with the jar grabby thing and place on a towel to cool completely
Remove rings and wash threads. Corn is extremely sticky so the rings may be hard to remove. Not doing so can lead to mold, rust and rotten food.
Wash the threads of your jar (where the rings were) with warm soapy water. Write the date and store

What Does Food Security Look Like?

December 10, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

If you live in America or really any industrialized country, there is a good chance you have a ton of holes in your food chain. The vast majority of Americans don’t even know what food security is, it’s just not something they think about. As long as they can get to the store and buy their food, they are happy. Unfortunately, when the pandemic hit, it was eye opening for a lot of people. They learned that having an emergency food supply isn’t just about a zombie apocalypse. This series is here to help you identify and start to fill the holes in your food security.

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Why Food Security Is Important

I don’t understand why so many people don’t think about where their next meal is coming from. It’s mind boggling to me how many people just go about their life with no thoughts to the future. Most people don’t have a plan if their house catches on fire, let alone what they are going to do if they lose their job. Preppers have caught a bad name due to being hyper prepared but also due to propaganda. But those of us that have lost jobs, homes, or other life altering events know how important it is to have a back up plan.

Not all emergencies look the same, nor are they all on the same scale. For example, losing a job could be catastrophic for one family, but not a big deal for another. A week without power could cripple a family that relies on freezers to feed their family. A cancer diagnosis could financially ruin a family. But all of these are emergencies. But by having food security, it reduces one part of their emergency. Even if it’s small.

What Is Food Security

To start, we need to figure out what food security means to you and your family. To me, food security means having the ability to source and acquire the food, water, and other necessities my family and animals need to survive, at a minimum. If you don’t know what that looks like, you came to the right place.

In order to start filling food security holes, you need to first identify them. Then you can start figuring out how to close those holes. Remember, we are trying to source these items. Are you on a special diet? What do you know how to cook? What do you like to eat? What kind of storage do you have? What do your animals need to eat? These are all very important questions in closing food security holes.

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Let’s start answering some of those questions

If you are on a special diet like a cardiac, diabetic, or even lactose intolerant, getting emergency supplies is going to be harder to do. There is a ton of carbs and sodium in long term, commercial foods. Preserving your own foods is ideal, but it’s not necessarily long term.

Can you cook? If not, having pre-made, commercial meals may be the way to go. Especially if your culinary skills are limited. However, I would highly suggest you learn to cook more and also learn about the fundamentals of cooking.

Are you a picky eater? Or have someone in your home that is picky? Then you need to make sure that you’ve got foods that they like or can tolerate. It’s cruel to tell someone, “sucks to be you” in an emergency situation. So make sure you’ve got foods that they like. A side note to this, if you buy a pre packed survival meal kit like this, please make sure that you like EVERYTHING in it. It may save you some money now, but if you don’t like beef stroganoff, don’t waste your money on it.

What kind of storage do you have? We are blessed to have a basement/garage combo that we were able to retrofit with shelves and turn a 12×12 area into our food storage room. We’ve got tons of shelves and supplies to help us out. Everything from canned goods to extra jars as well as commercial, long term storage items. If you aren’t that lucky, where can you store your emergency supplies? A linen closet? Under the beds?

Lastly, what do your animals need to survive? It seems that most people forget to make sure they’re animals will be okay in an emergency situation. That means making sure that you’ve got medications, food, and water.

Why is this so important to me?

Well, recently we had to replace our well pump. I know you’re thinking, “Leigh, a well pump isn’t about food and food security.” But it is. Without water, all things will die.

When we moved on to our homestead, we were told that the well pump was pretty new but to have a couple of pump switches on stand by because the power would surge and cause the switch to fail. The first night we were here, the water cut off in the middle of my shower. I had to use bottled water to finish washing my hair. I called my step dad and the old owner trying to figure out what happened. The switch failed.

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For the next several months we dealt with the water randomly cutting off or the water stopping if we ran the back spigot. Multiple plumbers came out and no one knew how to fix it. Then one morning, the water cut off completely.

This is a big problem, without water you cannot drink, shower, water crops or animals. Since the other plumbers couldn’t figure out the problem, I decided to call a well plumber. We were showering at the stations because we had no water at home and we were giving our animals bottled water. There was also a winter storm bearing down on us that was supposed to hit that weekend. The stores were running out of water. In short, we were screwed if we couldn’t get access water.

The well plumbers came out and said it was the well pump. When we explained it was a brand new pump, they said that everything we were describing; running out of water, low pressure, etc were all because of the pump. Once it was replaced, we never had another problem.

PS: Shortly after the well pump was fixed, that winter storm hit and we lost power for three days.

So how does this relate to food security?

Simple: if you do not have water, you cannot cook, clean, drink, or survive. Without that well pump, our animals would die of thirst.

Some of the steps we took after this incident was to make sure that we always have 5 gallon jugs filled. We also have a pump to get water out of them. Then we have several IBC and 55 gallon totes around the property that we fill for animal water.

Our garden produces a lot of our veggies, if not all of them. This helps make sure that we have fresh veggies for today, but also canned veggies for later.

Then we have our animals, all of the animals on our homestead can survive off of what the homestead produces during the warm months. The chickens and ducks give us a ton of eggs and we’ve only selected dual purpose breeds so that we can butcher when we need to.

Our goats provide us with milk and we make our own cheeses, creamers, and even butter. We are also going to be purchasing Boer goats and breed them so that we can have meat from them as well.

Don’t live on a farm?

Don’t panic! Just because you don’t have a garden or animals, doesn’t mean that you can’t start preparing for an emergency! You can go on Amazon or Walmart.com and start looking at various long term, emergency food. We like Augason and Ready Wise, but do your research.

Also make sure you have manual can openers or keys like these. Oh and coffee!!!! Make sure you’ve got some form of caffeine because when the power goes out, nothing is better than hot coffee!

Food security includes water, food, and basic necessities like soap, medications, first aid, and clothes just to name a few things. So what can you do to start identifying holes in your food security and fixing them?

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How To Save Money On Livestock Feed

December 7, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Whether you homestead on a large scale or small, livestock feed is expensive. To be fair, raising livestock in general is expensive. But with the holidays on us, plus supply chain issues and inflation, saving money is becoming more and more important. These tips are how we save money on livestock feed.

How To Save Money On Livestock Feed

Just Add Water
Grow it
Microgreens or Sprouts- Another great way to stretch feed
Buy in bulk
Reduce animal numbers.

You could also make your own, but that is an entire post all on it’s own so make sure you subscribe below to be updated on that post!

Let’s talk about each one of these a little more in depth.

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Just Add Water

Soaking feed is number one for a reason. It is hands down the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to stretch your feed. All you need is a 5 gallon bucket with a tight lid for each different feed you plan to soak. For example: I soak/ ferment pig, chicken and goat feed, plus alfalfa and beet pulp, which I do together. So I have 4 buckets.

What’s the difference between soaking and fermenting? Time. If you leave your feed for too long in a bucket it should ferment. And if you leave it too long past that, it will mold. We soak our pig feed and the alfalfa/beet pulp overnight. The chickens and goats get fermented feed that we start 2-3 days prior and then add more as we go.

PS: if you ferment your pig feed for too long, or if there is corn in the feed, you will have drunk pigs…. Don’t ask how I know.

The Hay Calculator:

If you aren’t math-y (don’t worry I’m not either), check out our Hay Calculator. It literally does ALL of the math for you and gives you totals based on what you want your goals.

On the second page, you can track where you’ve bought hay, what you spent and how long it lasted.

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Grow It

Right now growing isn’t as easy because it’s winter. But growing crops for your animals is hands down the cheapest way to reduce feed costs. In fact, I would dare say that if you have enough property, or not a lot of animals, you could feasibly never buy a bag of feed. Between grasses for grazing, pasture rotation, and then expanding your garden to grow corn, barley, buckwheat, winter squashes, and more, you could never buy a bag of feed. This could save you thousands of dollars a year for just a few seed packets. You can get almost all of your seeds from Territorial Seed Company or Eden Brothers.

What kind of fodder crops should you grow for your animals? That really depends on what animals you have and what they can eat. But corn is a great plant that is easy-ish to grow, store and feed out. Another good plant is pumpkins, and our animals love it. Winter squashes are another really great veggie that does well despite most attempts to kill it. It’s very easy to store and will last a long time in proper conditions. Another good option is putting your animals in your gardens after harvest. They can get all the left over yummies in there and clear your garden at the same time.

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Microgreens/ Sprouts

This one can get very in depth and long winded. But to give you the highlights: take a tray, add soil (you don’t have to use soil), add microgreen seeds (densely packed), and then soak. With proper lighting and care you can grow fodder for your chickens and even pigs and goats. The 104 Homestead has a great post on sprouting barley. The Homesteading RD also has a great post on the different microgreens and the process of growing them. Just make sure that your animals can eat the greens. Rainbow Heirloom Seed Co. has some great seeds on Amazon.

What kind and how much to feed? Honestly, we are just starting out with our microgreens and there just isn’t that much information out there on feeding microgreens to livestock. But I will say this, we are growing greens that they can eat the plant or seed of. So if goats can eat broccoli we will feed them half a tray of broccoli microgreens and see what happens. I’ll post more when we know more or find more research of it.

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Buy In Bulk

Buying bulk depends completely on two things; your ability to load/unload and your ability to store. When I talk about buying in bulk, I’m talking about half ton totes like these. We have neither the ability to unload or store, so buying in bulk isn’t really a good option for us per se. But we do get a discount on how many pounds of feed we buy at a time. At our feed store if we buy a total of 500# of feed, we get a discount on all of the feed. It doesn’t matter if it’s pig, chicken and goat. I can move and store 10 50# bags of feed, I cannot do that with a ton of pig, a ton of chicken and a ton of goat feed.

What do you need to load/unload and store? Dolly’s to start if you are planning to store in 55gal drums. But if you are buying those big 1 ton totes? You’ll need pallets, pallet jack, and probably a tractor to get it off the delivery truck. There are places that you can go and fill 55 gallon drums but you have to find them first.

Another caveat to this is to shop around. While I absolutely adore Tractor Supply, I cannot afford $25-30 for a 50# bag of chicken feed. Not when I can get a better quality for half the price at my feed store. So ask other homesteaders/farmers in your area where they go for feed.

The other thing that buying in bulk helps with is reducing the amount of feed bags laying around your garage….. Not that I have that problem.

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Reduce Your Animal Numbers

No one wants to talk about this, and for good reason. I don’t want to cull, sell or give away any of my animals. On our homestead we can’t keep around animals simply because they are cute. If an animal doesn’t have a purpose, they don’t stay on the farm. The best way to save money on feed is to not have so many animals to feed. It’s just the cold hard truth. If you are trying to reduce your spending, buying feed from the feed store isn’t going to reduce your spending.

If you are having trouble choosing who needs to go, ask your self this: who is the oldest? Who is the meanest? Who is the fattest? Who is the hardest to handle? This should start to help you narrow it down a bit. Again, while not ideal and it breaks my heart, I know who is on the chopping block if we ever get to that point.

Saving Money On Livestock Feed

There are a million different ways to feed your animals. But at the end of the day, feed is an expense that you need to be okay with. If you’re not, then you need to reconsider the amount and type of animals you are getting. Meat chickens require tons of feed but pigs can be maintained on kitchen scraps and good pasture. It’s all in how you want to raise your animals.

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Goats

The Spring To Do List

Spring To Do List: Garden

Spring To Do List: Livestock

Spring To Do List: Poultry

****Spoiler alert**** There are cons to raising chickens…. Just so you know.

Finally, We Clean and Organize

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Don’t Be Afraid Of Being Prepared

What Is Prepping?

Prepping Out Of Fear

Preparing Where You Can

Having Hard Conversations With Your Significant Other

What To Do With The People That Don’t Matter

Don’t Be Afraid Of Being Prepared

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What Does Self Reliance Look Like To Us

Setting Up Our Infrastructure

Meat

Gardens

Animals

Permaculture And Self Reliance

Bringing Self Reliance Into The House

The Food Storage Room

What Is Your Self Reliance Infrastructure

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What Is Cabin Fever

How To Prevent Or Deal With Cabin Fever

Plan

Interior Projects

Livestock

Organize

Canning

Hobbies

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Our Free Range Goats

How Did We Get Them To Successfully Free Range?

Electric fencing?

Maybe I can let them run loose?

So Can You Free Range Goats?

Potential Steps To Take

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Homestead Goal Ideas

Do’s and Don’ts Of Homestead Goals

Selecting Your Homestead Goals

Timing Your Goals For Maximum Potential

What Are Finish Line Goals

Master Homestead Goal Ideas

Homestead Goal Ideas

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What are raised garden beds?

To Buy Or Build A Raised Bed

It Was Better For Us To Build Raised Garden Beds

How To Build Raised Garden Beds

Prepping Your Garden Beds

Filler

Compost

Soil

Plants

Our Take Away

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What do you need?

Shucking Your Corn

De-Cobbing Your Corn

Prepping For Canning

It’s Done Processing, Now What?

That’s it!

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Canning Corn on the Cob

Ingredients

Equipment

Method

Why Food Security Is Important

What Is Food Security

Let’s start answering some of those questions

Why is this so important to me?

So how does this relate to food security?

Don’t live on a farm?

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

How To Save Money On Livestock Feed

Spoiler alert There are cons to raising chickens…. Just so you know.