A New Adventure

It’s been a while, dear reader (to put it mildly), and so much has happened since my last post! One of the biggest changes is that we’ve moved to a new house. We left our old manufactured home on just under 8 acres and purchased a full-log home with 22 acres - half wooded, half pasture. The kids are loving the woods to roam in, my husband is enjoying the verdant views and wildlife (we've seen whitetailed deer, turkeys, hawks and bald eagles, bear tracks; we've heard barred owls hooting in the night; and a pair of phoebe birds are building a nest above our porch), and I’m having fun trying new things in the house and garden. I’m also enjoying the rich deposits of Obtanium we have in the woods on the property (“Obtanium” is a word I learned from a teacher at the Hay River Traditional and Green Skills Event a year or two ago – the definition being, roughly: “that which is found, gathered, or bartered for - not purchased - and put to good use”. See also “Redneck Recycling”). The fallen leaves, old dead wood, and abundant rocks have all found uses in the gardens - and the morel mushrooms my daughter discovered were a welcome addition in the kitchen!

We moved in mid-February, for which I am heartily grateful. It was a challenge on our actual moving day (I remember temps of -17F as friends helped us transfer furniture from the old house to the new), but after the heavy lifting was accomplished, it was nice to have time to set up the house while the yard waited patiently under a foot or so of snow. We had a late winter (on April 16^th I posted a shot on Facebook of the hill outside the kitchen door where I was planning to put the garden – the yardstick measured a 16-inch snowbank there!) and the snow stuck around until the end of April.

I was very blessed to have a friend who was willing to keep my hens for me during the transition. It’s not many women who will add a friend’s 18 chickens to a coop that previously only held her 7 birds! Obviously, this created a major egg surplus compared to what she was used to, and even supplying us, she was able to have a little fun selling eggs on the side (she bought a dozen or so more chicks this spring, so I think it’s safe to say she liked the experience!)

We finally brought the hens to the new property in May, thanks to another friend who offered us her old coop – which is actually an old pickup-bed camper converted for the job. It works great, and I certainly couldn’t complain about the price (free)!

Gotta love that Obtanium!

We also picked up our new pair of feeder pigs just this Friday: Maple (the brown girl) and Hickory (the black male). This year’s names reflect my hope that I’ll be able to try my hand at smoking our own bacon this fall (I took a class on home smoking at the event I mentioned above, and I can't wait to try it out!)

Little by little, our new farm is taking shape!