Isn't life great?

Today was a good day. Yesterday was a good day as well. I suppose every day is good, but these days were really very good and I wanted to write about them and hopefully inspire someone. I'll mostly be talking about yesterday.

So I started off the day yesterday not like I would have liked. I woke up late and it was all dark and rainy outside. But luckily that didn't dampen my spirits because I had something to look forward too; cleaning the chicken coop! Now you might be thinking "Hey Mary, did you just say you're looking forward to cleaning the chicken coop? thats not even fun" and my reply to that is "I did just say that and are you kidding me, it's one of my favorite past times." A different thought you could be having is "Wow, that sounds like so much fun!" (not sarcastically) to which I would reply "I know right! isn't cleaning the best?!" Anyways back to my day.
I got up and got dressed in my absolute favorite outfit, jeans and a flannel shirt. Stylish, comfy and good for working. I headed downstairs and got sidetracked eating and playing guitar and piano, and proceeded to go outside and start organizing our shed... but then I reminded myself of the chickens so by 1:00pm I was out accessing the situation.
The rain was coming down hard and I took one look at the muddy chicken run and decided that cleaning the coop could wait; my girls should not be walking in such mud. I threw off my coat (I was going to get soaked eventually) and proceeded with my plan of a makeshift "roof" over the run. I plan to build a more permanent one when spring rolls around.

The girls in their nice dryish run. 

I had to prop up a whole bunch of support beams under the tarp to keep the water from pooling up. Again. That happened today. The whole roof was about to cave in and one of the walls of the run would have snapped if I hadn't done something quick. Now back to yesterday...

It could be compared to a really ugly circus tent, but I like to think of it as a giant fort.

I constructed this roof with the help of one of my brothers, and by the time we were done both of us were quite wet. Me even more so as I had been outside longer.

Now for some reason I got distracted inside, eating food and drawing a rabbit....

Isn't she cute? As you can see, her name is the Fluffy Happy Velveteen Bunny of Life. I finally got "un-distracted" and headed out to clean the coop, even though it was almost dark out and still raining. After a ton of shoveling, scraping, sweeping and sweating (the four s's that describe chicken care perfectly) I finally finished cleaning the coop. That thing was Dirty with a capital D. Here are some pics of the end product. Sorry about the terrible lighting btw :P

The girls decided they like laying in this corner the best, so I decided to work with it and move the nest boxes back there.

The aftermath of my beautiful outfit... It was even dirtier than it looks. 

I came inside and was about to watch a hard earned show on Netflix, when the power went out. For three hours. Now I don't want to sound like I depend on electricity for everything but I was really looking forward to watching a show and the Wifi goes out with the power. Looking for a different source of entertainment, I picked up a book. My brain didn't have enough brainpower to read a book... I tried anyway and made it through two chapters of The Phantom of the Opera. Great book. 

I headed downstairs to see what the rest of the family was up to and heard a song in the distance "In sleep he sang to me, in dreams he came..." so naturally I made a dramatic entrance on the stairs and assumed the role of Christine Daae, lip synching of course.

When dinner was ready I sat down at the table and looked around.

In my head I was pretending I was in Little House on the Prairie, with an oil lamp lit and plenty of candles burning, after a long day on the homestead... I want that someday... when suddenly the power came back on! Yay! Netflix time.

I finished this awesome day by watching an episode of my all time favorite show, Once Upon A Time.

Today I got a ton more done as well and took some fabulous selfies with my peeps. This is the best one.

That is Ruthie on my shoulder. I did have to put her there this time but she normally jumps up by herself.

These are my other favorite pics from today. I spent a good amount of time chilling with the girls after organizing the shed some more.

So theres that.

I hope this post at least entertained you, if not inspired you.

Thank you for reading! 

Blow up your tv, move to the country, keep homesteading and stay farmy!

Rabbit preparations

Hello! back to the farmy posts. I have wanted rabbits for a while now because they make a great addition to any homestead/farm.

Rabbits have so many uses. Their droppings can either be composted or applied directly to the garden for great fertilizer, some rabbit breeds are good for meat and pelts, some are good for pets, some are good for both. Rabbits reproduce very quickly, normally having large litters of 5-8 babies within a month. (about 31 days to be exact)

Their babies can be kept and until they are large enough to be used for meat and pelts or sold as pets providing a great income. I plan to do both. In addition to all these awesome uses, rabbits can be cuddled and played with and are just entertaining animals overall.
Those are the reasons I have decided to get rabbits.
After convincing myself to get rabbits with all of these great reasons, I did the fun task of deciding what breed of rabbit I wanted to get.

There are SO many options when it comes to rabbit breeds. I spent a long time researching and contemplating the different breeds that stuck out to me. After a while I came to the conclusion that the silver fox rabbit would be a great one to start with, after meeting a silver fox that a fellow homesteader has and falling in love with her. She goes by many names, her given one being "the evil bunny of death" but her personality is very far from that, she is the sweetest rabbit ever. Her coat is SO SOFT, and her coloring is gorgeous, a beautiful black with silver undertones.

This is not evil, just an example of a silver foxes coat.

Another example.

Gorgeous! Silver foxes are a great breed overall, they make great pets but can also be used for meat and pelts if you so desire. I definitely recommend this breed for any homestead.
I plan to try breeding dutch rabbits as well as silver fox because I have read that they are great pets, generally calm and easy-going and can also be used for meat and pelts. There are a lot of color options when it comes to dutch rabbits. These are the three that stuck out to me.

This is a black dutch rabbit, so cute!

Brown dutch rabbit, beautiful.

I believe this coloring is called either blue or lilac, either way I love it.

I just love the markings on the dutch rabbit. The words that come to mind when I try describe them are authentic and simple. Now I thought I had my mind made up but then I remembered holland lops.....

 

THEIR EARS!! So cute. And there is so many color varieties, I could have a lot of fun experimenting with coloring. If I did get holland lops they would probably just be to sell as pets.

After picking the breeds I wanted(or trying), I started making plans for my rabbit setup. To start out I am going to have eight cages, for one silver fox doe, one dutch buck, and two dutch does, or hollands...(as you can see, my mind is definitely "made up") The extra four cages will be for the babies I plan to keep.(And I'm sure the number will grow over time : ) I am also going to get a silver fox buck at some point.

I'm going to use all wire cages because they are easy to keep clean and are fairly simple to make. 

I plan to make them 2'x3' so that the bunnies have enough room to stretch out and hop around. 

My rabbit setup is going to be on the side of the shed we have in our front yard. It's a nice spot that is usually shady and can easily be turned into a cool rabbit setup. 

For food, I plan to feed them whatever extra veggies or kitchen scraps that are safe for them and their main diet will consist of timothy hay because my guinea pigs eat it as well so I can just buy a big bale of it and it will feed them all.

Now I just need to start saving up for all this and begin building the rabbit setup. I'll try and post updates as the project moves along.

Thank you for reading!

Blow up your tv, move to the country, keep homesteading and stay farmy!

Harry Potter Fangirl rant. **CAUTION!! THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS**

If you didn't read the above warning... **CAUTION!! THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS**
We interrupt the regular farmy posts to bring you a Harry Potter fangirl rant.
                                     
Harry Potter. The boy who lived. Wow. I just finished reading the entire series and let me just say, it was an emotional roller coaster. I laughed, I cried, I nearly threw a book at the wall because Umbridge is just that awful.

I very much doubt there is anyone who hasn't at least heard of this amazing book series. If you haven't read the books, READ THEM! If you haven't seen the movies, WATCH THEM! They did an amazing job at recreating the books through film.
My favorite book was definitely all of them. If I had to order them by how much I liked them it would go:

1. Prisoner of azkaban
2. Order of the phoenix
3. Deathly hallows
4. Sorcerers stone
5. Chamber of secrets
6. Goblet of fire
7. Half blood prince
But I love them all so much.

So lets talk about the deaths.... I don't understand why in EVERY SINGLE DARN BOOK I read every character I grow to like and develop an attachment to DIES.
Sirius was my absolute favorite, and IN THE MOVIES... I can't even.

Lupin and Tonks.... those ones came as a shock, I had just started to accept Fred as gone...
FRED! He reminds me of myself in some ways, I can only hope to one day be as good at jokes as him and George. I cried at this death as well..
Dobby, man, Dobby.. He was a free elf.
Hedwig... I know what it's like to lose a cherished pet.. Harry had been so close to her.
Dumbledore. Definitely a sad one though I knew it was coming so it wasn't as sad when it happened. Harry's heartbrokenness hurt though.

Snape... Can't decide if I liked him or not... If he "always" loved Harry he had a bad way of showing it.
Cedric was hard. I took the sorting quiz and I'm in hufflepuff, felt like I was losing a friend though I didn't get to know him well enough.


Brighter subject... My favorite characters that aren't dead!
Ginny is just awesome. I love her character development and spunky personality.
Hermione of course is fantastic. I would love to have her as a best friend.
Luna is great, she made me laugh. I suspect the nargles are behind it.
Fred and George. Enough said.





Now I know he's a "villain"(not exactly I suppose) but I can't help but like Draco. First of all, Tom Felton. Second of all, he is such a drama queen."I'M DEAD! IT KILLED ME!" I can't even. Third of all, he's Draco. Fourth of all, Tom Felton. If that wasn't convincing enough for you, I don't know what is.


J. K. Rowling is an amazing author. The books are so well written, the plot is fantastic, character development is amazing, the deaths are heartbreaking, funny moments made me laugh out loud, and the way everything comes together in the end, I just, I have lost the ability to even.

So now I am officially a potter-head and I am working on buying all Harry Potter merchandise, and my next targeted item will be a HP blanket to add to my blanket collection.

Theres that. Harry Potter, the master of death, the boy who lived, greatest book series ever.

Thanks for reading!

Blow up your tv(after you've watched Harry Potter), move to the country, keep homesteading and stay farmy ;)

Dealing with loss on the homestead

Now before anyone gets all worried, I have not lost any animals recently. This is just a post that I thought would be helpful to those who have lost an animal.
I am a sensitive person. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a sensitive person.
Loss and change have always been hard for me. Now, I've been fortunate enough not to lose any family members, friends or relatives that I was close too, so I can't relate to that. But I have lost my fair share of animals.
No matter where you are in life, loss is inevitable. Especially on a homestead.
Those who want to be as self sufficient as possible often grow and butcher their own food, I totally want to do that someday, but I know when that day comes I will feel bad taking an animals life. Even hunting sounds hard but I still really want to.
When I first started getting into animals, around 7 years old, I started doing research on hamsters. Hamsters are wonderful pets, each with their own adorable personalities, but something I didn't read, or maybe just didn't pay attention to, is that they are fragile, and their lifespan is short. As soon as you develop a bond with it, it dies. With my first hamster I was not nearly so fortunate as to be able to develop a bond with it. Sugar(my hamster) lasted a week and then died. Mostly because I was a terrible pet owner at the time. Sugar counted on me for everything she needed and I failed her. My next hamster Nibbles, (clever name right? she chewed a hole in her box when I was bringing her home from the pet store and we had to put her in a purse so that she wouldn't run free all over the truck) was no better. Each time was hard and each loss is still really hard for me.
Guinea pigs, fish, chickens, rabbits, cats, every death seemed to get harder and harder.
Probably my worst experience was earlier this year when I was getting my chicks. We had gone to a farm that is about an hour away to get two little chickens, a polish and a cream legbar. Now if I had any sense in me I would have asked to look over them and make sure they were bright eyed, chipper and completely healthy. The cream legbar sure was, she peeped and peeped all the way home in her little cardboard box and she's still doing great to this day. The polish was quiet, however and never perked up like the others when we brought her home and put her in the brooder.
We separated her and things went downhill from there. I set up a small brooder for her with a nice heat lamp and her own little dish of food and water, and I named her Snow. Big mistake right there, it really is true that you get more attached to things when you name them. A few times Snow tried to stand and eat but couldn't, I knew what was coming I just didn't want to believe it. I won't go into much more detail but I'll just say, I watched her die. I watched her take her last breath, and that just broke me. There was nothing I could have done for her, which is what made it so hard. She was just a weak chick, right from the start. I cried for 5 straight hours. What a "happy" memory to be reminded of every year on valentines day, the day she died. All my plans for this little polish chick that I had in my head shattered. I would never collect her first egg, never hear her first cluck.. Now it might sound silly that I was so emotional over losing a chick that I had only had for five hours, but I loved this little chick. And when you love something, you are putting your heart out on the line. You will never know if you loved it if you never try.
I was reading a blog post a couple months after this, all about dealing with loss on the homestead and these words struck me: "The day losing an animal, whether by killing it so you can eat or losing it to something else, gets easy, is the day I stop farming."
Death is hard. Always has been, always will be. God did not intend for our world to be poisoned with death.
Here are some things that help me cope: Just cry. Crying is normal, its actually really good for you. It relieves stress, removes toxins, lowers blood pressure, and does so many other things for you.
Another idea is to have a proper burial. I've made little headstones for all the animals I've lost. It helps.
If you have to tell someone about an animal that has died, the worst thing you can do is lie to protect their feelings. Their feelings will just be hurt worse if they ever find out the truth. There have been a few instances where the truth was definitely harder to hear, but like the Bible verse John 8:32 says"And you will know the truth. And that truth will set you free."
I hope this blog post helped you in some way, and if you have lost an animal recently I'm really sorry.
Thank you for reading, I will definitely try to make my next blog post much more cheerful :)
Blow up your TV, throw away the paper, keep homesteading and stay farmy!

Introducing me!

Hello everyone! My name is Mary and I live in the beautiful evergreen state of Washington.
I have a passion for farming and my goal is to one day have a self sufficient farm out in the middle of nowhere, with a hand pump well, and all the farm animals I could ever want and a long dirt driveway leading to my log cabin in the forest... a girl can dream right? But for now I am making the most of my front yard in the city by transforming it into a mini-farm.

This picture is from a property in the mountains that my
Grandparents own.

Is it all right if I tell you a little (ok, long) story about how I became interested in farming? Well here's how it went...

About a year ago I had a sudden desire to get chickens. We had had chickens in the past but gave them away, and now I was starting to miss the cute scratching and pecking and clucking and all the other little things that chickens do. (not to mention the egg laying :)

So with a notepad and a laptop I researched chickens till the cows came home(or should I say till the chickens came home hehe), and in February 2015 I got my first batch of nine little chickens from the feed store. 6 Easter eggers, 2 gold stars and 1 speckled sussex. (chicken math had already taken control of me so our originally planned six turned into nine. If you don't know what chicken math is, it is a somewhat uncontrollable desire to keep expanding your flock of chickens. It can also be applied to ducks, rabbits, beehives, goats, etc.)

Ruthie, my speckled sussex. Behind her is one of the jersey giant girls.

With these girls all settled into their brooder, there were a few breeds that we still planned to get, so a couple days later we set out to a semi-local farm to pick up a fancy shmancy cream legbar and a polish. Unfortunately the tiny polish chick didn't make it,  but since a polish chicken had been on my wishlist we went back to the farm a couple days later to get a new little chick and this time i was sure she (or should i say he, it turned out to be a rooster!) was going to make it.

Now I had 11 tiny chickens (as I liked to call them) but the number was yet to grow because a month later we got two jersey giants, which we had to house separately because of such a big age difference between the two groups.
About a month after THAT 3 more little chicks joined the family, a buff orpington and 2 more polish.

And in conclusion to the chicken side of the story, my total number of chickens is 14. Two of the polish turned out to be roosters, and roosters aren't allowed where I live. We found them a great home though and now they are free ranging and dust bathing to their hearts content.

Besides chickens, I also have 4 guinea pigs and a beaglier (beagle-cavalier king Charles spaniel mix), and I would love to get rabbits next year, and ducks sometime in the future as well as goats and honeybees and a peacock, I have a long wish list of animals :)

Joy, my beaglier.

Interweaved into all the chicken research and whatnot I decided to try planting a garden, again.. there have been several failed attempts in the past. :P So I took advantage of my mom's two 8x3' raised garden beds and planted zucchini (which turned out beautifully, I don't think there is a person in the world who can fail at zucchini), as well as sugar snap peas, corn, cherry tomatoes, a potato tower (I'll do a post all about that later), pumpkins,(well, A pumpkin) kale, grapes,( my mom had planted a grapevine a few years ago and this was the first year it had fruit.) cucumbers, and cilantro.

This is Mr. Pumpkin, the only pumpkin from my garden this year.

Some of my favorite past times include, reading, knitting, sewing, baking, cooking, playing piano(fun fact: I also know how to play the accordion!), watching my favorite show EVER once upon a time, and listening to John Denver's greatest hits.

So now you know a bit about me and my love for farming, and I'd love to learn more about you! Do you have a farm? Want a farm? Just happened upon my blog? What's your favorite color? Favorite shape? Comment below!

My favorite color is green, my favorite shape is a pentagonal dodecahedron (look it up ;) and you probably know the answer to the farm questions if you read this entire post, also i just happened to stumble upon this blog and decided to write a post and make it my own.


Blow up the TV, move to the country, keep homesteading and stay farmy! (it's a word now)

Thank you for reading!