good morning people!

so i've been in the "mama at home" cloud all summer. soaking up the baby snuggles knowing i'm heading back to work... and it just struck me - i made some pretty loft goals this year and i'm not really putting any mind to them. so here's my update in hopes to get my butt in gear!


my goals...

+ grow produce in 2 {if not 3!!} of our raised beds - we planted all 3 beds! i'm not keeping up on them as i should, but we are grabbing tomatoes, garlic and lettuce now and again! so i'm pretty pleased with this. 

+ work on our general menu plan for the family so that two dinners a week are local, seasonal meals {right now we have one night a week as our "in season" night}- yes! i just recently made a 3 week menu to help streamline my kitchen time and this is totally happening! i'm not sure about the winter days when we are low on local goods in our pantry, but so far so good!

+ work on our general menu plan for the family so that either our main breakfast for the week, or our main lunch for the week are local, seasonal meals.- yes! our lunches are leftovers and our breakfast always consists of eggs from our chickens or a local chicken farmer's brood {it is becoming clear that our ladies are at the end of their prime laying and are not producing as much as they were. we have only purchased one dozen eggs so far this summer though, we have not had any extras to save for the winter}

that leaves me with the following two goals...
+ research raising our own meat and ways to extend our growing season at our home
+ consider renewable energy resources that might work for our home

i am very interested in both of these concepts so i am often thinking/researching these ideas. however, the plans we are considering are not in this year's budget. so i had hoped that maybe we could act on these *research and consider* goals, but i don't think we will this year. 

oh good, i'm not so far off! a little more research to round out the future plan and i'll call it done for the year!

 happy monday friends!

Homesteading Goals for 2017

good morning there!

i was a bit inspired by this post from Homestead Honey and it made me want to consider some solid, obtainable goals for this year on our homestead...

first off, in 2016 we put in the start of our raised bed garden, set up a safe composting system, took care of our chickens {their home + eggs}, grew seedlings, and jarred up some goodness to save! i would file it as a successful year - as i also spent all of 2016 growing our first child!

this year {2017!!} I would like to work on these few obtainable goals...
+ grow produce in 2 {if not 3!!} of our raised beds
+ work on our general menu plan for the family so that two dinners a week are local, seasonal meals {right now we have one night a week as our "in season" night}
+ work on our general menu plan for the family so that either our main breakfast for the week, or our main lunch for the week are local, seasonal meals.
+ research raising our own meat and ways to extend our growing season at our home
+ consider renewable energy resources that might work for our home

how exciting! these goals definitely feel inline with my word of the year - "nourish" too... i think i feel some momentum gathering!
happy monday, friends.

::making our home::

wow, it has been just about a year since we bought our little homestead. this time has been so precious, but has moved so very quickly.

we've been living here full time for just under a year and i've never moved to a new location and had it feel like home so quickly.

a few things i always want to remember...

+our pantry - over the summer i spent a few afternoons really organizing our pantry, spices cabinet and stocking those often consumed morsels. i really love how it turned out. it makes my life easier and now my husband can tell where many things are in the kitchen {which helps with all the days that he does the cooking because i'm tired-busy with feeding our little love on demand}.

+seeing our chickens out the window - it is fun when i am busy in the house and look out the nearest window and there are the girls running in the yard or pecking along the fence. it makes me so happy to know that our eggs come from well taken care of layers. i don't know if chickens are an animal that we will forever be able to have live on our property, but i hope that we do for many, many years to come.

+the start of our garden - we didn't get as much planted as i had hoped. i'm beginning to realize that is the way of gardening. i also know that in this season i might not get to do 'all the things' and have decided to be happy and thankful for the work my husband and i did to get a little garden area started. it is a perfect place to begin, and i really enjoyed having fresh peppers and tomatoes this past growing season.

+all the in and out of our pup - everyday our pup wants to be inside, outside and back again. i love, love, love our old beat up fence around the house. it gives our dog some space to run or just sit and smell the air {isn't it funny when dogs do that?!} it keeps her away from pestering the chickens when people are still inside {however, when we are outside and they are all together she just follows the chickens and tries to herd them, but has done a good job of keeping them safe/not stressed, although sometimes annoyed}

+all the sweeping! - hooray for beautiful hardwood floors. i admire them so much i'm having a difficult time putting down rugs in many many rooms. this means that i sweep just about every day (or every other day). at first this annoyed me a bit. but then i realized that this can be a chance to be grateful for what i have and that i have a few minutes each day to make our home feel good under our bare feet.

+eating at our picnic table - for my 'expectant mother's day' my husband designed and built a beautiful picnic table for me. i love it so very much and i really enjoy all the nights we are able to have dinner in our yard, surrounded by so many of the things i wrote about above. whenever we would visit farm houses that came up for sale i would try to picture where we would put a picnic table. i knew that was something i wanted to do, eat outdoors as a family. it is perfect and now that this is really happening my heart is just so full.


how about you? anything super special to be thankful for in your day to day homelife?

{a full year of eggs} reflection

good morning!

did you know that it has been just about one full year that our chickens have been laying beautiful, fresh eggs for my family? it is a year to reflect on to say the least…

let’s go ahead and get this out of the way… i love having a laying flock of chickens roaming around our yard more than i expected. they are a little silly and are most definitely diligent workers around our property. i am very grateful for the quality fresh eggs and being able to share those eggs with family and friends. of course there are a few responsibilities to own up to:

yes, sometimes when we are enjoying ourselves out on the town i am worried about hurrying home to “close up the girls”. but that once in awhile pull to get back home isn’t all the time because honestly, many nights we are already home to make sure they are safely locked up after heading into the coop to roost for the night.

and there are the nights that it is rainy and blustery and i let my poor guy head out there to make sure they are all tucked in. as well as some of those late sleepy first and third trimester mornings that i let my husband get up on his own and take care of those morning chores.

but really for us, a smaller flock of laying hens hasn’t been THAT much extra work. designing, building and investing in the coop and structure of how to care for the birds probably was the most work we have had to do all along. feeding, watering and keeping things clean goes along pretty smoothly (yes, there are a few days here and there when we realized that we are running late for work and chicken chores are one of the main contributors - didn’t we fill the water last night?! did they drink that much?!)

having the girls roam the yard for bugs and turning up weeds is no less than fantastic. they love to hop into the open raised bed and scratch around to see what they can find. it makes me smile and keeps the pests down in our little garden. 

i don’t think we will add to our flock anytime soon. our chickens keep us in plenty of eggs and they keep up with scraps as well as feed. maybe one day we will rotate a few new layers in, but i think these ladies will keep us just fine for now. 

have a happy monday!

{our little summer garden 2016}

hi there! i decided it was time for a little garden + growing update of sorts!

as you know there’s much going on around here… so my husband and i decided that one place we could slow things down (to make it more manageable) was the garden. i’m not standing the heat super well with being a human incubator and all, so a little lighter load outdoors has been pleasant for me this summer.

here’s what is going + growing these days…

+ we decided with the history of our mini farm (car maintenance as well as a dairy cow farm) that we would change our initial “in ground garden” plans to raised bed garden plans. this allows us to know that the dirt doesn’t have any harsh chemicals as one can never really be sure when you’re talking about farmed and well used land.

+ we have built three brand-new raised garden beds in a sunny place in our yard! one is filled with growing tomatoes, peppers and lettuce. a second is getting filled with quality dirt as we find it for cheap. and the third is our composting bed this year. 

+we have begun to use a compost tumbler to mostly compost veggie/produce/plant scraps so that we can add them to one open raised bed each year. this will allow us to compost and not attract various animals (with extremely fresh food scraps) so near to our growing produce and laying flock of chickens. we will be able to have one open raised bed each year to rotate our soil and keep things vibrant and replenished as needed.

we hope to add a bit more to the overall structure this summer and upcoming fall. but we are going to take it easy with just doing what we can. however, we figured if most of the structure is in place for next spring planting that will be much easier for us as we won’t be starting from scratch like we did this past spring. 

how about you? any good planting?

*i added this post to Our Simple Homestead Blog Hop #66 - go check out all the fun posts sharing about homesteading and simple living!

our chicken coop tour

good morning there!

it has been awhile since i've gushed about our sweet chickens. things are going well and i just am still smitten over my gals! i'll have to give a little update about how much fun it has been to have our ladies laying the eggs for almost one full year. but today is a photo tour of our chicken coop and some of my favorite parts of their home...

my husband was presented with the task of making a coop. i had picked out a few designs that i liked and even a few pre made packages that one just assembles. he decided that it would be fun to make our very own design and incorporate all the good ideas we noticed from other coops. we decided that we would base our coop on the likelihood that we wouldn't have more than 12 birds at once, so it was designed and built for 12 laying hens. we currently have 8 chickens and they are all layers (well, when our one buff orpington isn't broody!). 

one of the first desired attributes - a tall run! we both decided that if we didn't have to duck down the entire time we were in the run that we would probably keep up on needs inside the run. my husband is just at six feet tall, so that was the height we aimed for and he can comfortably stand in the center of the run when he takes a turn to "lock up" at night.

something else we decided that was important - shade! the girls can hang out under their coop when needing shade, it also is dry under there, so they often take dust baths. we also positioned our coop under some tree branches which provides even more shade seasonally. (at our school we put a tarp over the run to give the ladies some relief from the sun, so you don't really need trees to be next to your coop, this was just what worked well in our yard)

getting in and out of the run is something that happen several times each day - i'm talking hooks/latches/locks/human friendly unlocking and the safety net of "what if i get locked in?' we decided to select various locks and closures that are not raccoon friendly - mostly we have carabiners securing the run and each opening around the coop (the front coop door, each set of nesting boxes, the back coop door, and the tall door to the run are all locked at night) 

my husband installed a simple string pull system incase one ever gets accidentally closed into the run, if the door blows shut behind one of us we can pull on the string and it lifts the unlocked latch on the door.

we have six nesting boxes - but of course the girls like to lay in just a couple of them and put their eggs together. we liked the idea of being able to access the eggs from outside the run, that way we can just quickly pick up eggs on the days that the girls aren't able to free range (i don't like to get their hopes up that they are getting to gallivant around the property, which they do often, but not during the school year/work day when no one is home - too many predators around here).  my husband installed a little hook so the door can be held up easily while we collect eggs. this has been a nice addition, especially if children are helping with egg collecting. then of course we just lock up this exterior access point with a carabiner.

we also decided to use reclaimed barn siding for top layer of siding on our chicken coop. we thought it would look great and age well. it goes well with the look of our mini farm and should continue to be fairly low maintenance. one bonus i didn't think of until we had new wood structures around our place - the wood bees definitely prefer the new wood! so that has been nice too.  

so far we've really enjoyed our coop and the way it was designed and built. one idea not pictured: we have an easy access clean-out on the back of the coop and it is a perfect height for a wheelbarrow to sit underneath and catch the rakings when we have a clean out session. as we consider how to make certain structures and systems around our mini farm we've been trying to make things easy, low maintenance... hoping that it will age well with us and allow us to continue doing the work ourselves for many years to come. 

thanks for checking out our ladies' coop today!

*i added this blog post to the Our Simple Homestead Link Up! Click on over to check out all the homestead goodness! And Nancy On the Home Front selected this post as a favorite of the blog hop! i'm so honored- thanks Nancy!! Click on over to check out her post!

garden dreaming {berries + fruits}

oh yes, my friends. this is the year to start establishing my fruit growing plants, patches and practices!  i am thrilled beyond words to put in a few special plants that will produce in the upcoming years for my family to enjoy.


currently on our property we have an apple tree, a pear tree and a cherry tree. i am so happy with these established fruit trees. i cannot wait to pick and make some jams, butters and pies!


i am hoping to add a few more fruit bearing plants to our mini farm this year...

+the beginnings of a berry patch
dreaming about either strawberries or raspberries + fresh picking those beauties on the farm! (even if the picking doesn't happen this year...)

+ elderberry
i hope to plant a few varieties (currently considering Adams, Johns, Nova or York varieties) of elderberry plants this spring - which should give me just enough time to find a well-drained patch of soil around here! And then I hope to make syrup within the next few years!

+ a dwarf peach tree
i've always longed for a few dwarf fruit trees. something that will be easier to care for, accessible for the shorties 'round here, and not get too tall so that all the fruit is for the local birds. if it seems manageable to plant a fruit tree, i will select a dwarf peach tree to compliment the apple, cherry and pear trees we already have.

how about you? any thoughts about your plantings this year?

currently {feeling spring}

hey there friends!

yes, i am loving this spring-like weather we are having. i'll take the rain along with our warm, sunny days peppered in for good measure.


this past weekend was a good one. a good fill me up type of weekend, but also good for the garden! a friend and i decided to do a little seed trading for the garden AND i was able to get my seeds planted for starts! hooray! we'll see how they turn out, but so far, so good!


i planted mini red and yellow bell peppers, several varieties of tomatoes, onions, a few herbs and even some flowers just for fun. i am so excited to get my garden started!

how about you? enjoy the weekend? do any planting yet?

{cultivate} + {resolve} 2016 Garden Dreaming

Here we are, it is that time again... oh yes. Making 'Garden Resolutions + Plans' for 2016!

This will be our first growing year on our homestead and I am looking to learn A LOT! It will be fun to see what is around our property and how it can benefit from a little love (or no love from this gal at all) during our first spring and summer. With this first season of growth in mind I have a few plans...

2016 Garden Resolutions

::grow produce that we eat + some that we will save {such as}::

• tomatoes
• peppers
• onions
• lettuce, spinach
• zucchini
• cucumbers
• potatoes
• sweet potatoes
• carrots
• garlic
• herbs: basil, thyme, bay, cilantro, rosemary, sage

::spend time on our food or garden everyday {cooking, prepping, menu planning, gardening, etc.}::

::grow flowers::

::grow a pumpkin and/or berry patch::

::plant a fruit tree::

::find ways that work for us to preserve some of our mushroom harvest::

::continue to care for our laying hens::

::research, plan, + create a root cellar::

::take notes about our homestead --> growth of food, consumption, + general needs::

I'm using January + February to read some gardening books, lay out my garden plan, and consider the year's schedule + flow. How about you, up to some garden dreaming?

around these parts :: November Homestead Happenings

hello folks!

oh my, ohio has been enjoying a truly lovely fall. just these past few weeks we’ve been spoiled with great morning light, warm afternoons and sunsets to die for! of course a few rainy days and chilly dips in temperatures are to be expected but we really are getting outside as much we can to take advantage of it all.

this means a few great happenings around our new place.

moving the chickens and settling in…

oh yes, the girls are at our new house and they just love it! we are still keeping them in their run during the day and closing up their coop at night. but they are laying well and eating/drinking normally. this makes me think they have successfully made the transition. we hope to start encouraging a more free range lifestyle now they they seem to be settled and we have a good estimation of possible predators around our new property. 

plans for planting some garlic…

i'm starting to dream up my new garden plans basically any free moment i have to think (shower, waiting for the tea kettle to boil...) and just the other day my husband reminded me that we could easily start some garlic without any huge garden plans set. so we've picked up the materials and i'm hoping to get them planted before thanksgiving!

general settling of spaces in our new house…

we are s l o w l y getting things settled into our new house. each day i think i put away one little pile or find places for a box full of stuff. we had a totally clean dining room for dinner on monday night and we felt so spoiled! it is happening... and i can't wait for this place to feel like our home. 

our new {old farm} house

hello again!

it was so good to take a break. with all our moving and packing, organizing and finding the new normals... well, i just needed some time to have one less thing to feel responsible for.  thanks for all of you coming back to read this post today :)

so it is true. we are moved in and finding the rhythm of our days in our new to us house. we've been eating in our dining room just thinking about how many other people have eaten a homemade meal in our home over the year. our house was built in 1894 and it is just stunning.

stunning as in i pinch myself or yell "i can't believe we live here" basically every time i walk up our new staircase. {yes, stairs}

so here's the scoop with our newly purchased home... we weren't really looking it just came up and we jumped! for about a year now we've known what our criteria would be for a little homestead... thinking it would be a little out of town, at least five acres and either very cheap so we could fix it up or something that we could live in right away {while we finish fixing it up}.

it popped up on our local real estate page and when my husband said "we might need to act fast" i knew that we were in for some excitement. we saw it the second day it was on the market, got pre-approved for our home loan and put in an offer the next day. i think we started calling family after our offer was accepted... saying "guess what, we are buying a house and no we weren't really looking"... i guess sometimes you just know. and friends, we just knew.

so i guess that's all for this morning. i'll be back to posting little updates and maybe even a few last photos of our first home - the one we are still doing a few odd jobs to before it becomes someone else's treasured place. we will miss it, but we are excited for our new adventure.

have a happy Monday morning!

* i've added this post to Our Simple Homestead Blog Hop! ::click here:: to head over and check out all the great information and stories from other bloggers! Thanks to all the hosts and bloggers for sharing in the fun!