Yes I haven't died

Been away from the blog world for too long I see.

The raspberries I tried to root all died but I did dig some up from the woods and started a patch at the house and it is doing well. Hopefully they will make through this coming winter.



Last year we bought about $250 worth of trees and fruits to plant.

Out of all that we have 2-dwarf apples, one dwarf pear, one blueberry, 3-Nanking cherries, one pine tree, and 3 black berries. Everything else died.



I built a top-bar bee hive last month and have it set up out by an old apple tree, we will see if a swarm finds it or I will buy some bees one of these years when we have enough money.



Speaking of money we just spent $1100 on our septic system. Wonderful things these 100+ year old homes.

Was out walking last night and picked some cherries and some mulberries...very yummy. We will have to get them picked for freezing.

We got our Cornish cross chickens last week. We have had one or two die every day, they sure are a fragile breed. We are down to 43 from 52 that were shipped. Our Delawares will ship next week. We plan on breeding and improving this heritage breed for broilers as was done 50 years ago.

I planted several rows of oilseed sunflowers, will see how they do for deer forage and chicken feed.

That's about it for not, I promise to keep up on this for a while.

Still clinging to my God and my guns,
Randy

Trimming and experimenting along with chicken plans

I got out the trimmers on Thursday and did some trimming around the place.
I have been wanting to propagate some wild Black Raspberries so I went to a plant I needed to cut down growing wild by the garage and cut it into sections about 10" long. The ones in the left jar are dipped in rooting hormone and placed in the sunny window the ones on the right are in the jar with three weeping willow sprouts I cut off the tree.
I have read somewhere that willows excrete a hormone that makes them root easily and that if you put them in a jar like this with other things it will cause them to root also. So here is my experiment.

After I had done that I went for a little walk down to our fire ring where we build little fires to relax by. It is in a rough overgrown area that I was able to mow a grassy spot into a couple years ago. Anyway three years ago there was a wild apple tree that started putting out apples. They were amazingly good for a tree that received no care whatsoever. That fall while it still had apples a storm blew it over so we only ever got a couple apples from it. So I walked by where it was and low and behold there was a whole bunch of apple trees growing from the root system of this wild tree. I went back to the house and got the pruning shears and went to work cutting it into a nice apple bush. We will see what becomes of it now that the good tree has come back to life.

This would not work with an old orchard tree because they are all grafted onto different rootstock. But this was a wild tree growing in an old fence row. So the root is the same as what was growing before. Maybe I will get a new standard apple out of the deal.
I also read somewhere that the red delicious was originally found on a burnt up tree with only one live branch that someone took and grafted to orchard stock, so all red delicious apples are from this one branch.

Tanya and I are kicking around the idea of making a business plan and turning the homestead into a sustainable agriculture pick your own homestead. We feel we could make a pretty decent living with me here full time, but jumping in with both feet is kind of scary with three kids to feed. (If you feel like investing drop me a line at longhunter64@yahoo.com) and it would be three years before the berry plantings start paying a decent return.

We are getting Delaware chickens this year. They were that standard broilers before the ConishX became the standard. They are fast growing dual purpose heritage breads that are fairly rare. This fits our criteria exactly for what we want in a chicken. We are planning on getting 100 striaght run and putting them in a couple chicken tractors and then 25 hens to keep for eggs and breeding stock . We will pull one or two of the biggest straight run roosters to go with them. We have a friend who will share expenses with us and then we will split the meat bird so that we each get 50 or 1 chicken per week for a year.

I get real busy this time of year with all the little projects I've thought up over the winter.


Still clinging to my God and my guns,
Randy

They just needed encouragment

After telling you yesterday about the chickens who have yet to lay, here's what we got.





I wrote my post while I was at work and soon after it was up, Tanya emailed this picture to me.
Who knew I had wireless in the chicken house?
It came from the silver laced wyandotte sine the other two hens will lay green eggs.

Randy

This winter on the homestead

It sure has been slow here as far as homesteading projects go.
Wood, wood and wood have been the projects.

We have 4 chickens left of the six we bought in October. We have yet to get an egg and they were supposedly ready to lay. We got spoiled with our first chickens. They were red sex links and you could count on an average of 20 eggs every day from 24 chickens day in and day out all through the winter.

We tried black sex links and did not like them near as much since they were much more flighty and didn't lay as well for us. The Red's were the only chickens who ever paid for themselves by selling of the eggs. One of these days I will sit down and post a detailed rundown of our chicken experience with our 4 or 5 different batches.

Spring is in the air.
Tanya found some radischio that wintered over and is growing. She is going to put in spinach lettuce and maybe peas soon, into the herb garden.

Working on a new/old ministry .
I have felt lead for years to do a pastors retreat. I figured I might start a new blog dedicated to looking for the right person to finance the whole thing. Tanya and I are kicking around calling it "A Quite Place Pastoral Ministry".
We would have a homestead with cabins and small lodge where pastor could come and recharge in a Pastoral setting. We would focus on Stewardship and natural living with what God provides us.

Randy