Our Homesteading Quest

A Clothesline

I guess I'm a simpleton. It just doesn't take much to excite me.

Although it took me a while, I finally talked my hubby into a clothesline. I love it!

 

Now I'm off to do more laundry.

 

Better Late Than Never

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! I know we did!

 

Can you believe how big these kids are getting?

Oh! We're almost done with our new chicken coop/tractor, or whatever you want to call it. We had to build a new one because we have new chicks!

These are Cinnamon Queens which are almost identical, if not identical, to the four Golden Comet girls we already had:

 

These are 3 Red Stars (Which are supposed to be excellent layers even through harsh winters) and 2 Araucana/Ameraucana  (which lay eggs in shades of blue and green, they're also called Easter Egg Chicks for that very reason) chicks:

Happy 4th Birthday!

Happy 4th Birthday my sweet little boy!

 

 

I can't believe how much you've changed and how much you've grown over the past year! You'll always be our sweet little boy. We love you!!

A New Roof

I meant to post this last night. Oops! Well, maybe I'll do two posts today.

Our roof was finally completed yesterday! Here's the before:

 

Here's the after:

 

 

The new roof has a 30 year architectural style shingle and vented ridge caps.

So Much To Say, So Little Time To Say It

I have a lot to blog about over the next few weeks. A lot of it is about things that have already happened, some of it is happening right now, and some is still yet to come. Be patient. I really am going to try to do a post a day for the rest of this month, at least, try.

This moment, I have a splitting headache as they are finally putting our new roof on. They've been working on it since 7 a.m. Of course, I've been up since 5 a.m. because Maddy came into my room crying that her ear hurt really bad. Since she never complains when she's sick (I mean, this is the kid who says "I'm ok, I'm ok" as she's throwing up.) I figured that I better take her to the doctor. Sure enough, double ear infections.

They prescribed her an antibiotic and ear drops. I took the prescriptions to Target because it was the closest. They were going to charge me $7 for the antibiotic and $35 for the ear drops! I then decided to go to Publix because I knew that they give you antibiotics for free. There's $7 saved already! After insurance, the ear drops were $16 at Publix. That's a pretty good savings. However, I remembered the free drug card at  http://www.freedrugcard.us/ so I used it. I walked out of Publix with FREE antibiotics and only paid $7 for the ear drops! Now that's savings! $35 in savings to be exact. I encourage you to shop those prescriptions for the cheapest price and go download, and print, your free drug card. All you have to do is enter  your name and email, print out the free card, and take it with you. It saved me $9 this time!

Spring Fever

I apologize to all of my family, friends, and blog readers (if any) for negelecting you for the past couple of weeks. Spring is here and it's always a very busy time for us. We have gardens to plan, soil to till, and seeds to start. Not to mention, there are baby chicks, ducks, rabbits, and other various assorted critters at every local farm supply store begging for us to take them home. Although we haven't yet, it is very tempting. Maybe this will be the year that we can actually sell our house and get the land we've always wanted. Maybe.

Speaking of selling our house, we decided that instead of not doing some of the things that we've wanted to do, in hopes, or just in case we do sell the house, we've decided to go ahead and plant a few fruit trees and a few more blueberry bushes. We're even making the garden bigger this year. Now if only I had a bigger kitchen. My kitchen is definitely not the idea size for canning, but we'll make due, as usual.

Speaking of critters, we built another chicken tractor (portable chicken coop). Although we were really proud of our first one. It is really too heavy for one person to move (the wheels get NO traction in the mud) and became more of a chore than we intended for it to be. The new one is made only of PVC pipe and chicken wire. It was really easy to make and the chickens love the fact that they get a new spot in the yard every day! We still use the old one, but now it's more of a stationary coop that we put them in at night to roost. We know that it's predator proof and it's what they're used to. They wait at the door first thing in the morning to get out to the new tractor and they wait by the door in the evening to go back to their old coop to roost. Chickens are definitely creatures of habit. They are also easy to take care of and lots of fun!