As I am trying to become self -reliant I am picking up the new skills, one of which is seed saving. So while I was at Homestead Heritage I picked up a little book on growing seeds called "Growing Garden Seeds" it was $2.
40. The people at Homestead are serious about self reliance and the gentlemen behind the counter informed me he has been using it for years and still hasn't had to buy another book on seed saving.
So with the help of this book I was able to save my own cream peas and okra. One important thing about saving seeds is that you have to make sure that you do not purchase GMO seeds because they are unable to pollinate...in other words you will not be able to grow anything! I am buying more of my non GMO seed from Homestead Heritage so I can start to save more of my seeds and perhaps even sell some.
So if you are interested in seed saving this is the first book I would buy. It has been very helpful and think you might like it too.
Well, as we are slowing moving forward with our farm venture. The first of the two animals and I use the term loosely is....red wiggler composting worms. These worms are going to serve many purposes on the farm. First, these are composting not fishing worms. Second these worms can compost manure. We plan to use them to compost both the chicken and the new 'mystery' animals manure. We will be purchasing a pound a month for a 4-5 months so we have enough worms process the manure produced by the animals and the kitchen scraps. So, hopefully by the Fall we will start selling composting worm and worm castings, i.e. worm compost. Once the worms process the manure we have a compost that we will be selling by the gallon.
We are also adding a mystery animal in the next two weeks. We are currently preparing a place for them. This is an unexpected venture that we hope will do well in the near future. Farmer Jess will post more information on the mystery animal soon!
Okay, we have been SLOWLY working on this range coop for a while. We want to move it around the property a couple days a week but as you can see the coop is still not done. We still need to add the roof. But we ran out of money this month! Oh well, we'll finish it next month when we get a new infusion of Farm cash from our general budget. But we just had to let them out to eat the bugs and grass and to see the world. These are our broilers. They are white Cornish Rocks and they are huge. This is the only time we are going to grow these particular birds we are ordering the dark
Cornish for the spring and we will try to maintain a flock of them as meat birds. They do not require
assistance with
reproduction like the white
Cornish do. So let it be known any bird that is relying on me to come by with a turkey baster will be going
extinct, because it
ain't gonna happen! Once we finish the thing I will post the directions. After this we will be building a coop half as tall and converting this one into a duck house! We made it too tall because I did not look closely at Farmer Jason's! Our goal is to have two of these range houses and moving them around the yard. We should be able to produce about 40 broilers every 10 weeks. Right now we are building a turkey house & pig pen. So like George Jefferson said "we're moving on up!" just not to a penthouse to a pig pen!
Well, we've knocked out another project around the farm. The shed is finally painted, I purchased some $7 shutters (at our local junk store) and they are painted and hanging! We need to fix the light and I am going to be looking for a cute little country weather vein for the top of the roof. Wayne can make one of those little boxes they sit on. We have lilies to plant in front of the shed. We also want to add trim to the doors and we'd love to put on those old black country hinges on to it. Now all the things we need to do to the exterior are just cosmetic.
We also painted the chicken coop yellow. We still need to start building a larger coop and clearing the area behind the small coop. We also need to build a portable house for the broilers so they can graze to grow. Everything takes much longer then I think it will take and there is always something to do on the homestead.
Right now we are building a duck house. Then back to the chickens. Followed by fencing the yard for the dogs & small kids!
Rejoicing in simplicity,
RH
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40. The people at Homestead are serious about self reliance and the gentlemen behind the counter informed me he has been using it for years and still hasn't had to buy another book on seed saving. 
