We started the month celebrating the Fourth of July with family and friends! It was a blast. We’ve also been at the Chassell farmer’s market each week selling our eggs and freeze-dried skittles!
There was also much new life given to us this month – baby chicks, baby bunnies, and baby vegetables! But more on that below…
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Garden Planting and Harvest
The garden finally exploded this month! The corn is looking wonderful, the pole beans and bush beans are finally starting to flower, and we have acorn squash just starting to get big!
The sunflowers and marigolds still have quite a ways to go. I’ll be starting these indoors next year. I also attempted to start some tomatoes outdoors as I didn’t have enough time with the baby arriving to start them indoors. They have quite a ways to go and if we get tomatoes before our first frost, it will be quite the accomplishment!
We have been harvesting zucchini, snow peas, lettuce, spinach, mustard kale, and radishes! Thank you, Lord for this bountiful harvest.
I also planted a fall crop of beets, carrots, lettuce, and kale. We’ll see how those are looking next month!
I’ve always said I’m not one to love gardening but I think this year I have caught the gardening bug because I’m already planning my garden for next year. I’m going to have to buy more seed starting supplies soon too!
Berry Picking
I love this month because all the berries become full and juicy! We went strawberry picking a few times, found some wild raspberries on our land for picking, and also went picking for some blueberries!
My goal is to stock up a year’s worth of fruit by picking from our land and local farmers. One day in the future, hopefully, we will be able to produce all our needs ourselves. The freezer and freeze dryer makes it easy to preserve them all for smoothies and treats in the winter.
I’m so glad we can enjoy so many berries for fresh eating now too!
Meat Chickens Arrive And Tractor Built
Our meat chickens arrived on July 1st! We ordered 60 male Cornish Cross from McMurray Hatchery and they were so cute…that is until they started to grow! After that, I found that meat chickens are quite ugly and nasty. But we are thankful for fast meat!
At two weeks old they moved from the brooder in the barn to the meat chicken tractors Landon built outside! They are eating grass and bugs and we move the tractors/pens every day to give them clean, fresh access to more pasture.
Only about one month to go until we butcher them. It will either be late August or early September. We are praying they all stay happy and healthy so we can fill our freezer with delicious farm-raised meat for the coming year.
We are considering selling meat chickens as well next year if anyone in the community is interested! Please leave a comment below or send us a message if you are, thanks!
Incubating More Eggs
We have been incubating lots of eggs to prepare for a new flock. We are going to butcher our very first flock of chickens and replace them with these new ones we are currently raising.
We are on our third round of incubating. Because we only have one rooster it takes a while to get enough birds. We need about 60 (half with be roosters and butchered) and so far have nine in total. That means we have quite a few more rounds of incubating to go, but we don’t mind! It is so fun and cute having little baby chicks around all the time.
First Lake Trout
Landon went fishing with a friend from church and caught his first lake trout ever! It was a blast and he brought home four in total for us to eat up.
Hunting and fishing are a huge part of homesteading that often get overlooked. They are a wonderful way to provide food for your family!
Rabbit Pen Addition
Now that we are breeding our rabbits so close together, we needed another pen for the babies to transfer into when they wean from mom since they transfer before the older bunnies are butchered. (If that makes sense to any of you! haha)
Anyways, Landon built another rabbit pen for them to transfer into in just a few weeks! Our rabbitry is finally complete. I don’t think we will need to do anything else to it in the future unless for some reason we need to expand again.
Thanks for reading! We hope you are enjoying your summer and we will check back in next month!
And as always, feel free to comment below or send us a message. We love connecting with you!
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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