Ah, I love the fall time! The changing leaves on our new land – 80 acres in the Keweenaw Peninsula up north – was such a treat! Plus, we can’t stop drinking apple cider and baking delicious apple treats in our house right now.
September was a wonderful month filled with some incredible highs, but also a few tough lows. I can’t wait to share with you everything we’ve been up to this month as we get closer to moving to our homesteading land full time!
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Our First Ultrasound
Quick pregnancy update – we had our first ultrasound! If you don’t know we are doing a home birth in our current home and then slowly transitioning up north after that.
Because I have a midwife, she only requires one ultrasound at 20 weeks to check on the baby’s growth and development. I strive to do things as naturally as possible and I am not the biggest fan of ultrasounds honestly. They haven’t been proven completely safe, but they haven’t been proven to be unsafe either.
Related Post: Our Homesteading Journey – August 2020 Update
However, my midwife encouraged me that the 20-week ultrasound is important because we are doing a home birth. If we were in the hospital, she would feel more comfortable skipping it. However, since we are at home we want to be sure everything will go smoothly.
I agreed and Landon and I both enjoyed the ultrasound a great deal. We were able to see our little one for the first time and praise God that he or she is healthy and safe.
We are going to go back for a second ultrasound in a month to check on the baby’s growth one more time, so stay tuned for next month’s update!
EGGS!
We had just come home from our 20-week ultrasound and I went down to the coop to take care of the chickens. As I looked down into the coop a gasp filled my mouth!
I almost cried when I saw them – four beautiful brown eggs laying nestled into the hay. I grabbed the eggs and sprinted up our backyard to the house and screamed as I showed Landon. He smiled at me and laughed at my over-exaggeration of excitement.
We have both been loving having fresh eggs for breakfast every morning and it has become an easy way to take meals on the go, from plain boiled eggs to egg salad sandwiches.
So far we are getting anywhere from 6-9 eggs a day from our 25 chickens. I am sure we will be getting even more soon and can’t wait to share them with our neighbors, family, and friends.
Baking All The Things
This month was the month of harvesting apples from our land! We have maybe close to nine mature apple trees on our new homesteading property and we feel like we struck gold!
Unfortunately, I haven’t practiced my hand at canning yet because if I did, we would be eating apples for the next year!
The abundance of apples has helped me get in the kitchen more. From making apple butter in the crockpot to apple muffins and dessert in the over, and even applesauce the whole day one Saturday, I have loved finding ways for us to enjoy the harvest.
If you don’t follow our family on Instagram yet, make sure you head over to @theadventuringalberts so you can see all our homesteading updates in real-time.
Trailer Breakdown
Landon has been traveling up north on the weekends again this month but with WiFi installed as well, it has allowed him to also spend a week at a time a few times this month. That has been a huge blessing because he can get more done and finish the tiny house before the snow comes.
But, one weekend while he was traveling north we had an unfortunate trailer breakdown.
The trailer was carrying our last Home Depot haul. It was all the large items he needed to complete the tiny house. While he was driving on the highway. The ball bearings seized up which snapped the tire off into the middle of the highway.
Landon pulled over, grabbed the tire, and let the local police know the situation as a precaution. He then left the trailer on the side of the highway and drove to the closest U-haul location. It was late at night, so he slept in the car until they opened the next morning.
Next, he transported all the material to the new U-haul trailer and continued on his journey. He called a local mechanic that worked for AAA to come and pick up the trailer and bring it back to their shop. We are still working on getting a quote to fix the trailer and get it back in our possession.
But, for now, we are just extremely thankful that Landon is safe and was able to make it up north with all our supplies!
Babymoon / Anniversary Getaway
Landon gave me the best surprise I could possibly ask for in this season of life!
We had two weddings back to back weekends and I had the week off of work in between them. I had taken this week off of work forever ago in hopes that we would be able to travel to Canada to celebrate our one year anniversary.
Due to COVID, the Canadian border is still closed, and we had to cancel our original plans. We wanted to spend the week up north on our land instead but because we are so tight on finances, we couldn’t afford to pay anyone to watch our animals.
The day before the week of our vacation, Landon told me that our friends at church were willing to watch our animals for us at no charge and were going to spend the week on our land to celebrate our anniversary, have a babymoon, and finish up our tiny house!
I couldn’t believe it and it brought me to tears. It was just what we both needed to make it through this season of life, and we are so thankful for our church friends. It was truly a blessing!
When we were up north, we installed the flooring in our tiny house, finished up the trim work, and at night camped in our barn. Landon was still working his regular day job but I was able to clean up all the construction mess over the past months and do small projects around the homestead. We had the pups with us too so it was fun to play with them!
Overall our honeymoon vacation/babymoon was extremely relaxing and refreshing for both of us.
Breeding the Rabbits
At the end of the month, I couldn’t wait any longer and decided that now was the time to breed our new rabbits! Our two new females just turned 6 months and our two males have bn old enough for a while.
Lavender, our New Zealand female, was an amazing breeder. She is likely pregnant right now and should be giving birth shortly. A rabbit is only pregnant for about 31 days.
Lemon, our Californian, on the other hand, did not do good. She refused to breed and stayed to herself. After several attempts, still no luck. We are going to try again at the beginning of October and see if she is more comfortable to breed in a few weeks.
This picture kills me every time because it shows just how uninterested Lemon was in breeding!
Stay tuned to see if we can get our first litter of little baby bunnies soon!
THE TINY HOME UP NORTH IS DONE!
Guys, you’ll never believe it but Landon finished our tiny home! I am so incredibly proud of him! He basically turned a falling over shack into a house for our little family and it blows my mind that he did it all by himself (for the most part – we had some help from family) with basically no budget to work with.
Honestly, the pictures just speak for themselves!
Thank you so much for reading this month’s homesteading update…and keeping up to date with our tiny home up north! Drop a comment below for us and thank you for your continual prayers and support. <3
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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