Well I have had to put a hold on ordering the chicks and trees. I have to many questions I need answered first and no one is answering the phones Until Monday. So I have a serious to do list for Monday.
1. Call the Tax Collector find out how much money he needs for the taxes
2 write checks for the taxes, house payment and car payment
3. Mail Checks
4. Call the hatchery and find out if the post office will actually deliver my chicks to my door or if I have to pick them up at the post office. I can't exactly leave this place anytime I want. I don't drive and hubby works 12 hours a day 5 days a week with another 6 hours on Saturday. His job is a 30 mile drive from here because that's the price you pay if you live in the mountains of Arkansas. Our entire county only has about half the population of Conway Arkansas. Though that's great for having space to homestead and not having nosy neighbors it sucks if you need to pick anything up in a set time frame.
5. If the chicks do come directly to the house then I need to order the chicks
6. Call the Nursery to find out how many years it will take for the trees to start producing based upon the youngest two order options
7. Order Trees
8. Call the County Clerks office find out if we are going to have to have a building permit to build the coop. If so start evaluating the already built storage building for slight modifications so that it can be used as a coop.
9. Call my Aunt and discuss birds and free range raising with her and her husband. If anyone knows what I need to do to keep the birds safe yet have healthy birds out here it will be Larry.
I'm glad this can wait till Monday. Mom and My sister are coming out tomorrow, plus its the super bowl and we promised the kids they could go to town now that its warmed up. To many things to do all at one time.
The good news is that my sink is half fixed and we managed to find a tiller. So we might be off to a slow start but we are off to a start.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tomorrow It begins
Tomorrow I am ordering our chickens and Apple trees. Bear is also going to start looking around for a tiller. Its the one gardening tool I have always needed and never had. I have a feeling it will seriously improve our chances of actually getting a garden to work instead of having a bunch of plants that never really produce and get buried in weeds I can't keep up with.
I want to make sure that the chicks we get will go broody so I never have to buy chickens again and can rather raise my own. Of course, Ill have to hope that there is a rooster in the bunch of chicks they send to me. We are going to order them from McMurray Hatchery. If you want to see a picture of the ones we are getting you can find it here.
For the Apple trees, I couldn't find a local source so we are ordering from TyTy Nursery. For now we are sticking to Arkansas Black Apples and Gala Apples. The Gala is the best to cross breed with the Arkansas Blacks.
From there its just a matter of finding the seeds I want for the Strawberries, Broccoli, and Snow peas to start getting them started in a small greenhouse box indoors as well as buying the tiller.
Monday, I'll mail the payments for the taxes on the land and we will be good to go for at least another year.
I want to make sure that the chicks we get will go broody so I never have to buy chickens again and can rather raise my own. Of course, Ill have to hope that there is a rooster in the bunch of chicks they send to me. We are going to order them from McMurray Hatchery. If you want to see a picture of the ones we are getting you can find it here.
For the Apple trees, I couldn't find a local source so we are ordering from TyTy Nursery. For now we are sticking to Arkansas Black Apples and Gala Apples. The Gala is the best to cross breed with the Arkansas Blacks.
From there its just a matter of finding the seeds I want for the Strawberries, Broccoli, and Snow peas to start getting them started in a small greenhouse box indoors as well as buying the tiller.
Monday, I'll mail the payments for the taxes on the land and we will be good to go for at least another year.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Getting started
We have always tried to live simply. My kids have rarely seen the inside of a McDonald's since their father stopped working there. I love to cook and I love to bake. Anyone reading my Cooking blog will have seen that the one splurge we have besides the Internet and satellite TV are the sodas. To many sodas that I intend to find a way to get away from. One way or the other, but I digress Being as that we live simply as it is and I can feed a family of 8 on 150 dollars a week and that includes all my cleaning supplies, toiletries and medications when it came time to think about living simply I had to take it a step further. Were slowly going to move into homesteading. The problem is where to start.
We already have electricity and water from traditional ways and we have a house we are living in that only needs a good cleaning and some appliance upgrades. I could seriously use a new fridge and stove. We heat with a combination of the fire place on one end of the house and room heaters in the rest of the rooms on the other end of the house due to the fact the wiring in the furnace shorted out a couple of winters ago. We have window unit air conditioners because well..... We live in Arkansas and in July you can die in this heat easy. Its not the heat its not the humidity its both.
Though those things all need to be changed, switching to solar, and upgrading appliances would be the most expensive options. I’m sticking to city water because we live to close to a paper mill and the Arkansas river for me to be comfortable with the ground water here. So I needed to figure out a way I could save money so that we would be able to afford the Solar panels and appliance upgrades. The best option is gardening and finding a way to make our meat consumption less expensive.
Eggs have gotten outrageous. Milk is expensive as well, we have already switched to powdered milk because I can't afford the real stuff. Fresh veggies are right up there too. Paying nearly a dollar a pound for potatoes is sad paying nearly three times that for apples are even worse. So we are starting there.
We would almost have the money to do everything with the tax return except that we have to pay the back taxes on the land that daddy paid to the lawyers he bought the land from and some how never made it to the tax collectors office. We still have to pay part of the 2006 taxes and all of 2007 and 2008. 2008 can wait a few months that won't kill us but the rest have to be paid before we lose the land. that’s around 1000 dollars so that’s where most of the taxes will be going.
The rest will get going to buying three Arkansas Black Apple Trees, and three Gala Apple Trees. The Arkansas Blacks are late season apples but are good for everything from eating to making pies to making applesauce and they store very well. So were going to add those even though we won't get apples for two or three years its a start.
We are also working on plans for a chicken coop and hoping to order some B.B. Red Old English Chicks. Then we will have eggs and chicken to cut back on exegeses as well. We just have to figure out how to garden.
Okay my grandfather had the greenest thumb on the planet. He could grow or raise anything. I on the other hand kill house plants. So now I have to find is talent in skill in me. Unfortunately with his Alzheimer’s he can't help me. So I’m pretty much dependant on my own research.
Thanks to the Mother Earth News I now know how to go about planting potatoes and thanks to where we live, we can do both early and late potatoes. So that’s another place to start. I’m hoping to grow both Sweet corn and Indian Corn. The Indian Corn can be dried and ground up into mesa that we can use for baking. Which will work well.
I’m also using some old Native American Myths to help me in my gardening without chemicals attempt. The Three Sisters in Native American Myths are Corn, Squash and Beans. The kids don't really eat Squash but if I can find good ways to prepare it rather than the fried mess my grandmother always made Apparently the beans and squash will help add nutrients into the ground that corn needs to survive. The Corn can act as stakes for the beans, and the squash as ground cover to keep the weeds from growing. These things make me happy.
On top of that Ill grow peppers and Tomatoes and set up a run for the chickens around the garden to keep out weed seeds, bugs and rodents. I’m hoping to also have strawberries, lettuce, carrots, Snow Peas, broccoli, Watermelon, Egg plant, Pumpkin, Cucumbers, Onions, and Cantaloupe.
Ill probably do several different types of beans and peas if I can find the room. There is plenty of room up on the hill, but I’m afraid there isn’t enough sunlight even in that clearing. There isn't as much room down in front of the house, where we have been planting the garden but I won't have to buy several water hoses to water the garden. I think I should save the hill for the fruit trees and the yard for the garden.
I think we can expand the garden area, if we clean up that area where Bear's storage building use to be. We might have to cut down one of the trees but it would open up a lot more room and sunlight if we did. Neva might kill me for it though. So that’s where we are going to start and as ambitious as it is, I think if I start looking at the garden as our only option for feeding this family we might actually succeed in making it work. Now I just have to figure out how actually get everything to grow out here in a place where only trees grow and only if they come about the way a forest usually grows.
To anyone who reads this, welcome to our journey.
We already have electricity and water from traditional ways and we have a house we are living in that only needs a good cleaning and some appliance upgrades. I could seriously use a new fridge and stove. We heat with a combination of the fire place on one end of the house and room heaters in the rest of the rooms on the other end of the house due to the fact the wiring in the furnace shorted out a couple of winters ago. We have window unit air conditioners because well..... We live in Arkansas and in July you can die in this heat easy. Its not the heat its not the humidity its both.
Though those things all need to be changed, switching to solar, and upgrading appliances would be the most expensive options. I’m sticking to city water because we live to close to a paper mill and the Arkansas river for me to be comfortable with the ground water here. So I needed to figure out a way I could save money so that we would be able to afford the Solar panels and appliance upgrades. The best option is gardening and finding a way to make our meat consumption less expensive.
Eggs have gotten outrageous. Milk is expensive as well, we have already switched to powdered milk because I can't afford the real stuff. Fresh veggies are right up there too. Paying nearly a dollar a pound for potatoes is sad paying nearly three times that for apples are even worse. So we are starting there.
We would almost have the money to do everything with the tax return except that we have to pay the back taxes on the land that daddy paid to the lawyers he bought the land from and some how never made it to the tax collectors office. We still have to pay part of the 2006 taxes and all of 2007 and 2008. 2008 can wait a few months that won't kill us but the rest have to be paid before we lose the land. that’s around 1000 dollars so that’s where most of the taxes will be going.
The rest will get going to buying three Arkansas Black Apple Trees, and three Gala Apple Trees. The Arkansas Blacks are late season apples but are good for everything from eating to making pies to making applesauce and they store very well. So were going to add those even though we won't get apples for two or three years its a start.
We are also working on plans for a chicken coop and hoping to order some B.B. Red Old English Chicks. Then we will have eggs and chicken to cut back on exegeses as well. We just have to figure out how to garden.
Okay my grandfather had the greenest thumb on the planet. He could grow or raise anything. I on the other hand kill house plants. So now I have to find is talent in skill in me. Unfortunately with his Alzheimer’s he can't help me. So I’m pretty much dependant on my own research.
Thanks to the Mother Earth News I now know how to go about planting potatoes and thanks to where we live, we can do both early and late potatoes. So that’s another place to start. I’m hoping to grow both Sweet corn and Indian Corn. The Indian Corn can be dried and ground up into mesa that we can use for baking. Which will work well.
I’m also using some old Native American Myths to help me in my gardening without chemicals attempt. The Three Sisters in Native American Myths are Corn, Squash and Beans. The kids don't really eat Squash but if I can find good ways to prepare it rather than the fried mess my grandmother always made Apparently the beans and squash will help add nutrients into the ground that corn needs to survive. The Corn can act as stakes for the beans, and the squash as ground cover to keep the weeds from growing. These things make me happy.
On top of that Ill grow peppers and Tomatoes and set up a run for the chickens around the garden to keep out weed seeds, bugs and rodents. I’m hoping to also have strawberries, lettuce, carrots, Snow Peas, broccoli, Watermelon, Egg plant, Pumpkin, Cucumbers, Onions, and Cantaloupe.
Ill probably do several different types of beans and peas if I can find the room. There is plenty of room up on the hill, but I’m afraid there isn’t enough sunlight even in that clearing. There isn't as much room down in front of the house, where we have been planting the garden but I won't have to buy several water hoses to water the garden. I think I should save the hill for the fruit trees and the yard for the garden.
I think we can expand the garden area, if we clean up that area where Bear's storage building use to be. We might have to cut down one of the trees but it would open up a lot more room and sunlight if we did. Neva might kill me for it though. So that’s where we are going to start and as ambitious as it is, I think if I start looking at the garden as our only option for feeding this family we might actually succeed in making it work. Now I just have to figure out how actually get everything to grow out here in a place where only trees grow and only if they come about the way a forest usually grows.
To anyone who reads this, welcome to our journey.
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