What better day to ponder than Mother’s Day why kids are so darn cute?!
The newest kids, born yesterday, Phoebe’s firsts—Hercules & Zena—notice he is twice the size of her!
We’ve bartered or sold most of our piglets already. We’re not on social media where such information is exchanged, but it certainly does seem the homesteading community in our area is growing rapidly. Yippie!
One family who came by insisted we were under-profiting from our piglets. Their 11-year old daughter offered her mom to pay us $50 more than we were charging, ‘for the cuteness factor’. Aren’t kids precious!
In not-so-cute news, the swelter season has started abruptly. Bye, bye beets and broccoli, before your time, because I think not even the shade cloth can save you now. The last rain that was hyped on about for days, that flooded some areas and caused tornadoes in others, yielded us a whopping 1/4 inch, not even enough to penetrate the mulch layer.
Of course I’m happy we didn’t get hit with another tornado, but I can still be miffed I have to start watering the garden. Half my roses haven’t even bloomed yet, or the zinnias. The parsley and celery have gone to seed before I got a decent harvest from them and the lettuce will soon follow, no doubt.
The bees are feeling it, too. I checked these hives last week and they were just half-full, yet the bees are bearding. Unfortunately, the swarm we got a couple of weeks ago left after only one day, unhappy with the digs I’d offered apparently. Now it’s already too hot for me to do the splits I’d planned. Better luck next spring.
I’m so pleased to be getting any strawberry harvest at all, they’ve never done well before. Then I saw this video and quickly got a reality check.
Hubby tried to make me feel better by saying those were probably grown in California and loaded with pesticides harvested by illegal aliens. He’s mentioned before something is off about this (Fabulous!) channel. It must be CGI, or heavily staged, or something. Never has a country cottage been so clean and picturesque. Where’s the chicken poop on the table and the flower pots dug up by the puppies? Good questions!
By ‘doing well’ I see I need to learn a thing or two about growing strawberries. They are too crowded and between the humidity and the wet mulch they are mostly half-rotted by the time they get ripe. I’m really loving the strawberry kombucha though! As well as the blackberry, and mulberry. I’ve started making the kombucha tea from yaupon, which grows like a weed around here. It’s delicious and sweeter than the store-bought green tea I usually use.
And speaking of mulberries, what a great surprise, Hubby found a full grown, wild mulberry tree in a spot we walk by regularly and never noticed before. What a treasure hidden in plain site!
And this post has reached my attention span limit, so I leave the cheese to the next post. It’s gonna be a good one all on its on, really! Stay tuned!
Instead I exit abruptly, like spring has done in East Texas, with this quick lesson from Bubba in best yoga techniques.
Kensho Homestead 
I’ve watched a few of their videos & also felt something was “off”. Just not realistic of what this type of country living would be like. Not sure what they’re supposed to be representing but it’s certainly not anything I’ve experienced. I’ve grown strawberries, both June bearing & everbearing but it was an every day chore to pick. If these represented a days picking ( it doesn’t say) I can’t imagine how many acres & acres of strawberries they have. Are they growing for resale? Who knows? Flower boxes filled with perfect flowers everywhere & rabbits running free but don’t eat & destroy the flowers? Think not. Reminds me of a fairy tale Disney movie ( before they got caught doing bad things). There were a few other conundrums in their other videos that didn’t ring true with me. I remember watching & thinking “no way”. You’re right about the chicken poop also. Where the birds go so goes the poop.
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Oh the poop, Granny, don’t get me started! I loved having ducks and the novelty of the chickens roaming up to the deck freely at first was great. That didn’t last long until trying to keep the porch clean was driving me nuts. Building the new chicken coop further away solved that problem and I’d really like to get ducks again soon. All the poop has done wonders for the garden, and keeping it far from the house has done wonders for my sanity! Though I do think there were fewer of certain bugs when we had them closer to the house. Always a trade off.
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Gives new meaning to “Selling the farm”.
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So true!
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