Hi everyone! I’ve had a couple big wins lately that make me feel like I’ve reached the next level of homesteading: the level where things start clicking!
First, I FINALLY harvested honey from my own bees!!!!!! This past winter I lost my third apiary in a row before I got to harvest anything and I almost threw in the towel. Somehow, though, I talked myself into trying one more time with a different breed of bee. And, in this case, fourth time was the charm! I’ve only had these two colonies since April, but they are doing really well so I decided to pull a few frames from each one (8 frames in total) and borrowed the manual honey extractor from my local beekeepers association After several tiring attempts to spin it fast by hand, AC had the brilliant idea to use a drill.
A few sweaty, sticky hours later, I had 2 gallons of my very own liquid gold! Eeeeeek! I could have cried (and maybe I did a little when AC wasn’t looking). I still have a bit of store-bought honey that I need to finish, but I can’t wait to drizzle some of my own on toast, yogurt, tea, or just straight into my mouth! Don’t judge – this has been a long time coming!
Second achievement: I haven’t been to the grocery in about two weeks. Not because I haven’t had time, but because
We 👏 Haven’t 👏 Needed 👏 It 👏
Our farm has actually sustained us AND we’re not just eating eggs every day. For example, our menu might look something like this:
🥓 Breakfast: Goat milk yogurt flavored with blackberry jam (or, now, homestead honey!) and/or homemade sausage, egg, and cheese scramble and/or buttered toast (all things we’ve made – yes even butter)
🥪 Lunch: leftovers or an egg sammich or crackers with goat cheese
🍽️ Dinner: venison roast, mashed potatoes and blistered shisito peppers OR fried rabbit, sweet potato, and sauteed zucchini OR sausage, potatoes, and onions with a summer salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and dressing PLUS blackberry cobbler and goat milk ice cream for dessert
ALL directly from our farm to our table. Booyah!
I wish I has some pictures of these yummy meals, but we dig in before we remember to snap a pic! So here’s an update on my new garden trellis instead.
Other wins:
🐐 Goat life has felt less chaotic the past few days because we sold Fauna and her babies to a neighbor, so we’re down three troublemakers and only milking 3 (fairly calm) mamas now.
🐰+🐔 The rabbits are low key, the chickens are laying, and we’ve reclaimed our garage from the guinea keets who have moved into their big bird house.
🐷 The pigs are growing and we even found a source for very affordable bulk feed (big win!).
🥕 The garden is looking good, though I still need to do a better job of using all my space.
🐶+🐱 Meeko is calming down a tiny bit more every day, and Bella is still a sweet sweet girl who recently proved her value by running off a hawk that was eyeing the little goats. Ralph is a great big brother to Fig and Calli, and
🚜 We won a carport shell at a local farm equipment auction – that was an experience – so the tractor will move out of our neighbor’s carport and in to ours…as soon as we get it built.
AC is great! She still hates weed eating, and she’s dipping her toe back into athletics as a new high school volleyball referee.
I started a new job last month, as a Senior Technical Trainer for Samsara, and I’m excited to get back in front of clients. Onboarding is going well and my new team is great. All of my free time is spent either in the garden or planning 🍅TomatoFEST🍅, my nonprofit’s signature event that takes place on August 1 from 9a-1p…in case you want to come check it out and help us judge the Bloody Mary competition 😉
So that’s where we’re at; living large and loving life. I hope y’all are doing well, too!
Until next time,
Charli
This is all such amazing news! Congratulations!!!