Starting the house

2021 was a busy year for lots of the world and here on Green Journal Homestead – we finally started a house!

The plan had been originally to move into the trailer on the property and fix it up. Quickly we discovered that on the old 1970s trailer, homeowners insurance was going to be impossible.

We spent the next few years trying to go through options that gave us the most control over the process. We looked into having an existing house moved to the property but those aren’t always available or close enough to safely move. We thought about maybe another mobile home but they don’t allow for the amount of customization we wanted to do. Looking into a traditional builder was way more than we wanted to spend and also they all wanted to turn in a turn-key building. Nothing wrong with that at all, but just not what we were looking for. Eventually , we settled on a metal building turned into a house or shop houses that have become more popular – aka “barndominium”.

There was a company somewhat local that drew up blueprints, to our exact specifications and we started the process.

First, we had to clear the land in order to get ready for the gravel and concrete slab.

Then the framers could come out, after the concrete cured to start putting up the outside frame.

Interior walls and roof trusses went up as well.

House wrap and porch roof.

It has been painfully slow, seems everyone everywhere is building right now, so getting people to do the things we can’t has been a struggle. One of the draw backs of not having a general contractor to sub contract out all these jobs to.

We love the look of the metal and with the doors and windows in, it looks like a real house.

Electric and Septic has been the hardest to get, and when we do get them they are so far behind or something is out of stock they need.

But it is still moving forward and we are excited to be able to do so much ourselves. It will help keep the costs down and will be a home we both designed and worked in without being told it might hurt re-sale value. When you are building your forever home, who cares about re-selling!

Chicken / Rabbit Tractor

We wanted our chickens and rabbits to have lots of time on grass but we can’t have them running loose on the homestead. Fencing off large chunks of the property isn’t really an option either. So we figured a chicken tractor would be the best way to go. And when it’s not in use for chickens, it can be used for rabbit litters to grow out.

One key thing we did to make it rabbit friendly was put some fencing on the bottom. It is wide enough for grasses and clover to be reached but not so wide that the rabbits can dig through. It does make it a little tricky for chick feet. Have to move the tractor carefully so no feet get caught.

We used some of the tin that came off the original barn. It went across the whole top and half of one side.

The tractor is 8 ft long, 4 ft wide and with the lid, 26 in tall.

We made a split top, to open on the left half or right half.

We’ve used it successfully for chicks to grow out and also for rabbit litters to grow out. We plan on building more because they have really worked great for us. And the grass is so much better the next time around.

New Chicks

We’ve enjoyed the chickens and everything they have been doing for the homestead and of course all the fresh eggs. We knew that the first hens we got should be slowing down their egg laying so we made moves to go ahead and pick out the next layers for us.

We were pretty pleased with the last batch of meat birds we got from McMurray Hatchery and decided to use them again for the new round of hens. We love having the variety of colors and sizes of our current flock but ultimately went with a variety of brown egg layers with large/extra large eggs. We figure that will be the most bang for our buck.

We used our tried and true method of keeping them in a big plastic tote. They are on wood chips and we have a cover with a heat lamp or 2. They have plenty of room while they are bitty and we can keep them close by.

Once they get bigger and older, they go into the brooder box, on the porch, with a heat lamp for a little bit. The brooder got an upgrade this year with a fancy, bright green paint job. We needed to protect the wood and get some more use out of the box and this paint was the right price for the job.

We got them ordered just in time too. During the winter, the flock was down to laying just a few eggs a day. Once spring hit, they all started up again but then we noticed our oldest hens had slowed down a lot. They had been awesome layers for us but we wanted to keep up the higher level of egg production.

Once they outgrow the brooder box, they take a turn in the pen addition to the barn. They get more room to grow and can take advantage of garden scraps, just like the big hens.

We’re looking forward to them being good layers for us and having egg production high again.

Chicken move timeline

With getting ready to garden, a large part of that was getting the chickens ready to move. With the easy coop we built. Read more about it, below.

Chicken Coop

The net moves quickly which with the rotational chicken grazing plan. That is why we bought it .

The chickens enjoyed the move, at least we didn’t hear anyone complain, and within an hour the net and charger was set up and the chickens were in their new home.

With three 25ft by 50ft beds they have plenty of work to do . The plan again is to let them stay on one garden bed and plant on the other 2. With only doing this on one plot so far, we are already seeing improvement in our plants.

As you can see the chickens are already fast at work . Only a month in and they have already picked everything they wanted.

The only thing left for us to do is go in and knock down the things they did not want and then to start giving scraps, wood chips, and give them a compost pile to work .

The garden results this year were fantastic. We planted two sections – one that had the chickens on it for 6 months and one that only had compost spread by us on it. The chicken prepped garden grew over twice as fast and produced ten times the vegetables. We knew it would help, but the level of success was even more than expected.

With the limited land we have getting ten times more out of the same space just makes sense.

As you can see, it is time for the chickens to move again, to till this plot up and let us get to planting!

Meat Chickens

Once the barn expansion was done we started plans to do our first batch of Meat Chickens.

We ordered Cornish Cross, online from Murray McMurray Hatchery.

Chicks showed up happy and healthy with zero losses.

We ended up with 27 and did have one loss as an adult , and the rest went to the freezer.

It was an enjoyable process. They go from hatched to freezer in about 60 days so that is a lot of growing to do in a short time. We would like to add a way for them to be on grass to help the feed bill, but that will come in the future.

There were not as easy to process as rabbits, but pretty close. It is nice to have variety in the freezer.

As we said we ended up putting 26 in the freezer, with an average weight of 6lbs and a total weight of over 150lbs processed. The smallest was 3lbs 14 oz and the largest was just over 8 lbs!

After we have been eating these , it will be hard to every go back to store bought chicken again.

More chickens

We originally got chickens for the eggs and improvement of our garden plots with rotational grazing. We also knew we would end up with some roosters in the mix for the freezer. We had no idea how many , which we covered in a previous post.

The chickens were doing so good, we even got a second batch to replace the roosters and build the ranks. We are loving the eggs ( so are our friends and family) and how easy they are to take care of.

We also loved that where we kept them for the past year is now a beautiful garden. Years prior to the chickens we couldn’t get anything to grow there. Now it is our best looking garden so far this year.

With all the benefits, it was an easy decision to get more this year .

So we got 10 Ameraucana chicks locally. Trying to add some color to the egg basket. They did great moving from our brooder, to our chicken/ rabbit tractor. Moved in with the additional flock with little trouble (once we removed the 4 roosters out of new batch.

We have absolutely enjoyed the chickens and their role on the homestead. Watching them peck and scratch is a great way to spend some time. Their benefits to the soil can’t be denied. If you can do only one thing a year around your place, we highly recommend chickens.

Trying potatoes again

The first year we grew potatoes, they were in stacked tires. To be more precise, we TRIED to grow them. Sweet potatoes did pretty good, but everything else just turned into marble size things that would not soften even if boiled an hour.

Last year we tried to plant them traditionally in rows and had even less success. Now we are realizing that our soil needs more work than we thought, the chickens and rabbits are helping with that, but was still the overall issue we believe. The plants did great, but nothing happened underground.

This year we decided to try a different approach . Talking to friends who had had some success, we just tilled a plot. Put the potatoes on the ground and covered in hay.

Super easy , our concerns were are all the heavy storms matting down the hay as fast as we put it on there, and ants. We have all the ants, so if you are missing any, we have them. They are some of our best producers, unfortunately.

We ended up getting about a wheel barrow full. Excited to try this method again. The only thing we would change is make sure the ground under is tilled better. Even though they are planted “on top” of the ground , we found they stopped shallow because of the lack of tilling.

Trying to grow mushrooms!

We saw a local park offering a class on mushroom logs and the idea really took hold. We figured it ought to be easy enough and we really like eating them. Mushrooms would be a good addition to the homestead.

The class was good, gave us some good information and then we got our own logs to inoculate with mushroom spore. We learned that hard woods are the best. You drill a hole in and pack the sawdust mushroom spore mixture in it and seal with wax. Then let it sit and grow!

The class gave us shiitake mushrooms for our demo log and we got some oyster mushrooms to try at home.

We ended up using some Bradford Pear logs from a tree that came down in a storm. This isn’t a hard wood tree but the timing was too good to ignore it.

Stacked on pallets to get air circulation

Unfortunately, we didn’t get mushrooms from any of these logs. We’re not sure if it’s the wrong wood that was used, the wrong wax or maybe even too much wax.

Our demo logs finally did make mushrooms but they were not shiitake. They maybe got too hot or too dried out. I think we’ll try it again eventually but we’ll need to try and really set up an ideal location. Maybe we can try one of the box kits before trying logs again.

Let us know if you’ve had any success growing your own mushrooms, in the comments below. We’d love to hear about what worked or didn’t work for you.

2020 Garden

I think we can all agree 2020 has been an interesting year so far. Lots going on around the world and around the homestead.

We started seeds in February like usual, but did not get them planted until nearly the middle of May. The weather here just stayed wet, and could not till up the garden in the mud.

Then the weekend after we planted, had two nights of historic frost for our area. Looks like we should have waited even longer to get them in the ground. We will certainly keep that in mind for next year.

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We ended up having around 125 plants to cover with pots. We got several of those from a last minute run to a dollar store. Cleaned them out of 31 pots! They’ll get put to use later for transplanting as seeds start to outgrow their starter block.

Our lettuce bed we covered in a tarp as the bed itself is a little set in the ground. Lots of the more tolerant plants just got some hay spread around them.

Most things made it, more than we would have thought. Some decisions had to be made, and some plants did not get the best cover. We have had a few die but that is part of gardening anyway. No one anticipated a frost right before Mother’s Day.

We did not change much in the garden this year. We worked on getting more proficient at what we are already doing. We invested into more of the black fabric we had so much success with last year. This year instead of skipping rows we decided to cover it all and torch holes on where we wanted to plant. Took more time upfront but is already proving to save us time weeding. We even did the corn plot the same way, but a storm the very next night ripped up all the paper. So now its just a wait to see where corn pops up so we can weed around it. No way we could have gotten the paper back down exactly lining the holes up to where we already planted.

One exciting difference this year is we have so much lettuce!

We are pretty sure we can thank the farm cats for that. They are doing a great job of keeping the rodent and rabbit population down.

The only real new things we added this year were some GIGANTIC pumpkins for fun, a new cucumber variety we wanted to try, and eggplant. Oh yeah, and a beet variety. We’re also trying potato and sweet potato again this year.

So far we have had plenty of rain and not enough sunshine but we will see. Hope all of your gardens are doing just as well or better!

Anyone planting anything new this year?

Favorite Dishes from the Garden: Squash

One of the fun things our first few years of growing our own food taught us was how to get creative with meal time.

When you’re looking at your 12th consecutive day of having yellow squash for dinner, you want to spice things up – literally and figuratively!

We’ve got the fried squash down perfectly. In fact, it’s usually requested by the June birthday girl since its the best thing.

Sadly though, we can’t live off fried squash so we started looking at other flavors we liked and tried them with squash.

One of the earliest attempts was squash pickles.

They were a start but not really a meal.

One of us got to craving pizza but this mound of produce kept staring at us. We then had the idea of taking some of the bigger squash and turning them into pizza boats!

This was a great way to use up the larger squash that weren’t as tender as the smaller ones but are still just as delicious. We also cooked these on the grill since it’s just too hot to run the oven in the house.

We took 2 good sized squash and cleaned and prepped them. They were washed, cut in half and the insides scooped out for either the compost pile or chickens.

They were seasoned with salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder, as well as since Italian seasoning, since we’re making pizzas, after all. We drizzled with olive oil and set cut side down on the pre-lit grill over medium heat for about 6 to 7 minutes. Try to avoid any burning at this step. It’s not a yummy taste.

After that, flip the squash over so the skin can cook and so that the pizza toppings can get started. We used some ready made pizza sauce but of course homemade will be just as good. Spoon 2 to 3 spoonfuls then start layering in toppings. Pre-cooked Italian sausage or ground beef , pepperoni slices, basically any protein that you like on a pizza goes great here. Then some veggies. We love mushrooms so those were a given. Peppers, onions, spinach would all be great too. Top with any kind of mild, easy melting cheese like provolone or mozzarella and a little more Italian seasoning. Return to the grill and finish off for about another 4 to 5 minutes or until the squash is fork tender and the toppings are melted and bubbling slightly.

Cool for a couple minutes and then dig in!

We also a squash hamburger bun and even squash “mac and cheese”.

We used our own frozen squash, cut into slices and then halved. They went right into a pot to cook in their own juices from frozen. A little salt and pepper to season.

After the squash had cooked through, we lightly drained it and added a can of cheese soup. Just a splash of milk was used to thin the soup. Not much was needed since there was so much liquid from the squash. From there, we seasoned to taste and were ready to dig in!

The squash mac was in pretty heavy rotation because it is so easy and tastes good too.

Do you have any squash recipes we need to try? Any other twists on a favorite that we missed? Share in the comments and let us know!