Musings from the life of a wannabe homesteader

Happy New Year!

This is the first post in what I want to do this year: challenge myself to post every day for the whole year. Post about things I do here on the farm, skills I learn, habits I try to unlearn, and thoughts about all of it.

I really hoped I was gonna make a nicer and longer post today… but nope.

Spent hours trying to thaw hoses and pipes so I can fill all watering throughs not by carrying it from the creek in a barrel like yesterday. Success!

Guess what? Now it’s raining… The snow is almost gone.

A picture of it to reminisce later on.

Not a very good start these short posts with nothing notable to say. I guess that’s how life is, some some days are great and some days just are.

And, to be honest, I didn’t really think I was gonna write a novel each day. So I’m cutting myself some slack.

Today was manure shoveling day. More precise first day of. I probably did about 5%, but it’s a start. Me and my shovel. Actually it’s a fork.

I am sooo tired, am just gonna crawl into bed here in a minute.

Someone asked, most likely rhetorically, if shoveling manure is better than working as a Virtual Assistant.  

It's not better per se. Neither is bad.  

Manure shoveling, albeit indirectly and combined with other homestead activities gives me things I could never buy. I get to decide how my food is raised and grown, all the way from the dirt to the table.

Besides the foodstuffs - cream and butter, all the cheeses I muster the courage to make, all the steaks, roasts and hamburgers I could ever dream of, and a bounty of vegetables the manure enhanced garden gives me, and the fact that I can feed some of the other creatures with the milk or milk products, I also get to hug my cows every day. This is one of the things that gives me strength to continue.

Picture later...:)

Reflection time.

I just realized the other day that this will be my 8th year of milking. Every day. Actually, most of this time was twice a day.

For the sake of being thruthful, I did take a two and a half months break last winter, when I had everybody bred to freshen within the same month - April - so the dry period was the same for all of them, so no milking for me.

Take the two and a half months out of 8 years, there is still a whole lot of time left. In the beginning there were goats, then one cow and goats, then more cows and goats, and after that only cows.

It’s possible that I am setting the scene for a question that has started to bug me recently: why am I doing all this?

Me writing here is an attempt to find the answer to that question.

It’s also a practice for a skill I am trying to get better at.

And I’m also trying to find my voice. They say everyone has one. For some it’s just not that obvious or it’s burried deeper.

So far I’m not very fond of my voice. I sound like an accountant ( well, which I am!) reading a bunch of numbers. Boring to tears.

I really hope there is truth in “practice makes perfect”. I’m gonna practice till I get better at it. And then some.

Is this the bigger "why?" of Permaculture:
https://permies.com/t/157467

Or just "Why ~Cows?"

Nancy Reading wrote:Is this the bigger "why?" of Permaculture:
https://permies.com/t/157467

Or just "Why ~Cows?"

Both of those, and more. It’s going to be a long process and one there really is no manual for:)

It’s hard not to be complaining about things when in the midsts of so many projects and things to do.

I am going to do my best to not go there.

A great thing right now: the weather is dry for the next week or so if I am to believe the forecast. The sun felt so weird today after so many cloudy days.

Need to use this time to try to finish as many projects as possible.

Oh, and about this time each year I start dreaming about the seeds and the plants and the garden. It feels so good. Hopefully my big hoop house is gonna be ready in time for starting seeds. I purchased the kit several years ago, and only now it’s being built.

Maybe another thing to learn this year is to be more frugal with the garden. Every year I grow too many things and almost always am surprised half the way into the summer how tired I am and how much work there is to do. Why is it so hard to learn?

Would it be enough to just tell myself: only 50 tomato plants instead of 100?

Yesterday was butter making day, among other things.

I really like cultured butter and try to make it as often as possible. It doesn’t always work, especially in cold weather. Those bacteria and yeasts that make my cream taste divine like warm temps, and in the summer it’s really easy to get cultured cream fast. In winter it’s more of a gamble.

This time it worked, even though my kitchen is on the cold side.

It probably looks funny to most people round shaped like that. I squeeze the whey out by hand, so that’s the shape I get, and I don’t mind. It dissapears fast in our bellies anyway.

The only thing better than this butter is the one made from spring grass cream/milk.

Thank you for the introduction to cultured butter I hadn't come across it before. One for the notebook.
That reminds me I was going to try and use one of my local bogs for storage (just to see what happens). Not really the right time of year now.

(Great thread idea! Commenting so I'll get notifications when you post.)