Exciting Homestead Announcement!

A year and a half has come and gone since our move to the homestead in June, 2017. Did I have any idea the major amount of work and progress we would have achieved in the first year and a half? Nope! Although sometimes it’s hard to see it through my own perspective because I usually see things as what needs to be done, rather than spending time thinking about what has been done. It’s the comments by visitors that helps me see the amount of hard work we’ve put into our homestead in such little time. We’ve often heard things like “how long have you been here, a decade or so?” or “I can’t believe how much you’ve achieved in such little time.”

In winter, it brings me an even clearer perspective of the past. While we’ve lived here for a year and a half, almost all the major outdoor work is done May through October since those are the months when weather generally cooperates for projects to take place and the ground is not frozen. No wonder we are so busy all summer!

The start of 2019 brings even more growth. Our exciting homestead announcement is that we officially launched our business – White Sky Woods Homestead, LLC! In 2019, we’ll be expanding our ethically and pasture-raised meat to hogs and rabbits. Being an LLC will allow us to invest in better systems on our homestead that will benefit people and animals. It will allow us to further educate ourselves and therefore offer more services around the products we offer.

Our intention for our homestead continues to be a focus on self-reliance and sustainability. However, we’ve found it to be very pleasing to bring ethically raised, high-quality meat product to other people who are interested in finding this locally. We are so thankful for our 2018 buyers, and are stoked for what will come of 2019!

Our son Woodland with the chickens and ducks on a winter day.

Maybe you’ve purchased a pasture-raised hog, maybe you’re a new friend or you know us from our pre-homesteading life. Perhaps being like-minded, you’ve stumbled across us on social media or the web. All of the support by words of encouragement, a simple like on our social posts, or the purchase of a pasture-raised hog is meaningful to where we are headed with our new business. THANK YOU ALL!

1,200 pounds of food for FREE.

Last week we were granted an amazing opportunity. The story goes like this. I posted a few messages on Facebook Marketplace and in my newsfeed asking for people who were interested in donating their old Halloween pumpkins to us to contact me and we’d do pick-up.  (We ended up with an entire trunkload of pumpkins! The pumpkins are feeding the pigs.)

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Hauling pumpkins away from gracious strangers.

Anyhow, a Facebook friend saw the pumpkin message and shared the details with her friend. Her friend happens to know a family that grows a large field of vegetables. Anything that doesn’t sell at their farmstand then seems to be picked by community members and donated to local food banks, so awesome. They still had a lot left in the field and snow was coming. No one else was coming to pick. We were connected with them and they allowed us to come out and pick the leftover carrots, rutabagas and beets for pig feed.

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Our young helpers, Flora and Woodland.

It was 20 degrees and snowing but in less than 2 hours we filled the truck with what we estimated to be 1,200 pounds of root vegetables for our animals. The pigs are happy with all the root vegetables. The rabbits are enjoying the carrots. The chickens, ducks, and goats are eating some of the beet greens. All around happy bunch of animals here…and all because of the thoughtfulness of one person that set a chain reaction. In thinking about my gratefulness, this entire experience warms my heart and it also inspires me to consider future growth of our own to emulate the generosity of the family who owns this farm and is so gracious.

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Happy pigs!

So, I’m looking now for some luck in paying it forward. Keweenaw and U.P. area readers, we recently learned of a person who is looking to relocate back to this area. Do you or someone you know have an opportunity for this multi-talented individual? Here are some details. If you are interested in more information, please send me a message.

  • Trained as an electrical engineer and worked in that field for 10+ years
  • Past 2 years working on farms full-time and plans to continue that indefinitely
  • Experience with tractors and equipment, livestock care, poultry slaughtering, making hay, and raising/harvesting/selling vegetables – organic, field, high tunnel, hydroponics
  • Current living in New England, but lived in the Keweenaw in the 2000’s
  • Looking for “apprentice” type relationship.
  • Current employment is stable, so no set timeline

Please share!

Peace, Love, and Nature,

-L

Be Scrappy, Get Hay, Save the Pumpkins!

I’m learning that living a frugal life on the homestead has a lot to do with being scrappy.  Maybe that’s not a term you’re familiar with, but when I describe someone as scrappy that means they are resourceful and determined….you know, the kind of person who defines “where there is a will, there is a way”.  We’ve had our fair share of being scrappy around here.  I’m willing to do the hard work (vs. spending money) to receive a positive outcome.  One example of this is our horse manure source. She needs the horse barn cleaned out and the manure to go away, we’re willing to shovel it and haul it away.  It then gets spread across our garden to help the soil fertility.  Win-Win!

Another recent example of this is when we randomly inquired about hay bales that were being used for an event. A friend connected us with the event coordinator who was using the haybales whom we learned was more than happy to have us haul 75 hay bales away. Otherwise, she would have had to find something to do with them. With the help of friends who have a large trailer, we met, loaded, hauled and unloaded 75 bales of hay.  They took what they needed and we kept the rest. No cost, some labor, working together as a team – now that’s scrappy! The real benefit goes to our animals. Between feed, bedding and creating winter shelter, these bales are a real aid to our homesteading.  The event coordinator got rid of 75 unwanted hay bales effortlessly.  Another Win-Win!

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Free Hay?  Yes!

Another way we’ll be scrappy in this Halloween season is by putting a message out to people in the local area letting them know we’ll collect their pumpkins, hay bales, and/or corn they had out as decorations for autumn and Halloween.  Did you know that in the U.S. alone, over 1 BILLION pounds of pumpkins go to the landfill? Imagine how many people (or in our case – happy pigs) that could be feed, or how much nutrient rich compost that could make? So, local friends who have pumpkins (carved, getting wrinkly, or uncarved are all welcome), message me and we’ll come pick them up and put them to use!  Or, you can stop by and personally feed them to our pigs, it’s fun to watch!

Ideas for your uncarved pumpkins after Halloween can be found here.  If you can feed your pumpkins to the wildlife without creating nuisance animals for your neighborhood, that’s an idea too.  Have a friend with a compost pile? Share your pumpkin with them! If you have a friend with pigs, well of course give them the pumpkins.  🙂

Homesteading and non-homesteading followers alike – have any tips on how you are scrappy?  This could be tips for the homestead, meals, household, etc. Let us know! Drop us a comment here at the blog, or find our Facebook post with this blog and post your ideas there.  We love hearing from you!

Peace, Love & Nature,

-L

Tour the Homestead on YouTube!

Hello!  Long time since we’ve updated the blog.  But, all for good reason. When the blog goes dormant…it means we’ve been busy!

The harvest is coming in strong.

Homeschool is underway.

The animals are lazily enjoying the autumn weather.

The pantry is being stocked with homemade canned goods of every kind.

Amazing time is being spent with friends.

The woodpile is large enough to sustain us through the winter.

But as the harvest season wraps up, more cozy time inside will be available and I’ll get back to writing, which I love as much as all the summer work (and it will be a well needed break)!  If only there were more time in the day for all the things we love the most, right?

Chores are calling, so let me get to the point of this blog.  Tim and I, the kids, and the homestead….well, we’re on YouTube!  No, no….we didn’t start a YouTube channel.  But we were visited by new friends who have a popular homesteading channel on YouTube.  We didn’t know it, but they brought their camera and asked us if we didn’t mind filming a bit with them.  We said “yes!”. The final product was a real treat for us!  What a beautiful gift to capture the homestead in this format, which has not been done before. We celebrated a year here on the homestead in June, so watching this video which was filmed just a few months later is making me feel proud of all our hard work and accomplishments. I hope you enjoy watching the video as much as we did:

CLICK HERE TO WATCH: They LEFT THE CITY to Homestead & Live the YURT LIFE

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Love, Peace & Nature,

-L

 

 

Pasture Raised Pork for Sale

Big news from the homestead, we have pigs for sale!  2 ways to buy:

1.) Feeder Pigs for sale.  Weaned and ready to go to their new home around mid-August.  E-mail to get details and reserve your pig. $100 per each.

2.) Pasture Raised Pork for sale. Whole pigs for sale. Our happy hogs are raised on pasture, eating grasses, local vegetation and happily rooting and rolling around. To support their growth they are supplemented with hay and hog feed. The expected date for our 2018 harvest is early December. Butcher dates are reserved for: December 11, 2018 and December 18, 2018.  You can get the details and information on how to reserve yours here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15dstxO9mJr3N4hze4HaMeh_nPeLJNMBmAXGcgKNghA4/edit?usp=sharing

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We are located in the Lake Linden, Michigan area. Feeder pigs will be ready to be purchased by mid-August, but you can reserve yours now, just send us an e-mail.

Meet the Livestock at our Homestead!

It hasn’t been yet a year since our move and our homestead has been growing and has more growth on the way.  Coming into this, we had very little (ok, none whatsoever) experience with livestock. First we just had our chickens. You can meet the flock here. Right off the bat we saw how each of them was different in personality. Flora (our 8 year old), quickly corrected me to say they do not have personalities, they have CHICKENalities. Clever girl. The rooster from that original flock fell ill and didn’t survive, it was our first homestead fatality. The hens however have been laying faithfully, survived the long winter, and took kindly to our replacement Rooster – Alabaster.

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Alabaster – The Rooster

Last fall we also brought home 2 pigs. The pigs have given us many exciting, humorous and frustrating times.  Just click here for Nat’s explaination of his recent escape.  In months where there is no snow cover, our pigs are pastured, eating a natural diet and tilling up our soil for future crop planting. In winter, we cleaned up the pen daily and kept them happy with fresh bedding. Our first agenda with these pigs is to breed them and sell the piglets as feeder pigs. All signs show that our female, Frannie, is pregnant and due in mid-June. Time will tell what our long range plan for keeping pigs will be, but they have been very enjoyable to have around! They are living happy lives, I mean, c’mon….just see here:

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Pig Snuggles. Frannie (Pink), Nat (Brown).

Our newest edition was an ask from Flora. She even paid for 2 of her own! DUCKS! Yes, they have duckinalities… 😉 The kids are adoring on them. The goal is to keep the females from each breed and 1 male from each breed. Perhaps in the future we can allow them to raise some young to have more ducks for eggs and/or meat. Any extra males will make a meal that we will be so very thankful for. The ducklings are currently 1 week old. We have 2 Cayuga’s (black ducks) and 6 Swedish Blue (Yellow ducks). They live inside until it’s warm enough and they develop their feathers.  Then they will go out and till up our garden for us. Major AWWWWW-factor here:

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In May and June our livestock population should grow.  First, chickens. We will be working on having one of our chickens “go broody” and sit on eggs from our flock.  If we can grow our own flock, it’s a sustainable way of providing more food (eggs) for our family.  If all goes smoothly, we should have chicks in late May.  In mid-June if our calculation for Frannie’s due date is correct, we should have piglets!  As someone who is new at all this, I’m hoping for a successful delivery for her, and a small litter.  Time will tell!

The animals have really made the homestead complete. While there were some cold, winter snowy days that I dreaded animal chores, I am so happy they were out there giving me reason to get out, get fresh air, and get moving. The little extra effort is well worth the reward.

What should be next?  Comment on what type of livestock we should consider for our homestead and why!