I broke ground today!

    We've lived on our new homestead property for almost three weeks now! It isn't exactly the 5-10 acre land of my dreams, but it's a massive improvement from the rented town home in a college town we were living in. We started our homesteading journey in spring of 2022. That first year, I had all of my plants in plastic totes on an 8x10 patio. Below is a link to that first garden on Instagram. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CdnyGqaritb/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    In May 2022 I started our canning journey with a few small jars of pansy jelly, which is still a favorite! We also began experimenting more with dehydrating and foraging. July 4th weekend of that same year, we added 10 quail to our patio set up. One of our quail turned out to be a rooster, so I learned to cull a few days later. In August of 2022, I acquired a free, abandoned plot at a local community garden.  This is when I doubled my gardening space!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch5CLpUu_fc/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

    Moving into 2023, I had two large plots at the community garden and the smaller 8x8 as well. I planted the two 10x16 plots, and the boys planted the 8x8 with the Three Sisters. We tried mushrooms logs inoculated with shitaake spore... Nothing has ever happened, lol. The community garden is the first place I planted anything in the ground instead of containers. I learned about mulch! Matt (my DH) and I tried out a soil block for seed starting. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CniYNVfuts8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

    When Sukkot came around, we were able to incorporate something from out harvest for each meal. That was an amazing feeling and a huge feat from where we started! 

AND NOW?! 

    Now we own our first home! We've got two boys, two cats, 20 chickens (chicken math is REAL!), and 3 ducks. It's cozy, wonderful, and a dream come true!!! The front yard is huge (for us!) and the back yard is huge (for us!). I've already planted our perennials, which we moved down with us. I've also planted sunflowers and a few medicinal flowers. We've started setting up our recycled swing set chicken run. I'm soon to build a duck house. We bought an oven build between the 50's-70's that is built like a tank to replace a broken, janky cook top. We've hit the ground running, BUT as always we are starting small and doing a little at a time. This blog is an accompaniment to my Instagram @start_small_homestead which is a bunch of cute chick and duck pictures and videos at the moment, lol. It is spring after all! I hope that you will enjoy both the insta and the blog, and welcome!