First: Welcome to the new BLOG Website! She’s still under construction. To help us balance our busy homesteading lifestyle, we’ve decided to switch to posting every second Thursday. This will allow us to include better content with fewer cliffhangers and balance the work we need to do to achieve our homesteading goals.
Second: We’ll catch you up on the last couple months;
Christmas was quiet but we did enjoy a Christmas dinner with friends from the Glen; Al, Constance and their two kids and Mother. It was also the first time we processed our own turkey, which was grown right here on our property!
It was a Wild (but not wild) Eastern Turkey – which are very prolific around these parts. It was a surprise to see flocks of these turkeys as we drove around New Brunswick. Our turkeys, however, were given to us by Jack (who we affectionately call Duck Mom) as little chicks. Our first animals on the property were ducks, which we bought from her. She went above and beyond by sourcing four turkey chicks for us from a friend—completely free! Among the four were one Wild Eastern and three Bourbon Reds. The goal was always to have a breeding trio and raise our own for food (ground turkey and holiday meals). The three we kept just happened to be two female and one male!
We spent maybe an hour processing the turkey (I’ll spare the details) then Al picked it up the next day. On Christmas day he put it in the smoker with a blanket of bacon on it and also smoked a ham at the same time. Constance also made some sweet potatoes and Mandy added some other wonderful dishes to the meal. We also enjoyed a blueberry pie from Earth to Belly Homestead. It’s the farm I have been working on. Sorry for the lack of photos but we ate very delicious food and enjoyed wonderful company.
Next, we had Kristel, Kailem, and the girls over to ring in the New Year. We spent time watching Grown Ups 1 and 2 and, once again, had so many delicious foods. It’s tradition for us to have a table full of appetizers to graze on while welcoming the new year.
We did try to snap some more photos, but we’re really focusing on being present in the moment during get-togethers like this… and enjoying the food. Did I mention we love food during the holidays? Which, of course, does nothing for my waist, hips, and thighs—though Mandy says it helps my Captain America cosplay. LOL
Later, we took the girls to visit Al, Constance, Stefan, Amalia, and a few others for the fireworks! Al was pretty excited and put on a great show—including a few fireworks that decided to skeet across the field. We are loving the new friends we’re making and the sense of community that’s growing around us!
2024 in Review and Plans for 2025
Before we get ahead of ourselves, we have to address the area that will be our garden. Whatever we had left or were waiting to harvest were quickly killed and trampled by Bron (Goat Buck) and Ronin & Shogun (our two Great Pyrenees Livestock Guardian Dogs – puppies).
Gardens:
Once the ground starts to thaw I will have to start pounding in wood fence posts and put wire fence all around the sides up to eight feet in height. We discovered that Bron can easily clear seven feet. Once this is done we can start adding new beds and grow areas, the garden should be bigger with the relocation of the bucks also.
We will also try to work on the high tunnel and green house just outside of the garden area. That’s on the list of to dos. Aside from the animals destroying some parts of our garden, we didn’t bring in what we were growing on the deck greenhouse fast enough and most died due to frost/snow. I believe our banana plant and lemongrass are also dead… :'( We do have the growing space in the basement it’s eight foot by four foot and we purchased some bigger grow lights for it. There’s a handful of plants we’re trying to save but not looking good…
Overall we had a great growing year, but I think we overwhelmed ourselves trying to grow everything. Our corn didn’t grow so great, we have to work the land there more and also fence it from our dogs. We didn’t get to harvesting our carrots but the ones we did eat pulled fresh from the frosty ground was amazing and a good size. The sun chokes unfortunately didn’t get harvested either. Our beans were rolled over by our dogs and bucks. We didn’t plant our peppers soon enough. Our big wins was definately the tomatoes… we planted sixty and all sixty grew and produced so much. Surprises were the figs and blue berries; though we would have loved more we were greatly excited to have gotten any at all.
An issue that we had last winter was our tractor kinda died while snow blowing the driveway. So far Al has saved us a few times but he is helping us getting the tractor working again. She’s running but not 100%, more a of a return to work program. Did we say how much we love some of our neighbours? Al & Constance lent us their utility trailer when we had to pick up thirty emergency bales of hay… we could have done it with the truck but it would have been a couple of questionable trips instead of one. Josh has been a more active role helping out on the homestead, from machine maintenance to chopping firewood. A very valuable and handy kid to have around.
Animals:
LGD’s (Livestock Guardian Dogs):
Ronin and Shogun are getting better at their jobs and obeying commands more. They do spend some time in their run and if the weather gets too dreary for them they retreat to their house. They are also getting better with routine. When we have to charge their GPS fence collars they sit and put their noses up so I can take them off without issues. Then they stay in their run with very little complaints. Not sure if its from me beefing and fixing openings in their run but they know the routine of it. They are still puppies – just giant size puppies.
Goat Heard:
The bucks are being moved to make way for a bigger garden to a much bigger space – and more fortified. Bron is currently in the new (half) section as I will need to gather more building materials for the other side. Once that is complete we will move Johnny in there and possibly Cosmo. Cosmo would depend if and when he has a date in the city.
As far as the girls go if you haven’t read or heard, Bron got out several times and swooned the ladies… so Missy, Tessy, June and Stella are all expecting in March. Ally is due at a later date but the father is Johnny and not Bron. Couldn’t let Bron have all the fun! So it’s going to be a busy March with at least five babies and possibly upwards to ten plus! Not what we were planning but nothing usually goes to plan.
Maverick and his Ducks are still alive and well. So, that was a success for 2024. For 2025, we would like to expand their habitat with the pond forms I picked up last year. We are still planning for some BBQ duck and Al is excited to smoke them. Also if you didn’t read in one of our older posts it was discovered that Maverick our guard goose was not a female but a male … just has a really small … you know – explains why he’s always mad! I’d be too! HAHA It still amazes me when it gets dark and we go to put them away for the night, they respond to “OK Ducks bedtime!” Sometimes it takes them a few tries but they put themselves in to bed!
Chickens & Turkeys:
We had a few deaths, I want to say we had five over the Winter due to a weasel getting in and killing one a night. I have gone through and sealed up anything that could be a potential door and it has stopped. We received four new reds from Earth to Belly as they give their eighteen month old chickens to the community and bring in new baby chicks in the Spring. We still have our Turkeys Tom and Jill but have added the 4 (minus Christmas dinner) and we’ll watch them and pick a breeding trio and the rest will go to camp.
We plan on getting more dual purpose breeds as we didn’t have a successful hatch rate for our own chickens last year and that was a goal.
Bunnies:
Luke and his girls Mara and Jade should be getting to know each other this Spring and hopefully will be giving us some babies!
Quail:
Not sure if we want to expand our quail flock, though it would be a great supplement for Ronin & Shogun… we go through a big bag of Costco dog food and eggs maybe every two weeks now. Currently we’re not drowning in eggs and have had to buy some… ugh. Seems like we take a step forwards and two steps back… but that’s life. Just keep picking yourself up and move forward.
???:
We’ve wanted lots of different animals here on the homestead, but what we add or don’t add depends on where we are both financially and infrastructure wise. So the door is open…
Our Inside/Outside Fur babies;
Marigold just celebrated her 13th Christmas! She definately still loves to unwrap presents! We make sure that the animals have a little something to unwrap on Christmas morning or at least help.
Bucky is turning four! Hard to believe he was a ball of fur when we got him during lockdown. He’s really grown into his name as Bucky, the Winter Soldier! He really is the Alpha. He tells our big boys whos boss and he’s a bit of a bully as when he wants something from Ronin or Shogun, he TAKES IT!
Garfield continues to be a big purrring motor and a cuddle bum. Gizmo does this cute thing where he calls you over to the cat tower just so he can give you a head bump. He still loves the occasional cuddle. We’re still dealing with Lola’s pissy pants but she is still cute and has shown more affection to cuddle on us. We have also separated her and the boys during meals and that has helped her start to put on weight.
The birds; Takuhi and Fren have their own room, well the guest room, and are enjoying not being bothered by the cats. Josh will bring them into his room every now and then to hang out. They seem very happy to just hang around as he plays games.
Mandy is still working at the same company but has recently switched to a different team and is happily enjoying working in our time zone. She was previously working mostly six days a week til 10pm our time to sync with BC time zone. Now she’s usually working five days a week, off around 530pm and hasn’t had to work any weekends … yet.
As for myself, its sorta off season at Earth to Belly Homestead. I have been working at the Fredericton Boyce Farmers Market, which usually involves me getting up at 4am and getting there and setting up for 7am. It’s great as I get to meet a lot of people and I enjoy their practices of organic growing from the farm. Starting in February I will be doing their commercial deliveries in addition to the Markets.
Since we were on the off season, it was the best time to commit to the Level 1 Fire Fighter’s Course. Of course we are always training at the fire hall every Tuesday night, but this is the national training that is recognized all throughout Canada. It requires a lot of time commitment but it really goes to serve the community and I have made a lot of friends and connections in a few short months. We really want to grow our roots here, so this was a logical choice. So far I am loving all the learning and we are fortunate we haven’t been flooded with calls.
I have had many first (FUN!) experiences with the fire department, things I’d never seen or heard of. We helped with the twenty foot tree standing and light up; We even played a game of hockey in full fire gear! What fun! We’ve also been to many dinners and celebrations with the crew and have learned lots of the history and people within the Stanley Community.
If you’ve made it this far, Thank You! Please consider sharing and commenting to help us grow! Let us know what you’d like to see on the new BLOG and share with us recipes, tips and tricks!
Great read!