The DAILY Realities of Growing our own food!

I was posting a few stories on Instagram recently and this viral reel came to the top of our feed and it was someone sharing their experience of selling their homestead and what they thought would be a slower life when the reality was that it was constant hard work, projects, and associated costs with them. And the conclusion that they drew was that moving back to the suburbs actually created the slower life that they were after. Along the way in this homesteading life, your values are going to be made clear. This lifestyle isn't for everyone. It's hard. The daily, weekly, and year-round demands are real and slow is going to take on a different definition for everyone. To us, it doesn't mean idle, but finding peace and rest in the midst of the task of the day. That's been our kind of slow. With our family of six, soon to be seven, on our five acres, we're able to grow around 75 percent of our food between cows, chickens, our orchard, and large gardens. And we've been waiting for life to slow down and it hasn't happened yet. Come along and see our full setup and the different daily systems and rhythms we have in place on our homestead that have made the day-to-day go so much more smoothly and seem way more manageable. Our alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and by 5 30 we're typically up and at them. Most of the year I like to go for a walk outside after eating breakfast and before milking each morning, but during harvest season I've been using this first 20 to 30 minutes of the day to do daily harvesting. Right now that means harvesting and checking on tomatoes every day or at least every other day. We're in that season where in order to stay on top of them, this is necessary. We haven't quite reached that peak tomato season yet, but every day more and more are ripening so I know that we'll be there in the next week or two. Besides that, I'm mainly harvesting based on what our needs are for meals for that day. Since most of what we grow are storage crops, things like potatoes, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, harvesting the bulk of these typically looks like setting aside larger chunks of time, either full days or half days, that are dedicated to going out and harvesting together, which makes it way more fun and enjoyable. And we typically do this later in the summer or in the early fall. We're going to be having corn on the cob as a side today with dinner so I wanted to grab several ears of corn as well as check on the peaches from our last peach tree. This is a contender peach tree that ripens a little bit later in the summer than the other varieties that we grow and these are just starting to ripen. This is the first year that I started doing this early morning harvesting and it's made a huge difference in the flow of the rest of my day, especially since we've gotten back to our homeschooling routine and do that every morning. I was finding that needing to find time to get out and harvest at some point throughout the day always felt stressful, but by getting it done first thing it's really nice to know that that's done and I can focus on other things throughout the day. After harvesting I head out to milk. Typically our kids will still be sleeping or just starting to wake up when I go out to milk. We've had Thimble, our family milk cow, for six years now so we really have our routine down pat and she makes it so easy. She's such a calm and gentle cow. I just halter her and tie her up to a fence post in the paddock that she's currently in and the whole milking process takes about 20 minutes start to finish. We've never actually tried milking with a machine. I just figured if we were going to be milking multiple cows I'd think about it, but with just one I thought the time it would take to wash the machine and everything that went along with that would take just as long as hand milking and I actually just really enjoy the slow methodical process of it. With four young kids our house is rarely quiet so I appreciate this peaceful start to the day. After milking I head in to strain the milk. This takes an additional around 10 to 15 minutes and I just use a dish towel and a mesh strainer to do this and it works great. After straining I always put the fresh milk directly in the freezer to chill down for a couple of hours before moving it to the fridge. We haven't always done this but when we did start doing it consistently we noticed a significant difference in how fresh our milk would taste for longer. Our milk never usually hangs around for more than a couple of days but on rare occasions when we've gone out of town or I've had some milk in the fridge for like 10 days to two weeks it stayed tasting great without being sour at all when I chilled the milk down in the freezer right away. While I'm wrapping up straining and milking Jim is heading out to do chicken chores and move fencing and one thing that's been huge for us is being on the same page with each having our own designated daily roles and responsibilities on the homestead that work for us. It hasn't been a point of contention or frustration we both just have the things that we manage and plan our days around. A typical round of doing morning chores in the summertime is pretty simple but today I have some extra things on my plate. Normally the first thing I do is feed the chickens but as you'll notice they're not out of the coop yet and that was on purpose. The night before I switched their automatic chicken door to manual so that it wouldn't open automatically when the sun came up. This was so that I can keep them all contained in the coop while I move our Eggmobile chicken coop to a new location. Our goal has been to do this every week but it's pushing two weeks now since we last moved it so it's definitely due for a move. Step one in doing this is actually moving our cows fencing since I want to set up the new section for the chickens to roam as close behind the cows as possible. So first I'll let Hazel back in with Thimble. This is something Joelle used to always do right away when she finished milking but since Hazel is still nursing we wanted to give Thimble a little bit more time after milking to refresh her milk supply before letting Hazel in with her. So now I just do it when I go out a little bit later. Then I'll take down the last section of polywire fencing and set it up again to form a new paddock for the cows to graze. This will then be the paddock that I'll separate Thimble into in the evening and the cows will graze on the following day. In total I always have three sections of polywire fencing set up which creates two separate paddocks. This works out great for calf sharing and separating the cows at night and then milking in the morning. Moving all the fiberglass posts and a section of the polywire fencing usually takes about 15 minutes every morning. And I'll also move down their water trough and get that ready to fill for the evening so everything is all set up for evening chores to streamline those. Now that the cow's fencing is in place I'll start getting things ready to move the chickens. We have three long sections of poultry netting that they're currently contained in. I had concerns at first that the chickens would be constantly getting out of the fencing and we'd be chasing them down all over creation, but it's been a pleasant surprise that the chickens rarely, if ever, get outside of the fencing. And when they do they really just want to get back in with the rest of the flock instead of just roaming free. We haven't had to clip their wings at all to do this. I think the biggest thing is making sure they have plenty of space within their fencing to keep them occupied. Plus moving their coop regularly helps with that to give them fresh territory to roam. At this point they've been trained to stay within the netting whether it's the poultry netting or the electro netting we use for the cows, which they can actually get through pretty easily if they wanted. So today I'm just going to move two of those sections of poultry netting and set it up in somewhat of a horseshoe shape, separating the chickens from the cows and Stella our livestock guardian dog. And this will also give them the maximum amount of space to roam about in. Normally I'd be able to just pull our tractor out, hook it up to the movable coop, and pull it to a new spot. But I recently lent out our tractor and tiller to a neighbor up the road who was putting in a food plot and I hadn't had a chance to remove the tiller on the backside yet. So I'll take a few extra minutes here to do that. This tiller is a beast and I was pretty proud that I was able to put it on the back end of the tractor all on my own for the first time. Not having grown up around tractors at all, even simple tasks like taking implements on and off tractors still seems intimidating. But the more times you do it, the easier it gets and the more tricks you figure out along the way to simplify things. All right, now we can finally move the coop and finish up chores. So far the size and design of this Eggmobile has worked out great for us and a small tractor has been perfect for pulling in. I store the chicken's feed in an old non-running fridge in our barn. It's been a good critter safe storage space for us. Normally I'll fill a bucket with feed, but we're at the end of the bag today, so I'll just bring the whole bag with me. I'll also grab some dog food for Stella, then fill a cup with minerals for the cows. The other thing I'd normally do is grab our bag of black soldier fly larvae and give the chickens a few handfuls of those. But for the first day or two after I move the coop to a new spot, I usually skip that since there's so much good stuff out there for the chickens to hunt down in terms of bugs and naturally occurring fly larvae in the cow pies out there. Feeding all the animals really only takes a few minutes every morning. I'll usually start by giving the chickens a couple handfuls of the black soldier fly larvae, then give them their food, and then refill their waters as needed. Since running the hose back and forth between the cows and chickens is kind of a hassle, I've found it easiest to just fill the chickens waters by bringing them over and dunking them in the cow's water troughs. Then I'll just dump the cow's minerals into a rubber-weighted bowl and give Stella her food. And that pretty much wraps up morning chores. There have definitely been trade-offs with the new eggmobile setup. The one thing I do kind of miss about having the chicken poop in our barn is how short of a distance it was to get them food and water. It's quite a bit of back and forth now running them out their food and filling waters, but I also don't miss the constant chicken poop from them free-ranging all around our yard or the amount of rodents the chickens attracted to our barn. Meals right now are all based around what we're harvesting and keeping things as simple as possible. With harvesting daily tomatoes right now, I'm making tomato sauce around every other day or every third day, but we use the easiest recipe possible and it tastes amazing. So it's very doable to just add into the margin of my day. I just placed clean tomatoes on a rimmed baking sheet. If they're larger ones, I'll slice them in half, but oftentimes I'll just place them whole and then I pop them into the oven at around 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 40-ish minutes to roast the tomatoes. When they're done, I throw all the roasted tomatoes into our Vitamix blender and blend them up. Seeds, skins, and all. If there's a lot of juice on the pan, I'll typically add most of that in too, but if you wanted to make a really thick tomato sauce, you wouldn't have to. And that's it. It's the easiest tomato sauce ever, but we all love it. Once our tomatoes really start ripening in full force, I'll start canning a ton of this tomato sauce several times a week, but for now we've been incorporating the tomato sauce into our weekly meals and making a roasted tomato soup a couple of times a week. To turn the tomato sauce into a really delicious creamy tomato soup, I add a pint of cream for every six or so cups of tomato sauce and then sprinkle in some sea salt. And that's it. Literally just three ingredients. The tomatoes, cream, and salt. And it's so good. We eat a lot of soup and this is one of our favorites. You could swap some or all of the cream for milk, but for the most decadent and delicious tomato soup, cream is definitely the way to go. Of course, you could add other ingredients like garlic, onions, basil, and other spices, but for us, tomato soup is one of those meals that I make when I need something fast and easy and we all love it just simple like this. We'll typically serve this with grilled cheese or if we have some sort of leftover meat that needs to be eaten, I'll pair it with that for a quick and easy meal. Nine scoops. Holy moly. You want nine scoops? Two? I'll take five scoops. That good measure. Yummy. One of the biggest challenges for us can be finding time to incorporate fun things for our family other than what we do on our homestead. Camping is a big one that we'd love to do more of. A few years ago, we were searching for a quality affordable family tent to give our kids for Christmas and found the perfect one at Portal Outdoors. The front porch area on this eight-person family tent to put shoes and other things in is the best and it's super spacious for our growing family. While we haven't done a lot of bigger camping excursions yet, backyard camping has been a favorite way to make memories for our family. Since then, Portal has become our go-to for quality and affordable outdoor gear. Recently, we got this awesome quick adjust roll-up table and it's been perfect for pop-up picnics. After a long day of preserving in the kitchen, there is no place we'd rather be when the day is winding down than outside with our family. This table has made it so easy to seamlessly move our meal or dessert outdoors. It can be set up in literally 30 seconds, but it's also really sturdy. We love the adjustable table height and how small it folds down to. It's perfect for the homestead or just keeping in the van for when the need arises. Whether it's their tents, tables, or even stand-up paddle boards, Portal's products have been go-to gifts for us over the years that are always a hit. We'll put the link in the description below to go check them out. Another daily farm chore is collecting eggs, and this was one that we were happy to hand off to our kids and they were happy to accept the responsibility of. They've gotten in the habit of checking twice daily, once around lunchtime and once in the evening. Normally, it's just our two oldest kids that go out, but today the whole crew wanted to join in. This is also a great midday opportunity to just check in on the animals and make sure everyone has food, water, and everything else looks as it should. There are a couple chickens that lay eggs in our feeder, so after checking there for eggs, one of the things I've had the kids do lately is to shake down the feeder, or in this case, scoop down some handfuls of food for the chickens, since the really finely ground feed doesn't always shake down well on its own. At the back side of our coop is the laying box, and thankfully that's where the majority of the eggs are laid. We have the extra large roll-out nesting box from Hengear, and it's been awesome, especially for the kids collecting them. The eggs just roll down to the collection tray in the front and stay clean, and the chickens can't really peck at them or bust them open. Our spring chicks just started laying in the last week or two, so it's been great to see an increase in egg production. The kids already got close to two dozen eggs today. I've also been working with the kids to be observant for when eggs are laid outside the coop, and today they spotted one under the coop and grabbed it. The new chicks we got are all Easter Eggers, so it's been fun to see some of those colorful blue and green eggs popping up, though not as many as we'd like as almost 10 of the 30 chicks we ordered ended up being roosters. I think we'll have some extra stew birds here pretty soon. When it comes to chores, we find that there are three different categories. There's daily chores, there are occasional chores that maybe happen weekly or every couple of weeks, and then there are projects, which have more of a distinct start and finish. So Jim moving the egg mobile earlier was a weekly chore for us on top of the usual daily chores, like giving chickens food and water and setting up a new paddock for the cows. Harvesting this time of year becomes somewhat of a daily chore for me with morning harvest sessions, and pretty soon as fall approaches we'll start devoting entire days and weeks to harvesting and storing away food. You might recall that last year an occasional chore for us was mowing down our fields with our tractor after the cows finished grazing an entire section of pasture, and to be honest this hasn't happened once this year for a couple of reasons. One was that it took some extra time in figuring out getting our egg mobile integrated in with our cows grazing, and the second reason is that we parked the mower in the back of our barn and a bunch of stuff got put in front of it and it's been a really full summer and we just haven't made it happen to move it all out of the way to get access to the mower. But today Jim was determined to change that, clear out the stuff in our barn so he could pull out the mower deck and hook it up on the tractor. The egg mobile was moved inside the cow's current section of fencing, Jim was able to go in and mow down the whole section of the field that had just been grazed through. We found that occasionally mowing down the fields gives them a reset, which helps the pasture grow back in more even and robust. Plus the pastures just get really wily and out of control this time of year with things like Queen Anne's Lace that the cows won't touch, so it's nice to chop it down occasionally so it doesn't totally take over. And many of those thorny thistley plants are about ready to flower and spread their seed this time of year, so it's nice to clear those out too. Between clearing out the barn to access our mower deck, hooking it up on the tractor, and then mowing down our very overgrown field, it easily took most of Jim's afternoon. But again, it's nice that this is something we only have to do a few times throughout the growing season as needed. After dinner, a yummy and super easy meal of baked salmon, corn on the cob, and peaches, it's time for evening chores. We've gotten a lot of questions about how we cook salmon so that everyone enjoys it, and I typically just bake it, but I also like to whip up an easy cream sauce to serve over it. Two of our kids prefer it plain, but the rest of us love it with this easy sauce to serve with it. I just combine a mixture of sour cream, yogurt, a little bit of mayo, with fresh dill and garlic. I don't follow any recipes, just use what we have with those basic ingredients, and it's always delicious. And this was the first sweet corn that we harvested for the season. It was all very exciting. I just baked the corn in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, and then shucked the corn after it was peeled so it stayed nice and moist. This was Stowell's organic evergreen corn variety that we bought from Seed Savers, primarily because it's supposed to grow nice and tall, which it definitely did, making it incorporate perfectly into our three sisters garden. But we were pleasantly surprised with the flavor and size of these ears of corn. We would definitely grow this variety again. Do I have a butter nose? Because I got a lot of butter. With knocking out most of the heavy lifting in the morning, evening chores are pretty simple. Since I finished off the bag of chicken feed in the morning, I'll bring a new one out to the barn. I used to keep our bags of feed in the barn, but since we've had issues with rodents in there, keeping them in our garage attached to our house is much safer. All I need for the night is a few more scoops of chicken feed, more dog food for Stella, and I think I'll also give the chickens a small scoop of oyster shells. Then we'll turn on the hose to fill up the cow's water trough in the new paddock I'll move Thimble into. The kids are coming out with me so they can help out and check for any eggs that the chickens laid. I love how routine cows are. Most every night, Thimble is there waiting for me at the spot where I open up the fence for her to separate her from Hazel for the night. Plus, it probably doesn't hurt that there's a paddock of fresh pasture there waiting for her. Hazel knows the routine too and really never tries to bust through with Thimble. It helps separating them so they're still right next to each other. After feeding Stella, we'll go tackle the chicken chores. With the new layers laying eggs now, I've been giving them oyster shells about every other day as opposed to just once or twice a week like I normally do. We find the young layers can take some time to regulate their laying, and there can tend to be a lot of eggs with soft shells or even without shells, so I like to make sure they have plenty of calcium available to them right now as they kick into gear. I'll usually give them a little more food to make sure they have plenty to last them to the morning, check their waters, and then the kids gather up the eggs. All right, everyone has food and water and is all set for the night. We'll turn the fence back on and head back inside. Evening chores this time of year are really simple. As long as everything goes as planned, they usually only take five to ten minutes. I will say our automatic chicken door has really been an awesome coop addition. On these long summer days, I used to have to make a separate run out to the coop at night to close up the chickens once they made their way back in, but now this automatic door has a built-in light sensor that automatically closes as the sun goes down, then opens in the morning when the sun rises, and this is a total game changer. When our daughter was six or seven, she tried paddle boarding for the first time. She was sitting on the board, had her life jacket on, and wasn't far from the shore, so we weren't too concerned, but as she navigated trying to figure out how to paddle and which directions would steer her which way with the paddle, she got a bit flustered. Then we heard her gently tell herself, don't panic, just breathe, over and over again until she calmly righted her paddleboard and steered in the direction that she wanted to go. Don't panic, just breathe has become a mantra of sorts in our family ever since. In this season, the height of summer and go time on the homestead, I find myself regularly having to remind myself of that same thing. Don't panic, just breathe, because somehow it always gets done. Let's see this frog. Oh yeah. Down. Has he moved at all? He's a little stunned, I think. Or angry. No, it might be poisonous.