End of Year

It's the end of the year; a time for reflection and planning.  Our homestead feels a little empty with no chickens to take care of.  We started the year with 5 laying chickens, raised and butchered 25 meat chickens, and then butchered our laying chickens when they stopped producing.  We are already planning on getting 6 laying chickens in March.

Right now we are excited about growing two or three pigs in our current fenced in chicken yard.  One pig for us, and the rest for our families.  Our families are excited about the prospect of us growing some pigs for them as well.  These pigs would be butchered right around the time when the new layers are ready to occupy the space.  Although I'm not throwing out the idea of raising them on concrete in the barn as my neighbor does.  One of the benefits would be the ability to collect and spread the manure on our fields.

Speaking of fields, if I had laid out my beds better, I could have got one more bed in the field and used up all of our seed.  Our goal this year is to sell 500 pounds of garlic, which would make the tractor payment for the year and purchase a new raised bed maker from Buckeye Tractor.
http://www.buctraco.com/3%20Online%20Catalog/Model1921-Dx.htm

We are also looking forward to planting a half acre of corn.  After talking with our friends, family, and neighbors, we've decided on a the types of corn and are preparing our seed order.  We haven't yet figured out how we are going to plant the corn.  I've seen 1 and 2 row planters at auctions for less than $300 that need some work, but for only 1/2 acre I could get a brand new walk behind planter.

As the year winds down, we have been spending time looking at more acreage.  Wooded acreage for cutting firewood, hunting, and building a small camp.  Tillable acreage for expanding our garlic crop and raising beef cattle.

Reflecting on our garden and our harvest the last few years, we have to make some changes.  We have raised beds that need repaired/replaced.  Our 1 foot wide beds are going to expand to 2 foot wide for our tomatoes.  Our walkways need to be repaired and finished.  And finally our soil/compost mix needs to be refreshed in all of the boxes.  We've talked about putting up a greenhouse on the south side of the barn so that we can get an early start on everything and even grow some things year round.

We will not get all of the projects done that we envision for 2015, but we've come to realize that is just a part of homesteading.  There is always more to get done than there are hours in the day. 

Overall, we had a good year and we are looking forward to 2015.