A quick tour...

Here is a quick glimpse of the few projects we have going around the homestead.

These are our chickens!  We have 5 full grown hens and 21 hens almost ready to start laying.  We also  have a rooster.  He's the big white guy with the bright red comb in the front of the picture.  The small shed in the background is our coop equipped with 5 nesting boxes where they lay their eggs.  We also have a smaller coop with a run attached for smaller chickens that are vulnerable to hawks.  We typically let them free range through out the yard, but seeing as they were eating all the red tomatoes off the plants, they are staying put until after we can the tomatoes!  I will get more specific about chickens/chicken care and tips on another blog entry.

(Here is Little Girl...the kids favorite chicken!)

Bees, bees everywhere!!!  We have 3 hives going at the moment and will be receiving our 4th from a great man that's mentoring my husband on bee keeping.  These little creatures are absolutely fascinating and very easy to care for.  I'm going to have my husband do some guest blogging in the near future.  This time next year we should have some amazing posts about honey extraction and bottling!!

We have a nice size garden in our front yard.  We also have young fruit trees, berry bushes and an herb/asparagus garden.  We are finishing up our main harvest and have planted our fall plants.  Future gardening blog entries will include easy food preservation and canning and common plant ailments we have battled this year and how to prevent them. 

Here are a few other tidbits about the homestead!

(This is our food plot for the deer.  It ensures that the deer stick around and we have an ample meat supply for the upcoming year.)

(My beloved bottle tree!  I have a thing for bottles of all shapes and sizes.  We are always coming across old bottles in our woods.  If its in good condition it will make it onto the tree.  It also has an assortment of wine and whiskey bottles.)

(This is my huge backyard.  We often golf, play baseball, shoot clay pigeons and target shoot here.)

That concludes the tour of our happy little homestead!