Winter has come and now we have a 6 inch blanket of snow on the homestead. The kids enjoyed their snow day a couple weeks ago with some sledding, movies and hot chocolate. I was stuck inside with a wicked sinus infection, but their father was more than happy to pull their sled down the drive way with his Ford diesel.
We did our best to prepare for what is now upon us. Here are a few things we did....
Garden
The garden was tilled up before the snow. My husband laid a cover crop the will be tilled into the garden next spring. We covered the blue berry and raspberry bushes with leaves to act as a mulch to protect the plant through the winter. We then surrounded the beds with chicken wire to hold the leaves into place. We had to put up the chicken wire quickly before the chickens scratched it all out of place.
Trees
We like to scout out the deals at the big home improvement stores for fruit trees and bushes in late fall. They get down to 75% off and usually my husband can talk them down even further! We bought several apple trees, pear trees, blueberry bushes, grape vines and more for around $100 this year. Once they were planted we put black gutter pipe around the trunk of the tree to protect it through the winter. When I say "we" that usually means my husband. My oldest helped with this as well.
Chickens
Our chickens are not loving the snow. The stick close to the coop when the snow is high unless there is a path shoveled so they can get out. We have to manually bring them water every day since we haven't found a great way to keep their fancy waterer from freezing. We've started scattering scratch grain around since they can't actually scratch the ground for bugs and things. It just gives them a little extra nutrition through the colder months. So far all the chickens are healthy and laying very well! We found a huge clutch of eggs underneath the coop a couple days ago. We pulled out 74 eggs!! We were able to salvage about 2 dozen. The rest were cracked, frozen or just bad.
Bees
I have little to nothing to do with the bees. My husband has checked on them a few times since it got cold. He says they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, so I'm just hoping they survive through the winter! I'm looking forward to the honey in August!
Cat
Sweet Bullet got fixed last week. We let him stay inside in our water heater closet a couple days to heal up. We then moved him out to the garage where he's staying with a warm cooler house (the humane society gave up a foam cooler with a hole cut in it, stuffed with hay) and litter box. This set up seems to be working well! He's happy and healthy.
Food
We have several freezer bags of broccoli, cauliflower, green beans and homemade stir fry mix to eat through the winter. We still have carrots in one little section of the garden. We were told they would be fine there until we were ready to eat them. We actually dug up a few they other day and they were perfect! We have tomatoes canned for chili, spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce. My husband has shot 4 deer so far this year. A buddy of ours shot a wild hog and gave us the meat this year, which will make some amazing brats and sausage!!
Things are coming along! Hopefully each year we will be able to add a little something to the homestead to get be more self sufficient. We intend to add some raised beds for garlic and onion, which are staples around our house. We talked about digging a root cellar into the south east corner of the house, but that won't happen for a while. There are many ideas in the works here and we are excited to see what the future brings! I'm still hoping for goats and maybe a dog, but that may be wishful thinking!
