This week I took down one of my pens. Carried the metal panels by hand across the field and built a loading pen. Then I’ve spent and will continue to spend the next few days getting them comfortable loading into the pen for when the trailer comes.

These 3 steers I paid a total of $500 for last June. I fed them $900 worth of hay and $800 worth of grain total. Market rate is between $2.50-$3.50 for steers of this quality.

I’ve done this entirely on my own. I’m a 37 year old woman, farming by myself. I do get a little help with round bales from a neighbour.

So I’m proud of myself. This year I think I’ll actually make some money

Curious to hear how I make out next week at auction?

So crazy enough, I pressure clean my rug when it gets pretty dirty. But I last did it on my metal fence at my old place. I’ve since moved.

As you know, a wet rug is a HEAVY rug.

But I’ll also hang some comforters and sheets, etc.

Well, I had to put down one of my favorite roosters yesterday, I had an idea I was gonna have to at some point but not necessary so abruptly. Let me back up a bit.

We bought more chics (well known hatchery) back in Aug of 2024. We asked for 12 and they ended up sending us 15 so we felt blessed to have the extra 3. Well turns out we ended up with 3 roos from the batch. 2 Buff Orph we called "Shake and Bake" and a Speckled Sus called Uncle Sam. We weren't for sure how this would play out, we already had a very well behaved and "trained" Easter Egger Roo, but we would now have 36 hens so we hoped it might work out. Some might ask why would we even consider 4 roos, well, we live in the country and have a serious hawk problem. We let our girls free-range on an acre of land so we figured it might actually work out.

Everything was fine till about 2 weeks ago when i noticed one of the Buff Orph roos seemed to be becoming a bit aggressive not just toward the other hens but roos as well. It wasn't too serious, it was typical pecking order roo scuffles here and there, never lasting to long or producing any blood.

That all changed and took a violent turn yesterday. I first noticed him chasing my Easter egger roo, the smallest of the 4. He'd eventually catch him and give a few pecks and stop. By the afternoon though this had changed to all out war. He would aggressively run all the roos down and it would turn into a knock down drag out old school cock fight. The problem was though he just didn't seem to know when to quit. You see what most folks may not know is, roos will fight and eventually one will submit and typically the fight will stop there but he'd keep at them, almost like when a roo mounts a hen. Once the roo would submit he'd get on their back and just continue attacking their head to a point of drawing blood.

I managed to catch him and put him in a solo coop I have for sick or injured hens. I kept him in there for about 5 hours hoping this would calm him down. But, unfortunately, once I let him back out he immediately went on the war path again so I had to take action. I called some folks who might want him for meat but no one was interested so he was buried in the back of the property.

I spent the next 2 hours catching and treating my 3 other roos and their injuries. In 6 years of having chickens I've never seen a roo just go terminator like this. I hope and pray I never have to again, not only are my chickens a source of eggs for me and my extended family, they are my pets and I love each and everyone of them. Rest in peace "Shake".

This may be too many questions to put in one post but I’m going to go for it anyway. I am very fortunate to have a spring on my property, and a previous owner even put in a spring box! I don’t know when, but it’s been around long enough to be marked on all of the county parcel records. I have a long, skinny 8 acres and the spring is about 2/3 back on the property, far from my house at the front. When I moved in the cover on the box (corrugated metal roofing) had caved and it was full of leaves and debris. The streambed flowing away from the spring was eroded into a marshy mess. My son and I have been working to clear a path from the spring to a creek that’s about 50’ away, and my current task is to get all the water out of the box so I can clean out about 6” of silt at the bottom. Here are my questions, and I’m adding some pictures to help visualize. The spring box has 2 drums/ cisterns, I suspect the spring flows into one, that then fills the other. When I empty as much water as I can from one it refills so quickly that I can’t really get to the silt effectively. Is the only solution to bucket faster? And/or shovel it out quickly? I’m definitely not complaining about a potentially very productive spring. We’ve tried various pumps and nothing has been great. Also I unearthed some asbestos siding in the spring box today (it looks exactly like the siding I just paid $$$ to remove from the house). Why would that have been part of the spring box design whenever it was built between 1955 and 2020? At what point in this process should I get the water tested to see if it’s potable? It seems to be well protected from groundwater based on recent rains.

A little over 100 yards of my 10 acres is bordered by a small river. This year the beavers have been going to town on trees close to the river. Most of the trees i dont have a particular use for and already had plans to cut them down eventually. So it is what it is, saved me some work but they get the wood.

So now ive got a mostly cleared out section that needs to be made use of. Originally wanted to plant cherry trees there but i currently dont have the funds to either obtain a few cherry trees nor defend them against a beaver invasion.

I was gifted a dozen raspberry plants yesterday and probably have a dozen that i could dig up from my parents house. 15 seconds on google let me know this is a topic to discuss with people rather than an algorithm. Dont search beaver and raspberry together.

Will beavers leave brambles alone? Will a thick enough patch of brambles along the river (i can see their access point, its very obvious.) deter them from any further damage?

Wild blackberrys grow like weeds here and i have enough that i didnt hack down to move them to their access point and make it as thick and dense as needed.

Homesteading off grid home births. Without a Midwife.

In 1981 we were building up a cabin, garden, etc, on a river, 5 miles down a 4wd road. We were still living in a Tipi when wife got pregnant with our 2nd baby.

For our 1st homebirth our Midwife was arrested for practicing medicine without a license, on the day her water broke and labor started. We delivered at home, by ourselves.

By the time 2nd birth approaches, we have the cabin enclosed, but still only half a floor.

This was a before cell phones. And we were 9 miles from a pay phone. Wife's cousin was staying with us so he could go to the phone for Midwife.

The night finally came, phone call was made.

But our baby decided to come faster the Midwife. Lol. So we delivered him by the light of kerosene lamps.

The Midwife showed up in time to deliver the placenta, which was nice.

All in all, it was a really beautiful birth experience. It strengthened our beliefs in our ability to be self-sufficient and take care of ourselves.

Questions ? Comments ?

I just moved into a new home which has many fruit trees and bushes. One is a Triumph self fertile muscadine bronze grapevine. It sits very low to the ground but I’d love to trellis it. I’ve never had grapes before so I would love guidance on how to trellis and maintain this vine for best grape production!!

What are your thoughts on this loafing shed design? Mainly wondering if there is anything you wish you would have done differently or glad you did?

I want render My own tallow and use it in things like soap eventuall, but I’ve heard people say that in the summer you can smell it on your skin. If anyone has done this themselves lemme know if this is true or not.

Hi, we're getting chickens, we have a large coop with a dirt floor at the moment. They'd only use the coop for roosting other than that we have a big outdoor covered area and a chicken run for them. What would be the easiest flooring for the coop to keep clean? We can't afford cement I've seen videos of people using everything from sand to plywood. I was thinking of using old plywood and just spraying it off with a water hose but my family is telling me that's a bad idea.

I’m sorry but this is a bit of a rant but I am so sick and tired of development. I’m so tired of everything in my state getting built up and developed, any time now I see a pretty piece of property a few weeks later it’s bulldozed and houses are being piled on top of it.

I was born and raised an hour and a half south of Nashville in a very rural town and it still is a rural town and county but it’s only a matter of time until it’s not. Recently within the last few years Tennessee has exploded and essentially everywhere is getting built up in middle Tennessee. I get so sick and tired of leaving my county now because every other county around is just on build build build mode. Not only that but traffic has gotten awful too that going north towards Nashville sucks and takes way longer than it used to. Every property that is listed for sell has advertised “dear Nashville developers, here’s your opportunity ….”. Everyone is listing everything for housing potentially, commercial potential and so on and I’m sick of it. Not to mention most of these transplants are rude, awful and complain about the area that they just moved to and many of the treat you like you’re a dumb country person that doesn’t know anything. I’m tired of these people with a holier than thou attitude.

I’m just overall sick of the development, the people, the high prices that no one local can afford. So tired of everyone wanting to change everything, with people wanting more, more, more, until the rural area is no longer the same then they complain about “I remember when this place was rural” like no shit it was until you wanted everything changed. Overall I’m sorry for the rant but it’s been on my mind that I hate everywhere I look just gets changed for some shitty cookie cutter subdivision or those new barndaminium houses which look soulless in my opinion. I just want where I live to not change to the extent other places have, some growth is good but at the rate other places are growing it’s not a benefit but a strain on the local communities

This may be too many questions to put in one post but I’m going to go for it anyway. I am very fortunate to have a spring on my property, and a previous owner even put in a spring box! I don’t know when, but it’s been around long enough to be marked on all of the county parcel records. I have a long, skinny 8 acres and the spring is about 2/3 back on the property, far from my house at the front. When I moved in the cover on the box (corrugated metal roofing) had caved and it was full of leaves and debris. The streambed flowing away from the spring was eroded into a marshy mess. My son and I have been working to clear a path from the spring to a creek that’s about 50’ away, and my current task is to get all the water out of the box so I can clean out about 6” of silt at the bottom. Here are my questions, and I’m adding some pictures to help visualize. The spring box has 2 drums/ cisterns, I suspect the spring flows into one, that then fills the other. When I empty as much water as I can from one it refills so quickly that I can’t really get to the silt effectively. Is the only solution to bucket faster? And/or shovel it out quickly? I’m definitely not complaining about a potentially very productive spring. We’ve tried various pumps and nothing has been great. Also I unearthed some asbestos siding in the spring box today (it looks exactly like the siding I just paid $$$ to remove from the house). Why would that have been part of the spring box design whenever it was built between 1955 and 2020? At what point in this process should I get the water tested to see if it’s potable? It seems to be well protected from groundwater based on recent rains.

Hi everyone. I have a small vegetable farm and started using non-woven cloches last year to great success. However, it is pretty windy here at that time of year and I really struggled keeping the sheets secured without tearing.

First I tried scaffolding poles I had lying around but they just rolled off. Then I tried clips to hold the cloth to the poles, but they ripped the cloth over the long term. Then I tried landscaping pins over the poles and that was okay but far from perfect and it put holes in the sheet anyway. In the end I had an inefficient, ineffective mishmash of poles and pins and rocks all piled on top of the sheets.

This year my plan is to get some sandbags, the ones used to stop flooding, and fill them with maybe 1-2 kg of soil from another part of the field and place them every 1-2 m along the rows. The thing is, I have 190 m of rows to cover so filling the bags would be a fair bit of work. I also don't really have anywhere to store the filled bags so I would have to empty and fill them again each year. So now I'm thinking of burying one side of the cloches in the ground on the windiest side so then I only need half the number of bags. That will still allow me to access the rows to look after the plants.

Or is there a more sensible way to go about this?

How do you guys use cloches at scale? I can't imagine the work needed on a large farm.

Southern Georgian Bay, Ontario

Hi all,
These willow shrubs on my property (green) and my neighbour's across the road (yellow) are blocking my view of the sunset. I have permission to change my neighbour's plant however I want. The red line follows the course of branches I've put down to mark out where I want to eventually plant and grow a hedge that I will eventually lay in a British style. This line is about 15 feet away from the willow on my side. I thought about putting the hedge line so that it includes our willow and that pine, but with snowplowing and water retention I decided it wouldn't work. I'll mow the house side and let the far side grow wild.

I want to keep these plants alive because they are helpful windbreaks, help suck up water from our wetlands, and I generally want more plants not less for obvious reasons. The problem is I can't decide on the best way to cut these plants.

Here are my options as I see them:

1. Simply cut the tops off to shorten each bush; I'll cut so that our sightline from our sitting area is a bit below the horizon. I guess I'd also tighten their overall spread a little bit
2. Cut the vertical canes away and plant/propagate them along the hedge line; I could leave some and let the root ball continue sending shoots up
3. Lay my willow over top of the pond and see if it roots in the water and similarly lay my neighbour's

Generally speaking, I want the laid hedge project to be as biodiverse as possible, so I don't necessarily want it all to be willow; native Canadian maples, various dense berries, thorns, etc. That said, this area is extremely wet all of the time so perhaps free willows are the way to go?

What would you do?

Over the last few years I've been learning to make a lot of my own products at home: yogurt, cheeses, butter, etc. Are there sources to buy bulk pasteurized milk? I get tired of buying a gallon at a time. (I'm not wanting any debate on pasteurized vs raw milk) I'm just looking for options to buy in larger quantities, or if I just continue buying multiple gallons at a time.

I was at an auction over the weekend and there were a bunch of “odd” breed pigs. I wasn’t sure about the picture policy but I got this one. Anyone know the breed? Tiny legs?

This year I will try to make my own sweet potato slips.

Got to reflecting on the tariffs, what will be impacted, and of that what I need for my day to day. At the end of the reflection I think that my transportation (fuel, etc.) and home (property maintenace) budgets will be most impacted because I mostly buy produce, some of which is completely locally made.

Everyone else out there, do you think you'll feel a big impact on your "needs"? Obviously "wants" will be impacted because they're mostly made overseas, but as long as we already have the habits of buying from local producers will we really feel the impacts?

If you're one of the local producers do you think you'll have to raise prices or get extra costs from these tariffs?

Last year our goat yoghurt was completely smooth and sort of sweet in taste. This year we just made the first two batches and it's slightly 'grainy' like cottage cheese and slightly sour in taste. Any ideas why? We used siggis Skyr, 110 degrees for 11 hours

Hello all. My wife and I are beginning our search for the best place to start a decent homestead. The ultimate goal is to run a Doberman rescue on ample, considerably safe land where we grow our own food (plants and animals). I'm fine with a well wherever I live, but I do want electricity (solar power is fine) and internet. Given these basic goals, what are some pros and cons you can think of for each of these states?

I’m really curious about what it’s like to live off grid in Australia. I keep seeing videos of people doing it in New Zealand, but hardly anything from Australia (maybe it’s just the algorithm).

Here are a few things I’ve been wondering:

What are rural or off grid communities like outside the big cities?

How are the laws and red tape for people living off grid?

What’s the rainfall like on the east coast?

Any issues with predators? I’m asking because I know Australia has kangaroos, foxes, snakes, and all that...

Would love to hear from anyone living this lifestyle or who knows more about it!

I'm curious if anyone has found a different solution to dealing with carpenter bees, aside from the typical traps. I'd love to keep their fat butts around, but boring holes into my house isn't really going to work for me.

I have seen some promotion of "houses" just for them, but that seems like it would just help support a larger population in the area, rather than keep all away from the home.

At the moment, the only solution seems to be let them die in traps. Sad. Thoughts?

After spending my 20s loving rural life with big gardens, poultry, dairy goats, and pigs, I’m having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that my current life trajectory doesn’t have that in the cards (now, and rather likely never again on that scale). I don’t need to split wood and get the fire started, or get up at midnight to feed a baby goat, or swear up and down the garden when I get spooked by a snake minding its own business.

I’m absolutely gutted by that fact.

My boyfriend is not into self-sufficiency or contingency prepping (and don’t go critiquing him for that, he’s my other half and I’m not ditching him). We live in his house which, while rural is more of “subdivision in the woods” rather than “farmland”. We own a decent parcel of dense forested land 30m from the house, with is off grid with no water (and I work full time, so going there daily isn’t really feasible).

I’m still planning for small projects (quail, compost, rabbits, aquaponic lettuce inside) and have some plots at the community garden, but I’m emotionally clinging to the “what was and will never be again”. I need to move beyond this thinking, as it sure isn’t serving me or my mental health! I know for me it isn’t necessarily the scale, it’s the lifestyle that I need for my sanity.

I’d love to hear any stories or ideas about how you live this life with such constraints as space, not disturbing neighbours, and a partner who’s just not into it (and thus it’s a one-peep operation).