First, I finally quit my day job selling cars right before the holidays so that I can concentrate all my time and energy on gardening and caring for animals. Fortunately, while much of the nation's economy is struggling, Danielle managed to land herself a better job and starts next week. Her new salary will afford the both of us some peace of mind as we dive deeper into the waters of homesteading.
In animal news: We're in the final stages of selecting the various animal breeds we plan on raising this year. We're getting some rabbits in the next few weeks (for food and worms), and we have two Nigerian Dwarf Dairy goats scheduled to be born on the 11th. Unfortunately, hatching eggs of the breeds of geese and chicken we desire won't be available until February, so those will have to wait a little longer. In an effort to maintain peace with our neighbors and keep the noise down, we've decided not to have any roosters. We will focus breeding rabbits, quail, duck, and geese.
Other sustainable excitement: I just got done rehabbing the neighbor's old, abandoned chicken coop. It was a mess at the beginning, but I've spent time cleaning it out and recently finished installing new nesting boxes. It still needs a few more roosts before the girls can move into the coop in the Spring.
We also ran into trouble finding a local source for oil lamps, but luckily we found some people selling them on the internet. Our lamps should be here within the week. We can't wait to see how many ways we can cut down on our energy usage this year.
We're still anticipating our biggest expense to be the compost and soil building components. We need this before we can begin the back breaking process of the double digging method of biointensive gardening. Danielle's working on submitting a proposal to Lowe's sponsorship program to see if the corporation will be willing to donate some of the materials we need. We hope to hear a response from Lowe's before the end of winter.
Keep checking back to see updates on all our happy animals and planting progress.
Happy New Year, and happy homesteading
Justin
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