Blue Hollow Homestead

Step 1: Acquire Raw cow's milk from a local farm. You can also use your own cow of course, but we don't have the resources for a cow at this point. We buy our milk at Mad Radish CSA in Chesterfield, NH (http://madradishcsa.com/). It is illegal to sell unpasteurized milk in Vermont. If you can not find raw milk anywhere, you can skip this step and buy heavy cream from the grocery store. I much prefer supporting a local farm and the taste of raw cows milk.  When using raw cows milk, if you let it sit overnight the cream will rise to the top. There will be a clear line showing where the cream is and where the milk is. Here we have already separated the cream from one of the bottles of milk. You will need to separate the cream. This is what you will turn into butter. To separate the cream from the milk, we use a small ladle and scoop it off the top. Almost two cups of cream! Step 2: Acquire a jar with a twist on lid. This will be your high tech butter making ...

If you raise chickens or plan to at any point in your life, it is likely that at some point a chicken will refuse to get off of her nest box. She will sit there for days, not lay a single egg, and fluff up (sometimes even peck!) at you when she thinks you are possibly in her space. This hen is broody. If you are looking to hatch eggs at that very second, this can be a great thing. A broody hen will take all of the stress out of hatching eggs for you and there are many benefits. If you do not want chicks currently or do not have any fertile eggs available, you will need to use a broody breaker. This can be a pain in the butt. After multiple failed or long attempts, we have finally determined the cheapest, easiest way to break a broody that works great for us. Here is Fluffy, the notoriously broody Silkie. We put a large dog crate on top of 2 sawhorses. This makes her unable to make a nest anywhere and eventually they stop being broody- sometimes in just a day, sometimes i...

We permanently attached the run to the rabbit hutch so that our girls can live a more natural (but still safe) life. I wish I got some pictures the first moment we opened up the run but I was too busy enjoying the sweet bunnies sprinting around! First, we lay down feed bags and wire cloth to the bottom to prevent bunnies digging out (or something digging in!). It is not quite done yet. We will be adding a roof on the top. Instead of hay inside of the run we will fill it with straw to prevent urine burn. We also have some cute little tunnels and hiding areas in the works. Look what else is being set up. Can anybody guess what this means for the future of the homestead? HINT: There may be some more bunnies coming soon!!  The girls enjoying the new run.  Temporary Rain repellent/ shade creator. Maple Being her stunning self.

*WARNING: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS* When I daydream about my perfect life, I picture happy chickens clucking at my feet, collecting fresh eggs every morning, having gardens that are overflowing with fresh vegetables, having ducks quacking at my heals, sweet bunnies hopping up every time they see me, baby chicks peeping in the brooder, maybe even a couple of goats to give us fresh milk each morning. What isn't included in my daydreaming (and is a commonly overlooked part of homesteading) is going out to the coop one day only to see a massacre before my eyes, having to clean up the corpse of baby chicks who have been trampled in the mail, a whole crop being destroyed by a pest or not growing properly, or having to put down a baby turkey. While many people pretend that the really hard part of homesteading doesn't exist, push it from their mind, and focus on the happy chicken thoughts in their head the fact of the matter is that death and loss are things that any homesteader is force...