Blue Hollow Homestead

We did canning for the first time ever, using the most simple ingredients! We took a lot of pictures along the way to share with you all.  Step 1: Harvest Flowers We employed the children to help with this task. We picked 10 cups of dandelions and 3 cups of violets.  Step 2: Prepare Flowers  This step took the longest for the dandelions. We used scissors to cut off the bottoms of the flower and pulled off every bit of green. We set all of the greens aside as a treat for the rabbits, who were quite happy! The violets can go in whole, just make sure the stem is gone. When done there should be 3 cups of each flower. Step 3: Tea Next you boil enough water to cover the flowers. Pour boiling water over the flowers and let it rest until cool. We let some rest longer than overnight and are pleased with how those turned out. We then used a mesh strainer to separate the flowers from the tea. Measure out three cups of the tea.  ...

Here is how we sourced most of our own materials to make a goat house for almost free. I will explain our expenses.  We acquired our neighbors old hunting cabin. When I say old, I mean very  old. It doesn't look pretty, but some of the structural parts will save us quite a bit of money.   You see that above the window? Yeah, that is a bird nest. We soon discovered the cabin was overrun with birds, ant nests, and MICE. Gah!  First, we cleaned out the junk, which took a while. We then added vinyl flooring. We bought "seconds" at Home Depot, which means since they are flawed in some way they are heavily discounted. This step isn't necessary, so arguably we could have skipped it, but we find when cleaning it makes things MUCH easier. The whole roll was $50, and we have enough left to cover the floors on our rooster chicken coops we are building as well.  This is my future milking area. Can you envision it? I can't quite yet!...

It has been a long, cold winter and we are eagerly preparing for spring. We headed on over to Rock N Root Farm for a winter tour and some inspiration on how we can expand our homestead in the upcoming year. We took plenty of pictures so that you can admire the amazing work they do there and hopefully get some ideas yourselves!  After you go down the steep driveway and past their beautiful hand built home, you come across the chicken coop! Their chicken coop is a cattle panel hoop house. They free range their chickens, and you will notice many roosters and hens clucking about with the goats and hanging around the yard.  Right next to their chicken coop is the goat house. This structure is beautiful, made mostly of reclaimed materials (a theme you will notice around the farm- they are VERY resourceful!). If you open the right side of the house you will enter the spacious goat barn.   Here were a couple of cool features that we plan t...