Second Weekend in, May, 2021: Homestead Homecoming

If you wanna see progress on the homestead, leave for Kansas for a few days then come home and look around.

The berries are ripe, the lawn needs mowed, the pigs are huge, the new comfrey is coming up, the rabbits are nearly big enough to start eating them, there's new thornless blackberry primocanes everywhere, the corn is coming up, the volunteer corn (yeah, we have that here I guess. It's either volunteer or perennial...) is flowering, did I mention the grass needs mowed? Goodness, my cup overflows with abundant blessings! Nothing like a couple days off to show you that progress is being made.

Work got cancelled Sunday night for industry-wide shortages, likely going to be a big issue here soon. All the more urgency to get our act together here and start eating as much as we can from home. It's supposed to rain all week, which means I'll be getting wet while doing projects. Oh well, they all still need done.

It seems groceries are getting inflated to a decent degree. With all the economic shortages, new laws, and terrible monetary policy, it's no surprise.

My friend came over shortly after we got home. It was good to see him. He took a lot of pictures of the place using the awesome camera on his phone. All of today's pics except the primocane one are his. After some good talking and catching up it was time for supper and bed. There's something cool about sleeping at home at night with the family. I don't usually get that. I think when the van gets paid off next spring we'll have the financial ability to handle the pay cut of switching to day shift. That'd really be awesome.

Nate foraging strawberries

Rabbits

Monday morning the pigs knocked over their water barrel. This is a usual chore with pigs I've heard, and easy enough to fix. I got in to right it and the pigs got jumpy. They really are a lot like dogs, but a little less couth. Just that one little chore had me covered in mud from head to toe, it was hilarious.

Nate petting the pigs

Pigs

I could hang out with the pigs all day. I could hang out with peach trees all day. I could hang out with rabbits all day. It's awesome to have so much at home that I like, making no mention of my family 🤣

After washing off the mud, I was a tad lazy for a while. It was rainy, and will be rainy the rest of the week, but we got a couple hours of sun that got me up and at em. I prepped and planted one 4x6-ish sorghum bed, then mowed the side yard and taught farmer Sam to mow. While he mowed the front yard (sorry, @goldenoakfarm, I didn't get a picture), I prepped a 6x25-ish sorghum bed and dug twenty-six pecan trees out of the 6x30-ish bed that'll be another sorghum bed. These are the old beds from the community garden last year. The horse manure bedding has decomposed into mounds and heaps and gobs of fluffy mycelium and worm castings. I can't wait to see how the sorghum does in here. There's another spot I'll plant as well with sorghum, the other bed out front, but it'll be getting expanded somewhat to better fill the space it's in. Most of the pecan trees will be sold to friends in my community, and I reckon I'll keep a few for my place.

Pigs

Nate petting pigs

When the yard was mowed and a bit of sorghum planted, it was time for supper, then a couple hours of talk time with Melissa before going to work. It's always weird going back to work. It'd feel more natural staying home, to be sure. Maybe one day I'll grow up and become a farmer, that way I can sleep at home at night and hang out with pigs, peaches, chickens, and rabbits all the time.

Chickens in the food forest

Chickens

It's Tuesday morning now, time to be hitting "publish," so I'm gonna call it a day. Maybe I'll have energy to prep a bed when I get home in a couple hours... We'll see.

Chickens in the food forest

Love from Texas,

Nate 💚