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When we moved to our homestead one of the first things that I wanted to do was plant grass. I had planted grass before, so I was sure that I could do it again. I prepared the area, planted the seeds, and watered it daily. Unfortunately that was not enough. I don’t exactly know all of the reasons why my grass was a failure, but it definitely was. Since then I have been growing whatever I could grow in this desert that we live in. We have also been working on putting up fences so that we could add more animals to our homestead.

This summer I decided that I wanted to see if I could grow wheat here. I learned that I could grow some wheat, but that I also had to contend with the wild rabbits who were more excied about my wheat than I was, and I was pretty excited.

To grow my wheat I covered my soaked wheat berries with straw to keep the ground from drying out. Because that was somewhat successful I wondered if I could do the same thing for my grass seed and have success. I figured that if I could just get my grass up and out of the ground then I would only have to cover the ground with straw once, and then I could maintian the grass. The biggest obstacle was just geting the grass to grow in the first place.

Fortunately after three weeks I started to see tiny blades of grass growing up. Success!

Here we have grass growing with wild purslane. The grass is growing through the straw we covered the groud with, and we hope it will continue to grow and spread through the next year.

Now as I look around at my test area I know that I can get the grass to grow for a pasture.  However I am pretty sure that I will have to concentrate on getting small areas up at a time.

The reason that I have to do small areas at a time is because I am limited by our solar power (which powers our well). I only have a few hours during the middle of the day where there is enough sun to ‎set our srinklers and water my grass seed.  Because I have to water the grass daily until I can get it out of the ground, I have to limit myself to starting small sections of grass as a time.

Sometimes our monsoon season lasts for a few weeks where we live,  and we get lots of rain in August and September. Unfortunately this is not always the case, but if we do get a few weeks of rain this fall then I might get a larger area done at one time. If, however,  I put the seed out and it doesn’t rain then the ants, mice, and birds will surely escape with a lot of of the grass seed before it gets a chance to grow.

In the area that I have managed to get grass up I do have several spots where the grass didn’t come up, but I think that I can just reseed next year when what I have planted is well established.

What have I learned from all of this? Well basically I have learned what I keep learning. First to grow things out here I have to keep trying; I have to have patience; I have to keep learning; to be successful I can’t give up.

This summer my husband decided to take a position as camp director for a summer camp.  He is really good at what he does and he enjoys the job, but the pay is pretty low. Because of that we were not able to put any money into our farm this summer. However, I have still been able to make progress despite our current situation. The reason why I have been able to make progress is because when I set goals, I discuss my goals with my husband, my friends and my family.  This simple steps creates opportunities that I might now otherwise have.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine who was cleaning up her property and making some changes offered me some bricks and t-posts. I had shared with her my goals which included fencing in paddocks for my animals. When she was cleaning up her property she thought of me and made the offer.

My friend gave me enough t-posts to add a paddock for sheep next to my cow paddock. I still have to get the field fencing, but having help from others helps me to keep moving forward on my projects. We should always be willing to share our plans with others because we never know when we might get a little push forward on our goals.

Likewise another friend of mine offered me some catnip for my garden after taking a tour of my garden and learning my goals. She planned to thin out her catnip and thought me.

Catnip from my friend and neighbor.

Another place I received help on my projects was from my birthday. Because I shared my goals with my family my daugher and my mother-in-law gave me trees to add to my orchard for my birthday.

Black Mulberry tree given as a gift from my daughter for my birthday.

Honey Locust give as a gift for my birthday.

Sharing our goals with others is really powerful.
It can be difficult because it can make you feel vulnerable, especially if you don’t know if they will agree with you or make fun of you.  We leave ourselves open to feeling judged by others, but we also open ourselves up to help we might not otherwise get.

We are often told that finding balance in our lives is important. I couldn’t agree more, but I have found that balance looks very different than what I use to think it was. I use to think we give a little bit of what we have to all of the things that are important, but if we do that then we run out of resources before we can get to everything. We have to make choices to find balance and this requires focus and sacrifice.

We have a finite amount of time and resources.

Occasionally I hear a story about someone who has so much money they don’t know how to spend it all, but that seems to be the exception, definitely not the rule. And even if the resources for a person were unlimited, they would still be bound by the same time restrictions that we all have. Most of us have a finite amount of time and resources.

This is important because when we talk about finding balance we have to acknowledge that balance doesn’t mean we equally give our time and resources to the people and things we love. Rather it means that we have to choose what resource we give and how much we give to each person and each project. It means that we find a way to focus on one thing at a time.

Balance requires focus.

In order to have balance in our lives we can’t have our attention so divided that we are spread thin. This leads to stress, frustrations, and anxiety. Yes it is possible to spend time with your children while you are working on a project. In fact not only is it possible, but it is important. When we work with them we are teaching our children that we love them and that they can work hard and accomplish a goal. But balance requires that we also teach them other things like love, charity, and faith. Although it is possible to teach a lot of these things while we are working along side them, if we only spend time with our children then we are working then we lose that balance that we are seeking. Balance also means that we have to walk away from daily chores and play with our children.

Balance requires sacrifices.

When it comes to finances balance means that we have to allocate a limited amount of funds for an unlimited amount of costs, and in order to do that we have to make sacrifices. We have to choose how to spend the money we have and what to give up. We have to work hard to compensate for the things we can’t buy which often requires sacrificing time. We have to be creative and intentional. However being creative often requires giving up time for other things.  We have to pick what projects to work on because we can’t work on them all, and we can’t work on them all at once. We have to decide what we will work on and when we will work on it. This all requires that we sacrifice projects and time with people we value.

How then do we find balance.

When we understand that balance requires focus and sacrifice we can then find a way to truly have balance in our lives. At the point when we see things as they are we have to step back and look at the whole picture. We need to look at our long term goals in order find and have balance in our lives.

My long term goals look like this:

Raise my children with love and teach them.
Serve God and his children.
Strengthen my marriage.
Build a home business.
Build our homestead.
Play with my family.
(Not necessarily in this order)

It is easy to get focused on just one of these goals and allocate all my time and resources to accomplishing just one of these. That is why it is so important that to find my balance I look at the big picture.

When I look at my long term goals, then I have to look at my time and resources. I take out my calendar, and I first put on it the things that I can’t change. Then I hard things that are occasional but necessary. But what is important is that when I decide what to do and how to spend my resources I look at the entire list. If I don’t have things that are important to me on the list then I will run out of time and resources before I can put those important things into my life. The truth is that I will run out of time and resources and I will have to make sacrifices. In order to find balance I have to make sacrifices but I also have to make sure that I am seeing what is important.

Balance requires charity.

If we only have time for ourselves than we missed the point entirely. When our list of to dos is super long and our resources time and energy is spent we become exhausted both spiritually and mentally. In order to keep from wearing out we must find time to serve others. Charity rejuvenates us. Charity lifts our spirits. Charity heals us. Charity helps us to find our focus again and look at the whole picture again.

For me balance requires God.

This last part is probably the most important in my life. I already know that I don’t have enough time and resources, and to find balance I have to pray for help and guidance in both making choices about priorities and in reaching my goals. I know that God loves me and he wants me to succeed. Because I know this I ask him for help. When he doesn’t give me resources he gives me patience, understanding, and love. He helps me to see that what I have and what I can do is enough if I put him first.

Sometimes when we build things there is a plan that is made months in advance. Other times we build based on what is available. This is the case with our Cayuga ducks. We had an area where we could raise our Cayuga ducks, and all we needed to do was add a fence to keep them in. We knew from the beginning that at some point they would actually be able to fly over the small fence we built, but it was necessary to put up the fence until we were able to do more.

This is the original space for the Cayuga ducks which they have out grown.

Our Cayuga ducks haven’t started flying yet, but the water container they used needed to be upgraded to a bigger container. We already had the bigger container (which was a small kiddie pool), but it was half the size of their living area and there was no place to dump it. Since we dump and wash out their water daily this was a big problem. The first time I tried to dump it I ended up flooding their living space. Well ducks do like water and it was a hot day, but we definitely needed to make some changes if this was going to be a daily problem.

The Solution

I realized that I needed to increase their living space while at the same time finding a new space for their water so we could dump it daily. My daughter and I examined the current place and tried to come up with a new solution. All of our solutions involved moving the ducks to the back side of their current place and enclosing that. The biggest problem with that was we would be losing the protection from the weather and would need to build an new covered enclosure for them. The second problem was that it would be roughly the same size as the first space, so we wouldn’t be giving them more space. However, we would be able to dump the water daily without flooding their living space.

I called my husband to talk it over with him because he was temporarily out of town on business. I really hoped he might have some ideas. He immediately understood the problem and said, “Okay put a hole in the back of their coop.”

Why didn’t I think of that? Oh well, as long as someone was smart enough to think of it; it doesn’t matter if it was me.  So today we cut a hole in the back of their covered enclosure and then we added fencing to enclose a new area. This doubled the size of their living space while keeping a covered space for bad weather. It also allowed me to do something that I wanted to do. It allowed me to take their water out of their covered space. I didn’t want water in their sleeping space so this was a great solution.  Having damp flooring really isn’t a big deal in the hot summer months, but in the winter months wet bedding could be deadly.

Fix it up, wear it out, make it do. or do without! 

Before we go to the store and buy anything for a project the first thing that we do when we need to make changes is go on a walk-about. We walk around our property and take note of what resources that we have that we might be able to use for our project. When we did this we found two pallets that we thought would work on enclose the west and the north sides. The south and east side were already part of the duck coop. We also found  some fencing that we would be able to use to cover the bottom half of the pallet on the west side to keep the ducks contained. On the north side we just cut old 2x4s that we also had and filled in the holes of the pallet to make a semi-solid wall.

I am super happy that we were able to come up with a solutions for our ducks and to stay within our budget (which was actually $0).

Today was all about the bees. This morning I put on the bee suit for the first time. It is my husband’s bee suit, so it is a little big on me. However, it still does the job. Then I put syrup in the hive. We still don’t have a lot of flowering plants, so we decided to syrup them for a little longer.

This is me in my husband’s bee suit. It was custom made for him when he worked for a season as a bee keeper many years ago. I am quite a bit shorter than he is, and it really shows here.

Then I went with my son to the swap meet. I was delighted to find some beautiful roses for an amazing price. I thought my bees are going to love these roses. With the help of two of my beautiful girls I planted 7 rose plants in the perennial garden.

I have 2 more roses to plant as soon as I can decide where to plant them.

We are finally seeing out bees buzzing around the garden. It is exciting to follow their progress and to be part of this amazing process.

We are currently using a Warre Hive. It is top bar hive design. So far the bees haven’t complained.

Welcome to…WINDSWEPT FARM

Of all the things we have worked on, naming our farm was one of the most difficult. Probably because although we can rename it, we probably won’t.

Our breakthrough came when we started playing around with a farm name generator which was created for online farm games.  The online generator came up with some fun names and helped us find the perfect name for our “real” farm.

We have been working really hard this year adding new farm animals and crops that will soon be available for purchase from our farm. We hope to have lots of visitors over the next few years as our farm grows and our products increase.  Plan your visit today!

Plan your visit by sending us an email with your contact information and we will set up a visit.

tinyhousehomesteading@gmail.com