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Post by cedarhollowhomestead on Jan 3, 2020 19:14:53 GMT -6
Hello, I'm Melody from central Georgia. My hubby told me about this site after Ron from Heavy Hitter Okra told him about it. Even though I had zero experience with anything gardening, homesteading or canning while growing up, I became very interested and started researching and growing stuff before I was 20. By the time I turned 30 I was growing a large % of my own food and no longer worked for anyone besides myself. From the food I grew I dived into canning. My income was coming from selling my canned goods (from things that either I grew or purchased from other local sources) and baked goods along with selling unusual varieties of seeds and seedlings locally, and from teaching classes on canning and intensive, container, and food forest style veggie gardening. I did that for years until 8 years ago when I relocated to Georgia. Hubby and I are closing on a 93 year old farmhouse on 5 acres within the next 2 weeks (as long as the lawyers don't throw up any more delays). We're planning on really upping our ante with the amount of our own food we're hoping to produce. We have approximately 0.5 acre area that we're going to grow several things in his row style gardening - tomatoes (we really LOVE our salsas, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes), Heavy Hitter Okra (which we've grown for 4 years now - Thanks Ron!!!), corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. There's also an area right off the kitchen which I'll be doing my no-till, intensive, companion style planting in raised beds. Just about everything else will be planted there. Some of the things that pop into my mind include cooking and medicinal herbs, cherry and slicing tomatoes, various hot and sweet peppers, beans and peas, squash, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, cukes, eggplant, greens (lettuces, mustards, spinach), melons, parsnips and rutabagas, plus some beneficial edible flowers. Also going to grow garlic and asparagus somewhere. LOL The property currently has 14 or 15 HUGE pecan trees, an old pear tree, and a good sized fig tree. I'll be putting in various fruit trees and bushes around on the property as well. Aside from the garden, we're also planning on animals for protein - chickens, turkeys, quail, rabbits, and I'm still tossed up between goats and sheep (leaning more towards sheep since I also spin, crochet and weave). Also heavily debating on 2 Piney Woods Cows for the milk and meat. 3 of the 5 acres is in planted pines and the piney woods cows thrive on that type of landscape. I'm also hoping to getting 2 horses for myself and our daughter. Plus, since the location is very rural and wooded and there's a problem with ticks (and the thought of lyme disease scares me) I'm thinking we're going to get a flock of guinea birds. So. That's us in a nutshell in regards to gardening / homesteading. Oh, I did forget to mention that our little girl (she's 6 and I homeschool her) has declared that she's going to have her OWN veggie garden this year! Plus she wants to expand her worm farm enough to sell some and start selling baked goodies at the local farmers market to "help pay bills so daddy can stay home with us more"
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Post by macmex on Jan 4, 2020 7:02:03 GMT -6
Hi Melody, welcome to Green Country Seed Savers! It looks like you can be a great asset here. Sounds like you have an incredibly busy lifestyle.
I'll put in my 2 cents on the ticks. Yes, if you can tolerate them, get guineas. They do eat a lot of ticks. Ducks, turkeys and chickens also eat ticks, but they don't range as much. The guineas really cover a lot of territory. On top of that, I'd recommend that you purchase and use permethrin, from your local feed store. They sell it in spray cans, which are meant to be sprayed on one's clothing. I just calculated the concentration and mixed my own from the permethrin they sold for application on animals. One doesn't use it like regular insect repellent, you're supposed to saturate your clothing (I just do socks and pants), let it dry, and then use those clothes when outdoors. The permethrin is effective in repelling ticks and chiggers for six washings.
During a normal year, I probably have had a couple of tick bites a day, from around April until July, and that, in spite of using a deet based insect repellent. On occasion have had as many as 30 ticks get hold of me in a single encounter, and they often leave scars which last until the following spring. Our daughter has a couple of tick borne diseases along with the red meat allergy which sometimes comes with them. So this is very personal to me.
At any rate, the good folks at our feed store recommended permethriin and I finally decided to try it. Last year I think I may have had one or two tick bites, the entire year. I'm sold!
As far as sheep versus goats: we have both. I will tell you that if you want milk, you need the goat (or a cow). If you raise them for meat, I'd go with the sheep. We have hair sheep, which are pretty resistant to parasites. Our experience is that the sheep size up about twice as fast as a goat. Also, and this is a personal preference, I would eat sheep over goat almost any day. I can't tell goat from venison, and I like them both. The way we process our meat, I can honestly say that we almost never experience gamey flavor; no complaints with goat meat. But sheep is absolutely to die for. Also, if you have Hispanics or Middle Easterners within an hour of you, you'll find that you can sell either, very easily. But sheep do seed to sell better.
I periodically sell sheep or goats on Craigslist, and I have to admit, that some of my favorite encounters have been with the people who purchase sheep and goats from us.
Okay, I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I can come back and comment more, later.
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Post by macmex on Jan 4, 2020 7:09:38 GMT -6
Okay, I'm back (less than a minute went by). Kudos on how you're raising your daughter! We homeschooled our three. It was definitely worth it. They're all adults and doing very very well.
Video about our daughter's first garden
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Post by cedarhollowhomestead on Jan 5, 2020 10:18:23 GMT -6
macmex Thank YOU very much! I'll be looking into that repellent - it sounds great! Hubby does land surveying & timber and he comes home with ticks all the time even with using deet repellent. Yes, I like being busy. Well, not so much busy but productive. I really cannot stand busy work. LOL I have ADD and learned years ago the way for me to be able to get things accomplished was to have many things that I can jump to when I suddenly lose interested in one. Thank YOU for the info on sheep vs goats! Leaning more towards sheep now. If you were to raise up goat for milk, does she need a buddy or two of her own species? As far as taste, we really cannot stand the flavor of the majority of grocery store meat... A friend has pasture beef and we get some from him occasionally, but the majority of our red meat is venison. Speaking of which, there's a beautiful 8 point that we've caught on camera on the property we're buying that will hopefully be in the freezer not long after we close on the property. We've caught a large variety of critters on camera so far... Many deer, a bobcat, 2 coyotes, coons, squirrels, and a single boar hog. Hopefully we'll be able to dispatch the hog before he tells his friends. LOL Our girl is excited to go squirrel hunting. She got her very first pellet riffle for Christmas. I'm just concerned about keeping livestock alive with the bobcat and coyotes... Re homeschooling - thank you! We (her & I) are enjoying it. I always enjoy hearing about how others are doing that were homeschooled.
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Post by cedarhollowhomestead on Jan 5, 2020 10:20:46 GMT -6
Hi Bonnie Thank you! I doubt that's all your good at. Specially since good dirt and compost is the start of good veggies. I'm concerned a bit about finding time to fit in homesteading with homeschooling. Any suggestions?
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Post by glen on Jan 5, 2020 12:44:21 GMT -6
Welcome to the forum. This is a good place to meet some very nice people. And, we save seeds here. We save seed, and we share seed. There is also some very good gardeners here. Again, welcome.
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Post by macmex on Jan 5, 2020 14:17:30 GMT -6
Melody, One should have at least two goats, just to keep them out of trouble. They do much better with at least two. If you want to milk, you might start out getting a young doe and a young wether (castrated male). In about 1 1/2 years you'll want to eat the wether. They become obnoxious in their second year, but oh, they do taste good! By that time, you should have bred your doe and had one or two kids hit the ground, so now you'd have company for her. You could keep this cycle going.
If you only have one doe, you will probably want to look around to find someone who will let you breed to their buck. This would be the most efficient way to deal with breeding. One breeds the doe(s) every fall.
I have a doe, due to kid, in a little over two weeks. With most breeds, kidding can start as early as Christmas and run as late as June. They tend to go into heat with the first cool nights in late summer, and gestation is 150 days. The one oddball breed that comes to mind are the Nigerian Dwarves. Though rather small, they do milk well for their size, and they apparently will breed at any time of the year. We have LaMancha. We started with Nubians, which are also very good. Saanen, Alpine, Toggenburg and Oberhasli are other breeds which can be quite good.
We have livestock guardian dogs, which are amazing. They protect us. They protect all our animals, and, they keep both deer and wild hog off the homestead. Here's a link to a blog I did on livestock guardian dogs.
Why Get a Livestock Guardian Dog?
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Post by macmex on Jan 5, 2020 15:02:35 GMT -6
I'd add that the best way to get a milk goat is to purchase a newly weaned doeling, at 6-8 weeks of age. They are cheaper at this time and there are more to pick from. Additionally, you are less likely to be getting somebody's reject. It is really a challenge to get an adult of quality at a good price. People tend to keep the good ones. A doe born before April will be ready to breed by Octobe/November of the same year. She should have a single kid for the first kidding, and after that, twins.
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Post by rdback on Jan 6, 2020 19:50:09 GMT -6
Welcome Melody! Pull up a keyboard and stay a while!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jan 9, 2020 22:22:07 GMT -6
Hi Melody, welcome to Green Country Seed Savers.
I've raised beef cattle, mules, and horses, all my life. For my 2 cents worth, I'd like to advise against purchasing more than one large animal at a time, if you've only got five acres of forage. At least until you have a working knowledge of what your new land can produce ... One horse alone can decimate 5 acres of grass pretty quickly, by walking and peeing or pooping on almost every blade of grass faster than it can grow. If you're not careful and overgraze your pasture, large animals will end up eating you out of house and home. Hay is expensive when you have to buy it as an only means of nutrition. One cow in Oklahoma requires one ton of hay per winter. (About 30 square bales). I'm not at all familiar with what it takes to get a cow through the year in Georgia though.
We learned the hard way that our 5 acres is about 3 acres of light timber and wouldn't support more than one cow or one horse. I had been raised on 210 acres of lush pasture land, plus a 60-acre hay meadow. I really had no idea how much a horse could eat because we always had so much pasture that it didn't matter. Growing up, we ran 90 head of beef cattle and 9 to 38 head of working horses and mules. (We also ran a riding stable and a stagecoach service). We had access to several acres of Corps of Engineers Land and leased a year 'round creek, so water was also not a consideration.
When we moved out here on this 5-acre place, we were unpleasantly surprised to find out that what we had was not enough to meet our high ambitions. We encountered two record-breaking droughts between 2006 and 2011 and ended up losing our shirts trying to sell off livestock in a market where no demand existed. People's wells and ponds were going dry, there was no grass or hay for sale, and cattle were dying in the trailers while waiting in line at the sale barns. The sale barn in Tahlequah closed operations due to high heat and severe losses and desperate farm folks were dumping cattle alongside the roads because they could no longer feed or water them. Square bales of hay were almost non-existant and round bales skyrocketed to $60.00 per bale. I know those were extreme circumstances, but things like that happen and if you are caught off-guard, it can wipe out a small operation. We had to sell out, lock stock and barrel. All our wagons, harness, tack and saddles too.
Small livestock such as goats or sheep are much more economical. If I had it to do all over again, I would start off with a couple of sheep and a few goats, as sheep and goats do not compete for pasture. Goats are browsers like deer and sheep are grazers like cattle. If you got in a bind you could eat them ... Not so with horses or mules. Goats will provide more milk than a family can drink and sheep provide meat and wool.
I would also recommend a small flock of laying hens for eggs and a few ducks or geese for meat. George introduced me to a heritage breed of meat chickens called, "Buckeye". They forage quite well and also lay, but provide a lot more meat than my old Dominiquer hens did. (of course, they also eat a lot more than my smaller birds). Those things, along with a good size garden will keep you plenty busy and possibly not scratching for too much money for feed. We have a quarter-acre garden and grow enough produce to make tractor and equipment payments by selling our surplus at the Farmers Market and a few restaurants in town.
Right now, I'm converting our 70' x 90' hog pen into an Elderberry, Thornless Blackberry, and Muscadine Grape patch. I set out 40 Elderberry starts yesterday and got a fairly good start on setting out Thornless Blackberries today. I set out Muscadines about two weeks ago. In about two more years, I hope to be selling those at the market, along with my garden produce and pawpaws.
It's not farming the way I was brought up, but we get by. I just wish I had started off with smaller livestock, rather than visa~versa
Best of luck in your endeavors. Homesteading done right is its own wonderful reward.
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Post by macmex on Jan 10, 2020 7:38:57 GMT -6
Here's a post I did on Muscovies. They are superb producers of meat and eggs.
The Muscovy Duck for Food Production
The only drawbacks on the Muscovy are:
1) They really need to roam and pick their own nesting spot, in order to succeed at hatching their ducklings. I use halves of discarded car top carriers, turned over, to make "little dog houses" for some nesting areas. But they often prefer my hay barn or a hollow tree.
2) They actually need to free range some, in order to thrive. Though one MUST feed them, they also want to eat rodents and other small critters. 3) They are laborious to pluck. Butchering a Muscovy takes me about twice the time as a chicken But, oh! are they good! 4) They don't naturally do well, protecting their young from the cold. In order to raise ducklings when it's cold, I have to pen the duck with a homemade shelter/brooder (see below). Otherwise, she'll lose them all to hypothermia.
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