Feral Little Things

Cheating meal prepping by double batching soups we make for lunches and then freezing them into containers. This is a cilantro, lime and chicken soup that smells delicious.

All our alpacas are pregnant and due in June. The little guy my daughter is hugging is Sprout and he was born last June and is the most amazing little thing with people.

All my sweet babies born this year with their older brother born last year.

Cozy winter days mean lunch during homeschool is an amazing Greek lemon chicken soup with fresh bread right out of the oven. Goat cheese is being made on the counter, turkey broth from thanksgiving is in the canner, the house is clean, animals have been cared for, goats have been milked and school is done. Now we settle down for a relaxing afternoon.

Every single one of our does scheduled for kidding this spring is finally bred. I am estimating about sixteen new baby goats this spring!!!!

One of my absolute favorite things is fresh baked bread goods. It’s incredibly comforting slathering butter over steaming bread when you put all the work in to it and smelled it baking. These are my FAVORITE bacon, chive and cheddar biscuits, bagels under the towel resting and sandwich bread. I absolutely stole one of the biscuits fresh out of the oven.

My husband is a nutrition coach and I’m sure he hates these posts. But those biscuits were made with two sticks of butter and are literally heaven on earth with their perfect texture, savory deep flavor and bacon baked right in. In the morning, fry an egg, split one of these in half and slide your egg right in. Breakfast prepped and delicious in 10 mins all because you planned ahead. ❤️❤️

Today I borrowed my cousin’s AMAZING food processor to process 70 pounds of potatoes I got from my friend Paul Anderson. We’ve put about 20 pounds of hashbrowns, 15 pounds of sliced potatoes and I’m going to round off the day with 15 pounds of mashed potatoes and 20 pounds of steak fries.

Slice up your potatoes, blanch them for 3 mins in boiling water and layer them on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper to freeze for a few hours. Then vacuum seal! Boom. Potatoes ready to be pan fried, baked it air fried right from the freezer. No need to defrost before you cook them!

After three failed attempts the caramel that my other daughter made is finally ready. She has about eight more batches to make but before she can do that, this daughter is working on some fresh straeberry jam. And it’s a delicious one!

Every evening, I take a few minutes and record all the things for the homestead in my bullet journal for the homestead. Who we bred, feed we bought, animals we harvested, eggs collected, animals we sold or bought, milk amounts, everything. This helps me see the long term plan we have. We can look back over the year and see if we need to do things better or make adjustments.

Come join my kids and other homeschoolers at this craft fair!!!!

My kids signed up for the kids only craft fair at our church in December. It has to be 100% kid done products. So my 8 year old is getting help from her sister in making a magical substance called cajeta. It’s a Hispanic cinnamon vanilla caramel sauce made from goat milk that she will be selling there.

Please come see all the kids at Calvary Chapel on December 2nd from 10am-2pm at 9209 Ridge Road Cheyenne!!!

Our booth will be filled with cajeta, herbed goat cheese, salsa, homemade tortilla chips, fresh artisan bread, jams and jellies, medicinal balms, leather journals and tanned rabbit skins all made exclusively by my children!!! It’s such a cool concept!

We are adding a roof to these baby goat warming barrels to keep the rain and snow off the lights inside. And my dad got to experience goat yoga today. 😂😂

Tonight, all goat registrations have been handled and all alpaca blood tests for registrations have been ordered.

Four different help tickets to the American Dairy Goat Association but it got handled. There’s a huge learning curve in this life. But handle your stuff and move forward proud that you’ve learned some new things!

We have three of our goats bred for early spring babies and three more to go. The two new ones we brought in from Illinois are settling in just great! We did a food naming theme this year for all the new animals we brought into the homestead.

Here’s a recap of the ones we have new this year:

Sprout (baby alpaca)
Noodle (stud alpaca)
Graham (stud alpaca)
Pumpkin (goat mama)
Cider (goat mama)
Donut (baby goat)
Eclair (baby goat)
Waffle (baby goat)
Almond (baby goat)
Walnut (baby goat used for meat)
Vienna (baby goat used for breeding)

Next year will be cocktail names and my friend’s going with a coordinating theme which will be hilarious! Stay tuned on that combination!

We will have six goats, a Jersey cow and three alpaca all due this spring. We will be adding two angus steers this spring as well. Fall is the time for planning and getting things ready for the spring. Garden plans, beehive plans, breeding, birthing and butchering all need great planning.

And please enjoy Waffle dressed up for trick or treating which she did indeed go with us.

Bunnies are literally the best animals to raise for a homestead for kids to learn to be self sufficient. Rabbits can be raised in a very small area happily, they’re easy to breed, easy to butcher and easy to learn to cook. They teach your children how to care for a living thing they will eventually have to butcher and put in the freezer. So many lessons for them.

Today we are heading to Illinois to pick up two gorgeous Nigerian dwarf does from Roamin Ranch. We are adding to our herd from national grand championship lines. We need amazing milkers for our homestead. We will be picking them up tomorrow! Their names are Cider and Pumpkin and they’re bred for March babies!!

Here’s the high capacity meat chicken feeder! The bins on top hold six 40 pound bags of chicken feed that are gravity fed through pvc pipe to the pvc feeders at the bottom. There are four hinged lids to open and close at 12 hour intervals. We have about 160 meat chickens in this pen and this is entimated to feed them all for about 2-3 weeks without needing to be refilled. Managing and creating systems that work for you to lessen your work load is what I am all about. Working smarter and not harder. This was more effort in the beginning to design and create but this very effectively saves me over an hour every day filling and pulling feeders twice a day. Just open and close the lids on the bottom feeders and you’re done.