What I Did To Prep This Week: February 21st 2021 – February 27th 2021
Hello Pack. I hope you all have had a great week of prepping. We can now see actual land and not big mounds of snow on 85 percent of our survival homestead! We are once again living on a mud farm – but I welcome the change from snow and ice. Our private farm road is only accessible by 4-wheel drive right now, and even then just barely.
Groundwork has resumed on our daughter’s home site. There is one contractor’s truck stuck in our field after sliding past a gate, but we can deal with that later. I do not like the widening of our ultra-secluded creek entrance near the bottom of our land, but it has to be done to get Brea’s home through.
All of the digging near the creek with our backhoe did result in ripping out any dormant poison hemlock that was about to try and regrow again this year – so that is a definite plus.
The ODNR guy suggested I let our goats eat it because they are the only supposedly known creature on the planet that can consume or inhale poison hemlock spores and survive.
I nixed that idea in rapid fashion. Not only do I not trust the supposed immunity goat’s boast against poison hemlock, but my grandkiddos (alright, and me too) pet and hug on the goats. Hemlock can remain viable on a surface for up to three years.
In other preps this week we had another exciting arrival in the barnyard. Baby Zoey finally had her kids. She threw twins her first time as a nanny, which is quite unusual.
She and her kids are doing great. Our three bred mini-donkeys and three more bred goats should be delivered here on our hill in the coming weeks.
The donkeys earn their keep guarding all of our herds and flocks from coyotes. Selling the mini donkey babies is also a great way to funnel more money into our preps.
I got some seeds planted indoors this week – now it feels like spring is really and truly almost finally here.
I hope that the dwarf moringa seeds that I planted this year will do better than last – miniature versions of the “Tree of Life” are quite difficult to grow. They germinate easily but tend to dampen off even when their natural tropical environmental conditions are mimicked as closely as possible.
Planning for the Old School Survival Boot Camp continues to progress very well. We added two more presenters this week. Another local musical duo to perform after classes and an amazing rural Ohio couple.
The young couple that decided to ditch the modern world, sell their home, and live debt-free and off-grid inside of a camper on a beautiful homestead with their three sons.
Brittany and Justin are building a small home little by little to avoid having to finance the expense – and doing the work on the home themselves. When you are blessed to live in a rural area, you can do things like decide to build your own house and just walk outside on your very own land and start.
The couple has both a Honey I’m Homestead Facebook page and a YouTube channel documenting their journey, I highly suggest you check out their inspiring story.
This Week’s Questions:
- How are your food growing plans for this year moving along?
- How is the snow, freezing rain, and now mud impacting your outdoor preps?
- What do you think would be the most rewarding and the most challenging aspects of living completely off grid?
- What did you do to prep this week?