Choosing Icelandic Chickens for Our Little Homestead and Raising from Day Old Cold Brooded Chicks

 

Along with everything else involved with moving and settling into a new place this summer, we added chickens to our little homestead. With the continued goal of creating a place where we are able to produce more of what we need on a regular basis from our own property. In preparation for this, last winter I did a lot of research and reading about what breeds would best for our situation. Like most thing, this meant I first had to figure out what my main goals were, so I could then determine what would fit with that. I wanted something that would:

Early July Tiny House Garden

So far this year the garden has been thriving overall. Which is wonderful since gardening is one of my favorite things to do. As is eating wonderful fresh foods. 😊 While the weather has been pretty cool (here high in the mountains, that means around freezing) for most of the spring and early summer, the frost covers have continued to do their job well. I probably covered the garden 85% of the nights, as well as some days, from planting in early May till

The Best Brownies Ever (And they're healthy!)

Do you like brownies? Especially rich soft almost fudge like brownies? Then this is the recipe for you! You know how most of the time when you see something labeled "gluten free," "dairy free," "vegan," etc you can often assume it's kind of a shadow of the normal version. Less wonderful but maybe edible? At least that's often been my experience. These are not like that. They are better than any other brownie I've ever had!  And everyone

Planting a Tiny House Garden with No Frost Free Summer

Planting a garden in a mountain corner of Wyoming where there is no official growing season... As in most areas have a "last frost date" and "first frost date" and in general (though not always!) you can pretty much count on plants growing with no frosts and freezes in between. If you don't know what your growing season is, you can put in your location in this handy little calculator - https://davesgarden.com/guides/freeze-frost-dates/index.php and it will tell you some general info. Like in my parent's area, they generally have a frost free growing season a little over 150 days long so they can plant things that take up to that many days to mature without freezing. But in my area, there's always a chance of frosts or freezes all summer. So really what I grow is kind of what many people would call a

Tiny House Garden - Is the Gopher Proofing Working?

The garden above is the one I started as soon as the snow melted my very first spring here in the tiny house. And after a lot of work to create it, mostly involving removing truckloads worth of rocks from the size of chicken eggs to dinosaur eggs (seriously, some weighed more than me! 💪), it thrived for several years. Those rocks all went into helping form the lane that leads to my house. Then that lovely garden was discovered by evil marauding little demons. Otherwise known as

Winter Squash

Some of the many squash I helped grow and harvest at a previous job in a different and much warmer location!

 Winter squash (the hard, sometimes oddly shaped and colored ones, not things like zucchini which are summer squash) are a great way to get lots of vitamins, minerals and fiber, among other thing, into your diet in the winter. Check out http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2751/2 or other sources if you want to see a list of all the vitamins and minerals they contain. They also store very well, so are a great winter food. I would love to grow and store my own as they are pretty easy to grow. If you have a warm enough climate. Most varieties take a 100 day plus frost free growing season and here we're lucky to have 50 days without snow. Usually with multiple frosts in that period. But wether you can grow your own or buy them, one of the best things about squash is how easy they are

Some Interesting and Different Meals

As you probably know, I very much enjoy cooking and sometimes am asked, "what kind of food do you make?" I never know how to answer this question. I make a lot of things. :) I think one of the wonderful things about preparing your own food is not only the quality and knowing what is actually in it, but being able to experiment with different ideas and flavors to make things exactly the way you prefer. So I rarely make two things exactly the same. Above is something like an open faced "egg macmuffin."  The biscuit made with freshly hand ground einkorn wheat, grass fed