Home, Home On The Range…

The picture at left is from Architectural Digest, which did a photo layout of one of John and Cindy McCain’s Arizona homes in 2005. Here is the full slide show. Nice place.

Not exactly like our homesteads, which more often look sort of spliced together from this and that as we attempt to grow our personal independence and self-sufficiency in an increasingly hostile economy. Heck, many of us dedicated homesteaders have had to invent some creative ways just to pay the mortgage, which does tend to bite into time for completing the goat barn or installing the solar panels or building the sluice for the water turbine or… well, suffice it to say that for most of us, our homesteads are a forever work-in-progress. We wouldn’t be doing it if “Home” were not the most important asset we have in the world, on which we lavish our time, toil and love unconditionally.

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Filed under Economics, Garden, Goats, Home Buying, Homestead, Independence | Comments (2)

Home Made Goat Cheese… Yum!

As we prepare to replace the fence posts and fencing around the garden, I’ve been considering a fenced area on the other side of the garden, or perhaps on the upper terraces, for a chicken coop, a little barn-shed and a couple of milk goats. It would be a big step for us to go into livestock (that’s not dogs, cats or doves), but with the food shortages expanding and the prices rising fast, it might be something that makes good sense.

The folks we bought this place from some 15 years ago raised goats and horses, also kept bees. I’d love to get some bee boxes, know right where to station them at the edge of the woods facing the garden. But we’ve plenty of wild bees and other insect pollinators for the fruit and vegetables and wildflowers. I’d be doing it for the honey! Chickens will have to be well protected from foxes (we have a couple of fox families on the property, and we don’t plan to kill them). We used to keep chickens in the fenced back yard of a house in town when I was a kid, they aren’t difficult if they’re protected.

My experience with goats hasn’t been so encouraging. Got our first goat in Virginia from a friend. She was half alpine, half Nubian, the cutest critter God ever made! All legs and full of energy. By the time she’d grown up enough to breed (yes, they have to be bred regularly in order to give milk), she was convinced she was a dog. Who ever heard of milking a dog? She made an great pet, but we never had her bred.

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Filed under Cheesemaking, Cultivated Herbs, Dairy, Future Planning, Goats, Homestead, Livestock | Comments (7)