I am a wife and a mother of three. My Bachelor's degree is in Business Management, I
am currently managing a household and DH's business accounting. We live on 1/3 of an acre in a (very) small city in Southwest Virginia. I've been at home with the kids for about two years now. My oldest will start middle school in the fall, our middle child is going into 2nd grade and my baby will be starting Kindergarten! We share our space with Evan the rottweiler, Drake the chocolate lab puppy, and Miss Kitty a very vocal bengal kitty. Out in the coop are 5 Speckled sussex hens, 7 RIR chicks, 2 ducks and a bunch of pigeons. Baking is one of my favorite things and I often do so late at night, after the kids are sleeping.
We do our best to provide for our family's food needs from our garden, raising chickens, foraging, hunting and fishing. When we can, we visit some of our local, pesticide -free pick-your-own berry farms and orchards. I butcher the meat and preserve as much as I can from the garden and fruit-picking expeditions. I expanded my tiny herb garden last year to a 30' x 40' veggie garden. I use organic gardening methods. This year I got two cherry trees for Mother's Day, a Bing and a Black Tartarian. I used the some of the money I made selling chocolates to purchase Bluecrop and Jersey blueberries this spring. I've also added a "Wonderful" semi-dwarf pomegranate, Aronia, Amelanchir and Elderberry shrubs. This year , the garden has been extended it to 2200sq ft.
I love playing in the dirt! I've done almost all of the work by hand, after tit was originally tilled, with bits of help here and there from DH and the kids. I've already had some major battles with mother nature in the garden and a ton of fun with the kids. Kadence, our youngest will stay out working with me all day and is growing her very first sunflower this season and is thoroughly excited that it is at least twice her size already.
This year, my husband Kris and I put a fence up around the garden to keep the dogs out, as the puppy will not walk on the paths like Evan does.
We also built the chicken coop this spring, out of nearly all recycled materials, found free on craigslist:) I am lucky that one of Kris' cousins is a licensed contractor and was willing to trade his building skills for my doing some bookkeeping for his business! Kris and I have been working on it steadily, getting the run up, building roosts and nest boxes and a little pigeon door!
As of yet, we've found a pigeon egg but none from the chickens, soon enough I'm sure, the "big girls" are about four and a half months old. Unfortunately, the pigeons cracked the egg and none have layed anymore yet. They are mostly homers, but there are some fancy pigeons out there also. We had thought that the SS girls were pulling feathers and generally harassing the little RIRs, but it turned out that Drake was hiding under the coop and grabbing them when they were off their guard. We remedied this by putting trellis up around the bottom of the coop. Now the birds are much more calm and friendly toward each other. After the addition of the birds, Melody, the middle child has decided that we don't have a yard anymore. She told me that now we have a "mini-farm." I had to dash her hopes of a horse, though.
