Purpose Driven Homestead

We love our Jersey Cows... because they provide so much for our family in the way of dairy products. However, milking them by hand is a bit of a chore. There's a reason why people always list "milking the cows" in all the movies as a farm chore they put off. LOL. Between the cows kicking buckets and wasting milk, as well as "relieving" themselves while milking... it often takes several hours to get the girls milked out in the field where they graze. This mechanical milker has saved us SOOOO much time and effort. It routes the milk over to a single 6 gallon tank where it's held while we milk both cows. No flies to worry about, no dirt or flies to worry about contaminating it... it's been like a dream. It also takes us about 7 min per cow to milk now vs. 30-45 min by hand and the cows eat less feed now while milking (due to shorter time in the process) which saves on cost. LOVE this thing.... https://youtube.com/shorts/AlKswKQEMgM

I decided to borrow my father's 1940's International Harvester tractor to save me a little work on weeding on our potatoes. I won't be able to use it on the inside row near the weed barrier, but ids say it worked quite well rowing up and getting rid of weeds in the other rows... What do you guys think?

Progress on our farm stand continues! Its like anything... there's like a thousand parts... so its complicated. Despite this being a US based company and it says its made in the USA... the instructions were written poorly and with a lot of left out steps. Lol.

More cabbage and cauliflower are starting to mature... looking really good. The rain continues to be an issue. We've now been nearly 3 weeks without a drop. Pastures are crunchy and we've not even made it to "summer" yet.

Next batch of chicks is ready to leave the brooder and go on pasture. We also started the prep work for a small farm shed at the end of the driveway where we set up a little "honors system" farm stand. The plan is that we'll have eggs, raw pet milk, and chickens in there for purchase, in addition to produce thats in season. When our bee hives make honey, we'll have that for sale also. What do you guys think?

We decided to plant a lot of potatoes this year and some are "no dig" and some are the traditional method. Here's a shot of the potatoes a week apart after some much needed rain in our traditional plot. They grew a lot just in that week. The rain definitely helped and has been sorely needed this spring. Its been an extremely dry spring which is worrisome going into the typically hot and dry summer.

Yesterday, I was able to spend a little time mowing the pasture with my Grandfather's (now my Father's) tractor. Its a 1955 Ford Model 850 that still runs like a top. The rye grass we planted last year to get the pasture up and running has now gone to seed and I need to knock it down so the clover and grass can keep going. It amazes me how long these machines would run for with very little maintenance or replacement parts compared to newer equipment.

@stiv_iten_1988 if you're trying to comment on the post, you'll need to join our backyard homesteading group where our comments are housed. It has a test you have to pass to join to keep out bots... fyi...

When you have a larger family and are trying to build a homestead business, you have to plan meals. We often cook 3-4 chickens of our pasture raised chickens at once so we can heat the oven, or in this case the smoker, a single time to cook enough food for a a few meals. This is great when we're working outside until 9pm busy on projects and want lower prep times. Our home grown smoked chicken was dinner with some garden sides the first night, then chicken quesadilla the next night, and will likely be a "chicken in a potato patch" where its inside a baked potato the last night. It stretches the meat further, because even though they are home grown, its still saved money when we can stretch meals for our larger family.

The harvest has started for the year! We've just started getting our first zucchini, crook necked yellow squash, turnips, radishes, and some sweet beets. Collards, kale, and cabbage are also ready now! Woo hoo! We're pretty stoked about our first season of gardening since we moved from the Midwest to the Southeast!