Homesteading in Paradise March 2018 Highlights Video

Here is my monthly "Homesteading in Paradise" video series. This shows our homesteading life in March, and yes, it includes footage of my crazy teenagers jumping into one of our ice-cold, wild creeks while it snowed. 

Also: plenty of cuteness involving baby goats and baby chicks. And I planted garlic and peas.  Spring is finally here! 

Watch this short little video here <----



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Here at Marblemount Homestead, we teach and inspire people who see things differently. 

You're fed up with the status quo consumerism pop culture. You want to live a more wholesome, sustainable, healthier, happier life and be more connected to nature. 

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For over 5 years, I've offered you absolutely free content on my blog and my youtube channel: free tutorials teaching anything you can imagine that's related to homesteading, wholesome living, sustainability, homeschooling and health.

Many mornings, I get up at 5 am, before milking the goats and feeding the pigs, ducks, chickens and (human) kids, so I can write a blog post or edit movie footage we filmed.
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In other words, plenty of blood, sweat and tears have gone into providing the stuff you all find so inspiring and helpful.  And I love doing that for you!

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We hope your spring is going great!

Alive and well

It's so wonderful that life offers pockets of comedy, even in the face of grief and loss. Watching our puppy chase butterflies, or rather their shadows on the ground, never fails to make me laugh out loud. 

Trying not to smile when my six-year-old (who is learning to sound out words) asks, "Mommy, does the F-word start with f?"... Some of you might not find this funny, but the ones who know me and my terrible potty mouth might.

In the midst of crying over my friend's suicide and another friend's death in a car accident, I find lots of things to be grateful for, maybe BECAUSE of these deaths. After all, we are alive, and we are well.

I'm feeling incredibly grateful for our beautiful piece of land, which grounds me and serves as my mental health therapy. It doesn't hurt that it also puts out a lot of food already!

And the flowers! The flowers! I pick huge bouquets of roses and peonies and station them around the house, so we can smell them inside and outside. I grow perennial flowers in various flower beds around our place, and I also like flowers in my vegetable garden, because they look pretty and attract pollinators.

Steve, the kids and I worked in the yard all day on Memorial Day. We went a little bit insane and paid for it the next day since we were so sore. But we got a lot done! Steve did macho stuff with the chainsaw that involved trimming up some pretty big trees that had gotten too overgrown, shading my precious flowers. I single handedly weeded so much buttercup and grass from under the blueberry bushes that my hands could hardly milk the goats the next morning. We also weeded the garden and mowed the lawn. Our place now looks worthy of being featured in Sunset Magazine or something.

We bribed the kids into helping by promising strawberries and whipping cream later on. It worked. They kicked butt.

If you look closely, you can see Steve on the ladder with a chainsaw in the middle of the picture. See how all that green swallows everything?

Another source of comedy and comfort are our animals. Truly, how could you be sad when you watch the puppy sniff noses with our new baby pigs, or when you hang out with the goats and chickens? Our baby chicks are now 3 months old, and the roosters are starting to crow. The other day I milked the goats in the barn and heard a terrible screaming sound outside. I just about knocked over the milk bucket trying to figure out who got killed. Turned out it was the rooster who tried to crow for the first time in his life. Yeah, keep practicing, buddy.

And lastly, who cheers me up most are my children. This weekend, little Eva got to hang out with her best friend and even be the hostess of a sleepover. These girls played in the garden for hours, making up games, grazing on fennel and kale. At one point, I asked them if they were fairies. They looked at me a little disdainfully and said, "No, we are obviously wolves." Right.

In the picture, their teeth are green because they are eating fennel. Obviously.

Let me leave you with a picture of my Cabra Al Vino. Remember, if you want to learn how to make cheese from me, take my self-paced, start-anytime online cheesemaking course. I promise, it's super fun!

Bounty everywhere

I am hiding in my bedroom with the computer and a glass of wine. My kids' loud voices are echoing upstairs into my sanctuary, and the smell of chicken in the oven is wafting up through the ceiling. The smell reminds me of the task ahead next week: “harvesting” our meat birds. I don't like this job of killing and processing chickens, but I sure like the taste of baked chicken – chickens we grew ourselves, raised on green pasture and organic grain. I don't like being part of the death of animals I raised, but I would rather eat THEM than meat I buy at the grocery store, packaged in plastic wrap, not knowing where the meat comes from, not knowing if the animals had a happy life. I know for sure that our chickens lead a happy life, up until the time of their death in the pasture they were raised in, without having to transport them to a slaughter house. They get to forage in beautiful green grass, get lots of fresh water, space and exercise and are allowed to chase bugs to their hearts' content. They live in a chicken palace with a mountain view. What's not to love?

Our pigs are next. We are hoping to have a butcher come out the end of October to process them for us. It's more expensive that way, but immeasurably less work for us. Our pigs are huge already, fattened on grass, whey and organic barley. They are spoiled, get moved to fresh pasture regularly, and get sprayed with the water hose in hot weather. They love getting sprayed and push each other out of the way to put their noses in it. Afterwards, they scratch themselves on every available surface, grunting with pleasure, almost grinning. They are so big and ferocious at feeding time that I am nervous. I don't go into their enclosure any more. When they were little, the kids played tag with them in the pasture, but now? Oh no! They bite my boots if I try to go into their movable structure, and they lean against me to scratch themselves, knocking me over. I bet they wouldn't mind taking a bite out of me.

The egg layers are safe from slaughter. These girls die a natural death, pass away peacefully in the chicken coop when they are several years old, and that's fine with us. They have cranked out eggs for months on end, so they deserve to live out their lives. The kids adore them. They watch them grow from one day old chickies, hold them when they are little, and feed them daily. “Chicken duty” is the kids' job: feed 'em, give 'em water, and collect their eggs. Between the ducks and the chickens, we are egg rich. What an abundant life!

The kids are walking along the driveway to do "chicken duty".  Eva's carrying the egg bucket.  Oh my.

The kids throw the chicken's grain in the air and on the ground, so that the chickens can happily peck it.

Talking about abundance: We are drowning in cantaloupes - can you imagine? Melons in the Pacific Northwest? Yes. You may kiss my feet. The way we do it is planting the starts in black plastic, to really crank the heat. This year, with all the heat and lack of greyness, they have exploded. We eat them fresh, juice dripping down our chins, invite friends over to gorge on them, and I froze about 15 pounds for smoothies. Ahhhh!!! This will be gold in the dark, cold, depressing winter.

Juicy, ey?

And then there are tomatoes. Homegrown tomatoes, rich and sweet and juicy, warmed by the sun, freshly picked from the vine and bitten into... there's nothing like it, except maybe eating a killer chocolate cake. We bought two boxes of tomatoes from a friend and made it into salsa and sun-dried (or rather dehydrator-dried) tomatoes. The salsa is a big hit with my family. It's amazing what you can do with tomatoes, onions, garlic, sweet peppers, lime juice, cumin, salt and pepper. The kids devoured the salsa, served with stone ground organic chips. I should have bought about 150 more pounds of tomatoes. I tell you, the way these kids eat, we will have to start raising pigs. Oh, wait a minute. We ARE raising pigs. Phew. Good.

Despite all this work, we managed to escape for a two day vacation up to Birch Bay, close to the Canadian border, where we bicycled and played at the beach.  

A rare sight indeed... Steve relaxing.

I leave you with the image of my son Lukas with a salmon he caught himself.  My wilderness man husband Steve, Lukas and his brother Kai went out into the wild this week, with nothing else than some knives, bamboo spears, and a pot to boil water in. They left in the morning without eating any breakfast, so they would experience what it's like to feel hungry, and to be motivated to hunt and gather their own food.

Steve treated this as a rite of passage for the boys, and they came back changed, with incredible stories.  They got to share them with our community at a feast, where they brought salmon they had caught and smoked over a campfire.  Oh, how I love these men of mine.

Thanksgiving thankfulness

This Thanksgiving, I am especially thankful for the animals on our farm.  They give us lots of food and entertainment, especially the pesky goats.  Our Ancona ducks are an endangered heritage breed.  They like to hang out with black and white things, like soccer balls.  No, I'm just kidding.  I merely thought the football in the picture was a nice touch.

 

The goats give us milk, cheese, yogurt, and kefir.  Let me introduce Gracie and Coco.  I know, I know, they don't have any ears, but that's because they are a breed of goats called "La Mancha", known for their high butterfat, high solids milk, which is ideal for cheese making.

This year, we raised 60 meat birds with our neighbors.  They are the tastiest chickens I have ever eaten, fed on organic grain and free range pasture.  Our ten and eight year old sons Kai and Lukas were very involved in the whole process.  They know where their food comes from.  They nurtured the little baby chicks, watched them grow, and finally enthusiastically eviscerated their guts after they were slaughtered, ahhhh.... harvested.

Dear chicken, thank you for becoming our Thanksgiving dinner

Plucking chickens is a nasty, nasty job.  You can see how much I am enjoying the process.

I know it's gross and graphic, but this picture distills Lukas' helpful spirit.  Notice how some chickens are much plumper than others.

And here is the chicken when it came out of the oven for our Thanksgiving dinner.  I like to bake it with bacon, to keep it really moist, and to show off the bacon that came from pigs raised on the whey brom my cheese making.

And finally, I am extremely grateful for my family.  My kids have brought so many blessings into my life, and Steve, my amazing husband... how lucky am I?

Kai

Maple Leaf... no, wait!  It's Lukas!

Little Eva

Steve, the wilderness man, who knows how to blow fire into a flame, made from rubbing two sticks together!