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Recommended: Our Half Acre Homestead

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Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!

As I found myself delving further into recourses for the “homesteading” community – a term I still find strange, since it’s how I grew up, and no one called it “homesteading” back then – I saw a lot of really great information. It was very encouraging to see so many young families in particular, diving into lives of self sufficiency and self reliance, while also being part of a larger community that was more than happy to share information and help each other out.

Many happily share their experiences online. Some of the interesting and helpful articles and videos I found where those sharing about the mistakes they made, or what they wish they’d know before they started, and so on. These often included lists of things that they really didn’t think about at all, until after they started homesteading, like unexpected costs of living (home insurance is a big one!).

I also saw a number of sites that had lists of things to help people prepare for homestead living, before they got to actually doing it. One item that I saw cropping up more than a few times was just how much physical labour was involved, and stressing how important it was to be fit and healthy.

Except, in this day and age, when people say “fit” or “healthy”, what they’re really saying is “be skinny.” Also, able bodied and young.

Which is amusing to me, because I’m old, broken and fat, I have a disabled husband, and even my daughters have their own health issues they have to work around. Yet, here we are.

Today’s recommendation is someone who is also breaking all the “rules”, and doing it anyhow: Our Half Acre Homestead.

Don’t have a lot of land? They have only half an acre.

Don’t have a lot of money? They are a single income family that when through a bankruptcy and still managed to buy the property only a couple of years later.

Feel like you’re too old? In one of the earliest of their earlier videos, she mentions that she was 50. That video, at the time of this writing, was 11 years old.

That’s right. This couple has been on their half acre homestead and making videos for more than 10 years! Their oldest video was done in 2009.

As you can imagine, they have a LOT of videos!

The above video was done in 2010. You can see they’re still just setting up their garden, the house is being worked on, they’ve got chickens and talk about the plans they are working towards. Talk about starting from the ground up!

This next video was uploaded in 2011, and shows how things had grown and expanded over the previous years, from the building of a chicken coop and incubating eggs, to building a small barn and getting a calf and goats.

In that half acre, they are able to have chickens, cows, goats, pigs and rabbits – that I’ve seen so far! – supplemented by hunting. Mrs. V is an excellent shot. They’ve got their garden, bee hives, and even tap their own sap and make their own maple syrup.

All of this accomplished by a couple that is older, rounder and kinda broken. Like me! :-D They’ve also been at it for a long time, and have much to share. Along with the many cooking videos and gardening videos, you’ll also find videos like this one.

Peameal bacon is also sometimes known as Canadian bacon or back bacon.

Now that I’ve seen the video, I want to make some of my own! That looks amazing!

You’ll also find “grocery haul” videos, like this more recent one, showing what they add to their food supply.

You’ll find videos sharing frugal ideas, like this one…

… using bits and pieces to make and can stock.

There are also live stream videos, and shorter Tea Break videos.

Many of the videos are sorted into playlists, too.

Like us, they’ve been itching to get out in the garden, too!

They’re in Eastern Canada, which has a longer growing season than we’ve got. While this video was being made, we were getting more snow, and still dealing with the new snow from our recent storm.

You’ll find videos on butchering and how to dress a deer, baking, cooking with a slow cooker or an Instant Pot, YouTube tax problems for Canadians, and even live streams from the Freedom Convoy 2022. There’s videos on how to knit, and make Christmas ornaments. There are videos on freezing, canning, dehydrating, growing, seed saving, product reviews…

There is just so much that’s covered, as one might expect from someone who’s been making videos for more than a decade! New videos are added very frequently, too.

There’s just a vast wealth of information available, and I highly recommend checking out Our Half Acre Homestead.

The Re-Farmer

Morning Visitors

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I meant to post this earlier, but my friend is still in town and I was able to meet up with her at the last minute. We had a grand time!

It was getting dark by the time I was heading home, which meant being extremely cautious about deer! At one point, I passed at least 5 standing on the edge of the highway but, thankfully, they did not try to cross.

I put together some of the better videos from the gate cam, showing our morning visitors. I hope you like it! :-)

The Re-Farmer

I couldn’t resist

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I’ve made more videos in the past few days than I have in ages! I just can’t resist those deer images!

This is a short one; I did resist including more of the files of deer from the trail cams.

I love how they came so close to the camera! I don’t think they’ll be able to do that after today, though. It’s warmed up enough that I think they’ll start sinking, if they try.

The other trail cam had a deer go close by, too. The snow has finally melted enough that they can get through to that area again. :-D

I think we can officially say we’ve seen more deer this year, than we have since we moved out here.

The Re-Farmer

A whole parade of them!

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I haven’t been going out to the sign cam to switch memory cards for the last few days, due to the weather conditions and the path being blown in as much as it was, but I finally was able to get out there today.

It was just a few days, but there were over 300 files to check out!

Yes, they were mostly of deer. A whole parade of them!

I couldn’t resist. I put them together into a video.

So. Many. Deer!!!

The Re-Farmer

Night of the Deer!

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With all the stuff going on today, it was a while before I had a chance to check the trail cam files.

What a surprise I found!!

Here is a compilation of several of them.

So many deer!!!

What on earth where they all doing, hanging out at our driveway??

The Re-Farmer

Winter’s last gasp?

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Counting today, we’re expected to have three cold days before the spring-like temperatures return.

Not that it’s particularly cold – until you step out into the wind!

The outside cats barely made an appearance this morning. They were far more interested in staying out of that wind!

The wind was mostly coming from the north, which meant stepping around the house to put seed out, was like walking into a wall.

A cold wall.

The path to the sign cam was pretty much blown in.

I paused this morning to check out the deer damage to the Chokecherry and Saskatoon bushes we uncovered while clearing out the invasive spirea at the edge of the spruce grove. Cleaning things up meant they got more sunlight and actually produced fruit during their first uncrowded summer, but now the deer can get at them. All the lower twigs are nibbled away, and there are many broken branches. And by “lower twigs”, I mean basically anything under about 7 feet. The deer can reach pretty high when they stand on their hind legs!

I wonder if these deer were among those causing damage?

I didn’t see any deer when I came out this morning. They’d already left. :-D

The winds are still high and it’s quite unpleasant out there.

Rolando Moon the Wise has staked out her spot in the sun room, where it’s much warmer and cozier! Not to mention, she has her own private food and water bowls. :-D

As for today, we’ve got a big project to work on. While doing the laundry last night, I came to the entry and found water all over the floor.

It wasn’t from the washing machine. At least not directly. It’s from the drain. I’ve long had concerns about it. When the water starts to drain, you can hear it flowing, but the tone changes until the sound stops. Basically, the water is draining out of the washing machine faster than the water is flowing through the pipes, and what I’ve been hearing is the water backing up until it reaches the end of the drain hose from the washing machine, and then you can no longer heard the water flowing. I’ve been keeping an eye on it, to see if it’s at risk of overflowing, but until now it’s been fine.

I did a larger “heavy duty” load last night, and it may have been just too much water this time.

So what I want to do is see if we can clear the drain a bit. Which means we have to move the washing machine.

The washer and dryer just fit between the built-in closet and the wall the taps are in. There are two steps from the entryway into the dining room, and the bottom step is several inches in front of the washing machine. Which is handy for short little me to stand on and reach the bottom of the washing machine, but it also means we can’t simply pull the washing machine straight out. In order to move the washing machine, we have to move out the dryer.

Since we have to move the machines out, anyhow, we’re going to clean up the mess we know is back there. The cats have been knocking things down off the shelves and, from the smell of it, they’ve been peeing back there, too. It’s just so difficult to get back there, we haven’t done it, yet. I would love to find some way to keep the cats from going back there, but no practical solution has come up yet.

I am not looking forward to this particular job. I’d almost rather be working outside, in the wind!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 Garden: First Day of Spring

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I noticed some of my favourite gardening channels were posting videos showing first-day-of-spring tours of their gardens. This one in particular inspired me.

I was so inspired, I just had to get out there and take some video of our own first-day-of-spring garden.

It’s a quick and dirty video, but I had fun making it. I hope you like it, too!

As you’ll see, we’ve … uhm… got quite a bumper crop going right now… ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning critters

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We had another colder than predicted night, with a bitterly cold wind chill. It’s supposed to warm up quite a bit today, though not until this evening. After that, things are supposed to keep getting warmer.

We’re also supposed to be snowing, as I write this, and it isn’t, so… yeah. We’ll see.

I counted 14 or 15 outside cats this morning. Then I spotted Ghost Baby later on, so we had a headcount of possibly 16 of the outside cats.

They are most definitely appreciating having access to the heated water bowl in the sun room. As you can see in the above photo, the outside bowl is completely empty. Likely, the piebald visited the kibble house again, and finished off the water, too.

Speaking of which…

The three regulars were at the feeding station when I came around with seed. They ran off, but almost immediately started to come back. So I paused to see what they would do.

As usual, the piebald would chase off the other two, but they kept coming back.

They came within 20-25 feet of me!

I’m happy my phone was able to pick up that huffing sound the piebald makes.

I was making them nervous, though, so I moved on and let them be.

Chadiccus does not approve of my taking his picture, instead of petting him!

Oh, what a loaf Rolando Moon makes!

They keep breaking and knocking out the rigid insulation. I’ll have to think of something better to use, if we are going to keep using this old shelf as a cat shelter.

I had been talking about doing our Costco trip today, but one of my daughters has been suggesting that Costco on a Saturday might not be a good idea. Looking at the weather, we might not be snowing here, but it’s sure to be snowing to the house of us, and I’d rather not drive in it, if I don’t have to. So that will probably wait until Monday, then.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the seedlings, and today we’re going to be doing some major changes, from re-planting to replace losses, to physically re-arranging a whole bunch of things. I’ll post about how that goes, later.

The Re-Farmer

Changes of plans, and look who blinked first (convoy talk)

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One of my goals for today was to start more seeds and transplant some little tomatoes, after I did some baking.

My younger daughter usually does the bread baking, but she not well today. So I did a double batch of oatmeal and chia bread, then another double batch of herb bread made into mini loaves and buns.

Of course, the phone kept being busy today! After my phone appointment with my doctor, he forwarded a 90 day refill for my prescription – but for some reason changed it from taking it twice a day, to once a day, which was not what we talked about on the phone. The pharmacy caught the change and called me about it. In the end, I went ahead and took what they could give me, while they sent another fax to the doctor for find out what was going on.

After that, I left the phone with my husband!

Even so, I happened to glance out the kitchen window while shaping loaves, and saw someone walking by with a cat carrier and some bags of cat food! He didn’t even go to the door, but let them near the cat shelter. I got outside just in time to wave goodbye to them as they drove away.

I’m assuming the guy was the Cat Lady’s husband. With no chance to talk, I quickly sent a thank you text. It turned out she’d tried to phone ahead, but … well… we do live in a cell phone dead zone, and this time, she had no signal at all. The cat food bags they left with us were very small bags; it actually made more sense when I saw them, after she told me she’d got them for only 27 cents each, but couponing. It should be enough to last us until after we get the van back and can do some shopping.

Then the pharmacy delivery guy called, but my husband was able to take care of that, while I finished shaping the last of the buns.

The down side is, by the time I finished kneading the second batch and setting it to rise, my left hip gave out. It’s still bothering me! I was able to finish the baking, but I’m afraid I had to leave most of the clean up for when my daughters to the evening chores. Which means mostly my older daughter, once she’s done working, since my younger daughter isn’t feeling any better, yet – and my older daughter has her own joint issues to deal with!

What a gimpy bunch we are. :-D

While I was doing all this, what I was NOT doing was keeping on on the Senate debates before voting for or against our Prime Dictator’s invocation of the Emergency Measures Act. They’d debated all day yesterday, and the people I knew who were watching it live were mostly incredibly disgusted by what they saw. A lot of the senators were repeating the same lies and slander our politicians and media were pushing.

I must say, though, this brief clip was probably the worst example.

The “ceased” guns she was referring to had nothing to do with the protesters, the vitriol wasn’t from the protesters, but… honk honk equals Heil Hitler?? Really? It’s one thing to see idiots saying that on social media, but coming from a senator?

There was some calm and measured speeches, though. This one is worth a listen.

The fact that she has been working right where the protests were happening, and could confirm what was really going on, was important.

Funny how people who weren’t there were the ones who complained about the disruption and noise of the protests more than people actually living there. I even had one person on my friends list claim they could hear the horns, even though 1) they live an hour away from Ottawa and 2) the honking had stopped.

A constant refrain I was starting to hear from people living there is that the police blockades were far worse than the protesters ever where.

The Liberals didn’t like it when the New York Times managed to accurately report on the police actions.

Meanwhile, organizer Tamara Lich was denied bail.

This video dives into the many problems about that.

That’s right. The judge who denied Lich bail is a T2 supporter who even ran for election as an MP, for the Liberal Party.

Then I started getting messages from people.

Our Prime Dictator revoked the Emergency Measures Act himself.

That’s right. It’s done.

Gone.

But not over, of course.

He went from saying the EMA would need to be in place for months, even though the “red zone” in Ottawa was cleared of protesters, because they might come back. His party was even talking about making some of the EMA powers permanent.

The Conservative Party had already filed a motion to revoke, which would have been discussed on Monday, should the Senate have voted to support the invocation of the Act. Under the Act, the EMA is in force for 30 days, when it either expires or gets extended by vote. Any party, at any time, could move to revoke the Act, at which point our Prime Dictator would have to justify keeping it in force again, then the House and Senate would have to debate and vote on it again. The NDP would be supporting the Liberals every time, which means it would always be the Senate that had to have the final say.

A process that could, potentially, keep happening, over and over again.

Meanwhile, it began to appear that not enough senators would vote in favour of the EMA. A number of them voiced displeasure at the pressure they were getting to just rubber stamp the invocation. They were still debating it when our Prime Dictator made a live announcement that, since the emergency was over (the emergency that was never there in the first place), it wasn’t needed anymore, so he was ending it.

I have not watched his speech, because seeing and hearing him makes me physically ill.

Trudeau blinks; the truckers win; the Emergencies Act is dropped. But it has shown us who the tyrants were, didn’t it?

Literally today, as Trudeau was writing his short speech announcing that he was abandoning his Emergencies Act, his shills in the Senate were standing up and speaking in favour of it. Imagine burning up a lifetime of political capital, only to have Trudeau walk away from it moments later. Oh well – it was a useful exercise.

Which politicians — including in the Conservative Party. Oh yes, I didn’t mention it?

The cowards in the Liberal Party who announced that they were very much against it — but that they were going to vote for it anyways, because Trudeau was “forcing” them to.

But is it over?

No, of course not.

The reasons for the protests are still there. The federal mandates have not been lifted.

There continue to be protests across the country and, even near Ottawa, there are protesters set up and ready to come back, if necessary. People’s bank accounts that had been frozen are slowly being un-frozen. The law suits are still files and making their way through the process.

Ottawa’s newest Chief of Police was going to continue his witch hunt.

Will that change, now that the EMA is no longer in effect? I don’t think so.

Will this mean that our Prime Dictator will just invoke the EMA every time there are protests he doesn’t approve of? Or will his party just find other ways to grab power? For example, while all this was going on, they have been trying to push a bill that would make vaccination – but just one specific vaccination – a condition of employment, by federal law. Never mind that making any vaccine mandatory is illegal in Canada.

This is not any sort of victory. Our Prime Dictator has simply blinked first, but not until after his jackboots used illegal and violent measures to remove a legal and peaceful protest. This is not the first time he’s tried to make a power play. This is just the first time it involved the general public in such an open manner. A lot of people who were typically on board with him, even if they didn’t like some of the stuff he was doing, have had a very rude awakening.

A lot of people have also realized what a precarious position they are in, in many ways. I saw a huge leap in people moving towards increased self sufficiency, working to get out of the cities, and some even leaving the country. I foresee the “homesteading” movement to continue to grow because of what’s been happening these past two years.

For us, we’re still going to be pushing ahead with our one original goal to be as self sufficient as possible. The only change is to see how much we can speed up the process.

This is not over. Not by a long shot.

The Re-Farmer

We lucked out

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The predicted blizzard conditions we were getting warnings about, passed well to the south of us. Once it swept down from the mountains and across Alberta, the system made its way mostly along the Canada/US border.

I guess there are some advantages to being further north!

What we did get was wind.

And deer.

Five of them!

The two in front are our usual visitors. The three in back are new ones. As least, that we’ve seen. For all I know, they visit when we’re not around to see them.

Unfortunately, the three visitors decided the chokecherry and saskatoon twigs were delicious!

After I took the video, I turned the living room light on, so they could see me, then waved my arms around like a fool. The two regulars ignored me, but the ones eating the twigs went away. And that’s all I wanted!

The two regulars came back later.

They were digging down really deep into the snow, to try and find more seeds!

This is what the area looked like this morning, after I put more seeds out.

That deep hole is almost completely filled in, and the snow is hard packed, from the high winds.

This wasn’t the only area blown over. I actually had to push my way through a drift, just to get outside!

It even drifted into the kibble house, though the cats did a good job of flattening it.

Check out the heated water bowl!

After knocking the snow out of the kibble trays and putting food out, I dug out the water bowls, knocking a thick layer off the top of the heated bowl. There was still water in it, though it was lot enough the cats would have had difficulty reaching it through that hole.

I ended up letting Potato Beetle out of the sun room this morning. He’d trashed a few things, trying to get out. He’s not injured anymore, and the only reason we were keeping him in was to prevent other cats from attacking him again. He was happy to be out, and hopefully, he will manage to keep away from whichever cats have been aggressive towards him.

Once the sun room door was open, though, Agnoos, Tuxedo Mask and Chadiccus were right in there! So I left the power bar on, for the light, heat bulb and the other heated water bowl, and left the doors open. When I was done and ready to come inside, I left the doors open just a little bit, so the cats can go in and out. I think there might have been four in there, at the time. We’ve since spotted Tuxedo Mask through the bathroom window, in his favourite spot on top of the board the heat bulb’s fixture is attached to, and under the light. The plan is to close the sun room all up again, after we go out and shovel out at least some of the paths – the wind chill is still pretty extreme right now – but we might have difficulties getting the cats out when we do! :-D

The Re-Farmer

ps: Just for fun, I compiled some short videos I got of the piebald deer, a few days ago. Turn your sound up, and you’ll hear the purring and chomping noises from Susan, who kept trying to eat my phone while I was taking video!!