Real homesteading tips with a side of "WTF?!"

Welcome to the chaotic, scary, hilarious, makes you want to cry sometimes; adventures of homesteading. Where I prove (or make you question my entire existence) that you don't need a huge space or complicated plans to provide for your family. Proudly brought to you by ADHD and the inability to say "No!"

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Homesteading: KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid)

I like to follow the rule of "keep it simple, stupid," or my personal favourite way to accomplish tasks is to "wing it full send" and figure it out later. By figure it out later, I mean panic because we got 7 chickens and had nowhere to keep them after getting them. Thankfully, there are enough businesses who get rid of pallets and my boyfriend would have rather built the damn chicken coop than listen to me complain about how I was going to build a chicken coop. However, they are now his "ladies" and they have him trained extremely well. He walks out for a cigarette and they all start talking to him for mealworms, if that doesn't work, my daughter's chicken, Rumi, jumps the fence perimeter and looks at him until he conceeds and gives them mealworms. He then has to chase Rumi back in with her buddies and mutters to himself the whole time. I say, " it's your fault for deeming yourself the "snack daddy"".

1.5 hours, for the "I am a tough bitch, bitch"

1.5 hours that I'm not proud of. 1.5 hours of "fuck this!" 1.5 hours it took me to skin and gut my first rooster ever. Because my boyfriend has graciously taken care of the last several.

I'm not going to sugar coat it, where we live, we cannot have roosters. So, when we end up with a rooster, he inevitably becomes soup. We had 2 that needed to go, so, we packed them up and took them out of town to dispatch and process.

My boyfriend showed me the correct and most humane procedures and then showed me step by step how to clean it. I watched squeamishly the entire time reminding myself how "I'm a bad bitch and I CAN DO THIS!"

He offered to clean-up the 2nd one as well, and my stupid ass said "nope, I got it!"

I did not fuckin "got it." Not even a little bit.

I began the process and begged him to take over, but he would encourage me on. So, I HAD to prove myself, right? Right?!

"I got this!" I kept telling myself. "The chicken is already in the crockpot you're just making it fit."

My boyfriend left, ran errands, and came back when I was about 75% done skinning it. He grabbed a beer and continued to watch the chaos unfold. It started to torrentially downpour and all I could think was "Good, at least I can't smell it anymore."

Finally, after 1.5 hours I finished skinning and getting it cleaned up. And this mother fucker has the audacity to turn and look at me and say "remember when you wanted to do 30 meat chickens?"

So anyways, his funeral is tomorrow.

Raising backyard velociraptors

How to wing it AND keep your chickens relatively safe from predators; ones who escape the fencing are on a FAFO basis (Fuck around and find out). We have 2 big dogs and a cat; the perimeter fence in this case IS in fact do or die.

Steps to having and housing tiny velociraptors:

1) Convince boyfriend we need chickens.

2) Convince self and boyfriend that providing for living chickens is cheaper than buying eggs.

3) Realize you have now set yourself up for an invisible, impossible task; because you told yourself this is cheap, so now you must MAKE it cheap!

4) Find pallets....a lot of them, and a sense of humor and a lot of beer.

5) Look up "pallet chicken coops" on etsy and pinterest...and youtube and google....and then just wing it, because "the directions were unclear".

6) Ta-da, you now have a chicken coop!

7) Thanks babe!

My chickens have trained my boyfriend!

Meet Jessica and Samantha, the 2 most instigating chickens we own! They are Australorp x Rhode Island Red with an attitude; and they have made my boyfriend their "Snack Daddy". He goes out for cigarettes multiple times per day, and every few trips, he feeds them mealworms. Well, the ladies have figured out that snack daddy comes out and so now; they look for him! This morning, they were right up on my back patio looking for him! I think they have him trained better than we have them trained.

Growing a fuckin' garden, I think?

According to AI: You should start your garden small and harvest big with beginner-friendly raised beds, companion planting, and kid-approved homegrown crops.

Fuck that! Here's what we did!

1) Go to a local nursery where plants are DIRT cheap.

2) Wing it! Buy whatever fuckin plants you, your partner and your child deem necessary for homegrown must haves.

3) Get home and google "how the fuck to transplant XYZ".

4) Google when to harvest plants.

5) Realize some of your plants are dying, discover "root boundness", and panic to google about how to cut the roots without killing the stupid fucking thing you've been nurturing for MONTHS, hoping you didn't kill it from incompetency.

6) Become irrationally angry when your chickens kill your squash, pumpkin and watermelon because you made the planter too heavy and now can't move it.

7) Realize that sacrifing the squashes is a must, otherwise chickens will continue to escape.

8) Rejoice when SOMETHING fucking grows!

9) Realize the cucumbers may be over ripe and that the tomatoes you planted for tomato sauce have now become useless.

10) Eat an itty bitty pea pod, become ecstatic and plan your garden for NEXT year!

11) Repeat until total insanity or something fucking works!

Sourdough and baking-busy bitch version

Wing it. Seriously. I don't know why SO many people online like to make sourdough look so god damn hard. It's not hard... like at all. Be smart about it! Ask a friend or a local community page if they have an active starter you can have some of, OR google how to make a sourdough starter. It's ridiculously easy, especially once it's established.

Once your starter is successfully thriving (again, consult google or a self-deemed "expert", stick that bitch in the fridge and leave it. Leave it until a day before you plan on making your sourdough.

Pull that bitch out of the fridge, I call mine "Doughreen" and pour all but a tsp into a separate, clean jar. Put that jar back into your fridge as your "discard" and feed Doughreen.

I feed Doughreen usually a ratio of 1 part flour to 1.5-2 parts FILTERED or BOILED AND COOLED water. Basically make a pancake batter and then make it slightly thinner; but NOT like crepe thin.

Once doubled in height in your jar (mark the bitch with a sharpie if you're like me and fuckin forget), measure out 1/3 of a cup of starter into a mixing bowl. This can take UP to 24 hours, pay attention...she needs to be checked on. She's a finicky bitch and the temperature of your house will determine how fast or slow she rises.

Add 1 1/2 and 4 tbsp of FILTERED or BOILED AND COOLED water to your starter and mix until well combined. I like to use a whisk, but a stand mixer works well too!

Once the starter is dissolved in the water, add 1 and 3/4 tsp of salt and 3 and 2/3 cups of all purpose flour (I use what ever the fuck is on sale.) You want it to feel slightly sticky, but not unbearably. Basically, if you're ADHD brain doesn't like the texture, and you can't get away from your own body fast enough...it's too sticky,

Mix the SHIT out of it! If kneading by hand, I usually do for 10-12 minutes until it becomes a nice, smooth dough. If using a stand mixer, I let it run until my ADHD brain shifts back to the task of making bread and away from wherever the shit it ventured to!

Let that shit rest for like 8-12 hours, basically, if you poke it, you want it to bounce back slowly and not stay indented. If you're like me, odds are you failed at the math and your bread will end up ready to bake at like 3 in the fucking morning.

The cool thing is, at this point, you can shape your bread, stick it into your baking pans, cover it and place it in the damn fridge until you decide it's an acceptable time to bake bread.

When it's time to bake it, cut a slit down whatever side you think will relieve the steam the best, heat your oven to 450 degrees, place a lid on your bread and place it immediately into the oven. Don't preheat it. I don't know why, an excellent breadmaker told me this and I don't question shit that works. Bake it covered for 30 mins and then uncover for another 15-20 minutes.

Voila bitch, you just made sourdough without a bajillion steps. You're welcome.

How to grow potatoes; a can do for the impulsive idiot!

If you're thinking to yourself, "self, I want to grow potatoes , but we don't have a lot of room."

Lemme introduce you to garbage can potato gardening. You heard me...garbage....can... hear me out.

1) Collect all of the layers you need for a garden bed (rocks, compost and soil).

2) Find an old clean garbage can and drill holes around the bottom 6" and the bottom of the can.

3) Layer your growing mediums like a lasagna (rocks, compost, soil.)

4) Add growing potatoes to your soil. Add some more compost on top, add some more soil and add some more potatoes. Basically make 3 layers of soil, compost and potatoes...ending with soil.

5) Water generously daily.

6) Wait a reasonable length of time and wait for your stalks to get wilty and dry.

7) After a reasonable length of time has past, dump your garbage can upside down and reap the rewards of your very minimal efforts.

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The honest truth about a funny-farm

It all started with sourdough, no seriously, it did. Ask my friend, she warned my boyfriend while she and her husband were getting their new cow/calf pairs settled in. We laughed at the time, and then realized that it does, in fact, start with sourdough. I first picked up baking sourdough on a whim, and I absolutely sucked at it. I watched video after video of "stretch and folds", bannetons and fancy whisks. I quickly learned that I didn't have the attention span, or the will power to actually maintain all of the steps. So I didn't, I learned what worked by trial and error. I learned that kneading the shit out of it one time made the same texture of bread as reminding myself to stop hyperfocusing every 30 minutes, drag myself back to the kitchen and do another mundane set of stretch and folds.

As you can guess, that same method, or lack thereof, has applied to everything my family has done together. From animal husbandry, horse antics, baking, gardening and...of course, chicken farming.

Homecooked staples on a peasant's budget

As you can guess, feeding all of our furry kids takes a lot of resources, including money. So I have had to get seriously creative and resourceful when it comes to meals for my family. However, because I was blessed with a mother who couldn't cook to save her life, I loved watching cooking shows, hosting my own cooking shows and making family meals as often as possible, because I was NOT going to eat boiled dry and burnt potatoes for the rest of my life.

I've since moved out of my parents (obviously) and now subject my family to budget friendly, food bank staple, delicious meals!

Build a chicken coop-you say?

Follow our journey on how we made an entire chicken coop for less than $80 using pallets and construction scraps from friends. It's not expensive, but it is time consuming!