We loved looking at the chics.  Helping them learn to eat and drink.  It was so much fun to just stare at them and occasionally make a quick loud noise and watch them all jump.  I think we lost about 5 for unknown reasons.  I think some of them just didn't learn how to eat even though we try to watch them and teach them how to eat if they look like they were not eating.  We even tried to mark the ones that we knew were eating with a permanent marker, but that didn't work well. 

They had started to grow big enough that it was time they move out of our basement.  But I had no where to put them so I bought some chicken wire and 10 post.  I fenced in a square that was about 10X10, put lights out there and because of our previous experiences with the dogs and other predators I lined it with electric fencing.  I got a good strong electric shocker so that we could use it in the future when we got goats.  With great resistance, I put up our 10X10 EZ Pop up canopy over the chicken coop figuring that I would have something permanent soon. 

Eventually they grew out of that and I fenced off about 50ftX30ft of the yard with electric fencing.  I put 3 lines of actual fencing and 2 that were just grounds so that if they jumped on the fence and touched two wires they would get shocked.  This worked well and we lost none of the chicks to predators.  We did unfortunately loose one to the electric fence, which was horrible.

The next step was to set them up in our 30X20 foot barn and since the electric fence worked well we fenced off an area of about 50X50 in the yard.  This worked great but eventually the chickens would get out of the fenced area but they would always run into there for safety if a dog came by. 

Our chickens were just about fully grown and on my return from a trip to California I was going to make laying boxes.  While I was driving my way back I got a call that they electric fence was unplugged and about 20 chickens were just gone.  No evidence of what had happen was left behind.  Two nights later it happen again and almost all the rest were gone, no evidence again.  We protected the remainder of the chickens (about 4) but over time the Cornish Cross just died.  Not sure what happened but they always seemed to struggle as they go so big.

After having two very unsuccessful attempts at raising chicks in California my wife decided to try again.  She ordered about 25 Cornish Cross and 25 Road Island Reds.  Our thoughts were that we would raise these first chicks and then incubate their eggs to grow our chicken farm. 

At about 6:30 am my phone unexpectedly rang.  I jumped out of bed figuring something bad has happened and saw the caller ID.  It was the post office.  I figure out what the call was for and then answered acting like I had been up for hours.  The chicks had arrived and unknowing to me, I had to go pick them up.  Guess that makes sense, after about 1 minute all that chirping and smell would drive everyone nuts.  Any I got my boys up and excitedly jumped into the van to race over to the post office. 

We got home and spent the rest of the day just looking at the chicks.  It was the most we had ever had.  I got boxes and put hay on the bottom, a heat lamp, feeder and waterereererer or however you spell that.  Set it all up and watched them for a while more.  It was a lot of fun. 

In the next days we built a big cardboard set up so they would have a lot of room.  We had 2 heat lamps, 3 water whatever’s and 2 feeders.  We fed them chick starter.

First on my list was to put in a garden.  The garden that the previous owners had was about a modest 15X10 foot garden.  I really was thinking big...  We need enough food to feed our family.  I figured 50x50 foot would be a good start (ouch).

We had no way to turn the soil so I rented a hydraulic roto tiller, $70 for the day.  I was beat by the end of the day trying to turn soil that had never been turned.

Next the layout of the garden.  Since we had a well and I figured it wouldn't be able to handle watering the garden I was planning to use a pump that was left here and pump water out of the pond.  I figured I would mound each row of vegetables and then the water could fill up in between.  That in it's self was work to dig and set up. 

My wife purchased seeds and I went at it.  Ug!!  it was so much work. 

Then came the weeds.  Seemed like we were out there every day.  Unfortunately in the end we had to travel some, got too busy and let it go for the most part.  We had some good tomatoes, asparagus (which we did nothing to except weed, they were already there), string beans and maybe a few other things.  The potatoes, onions, garlic and carrots were not worth it, I think the soil was not amended enough.  I am using what I harvested as seeds this year.  all the squash, cucumbers, melons and pumpkins rotted.  We planted a lot of other things but there was so much that we couldn't keep up with it all.  So the first year was pretty much a total flop. 

Hopefully we have learned and this year will be a lot better.  Jen went to a get together and got a lot of great ideas.  Guess we will just have to wait and see how this year goes...  Can't be a master garner on the first year...  or second...  maybe never...

This might seem silly but the first thing we missed when we moved from California to Tennessee is what we knew as civilization.  We learned that our here good coffee is at the gas station and healthy eating is biscuts and gravey or anything fried.  Fried Okra and greens....  what is that?  Realistate discriptions all included how close a Wal-Mart is. 

Where's Starbucks, Fresh Choice, Chevy, Jomba Juice and Belair Grocery stores.  Where is the natural food section in the store??  I thought the produce would be so much better but it not (by far).  Why does Chinese and Japanese food out here have potatoes in it?  It was almost like a culture shock.  And if someone walks by us with some sickness, we'd get it. 

Well, we have been here a year and a half now and I can truely say, I can live without all of that.  I can live without all the nice luxuries of CA and I can live without Okra and Walmarts.  And I am that much further pushed to growing it all myself.

I am not much of a blogger but with the findings of the spell check that is on the toolbar of my browser, I am feeling that this might be a little easier.  Too bad it wont correct my grammar too.

I figure that this blog may actually have a purpose.  I am going to tell about our experiences trying to homestead.  We have been trying to do small stuff for the past couple of years but until we bought the place we live at now, anything we did was mostly just for fun.

In 2003-2005 we knew we would like to homestead.  What a fun idea.  Watching homestead shows or videos, ah...  we could do that.(little do we know, I am sure)  The only problem was that we rented and had no money.  My wife for some reason thought it would be great to buy Chics...  So she bought a few with the kids...  They lived for a couple month and then became chew toys for our dog.  We tried again only smarter this time (or at least what we figured was smarter).  After the months inside the house in a box I built a light weight easy to move chicken coop out of 3/4 PVC pipes and chicken wire.  Worked pretty good and the Chickens live for a while until something managed to stretch open a hole in the side and have chicken al cart. 

My sister-in-law had this great idea to move out to Tennessee...  (what was she thinking???)  We had been looking to move but hadn't had any opportunities.  In my mind I had a line from Sacramento, CA to the White House and wanted to move some where above that line.  Tennessee is not above that line.  So we ended up moving to Tennessee.  I praised God that we at least had the opportunity.

After seeing Tennessee in 2005 I was very excited about living her.  In 2006 we bought a house on a rolling 10 treed acres with a good sized pond and several small structures.  Not the best place to try and homestead but certainly a beautiful piece of land and a good place for us to start to learn.

So the idea's begin to form.  I hope you enjoy this blog and reading about our endeavors to homesteading.