Tag: ranch

2015 is the year that we transform our home and gardens to a self-sustaining homestead. Our first step is adding goats for milk and meat.  I know… Some think that this is strange. But it is our way of life. On December 27, we got to bring Frankie home. He is a neutered St. Croix sheep and the companion to…

Dear Jack the Cat, You are not allowed to touch the seeds… or the greens. … well, really or anything that I am growing in the house. You are a cat, not a cow! Love, Mom (the one who feeds you meat.)   Jack decided to LOVE on the fodder…  We have 7 trays growing inside and one in the…

Ok, so I am sure that you are finally bored with my posts on fodder…. I am just thrilled at being able to share my success (and my failure as well) with you… and I know that there are some out there who want to have chickens AND save money on feed. This is the way to do it! Once…

Houston, we are go for GREEN! We finally have sprouts that are showing COLOR! Day 6 is showing AWESOME growth! I am still uncertain on if a root base will form like I have read about. Remember this is an experiment for us anyhow! It looks like after researching, that I am “disturbing” the roots too much in the beginning,…

Oh My! Day 5 is here… we are half way through the growing on the first tray of barley fodder. I have determined that if this continues to work that we need to build another greenhouse… Oh LARRY?!?! Want another project?  I am thinking a lean-to on the front of the house. 🙂 So far, so good, no mold or…

So the sprouts have really begun this morning and the roots are forming! We have 3 bins going now, plus tonight will soak seeds before bead for the next day to make the 4th one. There is a “sweet” smell from the seeds and about 3 dozen fruit flies on them this morning. I have to find a way to…

We woke up this morning to a bit of a change on our barley. They have begun to sprout over night and we can start to see little white root coming out of some of them. We did have some fruit flies on the trays this morning. Made a home-made fruit fly trap (jar with a funnel and a 1/2…

Day 2 is kind of boring. We dumped the soaking seeds into their tray and watered twice, once in the morning and once before bed. The seeds did get much larger from soaking overnight. We dumped the drained water onto our herbs outside. We added 3 more cups of grains to our soaking bucket for the night to start another…

Day 1 – Yep, we are starting this journey of growing our own chicken feed for our hens (and a few roosters… and some ducks and geese too) If this works the way that we are hoping, we will have to double production on this in the next few weeks and then double it again when we get our rabbits…

We are going to revisit our fodder growing in severeal weeks. We dumped all of the moldy trays (yes, the chickens loved eating them still) and have 2 new methods going – A bucket one that we saw a youtube video on and another one where you water the top and the excess water drips down to the bucket below. …