We’re so close to finishing up our last big project of the summer, if we’re being honest the list was supposed to be done in spring. We’re just putting the finishing touches on building a front pasture, a temporary home for our buck and buckling until we can get a more permanent area for them next year. After they move out it’ll basically just be a play yard for babies or an extra stall and pasture for impulsive Facebook livestock purchases, not that I would ever do that.
We accomplished a lot this summer. We finished building our green house. We built raised beds, and then discovered between our dogs and the chickens that raised beds too need to be fenced off. We put a ridiculous amount of sand in the chicken run, because they like to make it a muddy mess and it’s not very fun to deal with. We started a farmstand. We built the cutest little chicken tractor for silkies. We’re almost done with all of the meat chickens, we started with 50, lost about 20, butchered the remaining chickens and now we have 8 left that we impulsively bought at a big box store.
Our most recent project was on our list for a someday project, but moved to an emergency project, we upgraded our barn stalls. Our pregnant pigs were breaking out of their old stalls, they were built with some old wooden shipping containers we upcycled. The goats were breaking the stalls too. So we made new stalls with 2×4’s and cattle panels and they’re so nice! I love how it looks now, you can see the animals all love it now. Here’s the goats hanging out in the pig stall just because they could.
Now that we’re finally done, it feels like a huge accomplishment, but it’s almost August. That means it’s almost canning season, our pigs are going to be farrowing soon, and we need to get our little homestead ready for winter. We have so much work to do before winter. Once we get all of that done it’ll be time to relax and hibernate by a fire.
It just seems like no matter what you do on the homestead, there’s always more projects around the corner. You’re never truly done. We were just talking about the fact that next summer will be easier because we won’t have anything to build. Then we remembered our plan to build another pasture and a barn for our male goats and pigs. It really never ends, but that’s ok it’s something we love.
So wake me up when September ends, maybe we’ll get a break, or maybe not, we’ll see!
Written by, Brittany, the geek behind the blog. Sharing tips and stories from the trenches on navigating life homeschooling and homesteading as a stay at home mom.