Lisa
Welcome to the two acre homestead come along with us on our journey from a small Suburban Homestead lifestyle, to our new lifestyle homesteading in the rural countryside of southern Arizona. We'll share with you our tips, tricks, successes and failures from both our past suburban lifestyle to our new rural lifestyle all on the two acre homestead.
Welcome to the two acre homestead podcast. We're your host, Lisa,
Kevin
and Kevin.
Lisa
And, man, does it feel good to be back in studio?
Kevin
Yeah, there's cobwebs in here. It seems like it's been a little while
Lisa
it has.
Kevin
So for those of you who are new around here, we'd like to start off our episode with a question. So what have you been up to lately?
Lisa
Well, I think the whole episode is really about what we've been up to you.
Kevin
Yep. Yeah, we've had a lot going on lately. It's not like we've been sitting around watching, you know, TV streaming. You know, these past couple months or so.
Lisa
Yeah. You know that the truth? We dropped the mic in the beginning of April. And we've been off the air from April to May. So yeah, it's it's been a little while.
Kevin
But you know, that break was needed. And it goes along with the theme we'll be talking about. We're real homesteaders.
Lisa
We do all the things.
Kevin
Yep. So you know, that takes time and energy. And we need some time to get some things done.
Lisa
Well, and it helps us to avoid burnout.
Kevin
Yep. Yep. That's the theme of the season, isn't it? So we're going to be talking about avoiding burnout. How do you do that?
Lisa
Right. So that means we're going to be talking about homesteading in such a way that you avoid burning yourself out. Because you might be trying to get all the things done doing all of the things. I say that with air quotes, but sometimes when you're trying to do all the things you can really get burnt out.
Kevin
Yep. So that being said, what's new in your world?
Lisa
Well, this is the busiest time of the year. So I am very busy with the gardens. We're starting harvest, we're starting our harvest season already. And really just working on keeping on top of my weeds, making sure that the gardens are completely weeded, weed free and weeded out. It's not to say that I haven't had some challenges I really have. There have been some weeds that have poked through even though we've put a lot of things in place to prevent the weeds from popping up, but they still pop up. And we've been working on the expansion of the garden, although we're pretty much done with that now. Now it's just really focusing on the harvesting aspect of it. The temperatures have been kind of cool. And when I say cool, I mean, you know, we might be touching the 90s. I think we did get to 97 Just this past week, but it was for one day. And then now we're getting ready to cool off and be back into the 80s. That's significant because we're here in the high deserts of Arizona and I should say the low desert of Arizona but we are in a high elevation. So it's it's a little bit interesting. The weather has thrown everybody that I know a little bit of a curveball because the weather is just actually cooler right now. So it's kind of holding up some of the plant growth especially if our warmer season crops like our our eight plants and it's extended the season for some of our cooler weather crops like brassicas and so forth. So it's been kind of interesting. That's what's going on in the gardens. But I know I've been driving you crazy be because we've been hitting new animals
Kevin
yep, there have been some new additions. Yeah.
Lisa
So one of the new additions is our goats. Now, before the end of last season, we made a hard decision to get rid of our three goats. We just felt that it wasn't the right time for us to be milking. And and that was a personal decision for us. We were we gave the our goats back to their original owners who gladly accepted them. But as things progressed, as the months passed, the things that were keeping us occupied and very stressed, died down. And something really interesting happened. I got a text message from the goats original owner, asking if we would like to have them again. And we said, of course. And so our goats are back. And this time we believe all three of them are pregnant. So we're waiting to get the test the tests done on the goats, but we're pretty sure they are pregnant because we have not heard anybody going into heat. So that's exciting. Um, and we've also had some health challenges. So specifically me, I've been facing some health challenges. So we've completely done a dietary change and I have been just stuck in the weeds on fishing out how to correct some of these health problems that I've been having with diet and just changing how we do things health wise, here on our homestead so yeah, I haven't I've not that busy, you know?
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so Kevin, what have you been up to lately?
Kevin
So what have I been up to? Um, let's see. So the first thing when I think about some of the things that we've been working on these past couple months, we added electrical to the barns. So that's been real nice. So we added some really good lighting in there. And some outlets mainly on the inside. And that gives us the ability to not only have good lighting if we go out there late at night early in the morning when we need to take care of chores. But also we can run fans in there that makes it a bit cooler. I added some vents actually to to kind of keep fresh air flowing through there too. Which is nice. And I think that's really nice. And then you know you mentioned about the goats. Now that we have the goats back and especially if all of them are in milk we have an electric milkers so that's going to help make that process a lot easier. So I'm not dragging a cord out every morning.
Lisa
Yeah pain because that's what we were doing before is you're dragging out an electrical cord and that got to be just too much of
Kevin
a cord or something for In the house, you know, to, but anyway, we don't need to do that anymore. So I think that is real cool. Along with that electrical, we added a new shops. So I'm real excited about that I've been wanting that for some time. And you know, especially with the need to construct things, from time to time, fix things or whatnot, it's real nice to be able to have things set up, I built a workbench that I can roll around right now, it will get into this as far as animals but I'm building another coop. It's real nice because I can do a little bit at a time, leave it where it's at come back and it just it's a time saver. So it's real nice. So the shop allows, you know, for building things, the barn setup a lot better for milking and then lighting in general. And both of those areas. Another thing that we've been working on is new animals. Let's see. Yeah. Why
Lisa
are you building a second coat? Yeah,
Kevin
building. So will this be the third coop? Right? So right now we have let's see. So we have four baby turkeys.
Lisa
Is it four or 545
Kevin
and five? Wait, let's see we have five American breasts, chickens that we're bringing up right now. So they're all together. We do have a small temporarily we have a small cage that they can go into. They're so small they can they can handle it. But yeah, that coop is going to be able to support them. So that'll be a good addition. So I'm trying to finish that up as soon as possible. And then set up. So speaking of the barn, move the rabbits over there and set up a new spot for them raised it up to which so in addition, in the barn set up some additional cages for the rabbits because we're expecting what probably in the month of September to add some girl outs.
Lisa
Right, some additional kids. Yeah, that's when we'll start our breeding season for the rabbits is in September.
Kevin
And one more thing in the barn that I'll be setting up soon is since we're expecting that the to confirm that are those are all pregnant. So we'll be setting up kidding stalls in there as well. So that's going to be good.
Lisa
And that's exciting because the previous owners with our goats, the previous owners place the goats with the box. So they just let the goats kind of hang out with the Bucs. And that's how they run their program. They don't have like a specific. So they don't know like the specific time when the DOS got pregnant. So we're anticipating it's a best guesstimate that one of our dos will kid in July or August. And unfortunately, we were we don't know the exact dates. So that's one of the things I think you're going to be working on too is expanding. I think we're talking about putting expanding our dairy or dairy for our goats, and we're going to be adding bucks to our property. So that way, we're in control of the breeding. You know, when these girls get bred and when they don't?
Kevin
Yeah, instead of saying, Hey, can you bring them over for a date type of thing? Right,
Lisa
right, or just the not knowing, you know, when they've gotten pregnant? Because it's, it's important for us to know, when they're going to start kidding, because, you know, kidding means giving birth for goats. And it's important for us to know that because then we'll know, you know, this particular day is the day that we're expecting, you know, this dough to kid. And if there's anything that we can do to help, we're right there to assist in that birth. But, and unfortunately, in this situation, that we find ourselves right now we don't know the exact time or the exact date of possible pregnancy so it's just like it Could have been maybe somewheres around here. So
Kevin
it helps with planning, right and then, right. You know, plus, if you you take good records, you know, you know what kind of when you can expect, right up. And so, you know, like you mentioned when the project is going to be in, it's always infrastructure first, right, so, we've talked about that maybe getting a buck in a weather, but first, you know, put up the, the infrastructure, we kind of know where it's gonna go, I kind of have some ideas where we haven't really, you know, flesh it out exactly. But we're going to keep it separate from the barn, I have an area that basically the area of the goat pen that we have now, I put three pallets, if you can imagine I left space for a gate, the swing gate, but I just put three pallets together, screw them together and screw them into the post. So I want to put a gate there. So now we can access it a little bit easier. Not a big deal right now. But that way, you know, we can lead them out. If we want, let's say the the DOE's we can lead them out to the field when there's greenery there, and they can go eat and so on. So that will That'll also help too, because less feed less hay that we have to feed them and wow, man, we can't wait to get the money. Because hay prices we I don't want to get in too much into prices. But the hay prices are just crazy and
Lisa
still astronomical. So and we're
Kevin
not even on pasture yet. We're not even at winter time yet. But anyway. What else and then the one more project that's going to be once we get these other things done is a three sided barn, not really a barn but it's a three sided structure for storing hay. I've got some things I may throw in there, like what a tiller and some things but that kind of a thing. And plus, it'll give us some privacy from neighbors on one side. So that's going to be nice. So hopefully that'll be coming sometime soon.
Lisa
That's got to come soon. Because yeah. Why is that? Well, because we are I mean winter. I know it's only June but you know, we're we're already starting to make our our plans for winter. So all of those projects, they're going to have to get done soon. So
Kevin
yep, so not slacking.
Lisa
No, we're not slacking at all. So that is kind of a wrap, I would say on this particular episode. Next week, we are going to take a deep dive into burnout on the homestead as we were talking about all of these projects, projects can burn you out and there's a way to handle it that we have found we are not perfect at it. But we definitely will be taking a deep dive into some things that you can do to avoid your homestead. So that is it from all of us here at our homestead. So from all of us here to all of you wherever you are in the world. Happy homesteading and stay safe out there.