Making homemade soap not only provides us with natural soaps on the homestead, but it’s also a creative outlet. This year I am committed to trying new techniques, additives, and all-natural ingredients to make small batches of unique soaps. Soaps created with peppermint essential oil are my all-time favorite. I wanted to make a winter…
For years, I have dreaded the late summer months on the homestead because turkey mites would inevitably ravage my legs. This almost invisible villain is the larval form of the Lone Star Tick. The intense itching for weeks was too much! I began searching for the ultimate defense to protect myself from turkey mite bites….
In this modern world, many people’s only recollection of a root cellar is from television. However, prior to modern refrigeration, root cellars were one of the ways that families could store food for the winter. Root cellars are underground structures that use the earth to provide a means to naturally cool, insulate and maintain proper…
The number one reason that new beekeepers get started with honey bees is access to fresh honey! While beekeepers keep bees for a variety of reasons harvesting honey is an exciting part of the job! A healthy hive can produce 40 to 100 pounds of honey depending on the size of the honey supers used….
Fall has finally come to the homestead and buck fever hits hard this time of year. Philip is an avid hunter and while he certainly scopes out the best bucks each year. Hunting on the homestead is not about trophies, it’s about filling our freezers with wild game. While using a local meat processor is…
In April, we moved four of our strongest colonies of honey bees from Florida to our homestead in Kentucky. Even then the fields were full of flowers and the trees were in bloom. We felt good that when we returned to Kentucky in the late summer that the hives would be full of honey ready…
Our trips to the homestead can be brutal in the late summer months. It never fails that I get eaten up by what I have called chiggers for many years. However the locals, all say the same thing, likely I was bitten by turkey mites. In all the places I have lived, I had never…
Once the most important aspects of the driveway were complete, the other major project that we needed our bulldozer contractor to focus on was building the farm pond. Clinton and Ed Cockriel from Ed Cockriel & Son Dozer and Backhoe Services have years of experience in pond building in the Western Kentucky area. We appreciate…
It’s finally fall and life on the homestead takes on a whole new focus. The hustle and bustle of the spring and summer seasons are slowing down, though Philip and I don’t know how to live any other way. We continue to hustle no matter the season! September brings the opening of archery season in…
