Not-Quite Spring

It's time for another homestead update! Gardening: The daffodils, crocuses, and forsythias all in bloom may lead you to believe that Spring has finally sprung! I know that I am sorely tempted to get out in the garden and plant all of my spring crops already. But... alas, it's not quite Spring. In fact, we got snow! Our overnight temperatures are in the teens, hard frosts, and all the pretty green things and blossoms are burried under an uncharacteristically late blanket of white! I'm not the most excited person about winter hanging on into March. I had planned to put out my flowering vines and cold-hardy greens, like kale, but seeing as we have a good 2.5 inches of snow on the ground now, it is not going to happen. Se La Vie. Instead, I've been turning my attention to inventories throughout the house- sewing room, freezers, clothing, seeds, homestead shop, and just trying to see what we have, and make plans regarding what we want, what we need to replace, what we can toss out, what we can use. Home: While I'm talking about inventory, I've been doing some pre-Spring Spring cleaning. One of my "before the baby comes" goals was to whip my home into shape. Since I'm having baby at home (Praise God for that answered prayer!!) and I won't be away from everything for 2-3 days post delivery while the rest of the family fends for themselves, I thought it prudent to eliminate as much chaos as possible so that this home-birthing experience can be as tranquil and low-key as I intend it to be. This means I've been spending the last three weeks de-cluttering the house of broken furniture, old clothing, trash- BAGS AND BAGS OF GARBAGE!- and all of those extra things that I've kept for sentimental reasons, but which never get used or pulled out, and that I don't really even like or want. It's a scary thought as a homesteader to toss out excess rather than preserve it and put it away. But I think of it like this- I can keep the memories, and pass on the stuff to someone who may actually benefit from using it now. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to fix a glider rocker we had, but I was able to repair a rocking chair. The seat straps had all fallen through and broken, so it was essentially a chair without a seat. I got the webbing replaced, and it's good as new! What I have found in all of this is that more and more, as I walk through my house, I'm surrounded by things I truly love! I don't have any more "yellow mug days." [FYI: My MIL and I had matching set of mugs/bowls. One of them in particular was a really horrific shade of mustardy yellow... the color that reminds you exactly of the breastfeeding baby diaper you just changed... When that mug was the last clean one on the shelf, you just knew it was going to be a sub-optimal day.] I now find it easier to focus on the people behind all my daily tasks. Looking around and only seeing things that make me feel at home, and comforted, and at peace- that's what I want my home to be like for me and all of my family- it needs to become a haven, and cease to be a dumping ground. Baby steps. But before I can truly organize, I have to de-clutter the excess junk. So I'm making progress! And since the kitchen is the easiest to tackle during nap time because it's farthest from sleeping babes, and still relatively "bare and new" from our summer remodel, I've just been boxing and donating everything we cleared out of cabinets back in July. The problem area there was my recipe collection. Folders and binders and index cards full of recipes are scattered about the garage, and I can't find anything I'm looking for. SO- I've committed to setting up an organizational system, scanning all my loose sheet recipes into a digital file, and then printing only the ones I'm actually going to cook. Sorry, dad, probably not going to make that deep fried whole chicken recipe with the inordinate amount of Crisco... Or the random casseroles that are 40% jello, or the salads that are 60% mayonnaise. Those can get chucked RIGHT out. I look forward to sharing the fruit of all my organizational efforts. Animals: We're still waiting on all of the babies to arrive at the homestead. We've got rabbits up first; they're due March 15-17. This is our first round of breeding rabbits, ever! I am a little nervous, but definitely excited. Then will come the first of our dairy goats, Luna, around early to mid May. She had a much longer than average gestation last year, so I expect the same of her this year. And then Honey will be due the end of May- beginning of June. And hopefully, last of all to deliver, will be my little one early to mid June. My husband has informed me that I will not be making it to my due date, and will in fact deliver in May. We'll see. I haven't gone a full 40 weeks since our first. On a sadder note, we had to dispatch our Black Copper Maran rooster. He was a pretty fellow, but he had become increasingly aggressive with both my husband and I as well as our boys. The hens were getting roughed up a bit by him as well, particularly his favorite Ameraucana hen. We still have an andalusian rooster, and he has remained quite docile with us, and does his job of protecting the hens. While I don't have any olive egger chickies to brood, I have the benefit of 1) still having a rooster, 2) being able to gather eggs without being attacked, and 3) my children can help without being in danger of rooster attack. Website: We have a couple new and exciting things coming to the website. The first is our homemade dish scrubbers! You can find those now in our shop. They were fun little things to make, and they work really well at getting your dishes squeaky clean. The second exciting thing is that we've uploaded a free printable crop rotation chart for you to enjoy as we gear up for spring planting! This was a fun thing I put together a while back, and it comes from information I've gleaned over the last 5 years of gardening and figuring which plants do best where, and in which succession. So pop over to our website under the "More Info" tab and make sure you grab a copy for your gardening notes this year. The third and, in my opinion, most exciting thing coming soon is the Shaggy Maple Homestead Podcast: Wholly Holy Living! This was born out of my desire to transfer all the blog content from WHL to our new website, without it costing me a small fortune in renewals, upgrades, and plug-ins. My solution is to convert much of the content curated over the last 7 years into podcast form! This is a first for us, so I'm really looking forward to the new format, and actually getting to chat about all the things we've got going on here. It will be a lot of fun put my background in sound and media recording and my degree in theatre to good use. I'm excited to get it up and running in the next few weeks, and will be sure to let you know when the first episode officially drops, but right now, the timeline is looking like mid to late April! Everything else is just going according to the usual routine, praise the Lord!