Month: March 2022

Well…..I had this whole blog post planned out to talk about different style of gardening and how you can literally garden anywhere….. and then we got a SURPRISE!!!!

WE HAVE BABIES ON THE HOMESTEAD!!

Peaches is our matriarch cat on the farm. She came to us from Michigan, and she has given us many litters in the past 5 years. She is super friendly and a wonderful mother. Today, she welcomed a new litter to the homestead. Of the 5 kittens, 4 have survived so far. And we are super excited, because if you have ever been to our house, you know we have an over abundance of yellow/orange cats….and this litter has calico and black babies!!!

This is sure to be the beginning of even more new life on the homestead, as our female ducks have started laying and clutching their eggs…so hopefully we will be having baby ducklings soon as well.

Spring is definitely an exciting time on the homestead!

Have a great week!!! Let me know you stopped by the blog by leaving some name suggestions for the new kittens.

Since last week’s post, we have been hard at work around the homestead. We were blessed with some very nice weather a few days this week, which allowed for some much needed chores and work to get done. Luke had been under the weather for a couple days, so I enlisted the help of the kids to get some things done.

Knowing that we had a garden expansion planned, a friend of ours was gracious enough to come over with his tractor and auger the post holes for us. Let me tell you….that auger made short work out of those post holes!  What would have taken us several days of post hole digging, using the auger we were able to get them done in under 30 minutes! We are not quite finished with the garden expansion, as we need to get some nice days when Luke and I can get out there and wrap the new posts with fencing. We have to be able to do it all at one time, otherwise the guinea and the few free range chickens we have will tear up my garden rows. I just cannot have that happen.  But to help further things along, the girls have since started laying the decorative pavers around the new garden area.

The girls were also a huge help with reconfiguring the compost area.  Having two bays for the compost and one for sawdust just wasn’t working. The compost bins were too small, and we needed more space to be able to get in there to turn it. The girls worked hard and took out the center divider of the compost piles and made one big compost bin. If we ever get a tractor with a bucket on it, the wider compost area will make it easier to get in there and stir it. We ended up with some left over cinder blocks, so we decided to lay them across the back of the compost area and we plan to make it look nice by planting some flowers in the holes of the cinder blocks.

While the girls were helping out with the compost piles and the garden pavers, Wyatt and I had a much worse spring chore…cleaning out the chicken coop. Oh, Man….it was gross!  Wyatt and I literally emptied out the whole coop, and put it all back together with fresh bedding.  And it was a blessing that the girls made the compost pile bigger, because we had a lot of dirty coop bedding to compost.  The chickens LOVED getting back into their freshly cleaned coop. They all got in there and were dust bathing in the fresh sawdust.

After the gross job, I let Wyatt have some creative freedom with helping come up with a design for the new herb garden that I’d like to put in.  We took some decorative pavers to designate a space, and then I let him decorate the exterior how he wanted to. I think it came out pretty neat.

To end this post…I have a confession to make. I have a problem….I am a chronic seed buyer. I went to the store this week, and seeds were on sale, and I just couldn’t pass them up! I walked out with 10 more packs!!! I think I have plenty of seeds to get me through this growing season….or do I? Hahaha!

I’d love to know that you stopped by the blog. Leave a message with your favorite herb/spice. Have a great week!!!

Last week I shared my excitement of buying and saving seeds, and the produce I put in the garden as starts. This week’s article is about taking an inventory of the items we currently have stored from last year’s harvest, how much a family should grow to sustain themselves, and planning your garden.

If you are already someone who cans or stores your produce, spring is the time to take an inventory of what you have left from the previous year’s garden. On our homestead, it’s also a time to eat up what’s still on the shelves to make room and empty some jars for the upcoming canning season. The easiest way that we have found to keep track of what we have on hand for canned goods, is to have a dry erase board hanging close by. Every time a jar of green beans, crushed tomatoes, pickles, or any other canned goods are taken off the shelves, we subtract it from the running total on the dry erase board. If I’m being completely honest, there are several times throughout the year when I have to go down and do an inventory because there are a few people (I won’t call anyone out by name) that “forgets” to update the dry erase board. 

Growing any amount of fresh produce for your family is already a step in the right direction, but if you are looking to grow enough to sustain your family for the year, a little more research is needed. The most obvious place to start is the size of your family and the ages. When you’re planning how much you are going to grow, keep in mind that a toddler does not eat as much as a teenager, so the number of plants per person may vary slightly. 

The chart below shows some of the vegetables that we grow here on the homestead, and an estimate of how much is needed to sustain a person through the year. 

Green Beans	12-15 Plants per Person
Cucumbers	4-5 Plants per Person
Carrots	25-35 Plants per Person
Corn	10-15 Plants per Person
Lettuce	4-6 Plants per Person
Melons	1-2 Plants per Person
Onions	12-20 Sets per Person
Peas	15-20 Plants per Person
Potatoes	10-15 Plants per Person
Spinach	5-6 Plants per Person
Squash	1-2 Plants per Person
Tomatoes	2-4 Plants per Person

Our homestead doesn’t quite follow this chart, as we grow enough not only for our family, but also for farmer’s markets/produce stand.  

Lastly, for today, I wanted to share some garden planning ideas. If you don’t have a garden and are looking to start growing some produce, or you have a garden but ran out of ground space and aren’t able to expand, it’s time to get creative! There’s no right or wrong way to have a garden. It doesn’t have to be big enough to be tilled with a tractor, or fenced in, or even in the ground. One option that I have seen people with very small do is planting vegetables in their flower beds. Maybe you have health issues and getting up and down isn’t possible for you, so you could have a raised bed garden, where your plants are in boxes above the ground. Or maybe container gardening is a more realistic option for your living situation. This is where you can be creative. You can plant in anything, from a wooden box, a bucket, an old bathtub, or even an old boot! The possibilities are endless, and this allows you to make your garden special and unique. Have FUN with your garden!! If you enjoy your garden and have fun with it, it is less of a chore to have to take care of.

I hope this post got your creative ideas going, from canning storage, keeping track of what you have on hand, how much to grow to sustain a person for a year, to some creative gardening ideas. I would love to see other people’s gardens and some of the fun things people use as planters!!!  Send me some pics!!!  

Have a great week!!!

I think I can speak for the majority of people in our area, and testify that when we get to about this time of the year, we are ready for some warmer weather. And, after the wet week we just had, I would say some dryer weather. I understand the necessity of the cold winter months, but I’m ready for spring! Like everyone else, the past few months we have been staying inside where it’s warm, with the exception of taking care of the chickens and ducks; but now, with warmer weather ahead, there are some projects that need to be planned to get done.  

Spring is always a busy time on the homestead, but with new additions to our livestock and expansion projects, this year is even busier. For the next several weeks, I’m going to be sharing with you the projects we have planned for this year. Part 1 is going to be focused around seed and plant selection for this year’s garden and stocking up on some garden necessities.

In case you haven’t walked past the garden center in your local stores, SEEDS ARE OUT!!! I am like a kid in a candy store when seed packets become available. I want one of every pack! HAHAHA. While I’m standing in the aisle with my arms full of seed packets, I have to stop and decide what I want to grow from seed, and what I want to plant as a start. Looking from my stash to my cart, I have some decisions to make.  

I do my best to save seeds from the previous year, so I know I will be directly sewing some of those into the garden, like peas, green beans, cucumber and zucchini. From my armfull of seed packets, I can put those back on the display. Other seeds that I sew directly into the garden are lettuce, spinach, squash and my root vegetables. I am also going to plant melons and corn. These two are a first for me. And that’s even more seed packets into my cart!  

Some items I just have better luck planting as starts. I’m going to try to grow some starts myself and plant them into the garden. I am not ashamed to say that I have had a rough go at this in the past, so I have a wonderful place that I get the rest of my vegetable plants from. I usually plant a variety of tomatoes, cabbages, and peppers from starts, and this year I am also going to try brussel sprouts. I have tried several times to grow brussel sprouts, but I have not been successful. I am determined to figure it out, even if my husband says it is a waste of garden real estate. HAHAHA

The last thing I want to touch on for Part 1, is stocking up on garden necessities. I am very supportive of those who farm/garden organically. When it comes down to it, our garden is not at a scale where I feel I can justify growing organically. I want our garden to produce as much as possible for our use and to bless others. While we are very fortunate to have chickens and ducks that provide us with fertilizer, we also like to use fertilizer that we mix in while watering. We also make sure that we are prepared for the unwanted weeds and ever present threat of harmful insects, by having weed and insect killer on hand. More power to those who are brave enough to grab a hornworm and not use any bug killer. Those are some nasty looking pests!! Gives me the creepy-crawlies just thinking about it! 

Come back next week for Part 2.  I’m going to talk about the expansion projects we are doing this year on the homestead, as well as talking about our canned goods supply and planning how much people should plan to put up for a year. 

Welcome to Faithful Friends Homestead and Kennel Blog!

My name is April Burkhart, Owner of Faithful Friends Homestead and Kennel LLC, and I am excited to be starting my first blog! A little bit about me; my husband and I have been married for 17 years, and I am mother of 3 teenagers and 2 dogs. I have a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Findlay, and am the office manager of a plumbing company. I did not grow up as a country girl, but through raising livestock in 4-H, I always had hoped one day I would live on a farm. And now, here I am, on our 2 acre homestead, living the country life.

With this blog, I hope to share what’s going on with our homestead and let others into our homestead experiences.. From planting seeds, pest control, harvesting, raising animals, shoveling poop, preserving our own food, to just having a good time, I want to share it all with my readers. I will share our successes and our failures…..or maybe we will call them “life lessons” 🙂 Readers will get to see our “creative” construction of projects around the homestead, as sometimes we have to be thrifty and use what’s on hand.  More on that in future posts. 

I would like to reach people of all ages and skill levels who are interested in learning with us, from us, and from others about homesteading. I want people to understand that it is ok to try new things and fail at them, that following through with a wacky idea can prove to have a great reward, and anyone can homestead in their own way, even if on a very small scale. 

With this being my first blog, I am planning on a weekly blog post to start out. Updates will be on Thursdays starting on March 10.

I would love to hear from any reader of this blog, but I do ask that everyone be respectful and kind. We are all stewards of this earth, and we are all striving to do our best with what God has blessed and provided to us.

I can also be reached via email at ffhk@bright.net