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| The Crowned Anvil Homestead |
So I guess really, I should start with an explanation. I mean, we didn't even make it through the entire growing season before we disappeared?! That's a new low even for us, right? Well, to be honest, our little world that we share with you all, exploded a bit this last summer. Mike started having some medical problems that escalated quickly and deeply. The better part of our summer and fall was spent in and out of the hospital and medical offices. The end result was him being diagnosed with Achalasia, but the recovery and treatment weren't as smooth sailing as we would have hoped. At some point, I'm sure he'll address and share, but I'm doing today's post! It should suffice to say that due to his illness, most of the garden and everything else in our lives was left
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| Some of the plants in my kitchen window! |
almost solely in my care since he was too ill to help much. (I could get deeper into it, but let's just say that averaging 500 calories a day doesn't leave much energy to do anything.) Combine this with learning to care for our chickens and I was just swamped! Thankfully, he is doing better now. Things in our life may never be the same as they were before, but we're tackling those obstacles as they jump in front of us.
That being said, through this process of dealing with so serious an illness so close to home, the reality of how short life is finally hit us. We've had these dreams and goals that we kept putting off for "someday when life
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| Grass I grow inside for the chickens. |
is easier". A good deal of it was being stopped by our credit. We've had some really rough patches in our lives together that some days it still feels like we barely made it through. As great as these situations were to help us to grow together, they left a deep scar on our credit history that we haven't been brave enough to face. Well, since Mike started getting better, we started making time to sit down and talk about our dreams for the future. We started talking about what matters to us and what doesn't. The more we talked, the more the dream of having our own land to grow and raise some animals on kept coming up. It's an idea that has been growing in our heads for quite some time and it's made it's way to a full fledged dream. At first, we thought it was impossible that we would ever be able to have something like that of our own. It's an intimidating idea, isn't it? To work from a rental where you're allowed a handful of chickens to one day property and other livestock. Well, we've decided to be crazy and to go for it. And so, I am happy to
present the name of our homestead going forward:
The Crowned Anvil Homestead.
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| Our egg labels I designed |
We had originally planned on waiting to name ourselves until we actually had property of our own, but since we've been selling eggs as fast as our chickens can lay them, it became an issue sooner than later. Coming up with the name wasn't easy. We wanted it to be easier to say than our last name (which no one ever says right the first time!) and we wanted it to be memorable! We ended up looking at our family linage. Mike's family stems from the Patterson's of old (a line of blacksmiths) so his representation is the anvil. My family has some very distant royalty linage (thus the crown). We are very proud of the name and we're ridiculously excited to see where it will go in the coming future! That being said, we've been busy lately. The best way to fight winter blues for the winter that feels like it will never end is to keep working towards spring! I have to admit, though, that this is the most snow I've ever seen in my life! That being said, back to what has been keeping us busy! All of our little chickens are laying an egg a day (by in large).
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| My kitchen window basil plant |
While Mike was sick, I put together a better coop for them and with the help of his dad, put a run on for them. Actually, the need for the run has a funny story behind it. Our chickens up until this point hadn't tried to leave our backyard when we let them free range. They seemed content with what was theirs. Well, as fall came upon us and the grass and bugs began to die off, they lost that contentedness. Across the fence was our neighbor's yummy looking garden (which still had nice red tomatoes on the plants at this point). They decided to start jumping the fence and demanding treats from our poor compassionate neighbor (thankfully they have chickens too and she didn't mind too much!). So, since I'm too much of a soft heart when it comes to treating the chickens with kindness, the need for a run moved up higher in our priorities. When Mike's dad helped us add the run on, he made sure that there was enough shelter in it for the chickens to be able to still go out and enjoy the dirt and outside on all but the coldest days (oh boy have we had a few of those!). This helped immensely with keeping the chickens happy this winter! Now that I've talked the chickens to death (for now), more recently we've been trying to plan our garden. This year, we're going to be working with heirloom seeds from Botanical Interests. I'm nervous about the concept of trying to seed save as well as excited by it. We're growing all sorts of strange things (because why not?). As a matter of fact, earlier today, we just got a good chunk of our seed starters started! To battle the lack of light anywhere in our
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| Seed starters! |
rental house, we're experimenting with different light alternatives for the seedlings. We ended up putting in another compost (we ran out of room in the garbage can one...plus it was going so well!) bin using pallets. This year for the garden, we're planning on playing a bit more with the concept of vertical gardening. Most of the variations of things we're growing will be vine plants so they can grow up over a trellis we are planning on putting together as soon as the weather turns nice enough for us to. We've also been playing with our dehydrator more. Where we live, there are some amazing cottage laws for selling goods, and where as I've been selling jams and jellies for years under them, we're ready to expand our market! I have a wonderful buying crowd that are all about supporting us and the more I can offer them, the better!
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| Fruit leather I made recently. |
Mike and I are also working on getting an etsy set up to sell some of the goods we make that aren't food related on. This is all a part of us deciding to dive in to this dream and do anything we can to make it happen. We're really working hard on tying all the names of our stuff together (so it's easier for us to be found by our supporters!).
On a more random, completely unrelated note, I've recently been working on my horrible drawing (it's amazing stress relief) and have started a web comic that I update twice weekly. It originally had a different name, but due to the changing nature of the story line, we've decided to tie it's name in with our blog name! So, feel free to check out my webcomic! It is under consideration that the updates would also be posted here regularly, so feel free to email us and let
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| Dehydrated cabbage...you'd be surprised at just how nummy it is! |
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