For the past few weeks I have been wondering about the hummingbirds. When are they coming back? Should I put out the nectar for them? When should I prepare for their arrival. Well - today was the day! Most of my readers live further south than we do, so they likely have their hummingbirds back already.

So this morning, shortly after breakfast, who did we see out our window? (Our house is designed for passive solar, so all of our windows are on the south side -long side- of our home and are quite large, we hang our feeder outside of one of the large windows in our kitchen.) It was one of the mamma ruby throated hummingbirds from last year!

How could I tell she was a repeat customer? Well she flew up to the window the feeder normally hangs at, buzzed around for a time, looking at us inside the house it seemed, then she flew to the next window, buzzed around and looked at us again before flying away.

So - I knew it was time to pull out the feeder at long last. I’m just glad she came by to announce her return! I actually felt flattered that she remembered us, er, our feeder. Last year we had two - three hummingbird couples feeding at our house - not many, but enough to entertain our little ones. I have stayed in places where they have a dozen or more regular hummingbird customers at their hanging restaurant.

So, here’s how we do it, if you’ve never fed hummingbirds before:

1. Buy yourself a feeder, the cheap red plastic ones are fine, that’s what we have!

2. Boil 1 cup of water.

3. Dissolve 1/4 cup of white sugar in the water (we buy it just for the birds, we normally eat the unbleached oranic type ourselves).

4. Wait for the syrup to cool.

5. Pour into your feeder with a funnel.

6. Hang!

It may take the birds awhile to find your feeder, and you might not even know if hummingbirds are in your area until you put one out. But if there are hummingbirds anywhere around, they will certainly find you! We don’t have a flower garden yet, or else I would be providing appealing nectar providing plants for the birds as well. As it is, the syrup is a supplement to their diet, they know where the flowers are ;). This is a good activity for urban homesteaders as well, you don’t need much space, all you need are the birds.

Welcome to the 50th Homesteading Carnival - Getting the Garden In! This is my first time hosting a carnival, and on a bit of short notice, so please bear with me! I feel so humbled to be able to host the big #50 - a milestone of a marker!

Here in Alberta, Canada it is finally planting season! You should see the big snow we had here in late April. Planting season comes a bit later than in other parts of North America, so many of you likely have gardens in already. However, it does seem that the theme of the submissions for the week is Getting the Garden In.

Thanks to everyone for participating in this week’s carnival! Don’t forget to link to this post on your blog and let your readers know to head on over here for some great homesteading blog posts!

Laura Williams presents Plantin’ Season around the Ol’ Homestead posted at Laura Williams’ Musings. Laura is busy cleaning up her garden beds and making plans for the upcoming growing season.

Sheri presents Dandelions posted at Shades of Pink. A nature study on dandelions, great for homeschoolers! Directions for making dandelion chains! We don’t have any here yet, but they are in town now, so we should have some soon.

Carole DeJarnatt presents The Basics Needed for Raising Baby Chicks posted at Fowl Visions. Baby chicks are so sweet, our girls just love them, find out some of the basics of baby chick care in this post.

Penny Raine presents tackle it tuesday- WFMW- instant garden posted at pennyraine.com. Photo’s of Penny’s new garden making efforts.

Grandma Rosie presents Grandma Rosie’s Texas Home - Recipe for soap spray……….From OHG Files posted at Grandma Rosie’s Texas Home. Recipes for soap spray, hot stuff spray and *shiver* bug juice spray!

Miss Amanda presents My Learning Experience - How Great Are His Works posted at My Learning Experience. Beautiful photographs of God’s handiwork in nature.

Dora Renee’ Wilkerson presents Y-2K Hippie: 05/07/08 posted at Y-2K Hippie. A neat project to do with honeysuckle! I was always trying to figure out lotions and potions to make out of flowers as a child, this looks like fun to do with your little ones.

Miss Jocelyn presents The Homesteading Carnival - ELDERBERRY RECIPES posted at The Homesteading Carnival. Oh, these sound so yummy! I look forward to having some fruit producing plants here on our homestead.

Becca Beardx presents Mission of Motherhood - Uses for Breastmilk posted at The Mission Of Motherhood.  Yep, I’ve used breastmilk in some of these ways too - particularly in the eyes!  Great list of breastmilk uses.

Peach presents Using Organic Fertilizers For A Healthy Lawn | Spring Lawn Care - Lawn Care Tips posted at Hobby Lawn Care.  Why you DON’T want to use synthetic chemicals on your lawn, and some suggestions for natural alternatives.

And then there’s me, Jennifer Bogart presents We ARE Going To Have a Garden This Year posted at Quiverfullfamily.com Blog. Our garden defeats in past years, and our determination to have a garden this year. Just to clarify, we have had many, many gardens in years past in different locations, but this patch of sod is proving hard to break in.

Thanks for visiting the Homesteading Carnival for this week! Don’t forget to submit your posts for next week’s carnival, to be held at Grandma Rosie’s Texas Home.

Hello fellow bloggers!

In a sudden change of plans next week’s Homesteading Carnival will be taking place right here on Monday, May 19th! If you have written any homesteading related posts in the past week, please submit them here.

Sorry for the short notice, but the lined up host for this coming week was unable to host :). Please submit your posts as soon as possible, and we’ll see you all back here (with links to all the posts) on Monday for a great Carnival! Hope you are all enjoying getting your gardens in!

Well, we’ve been living here on our homestead for a couple of years, and so far, our garden attempts have been a failure.  The first year we tried we just hand-dug up a soddy patch (full of quack grass!) and planted it to onions, lettuce, carrots - pretty simple.  Unfortunately, after we double dug the bed (and just turned the sod over) the quack grass roots were a foot underneath the surface of the soil.  And of course, the grass came back - but there was no getting rid of it!  The roots were 1 foot underneat the surface, our little seedlings were growing, we were trying to build a house, the deer were eating the onion tops.  Well, I just let it go after valliantly trying to hand-weed that grass out of there, it was mission impossible.

The next year we purchased some weaner pigs and put them in a pen over where we wanted our garden to grow.  Ah-hah we thought, this will take care of that quack grass!  The pigs did root some, and ate some, and by the time we were done with pigs in that pen, the sod had been pretty well killed - or so it seemed on the surface.  Last summer it didn’t come back, the sod was pretty black, so we thought that we were triumphant!  However, we were away so much of last year with our fence building contract that we didn’t bother with a garden.

But THIS year we have a borrowed tractor, and a borrowed cultivator, so Larry has worked up that patch of ground.  Guess what we are finding today?  Quack grass roots ;).  They are hard to kill!  But…we’ll take out as many as we can find and just go ahead.  We MUST have a garden this year!  We have a rhubarb start, and a comfrey start that need homes ASAP!  We just picked them up yesterday from my sister-in-laws old place, I think it came with rhubarb when they bought it.  I just love rhubarb, and haven’t had any (in the garden) since my parents garden when I was a small child,s o this is very exciting!  Who knows what variety it is, but it’s heritage that’s for certain!  My husband insisted we get some from their place because it is sweeter than others he’s tried.   Mmmm, rhubarb!

Here is another installment of the Homesteading Carnival for your enjoyment.  I didn’t know I was going to be included this week, so I was pleasantly surprised!  This week it is hosted by a homeschooled young lady of 18, she has such a sweet heart for others.  If you visit her blog, I’m sure you’ll be blessed.  Her theme for the week is her love and appreciation for her mother (to go along with Mother’s Day), and between the Homesteadng Carnival posts she expresses the many ways her Mama is wonderful :).

Last week I participated in my first non-prizey blog carnival.  It should be of interest to our homesteading/farming/smallholding online friends and readers, and the simply curious as well.

The Homesteading Carnival is a weekly blog happening where you can contribute your thoughts, experiences, advice etc. on homesteading.  We submitted our infamous piglet castration post for inclusion :).  Lots of other great posts to read there on a WIDE variety of topics, so enjoy!

Now for our long awaited How To Castrate a Piglet tutorial! Our sensitive readers may wish to skip this post if they feel a bit sensitive when encountering surgical procedures. It does include detailed photographs.

Castrating your own piglets is a necessary chore to do if you are keeping sows for breeding, and raising piglets. Someone will need to castrate the little male piglets (called barrows) unless you are saving them to sell as breeding stock. If they are to be sold as weaner pigs, or to be fed out into butcher hogs, they will need to be castrated. Yes, you can hire a vet to perform this service, but when last I checked the price for castrating two pigs (granted these were large weaner pigs that my in-laws had put off castrating themselves) the vet quoted them $150.00 for the two. My dear husband, Larry castrated them instead with the help of my in-laws (and he did need help, castrating a large pig is very difficult, they are quite strong and need to be carefully restrained).

However, if you castrate your piglets when they are 8 - 14 days old the operation can easily be performed by two people, some can even perform it by themselves if they are particularly talented, and it only requires a matter of minutes to complete. My husband Larry has now castrated a few batches of piglets, and some larger pigs as well, so he will be starring in this tutorial in the photographs along with my father-in-law, Keith. Keith is holding, and Larry is cutting, thanks for letting me take pictures! It was a bit difficult to get good photos of some of the detailed work, as there were 4 adults and my two small children in a smallish area.

Please note that we aren’t vets, and cannot take any liability for the outcome of your own castration of your piglets. This information is provided for educational purposes only.

So, here we go!

1. Remove the piglet to be castrated from its mother. Depending upon the breed of pig the mother may display varying signs of distress, and possibly hostility upon having surgical procedures performed to her off-spring, so it is best to be well away from her. We have kept Berkshires, and so do our in-laws, their mothers seem midly concerned, will come take a look, and do some querying snorting from the other side of the fence, but we haven’t had any problems so far.
2. Have your helper restrain the piglet in the position show in the photograph. Apply iodine to sterilize the area. Prepare a sharp, sterile cutting instrumet - scalpels with disposable blades can be picked up at the vet supply, local farm store, rural co-ops etc.

   

3. Squeeze the testes sac so that the testicles are snug up against the outer skin of the sac.

   

4. Make a vertical incision with the sterile scalpel on one of the sides of the sac, down low for drainage purposes. When the piglet is held in this position, the slit should be made high on the testes sac so that when the piglet is placed on the ground it down low, and well situated for drainage of the sac. Depending upon the age of the pig you may need to cut down further into the testes sac depending upon the amount of fat between the skin and the testicle. You’ll have to figure this out as you go.

   

5. Cut down into the teste to be removed, and squeeze the testes sac until the testicle ‘pops’ out of the sac. You may need to enlarge your incision slightly to facilitate this removal.
6. Once the testicle is outside of the bag, draw it away from the body with one hand. Cut the white spermatic cord with the scalpel, then continue pulling the testicle until the red blood cord snaps off. This will result in the least amount of bleeding for the piglet. Larry has the testicle in his hand in this photo and is preparing to cut the white cord with the scalpel.

   

7. This should be your end result. If you have everything out that is pictured in the below photo, your job is done for that side.

   

8. Now you are done the first side, repeat procedures 3 - 6 on the other side.
9. Spray the piglet well with a disinfecting agent, we use iodine, and my in-laws like to apply some colloidal silver as well.
10. Place the piglet back in the pen with his mother (he is now referred to as a wether), he will run to her for some tender Momma love and comfort, and will hardly act like anything happed at all. This is a very quick and humane method of castration, hardly seems to fizz the little fellows!

I hope you find this helpful in your own homesteading efforts! This basic technique works well for other animals as well, though with older pigs, and different breeds of animals you may need to cut the blood cord depending upon the age and stage of development of that animal. In that case, pull it out as far as you can before cutting it, so that it will retract back into the body. The method of restraint will vary according to the animal breed and age as well. We have successfully castrated tomcats and bull calves using variations of this method.

Work at Home Business Idea for Homeschoolers #1, Condiment Making
Or Make Your Own Relish – Frugal Friday

This is a combination post! A bit of cooking, small family home business idea, saving money, and homesteading all in one! It is also a combination of authors, Larry originated the post idea and wrote much of it, I edited, filled in a few details and supplied the recipe.

Over the years our family has had many small home based business to earn extra money and allow us to stay at home, and I would like to share with other home schooling families some of our experiences.

The first home business idea I’d like to share is making food stuff at home and then selling it at farmer markets or other venues like that – local fairs, craft shows etc. Our families first experience with selling food items would be my wife Jennifer when she was a small girl and helped her mother to make and sell home baking, my sisters also did this as a way of earning their pocket money. My our experience started back in the late 1980’s when I had a few honey bees and sold honey at the local farmers market. I very much enjoyed keeping bees and selling the honey.

What I want to share in this post is the business opportunity to make and sell condiments (relish, jams, pickles etc.). While we were down visiting my family, my mother had bought some relish at the local farmers market and we all enjoyed it very much. My oldest daughter liked it very much but we found out that it had wheat flour in it and she has a very hard time with wheat. So I asked Jen to look on the Internet for a recipe to make our own, she found a recipe and we took a morning to make some, replacing the wheat with rice flour. It was a great hit, our first batch was so close to the relish my mother had bought that we knew we had something our whole family could enjoy.

Now the reason that I thought this would be a great home based business was when I sat down and crunched the numbers. The relish my mother bought was $7.50 for a one pint jar and the lady making it has a hard time keeping up with the demand. We had made 17 pints that morning following the recipe we got off the Internet and the ingredients cost about $30.00 not counting the jars. So 17 times $7.50 is $127.50 less the ingredients is $97.50 then you have to take out the cost of the jars at $.65 each times 17 giving you $16.35 for a net total of $81.15 - not bad for about 4 hours in the kitchen, that is $20.28/hour!

*This is also my Frugal Friday post! Making your own condiments saves a LOT of money over buying it at the store. Our family could not afford $7.50/jar of relish at likely 1 jar/week at the way our family eats it! Making your own brings the cost down to $2.00/jar (not counting the jars, which are re-usable), which is far more affordable! And there is a very high vegetable content in this relish, which is wonderful!*

Of course, you may need to take your fuel and marketing costs out as well ?. If you grow your own veggies you could half your ingredient costs, and then you could add other kinds of relish, pickles and jams. Depending upon the regulations in the part of the world where you live you may need to prepare the condiments in a commercial kitchen (either one in your home, or you can rent space in some locations) in order to sell at a farmers market. Here in Alberta that is the way food regulations are going, so you should check into the requirements in your state/province for small scale food processing. People love home made condiments and there is no end to the kinds you can make.

If you have teenage daughters this is a wonderful business idea for them! It is simple, fun, and profitable!

So here is the recipe for the relish we made (we did modify the recipe we found, so this is the revision) if all you do is try a batch for yourself you will I hope find it very enjoyable, just be careful who you give a jar to for they will want more. Jennifer’s grandparents just adore it, we shared some with them on our visit to the city yesterday, and they will be needing more on our next visit for certain!

Lady Rose Relish Recipe

This is the recipe that we will be using next time as a result of our learning experiences – the batch we made this time is slightly different, but we’d like it better with these changes.

Ingredients

4 cups of chopped, peeled cucumbers
4 cups chopped, peeled onions
2 heads celery, cut fine
3 sweet red peppers, cut fine
3 green peppers, cut fine
1 large cauliflower, cut fine
5 cups white vinegar
6 ¾ cups white sugar (we used organic which is ‘tan’ sugar)
¼ cup yellow mustard seeds
1 cup rice flour (you can also use wheat)
4 tbsp. dry mustard powder
2 tbsp. turmeric powder
¼ cup salt

Instructions

Wash, peel and trim all vegetables as needed. Either cut fine by hand, with a chopper, or in the food processor with the chopping blade (we used a food processor – the girls loved helping!) to get the above measures necessary for the recipe.

Place all ingredients in a non-reactive pot (we used stainless steel), stir well and let stand for 24 hours. Heat until the relish comes to a boil, stir regularly to prevent burning. Pour into scalded canning jars, leaving ½” headspace, and ensuring that the rim is wiped clean, place scalded seals and rings on jars, sealing until finger tight. Place jars in a boiling water canning bath for 10 minutes. Remove with tongs and place on counter undisturbed for 24 hours. Tighten any loose rings, and put any unsealed jars into the fridge for immediate consumption.

Mmmm, enjoy!