newspaper seed pots.

I spent this morning making 72 newspaper seed pots. I then filled them with dirt and planted tomatoes, tomatillos and orange habanero peppers! I have all of my gourd seeds soaking overnight and I'll put those in the seed pots I'm making now. I have hundreds of these things to make...yipppee.

homestead babies / chickens ducks & turkeys

         Getting ready for our little homestead!

2 of the lovely young lady chickens.

2 of the darling lil duckies!

This is our male turkey.

We got a trio of turkeys, a tom and two ladies. It should be easier to resist naming him Tommy, I will resist! I am very interested to watch these turkeys grow and become our friends. We have high hopes that they will aide us in insect control in our garden and I keep reading what great pets they make.

The ducks are so cute! We fill a giant bowl and watch them swim in the sunshine everyday. They are just darling and the youngest out of all these birds.

The chickens are very present and make eye contact! I look forward to loving them and collecting their eggs. Raising these babies is going to be so rewarding and fun!

homesteading it's our dream, it's our future.

We have been in Xela (a big city for Guaemala) for a year and a half now and we've been in the house we're in for a year. We've been pining for dirt, trees and open air; in other words, el campo!

We move in 10 days to just that, the country, just outside of San Juan del Obispo, Sacatepequez!

We think we have an acre to farm (homestead) and a house with a big chicken run and a separate building that will make two nice stalls. We have big plans for this place and our new lifestyle and we are busy putting them into action. We procured an arsenal of non-gmo seeds including:

egyptian kamut wheat

amaranth oppeopo

quinoa

corns

beans beans beans

peas

tomatoes galoure

gourds

melons & watermelons

squash (summer & winter)

cucumbers

eggplant

carrots

onions

peppers

rapini

broccoli

romanesco

herbs

sunflowers

highbush blueberries

black currants

peanuts

cauliflower

collards

kale

mustard greens

Our goal with the homesteading is to become food independent! I feel like that should be capitalized, it's so important and special to me! Food independence goes hand in hand with having a whole-diet farm and that's what we are aiming for. It's not going to happen over night but, we'll work as hard as we can towards our goal.

For meat & eggs we are going to have:

Chickens

Turkeys

Ducks

Guinea Hens

Rabbits

For milk, butter & cheese we are going to have:

GOATS!

The property has an avocado tree, it's young but, it's already producing. There's also a 2 year old cinnamon tree! How cool is that? We really just can't sit still we are so excited!

We are going to garden using Intensive Gardening methods to maximize our space and work with the earth....can't wait to have a Three Sisters Garden!

egg dreams.

We love love love the markets here and do the majority of our shopping there. You just never know what you're going to find each time you go and we go almost everyday. It's always fun when one of us stays home and the other goes on a market shop. Surprises from the market are the best!
The other day Zach came home with all kinds of great treasures: geese eggs, a duck egg, 7 fist size Crystal Quartz rocks, 1 big chunk of Obsidian and a bike! About those eggs though...he got them with hopes of hatching them. Right away, he whipped up an incubator out of a lightbulb and cardboard box, marked them so we can turn them...we have a thermometer and by adjusting the lid we have the temp hovering at 100 degrees. Incubation period is 21 days and we have our fingers crossed that we have some hatchlings in a few weeks or less. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed!