Just the Beginning

I love the word of God, it is so sweet to our souls it is compared to delicious honey:

 Psalms 119:103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Missy-

Okay... where to begin? We're not really sure honestly. I think the most fun of this will be watching with my husband how all of this will play out. That is why I want to remember where we started, the funny and maybe not-so funny mistakes we will make and where we will end verses our beginning expectations. Which those expectations are: 

1. To make a small sustainable garden that will grow and produce enough for us to enjoy all year long and hopefully sell excess to willing buyers at farmer markets and other avenues. We plan to grow our plants year-round and preserve what is not used or sold fresh. 

2. We would like to have a decent amount of chickens for eggs and please don't judge us, but also eventually for chemical-free meat. 

3. We plan on eventually obtaining a small herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats for milk to make cheese, yogurt, soap and other great things. Also we would be breeding and selling the goats. 

4.Lastly and my greatest desire in this endeavor is to have two or more honey-bee hives. We want to harvest yummy honey and useful beeswax, we plan to bottle and sell the excess honey as well. 

A small sustainable garden: We've started our small garden, which will get bigger year-by-year but I find it to be pretty adorable:

We are growing corn, green beans, cucumber, squash, melons, strawberries and tomatoes of course! My friend Lara gave me a few pumpkin sprouts to plant. She also gave me oregano and mint (I can't wait to use it for mojitos!) that I will plant closer to the house. We also have a few blueberry bushes that were transplanted, originally from my great grandmother's home, dispersed around our property that are doing very well. We will have a fair amount of blue berries to harvest from them this year! We have a gigantic pear tree and wild black berries that also grow on our land.   

Chickens: We're getting chicks tomorrow! We were holding out for easter eggers, a non-specific breed holding the blue/green egg gene. So the eggs will be a beautiful blue/green! We will breed these cute chickies for a while and it will probably be years before we use them for meat, but that is the plan eventually.  This is one of the cute babies coming home with me tomorrow!

Honey Bee Hives: I am a bit weary to be around the bees in my condition (pregnant), and the time to order bees is ending soon. We have not been educated at all in the art of bee-keeping so we will spend the next year going to bee-keepers meetings (they exist), collecting knowledge, supplies, and contacts.

Nigerian Dwarf Goats: As for the goats we will need ADGA registered goats so we could breed them and sell them and they are expensive!!! So they will probably be saved for last once we have gotten into a good routine caring for our other creatures and projects. 

These are long-term dreams intermingled in preparing for a baby, fixing up our project-filled home and all of our other responsibilities. So we are being patient with ourselves and only taking on as much as we can enjoy. I feel very blessed to start this journey with my amazing husband. It is seriously the best to dream and work together with him.