Today I want to talk about what I love about homesteading. Quite a few of the previous podcasts have contained lots of information about animal predator issues we have been having. I know it has been a real downer. As for me, it has definitely been a downer and I want to do this podcast to bring a balanced perspective and more positive outlook on our life here on the homestead. We don’t always have such a bad time of it. In fact, what I love about homesteading is a much better representation of what it is like for us most of the time.

Let me take a brief minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. I can’t thank you all enough. I appreciate you all so much. And I’m so excited to share with you what’s going on at the farm this week. We have big news.

Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates

The greatest thing is finally happening. If all goes well over the next few days, we will have a new dog on the homestead.

Sheep and Goats

We had yet another attack on our sheep. This time it was dogs. The tracks left behind were definitely from dogs. At least two. I’m not going to give the details this time, but we are down to four animals. The flock ram, a yearling and two breeding ewes. Thank God for the imminent arrival of a livestock guardian dog.

We can now rebuild our sheep flock and start a new goat herd. The most stressful thing about the whole situation is that we could not rebuild the flock or introduce the new goat breed we are adding to the homestead. I wanted to get back to normal flock size but we simply could not risk bringing new animals onto the homestead that would simply be killed by stray dogs. They are still out there. Yesterday we found dog tracks down in the very creek bed where the previous destruction occurred. It had rained hard the day before. These tracks were fresh yesterday. I’m so grateful that we have finally found a dog. Let me tell you a little bit about him.

Mack the Catalonian Sheep Dog

Mack was rehomed from a family that sold all of their sheep and therefore he no longer had a job. He was born and raised in the pasture with livestock, which is what we were looking for in a guardian dog. The lady from which we are getting him has had him for just a few months. She began having a bit of an issue with him going to visit the neighbors while she was not there during the daylight hours. At night he protected his animals.

Wandering is Not Good

As she does not live on that farmland where he was housed, he began seeking company elsewhere. She expected him to stay with the animals all the time. It seems that while she was only a few miles away, he still needed to know a human was around and sought out the neighbors to fill that role. We are hoping that because we are here all the time, he will be comfortable knowing we are always around and that he will be diligent about staying with the sheep. We shall see.

It has been many, many years since either of us has had a dog. I, for one, am looking forward to this new adventure. I hope Mack will be happy with us and with his new flock of sheep.

Adding the goats later will be an interesting exercise in introducing new animals to Mack. I’m sure I’ll be regaling stories of the ups and downs of livestock guardian dog ownership. Stay tuned.

Cows

We are still waiting on Violet to come into heat. Does it seem like to you that we are always “waiting on Violet” for something? I know it seems like it to me. We are pretty confident that all of the other girls are gestating a new calf. Will Violet get with the program? Only time will tell. She needs to conceive in the next few weeks or we end up in the same situation again. We have just a few weeks to meet our schedule of having her pregnant and due for delivery no later than the last week of April.

Quail

New quail babies will hatch in a few days. I have 84 eggs in there. I’m not sure what is going to happen this time. A couple of days ago we had a power outage. A tree fell on a line during a particularly heavy thunderstorm. We were out of power for several hours. This is not a problem during any time when the incubator is not running. After about an hour, we started the generator and plugged in the incubator. The temp was quite low and the humidity was really high due to the moisture from the rain. It stabilized quickly but I have no idea how this will affect the hatch rate.

I was going back and forth trying to decide between getting a battery big enough to jump start the car or one that would simply be enough for the cell phone and credit card reader. I need those two things working when I’m at the farmer’s market. This power outage clarified that decision.

HALO Bolt

There is a product called Halo Bolt and there are several different models. It comes with a small set of jumper cables, a couple of USB connections and even a place to attach a small device with an AC plug. It costs just under $100 dollars.

On the other hand, I can get a small charging device without the AC outlet and jumper cable capability for about 20 bucks. I was leaning in that direction. I just got a new car battery and don’t expect to have to use the jumper cables for quite a few years. But the experience of being without power for the incubator has convinced me to invest in the more expensive unit.

Let’s Get One and Test It Out

We cranked up the generator. But that was overkill for one little incubator. The more practical solution would be to be able to plug it into that battery for a little while. At least I think that will work. It is designed for charging a tablet or laptop, but I believe you can plug in any AC cord and run the device. We shall see. I’ll give it a try and let you know how it turns out. These are the kinds of things for which everyone needs to be prepared. You simply never know when the power is going to be out. For you it might be that you need to be able to charge your cell phone. For us, it’s going to be keeping the incubator running for those quail eggs.

Garden

I have three 5-gallon buckets of green beans in the cooler. We picked them Sunday evening. Tomorrow I’ll be packaging them up for the farmer’s market. They look beautiful. I’m so glad we got this great harvest. In the next few weeks, the Mexican bean beetles will come out and take over the plants. We don’t use any pesticides on our garden, not even the organic ones. We pick them off or squish them. But using this method ensures that eventually the bugs will win. Planting extra and making sure the plants are healthy and not a magnet to bugs are my two strategies for pest control and reaping a decent harvest.

There are small tomatoes all over the place out there. That’s going to be another great crop to harvest in the very near future.

Orchard

In the orchard, the blackberries are all that is left to pick. Scott cleaned out the wild blackberries that have thorns so it is easy for me to pick the remaining blackberries. We still have quite a few that are red and not yet ripe. I have a couple of gallons in the freezer right now. My plan for those is to steam the juice out of them and make seedless blackberry jelly.

I don’t know what happened to the apples. We had several trees that had apples for the first time ever but those apples disappeared. I suspect the deer that briefly invaded the orchard area is the culprit there. There is always next year.

I was hoping to see the strawberries bloom again. They are supposed to be everbearing. The deer ate all of the green leaves a while back, but they have grown back and the plants look great. Still waiting on those blooms and more strawberries.

Creamery

Still nothing going on here. It may be another couple of weeks before anything gets going again in the creamery. Scott is so busy with the high summer tasks of keeping the fields and orchards cut. Repairing fences takes up him time and so on. He has three or four more fields to mow and then maybe he can get back on the creamery tasks. You never know though. Some other tasks may come up. We shall see. Let’s talk about what I love about homesteading.

What I Love About Homesteading

I’m just going to run through a list of things that came up when I thought about what I love about homesteading. They are not in any particular order.

Setting my own schedule

The first thing that I love is that I’m in charge of when I get up and go to work. I say this with some ambiguity. It’s not like I can sleep until noon on any given day. In fact, there are still chores that need to be done on a regular basis, usually at a particular time. But as I have chosen to make those chores part of my life, I’m still in charge. I’m free to change the routine at any time. It might involve changing what animals we house here, but I certainly have that option.

Daily Planning Meetings

Another thing that is an absolute delight is having daily meetings with Scott about what we are going to do on any given day. It is a continuation of the hours and hours that we spent dreaming about what we were going to do once we were living here all the time, no longer working for someone else. We still dream together on a daily basis.

Making cheese

Once a week I make cheese. I love making cheese. It is a peaceful occupation. Sometimes it requires a bit of heavy lifting and that makes me tired, but in the end, I get these wonderful masterpieces of cheese on which to gaze. The entire process is still so amazing to experience, even though I’ve done it hundreds of times. To see liquid milk turn into a solid wheel or two or three of cheese is still awesome to see.

Gardening

Gardening without having to work it in around other things, well for the most part. This is like saying I set my schedule. There are sometimes when I need to do things in the garden but I also need to make cheese or go to the bank or clean the bathroom and so on. So, I do end up working it in around other things. But what I don’t have to do is try to work it in after a day at the office or in a limited time frame on the weekend. I have the whole week to figure out where I am going to fit in the gardening.

Perhaps this sounds too simple. But we spent years and years driving back and forth from Virginia to South Carolina for work. I had all day Saturday and Sunday until 6 pm to get all of the gardening done as well as laundry and cleaning and on and on. The garden was always overrun with weeds. It was not really that fun. Now it is a joy. And of course it is hard work when it is 85 or 90 degrees out, but it is a good work out. And if I don’t get it all done in one day, I have other days in which to work out when to get out there and water, weed, and pick veggies.  

Experiencing the Seasons

Experiencing each of the seasons up close and personal is part of our everyday life. The gardens brought that to mind. In the past, we experienced spring, summer, fall and winter as changes in temperature. Perhaps whether it snowed or rained was the most important aspect of the season but daily activities remained pretty much the same. Get up, go to work, come home, watch a little TV, go to bed and then do it all over again.

Now, each season brings us a change in what we do on the homestead. There is a lot of activity associated with spring, summer and fall. But each activity is different. In general, spring time is for planting, summer for weeding and watering and the fall is all about the harvest and preserving the harvest. Some of that happens all along the way, but in general, this is how I think about my life. The primary focus in the spring is getting the planting done. The primary focus in the summer is weeding and water, though there is a lot of harvesting happening as well. It just moves around a lot from one plant to the next to the next. In the fall, it is all about getting everything in and preserved for later use.

I Love Winter

And I never thought I would say this, but I love the winter now. It is a time to slow down, take stock of what worked and what needs to be changed in the next season. I used to hate winter. Seasonal Affective Disorder is something I have struggled with most of my life. As the winter season wore on, I would get more and more inactive and more and more depressed.

Recently, in the last few years, I’ve changed my diet, eliminating most carbohydrates. My moods stabilized. Now I experience the winter with joy. I still slow down. That’s why winter is useful. It is a time to rest up and revitalize the roots so the organism is strong and bursting with energy in the spring. I’m having a great experience with that deep revitalization in the winter. And I’m ready to get up and go when spring arrives.

Losing Track of the Day and Hour

Not knowing what day of the week it is or what time of day it is can be a little disconcerting. But I really only have to think about it once or twice a day. In the morning I determine what day it is and what I need to accomplish for the coming days. Things like getting ready for the farmer’s market or doing a podcast or newsletter. These things are done on specific days so I need to be ready for that. Otherwise, I check my list of things to do and get going on the first item.

In the evening there is a bit of reflection on what to prepare for the next day. One of the farmer’s markets requires me to get up at 5:15 am and the other 6:00 am. Other days of the week, the alarm goes off at 6 but we may or may not get up immediately. We have some leeway on those days. But market days, we pop up and get going as soon as the alarm sounds.  

New Life

The new births that happen in the spring. I never get tired of the new births. It is stressful for me, as I’ve said before. But I wouldn’t trade that joy of new birth for anything in the world.

Tours for Kids

Sharing our homestead with kids that come to visit. They love it so much. I watched a group of 8 kids just a few days ago which they explored the quail. They delighted in watching these quirky birds. They didn’t just look at them and say, “Oh they are cute.” No, they watched and watched and watched them. They looked into each section of the cages. They opened the cage doors and looked for eggs. It was so beautiful to see.

Clean Eating

Another thing I love about the homestead is cooking with ingredients that I raised myself. I know the exact contents of everything I eat. It was either raised by myself, purchased or bartered for it from another farm or homestead, or I purchased a single ingredient item in the store. This was the first and most important reason that we started our dream of living the homestead life.

I get so tired of reading the labels on foods in the grocery store and seeing all kinds of things that I cannot even pronounce. There are so many fillers and everything has sugar or wheat or gluten added. Even the meats now are injected with flavoring and fillers to bulk up the product. The label says something like, “contains 10% of something or other” to maintain freshness or enhance flavor or whatever. That’s 10% of the meat that is something that did not originate with the animal. I’m so glad those days are past.

Spending Time in the Kitchen

I get to spend lots of time in the kitchen storing food and being food self-reliant. When working for someone else, time in the kitchen was a dreadful activity. Mostly, I wanted to eat out as much as possible. Who wants to cook after working all day? I’m ready to sit down and let someone else do the work. Of course, I was eating a lot of really bad stuff. Chinese take out was a favorite. There is a lot of sugar in that stuff. So that is all in the past. I spend time in the kitchen when I choose.

Sometimes I make a meal that will last for days. In the intervening days, I might be making jam or canning pickled peppers. Canning is another task that I used to dread when I worked for other people. Pressure canning was something I had to do and I had to do it right away in a limited time frame on Saturday or Sunday. It was stressful. Now there is still stress to get the harvest processed but the window of time has expanded. I have every day, seven days a week to plan for the next harvest and canning session.  

Long Term Dreaming/Planning Sessions

Long term planning of the next step in our journey or modifying the previous plan is just as wonderful now as it was when we were just dreaming. We spent years dreaming about what we were going to do once we lived full time on our homestead. Of course, we wanted to do everything. We soon found out that we had to pick and choose what to do. There are simply not enough hours in the day to do all of which we dreamed. But the dreaming and planning is so much fun. And it continues. There is always something new to be added, changed or deleted from our homestead.

Daily Communion with God

And the final thing I want to say about what I love about homesteading is just getting up and going outside and communing with God. Living the homestead lifestyle makes it effortless. While all the work is going on and on and on, seemingly endless, there is always time to just stop and listen to the birds, feel the sunshine and soft breeze, and to watch God’s creations grazing in the fields, the children playing and the amazing plants growing and changing each day as they blossom and produce their fruits. We are truly blessed.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for today’s podcast. I may have rambled a bit here and there but I hope you enjoyed the uplifting ideas I talked about. Let me know what your dreams are and how you are progressing toward them. It doesn’t have to be the homestead life. We are all unique in our hopes and desires. Please share your dreams with me. I’d love to hear your story. Send me an email. Let me know what’s beautiful in your life.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts or whatever podcasting service you use, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. And if you like this content and want to help out the show, the absolute best way you can do that is to share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content. Let them know about the Peaceful Heart Farmcast.

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

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A day in the life on our homestead. My brother-in-law says we are always working. He is so right. And we love it. There is never a dull moment around here. For sure, sometimes it seems like just too much and wouldn’t a life of leisure be preferable. No, not really. As I imagine that life, I can only see boredom and always searching for something new and interesting. Here we don’t have to search for it as it comes to us every single day. Today I’ll give you an overview of a whirlwind day I recently experienced.

I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. I appreciate you all so much. I’m so excited to share with you what’s going on at the farm this week.

Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates

I’m going to skip most of the updates on the animals as they will show up in my rendition of a day in the life on our homestead. I will just briefly mention that Sweet Pea and Johnny are still looking for a new “forever home”. We love them but we simply do not need four donkeys. We intentionally reduced our sheep population and now the coyotes have reduced it even further. It will take time to rebuild what we have lost. In the end, we will still have only a small number of sheep, perhaps a dozen or so, compared to our high of 70 animals in the flock.

We are winding down our cashmere goat herd this fall. Next up will be bringing in a few Kiko goats. Perhaps I will do a whole podcast on this breed of goat. They were bred in New Zealand. The wild goats were bred with domestic stock to create a breed that is disease and parasite resistant. And my favorite attribute they bred for was little to no hoof maintenance. Most domestic goats in the US have a really hard time with their hooves. I look forward to raising goats that can be comfortable on their feet without constant attention.

That’s it for now. I want to get on to the topic of a day in the life on the homestead. I hope you enjoy this brief glimpse of the story of our life.

A Day in the Life

Our day begins the same every morning. Scott and I pray the rosary together. It’s a great meditation and starts our day off in the right frame of mind. God first.

Morning Milking

Now we get ready for morning milking. There isn’t much for me to as Scott handles most of the milking tasks. I handle some of the cleanup at the end. The only thing I have for this morning is to tend to the baby quail chicks. I make sure they have food and fresh water. The little ones get checked on twice a day. The grownups, only in the evening. Everyone looks good this morning and they are happy to have food and water.

Morning Gardening

Scott is still working on the milking so I take the opportunity for a brief walk through the garden. I decide to harvest some fresh herbs for the farmer’s markets. It’s a spur of the moment decision just because I have some time and it’s a beautiful morning to be in the garden. I sprint back to the house, pick up some scissors and a bucket and I’m back out in the garden in a flash. I love cutting fresh herbs. This morning it’s basil leaves, oregano sprigs and bunches of thyme. The smell is heavenly. The herbs are quickly stored in the cooler. I will package them later – probably tomorrow.

Making a Snack

I need to have protein snacks quickly available. Hard boiled eggs are one of my favorites. My Corsori, an Instapot lookalike, can handle 18 eggs at a time. Six minutes under pressure, six minutes cool down and natural pressure release, followed by a quick pressure release and open the lid. Six minutes in a cold-water bath, then peel. I like using my pressure cooker because the shells always just fall off when I am peeling them.

We generally eat just two meals a day. Scott makes us brunch somewhere between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm. It is usually in that 11:00 to 12:00 range. If I plan well, dinner will be around 5:00 pm for me. Scott’s dinner is always much later. Well, not always, but usually his preference is to work outside right up until milking time in the evening. He will eat after all of that is done and he has had a shower. That’s an Italian evening meal time around 9:00 or 10:00 in the evening. Sometimes he even gets the Italian siesta in the afternoon. Most times not though.  

Starting Strawberry Jam

I’ve got four quarts of strawberries that need to be attended to today. I’ll be making jam. I love strawberry jam. It’s a quick job to cut out the stems and dice them up. Two quarts of cut berries and six cups of sugar. I’ll add a dash of lemon to help maintain the bright red color.

Well, the strawberries are mixed with the sugar in the pot on the stove, but I’ve got to interrupt that process and forego the cooking and canning part. I’ll cover the pot with a clean towel and get back to it in a little while. This is a day in the life on the homestead. We need to take care of some animals. I have cream warming up in the butter churn. There is still about an hour before it will be warm enough to churn into butter. It should be possible to get it all done in time.

Cattle Husbandry

The flies have been horrendous. We have two suffering from pink eye. In humans we call it conjunctivitis. It is a bacterial infection of the eye. The flies irritate the eye and make it susceptible to the bacteria. The flies are also spreading it from one to another. Anyway, we put antibiotic cream directly in the eye and then followed up with injectable antibiotic. We are as natural as possible in raising and caring for our livestock. However, I’m sure you have heard me say this before, if they need medical treatment, they get it. In this case, blindness is a real possibility if the condition is left untreated.

We spent quite some time checking on each and every cow to make sure there were only two affected. I even treated Newton, the youngest calf at three weeks of age. This was prophylactic just in case. The younger calves are often the most susceptible. He looked fine but we treated him anyway. Just the cream, not the injection.

Time Trials

The whole process took more time than I had planned. There were four different groups of animals. There are the milking girls. Then there is the group we call the nursery girls. We do not milk them, but they are nursing calves three calves between the two of them. We also have Luna in that group. She is a heifer and has no calf. And Buttercup is also in that group. She did not have a calf this year. The boys are always in a group by themselves because two of them are bulls. They can’t just run with the girls. That would be a breeding disaster. And then there was Virginia and baby Newton. All in all, it took longer than the hour I had set aside but the cream was still in good shape for making butter.

Making Butter

I’m back inside now running the electric butter churn while the strawberries are heating up and cooking for the jam. It’s a little risky to do both of these things at once as they both have a break point that must be met. I gambled anyway. I figured the butter would get done long before the strawberries and sugar reached the gel point. It didn’t.

I don’t use pectin in my jams. I just cook it to gel point. That usually takes about 40 minutes or so. The butter got done just a few minutes before the jam reached the gel point. So, what do I do now? Well, I just turn the churn off and let the butter sit in the churn until I can get to it. I still had to be quick. The problem there is that the warmer the butter gets, the harder it is to work with. It is literally melting in my hands if it gets too warm.

Finishing the Strawberry Jam

The jam is ready. I quickly fill the jars, clean the rims, secure the lids and put them in the water-bath canner. Now I have time for the butter. It will take a while for the water to heat up to a rolling boil for the jam. Once it reaches that point, it is just a matter of setting a timer for how long to process the jam. That’s 20 minutes at my altitude.

I clean up the butter by rinsing it over and over with cold water. Then squish it firmly into 4 oz silicon soap molds and put the mold tray into the freezer. Tomorrow I will remove it from the freezer and pop out and wrap each 4 oz block of butter in paper. Now that the butter is in the freezer and the jam is processing in the canner, all of the clean-up for these two tasks is happening. I’m pretty messy when filling jars. There are bits of jam all over. And the butter? That requires lots of soap to get all that greasy mess in the churn, the bowls and utensils cleaned up. Whew, it feels good to get all that done. What’s next? Yes, there is more.

Making Blueberry Jam

Now I’m ready to make blueberry jam. I smashed them, added the sugar and got started heating them up. That takes a while. I have time to get more jars ready for the blueberry jam. The jars of strawberry jam are finished and need to come out of the water-bath canner. I’ll keep the water in it near boiling waiting for the blueberry jam. That makes the second batch quicker as the time to reach boil after adding the jars will be shorter. As the blueberry jam nears the gel point, I’m stirring constantly to keep it from sticking. Make sure to have my clothes covered. It begins to spit out blueberry goo all over the place. Stir more to keep that under control. That’s another mess to be cleaned up later.

Now it’s reached gel point, repeat the filling of jars, adding lids and put them in the canner. I’m a little tired but there is still so much to do. I think I’ll take a much-needed short break while this second batch of jam is processing. I have about 45 minutes or so to relax.

Weekly Newsletter

It’s now late afternoon and I need to create the weekly newsletter for all who are following what we are up to on the homestead. I like communicating with all of my customers and those who just follow us because they like hearing about our progress on the homestead.

It’s important to get the information out weekly. There are always updates and changes to what is happening at the farmer’s markets. I’ve done this so many times, that I have made the process quick and efficient. The newsletter is done and out in the email ethers. Now it’s probably time for evening milking and other chores.

Evening Chores

We start each milking event by warming up Newton’s milk. He gets two half-gallon calf milk bottles morning and evening. That’s two gallons per day. As a side note, tomorrow, I’ll spend quite a bit of time filling up gallon jars for just this purpose. We store his milk in one-gallon jars. Twice a day we put a gallon jar in a bucket of hot water. After about a half hour, we pour out the now cold water and refill it with hot water again. In another half hour it is warm enough for him to drink ready to be poured into the calf bottles.

All of this minutia becomes second nature as we do it twice a day. Go get the cows, get them prepped for milking, turn on the machine and put the milking inflations on their teats. Wait for about six minutes and they are done. Two at a time so there is a second round for Violet. The milk gets filtered and poured into five-gallon cans which are stored in the bulk cooling tank. The milk must be cooled to below 40 degrees in less than two hours. Then the clean-up procedures begin.

While Scott is doing those milking tasks, I’m taking care of the quail. The babies get food and water again. I collect eggs from the big girls, give them feed, and check their automatic watering system. I refill the 5-gallon bucket that automatically feeds into little cups in their cages as needed. Not a lot to do here, but a daily tasks nonetheless.

Clean Up Time

At the end is lots of clean up. Calf bottles, milk filter, milking machine – all have to be meticulously cleaned and sanitized. Then dinner, a shower and it’s time to wind down for the evening. For me that is usually around 8:00 or 8:30. Scott is sometimes just eating dinner at 9:00 or 9:30 – he may or may not have had that wonderful shower.

Tomorrow’s To-Do List

There is a lot more to do tomorrow. It will be Thursday. I need to get ready for the farmer’s markets on Friday and Saturday. That means making labels for those two new jams. And do you remember those herbs I cut early this morning? Yeah, those have to be packaged. I have three more half-gallons of cream and need to make another butter. I’m not sure how I got behind on that, but it will be good to catch up.

The Milk

All milk cans need to be emptied and cleaned. I’ll pour milk into 14 one-gallon jars for feeding Newton for the next week. And I will pour up milk for Friday and Saturday herd share pickups. I’ll need a gallon and a half of milk put back to make yogurt on Monday or Tuesday next week. I may even pour up some drinking milk for us. Any remaining milk gets the cream skimmed off the top. I store the cream in half gallon jars.

The Cream

The remaining cans usually have enough cream to skim to make one batch of butter. That will also happen next week on Tuesday or Wednesday. I make three pounds of butter at a time, usually once a week. I’ll have some extra cream to add back into the skim milk to make Scott’s half and half. He loves his coffee. In the end, there will be leftover skim milk and that gets poured on the garden. The green beans and tomatoes are loving that milk fertilizer. They look amazing.

Not a Typical Day in the Life

The day I just described is not every day, but it is very often the life that I live. It is wonderful. Actually, on most days, I laze around and would only make one batch of jam and maybe no butter. Some days, Scott takes a nap in the middle of the day or comes in and just vegges out on Facebook or YouTube. Sometimes he is doing more than vegging out. Sometimes he is sharing his day in the life on our Facebook page. If you are not following us there, please do. You get my perspective here, and Scott’s perspective can be found on the Facebook page with pictures and videos. Just search for Peaceful Heart Farm and it should come right up. Like us and share our content.

Well, I got tired just talking about all of that. I think I’ll end early today. We have that luxury any time we want – within limits. The cows still need to be milked twice daily and the quail need daily care. But other than that, we set our schedule. 

Final Thoughts

So, my brother-in-law says we seem to always be working and when is age going to slow us down? We hope that’s a long way in the future. I’m 66 and Scott will be 66 next month. This lifestyle keeps us fit. We get to eat healthy food that we have produced ourselves. Or at the very least, we know the farmer from which we purchased those eggs and hydroponic lettuce. And the blueberries and strawberries that went into the jams came from local farmers as well. We all grow good food and support each other.

I hope you enjoyed that walk through a day in my life. As I said, every day is not that busy, but I really enjoy the challenge in finding out how much I can accomplish in a day. I’m not crazy enough to do it every day though. I also need to spend time sitting at my computer making podcasts for you guys. I love you so much. Thank you so much for listening and sharing our joy.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts or whatever podcasting service you use, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. If you like this content and want to help out the show, again, the absolute best way you can do that is to share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content. Let them know about the Peaceful Heart Farmcast.

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

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