Cockeyed Videos Standstill, but the Programs are Great!

We are still on hiatus with our cockeyed videos on YouTube. Mel is still busily working on an additional Java based software programs. The garden planner/seed catalog/gardening journal is now out for beta testing.

This new program is based on animals on the homestead. For example, (it can be used for whatever animal you choose) I'll use our angora rabbits. Date of birth, breeding, offspring, size of litter are important information you'll have access  within a few clicks of your mouse after inputting your data. It will also contain a simple profits and loss calculator which will show you where and how much money you are making and spending for your animals. Like the gardening software, it will help you stay organized. It will also include information enabling you to pedigree your stock.

These are separate programs. So you can buy just what you need. It's a buy once and it's yours to use unlike the online subscription based services. It has plenty of wiggle room built in to expand or customize it based on your needs. The exact price of the software programs has not been set yet, but we want to make it affordable for small homesteads like ours. These are not comprehensive programs but they do cover the basics every small homestead up to hobby farm size ventures.

What determines what software to make? Well, that's simple. Whatever we need or want. If we could use it, you can bet other homesteads out there can use them too. The small homestead governs what we make because we are tiny compared to other homesteads. We have just two acres. 

What's next on the programming agenda?  How about something based on your pantry/freezer? We can a lot of our vegetable and poultry production here at the Cockeyed Homestead. We have chickens that provide us with meat and eggs. A garden that produces about 75% of our needs. It's great that we are able to put by each year. How do you keep track of it all? Do you know how many jars of food stuff to put by each year. What did you can too much of? What did you can too little of?



I canned about three bushels of tomatoes last year thinking that would be enough. It lasted the two of us four months. Guess what I'll be planting and canning more of this year. My pickles? I barely will eek through. A few extra jars would be heavenly. I canned way too much jams. We don't need half as much for a year. Peaches, between frozen and canned we broke even. I did this by memory and guessimation this year. A program would have been nice. It will help us produce more accurately and hold down costs.

I normally buy meats we don't produce from Zaycon by the case.Well, it turned out their pork sausage links made Mel nauseous. I ended up giving 3/4 of a case to my neighbor. We loved their all beef hot dogs so much that I'll be buying two cases this summer to last us all year. With just the two of us on this homestead, a case or two of whatever will last us a year. Coupled with their sales, it's cheaper than the grocery store. I'll hit a local vendor for grass fed/ no antibiotic beef. I'll buy half a cow a year. I'll even take all the bones, tongues, and fat the processor will give me. It's bone broth/beef stock and rendered fat for soaps for basically free. The dogs love the bones after I've finished with them.

So why did Mel design the computer based programs? 
 
We started, like most homesteads, with a ring binder journal. We quickly found that the forms that were downloadable were inadequate for our needs in just three years. We tried creating spread sheets of our own. We were quickly overwhelmed by just pages upon pages. A 3" binder wasn't big enough. We ended up with several. And then, it was shuffling back and forth between notebooks trying to correlate the data we needed. It became a headache in record keeping. Now, we have the data we need and want within a simple program that we can adjust based on our needs.

Let's face it, as homesteaders, we have a duty to be self accountable. We want to know if something is a dismal failure or a success, and by how much. Are we getting our money's worth? A return on investment? Where did we spend too much or too little? How can we save money? Will these programs help with that? Well, let me put it this way. It sure couldn't hurt. It had to be simple to use because my damaged brain and at my <cough>age, it has to be.

The programs will be available soon.

Y'all have a blessed day.

Something to Crow About

This morning, I was sitting at my computer when I heard the first, low, strangling attempts of crowing from our young chickens. I knew it was going to happen soon. I figured about a month or so. So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard this at the crack of dawn this morning. Even Mel woke enough to ask if this was the babies crowing.

I'm not real sure, because it was still to dark to see, but I think it was Houdini making all the noise.  I've heard of young roosters crowing at about seven weeks old, but these babies are twelve weeks old. So, they are a bit behind on the growing curve. So far today, since daylight is in full force, I haven't heard it again.

I know this is only the beginning, but as a proud mama hen type I had to do a bit of my own crowing. It looks like I have THREE buff roosters out of the five. Not a good ratio at all. Someone or two may be heading for freezer camp in a few weeks. Right now they are less than three pounds a piece. I'll let them fatten up a bit first. Now the Rhode Island Reds are holding to the planned ratio of two roosters, I think.

We have one hen (yes she's a hen) that is definitely not a RIR or a Buff. Not sure what she is. She's not red enough to be a RIR or light enough to be a Buff. She may be a different type or a mixture of the two. She'll live in the Buff side of the hen house and run. A very tiny crown and an almost nonexistent wattle.

We'll have to buy some more Buff hens at a later date. Probably later in the summer for butchering. I should have done it earlier, but didn't want to have to butcher a lot of chickens plus set up the garden. There's only so much you can handle when homesteading. Since I'm the one that tends and weeds the garden and the only one that butchers animals, I have my limits. I have other things demanding my time including physical therapy once a week and the rabbits.

Speaking of time. I think we lost our WWOOFER, Amy, and son. I haven't seen them since October or November. It's  a shame too because plenty of extra hands would have worked wonders here at the Cockeyed Homestead. Instead of going full tilt, we are moving at a snail's pace only partly because of being short staffed. The tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, green beans, pole beans, and corn did get planted but it took several weeks instead of doing it all in a day. A wealth of information was lost by them.

It's been in the high 50s and low 60s with all this rain. I've been taking advantage of it by canning. So far, I've pressure canned about five pounds of navy beans into baked beans, four pounds of small dry limas beans, and four pounds of kidney beans into chili beans. I still have about six pounds of dried black eyed-peas to can for the following year. How do I know how much I'll need for a year? I simply kept a running mental total of what I've bought the last year.

We're a Zaycon Influencer. If you didn't know, Zaycon is a farm direct meat supplier of hormone free meat. I'd bought 10 pounds of all beef hotdogs. Not the kind made with beef waste products but whole meat ground like ground beef. We like baked beans with this. I also bought 36 pounds of hickory smoked bacon, 40 pounds of 80/20 ground beef, and 40 pounds of sausage links. With all this meat in the freezer, I need vegetable sides to go with them. Now keep in mind there are only two of us one this homestead. This is approximately a year's worth of these items for us. Throw in some steaks, beef roasts, pork chops from our local sourced farms and the butchering of our own chickens and rabbits, we have plenty of meat for a year.

Mel hails from England so a meal of Bangers and mash with green peas is often a full meal for us. I make a mean onion gravy to accompany it. Breakfast fare such as bacon, eggs and grits are also appears a fair amount also. It all depends on what is going on during the day. If it's a quick, slop on the table because we've been busy this often is the quick fix.

We'll that's it for this week from our homestead.

Y'all have a blessed day.