Progress Continues at the Cockeyed Homestead

As the days and nights continue their warming trends towards summer. I can already see the progress forward as we grow our homestead to how we want it to be every week. Considering we're two sexagenarians, disabled females, and on a tight shoe string budget, we're making it happen one baby step at a time.

The orchard is coming along slowly but surely. More raspberries, grapes, elderberries, and fruit trees will be bought, traded for, or given to us this year expanding production while they mature. The apple trees are blooming , the peach trees are setting fruit. We're hoping the old peach and apple trees, one each here when Mel got here almost 6 years ago, will bear fruit this year. Trimming branches off the existing apple and peach trees each year has given us ample chew sticks for our rabbit and the local colonies of cotton tails.

The existing trees, having been neglected for too many years, are out of control and are over 15 ft tall. My balance isn't the greatest, as you can imagine and Mel's grace, aka stumbling and falling while walking on solid ground, has me concerned when she climbs up on the roof. Let alone climbing trees anchored in sloping ground, with wayward branches with and using a chainsaw. Just the mental image alone gives me the willies.

That's what happens when you decide to pick up stakes and start your homestead near a small town. Who you gonna call? Nobody, because you don't know anyone and you can't afford to pay someone else to do it. You have to get creative and think outside the box to get the job done which both of us are terrific at.  But unfortunately in this case, it's failed us. So for now, we do what we can and take care of them the best we can.

The roof in the living room is still leaking. We thought the silicone had done the trick. In the coming weeks, we are trying a different tactic. We'll be ripping out the ceiling and insulation. Where we see daylight and mold has to be the problem, right? It's affecting both of our health now. I'm back on asthma medicine that I haven't had to use in 50 years other than a rescue inhaler. I might have used 1 inhaler a year. It's a daily thing now. The weather is warmer, we can tackle this job if we can get a week's worth of dry days and I can afford the repairs.

So now I'm budgeting for roof repairs. It's not only the roof, but the wood that needs to be replaced, new insulation and some sort of replacement ceiling covering. I'm thinking of thin plywood or paneling for that. but before any of that, there's the cost of the batteries ($100) for the tools to operate. ARGH! You see the see the source of my financial rants of late about our finances? I'm treading water here.

If I sound  depressed, I am in a way. I updated our Cockeyed Critter page and deleted Benjamin, our ermine English angora buck. He was one of Mel's favorites. He joined his son who died last week. I announced a few weeks ago that we were downsizing our rabbitry BUT not this way! Plus all the hens we lost...6 total over winter and early spring due to coyotes. It gets down right depressing at times. Yes, they are livestock and earn their keep, but they are like our pets.

What killed them. I dunno. It could have been fifty different things We'll be pulling down all the cages down early.and be giving them all a good scrubbing and bleaching. It's that time of year. We do it four times a year. Their barn was emptied of composted bedding, but these rabbits went down fast. Max 48 hours so I'm ruling out feed (they were eating the same as all the rest). I'm ruling out infection because it takes longer to manifest, but the two bucks were 8n side by side cages. I could play the twenty question game all day long and not have an answer.


It seems I'm always griping about finances lately, doesn't it? A few months ago, I went from a monthly $500  project budget down to a $50 dollar budget. It's harder to get things moving forward with that kind of budget crunch. It seems everybody that can help is $65 an hour or greater and nobody can fix something in an hour. The less cushion we have the more repairs or replacements we have to have. These are few, but we can't do without some basics.

Baby stepping with style

But, if we keep plugging forwards and keep our eyes on the goal, it'll get easier over time. Mel built a ram pump to bring water up from the creek and we've Gerry-rigged a sump pump for the hydroponic grow system that can later be expanded for the new greenhouses and irrigating the garden and orchard areas. Our toilets flush and animals are now watered using rain water catchment for their needs. This is major progress. They were done with what we had on hand. Some of these projects had items purchased years ago waiting for the opportunity to buy additional items, and some were just scrap found here and about or from other projects. We're baby stepping to our goal our way in style and laughter. We'll be thanking God for every step forward. With Him in the plans, how could we ultimately fail?

Y'all have a blessed day! I know we will.

Cockeyed Jo