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Today I’m doing a homestead update where I share our goals, successes and failures.

Titus my 4 year old always asks me at breakfast “What are you dunna do today daddy?” I’ll tell him a couple things on my to-do list and then yaknow, generalize with “I’m gonna go work”. Then he tells me all the things he is gonna do. That’s kind of what I’m doing here today, we’re going to talk about the Ferguson homestead, and some of our goals for 2016.

I want to start out by talking about who we are in case you don’t know us yet, I thought you guys might like to know a little bit more about us Fergusons. My wife Catie is a homeschooling mom, she handles the kids and taking care of the homefront while I somehow manage to keep bringing home the bacon. We have 3 boys, Titus who is 4, Asher who is 2 and a half, and Eli is a few months short of 1 year old. I might have some of those ages a little off sorry, it’s hard to keep up with ages and birthdays, I grow plants, Catie grows kids.

We live in Saline, Louisiana on land that has been in the family for 5 generations now and we hope to keep it that way for several more generations.

• Earthworks:
  • We talk about what all we did during the workshop and give some updates on future classes.
  • Cover crop growing well – We planted a mixture of Rye, Wheat, Hairy Vetch, Oats, Crimson Clover, Dutch White Clover, Daikon Radish, and a vegetable mix full of spinach, lettuce, radishes, turnips, and a bunch of other things I can’t remember. The veggies got eaten by animals, but the other cover crops are doing well, they will summer kill but in the meantime will provide cover for the summer grasses to come in, weeds, and tree seeds to spring up. Since we are successing this from pine regrowth forest into a silvopasture system, we are going to see lots of weedy tree species sprout up, and what better animals to help convert that into manure than goats! So for now the goats are going to be invaluable in our system development
  • Ponds full, ducks will be introduced later this spring to allow more life to develop in the aquatic system before the ducks are introduced
  • The new roads have stayed firm, no problems there thankfully!
  • Trees need to come down. We have about 100 large pines that we want to harvest for lumber. It’s a lot of work, but we might be able to trade the pine tops and smaller pines as pulp wood for the efforts of a logging company to come take the trees down and stack them up for us. It would save me months of work. However, the problem is that we would loose all that material that could be chipped and used on the property as mulch. I sure could use the mulch! Of course we need to balance the positives and negatives of trading all that mulch material for the time savings of having professionals take down and stack all my trees for milling. Because it’s always a possibility of having mulch delivered for free or very cheaply in the future.
  • Of course if we get the trees down and milled, I hope to have the finances to buy the other materials needed to build a barn cause we sure need one for all the animals and the work that I need to get done! At the very least I need to build a pole barn to store hay under.

• Garden:
  • The goals with the garden this year are to be producing all our vegetable needs for the whole year. We should be able to accomplish that goal and I’m going to give it my best shot. I am also going to be trialing a method for growing that is a hybrid of all natural no till practices and conventional fertilization methods that will make lots of the more eco warrior people upset, and make the conventional gardeners scratch their heads and wonder what’s wrong with me. I’ve been growing a garden for long enough that I’m fairly sure I know exactly what I’m going to find with my experiment, but I’m going to document it all scientifically so there can be no disputing the results. And the great thing is that I know it’s going to make it so much easier for novice gardeners to be wildly successful. So I’m really excited about that of course!
  • 1440 plants started, likely 3 times that many are going to be direct seeded
  • We are planting 7 different tomatoes, 6 different peppers, 2 types of cabbage, 2 types of broccoli, 2 types of brussels sprouts, 3 or 4 different kinds of green onions, garlic, marigolds, daisies, valerian, viper’s bugloss, Havanna Tobacco, two types of thyme, wild zataar oregano, lemongrass, Thai roselle, Ground cherries, German chamomile, ashwaganda, cumin, calendula, feverfew, catmint, Mayan mint, Mexican sunflower. And those are just the things I have started early. Probably a hundred other cultivars and types of plants going in the garden later this season.
  • One of the listeners is sending me some sweet potato squash seed that had been stored for 25 years on the top of his grandpa’s fridge that we are going to try to grow and get him some viable seed so they can save those genetics for his family. I don’t know if it’s gonna work, but we’re gonna try and see what happens!
  • Expansion from the fall earthworks workshop doubled the garden space to almost a half acre
• Bee forage establishment for 2016
• Ducks – Trained to move from barnyard to the lake. Feeding our birds insects raised on the homestead
  • Turning a problem into a solution with ducks
  • Super sneaky methods for getting people to feed my ducks, and even paying me to feed them
• Nursery:
  • Fodder trees started and stratifying
  • Seedling research – Apples and the myth of no good fruit
  • Trialing Black Elderberry – Developing our own cultivars for sale. We hope to have some for sale later this year.
• Rabbits bred
  • I have 2 Florida white rabbits that are a smaller breed with thinner fur that are supposed to be excellent in the heat bred to Salatin bucks, also a silver fox doe bred to a Salatin buck that looks like he has rex genes in him. Another doe was bred to a Salatin buck, and she is a Silver fox crossed with a Florida white. All 4 does were bred and I’m expecting them to kindle in about 3 weeks. So be looking for pictures when we have a flood of baby rabbits!
• Goats bred: 1 is due the middle of march, 2 are due the middle of May, and one is due the middle of June. This may be the last run of goats I will breed, we will see though. It all depends on how things go this year, I may need them for a few more years for pasture establishment and brush clearing. But either way, if you are interested in some goats, I should have some for sale later this year! That’s potentially 8 kids and I don’t need 8 more goats on this property!!
• We talk about resilient animals and why that’s important for the homestead
• We have a really good dog picked out to breed our LGD to the next time she comes into heat in a couple months. Puppy training will begin in earnest! There is a chance I will have a couple LGDs trained up and ready to sell by winter.

As you can tell, we have a lot going on! I just wanted to share what all we are planning, so if this has given you any ideas, or inspired you to share what your goals are, please head over to the Homegrown Liberty Facebook group and share your own goals for this year! Maybe we can all help and encourage each other to stay on point and do good things this year!

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s show, If you’d like to get in touch with me, please send an email to

nick@homegrownliberty.com

I hope you have a wonderful day, God Bless. And as always “Go Do Good Things”