It’s been 10 months since I wrote a blog entry, and truthfully, I thought my time as a blogger was over. Just another passing phase. But I found a genuinely enjoyed writing, and while our family hasn’t done anything super funny or worth writing about for quite some time, I still missed that feeling of finishing a good piece of writing!

To catch you up on life here in my suburban homestead, we are right now finishing up a HORRIBLY busy winter. Like, projects we should never have started ourselves because they are too time consuming but it’s too late now, sort of busy. We are presently ALL rotating bedrooms (9yr old Girlchild gets a brand new one), thanks to the hard work of Captain Schenanigans, who turned our 2 bedroom house into a 3 bedroom house! Such a blessing, but such a ton of work to get done by Girlchild’s birthday sleepover next week-ed!! Ugh.

We are also in the midst of selling our townhouse starter home that we had been renting. I never want to pull up another scrap of carpeting ever AGAIN! My new life goal is to never have to prepare another house for market- it’s bananas. I don’t know how other people with kids and jobs and lives make it look so easy. Add to that a crazy demanding work/travel schedule for my better half, a bucket full of anxiety for everyone,  and this season of  our lives is the hardest it has been in many, many years!

On the bright side, I have started selling backyard chicken eggs to one customer consistently, and another I barter eggs in exchange for swimming pool privileges in the summer for my children.  That one is really a steal! Next week-end I plan to purchase a few Prairie Bluebell chicks to help boost my flock’s future production. Having only last week earned back my chicks-in-the-house privilege (I promised to keep the smell down this time, only 2-3 chicks, really, honest, why are you laughing?), I now can rear birds earlier so they will be laying by July/Aug. Before I had to wait until the barn temp warmed up enough for my plate heater to do it’s job properly- in April.

Manchild has just sold his last batch of pinkie babies, since the cat keeps snacking on his breeding livestock. We moved them to a smaller cage for his new room and guess what? Mouse babies can fit through the bars on commercial cages- who knew?! So, his get rich quick scheme went bust before he could form a pyramid, but it was a good run while it lasted. He’ll probably have some summer produce to sell instead. Him and Sally, the last mouse standing.

This year I plan to scale back on the 3 rounds of crops I planted in my 2 gardens last year. I got sick of picking stuff, and it seems to get frost bite in my vacuum sealed bags. IDK why? So I’m giving each kid half a garden (Manchild called dibs on the half closest to the house, of course), and letting them plan and run their own plots. It should be interesting, (Girlchild is already complaining that Manchild’s tomatoes are going to cross the line onto her side, a preemptive produce war strike).  Junior Homesteaders they shall be, if not the Hatfields and the McCoys. Can you really fight about future events that haven’t even happened yet? Really? REALLY?

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. If you are one of the 3 readers this site has managed to hang on to since my disappearance, hey, thanks for your loyalty. Maybe more will read, maybe not, but my goal of being a homesteading, Jesus loving, time filler blog site is back in action. Once again. 🙂