Welcome to the Experimental Homesteader site! I am so excited about this site finally going live! For the past five years, my husband Jerry and I have lived on a small farm which we named Exotic Gardening Farm & Wildlife Habitat. We have an acre and a half of land. The photo above was of the house when we bought it five years ago.

When we first moved here I was excited that the house was equipped with wood heat. Sometimes that is wonderful and sometimes it can be a real pain! Getting up several times at night to put logs on the fire is not fun, nor is waking up to a cool house in the morning. We are getting used to it however.

Cooking with cast iron on the wood stove is a real blast! Since the wood stove is in my office it makes cooking and working at the same time much easier. We love roasts in the cast iron Dutch oven. I have cooked breads, bacon, chicken, vegetables and potatoes on the wood stove. Learning how to regulate the heat and keep it steady by adding small pieces of wood is the trick.

We moved here in August and the following spring decided to get chickens and ducks. I had raised them before but Jerry was new to having animals. He was taken by how cute the ducks were. Cute and messy, let me assure you.

That summer the chickens and ducks settled in, began laying eggs and of course, produced an abundance. I was selling eggs as fast as I could fill egg cartons at $1.50 a dozen.

When winter came, the chickens and ducks quit laying. It was work going out in the snow to give them food and water. The coop became quit messy. I guess that is what happens when they stay in a confined area.

The next year we decided to get a goat. It was a mistake to get just one goat. Darla did not like being the only goat. We had to get a companion.

That was where Mr. Buck came in. When we brought Mr. Buck home, life was great, that is until he decided to use his horns in an attempt to tear the stall down!

We got a second goat, Sugar. Mr. Buck and Darla decided to gang up on her. After a while she began to fit in, but really, why was I keeping Mr. Buck when he continued to destroy things? So, we put him up for sale.

Before we could sell him, we got a third doe, Spice. She was Sugar’s sister and a great milker. When we introduced her, the other goats ganged up on her. The three does all came from the same breeder and knew each other, but that Mr. Buck was a gang leader if ever there was one! He had to go! So, I gave him away.

Things were going pretty good with the goats. I was getting lots of milk, learning to make cheese, butter, ice cream and a slew of other dairy products.

Then along came Beauty. She was an abused horse that was starving. She was given to us. The story went that a lady had strapped her head to a saddle and was beating her into submission. She was also not feeding her. Beauty broke the straps and stomped the woman. The woman ended up almost dying. The hay man took Beauty and passed her on to another person. She would not eat with his horses, so he asked me if I wanted her. I said yes. She was unnamed, but her beauty showed, even in the condition she was in, so her name became Beauty.

Since I was getting into spinning, I decided I wanted some angora rabbits. That was the next quest. Rabbits are fun indeed, but hand picking the angora can be time consuming. We now have four rabbits.

We also acquired a cashmere doe we named Tulip because of the white Tulip on her forehead.

In between time we have had turkeys, peacocks, pheasants and guinea. We still have the pheasant. Having guineas as close to town as we are was not working well.

Finding someone to breed our goats was a problem. After a year of them not being bred, we decided to do something about it and get a buck. Now, I did not want just any old buck, I wanted an angora.  We searched high and low for one when a friend called with a phone number of a lady a county away that raised them. I called her and went to pick up our buck. We named him Leonardo, or Leo for short.

Last August, for my birthday, we added a pair of Leicester Longwool sheep – Johnny and Pearl. I wanted them for the fiber but more importantly I wanted to help preserve an endangered breed. They are the sweetest of all the animals, very obedient, very loving and very shy.

In early summer we were blessed with seven baby goats – two does, Faith and Victoria.

Five boys whom we wethered – Rembrant – a cashgora, Cyrus, Raphael, Nutmeg and Cinnamon.

We raise most of our own food – fruits, vegetables and herbs. We butcher the extra roosters when necessary. We are working to learn to live off of our own land. I have a greenhouse that allows me to grow tropical plants year round and start seedlings in the spring. We garden outdoors year round with the help of cold frames. We can, dehydrate, ferment and the list goes on.

I hope you will come with us on our journey to self-sufficiency. Hopefully you will pick up some survival skills along the way!