Bossy Hen Homestead Update

I would like to take a moment and provide an update to those of you who read our blog as well as those of you who were kind enough to donate to our cause.

As many of you know we are beginning to refine our focus in regards to the short and long term goals of our urban homestead.  Recently we have been able to take a few steps towards accomplishing our desires with the help of some very generous people.

To begin with, we were able to winterize the hutch for our eldest doe rabbit. It will provide her with a dry and warm home this winter with plenty of room to stretch her legs.

We purchased three new varieties of  organic heirloom garlic from The Seed Savers Exchange to go along with our existing "postman" garlic. This in turn aloud us to plant well over 300 cloves of garlic. Not only will our family directly benefit from this planting but so will many of the members of our community who live below the poverty line and receive donations from our local food bank.

We also invested in seeds from Fedco Seeds in an effort to experiment with season extension. We bought short season greens and planted them under new row covers that we purchased with donations as well. Though we do consider this winter just an opportunity to stick our toe in the water so to speak the goal is to extend our own growing season so that not only can we provide fresh food to our own family for a longer period of time but also to be able to provide fresh local produce to our local food bank for a much longer period of time as well.

It has been a very exciting time period for us here at Bossy Hen Homestead. We have been reinvigorated and have allowed ourselves to bask in the potential of it all. We are pursuing the opportunity to grow gourmet mushrooms next year and are also investigating the potential of a few bee hives on neighboring property. We are also looking into a small coop and run in a quiet section of our property to go along with our current hen house so that we can add three more laying hens and thus have extra eggs for the food bank.

I have to admit that I have been rolling around the idea of turning this project into something more than just a hobby at some point but that is for a later date.

I will certainly do my best to keep you all updated. If you are curious about the current mission of our urban farm please go to the following link. If you are interested in knowing more or are interested in donating to our cause please feel free to email us at hermitmusic2002@yahoo.com under the header farm donations.

Tobias Whitaker blogs for Mother Earth News and Grit Magazine. You can also find him on Facebook at Seed To Harvest: Bossy Hen Homestead. Last, but certainly not least, you can also find his work at Tobias Alan Whitaker.