Everything Is Changing For Us!

We have big plans in the works here on our homestead! Today I am sharing those with you to show you how you can become more sustainable and produce an income on less that 5 acres too!

Transcript

Episode 17 PP

Everything Is Changing For Us!

We made some huge changes here on our property. There are a lot of things starting to happen. In this episode I am going to share our new plans with you. Are you ready here we go…

Hi and welcome back to the Prepping Positively Podcast. I’m Annie and today I am sharing with you all of the big changes that are happening for us and how they can affect you.

So let me give you a bit of a background in case you are new to our podcast and the Road to Reliance community.

My name is Annie and I live with my soon to be husband, Lance, on a 15 acre piece of property in Central Florida in a small rural town called Weirsdale. Together we have homesteaded for the last 5 years here. 

We have chickens, ducks, cows, horses, rabbits, pigs, a turkey, cats, dogs and birds. We grow a lot of our own food and raise all of our poultry, rabbit, and pork. We also raise catfish and tilapia in our swimming pool turned fish pond.

We grow vegetables, herbs, medicinal plants, and perennials here. We are an almost completely natural homestead as we make most of our cleaning and bath and body products from natural ingredients.

We are currently on the grid but looking to change that in the next year or two. We collect rainwater for our gardens and our animals. 

Over the last few years since we got together, we have experienced many joys and many losses. From the death of my Dad in 2018, to the death of both my son and my son in law in 2021, we have endured some serious losses. We travelled to Pennsylvania for my daughter for Brain surgery.

We also shared in the joy of 7 grandchildren being born or growing up, as well as another one on the way come January of 2022.

We lived over a year without power, almost lost our maintenance business, lost an entire addition of our home from black mold, and the list goes on.

All of these losses and struggles, though, taught us to work together, to stay strong, and to have faith that there is a rainbow at the end of our storm clouds.

After sitting and talking for hours many times on what was best for us and this property, we finally came up with some ideas. We talked some more, and now we have a clear picture of where we are going. And that’s exactly what I am sharing with you today.

One of the first priorities for us was an income. Now Lance has his maintenance business, but it does get slow at times and sometimes there is no work at all. So although it is an income it is not dependable. We need dependable.

We also decided not to put all of our eggs in one basket. In other words, we need income to come from many places. 

With that in mind, here is our plan going forward.

First of all, we installed a small 20 x 10 foot greenhouse. It is placed next to our pigs currently. In it I will be starting all of our new seeds, cuttings, and transplants. 

The pigs are getting downsized from 17 to 4. We will keep two males and two females. They will be our breeders. They will be moved to the backside of my food forest closer to the lake this month. The rest are being sold or given away.

Once the pigs are moved, the area where the pigs were will turn into a garden for vegetables and herbs that I will grow and then offer for sale to the public.

Next to that garden is a spot cleared. This spot will be covered this week with landscape fabric and will be a nursery. We will be selling perennials, vegetables, fruit trees, herbs, and flowers from it.

Our chickens will be divided by breed and placed in smaller coops made from pallets with runs attached to them and spread throughout my food forest. We have a 300 egg incubator that we will be hatching chicks from and then will be selling them to the public.

Our ducks will be split into two groups, Pekins in one and Indian Runners in the other. We will breed each set and sell those also. They are getting 2 bigger pens in the back of the tiny house complete with a drainable pond.

We currently house over 30 meat rabbits of about 5 different breeds. We will be keeping a male and 2 females of each breed. They will go in new pens in the food forest and the manure from those pens will be collected daily and placed in our gardens, in bags for sale, and in the compost bins.

The rest of the rabbits will fill my freezer.

We currently use a small 2 bin composter. That will stay where it is, however we are building a larger 4 bin compost area. That will be used for our gardens.

We also made some leaf rings to gather the fallen leaves with and we will be allowing those rings to stay full so that they become their own compost next growing season. 

The Zebu cows, mama, pops, and the baby are being moved to a huge 3 acre overgrown with grass pasture that buts up to our lake in the back of our property. Mama is expecting so we are hoping for a boy this time. Eventually we would like to breed and sell the calves.

We are also building a smoke house next to the tiny house for us to smoke our sausage, and fish as needed.

The firewood has been being cut all year so we will also be offering firewood for sale this winter to the locals.

As far as in the home, we have new things happening there as well. 

First of all we are starting to sell cottage foods. Breads, cookies and so on to the locals here. 

We also started making more bath and body products. These are being given to our neighbors to try. If they like them, we are asking them to spread the word so we can start selling them. Some of those products will also be listed on our Etsy store and our PayHip store.

Besides body products, we are also going to sell homemade natural cleaners, soaps, and candles as well.

I will also be selling essential oils from a very reputable company and may even open a Shopify store in the near future.

Now as we go through this journey and get everything set up and started, I will be videoing our journey as well as talking about how you can do some of these things as well,

Our overall goal is to show people how to turn less than 5 acres into a sustainable place that provides an income also.

Future plans include onsite classes for kids as well as adults, fundraisers, and events centered around the holidays. 

Now obviously all of these tasks are going to take time to get all the parts in the right places. Our timeline is to be set up and ready by November. We do have some legal things like insurance, permits ands so on that are in the works for all of this as well. 

However the important part is that we have a plan. And if we keep focused and do the things we need to, we should have a sustainable, income producing homestead in no time.

If you want to see a visual of all of these plans, you can go to our YouTube channel Road To reliance, and check out the video! There is also a post on the site. Just go to https://roadtoreliance.com/future-plans/ and you can read the post as well.

So now you know where we are heading for the future. Big changes are coming. I hope you follow us on our journey and learn some new skills and ideas on the way.

Until next week, happy homesteading!