End Of Summer In Sight

Summer break is over, the grass is beginning to brown, and we just spotted a few of our Aspen leaves changing color. Come on fall colors, we’re ready for you! Crosby’s going to have to get used to wearing clothes again soon.

It was chicken processing day this past week. At one point Johnny glanced over at me as I was elbow deep inside a chicken and chuckled, “If you would have asked me 16 years ago if I would ever see you like this, I would have laughed I your face.” That was his endearing way of telling me he was proud of how far I’ve come on this homestead journey I walked us all into.

We started with 50 baby chicks which would grow into our meat birds. That was a fun trip to the post office. However, thanks to some local foxes and a few other mishaps, we ended up only processing 31. Still not bad for our first year!

Unexpectedly, I found myself needing to immediately butcher our last full grown turkey SOLO this week too. We think she prolapsed after laying her first egg. As devastating as her death was, I know the importance of waste-not! Luckily I was home and knew exactly what to do and how to clean her. I mean, she was 6x bigger than the chickens but pretty much everything else was the same in there.

Sweet Mallory was so excited to see the house addition progress. We’re very sad she won’t be able to cheer us along anymore.

Homemade bone broth and 9 lbs of ground turkey later, we enjoyed a hefty meal of slow roasted turkey legs, wings, and brown rice topped with the most delicious gravy I’ve ever tasted. Watching my entire family lick their plates clean (figuratively) was worth the hours spent breaking down that 25+ lb bird!

I’ll be honest. Some days we look at each other and question our lifestyle decision. Either the puppy killed another chicken, or our rabbits got out and now we’re missing three, or the foxes took a duck. Ughhh!! But then I remember that we are still novices and $h!t happens. Those moments are few and far between the joy I see on my daughters face when she’s snuggling her favorite bunny, or when Crosby mimics the sounds of the baby turkeys, or when Hudson comes in and announces that we got 16 eggs in one day!