Tag Archives: Homesteading

What is it like to Homestead?

Kai: What is it like to homestead? Well, here’s the truth: Homesteading is admittedly not for the faint of heart – not to say that we aren’t in certain areas of this lifestyle, but I think it’s important to come clean about it. It can be a lot of work, requiring spur of the moment changes, working in the bad weather, learning basic survival skills and much more.

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A Permaculture Fish System

Kai: When I first started breeding goldfish, I knew I wanted to do it in the most permaculture fashion I possibly could. This led me to challenge myself – no filters, no chemicals, no prepackaged fish food. To overcome the commercial ways, I partition the ponds often, and use an ecosystem strategy to keep them clean. When I partition water, it is used to water the garden instead of just getting dumped. It might be odd to say, but I did treat some ill fish naturally, and as for food, I used a Japanese method used for koi – feed from the garden! Meaning fruits, veggies, eggs and garden pests! This all worked well, but there were two things that I could not wrap my head around in the beginning. The first, was when fish would leap out of the ponds and kill themselves. The other, is when I put fry in seemingly “safe” crystal clear water, which caused them to perish. These were conundrums that first year.

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Homesteading is more than you think

Kai: When one hears the term “homesteading”, they might think of farm animals and rows of crops. But it is much more than just growing food and raising livestock. Homesteading includes everything that comes with it. We’ve met some homesteaders that could be considered serious business men, but also talented craftsmen.

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Chicken and Quail Eggs are Awesome!

Kai: Permaculture recycles everything, just the way nature intended! With all of the laying birds in the family, it’s important for them to get their calcium, and although there are many products one can buy for this, we like to reuse our chickens and quails own eggshells. We simply toast the empty shells in the oven and blenderize to a powder which is added to the bird’s food. I even use it for my parakeets.

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Baby Quail Hatch Update

Kai: The baby quail are 2 weeks old now. Out of the 8 that hatched, 7 have survived to this point and are looking good. One that still remains has a bit of a longer story though, as when he or she hatched, they were born with splay-leg. This condition can be fixed if caught immediately, and so luckily l recognized it shortly after hatch day – but at the same time, I had absolutely no experience with it.

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