Harlow Family Homestead

21/02/2024

Maggie-Moo is our youngest heifer calf. She is 9 months old now and still wants to play with me. She reminds me of an oversized dog with a case of the “zoomies”

20/01/2024

Everyone rather hang out in the barn. See the peacock in the back practicing his courting skills??? I went around the corner and he was practicing on Willow…our cow.

20/01/2024

Cows and Rollo enjoying the snow days. Although I think the Cows are ready to be back out on pasture.

18/01/2024

it’s super dark and 15 degrees and you didn’t want to go outside but knew that you have no choice in the matter. Animals need feed, warm water and cow needs to be milked. Heavy buckets of hot water in hand, walking gingerly through the snow so you don’t fall and bust your face again this week. thinking of all the comments about how crazy we are, some people are in awe of all we do here but there are others who pity us. They think it’s some silly hobby and a waste of time, money and energy. You do your chores then slug up the hill to your neighbors to feed their animals while they are out of town and you look over at your homestead, the sun just peeking out from the horizon, and a blaze of orange and pink are beginning to tear through the dark sky over your barn. God reminds me of our “why” and I look over at my husband and he says “look at all those colors.” And I know that he and I are looking at our choice, and our life though the same lens. That’s all that matters.

16/01/2024

Snow day at the Harlow Family Homestead.

10/01/2024

"Ode to the feral women”

“My soul is not set fire by being the best home maker but by growing flowers and plants, shoveling dirt, snow or manure, breathing the cold fresh air, letting them sun beat on my face, and tending animals.
It is not that I can not cook and clean it’s that I desire to be else where.
I’ve struggled with the fact that I am well me. I am a feral woman. As much as I wish I could be the sweet and clean home maker, I am
not.
I finally made peace with this when I saw a quote circulating around that said,
“the term domesticate house wife implies there must be a feral one”

It’s me and other women I know. I am and we are feral women.
We may not have perfect houses but we still make them a home. We may not clean the dishes right after every meal but we can sure cook a good meal. The laundry is lagging but at the end of the day everyone has something clean to wear. We may not be domesticate but it does not make us less.
If anything our strength is found as we carry feed sacks across our shoulders,as we till up dirt to plant gardens, as we end a life to provide food for our families all while we still carry the softness of a woman.
Here is to the feral women. May we be them, may we know them, may we raise them.”

Author unknown, but clearly a bloody marvelous woman.
-
(Jameson Beckard - original author found)

10/01/2024

We brought all the animals into the barn to get out of the rain. Went down last night after the last round of heavy rains and…the barn was flooded. Not sure the exact amount of rain for our area but a local forecaster measured over 3 inches in his rain bucket. That is a lot of rain in 12 hours! It doesn’t help that our barn is at the lowest point on our property, basically in a natural drainage area. Fortunately, this is the first time it’s flooded and I hope it’s the last!

05/01/2024

Our 💤🌙 🕯️

04/01/2024

Our Cows Maple, Willow and Magnolia. Willow is our only Cow in milk at the moment. We would get about 4 gallons a day but Maple continues to nurse on Willow. While it’s not the ideal situation it has been a godsend when we already have too much milk or if we are jut running late. If we separate the two, Willow is Mooooing in distress at the 12 hour mark. I certainly do not blame her as I do know how that feels. At some point Maple will need to “wean” from her “wet nurse”

17/11/2023

They are barbaric!!!

31/10/2023

All the beautiful creatures

27/10/2023

I am not a morning person but, seeing all these beautiful sunrises and skies every morning is making me second guess my circadian rhythm.

24/10/2023

We built this stanchion and Willow refuses to use it. Instead, we are milking her in a stall. So much for well laid plans.

24/10/2023

Morning milking chores ✅

21/10/2023

Last Saturday, in the wee hours of the morning, Willow gave birth to her first calf. Unfortunately, the labor was hard as the calf was in a full breech position. The calf was stillborn, not fully developed and had multiple fetal abnormalities. After a few days of rest, Willow is doing well. 🙌 we are hand milking her twice a day and giving her all the love she can handle.

21/10/2023

Declyn with Maggie, our little heifer calf, and Christmas, the Turkey. Dec is in the process of halter training Maggie with the hopes of one day showing her at the fair.

25/09/2023

When handwriting practice is your least favorite part of your school day, it helps to have a little chunky pig on your feet

22/09/2023

I’m happy to have had the kids help me clear out the pumpkins today. Dec cut this one with a little curly cue and she thought it was the cutest thing. 🎃

22/09/2023

It’s been soooo hard for me to just let things go! Broken foot got me down for six weeks and all I could do was sit and watch weeds grow in the garden, the heifer in the field and not being worked on the stanchion, all the unfinished projects and the could of been projects planned for the Summer. I had to slow way down and give all the chores to my husband. I quit watching my favorite homesteaders and farmers because if I had I would have a bad case of FOMO. But here we are, cleaning out this overgrown pumpkin and squash patch to prepare for our first fall crop!

05/09/2023

It’s been a long while since I’ve stepped into my home state of NC. We came, we saw, we conquered. Fun times on the River!

11/08/2023

It’s been quite a while since last time we posted. It’s been a great summer thus far as we are just living and loving life together. This week we harvested our sunflowers and tomatoes are finally starting to blush. We ate the few peaches our tree produced. Eason had the first, since he and I planted them last fall. We are down to 7 pigs including Nacho, the house pig we syringe fed in the spring. He has slowly integrated with the rest of the pigs and spends most days with them and comes up to the house at night to sleep on the back deck.

We had to separate our 7 month old calf, Maple, from our heifer, Willow, because Maple started nursing off of Willow and Willow started letting down milk. Willow isn’t due with her first calf until September so we don’t want Maple getting all that colostrum or inducing early labor. Neither are not happy about the separation.

We weaned our youngest calf, Maggie, from the bottle a few weeks ago and she is ready to go out to pasture with the Willow and Maple. Unfortunately, I worry that she will also try to nurse from Willow so I am hesitant until the Willow calves.

Evan and I started working on a stanchion so we can start training Willow. Yep, it’s last minute as usual. however, I am laid up for a few weeks due to having a broken foot. So, due to boredom, I may be making more posts in the near future.

22/07/2023

From April through May we raised meat chickens in our crop garden. In early June we processed those chickens and weeks later we found little buds where we fed the chickens. This week those little buds bloomed into beautiful Sunflowers.

25/06/2023

Beautiful Rainbow tonight. We are thankful for the rain this week, a beautiful day with family today and a sign of hope, joy and promise ❤️

08/06/2023

I’ve been working hard on getting all the plantings in the ground and keeping the chickens out! We added two 12X4 beds this year and a cattle panel trellis. We filled them with limbs, twigs and branches from our fall clean up and composted horse manure from our neighbor. The compost was super black and earthy. The Tomatoes love it and grew a foot overnight it seemed. I’m still working on my potting area under the deck.

04/06/2023

Shawn and Beth have been an excellent resource on our homestead journey. So very sad to see that their beloved home has burned.

It is unfortunate news to hear that our beloved speakers and mentors, Dougherty, have lost their beloved farmhouse in a fire.

We have reached out to them to be sure that the links being shared are the correct links. Please see the website below if you would like you support our friends during this time.

They have poured so much into this community, and we know the homesteading community will pour right back into them! More than anything, we pray for strength and energy during this time for them!

Donate here — https://www.givesendgo.com/shawnandbethhousefire

02/06/2023

“Cultivators are the most valuable citizens…they are tied to their country.” – Thomas Jefferson

01/06/2023

The last piglets left the homestead today for their new homes. We started with two boars piglets in February 2022. Had an unfortunate accident and lost a piglet. Then acquired 2 gilts (female) piglets and another boar. I waffled many times on whether we should breed our animals. We enjoyed their company and I was happy to have them as pets. Breeding animals was a leap into homesteading I wasn’t sure I was ready to take.

Fast forward to Fall 2022, we saw our male boar courting our girls and I knew we would have piglets. 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days later give or take, we had our first set of piglets born. It was easy peasy. Mama Ginger gave birth when I left her labor to go eat. She took to her babies and fed them with minimal interaction. 2 weeks later it was Bridget’s turn, it didn’t go as well. She had a hard labor, vet was called, she didn’t take to her babies, I spent weeks providing round the clock care. So much intervention and we lost one baby.

It was so hard! But, we learned so much! I am very pleased see these last piglets off to their new homes. Some will pets, some will be used for breeding and some will be meat. All were cared for and had a great start. We are looking forward to tending to our smaller herd for the Summer.