The Homesteading Pioneer (2025)

14/09/2025

This morning Franz said to me I am to do nothing but study. I thought I would quickly do the dishes and it turns out the dishes wasn't as quick as I thought.
Anyway, our wonderful sheep gained access to our orchard and yes, you guessed it, I barely have anything left. They didn't eat the elderberry at all, which is very surprising, and my lemon and my guava remains, I think only cos it is too high for them. But, everything else, is eaten. My pepino melon is completely ripped out of the ground. My one pine tree is literally down to the ground. Olive, fig, almond, Eugenia, loquot all gone. I'm devastated. It will grow back but this is such a huge set back for me.
Anyway, no use crying over eaten trees, I can't do anything to change it now.
Now I'm studying, what are you doing and how is your weekend going?
🙄😞

13/09/2025

My 🐭 asked me a while back to make her a smudge. I admit, I completely forgot and decided to quickly make it now for her. I'm certain it will dry within the next week. She wants to take it with her to CT.
A few favourites from my garden with properties of protection and calm mostly.
Comfrey, teatree, horseradish, sage, lavender, catnip, rosemary, thyme, lemon balm, yarrow, peppermint, apple mint.
Bound with her favorite color of course, pink!

13/09/2025

It's been a good week for us. Most of my new trees and shrubs have started flowering.
Lemon is full of blossoms, I have 2 little peaches on my tree, I have 3 almonds growing, my pepino melon is flowering, my elderberry is flowering, and my olive is flowering! I sowed more radishes, some sweetcorn, some watermelon and some bush beans. My gem squash plants have germinated and is on the grow.
My carrots are getting pretty big and my peas are through the roof! I am going to have a great harvest. Our UV has moved up to 7 as from today so the weather is pumping.
Franz is working on the slaughtered pig's hide as I want it dried out. All the fat and skin needs to be removed and is quite a job. I had 80 passion fruits again and I made more cordial.
My gingerbug is bugging and I added some cordial to it as a drink. Tasted amazing. One batch has fermented a little long and has some alcohol content I'm sure. Tastes like a fruity wine now.
I finished all the tinctures for my mouse, who is leaving next weekend to write her finals. She will be gone basically 2 months. It's super weird without her here.
She has ginger tincture and cannabis tincture in. The ginger is for the nausea and the cannabis relaxes her. It's literally 2 drops under the tongue and works super fast. I have also made her some sore throat mixture to take with. Honey and lemon is the bomb!
Pulled a piece of one of my sheep's hair / wool. It's so long!
I'm washing her last stuff she wants to take to Cape Town so this week it's literally wear what is here. I probably won't be able to wash again this week before she goes.
Anyway, still studying and studying.
How's your week been and how's your weekend going?

13/09/2025

Making some pet mince for our dogs with the pigs organs.
A nice little time-lapse for you while we were busy!
The organs were very soft and really didn't go well through the mincer. But OK, we're cooking it up for them as we speak. Don't just throw the organs away of your animals that you slaughter, they contain alot of beneficial nutrients that you can feed to your dogs!

12/09/2025

And just like that 2 hours later, they are done. Beautiful fresh meat for us.
Apparently our piggy didn't have alot of fat on him, so I will have to see about cooking it off for Lard.
I'm glad I didn't see it or do it, it really hurts me emotionally. The processing needs to begin and although this looks a little, it's neatly packed in a huge cooler box for me to do what I want now. I want to make some mince and wors, and will see the rest. I am probably going to also can some meat.
Franz is feeling more confident slaughtering our bigger animals going forward so that's good news.

12/09/2025

Today is a big day for us. As we approach our almost 3 year Homesteading journey, starting from absolutely nothing, we are slaughtering our first pig. This is especially big because a pig is not the same as a chicken. It's alot bigger, essentially more work and well we have been looking after it for a year. A year ago he was still a little baby!
I didn't think we would actually have the balls to do it. And by we, I definitely don't mean me, because I don't. Franz and one of my friends are doing it. Here's the start of our meat season. I did careful calculations as to when we are doing what. We started with veg and herbs, chickens for eggs and culling, ducks for meat, eggs and breeding. I started with one sheep as a pet, which soon turned into 4 and then 5! And we kind of just escalated from there.
We know what we fed our pig and today we are proud of what we are eating and living. It is finally starting to pay off. Next up, not today, but down the line, we are slaughtering the sheep. Not Didi my pet, but our 3 lambs from last year. Also not all at once probably. There is going to be alot of processing and work involved here. We had to wait for better weather so we can store the meat in the freezer. From there we will decide how we are going to deal with it. The fat I will cook down for lard. Lard can be used to cook your food in, therefore saving us money for cooking oils etc. We understand that not everyone will agree with this, and that's OK. Please keep your opinion to yourself because that's all it is to me. We treat our animals with the utmost respect and feed them proper feed. They are super happy little campers and definitely don't suffer with us. We chose this lifestyle for a reason and we can live with the decisions we make. Well done to us for finally getting to this exact moment.
Thanks Amanda Lombaard-Booyzen for helping us with this, you don't know what it means!

12/09/2025

Big thanks to Joey Bezant, Lana de Villiers, Anine Louw, Gavin Wayne Andrews, Johan le Roux

for all your support! Congrats for being top fans on a streak 🔥!

31/08/2025

Our turkey laid her first eggs!

24/08/2025

I procrastinated alot during the week. I know it looks like alot was done but really I haven't done alot. Today I am in full work mode with my homesteading. The canner is on with 7kilos of chicken to can and making chicken stock in my stock pot. Double layer of chicken in my Presto pot.
Been dehydrating some parsley and it's almost ready to jar. This week I canned 25 liters of milk. Again, it sounds alot but really it goes so quick to do it. Also, I want to build up some stock again. At this point we are going through the milk and the meat especially since I refuse to buy box milk and our freezer is still off for the winter. We will be putting it back on soon and then we are hoping to slaughter our one piggie. The meat should see us through for quite a while. I'm nervous and excited and frankly a little sad too. But I am looking forward to eating what has come from us. We treat our animals with alot of respect and they are really well looked after. It does make it hard to then off it, but we wanted to live this way and this is what we chose. At this point I'm doubting every piece of meat from the shops of what we are really consuming. People are trusting and vulnerable. If we read pork, then we believe it is. Anyway, I am a very big conspiracy theorist and we always laugh about it. Maybe I'm over reacting and maybe I'm not. I don't trust what we buy because I can't see what it really is. You should be questioning more. The chicken doesn't even look like chicken anymore. Anyway, these are my opinions and my beliefs.
But, open your eyes!
You can not and should not trust blindly!

24/08/2025

I sowed radish barely a week ago and happy it has germinated. I have been super successful with radishes in the past and we really enjoy them. They are fast growing and I can start harvesting from as little as 4 weeks. As soon as I harvest I prepare a pickle brine and I pickle mine immediately. As it ages it develops a beautiful crunchy addition to anything you want to add it.
My beets are just about ready to harvest. I sowed 300 seeds and about 70 to 80 have grown to size. It's not a loss and I just need some time to not only harvest, but it will need to be processed too.
Carrots are looking great and it's my first successful year of carrots here. So I'm really looking forward to this batch.
Some of my pak Choi (volunteers) has bolted and I'm ok with it because I need seeds. I didn't sow it this year so I'm pretty impressed that I have a few that come up on its own. I love my garden. I am a little bit of a chaos planter, but it works for me. It's also self sustaining at the moment, meaning previous seasons seeds just keep popping up. New potatoes have come up and my peas are flowering! My beans did not do so well this year. Super small beans and actually not even worth the harvest. But I will see. It was a very cold winter this year. I suspect it had an effect on it.
Canned about 25liters of milk this week and made some yogurt too. My thermometer broke and I had to throw a batch of yogurt away as I didn't know if the glass fell in the pot. S**t happens and it's OK.
I have about 7kilo of chickens b***s to process now. Fillet and can. Make a stock of the bones and can that too. Yes it's alot of work. No, I don't mind working hard. The dehydrator is on and I'm drying out some curly parsley. All in all, a busy day. I made some custard flapjacks for the beasts this morning. Tasted great. Just added custard powder to my flapjacks mix. It doesn't look different on the outside, but the inside is super yellow lol.
What are all my peeps doing?

The Homesteading Pioneer

14/09/2025

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