Jim and I have been starting some seeds indoors this month. We’ve always just done a few in a sunny window, but this year we hung some lights on the underside of a closet shelf to provide an area for several flats of seeds to get going.

Starting seeds indoors gives us a jump start on our growing season, which is a bit short in our region, with only four frost-free months. It will also save us some money if our tomato and pepper starts do well and we don’t have to buy nursery plants.

Last year we had our first garden on our property, and we planted only vegetables. As I was tidying up the veggie patch last fall, I realized that I had really missed having a flower bed. We do have beautiful wildflowers all around us all summer, but I would have enjoyed some color and variety in some of the “brown and beige” areas close to our home.

It kind of dawned on me … along with food production, the visual interest of flowers is an important part of rural living too.

So this year, in addition to a few flowers in our window boxes, we’ll be planting some annuals and perennials around the place. I have a personal priority of not introducing non-natives to our property, so I’m focusing on natives. This is especially important to me where the edges of our “yard” merge into natural areas of grass, brush, and forest.

Last fall I collected seeds from native flowering plants and scattered the seeds in large edging areas. The seeds slept under the snow this winter, and many of them should sprout this spring.

And along with veggie seeds, several packets of flower seeds were included in my seed order this year. Some of them are native varieties to supplement the seeds I collected. Others are favorite non-natives for a few selected beds and containers where I can control spreading.

Some of these seeds can be directly sown outdoors, but several varieties will soon be sprouting indoors right alongside our veggie starts. Hopefully we’ll have some fire red petunias, multi-colored cosmos, and Shasta daisies bursting from the soil to eagerly join the crowd.

Not only do I love the outdoor display of flowers, but to me, one thing that says “country kitchen” is my large white pitcher stuffed with multi-colored fresh flowers. So this year I’m determined to have that viewing and cutting flower garden!

If you’re interested in learning to start seeds indoors, hop on over to my family’s blog The Homesteader School and check out some of our “Learning to Garden” tutorials. Here’s a good one to start with! 

Marie and her husband, Jim, are developing a farm in the Pacific Northwest with their adult children and grandchildren. At The Homesteader Kitchen Marie and her daughter review kitchen equipment and talk about preparing and preserving delicious food. Along with other family members, Marie shares glimpses of country life at Rural Living Today and teaches practical skills at The Homesteader School . 

Here in our corner of the country, snow flurries are flying less frequently and we even have some frost-free mornings. It looks like spring is on its way! Our thoughts are going in two directions: getting the garden started and raising little livestock babies.  

In my planning and plotting, I came across this blog post about our first foray into hatching our own chicks. It was just last year, so this will be our second year. Here’s how I saw it last year - March 2011:  

A new adventure for us this spring is hatching our own chicks. Last year we raised 42 hatchery chicks, most of which were two days old when they arrived. We got that chick-rearing process down pat and decided to go a step farther this year. We bought an incubator.

We looked at the calendar to determine when the weather would be conducive to chicks moving outdoors at four weeks of age. Backtracking from there, we decided that a late March hatch date would be just about right. We collected a number of eggs and got them started in the incubator.

The gestation time for chicken eggs is 21 days, but it’s suggested that eggs be “candled” early on to see which ones contain viable embryos. Candling involves shining a light on the egg to show the air cell, blood vessels, and even little chicky eyes. It’s also possible to see the embryos moving around and tiny hearts beating.

So at one week we candled the eggs and removed several undeveloped ones. Again at two weeks, we took out a couple of eggs. On the 18th day, when the eggs should be “locked down” and undisturbed, we had 12 viable eggs.

An interesting thing had happened early in the month. A few days after we set the incubator eggs, one of our hens went broody. This means that she focused on becoming a mother and glued herself to a clutch of eggs, leaving the nest only about once a day to eat, drink, and take care of other business. She had no idea that since the rooster didn't visit her coop, her eggs were not fertile and would never hatch.

Tiny Pigwidgeon (“Piggy”) is our smallest hen, a petite Dark Brahma banty. She was faithful and determined, and in three weeks I saw her off the nest only one time for a brief jaunt outside. Hopefully she took a break at least once a day. But a broody hen lives for one thing only: to hatch and raise some baby chicks.

We decided to give Piggy half of the incubator eggs in hopes that she would hatch them. So on Day 18, we removed her clutch of infertile eggs to replace them with 6 viable incubator eggs. What a shock to see that she had accumulated 13 eggs in her nest, stealing the eggs her roommates had laid on the other side of the nestbox and hiding them all under her fluffy body and wings.

Day 21 came and went, and by Day 23 three chicks had hatched in the incubator. But not a peep came from Piggy’s private nest. Unfortunately by Day 26 she hadn’t managed to hatch any chicks. Perhaps she was off the nest too long, or the coop was just too cold, or maybe all six of her eggs just happened to fail in the last days of gestation. We didn’t do eggtopsies, so we’ll never know for sure.

Since Piggy had been brooding for weeks, with very little exercise and less food and water than normal, we removed her from the nest and took her private little brooder box out of the coop. We told her to go be a regular chicken for a while, scratching and pecking outside and regaining her strength. Reluctantly, she complied. It didn't take her long to remember the joys of fresh air, sunshine, and treats to be discovered in the great outdoors.

Hopefully we will experience both natural and mechanized hatching and brooding and have the joy of watching some of our hens putter around with little chicks toddling after them. Today we’re starting our second incubator batch but won't be surprised if spring weather also brings on the broodiness in the henhouse.

Update from later in 2011: Spring weather did indeed bring on the broodiness! Two of our hens, Silkie Hedwig and Buff Orp Yolk, successfully hatched chicks the old-fashioned way — and it was a delight to see the doting mamas teach their little ones how to scratch in the dirt and take dust baths.  

As for Miss Piggy, she again went broody and again sat on eggs--just a few this time. But again none of them hatched. Maybe she’ll give it another try next year, having learned some secrets from her hen sisters.   

Hopefully 2012 will see us hatching chicks both in the incubator and under fluffy mother hens - perhaps even Piggy will have her dreams come true!

Marie and her husband, Jim, are developing a farm in the Pacific Northwest with their adult children and grandchildren. At The Homesteader Kitchen Marie and her daughter review kitchen equipment and talk about preparing and preserving delicious food. Along with other family members, Marie shares glimpses of country life at Rural Living Today and teaches practical skills at The Homesteader School .

Today I’m sharing something written by my husband, Jim. He has a great perspective on this life we’re living together. Here he shares a bit of history and how he really feels about living the rural life!

Here I am, living on our rural property and real jazzed about it. I’m jazzed at night looking back at the day, and I'm really jazzed when I wake up!

I remember one day years ago in my corporate life. I was in a meeting discussing TPS report cover designs and found myself daydreaming. I can’t even recall what I was dreaming about, but it was pleasantly distracting. Then the person addressing the meeting woke me up when he said that when he got up in the morning he was "jazzed" about life and ready for the ups and downs of the day. I could see his genuine excitement and enthusiasm. But where in the world did he get it?

Comparing that guy’s feelings to my sense of life, I realized I was just going through the motions. I had a great job and a great family ... but something was missing. Maybe a lot was missing. I didn't even like lots of things about my life - and I definitely could care less about TPS cover designs. Why was I dying on the inside, even when things were going well on the outside?

I knew I needed to wake up and understand what was missing in my life. Maybe then I could rediscover the excitement and passion of life that I’d once had.

Thus started my journey to discover what was really going on with me. Along the way, I took a trip with my elderly father back to his home roots on a large farm in the Midwest. He had left the farm when he finished high school, but I suspect he really never really left in his heart. As we walked around the eight square miles that was the original family homestead, I saw firsthand what a farm was, or more accurately, what LAND was. I found myself getting pretty jazzed up internally.

It wasn't living in that specific place that was the exciting part; it was seeing with my own eyes what was involved in a new kind of life - one that was connected to the land. It was the rural lifestyle that really got me going.

I remembered my happiness in years past when I’d spent my weekends mending fences and doing other routine chores on our 5-acre gentleman’s farm. My wife, Marie, had been in her element raising kids, baking bread, growing food - even chasing escapee cows back into our pastures. Our kids were constantly outdoors, happily playing on their rope swing or munching veggies in the garden.

Over the years, circumstances had taken us back to city and suburban neighborhoods, but my excitement started growing as I started thinking about living on acreage again. Marie and I agreed - we were both happiest and most “at home” when living the rural lifestyle. As we talked about making a change, I started seeing some possibilities for moving back to rural life. But then came the doubt. The realist in me challenged my thoughts.

Could I really make such a major change ... or any change at all? How could I really leave my current corporate life? I couldn't afford it. There were too many obstacles. A part of me said I should just keep doing what I was doing. But the other part was starting to soar ... becoming excited ... getting jazzed about the possibilities of a change.

I was tired of just existing. Of going through the motions. Would I continue for the rest of my life this way? Nope. Couldn't do it. For me and my family, change was required, and for us it involved moving to some acreage and living a whole new way of life. I just couldn't pretend that I liked my life and satisfy my longings by playing Farmville on Facebook. I needed the real thing. Not a picture or game of the real thing.

For others, contentment might mean something else. They write their own stories about their journeys. But for my family and me, this life is very satisfying - and it suits us.

Marie and Jim are developing a farm in the Pacific Northwest with their adult children and grandchildren. Together they share glimpses of country life at Rural Living Today and teach practical skills at The Homesteader School .  

Many years ago our young family took a trip to Disneyland. We had the free use of a motor home that would sleep our family comfortably, so we decided to drive.

We packed up the motor home with basic cooking equipment and groceries, bedding and enough clothes for the trip. Each of us brought along some things for entertainment, from books to cassette tapes (remember those?) to toys and games. I even stashed my sewing machine in the shower so I could finish up some clothes I’d been making for the kids.
 

As we drove away from home, I looked back at our two-story house. I thought to myself, we have everything we need right here in this little motor home. Why in the world do we have such a big house and so much stuff?

Of course, when we returned from our vacation we went right on living in our big house full of stuff. But that kind of thing has repeated itself over and over in our life. We moved overseas, taking very little—but we accumulated a houseful of stuff again. Five years later we returned to the U.S. with very little and … yep, we accumulated another houseful.

Several years ago, when we lived in a suburban neighborhood, Jim and I realized that we spent 80% of our time at home in just a few rooms. The other space was used just occasionally. We slept in our bedroom and used our master bathroom. We cooked in the kitchen and ate in the adjoining dining area. Though we sat in the living room once in a while, we really lived in the family room. I admit we did have an “everything room” that stored a lot of stuff but was really not used much.

That’s when we started re-evaluating our plans to build a large house on our acreage. Not only do we not need the space most of the time, but maintaining a large home is not very high on our list of favorite things to do.

So we decided to build a small home within our utility barn and live in it for a while, building the larger house later. Our new home takes up one long side of the barn. It’s cute and cozy and just right for the two of us. We built a little home office in the “barn” side. We’ve lived this way for over a year—through two winters—and so far it hasn’t seemed too small! It even looks promising for a permanent situation.

Less of a house to clean and maintain gives us more time for our other projects. We never have to search more than a minute to find each other in the house. And no matter what room we're in, everything else seems to be just steps away. 

Downsizing so drastically really forced us to weed through our belongings. We decided we’d keep things that were meaningful, useful, or otherwise important. Now when we look around our little home, every piece of furniture, every picture on the wall, and every decorative item has a connection to our family or our experiences.

Would we like a bigger house? Sometimes. We can’t squeeze big groups or crowds in our living room. We don’t have an extra bedroom for family and friends to sleep in. The kitchen table always seems to have something on it. Once in a while there’s even a line for the single bathroom.

But so far we’ve tweaked things to be pretty comfortable. We have plenty of storage space in the adjoining barn for off-season clothes and things we need to access occasionally. We could build an outdoor studio cabin if we needed more space. For six months of the year we can have oodles of people sitting in our outdoor "living room," dining at our patio tables, and sleeping in trailers and tents.

Stay tuned ... we may just never build that larger house. 

Marie and her husband, Jim, are developing a farm in the Pacific Northwest with their adult children and grandchildren. At The Homesteader Kitchen Marie and her daughter review kitchen equipment and talk about preparing and preserving delicious food. Along with other family members, Marie shares glimpses of country life at Rural Living Today and teaches practical skills at The Homesteader School .