Happy Monday!

As per usual, it's been a while. Marriage planning will derail and consume much of your free time. But, that's over with now 💒👰🏼‍♀️
Now, we are in the tomato harvest season at the moment, with a total of 17 plants 😱

That may seem like a lot, but if you've ever made tomato sauce before, you know that it takes a boat load of 🍅 to make one jar of sauce🥫

We're about 2 months into the 2024 planting season and I'm feeling the "gardening guilt".

Usually during the cold, snowy days I'm thinking about my next season's garden (seasonal depression, yanno?). I have all of these big ideas and big plans: "I'm going to grow herbs and dry them. I'm going to grow green beans and pickle them. I'm going to ... "

And here we are. 2024 gardening season and all I have to show for are tomatoes.

The hubby reminded me though we had a lot going on. Like getting married, taking a week long mini-moon, and just trying to get back in the swing of normal life after being in wedding planning mode for so long.

It IS okay to not be as self-sufficient as you wanted to be or planned.

It IS okay to have a failed gardening attempt --which I did. Our beans went to hell, we got one harvest of lettuce, & I don't even know if our beets are even still growing.

HOWEVER, because we had one garden bed flop, we are now going to use that bed for some fall planted crops, whereas, if we had had success for the spring/summer crops, we would have finished the season this fall and been done with it until next spring.

✨Failure = new opportunities ✨

I hope that I can keep up with writing some blogs better than I was before now that we are back to normal life 🤞🏼 I'm thinking the next one will be a little tomato hack for those who plan to make sauce!

TTFN!
-Jen

Heyyyyy!

It's my monthly/bi-monthly blog post because I suck at blogging 🙃

I come here to say something that mayyyy be a litttttleee controversial -- I threw away my sourdough starter without making a single sourdough food item with it.

And here's the reason why.

As someone who exclusively makes all of their bread products (sandwich bread, hamburger/hotdog buns, Ect.) because it's a choice I made a year and a half ago to 100% stop buying from the store, I couldn't be bothered with the process of sourdough.

Any recipe that I found (and I didn't scour the Internet by any means), required like a full day of prep work before I could even start making bread. You have to feed it, then let it sit for X amount of hours, stretch it, do this and that, and maybe if I was better at planning to make bread, I probably would have been successful.

I've seen so many people be successful sourdough makers and I love that!

I feel like when I share my lifestyle, I get some "😒🤨" at times.
It's not much different than the average Joe other than I have a passion for homemade & homegrown and challenge myself to be somewhat of an 'ingredient only household' so I can explore different avenues with recipes and creations that I make up as I go. I feel a sense of achievement when I can take a few basic ingredients and turn them into a wonderful dish. Which brings me to my point of -- that's why I make my own yeast bread. It's a few basic ingredients that are versatile in the kitchen and I have on hand & within 2 hours I can have loafs of bread ready to serve.

Sourdough is 'trendy' at the moment and I truly hope that people don't use it as just a trending moment, but explore and realize making scratch food doesn't need to be a trend to do it, you can just do it, and continue doing it. It's a way to showcase skills, bring comfort, show excitement, and more, to those you share it with.

I can blabber all day about homemade & homegrown, don't hesitate to reach out if you want to blabber together or have questions.

✌🏻&🩷

- Jen

Good evening, folks!

I write to you as I am making my supper for tonight--- scratch made corn, potato, & bacon cheddar soup.

Last night's meal was also soup, you know, 'tis the season, and I made chicken & rice soup. The honey was feeling a little under the weather so I thought a good chicken stock soup would help bring him back to par. As we sat down to eat, he took a bite and started laughing. A joke in our house is, "if it tastes like 💩, I didn't make it!" AND I always make him take the first bite.

Something about me you may or may not know is that 99.9% of the time I don't follow a recipe for whatever I make and I most likely can't make it again to taste the same.

I measure with my eyes, mostly the heart, never with a measuring cup 🙃

The future hubs finds it so funny when he asks how I made something and I start with "it was pretty easy/simple, I just ..." And I go on and on about how I made whatever we're eating. He is a griller. Not a baker nor everyday cook so to him, it's 20 steps too many for him.

The point of this ramble is that I Iearned some interesting family history over the Christmas weekend. I always knew my dad's family was a family of cooks-- and excellent ones at that. They would force you to eat something whenever you visited and they also never followed recipes. What I didn't know was that my great-grandparents owned a diner and everything they made was from scratch & not a single recipe was written down.

I've continued to think about that as I've made my scratch meals over the last few weeks.

Nothing major but something that I hold close to me and I continue to navigate life & continue my journey of self-discovery on my own-- not through the ways of influencers, trends and social media.

✌️&🩷,

Jen

Happy 2024!

As everyone says, the year flew by. It feels like just last month I was on cloud 9 from getting engaged and here we are, almost a year later.

This year brought the highest of highs, but also the lowest of lows. And I want to use this post to talk through that.

When I first started this blog, it was nearing the last days of school for teachers for the summer. I just felt this desire in me that I couldn't shake. While I spent my entire day talking about agriculture, I felt I wasn't really sharing things that I truly had a passion for. Of course I love ag, but when you talk about taproots vs. fibrous roots, it's a little different than talking about how you can your own veggies at home and what new recipe you made up to use up your zucchini. I also initially started this blog to share homesteading and self-suffiency, I find myself enjoying sharing all- aspects- of- life-things.

With that, I want to talk about 2023 and what I have in mind for 2024.

•2023 recap•
- 💍thinking my day couldn't get any better when I saw dolphins before 9am, but little did I know I would say yes to my best friend.

- I experienced some of the worst mental health ever. I felt like a complete failure because I was so unhappy in my career, I couldn't find a new job, I was unhappy with where I moved to with said best friend, and micro-focused on all the things not going right and dwelled on them.

- struggled for nearly 9 months, wondering why nothing was working out for me, only to realize it was the best thing ever for all of those things to not work out because my life changed for the better when I was offered my current job.

- ended the year hearing the ocean waves on a beach and smooching my honey into the new year.

All in all, I'm glad I can go into the new year with a peaceful mind (for the most part) and knowing I am in good health, I have a healthy & happy relationship, I wake up to my sweet angel babies 🐾, I have a roof over my head and food on the table.

Now to my 2024 goals! It's not a riveting list or anything, but I know they are achievable and things that I am making the conscious effort to accomplish.

2024 Goals & Resolutions:
- make homemade pasta
- can more garden veggies
- walk outside every day
- read a daily positivity/gratitude excerpt
- stay off phone in the first 15-30 mins of waking up & last going to bed
-read at least 1 book per month

Small goals but fulfilling in my heart.

I hope you all think about small goals that will fulfill your heart and just give you that light each day.

Happy 2024! Here's to another year of figuring myself out and doing what's best for me!
I sincerely hope you do the same.

Remember, keeping up with the Jones' will be a cup half full situation, do what's best for YOU and what makes YOU happy, not what you think people want to see.

✌️& 🩷,

Jen the Garden Gossiper

Happy Sunday Folks!

The future hubs and I got the tree up & decorated Friday night (not pictured above), but that is, what I've dedicated as, our Stewart's Shop Christmas tree. We're on year 3 of getting the Stewart's ornament and since we eat their ice cream every day, it seemed fitting. 🎄🩷

Prepare for a little holiday opinion.

I was running errands yesterday and decided to swing into TJMaxx before I headed home (I'm a notorious window shopper and literally never buy anything, but like looking. Shout-out to my sister and brother-in-law for never rushing me knowing I'm like this 🫶) and had a moment.

The place was mobbed, people were walking around with carts overflowing, there were tables of such random stuff that I'm like... Why. Maybe some of my thoughts stem from just having watched The Grinch, but people are out there working extra hours, picking up a second or third job, do this, do that for the holidays so they can spend more money on stuff that, most likely doesn't get appreciated and/or is completely unnecessary.

I'm in my olden days, grandma era so I'm over here getting more enjoyment out of my cozy, festive living room than thinking about Christmas presents.

This is not to say "don't buy gifts for people" but I think we can also remember that it's not about how many gifts you give or get, it should be the thought behind them.

I bought my family's Christmas gifts already, and with the exception of my sister, all are practical gifts. My dad wanted a thermos to keep his coffee hot, my mom didn't have anything in particular so I got her LLBean Sherpa lined mocs that are warm and waterproof (she already knows so it's no secret), my brother (who's 9 going on 29) is getting his first tool box and set of tools because he doesn't play with toys. I got 3 little goat milk soap/hand balm/crocheted towel gift sets from a cute farm stand down the road for some family members. I am making a Christmas simmer pot as a gift with needles I saved from the Christmas tree trimmings.

I don't know, the older I get and the fact that I moved away from my hometown and "comfortableness", I really figured myself out and what really matters and how I want to live my life (for the most part, there's still trial and error). Luckily for me, my best friend happens to be just like me. Coffee shop dates, homemade, thrifted, DIY, are our jam. Shout-out to Amanda Woz🤍🍎
Things like that mean more to me than this materialistic, social media world that's driving the current way of living.

All this to say & the moral of the rant: you don't need to go into debt or work yourself ragged to buy crap for other people. 🙃

✌️& 🩷

- Jen

Hello hello!

I know I have been the worst with maintaining a decent blog these days 😬 maybe some day I'll get in the flow. BUT if you want to keep up with some good blog posts, check out the link listed in this post.

My amazing boss has created a blog to help bridge the gap between producers and consumers, so you can read what myself, boss, & co-worker have to share over there more frequently! I'll still share some stuff here too, but there's consistency on the other blog 😅

But, I come today to give my intrigued and maybe nosey readers (don't worry, I'm the same way too) a life/new job update.

I am one month into this new role in the agricultural marketing world and.... I FRIGGIN' LOVE IT. To recap, I am a "Marketing Coordinator & Agriculture Advocate" for a woman-owned and 100% woman staffed company that specializes in agricultural equipment marketing, with a signature color of PINK. -- like could it be any better?!

It was scary quitting my teaching job because you know: benefits, summer's off, week off for Christmas, spring break, winter break, and just this taboo concept that teachers need to stick out the entire school year and "do it for the kids". HECK NO.

I have seen such a huge improvement in my overall attitude, mental health, and I literally love what I do and love my new work family.

Here's some advice as someone who kept coming up with excuses to not leave my teaching job -- if you have Sunday Scaries every single week, you should get a new job. I know it's daunting and no one likes doing it, but at least start the process.

I'm not talking Sunday Scaries because of a big work deadline, project, something along those lines where it's for a short amount of time and you know it's because of X. I'm talking week in and week out, you live for the weekends and can't pick yourself back up because of what your job is doing to you.

You've heard the cliché -- don't settle.
Don't settle for relationships, for this, for that, don't settle for your job! You have how many years of work ahead of you and if you're young like me (late 20s) that'll be a hell of long time of Sunday Scaries.

You deserve to enjoy your life too. Quit that job that's bringing you down on a daily.

✌️& 🩷,
Jen

Hello!

It's been FOREVER since I've written a legitimate blog post. If you follow along on my Instagram page, you will see I've been keeping up with content over there, just not blog posts. I promise I'll get a better schedule and rhythm, but right now, I'm still just winging it.

The reason for this specific post today is because I start a new job tomorrow! If you didn't know, I was a middle school Agriculture teacher. I taught around 150ish 7th & 8th graders each year for the last 2 years.

🚨🚔I committed a teacher-crime and put my notice in, not only during the school year, but on the 2nd day of school 🚔🚨
It was the best decision I've made in a LONG time, maybe even ever.

I have an Associate's degree in Plant Science, a Bachelor's in Agricultural Business Management and a Master of Science in Agriculture. While I took a handful of Ag Ed classes within those majors, I did not pursue teaching from the get-go (This is important to background information).

I accepted my teaching job wearing rose colored glasses. The reason being because I had the best agriculture teacher 7-12th grade. She was the biggest reason why I decided to pursue Agriculture after high school. She exposed me to so many aspects of the field and provided me with opportunities that I still remember today. So, when I found an opportunity to teach near the town I was freshly moving to, I thought, "it's meant to be. I can be a 'Betty 2.0'."

What 25 year old doesn't want to have summers off, long holiday breaks, spring breaks, snow days, 7:30-2:30 job? I thought the same. Until I realized, it was NOT worth it.

I dealt with the most mental health stress that I ever have in my life. I was able to teach under a specific certification because of my work experience in Ag so I came into teaching with zero know-how of anything.

• Teacher Life for Jen •
#1 - Not coming from an education background was the greatest challenge because I had to figure out curriculum, lesson plans, standards, understanding student accommodations, ECT.

#2 - BEHAVIORS. Holy guacamole. I'm not naturally a serious person so it was a challenge to "not smile before Thanksgiving". But also, the kids were just rude and disrespectful. I would come home with a headache nearly every day. 40 minute classes felt like 40 hours in hell. Was it every day? No. Was it a majority of the time? Yes.

#3 - I was just unhappy. It didn't give me career satisfaction. I wasn't proud. I was doing myself a disservice by staying there because I knew it wasn't what was best for me.

And I don't say this to discourage anyone from pursuing ag ed or teaching, I'm just speaking on my own personal experience.
•
•
•
I'm excited to start a new role in Ag Marketing! I know I'm going to learn so many cool things & experience a side of agriculture I haven't been exposed to.

For the first time in over 2 years, I'm excited to go to work tomorrow. It didn't come easy. I was defeated. Tears were shed. Stress was high.

As they say, "everything happens for a reason", and when I didn't think anything was ever going to happen for me, it did.

Don't lose hope & faith if you're in a similar boat! 🚤

Thanks for reading!

- Jen

Howdy everyone🤠

I wanted to share this amazing business venture idea I pitched to the future hubby, that in the moment, I feel like he was thinking "wow, this girl finally proposed something that actually makes sense, unlike every other time she's tried pitching something".

Picture this-- you have a rough spot in your yard, field, woods, whatever it is that you want to bring some control to and don't want it going wild anymore but you don't have the equipment and/or time to do it on your own.

Now this is where I come in. Goats and a donkey!

I told Mr. Garden Gossiper that we could rent a goat eating service to people! We could set up the moveable fencing and put a handful of goats out there that'll eat all the junk no one has time to figure out themselves. Goats are a very curious critter and like to eat a variety of different things. They're great for eating pesky plants like poison ivy and invasive weeds.

You're probably wondering why I included the donkey, right? Did you know that donkeys can be great protectors? They can provide round the clock guarding for the little ruminate garbage disposals.

I think Mr. GG could almost see the twinkle in my eye when I pitched him the idea. 🤩

I'll keep you updated if this ever happens. Don't wait up though 💀

P.S. -- the picture is circa September 2015, my first semester at SUNY Cobleskill. All I have to say is how many kids can say they spent their time at college cuddling baby goats and messing around in a greenhouse? 🙋‍♀️

TTFN (ta ta for now)

- Jen The Garden Gossiper

Hello hello!
Sorry folks for being a little MIA. Summer has been crazy with weddings, trips, and just life in general. I also had some mental moments of "I don't know why I'm even doing this, no one cares about what I have to share" and lost my creative spirit.

BUT, an hour long phone call with my bestie/wedding planner/fellow ag lover got me my spark back. (Click the link below to check out what my friend Amanda is up to on her farm!)

Agriculture Always-- a little motto that I wish more people thought about.

My love for agriculture started before I really even knew what "agriculture" was. I was a naive 8-? however old and thought of 'farming'.

Throughout middle & high school I was educated by the best and realized farming is just a small portion of Agriculture. I was so intrigued and loved it so much that I decided to get an Associate's, Bachelor's, and Master's degree in some area of Agriculture. If I had a solid PhD idea I'd keep going.

But let's start with the farmer.

You eat food right?

Do you need to produce any of that on your own? Absolutely not. However, I encourage you to be an educated CONSUMER. We will all be consumers. Whether you consume agricultural products from the grocery store or your own garden, we will forever need to consume.

I challenge you to take a moment in the grocery store or at the farm stand & think about the fact that a farmer is the reason you have the ability to buy what you're buying.

#ThankAFarmer

Thanks for reading!

- Jen The Garden Gossiper

Over the last year, I have truly valued wholesome food in a different light and perspective. And I don't mean that on a level of "our bodies need food to survive".

No hate on my lovely mother, but I had recently gone grocery shopping with her; her grocery cart and my grocery cart look very different. But, we also have different viewpoints on food all together. I have the "ingredient-only household" and she has the one all of our high school friends enjoyed going to because there's always the little debbies and at least 3 different types of candy. Don't get me wrong, I indulge when I'm there, but it's an indulgent weekend, not a lifestyle choice.

Now, I feel like I was a natural born cook. It's not daunting to me to have 3 pots going on the stove, a baking dish in the oven and the handmixer going all at the same time. I also have a different mindset where I'd rather have all of those things going, with extra dishes to clean, if it means my end product was delicious & made from wholesome ingredients.

I am no queen though, we do have occasional cheat days where we eat pizza rolls for dinner.

I kind of think of cooking as art -- you put your own flare in, you add touches of flavors you enjoy, and you just experiment really.

The running joke in our household is :
1. If it tastes like 💩 I didn't make it
2. If it's really good, too bad we can't have it again because I don't measure and make everything up as I go.

Dont be afraid of being a food artist and trying new things! You'll never know what you're good at making and how creative you are if you stick with rice-a-roni, packaged, and premade meal.

Create some dang food art!

- Garden Gossiper

If you're anything like me, you somehow started your little homestead journey and interest because of a few chickens in the backyard. We have Rudy, Trudy, Judy, and honorary chicken - who is actually a duck but that's a sore subject - Booty. Don't ask me about the breeds, if they're single purpose or dual purpose, I just know we had some gifted, freeloading chickens for a while.

HOWEVER, if we look at the prices of eggs just in January (the national average was $4.82/carton), the freeloading for a little while wasn't too bad.

Now, my fiance and I do not eat eggs on a regular basis, BUT, the convenience of knowing you have 1 egg waiting for you every day is a little peace of mind, especially if you're like me and love to bake at random and just assume you have all the ingredients on hand. We spend roughly $10 a month for feed for all 4 critters.

My parents recently said, "why do you have chickens, you barely eat eggs".

Touché. But in less than 1 minute I can have a farm fresh egg, laid that day. It doesn't get fresher than that. Egg prices have gone down and we could save a few dollars every month and buy store bought and avoid hassles and headaches; however, I proudly collect my 1 egg a day and embrace the farm fresh feeling🥚

Moral of the story-- If you're thinking about getting some chickens and trying to justify the need for them because of eggs, who cares. Get the chickens.

- Garden Gossiper

A quick trip home to my parents' house made me realize something about my self-sufficiency lifestyle.

In a previous blog I talked about growing up gardening. My parents also raise beef cattle, a pig here and there, and one time I told my mom to tell my little brother's teacher that we'll take the chickens that his class was hatching-- not so lucky for me was that they were all roosters and my dad was less than impressed.

Tonight I went to the barn for a little bit and it hit me-- I inherited my self-sufficiency from my dad. They have 28 cows currently (they usually have 40), and of them are 9 on milk. My parents' rule of thumb is 1 bag of milk replacer per calf until they're old enough and do not need it anymore. A bag of milk replacer is about $96.

While they only have 9 calves on milk now, their average is about 20/25 calves. They spend roughly $2,000 per year just on milk replacer.

So, my dad being my dad, tries to DIY, go the common sense route for EVERYTHING he does-- raised a calf, got her bred, and is now milking her to feed the rest of the babies. She gives approximately 9 gallons of milk a day-- perfect for 9 calves.

They have a few more heifers they plan on calving out and using as milkers for the babies in the near future.

Their little farmstead is small but mighty.

I don't know why it hit me tonight, but I feel like I was born to be a self-sufficient homesteader because of my dad.

- Garden Gossiper

Well, what a Sunday night.

We left town on Saturday morning and just got back around 8pm this evening. I ensured the duck had both swimming pools filled with fresh, clean water, all 4 birds were fed and the garden looked good.

The future hubby saw we had a big storm roll through that we luckily didn't experience while being away. Not so lucky for us was the sheer panic as we drove up the driveway and what appeared to be 3-4 of our biggest tomato plants knocked over the raised bed & main stem bending like a twizzler🫠. And it seems a blight magically appeared while we were gone for less than 48 hours. UGH.

So we scramble to get out of the truck to see the damages up close and personal. Mind you, it's getting dark and it's raining. We decide to work quickly and efficiently for the night and tie all of our cages together, stake and tie down what we could with the rope, creating an anchor system. While Pierce (my lovely other half) worked on anchoring, I decided to check our upper garden. It was like we had left for a month! Everything shot up inches, has blossomed, or started growing -- meaning something looks like corn but I'm 99% sure we didn't plant corn? Like what?

I checked the critters-- BOTH swimming pools looked like Booty used it as a personal bathroom. Also what?

It's now after 9pm, I'm soaked, tired, hangry and need to come up with a game plan to kick the 💩 out of the blight that's affecting 3 of our biggest tomato plants and how to ensure it doesn't spread.

It isn't always peaches and cream as a homesteader. I'll be sure to keep you all posted on the tomato tornado.

- Garden Gossiper

I feel like this is a great Mean Girls moment where my sister is Regina George and I'm Gretchen Wieners in the scene of her trying to make fetch happen. I try to make homemade bread happen and she just doesn't have it, along with all of you store-bought bread buyers.

I've heard it all--I don't do that that's too much work. I don't have time for that. It's easier to just buy it at the store.

Ah yes, I was a young grasshopper once too.

So far, my fiance and I have gone nearly a whole year without buying store bread, with the exception of a hand injury that made it so I couldn't physically make hotdog buns and those were bought. (Still kills me to admit it)

I also assumed making bread was hard until I tried it. It's 5 ingredients and the HARDEST part is kneading the dough, and when I say hard, it's not hard but sometimes 5 minutes feels like 5 hours.

The one thing you do need is time. Time for your dough to rise-- twice. And you don't need to stare at it like people do to newbord babies, you cover it, set a timer, do what you have to do until the timer goes off. But other than that it's not different than fixing regular breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, ect.

I started off just making a few loaves here and there but still buying bread and buns. Then I decided to try making hamburger buns. Then I decided to try making hotdog buns. Then I decided that we will be a homemade bread household all together. It was the coarse of probably a month or so.

As a wise bread-making grasshopper now, I say make the dang bread. Try it before you knock it.

If bread is to fetch, then I'm making fetch happen.

*PS-- I will be making bread on Friday and will post a video and my recipe for those who are still skeptical.

-Garden Gossiper

Is it possible to really have too many tomatoes? Easy, NOPE.

Well, the answer is yes too, but if you're like me and want to make your own tomato sauce then it's entirely NOPE.

My whole life my mom always bought random brands of tomato sauce. I always said all tomato sauce tastes the same to me. Of course garlic flavored would be slightly different from basil, and so on. It wasn't until my fiance introduced me to Rao's that I came to the quick conclusion that Rao's is in fact, the superior store- bought sauce.

What do you think comes with superior store-bought sauce status?
🤑🤑🤑 That's what! One jar of that stuff is like $8! And while $8 doesn't sound like anything crazy, when you live with someone who has spaghetti as one of their major food groups, the cost racks up real quick.

I decided "I'm putting a stop to this" and naturally decided to spend my summer canning my own sauce. You know, the easiest conclusion possible 🙃.

What I didn't realize is HOW MANY DANG TOMATOES YOU NEED. We had 4 plants last year and I would get baskets full of tomatoes nearly daily. But when you chop, slice, dice and boil down your tomatoes for sauce, it amounts to nearly nothing. I believe I got 6 quarts from 4 plants. And that wasn't all tomatoes exclusively going to sauce, but I would say 90%.

Sauce making was quite easy though. As I mentioned, slice, dice, boil down. It's not HARD. It does take TIME.

To ensure we have *hopefully* enough sauce to last us the year, we planted 12 tomato plants with I believe 6 different varieties.

I used to never be a tomato person until I realized that you don't have to plain ol' cold tomatoes on stuff. Keep following along for future recipes that are a staple in our house with the 10% of tomatoes that don't go into sauce. We just ate a tomato dish as a side last night and it was DELICIOUS. I almost want it again tonight. A few ingredients and 20 minutes in the oven. Super easy.

Stay tuned for the life of the tomatoes!

- Garden Gossiper

How about that catching title, huh?!

Now, if you read the first post "It's Always the Hens", you would have picked up on us having an honorary chicken, who is actually a duck, named Booty. You're probably wondering why we named her Booty. It's quite simple actually. She wiggles what her mama gave her like it's her day job, and I wanted her name to rhyme with the chickens, but be slightly different since she is 'slightly' different from the other 3.

You may also be wondering why in the world we have 3 chickens but only 1 duck.

It wasn't always like that.

We HAD 6 ducks that I thought were the cat's meow when they were wee little tikes and fresh out of the shell *insert chuckle". We had all 6 ducks for about 2 months. They were so cute who wouldn't want them, right? ME! That's who!

But let me back track for a minute. I have always wanted ducks since I was younger but my dad always told me no, for dang good reasons too, but sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

My fiance and I got suckered like so many poor souls do at the good 'ol Tractor Supply when they had the chicks and ducklings this past spring. Surprisingly though, it was him who had to convince me to get them, not the other way around. What we didn't realize is how much more work they were than our chickens. We could fill the food and water containers full and they would be good for weeks. The ducks on the other hand ate and drank like it was their last meal.

As the ducks got older, we realized that it would be more beneficial for them to be in a moveable pen that we can drag around the backyard to give them access to the fresh grass and keep the mess a little less messy in one spot. If you didn't know, they poop A LOT. And not like chickens. Excuse my unladylike language, but they shart. A lot.

Booty was being bullied-- poor thing. I had to rehab her in a separate pen for a little while before I tried to reintroduce her back to her kind. When I did, they attacked her again. So Booty got privileges. She was able to roam wild and free outside the pen for a while when the others were trapped (and by trapped I mean they had critter fencing so they couldn't get out and nothing could get in, still lots of fresh air to blow through their little hairs).

"Critter fencing so they couldn't get out". Funny. They got out. We put them in, fixed the hole, and a few days later they got out again. In the mean time, we put Booty in our permanent fencing with the chickens. The escapee ducks hung out near her out in the open. For a few days anyway.... until they weren't there anymore 🥺

The goal of ducks was always for processing or eggs. Males we would process for meat and females we would keep for eggs. But a hungry critter acted on an opportunity.

Advice: just because your animals hang around your house or in the yard doesn't mean they're safe, enclose them at night. We knew better. But because they were in our backyard and we have 2 dogs roaming around, we didn't think something would come that close. We spent a lot of time and money for them to be gone in a flash. But we let our minds get lazy. Booty spent the next morning calling and looking for her family. Hence the title "Booty Called".

We know better now. And we know that we never want ducks again. Like, ever ever again 🙃

While this is a little heartbreaker (for me anyway) Booty is honorary chicken and even tries to act like the others, it's so funny.

Be smart friends if you decide to venture into the farm critter world!

-Garden Gossiper

Why this journey you may wonder or ask?

It's been a very interesting year or so creating a life that aligns with "homesteading, self-sufficiency, farm to fork, or as my sister would say, OK grandma."

Last year, my fiance and I decided to start our own garden. Homesteading starter kit: garden & chickens.

Now this wasn't my first rodeo in the gardening and growing world. I kindly asked my dad YEARS ago, like 12 year old Jen, if he could please till up a little piece of our land for a garden. If you're lucky enough to know my dad, you dang well know it wasn't a little garden-- it felt like 10 acres (very dramatic and it wasn't that big, but for little 'ol me it surely felt that way).

I spent that summer scrubbing carrots with a toothbrush to get the dirt off, shredding zucchini until my eyes crossed, canning and pickling dozens upon dozens of relish and pickles: side note- the relish was THE BEST relish and very much how my dad and I role, no recipe, just winged it. Needless to say, we can't make them the same ever again *insert soft sob*.

For some, that seems like a lot of work and sounds dreadful (cue my sister♥️). It took years for me to reflect and appreciate what I had started and did with my family, and now as an adult on my own, I'm #thankful #grateful #blessed.

I grew up knowing and learning how to produce my own food! As frivolous as it seems, there are people out there (some may even be reading this right now) that do not understand how your food is grown or raised; as if by magic the food just appears at the grocery store.

My goal is to use this new journey and platform to share my mistakes, accomplishments, and recipes with my own home-grown food.

I hope you take this small piece of advice and learn a little about agriculture, most importantly your food. Take a leap into the deep waters and try it on your own. Large or small, I'm sure you'll feel more accomplished picking your own tomato off the plant you planted & tended to than you would at the grocery store.

-Garden Gossiper