BRB

Sorry its been a while since i have posted. My family is very involved in theater, and the last two weeks have been so busy with our production of PeterPan that I haven't had time for much else. Thank you for your patience and I will be back next week!

Shane

Photo courtesy of Mico Aloisio

Mamie Winters KMAR Country Music Showdown

   One of my very talented children, Mamie. She is 16 and I couldn't have asked for a better kid. She is beautiful, smart, funny, and helps me around the house. She loves to sing to her little siblings as well as to the children we babysit. Babies just melt to her voice. Good luck with your dreams baby girl, mommy loves you.

The Birth Fowlplayas

     I can't quite pinpoint when I decided I wanted chickens. I can tell you when I got them. It was my anniversary 2014. I had been telling Daniel how much I wanted to raise them. We went to Houma, LA for an anniversary lunch. This is the town where our feed store is located. We went there after lunch just for fun, or so I thought. He then surprised me by telling me to go pick out some chickens!

Few of the first chicks 

     I carefully chose 5 Barred Plymouth Rock babies. Five little mostly black puffs of feathers. The cutest little things I had ever seen, other than my babies. I purchased some feed, a waterer, and a feeder. They lived in a storage tote for weeks in my garage. I was in the middle of moving from one house to another. We decided to move into one of our rentals since our current home was being sold. We could keep chickens in the town where the rental was. This made me so happy. Daniel found a chicken tractor on the side of the road!! The family that put it there used it as a rabbit house and the man even helped bring it down the street for us. It was a blessing. We still had a few weeks before we moved in, so the babies grew up some in the garage.
   

The free chicken house
check out that post, I
wanted more space way back then

     Once we made the move, the 5 BR babies made the move too. We put them in their new home and they loved it. But, one morning while drinking coffee with Daniel before work, I heard chirping from front door. I ran and found four of my babies on my porch, visibly upset. Daniel ran to the backyard to find the coop (tractor) open! He saw a raccoon take off into the woods with one of my babies. I was so upset. He had climbed on the tractor and knock off one of the doors. I took it as a learning moment. We screwed the roof doors down and tried again. He never got another one.

The Post office delivery!

    After a few months at the new house, and a few more months with chickens, I was ready for more! But I had decided that I wanted an eclectic mix of chickens. I wanted to see different colors of chickens roaming my yard and different colors of eggs. Eggs can be white, cream, brown, dark brown, blue, and green. The can by many shades of those colors and even have spots. So this time I went to the internet. I ordered 10 "Brown egg layer Mix" chicks from mypetchicken.com. This meant the morning of shipping, they would grab 10 random babies and send them to me. I figured this would be fun for us. We would get to try to figure out which breeds we got!

     We waited for the post office to call. Once they did, we went to pick them up. I heard them chirping the moment I walked in. The other people in the post office were staring and wondering what in the world I was doing. The postmaster was very sweet. I climbed in the truck and we peeked. So cute! 10 perfect little babies. I saw brown, black, and yellow puffs. The kids were so excited to see what these babies would become.

Alicia's Birthday Bantam Chicks

     On Alicia's 11th birthday, she wanted something that most her age probably would never have asked for--more chickens--! After visiting Daniel's pawpaw in the hospital, we went to TSC. There we found some bantam chicks. We bought 5 lil tiny babies and surprised her that evening. She was so happy. Only 4 survived the night, but those 4 are now 20 weeks old and will start laying soon.

     One day, not long after new babies came home, we had a family BBQ. The cousins brought their kids to our makeshift chicken farm. They loved seeing and holding the chicks. We spent hours just being together and talking about the future. While visiting, Daniel's cousins Amber and Hannah helped me to come up with a name for our little farm. Fowlplayas Poultry Farm was born. It is a catchy name and looks good on a shirt! Our Journey had begun. As of July 2015, we have 35 chickens. I want to grow this in Tennessee to 3500! There will be more posts about our little farm to come.

 https://www.facebook.com/Fowlplayas

   

The First Run of T-shirts

Alicia with 2 of our chickens

backyardchickenproject posted the kids homecoming photo

Thomas running with the chickens and a duck

Now What?

     What to do next? First, control my excitement and get done what needs to be done. Loose ends need to be tied here in Louisiana. Sell some property, pay off some debt, sell stuff we won't need, start hoarding farm paraphernalia, and finally.......breathe. Life has a way of changing course with out giving you a warning. Some days it seems we will leave soon, other days I feel I will never get there. Two steps forward, three steps back. But I have faith that we will make this happen. With this faith, I continue to study.

     I am constantly reading other blogs about similar living. Taking notes and asking questions. What do I plant first? What grows well? Where is the best place for a pond? Do I need more than 1 goat? Cow? Will I be able to use the milk? Can I sell extra? What can I recycle? So many things to learn. I will start out small. Small garden. Few chickens (who am I kidding, lots of chickens). A goat, a milk cow, a big ole bull, a couple pigs. I have learned that I can make stuff happen on 1 acre, including a house, so I'm sure I can modify those backyard plans to fit my size family. I plan on a whole post being about my planning of the homestead. I also plan on posts about how to do some of the things we are going to do to our land. Where I found info and what info I found useful or not useful at all.

     I also wanted to know more about the town of Savannah and more about Hardin county. So far the people we have met and talked to are very welcoming. The area has a lake. Pickwick lake. There is a pro Bass tournament there each year. I've heard the catfish from the nearby Tennessee river rival the Atchafalaya catfish. There are several community and children's theater groups in the county. This makes the kids very happy. We will be a stones throw from Memphis and Nashville. Similar to a trip from Patterson to Nola. Mamie is planning her first trip to Music City. Temperatures get high, but not as humid. Winter has snow occasionally. We will have all four seasons, something I am looking forward to. There is a homeschooling group in Savannah. We found the Catholic Church. And if you know me, you can imagine my excitement when I saw a Tractor Supply minutes form our site.  There is a stockyard that sells all sorts of livestock each week. There aren't a lot of people there during most of the year, population about 7k, but that swells during summer due to the lake. Shiloh battle ground is very near and is rich in southern history. 

http://www.cityofsavannah.org

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah,_Tennessee

https://www.facebook.com/FIRSTDREAMWEAVER

We are not ready yet, but we are getting closer everyday. I will continue to learn all that I can about my dream way of life. 

Simple, but not easy. Rewarding, but not rich.

......The beginning

     For a few months back in early 2013, Daniel and I tossed around and joked about leaving the area we both have known as home our whole life, South Louisiana, for wide open spaces. I read everything I could about homesteading, gardening, and animal husbandry. I was so excited.

     Then in late 2013, his father fell very ill. He died the day after Christmas 2013. We hadn't spoke of moving after that for a long while. It was a sad time for a solid year. More bad things happen to us then I thought should happen to any one family. I will not go into detail, but trust me, it was rough!
   Enter October 2014. I brought the crazy idea up once again to the husband after a very rough day. To my surprise, he agreed! So my search began!!

     I downloaded an app for my phone from Realtor.com. I looked and looked near our current home. The land here, although rich in soil for growing all sorts of plants, was not "exciting". I mean, it was flat....it was old cane fields......it was boring. And the big thing, it was EXPENSIVE! like $17k an acre!! WHAT?!?!!? My little dream began to unravel. I thought I would never have my little homestead farm.

Our search area

     Then one day my 16 year old daughter, Mamie, came to me with an idea. She is our resident singer and her dream is to be a country music superstar. She asked if we could move close to Nashville. This would help her career and she wouldn't have to move away from us. I told her that it would probably be impossible to find land there and even harder to talk dad into moving so far away. That night we went to him with the idea of Tennessee. He agreed! I couldn't have been happier. Not only a change of way of life, but a whole change in scenery.

     I went back to the Realtor.com app and began my search of Tennessee. Land was still fairly expensive. I looked in north Mississippi too. Still, nothing. Each had something wrong. Price. Location. Size. Zoning. Nothing was standing out. I began to get discouraged.

     One day in November 2014 I went on the app. I put the most impossible search criteria. I figured there was no way this piece of land would even exist:

20+ acres, Under $50k, utilities

The Ad for Property

     Holy Moly!!! I got a hit. In a little town in the south eastern corner of west Tennessee. I found my Eden. A 40 acre plot of land with an old house, rolling hills, and lots of road frontage. I fell in love through pics and Google earth. I showed Daniel. I was so happy that he was just as happy with it as i was. For weeks we stared at the pics, looked up the town, read about the county. Then, in January 2015, we called the realtor. We asked a few questions and then began to discuss with each other the big decision we were about to make.

Our drive 

     We planned a trip. This is no small feat. We have 9 children, 8 that still live at home. There was lots of packing to do. Clothes, food, and even boots in case we wanted to walk the property. I called the realtor that Tuesday February 10, 2015 to set up a time to see him. He informed me that another lady had came to look at it. She had made an offer and it was accepted. We were so sad. We decided to go anyway and look around. We had fell in love with the area after all of our research. We thought there may be other spots. So we left very early that next morning with hopes of a new life beginning.

     The realtor tried for days after our call to get back in touch with the other lady. She wouldn't return calls or texts or even e mails. So we set a time to go see it on that Saturday. We arrived in Savannah, TN around 7pm on Friday. Daniel was anxious to see the property. So, after checking into the hotel, we loaded up and went for a drive. At 8pm on Friday February 13, 2015 we saw our future for the first time. It was dark. but we looked a bit. Excited to see it the next day in the light!!!

     The next morning, no one slept in. Bright and early we had breakfast and dressed for the day. Our meeting at the property was set for 11am. But Daniel was to excited. We went about 10am. When we drove up this time you could see the trees. The kids jumped out the van and disappeared into the thick trees.  Once through the tree line, the property open up to rolling hills. It was dead. No green at all. But all I could see was potential. I saw my pastures. I could hear my cows. I could smell my compost. All my senses were awoken. I knew at that very moment that I was home.

     Now, there was an old house there. Old. Ugly. Ransacked. But, I saw potential in that too. We made our offer and waited. For a whole 15 minutes! Accepted!!!!! For Valentines Day 2015, while my friends got cards, flowers, and dinner, I got LAND!!!!

Shane & Daniel Winters on the new property 2/14/15

     We hope to move in 2016.

Daniel overlooking property

Johnathan on a hill

LAND

a few hills

Elizabeth and a stump