The Homestead
Trying to hack it in the Land of Enchantment
Join Samantha on her homestead choring adventures.
Follow Samantha Christine on her YouTube channel as she posts videos of her daily activities, chores, and adventures on the homestead. Get inspired, have a good laugh, or just relax watching the mundane.
Short clip of Samantha Christine and Rooster, Jerry doing their morning chores. Visit Samantha's YouTube channel for more!
The Chickens
Seven chickens reside at the homestead. They’re all very unique and precocious. At first, none of them had names. They’re livestock. Don’t get attached. Down the line, it becomes necessary to add new chickens to the flock. Sometimes your new chicken already has a name. We all know once something has a name that’s that. So the chickens are as follows:
Woody. Woody is a cream legbar. They’re known as “blue egg wonders.” That she certainly is. Each day you will find a cute, little blue egg in the nesting box. She’s a warrior poet and saved her flock (with the exception of one) from a dog attack.
Amelia. Amelia is an Easter Egger (aka Ameraucana). She was named by a previous owner who failed to disclose that Amelia is totally insane and autistic. Her strangeness is what we like about her and the rest of the flock do a pretty good job of accepting her for who she is.
Missy. Yet another chicken that came with a name. She’s a Wyandotte and a TANK who wears the pants in the flock. She has a zero tolerance policy for misbehavior. If she was a person, she’d coach a women’s softball team and well, you know the rest of it.
The Little Reds. These two are Rhode Island Reds. They are so dear and sweet to the point of complete helplessness. They lay eggs prolifically and are the most sociable. For real, they just want to hang out with their human companions.
Sissy. She’s a Wyandotte like Missy. It’s getting harder and harder to tell the two apart now that Sissy is almost fully grown, but she definitely has her own personality and she loves tagging along with the rooster, Jerry. She just started laying eggs and they’re so tiny!
Jerriah (aka Jerry). The rooster. What more needs to be said? I always knew he looked different from the other chicks and was always a little bit of a trouble maker in his chick days. Well, he ended up being a rooster, which explains everything. For a rooster, Jerry is very sociable and treats his ladies well. He’s a great protector and always crows at the Amazon delivery driver, and boy oh boy does he crow. Sure, he sometimes tries to challenge me and some mornings he’s way too talkative, but I think we’ll keep him around for the foreseeable future.
The Bees
The bees are truly incredible creatures who are immensely loved and respected by everyone in the household. There are four hives (thanks to two captured swarms this year). Each hive has a colony of about ten to twenty thousand bees, and of course, each has a queen.
They are largely self-sufficient and thrive in the high desert environment of northern New Mexico. During the busy times (July through early October in these parts), the hives are checked about every two weeks. Their favorite plants are the Russian Sage and Salvia that grow all over the property. These flowers make their honey incredibly floral and a wonderful golden color. It practically shimmers.
These hardy souls survive winter at six thousand feet with no fuss or complaint. They’ve survived snow, sub-zero temperatures, and 80mph winds. When the hint of spring returns, they do not hesitate to rejoice and see what’s going on at the local watering hole (the bird bath).
The bees are the best and we hope to keep expanding, and maybe lend them to some of our farmer friends.
The Microbes
Besides the obvious critters you can see roaming or flying around the homestead, we also promote an abundance of unseen organisms through fermentation. We’re all about super food here at the homestead, and besides eggs and honey, fermented foods are one of the healthiest ways to maintain a healthy gut and immune system.
Samantha is only slightly obsessed with fermentation crocks. She uses a large, one gallon crock for things like sauerkraut and various other veggies, and a smaller crock for the fridge that contains the all-knowing being….the sourdough starter. There’s always something going on in those crocks around here (Samantha has some jalapenos going right now).
We tend to believe more often than not that these little microbes are our true overlords, so we keep them close and friendly.
The Routine
The cats are unabashedly jealous of the alarm clock. Every morning they get a fifteen minute jump on it, starting their Benny Hill routine promptly at 5:30am. Hissing, chasing, pouncing, and meowing. They throw all the tricks of their trade at the two lumps in bed, who minutes before, were experiencing the warmest of early morning R.E.M. sleep. Their routine has become my routine. I incorporate their antics as part of my husband’s alarm. When the actual alarm sounds, we’ve already been waking up, but it takes two more snoozes to coax us out from under the wool Pendleton blanket. Without even a glance, my husband Frankenstein’s his way to the shower. I foggily make my way upstairs, tripping over our little fluffy, black drill sergeants. On the journey to the kitchen, I’m vowing that this time I will indeed go back to sleep once I get my husband out the door. It never happens. By the time coffee is brewed, lunched packed, cats fed, a kiss and an “I love you” by the cold air of the open front door, I’m now wide awake.
Being up before the sun is not a burden. I look forward to that first sip of French pressed coffee, always on an empty stomach. I tell myself I’m not an addict, but I am. Looking out the window to the east, I can just see the glow behind the mountains and I enjoy watching its progress. This morning I saw a small, but sharp point of light at the top of the mountain. It looked like someone walking in total darkness with a flashlight bouncing up and down in that imperfect way humans try to hold something in place. I realized it must be one of the snowcats up at Ski Santa Fe grooming the trails for the early birds, those bronzed and affluent retirees that populate the tourist town. As quaint as Santa Fe is, I’m glad we chose to live on the periphery in the windswept Espanola valley.
By now the sun has crested the mountains enough to shift the deep blues and purples of night into the deep, fiery oranges and pinks of dawn. The sand and grasses of the valley reflect the color more brilliantly than a white piece of printer paper. The flicker that we allow to live in our eave departs for the day. Desert cottontails invisibly rustle the grasses. There’s so many of them on our property the rustle looks like a gentle breeze. That’s my reminder to go outside before the sun activates the constant valley winds.
The 310 days of sunshine can be deceiving in the high desert. My first breath of the outside morning air always shocks and refreshes me. At 6000 feet, the dry air invites the warmest vibrating particles to disappear into the atmosphere, leaving behind frigid stillness. This morning it is 9 degrees. I’m not sure how the chickens can stand it, but they do and I’m very grateful for it. To show my gratitude, I make sure their pen is swept clean. I refresh their water and spread scratch and black soldier fly larvae for a morning treat. By the time their automatic coop door opens, there is a thick ray of sunshine illuminating their feast. I like to think they appreciate the offering like a gift from God, but they know it’s me and know I am not God. So I move on to tend to the wilder creatures I still have a chance of tricking.
