WE HAVE BEEN FORCED TO CHANGE OUR NAME DUE TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT BY MIDDLE-EARTH ENTERPRISES. WE ARE NOW “WHEATON MOUNTAIN” FORMALLY KNOWN AS “HOBBIT HILL”. Homestead Update written on 3/13/19 We have also changed the names of our separately managed Facebook pages as follows: Wheaton Mountain Dairy Goats Wheaton Mountain View Article
How to Keep Chicken Water from Freezing in the Winter Without Electricity
Many opinions, odd antidotes, and myths surround the art of how to keep chicken water from freezing in the winter without electricity. We do it here at Hobbit Hill quite simply. It takes about ten minutes twice a day and involves either 5-gallon pails (or milk jugs depending on the size View Article
Happy New Year from Bucksport Maine!
We enjoyed a mellow New Year’s Eve with our good friend and neighbor Mandi who was kind enough to capture a photo of us lovebirds smooching by moonlight in front of the pond where we married almost three years ago now. We kicked off the evening by burning an old, View Article
November Snuck Up On Us
We had woken up to a white landscape last week. It stuck to the ground for two days before vanishing overnight. That lit a fire under my ass to focus on cleaning up things I don’t want incased in ice in the near future. Have I done it? No. No, View Article
Keeping the Chicken Run Clean
I rake leaves up, lawn clippings, and toss in a bucket of sand after a good rain at one end for scratching and dusting in. I generally try to rake it up to keep the poops down and put whatever dry stuff I can which will also keep them entertained. View Article
A Hard Journey from Pig to Pork
I can’t say I didn’t feel a pang of guilt and sadness as I ate the first bite of pork from our KuneKune boys Buddy and Pal last night. They were such gentile creatures who would come when I called for them, snorting happily all the way across the yard. View Article
Mild out this weekend and last… Don’t get used to it.
It’s been a good couple of weekends to yank frozen farm tools that were stuck in ice and shovel thawed out manure from stalls and coops. This kind of warm cold whiplash can be hard on poultry. Respiratory issues can come of thickly fogged mornings to crisp thin air only View Article
Snowy March Day in Bucksport
It seems the winter is still hanging on. Overnight several inches of heavy snow blanketed the rugged landscape of the mountain. Wind sent snowflakes dancing sideways into drifts. This was warm snow on the verge of optimal snow fort building—but not quite warm enough to hold together. The flakes piled View Article