A Look Back at 2015

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Is 2015 really coming to a close? At the risk of sounding very cliché, this year flew by so fast! I always enjoy taking some time to look back and reflect on the things that happened throughout the year. Everything we walk through is such a learning and growing experience. We had a pretty exciting year here on the homestead. Let’s take a look at what went down around here.

A Look Back at 2015

Where do we begin? I suppose we start with the best news that we received all year. Our family was growing again, we were blessed with expecting our seventh precious child.

Early in 2015 we announced that we were expecting again!

We planned out our garden for the year. I always plan our garden with visions of a huge bounty, minimal pests, and lots of preserving. As usually happens, expectations meet reality. The garden was lovely and kept us fed. We didn’t have as much to preserve as we would have liked. This coming year we are hoping for more abundance in the garden.

Our 2015 garden

One very exciting thing we got to do was butcher our own pigs. What a great skill to have. We were able to raise our pigs free ranging and eating non-gmo/soy free feed. The pork was delicious and our freezer was full. We also got to render the lard from our pigs. This is like homesteader heaven right here!

Happy piggy

Our goal is to raise all of our own food and meat is the most important aspect of that to us. We’ve raised our own chickens and pigs. This year we added beef and turkeys as well. The beef will be more of a long term goal but we are on our way. We started out with buying a young bull calf (now a steer) to raise and expanded to three beef breeding heifers. We plan to breed them early in 2016. We raised turkeys for the first time this year and butchered them on our own along with raising a couple of batches of chickens.

These are just a few of the highlights from our year on the homestead. There is so much more that happened but I’m just writing a post, not a book.

Alas, I have saved the best and most important for last. Our precious little farm baby made his appearance this fall at a whopping 9lbs. He was our biggest baby yet! We are so thankful to God that he saw fit to grow our family again. All of the farm kids are completely enamored and in love with him as are Farmer Derek and I.

Sweet newest farm baby

We are giving thanks to God for all He has done and blessed us with this year. For the ups where we learned and celebrated. For the downs that He used to stretch us and our faith and grow us. We know He is continually preparing us to fulfill His will for our lives. As we move into 2016 we will continue to seek God and His plan for us. We will meditate on this verse:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

~Faith~Family~Farm~

Jenna

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