New Years Eve!

It's new years eve and I spent the day with family! Tonight I finished making myself some bible tabs for my new bible. I used scrapbooking paper that I liked to give it a soft feel! Now I'm ready to start my new years resolution to read the bible in a year again. I've read it twice, but there is so much to take in and learn! It's an easy DIY (Do it yourself!) project and super easy! I just cut 1.25 squares, cut little notches in the bottom, and taped them in! What do you think?

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead

Merry Christmas 2017!!

Hi everyone! I hope you have all had a great Christmas this year! I had such an amazing Christmas with our families this year! We've had a lot of loss over the years, and while our family dinners may be getting smaller, the love we have for each other just continues to grow! I wanted to share some photos of our Christmas Eve!

Every Christmas Eve as our tradition I make matching family pajama's for us all, but this year my parents joined us so they got matching sets too! I used CKC Patterns Taylor Pajama's pants pattern, and Fleece from Joann's so it is really affordable! 
My mother is extremely sick. She has Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), formerly known as primary biliary cirrhosis. So them staying with us this Christmas was a huge treat for us. She needs a liver transplant to survive and it's been so hard watching her get sicker and sicker, but I pray that 2018 is the year that she gets a new liver, and a new chance at life! Please consider being an organ donor today, there are so many people who need the gift of life! 

Our Christmas tree before Santa came!

Christmas Eve has come!

Natalie making Santa some chocolates!

Goodies left for Santa and his Reindeer!

A place for Santa to sit down with his snacks! Natalie wanted it "comfy" for him!

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead

Goats in Pajamas!

I'm a seamstress and own a PDF sewing pattern company called CKC Patterns. So It was only natural that I would make the girls some pajamas! Now they don't wear these much. I made them just for fun and not for warmth, but aren't they just adorable? I'm including both images and a cute short video clip at the bottom. One thing I love is cute little goat in pajama videos and I knew the girls would look adorable in their own!

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead

My winter wonderland!

The cold has been sticking around as well as all this white snow. It's been fun watching all the animals learn to adapt to their new surroundings. They seem to be better with all of it now. I see the chickens spending more time outside than they had when it first fell a few weeks ago. They are still laying eggs too. 17 hens and we are still getting at least 9 eggs a day! Some days as much as 13, which seems pretty good to me! Our Turkeys haven't laid any yet that I know of though!

I have been feeling so incredibly grateful lately. I mean, I always feel really grateful for this little herd of ours, and all these dreams of mine to own land and animals coming true. Getting thought this cold winter, wondering each day how they will cope and watching them learn and grow. Seeing myself getting strong lugging buckets of warm water out each day and cleaning their homes up. It's been pretty exciting. It's not at all what I expected. They all have so much more personality than I had imagined and I just love them all! I did know right from the beginning that they would all be our pets, and not being used for food (Other than eggs!). So I did get attached pretty quickly, even for me!

What do you think was your best memory of your first farm animal?

I laugh the most because our turkeys are the biggest of our animals, but they are also such babies! They do have some growing up to do but looking at them you wouldn't know it!

Anyway, after a long day of work, I'm sitting down to write this blog, and show some snowy photos on here! The one thing I can say about Michigan is that I love having seasons. You can never get really bored with the seasons changing so often. I will say though that Winter is my least favorite season. It does lead to spring though and I can start planning my garden and watching things come back to life again so I am excited for all of that too!

The turkeys (Muffet and Genji) Sure look big next to the little 

goaties don't they? 

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead

Natalie and her chicken egg apron!

It's been a snowy, cold few days here in Michigan and it's about to get a lot colder and the snow is really coming down now! The herd is basically staying inside the barn and coop, not wanting to go out into the cold and snow! So I'm looking back at summer and warmth! I made Natalie this adorable dress and apron to use when she would collect eggs! I used the Gertrude pattern from CKC Patterns and she loves it! Here are the photos when there was still green grass and before our chickens even laid their first eggs! I hope you enjoy! Isn't she just the most adorable little country girl? She just loves her chickens!

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead

Chickens, meet snow!

Apparently, chickens hate snow! Who knew....They always make me laugh, and really, they are funnier than you would think they are! I couldn't imagine our lives without these silly girls that's for sure! Here they are, seeing their first real snow fall! They had seen a light dusting back on halloween that quickly melted, but today, they got real snow! Watch the video to see how they reacted! I made it into a short 2 minute video of all their fun reactions!

Thanks for watching! ~The Vela Homestead

The goats stall in the barn!

Today I just wanted to share the goat's stall with you! My husband built it inside the old pole barn with some help from my brother! I'm so happy with how it turned out. It seemed so much smaller before we brought the girls home because they were just so tiny in it! I keep them in here at night but during the day all the animals come in and out as they please to get out of the wind and this cold weather!

Building the floor! 

After he added the door! 

Then he built a fun jungle gym for them inside so they had lots of room to climb and play and sleep! He added chicken wire behind it so they couldn't jump our or hurt themselves! 

Their hay is in that plastic bin with holes so they can get it without making a big mess. They really don't waste that much of it. I have 2 bowls under it on the crate so what does fall out goes in there to easily clean up. Then their mineral block, and more minerals and baking soda in the black section. A pail of water and a chair for me to sit in when I visit and play with them! Although they use the chair more than I do! 

He had this great idea to create a sliding door to let them in and out of. I still need to paint it! The only hassle is that hay, mud, poop and all that gets stuck in the track and I have to clean it out to close it all the way. But it's easy to let them in and out of! 

There it is! The goats room and play area inside the barn! Next time I'll be sharing what the outside pen looks like and what they all have out their to play on! It's changed a few times as we adjust to having our herd living together! 

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead

Welcoming home Brooklyn and Bailey! Twin nigerian dwarf goat doelings!

Hi ya'll! I'm so excited to be writing this blog today! Well, I'm always excited to write new blogs about my little ladies, but today, I get to talk about our twin Nigerian Dwarf Goat doelings! Brooklyn and Bailey! They are just the sweetest little girls! I thought I was nervous getting chickens, but goats have taken things to a whole other level! Rumens, bloat, bottles! There is so much to know and to look out for. Once again I joined every goat group on Facebook that I could find, bought tons of books and visited countless websites searching and reading for hours on what to do, and what not to do, and just like with the chickens there was so much conflicting information out there it made my head spin! After researching it was time to look for our new goaties! Wethers, doelings, bucklings? Kids or adult? After searching some sale sites I found the perfect little pair for our family! I didn't want to start with newborns and bottle babies. I wanted them to stay with mom first. Which is what we did. Out girls were born on July 1st 2017 and were just as cute as ever! I really wanted girls with blue eyes, and because they were twins they were born together and could always be together! I thought that would also make the transition to our farm a little easier because they would stay together. Anyway, at 1 week old we got to meet the girls for the first time! I couldn't believe how teeny tiny they were!

Bailey!

Brooklyn!

 Aren't they so tiny? 

 I loved them the moment I laid eyes on them!

They didn't come home until they were 8 weeks old! Here are some photos from their first day with us! They explored everything! 

Isn't she the cutest? Brooklyn is always photo ready these days!

I hope you enjoyed seeing our girls! I will be sharing more of their past few months here with us in some future blogs but didn't want to post too many pictures today! Do you have goats? What's your favorite thing about them?

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead