Today I am trading spaces with Sarah, so come by and visit my over at Frühlingskabine Micro-Farm today!
My greatest inspiration in my own backyard farming adventure has been to hear the experiences of others. I invite you to read along here as Homesteaders share their adventures and experiences from their own farms, backyards, and homes.
Want to be featured as a Homestead Highlight? I would love to hear about your experience. For more information follow the link to the information page and share your own homestead here at the Backyard Farming Connection!
Today I welcome Sarah to this space.
Sarah and her family are learning to be more self-sufficient, step-by-step, though gardening, animal husbandry, and by making things from scratch on a quarter-acre in a small California gold-rush town. She lives with her husband, young daughter, chickens, hives of honeybees, and a herd of French angora rabbits at Frühlingskabine Micro-Farm. Frühlingskabine Micro-Farm websiteFrühlingskabine’s Etsy Shop
How long have you been backyard farming? What got you started?
We are in our second year of farming on our small rented lot. I’m not sure what got us started… a desire to “get back to basics” I suppose. We started with chickens, no space for sheep led us to angora rabbits, and an aisle detour in the local bookstore got us started in beekeeping. Now we try to do as much as we can from scratch and we are constantly learning new (to us) skills.
What does your backyard farm look like? Where is it?
Frühlingskabine Micro-Farm includes our little house on a quarter-acre lot (.22 acres to be precise) and is located in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. We are basically in Yosemite’s backyard. Our whole yard is on a slight hill with a field at the bottom; wooded area at the top. The chicken coop is in the field with the bees and the rabbits and cob oven are up by the house. We get a whole range of weather with 100* degree days in the summer and several feet of snow in the winter.
What has been your biggest success and biggest mistake?
Our biggest mistake last year was not planting enough! We easily got through the summer and large part of the fall solely on food from the garden, but we had very little surplus to can, dry, or otherwise preserve for winter. Luckily that can easily be fixed next year. Our biggest success has been raising French angora rabbits for wool and meat. It’s not always easy, but it has been a very rewarding experience for our family as a whole.
What plans do you have for the future?
In the spring we are planning to fence in our side yard (lots of hungry, determined deer around here) to make a shady mushroom garden. We will also be using part of the field to attempt to grow buckwheat to use for bread flour. Hopefully in the near future we can even build our own greenhouse to grow greens in the winter and to start spring seedlings since we still have snow as late as May.
Sarah and her family are learning to be more self-sufficient, step-by-step, though gardening, animal husbandry, and by making things from scratch on a quarter-acre in a small California gold-rush town. She lives with her husband, young daughter, chickens, hives of honeybees, and a herd of French angora rabbits at Frühlingskabine Micro-Farm. Frühlingskabine Micro-Farm websiteFrühlingskabine’s Etsy Shop
Another great story! It is interesting to read what others are doing to become more self-sufficient and exciting to see that so many are doing it! Love the angora rabbits, with so much talk about them lately I have been looking into raising some! Thanks for sharing!
~Rob
Her rabbits are inspiring me as we'll! I have been looking into getting a free too.
Beautiful story and photos!
Great feature! The animals are soooo cute. Now I'm interested in angora rabbits…thanks for sharing! It is very impressive what you can do on such a small lot.
Sounds like there are going to be a lot of people raising angora rabbits in the Spring! I need to dig out my plans for my rabbit hutch/run and post them on my website!
~Rob
Great pictures and awesome homestead! I love your outdoor oven! I love your blog, too, Sarah, and have been subscribing for a while. 🙂
Hi! It's so nice to see so many people interested in French Angoras. We need more people raising angora rabbits — especially you left-coasters! Thanks everyone for looking us up and what we're doing and a BIG thank you to Gretchen for featuring us here!