Here at the Wallow, Joshua and I had a nice tail-end to fall with our new cat, Juli, usually affectionately just called Kitteh. Now that it’s almost winter and it’s much colder outside, she doesn’t have much interest in staying out. Very occasionally, she sits at the door to go outside, but then just a minute or two later she’s back at the door wanting back in.

Here at The Wallow, we have a lot of bees and we have a lot of wasps. Is there a difference? You bet!

Since I’m in love with bees and I hate wasps, it always bugs me when I hear someone confuse the two. The other day someone commented on a yellow jacket sting saying they hated bees. I piped up to say that yellow jackets are wasps, not bees. The other person said it didn’t much matter when you were being stung. Ah, but it does! It matters in the moment right before you think you’re going to be stung (because you might want to act differently depending on whether it’s a bee or a wasp), and it matters when you get stung (because one is just bothersome and one hurts like hell!)

Becoming a beekeeper is one of my dearest homesteading goals for myself. I’ve long had a fascination with honeybee lore. And while having ready access to honey and beeswax will be a nice side effect, what I truly want is to be a human who has a relationship with honeybees. I want to watch them and understand them and interact with them in ways that are positive for me and for the bees.

In a fortunate little turn of events, the house Joshua and I bought comes with a honeybee colony already installed! The previous owner (a friend of mine) began learning about beekeeping here, and he decided to leave his colony behind rather than try to relocate it.

Joshua picked up because he’s interested in having chickens right away on our homestead. While chickens will not be my main focus, I wanted to have an overview of the topic and so I read this book, too.

Every homestead needs a barn cat or two, right? We’ve got our first one in little Julie.

One of my big goals for homesteading is to raise animals for food. Bees are in the works, and eventually down the line there may be chickens and goats and rabbits. What I’m really excited about, though, is raising a pig!

I first settled on a pig because I’m curious about how I will feel raising an animal on my own and then killing and eating it.