The Hutton Homestead

06/02/2024

05/17/2024

😆

05/11/2024

2 dozen farm fresh eggs $8.
First come first serve. I can bring them to church tomorrow, Lord willing.
These are from our free range chickens.
We only have these 2 dozen to spare but will be getting more in the future. Thanks 😊

04/15/2024

God will give you the physical and mental energy to do what HE wants you to do...

If you're exhausted and stressed, what are you doing that is not what He has for you to do?

Many times, for me, I've learned it's messing with my phone. I start getting irritated with my children wanting to play with me (which is clearly part of what God wants me to do rather than google searching the lifespan of a fly 😆).

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TODAY THAT'S NOT PART OF HIS PLAN?

02/20/2024

Round #2 on incubation!
36 eggs in to start, let's see what will hatch!
Our previous hatch gave us 14 chicks that are now a month old!
Follow for more updates on this hatch!

We have:
3 Liège eggs (very rare)
1 Polish
8 Rhode Island RED
8 Easter Eggers
4 Black Maron
12 Green Eggers

Expect 50% hatch rate and 50% of those that hatch to be roosters 🐓.

02/16/2024

Normal people: "1000 watts? No, get the 1500 watt microwave, it will cook things alot faster"
Off-grid people: "1000 watts just to heat your food up!? Put that back! We will just put it on the wood stove!!"

01/24/2024

Watching the eggs hatch!

01/24/2024

Our eggs have hatched into 11 cute chicks 🐣!

*Update* we are up to 14, 3 more just hatched
That's a 60% hatch rate if no more come. Not too bad for beginners. 80% is what you should get with experience and a good machine.

01/18/2024

Good girls! Our dogs earning their keep. Found a pile of fur where they got in a fight last night with, what I can make out to be, a coyote.
*edit*
It could have been a fox as they look very similar.

01/17/2024

*LIVE Egg Candling tonight at 6PM* (Lord willing)

Join us on our page The Hutton Homestead to see how a chick looks inside its egg 5 days before hatch day 😀 🐥

01/17/2024

For those wondering how we're doing, we are iced in but all our needs are met!
By God's Grace, we still have power and water 👏 🙌!
We will probably not make it to church tonight but we're hoping and praying to be able to get out to get some basic needs before the end of the week 🙏.

01/17/2024

Egg incubating science project 2024.

We began with 27 eggs from two different suppliers as we wanted to incorporate a variety of breeds to our flock.
I would label our family as a novice with hatching eggs with Jeffrey being the only one with any experience. We purchased an incubator from Amazon that has some mixed reviews but it was the only one I could find that can run off of 12 volt batteries, which is an essential when you're off grid. It also only uses 45 watts so it wouldn't be a drain on our solar panel system.
We placed the eggs in the incubator then began turning them twice a day, despite the incubator having a built in turner. (A few reviews said thier turner stopped and the chicks didn't hatch appropriately so we wanted to error on the side of caution). On day 7 we "candled" the eggs to see which had life and which needed to be thrown out. We weren't able to see much we so waited until day 10, which is where we done some experimenting.
We found two eggs that were questionable. Our lack of experience pressed us to see what was inside these eggs. One seemed completely infertile and the other seemed to be dead.
Pics are below of the egg being candled.
The empty one was cracked and looked like a regular egg you'd fry for breakfast and had no smell to it.
The one with a dot in it that seemed dead smelled like a rotten egg and the dot looked like a blood clot.
Later we found two more that looked like the one with the spot in it. Now knowing that it is indeed a dead embryo, we discarded those without cracking them open.
We looked again at one today, day 14, and you can see the chick inside the egg swimming around.
From what I can tell, we will have 23 chicks hatch but you have to remember the old saying,
don't count your chickens before they hatch!

01/17/2024

We are on day 14 incubating eggs, four days away from "lockdown"!!

We are doing this as a science lesson for homeschooling and we're all learning quite a bit!

I'll do a separate post of what we've discovered, as it will be a lengthy read.

01/05/2024

Comfortably sleeping in a warm house when it's 20° outside! Praise The Lord for keeping us warm!
You never will appreciate these things so much until you're no longer living a "normal life".
Winter off grid is survival mode, to some degree. It teaches you to be grateful for having running water, heat, food, a septic system, to name just a few. All things that are so easily available in our culture that is alot of work to have off grid!
Thank you, Lord, for your provisioning!

01/05/2024

We've had many inquiries about the house progress on our homestead so I wanted to give an update.
The house is fully closed in, walls and floors are insulated, all the windows are installed, and all that is remaining (in that reguard) is installing the doors. We currently have the front door loosely installed to keep weather and animals out, actually originally put on to keep the chickens out 😆.
We pushed so hard to get in by winter that it caused medical issues for Jeffrey, strained relationships, lack of time for the children, and overall alot of chaos. This leaned us towards alternative options as this was opposite of what we were trying to accomplish.
We prayed and came to the conclusion of finishing the school house, as it's much smaller, to stay in while we make progress on the house. This is currently where we are as a family and we are making adjustments to survive and thrive at our new location.

Moving, in general, is a difficult task... but moving from one off grid location to another is a bit daunting. There are so many variables that you have to consider to make sure your needs are taken care of. We are definitely better set up than we were at the previous location and we are right beside the house to work on anytime.
It also makes your time and energy spent on making things livable worth while as these will be the same systems that will be used in the house.

Our latest upgrade is a sun tracking solar panel mount from "eco-worthy". This allows 6 panels to be mounted all on one mount and follows the sun all day long! I'm impressed with it for the cost but only time will tell how well it holds up.

Follow us for more updates 😊
The Hutton Homestead

01/03/2024

01/02/2024

2023 was a crazy year! We knew it was going to be a difficult ride and at times it's been almost more than we bargained for. However, we have always seen the beauty and goodness of the Lord through...all of it! The good times and the tough times. We have been blessed! So long 2023 we are ready for another adventurous year🙃
Here is one of my favorite photos of the year. A view from the top of the mountain looking down the driveway.

10/22/2023

Many people think the way we are living is a lack of money or a lack of desire to excel in life but that's not it all.
The modern day luxuries that make life "easy" has created a generation of lazy, self-entitled, spoiled brats! We both have realized we were in the category and was raising 4 girls to be the same, if not worse.
We were directed by The Lord and CHOSE to live this way. It was, and still is, a purposeful decision to STRUGGLE.
We left a life where we were able to sit back and "enjoy life" to work our butts off to simply survive.
We left a life where our children were able to be sent off to school or entertained by electronics to teaching them and training them all day, every day.
Would I rather give our children a tablet, send them to their room, so that I can lay on the couch to watch TV? Oh yeah! But what are we creating here?!

An insert from a book "To Train Up A Child" said something like this (in regards to developing good character in your children) :
If you get to a place where it seems like life is easy, sell everything and start all over again. You will never create good character in your child by an easy life. Start over again to where you're having to struggle just to eat the next meal.

An old friend, who owned a business, once said to me:
"You can teach nearly anyone to do any job. That's not the hard part. What you cannot teach them is good character. By the time they enter the work field, that has already been well established."

So while help is needed and appreciated at times, please don't look down on "homesteading" as a poor person's lifestyle or as that's all they can do.
This was a purposeful decision, led by God, to teach our whole family many things. Might I add, it's been a very successful adventure in that regards!

10/06/2023

One generous donor has taken care of this need! Praise The Lord and thank you for your prayers!!!

If anyone is looking to help out our homestead or is looking for Christ… Jeffrey Hutton needs your support for A wood stove for The Hutton Family's Christmas

10/03/2023

If anyone wants to contribute to our homestead or needs an idea for Christmas, please consider a donation to help us get a wood stove.
If financial gifts aren't possible, please pray for God to provide as He sees fit. 🙏

If anyone is looking to help out our homestead or is looking for Christ… Jeffrey Hutton needs your support for A wood stove for The Hutton Family's Christmas