The Taylor Family Farm

Sooooooo it’s been a month… Sorry!

We finally went public with our blog and YouTube channel and then boom, a month passes without me posting. Sorry about that. Life just gets busy with school, work, etc. Today’s going to be a long catch-up post so I can bring up guys up to speed.

We’ve continued working every weekend at the land and we’ve made TREMENDOUS progress. Johnny goes out once or twice a week without us and then we all hit it hard on the weekends. We spent all three days out there this Labor Day weekend and we’ve made a new friend, Mr. Kelvin. He stopped by and introduced himself and offered to help us out with the big heavy stuff and our heavy equipment needs. He also had a big huge trailer that we were able to load up with over 5000 lbs of scrap metal! (Unfortunately in my exhausted brain fog I didn’t even think to get a pic. 😥 Don’t judge unless you’ve hauled 5000 lbs of metal though – you’re in survival mode by that point!) That cleared out the majority of our main pile up at base camp. We have a couple of other smaller piles of scrap staged throughout the land so this weekend the kids will have to focus on hauling that out to the road so we can get it moved out.

This weekend Mr. Kelvin was able to help us not only clear the main scrap pile, but also helped us pull some mega huge parts out of the ground that we had no idea how we were going to move. These are parts to an 18 wheeler and parts to a bulldozer. 🤦🤷 We cleared out a path and he drove his truck back there and with some chains and the right amount of horsepower, that crap came grudgingly from the Earth. I wish I had gotten pics and video of all of it but again, exhaustion. I did snap a pic of the biggest piece though!

The kids had this half dug up but we had NO IDEA how we were going to get it out of there. Mr. Kelvin to the rescue!

We pulled out whatever that is above along with a fifth wheel hitch off an 18 wheeler. We also pulled out the back bumper with metal mudflaps.

Something like this but MUCH thicker and attached to huge bottom base thing. It was crazy huge and heavy. Johnny and Mr. Kelvin about killed themselves trying to get that thing on the trailer while the neighbors sat on the porch watching them. Wish I’d gotten a pic of the real thing so you guys could properly appreciate this thing. Also, this explains a lot!

We also pulled out the front end loader bucket from a bull dozer. I just can’t imagine why all this stuff would just be left out there to rot. We’re talking about expensive stuff, even back then!

Johnny’s been brush cutting and chainsawing so much that even his work gloves have blisters!

It was a long weekend and we intended to hit it hard and knock a lot out. We definitely accomplished that. The kids have busted their butts working out there and weren’t too happy that we stayed extra late Sunday night but I told them as long as we had people willing to help, we’d stay as long as they were willing to help! There is zero chance that we could have accomplished what we did this weekend without some help. When Mr. Kelvin came and introduced himself he said he was hoping he could be a blessing to us and we could be a blessing to him. He’s definitely been that so far in just one day!

To make up for lost time – we’ve posted not one, but TWO new videos for your viewing pleasure…there’s a compilation video of our August progress (on account of me being such a slacker), and a Labor Day video to bring you up to speed. Also, there’s soon to be some new additions…we’ve officially ordered our first batch of baby chicks! Eeeeeek! The kids are SOOOO excited! Pics and videos to come! 🙂

Week Two – Sooooooo Much Trash!

So we spent yesterday out at the land, excavating more metal. There were several special bits we managed to recover yesterday. One was a set of rebar stairs that were trapped in the Earth by the roots of three different trees. That was special.

Another special bit was this super cool bike. Johnny’s been saying he wanted a bike for his birthday so…. There’s that!

We also had lots of fun removing this bundle of barbed wire from the Earth.

We got rained out for a while and took a lunch break. You can see Johnny’s exceptionally fluffy. 😂

I, of course, still look fantastic in spite of the rain and mud.

On a positive note, we found this super rare, blown glass artifact that we’re fairly certain is going to make us rich! (The kids seriously thought they had something here.) 😂

The kids have worked so hard and in spite of some groaning and complaining (and LOTS of spiders), we’ve accomplished so much in just two weeks.

As a family, I know we can accomplish anything!

You can check out our latest YouTube video here. It’s pretty hysterical! 😂

The Taylor Rabbitry

Hi, I’m Sarah, the oldest Taylor kid, and when my parents went on another crazy spree to extend our family more… Well let’s just say I was NOT in support of it. I knew it would be a LOT of work, but the crazy lady showed me some videos of how commercial animals are treated, and it was so sad, I decided I would support their (what seemed like unreachable) dreams, and BAM, apparently when I did, I said goodbye to the rest of my summer, but I’m good with that, for the sake of my new fluff babies.

We decided to start small because we needed to be able to raise and breed them in our yard since the work on the land probably won’t be done for a year.

Rabbit number one is Oreo, who is much tamer than the others because he’s smaller cuter and you can handle him easily. He is a male mini rex and he’s tri-colored. He looks like he fell butt first into a bowl of chocolate and then rubbed mud on his face, and he is very very adorable. Since he’s smaller we have to give him less food and hay but he likes to eat grass so we let him and Mint graze in the grass together because they’re friends.

He looked away just as I took the pic, still more photogenic than me though!

Rabbit number two is mint who is a male Californian. When we got him he’d had ear mites for who knows and how long, but they were scabbed up nearly half the length of his ears, so I healed him up and gave him medicine and cleaned his ears up and everything and now he’s doing much better. We give him what he needs and I love him just like one of my siblings, except probably more cuz he’s not annoying.

These two have a friendship that no barrier can stop, not even wire mesh!

Rabbit number three is chocolate and she is a female Californian. She’s more my mom’s rabbit than anyone else’s, even though I take care of her. I take care of all of them every morning I make sure that they have food hey water and I clean out all the crap out of their cages, but still this ungrateful rabbit is like “hey you want to pet me? No thanks, I’m only going to let Mom pet me even though you like care for me and everything so no.” So rude.

Don’t judge me for liking scratches under the chin!

Rabbit number four is vanilla but we call her Karen, like the meme, because she is mean and attacks everything and anything including but not limited to food, water, other rabbits, people, and basically everything else. Her main goal in life is to maul everything and try and escape, even though we give her everything she needs.

Fine, you can pet me, but on MY terms only.

I can smell your feet from the other side of the fence.

We bred Oreo (male mini Rex) with Chocolate (Californian female) in the hopes of getting large colored rabbits, and Chocolate is currently 4 weeks pregnant, extremely moody and hormonal, and has destroyed all the cardboard we give her, including in her nesting box.

We attempted to breed Mint (Californian male) with Vanilla/Karen (psychopathic Californian female), but it ended with mint having his ear viciously bitten and being traumatized, and Karen seeming self-satisfied and violent.

When we first got them, we planned on getting 3 Californians for free so we brought three boxes, but Oreo was added to the package as a surprise. I got to hold him on the 40 minute drive home, but he is pretty tame, so there weren’t any problems.

Oreo’s so adorable and genuinely likes people, unlike the females, who hate people(and each other!), and mint, who just tolerates us. The girls however, can’t share the same space or they’ll fight. It looks kind of funny though, because their dewlaps (double chins😆) are flapping in the wind while they try and assert dominance… through a wire separation, of course.

The boys are weird friends, they pee on each other and assert dominance and all that stuff, and then oreo sits in the 2 square inches between mint and the edge of the pen, even though it’s like, 95 degrees. He doesn’t understand personal space.

He has an entire pen to lay around in and he chooses… Right behind mints butt. Questionable judgement to the max.

What the heck, man! You’re gonna crowd me AND be dirty???? How dare you. I must clean your ears immediately.

Anyways, we’re doing this because we want to give them happy and healthy lives and have good, healthy food at the same time. If you’re interested, I’ve put together a YouTube video on how to care for your rabbits. Check it out here!

While I’m not looking forward to harvest day….I like meat. I feel like if I can make sure my meat is humanely and ethically raised and slaughtered, then I can feel confident that what my siblings and I are eating is good for us and not full of chemicals and steroids and antibiotics. It’s better for the animals and better for the environment.

One Week In

So we’re one week in from purchasing the property and we’ve put in an immense amount of man hours working to clear it. The little kids have been picking up trash…SO much trash! And the boys and I have been working on excavating metal from the ground. It’s painstakingly slow and backbreaking work but we’re finally starting to see some progress. We hauled out the big recycling can, and a big trash can with us over the weekend the the kids filled them both to the brim. Our trash guys are going to be HATING us.

Sooooo, fun fact. Did you know that if you toss a couple of coils of steel cable next to a tree, it’ll just grow it’s roots right over that shit? I didn’t. Now I do. 4 HOURS of labor to ax through, and dig under the tree root, SLOWLY, inch by inch, ratcheting up that coil from the Earth. That was insane.

We also pulled a car axle from the Earth. Who knew that if you throw a bunch of crap in a field and left it for 50 years, the Earth would just claim all that shit for itself???? There are vines and brambles and just SOOOOO much crap just holding this stuff in the ground. Every piece must be fought from the ground with a combination of digging, machete slicing of vines and roots, and just brute strength, and then hauled out. Thank goodness for our wagons! We purchased a dumping wagon that hauls 600 lbs, as well as the heavy duty gorilla wagon which conveniently converts into a flatbed for bulky items and will haul up to 800 lbs. These have been immensely helpful!

Also, I never realized how little scrap metal pays…like 3-4 cents per pound, depending on the going rate that day. Still better than paying to dispose of it though!

Also we acquired our brush cutter and I think Johnny is very happy to have it! This thing plows through just about anything and it’s making progress so much faster!. The slow part is of course that we have to get trash / metal / glass / etc all cleared out so he can mow with the brush cutter but we also need him to mow so that we can GET to the trash. It’s kind of a chicken or the egg situation but we’re making progress….slowly but surely.

Also I have to brag on our super awesome trailer hitch cargo carrier I mentioned in our last post. It has come in amazingly helpful! It has hauled everything we’ve asked of it and has been immensely helpful!

The kids are also doing amazingly well with the amount of labor that’s being asked of them. Their first day out they were scared, timid, overwhelmed of course and there was quite a bit of bad attitudes. I was nervous about whether they were actually up to the task. Now that we’ve found a routine and everyone has their jobs, they’re tackling their assignments with gusto and enthusiasm. They feel good about the progress we’re making and I think they can see it starting to come together.

Johnny did an awesome update video that we’ve posted to our YouTube channel to show our progress if you want to check it out here.

We Did It!

It’s official – we’re landowners! So exciting. We made our first trip out to the land to start cleaning up and teaching the kids all about poison oak! Johnny made a pretty awesome video to document the current state of the land – you can check it out here! Spoiler alert…sooooo many spiders. Also, the kids were utterly surprised to find the land came with no air conditioning. And did I mention the snakes? The land came with loads of free snakes. Let’s just say the excitement level (of the kids) has been dialed back quite a few notches!

Today Johnny installed this pretty awesome cargo carrier on the back of our passenger van so that’ll make things easier to haul back and forth rather than always needing a trailer.

We found it on Amazon (of course) for $185. Pricier than some but I really liked the cage around the sides to be able to secure a load and it had great reviews. Really looking forward to seeing how versatile it is for us. Johnny REALLY doesn’t want to have to buy a trailer but I’m pretty sure it’s inevitable.

Next up is finding a used brush mower to try to knock down all the tall stuff and start carving out some paths around the property!

Are We Crazy?

Well, maybe. Johnny and I have been married 15 years and we have always talked about having our own farm. We’ve always been very frugal and careful with our finances but the dream was still a dream. We hoped that when we retired, we would be able to purchase a retirement home on some land, allowing us to bring our dream to fruition.

However, that bothered us. We’ve always worked to feed our kids healthy foods and raise them with a healthy lifestyle. We do most of our cooking from scratch and grow what we can in our tiny backyard. But we still yearned for more for our family. We’ve searched for years looking for land that we could purchase that was both affordable, and within an hour from our home.

We finally found it. Granted it’s not much to look at now…it’s an old abandoned piece of junked out land. But Johnny and I intend to make our dream a reality and setup this little farm we’ve always wanted and live a more sustainable life. We’re so excited to finally be making this happen and I’ve decided to start both this blog, and a YouTube channel to document our journey and transformation of our land. We look forward to sharing our journey with you and everything we learn along the way!