We love sharing knowledge!
When we first started on this journey, we had no-one to ask questions or turn to. It took some time to find individuals and families on the same path as us, from who we could learn.
While we were looking to establish a "tribe" and local community to partner up on projects and learn from each other, we used YouTube University for much of our initial learning.
We have been able to learn so much from the friends we have gained, and are now able to share the knowledge we have gained with others.
Our Up-Skill Challenge 2024
Are you looking for a community where we can all learn together and from each other? In 2024, we will add new skills, and deepen existing ones. The plan is to start with one new skill a month and build from there. Absolute beginners through more advanced.
This challenge is for you if you’re looking to:
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Learn new skills
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Build upon existing skills
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Learn from each other
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Build Community
I'm so excited to learn with you!
This year we started a challenge. The goal is to not just challenge ourselves with learning new skill and adding depth to existing skills, but to share and learn alongside our community.
We are hosting face to face workshops in partership with a local shop, we share videos and live chats online, and we hope to build community and share lessons learned along the way.
Foraging
We have a passion for sharing about some of the forgotten skills. Foraging for wild plants is one of many, and there are many folks who are intimidated by exploring wild plants.
Our local flora has been the backbone of modern medicine, when it comes to developing medicine for all kinds of ailments. Learning about what grows around us and how we can support our personal health journey by including plants in our lives, is a great skill to hone.
Our live foraging walk and workshop is a great fit for new foragers, foragers new to the growing zone, or those wanting a refresher.
We complete a walk in the forest, where we forage, get to know local plants, and harvest sustainably.
Processing Livestock
Each year we raise a fresh batch of poultry to add to our freezer. Here at Hidden Oaks Homestead LLC, we rotational graze our chickens. This helps the birds have a healthier diet, stay cleaner, and requires less supplemental feed.
Due to demand we are now offering our chickens as freezer meat. This allows us to operate under the USDA-FSIS custom exemption.
Our class offers hands-on learning on how to dispatch, scald, pluck, and clean the birds using proper sanitation and ethical procedures to prepare the birds for the freezer.
Plan to go home ready to use your newly acquired butchering skills on your own homestead or farm!
Gardening
As a young married couple, we tried a garden once after we had first moved onto our first 'real country property'. We had 1.5 acres to play with and really wanted to grow some watermelons and tomatoes. Let's just leave it at: It was a failed attempt! After that initial disappointment, we did not try growing anything again until years later.
When we moved onto our property in March 2020, we had nothing but thick Florida woods on our 20 acres, except for 1.4 acre which had been cleared around the house.
We were impatient and wanted to grow something right away, and so, ended up with buying four pre-manufactured raised beds, which we filled Hugelkultur style and grew our first garden.
Since then, we expanded every year with additional raised beds, pots, in-ground garden area and trellises. Every year we have learned something new.
We share the lessons we have learned with seed starting, planting, harvesting and all tips and tricks we have learned along the way with our local and online communities via videos and local teaching opportunities.
Herbs & Medicinals
In line with our gardening and foraging, we grow and collect herbs and medicinal plants. We like to use a holistic approach to healing and supporting our bodies with the best nutrition and beneficial supplements.
We collect wild herbs and medicinals and grow additionally in our garden. These plants and foods are then used to make tinctures, salves, teas, tonics and more.
We use these ourselves, but also sell them at local farmers markets and online. Visit our FARM STORE for a selection of our salves and tinctures.
Food Preservation
Whether you grow your own garden, go foraging or buy in bulk at farmers markets and from other sources, the last thing you want to do is to waste food.
Cue food preservation. What do we do when we have bulk fruit and vegetables available? Maybe too much to eat fresh? Now what?
To avoid waste, learning how to preserve food for long term storage is a pretty amazing task to have at your fingertips. Whether you dehydrate, freeze, can, or ferment, there are many different ways on how to preserve your fresh harvest or farmers market bounty.
On our homestead, we use all the different methods to preserve our foods and share our recipes and some how-to's via our webpage, and in live and hands-on classes.
Livestock Education
We raise livestock for a few different reasons on our little farm. For food production including meat and dairy, and for breeding purposes, though breeding and dairy and milk production do go hand in hand.
We raise miniature goats for dairy. Nigerian Dwarfs have amazingly creamy and great tasting milk. We consume the milk in our household, produce our own dairy products for our own consumption and also use the milk to make our Goat Milk & Lard Soap.
We raise pigs for meat consumption and we breed Kune pigs for both meat consumption and to sell as homesteading breeding stock or pets. We produce all of our own pork and sausage and use our own lard for our Goat Milk & Lard Soap.
We raise chickens for multiple reasons. We have free ranging egg layers, we have specialty chickens we raise and breed as pets and we also raise meat chickens seasonally for meat consumption.
In addition, we also raise rabbits, for meat, use of their green manure in our garden, as well as to sell them as pets.
We share birth stories, care instructions, and more via our different online outlets and through in person instruction.
Livestock Guardian Dogs
We breed and raise both pure Anatolian Shepherds as well as as Anatolian Pyrenees. Both make amazing guardian and working dogs.
The parents are active working dogs on our farm and puppies are exposed and raised with all our livestock and animals including cattle, goats, chickens, rabbits and cats.
In order to raise a successful guardian, training is required. Though their breeds are natural guardians, they still require training to assure they are bonded with livestock and know who is to be protected vs. who is an intruder. Close supervision is required throughout the puppy stage around small livestock, especially birds.
