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Welcome to the January Homestead Hangout! In this monthly series we give a glimpse into our own homesteading activities. January highlights include how we and the local wildlife are dealing with winter weather, planting our living Christmas tree, adventures in sourdough and the launch of our new Quick Start series.

Home & Construction

At the end of December Stormfront moved through two feet of snow in our area. Well beautiful the snow brought with it some problems we could have done without the worst of these problems that it took down the rain gutters we had installed along with our metal roof last March. We weren't completely naive to this risk when we had the metal roof put on but we badly overestimated how much snowfall it would actually require to pose a threat to the gutters. This was a hard lesson to learn but we're going to replace the gutters and add snow retention bars to the roof to prevent a recurrence.

Outdoors & Wildlife

All that snow on the ground also caused a delay for our living Christmas tree. Young cedar had to spend an extra two weeks in the garage before taking a short trip in a garden Park and then being carried to its new home in our forest. The tree had to wait for me to dig through countless rocks and roots to prepare for planting. It waited and waited. Once I finished I shook the root ball loose threw in some potting soil for good measure and watered it three and we'll hope it likes the new spot it might be there for hundreds of years.

Wildlife on the homestead also found the snow challenging. Most animals seem to hunker down but the local deer were very active, constantly foraging on whatever was still accessible. Above the snow, or Arbor vitae was especially popular and on one January day we had a whole herd in the driveway enjoying a feast and even getting a little on their face.

After eating their fill they headed off down our wooded trail. Deer also made regular appearances on the Ford trail cams we now are up and running on the homestead but they weren't the only ones. The two new cameras we placed in our woods documented regular coyote activity throughout the month. The first time we saw seem to take an interest in one of the cameras and walked right up to investigate before retreating quickly down the trail.

A week later, a pair of coyotes traveled past the camera placed on a trail on our property line and then continued past the second camera on the trail through the heart of our woods. Five days later that same trail was at coyote highway with the camera capturing them again and again throughout the night. We love knowing these guys are out there and we're very happy to have them as neighbors.

Our cameras caught much smaller neighbors as well including a tiny Douglass squirrel that was seen both on the main trail and on the property border and an Eastern grey squirrel was seen along the main trail.

Northern flying squirrels made several appearances on both of our cameras as well. And we were most excited to see them because they're only active well past her bedtime and we rarely get to see them live and in person. So seeing them when they're up and about after dark was quite a treat.

Many birds both permanent residents as well as winter visitors have also been here on the homestead in January. And we know there are many reptiles amphibians, insects and other small creatures present but dormant waiting for warmer weather to return. We feel fortunate to share this place with each of them. We will continue to try to preserve and improve the habitat on which they rely.

Grow & Tend

Even though it's still the depths of winter here in the Pacific Northwest we are excitedly planning our spring garden. If you're new to growing vegetables, we encourage you to download our free guide at our website.

Food & Drink

Well it's still too cold and too wet to be spending much time outdoors. It's a great time to be spending time in the kitchen. Exploring working with sourdough. This month. We perfected some dinner rolls that we can make with our sourdough starter and our cast iron pan. Sourdough is much easier to work with and anybody ever told us like so many things in homesteading, people often try to make it more complicated than it needs to be. We hope that with what we're learning, we'll be able to share some of our tips and tricks with you so that you can make some delicious homemade rolls for your own homestead. Very soon.

Planning & Mindset

You may already be enjoying the most rewarding work of all for us this month, which is our new series on the QuickStart Guide to homesteading.