It got me thinking about what I could plant in the garden area that would also feed the animals. While I'm certainly not an expert at growing vegetables, I'm not too bad at it. Grain crops on the other hand??? This was something else entirely!
I narrowed it down to some crops I thought I could maybe manage on a small scale: Oats, Millet, Sorghum, greens (like lettuce for the chickens, ducks & rabbit). Oats and Millet would take some room away from my veggies. Sorghum grows a LOT like corn, and I KNEW it grew well in Missouri because the Amish and Mennonites grow it locally for both grains and as a sweetener (ever heard of sorghum syrup or sorghum molasses?). Lettuces were simple, but you needed cool enough weather to grow them, or grow them in partial shade, so they don't bolt (go to seed and get bitter). So I began researching these crops, I'd give it a shot next year, if I felt confident enough.
We were feeding hay to the horses already. We bought square bales locally for $4.75 a bale and prayed we'd have rain enough to green up the pastures before winter actually got here, so we could take a break in feeding hay, and so farmers could get in another crop of hay. Our wishes didn't come through. We went back for more square bales in August and they were now up to $5.75 a bale.
Meanwhile the garden was still going strong (thanks to heavy watering) but the yard was brown and crispy, as was the pasture. We closed off the pasture and put the horses on a dry lot up by the barn. It was SO hot and dry that the animals were getting dehydrated and overheated, even with all the water we put out multiple times a day. We got inventive and used a method that had kept animals cooled off in the hot, arid regions of Arizona, where we'd lived for years...a misting system. I ran hoses, hooked up some mister sprayers and ran the water at a trickle to produce just the right amount of cooling mist. I aimed it towards the barn and horses, and the chickens, ducks and dogs enjoyed it, too! Saddly we lost a favorite cat during the heat. He got dehydrated and over heated and just went to sleep under our car and never woke up. It was very sad and I had to get onto the kids to really keep an eye on the animals. They didn't just need water daily, they needed to be checked for overheating and nursed back to health indoors. He had been inside the day before he died, because I thought he didn't look well, but as soon as he perked up the kids let him back out, not realizing he was still dehydrated. :(
By the end of July the grasshoppers descended. Anything green was devoured...the only thing green was my garden, so they ate any greens I had in there, including my sweet corn. I was left with a few tomatoes and pepper plants, and the marigolds. It was really disappointing. I now know how Ma & Pa felt in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when the grasshoppers descended on their homestead. :( All the trees had lost their leaves, too...and there was little shade now from the trees for either the house or the animals.
Nothing had really been done on the house all summer long. Jason was working far too many hours and we were afraid to really build anything more without having the money for a roof (about $5,000 or more), so it stood as a foundation all summer. We did spend a little money on the cabin. Having lived through one winter and a super duper hot summer, we knew we had to do something not only about loss of indoor heat/cooling, but also about all the shoes, hats, coats, mittens, gloves, etc., that comes with cold weather. We were losing a very large portion of space just to coats and shoes, and they never stayed where they belonged, because the dogs and cats would knock them all around, so we were constantly tripping over them...not to mention the mess on the floor daily from tracking in dirt and chicken poop on them.
Jason added a small, enclosed porch to the front of the cabin. He and the boys did an excellent job of making it look like it belonged there. On the down-side, once it was finished it was winter...and it never got insulated (at least not yet), but thankfully we can put a curtain across the old doorway into the porch and keep out most of the cold/heat. We now have a LOT of space for coats, hats, mittens, boots, shoes, gloves, the litter pan, and some of my food storage (although I have to be careful with the changes in temps...so I try to only keep things out there that I can use within a year or so, in case of loss of food quality).
Here is a photo of the porch after it was all finished...right around Christmas time 2012.
Prices on food and animal feed were starting to skyrocket. What we'd purchased in hay wasn't going to last all winter...so we began looking for quality hay to get us through. We found good quality hay for $8.75 a square bale...and then $9.25 a square bale. We bought all we could afford and prayed it would get us through til spring. The barn was full of hay, and we were ready for snow.
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