The Nellis Family Loves
Jesus, Family, Homeschooling, Farm Animals & Montana.
When Craig was a school teacher & roofer, we had lots of land in Door County, WI. Then we moved to the city for a Kids Pastor position in the fall of 2015, it was a huge shock for the kids.
The kids spent lots of time helping at church, working in ministry has lots of opportunities where we can work as a family. This helped them fill their time, since before they had almost 90 acres as their back yard for free time.
We lived in Janesville, WI, and had 1/18th of an acre with rocky soil & big trees on our neighbors yards. It was almost impossible to have a garden & our yard wasn't big enough to have chickens (according to the regulations of the city). So the girls got into rabbits.
Three years later, in the fall of 2018 we moved to Montana for a Kids Pastor position. One requirement was that we have enough land for a garden and some animals. We found a house that had 3.75 acres, fencing perfect for goats, fertile soil, a little shed and on a semi busy road.
At first the amount of traffic was our least favorite part of this house, but we quickly changed our tune when the idea came about to sell products from our home. There are two 90 degree turns on this road with a couple houses between those turns. We happen to be located between these turns. All vehicles must be slowing down here. Perfect spot for sign to sell our products!
The kids set out right away to find free or cheap animals on facebook & craigslist. Within the first couple months we had 6 goats, 2 alpacas, 2 peacocks, 2 peahens, 20 chickens, 3 roosters and 2 geese. Did we mention over 80 chicks that the kids incubated!
Carrie was asking the kids what they wanted to do after high school one day, so she could start preparing them with classes suitable for their field. All three older ones wanted to farm. This was great! Less research on different occupations.
But after looking into it for a short time, we found out that farming was going to be a hard road for providing for their future families. Lots of farms were going under, how would ours be different?
We requested tons of books from the library and did a lot of research online, while building structures and taking care of the animals we currently had. It was definitely learning as we go. In January of 2019, we started the research. We hit the ground running.
A short time later in April of 2019, we had all these things going on.
- Selling animals & odd/ends online (facebook & craigslist)
- Working on locals farms
- changing irrigation pipes
- cleaning out horse stalls
- cleaning out chicken coops
- Chickens
- raising & selling chicks
- selling & delivering eggs
- making water feeders
- Goats
- renting out our buck
- selling our baby goats
- selling raw milk
- plus looking into how to do it legally
- trying to figure out recipes for:
- soaps
- lotions
- deodorants
- perfumes
- cheese
- and more are added daily!
- Crafts
- crocheting & knitting
- dishcloths
- hats
- feather stuff
- Montana signs
- Social Media
- YouTube videos
- blogging
- Feed Distributor (looking into it and have a lead)
- Selling Flowers
- planting seeds
- coming up with a plan on how to sell them
- Bees
- figuring out how to build one hive into more
Our blog started out with these adventures...
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