April 2025 On The Homestead
April was a good month on our little farm/homestead, but it did have it’s ups and downs! We kept very busy, and accomplished a lot. We’ve been enjoying spring so far. Check out April 2025 on the homestead below.
FYI these homestead recaps tend to be photo heavy, and may contain affiliate links.
CLEAN UP & PROJECTS
April is always very busy on the homestead; spring cleaning and garden work. Prepping garden beds, planting seeds and starts. Mowing, winter clean up, and a little brush burning.
Another big project was to finish getting the bee apiary ready. Finish painting the hives, and placing them on a stand. Pruning the area, and mulching it.
A little story about this Japanese Maple Tree, pictured above. Our old house had this beautiful huge Japanese Maple Tree, that we absolutely loved, named Albert. So, when we bought our new place in 2022 we intended on purchasing a new “Albert”. Well, the previous owners had a few young trees in a couple pots they left behind and to our amazement when spring arrived one of the happened to be the same type of tree as Albert was. I didn’t get Albert 2 in the ground until the following year, and look at him now!
When I’m harvesting stinging nettle to dry and consume, I put the stems and not great looking leaves into water for plant fertilizer.
IN THE GARDEN
Aw, I love spring time, the garden really starts taking off! April is another busy month for outdoor work. I was busy prepping beds/containers, starting seeds, general up-keep, and a little harvesting.
We spotted two wild cherry trees growing on part of our property, which was exciting. There’s been a lot of flowers on our fruit trees, and we’ve had some great pollinators this year so I’m hoping we’ll get some good crop.
In April we harvested lots of stinging nettle, dandelions, chives, green onions, and purple dead nettle.
Click here for the fruit tree fertilizer I use, it’s really great!
Entrance to the food forest, I placed the beehives on the left side.
I LOVE spotting trillium in my yard!
animals on the homestead
The dogs & cat have really been enjoying all the time outdoors. I can’t believe our dog “Bertha” turned 17.
I love that the animals work together to tear up our yard/garden. At least they’re getting along?!! Annie loves to dig holes for the chickens dust bathes, and to find them bugs. Chickens are all doing good, except a few of them had been dealing with dirty bottoms. So, epsom salt soaks, dewormers, and probiotics! (They always have grit available and apple cider vinegar in the water)
The most excitement of the month was picking up our two Carniolan Bee packages, and installing them. It was so much easier than I expected, all because of the beginner beekeeping class and workshop I took.
My 7 year old is a natural beekeeper and I can’t believe how calm & comfortable she is with the bees. She amazes me!
Can you spot the queen in the bottom right picture?
in the kitchen
I’ve been busy using up last years harvest that we have preserved. I’ve made a few jars of raspberry preserves; I only used sugar, berries & lemon – it taste amazing!! I’ve still got a bunch of raspberries, and strawberries to use up. I’m also working on using the herbs I have stored in the freezer(chives, green onions, mint, lemon balm).
Of course I dried more stinging nettle – it’s probably my favorite spring plant. We have an abundance of it on our property, and it’s really easy to harvest(just don’t forget the gloves). Not to mention all the health benefits.
We also cooked a lot at home, but just the usual foods, I didn’t really experiment much with different recipes.
My favorite go-to Pot Roast Recipe & Sourdough Focaccia Recipe!
Have some Dandelion Leaf Tincture “brewing” and harvested/preserved chives & purple dead nettle.
Although our farm fresh eggs won’t have bright colors, because we don’t have any white egg layers. Knowing they came straight from our farm is 100% better!
life & what i’m loving
We had a lot going on at the beginning of the month, and really counted down the days until spring break. We did a couple sasquatch scavenger hunts at parks in the area.
Went to the drive-in movie theatre, and saw Minecraft. My daughter is such an amazing person/student, and received another award at school.
It was my first-born’s birthday, can’t believe he’s almost an adult.
We all got our fishing license, and have enjoyed being out on the water.
Middle of April our school district had Spring Break. It was MUCH needed! We had some great weather, and enjoyed a lot of outdoor time. My car was in the shop most of the week, go figure – some advice – don’t get a Ford Explorer aka Ford Exploder. We also spent some time at Great Wolf Lodge with my sister, and niece. It was a lot of fun!
We also went to the Tacoma Rainiers game with the school’s PTA. It was a lot of fun planning it and attending – we had a great turn out. Weather was perfect, and it was a firework show.
We ended the month with a good hike to Dickerson Creek Waterfall, there was a huge group of us, including 11 kids and 1 teen with us! It was a lot of fun, I don’t know how we managed to not have any meltdowns and no real injures. It was great!
Hope you had a great April, and are enjoying the spring!
