Hi! Welcome to my page. I am Mouse, a female in her 20’s living in the Greater Cleveland Area in Ohio. I am pursuing a career in market and local agriculture and love animals with every fiber of my being. Despite (or perhaps because of) this I find myself very dedicated to the idea of farming, including raising animals for dairy, eggs and meat in sustainable and humane ways. I work very hard to see the world from different viewpoints, even ones I don’t agree with. I ascribe to an earth-based-faith and am polyamorous and impassioned about science, gaming and other nerdy subjects.
I currently live with my partner of many years, Greg, two dogs, a dozen hens, a rooster, and more rabbits than you can shake a stick at! Near-by lives my second partner Dan, two sets of my older sisters, their own partners, one nephew, three nieces, countless friends and my father. Many of these people help me to make this passion and dream come true in my life.
Quarter Acre Home is a blog detailing and recording the journey of myself as I pursue a small, sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyle for myself, my partners and my pets. While this is primarily a blog about homesteading in an urban setting, other issues such as environmental, political and ethical concerns that may impact a homesteading lifestyle will likely be brought up as well. Some things may be discussed in epic detail while other posts may just consist of cute pictures of animals depending on the day… It is, after all, my blog that I write for fun and reflection so topics may vary. I hope you choose to read my blog and I hope to both educate and amuse you with my rapier wit and journey towards sustainability!
Now lets all go grow something!
quarteracrehome 
Hi, there: Thanks for stopping by my blog. I love your blog — we’re on a quarter-acre in the midwest, as well, so working through how to maximize sustainability when we don’t have acreage to work with. I can’t wait to read more!
Well I hope I end up being helpful and providing good information for you and your family! 😀 Thanks so much!
We certainly share common interests! I look forward to hearing more and more about your journey.
Do you follow Tiny Homesteaders on WordPress? They live on 1/2 acre, homeschool, and have rabbits.
I don’t really “follow” anyone, honestly, unless I have a reason to like every single post they write. Sometimes if there is a blog I like I try to stop in regularly, though. So I will check them out! :3
Hello quarteracrehome! Thank you for dropping by my blog earlier this week. I am very interested to read yours. 🙂
Thanks for liking my post. I hope you’ll stop by my blog again.
I was recently nominated for Versatile Blogger and Most Inspiring Blogger and I would like to pass them on to you. Thanks for creating such a great blog. I always learn something new when I visit.
Oh! Thanks so much! I really appreciate the nominations… It always means something to me when I find out that someone likes my blog! I often find myself wondering if anyone even stops by regularly so knowing that people not only read my blog, but like it enough to nominate it for awards is an amazing feeling and really makes me glad that I write!
Unfortunately I am not overly fond of the chain-letter like aspect of blog awards, so I likely won’t be carrying these on. I find that I go on my reader and read individual posts rather than individual blogs so I only have 2-3 that I read regularly (and that is because they always post something I wanna read on my reader!)… Someday when I have more I may be able to pass these on to the appropriate number of people! Thans again so much!
I look forward to hearing more from you on your blog. Thank you for visiting mine. I love to see how creative people are when it comes to urban homesteading. I look forward to following your journey 🙂
Thanks for liking my post. Peace. Love and Light to you!
Hey I hope you don’t mind, but I nominated you for the “Inspiring Blogger” award, I think that your site is an excellent resource for those who want to raise Rabbits.
http://homesteadroots.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/inspiring-blogger-nomination/
Hi! Thanks SO much for the nomination. Really, I don’t participate in blog awards much (I really dislike anything like chain letters), but I always appreciate hearing that people enjoy my blog! Just reading your kind words makes me very happy! Thanks again!
I look forward to reading more of your blog. Thanks for commenting on mine earlier – like you, I feel gratified when folks take time to leave a response on something I’ve written. I hope to build a community of regular readers and to read like-minded posts. Peace.
Thanks for coming by, hope to see you again. Good days with your homestead farming :).
HI! Thanks for stopping by simplelifeblessings.com! I’m glad you did so I can learn from your blog! Even though I am in a very rural area, the acreage we have to garden, keep turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens and goats on is only about an acre and a half so I am sure I can learn a lot from you!
Ooh, I hope so! I am just getting started, but someday I would like to make my property produce a few thousand pounds of food each year. It should be easy as pie for you to raise enough of your own food on one and a half acres! I am jelly and wish I had that much space!
My problem is not enough time! I do the book work for my husbands business and I’m really glad I can do that for him, but I often find myself daydreaming what all I could do if I could concentrate completely on raising and persevering food!
Well, I do hope you end up finding the time to grow some food! I will say this; chickens and peas are the easiest things in the world to grow!
Nice rabbits! I would love to see pics of your cages and your grazing set up. Are there posts with images of that?
cheers
Laura
Hi! Thanks for the compliment. I do have some photos of the rabbit’s cages. You can see shots from when we finished building them here;
https://quarteracrehome.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/finished-and-baby-bunnies/
They are HUGE. One of the shots has my partner literally inside of one to staple down the wire mesh.
As for grazing I simply use one of my dog crates that has no plastic tray. Only one of my dogs needs a crate regularly, so that frees one up for whatever I want to use it for. In the future I will be building a rabbit and chicken tractor with wire mesh walls, but until then this suffices VERY well. If there is a sunny, dry day and my grass looks good I just stick them out for a while. You can see one of my rabbits grazing here;
https://quarteracrehome.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/sunny-days/
Thanks for reading!
What a great blog! And what a great undertaking; farming on 1/4 acre. I look forward to reading more of your posts!
Thanks! It’s hard work, but by golly I will make it happen!
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I look forward to browsing yours soon! I’m interested to hear more about your homesteading process (something that I’ve barely touched in past couple years of gardening).
Well, I think you’ll find that our focus is on the good keeping and raising of small holding livestock. 🙂 We have had a lot of mishaps… But I strongly suggest rabbit keeping to anyone interested in homesteady things! Fur, meat, wool, amazing conversion of grass based feed to human edible food. They are hard to beat! Good luck!
How do I follow you?
Hi! Most people follow me using their WordPress dashboard, but somehow (three years down the line) it never occurred to me to make sure there was a subscribe option on my blog’s front page. I feel pretty silly and foolish now.
Thanks for letting me know that there wasn’t an easy way to subscribe available. I really thought that there was a button that WordPress automatically put on your blog but now I know there isn’t. You can now go to my home page and there is a link in the left sidebar.
https://quarteracrehome.wordpress.com/
Sorry for the inconvenience! I guess you learn something new every day.
I saw where you visited my WordPress blog today, so that is how I found your blog. It looks very interesting, plus what you are doing in an urban environment while I live in the country and have only thought about doing it. My main blog is not the one on WordPress. If interested in seeing more hound photos you can click my on my name.
Do you have a link to contact you?
I’d be interested in how you keep deer and rabbits from eating your gardens … my bloodhounds can’t keep them out while they sleep at night. 🙂
Tee hee! I ran into your blog and then found houndy photos and just got very excited. I love dogs.
You can find my contact info on other pages here on my blog, but please feel free to just chat here as well. 🙂 I welcome comments.
For deer there is only one solution; fencing. We have a 6′ privacy fence around our back yard and it’s invaluable. It keeps our neighbors from peeking in on butcher days, it gives our dogs and chickens a safe space to roam and it keeps deer and people out. But as for rabbits, my husky just murders anything that she can in the lawn. She slaughters litters of baby rabbits and eats them, she gives anything big enough to move a run for it’s life. The smaller animals have magically decided that my lawn probably isn’t safe and stay out now.
I do have a small metal cage over my kale right now, though…. Just in case.
I popped over from your post on Back Yard Chickens in the To Worm or Not To Worm thread. At least I think I am in the right place as your city is the same for both places, and your avatar is similar to an image in your header here. The blog address in your signature says quateracre not quarter acre. Not being critical just thought you might want to correct it in case someone else tries to find your blog. I read about your suggestion of wood chips and was looking for more information. Are you talking about the pine bedding wood chips you can buy at walmart? Or something else? I have a big pen and part of it is on ground that gradually goes down hill. That makes it muddy in one section when it rains a lot and I really don’t like that. Off to have a look at your blog.
Oh! Whoops. Thanks for the heads up, I will go fix that. 😀
For wood chips I absolutely don’t mean pine bedding. That would be good inside of a coop but you’d go broke filling a pen with it.
No, I was referring to arborists wood chips. These are raw, unaged, new wood chips from downed trees or branches. When a storm comes through or an arborist takes down a tree they chip all the small material and grind the stump and cart off the wood chips to be dumped on their property which is then sold to places to be processed into mulches, etc.
You can call most local tree companies and ask for woodchips or even your city or county or local utility company. These will be big, ugly, chunky, dry-looking woodchips with small sticks and chunks of wood mixed in. Sometimes (especially if they’re free) there’s tons of shredded leaves mixed in but that’s a good thing. I order mine from a local landscaping company that charges $1 per yard plus $20 for delivery.
You can check out what they look like in this post from a long time ago;
https://quarteracrehome.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/building-the-garden-beds-and-other-garden-things/
You can see photos of what they look like after a few months in the garden beds and chicken pen here;
https://quarteracrehome.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/a-proper-update/
and here;
https://quarteracrehome.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/farming-label-myths/
(just the last photo)
Yes I am familiar with those types of wood chips. I think the companies here give them for free. I just didn’t know they were good in chicken pens! I am wanting to make my pen unfriendly to worms(bad infesting kind) and I have an area that gets muddy. This sounds like it will solve my problem with the muddy area and be good for my chickens. I am guessing that any kind of chipped trees are fine?
I have the pine chips/shavings in my coop but was sure they wouldn’t stay put or be economical in my big pen.
Yep, pretty much. Some trees like cedar contain high levels of chemicals that ca be toxic for chickens (birds have sensitive lungs) to breathe in close quarters, but outdoors in the pen it’s irrelevant.
Hey ! Nice blog!
Just wanted to send you a better link than the broken one you commented on.
https://www.moabsunnews.com/news/article_07ace61c-d8cf-11ea-9aab-03f6146fef78.html
This is really fascinating! I, too, have chickens and rabbits and a garden and am excited to get some ideas.
Hi Mouse, Would it be okay if we used your dandelion picture on our website? Thanks!
Hello! Depends on which one, can you provide a specific link to the image in question?