First month on the farm

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Wow! I can’t believe we’ve been on this property for a month now. It’s been an incredibly busy month. I knew moving onto a new property was going to be busy, but I did not know it was going to be this busy. I will take the blame for a lot of the craziness though, because I went ahead and moved full speed with my farm plans. We’ve gotten a lot done, but there is still so much to do. Let’s start with talking about the animals.

Chickens

The first animal we added to the farm was chickens. In fact, if you read any of the earlier posts you would know we got hatching eggs before we even closed on this property. We only ended up with three chicks from that hatch, so of course we stopped by our local feed store and grabbed a few more. When we had been here for about a week I picked up some hens that were already laying. We wanted eggs right away and our chicks weren’t going to start laying for a while. Next thing I know people are asking if we have eggs so of course, I had to get a few more chickens. Currently, we have 10 laying hens all about a year or two old, and 10 chicks. I wanted to focus on just a couple of breeds so I could hatch my own chickens, but like you tend to do we ended up with a barnyard mix. The chickens have pretty much been my favorite addition. They are easy to care for and going out to the coop and bringing in eggs feels very rewarding. Plus they are just plain fun to sit around and watch.

My one complaint about the chickens is they don’t go out into our “pasture” area. I have tried to get them to go out to the 1.5 acres we are calling the pasture but they seem to prefer the backyard or their coop area. I want them to go out into the pasture because we have had a few ticks show up. I cannot stand ticks, they gross me out so much. I was hoping to have the chickens roam the pasture area and eat the ticks, but it looks like I may need to find another solution. I have read about guineas, which I am considering, however I have also heard they are very loud. We may do a chicken tractor in the future so the chickens have to be out in the pasture, but I haven’t made a final decision. However, some form of tick control will need to be decided upon soon. Despite that the chickens have been a very easy and fun addition to the farm.

Dairy Goats

One of my main goals for our farm is to improve the quality of our food. As part of that plan finding a dairy animal was high on my priority list. I have been researching which type we wanted for years now. I would love to have a milk cow, but decided we didn’t have the room. On top of needing more room cows are harder to breed and the vet costs are much higher. Not to mention I don’t really need gallons of milk a day. So once I decided on goats, I started the research process to find the right breed. I really wanted Nubians but I couldn’t find any quality breeders in my local area, and for right now I was unwilling to drive six or more hours to pick up goats. So, instead, I found a good Nigerian Dwarf goat breeder who was only an hour away. I feel pretty lucky to have found her, as she shows her goats. This typically means more care is put into the goats as well as better genetics. We ended up purchasing two does that were already in milk, and two yearling does who have not been bred. I also picked up a buckling and a wether, both were born on April 2nd of this year. It will be a few months until the Buck is old enough to breed, but that gives us time to get used to the does we already have in milk and get our routine down.

Having does in milk has been wonderful but also very challenging. First, the milk is delicious. Nigerian Dwarfs have some of the highest butterfat content which makes their milk creamy and delicious. I won’t lie and say it’s exactly like cow’s milk, but it’s pretty close and maybe even better. The flavor of goat’s milk is very dependent on how you handle it. Other than being really clean, one of the most important factors is how fast you get the milk cooled down. I like to bring the milk into the house, filter it, and then get it into the freezer as soon as possible. I tend to let the milk hang out in the freezer for about an hour to get it cooled down and then I put it in the fridge. There are bacteria in the raw milk that will start to eat the sugars as soon as it is out of the udder. Cooling it down stops the bacteria from eating the sugar as fast and changing the flavor of the milk. Everyone who has tried the milk so far has been really impressed with how good it is. The part that is a little bit goaty is that sometimes there is a tiny bit of an aftertaste. It’s not bad at all and I do not feel like it ruins the milk but it is something to know about if you plan to have goats for milk.

My absolutely favorite thing to do with the milk is turn it into yogurt. I have made goat milk yogurt twice now and it’s the best yogurt I’ve ever had. I am currently a little sad that we have just enough milk to drink because I can’t wait to make more yogurt. We like to make it extra thick almost like a Greek yogurt, but it’s not near as sour as a Greek yogurt can sometimes be. I just top it with some honey and I’m in heaven. I have also made a quick, almost feta-like, cheese. I really enjoyed that as well, and it seems that when the milk is made into other things the goat flavor is completely gone. Not that the flavor is strong to begin with. It’s a very barely there flavor but it disappears completely in homemade goat cheese and yogurt.

Another pro to the Nigerian Dwarf goat breed is their size. I am 5’1″ and the goats come up to about my knee. They are about the size of a medium to large dog. This makes fencing and housing much easier than larger breeds. Also, when bringing them home they rode in the back of the truck. We have a topper on the truck and that’s where they went, no trailer is needed. Their smaller size makes them easy to handle, house, and transport. The con to their size is less milk. I know over time we can work on their udder size and milk capacity, but out of our two does, we are currently getting about four cups of milk each time we milk. This does add up to about half a gallon of milk a day, which sounds like a lot, but when you want to have milk to drink and make cheese/yogurt it isn’t quite enough. We also have two bottle babies still, so if I forget to thaw the frozen milk, almost all of our fresh milk goes to them. They are drinking around a half gallon a day, but they are absolutely adorable so I don’t complain.

All in all, I am very pleased with our goats. I will say one more thing that I learned along the way. If at all possible try and start out with quality stock. You can find cheaper goats from people selling off their backyard farms, but it isn’t always the best option over time. Look for goats that have been bred with milking quality in mind and from someone who has taken very good care of their goats. Starting with registered stock is not required but it may be something to consider. It will make your offspring more valuable since you can register them as well. Like I mentioned I found someone who does 4-H and other goat shows and really tried to focus on quality traits. They are all registered and healthy. They also test their herd every year since they travel and have to make sure they don’t take anything to the shows or pick something up while out. This gave me peace that even though it was more money upfront, we would be better off over the long haul. Plus the woman I bought them from has been very helpful and willing to be more of a mentor. Sometimes what you start out with really does matter.

For milking purposes on a small-scale homestead/farm Nigerian Dwarf goats are a great option. If you are thinking about a dairy animal I would highly suggest looking into these adorable troublemakers.

Challenges

It hasn’t all been fun and games. As I said, I moved pretty quickly when we first closed on the property. Chickens were added right away but we already had a coop and a fenced area so that was no big deal. I did however rush the goats. I had found the goats I wanted and they were ready to go, so I jumped. I don’t think this was the smartest way to do it, but sometimes when you find what you want you have to make it happen. We ended up bringing them home when their fencing wasn’t even finished. They hung out in our backyard while my husband and I finished fencing their pen. We also didn’t have a housing structure, but luckily there was something already here that we ended up using and it worked out great. It’s not perfect and will need some work in the future but it’s been exactly what we needed to get them here and safe right away. Our first night milking was quite a disaster since I also didn’t have a milking stand. We ended up milking them on the deck. We were slow and they were annoyed and it was a total disaster that ended with us all frustrated. A milking stand is expensive and shipping one would have taken time that we didn’t really have, so my husband converted an old bunk bed frame into a milking stand. Sometimes you have to use what you have. It has been serving us well ever since. As you would guess milking is a skill that takes a little while to get down. In the beginning, we took extra bowls out with us. We would milk into one bowl and then dump it into the other every so often, just in case one of the goats decided to step in the milk. Which they did, OFTEN. Even a few weeks in we are still learning. Last night I ended up with a lap full of milk because my daughter, who was helping, moved her hand and the goat thought we were done and kicked the bowl right over. Of course, this time I hadn’t poured it into another bowl so we lost the whole thing. The saying ” no crying over spilled milk”, does not apply here. It is so frustrating to lose all that milk.

The other most challenging part of the goats is keeping them in the fencing. A quick tip, make sure your gate opens inward. Our gate opens out and it gives the goats enough space to try and head-butt their way out of the gate. Quite often we have had to wrangle goats after they all pushed their way out of the pen when we were trying to put one back. You can also throw treats into the pen to distract the other goats while you get the one you wanted for milking. Goats will take advantage of any hole left in fencing or gap left in a gate. They have wormed their way into the chicken area when we cut what we thought was a chicken-sized hole in the fence. We wanted to give the chickens easy access to the pasture, that hole is now closed. Once, we had a goat in the chicken coop. It was so funny. I kept hearing a goat cry but couldn’t find her. It sounded like she was behind the chicken coop, but there was no goat to be found. I thought, “No way she’s in the coop”. She was! She had climbed up the chicken ramp and somehow had knocked the door closed behind her and was stuck inside crying for someone to help. So, if a chicken can fit, so can a goat. Who knew?

Other challenges we can’t do anything about. Where we live the wind is absolutely insane. It’s no fun trying to milk goats when the doors to the shed are rattling on their hinges and you feel like you are going to blow away walking them back to the pen. That is unfortunately something we will have to get used to. I do believe the animals will get easier as we get more experience, but the weather is something we will just have to suck it up and deal with.

This last month has been wonderful and I am so happy that we have been able to make this dream happen. I have loved adding the chickens and the goats and I can’t wait for garden season to start. However, even a month in I can tell you it’s not like what you see on the internet. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to be a lot of work. I always to try and keep my why in mind. Why is this what I wanted? What do I hope to accomplish? It helps me when things get hard, to remember why I started all this in the first place. To remember my goals. To remember that this is what I have dreamed about for years. I am now living in it and I don’t want to forget that and ever become ungrateful. There have been hard days and I know there will be more, but I hope to never look at this with less than thankful eyes, challenges and all.

Chicken Rescue

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A few days ago while on the phone with my sister I glanced out the window and saw something white floating in the pond. It took me a second to realize what I was seeing. A chicken had fallen into our pond and was floating on the surface. At first glance, it looked dead, but then I saw the tiniest bit of movement from its head. I threw my phone down on the bed, yelling at my sister to hold on, then ran outside to grab this hen. She was absolutely soaked through, hypothermic, and barely alive. I knocked on my son’s window yelling “Bring me a towel quick!”. I wrapped her up and brought her inside and we started the process of trying to get her warmed back up and praying that she made it.

I have never had to save an animal like this before, but we at least knew we needed to dry her off and warm her up. The first thing we did was towel her off as best we could. Then we brought out the blow dryer and started drying her feathers and warming her body. I have heard you don’t want to heat them back up too quickly, and of course, we didn’t want to burn her with the hot air, so we ran the blow dryer on the low setting. The whole time we were drying her she just twitched. She didn’t fight us, she didn’t complain, she just twitched her legs almost like a shock response. When she finally started shivering again I was so happy. I felt like we were at least making progress and her body was fighting. Once her feathers were pretty dry we grabbed our brooder heat plate, wrapped her up, and let her lay on the heat. We also tucked a sock full of rice, which we microwaved for 1 minute, and a bottle of hot water under the blanket with her to give her immediate heat.

I don’t know how long she sat there and warmed up, maybe an hour or two, but she finally pulled through and started trying to stand up. Eventually, I was able to take her back out to her flock and she went about her day as if nothing had happened.

I am unsure exactly what happened since I didn’t see it, but I have a theory. We have a small fish pond in the back yard and the chickens like to perch on the side and drink out of it. They have their own water, but they seem to prefer to do this anyway. This particular day was very windy and I assume while she was drinking on the side she slipped or the wind pushed her in. Our weather has not heated up yet so when she couldn’t get out she sat there and got cold. Even her comb had started to turn colors almost like frostbite. I told the kids I think she was pretty close to not making it. I am so very thankful I happened to catch her in time and we were able to save her.

If your animal ever gets wet and cold, dry them off and then slowly warm them up. I have heard from many sources to not feed the animal anything or try to get them to drink until they are fully warmed back up. For us in this situation a hair dryer and then some sort of heat pad were what worked really well. A heat source like a heat pad, or a heat plate might be something worth investing into if you plan to keep livestock. We never know what emergency is awaiting us around the corner.

We’re in

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We did it! We have moved into our new home. I haven’t been able to post and this will be short because we still have no internet. I am currently using a hotspot from my phone and it’s not the greatest.

I think the one thing I have been a little shocked at is how windy it is here. It was windy where we were before but it is so much worse out here. I am dying to get out into the garden and get it cleaned up but it’s too much in this wind. We had a storm roll through this week so I am hopeful that once the weather clears back up the wind will settle down. A little wind is fine but this is knock you over kind of wind. I didn’t realize our new property would live up to the name Home on the Windy Prairire quite so well.

It will probably be a few more days until we can get internet up and running. We are waiting for some parts to be mailed. Once we do have internet I hope to have many gardening and homestead adventures to share.

Tomorrow we close!

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We close on our new house tomorrow! Some of the family say it feels like it went quick but to me it feels like we’ve been waiting forever. The final walkthrough was last night and it was good to walk back through the house and see it again. That is one of the hard parts about buying a home, you tour a house, fall in love, and then can’t see it again in person until the end. It was nice to reassure ourselves we still liked it after all.

The house is smaller than we are already in but, the new property has just over 3 acres. The man who owned it before us did a lot of work so it comes with a bunch of small trees already planted, a chicken coop, a small pond, a garden area, and a storage shed. Not to mention most of the property is already fenced, including a backyard area for the dogs. Knowing we don’t have to start everything from scratch is so good.

Homestead Plans

Getting ready to move in early spring put a bit of a damper on my seed-starting plans. I already don’t have a good seed starting set-up so I decided to skip seeds this year. My plans for this year’s garden are to start seeds in the ground that are ok with that, and then buy plant starts from the local greenhouse. I won’t plant a large garden this time as we need to get used to the new property and figure out where we want everything to go. Containers will be used to grow a few items like herbs that spread while we figure out their permanent place. I am hoping to get a few fruit trees planted this year and maybe a few berry bushes. What I would really like to do is jump straight in and go crazy but I have to rein it back and have patience.

In total, we now have eight chicks. One of the ones we got from the store was sick and passed a few days later, and then we hatched three from our own eggs. I am still playing around with the idea of adding a few layers, but we have friends who we get eggs from so it’s not a huge issue if we wait for the chicks to grow. Our three Swedish Flower babies are what I am most excited about at the moment. I am hoping they are not all three roosters, but I would like one to be. I can’t wait to see them grow and have that question answered.

Lastly, I have found a local source for Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats and hope to add them quickly. We are not set up quite yet but that is at the top of my list to get done. I think chickens and a few goats is probably enough for a first-time homesteader like me. This last year was my first with a real garden and it went well so I am confident I can handle that with time, but I am a little nervous about having livestock.

All in all, we can’t wait for Friday and the beginning of this new chapter.

Hatching is done

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This round of hatching is done. It was not what I would call a successful hatch, but we do have three adorable little chicks from it. I will need to go back and have a look at my incubator to find out why the egg turner wasn’t working as it should. Other than that, this was our first time hatching chicken eggs so I will call it a learning curve. I am not sure if we will try again with more Swedish Flower eggs, since we have access to them, or just stick with what we have for now.

In total, we ended up with nine chicks. We purchased six from the store and three we hatched on our own. That will be plenty of chickens to keep our family of four in eggs. However, we do have friends who would like eggs in the future so, maybe we will stick with the chicks we have for now and if needed add a few adults later.

For now, I am thrilled with what we have and can’t wait to watch them grow. I do have one Welsummer chick that I am very curious to see if it may be a rooster. They are all supposed to be female but sometimes even the hatcheries make a mistake and honestly, I really want a Welsummer rooster so fingers crossed!

Moving day will be here soon

Moving day is next Friday! We don’t have to be out of our current house quickly so we plan to take our time, but we get the keys to our new place in 5 days. I can almost not even wrap my brain around all the possibilities we have. I have been looking forward to putting roots down for so long now and having a place to really settle into. There are silly things that I haven’t been able to do until now. Things like berry patches, an orchard, things that take years to really get going. I think the hardest part will be having patience and not trying to make it all happen at once. When you’ve been dreaming about something for so long it’s hard to rein it back in and take it slow. Friday is the beginning and I feel so very lucky to be making this move.

One Hatched!

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We had our first incubator chick hatch. I peeked into the incubator last night on the way to bed, not expecting anything, and found egg pieces on the floor. The chick was halfway through zipping already and we were so surprised. For the next 10 minutes, my kids and I sat there and cheered this little chicken on, it was so fun. We’ve been waiting to hatch our own chickens for years and it finally happened. This morning we have one more who has pipped and 3 more yet to go. This really is a dream come true. I still can’t believe we are actually taking steps towards our own little acreage and homestead.

Upcoming Changes

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With a new name change comes content changes as well. We are still homeschooling and that will always be a part of what I share, but we are also finally moving out onto a small piece of property and getting ready to start my homesteading dreams. We even have baby chicks sitting in the living room right now! This is something I’ve been dreaming about for the last 8 years if not longer. I can’t believe it’s finally becoming a reality, and I can’t wait to share some of it with you.

Chickens are here!

Chickens are sort of what started this whole thing as they tend to do. I’ve dreamt of them for years now, and have really been disappointed time and time again when we had to move somewhere that didn’t allow them. Pretty much as soon as our offer on the house was accepted my husband got me a dozen hatching eggs. We have friends who raise chickens and likes to have different breeds, so she sold us a dozen Swedish Flower hatching eggs. Into the incubator they went. Unfortunately, my incubator decided this was the time to act up and the turner didn’t work very well, so on lockdown down we found out only five had made it that far. Five chicks, with the possibility of a decent number being roosters, meant we needed a few more. We headed to our local farm supply store and came home with six more chicks. We chose two Black Australorps and four Welsummers which are already sexed and should be hens. Now the problem we face is that these won’t lay for months and I am wondering if I should find a few adults to add as well. Chicken math sure does kick in quick.

What’s Next?

I am so excited for what the future will bring. I plan on starting a large vegetable garden, an herb garden, flowers everywhere, an orchard and berry patch, and of course our farm animals. As much as I would love to do this all right away, I know it will take time and I will have to be patient. So I hope you will all follow along as I work to accomplish my dreams.

It’s a hit!

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We’ve only had the Yoto player for 3 days now, but it’s a hit! My daughter absolutely loves her Yoto player and has barely put it down over the last few days. She has already finished four books and uses the player to fall asleep every night. In fact, the first day she had it, she climbed into bed with me during the afternoon, while I was reading, and fell right asleep listening to a book. She never takes a nap but she was warm and quiet and passed right out.

In addition to playing audiobooks, the Yoto player does have other things it can do. Her favorite is the Yoto daily podcasts. If you do buy a Yoto player they have an app that is pretty cool all by itself. The app is full of extras like podcast options, kids’ music channels, and ways you can customize the player for your child. You can set them alarms, change the light colors on their player, and even play books or sleep sounds from your phone. I still find myself scrolling through the app and finding new things each day. In fact, there are so many options that I would be typing all day to explain them all, so I would highly suggest going to their website and taking a look. I would also suggest the Yoto Club membership. It’s $10 a month and you get two credits to spend on books, but it also gets you free shipping and a 10% discount. I would sign up for the club membership first and then order my Yoto player to get the discount and free shipping.

If you want to order a player but not the membership everyone with a player has a code for 10% off your first purchase over $69.99. Mine is https://prz.io/1dGAgBas0. I do get points to use on their website if you use that code. I do not believe you can stack the 10% code and the Yoto Club membership 10% off. It seems to be one or the other.

As of right now, my daughter says the Yoto player was her favorite Christmas present and she’s thrilled with it. I can’t recommend it enough if you have a child who likes to listen to their own books, music, etc. It’s screen-free so there is no concern with them stumbling upon something they shouldn’t. I love that I don’t have to worry about anything and I feel completely safe letting her have full control over the player and what she listens to on it. It is 100% a hit in our house.

Audio Books and Christmas Presents

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My last post was on our switch to Kindle e-readers and now I want to talk about audiobook options. My daughter is going through a big audiobook phase and wants to have one available at all times. I don’t love having her take my phone constantly, that’s where audible is, so I started looking for other options. One option is the Kindle. You can get audible on a Kindle but I haven’t really loved this as an actual solution. My biggest complaint is the Kindle will only work with Bluetooth headphones. It has a charger port just like my phone, that my phone will take headphones in, but the Kindle won’t. I don’t want everything we listen to to be on Bluetooth, so this ruins the Kindle for me as an audiobook option for her.

A second very simple option and one we use often is a Bluetooth speaker and my phone or computer. This works great and she can take it to her room and listen but again I am not a fan of her having my phone all the time or using it for sleep sounds and my phone dying. I have a friend who got her kids old iPods and using the library to put rented audiobooks on them, but the library is changing formats and that isn’t working for them anymore either.

So, this leads me to her Christmas present and what I hope ends up being the perfect solution for us. I ordered her a Yoto player. https://us.yotoplay.com/. It’s an audio player that has no screen and no access to the internet. You buy the books on yoto cards and they insert into the player and play the book. She wanted the larger one which also works as an alarm clock, plays kid-friendly podcasts, and sleep sounds. I also went ahead and grabbed one for my four-year-old nephew as it’s perfect for little kids as well. It even has an alarm clock mode where the light will stay red until it’s an acceptable time for them to get out of bed. That is something I wanted when my kids were smaller. The Yoto cards do get a little pricey, but they have a Yoto Club membership that will help with the expense. It’s pretty similar to what you would pay for an audible subscription. If you are going to order one go ahead and sign up for the Yoto Club because you get 10% off of your orders and free shipping.

Since this is her Christmas present we haven’t opened it yet and got to play around with it. I can’t say for sure this is going to be what we want it to be, but I am very hopeful this is going to be a good solution. I definitely think it’s worth looking into if you are looking for an internet-free and screen-free option for audiobooks for your kids. I will update here as soon as we have used it a bit.

Kindle E-Reader

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I know, I know! As homeschool moms and book readers, we prefer physical books that we can have on shelves all over the house. Books everywhere! I was the same way. My home library was quite large, and I was proud of all the amazing books I had available for my kids to read. However, we’ve recently made a change that we love and I think it might be worth considering in your own home.

We have switched over to mostly Kindle reading or e-books. I have had a Kindle for years and have switched back and forth between it and physical books many times. Currently, it has become my go-to for one very specific reason. I can adjust the text size on my Kindle. I have had glasses since 9th grade and as I’ve gotten older I have been told I need readers. My eyes are pretty sensitive and I have found myself straining, even with readers, to read the tiny words that some books have. My Kindle has helped this problem so much. It’s super simple to adjust the text size all you do is pinch and move your fingers like you’re zooming in on your phone. My kids tease me about how large my font is, but my eyes are sure thanking me. I also really just enjoy reading on the Kindle. Somehow it makes it feel like the books go faster and I have read so many more books in the past two months than I did the whole previous year because I finally picked my Kindle back up. The Kindle also has a backlight on it and I’ve been getting a good chunk of my reading done at night comfy in bed. I love it and I have now switched my children to a Kindle as well.

Kindle Kids

Back in October when Amazon had its most recent Prime Day I picked up a Kindle kids for my kids to share. When on sale, the Kindle kids is a great option. The Kindle comes with a case and a full year of Kindle kids, which is basically Kindle Unlimited but for children’s books. Both series that we were reading were available on that subscription for free. It has been wonderful. They can take the Kindle in the car, to sports practice, in the bath, to bed, basically anywhere, and read. I have seen them read so much more than when they had to carry a physical book around. Not to mention the ease with which we can get a book. For example, my oldest is currently reading through the Harry Potter series. We own two different copies of this series. One of them is older and the cover was starting to fall apart as he read it, the other is the large illustrated version, which isn’t very easy to carry around and read. We tried borrowing a copy from the library and that also was old and falling apart. So, the Kindle came in, and we downloaded his book, and he was able to read it without worrying about his book falling apart. As soon as he has finished a book the next is readily available to download and read. My younger child was also able to get the Warriors series which our closest library didn’t have in stock and has started reading that. As of now, I have no complaints, except that the kids have only one Kindle to share. So, for Christmas, I bought another and now they will each have one. On top of the kid’s Kindle I also grabbed myself a new one for Christmas. It doesn’t come with a cover or a subscription like the kids ones, but my old Kindle was going on about 8 years old and had a few cracks in the screen. I forced myself to put it under the tree but I can’t wait to open it up and use it.

Decluttering

Another benefit of the Kindle, and the reason I started thinking about them in the first place, is my ability to clear out the house a little. As I mentioned earlier we had quite a large amount of books in our home. I love books and I loved having them on the shelves, but in reality, they were taking up a lot of space. We had books that I bought years ago because I found a good deal and I was really hoping to get to, but they were still sitting on the shelf unread. So, I cleared out a ton of our books. In fact, I did this while I went through a rather large decluttering of the whole house. I kept the books we have read and loved and a few others that I felt were worthy of keeping, but I got rid of probably 80 percent of our physical books. If it gets to a point where I want to read some of the ones we decluttered we have the library or our Kindle subscriptions. Im really happy with the switch we made and the kids seem to love it as well.

Where to get books

If you switch to a Kindle you do not have to buy e-books or a Kindle subscription. If you have a library card you can borrow e-books from the library for free. My library links directly to Amazon and sends them straight to my Kindle. There is also the Libby app, which I don’t have so I can’t say a lot about it, but I’ve heard from tons of people that it’s great. I have recently bought myself a Kindle Unlimited subscription because it went on sale and has quite a few of the books I like to read, but be aware Kindle Unlimited doesn’t always have the most popular books. There is also a website called BookBub that you can tell your preferences to and you get daily emails with deals on e-books from your favorite categories. Most of those are around $2-$3. It’s not quite as fun as getting a box of books in the mail but you can get the book you are waiting on much faster and often times cheaper. I’m sure there are many other options but those are the ones I use.

Lastly, you can get audiobooks on your Kindle. You can listen via Bluetooth from your Kindle, no wired headphones, which I don’t love, but it is an option. The Kindle kids subscription has a few available with it, not really popular ones, but still an option. I will probably keep up with our audible since that’s where the books we want are, but it is another benefit of the Kindle.