Dezeray Rathjen, the mama behind MTN DOG FARM. She lives on her off-the-grid homestead in rural Montana alongside her two wildflowers and her husband, Troy; although he is a traveling pipeliner so she often is tending to the chores with just tiny helping hands.
If you’re ever looking for her, she’s probably elbows deep in her market garden, deep in the Bible, starting something new in her DIY greenhouse, singing alongside the sheep or hunting with her family.
She has a heart for community-sufficiency, nurturing her family with wholesome food and encouraging other to live off the land
Hi homestead mamas! As mountain lion hunting is a large piece of our homesteading life, I thought I would share a few words on the topic.
Mountain lion hunting is primarily done for conservation.
A full-sized cat will eat one large, mature, deer every five days — so you can only imagine how many in a year!
Three years (two-hundred-nineteen)!
Five (three-hundred-sixty-five)!
Montana gives lion tags on a “draw system” the first half of the year, then on a quota system the second. So only so many are harvested per year to both conserve numbers of mountain lion as well as managing the predator numbers for big game. It’s a scale specifically determined by FWP, if one number becomes too large, the other will dwindle.
When the snow is on the ground, we locate a track. Did you know that you can tell the sex of a mountain lion by the shape of its toes and its stride length? Although it is legal, we choose not to run female cats with kittens.
Once the track has been identified, we put tracking collars on our dogs and “dump the box” or let them run the track
We are able to identify what stage of the chase they’re in by the time of their bark —- pursue, locate or treed. We follow closely behind and meet them at the tree.
Not all chased lions are harvested. We will run them with the dogs all season to continue to push them further from town, heighten their awareness to people and encourage them to stay in their habitat not seeking easy food in the streets.
Are mountain lions beautiful, majestic, creatures to be awed? Absolutely.
But in order to keep our ecosystem functioning properly and the deer, elk, rabbit, moose, children (yes, that does happen) populations in tact, the pursuit of mountain lion is vital.
Dezeray @ MTN DOG FARM
I began my homesteading journey from the perspective of a Nutritional Therapist, closet herbalist, and beekeeper. This mentally gave me a few barriers to diving into the conventionally accepted tools for animal health such as antibiotics, injectable vitamins, generic minerals and mass produced bagged feeds…
If you want to be self-sufficient and feed your family healthy hearty meals from scratch, you’ve got to
start milling at home. I know, I know, it sounds complicated and al little bit scary, right? But it doesn’t
have to be!
I am not well traveled. I’ve never flown on a plane. I’ve never been north of Ohio or west of Texas.I’m not as well traveled as some may say one should be, but this piece of land has housed all of my fondest memories…
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us’ … the land knows you, even when you are lost.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass…
One year ago, I resolved that I would learn to make all of the bread products my family needed. With an ever-shrinking bank account battling current inflation prices, I would walk the aisles of our local markets frustrated that I did not possess the skills required to make most of the things I needed to purchase…
Hey there, Homesteading Mama’s!
I’m Rachel from @frontier_homesteading. My husband Ryan, three children and I have been homesteading for about 10 years now, first in Wyoming and now in Alaska.
We currently have milk goats, pack goats, sheep, a pig, a cow, chickens, rabbits, bees and a dog. Seasonally, we also have more pigs, meat chickens and turkeys….
Stained glass windows date back to the 7th century. With the earliest known reference dating
from 675 AD when workmen were imported from France to Britain to Glaze the windows of a
monastery…
Homesteading and growing food is not the easy way out of this life, i would say it is the hard way as there’s nothing convenient about it. It’s a lifestyle, a life change not a trend or hobby. Well, that’s my opinion any way…
Like many in this homesteading space, this has been a completely unexpected journey for our family.
Even 10 years ago I would have laughed at the thought of getting up to milk a cow each morning and
canning endless amounts of tomatoes…
