Homesteading
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Food Forest Walkthrough Video
In this video we walk you through what our food forest looks like around the spring equinox of 2021.
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We’ve Got Eggs!
It’s that time of year again when we are inundated with eggs — SPRING! And we are happy to share them with our neighbors out of our roadside homestead stand. Last spring our flock was very small — we just had enough to meet our own needs. This year is a different story. We hope to offer a variety of homestead-produced items in the stand this year. But for now, all we’ve got are eggs… For those of you in the local area: Come on down and get you some free-range, farm-fresh, pastured eggs!
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Our Greenhouse Patio
This year, we made great strides in remodeling the large greenhouse attached to our poultry house. While it is still under construction, with plans to create & use an aquaponic system in it, my husband thought a small patio area within it as well would make a nice respite, particularly in the winter months. And so far it has served us well. 🙂 With temperatures in the 40s and low 50s outside… We are able to enjoy some leisure while soaking in the sun and enjoying some free heat. What a blessing! We look forward to getting a lot of use out of our new outdoor, indoor living space. 🙂
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More Chickens!
In the winter of 2019/2020, sadly, we lost a lot of birds (chickens & quail) due to predators and feeding complications while we were away from home. Finding help in the spring enabled us to make some improvements on the property, to include our poultry housing. Improvements included redefining interior space, leveling the dirt floor, replacing insulation, sealing up holes where rats/snakes were getting in and fixing water leak issues. We were making ready to build up our flock of chickens again. As news spread concerning COVID19 in the spring, the demand for both birds & eggs in our area went up tremendously. So, we got busy renovating our brooding…
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A Walk in Our Woods
In early November I took a stroll through our woods to see the last remains of color on the trees. Here’s a brief tour of the highlights. I feel so blessed to be living in this place. What a beautiful world our Creator has made for us. Wouldn’t you say?
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Storing Onions Without Braiding
We’ve been growing onions in our garden the past few years, and I came across the following video from Homesteading Family that taught me something new. In the past I did the braiding method, and she’s right, the stems lose their integrity over time. I’ve also stored them using pantyhose before, but this method looks more promising: stringing them up. I look forward to trying it out. Of course, the key is to make sure the onions are cured properly (neck & stem of the onion completely dried out) — something I haven’t always been diligent at doing in the past. Going forward though, I aim to do better. 🙂…
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Morning Feeding with Doobie
Doobie is a rat terror and also a rat terrier. Quite remarkably, we have trained him to not attack poultry. We started with chicks 4-5 months ago after getting down to less than a dozen old laying hens. The first batch of these girls will be laying fairly soon.
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Early Morning Harvest
Each morning, I look forward to getting up, getting dressed, donning my grey hoodie jacket, washed red denim ball cap, and muck boots with basket, scissors and bowl in tow, and going out into the garden / budding food forest to gather the day’s goodies. Starting in May I was able to harvest strawberries and greens (lambsquarter, kale, and swiss chard) on a daily basis. Then the raspberries came in with a smattering of blueberries. Blackberries were just around the corner. Today, I picked a nice sized basket-full of blackberries, a few strawberries, a bowl full of kale, and a couple bell peppers. I try to get out there before…
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Lambsquarters: How We Prepare It
Lambsquarters (also Chenopodium album) is commonly considered a weed and is often cast aside and attention is diverted to more conventional plants. However, it is actually an incredibly nutritious plant as well as very accessible because as a “weed” it grows exponentially and in places that would be inconvenient if you weren’t planning on eating it–so in actuality, it’s very convenient if you choose to take advantage of it. So, how do you eat it? Great question! It’s actually a very easy plant to prepare considering it’s mild which makes it very versatile. Wherever you would use spinach in a recipe, you can use lambsquarters instead. You can put it…
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Mother Earth is Not My God
In the course of my research on Permaculture principles and living a more natural lifestyle I find a lot of attention is often given to “Mother Earth” (aka “Mother Nature” or “Gaia/Gaea”) all over the place…in magazines, books, videos, etc. While I recognize the value of the land, and I can see how the land can be identified as our mother, I am not an advocate for Gaia worship, and I prefer not to call the earth or nature our mother because of where that leads people in their minds. Mother Earth is Not My God I believe in a Creator, who is identified in the Bible simply as “God”. I…
