A wreath I made... two years ago. It's Christmas month! And as I do every year, I'm breathing a great sigh of relief that I can hole up indoors now. It seems like one half of the year I neglect my indoor existence, and the other half of the year I'm neglecting the outdoors. But at this point, the snow gives me a valid excuse to (almost) completely forget about the homestead and focus primarily on housekeeping items. And, of course, as much reading as I can possibly indulge in. Back in the good old days, I made most of our Christmas decorations. It was a lot of fun. Now that we're in a (much ..read more

Yesterday's homestead harvest. Well, I'll be! I was ready to wrap up the garden a month ago, but it has been WEEKS without a 32°F frost. I got tired of waiting and cleaned up several of my garden areas even though they were still producing, but I'm leaving the tomatoes, peppers and beans until a true frost.  Some of our fruit here on the homestead has been acting wonky. The apple trees were re-blossoming at the end of September: And then a few weeks later, some of my strawberry plants decided to blossom! Wild! You can see some purple berries in the basket of things I harvested yeste ..read more

After seven years of largely beef-free meals and just over a year of bovine ownership, we are now the proud owners of a freezer full of beef. Ground beef, T-bones, brisket, filet mignon... oh, yes. We're moving up in this world. When I wrote The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food, I did some quick calculations to see if one could save money by raising one's own beef cow. Here's a direct quote from the book: "If you are interested in buying grass fed or other specially raised meats, it may be better to buy a whole or half animal. Keep in mind though that some animals are sold by their live wei ..read more

Hi everyone! I thought I'd better do an August post before it was no longer August! :p One benefit of the 2020 Canning Lid Shortage is that I was able to explore a few different methods of food preservation. While I did NOT have success with lacto-fermented veggies, despite spending $30-40.00 on tools and supplies, I DID have success with dehydrating some of the produce that I would've otherwise canned. The Hunt for a Great Tomato Sauce One of my favorite dehydration experiments was dried tomatoes. In the past, I've never had a homemade pizza/spaghetti sauce that I've been happy with unle ..read more

Have you ever stepped into what dog owners call a "dog mine?" A while back I was in someone's yard and got that slow, sinking and sliding feeling, and I knew. I just knew. Of course, dog poop isn't like other kinds of poop. It's sticky. I had to use a stick to scrape some of it off, but of course anything touching the bottom of my shoe was hard-pressed to come off. Worse than the mess, though, was the smell. Dog poop smells worse than other feces. I will take chicken or cow or goat excrement over dog poop any day. The odor followed me home on my foot, while I improvised a plastic bag barrier ..read more

Direct-sown spinach and radishes. ​Hi everyone! May has been pretty busy for me, as it usually is. Every year I try to make some improvements around the homestead that'll allow me to harvest more food with less effort. This year, however, I feel a bit more urgency. It seems like every week brings some new disaster in one part of our country or another. Last week it was the Colonial pipeline ransomware attack. Think about it: some foreigner literally launched an attack on our fuel supply... from his computer. What else could they attack? These cyber attacks seem to be happening more often, wh ..read more

2021 Seedlings: 10 days old Hi everyone! I'd like to give a little update on my grow light system. According to my records, I started seeds February 24th. The onions, marigolds, and one tomato plant had sprouted by March 1st.  The picture above was taken March 10th. You can see some barely-sprouted peppers in the upper left-hand corner. The photo below was taken March 31st: As you can see, the tomatoes have exploded in three weeks! Halfway through March, I did transplant the seedlings into bigger pots because the roots were starting to outgrow their little soil pellets. 2020 / 2021 ..read more

I was mistaken... NEXT week is our Really Busy Week! So here's a Friday assortment! Butternut Squash Last year I grew my own butternut squash, but my 1' by 4' vertical patch only yielded 10 half-sized squashes (which is actually quite impressive, but not enough to last through the winter). So I bought like 20 full-sized butternut squash at a produce auction for $0.60 each. What a bargain! Well, last week I had about 10 rotting full-sized butternut squash to do something with. We ate a lot of squash. I also froze several of the squash, so we'll be eating squash for a long time. The good ne ..read more

Hi everyone! I did some fun things in the last two weeks that I thought I'd share today. Year-round Garden Several years ago, I decided that I didn't enjoy canning in the way that homesteaders are supposed to enjoy canning. However, I still liked the taste, nutritional value and savings that came from gardening. The result of this quandary was a goal I came up with: to harvest fresh produce year-round. This month our menu will feature butternut squash, apples, onions, garlic, potatoes, parsnips, beets, and possibly some microgreens or foraged greens. I'll be supplementing those things with ..read more

Hi everyone! I missed posting yesterday, as our daughter woke up early, and I missed posting last week because we were gone! We spent the weekend at a marriage retreat (which was more like a workshop than a retreat, but I'll cover that later), which I'm going to make the main topic of this post. Back before Christmas, some of my sisters-in-law were talking about marriage counseling and/or events, and one of them mentioned a retreat happening on Ohio. We thought it would be fun for several of us couples to go together. Hubs and I have always wanted to do some type of marriage event, but it ha ..read more