Every gardener I know is getting the itch. It happens to us all this time of year. Although we can’t complain about our mild winter (unless you’re a person that actually likes snow, like myself!), by this time every year we’re just itching to start our gardens. Fresh produce! Not the shipped-in-from-a-faraway-country stuff in the grocery store right now. But real, fresh produce! That’s what gardeners dream about in mid-winter!
So to fill our yearning, we start planning. In January, we ooh and ahh through the seed catalogues, dreaming about all the fantastic varieties we could grow. We place our order, and now it’s time to see if we can fit it all in our (usually limited) garden space!
I’ve been working over the last week or so to draw out our garden plan. I love planning, charts, lists, etc., so this is right up my alley. The photo above shows my main gardening resources this year. I’ve made a schedule for seed-starting, reviewed the companion/antagonist charts and where we planted each crop last year, and plotted out our garden (although that chart is now obsolete, as we’ve decided to use Square Foot Gardening for most of our plot this year…back to the drawing board). The planning is almost as fun as the gardening itself for me! (Almost…nothing beats the taste of that first fresh-off-the-vine heirloom tomato.)
I wish you the best with your garden planning this year! May we all reap our best harvest yet!
We’re going to give it a try! Square Foot Gardening, that is. We recently read Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening and will be incorporating many of the principles into our vegetable garden this year. Square Foot Gardening (SFG) attempts to maximize space and efficiency by growing plants in raised beds comprised of square planting areas (bet you can guess what size the squares are).
First of all, raised beds are key. The soil stays loose in raised beds (because you’re not walking on it) and therefore weeding is a much less daunting task. The looser soil is good for the plants, too, as it allows their roots more freedom to grow!
Second, SFG utilizes square foot planting areas to maximize space and efficiency, and to minimize weed growth. When you plant in rows, much space is wasted in paths between the rows. That also leaves more room for weeds to grow and provides more work for the gardener (just what we need, right?). By planting blocks of plants closer together, you can fit more plants in a smaller space, without all the wasted space for weeds to take over.
You also don’t need to worry about crop rotation with SFG, as each square block is growing a different plant. When that plant is finished (say, lettuce in the spring), you plant another different crop in that box (like peppers for the summer). This not only takes the headache out of crop rotation, but it also helps with pest control. When your tomato or cabbage plants are spread throughout your garden, rather than all in a row, it’s a lot harder for pests to set up camp there!
There is MUCH more to this gardening method, and I definitely recommend reading Bartholomew’s book. We’ll be combining this method with what we learned last year from reading How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons. There are many similarities in these two approaches, which both attempt to maximize space and efficiency.
If you’ve used Square Foot Gardening, please leave a comment! I’d love to hear your experiences and advice!
For those of you that grind your own fresh flour, or even those who don’t but like fresh bread, here are a few whole wheat bread recipes. I have not mastered the perfect wheat sandwich bread yet, but I’ve included the recipe for my favorite bread machine version, as well as a couple of links to others I’ve tried and liked!
Honey Whole Wheat Bread
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 ½ tsp salt
1/3 cup honey (use less if you don’t like it too sweet!)
1 ½ Tbsp butter
1/2 cup milk
5/8 cup water
1 ½ tsp active dry yeast
Put ingredients in bread machine pan according to the directions of your bread machine. Select whole wheat setting (although I’m impatient and like the way the crust turns out better with the basic setting, so I just use that!). Press start. In a few hours your house will smell delicious and you’ll have a loaf of irresistible wheat bread!
If you happen to have spent grain from beer making (my husband’s favorite hobby), you can add in about a cup of the grains, as long as they’re without the hops. It adds the most amazing flavor…and nutrition!
Here is a link to a fantastic wheat roll recipe, also for the bread machine (but recipe works by hand as well). A portion of the flour called for is bread flour. We increase the proportion of wheat flour, so we’re using a smaller amount of white flour in this recipe.
And lastly, a great Whole Wheat Sourdough loaf from one of my favorite homesteading blogs. We’ll be discussing sourdough, including a sourdough starter tutorial and recipes, soon!
Enjoy your fresh bread this weekend!
I’ll begin this post by stating that I am far from perfect. I set goals, and sometimes I’m too tired or busy or lazy to accomplish them. This is one of them!
About a year ago we saved up and purchased a Grain Mill. I had done some reading that made me feel like fresh flour was worth the time and effort of grinding myself. (I’ll also add that there are many electric grain mills that make grinding flour fast and require minimal effort.)
First of all, grinding your own flour saves money. Wheat berries can be bought for anywhere from .39 to .69 cents per pound, and can be stored almost indefinitely, if kept sealed in a cool, dry place. This also helps with your food storage goals! (link to http://www.waynepost.com/JoeyNorsen/x962216409/Why-We-Started-Homesteading-Being-Prepared)
Secondly, and most importantly, fresh flour is substantially more nutritious than store-bought flour. When you purchase enriched all-purpose flour at the store, the bran and germ are taken out, so the flour can be preserved longer on the store shelf. (It’s also usually bleached to make it look even whiter…yuck.) The bran and germ are where most of the nutrients are! All-purpose flour is virtually devoid of all the good stuff found in wheat. Store-bought wheat flour is definitely a big step up from all-purpose flour. However, just like with vegetables, the longer it takes to get to you, the more the nutrients deteriorate. Freshly ground flour preserves all of the nutrients of the wheat berry, giving you the maximum amount of nutrients in your flour.
Lastly, fresh just tastes better! Isn’t that always the case? Nothing beats the taste of fresh bread warm from the oven, from flour that you just ground yourself!
Now with all of those great reasons to grind our flour fresh, I still haven’t converted 100%. It takes time and energy, sometimes that I don’t have! I do try to grind flour for most of our bread and rolls. But I still haven’t learned to bake cookies and cakes perfectly with fresh flour, so many times I cop-out and use all-purpose flour, because I know it’ll turn out the way the recipe intends. But we’re on a journey, right? We can’t regain all these skills without practice, and I count any step we make towards healthier cooking and self-sufficiency to be a good one!
Be sure to back Friday for some yummy bread recipes!
We LOVE blondies in our house. It is our favorite stand-by cookie recipe, and is super easy to make. So this Valentine’s Day, I decided to make heart-shaped blondies for a little festive treat. You can use heart-shaped cookie cutters, like I did, or sprinkle with pink and red m&m’s before baking to add a little color. If you really want to get fancy, you could drizzle with some melted chocolate after they’re cooled!
The recipe I’ve used for years is out of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. I’ve honestly never even tried another recipe for blondies…I fell in love with these at first taste!
Blondies
2 cups packed brown sugar
2/3 cup butter (please don’t substitute margarine…you’ll be disappointed!)
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup semisweet chocolate pieces
1 cup chopped nuts (although I never add the nuts)
Grease a 9x13 baking pan and set aside. In a medium saucepan heat brown sugar and butter over medium heat until butter melts and the mixture is smooth, stirring constantly. (By constantly, I mean do take a break to go check on your son who ran off and is playing again at the bathroom sink. *sigh*). Cool slightly.
Stir in eggs one at a time (I used duck eggs this time!), then vanilla. Stir in flour, baking powder and baking soda.
Spread batter in prepared baking pan. Sprinkle with chocolate pieces (and nuts, if using). Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool slightly. Cut into bars while still warm.
Enjoy!
My husband and I try to sit down and revisit our goals each year, planning our priority projects. With homesteading (and homeownership in general), there is a never-ending list of tasks that need to be accomplished. So we’ve found that it helps to set goals for each year, in addition to our long-range planning. We share with you, both to keep us accountable and to hopefully inspire you to take the time for some planning as well!
So without further ado, here are our goals for 2012:
1. Set up separate housing for our ducks. Right now they are with the chickens, and it’s just not working out as well as we’d like. They all get along fine, but the ducks make a MESS of the coop. We’d like to set up some year-round outdoor housing.
2. Set up a new system for seed-starting. Last year our bedroom was a greenhouse all spring, as it is the only room that has a bright enough window. This year we had some wonderful friends gift us with racks, lights and trays for seed-starting. We’ll be setting that up in the next week or so and be able to get a start on our seedlings!
3. Build a few more raised garden beds, using downed logs from our property.
4. Increase garden productivity. I’ll do a separate post on this in the future, but last year was our first attempt at completely organic and heirloom gardening. It was difficult and our yields on most vegetables were much lower than we’d like.
5. Replace fruit trees/bushes that didn’t make it last year. (Thankfully Miller’s has a one-year guarantee!)
6. Can and freeze vegetables/fruit in season. I won’t add “enough to feed our family for a year”, as I think that would unrealistic this year, with baby due in August. But we’ll preserve as much as we possibly can!
7. Build a chicken tractor or moveable fence and raise/butcher meat birds.
8. Cut, split and stack a dozen face cords of firewood for next winter.
Whew! Even with trying to keep it simple, that looks like a lot! We’ll be busy! How about you? What are your goals for the year?
And check back on Friday for a fun Valentine’s Day themed Food Friday!!!
We get a lot of questions about why we decided to take on the challenge of a homesteading lifestyle. Now that we are doing it, I could give you LOTS of reasons why we’re (attempting!) homesteading. We absolutely love it. But our journey started with one primary reason – being prepared.
A few years ago, my husband and I started to become aware of how dependent we were on conveniences just to stay alive. Conveniences like a grocery store to feed our family, a close gas station to fill our vehicles, and clean water from the town, just to name a few. But what if a disaster struck and those were not available, even for a short time? (Hurricane Irene, anyone? There are STILL areas of our state rebuilding from that storm.) Whether natural or man-made, we knew we would be devastated. Even an ice storm in our area could knock out power for weeks and cause shortages of basic necessities, like food and clean drinking water. We decided that being prepared for whatever circumstances might arise would be wise for our family.
We began to build up a short-term storage of food (www.ready.gov recommends a minimum of a 3-day supply), water and first-aid supplies. At first it was just enough for a week or so, then we continued to build up from there as we were able. Just five extra dollars a week of non-perishable goods each time you shop for groceries will quickly build a decent supply of food to last through an emergency.
Then we began to think about the long-term. What if our country did fall into a great depression or experience a large-scale terrorist attack? What if prices sky-rocketed and we couldn’t afford to fulfill the needs of our family? Though we weren’t planning on those things happening, we wanted to know that we could provide for our family, regardless of the circumstances. As we read and researched, we learned not only about how homesteading could help us be prepared in difficult times, but also the many other advantages of homesteading (like the health benefits and better taste of truly fresh, organic food).
Even if you don’t think homesteading is for you, I’d encourage you to do some research on how to be more prepared. Then take small steps (or big ones!) as you are able until you have the supplies and skills you need to get through whatever circumstances come your way.
I have a very simple recipe for you on this Food Friday! This is THE EASIEST whole chicken recipe I’ve ever made (and would make great Superbowl fare!). This past summer, we teamed up with a couple of families and raised meat chickens. Our family ended up with twenty-five delicious whole chickens in our freezer. Up to that point, I usually bought the boneless skinless chicken breast from the grocery store, and had rarely cooked whole chicken. So I needed some yummy and easy ways to cook these birds! This is by far the easiest, and most moist, way we’ve cooked our whole chickens.
Easy “Roast” Chicken
1 whole chicken (be sure to get one that will fit in your crock pot!)
Salt and pepper
Other seasonings or BBQ sauce, as desired
Rinse chicken under cold water and pat dry with paper towel. Place in crockpot. Season with salt and pepper. Then sprinkle with other seasonings as desired, or just dump your favorite BBQ sauce over it! Cook on low for 8-10 hours, or high for 4-5 (low is preferred).
That’s it! At the end of the day, you’ll have the most juicy, delicious chicken. It takes about 5 minutes to put together, and it’ll taste like you spent hours on it!
Today I want to take a brief break in homesteading posts to talk about another aspect of our life – that of a military family.
This weekend, there were farewell ceremonies across our state to say goodbye to some fantastic men and women, our National Guard Soldiers headed to Kuwait. Many of these men and women were ordered to go, and they willingly do so out of duty to their Country. However, many of these men and women also volunteered to go on this mission, ready to give a year of their lives to support our nation’s efforts in the Middle East. I am grateful to all of them.
As I stood through the ceremony on Saturday for one of these deploying units, I was personally very thankful that my husband was spared of this mission (especially now so, as we are expecting little one #2 to arrive in August). But, as one who has been through it, my heart also goes out to many of our friends who are saying goodbye-for-now, and enduring the heartache that comes with military separation.
The military talks a lot about “resiliency” – the ability to adapt and bounce back from constantly changing circumstances. And these Soldiers and Families are resilient, some facing their third or fourth deployment.
My thoughts and prayers are with the Soldiers as they move forward with their training and mission, and for their loved ones at home moving forward without the daily presence of their Soldier. We are proud and thankful for your continued many sacrifices. And I can say, for my part, I will be praying for each of you everyday until you are reunited.
This week we’re making some yummy frittatas! We’re always looking for egg dishes at our house, and this is one we’ve enjoyed for awhile. It’s a great way to use up leftover veggies. In fact, that is how frittatas are traditionally prepared in Italy, where they originate from, using the previous nights leftovers. There are lots of different ways to make frittatas, sometimes using potatoes or pasta even, but this is how I’ve made them.
Farmhouse Frittata
6-8 eggs
½ cup of milk
1 Tbsp butter or oil, to sauté veggies
About 2 cups of diced veggies (I used peppers, onions and zucchini this time. I’ve also used corn, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans…really whatever I have on hand!)
Bacon, sausage or ham, if desired
Salt and pepper
1 cup shredded cheese (I usually use cheddar)
Beat eggs and whisk in milk, salt and pepper. Set aside. Preheat broiler on low. If you’re using meat, cook that first in an ovenproof skillet on the stovetop. In this case, I used some chopped bacon. I fried the bacon first, then drained the grease and added my veggies directly to the pan with the bacon (instead of using the butter). Sauté veggies until soft and just slightly browned. Give your egg mixture a little whisk, then pour into the pan over the veggies and meat. Cook over medium heat. As the eggs are cooking, lightly lift the edges of the frittata, letting some of the uncooked egg flow underneath. When the eggs are mostly set, but still a little jiggly on top, sprinkle with shredded cheese and put pan under broiler, about 4-5 inches from heat. Watch closely! Take frittata out when eggs are completely set and cheese is melted.
If desired, top with some banana peppers or jalapenos and a few dollops of cream cheese! We typically eat it right out of the oven, but traditionally in Italy the frittata is served room temperature. Either way, enjoy!
It’s time to plan the vegetable garden! We’ll be spending time over the next week looking through the seed catalogues and deciding what to plant this year. It’s so much fun to see all the different things we could grow!
Last year we used all heirloom, organic seeds for the very first time. We started the large majority of our seedlings ourselves, but didn’t have great success with transplanting many of them to the garden. Then there were the bugs that ate through many of our carrots and parsnips, the wet streak in June that ruined the majority of our potato crop (and heirloom seed potatoes are expensive!), and the blight on our tomatoes. We certainly have some adjustments to make, both in varieties of plants we choose and our transplanting process. We did have some successes though, and hope to use the seeds we saved from our favorites that produced well – Kentucky Wonder green beans, a butternut squash variety with the best flavor we’ve ever tasted, and some delicious snap peas. Our lettuce, buttercup squash, popcorn and sweet potatoes all produced fairly well, too.
This year we hope to use all organic, heirloom seeds again. We want to continue to hone our gardening skills, correcting mistakes from last year and building on the knowledge we gained. We also prefer that our food come from non-GMO sources whenever possible, which is why we choose heirloom. However, I am going to allow myself the flexibility to purchase plants if our transplants don’t work out! A good harvest is more important for me than sticking to heirloom seeds this year.
What about you? What are your garden plans this year? I’d love to hear about it!
Welcome to Food Fridays! Every Friday check back here to read a post related to food – whether a recipe, a how-to (like today’s soft cheese!), or another food topic. Today we’re making a basic soft cheese, and it’s super easy! The best cheese to compare this to is ricotta. Although true ricotta is made from the whey that is left after making mozzarella (thank you to the farmer that we get our milk from for that little tidbit!), this soft cheese has a very ricotta-like texture and consistency.
What you’ll need:
1 gallon of milk (I generally use whole, raw milk)
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
Pour your milk into a stainless steel pot. You’ll need a candy/liquid thermometer. Heat the milk to 185 degrees F over medium/medium-low heat, stirring frequently. The key here is heating it slowly enough that you don’t scald the milk on the bottom of the pan.
Once the milk reaches 185 degrees, add ¼ cup of apple cider vinegar and stir briefly. Leave this to sit for 10 minutes while the curds form.
Line a colander with cheesecloth and place over a container to receive the liquid. (The liquid that is left is called the whey. Don’t waste this precious liquid down the sink!).
Strain the milk through the cheesecloth, and allow time to drain. This step may take awhile. If after a couple hours there is still more moisture than you’d like, you can squeeze more of the liquid out through your cheesecloth.
Now you have cheese! The first time I made it, I was shocked with the small amount of cheese that came out of a gallon of milk! But you can use the leftover whey for lots of good things. Plus, YOU just made cheese! Congratulations! Wasn’t that easy?
It will taste pretty bland at this point. Add a little salt and a few herbs, and it’ll be delicious! Mine is going into lasagna for dinner tonight, or maybe on top of a pizza with some sauce and mozzarella. Yum!
Last post I discussed a few of the reasons we choose to raise chickens: nutrition, cost savings, and how it was an easy first step in our homesteading journey. Here are a few more of the reasons we keep chickens.
4. Raising chickens really is easy! – People are always surprised when I tell them how EASY it is to raise chickens! Our daily routine is simple. We collect eggs and check water and food supply twice a day. We don’t spend more than 15-20 minutes total on an average day caring for the chickens. Once a month (more or less depending on need), we spend a little extra time to clean out the coop well, change the bedding, etc. It’s really that easy!
5. Food security – We live in a very unstable world these days. If you pay attention to the news, even a little, you know that our economy is shaky (at best), there are threats and violence throughout the world, and it’s debatable whether our government has our best interest in mind. Add to these concerns that the majority of our food supply is shipped in from far-away places, rather than produced locally, and one interruption in the supply chain could devastate us. Given these worries, and others that I don’t have the space to detail in this one post, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. There are lots of ways to be prepared for an emergency situation, and one of those ways is to raise chickens. Yes, in chickens you have a continual food supply (both eggs and meat). Not to mention, eggs provide nutrients like omega-3’s that can be difficult to find elsewhere if a crisis strikes.
6. Chickens are fun! – I can’t write a post on raising chickens without mentioning how entertaining they are! It’s a blast (especially for our two-year-old) to watch them peck around the yard, scurrying from here to there. And I just LOVE that my son gets to see where his food comes from!
So there you have it! Six great reasons to raise chickens. Are you ready to take the plunge and get chickens yourself? I’d highly recommend it!
Today I want to explain a little about why we raise chickens for eggs. I think it’s a very important step in homesteading, and was one of the earliest ones we made. Here are three of the main reasons we keep chickens, with more to come in a second post.
1. Nutrition – This is probably the most obvious reason we raise chickens. Our eggs are fresh and from well-treated, healthy chickens allowed to free range during the day, with supplemental grain in the evening. Our chickens are eating lots of good, natural things (like insects and plants) that make the eggs much healthier than the caged, solely grain-fed chickens that store-bought eggs come from. (Although during the months we have snow on the ground, they’re eating mostly grain, with food scraps as a supplement to vary their diet. That’s the best we can do in our northern climate!).
2. Keeping chickens saves money (well, sort of) – If you buy the expensive cage-free, organic eggs in the store, then raising your own chickens will definitely save you money. We used to buy the cheapest eggs in the grocery store, but that was before I learned so much about where those eggs come from! If I were to buy eggs now, I would spend the extra money on healthier, cage-free eggs (from a local farmer, if possible!). So in that respect, keeping chickens saves us money. We also keep enough chickens that we can sell some of our eggs, helping to off-set the cost of keeping them.
3. The coop was all set up for us, making it an easy first step – Most people don’t have this blessing. When we moved in, the people who lived here before us had kept chickens. They had a stall in the barn already set up as a coop, with nesting boxes, roosts, and all the feeding/watering equipment we would need. I fully recognize that most people starting out homesteading don’t have this luxury! But it made getting chickens an easy step for us to take, with minimal investment.
So there you have it – three good reasons to keep chickens. In the next post, I’ll talk about how easy it is to raise chickens (really!), how chickens provide food security in an unstable world, and how honestly fun chickens are!
Part of my homesteading journey is learning to cook with ingredients that I have never used before, particularly whole grains. I grew up baking with bleached, enriched, all-purpose flour (and if I’m completely honest, I still use it at times…remember, this is a journey!). The grains we ate at most meals included processed flour (via pasta, baking mixes, etc) or white rice. But I’ve made a conscious effort over the last couple of years to incorporate more and more whole grains into our diet. The benefit is that we get a much higher nutrient content from what we eat (and I get to experiment with cooking new things!).
Here is a recipe that I created and instantly fell in love with when I was first trying to cook with quinoa, an extremely good-for-you, nutty-tasting, whole grain. (Which, if you haven’t tried yet, please do yourself a favor and make some quinoa tonight…it’s delicious!). Quinoa is packed with protein and a lot of other good stuff, like manganese, folate, phosphorus and magnesium. Unfortunately, around here it’s a treat, as it can be a little on the pricey side. But it is well worth it for the nutrition value and we enjoy it immensely when we do have it!
Quinoa with Black Beans and Shrimp
2 Tbsp oil
1 C uncooked quinoa
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small green pepper, chopped
1 – 8oz can tomato sauce
2 ½ C water
1 tsp chili powder
¼ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp cumin
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
Large handful of pre-cooked shrimp, thawed (as you can tell, I don’t always measure the greatest :). Just put as much as you want in there.).
Heat oil in large saucepan over med-high heat. Stir in quinoa, onion, garlic and green pepper. Cook and stir 5-10 minutes, until onion is tender and quinoa is slightly toasted. Stir in tomato sauce, water and seasonings. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to med-low, cover and simmer until liquid is absorbed (about 30 minutes). Add in black beans and shrimp and cook until just heated through.
If you really want a treat, wrap this mixture up in a whole-wheat tortilla, sprinkle a little cheddar cheese on top, and pop under the broiler for a few minutes until cheese is melted. Burritos! Yum!!!
A little over a year ago, my husband and I bought a five acre homestead in Palmyra, NY to live out our dreams of a simple, more sustainable and self-sufficient life. This is how it began…
My husband, Jeff, and I both spent our growing up years in Farmington, NY, just a few miles apart. There was nothing extraordinary about our childhoods. We grew up in typical American families – a convenient grocery store and a quick meal were our working mothers’ best friends – and we went to church most every week (in fact, the church nursery was where we met as preschoolers). Fast forward…
It wasn’t until after we were married and contemplating our future family that we began to think differently about our lifestyle. We began to read (a lot!) and discover a desire we didn’t know we had.
In 2007, the week before my husband went off to Basic training, we moved into an 1890′s Colonial house in the village of Palmyra. We loved it! We put a lot of work into fixing it up, but always knew that it wasn’t the dream – it was our so-called “starter house”. We figured we’d live there long enough to get settled, save up some money, and put our profit towards “the dream”. Then one day my husband had a little extra time to peruse craigslist (a note to wives - this is always dangerous!). In a few short months we said goodbye to our house in the village and moved to our five-acre homestead!
We’re now over a year into our homesteading journey and loving it! We have acquired chickens, planted a garden, and are learning the homestead life as we go. It is definitely challenging, especially trying to make this lifestyle change while my husband serves in the National Guard. With Jeff being away frequently, I’m often left to manage our toddler and homestead by myself. More on that in future posts…. But we’d never give up the life we have and thank God everyday for our blessings!
My hope is that you’ll follow along as I chronicle what we’re learning as we seek a simpler, more self-sufficient life on our homestead.
Joey Norsen is a hopeful homesteader, military wife and mom. From recipes and organic gardening, to chickens and do-it-yourself ideas, Joey will be sharing her experiences (and challenges!) as her family seeks a simple, more self-sufficient life.
