Play Time is Over

Well, my mini vacation is over. One of these days I will blog about why I was on mini vacation but not today, LOL. Last night, I chopped up some late season sweet peppers and got them dehydrating for soups, sauces and stews this winter. Plus, I picked some late season beans and tomatoes. I'm going to can up the beans and make a sauce from the tomatoes for some of my favorite food this week (Italian food!) to go with that riccotta cheese I just made.

I put my fat foot in the picture with the argonaut squash to give a better idea of the size of these things. I ordered the seeds this past spring from Gurneys for my neighbor who graciously brought me these 2 monsters. I'm going to cook them up and can them for making pies over the winter. I wont bother trying to save seed tho, supposedly the seed doesn't germinate too well (according to the amish guy who suggested my neighbor grow them).

I've got lots of work to catch up on around here and plenty of cooking, canning and other projects for the farmstead. I also pulled the frozen milk out to make a batch of soap.

Lookie what came in the mail for me! A wonderful lady named Coley sent me a box of blackberries! How cool is that? Thank you Coley!

Well, I'm off to do some cooking, more soon!

It's production time

We've finally made it to eating fresh for the year. The garden is finally producing for us. I'm pretty darn pleased with the tire garden plants. What an easy way to go. So much less back breaking work, the weeding is easier and that water stays where it should be instead of soaking into the ground where plant roots aren't. We've even got our first pumpkin growing! Should be a bumper crop for us, plenty of pumpkin to can up for pie filling. I love pumpkin pie, I would bake and eat a pumpkin pie every week if I could. I'm also pretty excited about the zucchinis. last year we only got one round of fruits and the plants died one by one. The plants in the tires are huge and healthy.

Here comes the rain

I still have tops on my beans! The row cover is working great! Now all I need is another 20 of them, LOL. While the hubster was sub soiling, discing and tilling for me, I was working on some cheese and eliminating some of the 10 dozen eggs in the fridge. I made a couple home made pound cakes. A simple recipe, just some flour, sugar, baking powder, home churned butter, a dozen eggs with vanilla and almond extracts. They came out much better than the cheese did. Apparently, 3 day old whole milk does not make good cheese. I know, why didn't I make it the day i got the milk? I was busy and making cheese takes up the entire day. sometimes I just can't stand in my kitchen for 6 hours. The cheese ended up in a pile in the barn lot for the chickens to peck on. Darn shame too, I'm out of cheese! Guess I will try again tomorrow.

I've got my rain water catcher sitting under the eave, it's close to full. I dipped some to water the inside seedlings this morning. They just grow so much better with rain water. When this nice spring rain breaks, I will be creating a couple more grow tubs for the cherry tomatoes and the rest of the beefsteaks. They are flowering in the house and need to get outside quick. I simply can not wait until I can build the arbors to transplant them. The way it's looking, it would be at least 3 weeks before I could even consider getting a few supplies. Time to do something else less attractive but just as useful.

So much needs done, I sometimes feel a little lost trying to get so much done at once. I always want to be everywhere at once instead of concentrating on one thing at a time. Ah, it will all get done........

What to Grow- Self Sustained Living

A major part of living self sustained is feeding yourself. So, what do you grow?

You want to think about what you eat first. If you like potatoes, grow them. Grow a bunch of them.

What about tomatoes? Diced, stewed, tomato paste, tomato sauce... You are learning to cook healthy meals at home right? How many of those recipes use tomatoes? I have stew recipes, rice recipes, egg recipes, bread recipes that all use tomatoes or something tomato. 3 or 4 plants won't do it tho. If you're just wanting to eat a couple here and there, you're in luck. If you want to can up enough tomatoes to make those pots of chili, a few stews and italian sauce dishes, you better think more along the lines of 3 or 4 dozen plants.

I cook with onions and garlic. Everything has at least onions in it. So, you figure a dozen onions in a baggie from the store and you buy one bag a week? How many onions do you need to plant? A bunch of onions!

What about your mixed veges? I use carrots, peas, beans celery and such in several dishes I cook. These can all be grown easily. How about corn? Think about how much corn you eat a month. You would probably eat more corn if it didn't cost so much. Grow yourself some and it becomes free and it tastes sooooo much better than store bought corn.

Sweet peppers is another one. not only can you eat them fresh, they dehydrate very nicely and will add a wonderful flavor to so many dishes. I even use ground sweet pepper on my roasts and in stews and soups.

Do you like hot peppers? Have you priced them in the grocery store lately? Not only are they expensive, the variety is limited. Grow your own hot peppers and you can have habaneros, cayennes, what ever you want!

don't waste precious garden space growing things you are not going to eat. If you don't eat brussel sprouts, don't grow them! If you don't eat leeks or cabbage, don't waste the space to grow them.

Stick to what you are going to eat and use the space you have to grow as much of it as you can. The more you can grow, the less you have to depend on the "system" to feed you.

Thursday Project

This was my big project for the day. It's not really much but i scrounged 5 pieces of wood up from the neighborhood and used the rest of that scrap chicken wire and build one row cover for some of my kidney beans.

I had to put pop bottles over each plant because the ducks were nipping the tops off of them. Apparently, these ducks are lawn mower ducks. I couldn't leave the pop bottles on the beans since they're growing so quickly. I'd hate for them to grow thru the tops over night. How would I get the bottles off them then?

Last spring the ducks were still staying around the barn where I kept them penned up all winter. They ventured out back into the pasture and nipped the corn and kidney beans from my back garden. This year, I am low on seed and I simply can not feed the ducks my seedling plants. So, row covers are in order. Catching up on our bills is harder than I imagined so the row covers are not getting built as quick as I'd like. I may have to find some other way to keep them all from eating the garden.......

There are so many little things that need fixed around here, it's pitiful. The boy knocked a hole in the crank case of the 4-wheeler yesterday and the daughter backed up the dually with the door open and sprung the driver door! If it's not one thing, it's another around here.

It's sprinkling rain and I still haven't got any corn planted....

pacing a hole in the Floor

I've got 2 shelves worth of seedlings waiting for me to get screens built to protect them from the ducks, chickens and cats. I'm also needing a few things I don't have to finish the 2 separate arbors for the cherry tomatoes. The multi colored sweet peppers still aren't big enough to go out yet. I did set a bowl of kidney beans out and the ducks proceeded to step all over them. Hopefully they will live thru it. I have 2 more bowls of kidneys not quite ready to go out to finish out the 2 rows I want to plant. The scrap chicken wire is working beautifully on the tater tires. The taters are sprouting up above the soil in all 4 tires. I'm pretty pleased with the whole thing at this point. I just can't see how growing them in tires is not going to be so much easier than traditional in ground planting. I like it so much, I may never go back to conventional potato rows again.

I'm a little disappointed, it's been 30 days and I do not have a single gourd seed sprouted. Apparently, gourd seeds do not like peat pellets. I've always just scattered the seed in the fall but now that I have ducks and chickens, I have to do something different. I restarted some today using the old tried and true paper towel in the ziploc bag method.

Since viewing that History channel film I talked about the other day, hubby has decided I need more garden. He ran up the road and got a subsoiler from a friend of ours and subsoiled the entire horse paddock. Where am I gonna put the horses now? Ah, it's a good idea and I'll probably move the fencing panels over a bit and use a 40x100 strip down the backside and plant extra sweet corn there. It will double the amount of corn I normally plant and leave my old corn patch open for more pumpkins and melons. A good thing I hope!

Off to get more little chores done......

Getting on with it

Here's my response to the overly intellegent people of Cambridge, MA, home of Harvard U who think "meatless Mondays" will combat global warming.... how can someone be so smart and so STUPID all in the same second??? They're proposals are all in line with creating some srious wealth for the county and doing very little to nothing for our real climate troubles. Hmmmm, let me think back to high school Earth Science, you know, the class that Al Gore slept thru? Complete lack of solar sun spot activity, the worlds population tripled in the last 50 years and we think eating meat and plastic grocery bags need taxed???? How will this fix our problem?

Folks, resist the urge to fall in with all these morons, they don't have a clue what they are talking about. These are the same people we trust to ensure of food supply is "safe", our drinking water is pure and our Constitution is upheld. Boy, did we ever screw up!

You really want to do something about climate change? Plant a few fruit trees and plant a garden. The trees absorb carbon dioxide and will feed you and of course, the garden will do the same. Recycle everything you can, don't run around in your car every day doing little chores you could easily wait on to do several at a time. Get rid of those gas guzzling SUVS and find a vehicle to fit your needs that gets decent fuel mileage. Stop thinking consumeristic and stop wasting and you'll be doing more than your share of "global climate change" control.

As for me, I'll keep baking my bread, canning my vegetables and eating my meat.

In Baking Mode

Why is it Christmas always makes me want to bake everything and anything? Cookies, pies, pastires, breads, LOL, pretty soon my kitchen will be over flowing and I can feel my butt getting bigger by the second!

Back in early summer, my Mom had a catalog sent to me from King Arthur Flour Company. There's a few things I'd love to have from them but I can't afford them and I won't ask my Mom to buy them for me. But what I think is the most impressive about the company and they're website is the recipe section. Just trying out a few of the recipes posted there (for free no less) makes one a better baker. Plus, think of all the money you can save by just taking the time to do it for yourself! I like Italian and French breads. If I drive 70 miles round trip to a grocery store to buy those breads for anywhere between $3 and $5 a loaf, that's quite a bit of time and money I just spent. For pennies on the dollar, I could easily spend that drive time waiting for my dough to rise and bake that bread myself! Instead of having to be out in the traffic and crowds, I get to tend my plants or read something on homesteading or work on any number of projects I have going. For me, that's double benefit! My time is so stretched anymore, it's just easier for me to do it for myself. Not only does it allow me to get a few more things done and save money, but I am comforted in knowing I'm eating healthier. Which, of course, is the whole point of becoming self sustained.

Later today I will post some pictures of the goodies my kitchen is producing today ;) In the meantime, Merry Christmas!

Tired out

No clever thoughts today, I'm too wore out. Taking on a whole new set of farm chores in addition to my own has just plum beat me down. Guess I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I have officially decided that I like cows much better when they are somebody elses and I can go home when I'm tired out! hahahaha

I should be cutting hay but I can't seem to drag myself out to the tractor.

I cut the Farmhouse Cheddar today and I've decided I really like it. Not quite as much as the regular cheddar but it is mighty tasty. I think I will add it to the regular schedule of cheese making.

I got all the monthly bills paid yesterday and there's no money left. I really hate that. I still haven't managed to finish the chicken house or get any blocks for the root cellar. Good thing I'm so dang frugal or we might be a bit uncomfortable! Still, it's hard to go out and feed those chickens every day and look at that half finished chicken house when all I need is a lousy $50 in supplies.

Oh, I almost forgot... the garden is acting like it's mid October. Plants are slowing way down and starting to die back. Even the beans are dying back on me with half filled pods. It's kind of weird. The tomatoes and peppers are still doing well and I'm pleased with that, been dehydrating the peppers and setting the tomatoes up to be canning into sauce about every other day now. Al least we'll have plenty of sauce for chili, stews and italian dishes. All good winter meals for a hungry family.

A nice Friday on the farm

Well, most of the day anyway. Had to do a little running around first thing and it took 6 hours! Good thing I got an early start. The normal stuff, getting fuel, looking for rabbit stuff, truck sticker, searching for guards for the haybine, the monthly stop in to the gun shop and the flour, sugar and salt purchase. Whew! Lots of stops! But, got it done and back to the farm. I got all the loose straw picked up.... oh, I didn't tell ya's about the straw! A neighbor I used to coal mine with combined his wheat(mine too) and pulled the adjuster out so the chaff would windrow for us to bale. 500 bales for the calves, goats and horses. We borrowed a hay elevator thingy from another farming friend and put it all up in the barn loft. What a cool piece of equipment, no throwing bales up into that little hole above my head! Of course, now we have to fix the hole in the barn roof from the inland hurricane. Turns out the barn is in worse shape than we thought but we got the hole fixed so we'll have dry straw and hay up there. Back to the straw... the New Holland combine is a rotary combine and it beats the wheat stalks half to death and makes it very chaffy(is that a word?) So, the bales shed straw and made one heck of a mess all ove the ground. Guess what I did with it???

Now to what I did today after all my running around... I've been weeding a little at a time out in the front patch and my cantalopes are working on flowering. Some plants are still very small but that's okay, they'll catch up. Anyhooo, I raked out some bunny poo, some chicken poo and mixed it with the straw chaff and spread it out on the cantalope patch. I wanted to go all the way down into the beans and sunflowers but the skeeters were munching me! Dang things are like mini vultures! Tomorrow before the rain comes in, I'll take a picture of it and finish it up. Too dark now for a picture.

Cucumbers are producing! I finally have cucumbers! I also have green peppers, tomatoes are just now looking like they're starting to change.

The fat sheep is outside today. He needs some sunshine so I got the pen up and kicked him out into it. So far, so good, he's still in it! That's more than I can say for the goats. I gave up trying to keep them in a pen. They are a pair of Houdinis. So, I've been altenating tying one or the other, staking them out in the shade and so far that's working good. The one that's free runs around a little bit but they both stay close enough to each other to not get into any trouble.

The ducklings and banty chicks went outside to the chicken coop. Waaaa! My house brooder is empty. I miss the little chirps already. Empty nest syndrome! hahahahaha

The coffee plants are doing well, a picture of them for tomorrow as well.....


Oh, I'm attending a Tea Party tomorrow to support my fellow patriots and to voice my displeasure with what Congress and President Obama are doing to this country. I am angry over the health care plan they have and the cap and trade bill currently in the Senate, all the new taxes on everything the can tax......

Getting it done

Even when you don't want to! That's all part of the every day thing you deal with when you live off your own little piece of land. Things just have to be done, even when you just don't feel like it. The heat index here has been 105+ for the past 5 days. Humidity is making it even worse. You can stand in the shade and pour sweat.

The past 4 days have been miserable, we put up 1100 bales of hay. I'm trying to talk myself into getting moving this morning. That 20 acres won't cut itself! I'm still working on the fist cut of hay here, the constant rains we had all May and the first 2 weeks of June didn't help me out.

Looks like the Banty chicks think the waterer is a roost! The tiny little fellers are flying around the brooder tank now, they look like hummingbirds flitting around in there. Still too small to put outside where they will become lunch for 4 legged critters. I'm happy with the hatch rates this spring, even the non broody hens have helped me out. The turkey eggs didn't hatch tho, that's disappointing.

The garden is plugging along, the stunted corn shot up when it quit raining. I might get good sized ears out of the first crop yet! The 2nd and 3d plantings both look good tho so no worries. I've not even looked at the wheat patch yet so hang in there if you're waiting on that. I need to finish the hay fields first, then I'll get to that wheat, it's not going anywhere.

Oh, I almost forgot, it's almost blackberry time!!!! That's right, I've got wild blackberries and lots of em! Pictures of course and we'll be making some jam with them and maybe some home made blackberry ice cream if I can find a good recipe....

NO, I WILL NOT COMPLY, PERIOD!

A look into our future??

I had to share this site I found. It's called Forgotten Michigan. It's photos of abandoned buildings, schools, churches, businesses all around the Detroit area. There's also a section of "other areas" including photos of Mike Tysons mansion. His swimming pool is growing green slime. That's not what bothered me tho, it's indoor and it's bigger than my front yard!

The photos on the site depressed me. I can't help but think if this is what economic recovery has in store for all of us, it's not a pleasant thought. Looking at those photos makes me want to go outside and plant something....

Coffee growing progress

I know, it's been a while since I talked about my favorite thing-coffee plants. Coffee has got to be the very most trying plant a gardener can start. Not because it's hard to do, but because it takes sooooo long to see results. Here they are, 8 of the 9 I started. The 9th could still yet pop up.

This round is for replacement plants for the old coffee plants my winter round of kittens so graciously killed for me. I stated them in one of those cheapie plastic food containers and just kept the soil moist with a daily spritzing from a water bottle. I kept the container on a shelf offset from the windows so it was not in direct sunlight. I did not cover the container, just kept it moist. It took 68 days for the first bean to sprout up.

As they grow, I will post updates on the progress.....

Farm Quickie

The rain has quit and it's like a sauna here today. The sun is shining and it's 90 degrees. Just walking around outside makes you drip. Had to make this quickie post to share what I found in the old barn a few minutes ago.... 7 new ducklings!!!! I've been getting chicks here and there all along but no ducklings and I was beginning to think there weren't going to be any.

Update on the cat scratch... it's ugly but the swelling has gone down a tiny bit....

Well, gotta get back out in the sweatbox, more work to be done!!!

Rain and surprise infections

Well, it rained overnight, this morning and again this afternoon, once again drowning us in rain. Even with spotty clouds in the evening skies, I can still hear thunder in the distance so more must be on the way. The bucket tomatoes are loving all the rain tho. Planted in a mineral tub, about the size of a wooden half barrel, there's half dollar tomatoes on the older plant and the 4 younger ones are starting to come on now. I am so very ready for some fresh tomatoes!

I had an interesting accident Sunday morning. One of the young tomcats I raised in the house last year jumped thru the kitchen window. Since I don't bend well first thing in the morning, I pinned him to the fridge with my leg. As I was working on picking him up, my old Momma cat decided she was going to kick that tomcats butt. She's feeling a bit territorial over the kitchen with her kittens just now starting to walk around. She baled on the tomcat only it wasn't the tom she landed on, it was my leg. All 4 claws and she even bit me! After it happened, I washed it and went on with my day. It got infected and is now swelled and very,very sore. I soaked it in epsom salts today and washed it out a couple times with peroxide. This is just the back claw damage, the bite and front claws came with a dandy bruise and was too gross to post. I so love cats......



I know you are all waiting for the wheat harvest, I am too. I have not even rounded up parts for the thresher yet or worked on my new harvesting tool. Been too rainy. Soon tho we'll be getting it harvested.

Eating from the garden again

Last night in the rain, I picked a few onions and a garlic clove to go in my fried potatoes and on sirloin steaks. Here's a picture of one of the broccoli heads I harvested today. I'm going to melt some homestead cheese over it for supper this evening and dehydrate the rest for winter use.

It poured rain here on and off yesterday with some showers overnight as well. I tried to do a little weeding today but it's just too muddy in the garden. It's still overcast and I can hear random thunder rolling.

I was out on the 4-wheeler yesterday looking at a baler for a friend and got caught in the pouring rain on the way home. Of course, I got soaked. I also picked up a coon dog pup someone apparently dumped on the back road north of me. The little bugger was running around and intersection and 3 hours later when I came back by in the pouring rain, he was still running around in the intersection. He's pretty starved and you can see here he had a collar on that was too small for him so I doubt he's been lost in that intersection long. Of course I scooped him up and he rode home in my lap. He's pretty pitiful looking right now, pics in a couple days tho. Have not named him yet.

Other than that, it's just farm life. Been watching stuff grow, waiting for something good to eat from it. It's coming, flowers on everything!

Harvest start for self sustained living

Well folks, it's about time to go get the wheat. Have a couple more days of rain in the forecast then some dry weather. Looks like I can "pick" my wheat Saturday or Sunday. I will share pictures and a description of how I do it.

Normally my first garden harvest is cucumbers but I lost all my plants during our inland hurricane. They got ripped off the trellis. Not to worry tho, I have a whole line of cucs coming up and a few already flowering all in a row close to last years crop spot. I guess I missed one or 2 and the seed scattered when I cleaned the trellis. That's a good thing for this crazy year!

Looks like I've lost hubbys potato patch. I checked it this morning and every single plant has gone to flower. I picked the flowers off but that won't help. So much for the potato crop this year. I'll be there isn't 20lbs of tater in those hills. Well, now I know not to trust hubby with the tater hills!

I picked my first zuchinni last night. A nice, 8" long zucc. Will make a nice batch fried. The bell peppers are flowered now, I lost one to the goats but the others should produce enough on their own. Tomatoes are flowered with tiny tomato buds on them. I will also be harvesting my first round of broccoli in the next day or 2.

I checked the corn patch this morning and the 4 new rows have popped up along with the beans, sunflowers and peas. Still waiting on the cantalopes, they should be up in another day or so. Going to get another 4 or 5 rows or corn planted along with the kidneys and the rest of the melons today and tomorrow.

Self Sustained Living- eating with what you grow

I thought maybe you all would like an example of a nice meal made with things you grow. Now, I didn't make the noodles, I bartered a dozen eggs for a bag of vege rotinis with a neighbor that makes them. Everything else was produced on my own farm.

Last night I caught up 6 young chickens I raised and butchered them this morning. I don't pluck feathers here, too messy. I just skin my chickens and cut the meat off the carcass and throw the rest- well, you don't really want to know.... Anyway, I have my chicken in a bowl of ice in the fridge for half the day and then I just cook it in a fry pan with some water and some herbs I also grew. When the chicken is done, I simply cut my pieces into small chunks and set them aside while I finish my noodles. I put parsley, dried red bell pepper, minced onion, basil, oregano, minced garlic, some salt, a dash of pepper and a bit of olive oil into a bowl, mix it together and toss my noodles in my seasoning. I add my chicken and some grated home made cheese to it and it's ready to eat.

So, basically, I just showed you how to make yourself a nice pasta salad just like what you would buy in a box from the grocery store without the ferous sulphate, mononitrate, matodextrin, MSG, partially hydrogenated oil, calcium stearate, hyrolyzed corn proteins or any of the growth hormones and antibiotics commercial chicken has in it. Yum, that stuff all sounds so good, doesn't it? Thanks but no thanks! Living self sustained, growing the things that you eat doesn't mean you can't eat all the things you love to eat. You just don't buy them from a store. You are also eating so much healthier without all those chemical preservatives and additives. Think of the money you just saved too.

Real Beauties

Check these babies out! I stole them from my mouse gray Banty hen today. She had 3 of the striped ones plus 3 black ones under her. I left her the 2 smallest black ones as she's still got more eggs under her.

A nice topper for a busy day here. I weeded in between my stalks of corn out back today, paid a bunch of bills and took the kids out for lunch. They like to be treated every now and then. I milked cows and did all the evening chores and found these little beauties.

Tomorrow is the cheese class I'm teaching and around 700 bales of hay to pick up and stack on top of all the stuff that happens daily here... should be an interesting day!