This year's homesteading plans

Yes, yes, I'm well aware that the year started about 3 months ago...  But the gardening season is just starting here, so it seems an appropriate time to talk about my goals.

First of all, our garden will be considerably smaller than the past two years.  Really small.  Baby #2 is set to make an appearance in mid-July, and I just don't want to be inundated with tomatoes while trying to adjust to having two littles.  I am still planning on making my own sauce and juice and canning fresh tomatoes, but I'd like to do it on my schedule.  So I will buy my tomatoes at the market in order to have some leeway with timing.  I'd hate to let tomatoes rot because I'm exhausted from a colicky baby or something.  I think I'm just going to grow dry beans, squash, carrots, onions, potatoes, and watermelon this year.  Everything should store well, so even if I'm a little slow to harvest, there shouldn't be any issues. 

My hens are going absolutely crazy laying eggs.  I've read in numerous places that a hen needs many hours of daylight to continue to lay, but my girls laid all through winter.  Production did slow down, but I never got less than 3 eggs per day once everyone started laying.  Now with the slightly longer days and warmer temps, I'm getting 5-6 eggs per day.  I love being able to feed them our kitchen scraps and leftovers that are going bad (though we've been really good about having less of those!).  No changes are planned for the girls, barring any catastrophes.

But we are going to get more chickens.  I have a friend with a barn and fenced horse pasture (out of use) who has offered to raise chicks with me!  We're going to get Freedom Rangers, as I have some ethical objections to the cornish cross hybrid (namely, I believe it is cruel to breed a bird to grow and gain weight so quickly that its legs and heart cannot support it.  I realize that sometimes this can be mitigated by withholding feed for some of the day, but I just don't feel it is responsible to breed a bird that is predisposed to so many health issues).  Our 25 chicks will arrive in late May or early June, and we will plan on butchering at about 12 weeks.  I would like to do the butchering ourselves, and another friend may have a chicken plucker built by then that we could borrow to speed things along.

I'm slowly but surely adding to my cooking repertoire.  Recently, I've made homemade Lara bars from dried dates, dried cherries, and walnuts (recipe).  Mine turned out a bit less sticky than they needed to be, but I about blew the motor on my mini food chopper, so I just left it instead of adding more dates and cherries.  I've also made broccoli cheddar soup (yum!) from this recipe.  I halved it and used all cheddar instead of "processed cheese".  I also added onion when I was melting my butter.  I had to cook it WAY longer than 30 minutes to make the broccoli less crunchy, but it was very good.  And...  I got brave and made my own pie crust to use for my chicken pot pie after learning that Pillsbury refrigerated crusts have awful ingredients and artificial colors.  Yuck.  I've always been scared of pie crusts, but decided to give it a go.  I found a recipe using 5 ingredients: flour, butter, salt, sugar, and water.  The first one was a dud (though edible), but version 2.0 was quite good.  I only used 2 1/4 cups of flour, so it wasn't so dry.  I'm impressed with myself.  If you decide to try your hand at crusts, I strongly suggest rolling it out onto a piece of parchment paper or waxed paper.  It makes transferring the crust to the dish so much easier and allows you to use much less flour.  I'm planning on making up a couple and freezing them so that they're on-hand in a pinch.

Foods I want to learn to make are yogurt, a good wheat sandwich bread, more soups, and homemade pasta.

But really, things here will just be business as usual this year.  As always, we're taking baby-steps to increase our self-sufficiency, eat healthier, support our local economy, and live more mindfully.  Some days I feel like I'm not accomplishing anything, but every time I take my lunch to work in a mason jar, I'm reminded of how far I've come.

Building the garden

Slowly but surely, things are moving along.  Shayne and I went to Lowes for lumber on Monday, he cut it yesterday, and today he actually started building the beds.  I'll have 4 new beds, each 4'x8' and 11" deep.  I have a can of amber shellac I'm not using for anything, so I might use it to seal/stain the wood to make it look nicer and a little more weatherproof.  The beds should be ready for final assembly by tomorrow or Saturday.  Yay!

I've decided to keep the single little bed we made last year.  We're going to arrange the new beds around it, making it look like the "5" side of dice.  The shallower original bed will be for strawberries.  I'd like to put a small picket fence around the entire garden, then plant some herbs and perennials around the edges.

I've got this image in my head that I just can't get to jive with our yard.  Every time I look in the side yard, I get this sinking feeling...  Like no matter how hard I try, the garden just isn't going to look the way I want it.  Maybe it's because the property line just looks so terrible.  It's overgrown with weeds, raspberry bushes, and God-only-knows-what.  I'm not even sure how to fix it.  Napalm, maybe??

Spring-ish

I'm one of the few people I know who doesn't dread winter.  I love the snow and don't mind the cold.  That said, I'm SO looking forward to spring.  We've been blessed with a few days of 50+F degree weather, and it's been great.  Unfortunately everything looks gray, dead, and muddy, but out in the yard my tulips and peonies are starting to poke up.  And the sun is actually shining!   Ethan and I have been out for walks a couple of times, and I actually got to go for a run this morning.  I am seriously out of shape, and it really sucks.  I may have lost all my baby weight, but I also lost all my pre-baby muscle.  Hmpf.

Spring also means garden time.  And while I'm excited about expanding my beds, for some reason I'm not-so-excited about starting seeds.  I don't know where I'll put them, don't have any of my supplies...  Ugh.  I'm behind, and I haven't even started yet!

Shayne and I got a $200 gift card for subscribing to AT&T U-Verse, so I think we'll be using that to buy the lumber and top soil for the raised beds.  A friend of mine has composted horse manure and a tractor to load it into our truck, so we're squared away on compost.  It's not organic, but it's free!

I need to start calling around to get estimages for the floor sanding.  The sooner this house is done, the happier I will be.  Shayne and I have a new harebrained idea, but I'll save that for another post...