Category Archives: the homestead

Planting? Food?

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Last year I planted garlic, and I failed miserably! I wasn’t patient enough and harvested the garlic before it was big and ready. My main mistake was planting it in an area that I needed for summer vegetables so I couldn’t let them just sit and get big.

This year I made a special little spot for my garlic where they can just grow and grow to their little heart’s delight until they are nice and big and become part of my dinner.

I picked an out of the way spot and moved a garden box into place, I used the soil from my onion box (which I had just harvested) and was ready to plant.

I bought a bag of garlic from the grocery store, I am not picky with garlic, but if you want something special there are many sources on-line for speciality varieties.

Prepping the garlic for planting is as easy as separating the cloves from the bulb.

I placed the cloves, blunt side down into the soil about 3 inches apart.

Then covered the bulbs with about 3 inches of soil.
They are all tucked in now for a long winters nap, and hopefully in a year they will be gracing my stock pot with flavor and healing powers.

My newest project

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Ok, maybe I should be more clear. It is my plan and Dadzoo’s project.

He does stuff like that. He takes the things I dream and talk about and makes it happen.

I love that guy!


Guess what I am getting?

And, no, it isn’t a fence.

I love watching a man work.

And that cowboy hat and boots….makes me tingle….

This is a lot of hard work too, see that little retaining wall next to Dadzoo, all those rocks were pulled out of our yard. And that isn’t even a quarter of them, we grow rocks like Idaho grows potatoes.

We are rock farmers.

He honestly digs a couple of inches and pulls out rocks, digs some more and finds a really big one, then breaks through it and digs some more.

He must love me.

 Check out the view to the East of us.

Isn’t that pretty, too bad there are houses in the way.

So does anyone have any guesses as to what Dadzoo is building for me?

Slow

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Life at times can be rather busy. I find that when I am at my busiest, I am also the most unhappy and unsatisfied with my life and my family’s life. When things are busy around here I snap easier, the kids bicker more and Dadzoo is irritable. While some degree of business is normal an unavoidable in a family of 7, a lot of it is business by choice. By limiting outside activities to those that are most important we leave time for building family relationships, when family relationships are strong peace and harmony in the home are easier to come by.

The afternoon right around our evening meal seems to be prime time for a lot of activity. Everyone is home and going here or there, playing with friends or each other and I am busy preparing our meal. It would be easy to get ornery (which I often do) but I have found that if I look for the beauty and peace around me it helps to calm my frazzled nerves.

The other day I stepped outside to pick peas for dinner, I then sat at the kitchen table to shell them. It was nice and relaxing to sit and slowly prepare food for my family.


I couldn’t help but notice how pretty the bright green looked in my white bowl. The afternoon sunlight streamed in my kitchen windows making for a peaceful scene.

I also got a handful of green beans out of the fridge from when I had picked them the day before and snapped them too, to go along with the peas.

There is something so satisfying about providing your own food.


The Pea Pods and the Bean ends will be fed to our compost pile, to later become nutrients for future vegetables.

The Peas and Beans will fill our tummies!

The Changing of the Seasons

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In times past the changing of the seasons were busy times. Spring was a time for preparing and planting, the long winter was over and it was time to start planning for the next winter. Autumn was a time for harvesting, preserving and hunkering down.

Now days Spring and Autumn aren’t quite the busy season like they use to be. Spring is a time to get out the summer dresses and flip-flops. Autumn you break out the winter coat so you can be warm while you run from your heated house to your heated car.

Not only was Autumn a time of harvesting and preserving it was a time of preparing the home for the long cold winter.

“All day long Pa was busy, banking the little house and the barn with dead leaves and straw, held down by stones, to keep out the cold. The weather grew colder all day, and that night there was once more a fire on the hearth and the windows were shut tight and chinked for the winter.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

We decided last winter that we were going to try to use our furnace as little as possible. I only wish we had a wood stove, but since central heating is the only method of heating our house that meant we needed to keep things nice a cool.

“The room grew colder. There was no heat from the front room to help the cookstove. The cold had crept into the front room and was sneaking in under the door. Beneath the lean-to door it was crawling in too. Ma brought the braided rugs from the front room and laid them, folded, tightly against he bottoms of the doors.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

Since our modern homes have weather stripping we didn’t need to go the extreme of folded rugs at the doors, we did however change somethings. We closed all the heat vents in the bedrooms and kept the thermostat at 65 during the day, at nights 50 degrees. Warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, but still pretty chilly. This meant a change in our bedding. More blankets! This week we had our first freeze, and so Friday I changed the bedding. It may seem small and simple, but to me it means the beginning of winter.

In the summer we only have a sheet and the top comforter, so I added a quilt.


Then on top, our comforter.

At the bottom of the bed another quilt is folded, so it is easy to pull up during night if it is needed. Also folded up under the bed are other blankets within easy reach.

Underneath all the blankets it is easy to stay warm and toasty. Last winter we saved about a 1.50 a day in heating costs. Well worth the extra effort. All the children’s beds are made in the same way, two quilts and an extra at the bottom. The two year old gets two layers of pajamas since he kicks his blankets off, and he stayed nice and warm.

“When Laura’s eyes opened in the morning she saw that every clinched nail in the roof overhead was furry-white with frost. Thick frost covered every windowpane to its very top….Sliding out of bed into the cold that took her breath away, Laura snatched up her dress and shoes and hurried to the top of the stairs….thankful for the warm, long, red flannels under the flannel nightgown.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter.

“That night Laura woke up, shivering. The bed-covers felt thin, and her nose was icy cold. Ma was tucking another quilt over her. “Snuggle close to Mary,” Ma said ” and you’ll get warm.””
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

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How do you prepare for winter?

Free Food

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I have found that as I have been trying to have a more homesteading mentality I cannot let free food go to waste. Now I am not talking about 10 boxes of rice-a-roni for a dollar, frankly I have no desire for that kind of “food” and I wouldn’t waste my dollar on it. I am talking about the wonderfully healthful foods sitting un-picked in gardens all over.

A week ago this Saturday we took a trip to our parents houses and took advantage of un-needed food that was going to waste. First we stopped at Dadzoo’s parent’s home. They are gone serving a mission for our church and the people staying in their home had no need of the good foods there. We picked two bushels of apples and almost a full bushel of grapes. All food that would have fallen and gone to waste. At my parent’s house we picked tomatoes, Grandmazoo had used all the tomatoes she needed, so I picked whatever was ripe. I got almost a full bushel.


The grapes I juiced and got 7 quarts, not a whole lot, but next year I know there will be much more.

The apples hadn’t been sprayed (yay! seriously…yay!) so about half of them had worms. The wormy apples will be cut up and made into apple butter, the ones with out the worms will be stored in our cool basement for eating.


The tomatoes were made into about 12 quarts of tomato juice.

Dadzoo favorite.
(yuck)

For the cost of gas and some of my time we were able to obtain good wholesome foods for the family to eat. Homesteading is all about finding blessing and taking advantage of those blessing. There are trees and gardens laden with fruit this time of year, all we need to do is ask and some of that bounty can be ours.