Category Archives: the homestead

Finding Lemon-aid

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I think everyone knows the saying “When life gives you lemons, make lemon-aid”.  Well this spring seems like a bushel basket full of lemons, regarding weather.  It has be cold and wet.  The wet part isn’t so bad, here in Utah, water is good, that is unless you are a farmer and your fields are still under water and you can’t get your crops in.  (There is so much snow in the mountains that there is serious concern about flooding this year.) Still, having full reservoirs in the mountains is a good thing, there have been many years when lack of water is a big issue and we have had to ration water. 

However, the cold, that is another story.  The temperatures feel more like the first of March than then end of April, and there is snow in the forecast this week.  My soul needs a good 70 degree day or two so I can open the windows and enjoy spring weather.  But, there is an upside to all this cold wet weather.  My spring flowers and blooming their little hearts out, and the cool weather extends their blooms longer than usual.  I love my Daffodils, they are my all time favorite flowers, and I have sure enjoyed almost a month of their beautiful blooms.

Parsnips

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Last season I tired a few new vegetables, like I do every year, one of them happened to be parsnips.  I only planted a small patch, not knowing if we were going to like them or not.  Everything I read about growing parsnips recommended that you leave them in the ground until the first freeze, it makes the root sweeter, and just to harvest as needed.  My intention was to dig them up in the winter for some fresh produce, but as things got colder and the snow deeper, I put off digging them up.  Luckily for me, parsnips winter over quite well and as the weather started to warm a little those hardy little parsnips started to grow again.

The weather around these parts has been unseasonible wet (flooding anyone?) and it has rained almost everyday (I wonder if this is what it is like in the Pacific Northwest, very strange weather for desert Utah).  One afternoon there was a beautiful break in the clouds and rain and I ran out and harvested about half of the parsnips.

I love the pretty white color, it was fun to harvest something this early in the season, considering I missed planting any cool weather crops on account of being on modified bed rest last month.  I  sliced and boiled the parsnips, then toss them with a little butter.  To say they weren’t our favorite is a huge overstatement, no one really liked them.  However, I won’t give up on parsnips yet, it took me a couple years to get the kids to like beets (and now they love them) so I will try for a little while with the ol’ parsnips.

My question for you, dear readers, does anyone know of a better way to prepare parsnips for eating?  I still have some left and I would like to serve them in a different way to see if we like them better.

Thanks! 

 

Suburban Homesteading

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This was originally posted September of 2009

I didn’t start my adult life out wanting anything more than the normal things; a husband, kids, a nice house and car. I had very few goals and dreams, nothing to work towards and strive for. As a child I was enamored with the “Little House” books and read them over and over again. I was drawn to the simple, yet hard way of life. I loved how they worked so hard for everything they had and how things such as farming and cooking had a meaning and purpose to them. I longed for this existence, but didn’t know to obtain it. I was living in the 21st century, life was about cute clothes, the coolest gadgets, going out with friends and all sorts of trivials. I needed more than that, I was tired and depressed, going through the motions of living the “good life”.

About two years after Dadzoo and I were married we bought a house. Just your typical little house on a quarter acre of land. We put in the typical green lawn with flower beds, bushes and some trees. There was a little bitty garden in the corner, enough room to grow some tomatoes and zucchini, but not much else.

 
This is a picture of our house eight years later. The front hasn’t changed much, excepting the trees are nice and big, it looks like your typical yard in any typical neighborhood. Through the years the garden slowly got bigger, a foot here and there, but not much more. I was on a quarter acre, I couldn’t have a big garden, I couldn’t produce most of our food, it was only a quarter acre of land after all.

Then I discovered the big wide world of blog land. I was amazed at the diversity! There were people like me out there, all my secret yearnings were being expressed by woman all over the world. I finally felt like I was going to fit in somewhere.


There were women out there that LIKED to cook, and LIKED to home make and LIKED their husbands. There were women out there that felt like being a homemaker and wife and mother was the most important thing they could do. There were women that weren’t afraid to wear skirts all the time, that homeschooled, that make their own bread and cheese. I was HOOKED!


This was what I wanted, this is what main stream suburban Momminess wasn’t giving me. I finally found my community of women that I felt like I could learn from.

I started enjoying the blessing around me and I worked towards making my mundane chores more meaningful.

My little piece of land is a blessing and I wanted it to work for me, instead of just being a nice piece of turf to make the neighbors happy.

One of the first things I taught myself was to bake bread. That was over two years ago and to this day I still bake all our bread. There is something that satisfies my soul to see loaves of bread lined up on the kitchen table cooling.

The next think I did was start to line dry clothes, and I watched my power bill go down. I used the power of the wind and the sunshine to dry my clothes, often times faster than my 800$ High Efficiency dryer and at no cost to me.

During this time of growth and change in our family, Dadzoo and I started to make long term plans. What were our goals, how did we want to live and raise our family? We discussed purchasing a farm in the future, a place where our children can grow and our grandchildren can come visit. Where we can live independent of government utilities and grow most of our own food. We want to work hard and in turn culture a spirit of thanksgiving in our lives.

Knowing that a farm is well into our future we decided to make the most of what we have here and now, we added some garden boxes. This year we harvested many, many pounds of produce.

We have a small flock of chickens that supply us with all the eggs we need, in turn all our kitchen scraps and weeds are fed to them, reducing the waste that we throw into landfills. When we take we also give back in the form of composting all plants material (except weeds), chicken and rabbit droppings and paper, which will later be used to enrich our soil.


Next spring we will be adding even more garden boxes, about 300 more square feet and we are also tearing up grass along the sides of the yard and planting raspberries and grapes.

Suburban homesteading is about learning, growing and trying new things. I found out this year that sheds make a perfect place for growing pole beans.

Suburban homesteading is about turning off the the TV, the radio, the Wii, the iTouch and whatever background noise occupies your life and standing still, listening and observing.

A Family Affair

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One chore that has been long neglected was any sort of gardening or yard clean up.  Usually starting in March, I will slowly get my flower beds and garden boxes cleaned out and ready for the first planting of the season.  Being that I was unable to do the work that the yard needed we are playing a crazy game of catch up.  I plant my cool weather vegetables the first of April and nothing is ready right now for a seed!

On Monday night our family sets aside time for Family Home Evening, we do a variety of things, sometimes it is a religious lesson, or a board game, or I will read out loud.  Yesterday, it was some intense gardening, I needed 4 garden boxes prepared for planting and a flower bed needed to be taken down and some perennials moved so our driveway can be expanded to accommodate that beast of a vehicle I drive around.

So my gardening chores, while they have always been some what of a family affair, became a very intense family affair, with my older girls doing some heavy shoveling and lifting.

Punk #2 is shoveling compost out of the pile into buckets that #1 is hauling to the garden boxes.  It doesn’t look super hard, but that compost is very compact after sitting all winter and cooking, this is the first time this season that it has been opened and turned.  I am happy to say there are tons of red worms.  This is my little slice of black gold heaven in my own yard.
The three little ones are plucking some tiny weeds and old veggies out of the garden box so I can turn the fresh compost into the exesting soil.

We also got four daylilies dug, split and moved to their new home, rocks moved, and two fruit trees pruned.  We go a lot done in an hour and a half, thanks to the hard work of my kids and Dadzoo.