The Harried Homemaker Preps

Yes, I'm Very Much OK...

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 20:58:00 +0000

I've gotten quite a few emails and comments wondering what has happened to me. Thank you all for your concern.

Everything is fine. More than fine, actually. I have so much exciting stuff going on in my offline world that I haven't had a ton of time to spend blogging. I also have been debating how much of my current doings to blog about because I have thus far kept this blog and my personal/professional life separate. That's the way things need to stay.

I have contemplated deleting "The Harried Homemaker Preps" entirely, but I know how much consternation it caused me to have Granny Miller's blog go up and down several times over the past few years, so I nixed that idea. Once I figure out exactly what I feel comfortable sharing, I hope to get back to posting here again.

Create a Grow Heap This Fall For Squash Next Year

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 21:21:00 +0000

One of the speakers who I had the pleasure of seeing several times at the Mother Earth News Fair was Barbara Pleasant. It almost felt like I was listening to an old friend speak since I had read so many of her articles in Mother Earth News.

In her workshop about composting, Barbara talked about how easy it is to grow squash in a Grow Heap. A Grow Heap is basically a giant compost pile that you create in the fall. You can either nestle transplants in the heap in the spring, or simply bury open-pollinated (remember - hybrids will not reproduce true) squash in the compost in the fall. The squash itself will decay into the pile during the winter, but the seeds will sprout in the spring.

Here's where she really got my attention: Barbara said she raised 100 lb of pumpkins this year in one Grow Heap. That's a ton of food for very little effort, so I knew we had to give it a go.

Our grow heap under construction

When we started to clear our garden of summer annuals as the first frost became imminent, we carried the garden waste over to a 12' x 4' spot that is contiguous to our sunflower patch. We layered brown materials (such as completely dried leaves and sunflower stalks) with luscious green materials (basil, marigolds, borage, comfrey, etc.). We made sure not to remove too much dirt from the roots of the plants we pulled out of the garden because, according to Barbara's book, The Complete Compost Gardening Guide, it is best to have about 20% of your pile consist of soil because it will help keep the plants from wilting under water stress. We did not include any plants from the Cucubit family (cucumbers, watermelon, squash, etc.) in the pile because we do not want to introduce any diseases that could affect next year's pumpkin crop.

We also had two compost bins of semi-composted rabbit manure and chicken litter available. We dumped that over the top of the Grow Heap. At that point, the pile stood about 2-1/2 feet tall.

A couple of chickens check out the newly-emptied compost bins. We've started
filling the bin on the left with the Cucubits we did not add to the Grow Heap.

We plan to add yet more to the Grow Heap as fall progresses. We will add a couple bags of shredded leaves and grass clippings plus the remains of the hardy garden plants (cabbage, chard) when we pull them out. The Grow Heap will be reduced in height by half when spring comes around, so it is good to make the pile large to begin with.We'll start pumpkin seedlings indoors sometime in April, and plant them in the heap in mid to late May. I'm hopeful that we'll get the biggest pumpkin crop we've ever had.

This was incredibly easy, so if it works, I'm sure Grow Heaps will become my go-to method for growing squash. If squash isn't your thing, you can also grow tomatoes in a Grow Heap. Any members of the Cucurbit or Solanaceae families should thrive in this environment.

Reference:

The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Road Trip! Our Visit to the Mother Earth News Fair

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 20:42:00 +0000

Hubby Dear and I set off for Lawrence, Kansas, last weekend to visit the Mother Earth News Fair. It is billed as an event for those interested in sustainable lifestyles. As a result, it attracts the crunchy-granola-hippy crowd, Joe and Suzy Suburbia, Old MacDonald (complete in bibbed overalls and straw hat), as well as the preparedness set. I think Hubby Dear and I probably fall under three of those four categories! I'll let you guess which one doesn't fit.

The Fair lasted for two very full days and we had so much fun! There were hundreds of booths offering information and products from herbal remedies to freeze-dried food to solar panels to gardening gadgets to animal castration devices. Interesting stuff! There was so much to look at and learn about that it was hard to fit it all in.

The main attraction for me, however, was the speakers and workshops.

Temple Grandin

Renowned animal behavior expert, Temple Grandin, gave a fascinating talk about how to improve animal welfare.

David Schafer of Featherman Co., left, and Joel Salatin, right

Hubby Dear and I really enjoyed the poultry processing demonstration given by the inimitable Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm. We are thinking about raising broiler chickens now after learning a few tricks of the trade.

In addition to these big name speakers, we attended lectures on raising mushrooms, dairy goats, and heritage pigs, composting, and beekeeping. There were so many interesting workshops that we could have attended had we been able to be in three or four places at once.

Some of the booty I brought home

I brought home a bag full of goodies, some of which you see in the above photo. I bought mostly books and other informational material, but I did buy one item of especial note.

A WAPI

I was able to pick a WAPI (Water Pasteurization Indicator) from the Sun Oven Company. The WAPI they used to sell came on a nylon cord and would burn or melt when being used to test water pasteurization anywhere else than a solar oven. This has been remedied in the product they currently carry, making it much more useful.

If you are able to attend a Mother Earth News Fair, I highly recommend it. There are four fairs scheduled for next year:

April 12-13, 2014 Asheville, NC

May 31- June 1, 2014 Puyallup, WA

September 12-14, 2014 Seven Springs, PA

Date TBD, Lawrence, KS

How to Cook an Old Rooster

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 20:04:00 +0000

There comes a time in the life of every chicken-keeper when you have to make some tough decisions. When laying hens get over two years of age, their rate-of-lay drops precipitously. Unless you want to start buying your eggs from the store and run an elderly chicken retirement home, you need to have another generation of pullets coming into lay and to butcher the old birds.

Our main laying flock will be two years old in the spring, so their days on our homestead are unfortunately numbered. The rooster of that flock became a vile jerk and only seemed to get worse with age, so he met his end before the rest of the bunch. He attacked any human - other than me, usually - who dared to enter his domain. He was rough on the ladies in his harem and had recently started to aggressively attack any chicken who dared to eat when I scattered treats in their run. It was time for Mr. Rooster to go.

Mr. Rooster was calm on his way to the killing cone. He was such a
gorgeous Buff Orpington, but was a complete tyrant.

The problem with old chickens is that they tend to be tough. You definitely will not want to fry an old, heritage breed bird unless you like leathery chicken. An older rooster or retired laying hen calls for being cooked for a long time over low, moist heat.

Here are the two ways I used our tough bird: Rooster and Dumplings and Bone Broth. The broth from an older, heritage breed bird is outstanding, and lends great depth of flavor to these simple preparations.

Rooster and dumplings

Enjoy!

Rooster and Dumplings

1 whole rooster or stew hen
3-1/2 t. salt, divided
3/4 t. pepper, divided
1/2 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. dried thyme
1/4 t. ground red pepper

FOR DUMPLINGS:
3 c. all-purpose flour
1-1/2 t. salt
4-1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. poultry seasoning
1/3 c. shortening
2 t. bacon drippings
1 c. milk

Place the chicken in a large, heavy pot such as a Dutch oven. Cover with water and add 2-1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. pepper, garlic powder, thyme, and red pepper. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to low. You want to cook the chicken very slowly so it isn't tough. Cook for about 5 hours at a very low simmer.

Remove the chicken carcass from the broth; cool slightly, and then pull the meat from the bones. Skim the fat from the top of the broth. Chop or shred the meat and then add it back to the broth. Reserve the bones for making bone broth (see following recipe). Add remaining salt and pepper to broth, taste, then adjust seasoning, if necessary.

Combine flour, salt, baking powder, and poultry seasoning in a medium-sized bowl. Cut in shortening and bacon drippings until the mixture is crumbly throughout. Add milk and stir until everything is moistened.

Roll dumpling dough out on a floured surface to 1/8" thickness. Cut into 1" squares.

Return broth mixture to a boil, then drop the dumplings one at a time into the broth. Go slowly and stir gently to make sure they do not break or stick together. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer, stirring often, for 25 minutes.

Note: If you aren't using an old bird, you do not have to cook it so long. Two hours would probably be sufficient for your typical broiler chicken. The broth will not be as flavorful, though, so you might want to supplement the broth with a chicken bouillon cube.

Nutritious Bone Broth

2 chicken carcasses - you only need the bones
Water
Salt and pepper
2 T. apple cider vinegar
3-4 cloves of garlic, peeled

Take the chicken carcasses and put them in the bottom of a 6 qt. slow cooker. Cover with water, add 1 t. salt and pepper to taste, and other ingredients. Cook on low for 24-48 hours. The combination of long cooking and the vinegar will help dissolve the healthy minerals from the bones. I usually cook this for 48 hours and remove the garlic cloves after the first day. Cool and freeze in freezer-safe containers. Use in any recipe that calls for chicken broth.

How to Braid and Store Onions

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 17:00:00 +0000

This year's garden production has been absolutely outstanding and our crop of storage onions was no exception. Here's a quick tutorial on how to store your harvest to use for months to come.

We had onions in both a double box and a shorter box. This was taken in mid June,
about a month prior to harvest.

Before you go to the trouble of braiding your onions for long(er) term storage, make sure your onions are a variety that will store well. Some onions keep for up to a year, but others (think Vidalia and many other sweet onions) only last a few weeks. We grew Patterson yellow storage onions this year and with care, they should keep into next spring. You can start onions from seed, from sets, or with plants. Onions started from sets do not store as well as those grown from seed or plants, so keep that in mind as well.

You will know your onions are ready to be harvested when the tops start to flop over and go brown. As long as the weather is dry, we let them stay in the the garden for a few days beyond that and then bring them into our garage to dry out some more.

A batch of onions newly harvested from our garden.

If you are not going to braid your onions, you might want to allow them to dry for up to three weeks. That lets the foliage dry out completely, preventing mold and letting you cut the leaves from the bulb with ease. Since we were braiding ours, we let them set for about 3 days or so, just enough to begin the drying process but not so long that the leaves would be too brittle to braid.

The Process

Here's how to do it. It might take you a few tries to create a neat braid, but it really isn't too hard. Even sloppy braids will store well.

Crisscross three onions together just like you were braiding hair.

Tie the onions tightly together with a piece of twine. This string will become
part of the braid, so make sure you cut it nice and long.

Put the long end of the twine in with the center onion's leaves.

Begin to braid, making sure to braid the twine along with the onion leaves.

Put another onion in the center, adding its leaves to the existing strand.

Braid the onion in to secure it.

Add two more onions, one on the left and one on the right. Make sure you line
up their leaves with the existing strands. You will always have three strands of leaves and
you just keep adding more onions and their leaves into the braid. Note the twine is still part of the braid.

Keep on braiding.

Keep adding onions and braiding until you have run out of onions. If you have lots of
onions, stop while your braid is still a manageable size/weight. Once you have added
your last onion, keep braiding the remaining leaves.

Double the leaf "handle" over.

Tie it securely using the end of the twine.

Viola! Your braid is now ready to be hung up. When you want an onion, simply cut one from
the braid. Our first braid is on the left. You can see that it took us a
little practice to make a nice, tight braid.

The ideal storage conditions for onions are 32-40 degrees F and 65-70% humidity. I don't have any place like that available to me at the moment, so we simply hung them up to a rafter in our basement storage room. A root cellar would be ideal. If you keep the onions in a cool dark place, they will last up to a year.

Reference:

Harvesting and Storing Onions

Do you grow your own onions? How do you store your onions?

In Case You Missed It...

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sun, 11 Aug 2013 21:15:00 +0000

I have a sidebar on the right side of my blog page where I keep a running tally of our harvest totals. I know many of you access this blog through a feed reader and you might have missed it, so here ya go!

Our 2013 egg count as of August 10:

1863 chicken eggs & 1076 duck eggs

Needless to say, we have lots of extra eggs and have been selling them to help recoup our costs. Keeping poultry is not by any means a money maker for us. We estimate that it costs us about $3.25 for each dozen eggs produced and we sell our eggs for less than that. Still, it is something.

We've sold a few ducklings and duck hatching eggs, too.

Garden Harvest and Preservation Totals

Current as of August 7:

- 81 Radishes

- 192.9 oz Swiss Chard

- 40.6 oz Mesclun Salad Mix

- 31 heads of Lettuce

- 149 heads and (mostly) side shoots of Broccoli

- 2.3 oz Spinach

- 992 Strawberries.

- I canned 18 half-pints of jam and we ate the rest.

- 61.6 oz Pod Peas. I froze most of these.

-4 bunches of Thyme

- 102.6 oz Kale

- 16 heads of Garlic

- 109.7 oz Shelling Peas

- 22.6 oz. Blueberries

- 11 Cherries

- 77.7 oz Raspberries

A bowl of blueberries and raspberries

- Nearly 27 POUNDS Blackberries, which has been processed into:

-10.5 pints of Raspberry/Blackberry Jam

- 11.5 pints of Blackberries, frozen

- 6 qt. Blackberry Fruit Leather

- 68 Cucumbers:

- 7 pints Bread and Butter Pickles

- 2 qt. + 1 pint Sweet Icicle Pickles

- 6 qt. Dill Pickles

- 2 gallons Deli-Style Dill Pickles, currently fermenting

Flavoring Agents for Deli-Style Dills

- 2 pints of dried oregano leaves

- 213.2 oz Green Beans. I froze these, too.

- 7 heads of Cabbage

- 100 Carrots

-160 Beets

-We ate some and I pickled and canned 3 pints.

- 4 Zucchini

- 2 Watermelons

- 19+ Pounds of potatoes

- 171 onions, dried and braided for storage (Expect a post on this soon.)

- 15 peppers of various kinds

- 17 tomatoes

- 2 ears of corn

- 1 cantaloupe

Harvest Basket

We still have room for improvement, but have been much encouraged by the bountiful harvest we've had this year. How is your garden growing?

Review: The Prepper's Cookbook

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 21:55:00 +0000

I was browsing through Amazon.com the other day and came across a new book that intrigued me -The Prepper's Cookbook: Essential Prepping Foods and Recipes to Deliciously Survive Any Disaster.

Weirdly, I was contacted by the book's publisher the very next day and was offered a copy of the book to review. (Please note my review policy and disclaimer at the end of this post.)

The Prepper's Cookbookby Rockridge Press is available as either a print or an e-book. To me, a kindle is what you do to start a fire, so needless to say, I got the print edition.

This book is not exactly what I expected. I thought from the title that the book would mainly be recipes that utilize food storage; there is some of that, but not as much as you would think. The book is divided into four sections: Preparing Your Supplies and Food Stores, Water-Bath and Pressure Canning , Drying and Storing Your Food, and Quick and Easy Prepper Recipes.

The information included in the first section is very basic. You will not get a lot of guidance on what food you should be storing. The author seems focused on short-term emergencies and recommends that you keep 3 days to a week's worth of food for each family member. I did like the chapter that discussed various powerless cooking options. The contents of the canning and dehydrating sections will be found (and in greater depth, at that) in any canning/preserving cookbook. It quickly covers canning jam, pickles, fruit, vegetables and meat, as well as drying fruit, vegetables, and jerky.

The Quick and Easy Prepper Recipes section reminds me of a Girl Scout camping cookbook. The recipes are mainly prepared in a Dutch Oven and rely on home-canned produce and meat. These recipes would work well in a short-term emergency or camping trip. The recipe for Apple Fritters perplexed me because it contained absolutely no apples; I know lots of us store dried apples, so that would be an easy ingredient to incorporate. Other than a bit of dried milk and eggs, you will not find recipes that use much of the food that you are storing if you follow the LDS recommendations (wheat, dried beans, etc.).

If you are just starting and need guidance on the first steps toward becoming prepared, I would recommend the book Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient when the Unexpected Happens instead. If you'd like recipes that use traditional food storage, Cookin' with Home Storage or the Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook will better serve your purpose. The Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving has a wider array of information on home canning and freezing and I haven't found a book on dehydration to beat Preserve It Naturally , the manual that came with my Excalibur Dehydrator.

In summary,The Preppers Cookbook is not horrible, but probably not worth purchasing unless you have to have every prepper-themed book on the market. Borrow this one from the library.

Disclaimer: I was contacted by Callisto Media and sent a free copy of The Prepper's Cookbook. As always, I was not compensated for this review and all opinions are my own.

The Easiest Fruit to Grow for Survival, Plus, How to Make Blackberry Fruit Leather

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 20:51:00 +0000

If I could only grow one kind of fruit or berry, I think it would have to be blackberries. They grow wild in many parts of the country, but they are also incredibly easy to grow in your yard or garden. They pretty much take care of themselves. All we do is fertilize them with organic fertilizer in the spring, spread mulch around the canes, and keep the area weeded. That's it. Complex spraying regimes are unnecessary and our bushes have always been untroubled by insects or diseases.

'Triple Crown' blackberries require a trellis while 'Chester' blackberries do not.

You can find varieties of blackberries that will grow well in USDA hardiness zones 5-10. We live in zone 5, so we bought two varieties of thornless blackberries that can withstand cold temperatures. The 'Triple Crown' variety is my favorite. It does require a trellis to support its long, floppy canes. Those long canes, however, yield huge numbers of berries, up to 30 lb PER VINE.

A 'Triple Crown' berry cluster.

After all the berries have been harvested for the year, you have to cut the spent canes back and tie up the new canes that grow to take their place. Simple.

Blackberries! And a few raspberries. Raspberries are pretty easy to grow, too, but
they are not nearly as bountiful producers for us.

Blackberries are also exceptionally nutritious. Each cup of berries contains 50% of your RDA of Vitamin C, plus large amounts of fiber and cancer-fighting antioxidants.

About the only drawback to blackberries is that the fruit is highly perishable. If you pick them when they are dead ripe on the vine, you really only have a few days to eat them before they are past their prime. They are easily preserved, however.

I can blackberry jam and freeze many pints of whole berries to use in cobblers later in the year. You can also dehydrate the berries whole or try this recipe for blackberry leather (aka fruit roll-up). The leather will last up to a year when stored properly.

How to make Blackberry Fruit Leather:

Based on a recipe in The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves.

There are only two ingredients in this recipe:

5 lb blackberries

1 lb applesauce. I used sweetened applesauce that I canned myself.

The first, and most difficult, task is to seed the blackberries. You can stew them and then press the softened berries through a fine-mesh sieve, but that will drive you bonkers and possibly stain your entire kitchen with blackberry juice. It is much easier to use a food mill of some kind.

I recommend this Roma Food Strainer. It definitely will get the job done.

My Roma Food Mill, ready for action.

I use the berry screen attachment (sold separately) and it keeps every single one of those tiny blackberry seeds out of the juice. I usually pass the pulp through the mill three times just to make sure I get out all of the juice and then I feed the remaining pulp to my chickens.

The blackberry juice and applesauce mixture

Stir in the applesauce and you are ready to make fruit leather. (The applesauce is used to improve the texture of the final product. You can't really taste it.)

I have an Excalibur Dehydrator that I really like and recommend. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can try making this in your oven, though I haven't tried it and can't vouch for it. You would want to keep your oven at the lowest possible setting, use parchment paper instead of plastic wrap, and check on it often.

Assuming you have a dehydrator (and if you are a gardener or prepper, you really should!), this is how to proceed:

Line the dehydrator trays with plastic wrap, taking special care to make sure the wrap is secure. I left an 1" margin on both sides of the tray so the air could circulate more easily.

Fruit on the prepared tray

Spread the fruit mixture on the plastic wrap. You are looking for a depth of approximately 1/4", but you want the edges to be thicker than the center. That will help the whole sheet of fruit dry evenly.

Loading up

This recipe filled 6 of the 9 trays of my Excalibur. I set the temperature at 135 degrees. After about 5 hours, I checked on the leather and it was making excellent progress. I turned it down 20 degrees, just to make sure that the leather remained pliable and did not get brittle. After a total of 15 hours, the leather was at the perfect consistency. It was tacky to the touch, but not wet. The time it takes your batch of leather to dry will be dependent on many factors - your dehydrator, the humidity, how thick you spread the fruit, etc.

Done!

Then all you have to do it remove the plastic wrap from the tray and roll it up like a scroll.

I cut each roll in half so they would could fit in quart canning jars for storage.

Next, I used my Food Saver's accessory attachment to vacuum seal a clean, used canning lid to the jar.

Et viola! A healthy, homemade snack that will last until next year's blackberry harvest. If I can keep it hidden from my kids, that is...

Summer on the Homestead

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 17:56:00 +0000

If you've been wondering where I've been, here's a few pictures to show why I've been so busy. It has been the best garden year yet.

Looking northeast

Everything is growing and yielding so well. Even the crops that are traditionally our Achilles heel (carrots, I'm looking at you...) are very bountiful this summer.

Looking southwest

A few of the ladies checking out the companion planting arrangement. The cucumbers have been
trellised up since I took that photo, which unfortunately cuts out their view. Too bad, because
I think they were taking notes on improvements for next year. ;)

One thing we did differently this year was to focus on companion planting. You can see that we have healthy borage and marigold plants in with our cucumbers in the above photo.

Cabbages, dill, and cantaloupe

We also have dill and nasturtiums mixed into some of the plantings.

'Black Velvet' Nasturtium

I think the beneficial plants do make a difference. It seems like our bug problems are a bit muted this year. Anyway, our garden is more colorful and that is a pleasure.

The sky after a storm. Freaky.

The 'Gypsy' tomato plant we started from seed. We are just starting to get a few tomatoes turning red.

'Tribute' everbearing strawberries

'Chioggia' and 'Detroit Red' Beets

Our beets grew exceptionally well.

Pickled Beets

I was able to can several pints of pickled beets. Yum!

Late June Orchard

We now have a mini forest of tiny trees and bushes in our orchard. Unfortunately, the 'Gold Rush' apple that was so hard hit by cedar-apple rust last year didn't make it. The 'Surecrop' cherry we planted just this spring has also died from mysterious causes. We'll replace those trees in upcoming years and I have made it a mission of mine to select rust-resistant trees from now on.

One of our new poultry pens

My poultry addiction continues full-tilt. I am up to five different pens for chickens and/or ducks and have become a serious breeder of two different varieties. Hubby Dear just loves building all the infrastructure for me. ;) The whole family loves the process of incubating and hatching ducklings and chicks.

Have you seen this video yet? Yeah. That video describes what happened to me to a T.

Raspberries and blueberries

A harvest basket: cucumbers, carrots, 'Costata Romanesco' zucchini, and cabbage

A typical meal: frittata, broccoli, salad, and peas, all from our homestead

I have updated the harvest and egg totals on the sidebar. I hope your summer is as bountiful as ours has been.

Babies! And Where My Monthly Prepping Budget Disappeared To

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:15:00 +0000

Sweet young things are popping out all over.

Baby 'Tribute' strawberries

An Itsy Bitsy 'Montmorency' cherry

A tiny 'Jonafree' apple

'Earliblue' blueberries-to-be

The rest of the garden has started to pick up its growth, too.

The north half of the garden, May 22. Compare to just a week earlier here.

South half. The pea gravel is all down, finally

Lettuce galore

'Sugar Sprint' pod pea flowers

I think we are going to finally have success growing broccoli!
The heads grow visibly bigger every day.

I know I haven't posted about much other than gardening-related topics recently. And my monthly prepping plan? That's largely gone, sad to say. The reason for that is this empty space on our homestead:

Hubby Dear won't have to mow this part of our lawn too much longer

I sacrificed my prepping budget to save up for a building project this fall. If all goes according to plan, we will construct a barn, complete with hay loft, a milking area, and a wing for my ever-expanding collection of poultry. That is the plan; we'll see how it matches up to reality. We are paying cash for this construction, so our budget will be the factor that determines how grand my poultry palace will be and how many new species of animals will make their way to our homestead.

My name is Emily and I have a problem. I am addicted to livestock.

I feel better just admitting that! ;)

Oh Spring, Where Art Thou? Garden and Orchard Update

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sun, 12 May 2013 20:28:00 +0000

This is what my garden looked like at this time last year:

The north half of my vegetable garden, mid-May 2012

2012 had an extremely mild winter which was immediately followed by one of the hottest and driest summers on record. In May, our garden looked great! Just don't ask about July or August...

This spring has looked more like this:

Snow in May!

The last time it snowed here in May was when my great-grandmother was a young girl. What a contrast to last year.

The lingering cold has really slowed down everything in our garden and orchard, but although things are growing slowly, the good news is that everything is growing. We have had abundant rain that has put a dent in the drought and things are green for the first time in a long time. That feels good.

GARDEN

The north half of our vegetable garden, mid-May 2013

The south half of our garden, mid-May 2013

We added another three raised beds to our garden, so our vegetable garden consists of 528 intensively managed square feet. We still have to haul more bags of pea gravel to cover the new pathways. This fall we plan to add the final box to complete the garden and then start the process of doubling each box's depth.

We follow the Square Foot Gardening method, but have changed things to suit us as we have gone along. The Square Foot Gardening method claims that you only need a 6" deep box, and for many plants, that is true. When there is a drought, however, deeper soil retains moisture a lot better and some plants really appreciate the extra depth.

We put a lot of effort into starting our own transplants this year. After all the time and energy we poured into that, it was really disheartening when our transplants were subjected to snow and freezing rain time and time again. Even the cold hardy plants like cabbage and broccoli really took a beating, but they are slowly making a come-back. This would have been a great year to have cold frames or row covers set up. Oh well, some other year, perhaps.

Broccoli to the rear, cauliflower in front

Radishes and cabbages. The cabbage in the front right was one of our original group
that was planted and got frozen. The outer leaves died off, but it has grown back.
The cabbage to the rear of the photo was one we planted later on.

Lettuces and spinach in various stages of growth

Forellenschluss lettuce

I love this lettuce! Forellenschluss is German for 'speckled like a trout'.

'Encore' lettuce mix

Doesn't this picture make you want to take a bottle of ranch dressing out to the garden and chow down right there? No? Maybe that is just me. ;)

Strawberry blossoms

'Little Marvel' peas in the foreground, Swiss Chard in the back. We are growing lots of chard
this year for poultry feed.

These barely visible sprouts may not make the most interesting photo, but they are really exciting to us.
Carrots! Lots and lots of carrots! We have had the hardest time growing carrots. I think the moist,
cool conditions must have been just right for them to germinate.

Garlic and some of our onions

The only fly in the ointment is our garlic. You can see that it is coming in pretty patchy. All of the cloves have sprouted, but most of them are still tiny. Strange.

ORCHARD

Things are slowly developing in the orchard, too.

'Montmorency' cherry blossom

One of our first tasks in the orchard this spring was to install limb spreaders in the trees that needed them.

May 5th - limb spreaders in place, starting to leaf out

It is important to attain a crotch angle (Yes, I just said that! I promise it is a real term!) of around 45 degrees between the limbs and the trunk. This assists light penetration and air circulation which are both important for healthy trees. Limbs with narrow crotch angles are also more prone to splitting away from the trunk under a heavy load of fruit. We will leave the limb spreaders in place until fall when the branches should have set into their new positions.

We also planted four new trees: a 'Stanley' prune plum, 'Surecrop' pie cherry, 'Sunglo' nectarine, and 'Contender' peach. Our orchard now consists of: 1 row each of blackberries and raspberries, 3 blueberry bushes, 3 apple, 3 pecan, 2 cherry, 2 pear, and 1 each of almond, peach, plum, and nectarine trees.

Our new 'Sunglo' nectarine

We have gotten the tree planting method espoused in The Holistic Orchard down to a science. If you want to learn the correct way to plant a fruit tree, check out the post I wrote on the subject here. We'll continue to get practice since our orchard is far from complete. (Insert Hubby Dear's groans as he reads this.)

Our apple trees were just planted last spring, so I wasn't expecting any fruit this year. Our 'Jonafree' apple tree (the one with the spreaders pictured above) surprised me by going into bloom.

'Jonafree' apple buds in various stages of development

A king blossom. The king blossom is the one in the center of a cluster of blossoms. It is the one that
will open first and has the potential to form the largest fruit.

'Earliblue' blueberry blossoms.

Our blueberries are also blossoming. We've only had them a year as well, but the bushes are three years old and so this is the first year we could expect a small crop.

Of course our weather has been so wacky, I was worried that these blooms would be killed by frost. We continue to get frost warnings, so I did a little research to find out at what temperature the blooms would be killed. Here is a handy little sheet that summarizes killing frost temperatures for many types of trees. This is another site just about apple trees and one about blueberries.

The upshot of those articles is that as long as it stays in the 30s, the blossoms will be safe. I just hope temperatures stabilize soon so that we can plant out our tomato and pepper transplants.

Has your spring been delayed like ours has been? What is growing in your garden?

How Many Fruit and Berry Plants Do You Need?

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sun, 05 May 2013 20:13:00 +0000

When I made my orchard plan a few years ago, there is one factor that I didn't take into consideration - how much fruit does each type of tree or berry plant yield? I recently did some research on this topic and I was astounded by some of my findings. The dwarf prune plum tree we just planted, for example, will only yield between 1/2 and 1 bushel of fruit. When the plums are all dried into prunes, that's really not much. On the other hand, when our apple trees are all in production, we can expect to get between 50-75 bushels of apples each year. That's a lot of applesauce.

Here are some estimated annual yields for commonly grown fruit and berry plants in the United States. Obviously, your results will vary based on your location, climate, etc., but this is a good place to begin your planning.

FRUIT TREES:

'Jonafree' apple bud, May 2013

Apples -

Dwarf - 5-6 bushels per tree
Semi-Dwarf - 10-15 bushels per tree
Standard - 15-20 bushels per tree

Apricots -

Miniature -1-2 pecks
Dwarf - 1-2 bushels per tree
Standard - 3-4 bushels per tree

Cherries, Sweet -

Dwarf - 8-10 gallons per tree
Semi-Dwarf - 10-15 gallons per tree
Standard - 15-20 gallons per tree

Cherries, Sour -

Dwarf - 3-5 gallons per tree
Semi-Dwarf - 12-18 gallons per tree

Nectarine -

Miniature -1-2 pecks
Dwarf - 3-4 bushels per tree
Standard - 6-10 bushels per tree

Peach -

Miniature -1-2 pecks
Dwarf -3-4 bushels per tree
Standard - 6-10 bushels per tree

Pears -

Dwarf - 6-8 bushels per tree
Standard - 12-15 bushels per tree

Pears, Asian -

Dwarf - 1 bushels per tree
Semi-Dwarf - 1-2 bushels per tree
Standard - 3-8 bushels per tree

Plums, European -

Dwarf -1/2-1 bushel per tree
Standard - 1-2 bushels per tree

Plums, Japanese -

Dwarf -3-4 bushels per tree
Semi-Dwarf - 4-5 bushels per tree
Standard - 5-6 bushels per tree

BERRIES:

Blackberries from my garden

Blackberries - 3-4 plants per person. Average yield per plant is 1 quart. (Note: My Triple Crown blackberry vines far outproduce this estimate.)

Blueberries - 2 plants per person. Average yield per plant (if you have multiple types for cross-pollination) is 3-4 quarts.

Raspberries - 25 plants per person. Average yield per plant is 1-2 quarts.

Strawberries - 25 plants per person. June-bearing strawberries (the ones that produce all of their berries at once) yield about 1 pint per plant. Everbearing strawberries (produce small amounts from June through first frost) yield about 1/2-1 lb per plant.

Most folks run out of room in their yard long before they plant enough trees and berries to produce an entire year's supply for their family. With judicious planting, however, even small yards can produce bountifully. We have an entire acre that we can use for our orchard and berry planting, if we find that we can maintain that much! In five years, it is technically possible that we could grow all the fruit we eat! Of course, that leaves the problem of storing and preserving all that fruit, but that is where a root cellar, canning, freezing, and dehydrating comes into play.

References:

I compiled this information from the Plant Manuals at starkbros.com. I highly recommend Stark Bros. We have bought all of our fruit and berry plants from them and are very pleased with their quality and customer service.

Link to a Must-Read Post PLUS DIY Seed Starting Rig Update

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:04:00 +0000

First, I wanted to share an interesting post about how many seeds to store/how much land you need to survive from The Survivalist Blog. If you haven't read it yet, be sure to check it out as it has some food for thought. You need to store many more seeds than you may think!

Second, remember that DIY Seed Starting Rig I made? We have been putting it to hard use and have made a few adjustments to it with experience.

Here is what it looks like today. There are plants growing on four levels of the shelving unit. If we massively increase our garden in years to come, we'll definitely have to add another shelving unit, but this will work for now.

The rig in use

We started out with only one shop light per level, but soon found that the seedlings on the outer edges of the flats were bending toward the light.

Two shop lights work better than one. You can use one in a pinch, though.

We rotated the plants so all would have nice, straight stems, but found that it was better to just add another shop light to each level. I am so pleased with the results that we have gotten so far.

'Dwarf Blue Curled' Kale

'Farao' cabbage. These babies need transplanted soon.

'Waltham 29' Broccoli'

Our broccoli plants are getting extra TLC at the moment. They got a little stressed for water (see below) and appear to need some additional fertilization. I'm paying close attention to their moisture levels and dosing them with liquid kelp and effective microbes.

The above plants were all started a month and a half ago and are certainly large enough to be hardened off and transplanted outdoors. There's just one problem: we keep getting snow! We're supposed to get another 1/2 ft. of snow this weekend.

'Purple of Sicily' cauliflower - started on March 10. We just thinned the seedlings to one per pot.

You might also notice that we have ditched the toilet paper roll seed starting pots. They work fine, but they hold so little soil that they get dried out quickly and require transplanting up into large containers. I am lazy enough that those factors make a difference for me.

'Five Color Silverbeet' - Rainbow Chard

Last weekend we planted our first seeds that require additional heat to germinate - eggplant and peppers. Tomatoes are also in that category and will be started this weekend. We bought some seedling heat mats to place under the flats that hold heat-loving plants. They raise the temperature 20 degrees above the ambient temperature of the room.

The eggplants have sprouted

Apparently it is working because we have baby eggplants. I've never grown eggplants before.

Eight shoplights + two seedling mats = a perceptibly warmer room. We think the additional warmth in the area is one of the causes for the stressed broccoli. We are paying very close to attention to moisture levels so they will outlive the lingering winter weather and survive to get transplanted outdoors.

Have you started your spring garden yet? What is growing at your house?

Getting baby chicks for the first time? Here' s what you need to know

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:15:00 +0000

If you walk into your local farm/feed store during this time of year, you are likely to be greeted by the sound of peeping chicks. Beware! Do NOT go and look at the chicks (or ducks, turkeys, rabbits, or whatever cute and cuddly creatures the store might be selling) unless you are prepared to bring some home. It has been scientifically proven that it is impossible to see baby poultry in a feed store without birds coming home with you. That's what I tell Hubby Dear, anyway. (Remember how I got into raising turkeys?)

I highly recommend that folks who can raise poultry, should. It is fun and an easy way to become more self-sufficient. Before you decide to bring home those sweet, fluffy chicks, however, you need a few basic supplies and a little bit of knowledge. I will lay out those essentials in this post.

Supply list:

1. A brooder - A brooder is simply a confined area where baby poultry can be safely raised under controlled conditions. It can be as simple as a large cardboard box, an old stock tank, or a plastic storage tote. Hatcheries also sell brooder kits like the one pictured below.

We bought our brooder kit from Randall Burkey.

That brooder was fine for 17 chicks for about 2-1/2 weeks. After that time, I gradually increased the size of the area they had to roam. Day old chicks can do well with 6 sq. inches of space per bird, but you will need to increase that to 1 sq. foot by the end of the first week and 2 sq. feet per bird by 2-3 weeks of age. Chickens need 4 sq. feet of coop space and 10 sq. feet of run space per bird as an adult. They grow quickly so have a coop or at least a plan for a coop in place before you commit to getting chickens.

Note: Chicks can and will fly. Turkeys are even more prone to aerial feats. You better have a plan to keep your birds inside the brooder once they can fly (about 2 weeks of age or so for chickens). Take it from me that it is not fun to step on a pile of turkey poo because your poults decided to be adventurous.

2. Brooder light – Mama chickens keep their babies nice and toasty by snuggling them under their wings. Assuming you don't have a broody chicken kicking around your place, you will need to be the mama for your birds and give them heat. Brooder lights are very inexpensive and easy to adjust for the correct temperature. You want the area directly under the light to be 95 degrees at chick level. Decrease the heat (by moving your light up) by 5 degrees every week until the temperature inside the brooder is the same as the ambient temperatures.

The brooder light is on one side. Some folks claim using a red light decreases incidences of picking,
but as long as the chicks have adequate room and don't get bored, that is not likely to be a problem for you.

Place your brooder light at one end of the brooder so that your chicks can get away from the heat if they get too hot. I always make sure the food and water is in the cool zone. The best way to tell if the temperature is correct is to watch their behavior. If they remind you of a day care run amok, things are probably just fine. It is normal for them to sack out in a pile under the heat lamp every so often. All babies need plenty of sleep.

3. Bedding - You need an absorbent, non-slippery material for your chicks to live in. I use pine shavings, which are sold in compressed bales in any feed store. They smell nice and are very absorbent. I put about 3" of shavings in the bottom of my brooder and then cover it with a layer of paper towels for the first four days or so, changing the towels daily. After the chicks have learned to eat their starter feed and not pine shavings, the paper towels are no longer necessary. Do NOT use sheets of newspaper as bedding. They can be too slick for baby chicks and can lead to leg problems. Do NOT use cedar shavings because they cause respiratory problems.

Bales of pine shavings and lidded trash cans for feed storage - two essentials for us.

I turn the litter regularly (actually, the chicks do an excellent job of that) and add more as necessary. You might be surprised to read this but my chicken coop is very rarely stinky. It doesn't smell like much of anything, to be honest. To quote the very inspiring Joel Salatin, "if you smell manure, you are smelling mismanagement." The key to this is the deep litter method. The deep litter method is beyond the scope of this post, but if you are interested in learning the best way to manage manure, I suggest reading Harvey Ussery's book, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.

4. Chick-sized feeders and waterers - You will want an appropriate-sized feeder and waterer for your chicks. I like to start out with the small quart-sized ones and move up to larger containers as they grow.

Midnight the Australorp getting her first drink. Note the marbles.

When you bring your chicks home, it is a good idea to gently put their beak in the water and make sure they take a sip. You can also put marbles in the rim of the waterer to make sure the chicks can't get in and drown.

Lunch time!

5. Chick starter - Chicks need to eat food especially formulated for their rapid growth. I buy bags of chick starter/grower, though some feed companies separate out those two categories. Each chick will eat about 10 lb of starter to reach 10 weeks of age, so buy accordingly. I try to keep a month's worth of feed on hand at all times, but no more than that lest it grow stale.

If you have ducklings, they can eat chick starter, but they need additional niacin. My ducklings get brewer's yeast added to their feed, which provides this essential nutrient. Turkey poults also appreciate the niacin and a higher protein "meat bird" starter will support their extra growth.

6. Chick-sized grit - The chicks won't need grit until they start eating foods other than chick starter. My chicks get treats of mashed hard-boiled eggs, torn dandelion greens, and other healthy goodies starting at about one week of age. At that time I give them access to a container of grit.

Three week-old chicks enjoying a snack of mashed hard-boiled egg

That's it! It's really not difficult and it is extremely rewarding. Good luck to those of you embarking on raising poultry for the first time this spring.

Resources I recommend:

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers by Harvey Ussery
Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, 3rd Edition by Gail Damerow

Perennial Vegetables to Establish Now for Your Survival Garden

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 22:57:00 +0000

I've been watching a series of old British TV shows called "The Victorian Kitchen Garden", "The Victorian Kitchen", and "The Victorian Flower Garden". I find it really relaxing to learn about gardening in days gone by. It's kind of like visual Valium for me. I love it.

One of the things that these programs have done is to pique my interest in perennial vegetables. The Victorians grew a much wider array of vegetables than are commonly consumed today and many of them are perennials that will grow back year after year. If you establish several of these types of vegetables in your garden now, you will have them in place should an emergency situation occur. You could consider these plants to be living members of your food storage.

Perennials in the kitchen

There are perennial vegetables mentioned in many of the episodes of the series listed above, but this episode of "The Victorian Kitchen" is the one that really got my wheels turning. If you start watching around 8:00, you will see the head gardener, Harry, come in with a basket of Jerusalem and Chinese artichokes for the cook, Ruth. The finished dish of Chinese artichokes is shown at about 10:30.

E8 Victorian Kitchen - The Dinner Party

Don't those Chinese Artichokes look like some sort of insect larva? I'm not sure that I would have an easy time putting them in my mouth, but I'd enjoy giving it a go.

Another reason to plant perennial vegetables - OPSEC

Besides the obvious advantage that perennial vegetables have in coming back every year with little help from the gardener, it is also worth noting that many don't look like vegetables to the uninformed. Jerusalem artichokes, for example, are a type of sunflower and could simply be a pleasing addition to your landscape. If the worst happens, the average Joe isn't going to recognize that your sunflowers have serious edibles growing underground.

This is what a Chinese Artichoke plant looks like. Does this look edible to you?
Image source: shizuokagourmet.com

What should you plant?

There are whole books dedicated to perennial vegetables out there. (Try this one,especially if you live in warmer climates.) The following is a short list is composed of plants that will thrive in my Zone 5 climate. Many of these plants can be grown in climates both warmer and cooler than Zone 5. Follow the provided links to learn more about each plant and its needs.

Asparagus - A classic, but, alas, no one in my family likes it. Maybe we can use it to barter. It must be grown for several seasons before you can harvest spears and even longer if you start with seeds rather than crowns.

Crosne (aka Chinese Artichoke) - Fool your friends and make them think you are eating insect larva! A plus for the time-crunched or fuel-conscious: these tubers can be cooked or eaten raw.

Dandelions - Maybe you don't need to plant these in your garden, but you probably have them in your yard already. Just make sure you don't spray them with chemicals and you can eat them or feed them to your chickens.

Egyptian Walking Onions or other Multiplying Onions - The article I linked says that they "tend to be more reliable and productive, less day-length sensitive and less subject to the depravations of pests and diseases" than your standard onion. Yes, please!

Good King Henry - I love the fanciful name of this plant. Apparently it is similar to spinach, though it also has edible flower buds and seeds. It can be grown in the shade, so if you have an area of your yard that is too shady for traditional vegetables, this would be a great option.

Lamb's Quarters - This is a plant that grows as a weed in many areas of the country. You can eat any of the above-ground parts of the plant and it can be used as a substitute for spinach.

Lovage - Lovage can be grown as a substitute for celery and it was used for medicinal purposes in times past.

Patience Dock - This is a hard-to-find plant, but apparently worth the search. It is supposed to taste like spinach (Is that the perennial vegetable equivalent of "tastes like chicken"?) and is one of the earliest greens in the garden.

Russian Red Kale - I am a new convert to the wonders of kale. If you've never tried it before, it reminds me of broccoli, but in leaf form. My kids gobble it up and it is great livestock feed as well. Many varieties of kale self-seed readily, which makes kale a great addition to your perennial vegetable plan.

Rhubarb - Rhubarb is a popular spring dessert ingredient, but don't forget that the leaves are poisonous!

Skirret - This is a vegetable I had never heard of until I watched "Victorian Kitchen Garden". Apparently it was a favorite of Queen Victoria. The edible part of the plant is its roots.

Sorrel (all kinds - Garden/Common, or French) - Tasty, lemony-flavored greens.

Sunchoke (aka Jerusalem Artichoke) - This tuber is popular with chefs and can be eaten raw, roasted, or boiled and pureed. This is one of the most attractive perennial vegetables to me simply because the plant is so pretty.

A sunny patch of sunchokes
Image source: http://myselfsufficienthome.com/jerusalem-artichokes/

I hope you find this list to be a useful starting place. I definitely plan to make perennial vegetables part of our garden in the future.

Helpful References:

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway

Perennial Vegetables: Grow More Food With Less Work , by Vicki Mattern, Mother Earth News, April/May 2012

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles by Eric Toensmeier

Indoor Seed Starting 101, Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:24:00 +0000

This is the second post in my series about starting seeds indoors. Click here for part one if you have not read it yet.

---------

Once your seeds have germinated and had a chance to grow a bit, it is time to thin your seedlings to one per pot.

Day Seven: Before Thinning

Snip, snip!

Pick strongest seedling in each pot and use a pair of scissors to snip off all of the other seedlings. It can feel almost painful to cut healthy little seedlings, but I assure you that it is very important. You want to give the remaining seedling all the space, light, water, and nutrients so that it will grow big and strong. We fed our thinned seedlings to our rabbits, which helped ease the pain a bit. Happy bunnies will cheer anyone up!

After thinning

Tip #9: Thin your seedlings to an appropriate spacing.

As the seedlings grow taller, keep an eye on the distance they are from your lights. You will have to move the lights up to maintain a 1-2" distance between the plants and the light. Don't forget to keep the soil moist, but not sodden, as well.

Tip #10: Check on your seedlings daily to monitor light and moisture levels.

One extra thing you might consider doing is to set a fan blowing gently over the seedlings. This will help to strengthen their stems so they will be able to better withstand the elements when they get transplanted outdoors. Or, if you really want to be hands-on, you can softly run your fingers over the tops of the seedlings for one minute, two times per day. This supposedly will have much the same effect.

Tip #11: Strengthen those stems by running a fan.

This is the sight that greeted me on my daily checkup seventeen days after sowing our cabbage, kale, and broccoli seeds.

'Farao' cabbage seedlings

'Dwarf Blue Curled' Kale

'Waltham 29 Broccoli'

All the seedlings were doing well, but we noticed that it was time to transplant the ones growing in the tiny toilet paper roll pots.

We moved the seedlings from the toilet paper roll pots into larger containers.

The toilet paper roll pots work fine, but they do dry out more quickly than the plastic pots we made from recycled materials (pop bottles, milk jugs, etc.) and they only hold a tiny amount of soil. Rapidly growing plants need a bit more room.

It can be a bit tricky to transplant such tiny seedlings without harming them, but if you remember to only handle the seedling by the seed leaves (NOT the stem!), you will avoid damaging the plants.

Tip #12: Transplant as necessary. Handle only by the seed leaves, not the stem.

At this time, you should consider fertilizing your seedlings. The seed starting mix we are using is fortified with fish meal and provides enough nutrients for plants to make it to the transplant stage without additional fertilization. Many seed starting mixes are essentially void of nutrients, however, so you will need to fertilize. Use a gentle fertilizer like liquid kelp diluted in water and fertilize about once a week during one of your routine waterings. You can even make your own organic liquid fertilizers for free if you so desire.

Tip #13: Fertilize with liquid fertilizers once plants have true leaves.

Keep caring for your seedlings like this until it is time to transplant them outdoors. Before you throw them out in your garden, however, you need to first harden them off.

See what a difference a decent light rig makes? Last year's transplants were super leggy, but at
least I hardened them off properly! Here they are hardening off on a shady porch
between a rosemary plant I overwintered indoors and a blueberry bush.

Hardening off is the process by which plants get acclimated to the outdoors. Start by placing a tray of seedlings in a shady area outdoors for a couple of hours. Gradually build up the time the plants spend outdoors and the amount of sunlight the plants are exposed to over a week or so. This is an essential step for happy plants that survive their final transplanting into the garden.

Tip #14: Don't forget to harden off the plants.

That's it! Now you have all you need to know to grow healthy plants from seed indoors. Happy gardening!

Indoor Seed Starting 101, Part One

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 04:17:00 +0000

There may still be snow on the ground, but it is the perfect time here in Zone 5 to get our 2013 garden started. We had variable success starting seeds last year, but after Hubby Dear's research and an investment in infrastructure, we feel confident that this year will be more fruitful. Here's how we started our broccoli, cabbage, and kale transplants.

First, gather whatever pots you want to start your seeds in.

Toilet paper roll pots aren't just cheap - they really work great!

We are using a mix of containers. Here is the link to my tutorial on making little pots out of toilet paper rolls.

Recycled containers drying after being dipped in a bleach solution

We are also recycling a variety of plastic containers. We washed them, drilled several holes in the bottom of each pot, and sanitized them prior to planting in a 10% bleach solution. Seeds and baby plants can be very delicate and mold or bacteria growth from an improperly cleaned container could kill them.

Tip #1: Sanitize recycled or previously used seed starting containers.

In addition to containers, you will need a seed-starting mix. Seed-starting mix is different from regular potting soil in that it is sterile. Sterile conditions will greatly improve your chance to avoid the dreaded damping off disease and other issues that can plague seedlings started in potting soil.

You can make your own seed-starting mix. Here are a couple of "recipes" you can try: this one or that one. We decided to go ahead and buy a large bag of it from Johnny's Selected Seeds and I noticed that even our local Wal-Mart is carrying organic seed-starting mix.

Tip #2: Buy or make a proper seed-starting mix.

The night before we planted our seeds, we poured out the amount of seed starting mix that we estimated we would need. Then we added enough water to moisten but not flood the soil. By noon the next day, the moisture level was perfect - similar to a wrung-out sponge.

Mini Me demonstrating the proper consistency of the seed starting mix

Since the soil would be consistently moist throughout, the seeds would get a serious head-start to germination.

Tip #3: Pre-moisten your soil prior to planting.

Now that you have sanitized containers, moistened seed-starting mix, and, of course, some seeds, it's time for the fun part. Scoop the soil mix into the pots and then tap the container several times against whatever work surface you are using.

Tapping the pot

You will be surprised just how much the soil will settle when you tap the pot and eliminate air pockets. This is a simple trick that can make a huge difference in your results. Top off with more seed-starting mix if necessary and then lightly press the soil down with your finger

Tip #4: Tap, tap, tap that container!

Then add your seeds. We put two seeds in each container.

Covering the seeds. These are "Farao" cabbage seeds.

Then we lightly covered the seeds with soil so that the seeds would be at the depth recommended on the seed packet - about 1/4" deep for the type of seeds we planted (all are brassica or cole crops).

Planted!

The next step was to lightly water the containers. We chose to use a spray bottle so we could gently mist everything.

Next, we placed a dome over our seed starting tray. We happened to buy a dome kit, but you don't need to get fancy. You can slide the whole apparatus into a plastic bag and it will work just as well. The point is to keep moisture in until germination occurs.

Tip #5: Keep things covered until the seeds germinate.

Sprout little seeds! Note: we have our lighting rig on, but it is not necessary for germination.

About 48 hours after we planted the seeds, the first cabbage sprouts poked their sleepy heads above the soil. Success!

As soon as the first seedling pokes out of the soil, take OFF your dome or plastic bag. Turn on your lights or put the seedlings in a sunny window. Here's the post about the DIY seed starting lighting rig we put together. The seedlings need a lot of light to grow into strong, sturdy plants. We have our lights on a timer so that the plants get about 16 hours of light a day.

Our cabbage sprouts on day three

Broccoli, cabbage, etc. will sprout just fine in our cool basement. The lights are 1-2" above the plants; this is to give the seedlings the optimum amount of light but it also warms them ever so slightly. We will have to provide supplemental heat for our tomato, pepper, and eggplants, however, since they are heat lovers.

Tip #6: Check heat requirements for the optimum germination.

Cabbage on day five.

I can already tell that this year's plants are going to be more sturdy than those we started in 2012. It is amazing how much of a difference the correct amount of light makes.

Tip #7: Let there be light! Lots and lots of light.

Since the lights are on a timer, it takes very little of my time to care for the seedlings. They need to stay moist, but too much water can cause the seedlings to rot. We are watering from the bottom in an attempt to minimize that problem. We pour water into the bottom tray, let the plants soak up the water for 30 minutes, and then pour off any remaining water.

Tip #8: Water from the bottom.

Don't forget to read Part Two of this post. I cover thinning, fertilization, transplanting to large containers, and hardening off in the next installments.

Some Helpful References:

Best Tips for Starting Seeds Indoors, by Barbara Pleasant, "Mother Earth News", Dec 2012/Jan 2013
Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett Markham

A Healthy, Paleo-Friendly Food Option for Your Bug-Out Bag

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 01:32:00 +0000

I've been eating Paleo-style for the last couple of months and I have noticed great changes in my health. My digestive system is working well, my aches and pains are greatly diminished, and I've lost 15 lbs.

One of the challenges of a Paleo lifestyle for the preparedness-minded is that so many food storage staples are no-nos. I'm still working on replacements for a lot of the key foods, but I do have a great item I can recommend for your short-term food storage, particularly for bug-out bags (BOB).

A PaleoKit from Steve's Original

A PaleoKit is a vacuum-sealed package full of nutritious goodness. I am not a big beef jerky aficionado, but I really like this and consume the jerky, nuts, and dried berries with gusto. I eat at least one of these PaleoKits per week as a meal replacement. They come in several sizes: small (snack size), large (meal size), and even a 1,006 calorie MRE option. They are compact and can easily fit in a glove compartment, purse, or BOB.

I have tried both the original and the grass-fed versions of the PaleoKit. I hate to say it, but I prefer the original PaleoKit; the grass-fed beef jerky is quite tough and requires an extraordinary amount of chewing. The jerky in the original PaleoKits I've eaten has been quite tender.

The other thing to keep in mind about the PaleoKit is that it only has a shelf life of 5-6 months. That's because the food is very minimally processed and has no preservatives. The very thing that makes the PaleoKit great for health-conscious preppers works against it as a long term food storage item.

The ingredients list of a Grass Fed PaleoKit

You could make your own version of a PaleoKit by vacuum-sealing jerky, nuts, and dried fruit in a FoodSaver bag. It would be cheaper for you to make it yourself, but at least where I live, it would be a challenge to find jerky without a bunch of junky preservatives.

Another item I can endorse from Steve's Original is the PaleoKrunch grain-free granola bar. I have tried both the original and Espresso flavors and they are delicious! They are a great, healthy snack option with about a 6 month storage life.

You can buy PaleoKits and PaleoKrunch bars directly from Steve's Original here.

Do you have any healthy food items in your bug-out bags? If so, I'd love to hear your ideas.

How to Make Seed Starting Pots from Toilet Paper Rolls

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 00:31:00 +0000

We have less than a week before we sow our first seeds of broccoli, kale, and cabbage. I am so excited to be getting started with this year's gardening tasks. While the year is young and nature is still hibernating, it's easy to be full of optimism and forget the failures of last year's growing season.

Hubby Dear and I are using mostly recycled materials as pots to start our seeds in. This is quite perplexing to my mother-in-law. She really doesn't get our homesteading activities - she grew up on a farm and is very happy to live in boring suburbia today - but when she heard about what we were going to do, she actually tried to drag Hubby Dear to a home improvement store so that she could buy us some "real" (plastic) pots! No thank you, mom.

I saw a picture of toilet paper roll pots on Facebook somewhere. I wish I remember where so I could cite the source, but it seems to be a pretty common idea. This exercise in frugality is also a great way to recycle toilet paper rolls, which are something that we have in abundance. Here's how to do it.

Hubby Dear makes a great hand model, doesn't he? ;)

Take a toilet paper roll.

Flatten it out in one direction.

And then flatten it in the opposite direction.

This will give your toilet paper roll four corners.

While the toilet paper roll is flat, cut it in half. You can make two tiny pots of the size suitable for seed starting from one toilet paper roll. We also used paper towel rolls and were able to get 5 pots from one of those rolls.

Now make small (1/2") cuts on the corners that you created by flattening the tube in two directions. There are four corners, so make four cuts.

Here the tube has been cut and is now ready to be folded.

Start folding the flaps in to create the bottom of the tube.

If you tuck the flaps under just so, they will stay in place perfectly. It is just like how you can secure the top flaps of a cardboard box under each other.

The finished product

That's it! The finished pot is about the same size as the pots made from Jiffy Peat Pellets. Once you get the hang of it, they come together very quickly.

We have about 64 of these little guys already made.

Eventually, the seedlings started in pots like these will grow too big for the container and will have to be transplanted. That's why we've saved our milk jugs, 2 liter bottles, etc. for the last month. No need to buy pots here!

We will plant our first seeds in less than a week, so I'll be able show these pots in action soon.

The Good Life

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 21:56:00 +0000

We've been doing a lot of thinking around here about our lifestyle. We're feeling a bit... dissatisfied, I guess you would say. There's been many things that have led us to this point.

Hubby Dear's work situation. As a health care provider, his job gets more mired in bureaucracy by the day. He is tired of working long hours for "the man" while feeling unappreciated and missing time with his family.

The Bible. When I read through the book of Proverbs recently, there were a few verses that jumped out at me:

Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready; after that, build your house. Proverbs 24:7

Like a bird that flees its nest is anyone who flees from home. Proverbs 27:8

Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations.

When the hay is removed and new growth appears and the grass from the hills is gathered in, the lambs will provide you with clothing, and the goats with the price of a field. You will have plenty of goats’ milk to feed your family and to nourish your female servants. Proverbs 27:23-27

Note that I completely skipped over Proverbs 27:15-16. I can assure you that verse isn't applicable in our house. Right, honey?

The joy and satisfaction we get from working outdoors and doing things ourselves. Even in the coldest weather, I always enjoy working with my poultry. I usually have a goofy grin on my face just from the pure joy I feel. I love to walk in the orchard, weed the garden, and formulate plans for the future. While he doesn't tend to rattle on about it like I do, I know that Hubby Dear feels the same way about the vegetable garden.

The Good Life. We recently watched "The Good Life", a British sitcom from the 1970s. It is a funny show, but more importantly, it struck a nerve with us. Episode one begins with Tom Good turning 40 and discovering that his life isn't satisfying. If you start the following video at about 16:25 and watch through 20:30, you'll see what transpires.

Watch The Good Life - S01E01 - Plough Your Own Furrow.avi in Comedy | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Tom and Barbara Good decide to live a self-sufficient lifestyle in the suburbs and comedy gold is born. But what if this scenario isn't just a made-for-TV gag? What if we could do it, too?

Of course there's a big difference between Tom and Barbara and Hubby Dear and The Harried Homemaker. Unlike them, we have a mortgage (which we are working diligently to pay off ASAP) and four kids to feed, clothe, and send to college.

We are not entirely sure what this will look like for us, but we have decided to pursue self-sufficiency to the extent we are able to at this point in our lives. We are saving to build a barn with a dairy cow, beef cattle, and possibly a pig to follow. You can bet that more poultry is also going to be part of that plan. Our garden and orchard will continue to expand along the way. When we turn 40, we don't want to have any of the regrets that Tom Good expresses in the above video. Maybe by then Hubby Dear will be able to work only part time and we can live off the fruit of our labor.

What do you think? Do you have the urge to live "The Good Life"?

How do I know how much to plant? Check out this useful resource.

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 13:59:00 +0000

I came across this useful chart on the website of one of my favorite seed retailers, Johnny's Selected Seeds:

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/assets/information/vegetablecharts.pdf

It tells you how many seeds you need to buy to fill in a 100' row (or acre, if you garden on that scale!) and, most usefully, how much you can expect to harvest from that seed. For example, you need 170 broccoli seeds for a 100' row and the average yield will be 75 lb of broccoli. If you are trying to grow all your family's vegetables, that is very useful information.

Enjoy!

2013 Garden Plan

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 20:35:00 +0000

I thought it was high time for me to share our 2013 garden plan. As usual, we have high hopes for a fabulous year in the garden. As I shared last month, we are going to start many of our crops from seed indoors using our DIY seed starting rig. We will grow several new species of plants as well as a few varieties that are new to us. Hubby Dear has been spending a lot of his spare time reading about new techniques that we can use to boost yields in our garden. In an attempt to fight back against the wee vicious beasties (a.k.a. squash bugs) that devastated our zucchini crop last year, we are incorporating some flowers to attract beneficial insects and will also try using row covers.

The north half of the garden.

I'm sorry the plan came out so blurry, but hopefully you can read it well enough to follow along. Assuming there are people following along. I know not everyone finds garden plans as entrancing as I do! We bought our seeds from a variety of catalogs. Baker Creek Seeds, Seed Saver's Exchange, Johnny's Selected Seeds, and Peaceful Valley are my favorites. I also bought a few seeds I couldn't get elsewhere from Southern Exposure Seeds and Territorial Seeds.

Zucchini - We're trying Costata Romanesco again this year. The one tiny zucchini we ate before the wee vicious beasties destroyed our plants last year was fabulous.

Watermelon - Golden Midget is another re-do from last year. Our vine plants just were eaten up by bugs and didn't produce much.

Cucumber - Boston Pickling We grew 'Double Yield' from Seed Saver's Exchange last year and it was a total bust. Time to try something new.

Corn - We are planting Golden Bantam again this year. Despite living in the corn belt, we have the worst luck growing corn. We think Golden Bantam would have been a good choice for us but we planted it too late last year. If at first you don't succeed...

Pumpkin - We have successfully grown 'Baby Pam' in the past, but decided to try Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkins this year. I wish I had room for all the varieties of squash I'd love to grow.

Kale - Dwarf Blue Curled I'll be honest. I've never tried Kale before. Not that I haven't wanted to, but it is not something that our podunk small town grocery store carries. Everyone I know raves about how good kale is (especially in chip form) and how good it is for you, so I thought it was time to grow some. If we don't like it, at least poultry will appreciate it.

Garlic - We grew Music variety garlic last year, enjoyed a nice harvest, and saved back some of the best heads for this year's crop. You can read about how we planted our garlic this past fall here. Now that I have finished using all our garlic from 2012, I know how much more I should have planted for this year. I need to double or triple this next year!

Onion - We hope to get the hang of seed starting this year so we can start our onions indoors from seed next year. In the meantime, we are buying pricier plants of Patterson storage onions.

Strawberries - Our plants from 2011 and 2012 survived the summer and have nicely filled in. The Lord willing, we should have an excellent harvest of Earliglow and Tribute strawberries this year.

Lettuces - We are planting Encore Lettuce Mix and Winter Density, two favorites of ours. We are also adding Forellenschluss, a pretty spotted lettuce whose name means 'Speckled Trout Back'. Fun!

Spinach - We grew 'Corvair' last year and really liked it. I only eat spinach as a baby salad green and I don't like savoyed leaves, so it worked great for us. Unfortunately, Johnny's no longer carries that variety so we will be growing its replacement, Pigeon.

Tomatoes - Ah, the king of the summer garden! We have some new tricks up our sleeves to use on our tomatoes this year. Our yield was drastically reduced by the weather, but we think that with sufficient mulching, proper watering, and pruning, we might do better this year, even in a drought. We are growing Amish Paste, Green Zebra, Brandywine (Sudduth's Strain), Gold Medal, Italian Heirloom, and Dester varieties. Baker Creek sent us a free packet of Gypsy tomato seeds, so we will be attempting to start that variety from seed. The rest will be transplants. We didn't want to chance our whole summer's crop on beginner seed starter's luck!

Peppers - Peppers will be one of our most challenging plants to start from seed this year. More on that in mid-March when we start them. We are growing Bull Nose Bell, Chocolate Beauty, Traveler Jalapeno, Aurora, and King of the North.

Broccoli - We hope that by starting Waltham 29 indoors that we will actually get to taste some homegrown broccoli. We're planting broccoli, cabbage, and kale in mid-February, so more on that soon.

Cauliflower - Hubby Dear really wanted to grow Purple of Sicily which is, unsurprisingly, a purple cauliflower. I remain skeptical about this choice.

The south half of the garden. Next year we will finally have all our garden boxes
built for a total of 608 intensively managed sq. ft.

Green beans - How could we not go with our famous "zombie beans"? Just when you think they are dead from the heat of summer, they spring back to life and produce a second crop. Provider it will be again this year.

Cabbage - Farao is one of the very few hybrids that we still grow, but I am very loyal to this variety. It is easy to grow and tastes great. I just need to learn to like sauerkraut so I don't have to make umpteen batches of bierocks when the cabbages all get harvested at once!

Radish - Radishes were one crop that we were never short of last year. We are growing Early Scarlet Globe, Watermelon, and White Icicle this time around. I vaguely remember reading about someone using White Icicle Radishes as a trap crop for aphids and other pests, so that is why that variety got added to the mix.

Cantaloupe - We will grow Kansas again.

Carrot - The carrot is our gardening nemesis. It doesn't matter what permutations we have tried with watering, depth of planting, etc., we have not had very good luck with carrots at all. Hope springs eternal, because we're trying again, this time with Bolero pelleted seeds.

Peas, Pod - Sugar Sprint, another repeat.

Peas, Shelling - We're switching to Little Marvel for reasons of economy. We really liked the Lincoln variety we grew last year but this kind is much cheaper. Those pennies add up.

Beets - We're trying Chioggia again as well as Detroit Dark Red.

Swiss Chard - Five Color Silverbeet We're growing an awful lot of this vegetable and no one in our family even likes it! It is very pretty and the poultry loves it.

Eggplant - Again, not a vegetable that most folks in my family will eat, but Mini Me wants to grow it and we're starting Florida High Bush eggplant from seed.

Potato - Yukon Gold again.

We've got our fingers crossed that the insanely hot temperatures and drought abate this summer so that all the love we're pouring into our garden will translate into some actual food. While I love square foot gardening, we found out the hard way that heat and drought hits a raised bed filled with Mel's Mix much harder than it does the soil at large. That's one reason we'll be deepening our boxes in upcoming seasons.

Beneficial Insect Attractants/Companion Plants:

We garden organically, so the only pesticides we will use in our garden is my pest repellent spray, a bit of Bt (a type of bacteria that kills caterpillars) for cabbage worms, diatomaceous earth for creepy crawlies, and some neem oil for wee vicious beasties like squash bugs.

This year we decided to focus on attracting the good kind of insects to our garden, the kinds that will eat the baddies up while leaving our veggies alone. Certain flowering plants attract beneficial insects and our plan is to sprinkle them liberally around the garden. They include:

Calendula
Marigold
Borage
Nasturtium
Dill and Basil - We usually plant these only in my herb garden near the house, but they are also awesome beneficial and companion plants.

I'll be interested to see what difference these plants will make in our garden. At the very least, it will be more colorful!

Out of the garden:

We never have enough room for all the plants we want to experiment with.

Jellymelon - Hubby Dear has been intrigued by this plant for years. Also known as the African Horned Cucumber, it supposedly tastes like a mix of pomegranate and citrus. I wasn't willing to substitute this for cantaloupe or another of our regular vine plants, so we will try to grow this among the baby trees in our orchard.

Sunflowers - We grew Peredovik black oil sunflowers for our birds last year. They loved it! We are tripling the amount we are going to plant, plus adding American Giant sunflowers and a Sunflower Mixture just for fun. The sunflower patch will be sited south of our main garden and east of our orchard.

"Chicken Mix" - We are going to build our birds their very own square foot garden (covered with hardware cloth so they can't scratch it up) in their run and sow it with an Omega 3 chicken forage blend.

That, more or less, is what we have planned. Have you made your garden plans and purchases yet?

DIY Seed Starting Set-Up

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 19:33:00 +0000

Now, I'm not the kind of girl that needs to have the latest or most expensive kind of purse or shoes. Far from it, actually. I have exactly one black leather handbag which I bought in 2004. I spent $90 on it back then, so I feel like I should be able to get at least another couple of years out of it.

Those kind of objects don't tempt me to spend a lot of money, but homesteading gadgets and gewgaws do. When I saw this lovely seed starting set-up from Gardener's Supply Co., I nearly started to salivate.

3-Tier Sunlite Garden, sold by Gardener's Supply Co.

We attempted to start some of our vegetable plants from seed last year and had mixed results. The main problem was that the plants got leggy due to lack of adequate light. This doodad would completely eliminate that problem. There's room to start quite a few seedlings or nuture larger transplants and the level of the light fixtures is easily adjusted.

There's just one problem. The Sunlite Garden costs $599, shipping not included. Ridiculous, isn't it? No worries. You can create your own, even larger version of this set-up for a fraction of the cost.

Here's how we did it:

Materials List:

One 74"x 48" 5-Tier Shelving Unit - $79.97 at Lowe's
Four 48" T8 fluorescent shop lights - $17.98 each at Lowe's
One 12 pack of 4' T8 Cool White Fluorescent bulbs - $29.98 at Lowe's
Eight S-hooks - 78 cents for two at Lowe's
One power strip with timer - $13.98 at Amazon.com

GRAND TOTAL FOR HARDWARE: $198.97 plus tax

We assembled the shelving unit and then hung the shop lights from each shelf

I found out from my research that you don't have to use special lights to grow strong seedlings. A standard fluorescent light will work provided that you can adjust it so that it is 1-2" above the seedlings. Shop lights already come on 9" chains; all you have to do is buy a few S hooks to hang them from the shelving unit at the level you need. Seedlings need about 12-14 hours of light a day and a power strip on a timer makes it easy to provide the right amount of light while saving energy.

The level of the shop lights can be easily adjusted using the chains and S hooks

Other expenses: You will also need something to start your seeds in. You can buy sterile seed starting medium or make your own. We plan on recycling toilet paper and paper towel rolls for seed starter pots (read about how to do that here) and milk jugs for larger transplants, so those will be free. We invested in some leak-proof seed starting flats, clear domes to cover the flats during germination, and a couple of heat mats to use with the most heat-loving plants. We will be starting seeds inside our house, but if you are planning on doing it out in a garage or cold basement, you will need to have a source of heat for the seedlings.

We'll be starting our first seeds in less than a month. I can't wait to put this system into use! I think I'll take all the money we saved and buy something truly useful.... like more chickens!

Reference:

Best Tips for Starting Seeds Indoors by Barbara Pleasant in the Dec 2012/Jan 2013 issue of Mother Earth News

--------------

Anyone else starting seeds indoor this year? What kind of set-up do you employ?

January has been "Prep-uary" at our Place

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:49:00 +0000

We've been very busy this month with prepping-related projects.

Hubby Dear and I cleaned and organized our storage room. It had collected a lot of odds and ends and, frankly, it was becoming a bit of a dump. I inventoried our long-term food storage and came up with a long list of items I need to buy. We've used some things that we need to replace. According to the food storage calculators, our family now consists of four adults and two children (children 7 and up are "adults" for food storage purposes), which means that I also need to increase the amount of food we store in general.

Once we cleared out the clutter, it became apparent that we had used A LOT
of our food storage and never replaced it.

We also have a lot of canned goods that need to be eaten and restocked. Rotate, rotate, rotate!

We still have some of the onions we grew last year left. They are stored in cheap pantyhose, which works
pretty well to keep them fresh and mold-free. You'll notice that a few of them have sprouted, though!

Because of some health concerns that I have, I started following a Paleo diet back in December. I no longer eat grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugars, or refined fats. In other words, I can't eat most of our food storage! I hope that this way of eating will help resolve some of the problems I have as a result of chronic inflammation in my body, but it does provide a challenge to store food that meets the criteria of my diet. I'm brainstorming a list of Paleo-friendly foods to add to our storage and this is what I've come up with so far: sprouting seeds, canned coconut milk, coconut oil, lard, nuts in the shell, and canned tuna and salmon. Anyone else out there who is both Paleo and a prepper? I'm curious to see how you handle this dilemma.

As I was organizing my storage room, I decided that my vintage, 1940s-era water bath canner had finally bit the dust. It is just too rusty and decrepit to use any more. Identical products on Amazon.com had very poor reviews - I guess they don't make granite ware like they used to - so I invested in a Victorio Stainless Steel Multi Use Canner. This product can be used as either a water bath canner or steam canner and seems really sturdy. I've never steam canned before - have any of you?

RIP, vintage water bath canner. You gave me (and others) years of good service.

Hubby Dear and I ordered our seeds for the spring and bought the components of our DIY seed starting set-up. I am excited to share with you our plans for the year in an upcoming post. It won't be long before we'll be sowing broccoli, cauliflower, and kale indoors.

Seeds, glorious seeds! So much promise is inside these packets.

I bought an assortment of homesteading books. Let's see if you can guess what kinds of things I am researching by a few of the titles: Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening, Keeping A Family Cow, and The Backyard Goat: An Introductory Guide to Keeping and Enjoying Pet Goats.

Some friends of ours are downsizing due to job loss and health challenges. We bought a generator and some other homesteading paraphernalia from them, which served to help both of our families out.

Our "new" 5500 W generator.

I did the math, and this generator will run one of our refrigerators and the furnace fan and that's it. It is definitely not a total solution to a long-term power outage, but it is a start. Now I need to stockpile some gas tanks, gasoline, and Sta-Bil.

Have you been celebrating "Prep-uary" at your house? Tell me what you've accomplished so far in 2013. :)

2012 in Review and 2013 Goals

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 01:01:00 +0000

Happy New Year, y'all! I hope everyone had a blessed holiday season.

Unfortunately, I was either busy or sick for much of 2012 and so my posting here wasn't as regular as I would have liked. Nevertheless, I managed to make progress on my preparedness goals. Here's the list of goals I had last January. I didn't accomplish everything, but I'm not unhappy.

In 2012 I :

Upgraded our bug-out bags

Added a bit to our first aid supplies. This is definitely an area where we fall short. I will admit to being a wee bit complacent about first aid since Hubby Dear is a medical professional. I need to improve.

Expanded our garden and learned some hard lessons during a very poor growing season. Our area of the country experienced the hottest year on record as well as one of the driest, so our garden was far less than stellar.

Delicious heirloom fruit and vegetables

We added to the orchard we established in 2011. We planted apples, blueberries, pears, and an almond tree. I learned a lot about organic orcharding from an amazing book, The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way. I immediately started implementing the principles from the book and saw an amazing amount of growth in our existing and new fruit trees. I can't recommend that book enough.

I planted comfrey in our orchard area. It's part of the whole holistic orchard deal, but the bonus is that it is also a medicinal herb. I learned about permaculture and now have plans to have a bunch of medicinal perennials growing among the trees in the orchard.

My favorite item on the list (and new obsession) is poultry. We started raising chickens, ducks, and turkeys. Having livestock was a big stretch for two former city kids like Hubby Dear and myself, but we have really enjoyed the journey. We started off with chicks and poults from hatcheries and ventured into hatching eggs with an incubator. Our chickens gave us 1,645 eggs in 2012; the ducks provided 124.

Some of our ducklings

Related to that last one, we butchered our first animals. It was so rewarding to grow our own meat and butchering is definitely a worthy skill for any prepper.

All the manure that started appearing on our property provided the impetus for us to begin composting.

Managed to keep our strawberries alive! We won't have to re-plant this year. I am hopeful that we will have a generous crop next spring.

Another success: I learned all about sprouting, an easy way to grow fresh, nutritious greens all year 'round.

My success with sprouting for people encouraged me to grow wheat grass for my birds. It took a couple of tries (and a horrible infestation of fruit flies), but I finally got the hang of it. I'm also proud of the black oil sunflower seeds we grew for the chickens.

A Peredovik black oil sunflower

I survived pneumonia. That should count for something, right?

I stocked up on reusable Tattler canning lids. I used them for all the canning I did and I finally got the hang of using them. They are a little different than standard metal canning lids, but once you get it, you won't go back.

For 2013, I remain focused on building up our homestead. One reason is that I just like doing it. I love puttering around the garden and taking care of my birds. I have expanded into breeding poultry for pleasure and profit, so that also takes up a lot of my time and energy.

The other reason that my preps are centered on homesteading is that I feel it is quite necessary. The shenanigans in DC regarding the so-called Fiscal Cliff made me sick to my stomach, but I hope that it will serve as a wake-up call to many. I fear that our country is in an irreversible decline and our prosperous American lifestyle is in serious jeopardy. In short, I think we're screwed. I feel that being as self-sufficient as possible will be incredibly valuable in the days ahead. You might not live on 5 acres in the country like I do, but I hope you are thinking about things you can do to help your family weather whatever storm may come.

With that said, here are my goals for 2013:

The north half of our garden, May 2012

Continue to add to our orchard. We have peach, nectarine, cherry, and plum trees ordered for the spring. We'll plant more peach, apple, and apricot trees in the fall. Here's the master plan for our orchard if you haven't seen it.
Expand our garden again and try some new varieties and methods of cultivation.
Try new types of pest control in the garden. We garden organically, but haven't ventured much into companion plantings to attract beneficial insects. That is a priority for me this year. We will also experiment with row covers to flummox the evil squash bug that has plagued us in the past.
We tried starting seeds indoor last year. We had mixed results, mainly due to lack of sunlight. We are building an easy DIY seed starting kit that should really help out.
Water storage is a huge issue for any prepper and the horrible drought we are in has really brought it to my attention. I hope to get rain barrels installed and may experiment with using greywater.
First aid - the perennial topic for me. I've got to get going here.
Food storage - I need to take inventory of what we have used up and refill as necessary. I will be canning and dehydrating the produce of our garden and herb garden.

So that's me. What about you? What do you have planned for 2013?