Homemade Gifts - Extra Large Cutting Board

Homemade Gifts - Kubb Set

Now that Christmas has passed, we can share some videos on homemade gifts that we did this year.

Christmas Traditions

Small Space Storage - A Kitchen Shelf

Storage solutions for small spaces.  Be sure to stay until the end for a major mistake caught on video.

Seeds

 We've harvested squash and pumpkin seeds in the past. It's a great way to be self sufficient. Our squash and pumpkins this year were grown exclusively from seeds we saved. We're hopeful if we pick the best seeds from the best plants we can help our plants become geared for the short, cold, growing season up here. 

So this year we decided to branch out. 

We saved the seeds from the one tiny watermelon we got. 

 

We also tried cucumbers. Our cucumber seeds weren't viable. Our season wasn't long enough for a cucumber to develop enough (almost rotting) for the seeds to be fully formed. 

 

We did get a bunch of carrot seeds. I was worried I had done it wrong, or that they too, wouldn't be viable. I didn't want to plant them next year and have nothing come up, so we decided to test them. I sprinkled a few in a cup of dirt and look what happened.

Twelve carrots sprouted. I didn't count how many I sprinkled in so I don't have an exact percentage of germination, but I didn't put in too many so I suspect it's at least 75%, 

I'm pretty excited. 

We wanted to try onion seeds also, but Baby Bear kept pulling them up. Maybe next year she'll be old enough. We'll try the cucumber again next year, also. It would be nice if we could cultivate a crop a little better suited to our climate.

Turkey Time - Happy Thanksgiving

Today we talk about getting ready for Thanksgiving by processing our turkey. We also talk about how we prepared and cooked him. All of the recipes of the dishes shown in this video are below: Turkey Brine: https://ourbestbites.com/kates-thanksgiving-turkey-2/ Crescent rolls: https://www.melskitchencafe.com/overnight-crescent-dinner-rolls/ Festive Salad: Dressing - 1/4 C sugar Scant 1/4 C red wine vinegar or cider vinegar 1 tbs lemon juice 1 tbs finely chopped or grated red onion 1/4 tbs salt 1/3 C vegetable oil 3pk Romain hearts 1 C grated Swiss cheese 1 med apple cored and cubed 1/4 C pomegranate seeds (Optional) 1/2-1 C chopped nuts (Optional) Red onion or bacon Combine dressing ingredients in a blender or food processor. In salad bowl combine salad ingredients except nuts. Drizzle with dressing and toss. Add nuts. Serve immediately. Fruit Salad: Various fruit cut into bite size pieces Vanilla yogurt Baked Sweet Potatoes: Sweet potatoes roasted the day before and chilled Cranberries to taste Brown sugar Pats of butter Marshmallows After heating up the dish, cover the top with marshmallows and broil to brown the tops

Upgrading the Chicken Coop, Including a Self Filling Waterer

We talked before about the upgrades that we made for the goats.  Well, our chickens demanded equal time, so today we will show some of the improvements that we have made for the chickens.

Harvesting and Preparing the Garden for Winter

Preparing for Winter - Firewood

Today we will try to finish off the majority of our firewood for winter. We will also talk about how we split it, stack it, and how much we need.

Upgrading the Goats

Our goats are causing trouble again!

Change

The long hot days of summer are gone.

Morning and evening are chill and dark. Mist shrouds us each morning. The sun comes up in the middle of the day long enough to remind us it is here but a cool wind still blows and jackets are needed. When the sun smiles on us we exit our home to bask in the wilderness we love. Retreating to comfort as the dark and cold return for the night. The garden lies empty and forlorn. I can no longer go pick a pepper or cucumber for dinner. Most of the harvest is bottled. Shelved neat and snug they are a promise of plenty of food over the long winter. We hunker down, grateful for our wood piles and stove. It is a time of turning in, of reflection, of comfort, and healing.

Winter comes.

 

Canning Apple Pie Filling

Fall harvest is going on and food preservation is on our minds. Come join us as we bottle apple pie filling.





recipe:
1 C cornstarch
4 1/2 C sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
10 C water
3 tbsp lemon juice.
Mix everything but the lemon juice. Boil until thick and bubbly. Take off heat and add lemon juice. pour into quart jars over apples. makes about 5-6 quarts. Process in water bath according to safe directions for your altitude. https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_02/can_pie/apple_filling.html

The perimeter has been breeched! Keeping voles out of the garden

First Year Processing and Preserving Chickens - Was it worth it ($$$)?

Summer Snow, The Aftermath

Uh Oh

 For some reason the dishwasher isn't draining. Which means it isn't running. Want to see what dishes for a family of six looks like?

Time to start washing.

Massive Summer Snow, Preparation Day 3

Massive Summer Snow, Preparation Days 1 and 2

A massive late summer snow storm is threatening to destroy almost all of our garden.  See how we are going to prepare in this video. 



Stay tuned for the next video on how it turns out.

High altitude garden tour - 2020

High Altitude Gardening, Part 6 - Raised Bed Green House

This is the sixth installment on gardening on the homestead. This time we will be talking about permanent green house structures.
We have talked before about removable cold frames on our raised beds. These work really well for extending the growing season in the spring when the plants are small. They also work well for smaller things like cucumbers and melons through the entire season. However for large plants, like tomatoes, the removable cold frames don't work. For the frames to be removable they need to be small and the tomatoes quickly outgrow them. Since tomatoes love the heat, they really need something through the whole season.
That is where a permanent green house is the right way to go. The green house that we show in this video is attached to the raised bed. It is the full width (4 feet) and length of the bed (10 feet) and is 4 feet high at the peak. The front and sides are all covered by clear corrugated plastic. The back is covered with outside siding and metal roofing. All of the structure is from pressure treated 2x4's except for the header that runs peak to peak which is two 2x6's nailed together.
We went with a gull wing door design for two main reasons. I wanted a large access to be able to easily get inside to work. Secondly, I wanted to be able to open the doors without interfering with the adjacent raised bed. This makes the door significantly heavier, but they are not so bad that Mama Bear can't get them open.
This is the first year that we have been able to grow in the green house. Our tomato crop is the biggest ever! We have been able to not only have fresh tomatoes to use, but there has also been enough to can. The size of the green house is proving adequate for our tomatoes so far, but in the future I would like to be able to put the tomatoes in a taller green house and move the peppers into this green house.

Building Trails

Voles

 

Something has happened. The other night when I was watering, I found this.

 

 

It’s a pile of dirt in my garden bed. After careful examination it was exactly what I feared it was. The voles have found our garden.  There’s a tunnel underneath that leads right to my asparagus.

 

The voles have already eaten the roots of every apple tree we’ve tried to plant. Now they want my vegetables.  We had hoped with how rocky and sandy the soil was in the garden (one reason we did raised beds) they would stay away. We were wrong. Our cats had better get to work.