Sunday June 22 UPDATE

This is what it looked like out my back door 2 days ago.
The whole sky was like this! 

All week we've had storms. We have hot days, then it cools off way too quickly and we end up with clouds that are just downright scary. Luckily, this year, we've not had the sirens go off once, and not had to go down to the shelter. Quite a feat for living smack in the middle of Tornado Alley.

All the rain though, has helped the garden tremendously. Tomatoes are growing and will ripen soon. I've picked peas a couple of times, enough for my salad. Fall will bring our main pea crop, right now they're just for fun. Yesterday we picked 50lbs of taters, enough to get us to around December. I hated to pull them early, but we had an infestation of Colorado potato beetles. I tried to keep them in check, but just couldn't. So I'll put more taters in the ground and hope for another 50lb crop this fall.

50 lbs of beautiful organic red potatoes.
Value if purchased would be about $100. So we just saved $100!

My strawberries though look like crap. I'm not sure what's wrong with them, I have a soil test coming and will try to ascertain the issue. I thought it was iron chlorosis which is what we had last year, but blood meal did not help this time. So I thought maybe the soil was too alkaline, as the rest our soil can be, and so added some sulfur. That was a no go too. I might have to just say goodbye to this bunch and plant a crop in a raised bed where I can control the soil a bit better. It could also be a virus.

Check these leaves. They look worse now, brown on the edges. :( 

Oh! And I got sunburned. And by sunburned, I mean sun. burned. My husband sprayed sunscreen on all of us, we're all pasty skinned you know, when we left for the market. He apparently didn't get my shoulders as well as he should have and I trusted I was covered. Yikes! Im paying for it now! Vinegar is helping, and I should be a-ok in a couple of days.

Daily chores are getting to me. Its that time of year when I have no desire to be in the house doing laundry or washing dishes, all I want to do is to be outside in the garden. I am forcing myself though to keep us in clean clothing and dishes :) Of course, I have family coming this week so there's some extra incentive there.

Three of the six chickens. 

We still only have one layer. I long for the days when I head to the coop and collect six eggs. They're now 17 weeks old and they should all start laying soon. Well today is jam packed, I have the house to really scrub (my mother is coming this week), mulberries to process, more mulberries to pick, and of course, family to take care of in the midst of all that.

So until next Sunday, have a great rest of your weekend and a terrific week :)

First Market of the Season!

If you ask me, it's not really summer until we get to go to the Markets downtown again. I was spoiled when we lived in Germany. We had access to the Marktplatz twice a week and they had everything you could imagine. Eating healthy and in season was quite easy. Even meats and breads and cheeses could be got there.

The Martkplatz we visited when we lived in Hanau, Germany. 

The States isn't quite the same. Some markets in some very urban areas are like this, running year round or mostly year round with a wide assortment of goodies. Some sell raw milk, cheeses, butters, pastured meats, etc. Ours isn't like that, and the first month or so, there's not a lot to be had, but hey, it's still a farmer's market and the more we go, the more vendors will see there is business to be had! 

Besides I love getting up on Saturday, enjoying some homemade cinnamon rolls and coffee, then walking downtown with the kids to hang out at the market, get some veggies for the week, and then head to the library for some quiet time. Very nice and relaxed way to spend your Saturday morning. 

But even though our market isn't what I was spoiled on overseas, I know something. I know that Family farms need our support! Family farms have a hard time getting in the biz now that big Ag has taken over. Used to be, you could find corner shops that sold local produce, but they've been put out of business by the likes of Walmart and other large chains stores. And why not? I mean, you can get food so much cheaper there right? But if we could spend half our budget at local farmers markets, you'd be surprised the impact that it makes. Its giving those farms a fighting chance and they need it! 

You know, one reason I like to shop farmers markets is that one, you can find organic food cheaper. Two, even the stuff that's not organic, it's got less pesticides on it, than something from a giant field that is sprayed every week no matter what. Most hobby farms that spray only do so when necessary, and because there's more biodiversity, the need is less than a farm with one food growing, like say, corn. 

Also, the backyard farmer doesn't have access to GMO seeds. They might be using hybrids, which aren't seed savable, but they don't grow GMO. 

There's several things I hope to accomplish by taking our family to the market every week. 

My four children, on our way to the market this morning. 

Give my kids a sense of real food. 

For the last 10 years, our family has lived close enough to the city and it's offerings to walk. We used to walk to a local fast food joint for lunch, then hit up the store for a few days worth of groceries and then head back home. We've changed this routine to hitting up the farmers market for healthy foods, then hitting up the library for healthy "brain food."What I'm after is to associate healthy foods with "being happy". I grew up thinking being on a diet was the normal way of life. That everyone had to be on a diet, all the time because food was the enemy. But it doesn't have to be. Real food is good for you, including things like butter and cheese. 

Let the kids know where their food comes from. 

You know, I see it all the time working around children. There is a real disconnect in where our foods actually come from. My kids were horrified to learn how the meat is made that we use for say....spaghetti night. But I reassured them, its a natural process and that it can be humane, it doesn't have to be like you see with a Feed Lot and slaughter house. 

It really hit home for me when a child I know was grossed out by the thought of food growing in the ground and covered in dirt. I mean really? How did this child think our food was grown? They couldn't answer me but to say indignantly "You get it at the store". YIKES! No, it's grown in the ground, but they just wouldn't have it.

I want my kids to know who's growing their food!

You know, we do grow a lot here, but we only have room for so much. I can't grow everything. Of course, I can't buy everything local either, we can't get milk, cheese, butter, wheat, other grains (unless we want GMO corn), and some things like asparagus and other "not so widely used" veggies and fruits. But what we don't grow, I try to buy downtown. Getting to know our food suppliers is pretty important so we know what practices they use. 

Introduce new and healthy foods that they'll like. 

Getting kids to eat new foods can be challenging, and if we're downright honest, kids can be very picky eaters. I mean, kids crave stability and routine. They need to know that they're loved, and what to expect on a daily basis. Hell, adults need this as well if you get right down to it. But kids just aren't equipped emotionally yet to deal with daily changes, and introducing new foods can be a huge roadblock. One thing you can do is to let them pick something out that week. Then you can take it home and show them how to cook it. There are also plenty of cooking books at your local library if you're unsure how to cook a new food. We all start somewhere right? 

Saturday mornings are no longer reseverd for cartoons and laying around. 

This is what my morning lineup looked like.

Well not for my kids. The 1980's saw some serious changes to our society in the form of consume more, do less, and all with more convenience. Fast food chains really took off and it was quite common for everyone to have a tele and a other modern appliances in their homes. Now, it's unheard of for these things not to be found in homes. 

Instead of letting my kids lay around and veg out (without the veggies I might add) on Saturday mornings with all sorts of crazy cartoons, we get out, get a good walk in and become more active in our food procurement. And don't feel sorry for my kids :) They get plenty of cartoons, but weekends are family time. 

Voting with their dollars. 

One of the most important things we can do, every single day, is to vote with our dollars. If we want healthy, home grown food, without pesticides and without GMO, the best way to let Big Ag know is to spend your money on those foods, and not spend it on processed crap you find in the grocery store. The more dollars you spend locally, the more stays locally and that's good for you and your community.

Homestead Barn Hop

Organic, GMO-free Homemade Chicken Feed

You can't even really see their heads because they're moving so fast! YUM!

I simply can't believe how big they've got!

I show people pics or a few people have come over to pick up some seedlings from our greenhouse and they're like "omgwut? They're so big!" I know. And they're not even full grown yet! We've got a few more weeks until they start laying and let me tell you, I'm so excited to one day walk into the coop, check the nesting boxes and find delicious, organic, pastured eggs.

I've wanted chickens for years. YEARS I say. I always said I'd have four kids, a giant garden and chickens. And sure enough, that's what I've got! I wasn't counting on three boys, but thus far I'm still living, so.......

And now I get to make my own organic chicken feed to ensure that our Ladies, as my littlest one calls them, get the best they can in this life. I will say it's easier to head down to your local feed store and just pick up a bag of pellets. But really, it's just not as healthy for them, and I want super healthy eggs for us!

We let our Ladies free range. They've got access to over 400 square feet of yummy clover, bugs and whatever they can scratch up, a lovely compost pile full of kitchen scraps and bugs, and now they've got their very own homemade, GMO free, organic-to-boot chicken feed. Now, as much as I'd love for the Ladies to forage all year long for their food, it's just not possible. Where we live, we have frozen ground for part of our winter, and that means no scratching for bugs or other goodies. Also, I like to give them a little treat every morning when I open the coop. I know, they've got me wrapped around their little chicken feet, but I love it!

Finding a feed mixture wasn't too hard. One just needs to know what a chicken eats. Chickens are omnivores. They eat grasses, seeds, fruit, grains like corn and wheat seeds, worms, bugs, and other insects. Most laying pellets you can buy at your local feed store are mainly composted of soy (which is almost 100% GMO in this country for commercial use) and corn (also mainly 100% GMO commercially). For us? GMO just isn't cool. So we source our grains wisely. The idea eventually when we get our 50 acres and a horse is just to grow our own. But until then, we use Amazon.com and Azure Standard. I actually use Azure exclusively, but should I not be able to source something there, or prices rise, I've got Amazon on backup.

With the recipe, I've listed price per pound that we pay so you can see how much this feed is going to cost. These prices are as of May 2014. Also, be aware these are the prices for the smaller packages. If you buy say 5 lbs of oat groats it's $1.15 per pound, but you can get it for 87¢ per pound if you buy 50 lbs at a time. It all depends on how much room and money you have.

So lets get to feeding the Ladies eh?

You will need: 
- 12 cups of oat groats ($1.15)
- 8 cups of hard red wheat (88¢)
- 8 cups of soft white wheat (74¢)
- 6 cups of whole corn (83¢)
- 4 cups of millet ($1.42)
- 4 cups of kamut ($1.45)
- 4 cups of lentils ($1.97)
- 4 cups of split yellow peas (60¢)
- 2 cups of sunflower seeds (60¢)
- 1 cup of large flake nutritional yeast ($8.60)
- 1 cup of kelp granuals ($6.15)

Now all you have to do is stick the ingredients in a bucket or tub (with a lid so nothing can get in!) and mix it up with your hands. Easy peasy. If you want, you can use a drizzle of coconut oil (I did) to make sure the  yeast and the kelp don't get lost in the bottom of the mix. These two things have vitamins, mineral and amino acids that are great for your chickens' health. This mixture has about 17% protein, which is what the laying feed at the feed store has and what is claimed to be needed for healthy laying chickens.

My ladies get only or two handfuls of this mixture a day (about a half cup). In the winter, the 6 of them will probably eat about 1.5 cups of the mixture based on some initial calculations. This recipe makes 52 cups of mixture (Im not counting the kelp and yeast as it sticks to the other grains). The entire mixture above costs $28.25. (And remember by buying in larger quantities, you can severely reduce your price!). This means that it's around 54¢ per cup.

You really can't beat organic, non-gmo feed for less than 30¢ a day. That's just over $9 a month (on average) to give your chickens the best you can, and you get eggs in the process and meat when they're done laying.

NOTE: Once we've made it through summer and into the winter months, these initial calculated will be reworked with new data. 

Sustainable City Living

It seems oxy-moroninc doesn't it? How can anyone be self sufficient in the city? The plots are tiny, most homes don't have a sustainable heat source, or water source, livestock is usually regulated with a heavy municipal hand.

I know. Boy do I know. And it's why I want my 50 acres, with a cabin in the woods. I mean, that's the idea right? Dairy cows, a couple of sows for piglets, lots of land for a giant garden......its the dream most of us have, I get it. But you know what? As I've shown you in other posts, you don't have to have 50 acres and a cabin in the woods to be a homesteader. Sometimes, life gets in the way of our biggest dreams and you'll need to bloom where you're planted. Me? Im in the city right now, and that's not going to change within at least the next two years.

And believe it or not, there are some serious benefits to living in the city. When we decided to get chickens, I simply walked the 1.5 miles to our library and checked out a few books on backyard chicken keeping. When I do need to get something at the store I can't grow (like flour) then I simply walk in the other direction 1 mile and hit up our local store. Don't be shy, bike the distance if it's too far! This really saves some fuel costs, which we know are ever rising!

You actually can be quite self sustainable in the city if you plan it it right! Like, really self sustainable believe it or not. And here's how.

1. Learn everything you can about your bioregion. 

What's a bioregion you ask? Great question, I had to look it up too. It's basically your region that's separated by the environment and it's characteristics, not by manmade structures. So ours include the Rocky Mountains, the Sandhills and a couple of rivers. This puts us in a river basin right in the middle of the North Platte and South Platte Rivers, so our soil is much different from just 25 miles either north or south of us.

Not only do you want to learn about your environment, but you want to learn about local laws. Some great questions to ask are:
Can you have backyard livestock? (Chicken/Rabbits/Goats/Ducks/etc)
Can you harvest rainwater?
What do you need to do to put up outbuildings like a coop?
What restrictions on where you can plant food?

Some cities like mine are pretty lax. We have no limit on backyard fowl, but of course, I don't want a chicken farm, Im just aiming for feeding our family. We have no limits on food production, other than blocking traffic views because we live on a corner lot. We are allowed to harvest our rainwater in barrels too, and our building permits allow us to put up sheds/etc without a permit as long as it's smaller than a certain size.

Observation is going to be the key in this first step. And write it all down too! Don't be like me, and think "Hey, I can remember that!" only to forget a week later. You never know where your journey will take you, so even things you think you might not need to know now, you might want to know for later.

2. Grow your own food. 

Growing your own food, is probably one of the most important things you can do as an urban homesteader. As urbanites, we have to get creative when we grow food. Think UP. Not just OUT. Vertical containers, hanging planters, ladder boxes, anything you can come up with to grow up and not out. This year we're growing pole beans. Even though they're a bit slower than bush beans, because it allows me to trellis the beans UP and plant something under that trellis instead of taking up precious space in the garden. 

I've seen strawberries in planters, tomatoes in containers, herbs and spices in boxes and baskets on a porch. You are not limited to places you can till up. Don't use your driveway because you bike/walk everywhere? Turn it into a garden with containers and raised beds. You're going to surprise yourself with how much food you can grow in a small space. I know I did. As long as you provide adequate dirt depth, almost anything can grow well in a container. 

3. What you can't grow, buy local. 

You know have heard me say this before. "Source what you can't grow". And honestly, I can't say it enough. There's no argument that organically grown food is healthier than food grown in a hothouse with pesticides, (think winter strawberries) or that farm fresh chicken eggs are better than what you get in the store. If you have any doubts about this, Netflix, Amazon and youtube are all chock full of documentaries that will open your eyes about the nature of our food industry. 

Not only is buying local and organic better for you, but it's better for your bioregion too. There are farmers markets, local farms that open their doors to the public, CSA's, the list goes on. Local Harvest is a great place to start if you need to find food close to you. 

They say that the dollars that are spent locally have three times the impact than the dollars you spend at big chains. This means that when you buy local, you create and help sustain jobs, you help your city and it's outreach with the city tax dollars collected from those sales, and you are voting on how you want to live and eat with that dollar. 

4. Raise some backyard animals! 

You wouldn't believe the amount of help you can get from just a few chickens or rabbits. We have six chickens. They free range on about 450 sq ft of our backyard (this includes the coop footprint) and the compost pile is back there too for them to dig through. This means I don't give them feed. They eat how nature intended, which by the way is free for me. The exception to this is when the ground is completely frozen and then I do give them a homemade feed. 

Now because I love my chickens, I give them some scratch and treats. They love a good cucumber and seriously, they are pecking the seeds out before I've laid it on the ground for them. I also give them a bit of our homemade feed in the summer time, about a handful that's thrown on the ground as scratch for them, just to kind of round out the diet and make sure they get what they need. And if you haven't seen home grown eggs, let me tell you, they're superior. f

Then there is the bedding and droppings. That goes straight into a second compost pile (not the one they eat from!) to compost into some seriously rich fertilizer for the garden. Chicken and rabbit droppings are coveted to the backyard homesteader because it's abundant and perfect for the garden.  

This brings me to number 5......

5. Compost, compost and compost some more. 

I cannot express enough how much your homemade compost is going to benefit your gardening. Its a way to amend your soil (clays, etc) and it's a way to put back into the earth vital nutrients so that you can grow more in a smaller space (think intensive/square foot gardening) and do so every year without letting any land sit fallow. 

Check out our guide on how to compost and get started today! 

6. Re-discover why the kitchen is considered the hearth of the family home. 

The kitchen is the place to be in my home. There's always some magic or another going on in there. Learning to cook what you grow, eat and cook seasonally and preserve your bounty are key ingredients in self-sustainablity. If you can't cook well, or don't know how to preserve food, start by taking a class! If you can't find classes, let me tell you, the internet is your friend, or visit your local library for books on how-to. Find a friend and learn together! 

Cooking what you eat not only saves you money on food, but will save you money down the road because you'll be healthier and happier. You'll be surprised at what you can do at home. Cheese, wine, artisan breads, they're all something you CAN do at home. With the right resources you can actually achieve almost total grocery store independence, even in the city. 

Freezing, dehydrating and canning are all great methods of persevering your foods. Whether you've grown them yourself or you found a local market or CSA for them. If you have extra, don't waste it! Americans waste almost 40% of the food we buy, and most of it is fresh foods like produce.  Preserve it! What you cannot preserve, feed to your backyards animals and what you cannot feed them compost. Don't let anything go to waste!

And lastly: 

7. Take charge of your energy and water resources. 

Its a common misconception that living in the city is energy heavy because well, in the country, you have room for a clothes line, and a wood stove, and a well....

Well it's simply a myth. If you plan it right, you can really reduce your energy expenditures. And when you need less energy, you're more self-sustainable. Start by sealing up your home. Re-caulk your windows, make sure your ductwork is insulated etc. Then make sure you're insulated. By this I mean, learn to live with the heat down in the winter and the AC up in the summer (or if you can tolerate it, turn off the AC). We turn our heat on about 62° or 63° in the winter. Yes, it's chilly. But that can be fixed with a sweater. We keep our AC off in the summer and only turn on it if reaches 100°+ and then we only turn it on at night so we can sleep. 

Next, try to find some sources of energy. You can put in a passive solar hot water heater, an outdoor bread oven solar dehydrator, and use the sun to dry your clothing. 

Spending just a couple hundred on three or four 55 gallon rainwater barrels (or see if you can find free giveaways!) will go a long way to helping you achieve water independence. We're lucky enough to live with a well on our property, but just putting barrels under the chicken coop, garage and house would yield us quite a bit of rainwater for watering animals and the garden. 

All of these things will go so far in helping you become more self-sustainable and leading a more energy efficient lifestyle. And best of all they are things can be done where you are in life. Even in an apartment, you can grow food on your own balcony or windowsill, reuse gray water for watering your plants, preserve food from your container garden or farmers market, bike and walk as your main mode of transportation, and even have a small compost pile in a rotating bin if you wanted. 

It only take some time and planning to get started and then once you do, you're well on your way! 

Happy Homesteading! 

Backyard Chicken Coop

It started back in January with sneaking around town in the dead of night, foraging for pallets left out by dumpsters. I had to be quick, and tricky, because around here, its first come first serve and you better be there before the sun comes up if you want free wood.

Larger brooder box inside the actual coop. 

I managed to score about 30 pallets, and I was going to tear down our metal shed and put up a wooden chicken coop large enough to house 12 hens, though we only are starting with six. Then hubby came up with the genius idea of converting the shed! If we put enough windows/vents in it, our chickens won't roast during the day in the metal. What a lifesaver! That right there saved me hours of work. So we got right to work on the conversion!

The first thing I did was to build a bigger brooder box. As you can see I simply cut some pallets in
half to achieve this, and gave them a floor (one of the pallets had a piece of plywood attached, and I just reused that). I stapled a piece of hardware cloth over the top of it on one side the other side was left "free" so we could get in and out of the box. This worked really well and the really cold nights, I just took a blanket and covered 3/4 of the top of the box to help keep the heat in. This brooder box is going to stay outside in the coop so if we ever get more chicks, we have a place to put them.

Metal doors are off, chicken run is framed out and you can see just how
much pallet wood I managed to score. 

I took off the metal doors, mainly because they didn't work right. They had plastic slides that were "keeping them in the track at the top" which I'm using the word "keeping" loosely here. The doors had certainly seen better days. Not only that I wanted something that I could close up at night and in the summer, still give them some air. So I came up with the dutch style doors.

The run was the hardest part because figuring out exactly how big to make it, where it would go, etc. was time consuming. Once we did that, it wasn't too bad. Just screwed the wood together with big wood screws (which you can find at any home improvement store).

We took the pallets and use them lego style (just fitting them together) and basically built walls inside the metal shed. This gave us something to screw to for the nesting boxes, ladder etc, and will also give us some insulation through the winter as our winters here get pretty cold.

Chicken run extends out from the coop and also encloses the compost pile.
They use the pile to forage for scraps and bugs. 

Simple nesting boxes being held up with pallets and a single piece of plywood along the bottom. I am now using the
portion under it for 2 large containers, one for un-used bedding and one for our homemade feed. 

Next on the list was to make the nesting boxes. We needed at least one, but I made two anyway. We already have chicks using them both for just hanging out in, so apparently two was the right choice. Some people think you need one for each chicken. Well you can do that if you want, but know that they'll probably only use a few of them, depending on how many you have. Honestly, I haven't figured out why this is. But growing up, at one point we had two chickens and 8 nesting boxes in the coop. They both used the same nesting box every day.

I also made a simple ladder from the pallet wood that serves as a way up and down for them. They can get to both nesting boxes quite easily this way.

Simple window system with a wooden board for propping open. 

Windows. They definitely need some windows. In fact, I might have fabric set aside for curtains.


You can see the one here, there's a matching one on the other side, and soon we'll be putting in a vent in the top to help with the heat build up in the summer. The window was pretty simple. I just took a drill, drilled a hole in the corner, then used tin snips to go around where I'd marked the window to be. Next we used pallet wood to "frame out" the window by simply screwing two pieces together with like a sandwich with metal in the middle. This gave us something to attach the window hinges to, and also kept the sharp metal from being exposed. The window is a simple thing that's just four pieces of wood screwed together with L-brackets and then I used a piece of acrylic  as the "window" part. I got this acrylic at my local home improvement store for six dollars. Cheap and it won't break if we get any hail. Which you know we will. I also have a piece of pallet wood that we're using as a prop to open the window with. I might put in a hinge system later on, for now the wood is working.

Dutch style doors offer protection from predators at night but also give a way to add in some ventilation. 

The last thing to do was the doors. This was the most difficult for me, because I had to build two of them from scratch. So first thing I did was to frame out the sides of the coop door way with wood. This gave a bit more structure to the frame for the doors to have something to hang on to. Next I just built the doors. I first made a rectangle from 1x4's that was as tall as the doorway and half the length of the doorway. I didn't get all fancy with mitering corner or anything. i just overlapped the top middle and bottom pieces over the right and left pieces. I didn't measure the middle piece, I just put it where I thought it looked good. Then I used plywood and measured out a piece to go in the bottom portions of each door. Then I just screwed it in. I did the same thing for the top, but these pieces I used hinges and put on the outside of the door so they open. On the inside, I just stapled chicken wire to help keep out other animals. Then I just used simple hinges to attach the doors to the frame of the shed. Just used nuts and bolts and drilled a hole, and screwed it right in. Viola! We have doors.

So then I noticed, how do I shut these and keep them shut? Hubby came up with the idea of an old style latch system like you see in the picture. I just used scrap wood, screwed it together in an L shape and then attached it to the door frame. Then you can use a piece of wood long enough to go into both of them and covered the middle of the door, thusly keeping it shut!

And now we have a chicken coop! And the chickens are happy.

Grow enough to feed your family for a year!

So in our last post we discussed 5 different ways that you could homestead wherever and whenever in your life that you're currently at. These were the things that every single one of us can do. I wanted to go a bit into depth on some of the issues we talked about, because simply saying "grow your own food" yeah, that's all nice and whatnot, but it can really be overwhelming if you've not done it before, or if you're like me and had a salad garden and that's it. Going from growing a couple of heads of lettuce, some tomatoes and cukes to all out growing almost everything you eat.....well that takes time. And planning. And organization. And all those things that I wasn't good at. :) So I hope you can learn from my failures!

So lets get our hands dirty shall we? It's always a good day when you can play in the dirt!

Number One: Figure out how much space you can spare. 

We have a 1/4 acre lot. There's a large patio in the backyard, the chicken coop and run, the single detached garage and we can't plant anything in the front yard cause that's where the gas/elec/water lines run. The "front" portion of our side yard, contains a walnut tree (which nut trees give off toxins and the surrounding soils aren't fit for growing) and the other front portion houses a pine tree and no sun. That leaves us the side yard. Now you might think this isn't a lot of land to plant.

You'd be wrong! Our garden this year is 65ft x 30ft. That's over 1,900 sq ft in which to plant our food in. Now we use a very intensive growing method of sq ft gardening (where we amend the soil with homemade compost every year to help with nutrients) and so we plant everything pretty close together.

Number Two: Figure out what foods you eat and what you want to grow. 

I don't grow a thing we won't eat. I'd love to grow both cabbage and cauliflower. But we simply can't eat enough of it to make it worthwhile. So we forgo it. Instead I plant lots of beans, TONS of tomatoes, and loads of peppers and onions. We also plant potatoes, which a lot of backyard gardeners don't do because it's kind of land intensive. But we like organically grown potatoes, I feel like they're just so much better than what you get in the store, so I make that sacrifice. What you grow, will probably be changed year by year. I grew cabbage our first year until I realized we just don't eat enough to spend the space root cellaring it.

Once you figure out what you want to grow, planning the garden is easy. You'll have to have some trial and error on figuring out how much of what to plant, as it took me a season or two to figure ours out. But once you figure it out, you can then plant most of what you eat if not all of it!

Number Three: Learn how to Preserve the Bounty of your Harvest.

Photo courtesy of Mother Earth News Mag

There's a few ways to do this. Canning, Freezing, Dehydrating and Root Cellaring. Somethings will root cellar well. Like potatoes, onions, carrots, apples, beets, cabbage, leeks, parsnips, pears, turnips, radishes, dried beans, garlic, pumpkins, squash and sweet potatoes are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Almost anything can be canned. Things you don't want to can are pureed pumpkin, dairy products or mashed beans. Now there are people who do can these things, and like I tell people, you can how you want, what your comfortable with. I personally follow the guidelines given to us by the USDA so I can 100% know that my foods are safe.

Freezing is a great way to preserve things, especially things like corn and green beans that get mushy when you can them. However, this requires energy to keep them frozen and freezer space. I prefer to use the one time energy of canning these items and then simply putting them on the shelf for later. This is just a matter of preference.

One thing that I feel is underutilized is dehydrating. You can dehydrate so many things. Fruit slices, fruit leather, jerky, things like whole peppers for dried use or later rehydrated use....the list goes on. We are building a solar dehydrator this year, and I will be sharing the plans and the materials list with you so you can too, build your own for next to nothing. The only thing you'll need to use it, will be a clear sunny day.

Once you've got these three things down, you're well on your way to growing, preserving and enjoying the fruits of your labor. You'll know exactly where the food came from, what was used on it to grow it, and you'll bask in the greatness that is a 2¢ tomato seed turned into an entire plant that's produced roughly 25lbs of tomatoes that would have cost you about $100 at the store (if you purchase organic for around $4 per lb, which is how we farm here).

The savings are incredible, even though yes, it take some hard work, but the moment when you bite into that ripe, fleshy, and flavorful tomato, you'll realize the appeal of growing your own food.

5 ways to turn your Home into a Homestead no matter the land amount!

Its' all our dream right? 150 acres, tons of trees, big house by the pond with a lean to or barn for the animals. A woodstove to keep us warm while we knit or read books at night. Waking up to the crow of the rooster, and the cluck of the chickens. Doing the days chores on your schedule and your time, not having to punch a time clock, no commuting......

I know.
I.
KNOW.

I want it badly. So badly I can taste it. I spend about an hour a week searching for land back home that I dream we can buy and finally have our homestead. Ok, maybe more than an hour a week dreaming. Lets be real.

What I finally realized is that what makes a home a homestead isn't how much land you have. Or if you have dairy cows or does. Not how many chickens you have, or if you sell produce from your acre garden to the locals. What makes it a homestead is self sufficiency. And this is something everyone can have. Even people living in the city. Even those with almost no land.

So instead of worrying about what resources for self sufficency you *don't* have, we need to focus on you what you do have and making the most with those!

Number one is food. 

Obviously you cannot grow or raise all your own food. In fact, it's hard for any farm to achieve this. Its hard to have beef, pork, fish, poultry, eggs, milk, dairy products, and produce and do it all  yourself. So pick what you can do and do it. What you can't do, source out locally. We can grow most of our own food, and raise chickens for our own eggs.

We don't eat much pork because I don't like it and so we go without. We source our beef and we're trying to find a local place to source out our poultry. Our current chickens will end up in the stewpot when they've reached an age where they no longer lay. We don't have room currently for a goat and cows aren't allowed, so we buy dairy at the store, but are looking for ways to source that as well. That might mean sourcing raw milk from a local **trusted** farmer and making your own yogurt, cheese, butter etc. Or maybe you can find those products already made for you and source them. Either way.

Grow what food you can, and buy what you can't from local farmers. This might be a CSA or the Famers Market. You'd be surprised what you can grow in your own backyard, or on your patio in containers.

Cook from scratch, and get rid of processed crap. If you need faster meals on the weekdays, spend some time on the weekends preparing what you can ahead of time. I try to do things like keep frozen lasagnas in the freezer to just pull out, thaw and cook in the oven. Its takes as much time to prepare one as it does four, so this way I have three more to put in the freezer for the rest of the month.

Number two is water. 

Water is the most essential thing in life. We need both food and water, but three days without water is really bad, you can go up to a month (ish) without food. Having a source of water that you know is clean and without added chemicals will go a long way to your self sufficiency. We have a well on our property, and this year is going to be the first year we're going to get it back up and running. I can't wait! But we'll also use rain barrels to collect water from the roofs of our garage, chicken coop and house. The coop water will be for the chickens. But the rest, we can either just pour it directly on our garden, or we can distill it for drinking/cooking. You'd be surprised what a homemade distiller and a bit of sunshine can yield you in drinking water, and if you have no sunshine, you can simply add heat.  

When a drought hits, and they will, they always do, you'll still be able to water your food and not have to worry about raising prices at the grocery. 

Number three is Go with the Flow. 

Why can we buy strawberries in January? They're most definitely a summer crop. We can, because people grow them for us and we buy them. They're not near as tasty, they don't have near the nutrients, and they feel like cardboard. This goes for everything out of season. There's a reason we have seasons. We plant food, it dies off, and you either till it under or plant cover crops to replenish your soil. You put compost you've made all year onto it in the spring and till that under. And all this will yield you super fresh, great tasting food that you'll love to eat.

We've managed to try to spend our lives running 24/7 365 days a year. Our jobs don't give us the winter off, even though most things are designed to be dormant or resting in the winter. And we see this as normal? Getting up at 5:30 am to feed the chickens in the winter is made better by knowing that my winter days are spent resting and not working near as hard, and shoot, I like that because it's cold out there! Take the time nature is giving you to try to live in harmony with Her. If you work it right, you can eat fresh produce most of the year, about 9 months, even longer if you use cold frames or greenhouses.

I spend my summers working in the garden, doing projects like fixing up fences, or what not. Then in the winter I spend my time working on things like garden planning, or my knitting/sewing for the family. Things I can do inside that keep me nice and warm. Obviously, not all of us are able to live with the seasons. And if you can't, live by your farmers' seasons. Buy your food locally when it's in season, join a CSA, or produce share around town.

Number four is Learn New Things. 

This may mean breaking out the old sewing machine and mending your clothing so you don't have to buy more. Or maybe you wanna learn to knit/sew so you can create your own clothing. Perhaps you want to learn to make cheese so the local raw milk you get can do more than just be for drinking and coffee. Maybe this means learning how to pressure can, water bath can and root celler your garden produce for the whole year. Maybe you don't know how to cook from scratch, a new skill to learn will be to learn how to cook. You'd be surprised at how you can come up with your own recipes when you understand the chemistry behind baking. (And yes it really is chemistry). Or how you can even fix a recipe to suit your needs. Maybe you want to learn to butcher your own animals and those you hunt. 

There's many many things we don't know how to do these days. We rely on people to do it for us, and they do one thing only. There's nothing wrong with using the local butcher if you want to, he needs to make a living too, but if you want to, you can learn. 

When you learn these things, you'll find that the more you know, the more you can do and then the more you'll turn around and try to learn. Soon, you'll be doing everything yourself you can and saving all kinds of money and time. 

Number five is Learn How to Use Money More Wisely. 

Unless you own a money mint, you have a finite amount of money. This means, that the longer you make it last, the more you'll have for things around the homestead. Maybe you're saving up for buying that 50 acres you just can't live without. Maybe you want to put solar on your home and go off grid. Maybe you want to only have to have one income. There's many reasons, but most of all your reasons are the important ones. I'm a SAHM so for us, having one income and one car, means that we live frugally to afford that lifestyle. Homesteading took that a step further and gave us a bit of cushion so we can save up for land and solar energy eventually.

There's many ways out there of doing this, and I won't plug one over the other. The best one is the one that works for you.

Homestead Barn Hop!!! 

From the Farm Blog Hop!

Home Acre Hop #68

8 Ways to Reduce Your Food Waste

So I was reading online the other day, and I came across this article in my Facebook newsfeed.

About 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. The average American consumer wastes 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia — up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s. Yet, 1 in 6 Americans doesn't have enough to eat, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And food waste costs us about $165 billion a year and sucks up 25 percent of our freshwater supply.

Seriously. 40%??? 

Wow. Why in the hell are we wasting that much food? So I dig deeper. Turns out that we've grown so accustomed to "perfect" food (no blemishes, or odd shapes etc) that we throw things out willy nilly now. Also the old mantra "when in doubt, throw it out" plays a part, because a lot of Americans are completely out of touch with their food, their food sources, and don't have the knowledge they need to make proper food decisions.

Now don't get me wrong, if I pull chicken out for dinner and it smells "off" because I left it in four or five days, then I toss it. But the idea is that we should be organized enough and aware of what's in our fridge and pantry so we don't waste! We also shouldn't cram our fridges so full we forget what's in there, thereby wasting food. So here's some steps to reduce your kitchen waste.

1. Use what you have in the fridge first. This goes for both freezer and pantry items.

2. Plan your meals. This sounds like a no brainer, and I imagine we've all at one time or another planned our meals, but then a few days of harried schedules happens and the meal routine is off. So one good thing is to plan out 21 days of food, that your family likes. Then go over your schedule for the next week and plan your weeks meals from that (I do this on a two week rotation). I try to have several crock pot meals so that if I have a busy day that's unplanned I can simply make a crock meal. This will help you buy only what you need and then you'll use it.

3. Don't buy so much in bulk! Ok, so I'm the queen of bulk, I know. I buy whole wheat flour by the 50lbs bag, and pinto beans in 25lbs. But one thing I won't buy in bulk is fresh items. Now, I totally break this rule if something is on a really good sale Like last summer, cherries.Cherries were 1.99 a lb That *never* happens around here, so I bought 20lbs and canned them. I made cherry jelly and canned cherries in water with a tsp of sugar. So for months we had cherry jelly (it's gone now) and every now and again I make a black forest cake or put some in my yogurt.

4. Use mason jars and plastic screw on lids to store your leftovers. Now this is twofold for me. One, I hate plastic. I really hate it. It gets nasty and scratched up, it gets smelly from things like spaghetti sauce, and eventually you dont wanna put food in it. Plus, you can't see through most of them to know what's in them. So I use mason jars. They come completely clean, I can easily go from pantry to fridge with goods I've canned and best of all I can see leftovers. We don't have as many now that I've started using clear jars.

5. Freeze stuff. Don't be afraid of the freezer! If you have wide mouth jars, you can even store stuff in the jars in the freezer. If you have an abundance of something, freeze it so it doesn't get wasted.

6. Can stuff. Don't be afraid of the canner! There's so many recipes out there, and best of all, you can can things like soups and meats where if you take advantage of on sale items, you can prepare them ahead of time,all at once, thusly using your bulk purchases and not letting them go to waste.

7. Eat your leftovers for lunch or snacks, or have a leftover night for dinner.  Lunch is one meal that's not too planned around here. We do pack our Bento boxes for the kids for school and some days, I have to plan out a meal, but mostly, I just send them with leftovers now. Hubby and I also eat leftovers a lot of days. I'ts easier and cheaper to make a meal for 10 and just eat the leftovers than it is to plan 2 separate meals.

8. If  you must throw it out, put what you can in a compost pile. Even if you just compost for your flower bed, it used to be that humans would eat foods, of course, there were no processed foods then, just whole real food, and then wed toss that apple core or carrot top back onto the ground where it would decompose and put nutrients back into the soil. Now, we grow our foods on commercial lots that are so devoid of minerals and nutrients because they don't use compost, they use chemical fertilizers, and then we toss our "trash" into landfills where they don't do us any good. So see our post on composting if you need a place to start.

If we work hard enough we can reduce our waste, which is better for everyone, including your pocketbook!