Summertime Top Five

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Anisa

To me, this weekend is the official kick off for summer.  To celebrate, here are my top five favorite things about the upcoming season!

Sun-warmed tomatoes, straight from the garden.  We have thirteen varieties this year.  I truly, truly can’t get enough.

Farmers markets  Even though we have a big garden and a CSA membership, I really love strolling around a Saturday farmers market.  We always come home with a treasure.  Like the time we bought five kinds of mushrooms – just because.  Or some late-season strawberries that we had eaten practically before we left the stall.  Amazing breads, greens to die for, radishes in the colors of the rainbow.  And all the varieties of squash at the end of the season.  Such an adventure.

Dining alfresco  Whether an impromptu picnic lunch with the kiddos, a late-night backyard BBQ with friends or an everyday dinner on the back patio.  Eating outside is fun.  Bonus points for cooking outside too.  Sun tea, s’mores, and grilled corn on the cob to name a few.  Through some experimentation, we’ve managed to grill a few somewhat unusual things too, like pizza, biscuits and peach cobbler.

The Fourth of July  I love, love, love the fourth.  A BBQ with friends, sparklers and spinners with the kids, popsicles, watermelon, staying up late.  One year (2005) we saw fireworks from the beach with our friends in San Diego.  Last year it rained, so the neighbor invited us all to pile into his Volkswagen Bus.  We drove to an empty parking lot, popped the top and watched the fireworks display through the window of the top bunk.  We’re hoping for a repeat (with or without the rain) this year.  Every year, I can’t wait to get my patriot on.

Bare-feet and Line-dried Clothes  Ok… I know it’s really two things.  But I love being barefoot in the cool grass.  I’d run around barefoot everywhere if I thought I could get away with it.  And I love the smell of line-dried clothes in the summer time.  Particularly sheets.  We hang clothes to dry throughout the year, but laundry that’s been crisped by the summer sun and kissed by a warm breeze is just better.

What are your favorite things about summer?

Categories: Garden, Simple Living, Top 5 | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

End of May Homestead Photo Tour

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Anisa

I thought I’d share what’s going on at the homestead right now.  I was going to do a video tour, but being nearly 32 weeks pregnant with a baby pushing on my lungs, every video take was nothing but me breathing heavy as I walked through the yard.  So it’s a photo tour instead.

Starting just outside our back door with the boys’ hugelkultur.  I didn’t do a close up, but the watermelon sprouts are up.  Next is the chicken yard, then the side yard along our driveway where the volunteer spinach lives, as well as the grapes, garlic and strawberries.  Next come my flower gardens that are slowly getting edibles mixed in.  And the neighbor’s garden that we’ve been helping with.  Then is our main garden and the beehive, which is to receive a new roof this weekend.  Not shown are the tiny leek and kohlrabi sprouts.  🙂  Eggplant and carrots are planted too, but not up yet.  Enjoy!

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Categories: Garden, Hugelkultur, Urban Homesteading | Tags: , , | 4 Comments

When the Power Goes Out

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Anisa

All across the country this spring, there have been storms taking out power (and, of course far worse).  My cousin in Alabama was affected earlier this year.  Thankfully she is ok, and was able to drive to Nashville to stay with family for a few days until the power came back on.  This makes me think a lot about disaster preparedness, and I know I’m not the only one.  Sharon Astyk and Greenpa both commented on the CDC’s article about the impending zombie apocalypse last week.  Northwest Edible Life asked about balancing energy consumption and preparedness (which gave rise to this post for me).

We aren’t really in a great place yet as far as being prepared for a natural disaster.  We’re pretty good about preserving food in the summer, enough to get us through the winter, but really nothing long term.  While we’ve been living without a fridge now for the last four weeks, I know we couldn’t hack it without our freezer.  The ice to keep everything from spoiling is pretty crucial.  We keep the majority of our preserved food in there as well.  Without power, we’d be coming up short pretty quickly, especially in the summer time with regards to our meat.

Happily, here in Colorado, the most likely time for a prolonged power outage would be the winter, and that in it of itself mitigates some of the potential damage to the freezer-stored food.  In the case of a power outage that was not during the cold or not soon to be resolved, I really think this is a place where community can help.  Our neighbor, for example, has a couple of generators. But he is a bachelor and has no food stock piled what-so-ever (I’m pretty sure he buys food everyday for each meal). So we could really come to a mutually beneficial arrangement, wherein, his generators help keep our food from spoiling, and we feed him. Of course, generators are only temporary as well, and in the event of something extending past that, we’re pretty much screwed.

We could definitely dehydrate, but only if we do it ahead of time, as both our food dehydrator and oven are electric and power company dependent.  While we could prepare a lot of herbs and some veggies this way ahead of time, I’m not a huge fan of jerky.  So that still leaves most of our meat vulnerable.  We don’t have a pressure-canner either, and a boiling water bath is not enough to safely preserve meats.

One meat preservation option we’ve considered is the possibility of smoking meats. We’ve been on the hunt for an oak barrel that we can use to make a smoker in our yard, as I saw done at the local living history museum last summer. We watched them smoke two chickens in a barrel over bricks dug in the ground. It was super cool and we’ve been wanting to do it ever since. This could even be done in the winter, in an emergent situation, provided you already had the hole for the bricks dug.

This reminds me a lot of Little House in the Big Woods.  I love how detailed the descriptions Laura gives for how the Ingalls family preserves meats for the winter.  Smoking venison and hams, freezing sausages, and putting up salted pork in the attic.  This always makes me wonder what exactly salted pork is and how it tastes, and what the process is.

So I’d like to know what systems others have in place?  Are you prepared for a disaster, whether a short term one, like a weather related power outage, or a long term one, like peak oil or zombie apocalypse?  How are you preserving meat for long term storage?  Are you building community food systems, so that in the event of a disaster you have resources other than your own to draw from?  Is it practical to store meat in the summer time?  (The Ingalls family did not, all their meat storage was just for the winter.)  How else, besides freezing, are you storing food – canning, root cellars, dehydrating, salting, smoking????  Do you have recipes to share?

Categories: Canning and Food Preservation, Community, Food, Preparedness, Sustainability | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments

Green and Good!

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Anisa

Since at this time of year, everyone seems to have an abundance of greens coming from the garden, I thought I’d share my favorite green smoothie recipe.  I shared it a couple weeks ago on my birth blog, but that you might appreciate it too.

This recipe was given to me by my midwife, Jen Anderson-Tarver, but I’ve played with it a bit to suit my personal tastes and moods.

To a blender add:

1/2 pound kale, tough stems removed
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup sliced frozen peaches, or approx. 1 frozen peach, unsweetened
And 1 of the following of your choice:  either 1 whole carrot, 1/2 a banana, OR 1/2 cup frozen blueberries

Blend until smooth, pour into glasses and enjoy!

The original recipe calls for the half a banana, but I don’t really care for bananas in smoothies.  They are a bit too sweet for me.  I like to substitute the carrot, which is a little sweet, but not too much, and since I don’t otherwise like carrots much, it’s a good way for me to sneak them into my diet.  The blueberries are a good choice if you don’t want your smoothie to actually be green… great for those with an aversion to green foods.  We’ve also substituted spinach for kale, though I prefer the kale if we have it.

This is the smoothie H and E ask for over and over.  Rick usually makes it with a carrot for me, and they like it just fine.  They’ve even bragged to the neighborhood kids about how good it is.  Of course, E has been known to run from me stuffing handfuls of spinach into his mouth before I can make him come back inside.  So fun having kids that like to eat their greens.  How lucky are we!

Categories: Recipes | Tags: | 4 Comments

To Be Continued

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Anisa

Four weeks now without a fridge and going strong.  We’ve had a lot of questions about the experiment and how it’s gone so far.  Last week, a friend asked if we knew yet if we planned to continue, or if we were going to plug back in after the month was up.  The honest answer, at this point is yes, and I don’t know yet.

Yes, we plan to continue living without the fridge plugged in, at least for a while.  Partially because it’s not been that hard or that big of an inconvenience.  Partially because I really want to get a full month’s billing cycle (or maybe two) from our power company under our belts, so we can compare the bills to last year.  I don’t know how significant of an impact not running the refrigerator will have on our energy consumption and bills for just the one or two months.  I’m hoping it’s a lot, but I realize that translating those kilowatt-hours to dollars isn’t always that huge of an impact either.

When asked what amount was significant enough to keep it unplugged, I didn’t really have an answer.  I like the idea that by unplugging the fridge for a year we could save enough money to upgrade our older, less efficient freezers to new, super efficient machines.  But I don’t know how realistic that is.  And if it’s not, I don’t know that that will make me plug back in either.  It’s sort of an open question right now I guess.

The other reason I don’t know how long the experiment will continue is that we’re coming up on summer when the CSA will be in full swing and we will have a lot of vegetables to get through every week.  This was Rick’s first major concern when I originally brought up the unplugging idea to him.  I plan to take it one week at a time.  To try to be efficient and wise about getting veggies put away in the freezer, kept cool in water, and used up within the week as we can.  But I’m not going to just let them waste or rot if it gets down to it.

I expressed the possibility of using the fridge in the summer if we are overwhelmed with produce and then re-unplugging it again in the fall and through the spring until it’s needed again.  But we’ll see if that’s even an issue as the summer gets here.  The CSA season starts usually in mid-June and takes a few weeks to get into full gear before we’re bring home loads and loads of food.  We’ll be able to adjust and take it as it comes, I think.  😉

So far, we’ve learned a lot already.  I learned that once you open the cheese, you better use it up, and don’t store it in the door unless you want it to go moldy.  Also, I learned not to buy two gallons of milk at a time.  They take up too much space and we ended up giving about half a gallon to the chickens that was spoiled during the first week, simply because it’s not quite as cold in the icebox as the fridge was, and the expiration date wasn’t at the end of the week.

At this point, we’re looking to keep going.  We still have a week left in the experiment, but I just don’t see us plugging in yet.

Categories: Simple Living, Unplugging the Fridge | Tags: , , , , | 7 Comments

Thursday Tip: Tomato Tags

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Anisa

Every year, we try new varieties of tomatoes.  They are, by far, my favorite thing to grow in our garden.  But we’ve had a few problems over the last couple of years keeping everything straight as far as know which tomato is which.

I’ve tried sticking the little plant tag in the ground next to the plant, but inevitably the tag gets broken or lost over the summer, never to be seen again until we are tilling in the fall.  I’ve tried writing it down, so we can keep a record of the varieties we love and don’t love quite as much.  But sometimes I forget.

This year, we have fifteen tomato plants, in thirteen different varieties. I’ve decided to try something new.  I think it’s a good idea and wanted to share it with you.

I’ve taken all the tags that came with each little plant, punched a hole, and zip-tied it to the tomato cage of each plant.  I’m hoping we can keep better track of the tags this way (no getting stepped on and broken, or lost in the foliage).  Wish us luck!

Categories: Garden, Thrift | 5 Comments

Independence Update and A Weekend Off

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Anisa

So as tough as it was for me, I took a weekend off from garden and household projects.  It was good timing, since there was a lot of rain this weekend and we had some family obligations on Saturday.  But normally that would have been no obstacle and we would have squeezed out the time for another project or two anyway.

But really.  I needed rest.  And I think Rick did too.  We didn’t do any work on Sunday.  We had a lazy morning and then went to the museum to see the Pirate exhibit.  We ordered a pizza on Friday night, ate out for breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday (whoa!!!) and had left-overs Sunday.  That. Never. Happens.

The rest was good.  I know I needed it.  My back has been hurting more the last few weeks, and I feel surprised by it.  I never had any back pain with my other two pregnancies, and although Rick says it’s because I’m doing more, I’m not convinced.  I mean I was a month ahead of this with E and working on the farm. ??  Well, who knows?

Things have been going well with the big unplugging of the fridge.  Actually it doesn’t really seem that big at this point.  It’s been a fun topic of conversation though, and I’m keeping track of the lessons we’re learning in these weeks to share with you all.

I’ve also been thinking about some little changes on the blog.  Nothing major, but I added a “recipes” category and tried to find all my old posts with recipes to put in it.  It needs a better name though… not something that boring.  I’m thinking “Homegrown Grub” or “Fresh to the Feedbag” or some other thing that’s witty, but to the point. Any suggestions??

I know it’s also been a few weeks since I wrote up an Independence Days update.  Here’s the latest, and it covers the last few weeks, so it’s not really as big as it seems.  🙂

Plant something – leeks, onions, beets, kohlrabi, carrots, watermelon, corn, eggplant, basil, tomatoes, peppers, kale, chard, peas, cucumbers… can you tell the danger of frost finally passed here?  😉

Harvest something –  eggs and spinach galore, mint, radishes, lettuce, asparagus.

Preserve something – chicken soup, broth too, asparagus, quiche.

Waste Not – compost, scraps to chickens, recycling, still planning meals (18 weeks in a row!), used wood chips to mulch garden, built the hugelkultur, made some calls about getting the tree trunk milled into lumber when it comes down.  Realized the changing table has seen better days (after the known 4 kids it’s been through, plus some??), so I let it stay in the spare room as a shelf.  Will find a substitute to use for changing table.  Used up half a gallon of left over paint (an old living room wall color) on a wall in the spare room.  Donated a carload of stuff to the Goodwill, took a box of the boys’ clothes to be sold.

Want Not – tried to make yogurt.  It tasted good but was thin.  Going to keep trying though – it’s so easy and even the “mistake” was tasty – H loved it.  Got new shoes for both boys and new underwear for H – they are growing like weeds already.

Build Community Food Systems – some of that planting was in the neighbor’s garden.  Also helped a friend start their first garden.

Eat the Food – Well.  Lots.  We’re getting to the end of the stuff we saved over the winter.  It hurts buying some things, like tomatoes (canned) and onions.  We will definitely be working to save a lot more this year, if we can.

Categories: Hugelkultur, Independence Days | 3 Comments

Photo Friday: Putting in the Bees

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Anisa

Because I just can’t get over how much fun it was.  Sorry about the quality of some of the pics – we were facing into the sun.  😉

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Categories: Beekeeping | 5 Comments

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