Category: homesteading

homesteading, Seasons

Getting Greener

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It’s the second sunny day in a row and I’ve spent parts of both days puttering in the garden(s). I’ve given up on growing foxgloves from seed and have finally just bought potted foxgloves and planted them in front of the front fence, with a couple of pansies. With any luck, they’ll fill in (maybe if I don’t plant the seeds but let them do it on their own I’ll get a whole row of foxgloves). Not sure how I’ll keep the neighborhood kids from grabbing the flower stalks and beating each other with them… The backyard is all cleaned …

homesteading, Seasons

Moving Out

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My tree has a new home! I contacted a nursery, malls, the local Boys & Girls Club, friends at Microsoft. I posted to our local parents email list and the Seattle freecycle group. But in the end it was the landscape service providers for our neighborhood who had a space tall enough for a 12 foot tree. So late last week, on a day with rain (despite being forecast otherwise), this beloved family member moved out. The Tree has been launched into a new life, out of the nest. Impact Property Services, our neighborhood’s landscape services company, has an office …

homesteading

My New Surrogate Cow

 

I haven’t made cheese or yogurt yet with it, but I think I may have found a replacement milk! Golden Glen stopped producing bottled milk back in January and I’ve been searching for a comparable substitute, or at least hoping one would materialize for me. PCC replaced Golden Glen pretty quickly with Straus, although I did have a week or two with Organic Valley‘s paper cartons. Organic Valley’s milk, though, is ultra-pasteurized. Straus’ isn’t, and the milk comes in glass bottles, but it comes from California – which works great when I’m visiting California, but it’s a bit far for …

homesteading, Introspection

Why I Do It

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Three cheers for all the urban homesteading bloggers more dedicated to the lifestyle than I. I’m so very grateful for their posts about their challenges: the bugs, the rats, the lice on the goats, the chickens with infected feet. I might sigh over fresh eggs or get starry eyed over fresh goat milk, but then I find pictures like this one and I’m suddenly a lot less romantic about backyard livestock. I just don’t think I’m cut out for the go-to veterinary stuff that goes with having lots of animals. Heck, I can’t even clean out the trap full of …

homesteading, in the kitchen, Seasons

The Circle of Potatoes

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Today, I used up the last of our stored potatoes, turning them into soup for tonight’s dinner. They weren’t much good for anything else, all shrivelly and going soft and putting out seriously desperate roots. Soup was good, though. I’m thinking I’ll drape the potato box with heavy black cloth next year, on the theory that the opening and closing of the pantry door, not to mention turning on the pantry light, for the last six months has provided enough stimulus for the potatoes to think they should start getting ready to make more potatoes. Perhaps a colder environment would …

in the kitchen

Pie Night!

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Chicken Pot Pie. Shepherd’s Pie. An underspiced but worth improving tomato-zucchini pie. Followed by Peach Pie Pops (they look like lollipops, but they are tiny, personal pies on sticks!), Lemon Meringue Pie, Peach Pie, a triple layer lemon/peach-pear/cream pie, and a Butterscotch Pie. Oh, and ice cream. No, I didn’t make all of that. Just four of them. Which was two more than I originally planned. Because sometimes Pie Happens. I’d post pictures, but we’ve eaten it already. Yes, we had help. And yes, there are leftovers. But they aren’t so pretty any more. Thanks to all the Pie Night …