Homestead Weekly Windup: 1
Welcome to our first Weekly Windup: Homestead edition! I’ve decided to post a quick summary of our homestead projects each Friday since the weather is warming up and our garden projects are becoming more of a reality rather than a winter dream. We are always learning from our many failures & some successes and enjoy using our story to encourage others in their homesteading dreams.
A Quick Back Story. . .
As a quick intro for those who might not know our story, my family lives on almost 11 acres of steep, partially wooded hillside in a wonderful little house we built ourselves in the few months when we were engaged. Over the past 5 years, we have built a good sized raised bed veggie garden, planted a huge amount of strawberries as ground cover wherever we can squeeze them in, planted a blueberry patch, added just about every berry you can think of including grapes, raspberries, goumi berries, goji berries, and elderberries, made an asparagus bed, planted an herb garden (and squeezed some into our landscaping,) lined our driveway with fruit trees & maple trees, and built a giant completely enclosed pen for our flock of ducks. I have been working hard to learn how to stay healthy naturally & make healthy meals cost-effectively. We’ve also had 3 kids in the last 4 years, which makes everything SO much more fun & purposeful!
You might notice that I mostly use “we” and “our” instead of “me/I/mine.” One of the things that I love most about our family is that we enjoy being together as much as possible & the kids are always involved with our homestead work, whether I’m wearing the baby, letting the toddler sprinkle duck food, or helping my 3yr old help me with just about everything I do. As soon as Jeremy gets home he jumps right in too! My mom also joins us a few times a week to play & do fun projects. This year she is going to play with the kids while I get to actually work efficiently so the garden will hopefully produce more & we will be able to bless her with some fruit for her labor too! It’s a win all around!
Now that you have the back story, here’s our first week of spring homesteading. . .
In the Kitchen . . .
One winter goal was developing a supply of kombucha to add fun flavor & probiotics to our diet. This week I saved our newest SCOBY then started another gallon of kombucha a few days later so we can maintain a batch at each stage and enjoy a steady supply. We now have 3 gallons of kombucha in a first ferment at any given time, 6-9 quarts in a second ferment, and about 4-6 quarts in the fridge ready to drink. It doesn’t seem like our little family should need much, but Jeremy will happily bring a quart to work each day, the girls will drink maybe 1/2 a quart between them each time they get to enjoy it as a treat with Daddy, and we always serve it for special Friday night picnics & big Saturday breakfasts. So it goes pretty fast.
Outdoor Adventures . . .
I finally finished clearing out our veggie & herb gardens from last season! Our late summer & early fall was busy with our newborn, Eli, so I finished the harvest but have cleaned up gradually. Since I only worked outside during naps on pleasant days it legitimately took all winter. All that is left is weeding the shade garden beds along the woods and the berry bushes.
Jeremy was also able to prune all the fruit trees, maple trees, and bushes in our front yard, a task he had been finding difficult to squeeze in since he hasn’t often been off work while it is light. (So grateful for the time change!) Everything looks a little sad right now but we are looking forward to an explosion of spring growth.
We are also super excited about growing our duck flock! We lost some ducks last year to a raccoon, but the 2 we were left with happily survived the winter. I have a slight hope that the female duck may go broody, but we’re planning on buying some ducklings from our neighbor later this spring regardless. Since we finally turned the hoses back on, the kids & I refilled the bathtub in the duck pen & let the ducks splash around for the first time this spring. It is very nice to stop carrying buckets of hot water out for them to drink from! The best surprise from our ducks this week was finding our first 2 eggs of spring! I didn’t even think to check & had my hands full with the baby & toddler, but my 3yr old peeked in the duck coop & and was so excited to find eggs! This is the first she has been big enough to collect eggs and I think I see an egg carrying apron in her future!
The kids & I have enjoyed pouring over the many garden magazines that have bombarded us this winter & used them for preschool projects, but still have not placed a seed/plant order. Today our project will be sorting through our seeds to decide if we need to buy anything for the coming season. (NEED, not want; I could happily buy the whole herb section & a good part of the rest of the catalog if money & time were not an issue!)
Thus ends the first week of our spring homesteading work. This coming week I’m hoping to get some of our cold weather seeds planted, start a few herbs inside, build & mulch a new strawberry bed in a 20x20x20 foot triangle near our veggie garden, and move some of the woodpile we didn’t use off the porch. Half excited and half tired just thinking about all the projects I have lined up!
What is your homestead & garden looking like? Drop a note with your herbal/homestead goals & projects so we can keep each other motivated!