Storing Up

This is where I should have photo after photo of a thriving garden....amazing harvests....canning equipment....

I don't.

Since being woefully unprepared has sort of been my theme when it comes to life at the Heap, I'm going to guess you aren't really surprised.

We came to the Heap in late summer/fall. We were so busy cleaning up and working on the many, many projects we had available .I was physically exhausted and mentally challenged in ways I've never been challenged before. I thought maybe this was the most challenging season.

Then came winter and my core body temperature dropped to about 40 degrees. I was freezing, unmotivated, isolated, and miserable. I was wrong about fall- winter is surely the most challenging season.

Along came spring and the pace of life picked up so suddenly and so frantically I was completely thrown off. In the midst of trying to finish up a school year and an AHG year, I also had to get a garden in, take care of new chicks, and try to help with all of the projects that had waited through the winter, but could wait no longer. Surely spring was the most challenging season.

But none of that prepared me for what was just around the corner. I'm a little embarrassed by how blissfully ignorant I was as I tended my "little" garden and watched over those baby chicks, thinking myself so very busy.

Harvest.

Oh. My. Holy. Homesteading. Ignorance.

Harvest.

In the blink of an eye stuff started coming in from the garden and the apple trees and the produce auction and friends' generosity....and every speck of it needed put up. Right now.

And so I found myself standing over a hot stove day after day canning. I chopped and bagged and froze. I dehydrated. I pickled. I stayed up unthinkable hours and I put it all away.

What I didn't do was take pictures.

So, all I have is some pictures of the resulting bounty, which I will admit, I'm mighty proud of.

I managed to put up way more this year than I would've expected. Not all of it came from my garden. Some came from friends sharing their harvests, some came from a visit to a produce auction where I picked up huge quantities for cheap. I managed to can:

Assorted jams and jellies
Tomatoes
Pears
Salsa
Assorted Pickles
Green Beans
Apples and Applesauce
Sauerkraut
Peaches


In addition to the canned goods I also put a lot in my freezers. I originally had a plan for being somewhat organized, but at some point I just started tossing it where it would fit.

In the freezers I have:

Green peppers
Onions
Peaches
and about 40 chickens along with the giblets.

I also have bags and bags and bags of tomatoes that I will eventually process into sauce and can. This will free up desperately needed freezer space. For the moment, though, I'm just catching my breath.

It was a good season. I learned how to butcher a chicken. I learned how to use a pressure canner. I spent hours in fellowship with a homesteading friend as we canned more food than we thought possible.

It was exhausting, but it was good.

I am no longer delusional though....on a homestead every season brings a new set of challenges. They also bring some pretty amazing moments and I'm grateful to be here.

Now to figure out how to get pictures as I'm working my tushy off.....


Tonia

Phase One

I was a bit late getting the garden in, but it's been planted and going strong for a couple of months now. As with everything out here, there are some high points and some, well, less than high points.

 

 

Three weeks ago I had cucumbers, tomatoes, popcorn, zucchini, onions, spaghetti squash, brussel sprouts, okra, and herbs growing.  We were just starting to get some good zucchini and a few cucumbers. There had been some minor squirmishes with bugs, but nothing a little peppermint spray hadn't taken care of. I was feeling good.

 

The corn seemed to be thriving.

I was delighted to find a sweet little baby spaghetti squash starting to grow.

The tomato plants had a ton of flowers and I spotted the first fruits taking shape.

And the apple trees had a ton of beautiful, healthy fruit on them.

It's easy to forget how fast things can change out here. In three short weeks we've had numerous rainy days and even more sunny days. My plants have either grown by leaps and bounds or they've met their untimely demise- all in the blink of an eye.

 

The cucumbers have taken off and I have already canned enough pickles to feed a small army. I'm only partly joking when I tell my family pickles are to become the standard veggie for every meal.

 

 

 

The tomatoes are as tall as me and have put on a ton of fruit, though nothing has ripened yet. I'm still holding out hope for jars and jars of spaghetti sauce and salsa.

 

 

 

Once one squash bug showed up my precious squash plants quickly started to decline. The zucchini is pretty much toast and the spaghetti squash is barely hanging on. It remains to be seen if the spaghetti squash can hang on long enough to allow the few good sized fruits to finish ripening. The amount of eggs and adult squash bugs in my garden boggles the mind. This is definitely one of the areas I must reevaluate for next year.

 

The corn is starting to flower. I'm hoping there are enough plants for successful pollination to occur. If we're very lucky we'll have popcorn to harvest in the fall.

 

Both the okra and the brussel sprouts have battled caterpillars and while still alive they are very stunted. I have managed to get rid of the critters with peppermint spray, but I'll just have to wait and see if the plants can catch up and put on some fruit.

 

 

 

The apples are still growing and starting to put on a lovely pink blush. I'm beyond excited that we're going to have some apples. It looks like we have one red variety and one green variety so I should be able to can applesauce and apple pie filling both.

 

This year's garden is just phase one. I have plans to expand into the other half of the fenced area next year and to put in a berry patch. This fall we will plant three more apple trees, too.  I still have a ton to learn about maximizing harvests and minimizing bugs and loss. Eventually, I will have two more 25x25 garden areas and lots more veggies. I'm grateful for the successes and the failures- they're helping me learn!

 

 

Tonia

Anticipating the Garden

One of the bummers of this year has been the fact that I wasn't able to plant a garden. We had a lovely raised bed garden at the McMansion, but I didn't want to plant it and then sell the house and have to leave it behind so I left it empty. We came to the Heap too late in the summer to start a garden here so it's been a much anticipated job to get a garden spot picked out and prepped for next year.

I chose to start fairly small for a homesteading garden because I know how much work a new garden can be. This garden will be a lot different from my previous one because it will not be raised and I know that a change like that can bring a big learning curve with it. So, I tried to tame my enthusiasm and be realistic......we'll see how that goes....

Finding a suitable location was harder than you might expect. There are a lot of trees out here- a problem I didn't have at the McMansion. I did find a place that will work, but even there we'll have to take out some trees so that they don't grow bigger and shade the plot too much.

Once I found the spot, I decided how big I wanted it and laid out paper right on top of the grass. Special weed barrier paper is available at nurseries and similar stores and that would have worked great, but I found a big roll of contractor paper at Lowes that was the same price as a much smaller square foot amount of the weed paper so I went with that. I also got some special lawn staples that are made to hold weed paper or fabric in place- turned out those didn't really work all that well with the paper I got.

 

I'm using a lasagna garden method. The general idea is that by putting a layer of organic material right on top of the ground you can kill off the grass and weeds and have a plot ready for planting in the spring. Some people do not till at all with this method, but I plan on tilling the ground before I plant- I just want to get rid of as much grass and weeds as possible before I do. I ended up with a plot that measures about 19 ft by 7 ft- more square footage than I had at the McMansion, but not by too much.

Once I had the paper down I put some wood chips and things down first and then covered them with top soil. I will then put a good layer of manure on top of that once the Hubs is able to go pick up a load from a local horse owner who offered us some of his bounty for free. The hope is that over the winter all of the larger things will break down and feed the soil and in the spring I'll have a lovely, fertile garden plot to plant in.

I cannot wait for the first seed catalogs to start arriving in late winter. Picking what to plant is going to be so much fun!

Tonia