What's growing in the garden

Raising veggies at the neighbor's

Raising kids in our back yard. Lettuce and spinach nearing its end for the season.

The other kids in my backyard!

The wild animals in our backyard! HA!

June, at least I know where you went, I think

What happened in June? 10 day vacation with family at a rental house in the Outer Banks started the month off. It was fun, fun, fun. Well worth the effort and expense of travelling with 3 kiddos. Wish we could see Dan's family more. And so begins our recruiting efforts to convince them all to move! :)

We came home and played catch up. Had to dispatch a chicken who was laying internally. Easier than I thought it would be. GIANT hard boiled-ish yolk is about all the details some of you likely want.

I also started night weaning Flower to get more milk from Iris. Started harvesting spring crops like lettuce and spinach and rhubarb and radishes. Giant phallic French breakfast radishes that I was tempted to take a pic of to share. We went on two strawberry farm picking trips and picked sugar snap peas as well. 30 some jars of strawberry syrup and some frozen peas were the first things put up for the year.

We started toying with cordials. Brandy infused with cherries from our little neighborhood farmer's market. Elderflower/lemon balm/lemon peel infused vodka. Hoping to try get some green plums to make umeshu.

We also got our first taker on us harvesting fruit trees for free. We took home 20lbs of tart cherries after 3 hrs of picking that took me 3 nights to pit and freeze. We used some to make Vitamix "ice cream" and dehydrated some as well. My niece Sarah came to spend a few days so that was a whirlwind of picnics and local attractions.

At the end of the month Dan brought home a first bit of honey and comb that was being built where it shouldn't have been.

I hope to add a few more pics to this later.

And now it is July.

My future endeavors?

Hubby wants the front yard gone and my lovely Honey Locust to go with it. Edible fruit trees out front would be nice but what about the privacy from the street and the shaded picnics with the kiddos! "Not yet anyway" I tell him. But if www.brownthumbmama.com picks me for the giveaway for the book The Edible Front Yard maybe I will let him toy with the project a bit. :) Of course, he already has 10 trees or so he needs to plant for me this April plus two bee hives to make plus retrofitting our garage for my goats and the fencing they need. I am guessing I will get to keep my Honey Locust for awhile! ;)

My urban homesteading endeavors

Recently there has been much talk of urban homesteading and what it means. "To each their own" is definitely the correct phrase to use here.

So as a followup to my post about the "who" of our homestead here is the "what" of our urban homestead.

Several years ago I caught the urban farm bug. We don't have a lot of land. 50 feet x 128 feet to be exact! I started out with a vegetable garden. Growing more than I cared to eat. I love to grow but didn't know how to use nor did I desire to use much of it frankly! I love heirlooms and unique items. Some of the fun things I have grown are cotton, purple potatoes, fish peppers, dozens of varieties of tomatoes, beautiful eggplants. They were beautiful enough that consumption was just a bonus. I have flirted with the idea of being a small-scale seed grower or farmer but now am more family oriented and looking to be more self-sufficient.

When we bought our house I loved the raised sunny area calling for a garden (which the chickens now occupy) and the secluded bit of a hillside and envisioned a secret garden there. I started a veggie garden and finally was able to plant perennials like asparagus, rhubarb and chives.

For a while I got a bit off track and had a brief but intense affair with hostas. At one point I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 varieties. Boy those things can get expensive and while beautiful I have grown past them and envision one day they might share their space with bees.

From veggies I next endeavored to grow a bit of fruit. I started several Asian pears (remember I like different things!) to have all but one mowed over. Amazingly last year it fruited despite its bad location thanks to me. I had a small strawberry patch and rhubarb as no garden is complete without them according to my genetics I believe. For a few years this was enough for me. I was devoting a lot of gardening related energy to the youth garden program I started. After that it was devoting time to my first baby.

We have slowly evolved though in our life aspirations and quickly wanted to really kick it up a notch. I suppose a farm just isn't a farm without animals so in spring of 2010 despite having brand-new twins we got chicks. From there I started scheming for goats and bought 2 Nigerian Dwarf goats in the fall of 2010. We were a bit off track in getting them home for a while but now in 2011 seem to be on track thanks to my city councilman! 2011 has barely begun and we have ordered a fair amount of fruit trees and fruiting bushes this spring. Apples, and peaches, and plums, oh my! We have also added golden currants and grapes in the last couple of years. I hope to try out espaliering the apple trees this year. This should handle my preserves needs in a few years. Nothing like your own preserves mixed into fresh yogurt. :) The little things that make me smile. I also hope to really kick up our veggies this year. With the babies a bit older we'll see. We have a few hundred starts in the basement growing as I hope to cover the coop roof with an herb garden. Soon I will start peppers and tomatoes and the rest of the veggies. We have a lot of new things going on in the kitchen too. Hubby has started making bread regularly and I have made a decent stash of preserves all thanks to some great books for Christmas. We have a few things growing in the kitchen, too. Yogurt, kefir, kombucha to name a few. Soon we will have goats milk to play with making more cheese and soap. Iris just kidded and should be here within weeks. I really look forward to that new learning experience. The bees are in route and hives to be built this month in anticipation of their installation on a nearby property. And the chickens have just layed their first 8 egg day including a robin's egg blue that just started being layed this week. Eight eggs from eight hens, what more can you ask for! Things are looking up and spring is in the air!

Fellow Chicken Mamas

Today I invited a new soon-to-be chicken mama over to talk chickens and such. I enjoy meeting people who are on the same path as me or some variation of it. I get out of it as much as I give, if not more. So last year I started hosting Chicken Mama get-togethers at my house. I can't say I came up with the name or the idea of getting together but luckily I don't think anyone has trademarked "Chicken Mama" yet. (HA! Sorry I couldn't help myself Dervaes! Jokes at your expense, you poor things!)

Anway we are mostly youngish mothers with small children. We join together to give each other support in our endeavors to eat and live sustainably. It is a safe place where no one will roll their eyes when you spend 5 minutes talking about the coolest chicken breed you are just dying to get your hands on. It is also an environment where knowledge sharing just pours forth. Over the course of our time together we might jump from talking about coop plans, to where to get organic feed, to where to buy sustainably raised beef, to what cool new site we found online, to agreeing to co-op on an order of herbs, to talking about a new recipe we tried, ....to infinite and beyond.

We are having fun building community and making new friends.

Together our brains are the equivalent of a super-computer, a full-time paid lobbyist, and a small research firm.

Together we will change our lives, our communities, our world!

I have a couple new girls in my life

No, I don't mean new friends..although I have been so lucky to meet some cool, new people lately. Like many of my new friends these girls make milk too (or will soon enough). Nope these girls are of the 4 legged variety in the Caprine family. They will legally be mine soon but won't come home until this fall at the earliest or next spring at the latest. Let me introduce them to you. First there is Angelina. She is a doeling just born this spring. She is out of a beautiful herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats bred by Megan Serfling out of Serfling Farms in South Dakota.

Her sister in milk will be Iris out of Promessa in Daykin, Nebraska. Iris' mother is a 4+lb milker and we hope Iris will be too. We will breed her first so that my first kidding and milking experiences will be with a more experienced doe. I will breed them alternatingly in spring and fall to have year round milk. Unlike most goats Nigerian Dwarf goats are year-round breeders. The idea of fresh milk and baby goats twice a year makes me giddy!

This is what her former owner had to say about Iris. "Iris is for sale to a milking home. She kidded with a single buckling in May and is being a super mom. She comes out to the milkstand and gets right on, she stands quietly for milking, and waits until I'm done with both goats on the stands. Iris is a bit shy at first, but once warmed up is quite friendly, loves to be petted and given treats.She has been led around a little by the collar. While I love the looks of her open ribbing and deep wide body, her udder just isn't quite up to show ring standards, though it will be a functional useful udder. She milks out well and can be a wonderful milk producer for someone wanting great tasting milk in a small package. Her dam is a good 4+ lb milker who has a long and persistant lactation, and I expect she will match that at least as a mature doe, as her sire's dam was also a very good milker. "
I am so excited to embark on this new adventure in healthy, sustainable living and eating!

Time on my side

Nothing makes me happier than when time is on my side. This morning was a prime example. Thanks goes to hubby for staying home from work in case Etta was still sick. With the help with the kiddos I managed to salvage the last of my organic apples. We had started to feed them to the chickens because they were beyond fresh eating and I didn't know when I might have time to get to them. Those chickens eat too well at our house! Anyway I put them all to their "best possible use" which I love. I have a real hierarchy worked out; good pieces for dehydrating, smaller bits and odd pieces to the apple sauce (with some peaches that were nearing their end and odd bits of banana that weren't suited for dehydrating), apple peels and other small bits to the chickens, seeds and really core bits to the compost. Ahh the little things that bring me joy!

Holy cuteness

So I recently got goat fever. Think baby fever then change "babies" to "goats". It all gained speed in my mind as I posted a while back about a horrible dairy cow story I saw and our efforts to live more sustainable whether by choice or necessity. From the thought of, "I should really consider goats. If hubby agreed to chickens after nagging for about 2 years why not goats." to falling in love with the idea took about 2 weeks. I had mentioned it before but never really thought of it as a serious possibility. So I first started my dairy goat search and read a bit about Kinder goats and then Nigerians and the various cross-bred mini-goats that you can breed. Frankly they are smaller than my dog..with the benefit of producing milk. Now Nadia is a great dog: she lovingly puts up with our inattention and makes me feel safe but she doesn't produce anything. Maybe she wants to be a goat herder in her spare time? Wonder if people would even notice if I had goats? Gotta get 2 so they don't get lonely.
I had briefly looked for Nebraska breeders but couldn't find any online. But then I mentioned it to my sister who lives in Worms and she has a neighbor who has mini-goats she is sure I get get stock from!! So when we are out that way for the Nebraska State Fair I am planning on a field trip to see them and how feasible it would be to have 2. It would be nice to make sure I like their milk, too, although I ultimately hope to make herbed cheeses and maybe soap. Now that you think I am crazy look at these cuties and tell me you could resist!


Check out these adorable goats.. http://playritefarm.webs.com/2010kids.htm




My friend wants mini-sheep. They are CUTE too!
http://mylittlesheep.com/

Asian Pear Miracle

About 4-5 years ago I planted 3 Asian Pear trees. Two got mowed over. The one that I still have was planted in a "temporary" spot. It was just set there to heal in for a bit. It is in an awful spot under the canopy of another tree. I figured it would not ever set fruit due to the shade and that it is not a self-pollinator but amazingly I have 5!! cherry sized or larger fruit on it. I see about 3 that aborted as well. So exciting..now to decide to move it this fall or not. I would possibly get a better yield and ultimately a healthier tree but I could also kill it.

Wind is blowing me towards Kinder goats

Just watched an atrocious video about abuse of cows at a dairy in Ohio. While I can't imagine most dairies treat their cows this way it spurred me to look into goats again a bit. I know nothing about them but am interested in the self-sufficiency of having them. Would love to have Angora goats for their fiber one day but right now I'm interested in milk. So I looked for small milk goats and came up with Kinder goats. They are supposed to be a cross between a standard Nubian and a Pygmy. Good milk production in a small package. Not imagining it will happen anytime soon. But in the meantime I'll try to locate some milk to try and try to learn more about goat husbandry.
I found this site and enjoyed reading about them a bit and would like to try some recipes.
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/sanderson95.html

Used this link to locate some places that I might be able to buy some milk from.
http://www.realmilk.com/where2.html#ia

So off on another tangent. My poor hubby.

Chicken peace

We gave the chicks their first outing yesterday. I can't tell you how at peace it made me feel watching them outside. For some time I stood there holding my soft, naked babies wearing cloth dipes while my daughter looked over the chickens making themselves comfy amongst the raised beds. I felt that in that moment we were really doing our best to share our lives with Mother Nature rather than just observe her or use her. Sustainable, simple living really can bring you satisfaction! It is not all about sacrifice.