The journey to the food we eat,

 
          

     "Farmers are the only indispensable people on the face of the earth."

  Lately we have had many discussions about what is actually in our food,where and how all that we eat is processed. Label reading happens with everything and discussions about what the ingredients actually are has become the norm lately.We watched the movie Fresh last night with our girls (10 and 12) http://www.freshthemovie.com/.%20This This  movie is about change, changing the way we raise the meat we eat and the food we grow. Now I have been talking about these ideas for awhile now and the kids listened with half an ear, thinking mom was on another health kick. Watching how the animals were treated in the movie last night and learning what was injected/fed to them must have really hit home, I could actually see the light bulb go on over their heads,lol. They asked where we could find meat that wasn't processed in the ways shown. They were really furious seeing how the chicks were thrown and crowded into the chicken houses. We talked about the pesticides that were sprayed on the crops and watched How stuff works in the food and beverages. We watched how corn, salt and wheat were processed, the spraying of chemicals on the corn and the genetic modification of both wheat and corn.

  There are several movies in our netflix queue for use to watch exploring more on this subject. Fed Up, What's on your plate, Ingredients and Food Matters are on the list. Tomorrow we will visit a local fresh bread store and a meat market, comparing prices and ingredients. This morning Piper looked at the ingredients for the granola cereal she was eating and asked why there was sugar,honey and dextrose in it. So we talked about what we wanted in our granola and plan on making some this weekend. Zoe was ranting(she tends to do that) about potato starch in the shredded cheese we had for dinner so we are going to learn about making cheese and why potato starch might be put in there.They have about decided that if they can't read or understand the ingredient when it is looked up then maybe it didn't need to be there. We are looking for different ideas for meals using the least amount of processed ingredients possible. I feel like they are coming to understand why gardening and raising our own animals are so important. It also helps that several of their friends parents are going thru the same process with their kids, I love listening to some of the conversations they have about the food that they are eating. The next read aloud book will be Animal,Vegatable,Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I want to explore how many of the foods we eat are grown close to home(50 to 100 miles).
 Somtimes I really feel that the girls aren't learning anything in our homeschooling journey and then there are times like this where I am drowning in the wave of information they are processing. Homeschooling Rocks!!

                               Blessed Be,      

Pinterest

   Have you heard of Pinterest yet?  To me it's a great place to keep and organize ideas. You can collect pins for gardening, kids, books, whatever you want. On your page you will have as many boards as you want,named with whatever appeals to you. If you find something out on the web or make something you want to share, copy/upload a picture of it and add it to the appropriate board. Keeping recipes with pictures is a snap, ideas for your garden, fun things to build/make with the kids, a honey build list with ideas for the house. This is a place to store so many fun things without clogging up files in you computer or risk loosing them when your computer crashes(as mine does frequently). You can follow your favorite boards and friends.Hit the Pinterest button on the right side of the blog and come play!

These are just a few pins from my boards, come stretch your imminagition!



Blessed Be,

Come on Spring!!

  Here in NW Arkansas the weather has been particularly nice this winter, a few cold days, a dusting of snow and a little rain. Makes me worried about what will happen here in February and March. We have also been receiving the annual seed catalogs in the mail, you know the ones that makes us feel like a kid in a candy store, so many choices that it's hard to decide what to plant. My friend Tabbie and I are going in together to buy seeds from Baker Creek,http://rareseeds.com/. We have a list of 53+ vegetables and herbs that we want to put in our gardens this year. My garden didn't well at all last year due to the very hot summer we had and the major invasion of bugs that came to visit. I am going to expand my garden quite a bit this year, make space for a larger variety of yummy stuff. The melons, squash, and cucumbers are all going on the little hill area behind the main garden, I hope to get more than last year as Hershey isn't here to carry them off. 6 more raised beds will be going up in the next month or so with other planters scattered around the garden. I want a really colorful garden with all kind of eccentric planters and surprises that catch your eye when wondering thru. I found tons of ideas on Pinterest and hope to put them in the garden this year.

These are just a few ideas I want to incorporate into the garden, to find more click on the Pinterest button on the right. What are you plans for the garden this year?                                                                            Blessed Be,

Being self sufficient and prepared,

  For awhile now I have been thinking about what would happen to us if the world around us collapsed. If the banks went belly up, no jobs, if we had to survive completely on ourselves. We would probably, maybe last a month! Where we are in our home/lives at this moment we are not self sufficient what so ever. The only bulk items I have on hand is popcorn.Does anyone ever think about what their family would do if the world crashes like that? Because there is a good chance it just might. My husband and I have talked about what we would do, talked a lot but haven't done anything yet. The #1 thing we would do is go to as many pharmacies or stores that carry diabetic supplies and load up on them as this would be what we would need to keep our daughter alive until the world straightened itself out.I hope we will be in a place to supply as much of our own food as we could and I am learning to make things like laundry soap/other soaps we would need, not much but a start. I have been collecting books on homesteading/how to/herbal medicines which I hope would be of use to us.

 I look back on my childhood and came to realize just how strong my mother was. We pretty much always lived out in the country or in very small towns. We moved around a lot! One of my favorite places was in the itty bitty town of Pyatt Ar. We started out there on a large acreage that had a new barn, a new milk house and a well house on it. Those buildings were what we lived in. We had our beds and living area set up in the barn and the kitchen was in the milk house. We had several acres of vegetables growing in the bottom land and a huge on up by the house for us. My brother who was about 16 or 17, myself(10) and the twins who were about 5 at the time helped mom take care of those gardens. We would swim in the creek down by the road or out by the rail road tracks.We had chickens, ducks, rabbits and dogs. I remember mom canning in the milk house and how hot it would get. The twins and I would take off up in the woods for the day and come back when it was getting dark, drinking out of the cold spring, eating blackberries. The school I went to had 1st-2nd in one room,3rd-4th in another and 5th-6th in another, the other grades were over in another building. I thought it was a wonderful school! In the winter we would move into town until spring and planting time. My mom was about 45 at this time and I remember how hard she worked to grow food for us and get it put up for the winter.I remember her making clothes for us and teaching us what bugs in the garden were good and what were bad. For a kid it seemed like a great life most of the time but for an adult I think it would have been a struggle. My older sisters probably know more of what mom went thru at that time. To me the strength she showed back then gives me hope that I can get my family thru anything that comes our way.                                                         
 It has finally dawned on me that my husband,kids and myself will not be able to do this on our own. We need a community, a group of people/families with varying talents and skills that can work together to build a secure,well prepared place to take care of our families if anything major happens. I don't know if that can happen on this property we are on now or if we need to look for a more suitable place. I do feel that everyone needs to get themselves someway ,somehow, into a position where they can safely survive a major catastrophe. It might be getting some families together on some land and growing or building everything you need, a group of people in a neighborhood banning together and making plans, everyone in an apt. building working together to makes things safe (this would require you to know your neighbors), helping family/friends monetarily who can get a safe place set up so that you could take your family there. I am not an alarmist, but bad things do happen, be it with mother nature or man made and there needs to be plans in place for our families so we will not have to rely on a government that probably won't be there to help us.The 99% needs to start taking care of their own! We can you know, we can band together, thinking outside the box and create our own paradigm shift.

        

Blessed Be,

Lessons learned this year,

  I have been thinking about the lessons I have learned about homesteading since we bought this place almost two years ago. Some were very subtle, others hit you right between the eyes letting you know what you did was a dumb idea!
 1. Labradors do not belong on homesteads that have chickens! We had to find a home for our chocolate
lab Hershey because she liked our chickens as much as we do. Labs are wonderful dogs but it is their nature to hunt birds and small animals.
2. Plant a garden 3 times more as you think you might need, that way you might get at least some of the produce that the bugs don't eat!
3.Homesteading and living in the country is hard work! I did know this really, I just get reminded a lot.
4. Two vehicles are a must,with one of them hopefully being a truck. You will always find something on craigslist or freecycle that you need a truck for, but then again you also find just how much feed, hay or wood you can put in your car when the seats lay down. Note: big goats do not fit in the back of a car!
5. Grass and weeds grow faster than you can mow!
6. During the winter, when you think they will never get the road plowed, walk down and look at the road. It might be that the roads are clear as a bell and it's your long snowed in driveway that is keeping you from getting out. The two winters that we have been here have been the worst in the area, my husband has to stay in town for several days during the worst snows and we now park at the end of the driveway when the weather gets bad.
7.Dogs like to bring you gifts of dead things!
8.It takes 2 to 3 times longer to build something than you think it might.
9.Friends and family don't come to visit very often because they think you live in the boondocks, even though you tell them that you live on a paved road and 30min. isn't that long of a drive. Gas prices might have something to do with it also, :)
10. That no matter how hard homesteading is, it is a wonderful life and you wouldn't change a thing! (ok, maybe more money to get things done faster)

Happy Homesteading and Blessed Be!     

Good, Bad and Bugly, Identifying the bugs in our garden.

This year has been our first time gardening at this place and I really haven't gardened since I was a kid. I think I forgot more than I ever knew! I started out small because well.. that's what all the books said to do so as not to overwhelm yourself. Maybe if I had put in a bigger garden I might have actually harvested some squash, corn and beans instead of just providing lunch for the squash bugs and lo moth caterpillars. I am going to start a list of good and bad bugs I find in the garden as well as what works for me to combat them or to draw them to the garden.
So far we have had,

Aphids, http://www.buzzle.com/articles/aphids-on-tomato-plants.html

I would wash the plants down really good and then spray them

with neem oil soap. There were also a lot of lady bugs eating them
as fast as the could. Next year I will find a way to discourage the ants
from coming around as they are the ones who farm the aphids.

Tomato Horn worms...
 these I have  really been diligent about watching for, I ck my plants every morning and evening to try and catch them.If you see little round balls of poop sitting on a leaf chances are the worm is really close by.

Squash bugs..bane of my life at the moment!

I haven't found anything that works on these yet but I am going to try this,  I will let you know how it works.

Lo Moth caterpillars....just found 5 of these fuzzy things having a party on my corn leaves.Here is the info I found for it. http://insects.about.com/od/butterfliesmoths/ig/Stinging-Caterpillars/Io-Moth-Caterpillar.htm. Not sure what eats them or kills them yet.

A friend is battling Blister Beatles, these things are just plain mean! Even if they are dead their blood can still burn you. Tabbie is trying to find something to kill them, maybe she will try the coke!

We also had Japanese Beetles..not to bad as they stayed mostly on the wild blackberries. These I just went out very early or late in the evening and would knock them off into a container of water.

Now for the Good Guys!!!

Lady Bugs...they LOVE aphids!

Lacewings...

The tiny larvae that emerges has a voracious appetite and will feed on aphids, small worms, insect eggs, mites, thrips, immature whitefly, and other insects. I will buy these and ladybugs next year, maybe I can get them to eat the squash bug eggs!

As I find more beneficial helpers and identify more pests I will add to this page.

Aquaponics

  The last few days I have been fighting the foes of my garden. Aphids, Squash bugs and Tomato Horn worms! I think I am winning at least until I go on vacation then we see if my husband can keep them from eating up my garden. I have decided that I am really just providing a nursery for the squash bugs at the moment and have lost my squeamishness to squishing the little pains in my squash. I am already working on my battle plan for next year! For the aphids I need to put something out the keeps the ants away as they are the ones who farm the aphids like we farm our animals, no ants hopefully no aphids, order more ladybugs to eat any that do come around and lots of soapy water to wash the tomatoes down with. Horn Worms I will fight by checking diligently like I do now, caught 4 in one day and one today. I so enjoyed seeing the chickens fighting over those worms! As for squash bugs I am at a loss, I am using neem oil soap on the aphids and that is working well so I am going to experiment with the soap and the squash bugs to see if it works. If any one has found something that works PLEASE let me know.

 Fighting this garden battle can get kind of depressing, knowing that there are way more of them and only one of you(more if you can get the kids to help squish bugs). So I have been wondering about other ways of growing veggies and whatnot. I have always been  intrigued by aquaponics, the idea of raising fish who at the same time are feeding the plants above them is pretty neat. I first read about this in Carla Emery's book Country Living, this book would be considered the homesteaders bible! In my research I found out about:

  Hydroponics --the cultivation of plants by placing the roots in liquid nutrient solutions rather than in soil; soilless growth of plants.

    And...

  Aquaponics which is a sustainable food production system that combines a traditional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In the aquaculture, effluents accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity for the fish. This water is led to a hydroponic system where the by-products from the aquaculture are filtered out by the plants as vital nutrients, after which the cleansed water is recirculated back to the animals. Many aquaponic styles are possible, it can be as simple as a pond with floating vegetation, through to incredibly complex systems with very high stocking densities of fish.

 I will never be able to afford the very expensive complex one so I started looking on my favorite place for information, you tube. There I found a lot of backyard gardeners making their own hydroponic tanks.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

I would like to start with the first one and eventually end up with the last one, though I really loved #3's garden beds. There is an aquaponic farm about 4 hrs away and I hope to visit it in the fall. I would like to know if they still have problems with garden pests or if the beneficial bugs still come around.

Here is a video showing how to make the strawberry towers in video 4.

This should give you some ideas on aquaponics and how to build your own. If you have already built any of these systems send me some pictures.

Blessed Be,

Greenhouses made from old windows.

 My brother has been cleaning up around his place and brought over some things he thought we could use. He brought some wood to make things with, fencing for the chickens and some old windows. Now I have been dreaming about building a greenhouse for some time. I do have my garden beds set up for mini greenhouses but I really want a big one someday. To buy a greenhouse in a kit is way out of my price range so I have been looking at ways to build one from scratch. There is a hoop house that several gardeners use, in fact I helped build a huge one on a friends place last fall.

This one only cost about 1500. to build and you can make it whatever size you want to keep the cost down. Having a teaching workshop can help defray the cost also.

 I have also thought about building cold frames and will probably do that until get a greenhouse up.

What I really like the look of  are greenhouses made from old windows. 1. You are recycling something that probably was going to the landfill. 2. you can make you greenhouse as unique as you want. So these windows I received will be the beginning of my greenhouse. I need to clean them up a lot and start looking for more so hopefully next year I can build something like these!

Favorite!

This greenhouse is made from reused aluminum storm doors.

Greenhouse.aspx#ixzz1ODodod6z

  These are just a few that I found on the web. So now go start collecting your windows and send me pictures when you have your greenhouse built.

Growing in the Garden

Our little garden is growing! I haven't put in a lot yet as I didn't want to overwhelm myself and screw it up. I have a three sister planting in one bed. Corn with beans right next to them and squash in between them, I planted them to close together but I think they will do fine.

Bed 2  has tomatoes and bell peppers.Bed 3 has onions and carrots which I wasn't sure if they had survived when I planted them as our puppy Lexie had jumped in and twirled around in the bed before I could stop her, needless to say the plants are not in a straight line any more!

 Bed 4 has 2 watermelon plants, the rest didn't make it for some reason and bed 5 isn't planted yet. I planted a bunch of potatoes in a big area next to the beds. It was kind of late to get them in and I hope they grow. I just covered the area with about 6" of hay and put the potatoes in and will keep covering them with hay as they grow., I have seen 2 coming up, hope the rest do.

 I even have melons coming up in the compost bin where I tossed some seeds, plan to transplant them soon.

I surrounded the beds with chicken to keep the dogs and cats out until the plants get big enough. This winter I will add more framing and plastic to make mini greenhouses.

We are also working on a spiral bed for strawberries. 

How is your garden growing?

Homeschool Conversations

 Yesterday our homeschool group met up for park day as we do on most Fridays. There were about 9 moms with 1-4 kids each so we had a good group. The kids had fun playing in the creek and generally chasing around. As I was leaving I wondered what moms in a big city homeschool group would talk about.  
 Our conversation yesterday centered around our gardens and the animals we hoped to raise this year. We talked about the best chickens to raise for meat and eggs , the best way to butcher them, how many a family would need in a year and how we could help each other out with that big chore. We considered what breed of rabbits to raise and volunteered to help one mom to make a better chicken tractor as she didn't like hers.
 We talked about the gardens and I hoped it wasn't to late to put in potatoes. Composting came up which then lead to a conversation about humanure. Most had read The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins and I told of a new one out called Holy Shit by Gene Logsdon. One family had already tried this and said the soil that was produced after 2 years was the richest she had ever seen. I thought that was quite interesting.r
 In between these conversations we kept an eye on kids, passed out snacks, passed around babies and generally made sure no one roamed to far away. With all the families there about half lived in town with the rest living any where from just outside to about 30-45 min away. I think we all consider ourselves homesteaders, urban and country. All in all it was a great play day for the kids and me!

  We have been busy bee's around here. Except for the roof, our little hen housed is finished. The girls and I started painting it yesterday, I will put up pictures when we are done. I need to find some fencing for the chickens until then I guess they will be truly free range, we have a rooster and 4 hens waiting at my neighbors for their new home.
 The garden beds are slowly getting ready. I have a lady coming out today and bringing me horse manure, I am trading blackberry plants for it. I hope to start planting soon.
 With everyone looking forward to spring and growing season I thought I would put up all my favorite homesteading, gardening and food prep sites. I hope you will find these as helpful as I have.

This has a lot of good Pod casts
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/search/homesteading/

Backwoods home Magazine
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/clay125.html

The Hillbilly Housewife
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/

The Humble Garden
http://www.humblegarden.com/

Dehydrate 2 Store
http://www.dehydrate2store.com/

Becky's Homestead
http://www.beckyshomestead.com/

http://selfsufficientpreparedness.wordpress.com/
Has alot of good info.

International Seed Saving Institute
 http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html

Leeners's
http://www.leeners.com/index.html
I haven't tried anything from here but it looks interesting.

Tattler
http://www.reusablecanninglids.com/
I will be ordering from here.

Homestead
http://www.homestead.org/

 Best book I have run across lately is  Great Garden Companions by Sally Jean Cunningham. This book has a lot of wonderful information on what plants to combine with your veggies to bring in the good bugs and keep the pests away. Also Mary Jane's Farm and Countryside Magazines have great information on homesteading, gardening and so much more.

 I hope everyone is looking forward to the growing season as much as I am. Ck. out these links and they will give you a lot of help and new ideas.

Dreaming of spring!

Spring is around the corner, I can feel it, I just can't find the right corner! Last fall the girls and I planted a bunch of bulbs someone gave us around the tree in the front yard. Today I saw that a bunch were up and I worry if we get more snow. I might cover them with more straw when that happens.

 My son Aaron and I spent last Sat. building garden beds out of scrap wood. They came out pretty good! I need to collect more wood to make the rest. Today Is Aaron's 19th birthday, Happy Birthday, we love you!
In the Mary Jane magazine I found an article about a barn made from pallets and a polyuathane carport cover. I really liked it and now plan to make one for the goats which I hope to have by the end of the summer. I went onto you tube and found all kinds of neat things that are built with pallets. Now a chicken house and a bigger storage shed are on the horizon. This is usually free wood folks, just today on craigs list someone was giving away 25-30 pallets free for the taking. I really need a truck! I am becoming a great scavanger!