INTRODUCTION
Homestead Roots Newsletter - 10/3/2024

The weather remains amazing for this time of year. These sorts of scenarios always make us want to do too much! It can be overwhelming to see these nice days come and go and know that we could be doing so much more. We are however… still human, and it’s been a busy summer and a busier fall and we are a little worn out! And so we soldier on, getting projects done, attending kids activities and looking forward to vacations and winter hibernation! In family news we had a big milestone, our littlest one is now walking! So fun to relive these milestones with her.

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Wood Shed is Done! Butchering Pigs and Meat Birds

We’ve continued to work hard on food preservation and projects around the homestead. The big project we’ve been working on is our woodshed, which is now complete. It took about 3 weekends of work. It really wasn’t that bad, all these projects seem bigger in your head. It takes a lot of energy just to get started and then the projects just keep rolling. I am really happy with how it turned out and we are looking forward now to getting it filled up. We’ve got a big pile of logs near the woodshed to split. That should last us the winter, with some other split wood we have on hand. This winter we will buck up more rounds and maybe start to get them split as well. We’ve done some strategic thinking about how to load the shed so we are burning the driest wood first.

Apples have been a big project for us recently. We have done some big batches of cider and apple sauce as well as dried apples on the dehydrator. Ingrid canned a lot of the cider and she also canned the sauce. Both will be shelf stable waiting for us this winter. Canning cider turns it more into apple juice, the heating process does steal some of the magic of cider but it is still really good and there is no other good way to store it. We’ve still got trees full of apples so we will need to figure out what to do with them. Likely more dehydrating and then we will store any of the perfect apples in the fridge for fresh eating.

Our homestead garden was a success this year. We are actually selling a lot of the onions we grew because we have too many to eat ourselves. We’ve also been selling some of the green beans. The potatoes and squash have been harvested and are curing to get ready for storage. Sweet potatoes are still in the ground as are dried beans which we have been harvesting periodically. We have had some deer getting in! Despite the 8 foot fence they are either tearing it down or just hopping right over. A buck got in and messed up some of our baby apple trees :( . They’ve also helped themselves to some of the vegetation in there.

We will be preparing today for meat chicken butchering tomorrow. We will do about 85 birds for three families. There are two other families that are waiting to let their birds get a little bigger, we will do them a separate day. Our birds are looking really good. I am looking forward to getting them in the freezer. Next week Tuesday we will take our pigs to the butcher as well. That means the annual process of getting them in the trailer! We’ve got a plan, and I think it will work. 🙂 

MARKET GARDENING
Confusing Weather!

Seasonal confusion is in full effect for the market garden. The tomatoes are having a full resurgence putting on new growth like crazy and lots of tomatoes. I literally picked every tomato 3 weeks ago and left them for dead. Since then the weather has been summer like and they are loving life. I am harvesting as they ripen and selling them as well. The cherry tomatoes are a complete jungle, I am navigating it almost every day and harvesting 6-10 pints that we sell.

We removed all our cucumbers and zucchini and have been replacing them in the tunnel with greens. We left the eggplant and peppers as they are still thriving and we don’t need the room.

We continue to see some beds struggle and have it diagnosed to low fertility. We push our beds really hard and needed to be adding some compost between plantings. We didn’t this year and are paying the price with slow growing crops. That means our lettuce harvests have remained really low. We are getting by with lots of other good stuff and people seem to be handling it well. It doesn’t help that the weather has stayed hot. The greens always really take off when the weather cools off, still waiting for that!

In past years we have closed the stand on October 1st. This year we decided to just let it roll. It was a decision we made early in the year but of course now the weather is making us look like geniuses! With as much as we have growing it would be silly to shut down. In previous years the shutdown was more for us than the garden. We are pushing ourselves and feeling pretty tired but doing OK.

CLOSING
Vacation!

We are interrupting our farmstand being open in October with a 1 week break next week. We are headed to our family condo in Florida and will be soaking up some sun and doing as little as possible, easier said than done with our little family. It should be a really good time away. We often go in October as it is a nice something to look forward to at the end of a busy season. Of course you always hope that the weather is cold and bad where you are leaving and sunny and warm where you are going. This current weather pattern will be hard to leave! We were last in Florida in October 2022, we skipped last year as we were fostering our little girl who is now officially adopted!

As homesteaders and business owners it can be hard to get away. On the homestead side, we have projects to finish, animals to take care of, and more food to preserve. For our business we will be literally shutting down the farmstand for a whole week, so there will be a loss of income there while we are away. BUT… I still think it is an important exercise and sacrifice. Yes for Ingrid and I, but also for our kids who put in a lot of work on the homestead and for the business. And so we will take a break and enjoy it!