INTRODUCTION
Homestead Roots Newsletter - 11/14/2024

What a mystery this fall season has been! Here we are mid November and we’ve only had some weak cold snaps. I think we have only fired up the woodstove 2 times. Looking into the weather crystal ball shows some more significant chances of winter coming next week. We will see if that holds up! We’ve had some weather and equipment related challenges as we work to button everything up for the season. More on that below!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Weather and Equipment Delays!

Last week we were able to pick up our pork from the butcher and get it distributed out to our customers. For the last few years we have used out local university which has a focus on agriculture as our butcher. They do a nice job! We had 5 pigs at the butcher with 10 customers purchasing a half of a pig. It worked out well this year to pick up the pork on two different days. I have gotten better at this process with time. A few years ago I took our minivan to pick up 9 pigs from the butcher. I COMPLETELY underestimated how much room 9 pigs in little frozen packages would take up. It completely filled the van and I bottomed out the shocks on every little bump. Not good! This year we had some boxes stored away, I allotted each customer 3 boxes and had them all prelabeled. The pork came out of the big freezer at the butcher shop in labeled bins but the individual packages aren’t labeled. So you have to keep good track of everything. It all worked out really well and we are happy to get our pork into the hands of our customers.

We were able to get some wood split over this past weekend and started the stacking process in the new wood shed. Part of our efforts is just finding a system that works in our new shed. I think we have things figured out and we made good progress. There is plenty more to do but that is a good project for the cold season. My big hope is that by getting our wood stacks consolidated we will also clean things up around the homestead. As I stacked the wood though I quickly realized this wasn’t going to happen overnight. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if this work took us into next year. We’ve got a number of large pieces of wood that are only going to be useful for burning in our sap cooker or for bonfires. So I think we will just whittle those piles down over time.

We’ve had some wet days recently that make our work difficult. Currently our compost piles are sitting an a wet spot on the farm. It is downhill from the garden and receives very little sun. So when it gets wet it stays wet. The skid steer is a big part of the operation and it makes quite a mess. So we like to let things dry out a little bit.

Speaking of the skidsteer I was doing some work with it earlier this week when it conked out on me. Up until this week the machine has run remarkably well. I was doing some light brushmowing when it just slowly lost power and then died. After a lot of cranking I was able to get it restarted but it would only stay running for 30 seconds or so. I was thankfully able to limp it back to the barn where it is easier to work on it. The issue is fuel related for sure, so step one was to swap out the fuel filters. It was on my list to do this winter as normal maintence anyway. Can we briefly talk about the locations of filters? Last winter I had to do the oil filter which was brutal and this time around the fuel filter is just terrible. After much grunting, groaning and finagling I was able to get both filters out and I should have the replacement filters later today. I am REALLY hoping the new filters solve the issue. The next steps are pretty involved and expensive! I will let you know how we make out.

MARKET GARDENING
Why we market garden?

The question in the header of this section had me thinking this past week. Why do we market garden? Why do we grow food? We certainly live in a world where it isn’t at all necessary! I can go to the grocery store and buy anything at anytime. The history of our market garden started innocently enough with us just wanting to have our own garden. We started growing food in our little backyard garden while living in town in Sioux Falls. When we moved back to Wisconsin we set our eyes on the large garden space sitting vacant at my parents. Ingrid went a little wild with the volume of her planting and with too many tomatoes to eat we put a sign at the end of the driveway and sold tomatoes! Overtime it grew, and we learned more and more and suddenly the garden was a viable form of income generation for us. Most years we have funneled that money in two directions, to continue to grow our homestead and to fund our kids future funds. This will be the first year that Ingrid and I will take a payout for the garden alongside the kids. Our little garden is on the verge of being able to provide enough to support our family. That is certainly exciting! We will see what the future holds.

Back to why we garden… we certainly couldn’t have imagined the possibility of the garden supporting us. And so our mission has been focused on growing the best food we can for our friends and neighbors. We certainly know how broken the food system is in our country. We want to be a part of the solution. Even if that is a little tiny part, we are here and we are making a difference for the families we serve. We hope to inspire, train and encourage other people to start operations like ours. Would you be interested?

I read a statistic the other day about Victory Gardens. During WWII with the countries resources being funneled into the war efforts the government encouraged people to plant gardens. It was incredibly successful! It also happened quickly. Which makes me believe it could happen again! Here are some of the numbers…

• Number of gardens: By 1943, there were more than 20 million victory gardens. 

• Food production: By 1945, American victory gardeners had grown between 8 and 10 million tons of food, which was an estimated 40% of the nations fresh veggies

• Location: Two-thirds of the gardens were in towns, cities, and suburban areas. 

• Popular vegetables: Tomatoes were the most popular, followed by string or wax beans, onions, lettuce, radishes, beets, and carrots

Aren’t those numbers amazing!?! Who’s to say we couldn’t do something like that again? I for one, think the food crisis we are living through warrants this kind of focused effort and attention.

CLOSING
Day Trips

As homesteaders we’ve gotten used to “day trips.” With animals and responsibilities at home it can be tough to spend long periods away from the farm. This past week we did a day trip up to Fargo for a funeral. My dad’s sweet aunt Dorothy passed away. My brothers and I always considered her an aunt to us as well. Funerals remind us how precious and fragile life can be. We live with the promise of Heaven and so while Dorothy will be greatly missed we know where she is and that we will see her again. What a gift!

Ingrid and I did the day trip without kids, what a revelation that was, it was actually an enjoyable trip. I know how this sounds… our kids have actually always been good in the car. Now that we have 3 grown kids you hardly know they are there when they get into a good book but the littlest one (20 months) is a different story. 8 hours of car time with her in one day is no fun for anyone! So the kids stayed with Ingrid’s parents and we got a peaceful 8 hours to time together. We did some planning, listened to some podcasts and just enjoyed silence. 🙂 For me car trips have always been about getting from A to B as fast as possible, but this trip opened my eyes to the possibility that time on the road isn’t all that bad.