INTRODUCTION
Homestead Roots Newsletter - 8/29/2024

Earlier this week we experienced one of the most humid days I have ever experienced. It was just wild! Thankfully in northern Wisconsin those days are few and far between. This year though we’ve had our fair share of damp days, whether that is hot and humid or morning rain showers. We’ve certainly had to dodge raindrops in doing our work outside!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Pulling Honey, Fattening Pigs and Chickens!

Shortly after our last post we had a fun family trip up to our favorite place… Bayfield County in northern WI. We tagged along with friends and shared a friends land for some camping. We also picked a years worth of blueberries, swam in the greatest lake in the world (Superior) and made a ton of memories. It was a spur of the moment trip as is often the case in our summer lifestyle.

Espen (13) and Elias (14) worked to pull the supers off their bee hives and process the honey this past week. Their bee mentor was super helpful as well as he has some pretty specialized equipment that makes everything easier. The three hives they managed this year produced about 340 lbs of honey which came down to about 133 quart jars. Espen will be selling the majority of the honey while our family keeps about a dozen jars. We are working hard to set the bees up to succeed this winter, to limit expenses in the spring!

All of a sudden the pigs are looking big! I did some measurements on them and found that are smallest pig is about 190 and our biggest is into the 230 lb range. We are about a month and a week from butchering them and hoping to have them between 250 and 300 lbs. We had some really hot weather this past weekend and had to cool them down with a fresh mud bath which they loved.

Meat chickens are now out on pasture. We moved them this week. They are sizing up nicely and I think looking really good. The plan is to butcher them the first week of October, so we just need to keep fattening them up. Timing is so important on raising animals, you don’t want them too big or too small and are often needing to plan and schedule butcher dates in advance. Every year we get better at it but it still makes me nervous!

Ingrid harvested both onions and potatoes from our homestead garden. Potatoes were a little disappointing but onions did amazing! These came from our homestead garden, it was an excellent trial year for that space. We are going to just keep adding compost and things should continue to improve. We still need to harvest sweet potatoes, popcorn, dried beans and winter squash.

MARKET GARDENING
Tomatoes suffering an early demise

Our wet June continues to effect the garden with the early demise of our tomato crop. Despite the tomatoes being in the tunnel it was just so humid that the plants picked up leaf mold. We pruned everything back hard but it spread too quickly for us to really get ahead of it. This week we took out two rows of determinate tomatoes that were gone and done producing. The cherries are still hanging on but the rest of our big tomatoes will be close behind. That likely means we will be done selling tomatoes by the second week of September, at least in big volume. Looking at the numbers I still believe we will see an improvement over last years sales which is always the goal.

Our salad setback is still going strong. Somewhere in late July or early August we got behind on planting, or the plants aren’t growing as quickly. Which means we just don’t have the lettuce we should to keep up at the stand. I am suspicious that our soil fertility has dropped off with this third planting in these beds and so we aren’t seeing the crops grow as quickly as they should. Next year I would like to do a fresh round of compost on beds after the second planting.

You know the end is near when you wrap up planting items! I think this week or next we will plant our last seedlings for the season. Then we just get everything in the ground and finish the year strong. Overall it has been a great year! We do hope to keep our doors open longer this year, but of course that is all dependent on weather and frosts so we will see how it goes!

CLOSING
Looking forward to Fall

Despite the wild weather earlier this week we can feel the fall season approaching. Shorter days, cooler nights, and changing colors are on the horizon. Fall is my favorite season and it isn’t even close, second place is more specific being the Christmas season and third place would be a day… the first warm day of snow melt after winter. 🙂 With the approaching fall our rhythms naturally start to change, we transition from growing to preserving. We start to stockpile and prepare for the winter. Our livestock moves to the freezer and we take the steps necessary to close down the garden. I often tell people if you want to love winter more, start a market garden! The busyness of the summer season makes me crave the slower cycles of winter. But first we get fall, and I can’t wait.