INTRODUCTION
Homestead Roots Newsletter - 9/13/2024

Summer has apparently returned! Temps are back in the mid to upper 80s. While we are looking forward to fall it is hard not to get excited about an extra long summer. We will take the nice weather. In this weeks post we are sharing details on the start of our new woodshed and how we are transitioning the garden to fall.

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Pulling Honey, Fattening Pigs and Chickens!

This summer has been a blessing on the homestead. The weather has been good and we’ve had success with projects and our animals. We are within a month now of butchering both our pigs and meat chickens. Butcher day is always a little bittersweet. We know from the beginning that our animals are going to have a short stay on the farm but it is still a challenging step to haul them to the butcher or do the butchering ourselves. I’ve mentioned it before but the stress of needing to pick a butcher date months in advance and then hope the animals get to your target weight is hard! After many years my confidence is still low!

Last week as we experienced some cooler temperatures I got motivated to get our woodshed started. I worked to put together a drawing, complete a supply list and then priced everything out at Menards’s. There are a couple local guys who build lean-to shelters on skids and drop them on your property. I wanted to ensure it was worth the effort and that my supplies cost were going to be lower than their costs. We decided on a 20 foot long by 9 foot 6 inches structure. It has a shed roof, so just one pitch. I built it on skids, because I didn’t want to be stuck with it in a permanent location. Now that we have started to build it I can tell you it isn’t going to be easy to move! Though we will be able to if we absolutely have to. 🙂 I originally planned for a 10 foot front wall and an 8 foot rear wall. After building the 8 foot wall we decided that was going to be plenty high! So that became the front wall and we did a 6’6” wall on the back. As you can see from the picture we have the structure up, I am currently working to somewhat grade the earth to make it a little more level, then we will start shoring things up and get the roof on. We opted for 1 by 4 slats for the siding on our structure to let airflow in and keep snow and rain out. We are excited to get it completed so we can start filling it up and clean up some of the wood piles we have laying around. It should clean things up nicely! If you are planning something similar, the lumber and metal roof for this project came to about $800. Something similar pre-built would be $2500 to $3000. I am looking forward to the challenge of building this structure ourselves. The boys are helping, so it should be good learning for all of us.

We’ve been busy canning. My parents do a lot of the heavy lifting for us on this stuff. Mom and Dad have done our two favorite kinds of salsa, 3 kinds of pickles, lots of soup for the farmstand, pizza sauce and I am sure other things I am forgetting. At home we have done some of our own sauce and some peaches. We also harvested all our pears and are waiting for them to ripen up. We got a pretty good harvest this year from our 2 pear trees. Ingrid has also been freezing green beans, broccoli, and kale and we have been drying cherry tomatoes, and herbs. We hope to build some soup bases of broth and veggies to can as we currently have a wealth of root veggies and lots of stock in the freezer. We are also picking, eating and freezing raspberries. Tough to get those to the freezer! Our apples are slowly ripening. We have failed miserably to accurately record what types of trees we are growing. So research on when apples are ripe is difficult to locate. We do have an idea on some trees and the others we will just need to taste test until they are where we like them. Most of our trees are later ripeners, but we are eating off of one tree right now and it is delicious!

MARKET GARDENING
Flipping Into Fall

Despite the fact that it feels like Summer we are working to stay on schedule and get our garden beds switched from summer crops to fall crops. That means, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, etc come out and greens, bok choy and root vegetables go in. To be honest we should really be doing this more in August but we just don’t currently have the bed space to make that work. So we are working on this instead.

Our lettuce crop is finally starting to turn around. We’ve been low for awhile and now we will likely have too much for late in the year. We have intentions of being open a month longer than last year so the hope is these greens will allow us to do that!

We’ve continued working on the paperwork for our high tunnel grant. The USDA awards grants to farmers for crop protection tunnels and we are applying. We should know if we are awarded a grant in November. In the meantime, I have been doing lots of thinking trying to ensure we get it placed in the right spot. Based on the tight quarters we farm on, I think we will need to move a tunnel to get this new tunnel in an optimal location. Definitely not ideal but I haven’t found a good way around it yet.

CLOSING
Birthdays

I celebrated a birthday last week. I have found what I look forward to most with each passing year is more time with family. As I consider my favorite moments and seasons of life they all center around time with my family. Yes, sometimes I end up with a headache due to the busyness and volume of our littlest family members but it is so worthwhile. This year for my birthday I got wonderful time with the people I love most as well as some very nice gifts, because the gift giving love language in my family is strong! Ingrid went above and beyond this year and planned a little kayaking adventure for the two of us. Some friends blessed us with helping coordinate. Quiet time in nature, with a little adventure thrown in, with the person I love most in the world was such a gift. So here is to another year! It is shaping up to be an interesting one! 🙂