Recipe Ideas Needed

It looks like we may have planted too many yellow squash plants this year. We are already drowning in them and they just started coming off. What do you do with yours other than frying, stewing, grilling or adding to spaghetti? Any casserole or bread ideas?

We also have a lot of banana peppers. I am planning to pickle them but have misplaced my Ball book. I'm hoping to put up a batch of pickled peppers (perhaps a peck of pickled peppers) this weekend but I was wondering what else you would use these for.

Seed Selection

I think starting your own seeds is a very important part of gardening. There is, by far, a greater variety of seeds available than plants that have already been started. Between all the seed companies online, you are sure to find that one special variety you have been itching to test out in your garden. The most important thing is the greater availability of heirlooms seeds.

Most seed companies sell their special hybrid seeds, which is good for you because they can combine the best characteristics of two different strains of the same vegetable in hopes of a superior product. It is good for them too because if you want that same hybrid once the seed packet is empty you have to buy more from them, which is in turn bad for you. If you sprout seed from a hybrid fruit you aren't guaranteed to get the exact same plant as the original. There is often even variation in separate plants grown from seeds of the same hybrid. It is the nature of genetics.

If you grow plants from heirloom seeds, save them, and then sprout them the next year you will get an identical plant. That means you don't have to buy more seed, you just grow them.

As always, there is some 'fine print'. Some plants are a pain to let go to seed. I never plan to harvest seed from lettuce because they are just so small I don't think I have the patience. Also, we like growing a Mesclun mix of leaf lettuce, but to grow our own seed mix we would have to collect seeds from each type of plant.

Be wary of cross pollination. If you plant two types of heirloom tomatoes side by side and the wind blows just right (or a bee goes from one plant to the other) they will cross pollinate and then boom, you have your very own hybrid. That is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just unpredictable.

I don't want this to come across as a rant against commercial hybrids. I use them, most of the seeds and plants I am using this year are just that. They have their place. I am using them this year because I got off to a late start and didn't have time to sprout my own. I specifically went after the disease and heat tolerant hybrids since I have had a problem with each in the past.

I also save hybrid seeds to see what kind of plant the second generation is; not as a main crop that I depend on for food but as an experimental one. At my heart, I have a scientific nature and a good portion of my garden is experiments in progress. I suggest you do the same, carve out at least some space in a garden devoted to experiments. Try a new hybrid to see how it performs. Try a new growing method such as growing melons on a trellis or potatoes in a box of hay. Or, just sprout some seeds from your favorite hybrids from the last harvest. You won't necessarily get the exact same kind of plant, but you may end up with a superior one. If the experiment fails, you still have the rest of the garden full of reliable plants. If it succeeds, well then you have a new trick to add to your gardening know-how checklist and you have more tasty food to eat.

I buy heirlooms, when possible, because I like to have the option of saving seeds and like having a pretty good idea what I can expect from the plants grown from those seeds. I also prefer heirlooms because they are the old and tried-and-true strains that have been productive for generations.

A big part of homesteading for me is to carry on traditional practices that people used time and time again in the past but seems to have been mostly forgotten by the last two or three generations. Another big part is sustainability. Saving heirlooms seeds fulfills both of those. Saving your own seeds has one more important advantage because you can save seeds from your healthiest and most productive plants. By productive, I don't mean focus solely on the plant that made the most fruit but the one that produced the most of the fruit you wanted. If you buy a couple beefsteak heirlooms plants (like I did), even though they are the same strain, each plant won't have the exact same tomatoes. If one plant has mostly 1 lb. tomatoes but the one beside it produced smaller fruit that had a better taste, you have to make a conscious decision whether you want to help natural selection along with the goal of larger tomatoes or better tasting tomatoes. When saving seeds it is important to pick out your best fruit or vegetable from the healthiest plant to increase the chances for a successful harvest next year. If you continue to do that for a couple years you will have a strain that, through natural selection, has the best characteristics for your own little micro-climate, your own perfect strain, for free.

This started out as a post on how to make seed starting boxes but, as is a habit of mine, I just sort of hopped up on my soapbox and rambled away.

The box instructions will be in the next post...I hope...

Seed-starting Boxes

And because I feel guilty when I have a post without pictures of my dogs, here are some failed attempts of getting a nice picture of all three sitting together.

Murphy says, "Don't mind me. I'm just passing through."

No, we won't look at the camera no matter how many times you ask

The stick is calling to me!

*sniff sniff* You smell that?! Someone just put hotdogs on the grill 2.37 miles that way!

Pallet Projects

I don't know if it is because I have been building little things out of wood since I was young or if it is just a quirk of homesteading, but it seems like there is always some small something or 'nother that needs to be built. Luckily, I work in a warehouse with a good supply of pallets.





There are some downsides to re-using pallets. The wood is not the highest quality and breaking down the pallet is time consuming. I usually could build my current project from new wood in less time than it takes me to reclaim what I need from a pallet and time is a precious resource. But, so is money and the pallets are free so, I am really just trading my time to save money.

There are as many, if not more, advantages; the largest being that every bit of wood and nail I reuse is something saved from a landfill. I started by taking only the double-length and odd sized pallets that would have gone to the dumpster but, as I think of more things to do with reclaimed pallet wood, the more I start eyeballing the nicer pallets that would mostly likely be reused by someone else.

The pallet wood has character. Most of the time it is rough cut, often with knots, bows, splits, and breaks. Even on the same pallet, most of the slats aren't the same thickness since many have been repaired at a couple points in their lifetime. They are darkened by age, stained, and covered in the insidious 'warehouse dust'. That character gives the finished product a rustic feel that fits right in with rest of the homestead. The challenge is to take this ragged wood and put it to the best use.

I have built a few things already from this retired wood:

A 6-hen nest box

A hopper feeder for one of our rooster pens that holds 5 gallons of feed. You add feed from the top and it drops down into the trough as the chickens eat it.

A cold frame

A seedling box

The seedling box is 12”x24”. An upcoming post will be directions on how to build one, but the example will be a 12”x12”. You can put soil directly into them or, of course, use small pots like I did in the picture.

Framing raised beds in the garden using two slats nailed together for stability

This bed is framed using the 2x4 runners from the double-length skids

Unfortunately, every time I finish one pallet wood project I think up at least 2 more.

Some things I hope to build in the near future:

• Chicken Tractor
• Greenhouse Foundation
• Potting Table
• Shade Shelters for the Chickens
• Garden Bench/Chairs

I am sure there will be more before that list is complete. Good news is that there are more pallets for the taking than I have time to break apart.

So finally...goals

To put it as shortly as I can, my goal is to be a self sufficient as possible. Anything I can provide for my family with my own two hands will be...eventually.

The first and foremost goal will be food. I want to grow our own vegetables and raise our own meat. Now I am not a complete novice in this department. While I was growing up my paternal grandparents always had a big garden (or two or three). I have done bits and pieces of most gardening duties. I started picking strawberries about the time I started to walk it seems, but most of said berries made it into my mouth not the basket. I have dug potatoes, strung butter beans, shucked corn, harvested apples, snapped snapbeans, picked squash, thumped watermelons, you name it I have done it. (Except okra, Dad talked incessantly about how he hated everything about okra, and if my Daddy hated something, I hated it also, end of story.) Once I got old enough I was promoted to plowing with the tractor. Thinking back, I spent quite a bit of time on that tractor between plowing, mowing pastures, and just puttering around with it. I learned quite a bit about small scale farming from the time I spent with my grandparents.

Their farm wasn't the only exposure I have had. When we moved to outside of Charlottesville, Va Dad created what was basically a little homestead though at that time I had no concept of the word. We had chickens for eggs, rabbits for pets, and a bit of garden. I learned early on that gardens have no love for hard red clay. There was also cultivation of native edibles. We had wild blueberry bushes around that I occasional made use of but the gem was a very large blackberry patch. From memory I would guess it was about a 20 foot by 20 foot patch but this is back when I was in middle school, so there is no telling how large it actually was. The point is that it was a significant patch and just not a couple bushes. It was very wild and unkempt when we started, but after a bit of work we were able to tame it. The biggest improvement it that we built a frame out of nearby fallen limbs and small trees so that the large plants would have something to support the heavy fruits and we would also have a tunnel underneath the canopy to access the innards of the patch. We never had any home-raised meat because Dad is not the type to be able to kill an animal he has raised. We did have some friends of the family use one of our buck rabbits for stud and repaid the favor in rabbit meat. Needless to say eating an animal I had been brought up to view as a pet was not the most enjoyable of meals.

Though I may have grew up a country boy, I was only ever a helper. I have never really grown anything in the garden to have it survive to the point of harvest. While I have collected eggs, I have never slaughtered a chicken. I have just enough knowledge to understand how little I know.

As I said, through gardening, animal husbandry, and maybe even a little hunting and fishing. I plan to supply as much of the food my family eats as possible. We are being cautious in our planning and are laying out steps on how we turn what is now the 'brown house' as my wife's family likes to call it into a full fledge producing homestead. The first step will be raised bed gardens. The number we start out with will be controlled by the availability of both money and land. To start with I only want to try to grow enough to feed the family (including being able to give some produce to our parents, grandparents, etc) and have enough left to can some produce to help us out over the winter. One of the advantages to moving to the coast instead of the mountains is the milder winter and longer growing seasons. With a greenhouse we may have fresh veggies year around. I have read about having cherry tomatoes as houseplants and the possibilities of having a constant supply of fresh tomatoes is quite tempting.

Along with a garden, we also plan to raise chickens for eggs and meat. When we add this once again depends on when we have the funds for the infrastructure they require. I keep researching breeds and think I will go with Barred Rocks. I like the black and while contrast of their feathers and they will fit in well with our border collies. I am also drawn to them due to the fact they are one of the oldest American breeds and were originally bred as a barnyard flock. I am still deciding whether I would want a separate laying flock and meat flock. I worry about the feed to egg/meat conversion of a dual purpose breed. I at first was drawn to Jersey Giants since the chickens will be mostly for meat and the eggs will be simply an added bonus of the process. I shied away from those simply because from my research they were slower to mature than a normal sized chicken. Chandler liked the Jersey Giants because she called them goth chickens, and I agree a good size flock of these huge black birds would be a sight, but I am not sure they are what we are looking for as beginner chicken-raisers. Right now I am considering just ordering a couple extra Jersey Giant and Cornish roosters to start working on my own meat hybrid. I am sure the plans will change in between now and when we can actually get started but to me the planning is half the fun. If I can find a reliable market for eggs or meat things will greatly change. Right now the plan is to have a small flock to provide for us. Given an egg market, I will add production layers to the mix. Given a meat market, I will further research the meat breeds. My plans don't rely on farm generated income but I will keep an open mind in order to take advantage of any opportunities that are presented.

When the time is right we would like to further expand into diary and meat goats, cattle, turkeys, lambs, and anything else I can think of, depending how much land and time is available. Not only would cattle and goats provide some luscious red meat, but also a variety of dairy products. A fruit and nut orchard would be nice, but those take years to yield and therefore are a longterm goal on the back burner for now. As I said I would love to be able to make some income from the farm by selling produce, eggs, or any other product but an income in not the main goal. While I believe their is a market for pasture raised meats and eggs I haven't done the research as to whether the market is already saturated. We are moving to a more rural area so not only will their be less people there will also be more of a supply. I cannot count on making a living through our homestead so all the plans are geared toward providing healthy food for the family. Another important advantage to raising our own food is that it should be cheaper and that will make it easier to transition to a one income family so that a parent can stay home once we have children. That has been the biggest delay to starting a family, the fact that both of us refuse to allow daycare to raise a child.

We are moving to an area such that we could eventually buy as much land as we wanted, but I never want to be a strict commercial farmer. I never want it to be about the money, I fully understand that it will most likely always require one of us to work off the farm to generate the income needed to run it. I almost prefer that. Once your sole income comes from your farming endeavors it will be too tempting to cut corners to increase profits. A strong dislike for the current practices of corporate agriculture is one of more important reasons we want to move to a homestead lifestyle. Animals raised on feedlots in unhealthy crowded conditions leads to a paradise for disease propagation which is controlled through heavy use of antibiotics and other drugs. It is more cost efficient to have fast growth through the use of hormones than it is through the use of high quality feed. All of these substances are ultimately passed on to the consumer of the meat. I will never be a vegetarian, I enjoy the taste of meat too much. By raising the animal myself I can be assured that the animal was healthy, treated well during its short lifespan, and slaughtered in the most humane way possible.

The main goal is healthy food, but I look forward to what I will learn in the path to that goal. I am interested to learn how things were done during my grandparents' generation when homesteading was a normal way of life. I worry that society as a whole is becoming to specified in each person's knowledge and a lot of what was common sense 2-3 generations ago is being forgotten. Being the techno-geek I am, I will also look for ways to apply current technology to improve on the practices of my ancestors. By mixing old and new I hope to have a true modern homestead. Raising your own food is not the only way to be self-sustaining. I also hope to eventually supply the majority of the electricity used. There are plenty of sun drenched roof tops that are just begging for solar panels. With the flat land of eastern NC, a wind mill may be usable. I want a root cellar if possible to help reduce energy required to preserve food, but I worry that the water table in that area may be too close to the surface. When adding chicken coops and other farm-type structures I plan to use recycled materials whenever possible while also making use of the more 'green' techniques such as strawbale and cordwood construction. I am already checking craigslist for the area to see if I can find a reliable source of pallets. They are an excellent source for free. recycled wood. I have seen sheds and other buildings built from them. Most of the time they use the pallets whole. My plan would be to disassemble the pallets so as to give me the greatest flexibility when using the wood.

Obviously the plans are many and goals great. Now I just have to get our current house in market ready condition, that and a big second mortgage is what is holding up the move currently. Oh, and finding new jobs. /sigh
It is still closer than it was the day before, that is the important part.

The History Behind Our Decision

To put it as shortly as I can, my goal is to be a self sufficient as possible. Anything I can provide for my family with my own two hands will be...eventually.

The first and foremost goal will be food. I want to grow our own vegetables and raise our own meat. Now I am not a complete novice in this department. While I was growing up my paternal grandparents always had a big garden (or two or three). I have done bits and pieces of most gardening duties. I started picking strawberries about the time I started to walk it seems, but most of said berries made it into my mouth not the basket. I have dug potatoes, strung butter beans, shucked corn, harvested apples, snapped snap beans, picked squash, thumped watermelons, you name it I have done it. (Except okra, Dad talked incessantly about how he hated everything about okra, and if my Daddy hated something, I hated it end of story.) Once I got old enough I was promoted to plowing with the tractor. Thinking back, I spent quite a bit of time on that tractor between plowing, mowing pastures, and just puttering around with it. I learned quite a bit about small-scale farming from the time I spent with my grandparents.

Their farm wasn't the only exposure I have had. When we moved to outside of Charlottesville, VA Dad created what was a little homestead though at that time I had no concept of the word. We had chickens for eggs, rabbits for pets, and a bit of garden. I learned early on that gardens have no love for hard red clay. There was also cultivation of native edibles. We had wild blueberry bushes around that I occasional made use of but the gem was a very large blackberry patch. From memory, I would guess it was about a 20 foot by 20-foot patch but this is back when I was in middle school, so there is no telling how large it actually was. The point is that it was a significant patch and just not a couple bushes. It was very wild and unkempt when we started, but after a bit of work we were able to tame it. The biggest improvement it that we built a frame out of nearby fallen limbs and small trees so that the large plants would have something to support the heavy fruits and we would also have a tunnel underneath the canopy to access the innards of the patch. We never had any home-raised meat because Dad is not the type to be able to kill an animal he has raised. We did have some friends of the family use one of our buck rabbits for stud and repaid the favor in rabbit meat. Needless to say, eating an animal I had been brought up to view as a pet was not the most enjoyable of meals.

Though I may have grown up a country boy, I was only ever a helper. I have never really grown anything in the garden to have it survive to the point of harvest. While I have collected eggs, I have never slaughtered a chicken. I have just enough knowledge to understand how little I know.

As I said, through gardening, animal husbandry, and maybe even a little hunting and fishing. I plan to supply as much of the food my family eats as possible. We are being cautious in our planning and are laying out steps on how we turn what is now the 'brown house' as my wife's family likes to call it into a full fledge producing homestead. The first step will be raised bed gardens. The number we start out with will be controlled by the availability of both money and land. To start with I only want to try to grow enough to feed the family (including being able to give some produce to our parents, grandparents, etc) and have enough left to can some produce to help us out over the winter. One of the advantages to moving to the coast instead of the mountains is the milder winter and longer growing seasons. With a greenhouse, we may have fresh veggies year around. I have read about having cherry tomatoes as houseplants and the possibility of having a constant supply of fresh tomatoes is quite tempting.

Along with a garden, we also plan to raise chickens for eggs and meat. When we add this once again depends on when we have the funds for the infrastructure they require. I keep researching breeds and think I will go with Barred Rocks. I like the black and while contrast of their feathers and they will fit in well with our border collies. I am also drawn to them due to the fact they are one of the oldest American breeds and were originally bred as a barnyard flock. I am still deciding whether I would want a separate laying flock and meat flock. I worry about the feed to egg/meat conversion of a dual-purpose breed. I at first was drawn to Jersey Giants since the chickens will be mostly for meat and the eggs will be simply an added bonus of the process. I shied away from those simply because from my research they were slower to mature than a normal sized chicken. Chandler liked the Jersey Giants because she called them Goth chickens, and I agree a good size flock of these huge black birds would be a sight, but I am not sure they are what we are looking for as beginner chicken-raisers. Right now, I am considering just ordering a couple extra Jersey Giant and Cornish roosters to start working on my own meat hybrid. I am sure the plans will change in between now and when we can actually get started but to me the planning is half the fun. If I can find a reliable market for eggs or meat things will greatly change. Right now, the plan is to have a small flock to provide for us. Given an egg market, I will add production layers to the mix. Given a meat market, I will further research the meat breeds. My plans do not rely on farm-generated income but I will keep an open mind in order to take advantage of any opportunities that are presented.

When the time is right we would like to expand further into diary and meat goats, cattle, turkeys, lambs, and anything else I can think of, depending how much land and time is available. Not only would cattle and goats provide some luscious red meat, but also a variety of dairy products. A fruit and nut orchard would be nice, but those take years to yield and therefore are a long-term goal on the back burner for now. As I said, I would love to be able to make some income from the farm by selling produce, eggs, or any other product but an income in not the main goal. While I believe there is a market for pasture raised meats and eggs, I have not done the research as to whether the market is already saturated. We are moving to a more rural area so not only will there be less people there will also be more of a supply. I cannot count on making a living through our homestead so all the plans are geared toward providing healthy food for the family. Another important advantage to raising our own food is that it should be cheaper and that will make it easier to transition to a one-income family so that a parent can stay home once we have children. That has been the biggest delay to starting a family, the fact that both of us refuse to allow daycare to raise a child.

We are moving to an area such that we could eventually buy as much land as we wanted, but I never want to be a strict commercial farmer. I never want it to be about the money, I fully understand that it will most likely always require one of us to work off the farm to generate the income needed to run it. I almost prefer that. Once your sole income comes from your farming endeavors, it will be too tempting to cut corners to increase profits. A strong dislike for the current practices of corporate agriculture is one of more important reasons we want to move to a homestead lifestyle. Animals raised on feedlots in unhealthy crowded conditions leads to a paradise for disease propagation that is controlled through heavy use of antibiotics and other drugs. It is more cost efficient to have fast growth through the use of hormones than it is through the use of high quality feed. All of these substances are ultimately passed on to the consumer of the meat. I will never be a vegetarian; I enjoy the taste of meat too much. By raising the animal myself, I can be assured that the animal was healthy, treated well during its short lifespan, and slaughtered in the most humane way possible.

The main goal is healthy food, but I look forward to what I will learn in the path to that goal. I am interested to learn how things were done during my grandparents' generation when homesteading was a normal way of life. I worry that society as a whole is becoming too specified in each person's knowledge and a lot of what was common sense 2-3 generations ago is being forgotten. Being the techno-geek I am, I will also look for ways to apply current technology to improve on the practices of my ancestors. By mixing old and new, I hope to have a true modern homestead. Raising your own food is not the only way to be self-sustaining. I also hope to eventually supply the majority of the electricity used. There are plenty of sun-drenched rooftops that are just begging for solar panels. With the flat land of eastern NC, a windmill may be usable. I want a root cellar if possible to help reduce energy required to preserve food, but I worry that the water table in that area may be too close to the surface. When adding chicken coops and other farm-type structures I plan to use recycled materials whenever possible while also making use of the more 'green' techniques such as straw bale and cordwood construction. I am already checking craigslist for the area to see if I can find a reliable source of pallets. They are an excellent source for free, recycled wood. I have seen sheds and other buildings built from them. Most of the time they use the pallets whole. My plan would be to disassemble the pallets so as to give me the greatest flexibility when using the wood.

Obviously the plans are many and goals great. Now I just have to get our current house in market ready condition, that and a big second mortgage is what are holding up the move currently. Oh, and finding new jobs. /sigh

It is still closer than it was the day before, which is the important part.