Homestead weekly update

Welcome to this week’s update.

Sorry I missed the update last week.  The holidays have really taken up a lot of my time and not allowed me to do much on the homestead.

I was given the honor of reading Jason Akers’ latest book, The Scrounged Homestead.  I plan on putting out a full review, but will give my initial thoughts about the book here.  I think it is a welcome addition to the starting homesteader’s library.  He does a great job of describing what he considers scrounging and what types of things he’s been able to scrounge.  But he doesn’t stop there, he gives ideas of where to scrounge items and who to talk to to avoid any trouble taking the materials.  He also shows some of the stuff that he has built with scrounged materials, things like chicken coops.  It is well written and I think it could be very helpful keeping the price of the homestead projects low.

I also ordered my seeds to plant next year.  As usual, I ordered the bulk of my seed from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.  I started ordering from SESE because they are fairly local to my area.  Because they are also in the Mid-Atlantic, they carry a lot of seed that is good for this area.  I’m sure that a lot of their seed comes from suppliers, but they seem to specialize in Mid-Atlantic seed.  I ordered about like I order every year, but I did change it up a bit.  For one, I ordered sweet potato slips.  I’ve never grown sweet potatoes, but have developed a taste for them.  Hopefully they do well in my area.  I usually order a mesclun mix from them.  But that mix contains oak leaf lettuce and I don’t like that kind of lettuce.  I ordered about 6 different varieties of lettuce to plant instead.  Next week I’ll likely do a full run down of my seed order.

That’s about all I have for this week.  But I do want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.