Welcome to this week’s homestead update.
Cabbage and cauliflower harvest
My wife planned fish tacos for dinner. Every time I’ve eaten fish tacos, they came with cabbage on them. So I decided to harvest a small head of cabbage to put in the tacos. This is the first cabbage I’ve ever grown. Continue reading
Like most families, we are rushed at times. And like most families, we have to make some really quick and easy recipes to be able to get the kids to their evening activities And I think that we all like chili. So we came up with this recipe to have a really quick meal on those days where we have to do a lot of running.
Is this as good as a hearty chili that takes hours to make? Nope. But it is tasty and gets a hot meal into us. This makes use of some canned goods, but that makes it more convenient. Just buy the cans and stick them in the pantry for a day when you need a quick meal. This Summer I am going to attempt to home can some of these ingredients. I may be able to make this with home-grown produce just as quickly as with canned goods.
Browning the ground beef
We like to buy ground beef in bigger packages than needed for a single recipe. So the other night we had tacos. That used half of a package of ground beef. So I browned up the rest of the package. This is about 1.5 pounds of ground beef browning. This really makes the quick and easy chili even quicker. I drained it and packed it in a container in the refrigerator.
Quick chili ingredients
Here’s the ingredients:
If not already browned, brown and drain the ground beef. Add it to a crock pot on medium. Drain the Mexicorn and add to the crock pot. Add the cans of chili beans and the tomatoes.
All mixed up
Mix it all up in the crock pot and cook on medium until hot. We usually allow it to cook for about 45-60 minutes.
Another way that we make this is in a skillet. In that case I would brown the ground beef, drain it and add all the ingredients to the skillet. Then cook it covered until done.
In this case, I used half of a jar of crushed tomatoes from this past Summer. The can of tomatoes contains Chipotle peppers. This coming year I will attempt to can the spicy tomatoes and the Mexicorn from my garden. The tomatoes will be fairly easy, just tomatoes and peppers. To make the Mexicorn, I will need to track down a suitable recipe.
So next time you are in need of a quick but easy meal, give this a try.
Welcome to part 2 of my explanation of what seeds I ordered for the garden this year and why I ordered them. If you haven’t already, please take a look at part 1 of the series. While I hope that this helps the readers with their seed selection, I write this sort of post more to help me keep track of what I am planting. It also helps with planning the garden and guides me in my path to preserving the harvest. This entire order was from my main seed source, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
Winter squash – I’m going to grow several of these. We are fairly new to growing winter squash. Neither my wife nor I grew up eating winter squash, but I would like to change this. I like the idea of being able to eat some of our harvest in the winter but without having to preserve it. Winter squash tends to stay good for a long time after harvest.
For those that aren’t overly familiar with squash, there are 4 different species of squash, C. pepo, C. maxima, C moschata and C. mixta (this is sometimes called C. argyrosperma). Planting 2 varieties of any of these species will allow cross-pollination. This does not affect the current year’s fruit, but will affect the seeds to produce next year’s crop. To avoid this, I am only growing 1 variety of each species. I will put the species in parenthesis after the squash name to help with identification.
Tahitian Melon squash – (C. moschata) I’ve read that this makes a very good pumpkin pie and great soup. Since this is similar to butternut squash, any recipe that uses butternut squash can use this squash instead. It also has a very long shelf life.
Rouge Vif D'Étampes (Cinderella) pumpkin
Rouge Vif D’Étampes (Cinderella) pumpkin - (C. maxima) This one is also supposed to make a great pie. But I really like the looks of this pumpkin and I think that my wife will set these around as Fall decoration.
Green-Striped Cushaw (Striped Crookneck) squash – (C. mixta) I had heard of cushaw squash and wanted to try growing these. From what I’ve read, they make a good pie and are really good baked with brown sugar or a stuffing mix. But what really drew me to this is the resistance to Squash Vine Borers.
Winter Luxury Pie pumpkin – (C. Pepo) This is mainly a pie pumpkin. I have plenty of squash that can be used for pies, but the kids like to grow pumpkins that look like pumpkins. So they will be able to grow these small pumpkins. This is the same species as the zucchini listed below. If I decide that I want to save seeds from this, I will need to hand pollinate the flowers.
Dark Green Zucchini squash – (C. pepo) I’m not a big Summer squash fan, but my wife loves it and my kids like it. So to help keep them happy, I grow zucchini. I do grate and freeze zucchini to make zucchini bread. This is very susceptible to squash vine borers, so I will have to plant this in succession to get a harvest the entire Summer. As with the Winter luxury pumpkin, if I decide to save seeds, this will require hand pollination.
Keystone Resistant Giant bell pepper – These are a bell pepper that gets fairly large. Southern Exposure lists this as being very well adapted to the Mid-Atlantic region. Since I have trouble growing peppers from seed, I want the cards stacked in my favor.
Calabrese (Italian Green Sprouting) Broccoli – I grew this variety several years in a row. It does not produce a big head, but instead produces a lot of small shoots at each leaf junction. This makes it produce longer than broccoli that only produces a big head.
Poinsett 76 cucumber – This is a slicing cucumber that produces fruit up to 8″ long and 2.5″ across. But what drew me to this variety is that the multiple disease resistances. It is an open pollinated variety.
Edisto 47 muskmelon – Most of the cantaloupe that is sold in stores is really muskmelons. My daughter loves cantaloupe, so I am growing these for her. This variety is very disease resistant, supposedly more so than hybrid varieties. I have never grown muskmelons before, so this will be an experience.
Crimson Sweet, Virginia Select watermelon – This variety is well adapted to the Mid-Atlantic. I didn’t have much luck with watermelon last year, but I’m going to keep trying until I get it right.
Amish Paste tomato – I ordered these mainly because they produce large paste tomatoes. Another thing that attracted me is that they are an indeterminate variety. Most paste tomatoes are determinate and mainly produce a single large harvest of tomatoes. These should produce the entire Summer. As long as I can get them to get beyond the seedling stage.
Green Arrow pea – We grew several varieties last year, and we really liked this variety. They are tasty peas that freeze well. I also like that the plants only get about waist-high and produce the most peas on the tops of the vines, so they are easy to harvest.
Tennessee Red Cob dent corn – The other day, I read the home ground flour post on Fast Grow The Weeds. They made some excellent points about growing corn for meal. I have grown sweet corn before, but this year I’m trying to grind my own corn meal.
Spring mesclun
Spring Mesclun Mix - This is my favorite salad mix. It contains several varieties of lettuce, spinach and mustard greens. The salads that come from this mix are very attractive with the mixture of green and red leaves. I last purchased this 3 years ago and it still produced wonderfully. Eventually I will probably start buying the individual seed packets, but for now I’m happy to receive the mix.
That’s it for my bulk order of seeds. I will likely have another post about some additional seeds. Those will come from local stores, or I could stumble upon some variety that looks interesting. If that happens, expect to see part 3.
I was reading the Trace My Preps blog this morning and decided that I should also do a look back at what I have accomplished on the homestead over the past year.
I think that my first real accomplishment is that I was able to get my wife on board with building the homestead. Up until this year, she has just humored me with my homesteading aspirations. But in the Spring, she noticed how prices were steadily increasing. We also talked about the increase in salmonella outbreaks. She is now very supportive of my homesteading goals and will help me reach the goals.
Another big accomplishment is that in mid-September, I made my first post to my blog. By launching my blog, I feel that I was adding legitimacy to my homestead. I was finally sitting down and putting in print what I intended this homestead to become. It also makes me accountable for making or missing any goals that I set forth.
I think those are my 2 biggest accomplishments of the year. Without those two, there would probably not be any Homestead Fritz. Some of the other accomplishments are bigger and some smaller, but all have helped me build the homestead. Here are some of the other accomplishments in no particular order.
Started the asparagus bed by planting ~30 crowns. Asparagus is a very long-term crop. We may be able to harvest a couple of spears this Spring, but maybe not. But it will produce for 20 or 30 years.
Increased the garden area from 12 beds to 20 beds.
Paid off one of our vehicles. This frees up some money that we have been able to use for other expenses. I feel that moving towards being debt free is critical to any homestead.
Began making cheese. So far I have only made cheese curds, cottage cheese and yogurt successfully. But I have learned from my less successful cheese making experiments.
Harvested all the garlic that we will use for the entire year. This is in addition to the seed garlic that I planted. I also discovered that we will always plant hardneck garlic because it produces scapes.
Built up my seed stock of potato onions. Hopefully these will allow me to continue growing onions forever.
Harvested enough onions to last from August 1 until January. These were mostly yellow onions planted from sets.
Preserved enough green beans and pumpkins to last us the entire year.
Processed some black walnuts from the trees along homestead border. It was an experience and I discovered that they don’t taste good enough to make them worth while. But it gives us another fat and protein source if we would need to make use of them.
Identified several types of weeds in the yard. Some of these are edible. Next year some of them will find their way into our salads.
Built a 3 bin compost bin system.
Built a low tunnel over one of the garden beds. This allowed me to harvest salad greens until the end of the year. I also learned that while draping plastic over the hoops works okay, I need to develop a better way of attaching the plastic.
Saved seed from my garlic chives, French breakfast radish and from my okra. This allows me to save money on the seed. But it also helps to develop varieties of these plants that are acclimated to my micro-climate. It also helps me develop my knowledge of how to save seeds, and I believe it makes me a better gardener.
Began baking bread again. I used to do this fairly regularly, but I drifted away from it. After finding the bread in 5 minutes a day, this allows me to not use time as an excuse for not baking bread.
Finally, I have been able to make use of the produce that we produced on the homestead. We have made pumpkin rolls and pumpkin bread for dessert. I have made beer bread from the beer that I brewed myself. I have made use of the zucchini that I froze to make zucchini bread. I have even made use of scraps that I would normally throw away by roasting pumpkin seeds.
I wasn’t going to do this wrap up of the year post. But I’m certainly glad that I did. This really shows me how far we have gone with the homestead. We still have a long way to go, but by seeing these accomplishments, it will really help keep us motivated. I’m hoping to have an even more productive 2012.
Welcome to part 2 of a multiple part post covering the seeds and plants that I planted in the garden this year. I still haven’t determined if this will be in 3 parts or if I’ll have to make it 4 posts. But I do know that I wasn’t able to cram it into 2 posts.
Onion harvest
Onions: I grew a lot of onions this year. I did not grow enough to make it all the way through the winter, but I am still using onions from the garden. I will increase my onion production next year in hopes of producing all our onions.
Texas Early Grano ONION, DRY BULB – SESE – No luck at all. Direct seeded into the garden about 30 seeds, didn’t get a single bulb form. I will attempt to plant the same seed next year, but will not order more seeds.
Yellow Ebenezer Onion – Gurney’s onion sets – These grew very well. I planted an entire bed that produced mostly large bulbs. I will plant these again this year, but will likely buy them locally.
Yellow potato onion – SESE – I planted ½ pound last year and got a couple big bulbs and 2 pounds of seed onions. I hope to plant these forever from my saved bulbs.
Tomatoes: I have a heck of a time with growing tomatoes from seed. My plants get to about 4” and keel over. I built a light stand to ensure they have plenty of light, but it appears that I’m doing something wrong. I hope to get it figured out in the near future. I ended up buying 6 Roma tomato plants, and 2 of another slicing tomato plant, but I don’t remember what type that was.
Rutgers VF Tomato – SESE – I had no luck, they died in the seed trays. I would like to try these next year, but will not order additional seed.
Roma tomato – bought as plants at local nursery – These grew great and produced well. I will plant these again next year, but would also like to get them started from seed.
Field pumpkin and Seminole pumpkin
Pumpkins: The squash vine borers and squash bugs had their way with my pumpkins. I harvested and canned several pumpkins, but the bugs eventually won out after I went on vacation. I’m not sure which type of pumpkin I will plant next year. I want to be able to save seed, so will need to do some planning before ordering seed.
Seminole pumpkin – SESE – These grew well and produced a couple of pumpkins. I canned them and they were good in pumpkin roll and pumpkin bread. I may grow these again, depending on my seed selection decision.
Field pumpkin – saved from last year – These grew well and produced a couple of pumpkins. I canned them for use in pumpkin roll and pumpkin bread. I may grow these again, depending on my seed selection decision.
Peas
Peas: This year we planted 3 different varieties of pea. The 2 kinds listed here, plus a variety that I got from a small local hardware store. All grew well, but this year had funky weather so it was rough on them.
Green Arrow Pea, Shelling – SESE – Very good producer, I really like the way they produce, so will grow again next year
Little Marvel Pea, Shelling – SESE – Produced pretty well. I will grow these again, but mainly because I still have a bunch of the seeds.
Green bean harvest
Green beans: I grew several varieties of green beans. I bought most of them from a local hardware store that carries bulk seed. I don’t know what variety these are, but they produced very well. I grew about 3/4 of the green beans that we will eat this year. The other quarter came from a local grower.
Blue Lake Bush Snap Beans – SESE – These beans grew well and produced a lot of beans. The bean beetles eat them like candy. I will plant them in the future.
Contender Bush Snap Beans – SESE – These produced just as well as the other beans. the bean beetles ate them just as much. I will plant them in the future.
I’m fairly sure that I will be able to fit the rest into one more post. Tune in next week for that edition. Take a look at part 1 of this series.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged beans, food, garden, harvest, homestead, onions, vegetables
I didn’t know what I was going to post about today. I didn’t feel like talking about weeds again. I didn’t do much with the homestead last night or today. I was stumped.
Big box of beans
That is until I got home from work. I found this box sitting in the living room. That’s a standard ruler for scale. Quite a box of beans, huh? My wife went by the farm stand a week or so ago and they didn’t have all that many beans. She left our number and asked the farmer to call if they ended up with at least a half bushel. She called us this afternoon.
Snapped beans
So I got to work. Karen snapped some beans before I got home from work. Then Mackenzie snapped some with me. I ended up snapping them while I watched some news before dinner. By that time I was about half way through the box. The dogs watched me the entire time I snapped.
Lydia enjoying the beans
The dogs really seem to like the beans. Both Foster and Lydia really like to eat green beans. The chew on them until they get the actual bean out of the pod. I gave each of them several beans and they hid under the table eating them. Lydia was the only one that let me take a picture.
Packing the beans
I managed to get enough beans snapped to fill 7 quart jars before dinner. I raw pack my beans. I’ve never tried hot packing them, but since raw packing works so well for me, I doubt I will try hot packing any time soon. It is just so easy to do. Pack the jars tight with beans and add 1/2 tsp of salt. Fill the jars with boiling water leaving about 3/4″ head space. Lid and ring goes on and into the canner.
First batch processed
I ended up canning 13 quarts of green beans this time around. Of course I didn’t grow these, but I did process them. Almost no homestead produces 100% of everything they need. They take advantage of the abundance that surrounds us. We were lucky that the farmer was able to provide us a bushel of beans, and for only $10.
Since I doubt I’ll get any more beans this year, it is time to tally up the totals. Of course I can’t count the beans that we ate fresh. The summer harvest brought us 13 quarts of beans. The fall harvest brought in an additional 12 quarts. Including the 13 quarts today, I canned a total of 38 quarts of green beans this year. I certainly hit my goal of producing more green beans than I did last year. Last year I stored 18 quarts of green beans. I probably also met my long-term goal of producing all of a particular product that we would need. I’m pretty sure these beans will last us until the spring harvest starts.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged beans, food, garden, harvest, homestead, preserving, vegetables
I feel like I’m beating a dead horse when I talk about the bean beetles. However, right now they are a huge impact on the homestead. I didn’t pull the beans the other day like I had planned. But I took care of that today.
I had some use or lose leave to use up before Christmas, so I took off today. I decided that today was the day to pull up the bean plants. But we prefer to can the beans, so I had to get a replacement canner first. So off to the store to look for one.
I would like to get an All-American canner, but that’s not in my budget at this time. I figured I’d get either a Mirro or Presto canner. I looked at Bed, Bath & Beyond, but the canners were MSRP and since I know I can get them online cheaper, I decided to check out Walmart.
Presto 16 Qt. Canner
I found this Presto 16 quart canner at Walmart for the same price as I could get online. This is replacing a 12 quart Mirro that I damaged. The larger Presto has a pressure gauge, but that’s not all that important to me. I brought this home and washed it up to take off the oils left by the manufacturing process.
With that taken care of, I headed out to the garden to check things out. The Mexican bean beetles were all over the place. There were easily twice as many beetles as were out there the other day. I was also wrong about the pole beans not being attractive to the bean beetles. Those couple pole bean plants had leaves that now looked like lace. So I started pulling up plants.
My technique is to pull up the plants from a portion of the bed. Then sit there on a milk crate to pull off the beans. The plants then go into the wheelbarrow. This time around I decided to try to kill off the beetles without destroying the plants. That way I could compost them. So I put the plants into black trash bags. I sealed them off with zip ties and have them laying in the sun to cook. In a couple weeks I’ll empty them out into the compost pile.
Nitrogen nodules on bean roots.
Whenever I plant beans in a bed for the first time, I always treat the beans with inoculant. This is a helpful bacteria that allows the bean plant to pull nitrogen from the atmosphere. This nitrogen is in nodules on the roots of the bean plant. I never knew what they would look like. So I figured I’d take a picture of them. Those little things that look like stones are the nodules. The quarter is there for scale.
Today's bean harvest
I ended up with this big pile of beans. That quarter should show just how big of a bowl that is. After I got them all picked, I had to take my son to karate, so my wife stepped in to help. She snapped all those beans and had them all ready for me to put into the jars ready to can. I ended up with 6 quarts of beans to put in the new canner. I’ll have to go through my notes to find out how many quarts we have canned this year, but I think it is in the 25 quart range.
On the way to karate, I passed the farm stand down the street. They have green beans in. I’m actually thinking of stopping by there tomorrow to get more beans to can. We certainly will eat them all before next year’s crop comes in. Might as well take advantage of the low prices on the local produce.
