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Homestead weekly update

Posted on January 6, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Welcome to this week’s homestead update.  It has been quite a while since my last weekly update, but because of the holidays I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished much on the homestead.

Pizza peel first time use

Because I’ve been baking bread and making pizza from scratch a lot lately, I received a pizza peel for Christmas.  I used it to make a loaf of the 5 minute a day bread.  While the loaf of bread was not my best, the pizza peel worked great.  I covered it with corn meal, allowed the bread to rise on top of the cornmeal and the loaf slid right off of the peel onto the baking stone.  I should have bought one of these a while ago.

Another thing that I received for Christmas was a Ryobi One+ Reciprocating saw.  I already have several of the Ryobi One+ tools, so this works with the batteries that I already have.  I mainly wanted this saw to do some pruning, so I also received a pruning blade for the saw.  One of the trees in the yard had a large branch that split in the wind.  The first part broke off the tree completely, but the other half was still there.  I used the saw to cut that branch.  It was about 5″ in diameter and the saw did fine.  I also cut some smaller branches from a couple other trees.  It does not replace a chain saw, but it does work fine to cut these smaller branches.

I was able to finish off my review of last year’s seeds.  It took me much longer to complete than I thought it would.  But doing that really helped me decide they varieties of seed I want to plant this year.

I made my list of goals to be completed on the homestead this year.  As I said in that post, I don’t usually set goals and I think that’s why I haven’t accomplished as much on the homestead as I wanted to.  I’m going to make sure that I refer back to my goals post often so I can stay on track with where I’m headed.

Over the past couple of weeks, the seed catalogs have really started to come in.  I’ve read over a lot of them so far and will begin making up my shopping list.  As with other years, I will likely buy the majority of my seeds this year from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.  But I will probably buy some from Seed Savers Exchange and from some other seed catalogs.  I like to spread my money around a little.  But I always make sure that I buy from companies that have signed the safe seed pledge.  These companies have signed a pledge that they will not knowingly sell GMO seed.  While it is a self policing system, it is a good first step to avoiding genetically modified seed.

Cast iron hung in the kitchen

I believe that I mentioned that we have been buying some cast iron cookware.  We were getting tired of always having to move it around when we made anything that didn’t use the cast iron.  So I hung these shelves and put some hooks into the wall to hold the cast iron and some of the larger cook pots.  Yeah, I hate that tile also.  It will be gone when we have the money to refinish the kitchen, but for now it has to stay.

I’ll give a short run down of what’s on the wall.  A couple of years ago, we bought a Lodge cast iron griddle.  That doesn’t get as much use, it takes up 2 burners and unless we are having a pretty big breakfast or have people over, it just isn’t used.  But a couple of months ago, we bought that Lodge 13.25″ skillet, the big one in the middle.  Last month, we bought the smaller skillet, a Lodge 8″ skillet.  The little square pan is a Lodge 5″ Wonder Skillet.  It is the size of a single grilled cheese sandwich.  Finally, up on the top shelf, barely visible, is a Norpro Bacon Press.  I haven’t had the opportunity to put it to use since I got it.  Maybe next weekend I’ll talk my wife into some bacon for breakfast.

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Homestead YEARLY update

Posted on December 30, 2011 by | 2 Comments

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.

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Black belts and bread baking

Posted on December 19, 2011 by | 5 Comments

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  It was a good one here on the homestead.

Flying side kick

I think I’ve posted about my son doing Tae Kwon Do.  Well he’s fairly advanced.  This weekend he tested for his probationary black belt.  That means that in April he will be able to test for his black belt.

I wanted to share a picture I took during his test.  That’s him breaking the board by doing a flying side kick over one of the other kids in his class.  We usually forget to take our camera with us on test days, but we remembered this time.  I was thrilled to be able to capture an action shot.

Compared to the testing, the rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful.

Apple pie in a bottle

Last week I was listening to the Self Sufficient Homestead podcast.  The Queen gave out a recipe for what they called apple pie in a bottle.  It sounded good, so this weekend I made some.  It contains vodka, apple juice, brown sugar, allspice and cinnamon.  The bottle on the left is one that I bottle beer into, the one on the right is a .5 liter bottle that I picked up at the kitchen store.  They had this flask in .25 and 1 liter also, as well as a couple other shapes.  It is pretty tasty.  If we didn’t already have our gifts purchased, I would be tempted to give this out.  Maybe we will give out gifts that we craft on the homestead in the future.

Bread bowls?

One of the meals we have planned this week is broccoli cheese soup.  We really like the kind we get at Panera and are trying to make something similar.  Because we always get that soup in bread bowls, I decided to give them a shot.  These are made from the bread in 5 minutes a day dough.  I made the dough up a couple of days ago and had it in the fridge.  I don’t know if these will hold up to soup since the bread used at Panera is sourdough.  But we are going to give it a shot.  I’ll report back here with the results.

I’ve been sitting on a Gurney’s catalog for a couple of weeks.  They run a sale where you buy $25 worth of merchandise and get another $25 for free.  I always end up buying about $50 worth of stuff and getting the $25.  It seems to work out a little cheaper than elsewhere.  Anyway, the sale was coming to an end, so I decided to order my raspberries to be planted in the Spring.  I ended up ordering all 9 varieties that they carry.  I will have golden, black and the standard red raspberries.  Based on their literature, I should have ripe raspberries from late June until early October.  I hope it works out that way, I really like raspberries.

For those that don’t know, raspberries have canes that grow out of a crown.  Typically, the canes will grow the first year.  Then the second year, those canes will flower and fruit, while the crown puts out another batch of new canes that will just grow.  However, 2 of the varieties that I bought will fruit on first year growth.  The Sweet Repeat and Heritage are “ever-bearing.”  This means that the first year canes will produce fruit on the tips of the canes.  Then the next year these same canes will produce fruit lower on the cane.  It isn’t really ever-bearing, there is a flush in June and another flush in the Fall.

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Homestead weekly update

Posted on December 16, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Welcome to this week’s homestead round-up.  Today is when I wrap up what has happened on the homestead this week.  I usually touch on the topics of the other posts, but will also talk about some things that didn’t warrant their own post.

There really wasn’t much happening on the homestead this past weekend.  I did take my daughter to see Santa at the club my parents belong to.  They cut the kids off at 10 years old, so my daughter is the last of the grand kids that are able to attend the party.  The party was Saturday morning.

I brought the rosemary plant into the house for the winter.  I did have to spray it with soap spray to make sure no bugs came in with it.

Last Tuesday was my son’s birthday and this past Saturday was my birthday.  We weren’t able to schedule a party for him, so we went to dinner and took my parents and my wife’s mother.  We don’t get to do this all that often.  They do live close enough, but we rarely get both of our parents together.  We didn’t go anyplace fancy, just to Red Lobster.  That’s one of my son’s favorite places to eat.

Between my son’s Tai Kwon Do, the kid’s Christmas party and going to dinner, Saturday was pretty much a wash as far as getting things done on the homestead.  But spending time with the family takes priority over working on the homestead.

I received an e-mail about a new social media site dedicated to Hobby Farms.  I signed up and put my homestead bio.  It seems kind of interesting, but I haven’t figured out if I like it or not.  They introduced it as sort of Facebook site, but there doesn’t seem to be a home page for each person.  The interface is kind of clunky, and each section of the site has its own page instead of being linked with the user’s home page.  On the home page is a survey question.  I have answered the same question 3 different days.  I would think that it would remember the response and would just show me the stats for the question.  But I’m going to give it the benefit of a doubt and see how it works out.  I may just not understand how to use it most effectively.

5 minutes a day bread

I made another loaf of that 5 minutes a day bread.  This looks really good and smelled great.  This is the same dough that I made last week.  It has been in the fridge since last week and still looks good.  I mainly wanted to see if the bread would bake up properly after sitting in the fridge for more than a week.

Under the cold frame

Here’s a look under the cold frame.  The mesclun mix is still growing.  It is really tough to see this unless I compare pictures from one week to the next.  Since I want to see what is happening under there, I take a picture each weekend and compare the growth.  Without weekly shots, it looks like nothing is happening.

So that’s what happened on the homestead.  What did you do on your own little slice of the country?

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Zucchini bread

Posted on December 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I was in the mood for something sweet.  I decided to pull some frozen, shredded zucchini out of the freezer to make some zucchini bread.  We really like this batter bread.  It is sweet, but not an overpowering sweetness.  It makes a great addition to my lunch bag.

Zucchini bread ingredients

  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 cups shredded zucchini
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 3/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 Tbsp cinnamon

Dry ingredients and wet ingredients

In a large bowl, mix the eggs, oil, sugar, zucchini and vanilla.  Set this aside.

In another bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda nutmeg and cinnamon.

 

 

Mixed up

Pour the dry ingredients on top of the wet ingredients and mix together.  Don’t over mix the batter.  If there are a few clumps of dry ingredients, that is fine.

 

 

Batter filled pans

Prepare 2 loaf pans by smearing the insides with shortening.  Coat the shortening with flour.  Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pans.  Drop the pans from about 3″ to shake out air pockets.

 

 

Zucchini bread

Bake the loaves at 350F for 45 to 50 minutes.  The center of the loaf will spring back when pressed.  I always use a cake tester.  If it comes out clean, the loaves are done.

 

 

Nutmeg

Any time that a recipe calls for nutmeg, I always use fresh nutmeg.  There is a huge difference in taste.  For those that don’t know, nutmeg is a nut.  I picked up this cool nutmeg micro plane a couple of years ago.  Just swipe the nutmeg against it a couple of times and I have 1/4 tsp of grated nutmeg.  The black section stores the nut for grating.  The clear section holds the grated nutmeg.  It also has holes near one end to act as a shaker.  Just shake it over that cup of eggnog.  I get my nutmeg from the farmers market.  It typically comes in a container of about 12 nuts.  I vacuum seal these and store them in the freezer.  It keeps them fresh for years.

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Homestead weekly update

Posted on December 2, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The weekend after Thanksgiving is usually fairly busy in our house.  This is when my wife puts up the lights for Christmas.  She puts up some of the Christmas decorations.  But the tree will wait until after my son’s birthday.  Because she is doing this work, I’m usually tied to keeping the kids and dogs our of her way.

This week wasn’t quite like this.  I went in to work on Friday so that others would be able to take the long weekend.  My wife was able to get some help from my son and my daughter stayed out of her way.  So I came home to the lights and decorations on display.  This is a good thing.

My wife took the blower vac over to her mother’s house to pick up the leaves.  Usually she uses a rake and bags.  She sees the benefit of using the vacuum to suck them up.  It isn’t all that much of a time saver, but it is less work than raking.  Her mother has a lot of trees and usually ends up with at least 50 bags of leaves.  With the shredder vac, it ended up being just 11 couple bags.  I had her bring them home so I can make compost out of them.

Lydia hunting, Foster observing

While my wife and kids were over at my mother-in-law’s house, I used that time to work in the garden.

I have a pile of straw, garden plant remains and leaves.  The dogs had a good time with that.  Here’s a shot of Lydia about half way into that pile.  Foster didn’t seem to have that same level of conviction.  He just watched.  I think that I probably have a field mouse of vole under the pile.  Lydia had that tail wagging a mile a minute.  She never found it, but has hunted down voles in the past.

Results of the hunt

She had a great time, but ended up a little messy.  I think that once my wife gets home she will want us to give Lydia a bath.  That long hair just attracts everything.

I was able to get my shallots planted.  Of course I had to go back out to remove the mulch from that bed.  I didn’t remember that shallots are not supposed to be mulched.  I hope that they do well.  I haven’t eaten many shallots, but I really like the idea of having mild onions that are easily saved.  Along with my potato onions and garlic, I should have Aliums to plant in the garden forever.  I guess the garlic chives are another one that I can just keep planting each year.

Late last week, I came across several blogs about making bread in 5 minutes a day.  I had to give this a try.  So Saturday evening, I mixed up the dough.  Sunday afternoon I baked the bread.  It turned out pretty good, but I discovered that I need to get a pizza peel to be able to make good artisan bread.  I can make due using parchment paper, but I want to get a peel anyway.

I also made use of the last pumpkin from this year’s garden.  I harvested this pumpkin after the other pumpkins were processed.  So the other day I canned pumpkin cubes.  I will use these over the winter to make some desserts and I may try making some pumpkin soup.  I also roasted the seeds from this pumpkin.  I planned on taking them to work to snack on, but they didn’t make it that far.  I ate them all the same day I made them.

So that’s what happened this week on the homestead.

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Bread in 5 minutes a day?

Posted on November 28, 2011 by | 8 Comments

This weekend I was looking for a bread recipe.  Since the weekends are so busy, I wanted to find something that was fairly easy to make.  But it still needed to be made from scratch.  I found a couple of blogs where the recipes were pretty simple.  But then I started finding blogs about the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking.  This book has about 100 recipes for various types of bread.  The trick is the way that the dough is mixed up.

I had to give it a shot to see if it is possible to make bread this easily.  I don’t have the book yet, but if this bread works out, I will order the book and do a brief review.

Bread ingredients

This is a very simple recipe.  The only ingredients in this dough are flour, water, yeast and salt.

  • 6 1/2 cup flour
  • 3 cup warm water
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp yeast
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp salt

 

Dough mixed up

Put the warm water into a container that will hold at least 5 quarts.  The water should be close to body temperature, mine was about 95F.  Add the yeast to the water and stir until it is mostly dissolved.

 

 

Dough in the container

Add all the flour to the container and add the salt on top.  Mix it all together with a wooden spoon until all parts are moistened.  The dough will be fairly loose and will form to the shape of the container.

 

Risen dough

Allow the dough to rise until it begins to flatten on top.  It appears to fall in upon itself.  This is where this technique varies from the way I usually make bread.  I’m used to allowing the dough to rise until doubled.  This technique allows the dough to keep rising until it falls.

From what I’ve read, the dough can be used right now, but it is easier to work with after it has been refrigerated over night.  I decided to put the dough in the fridge and make a loaf of bread on Sunday.

Dough resting

On bake day, sprinkle flour on top of the dough.  Reach in the container and grab out a chunk that’s about the size of a grapefruit, this should be about 1 pound.

Work the dough to stretch the edges of the dough to the bottom.  Add flour to the surface of the ball to keep it from sticking to your hands.  This should take no more than 1 minute.

Slashed and ready to bake

Sprinkle cornmeal onto a pizza peel or an edge-less cookie sheet.  Set the dough ball on the cornmeal and allow the dough to rest for about 45 minutes.  During this time, the dough will rise and warm up to about room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 450F, my oven takes about 15 minutes, so be sure to include this in the rise time.  Place a baking stone on the middle rack and the broiler pan on the bottom rack.  After the dough rises, dust with flour and slash the top with a serrated knife.  Slide the dough onto the pizza stone with a quick forward motion.  Hopefully the dough will slide off the sheet.  Unfortunately mine did not and I had to use an icing spatula to slide it off.  Pour 1 cup of hot tap water into the broiler pan and close the door to the oven.  This will create steam and will help form the crust.

Bread finished

Bake the bread for about 30 minutes or so.  The crust should be nicely browned and firm.  A tester inserted in the bottom should come out clean.

The loaf on the left used the cornmeal technique and ended up misshapen.  The one on the right was baked on a piece of parchment paper.  The box says the parchment is good to 420F, but the paper didn’t even brown.  I will use the parchment paper until I’m able to get a pizza peel.

Loaf bread

A batch of dough makes 3 loaves of bread.  I did the 2 free-form loaves shown above, and I tried making a loaf in a loaf pan.  I used just over a pound of dough for each loaf.  The last pound of dough was stickier than the other 2 loaves.  It didn’t rise as much as I would have liked, but it turned out okay.  Next time I will try using 1 1/2 or 2 pounds of dough in a loaf pan.

How did it turn out?  Pretty good.  The crust is chewy and it tastes good.  The next time I make this, I will do 2 loaves in loaf pans to see if it fills the pan more.  I will make this again, and I will buy the book.  I already have it on my wish list.  Once I get it, I’ll try some of the recipes and do a review of the book.

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