“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill
I’ve been on this small piece of land for 40 years now. A lot of mistakes and false starts along the way. I’ve built and torn down about 4 chicken coops, 3 greenhouses, at least 2 small buildings, and a geodesic dome. I’ve done and undone countless projects because I was in too much of a hurry or didn’t think things out in advance. The sign that used to hang behind the counter at Golden State Lumber sure resonated with me: : “If you didn’t have time to do it right in the first place, how come you have time to do it over?”
I’ve done presentations titled “The Half Acre Homestead” at the Maker Faire last year and at the North House Folk School this year, with pictures of the garden shredder, grain grinder, table saw, and on and on. What you can produce on a pretty small piece of land. Here are a few recent things:
Chickens: Our new flock of mostly Golden Seabright and Auracana bantams is a month or two away from laying eggs. I’ve dispatched 21 roosters. Skinning rather than plucking saves a lot of time. I’ve just learned how to “spatchcock” (butterfly) poultry for barbecuing (check the word on Google for instructions).
These home-raised birds taste way better than even “free-range” commercial chickens. Way different flavor, less fat, bones dense. I vacuum-seal them with Foodsaver “Gamesaver,” and freeze. This model is a big improvement over previous Foodsavers. (The trick with meat, fish, or sealing anything with liquid: freeze for a few hours before vacuum sealing; this eliminates liquid being drawn to the sealing area.)
Pickling: My 3rd batch of sauerkraut is the best. Made with our own red cabbage and salt, nada mas. My olives (salt, vinegar, water) have turned out great after 3 months; no lye. Lesley’s been making all our own (sour dough) bread and now, Kombucha tea.
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“An heirloom tomato…is an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) heirloom cultivar of tomato. Heirloom tomatoes have become increasingly popular and more readily available in recent years. They are grown for historical interest, access to wider varieties, and by people who wish to save seeds from year to year, as well as for their taste, which is widely perceived to be better than modern tomatoes. They do however have a shorter shelf life and less disease resistance than most commercial tomatoes…
Heirloom tomatoes lack a genetic mutation that gives tomatoes an appealing uniform red color while sacrificing the fruit’s sweet taste. Varieties bearing this mutation, which have been favored by industry since the 1940’s, feature fruits with lower levels of carotenoids and a decreased ability to make sugar within the fruit.…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heirloom_tomato
“…Only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes…”
-Guy Clark
Note, the knife shown is my favorite vegetable chopper. It holds an edge forever, and is cheap (under $10!). Made in Thailand and reviewed here on CoolTools.
“…Jill decided to check out a little two-bedroom 1950s home in West Allis that she’d heard about from their real estate agent. She went online and found a street view of the home.
What she saw intrigued her.
‘You couldn’t see the house,’ she said. ‘I looked at the whole street, and nothing else looked like that. And I thought, now I have to see the house. ‘”
What they saw when they visited was a lush garden anchored by a serviceberry and crabapple trees in the front yard. Native plants included towering cup plant, black-eyed Susan and New England asters.
‘It was just like heaven for me,’ said Jill.…”
https://shltr.net/grnmksbigr
Photo by Angela Peterson
I got a Google Alert about a video on our homestead and office that had been posted on https://www.rootsimple.com/. The blog is by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, authors of the very fine book (which I originally discovered on Boing Boing), The Urban Homestead, about raising food in a big city (in this case, LA). I enjoyed scrolling down the blog, seeing the eclectic mix. These guys are all over the place, like me.
Check out the swarm of bees on the Harley, and the swimming pool in the bed of a Chevy S10 pickup truck on a hot night (in LA, of course). The vintage photo at left is titled: “A member of the Woodmen of the World with his ceremonial axe…”
Hi there. I’m a long time fan of the Shelter books. Builders of the Pacific Coast is like viewing a tangible form of my dreams. My husband, Rob Campbell, also recently reviewed the Tiny Homes book on his woodworking blog.
This is a long shot and I apologize for the intrusion if it’s unwanted, but it seems like you would know folks interested in a property like ours. We are trying to sell our coastal Oregon home. It’s a pretty amazing place in a pretty amazing community. We made a website describing it and due to the unique nature of the property, are trying to sell it without a realtor since someone not familiar with the place could never really do it justice. Anyhow, if you want to take a look and share it with anyone you think might be interested, here is the webpage.…
-Xephaniah Fiddlehead Nubbinsworth https://logy.org/house
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Colors look great in the fog.
Colors are best in the fog. I shoot collages, rather than using a wide angle lens setting, because the proportions look about right to me through a 50 or so mm lens. Click on it to enlarge.
These home-raised birds taste way better than even “free-range” commercial chickens. Way different flavor, less fat, bones dense. I vacuum-seal them with Foodsaver “Gamesaver,” and freeze. This model is a big improvement over previous Foodsavers. (The trick with meat, fish, or sealing anything with liquid: freeze for a few hours before vacuum sealing; this eliminates liquid being drawn to the sealing area.)
