Leaning

I have been leaning towards sewing lately. Really the sewing of 60's fashion. I just ordered two vintage patterns from my snack pack sales. I previously ordered three vintage patterns and haven't even had the time to look at them, let alone make anything! However here I am ordering more!

The thing with vintage items is usually if you wait to buy something you really like, it'll be gone in the time you've been hemming and hawing. I've missed out on a number of fantastic vintage patterns and other such lovely things this way. So for now I'll just collect vintage patterns, in hopes of one day making a new wardrobe for myself!

In gardening news, the lettuce barrels are doing great! They've been loving the rain and cool weather. Also I've had another small crop of strawberries pop up, after we relocated the plants to planters in the front. The blackberries are almost done, most that we were waiting on never ripened, as the heat never came.

In the kitchen I've been making cheese scones, whole wheat french bread (i've given up on sourdough for now) and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Due to a shortage, I've found a fantastic addition to my cookie recipe! I was a cup short of oatmeal , and instead of running next door, decided to put in some ground flax seed. WOW!! what a difference! The cookies were much more airy, and melted in your mouth wonderfully! The men of the house prefer raisins to chocolate chips, so I just made a small batch for myself. I then ate them all in one day!

So now it's night time and we are all tired! Goodnight!

Tired Housewife

Hubby did a lot more spreading of mulch today. We tried to tae it easy this weekend. I got my snack packs finished, made a quiche and spent the morning at the beach with the family. Toda was an amazingly tired day. I am trying my sourdough culture for the third time. I am feeding it every 8 to 12 hours instad of every 24 hours and that seems to be helping. I really want to get a vintage food scale to weigh the ingredients for my sourdough bread. Okay I am exhausted, and our eldest is not sleeping ......

Real Progress Today!

The Shaker!

Lovely Herb Butter for Tomorrow!

Picking through our salad barrels.

The harvest!

Today marks the first day I was able to harvest from my own vegetables! I have grown vegetables in the past, but I took them for granted and even wasted some (gasp!). My eldest son and I carefully picked out some various greens from our two salad barrels, in order to thin out the crop. We got just enough for three small green salads, and will have to thin out a bit more in the days to come. Now these had to be the best tasting little salads I have had in some time. We took handfuls of salad and dipped them in a wee bit of ranch dressing, i was too proud of the little greens to pour dressing on!

Also today, the big boy and I made butter! We shook the heck out of some cream, washed it, then salted it. I decided to make it a herbed butter, but now kick myself for not trying some of the whipped goodness before adding all the flavoring! From the butter making, we have some real buttermilk and will make some yummy cheddar buttermilk biscuits to accompany some bean soup tomorrow. The weather calls for sweaters and soup this week!

First Harvest

Above is a photo of my first harvest. I don't have anything to harvest from my garden yet, so this is from my neighbors garden. She has three lovely, huge, lavender plants out front. She didn't want the flowers, so I clipped a bunch to dry and use in draw and dryer sachets. We don't use fabric softener, so these little guys will make our clothes smell oh so pretty! Just what a bunch of boys need, hey? Pretty smelling duds! Oh, well.

In other news, my second sourdough culture seems to be failing. It was bubbling and doing just fine, until i went to feed it yesterday. Again there was a layer of water sitting on the top, smothering all the bubbly goodness that should have been. I may try a wide, shallow container today and see if i can also revive the one in the jar. When I first started this whole sourdough culture business, I thought we'd be eating the stuff by now!





Yesterday I took a quick trip down to Value Village in search of a basket for my lavender harvest, as well as a hand powered mixer. I did have an old one of my mom's for a long time, but I can't find it now! I had no luck with the hand mixer, however did find a lovely yellow and green pyres bowl and some cute springy egg whisks. I may have to start a collection of them to hang in my bare kitchen! When I returned from VV, Jackson extremely delighted with the egg whisks, so he had a good play in the dirt with them!

Today and tomorrow I am cleaning and organizing our little homestead after the busy weekend spent outside. I hope to start planning the garden, as I just checked out an edible landscaping book from the library. I also checked out a crochet book, with a lovely wrap pattern. With all this dismal (oh I do love it!) weather, it seems appropriate to start planning my fall crochet projects!

See Lawn Die

The Family hard at work!

Our lawn in the front yard is no more!!! And it's starting to smell more like a farm around here! Today hubby and eldest son dropped off ton of bark mulch to smother the front lawn. We made two areas that will be garden in the spring and a pathway to the driveway. We are also putting mulch in the garden beds that are around the edge of the fence, so we don't have anymore five foot weeds. I am not sure what we will be planting in the front, but I plan to do some edible landscaping along with some veggies. So much fun!

For now we are ignoring the back yard. It seems to big and daunting to tackle. The front yard will be a good first project for us new homesteaders!

Oh and after my failed attempt at a sourdough culture, I finally seem to have success!! It's only been 24 hours, but I've already got bubbles in my starter!! Fresh sourdough here I come .... well in a couple of weeks!

Plans, Plans, Plans

Surveying the Crop

Helping with the dirt patio

Reuseable snack packs ..... want the pattern?

I totally failed yesterday! Well. okay maybe that's a bit harsh! My sourdough starter failed! I went to feed it yesterday afternoon, only to find fuzzy mold growing on the side. I have decided to try one more time and if that doesn't work, then I am going to buy a starter! I have found that my biggest mistake was keeping it an airtight container. It needs to breathe a bit, so that would explain why mine didn't get bubbly at all! Let's cross our fingers that this works!

I have got my husband on board with having chickens! It's still going to be a ways off, but hopefully sooner than later! We were weeding last night in preparation for our bark mulch load this weekend. I told hubby that the chickens would eat the weeds we are digging up and that made chickens more appealing to him! Oh the bark mulch, big plans here! We are snuffing out half the grass in the front and mulching all exposed dirt areas, until we decide what to plant. We are also going to get a bale of straw to put down on our dirt patio, until we have decided how to treat that surface. I am leaning towards cement molds, to make it look like brick, though hubby is going for big grey pavers ..... so ugly in my mind! We've also talked about having narrow planters down one side of the driveway for tomatoes next spring.

So many plans for the spring, but what about right now? Other than my little lettuce gardens, what can I plant? I did find a variety of carrot, however I'm in no mood to sift out a ton of soil, t prep for carrots! I am going to visit West Coast Seeds soon, and make an order for the spring and maybe even some fall gardening! I am so addicted to planning the garden!

This past weekend I did some sewing to save the environment! I designed so reusable snack packs so when I pack the boy's lunch or we go out, I can use them instead of ziplock bags. I designed them so they pop up and function as a bowl, but fold nice and flat to fit in my bag! Also I am turning an old pair of hubby's pants into some play/work pants for our eldest son! It's a bit of an experiment as I am not using a pattern!

I Dream of Chicken

I could get my classic car after all!

Green Roof

Area behind garage to fence for the chickens!

Right now I am totally obsessed with the idea of having chickens. They are much more than pets! They are little providers, shooting out eggs and fertilizer! I have been researching chicken coops and there are some great ones out there. Even though we are almost two years away from getting chickens, due to new baby and travel plans, I am getting ready. I'd like to design something with the features of the eglu, though larger. Also I like the idea of a green roof. We have a lot of space for a large run, so when we go away for weekends, the girls will have a lot of run around room. It's just a matter of convincing someone to mind them while we are away. I'd like to start from chicks, as they'd be more accustom to handling and our yard/coop. There are still so many things to look into, but for now i dream of chickens and coops!

In the reality of my everyday life, we got some supplies for canning. The blackberries are in, so I am hoping to make some jam soon. Cory pointed out that I don't even like jam, however I know a lot of people that do, and it seems like a good homesteady thing to learn! Also in the kitchen I am still working on my sourdough culture. I've been feeding it every day, and it seems to be going well. I had been using the metal canning lid, until today. I got some of those plastic lids of canning jars. I read in the Urban Homestead book that you are not supposed to have metal in contact with the sourdough culture for too long, so I thought it best to switch to plastic.

The Beginning

This is the very beginning. I am planning a massive overhaul for our 5,000 sq ft. city property! Since I have a three year old and three month old, I will be taking things rather slowly. For now I have planted my first crop in some barrels in the front yard. They contain different lettuces, chives, mustard green and cilantro. **Oh my god, my dog stinks! She is under the table and i just heard her fart (this is a first, usually they are silent, but deadly)! I think she is rotting inside or something .... ew!!! So foul!**

Sorry about that, back to the post. I planted my crop just over a week ago and have a nice amount of sprouts popping up! We are having a heat wave right now, so I am happy that my little seedlings have been surviving. I don't have a proper watering system right now, so I am just misting them with the hose. Oh the hose! What a joke! The one in the back split on me yesterday and the one in the front leaks at the nozzle joint, so I get soaked! Eventually I'd like to invest in a low flow drip irrigation system, but first I have to plan the garden!

Two days ago I started my first sourdough culture. I have to "feed" it every day for two weeks or so. It is already smelling sour doughy, so that's a good sign! I really wasn't sure how it would do in this heat, but so far so good! I have to get a couple things before I start baking sourdough bread, but in a few weeks we should be tasting the first experiment in my homesteading adventure! M husband has informed me that he doesn't really like sourdough, though I have promised him it will be the best loaf of bread he has ever tasted ...... I just hope I can pull it off!

So that's all for now, I'm off to hang some laundry on the line to dry! Got to take advantage of this summer heat somehow! I just wish we had a solar oven!