Book Review - The Backyard Homestead

"Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!" I'm a sucker for any book that makes that sort of claim on the front cover! The Backyard Homestead, edited by Carleen Madigan, just came out recently and was on my wish list when I spotted it at the library Saturday! If you have a bit of land, small or large, and wish to grow more of your food, this book will inspire you! On the back cover it says "from a quarter of an acre, you can harvest: 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, and 75 pounds of nuts"! Wow! We have almost three acres, and though some of our land is quite rocky, this book sure demonstrates that we could be utilizing our property wiser!

This book covers everything from making sauerkraut to beekeeping, cheese making to bread baking, building a chicken coop to making sausage. My impression is that the goal of the book is to give you a vision of what your land can do. The vegetable growing section is rather comprehensive but the rest of the book just gives an overview. If you really decided to get a milk cow, I'd suggest reading some of the resources mentioned in the back of the book. Though there is a nice amount of information on chickens and eggs, there is nothing about how to butcher a chicken. The book isn't huge and is very readable. If it answered every question on every topic they introduce, it would take a volume of encyclopedias!

But if you wonder how you can make the most of your land and want some ideas that you may have never even considered, I'd heartily recommend this book! Just don't look for it at the library this week if you go to our local library, because I'm intending to keep it for a while!

Now I'm off to research nut trees...

Harvesting Carrots

Carrots are one of my favorite vegetables to put away for winter. No shelling, husking, or peeling! With the help of a pressure canner, carrots could hardly be easier!

We dug a whole wagon full of carrots. It had rained the night before so the ground was soft and muddy. I went down the row with a fork, loosening the carrots and the children pulled them out! I plant the Danver Half Long variety. They are short carrots and great for clay soil. And so sweet and good!!!

We swished the carrots in a bucket of water to take the worse of the dirt off. Any job with water is a favorite with my children! You'll have to imagine how wet and dirty they were when we were finished as I didn't think to take a picture! After cutting off the carrot tops (which were fed to the chickens) I used a stiff brush and clean bucket of water to do the final cleaning. Last year I had a whole bunch of tiny carrots. I hated the thought of scrubbing each one individually so I dumped them in the washing machine and ran it through the cycle (without detergent, of course!)

Since the carrots were fresh and tender, there was no need to peel or scrape. A food processor made quick work of slicing the carrots.

The final result: 36 pint of sliced carrots! All ready for adding to soups and casseroles this winter!

First Egg

For those of you who have been following our chicken adventures...today we gathered our first egg! The children have been checking for eggs every day for several weeks! This morning I sent the children out to check again (just to get them out of the house!) They didn't really want to go and asked if I thought there was really going to be an egg! The pullets are 21 weeks old, so I told them we really would have eggs any day! A few minutes later they were dashing back to the house with an egg!

Actually, I guess this is our second egg. We found a smashed pullet egg shell last week in the pasture in the movable pen. This morning the egg was in the nesting box. It is amazing to me that a young pullet who has never laid an egg could figure out where we wanted the egg laid!

Next question...who will get to eat the first egg!

Through Child's Eyes - Raising monarch butterflies

One of my favorite late summer memories is finding monarch caterpillars and raising them to butterflies. In our area, monarch butterflies are laying their eggs on milk weed plants in August. At least I always thought it was in August, but this year we've already found two monarch caterpillars in July, so maybe they begin laying eggs earlier then I thought! For a fun project for children (and adults!) take a walk down a weedy road or abandoned lot and look for tiny striped caterpillars on milk weed plants. Though you can raise other kinds of caterpillars, monarchs are easy to find because they only eat milkweeds.

Cut the milk weed plant and place it in a jar of water. The caterpillar will eat voraciously and grow quickly. You may need to pick more milk weed leaves for him to eat.

When he reaches his ultimate size, he will look for a quiet place to make his chrysalis. At this point it is good to have him trapped in a jar because he will roam out of sight! An ideal system is a large gallon size jar with a small baby food jar of water inside for the milk weed. But if you don't have a jar big enough, a box with a screen top so you can watch him, works as well.

The caterpillar will hang from his tail with a little webbing and then change into his lovely green chrysalis. Two weeks later he will emerge as a beautiful monarch! Release him to the outdoors to begin his long flight to Mexico for the winter. To learn more about these fascinating insects, check out this site here. We've been enjoying some of the library books about butterflies but nothing beats watching it first hand.

Give it a try, and maybe it will become a favorite memory for your children as well. (And you don't have to have a child around to enjoy it!)

The photos in this post are mostly from last year's butterflies, though a few are from our present caterpillar!

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

I know that some of you have been using the pizza crust recipe that I shared last fall. I have been making it with half white flour and half whole wheat flour for some time. Every time I tried it with all whole wheat flour it seemed too dry. We eat lots of pizza which gives me ample time to experiment and I finally have figured out how to make it with all whole wheat and taste better then ever!

1 cup warm water
1 T yeast
Dissolve yeast in water.

Add:
2 T oil
1 tsp sugar or honey
1 tsp salt
2 cups whole wheat flour

Mix all together and stir for several minutes. I usually do this by hand unless I'm doubling the batch, then I use the kneading hook on my mixer. Allow the dough to sit for five minutes. This allows the flour to fully hydrate in the water and keeps you from adding too much flour. After five minutes, turn the dough out onto a floured counter and add only enough flour to make it easy to manage. You still want it to be slightly sticky without being tacky. I usually add about ½ cup more flour, sometimes not even that much. Knead only briefly since you stirred it well previously. It is fine if it is still rather sticky. Place in greased bowl and allow to raise until double. Place on baking sheet or pizza pans, add toppings and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes.

For more information on making pizza crust, check the original post.

Green Bean Supreme

This time of year, green beans are on the menu almost every day! We usually just eat them with a little butter and salt or other seasoning. When I asked Ed if I should participate in Tammy's In Season Recipe Swap and if so, what recipe I should share, he immediately said this one!

1 cup sour cream (I use plain yogurt.)
2 T flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 small diced onion
1 quart green beans
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup bread crumbs OR 1 cup crushed cornflakes

Mix sour cream, flour, salt, pepper, and onion. Layer beans in greased 9x9 casserole. Pour over sour cream mixture. Mix together bread crumbs and cheese. Sprinkle over top. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Garden Tour

I love to visit gardens! Formal gardens are great fun but friend's gardens are even better! If I come to your house, I may do a detour around the flower beds before I make it to the front door!

I thought I'd give you a little tour of our place! So come on over! I just hope the photos are small enough that you can't see the weeds!
Welcome to our little place we call Thistleberry Hollow! We seem to have an abundance of both berries and thistles! This has been our home for seven years now. Almost every summer, I am digging a new garden somewhere! The above photo shows the flower bed along the drive as you pull in.


The flower beds in front of the house.


Shade garden behind the house.


Our vegetable garden is divided into several beds. Above is the original garden when we moved here. The soil is rich, beautiful and loose. You can dig potatoes with your bare hands but because of the trees, the garden doesn't get as much sunlight as would be ideal. The fence divides our garden from our neighbors. Zucchini, watermelon, and hollyhocks grow along the fence. Strawberries, potatoes, broccoli, lettuce, chard and pumpkins are planted here. In back is our garden shed and compost bins.

Another shot of the same garden. When the strawberries were finished, we planted corn along the strawberry rows. It is just an experiment to see if it works to multi-crop in this way! We could make our garden bigger but we are trying to use every inch first!


From the garden shed you can see the other garden areas. To the right is the children's garden, on the left is the asparagus and grape arbor.

To utilize space, we planted pumpkins and winter squash along the pasture fence behind the asparagus and grape arbor. Vine crops take up so much room and we usually didn't plant them but this year we are making use of this wasted space along the fence.
Our largest vegetable garden. This was pasture when we moved here. The soil is good though not as nice as the first garden. We are slowly adding organic matter and trying to improve it.
Vegetables are growing well! These tomato plants are taller then me! In this garden is planted zinnias, green beans, peppers, basil, marigolds, tomatoes, onions, carrots, potatoes, and corn.


Another view from the opposite end of the same garden.


On the hillside beside the garden is my herbs, garlic, butternut squash and newly planted blueberry bushes. The blueberries are tiny and barely surviving and completely unseen on this photo!

Thanks for visiting! Whether your garden is a pot on the deck, or an acre truck patch, I'd love to see it! If you have a blog, take a few pictures and leave a link in the comments so we can come visit!