Orchard / berry update

2019 was a good year for the blackberries. Unfortunately, we lost 2 plants so blackberries will be in very limited supply in 2020. We also lost 2 blueberry bushes. The ones remaining look pretty healthy and do have some fruit on them. Hopefully we can get a few before the deer or other critters eat them.

2020 saw the first time the peaches really started to bloom. It almost seemed like too many for their first year so we made sure to pinch off at least every other fruit, before they got too big. Sadly, this was a year of a late frost, right before Mother’s Day. It really wrecked the peaches. They all split and seemed like they were oozing their sugars. They basically stopped growing and stayed rotting slowly on the branch. We’ve been giving them to the chickens though and they seem to like the treat.

One of the pear trees did great! We got so many pears! They are not the prettiest pears but they tasted good.

We had a few little apples on one tree. We had several turn red but stay the size of a golf ball. We also have some issues with cedar rust on the apple trees. We’re still holding out for the apples to start producing. They could do with another year or two of growing before they really start producing.

It seems like were losing a different pear tree. We had another apple tree there the first year and had to replace it.

We’re figuring the highest part of the property maybe just isn’t a good location for the fruit trees. We’re not sure if it’s too windy or maybe all the nutrients in the soil run downhill and nothing good stays at the top. Also, a power line runs along the back edge and the county periodically comes out to spray under the lines to keep the plants down. Of course, we can’t tell the herbicide to skip over our trees so they certainly get some of that exposure.

Favorite Dishes from the Garden: Squash

One of the fun things our first few years of growing our own food taught us was how to get creative with meal time.

When you’re looking at your 12th consecutive day of having yellow squash for dinner, you want to spice things up – literally and figuratively!

We’ve got the fried squash down perfectly. In fact, it’s usually requested by the June birthday girl since its the best thing.

Sadly though, we can’t live off fried squash so we started looking at other flavors we liked and tried them with squash.

One of the earliest attempts was squash pickles.

They were a start but not really a meal.

One of us got to craving pizza but this mound of produce kept staring at us. We then had the idea of taking some of the bigger squash and turning them into pizza boats!

This was a great way to use up the larger squash that weren’t as tender as the smaller ones but are still just as delicious. We also cooked these on the grill since it’s just too hot to run the oven in the house.

We took 2 good sized squash and cleaned and prepped them. They were washed, cut in half and the insides scooped out for either the compost pile or chickens.

They were seasoned with salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder, as well as since Italian seasoning, since we’re making pizzas, after all. We drizzled with olive oil and set cut side down on the pre-lit grill over medium heat for about 6 to 7 minutes. Try to avoid any burning at this step. It’s not a yummy taste.

After that, flip the squash over so the skin can cook and so that the pizza toppings can get started. We used some ready made pizza sauce but of course homemade will be just as good. Spoon 2 to 3 spoonfuls then start layering in toppings. Pre-cooked Italian sausage or ground beef , pepperoni slices, basically any protein that you like on a pizza goes great here. Then some veggies. We love mushrooms so those were a given. Peppers, onions, spinach would all be great too. Top with any kind of mild, easy melting cheese like provolone or mozzarella and a little more Italian seasoning. Return to the grill and finish off for about another 4 to 5 minutes or until the squash is fork tender and the toppings are melted and bubbling slightly.

Cool for a couple minutes and then dig in!

We also a squash hamburger bun and even squash “mac and cheese”.

We used our own frozen squash, cut into slices and then halved. They went right into a pot to cook in their own juices from frozen. A little salt and pepper to season.

After the squash had cooked through, we lightly drained it and added a can of cheese soup. Just a splash of milk was used to thin the soup. Not much was needed since there was so much liquid from the squash. From there, we seasoned to taste and were ready to dig in!

The squash mac was in pretty heavy rotation because it is so easy and tastes good too.

Do you have any squash recipes we need to try? Any other twists on a favorite that we missed? Share in the comments and let us know!

2019 wrap up

Little late with the wrap up post on 2019, which is about perfect because 2019 seemed to be the year of being a little late.

Just as with any place there was several successes and failures on the Homestead.

Greenhouse was finished and worked great for the head start on spring planting.

We also got to experiment with putting down black ground cover, which we liked and will be getting more for the future gardens.

Wild rabbits did eat at least 50% of what we planted, but the greenhouse worked.

We started breeding rabbits on the homestead, took it slowly but did successfully raise and process three litters.

Our first group of chicks had zero losses. We bought 3 different breeds and supposedly no roosters. Ended up with entirely different breeds and six roosters. So surprise for us we also got to do our first rooster harvest in 2019.

Bought 6 more chickens to replace the rooster fiasco this time they were all hens, but again not the breed we thought we were purchasing. They lay eggs though, so we are calling it a win.

Also, we started getting eggs!!

We were able to finish the barn and immediately started planning an expansion …. Might get to that this year.

Planted a few more trees and bushes, but to be completely honest we did not take care of the ones we already have. The blackberries were taken over by weeds, the blueberries were all eaten by something. Even had a plum tree that was real dead before we noticed. Strawberries grew, but they did not have much flavor, so they were mostly ignored for the rest of the year.

Berries and orchard have to be more of a priority this year.

Fall garden was non existent. We started some seeds, but it stayed into the high 90s all the way into October, then rained for what seemed like a month. We probably could have still planted, but just got disgusted by it and took the fall off garden wise. We did a small raised area for cabbage and another for carrots.

Land clearing we did not do much. Really just maintaining what we had already cleared. Bandit, the farm dog, uses the brush line as his boundary. We really dont want to get rid of that boundary without the fencing to keep him in. Money was not in the budget in 2019 for what we needed, so nothing additional got cleared.

House building we did a lot more planning, over planning, and then planning it to death. 2020 something tangible has to happen with the house. The trailer is slowly falling apart and still not worth putting any money into fixing.

We will do a future post on plans for 2020 as of now the top 5 are (we know this will probably change several times.)

Start on a house – actually for real get started
Raise more rabbits/ chickens for the freezer.
Add to / take care of orchard.
Barn expansion.
Start nut trees

Hopefully in 2020 we can get more accomplished, which I think that is the goal every year. Still loving the adventure!

What’s something else we could work on for 2020? Let us know what you think! Drop us a comment!

Grapes and trellises

Probably something we should have done sooner, but we finally got some grape trellises set up and some planted our second year in.

There are some muscadines on the property already , and we have been eating them and making jelly from them, but we wanted more grapes. So fingers crossed ,in a few years we will have loads of them!

For the trellises we used old cedar posts that we had on the property already. For what to run between them we looked at the standard wire options, but with more thought we decided to go with t-posts. Easy to get, last forever, and are actually cheaper than most of the wire/ wire hardware needed to support grapes. So with some T posts and electrical conduit clasps we had some trellises. Only hard part was digging the holes but even that was not to bad. We managed to plant these right on top of a snake nest too. Luckily, it was October when we first started the digging and it was only eggs that we found.

We have planted four vines so far. Two white and two red. The two white are called Niagara and the two red are Mars.

None of them have died yet, so that is a start! We even have a small handful of grapes on the older Mars variety we planted. It feels very promising!

2019 garden updates

Just a quick post on the 2019 garden so far.

The garden woven fabric is working wonderfully so far. If it holds up through the year and comes up in good condition we will be getting more for sure. See our previous post about it here: 2019 Spring garden .

Rabbits destroyed the rows of lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli , cauliflower. They ate what they wanted and are leaving the rest along for now. We are at war with them at the moment but they are still winning I think.

The plants have gotten to the point that they are outpacing the weeds which saves us some time. Between the weeds that come up still, the black fabric , and the hay bedding from our rabbits that we added to the rows, the soil is keeping its moisture. It has been very much needed in the hot dry weeks we have had recently.

We have already been eating squash, zucchini , radish, garlic (planted last year) , spinach, peppers.

Our herbs are also rocking and we were able to use them and the garlic with the last of our frozen tomatoes to make an amazing batch of sauce.

So many great things going on. Very exciting time of the year.

Speaking of the war on the rabbits – we have recruited some help. They are small now but once they get some size on them… varmints beware! We’ll share more about Callie the Calico and Ursa the Little Bear, in a future post.

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Blackberries, Strawberries and Blueberries. Oh my

Just a quick post about our berry production on our little homestead.

The first year we planted strawberries and a thornless blackberry. The second year we added more strawberries, blackberries , and then blueberries. Third year we added more blackberries and blueberries.

We are adding more as we can afford to and also when we can get an area cleared for them.

The strawberries were a mix of Alpine, Ozark, and probably some others we are forgetting. We tried a white strawberry too, called Pineberry.

They are planted in a old building foundation with a concrete wall that has fallen down. It was a defined area that we always try planting things in. Strawberries are about the only thing that we have found to work there. We say work but even though we are currently getting lots of strawberries, we are not getting lots of flavor. They have all been so bland this year! Our theories on this are that we have had record level of rains this year effecting the taste or they do not get enough sunlight. Or both. There are a few trees surrounding them we are considering cutting down.

Any suggestions from you guys are welcome in the comments!

The blackberries are a thorn less variety we like, named Apache . The property is covered in “wild” blackberry plants, but they do not produce as much due to their thickness and the wild animals get most of them before they are what we consider ripe.

We are planting them on the edge of our young orchard and keep adding as we take back the woods. They will have plenty of room to expand in the future. The plants do well for us despite a few bites taken out by deer and rabbits from time to time. Last year we even got enough to make a cobbler. I would be fine if we got enough this year to make 20 cobblers. We might be planting more, or we might give it a few years to see how far they expand on their own.

Blueberries we have planted several varieties so far, mainly because where we buy them from seems to change what they have every year. They are all doing a great job despite the light deer grazing, we have not gotten a significant amount off them yet, but maybe this year!

We also have some grapes we have started that we will go over in a future post. Thinking about maybe doing raspberries. We are in zone 7b so researching what we could realistically grow here.

What berries are you growing? What are some of your favorites? Are we forgetting any that we should get started? Let us know in the comments !!!