We got our first harvest of broccoli from our fall garden. We’ve never grown it before, and are completely impressed. It’s so much sweeter than store-bought – as is true with most everything we grow ourselves. We have lots more coming, along with three different types of cabbage and some cauliflower. The garden looks a […]
We finally have the roof on the workshop after many delays and much procrastination. We put a chest freezer in it to keep all of our frozen fruit and veggies at our house. We had been borrowing freezer space at my folks, which was less than ideal for everyone. The next step is to get
We received about 6 1/2 inches of rain this past week as what was left of Harvey came through Tennessee. That much rain caused the Shiitake mushroom logs to start fruiting like crazy. We have yet to see any Oyster mushrooms from this years inoculated Poplar logs.
In October of 2016, we bought a 3-pound bag of garlic from Sam’s Club. We broke the heads apart and planted about 2 pounds of cloves into a raised bed in rows about 10″ apart. We harvested the garlic once the bottom 2 or 3 leaves started to yellow and die. We got an amazing
Sarah’s BFF from Phoenix, AZ came to visit in late June. We picked her up in Nashville and she was on the homestead for one day before she and Sarah took off for Englewood, FL to see Sarah’s family and frolic in the sun and sea for a week. When they returned, Kim got a
We inoculated 18 Poplar logs with Oyster mushroom sawdust spawn this spring in addition to the Shiitake logs from 2 years ago. You can read that post, here. With any luck we will have Oyster mushrooms starting this summer or fall. Last year the Shiitake logs were prolific and we gave away, froze or dehydrated all
Sarah teaches The Scarlet Letter to her high school students and she is reading Jon Ronson’s book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Along those same lines we have a new rooster that keeps wanting to do battle with us, so I thought I would try some public shaming to see if he would be less
Last year we bought 3 Okinawan Sweet Potato slips for way too much money. We managed to remember not to eat them all so we could grow more slips. This variety of sweet potato is white on the outside and purple on the inside with a firmer texture than the kind you buy at the
The greenhouse has 3 small raised beds in it. The largest one is planted out with Oregon Spring determinate tomatoes. There are also four pepper plants behind the tomatoes that are full of blossoms. Both the tomatoes and the peppers are loving the heat and humidity in the greenhouse. Ginger and Turmeric haven’t yet come
The pole barn is about as finished as it is going to be for a while. It measures 24 feet wide by 16 deep with a 12 by 16 foot loft. For the time being it is mainly for drying lumber. The barn is stacked with 3 pines and 1 poplar tree. They are milled