Shiitake Mushrooms From Old Logs
I thought these mushroom logs from March 2015 were about done, but they are fruiting about 8 lbs of Shiitake mushrooms.
DIY Soil Sifter For Promix Seed Starter
We needed a good way to take compressed blocks of promix, peat moss, or seed starter and break it up quickly into a nice useful mix free of chunks. So, we made this sifter primarily for starting seeds using promix from our local nursery. It works great, and here is the link to the Microgreensfarmer.com video
60 lbs. Of Pears? DIY Pear Cider!
We have 3 young pear trees, only two fruited yielding 60 lbs. of pears this year. We canned about a dozen pints, and the remainder made 3 gallons of hard pear cider (perry). The primary fermentation is going full bore. Here is a good article on making pear cider from PracticalSelfReliance.com. Notice the bubbles coming out
Harvest, Eat, Preserve, and Repeat
We have our hands full keeping up with the garden. We eat all the fresh fruit and veggies that we can and preserve the rest by freezing, canning, or dehydrating. The freezer is full and canned goods are on shelves all over our tiny house. Good problems!
DIY Garden Bench
We needed a simple garden bench to sit and watch our bees and just enjoy the little orchard we planted this year. I had some 2″ thick cedar lumber that I had previously milled with an Alaskan chainsaw mill. I found a plan that we liked on ana-white.com. The bench uses only five 2 x
Pear Harvest…Finally!
We have 3 pear trees that we planted a few years ago, which until now have yielded no fruit. This year we have a decent amount of fruit on two of the three. We harvested 25 lbs of pears off of one tree. The other pear tree full of fruit is a different cultivar that
Making Wine From Our Grapes
Last year a friend gave us buckets of grapes and we successfully made 5 gallons of red wine, which we posted about titled Adventures In Winemaking. This year we harvested enough of our own grapes to try a gallon, which we are processing the same way as last year. We harvested about 14 lbs of concord
Stihl MS250 Chainsaw Rebuild
I bought a Stihl MS250 chainsaw on craigslist for $40. The seller was honest about the condition of the chainsaw and said it had no compression and he was selling it as a non-working parts saw. He included an almost new bar and chain which would cost more than $40. It was a no brainer
Black-eyed Susans
Last year Sarah planted a few, just a few, Black-eyed Susans under a pear tree in the garden. Now we have a beautiful explosion of Black-eyed Susans.
Garlic harvest
We planted well over 100 cloves of grocery store garlic last fall (October). In the last couple weeks the bottom few leaves have started to brown and some of the stalks were lying down, which is a sure sign they’re ready to harvest. This represents about 85% of the harvest with the rest still growing