Season Of Dreaming

The spring seed and chick catalogs are arriving my friends. All the temptation!

My daughter gets as many hatchery, seed and plant catalogs as I do…possibly more. At 6 years old she really has the dreaming aspect down pat. And also the planning as well. She wanted to know how long her Cochin hen will lay before she slows down so we went on an egg laying information research spree while my preserves and canner came to readiness. From what we read; her hen will slow down to 50% of her laying capacity around age 5 so my daughter wants to get a Standard Cochin rooster in 4 years and try to breed her for her second generation hen. My Faverolle is the same age so I am thinking I will have to split the hens and get a Mahoghany Faverolle rooster for her at the same time or fairly close.

My daughter has also settled on the next chicken breed she wants to try and big surprise-Mama wants this one too for the same reason-it is Marans, she isn’t sure yet which flavor but dark eggs are the goal.

This would of course be after we move…to that undefined place in the future. My mother has no interest in having any roosters or breeding anything really. So it is not something we can do here. This is also contingent on a) the hens living that long, because we all know predators are out there b) the 6 hens I got coming with us instead of staying with my mom’s 6 she got from North 40. And c) My now 6 year old holding her obsession for 4 more years. She has held it for several years already so chances are good. Oh, and d) being able to find the roosters and Marans when the time comes. Perhaps if we had an incubator we could order hatching eggs? Hmm…talk about season of dreaming lol

Then there are all the plants and seeds….aaagh…I am looking for sorrel starts come spring or seeds as I love eating it. I want to set up a compost pile for ongoing composting. First thing upon thawing we have to get that chicken coop up. It froze solid as we tried to put it up and has been solid since. Fencing in the run and starting to plan a lean to roof off the side of the coop for my rabbit cages. I could only hope and pray there will be rabbits in those cages while we live here. Me and the kids eat rabbit but my parents and sister are not in to it…like they think it akin to eating your cat or dog. Eating a pet mentality. Yup. I won’t eat a cat or dog or horse but everything else is fairly open season.

My mother isn’t totally against starting a small garden so we will likely have one…practice for when I have my own place she says 🙂 I am down with that! The kids love gardening as well. We just have to deer proof the yard…which will be challenging as it has to look nice and deter those deer. Otherwise it is a futile waste of time effort water and seeds. We have a huge in town deer population. Seriously. Year round with a mass of gorgeous bucks around every corner hunting season and on into breeding season.

I also plan to transplant my rhubarb and my mother’s out of pots and into the ground so they are happier. And after reading about asparagus being an arsenic magnet and it being a possibility to get arsenic poisoning if it absorbs to much and you eat it…well let’s just say we need to move the asparagus we planted last year to be safe.

What are you dreaming of as those catalogs hit your hands?

Food In Jars Mastery Challenge 2019

Have you heard of Marisa McClellan’s Food In Jars Books and Blog? I am in love with small batch canning to try things after buying her Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round as a birthday gift to myself a few years ago. It changed my life! I grabbed Preserving by the Pint: Quick Seasonal Canning for Small Spaces from the author of Food in Jars for my birthday in 2017 and it just upped the awesomeness. I seriously love being able to try different recipes and only be a few jars out if I don’t care for it…that being said, I have yet to not like something canned from recipes in her books.

This year she is hosting the Food In Jars Mastery Challenge 2019 based on the 2010 Tigress’ Can Jam Challenge- The Tigress’ blog seems to be deactivated and removed but you can google “Tigress’ Can Jam” for lots of recipes she provided and the many many people who participated and posted. Each month has a themed canning item-be it an ingredient to use or a canning process to try. This month the theme is Citrus so I grabbed some Blood Oranges that were on sale at our local family owned grocery store and some organic Lemons from our Co-Op. My sister wants to try Lemon Lavender Marmalade I think she said, from a canning book I ordered from out library. She is not big on eating jams and jellies (and does not can) but loves to try new recipes and I love both Lavender jelly and Lemons so we will likely try that.

I want to follow along because I haven’t canned much other then requested canning given as gifts to my grandparents and we ran out of jam in 2017 after moving so I canned some stone fruit jam up for peanut butter & jam for my kids. With my then 6 year old son’s help actually; much to my surprise and pleasure.

And I miss it, I really do. Once you get down to it it really doesn’t take long to make your own preserves, and they taste better more often then not. You also can try all those exotic sounding artisan jam and jelly recipes that add up so quickly if you can find them in the store or market. The last two years have held little food preservation and that is something I want to implement more and learn more about by doing rather then less. Taking part in this challenge will hopefully get my butt in gear while trying small batches to see what we like to eat, what processes are the best for us. I like doing things and being inspired by others doing them at the same time so this should definitely get me moving-especially if I want to meet the challenge deadlines! I think the January Challenge entries are due on the 25th so I better get off here and get prepped to can 🙂

Will you be joining in on this challenge? Do you can? Let me know in the comments below.

Why Farmstead?

Why Farmstead? Why not Homestead or Farm?

I tossed this question around in my head for quite some time. Homestead implies a more self sufficient place, a balance of garden and livestock to support your family, certainly not at all a bad thing! I do not know what our future place may look like; I am saving to buy it and know the area I want, and I feel like having an existing living structure would be best, be it barn, trailer, mobile home, cabin or house. I have no building experience and building a home by myself with just me and the kids seems like a fairly illogical choice at this time. But beyond that I am pretty fluid. I wouldn’t mind having acres to work with, my son wants pigs and cows and my daughter wants a horse so having a pasture would certainly be nice. Having land outside town limits frees up so many restrictions on having livestock so that would be great.

And yet, my family lives in those town limits; being close to them would be wonderful. The town is also the most likely place to get and maintain a steady job instead of living off unstable contract work. So living close would be great. That leads to the next question; what about urban homesteading? An Urban Homestead is doing it on a small-to-tiny scale within city or town limits. I had always found this idea fascinating-how much people could do with just their backyard-how inspiring! I can definitely get behind that idea! Though I must admit, I do not see why those same principles that make urban homesteading so fascinating to me could be applied on a larger scale.

So that brings the next question: why not call this future place a Farm? Well, I don’t know if it will be one. Farm bring up a mental image of acres rolling pastures and numerous outbuildings full of animals and tractors surrounding a white farmhouse. What are the chances of that being something I could afford for my first house/land/home purchase? Pretty unlikely. So what to call this dream? I was leaning towards homestead…but the thought of jumping right in and calling it that honestly is a little daunting when you think about all the facets of aiming for self sufficiency. Couldn’t I just ease into it? Dip my toes and gradually work towards the full monty? I wanted a name I loved for this blog, to document my goals and progress to making it reality instead of a hopeful someday dream. Mostly because I think better in writing and track life with lists, so written word sure helps! And partly…because I have been in a place in my life where this was the farthest impossible seeming dream. If I could inspire someone else in that place in life to dream big and work to get it, how could I not want to do that? This Post by Thoughtful Food helped lay all this term comparison out there in a much more pared down logical way and introduced me to the term “Farmstead” let us look at their definition for a moment.

“Farmsteading: Producing food to support your family and for sale. Think the farmer with a part-time or full-time non-farming job.”

Okay, doesn’t emphasize size or location or goals…sort of freeing and open to interpretation. Yes I can go with that! My goal is a better, healthier life for my family. Growing food and raising our meat. Am I opposed to the idea of raising market crops or having a farmers market stand or booth? Certainly not, my daughter wants to sell eggs from her chickens, and my son wants those cows, pigs, and has talked about having an apiary for honey and the possibility of selling it. Toss in my lifelong love of rabbits and knowing there is a meat rabbit market in my area…well sounds like we have a good dream cooking right? And this is the story of why I chose Farmstead.

Do you have a name for your place? What did you choose and why? Leave a comment and let me know, I love hearing the stories of others about how they chose their place’s name!

The Ms.