Starting a garden....or not?

Do you send vegetables from your garden to your neighbor?  I do. I also send them eggs. My neighbor loves the homegrown farm food experience. She has even taken an interest in our homegrown chicken meat. Asking if I would sell her some. Even though I think it is perfectly fine, the government not so much. There are a lot of regulations against selling meat raised in your backyard that has also be processed there.  We unfortunately do not have the setup necessary to pass an inspection and i do not plan on getting it for the moment.



 But with the interest there, I am curious what others would do if they had a neighbor that wanted a garden and chicken meat and had the land to do so, but would not work hard to do what needed to be done to upkeep a garden or feed their livestock. Is it a lost cause trying to help that type of person? The city slickers who love the farm stuff but get "sick" every time they go outside. Would you give them chicks to raise? Would you till them a garden?

I would love to help these people but unfortunately I do not believe they are ready for their own adventure in farming. Because of this I am going to invite the neighbor to help in my garden in exchange for veggies. This will help her gauge how ready for gardening she is. I think as people we tend to jump head first into things and wait for consequences later, when it comes to a garden the work can quickly overwhelm someone who is not used to the bending, kneeling and being in the
heat. Even me a person who loves to garden, can sometimes forget how long i have been in the sun, and get a good sunburn or a sore back from kneeling or hoeing rows.

Instead of jumping into a huge garden, i think the best starting point for most people is a raised bed garden. This can be as small as a five gallon bucket with a tomato plant or a plastic swimming pool with a variety of plants or even a permanent bed built from whatever material you see fit. One plastic swimming pool can actually fit quite a bit of plants, you can fit a few tomato plants a pepper plant and a squash plant in one easily. As long as you fill your garden bed with good soil and drill some holes in the bottom it is hard to go wrong. I like to purchase bags of compost and manure mix. The bags run 1.99 at our local tractor supply. Just because a bag of dirt is expensive does not necessarily mean that it is good. They also sell bags of "topsoil", but from what i found it is mostly clay
soil in most of the bags that i have purchased. For the same price i prefer the more nutrient dense choice.

With a raised bed garden you also do not need a lot of the tools that you need for a larger garden. For my large garden i use everything from a double action hoe to a digging fork. For my raised bed i really need nothing more than a shovel and hoe and that is really not  necessary. Hands are really the best and only tool you need to tend your garden. A deep longing for fresh vegetables doesn't hurt either.

So if you have been thinking about gardening but don't know if you are quite ready, whether it be an issue of time or duty, you can always start small and then go big later. Getting started and learning are the important parts. You carry knowledge with you all the time and it weighs nothing. We all learn more quickly by doing, so get out do, get your hands dirty. Grow something, anything. The only way to fail is by not doing anything. Happy HOMEsteading.

When do I plant?

They have a saying around here that you dont plant your plants until after easter to avoid the freeze. I say, I will trust the trees. Any old timer reading this will know exactly what i am talking about. When i say that i will trust the trees, i am referring to the blooming of trees. When my pear trees start to bloom, I plant my seeds. This is also about the time that you will notice bulb flowers blooming out as well. Then when my pecan trees bloom I know that it is officially spring and it is time to plant in the ground. You see no matter the date, the tree cannot be fooled. It can tell when to lose its leaves and for sap to draw toward the roots so that we can remove limbs for the health of the tree (although pecans are self pruning sometimes removing damaged limbs is necessary). It is merely a tree, but with its roots entertwined with the earth it has a better perception of time that we could ever imagine.

If you had no other way of telling what time of the year it is, the trees will tell you.Forget the calendar. With the weather as unpredictibable as ever we could all use a little help at deciphering when is the right time. And with the help of modern technology and
constant sharing on social networks it is easy to get confused when you see someone planting their tomatoes when you still have inches or feet of snow in your part of the country. This is especially confusing to the novice gardener. Big box stores are not making it easier for newbies either. It is not yet time to plant yet i see many stores already selling seedlings even though it hit 30 degrees here last night. When you are new to planting, trusting in the stores to tell you when it is time to
plant can hurt if you do not have a back up plan in place to keep your seedlings from freezing. On our homestead we save milk cartons and a relative saves soda bottles so that if we do need to cover our seedlings when we plant early they do not die.

If you can plant early and have the materials to protect your plants I would highly recomend planting early. You will be seeing the fruits of your labor sooner rather than later. Another mistake that you see a lot of new garders make is buying the single tomato plants in a pot because it already has fruit on it. These plants may already be producing but they are also stunted and more expensive. If you buy a six pack of tomatos it can cost you a few dollars where as if you purchase the single
tomato that is already producing it will cost you a whopping ten dollars. When i say that the plant is stunted i mean that if you purchase the six pack of plants, the plants could potentially grow taller than most people given the right conditions.Our tomato plants generally grow to about five to six feet tall. So i say save the money you would spend toward the single plant and use it to buy compost, manure, kelp meal, azomite. Whatever catches your gardening fancy. Gardening doesnt need to be some long thought out process where you pour your life savings into it. Dandelions in sidewaks are proof of that.


 In the mean time while you are waiting to grow you can have your soil tested by your local extension agent. Here we use LSU-ag for our soil testing needs. The charge can range from 10-45$ for soil testing but it help you to know what is in your soil so that you have ultimate growing conditions. For example if your nitrogen levels are too high it can inhibit flower bloom in your plants and therfore decrease your bounty. Dont confuse getting a soil sample testing with testing your ph. Although  they will tell you your ph, it is a much more extensive test and most offices are willing to work with you and help you get your optimal soil. Whether you want to go organic or not there are lots of options. I recently visited a place that sold many of the options here locally. The great thing too is that not only is this place local they also ship world wide.


I found this place through the azomite website. The name of this place is called Pure earth botanicals.
Really it is an old church turned business so it fits nicely in the neigbohood and doesnt bombard your eyesite with gravel parking lots like a big box nursery would. Not that i am against big nurseries but it would be nice to see them growing some of the things that they sell and teaching sustainable methods of doing so. Which is exactly what this business is doing.
From the road you can see the garden bed with edibles and a giant compost mixer. They have a facebook page you can follow at
www.facebook.com/pureearthbotanicals

They are located at 300 W. Lincoln Street Sulphur, Louisiana 70663
They also ship world wide and are the cheapest i have found
in the state for azomite (and if you do not know what azomite is, it is an omri certified addition for soil to help rebuild
trace minerals. check them out on facebook. https://www.facebook.com/AZOMITE) 
If you are not local you can find them at www.soilminerals.com where they sell everything from ammendments to an organic, mineral
balanced miracle grow. Check them out and get your soil ready. So when the time is right you can grow some of your own yummy
produce in your very own garden.

Deep bedding and our coop

On our homestead we have multiple housing units for our chickens, most of which are portable. One though is stationary. We have moved our stationary coop once before but it took us a whole day to move it around 100ft across the yard. We moved it so that we could fence in an area for our birds to forage on without worrying about predators. The large stationary coop is made of cross arms from highline poles. They are bolted together with some extremely long bolt so that it holds up to just about anything. The sides are covered in a small hole wire that most people would only consider using for the bottoms of a brooder, it is called hardware cloth and its holes are so small that when the pen is completely closed we do not have to worry about predators, not even snakes. The only thing we have ever had get in the pen is a mouse and it dug an extremely long tunnel to get in there. But once the chickens figured out that there was something to chase in there, its stay was very quickly ended.

Inside our coop there is no floor. Why you ask? I find that floors in a coop make for a hazard down the road. Even if you keep it thoroughly cleaned manure can be slick at times and if you step in it, well you get the picture. I did not want to fall inside our coop and end up covered in muck. Not having a floor in our coop also helps me build nitrogen rich compost for our garden in the spring. I do this by adding pine shavings, leaves, newspaper, and scraps really just about anything that I can get my hands on.
The chickens scratch and eat, and spread the manure through the shavings. As the manure decomposes it produces heat which helps keep the coop warm and break down the materials on the coop floor. When I see dirt on the floor I add more shavings. This is called deep litter method.
This method helps reduce the smell commonly associated with livestock. It also reduces the amount of labor needed on the day to day basis for coop management.  Instead of cleaning out manure and having to compost it you get a giant compost heap build into your chicken coop. We still have a compost pile though since our trees drop far too many leaves for the chickens to keep up with. We also have a poop shelf in the chicken coop. This is a board installed below the roost that is covered in scrap linoleum so that we can scrape the manure off of the board to put into our compost to build the heat up for proper decomposition. This shelf also helps so we can monitor the chicken’s health through their manure to make sure they are in tip top shape and not carrying any parasites.

In the spring I simple park the wheel barrow at the coop and shovel out the rich materials from the ground.  It is then mixed into our raised beds or used to fertilize our fruit trees. If you are building a coop you might like to take to heart how you are going to heat your coop in the winter. If you’re like me and cringe at the idea of heat lamps then deep litter method may be a good option for your coop. You could also use plastic sheeting on the sides if your sides are wire like ours to create a greenhouse effect.  We simply put a tarp on the north side of ours because the weather here can go from 28 degrees to 80 degrees in two days.  No matter which method you choose to heat your coop it is easy to see which method would best suit your needs by sitting down and thinking it through before beginning construction.

Awe nuts (originally written for modern homesteaders)

Around this time of the year every proper lady is in her kitchen cooking and baking away making those delicious concoctions of candies and baked goods.  If you are like me you have noticed the incline of prices of the key components of good candy and baked goods year after year. What is it you ask that is so crucial to making your deserts the best of the best? Nuts, pecans, almonds, walnuts, and we wouldn’t be able to make that crunchy delight peanut brittle without peanuts would we?
Here on our homestead we have multiple nut trees. We have six pecan trees and a black walnut tree. Now if you have never had a black walnut they are something to be appreciated to say the least.  Harvest time for black walnuts is the same time as pecans around the last of October first of November here in south Louisiana. When the nuts fall from the trees they are ready to harvest.   They look like a green golf ball and smell like pepper. If you cut one open and rub it on your hands you will smell like pepper and have greenish black hands for a long time too. I learned this the hard way.
The hull from the black walnut is known as a great alternative to commercial wormers, antifungals, and dyes.  Although you can find black walnut extract at some pharmaceutical type stores or online it is a simple task to make your own to use for yourself and livestock excluding horses and dogs.  If you have access to a black walnut tree you can simply remove the fresh green husk while wearing gloves with a sharp knife cutting around the inner nut to remove as much husk as possible. Then the husk can be placed in a clear glass container with a lid, and then covered with cheap liquor. You will notice immediately the color change.  The more you shake your concoction and let it set, the more tannin is released and the darker your liquid will become.

Black walnut tincture

There are some down sides to the black walnut though. It is said that tomatoes will not grow within the root range of a black walnut tree but I have proved that wrong more than once since ours is about twenty feet from our garden, well within range for the roots.  Apple trees are said not to grow near this tree either but we do have two pear trees growing fairly close to our walnut tree. The reason is a substance contained within the plant called juglone that inhibits oxygen absorption in plants. It is also considered toxic to horses and can cause laminitis whether absorbed internally or in their bedding. Although using black walnut wood in horse bedding would be a waste considering its desirable coloring and strength used in a lot of wood working crafts.

Now walnuts and many other nuts can be indigenous to your region and you not even realize it yet. Here in south Louisiana we have black walnuts, bitter pecans, chestnuts, and hickory nuts. You can find a great illustration of the leaves and nut identification here.
http://www.lsuagcenter.com/NR/rdonlyres/BA8FFA18-B7CD-4D98-88FF-AF234D5F9ACD/18437/pub1669LeafKey.pdf

Note that not all the trees and fruit on the site are edible, although you would be surprised to find that some are, sassafras is one example of one of the trees on the list that are edible. I suggest you research your region and find out what is indigenous to your local and get out and go foraging. We went this year a lot when preparing our food plots for the deer.  We found chestnuts, pecans, hickory nuts, sassafras, and persimmons to name a few. You can contact your local agricultural extension office for more information on what grows in your area.

Un-husked black walnuts

Riccotta be kidding me?

On my last post I talked about how to make mozzarella cheese, and when doing so to save the whey left over from making it. Today I want to cover how to use that whey to make ricotta. If you don’t know what ricotta is, it is a soft cheese that is predominantly used in making lasagna especially in commercialized operations.  Since ricotta is a byproduct of making mozzarella it means that it is a cheap efficient way to complete your meal without breaking your budget.

After making your mozzarella you let your whey sit in the same pot you made your cheese, overnight for about 12 to 24 hours so that it can develop its needed acidity. The next day it will probably be bubbling a little bit. It somewhat smells like a sourdough starter or beer bread dough at this point.

 FERMENTED WHEY

Warm your whey over a good fire, while stirring so that it doesn’t stick and burn, until it is near boiling (220 degrees Fahrenheit.) Don’t let it boil over. It will be sticking to your spoon at this point too.

RICOTTA IN THE MAKING

Remove your cooked whey from the heat and allow it to sit undisturbed until it is comfortable to touch. This will take a few hours.  Whatever you do, DO NOT stir up your curds. The curds need to be scooped out with a slotted spoon or strainer and placed into a fine mesh cloth to drain.  A tea towel or any solid cotton material will work fine as long as you boil it prior to using so you don’t get any bacteria or off flavors into your cheese. Let your curds drain for a few hours or you can let it drain in the refrigerator overnight. After it is sufficiently drained you can put your cheese into whatever container you like and use it within a week of making. If you do not plan to use it within a week ricotta does freeze very well.  And the leftover liquid is great to give livestock.

We give it to our pig and she goes nuts. Nothing on the homestead has to go to waste and ricotta is a great lesson to that point. I challenge you to use something you would normally throw out this week. Take those veggie scraps and make stock or throw that parmesan rind into some soup. You could even save bones that you cut out of your steak to make delicious brown gravy or take those bread heals and make bread crumbs.  There are endless possibilities to what you can do in your own kitchen to be more ecologically efficient

Let's shred some light on mozzerella

In preparation for having our own milk producers on our small homestead I decided to try something that would use a substantial amount of milk. Since most milk producing animals will produce anywhere from one quart to seven gallons of milk a day we needed to use a lot.  So I tried my hand at cheese, and I say try apprehensively, since I was scared I would screw it up to say the least.  It took me two times to get acceptable results. The first time was almost a complete flop, I only got about a quarter cup of cheese and it tasted so much like citric acid we couldn’t eat it plain. I added some Italian seasoning to it and decided that even though it was a flop, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be fixed and we could use it in lasagna or some homemade pizza.  After researching I found out that the rennet I had chosen to use was not actually good for making cheese, but was for making yogurt (we use it to make homemade ice cream on occasion) and custards, even though it had recipes on the inside of the box for making mozzarella and cheddar.

The rennet was too weak to form a proper curd, so what did I do. Well I extremely stubborn and it’s a good thing in this case. I took the rennet and multiplied the amount in the recipe, so instead of using half a tablet I used two whole tablets and voila I got the cheese I was looking for. It didn’t taste like citric acid albeit a little dry it was still an acceptable cheese.  So let me give you the rundown on how I did it and maybe you can too.  Go ahead grab the thermometer you know you want to.

First I started off with one gallon of whole raw milk, 1 ¼ teaspoon citric acid dissolved into ½ cup cool water, and 4 (junket) rennet tablets dissolve into ¼ cup cool water. Now if you are using a different brand of rennet this recipe will not give the exact same results as different brands of rennet contain varying amounts of enzymes.

First the milk must be warmed in a stainless steel pot to 88 degrees. Then the citric acid and rennet mixtures are added to the milk. Make sure to stir it really well and then let it sit for 1-2 hours without touching it. Waiting is probably the hardest part about making cheese. When it is done you will get what is called a clean break. This is what happens when the cheese has gelled enough that when you stick your finger into it and pull up the cheese does not stick to your finger. If it still like cottage cheese it’s not done let it sit until it forms a solid mass.

When the curd is ready you can use a sharp knife to cut it into ½ in cubes or try anyways, mine was rather hard to cut so I ended up making chunks rather than cubes.  Warm the curds and whey over a low heat while stirring until it reaches 108 degrees and keep it at this temperature for 35 minutes. I turned my fire off and on while keeping the pot lid on to keep mine at the same temperature for this long.

Now you can drain your whey, don’t just pour it down the drain though save it and you can make ricotta too.

Break you curds up and mix in 1 teaspoon of salt, I used canning salt since I don’t keep cheese salt on hand from what I read it is similar. Just don’t use iodized salt.

If you want you could stop here and it would be cheese but if you want that mozzarella stretchiness then you will have to heat it up some more. You can use a microwave or a double boiler whichever you prefer.  But it needs to be heated and stretched and folded until you get a smooth elastic cheese so that you can shape it into a ball.  It makes for a very interesting one person game of hot potato with a ball of cheese.  When you get it to the consistency that you like then you simply store the cheese in a covered container of salted water.  About 1/3 cup of salt to one quart of water is good. Let it sit in the refrigerator overnight and then you can use it within about a week or shred it for freezing to use later.  It comes out to about a pound of mozzerella cheese to a gallon of milk, plus what you will get if you make ricotta also which I will cover in another post.

Writing from the homestead, old articles not so lost in cyberspace.

Since Modern homesteaders will soon be shutting down completely and I have articles that I wrote exclusively for the site, I thought I would share them here so that they do not disappear completely with the site. I feel that with reading these hopefully my readers will get to know me a little better and maybe even encourage a few new people to think outside the big box store. So I will start rereleasing all of my writing to be found here starting today.

It all started on a dirt road.
Let me start by introducing myself. My name is dirtyfeetmaggoo. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, on a dirt road in Oklahoma. As a kid I was encouraged to play outside. This meant climbing trees, digging in the dirt, fishing in the creek and swimming in the lake, and on occasion feeding the neighbors ostriches rocks.  I didn’t realize as a child how much the country life had affected me and stolen my heart. After moving to the city at the age of 13 I discovered that things were much more fast paced living in town. There was always something to do but I still found myself longing to be in the woods on that dirt road. So after a few years of living in town I was introduced to the love of my life who took me on the road all the way to south Louisiana. We don’t live on a dirt road, but we have our very own three acres on which we raise our two children that have increased our love for all things home grown.
 
After giving birth to my son I attended cooking school, it is  in this time that I discovered that I really didn’t pay too much attention to the food that we were consuming. I realized that my children did not know that food was not some magical thing that only the grocery store could have. If you asked my daughter then where apples came from she probably would have told you that they come from the store. I had to change this way of thinking, so I started digging. I planted a small ten by ten foot plot of veggies. It was a failure and nothing really grew well enough to make it to the dinner plate. But the same year our two tangerine trees that were here when we moved started producing fruit. This gave me faith that if I kept at it I could figure it out.

 
The next year we were gifted a tiller and the small garden grew to a quarter acre. I read books, watched documentaries and talked to the local agricultural cooperative trying to figure out the tricks of the trade and how to grow it all.  I was hooked I wanted to grow it all and taste it all. There were many things I had never even heard of until I planted them. Soon after, we built a coop and adopted some hens and baby chickens. We discovered very quickly that this was exactly what we wanted, what had been missing all along. A life on the homestead. My husband being the hunter and country boy that he is helped me realize that our chickens could be for more than just eggs, that it was within our power to grow our own meat.  We built chicken tractors so that we could fertilize our land while growing our own meat. The taste and satisfaction of knowing where our food was coming from was undeniable.
 
Our little homestead has grown from the little ten foot plot, and we have learned things we never thought we could do on our own. Our home now has 6 pecan trees, a black walnut tree, two tangerine trees, a lemon tree, a lime tree, two blueberry bushes, three pear trees, and one peach tree.  Our little flock of chickens that started out as five laying hens and six chicks has also grown to 38 chickens. We have ventured into raising rabbits and have also purchased a pig this year. We are still learning and we hope to eventually be a fully self sustainable farm. It is my hope that I can inspire others to get back to nature and get their hands dirty. To raise a curious generation, anxious to learn.

Homeade pizza and soft pretzels

What if I told you that you can make pizza at home for less than two dollars per pizza? Sounds great right?  What if I told you that you can also make homemade soft pretzels like the ones you find at the mall? Well it is not too good to be true, you too can make these in the comfort of your home with the most simple of recipes and the great thing is the recipe is the same for both the pizza crust and the soft pretzels. There is only a slight difference in the final finishing which I will explain.

Its a great way to get the whole family in the kitchen by letting them fix their own pizza. Which bakes up best in a pan with sides.

DOUGH:
1 package (1/4oz) active dry yeast
1 1/2 cup warm water (110-115degrees)
4 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1teaspoon salt

Now all you have to do is combine these ingredients in a mixer with a dough hook and mix until it forms a ball. Then you cover your dough in the same bowl and let it rise until doubled. From this point you can roll it out and make pizza dough. It makes two thick crust pizzas or more if you like thin crust. It will store in the refrigerator for a few days fine as well as long as you keep the bowl covered with Saran wrap. It only takes about two or three tablespoons of sauce to cover a pizza so a jar of sauce can go a long way. Also we can get about 4 pizzas out of a small bag of cheese. We add pepperoni on our for the kiddos and one pack can last quite some time. If you add vegetables I would suggest using fresh and not frozen since frozen can take longer to cook and make your pizza soggy. Bake your pizza at 425 degrees until all the cheese is starting to change colors the dough will not brown around the crust unless you put egg on the crust which is not necessary it is just to help the color. I usually sprinkle a little garlic powder around the edges of the crust just to add some extra flavor.

Now if your goal is to make soft pretzels you would take the dough and roll into 15 inch pieces (the whole amount of dough will make about sixteen pretzels or you could make a pizza and pretzels)
and shape into pretzels and place on a baking sheet. Then you take one egg white and brush your pretzels with it and top with course salt or cinnamon sugar, whatever you prefer.  Bake these at 425 degrees for twelve to fifteen minutes or until it is starting to brown. I serve ours with cheese dip for the salted pretzels and chocolate dip for the cinnamon pretzels.

I hope you enjoy my recipe, if you do please share and you can also follow me on face book now. Happy HOMEsteading!

HOMEsteading through the holidays.

Even though the holidays have just past there were still plenty of chores to tend to around the homestead. Animals to be fed and watered and fruit trees to trim back while the sap was low. While taking care of the homestead we also had two extra little people running around and causing mischief and mayhem. We finally cut a giant limb out of our pear tree that has been dead for a while. It was a good 8 inches across and sixteen feet long so cutting it without getting hurt was a little tricky considering it was in the center of the tree. Luckily we got it done without too much consequence ourselves or the surrounding fence.

So all the fruit trees have been trimmed back and are ready for spring. We have collected as much manure as possible for the wood chip garden (without ordering a truck load). So very soon I will be sprawled out on the floor with my seed catalogues like a teenaged girl with her cosmo and picture of her favorite band. Picking and selecting the optimum choices for our shall I say decimal sized garden. It is roughly fifty feet by fifty feet and yes I consider that to be small. I would love to have the space to grow watermelons which is a local delicacy here. They talk about the melons here in other states because of the amazing loamy soil that inhabits the grounds here in our parish. I have even heard of people seeing melons labeled with our local as far as New York, I don't know if this were truly one of the Louisiana watermelons but it just goes to show that it is very well known some of the best melons come from here. 

I have been fighting my inner gardener for the last few weeks after finding out that a plant supplier I have used before is going to have a great deal on strawberry plants for spring planting. I am running out of places to put plants due to how our property is set up on top of being covered in trees. So it is getting hard to find anywhere that is not shaded. Even though this is great for my electric bill when it pertains to cooling in the summer it is bad when it comes to my obsession of seeing how much I can get from our land and not the grocery store.  Which is a lot more than you would think, it is almost like a game in and of  itself. Eventually we hope to move to a bigger place but for now the small garden and scattered fruit trees will fill the need to grow things.

My husband gifted me seven new books to delve in to over the holidays, I have since already read one. At the moment I am reading Joel salatins folks, this aint normal. I have already read one of his other books and he is one of the many influences that has furthered my love for biodiversity in our garden. Maybe I will give a review, maybe I wont only time will tell. With spring on the horizon I know I will be really busy burying my hands in the loamy gold in our back yard. So for now its back to planning, planning and more planning. Time to get ready to start seeds soon and that's going to take a greenhouse of some sort and I will keep everyone updated until then Happy Homesteading.

English muffins (thanks to the Rusty Plow homestead)

(can be gluten and dairy free, see below for subsitutions)

Ingredients

• 1 cup of milk
• 3 TBSP butter
• 3 TBSP of honey
• 1 cup of warm water (105-110 degrees)
• 1/4 oz of yeast
• 2 TBSP cornmeal
• 5 cups + extra for sprinkling all purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt

(To make gluten free, use a mix of rice flour instead of the ap flour, and use soy milk in place of the milk)

Directions
Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, mix lightly and set aside for ten minutes to foam lightly.

In a small saucepan, heat the milk, butter and honey until the butter is melted. Let cool lightly.
Combine the yeast mixture and milk mixtures gently.

In a large bowl, sift 3 cups of flour. Stir in the milk and yeast. Sift the remaining flour and salt. Stir until cohesive.

Flour and marble slab well and knead the dough for 3 minutes or til lightly elastic. Let rest for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, cover two cookie sheet with parchment and lightly sprinkle with cornmeal.
Flour the marble slab lightly and roll the dough out until it's a 1/2 inch thick. Air on the side of too thick okay.

Cut out circles (don't twirl your cutter, just cut). Gently place on the cookie sheets, sprinkle the tops with cornmeal

 and cover with a dry, light cloth. Let sit in a warm place for 45 minutes or til nearly doubled in size. It's more like 2/3. 45 minutes will definitely do though.

Heat a heavy bottomed skillet on medium low, don't grease it.
Gently place a muffin in your hand and shake lightly to remove some of the corn meal.
Gentleness is key in all of the handling. Place into the pan and repeat til the pan is full.
 Don't let them touch each other. Keep the heat on low. Cook for 8 minutes per side or until browned well,
 flip and cook again. Let cool lightly on a wire rack. Split and top with butter and honey, or with egg and sausage whichever your choosing.

Up to date's

A few new things going on around the homestead now that the temperatures have dropped. The garden is not really growing a whole lot. I have a bed of rhubarb planted along with some carrots, cabbage, kale, turnips, mustard greens and peas. We recently got a few shipments of plants in from a few different companies. We now have two cherry bushes planted where we pulled up some azaleas and planted three heritage raspberries in a bed by our chicken run.
The chickens are now in lock down, since Mr Houdini our escape artist of a rooster kept jumping over the fence some how, really I think he was climbing the pear tree. We are now up to 6 possibly seven blueberry bushes, the possibly seven is thanks to my six year old son who decided to play with a push lawnmower trying to push it around pretending he was mowing and ran over one of my bushes and broke the majority of a side of the plant off. I took the broken side and put rooting compound on it and put it into a pot on our deck and it seems to have taken. I don't think we will be getting a huge surplus of berries this spring but the thought is nice. In a few years though I am expecting a fruit bowl of sorts.

The pig is getting BIG, she is sucking up everything we give her. At first she would not eat whole corn, we think it might have hurt her teeth. We tried all kinds of things to try to get her to eat it and the only way we could get her to eat the whole corn was to cover it in molasses. But now she will eat it fine without anything added to it which is great because right now we can get corn for 7.50 for 50lbs at a time. She loves milk too and anything else. I think so far our decision to get a pig was the most economical of all decisions we have made for our homestead.

With all the cold we are barely getting any eggs surprisingly my silky chickens are still laying eggs. Well, two of the three hens are which is not bad since they are meant to be my little brooders. One of our Dominic mix hens just started laying after a long few months of now laying any eggs. If you don't know what it is like to have a egg in the nest box after waiting that long for an egg, well lets just say I did a little happy dance in the yard. 
Since it has been ridiculously cold here I have been staying inside a lot, baking and cooking and trying to get our house uncluttered. We have also been trying to think of what to use our old refrigerator for since we had to replace it :(. We don't want to do a smoker or a root cellar because of its size, really it is just too big. So send me your ideas tell me what you think would be a good idea to use it for?

Cinnamon Rolls worth its weight in dough

This recipe is supposedly originated at a certain mouse dominated corporation that will remain nameless. Regardless of it's origin it is a new favorite of mine for sure. The recipe caught my eye when I seen that it had something not generally associated with cinnamon rolls, vanilla pudding mix. I thought how weird? But tried it and it is the softest tastiest homemade cinnamon rolls I have come across, and they will definitely make you rethink purchasing those cans of pre-made rolls in the cold section. So start preheating that oven this time of the year is the perfect time to get baking for the family.

Cinnamon Rolls

• 1/2 cup warm water
• 2 packets yeast
• 2 tbsp. sugar
• 1 box (small box) instant vanilla pudding
• 2 cups milk
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs beaten
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 8 cups (all purpose) flour

Mix yeast, water and sugar together and let sit for a few minutes or until it starts to bubble. While it is sitting mix together your milk and butter in a saucepan and warm just until all the butter is melted then turn off heat and slowly stir in the two eggs. Mix yeast mixture and milk mixture together with the box of vanilla pudding and then add salt and flour all at once.  once it is thoroughly mixed cover with seran wrap and a towel and let sit until doubled in volume and then punch down dough. Let rise again, and then punch down dough and roll out on floured surface. This recipe makes 16 giant cinnamon rolls so when you roll the dough out it will be huge. Here is a picture of how mine looked when it was rolled out.

 

 

Filling:

• 2 sticks of unsalted butter (melted)
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 tbsp. cinnamon

Mix together sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. After butter is melted brush onto dough  and then sprinkle the sugar mixture onto the dough like in the picture above (you don't have to use all the butter I do not and it turns out great, I use some of the melted butter to brush the pans with so that the dough does not stick.)

 

After you are done putting the sugar over your dough, you simple start on the long side and start rolling the dough into a giant log. Make sure that you brush the flour off as you go along so that your dough will stick together. When you are done rolling and you have you super sized cinna-log, you can start cutting it into rolls. A serrated knife works best for cutting these 2 inch thick rolls. 

 

Now it is time for them to rise again but this time in the pan, when they are doubled put them into your oven at 350 for about twenty minutes or until golden on top. While the rolls are in the oven you can work on your frosting.

 

Before rising (roughly half sheet size pan)

After rising

 

 

Frosting:

 

• 8 oz cream cheese (room temperature)
• 1 stick unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 cups powdered sugar

 

Simply mix all the ingredients together with a whisk attachment , the longer you beat the mixture the whiter and fluffier the frosting. If you find your frosting a little on the thick side you can add a tablespoon or so of milk but I like the frosting thick so it does not soak into the rolls too much. Make sure to apply the frosting liberally because it makes plenty. This recipe does not freezes fine but I will say that in my experience with it the yeast flavor in the dough is enhanced by freezing somehow so take this into consideration if you do decide to make these as a freezer meal. You can also freeze the frosting rather well in ziplocs or in vacuum bags like I did.  Happy HOMEsteading.

 



Behaviors of a homesteader

There are many behaviors and habits that are the normal for homesteader but elude the minds of the average person. They can be considered odd or strange to other people that just don’t understand. So I have decided go into detail to explain some of these things. Kind of a you might be a homesteader if you do or believe these things.

 

1.       We hoard things. Milk jugs, folders cans, egg cartons, and 5 gallons buckets to name a few.  Now we wouldn’t hold onto something unless it was a use full commodity.  Those folders cans make really great feed scoops and I just used some of my five gallon buckets to cover those blueberry bushes I planted last month so the frost doesn’t hurt them.

2.       We leave said buckets lying around in random places to collect rainwater. If you have ever grown a garden you know that you can water all day long and your plants will not grow half as much as they will if you water them with rain water.

3.       We save poop. I have yet to find a better way to increase nitrogen in soil. We have three pear trees here around our house and one is in our chicken run and since that tree gets lots of chicken manure the pears get big and by big I mean the size of a soft ball.

4.       We dry our laundry on the line.  I think of it like this, every time I dry a set of sheets or a blanket in the dryer I am essentially just giving my money to the electric company when I could have just as easily kept it for something more useful.

5.       Our pets have a purpose. If you think of a farm in terms of a company structure where every person in the company has a purpose and a job to do it the same idea. I can’t justify having an animal that will cost me piles of money if he/she is only going to be “cute.”

6.       Contemplate other uses for thing people would normally throw out.  We just had a refrigerator go out last month and we have talked about turning it into a smoker or root cellar.  Why not it’s already here.

7.       Break shovels and hoes. (Oh wait that’s just me.)

8.       Cringe when you see someone bagging leaves. Leaves are a great addition to a compost pile, even though it takes two years for them to fully compost it takes even longer for that plastic bag to break down. Refer to number nine.

9.       Dirt is a prized possession. We build compost heaps and save grass clippings, leaves, banana peels, coffee and anything else that turns into great dirt. Have you ever tried growing a good tomato in bad dirt?

10.   Mason jars are the house china. We have a lot of them, did you really expect us not to use them?

 

So. Are you a homesteader?? Can you relate?? Maybe its time you join us like minds in the forums on modern homesteaders. http://www.modernhomesteaders.net/membership-account/membership-levels/?ap_id=dirtyfeetmaggoo  Make sure you sign up to receive all the current post and recipes that I am sharing over at Modern homesteaders.  There are a lot of great writers working together on this site making it a great information resource.

Facebook

Well I finally decide to join facebook. Ill be sharing pictures and interesting articles and recipes. If you would like to learn more or follow or friend me on facebook you can find me at www.facebook.com/dirtyfeet.maggoo look forward to chatting and sharing with you all.

Whats that smell??

We have recently adopted a new dog. She resembles a miniature lassie and, my daughter had decide to name her ginger. She was a stray that showed up on someones porch on the other side of town. So seeing the collie resemblance in her, we decided to adopt her in hopes of having a good herd dog that would help keep our yard free of cats (I'm allergic :( ) and other critters that might disturb our livestock.

So very quickly she became accustom to us and is running the fence outside, when me and the husband decide to take some eggs that our black bantam Cochin hen has been trying to hatch unsuccessfully and throw them in the wood. We know they are gonna be bad, possibly rotten. So my husband starts tossing eggs and one hits the grass and breaks and standing over twenty feet away we can smell the stink. If you have never smelled a rotten egg, be VERY thankful it is as my husband would say a smell that would "gag a maggot." My dog for some unknown reason decides to run over, roll over and roll back and forth on top of said rotten egg.....seriously... rolling back and forth as if she was getting some sort of thrill out of this nasty, stinky, rotten egg.

Right about this point I am thinking how am I gonna wash the dog without getting that smell on me. I don't even want that smell near me let alone on me. So I think back to the time that we caught a skunk in our live trap. There was no way of getting around shooting the skunk so our yard smelled so bad you couldn't even walk out the door without gagging. After the skunk sprayed about three times in the backyard there was a sheen on the grass and we sprayed it with vinegar and almost immediately the smell dissipated. Its like a magic trick. Vinegar of all things gets rid of skunk stench. So I sprayed my dog with some vinegar in hopes that I wouldn't actually have to get the smell on me and it worked. I still went ahead and bathed her after the vinegar had dried. But point being if you ever get a stinky egg or dog like me you don't have to let them "wear it off" as I have seen a lot of people do when their dogs get sprayed by skunks. You can use vinegar to bathe them. I just use the cheap white vinegar and it is only a few dollars for a gallon so it is not an expensive thing to keep on hand. We keep some on hand anyways for canning and cooking and baking.

I have heard of some people making apple cider vinegar from apple scraps at home but I have yet to venture into that endeavor. Maybe one day but for now I think my apple scraps are better spent as pig feed. She loves apple scraps, just remember to remove the seeds before feeding to livestock since they contain arsenic. You can also use the apple cider vinegar to help lower parasites in your livestock. There are many reasons to keep vinegar on hand even if its just one of those things you store under the sink. Which is where we keep ours all three gallons of it. Hopefully you never have to use your for a rotten egg but you never know. One thing is for sure we are all a little happier that the smell is gone on our little HOMEstead!

On the bookshelf

I have been thinking a lot about the things that have helped me along the way to figure things out and learn new trades when it comes to homesteading. I learn a lot by doing, but I also learn a lot from books. So I thought I would take a few minutes to share some of the books that I own and have read and found helpful as it pertains to the homestead.  The first book I think is a must have might gross a few out because of the pictures inside the book. But, I think that this book is a necessary one for people who have never hunted or cleaned their own meat. I found it very helpful in building my confidence into helping me butcher our chickens for the first time. It is called A Hunter's Cookbook: A Practical Step-By-Step Guide To Dressing, Preparing And Cooking Game, In The Field And At Home, With Over 75 Delicious Recipes And Over 1000 Photographs


The next is a book that I have never fully finished reading because it is so big and so much information in it that I get distracted and tend to flip through and read random pages in it. It has everything that you would need for being self sufficient on your homestead. It has information on building chicken coops, making cheese, soap making, bread making, tons of information on herbs and tonics. Really there is far too much to list of what this book has, if you can only afford to get one book I would say this one is definitely the one that I would pick. Country Wisdom & Know-How: A Practical Guide to Living off the Land


Another book that I find myself looking at all through the growing season is one that most homesteaders already have on their bookshelf. It is the book I refer to any time that I pull out my canner and can anything. I find that I can take almost any of my recipes and can them using this book just by canning the longest time for whichever ingredients are in it. If you are canning potatoes and meat for example, the meat is supposed to be pressure canned longer than potatoes so you would go by the time it takes to can the meat in the recipe.  It is a great idea for canning leftover soups so that you don't have to make a huge pot to bring the sick neighbor some chicken soup. ® Blue Book Guide to Preserving (by Jarden Home Brands)


There is also another blue canning book that I purchased while at the 2012 NRA conference in Houston, that takes the recipes to a whole new level. There are tons of recipes in this book that are not in the blue book. A lot of them are things I never would have even thought of it I hadn't seen them in this book. Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving I can promise you will not be able to make ever recipe in this book because there are a lot of them in there.

These are just a few of the books on my bookshelf I have tons more and I will try to cover more of them as the year progresses. If I have one good word of advice for purchasing books, it would be not to get them from the big box store, amazon is a great website and will save you tons on books. Take the Ball complete book for example, it is usually around 15$ on amazon I paid 20$ at the NRA conference for it. Every one of these books are worth every penny, but it helps to save that homestead cash for that roll of fence or new milking pail that you need. You can check out these books on amazon at http://astore.amazon.com/alitbitofhom-20

New things

Well! Where to start?  I have been given an amazing opportunity to work with some wonderful minds on a website called Modern Homesteaders. This website is the go to place for self sufficiency and self reliance. Subsequently also a go to for preppers since these ideals seem to cross into each other on many instances.  If you looking for a group of people to help your homestead thrive, this is the place you will find them. I am excited to be a part of this group and will continue to post here on my blog also.

I have also been gifted an amazing gift of books. Books that will broaden my horizon and help me to help others. I was gifted books that are for emergency medical services and pre-hospital trauma life support.  I hope to eventually relay this information onto my followers in hopes that the lessons I learn may one day help others. 

Also we have started on a new path with our garden here at the HOMEstead. When our local powerline company came through to trim the trees around the lines, I talked them into dumping three loads of mulch into my back yard.  They don't charge for this service but you have to ask for them to do it, otherwise it ends up at the landfill.  I have already started covering our garden in mulch, manure, banana peels and eggshells.  I am looking forward to a spring with no tilling and little weeding. We also planted rhubarb which I have never tried to grow or even tasted for that matter. I am looking forward to learning more about this method of gardening by diving straight in.  Fingers crossed. Hope you guys follow me over to modern homesteaders too, it a wonderful sight.  Check it out, and make sure you subscribe so you can see all my post as well. http://www.modernhomesteaders.net/membership-account/membership-levels/?ap_id=dirtyfeetmaggoo

Pumpkin Harvest Muffins

Let me start off by telling you I will try anything pumpkin flavored any time of year.  I am that weirdo that goes into the coffee shop in July asking if I can get a pumpkin latte and hoarding cans of pumpkin puree when they finally start stocking them in the fall so I can have pumpkin pie in march.  I am also a mother too though, which means I have two little mouths to feed and it better taste good or it is not going to get eaten. So I have been working on a recipe for muffins for a while trying to get it just right. 

TOPPING
1/4 C. Butter (softened)
1 tsp. pumpkin spice
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 c. brown sugar

Mix all of this together just until it resembles a crumble. and set aside, this will go on top of the muffins just before putting in the oven.( You could also opt not to do this part, and just sprinkle a little powdered sugar on top of the muffins, after they have cooled, which is pretty tasty too)


MUFFIN
1/4 c. butter (softened)
3/4 c honey
1 egg
1 c. Pumpkin puree

mix all of this together first and then assemble your dry ingredients

1 1/2 c. flour (all purpose)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

You will get the best result if you sift these ingredients into a bowl and mix before adding to your wet ingredients. If you like you can also add 1 cup of walnuts if you like nuts in your bread or muffins. We opt not to since I am sending these to school where there are children with nut allergies.  Spoon the crumble on top of the muffins before putting them in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes if you are making regular size muffins. Or until the edges start to brown just a tad.  We make them in the snack size since they fit perfectly in our little snack Tupperware for school lunches. They don't last long here either.

New pig

Well like most houses, we have a picky eater and a drive by eater. My daughter is the picky eater and my son the drive by eater. And if you don't know what a drive by eater is, it is a child that eats only when they want to by snacking all day. It leaves us with a lot of boxes of crackers and cookies left open and gone stale and inedible. I felt like we were throwing a lot of food away and the chickens can't always keep up with all the scraps that we toss to them and we end up with crows and stray cats sneaking their way over and under the fence to munch on the leftovers.  So we thought of an idea that would help us utilize all this food that kept going to waste, and it came upon us when we were at a friends house shelling peas.  This friend told us that they feed the purple hull pea shells, which are inedible to humans or somewhat unappetizing anyways, and mashed peas to their pigs.

The thought, how awesome it was that these animals were eating something that would just get thrown in the compost. Not that I am against compost, it is a much needed thing, but I love bacon and to think for a mere 50$ I could have my very own too. And in six to seven months have a years worth of pork.....where do I sign up??

It took a little while, but we eventually found an 8 week old female Berkshire piglet.  And boy is she loud. I just thought my chickens were noisy but when she wants to be heard you can here her a quarter mile away. Of course most of the time she is settled down and not making all that noise but she will let you know she does not like being picked up, but loves to be scratched.

Her admiration towards being scratched behind the ears is what got both of us in to trouble the first time I put her in her pin, which is made of cattle panels. She could fit her head through the larger holes on the panels and was nosing up to me while I was trying to feed her some kale, trying to get me to give her a good scratching.  Well she got what she was looking for a good scratching behind the ears and didn't want me to quit. She decided she would try to reach me and reach a little further discovering she could fit through the fence...well crap...now she was loose and didn't want to go back into that pin when it was so much fun to run in the yard.

She ended up going under the neighbors house trying to explore and no doubt making me worry thinking she would damage the neighbors plumping or worse the gas lines. We had to lure her out with a bucket of feed and a handful of pears. Thankfully she is a sucker for pears which we have a full tree of.  She squealed her little head off all the way back to her newly adopted pin, which we call chicken tractors that we keep our young chickens in to raise them up either for meat or laying hens.  its a 4 foot by 8 foot pin that is movable. She does fine in there for now. We quickly discovered why some people opt to put there pigs in electric fence though as this wouldn't have happened if we had also.

So she is here eating and making bacon for us. I must say she has eaten everything we have given her even a half eaten corn cob which seemed to be one of her favorites. I no longer feel like we are wasting food. And looking forward to having a years worth of pork for what little entails of taking care of her in the evenings. I hope for the day when we have enough room to keep a pair and raise piglets. But until then this is a great way to help us be a tad bit more frugal and teach our children that food doesn't just come from a store.  It is such a reassurance to know where our food is coming from with all the recalls you see now days. Definitely the best 50$ I have spent in a while.

Wild berries, Foraging the forest.

While out putting out corn and tending to our food plot I noticed what I thought looked like a litchi tomato, except this plant had yellow fruit. Well this is where I put the internet to my use and started looking it up. I love knowing what I can and cant eat in the woods. Some of the best tasting berries are the ones that grow wild. Blackberries and dewberries are a prime example of this fact.

The plant that I came across was not a litchi tomato, and it was definitely not edible.  Good thing I didn't eat it.  Honestly that was only under the advisement of my husband, because if it were just me in the wood I probably would have had a tiny taste because of its likeness to the litchi tomato. And for good reason too, this plant is actually called the devils tomato, bull nettle, horse nettle, or apple of Sodom. It is part of the nightshade family from which the tomato derives.  Although it looks somewhat like a tomato it is poisonous. It has thorns and the fruit is a yellow, sometimes striped fruit.

Another plant I came across while in the woods caught my eye because of its beautiful and unusual clumps of bright purple berries. Just by looking at it I thought, this has to be poisonous. But when I smashed some of the berries in my hand and smelled them I was delighted at the scent of these tiny purple beauties. It was a sweet smell that reminded me of fruit. So I was most anxious to find out what these berries were. To my surprise these berries were not only not poisonous but used for remedies and cures among Native American tribes. It is called Beauty berries.

 

The Berry itself is used commonly in jelly and is said to taste like a cross between a grape and apple jelly. It is not advised to eat the berries because of their astringent nature. 

 

The leaves are also used in folk remedies as a natural bug repellent.  It is still used to this day for this as it has been patented by the USDA as a mosquito repellent.

Because of its sweet smell and uses for keeping bugs at bay, I harvested about a quart of these berries and leaves to make an essential oil for some of our homemade soap. We will have to see how that turns out, hopefully a hunters soap for women.

 

 

 

And while I am sharing I thought I should mention some common wild plant that I do know a little about from growing up in Oklahoma. The first is Polk salad. It also has purple berries but unlike the beauty berry these berries are not edible but can be used as a dye or paint. Growing up we would use the berries along with Indian paint brushes (a common red wild flower in Oklahoma) to paint on rocks.  The leaves on the other hand are edible if cooked right. It is important to only harvest tender young leaves as the older ones will have a hard string in them that is unappetizing. When cooking them it is said that they need to be boiled and drained three times. I remember eating these greens as a child with some scrambled eggs mixed in with them, but I do not recall actually seeing them cooked.

 

 

Granted I could not get any pictures of ripe berries at the time being but they will turn purple and make fun paint.

 

 

The other plant I noticed is easily recognizable by it unusual flowers that look like no other flower I have come across. It is called passion fruit and is edible but takes a long time to ripen and looks like a dried plum when it is ready. But by the time it is ripe, raccoons have usually found the plants and eaten the fruit.

 

 

I hope to bring more knowledge to anyone who reads this so that maybe if you ever find yourself in the woods lost and hungry you might know what you can and cannot eat. Or maybe you could use this information to bring yourself closer to nature and take a stroll in the woods. Knowledge ways nothing and we always carry it with us even in the woods.