Tag: Homesteading

Gardening · Homesteading

Top Ten Most Read Gardening Posts For 2021

Sarah

I wrote a lot about farming, homesteading and gardening in 2021. Well, when I had time I did. This year kept me busy on the homestead, with more crops than ever. The most read this year were a mix of 2021 posts and ones from previous years. May this give you some winter reading while you wait for the first signs of spring.

When To Plant Seeds For Grow Zone 8b

The #1 post because if you are hyper local, this was a post to get people going. I wrote it for myself – so I’d have a record on what to do, and when to do it.

Growing Garlic In Zone 8b

We grow amazing garlic on Whidbey Island. Learning to grow it took me a few years to get the how to, but I got there.

What To Plant In Grow Zone 8b In June

I started writing monthly posts when I had time on what to get done by the month. June was a very popular one.

It’s Time For Fall Crop Planting

It was June, but I was trying to get my readers prepped for the long fall.

Growing A Garden In Zone 7 (and 8)

This was an older post, but still popular.

February Garden Tasks and Seed Planting (For Zones 7-8 PNW)

An older post as well, but very popular. February is when the urge to plant hits a lot of us….

February Garden Tasks & What Seeds To Plant

An updated version of the post above from this year.

It’s Not Too Late! What To Plant Now In Grow Zone 8b

People hit May and think they have missed the window to grow – and yet they have so much time left.

March: Garden Tasks and Planning

Spring beckons!

Growing Alpine Strawberry Plants From Seed

Growing alpine strawberries isn’t easy, but isn’t hard to learn how to. It’s very fulfilling to learn!

~Sarah

Snowday
Homesteading

Snowday

Sarah

We don’t get a lot of snow on our island, but many years we get a couple days before it melts. It didn’t disappoint today.

Start of a chilly week this morning.

The boys were out early and had to measure our 3″ of coastal snow.

Headed down to the chicken and duck coops.

Chilly!

Snow on Hemlock.

The boys out sledding.

It’s still snowing and getting cold…..which will be good for controlling insects this coming spring, and helping the fruit trees get the hours of cold needed.

~Sarah

Are You Winterized?
Gardening · Homesteading

Are You Winterized?

Sarah

The Winter Solstice was yesterday, and the temperatures are finally dropping into winter territory.

We may see snow in the lowlands of Western Washington this coming weekend – but we will definitely see cold temperatures.

This is your chance now to take care of homesteading chores to ensure you can prevent or mitigate damages.

Today will be rainy, but nearly 50* where we live. So at least it won’t be cold while you run around. What do you need to do?

  • Clean out animal coops/shelters and put in new hay/straw/wood chips, and do it thickly.
  • Do any of your shelters have a leaky roof? Go buy a cheap blue tarp and use zip ties to get it on.
  • Do the chickens have a dry area to get into to do dust baths?

  • Clean out water devices and pails. Fill them fully.
  • Ensure you have a rubber drinking bowl/pail in each area that you can kick to break the ice, not just plastic or metal. Plastic can break in deep freezes.
  • For chickens make sure their feed containers are well filled.
  • Check the birds daily for eggs, so you get them before they potentially freeze.
  • Feed your animals treats every day that are high in calories and fat. We feed our birds sunflower seeds, they are cheap and keep them fueled.
  • Be wary with using electric heat in coops/shelters. The last thing you want is a fire in it.
  • Drain your hoses.
  • Most field hydrants are frost safe, but remove all hoses from them and turn off.
  • Put insulators on your bib faucets and remove all hoses.
  • Drain anything that has collected rain water over the fall rainy season.
  • If you have winter crops going such as lettuce, spinach and chard, cover with frost fabric.
  • If you have plants in your greenhouse, and it isn’t heated, cover the plants with frost fabric (we have Aloe Vera plants in ours). Consider bringing into the greenhouse (if you have one) any small pots you have over wintering that you are concerned about.

  • If you have plants outside that cannot go below 20*, such as citrus, this is the time to get inside (greenhouse or garage) or get it wrapped with frost fabric.
  • If it snows, do clear the roofs of your coops/shelters often, as they are not built to handle the weight – and our snow is often heavy with water.

And then you can hide inside, out of the cold, and wait for it to blow out. Stay safe everyone! Stay home and be safe off the roads if you can.

~Sarah

December On The Homestead
Homesteading

December On The Homestead

Sarah

November was a very windy and rainy month with power outages. A lot of wind. The rain was heavy, but being we are in the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains we saw far less than the mainland, where it flooded badly.

The month started off with nearly 10 hours of daylight. We are still stuck in Daylight Savings – even though our state has passed to stop it – but Washington State cannot change it without Federal permission. Not long after this, we did fall back so we could pretend an extra hour of light means anything. Even though you will see that by the end of the month we lose most of that light….

I dug up the potatoes I planted at the end of summer. These were Ozette potatoes.

Just like spring potatoes, these are smaller but packed with flavor.

Fall settling in, the trees hadn’t shed yet.

When a wild cottontail rabbit moves into a chicken coop and acts offended that you are evicting it….

One of my coops (the one we got from our neighbor) has a roof leak. I put up a classy tarp, but alas, it needs a bigger tarp. The inside of the coop upstairs leaks on one side.

The rain comes from the South Pacific, and is warm. Only a couple of days have been cold this past month. Strawberry flowers were setting all month. No fruit though, not enough daylight.

The strongest of the storms had one Hemlock snap halfway up.

It fell as good as it could have.

A few more Hemlocks fell over, root ball tipping.

Kirk out cutting it.

Blackberry blooms at the end of the month.

Tiny, the rooster, that showed up one day on our homestead, disappeared just as suddenly. We didn’t find any feathers showing he had been grabbed.

However, this chicken was finally maturing into a rooster. He was natural born and raised by Rosie. I have wondered if Tiny took off because the other rooster matured. Raven Jr (named for his Dad, who went to another homestead to produce babies) is now about 4X the size that Tiny was. Tiny was in the Bantam family and all my hens are full sized.

Raven Jr on the far left. Enjoying grapes in the fall sun. The ducks hang out with the chickens all day.

The month slipped by and soon an hour less light.

Between storms the skies were amazing at sunset over the Olympic Mountains.

The dreary days were great for making bread though.

But those sunsets…..

On the last day of November we had dropped to 8 hours and 41 minutes of light. The Winter Solstice will occur on December 21st so there is that to look forward to. The quiet months flow quickly, and next month will be the start of the growing season, where I must start thinking about 2022!

~Sarah

October On The Homestead
Gardening · Homesteading

October On The Homestead

Sarah

October just slipped by. I blinked and it was gone. It started out cold, and ended cold. With a warm and very wet middle. So not too far off from normal weather, no matter what people claim.

We worked on the lower field at the start of the month. The darker side on the right is the part that is new, it hasn’t been planted before.

We will be putting up two hoop houses on it, with plenty of room left, come late winter.

The gravel part to the left is where the cargo container sat for a couple of years. We will be smoothing it out and putting our greenhouse here, in its permanent home.

With having moved the cargo container off of the field, I no longer had my wall of signs. I did however have a wooden post left over from a political sign last year, so I made it my new sign post!

Rooster hanging out with the ducks.

We worked on getting the beds ready for the coming cold.

I harvested most of the beets at the end of the month.

Wherever we have chipped wood piles, the fungi shows up with the first rains of fall.

They especially love Alder trees being chipped. The fungi is so good for the soil.

As the trees turned yellow and orange, in the 3rd week of October the Olympic Mountains got their first snow dusting.

I love random flowers that grow from seeds that blew in the wind. These I grew 2 years ago a bed away.

As October slid into November we dropped under 10 hours daylights. It’s dark out.

On sunny days it is good still. The chickens waffle from 1 to 8 eggs a day. A number of the hens are in winter mode for now. And that is OK. I lost another hen to an eagle attack at the end of the month. I hate when they kill and rip the hen up, but don’t take her. It’s so wasteful. But the key is to have enough hens (more than you think you need) to help with losses.

And at the end of the month, the skies cleared and we got cold mornings. It said 37, but it definitely had the first light frost.

On to the deep parts of fall, and into winter. These are the weeks for planning and dreaming about next spring’s gardens. Checking on the hens daily. And staying inside toasty as the days slip by.

~Sarah