On New Year's Day, we woke up to snow. We don't get a lot of snowy days around here, so it was a lovely way to start out the new year. We expected it to melt off by the afternoon, but in a very unusual turn of events for western Oregon, the snow is still here! The temperatures have remained below freezing for almost a week now, and everything, including the New Year's snow, is frozen in ...
Homesteading
Homebrewing Elderberry Wine
I have enjoyed plenty of other people's homebrewed elderberry wines, but never made my own, so last weekend we went for it. I had picked dozens of gallons of elderberries in October with a friend, who suggested we pick while we could, freeze the berries, and subsequently brew when we could. I meant to brew that wine many a time throughout the fall, but life was just so darn busy. The final ...
Winter Conifer Tonic Syrup
This weekend while we were cleaning all the elderberry harvest out of the freezer to brew elderberry wine, I decided to make this conifer and wild berry tonic syrup recipe from my wildcrafting heroes at Gather Victoria. While the elderberries were boiling on a burner outside for the wine, I filled a pot on our stove with elderberries, Douglas-fir needles, grand fir needles, spruce tips, ...
A Chicken Coop Raising
You've probably heard of a barn raising, right? Friends come over, help build your barn, and maybe have a hoe-down afterwords? Well, this weekend we had ourselves a chicken coop raising. Since a chicken coop is considerably smaller than a barn, we only needed one friend to come over and help raise the walls. We did not have a hoe-down, but I think a rowdy chicken coop party will be in order when ...
Pumpkin Perfect
Wishing you and all your pumpkins a Happy Halloween! ...
Shelter From the Storm
Rainy evenings are the perfect time to curl up in front of the woodstove with a glass of wine and a cat. This is how we hunkered down for the epic storm that did not come two weeks ago, and this is often the reward at the end of a wet weekend day working around the homestead. In between October downpours, we planted garlic and mulched it in, and weeded and mulched half of the garden with leaves. ...
September Happenings Around the Homestead
Fall is a time of change, and as is often the case with change, with it comes good things. As the days get shorter and the nights get colder, trees are ripe with fruit, vegetables are ready to harvest, and wild fruits are ready for the picking. Gathering it all up can be a lot of work, but it's a fair price to pay for enjoying all the season has to offer. As we head into this busy time on a ...
Just Peaches!
After all these years of homesteading, I finally grew a peach tree! And it finally grew some peaches! And I finally got to eat them! Everything is just peaches. ...
Homebrewing French Lilac Wine
In the continuing saga of my wild botanical homebrewing endeavors, I was enjoying the lilac flowers a while back, and decided to brew something with them. I looked through a few lilac cordial recipes before finding this French lilac wine recipe from Leslieland that was exactly what I was looking for: http://leslieland.com/2009/05/lilac-wine/ Her description was impressive, especially following ...
I’ve Got Them Summertime Applesauce Blues Again
Nothing says summer like the sound of mason jars popping on the counter while they're cooling from the canning bath. A friend kindly let us come over and pick her early transparent apples, and we ended up with some of our best applesauce yet. These vintage style blue canning jars give it a little pizzazz on the pantry shelves, and I'm looking forward to eating many lattke and applesauce dinners ...