It’s been the food factory here on the homestead lately. Since we depleted our freezer stash of meals and things when we got covid we’ve been driven to replenish them since feeling better. Having ready-made food in the freezer saved our bacon when we were going through that hard time. That made us realise even more the importance of having food put up for the times when we’re down.
The Kitchen
The Husband and I have both been working to get meals and meal bases or ingredients into the freezer. Before I caught the sickness I got a batch of chicken broth made and since then I have also made beef/lamb broth. The Husband made a big batch of concentrated tomato soup. When I cook rice I usually do eight cups of rice so that we can use it for one or two meals, plus a couple of my lunches, then put the rest into the freezer in vacuum seal bags. I’ve also been cooking larger batches of pasta, both wheat and gluten-free so I can put some in the freezer. Sure, it isn’t as good as freshly cooked rice or pasta, but when you have to feed your family and don’t have much ability or time to cook something, it’s a life saver!
We usually get a meal or part-meal put in the freezer each week just by cooking larger amounts at a time. I don’t like having to cook every day so we have leftovers several times a week, but I try to get some into the freezer too. Some things we commonly cook in larger batches and can get into the freezer are roast vegetables and mince and beans (beef mince, sometimes with finely chopped liver, beans, corn, various grated or thinly sliced vegetables, sometimes lentils, with a base of tomato soup, broth and herbs and spices). The giant pan, our 43cm cast iron pan, has been extremely helpful in cooking larger batches at a time. We recently used it to make a 4x lasagne recipe. It didn’t quite fit alllll the mince and tomato mixture in it so we had to transfer some to a stockpot to simmer, but we did it! We put them all into the freezer in glass pyrex or stoneware casserole dishes, wrapped in aluminium foil. They were all dairy-free and half were gluten-free.
The Garden
On the same day I attempted to quadruple the lasagne recipe for the first time I also attempted to get my long-suffering brassica seedlings into the garden. The poor plants had to wait for an extended period while we worked at weeding and prepping the rows in the Front Plot and while the unexpected sickness took us out for a couple of weeks. So they really needed to get into the ground as part of the future food that will feed us. Thankfully, The Husband was there to help with the lasagnes, the children and the washing.
The cauliflowers, unfortunately, all went to seed because of the wait and getting a bit dry. However, there were some ‘All The Year Round’ cauliflowers left that I was only growing for microgreens, having not been impressed with them in the past, so I planted those. Some of the seedlings were quite leggy by the time they got planted, but they should be ok. The tatsoi, red pak choy and some of the cabbage varieties had fared the best. The green pak choy had a run-in with cutworm caterpillars. A few of them died from getting too wet, funnily enough, and some got too leggy, but there were so many of them it didn’t matter. I gave some seedlings away to family as well.
I managed to finish getting the rows ready, including mulching with barley straw and a side mission to knock back the size of the huge flax (Phormium tenax) beside the Front Plot so it wasn’t lolloping over the far row. I got some of the seedlings planted that day and finished the rest over the next two days. I also dug up the rhubarb from in the Raised Bed Garden, divided it into two and planted them down the end of the Front Plot, where they should get more sustained moisture. Not that we’ve had unsustained moisture around here… We got six days in a row without rain in the last fortnight, which was apparently the first stretch over three days without rain since some time in December! We have not had any water woes this year. Just the opposite.
The children have been having a great time in the garden. They usually do more playing and snacking than helping, but it’s a joy to see them eating kale, cabbage, pak choy or sorrel straight off the plants and enjoying it, or discovering worms, rocks or other exciting things in the dirt. We had some kale and pak choy that self-sowed in the Front Plot in late summer or autumn so that’s been keeping the kids in garden snacks. On one occasion, while Miss Scarlet and I were in the Front Plot, The Little Fulla appeared. “Have you come to help with the weeding?” I asked. “I’ve come to help with the eating,” he replied, before promptly biting a chunk off a kale leaf. Yup. It’s Kaleosaurus season.
Before we got fully-focused on the Front Plot we were mostly working on the Herb Garden. After quite some time I got rid of all the weeds in the poor Herb Garden. We borrowed a pressure sprayer and The Husband sprayed the whole Herb Garden/Raised Bed Garden fence on both sides. It looks so much nicer now! I am still thinking about what kind of treatment to apply to it, but getting it pressure sprayed was the main thing to get done before I started planting herbs and things. I wanted a ‘little’ try with the pressure sprayer so I sprayed the paint off part of the Potting Shed. Then I sprayed the concrete steps. Then some of the spiderwebs off the rafters. Then some of the downpipes. Then one of the rain tanks… I realised just how many pressure spraying needs we had. We need to borrow one again!
The family delighted in spreading some sand around the Herb Garden before we raked it in and leveled the ground somewhat. I’m hoping the sand will improve the drainage in our peaty, loamy soil but we probably need more. The main perennial herbs like good drainage. All the rain we’ve had hasn’t helped it and simply encouraged the march of the banished creeping buttercups.
I did a few brick missions around the homestead and managed to find just enough bricks to make the six brick circles that I really wanted, three at each front corner of the Herb Garden. I originally had two brick circles, each containing a dwarf fruit tree. But the dwarf fruit trees did not fare well in their raised circles and they weren’t the best thing to grow in a herb garden. Two of the brick circles on each side have been planted with thyme, each a different variety: common thyme, chicken thyme, pizza thyme and lemon thyme. The last two circles will probably be planted with flowers.
Once I had positioned the brick circles I could finish moving and re-setting most of the stepping stones to make a better layout. I also planted a sage, a purple sage, a silver thyme and some creeping thyme, ‘Emerald Carpet’. I divided the creeping thyme into multiple rooted sections and planted them around the brick circles as a groundcover. I also planted some annual coriander (cilantro) and dill and some catmint, Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’. I have some lavenders to plant when the weather warms up. I planted some lemon balm in the planter beside the mint on the deck where it can be kept under control.
I decided that I must have a seat in the Herb Garden, so I started planning how to build one and positioning more stones in front of its site before I had to move on to the Front Plot. I got all the perennial herbs planted and that was the main thing. After using whatever dried herbs I had left I finally had to buy a few packets of herbs from the grocery store and I was not happy about it. Buying herbs is not cheap when you consider how much you use in the kitchen. Well, how much I use anyway. Hence, the urgency to get the herbs planted, plus getting them in before it got any colder. Thankfully, the rosemary and oregano survived the weed takeover, as well as the large pineapple sage and lemon verbena.
I was so disappointed in the neglect that the Herb Garden fell into and the loss of the other herbs, but that’s life sometimes. The thing is, I wouldn’t have reconfigured the Herb Garden or determined to pressure spray the fence if I hadn’t had to get it back to bare bones. I like the layout much more now, in terms of both aesthetics and accessibility and I am imaging what it could be with flowers and everything all set up. Despite the circumstances it’s been through, the Herb Garden is going to be better than it was before. That’s a good life lesson.
The Chickens
Chicken breeding season is one of the things I’m focusing on now. One of our young Australorp roosters, Tom Haverford, has been in the Corner Pen with some pullets for breeding. I was hoping to hatch eggs from them much earlier than now but because of stormy weather and things disrupting their laying, then our sickness, I only have eggs in the incubator now. In a couple more days I’ll be candling them to see how things are going. Tom Haverford was Judith’s son, and as such, had lovely blue colouring and a good comb. But his body type wasn’t as good as the other roosters. I put him with pullets who had deep breasts and better shape than him and who’s lineage would benefit from better colouring to see what offspring they could produce.
Tom has walked the green mile already. It’s risky before the chicks have hatched but I needed to clear the pen for proper breeding season. It’s hard making decisions like this, as he wasn’t a bad rooster, but to improve the breed you have to draw some hard lines. Tom Haverford just wasn’t deemed as good as the other roosters but, being in 4th place, I gave him a shot at breeding. His pullets are back with the main flock and I’m waiting for a rainless patch to clean out the coop before the next inhabitants move in. The girls need to be separated from the other roosters for four weeks before collecting eggs for hatching to make sure the rooster they are with is the father.
We still have three other roosters: Basil (head rooster), Ron Swanson, black son of probably Judith but possibly Ninja, and Ben Wyatt, black son of Dahlia. I need to actually get the chicken tractor built now so I can split all three roosters off with some girls. I have planned who will go with who already.
The House
The other main thing I’m focusing on is cleaning, tidying and improving storage. The house has definitely been in need of some good cleaning, but it’s a process. I built a shelf for the egg incubator to sit on in the laundry, just before I got it started up. Moving it and the washstand it was on out of the laundry freed up space to move around and to install the shelf that I bought for that space for better storage. It also keeps the incubator up higher and out of reach of little hands, along with the brooding accessories stored below it. I have a bunch of things that I need to sell or take to a second-hand store at the moment.
I finished knitting a hat for Miss Scarlet while I was forced to rest with the sickness. So something good came out of it. I made up the design with the crosses. After deciding to do something simple for my next project, I am currently working on knitting a dishcloth with a design I drew up. Maybe not quite so simple. Oops! It’s going slowly since I’m not sitting down with hands free very much. I need to work on that.
Winter was behaving pretty mildly, meaning some plants were still unexpectedly hanging in there. Nasturtiums were growing abundantly in the Raised Bed Garden, most of the pepper plants were still alive and some still slowly producing small peppers, the Chuck’s Winter squashes in the Front Plot were still alive and several sheltered cherry tomato plants were still producing a few little tomatoes. But we got down to around -2C (28F) last week so that has put an end to all of those plants. I don’t mind the frosts if they herald sunny days. The fog and the chilly, rainy days, not so much. But the rain does encourage house cleaning…
Wild Hope Homestead 