Holly and I have made some changes around the homestead in the past few weeks.  One of the major ones was shutting down the soap business (Homestead Soaps).  We’d also been loosely referring to the homestead and farm as Homestead Farm.  A name that neither of us was really happy with, but we lacked the motivation to name it anything else.  We jokingly refer to our place as “The Compound” because my parents and oldest sister also live on the land.  We really don’t want to call our place The Compound in public because it conjures images of religious wackos and polygamist sects.  Something we are not.  After a good bit of brainstorming we have decided to name our bit of the world “Pine Tar Patch”.  We’ve even set up a small website:  http://pinetarpatch.webs.com.  We’ll be sharing our journey to living a more simple life through the new website.  Holly will also be posting recipes and more there and I’m going to start posting the bulk of my blog entries to the website, so you’ll see a decline in the entries posted here.  Stop by and check out the new site.  We’re still under construction.  Feel free to sign up as a member to the website and let us know what you think.

In yesterday’s entry I listed Waddell Farmhouse Seeds as having their website down for maintenance.  I received an email from William Waddell II the owner of Waddell Farmhouse Seeds.  He was letting me know that he was closing down Waddell Farmhouse Seeds for the 2010 season and possibly permanently.  He cited some personal reasons which I wont air to the world but suffice it to say it wasn’t because business has been bad.  I hate to see him close the doors but I’m thankful that I was able to purchase seeds before he did so.  Customer service from his company was amazing.  Having just closed Homestead Soaps we completely understand where Mr. Waddell is coming from.

As the title implies and as promised in earlier posts, here is the list of crops we’ll be planting in 2010.  In 10 more days it will be time to start tomatoes indoors.  Crazy huh?

I’m going to break these out by the seed company we ordered them from.

Waddell Farmhouse (site seems to be down for maintenance at the time I’m writing this).

• Detroit Dark Red Supreme Beets
• Jackson Wonder Lima Beans
• Wando Garden Peas
• Texas Cream 8 Peas
• Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach
• Rutgers Improved Tomato

I want to note that while we could have ordered the seeds above cheaper somewhere else, we ordered from Waddell because of the exceptional customer service they gave us and the time they took to answers questions about their business and inventory before we purchased from them.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

• Mammoth Russian Sunflower
• Provider Snap Bean
• Kentucky Wonder Pole Bean
• Big Red Ripper Pea
• Carwile’s Virginia Peanuts
• Early Flat Dutch Cabbage
• Rainbow Swiss Chard
• Oxheart Carrot
• White Beauty Eggplant
• California Wonder Bell Pepper
• Homemade Pickles Cucumber
• Cocozelle Italian Summer Squash
• Early Golden Summer Squash
• Seminole Pumpkin
• Catnip
• German Chamomile
• Purple Coneflower
• Lemon Balm
• Sweet Marjoram
• Soapwort
• Sugar Drip Sorghum

The early golden summer squash and seminole pumpkin are varieties that pre-date the arrival of Europeans in North America and were grown by Native Americans in our area with good success. 

We’ll also be growing the following from seed we have saved

• Georgia Rattlesnake Watermelon
• Pencil Cob Corn
• Mammoth Dill
• Assortment of wild flowers.

The wild flowers are a mixture of some that we bought last year and grew and some that actually do grow wild on our property.

Farm Update:

The temp on the farm this morning at 6:00 AM was 26.2°F.  We’re forecast for low temps in the low 20’s and teens over the next few days.  Luckily we get out of the freezing temps during the day and it’s uncommon for us to have more than a few days in a row with temps below freezing at night.  Good thing too because it’s tiresome to have to break the ice on the livestock waterers (Holly usually does this since I’m at my day job).  The crops are all covered and those that aren’t should be able to handle the low temps.  If not, they’ll become compost rather quickly.

Yesterday we closed the doors on Homestead Soap.  No condolences are needed.  Closing Homestead Soaps was a necessary and happy step.  My beautiful wife Holly still makes all our soaps and shampoos, which was how Homestead Soaps started and grew.  Holly did not set out to become a full time soap maker and that’s where she was heading unless we made a change.  Yesterday she told me to shut the website down and I did it gladly.  It would mean less stress for my wonderful wife who I already think does too much.  We chose a simple way of living for the benefits it provides.  More time with family and a slower pace of life, just to name a couple.  The constant push to get ready for the next market, special event, or to pack orders and get them shipped or delivered locally on time was removing us from our simple lifestyle and our time with each other.  The website is still there with a goodbye message to all our customers.  It will be defunct by the end of January 2010.  I’ve chosen to release the domain name.  We’ve been discussing plans to get a free website to chronicle our adventures on the homestead and maybe help guide others along the way.  It’s still in the maybe stage at this point.

What’s new on the homestead:  Our top goat, Topsy, gave birth to healthy twins.  A boy and a girl.  We haven’t named them yet.  Here’s a couple of pics of them the day after they were born.

The wee goats are about 3 times that size now and still ridiculously cute.  We also have new chickens.  We hatched out 9 a while back in a home made incubator.  We let a hen that had gone broody sit on 4 eggs to see if she would hatch them out and 2 hatched this past Sunday.  She’s in a chicken tractor by herself with her two chicks.

Our cool weather crops are still going strong.  We’ve had a few light frosts.  Most of what we have going can withstand even a moderate freeze. 

We were very blessed over the holidays to be able to spend time with family and to have everyone in good health.  We breath a sigh of relief though and look forward to the new year.  2010 promises to be a great year on The Compound.  We’re looking forward to the growing season and as weird as it may sound, in just two weeks I’ll begin some of our seeds indoors in preparation for spring.  Stay tuned and I’ll post a list of crops we’ll be growing.

Happy New Year to all.

It’s raining on the farm.  Again.  We’re midway through December and we’ve had 3 days this month without rain.  Total rain for the month, not counting today, is 7.62”.  Needless to say all our rain barrels are full and the ground sloshes when you walk on it.  I expect the chickens to start quacking any time now and I swear I saw the goats practicing their synchronized swimming routine.

Other than raining a lot there hasn’t been much of import going on.  We still have cool weather crops growing and doing very well with the cooler temperatures.  We have bell peppers and dill still growing.  The elephant garlic crop is looking promising.  We even have elephant garlic coming up in some of the previous places we’d planted it.  I guess I missed a few small cloves when I was harvesting.  We have a section of lawn between our raised beds and blackberry bushes that we’re thinking of converting into a garlic bed.  It would be a permanent planting of the garlic and we’d harvest as needed.  Making a new bed in that area would have the added benefit of there being less grass to mow.

I’d also like to thank everyone who came out to see us at this year’s Victorian Christmas.  The weather was cold and at times fairly raw.  We’ve updated the website a bit.  Browse over to Homestead Soap.  The updates aren’t major.  The inventory has been updated and we’re selling all natural lip balms again.  We’re scaling back the soap operations a bit so we don’t have quite the variety we had in the past.

The holiday season has rolled around again and the obligatory Merry Christmas vs Happy Holidays issue is here again.  I really don’t care which one you say to me.  I’m not a big fan of this time of year.  Mostly because of too much money going out and not to the people I’d like it to go to.  While I’d rather be giving gifts to family and friends, most of what I spend goes to taxes and insurance.  I do enjoy all the time I get to spend with family and the wonderful food we always have around this time of year.  So “Happy, Merry, Whatever You Celebrate”.

A quick status update on what we’ve been up to around the farm.  Cooler weather is coming in although the forecast freeze for Friday seems to have been pushed back a bit.  The raised beds are prepped and have the frames for the covers put up in them.  I noticed this year I could push the frames (black plastic pipe sections) further down into the soil than I could last year.  A good sign that the soil under the beds has loosened quite a bit from what it was.  Our bathtub chickens are 3 weeks old now and looking very scraggly since they are losing their down and starting to get feathers in.  They are getting big too.  Judging by the comb developing on some of them we’ve got a few roosters in the bunch.  It’s still a guessing game at this stage though.

Thanks to Jase’s efforts in keeping the compost piles turned at least once a week, we have finished compost several months ahead of schedule.  And we have a lot of it.  A second pile is well on it’s way to being done and I figure it should be finished by the end of January.  Compost is the key to fertile soil and we’ve definitely seen how it can improve things in the kitchen garden which was heavy clay soil when we started it a couple of years ago.  Holly has done a wonderful job in the kitchen garden.  I often stop just to look at all the things growing in there.

We harvested about 4lbs of ginger root.  We grow ginger in pots in partial shade.  The location we grow it gets sun through the morning until noonish then is shaded from the hot afternoon sun.  It’s done quite well in that location so I’m going to create a bed there and grow it in the ground.  I’ll still grow some in pots just in case.  I’d hate to lose all of our ginger.  We use ginger in cooking and also make ginger water during the summer.  Cold ginger water can be drunk when you’re hot and thirsty without making you sick like plain cold water.  We add home brewed kombucha to our ginger water in place of vinegar for the added health benefits.

One of our main goals here on the farm is to provide ourselves and children with food security.  We know we’re heading toward a future in which fossil fuels will be in short supply or possible gone completely.  Along with a shortage of fossil fuels will come a shortage of food.  When there is no longer plentiful fuel to transport greens grown in California to supermarkets in the east, or fruit from South America, or even wheat and corn from middle America people will have to learn to grow their own or starve.  What farmers need to be doing now is weaning themselves from using ridiculous amounts of fossil fuels used to grow food.  We’re slowly weaning ourselves from using diesel and gas around the farm.  I’ve posted a link to a video below called “A Farm for the Future”.  This is a wonderful video about a lady in England searching for an alternative method of farming that doesn’t use fossil fuels.

My wife continually amazes me.  The most recent amazement comes from hatching out 9 chicks from a home made incubator.  I mentioned in a previous post that one of our roosters, Stan, was killed in an attack on our chickens.  Stan was the perfect rooster.  He kept the flock in line, didn’t crow too much or at odd times and was a very handsome fellow.  After his death we wanted to get some chicks that were descendants of Stan so Holly gathered up some Stan fertilized eggs.  Short for cash as usual, we couldn’t afford an incubator so Holly cobbles one together from a styrofoam cooler and a low wattage light bulb.  Viola!  Incubator.  21 days later we have 9 peeping chicks in the garden tub in our bathroom.  Amazing.

Also in the amazing department is the condo she built for our guinea pigs, Fuzzball and Hamham.  They now have a 16 square foot, 2 level condo to be all piggy in.  She built this out of wire storage cubes, chloroplast (material used for making signs) and some perforated drain pipe.

I won’t even try to describe all the other stuff she does every day to keep us all alive.  If it weren’t for her, the boys and I would probably be swinging from trees and eating berries.

We had a close call with Lenny, our only male goat.  Poor fellow had a bad case of worms and possibly another ailment.  He’s been wormed and treated and seems to be getting back to his old self again.  We wormed the rest of the goats at the same time.  During the course of Lenny’s treatment we had to give him some Pepto-Bismol to help settle his stomach.  He got the stuff all over his “lips” and in the fur around them so that he looked like he was wearing pink lipstick.  It was hilarious and I wish I had the presence of mind at the time to snap a picture.  Lenny’s looking better every day and it’s nice to hear his greeting when I come home.

Holly is growing a great crop of broccoli in the kitchen garden and in the raised beds.  If even half of it makes, we’ll be set for broccoli for a while.  Our elephant garlic is doing well.  This is the elephant garlic that my grandfather grew on his farm for decades.  After his death, my mother dug a few plants and put them in a flowerbed where they grew unattended for another 20 years or so until a couple of years ago when we moved them to our raised beds.  Last year we had 6 plants that gave us 80+ cloves.  I planted about 75 cloves earlier this fall.  The majority of them are up and looking great.  If 6 plants produced 80+ cloves, how many will 75 plants produce?  Elephant garlic anyone?

Quite a bit going on around the homestead the past few weeks.  Holly’s sister and nieces were down from Washington state for a visit.  I think we all had a great time.  We made a trip down to Wakulla Springs and then on to St. George Island to stay for a couple of days at a rental house on the beach.  We had fine weather for the trip and had the beach practically to ourselves. 

Holly, Jase and I also paid a visit to the Sunbelt Ag Expo.  Lot’s of interesting displays and vendors there.  I still haven’t sorted through all the info we picked up and brought back with us.  We did our share of walking.  It’s a huge expo and we maybe only saw half of the whole thing, though we gave seeing it all a good try.  I did a good bit of drooling over the new tractors and implements there.

We’ve started the cool weather crops and they’re doing well.  We have a good cover crop of buckwheat and clover going.  The honey bees are really loving it now that the buckwheat is flowering.  The crimson clover we planted along with the buckwheat is filling out underneath and looks great.  Once the buckwheat dies back it will do better.

We had an attack on the chickens and lost about 6 hens along with Stan the rooster.  From the evidence, Stan really gave the attacker a run for it’s money.  We’re thinking it was either a fox or coyote.  The attack happened due to my idiocy.  I didn’t test the fencing well enough to realize that the section of fencing that protects the chickens wasn’t energized.  Lesson learned though and we test the fencing at least weekly to make sure it’s charged all the way around and reasonably weed free.  As time and money permit, we’ll be building a permanent and more secure coop and rotate the chickens foraging areas around that.

My oldest son Jase is now living with us at least until he goes into the military, probably sometime in February 2010.  We’re definitely glad to have him with us and he’s been a great help in getting things done around the farm.  We have other new additions to the farm as well.  Hamham and Fuzzball are two guinea pigs that we bought a few days ago for Jase and Kellan.  They’ve taken to their new home well and are getting plenty of love.  We also picked up a new rooster.  This one is a yet unnamed.  He’s a big fellow.  He’s a Jersey Giant.  He’ll be a “tractor chicken” meaning we’ll keep him in a chicken tractor along with a couple of hens.  We’ll move them through the garden to fertilize and forage as needed.

My oldest son Jase, who is down for a visit before heading off for Warrant Officer Candidate School, and I harvested the field corn yesterday.  This crop, if you’ve read any previous posts, was planted mainly as a seed crop.  Prior to planting we had our older laying hens move through the planting area in the chicken tractor.  Corn is a heavy feeder so we wanted to make sure there was plenty of nitrogen for it.  I bought about $3 worth of seed and planted in a 14ft x 30ft area.  Most of the stalks grew 8 to 10 feet tall and put on 2 ears per stalk.  The yield was a single wheel barrow full or about 8, 5 gallon buckets full.  We had about a 90% germination rate on the original planting.  After the original planting was up I filled in the bare spots with a second planting about a week after the first.  The harvest was shucked (the shucks spread back over the garden) and the ears too insect damaged to keep were culled.  Then we set up a corn dryer.  The culled ears, about a gallon bucket full, were given to the chickens who thought it was a great treat. 

To build the corn dryer, we took two saw horses and a couple of 6ft lengths of bamboo.  We use a lot of bamboo because we have a large stand of it on one side of the property next to the game reserve.  It’s free, renewable, and good for a number of projects around the farm.  Over the bamboo, we put some chicken wire and zip tied it to the bamboo.  Next we put some row cover fabric on top of the chicken wire to keep bugs out.  Then we put the corn on the chicken wire and it promptly made the chicken wire sag in the middle and pull the bamboo ends toward the center.  We had a short length of 2”x2” lumber and ran that under the chicken wire in the middle to stop the sagging. We piled the rest of the corn ears on and folded the row cover fabric over and pinned it so bugs and birds couldn’t get to the corn.  The corn dryer is next to the south side of the house in full sun so we’ll get some reflected heat off of the house to help with the drying.  In a couple of days when it’s dried enough we’ll remove the kernels.  I’ll separate the best ears for next year’s seed and do some germination tests.

The kind of life we lead is often referred to as “The Simple Life”.  We live close to the land, grow or raise as much of our own food as we can.  We don’t have a lot of “gadgets” or “toys” like jet-ski’s, fishing boats, golf carts, mp3 players, etc, etc.  Nor do we watch a lot of TV.  I couldn’t tell you what’s going on with Survivor or American Idol.  Half the time if someone asks me if I watch a particular television show, I usually haven’t even heard of the program.  When I hear someone call our way of life “simple” I would like to have a goat kick them in the head.  To me, they lead the simple life.  They get off work in the afternoon, stop by a restaurant or fast food joint and get dinner, come home, eat, maybe do some cleaning, then veg in front of the TV for the rest of the night.  Now that’s the simple life.

Our way of life requires a lot of forethought and a lot of physical labor.  We have to plant months (sometimes years) in advance and know what to plant and where.  How much to plant.  How to care for each crop or tree we plant.  When’s the best time to harvest.  What to do with it once you harvest it.  How to preserve it to last until the next harvest.  That’s just the crops.  Then there’s the livestock.  Where to graze them and for how long?  Do they need anything supplemented to their diet?  Is it time to breed?  Do we want them to breed?  That’s just the short list and I’m not even going to get into the poultry or land and resource management. 

The way we live is a lot of work, but it has so many rewards.  There’s the connection to the land and nature that so many people miss.  I like how you can tell when the seasons are changing by what birds are visiting the bird feeders.  This year I liked seeing a pair of Eastern Bluebirds raise 8 young.  Nothing tastes better than food you’ve grown yourself.  There’s also nothing like needing something for dinner and stepping out your back door to pick it fresh.  The way the chickens and goats come running to the fence for treats when you walk near.  Looking at a pantry filled with food you grew yourself and all the colors of it stacked there in glass jars.  Watching a tiny miniscule seed you planted indoors in a cup in February turn into a 4ft tall, 3ft wide bush by July that provides leaves to sweeten your morning coffee.  Sitting down to a dinner to eat food that only your hands and your family’s hands have touched.  Spending less than $50 a week for groceries.  Knowing you can live through tough times.

If this entry looks “odd” it’s because I’m trying out the Windows Live Writer.

Still very busy around the farm.  We grew some pencil cob corn this year.  It’s field corn and this year’s crop I grew mainly for the seed and to see how it would perform in this area.  To say it was successful would be an understatement.  The stalks are 10ft tall on most plants and 2 to 3 ears to a stalk.  A little bug damage but nothing major.  I pulled 3 ears and got a 1/2 quart of kernels.  Looks like we’ll have plenty for next year’s seed and some to grind for corn meal.  Also a great success this year was the sweet potatoes.  I had planted two plants that I’d grown from last years sweet potatoes just to see if they would do anything.  I really didn’t expect them to perform well since they were planted in the kitchen garden which has a high clay content.  We got some of the biggest sweet potatoes we’ve ever grown.  You can see Kellan holding the two largest of the crop in the pics below.  In all we harvested about 7 1/2 gallons of sweet potatoes from a plot that was 3ft x 10ft.  Not a bad return on free plants.

Holly has taken over the kitchen garden to grow some things she’d like grown and to give me more time to concentrate on the big garden where we’ll hopefully be producing the bulk of our staple veggies (beans, corn, tomatoes, etc).  We’re also redoubling our efforts to save seed from one year to the next.  Holly has the kitchen garden off to a great start with cucumbers, beets, peas, carrots, beans and flowers going strong.  I found a nice garden planner online at GrowVeg that tracks what you planted where from year to year and will give you a warning if you’re planning to plant something from the same family of plants there again.  There’s a ton of the most commonly grow plants in their database along with growing info.  You can customize it to your area by putting in your zip code and it will lay out your frost dates for you and indicate if you can plant more than one crop of something.  The planner will also give you a plant list, spacing, number of plants, etc.  Very nice.  Though it does cost $25 / year,  you can trial it free for 30 days.

Tomatoes have been a flop this year.  Many ailments affected them.  Some died from disease, others were overwhelmed by bugs.  We have a second crop going now that was doing fine until I sprayed them with Organocide.  The plants are still living but the Organocide burned and killed some of the leaves and now the plants look miserable although they seem to be making a comeback.  I definitely won’t be buying and using that stuff again.  I’ll stick with Bt and neem oil for spraying.

We also planted some late bell peppers which are doing wonderfully.  Very healthy plants with huge peppers and very yummy.  I’m not the biggest fan of bell peppers but I do like them in egg bakes and a certain cucumber dish that Holly makes.  Another success story for this year is the Stevia.  We almost have a forest of the stuff.  We’ve dried tons and looking at the plants we have out there now you can hardly tell we’ve cut any of the stuff at all.

All the livestock are doing great.  We have 5 goats now; Laverne, Shirley, Lenny, Topsy and Flash.  All of them are related except for Lenny.  I’d like to have a dairy goat or two but we’re getting those eventually.  Chickens are doing great.  Keeping us in eggs with no problem.  We get at least a dozen a day.

Everyone is doing well.