Things My Father Never Grew

My father was a serious gardener.  I would almost call him a farmer. He planted with the same deliberate intent,  except he lacked a barn. He did have a small tractor.  Our garden was immense. At least a half acre, back breakingly carved out of our forested land. The work quantified by the rock wall that surrounded the plot. I remember watching him toss the rocks to the perimeter as he measured and staked his arrow straight rows. A string stretching the length to guide my sisters and I as we squated with our pails planting the seeds that would grow into the food thatwould nourish us.

I learned everything I know about gardening from my father and he from his father. I have never read a single book on the subject, never googled how to plant. I like to think it is part of me, like how chickens know to roost and salmon to swim upstream.

Although I know my rows will never be as straight or long in my smalled canted beds, I am proud of my garden. I am especially proud when I grow things my father never grew (or at least I don't remember him growing).

This year it is Swiss chard, radicchio, tomatillos and lemon cucumbers. 

Is it just me or do cucumber salads taste better out of metal bowls. It think its a reaction from the acid in the tomatoes and vinegar with the metal. Science is yumm.  This is also my nana's bowl, the same in which she served my grandfather's home grown salads. That makes me proud also. Using my grandmothers things, they really are so much better than anything you would buy today, but I will save that for another post .

This post is part of the homestead-barn-hop.

Sometimes....

Sometimes..... trees fall in your road and you have to remove them. Well I don't but someone does. I sat in the warm truck listening to the radio and watching. I did help pick up the blocks and throw the branches off the road when he was done. Oh and I baked two loaves of bread and dipped some stool legs earlier in the day, while I was trapped at home (Completely unaware of my capitivty). So I did my part.

I am calling this unpleasant off grid task #2. Removing fallen trees, not being trapped at home. Which has happened about three times for various reasons. That would be unpleasant off grid task #3.

Broke Girls Guide to Canning

I lack a canner and the funds to purchase one, but I do have a large enamel stock pot and a very resourceful mother.  She let me in on a little homesteader trick to get around that whole big fat canner/ rack thing.  This little trick happens to include one of my favorite things: cord wood rounds. There is a special little place in my heart for these little wooden pancakes and I get excited whenever I find a purpose for them (other than firewood of course)

We end up with a lot of these because someone (not me) always cuts the logs longer than our splitter

I used roughly 3" diameter rounds, 1" thick (they have to be even so the jars sit level).  I washed and scrubbed the seasoned (dry) rounds to remove any loose bits.  I was able to fit 5 jars around the edge of my 10" diameter stock pot.  I washed and scrubbed the seasoned (dry) rounds to remove any loose bits before laying them in the pot.

It worked fairly well, but they floated to the surface when the pot was filled with water, which made inserting the jars into the boiling bath cumbersome. Had I followed my mother's directions of using a round slightly smaller than the diameter of my pot and about 2" thick the problem would have been avoided. You will need a jar lifter if using this method.

Garlic Dill Zucchini Pickles using this Food in Jars recipe. My go to source for all things food preservation.  The jar with the orange curved pieces is round zucchini that I believe cross pollinated with the pumpkins. I only made one jar and plan to eat them first to see if they are tasty.

Round Zucchini

Straw Bale Coop

When you live off the grid you are required to have chickens. It is a rule.

I wanted the coop to be super insulated, and with a small footprint so I would not have to provide a heating source. That is what I told C, but really I just have been itching to build something out of straw. I read a number of books on the subject and then ignored almost all advice, as all good almost architects should do. I only found two books that gave enough information and details to actually be able to build a structure. I highly recommend them if you are planning to undertake such an adventure.

We cut a platform from a deck that had collapsed the year before we bought the house. The previous owner had left it in the woods.

Then we stacked the bales. Sounds easy right. It wasn't. Despite getting all our bales from the same place there was a length difference ranging up to about 6 inches. After about two hours and one un-baled bale, we ended up stacking the last two bales end to end. As you can see from the photo, they didn't compress the same and we had to do a little blocking to get the roof level. It still looks off in the photo but it is just the angle.

LOOK CHICKENS!!!
I almost did an entire post about a chicken coop with out a single picture of our chickens. They watched (Read: were in the way) the entire time their new house was being constructed.

The First Winter

I think it is safe to say we have officially survived the first winter here in between trees. It wasn't as tough as i expected, mostly due to the mild winter the 802 had this year. Although its wasn't tough, it didn't go smoothly either.

Our system is designed to power the house for three days with no sunshine. Due to some unforeseen problems the generator ran almost every day. Translation: We went through a lot more propane than anticipated, plus the addition wear and tear on our battery bank and generator.

I know what you are thinking, but "we" weren't the problem. Our daily electricity use was actually much lower than we predicted. The house, or more the systems to run the house, are the watt hogs.

I will be going through each problem in separate posts as we hopefully find solutions.

The Facts

This picture was taken last June when we first saw the house. Currently it is snowing and we have an accumulation of about four inches.


The House: It is a 2500 square foot kit log cabin that was planned to be grid tied. The power lines end about a 1/2 mile from the house, also the location of our nearest neighbor. We don't want to pay the man so we are attempting to live off the grid in a house that wasn't designed for it.


The System (a brief summary): We have a 2800 watt off grid system with a 1050 amp hour battery bank (two large arrays in back) and a backup generator (tan box in center). We also have a solar hot water system ( horizontal array in foreground) that heats our hot water and dumps excess into our radiant floors once both storage tanks are heated to maximum temperature.