Homestead Updates

This afternoon was a perfect day to get out and work in the garden. The sun was shining (at least for awhile!) and it was warm. With my daughter Sierra’s help we spent some time getting the weeds under control.. always a constant battle. And then my son Isaac helped me to set up the PVC pipes we use to water the garden.

Basically we have a spring fed pond that we use to water the garden. There is not a lot of elevation difference between the pond and the garden so sprinklers are out (not enough water pressure). The pond has sediment and such and it plugs the holes in soaker hoses.. so we use PVC pipe. The water runs from the pond through underground pipes to the garden. In the garden there is a faucet and place where the pipe comes up. I hook PVC pipes to this and run them to the garden. At each garden row I have ditches down the row and we let the water run down the ditch, after the water runs down the row we hook on another piece of pipe for the next row. We do this until we work our way across the garden. The next day we start at the other end and disconnect the pipes as we work back to the beginning. I shared about this last year in a blog post with pictures of the system: http://homesteadinghomemaker.blogspot.com/2009/07/watering-garden.html 

Here are some updated pictures of my garden…

My tomato plants are doing great.. I still need to get them staked but they are doing well..


My row of green beans..


My 250+ corn plants. These were the seeds that I started in my husbands shop a few weeks ago.  I got them planted last Monday and all but 2 or 3 of them have survived..


And my garden from the back corner.. it is really hard to get a full picture of it so this is the best I could do..




Other than garden work I also spent time this weekend in the kitchen.  I made a batch of feta cheese. I am itching to make some lacto fermented sauerkraut and some lacto fermented salsa and I needed some whey. Feta cheese tastes great and gives me a LOT of whey. I freeze the whey in smaller size containers to use in my recipes. You can find my recipe for the sauerkraut here: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/homemadekraut.htm  and the salsa here: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/lactofermentedsalsa.htm 

I also baked 4 loaves of bread and 2 loaves of sourdough banana bread. Below is a pic of the cheese hanging and draining out the whey and the 4 loaves of bread. I did not get a pic of the banana bread.. currently one loaf is almost gone and the second loaf is in the freezer.. :)



You can find my super easy feta cheese recipe here: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/easyfetacheese.htm  and the sourdough banana bread here: http://homesteadinghomemaker.blogspot.com/2011/06/sourdough-banana-bread-pizza-crust.html  and my basic whole wheat bread recipe here: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/deliciouswwbread.htm

That is all the updates from the homestead for now! Hope you all had a great weekend! :)