Harvest Is (Well) Over
Last night we had a killing frost. Not that there was much on the garden. Just Brussels Sprouts, Rhubarb, some beans drying, and Horseradish of course.
Inside the house, however, is a different story. Mostly with regards to the tomatoes. In fact it seems that everyone in our area had a bumper tomato crop and we can’t give the things away.
So we’re canning juice, freezing ketchup and plain tomatoes and making soup. We were able to reduce the bags of frozen tomatoes from last year to zero, but we still have over 30 jars of canned tomatoes from last year in the cellar.
Update:
We decided to stop processing the tomatoes because we have enough. This is the total of what we put away:
29 canning quart jars of juice
11 large freezer bags of whole tomatoes
10 reused peanut butter jars of marinara sauce
18 pb jars or ketchup
and we have some romas still in the fridge for fresh eating.
and again this is added to the 29 canned jars already in the cellar.
Nuts, I know.
Next year we will not be planting tomatoes. Well, OK we’ll plant a few for fresh fruit but that’s it.
We did have some left and Ernie took them to his sister who doled them out at the Drop-In and to immediate family that needed some. That went over quite well and none were wasted.
About The Garlic
I planted the garlic by myself this year. Ernie was busy with other things so I did all the planting, which is fine.
We bought new garlic seed this year from professional garlic growers. Marino, Gaia’s Joy and Northern Quebec are the names. This garlic is prairie adapted to our area.
We also purchase new seed from the organic vegetable farmer we originally bought from years ago and found out that he buys seed every year from a different province. This means it is not prairie adapted and would likely explain why we are having trouble with it.
We will therefore be reducing the plantings of this variety – I can’t remember what he said the name of it was – in favour of smaller types of garlic produced locally.
Altogether I planted 250 cloves in three different locations. Below is a picture of the new garlic bed. The chairs and pail are to help prevent the dogs from running through it.
Peppers Were Successful
We had a pretty good crop of peppers considering we didn’t plant as many as two years ago. There were enough to put away quite a few containers in the freezer. Peppers are on par here with garlic with regards to importance. We have decided to up the pepper production next year.
We now have a good method of starting, transplanting and increasing speed of production for our area. Pepper tents are a must here and work wonders.
And of course cabbage, herbs, beans, peas were all good this year as well. We left most of our beans to dry and will do that next year as well. Neither of us care much for processed beans, so we will only be eating fresh.
We had trouble with corn since it was so dry and grass bound so they were stunted. But they gave a little produce anyway.
And the potatoes. Well, lets say we’ll be buying in the spring. This year was so dry that we got half of what we had last year. We need to plant in a different location next year as well and make a few soil amendments that I will discuss at a later date.
So that’s it for the garden. Now on to other homestead things like cooking and eating, crafts and art and small town life. And maybe a bit of travelling. And writing…
Happy homesteading!
Traditional Christmas Tree Alternative
This year we decided not to use our homemade Christmas tree . It’s pretty tall and a little difficult to fit in the house, especially now with the new puppy around. I don’t want to take any chances with him near it. It could go flying.
Instead, we are using a Ficus plant that I got when I was taking my Horticulture degree in university. This was one of the first things I got when I started living on my own and was a purchased from the Horticulture club on campus.
Use What You Have
Using a houseplant for a seasonal tree is very simple. The only concern is to us appropriate decorations. Obviously the branches on the Ficus are fairly sturdy but in order to avoid damaging anything you will have to minimize the number and weight of the adornments.
Also, if your plant does not have a nice pot to sit in, you may have to decorate that.
I didn’t do anything to the plant pot because there is a large surface area of soil and I need access to that for watering. The pot is just a left over one from a nursery plant that we had purchased and the tray underneath is an old aluminum pizza baking pan.
I know it doesn’t look great, and I may try to fix it up yet, but mostly I just look at the beautiful branches and lights.
It’s best to make sure that if you use electric lights, that you keep them away from the soil when you water.
Earlier this year I trimmed the tree’s branches away from the base and repotted it in a larger pot. The branches are now quite a ways up from the base which gives it a jaunty look.
If you have a larger plant in your house, why not try to decorate it for the season. You never know, it might grow on you.
ONE Tip For Redecorating Without Spending
We have two pink sitting chairs. Well, three if you count the one we gave to my aunt because we had no room for it. We actually bought the third one at a yard sale because it was the same kind as one we already have. We thought we could use it upstairs in front of the TV up there.
Turns out we didn’t.
This happens a lot, or HAPPENED a lot to us before we clued in to what we were doing. I have to say here that I have always been a frugal advocate, but somehow, as I have said in another blog post, I got a little lost.
Turns out we were buying things left and right and not realizing it.
Then came the chair issue. The two pink chairs in the sitting room are ugly and don’t really look good there. Both were in this house when I moved in. But when I figured out our recent spending habits were not sustainable, I decided that the chairs HAD to stay, no matter what they looked like.
After I had committed to keeping the chairs, I was starting to get a back ache from sitting the the one I usually sit in. It is not a lounging chair, just a temporary sitting chair. The one Ernie sits in is a recliner and very comfortable, even though it is pink.
So we switched the pink chair I was using for the black leather recliner that we had bought for Ernie several years ago that was in the other room. We don’t need a new chair. Even though the black chair is leather (which actually prevents dog hair from sticking to it), and has some small tears and extra folds we are NOT GETTING A NEW CHAIR.
So the one redecorating tip is to just move stuff around, adding only things that you already have.
It is so easy to think that you need something new to fix a problem.
You probably have something in your house right now like that. It’s something that you don’t really like, is in too good of shape to get rid of it but you still feel it is out of place.
It started when I was a kid.
When I was a kid I used to rearrange my parents basement furniture and put things on the walls to decorate the area. My parents were not going to buy new stuff for the basement. But we had to play there and enjoy the place, so I decorated it.
I just simply moved stuff around until it looked fresh and interesting.
I did that again when I was living at my parents house and was in university. Redecorating weekly and sometimes daily was kind of like meditation for me. I didn’t BUY anything unless it was from a yard sale and under $1, I just used what we already had. This included dried flowers I made from our garden flowers and stuff I pulled from boxes that was stored.
So the lesson of this post is what many of you frugal and homesteading people already know. You don’t necessarily need to throw money at something to fix it. Just use your imagination.
Happy Homestead Redecorating Without Spending!
Tips For Redecorating With No Money
This is one of my favourite topics and pretty much goes hand in hand with homesteading. I redecorate regularly by spending no money. This is actually something that I have been doing since I was in elementary school in my childhood home.
My parents had little money, and certainly nothing to spend on decorating. For some reason redecorating the house came naturally to me, and I did it regularly for almost two decades. I would simply move furniture around, and find things in boxes or closets that hadn’t been used. Occasionally, we bought things are yard sales – which didn’t cost much anyway, but most of the time it was what we already had.
When I got a little older, I started growing flowers in the yard, cutting them and drying them for the house. I also dried wildflowers from the ditch that I picked up when we were on holidays and used them in the house too.
Now my obsession continues.
Currently we have no more room for any new things in the house. I like to keep things to a minimum. What I am using for decorating is what was already here or what I had before I moved here. Also, I am not repainting or staining anything. It has to look good just on it’s own without any adjustments.
There are a few important things that I follow when redecorating with no money.
I don’t always leave out something or get rid of something I dislike when I am redecorating. Obviously if you REALLY don’t like looking at something maybe don’t include it in your display, but sometimes things you may really hate can look different among certain other things. It really just depends. My suggestion is to try it first before discounting it. I find that it is better to wait a while and seeing if an object or placement of and object grows on you. Sometimes even a few days is needed to make a final decision.
I don’t always try to match things. Matching colours or sizes of items is boring to me. I don’t go nuts with using bright colours or anything like that but new stuff and older stuff can often work together or different fabrics and material can give neat contrasts. Just go with whatever you like and that usually will be right.
Moving things just slightly can make a big difference. I find I don’t always have to move EVERYTHING around to different places. Sometimes there will be an item that just doesn’t work and it’s removal or a change in position will fix it. Or just offsetting one thing can work wonders.
I make sure to dust. Yeah right! Well, the intention is there. Dusting really makes things look better and makes you FEEL better about your house. Just regularly dusting some things can make a huge difference and gives the illusion of redecorating! It’s magic.
Ane there you have it. In future posts I will examine each one of these separately. Happy Homesteading!
Bathroom Sink Stand Made Out Of Plywood
Recently, Ernie did some work on the bathroom. Our bathroom has been in pieces for 2 years. It has taken us that long to dismantle, design, choose, and buy the stuff we needed to finish the project.
Actually I am not really complaining. Our favourite thing when doing a project is to do it slowly. And that we did. We did that because we didn’t want to make any mistakes.
In the picture below, Ernie is varnishing the sink stand. He made it out of Maple plywood. We stained it with dark stain and then varnished it with water soluble varnish.
The next picture is the bathroom mostly done. The sink was purchased at a hardware store and was really the only choice we had and it was in stock in the store. If we had to do it again, I would either order one that we knew was eco-friendly – if such a thing exists, or we would make our own out of something recycled. The plumbing is not done i the pic that is why there is a rag hanging out of the wall. Obviously the sink tap is not cheap. We have found that often you get what you pay for so we spent some money on that.
The ceramic wall tiles were left overs at the store and they had enough for this surround. Ernie bought pine panelling for the wall behind the sink and a small section on the other end of the bathtub. This will be varnished with the water-soluble varnish as well. Just as an aside, the mirror in the picture was salvaged and Ernie made the frame from scrap wood. I varnished it.
So from a homesteading perspective, I feel we did the best we could on the recycling/reusing side and the not spending too much side. Ernie did all the work himself and did it at a relaxed pace, not stressing himself out at all. It took several weeks but was worth the wait.
My Recycled Boot Tray
I have been using the tray below for my shoes and boots for several years. It was here in this house when I married Ernie and moved in and is likely decades old. I shaded out the insides of the shoes to prevent you from seeing the dog hair there although it is all over the tray!
A few weeks ago, (we have been married for 9 years) he told me that it was a drain tray for washing dishes – I had not noticed and had no idea. You can clearly see the place where the water is supposed to drain out. Umm, so THAT was why the water drained onto the floor when it was facing towards the door!
Anyway, I love my boot tray and will use it until it is unusable. It looks like someone even repaired a crack in it with some kind of sealant – probably Ernie’s dad many years ago. Not everything has to be new and perfect and colour coordinated to be used. By using this tray I am saving it from being put in the dump. This is worth more than any fancy new boot tray to me.
DIY Handmade Tree Ornaments
The first project for the tree decorations this year are pine and spruce cone “ornaments”. I feel these are appropriate because they are part of a tree (obviously) and they bring the outdoors inside without make much of a mess. They are already dry, don’t fall apart and can be used year after year.
All you need are pine and/or spruce cones, (the ones I have here are Norway spruce), and some thread or if you want to use something fancier, you can use ribbon or glittery gift tying ribbon. I am using sewing thread because it is not too noticeable when hanging on the tree, and also because I will not be spending anything on this project and I don’t have any ribbon I can use.
All you do is tie a piece of thread or ribbon around one of the cone “branches” near the top. Try to make it balanced by placing the thread closer to the centre of the cone. Tie the end into a loop and hang on the tree.
The other ornaments are crocheted snowflakes that my mom made about 30 years ago. They were hidden away in an attic in a relative’s home and we finally found them. They are a little yellowed but look great on the tree.
This is truly an homestead craft project as it costs nothing to make, if you get your cones from your own trees or some that you find.
How To Make Your Own Unique Christmas Tree
Our Christmas tree is unconventional to say the least. I decided to make this one so that we have a unique looking tree as well as celebrate the beauty of nature. Yes, green trees are beautiful too, but this one lasts for years and is also super earth friendly.
It also cost nothing to make.
I found the branch on our 2 acre property. It was deadfall from an old plum tree. Ernie made the stand out of scrap wood, 1X2’s and 3/4 inch plywood. You don’t have to be a woodworker to make this base or one like it.
We cover the base with fabric that we already have. You could use anything really that goes with you decor and I’ll bet you already have something in your house for this.
This tree could even be made with a small branch from any tree that has fallen onto the ground. You can likely find branches like this anywhere, even in the city. In fact I think a tiny tree made in this way could look extra cool for an apartment.
Homestead Decor?
Now this is really DIY cheap. I didn’t have to decorate for halloween this year. Nature did it all by herself.
