Potato Harvest 2020

This past weekend we harvested our red potatoes. We planted our potato crop in early March. We normally plant them in late February, but the weather was terribly rainy and the ground was just too wet. If we had planted when the soil was too wet it would have tore up our garden and made it difficult for the potato plants to grow. Thankfully, even though we planted them later than usual, the harvest was still plentiful.

We planted our potatoes before the onset of these crazy times we find ourselves under now. If we had known then what we know now, we would have planted double what we did. But, we were donated our potato slips this year which means our harvest of potatoes was nearly free ~ praise be to God! Next year will be different and we will plan accordingly. 

We had planned to get down to the potato patch early in the morning to take up the potatoes, but my father-in-law surprised us and had pulled them all up before we could even get out there! Potatoes are ready to be picked when the leaves start to turn brown. We also must keep an eye out for ants, because they like to attack our potatoes before they're are fully ripe. When harvesting potatoes all you have to do is pull the green part straight up out of the ground and with it will come most if not all of the potatoes attached to that plant. 

Once we've pulled up all the potatoes and sort the greens from the actual potatoes, we run the plow through where the potatoes were planted to try to turn the soil. We do this, because sometimes there can be potatoes that didn't come up with the leafy part of the potato plant. The children's job is to walk behind the plow pushing the dirt mound back into the plow hole searching for potatoes. 

Once the potatoes are all accounted for, we take the green parts of the potato plants to the compost pile and then set the potatoes on a tarp to dry out for the remainder of the day. You don't want to leave the potatoes out over night because the dew will ruin them. Before nightfall, we collect the potatoes into buckets and bring them inside the house. Unfortunately, we do not have a cellar, so we have to process our potatoes fairly quickly. We set aside a nice size grocery store sack full of potatoes to eat fresh and then the remainder are canned. It's important to can the potatoes as quick as possible, because untreated, organically grown potatoes have a tendency to go soft fairly quickly.

We harvested about 20 gallons of potatoes this year, which was a mighty fine harvest if you ask me. I'll be sharing soon how we can our potatoes; but for now you can check out this post for an alternate way we've found to store our potatoes without processing them. This method will allow the potatoes to last a couple of months, which gives you the opportunity to enjoy farm fresh potatoes a tad bit longer even when you don't have a root cellar.

Under our family's current circumstances I've never been so glad to be able to grow our own food. There have been times over the years when I've resented the fact that we 'had' to grow our own food to make ends meet. But, now I find myself undeniably overwhelmed with gratitude that we know how to put food on the table without being dependent on going to the grocery store. While it is convenient to run to the local super market to buy food, it's a relief to know we don't have to if we didn't want to or couldn't. 

I'm a firm believer that everyone should at least have a kitchen garden. If the only planting space you have available is a patio, I can assure you there is plenty of produce that can be grown in pots and other forms of planters. There is no better time than now to learn the art of growing your own food. None of us have to be dependent on the grocery stores. We need to unite as a global community, encouraging, supporting, and sharing resources to help restore the food industry of the world. Our bodies need and deserve natural, unadulterated food grown by the hands of those who care. I have no doubt in my mind that we can pursue these endeavors with great success if only we commit to do it with out whole hearts and as if our lives depend upon, because truthfully dear friends, it does.

With Love & Hope,

Jennife

Perks of Raising Children in the Garden

Our family has been blessed to be able to raise our children in the garden. Does this mean we've spent every waking hour in the garden, not hardly; but we have spent a good many hours toiling in the soil. I never imagined in a million years that it would turn out to be as great a gift as it has turned out to be. In our early years, growing our own food was just something we felt led to do to save money and part of our 'back to basics' lifestyle. Our children really didn't have much of a choice but to come along side of us for better or worse ~ learning with us, as we evolved in our homesteading efforts.

Thankfully, we rarely have had any complaints from our children when it comes to working in the garden. To be honest, most of the time they are the spearheads when it comes to getting us all our there to get the work done. I suppose this has much to do with the fact that each of our children have spent their days digging in dirt since before they could walk. It's second nature, especially for the younger ones coming up. They've watched their Daddy, Mama, and siblings spend countless hours planting, hoeing, and picking the garden ~ year after year. They don't know anything else.

During seasons of burnout I've often thought about what our life would look like if we didn't have the demands of a thriving garden. When I ponder on the pros and cons of growing our own food, I really can't think of too many negatives. Any downside can quickly be turned into a positive. Which is why I quickly put those feeling aside when I have my rare: "I just don't want to do this anymore". Because I know raising our children in the garden is one of the best things we could ever do for them.

There are numerous advantageous to raising children in the garden, but in effort to keep this post to a minimum, I'm only going to share our family's top three reasons to include children in the process of growing your own food. 

1. Knowledge & Confidence Builder: Nature is God's greatest classroom. There is no better learning platform than the family garden. For a child to know where food comes from is an asset in and of itself. We have found that when a child has a firm understanding as to what it takes to grow food that it reduces children becoming picky eaters. (Growing food is hard work!!) There are so many lessons to be had outside in the garden from how to plant, when to plant, what to plant, what are pests and plights for growing fruits and vegetables ~ the lessons are endless. Not to mention the confidence booster that comes from growing your own food. For a child to experience the first hand joy of planting a seed, weeding, watering, and picking the delicious delectable fruit or veggies ~ trust me y'all it's good stuff for their little hearts, minds, and souls.
2. Encourage Parent/Child Relationship: Let's face it there are so many distractions these days which vie for our attention and our children's attention. When working in the garden those deterring plights seem to disappear; and it's just parent and child enjoying the beauty of God's creation. Can it be an opportunity for angst and child training? Absolutely, but that doesn't make children in the garden a bad thing. On the contrary! It makes it a good thing, a very good thing. To be able to teach your children to grow their own food is a valuable lifelong skill that they can take with them forever. They will never forget the time you invested in them teaching them, guiding them, and simply spending time with them. It truly is a worthwhile endeavor. 
3. Physically Health: Our bodies need to be outside. We need to move, sweat, and get dirty. Working in the garden is hard physically work, there is no doubt. But, it's the good kind of work that has amazing rewards. Staying fit and healthy is at the core of growing your own food, and including children in those efforts only better insures that they will carry those valuable attributes with them in to adulthood. Sickness and disease breeds in sedentary bodies, true me y'all, working in the garden is anything but sedentary. Add in the amazing health benefits of dirt and the exposure to the sun and it's awesome source of vitamin D ~ working in the garden just doesn't get any better for promoting a healthy body and mind!

We are a family unit, a team, working together to meet the needs of the entire family. Just like any institution, no one member is any more important than the other ~ we need everyone participating to make this homestead run as productively and smoothly as possible. Our efforts to include our children in the garden is not to make them slaves, but to show them they truly are a valued members of the family. Giving them the assurance that no matter how young they are they still can help, they can serve others, and most importantly they can be a positive contributing member. After all isn't that the sum of what all parents are trying to do? Raise children who will be positive contributing members to society? If that is true, than I can assure you, there is no better place to raise children than in the garden.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Onion Harvest

This past weekend we pulled up and processed our onions. It was a quick little homestead event, even with us planting more onions than we have in a quite a few years. Thus meaning it was one of our biggest harvests of onions and for that I am super excited! It's always a blessing when your hard work is rewarded by a bountiful harvest. After all the more you grow the less you have to buy from the store ~ which is one of our biggest goals in having this little homestead. 

Harvesting onions is super easy. All you have to do is pull them straight up out of the ground! It's so easy, even our two year old got in on the action.

I'm sure it's just because it's early in the main summer gardening season, but everyone was overly happy to participate in harvesting the onions. Children are fairly similar to adults when it comes to being refreshed and recharged after a long winters rest ~ come August we'll all be struggling to keep the momentum along with the right attitude.

 Everyone got their hands dirty during our onion harvesting, which is probably why it went by so quickly. The saying "many hands make light work", is no truer than when harvesting and preserving the garden. I could barely take a few pictures and a couple videos before all the onions were picked, but, hey, I'm not complaining. The quicker we are able to get it done the quicker we can move on to the next area that needs attention on our homestead. Trust me the work is never done, no matter how hard we try to keep up.

  

Once the onions we were picked we had a crew inside washing and chopping the tops off as well as a crew outside doing the same.

We cut the tops off of the onions and discarded them into our compost pile. There's probably something fabulous you can make with them, but I've honestly never taken the time to research it.

We ended up with two large basins full of onions to process.

Once all the tops were cut off and the onions were washed, we set to processing them in our food processor. If you choose to use a food processor to chop your onions, it is important not to over process them or they will turn into mush. I prefer to just pulse them a few times and at that point they're usually the right consistency. Once they're all chopped we scoop them into freezer bags by the cup full. We place four cups of onions into each freezer bag, for the simple reason that my canning recipes typically measure in four cup increments. This way once canning season is in full swing all I have to do is pull the bags of onions from the freezer and they're already pre-measured to throw into my canning pots as needed.

Involving children in the start to finish process of growing your own food is a wonderful aspect of the homesteading movement. There are so many amazing skills to be learned on a working homestead. Life skills that can truly benefit children for years to come. When someone is taught where something comes from they obtain knowledge, but teach them how to do something and they have a priceless skillset. Knowledge combined with ability is a powerful asset that we all should be pursuing via as many avenues as possible. 

The homesteading life is an amazing platform to obtain an array of knowledge and skills. Which can in turn be passed down from generation to generation. (Sadly, many are on the cusp of extinction due to the progression of technology). There is priceless value in the art of heritage skills, growing your own food, and the family unit. I'm beyond grateful that I have had the opportunity to rekindle the homesteading skills of days gone by with my family. The memories we've made and the lessons we've learned have been more than a blessing; they've been a beacon of hope in this darkened world we find ourselves living in. As I've said time and time again ~ the back-to-basics lifestyle is not an easy life, but it is a good life. 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Spring Around the Homestead

Sorry Y'all I know it has been awhile, but life ebbs and flows for sure, and life has just been extremely busy. I've actually had 14 posts ready to go for a couple weeks now but getting everything set up and published has proven to be a little more challenging than I'd prefer.

We have been super busy around the homestead lately, gearing up for what we hope and pray is a bountiful harvest year. We've had so many projects going on from sewing, soap making, starting seeds, sewing seeds & planting plants in our big gardens, making new flower beds, and of course continuing with our homeschooling efforts.

 We had weeks of rain which made it difficult to plant our early spring crops. But we did manage to get in the ground some white and red potatoes as well as some onions. We planted double the onions than what we did last year. Lord willing we will get a decent harvest.

I'd really like to experiment with some different varieties of onions in the future. But, I am grateful we were able to find these onions still available; since finding garden plants and seeds isn't as easy as it has been in years past.

I know I've said it many times before, but I'll say it again; I truly love that my children have the opportunity to learn how to grow their own food.

Everyone gets their hands in the dirt around here. 

We added a new fruit arbor to our homestead. This one holds ten muscadine plants, which is like a grape. Grapes don't grow very well down here, but muscadines are a great alternative.

We started many plants this year including this entire flat filled with tomatoes. 

We also planted an assortment of herbs which were given to us by some dear friends. 

We did purchase a good bit of plants this year: tomatoes, several pepper varieties, sweet potatoes, and eggplants. We are hoping to preserve more seeds this year for next years garden, reducing our need to buy plants.

Unfortunately, due to a very late cold snap, we lost most of our sweet potatoes. We are planning to replant them this week.

Our fruit bearing bushes and trees are looking very good this year. We currently have blueberries, pears, apples, peaches, plums, blackberries, and figs. 

Even though we purchased 'late blooming' fruit trees and bushes they often get a little excited over early warm weather and bloom a little too soon causing us to lose our harvest.

We are fervently praying that this will not be the case this year. We are all super excited and hopeful for a bumper crop of fruit this year! 

Currently in the ground we have tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, pumpkins, onions, white & red potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash, field peas, green beans, and corn. We have a good bit of seed starts growing to help stagger our garden harvest. 

I've been collecting canning and preserving items over the weeks such as vinegar, sugar, and canning lids. We have been diligently working to wrap up household projects and finish our academic year before the harvest begins. It won't be long before we're knee deep in produce! Fun times ahead for sure!

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Winter Around the Homestead

It's winter on the ol' Williams homestead and we're still producing some garden veggies. We've been blessed with quite a bit of pickings from this year's fall/winter garden. It's just like our main summer garden: some years we grow more than we do in others; it all depends on what is going on and what we want to plant. With me having a baby in December, we didn't plant all that much, but it did fill in the gaps of balancing out our food budget.

We planted kale, lettuce, and spinach. Unfortunately, it was ready for picking right about the time of Abby Lou's birth and we were not really able to pick like we wanted. Sadly, we had a warm spell and the bugs came out and had themselves a grand feast. {{sigh}}

We have a few cabbages planted, but none are ready for picking just yet.

We had some nice sized turnips to come up this year. Turnips are my all-time favorite fall/winter produce! I wish we'd planted more.

My favorite way to eat turnips, is to boil them like potatoes until fork tender, drain, and then toss in butter, black pepper, and sea salt ~ yummy!!!

We had several broccoli plants and a few cauliflower plants as well. 

Broccoli and cauliflower are rather peculiar plants that can be quite finicky to grow in the South. They are super easy to attract pests and need just the right temperature.

Our favorite way to cook broccoli and cauliflower is to roast it in the oven with spices and olive oil. In this batch of veggies we added some of our bell pepper that we froze from our summer garden.

 And then we've got our little chickies which have slowed down their laying, we're averaging five eggs a day ~ which is pretty good to me. We try to let them free range a little each day. When we have our gardens in full swing, it's not as easy to let them free-range because they will eat our plants. We are just limited on space, but do the best we can.

The ol' homestead isn't all that quiet this time of year, but it's definitely a time to regroup and plan for the coming 'main' garden season. It won't be long before we're tilling up the soil and planting away. We're currently making our seed & plant wish lists and focusing on eating from the larder so we have plenty of space in the freezers and jars to fill.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

August Harvest

Despite my better judgment and personal convictions in regards to social media; I have spent the past 2 years immersed in Instagram. Looking back I feel cheated and swindled by the Deceiver. But as with so many mistakes in my life God did use my time there to cultivate a few 'real' relationships. And for that I am grateful! 

The funny thing with the internet and social media, even blogging - you can recreate yourself over and over again. You can be anything you want to be. Unfortunately that can backfire and ultimately God always knows the true you. You can't run from God. Fact ~ Like it or not.

Our family has been 'homesteading' before homesteading was the thing to do. We did it because we were called to do it and because we had to do it. We had a very long season of 'leanness' and growing our own food was just what had to be done to make ends meet. (government assistance is just not an option for us - everyone has to do what they feel led to do, this is just our own personal convictions and story)

We had gotten to the point where we purchased very little in the form of food from the grocery store because we'd learned to grow AND cook with what we the good Lord provided through our very large garden and animals. 

Long story short (or maybe simply for another day) we backed off of our homesteading efforts and kind of just did it for a hobby and a nice supplement to our dietary needs. So, when I created my Instagram account I shared very little about our past homesteading efforts. 

Because of our personal background I enjoyed following others on similar homesteading paths. And since I'm typically a chatty person and like to help others, I often tried to share some wisdom, tips or suggestions in regards to gardening, animal husbandry, and food preservation. But much to my dismay they were not well received and typically brushed off as a woman who didn't have a clue! Insert gasp! 

See ~ because I had run from God and my true calling I was unable to be used by God to help these young up and coming homesteaders. The point of this post is not to debate social media but the fallacy in misrepresenting yourself in any form wether virtually or in realty. And I'd like to say I'm not trying to be prideful or boastful, I just happen to have years of experience and unfortunately mistakes under my belt that it would be nice to spare other folks those same setbacks!

Despite me running away from our simple life and homesteading lifestyle we have maintained a garden to some degree every year and this year was no different. The main summer garden season is currently wrapping up and soon we will be prepping the soil for our fall gardens. Which is one of the many wonderful perks of living in the south: The opportunity of 3 growing seasons! 

Despite us currently living 10 minutes from our old homestead where our gardens are located, we've had quite a successful garden and have preserved way more produce than I had expected we would. God is good like that always giving us more than we deserve. His mercies truly are never ending.

"The Lord is merciful and gracious, 

slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy." Psalm 103:8

Our Muscadines, Scupindines, figs, and blackberries are all producing giving us a little here and there. When it isn't much (like this half

gallon mixture) I just add them altogether in a freezer bag and freeze them for smoothies when the kale and spinach starts producing in the Fall.

 We've had our best ever harvest of butternut squash! We've picked at least 30 of them ~ I really should have kept count!

August is the season of okra in the South! We like it battered and fried of course but I will 'oven fry' it on occasion.

Any extra that we can't eat fresh, is cut and put into freezer bags and added to meals (from frozen). But you can fry from frozen too, it just tales a little more work and isn't nearly as good as frying from freshly picked.

The peppers are slowing down ~ about a gallon every picking. This year we've dehydrated most of the hot peppers to pulverize into crushed pepper to sprinkle onto meals. We all love spicy hot food around here!!

Finally the tomatoes are slowing down. Whew! Tomatoes can wear a person out! All we did with the tomatoes this year was make tomato sauce. As the season is dwindling down we're quartering the tomatoes, placing them in freezer bags, and freezing until we accumulate enough to make it worth our while to have a canning session.

Our oldest so graciously bought 20 chicks (we've lost 2) to help keep our family supplied with farm fresh eggs. The middle kids are handling their necessary care, but my oldest is still providing for their needs. Which is a huge blessing to our family and we are grateful for his contribution to our homesteading efforts!

My goal is to only cook/bake with farm fresh food either grown from us or through small family farms. We are blessed to have a local honey farmer who produces amazing organic raw honey. We typically purchase a 'seconds' batch in a 5 gallon bucket but this year he didn't have any of those so we're running low on our honey. We were so graciously gifted with 2 quarts of honey this week which will be rationed through the very last drop!

So, how's everyone's gardens wrapping up this season? What are you doing to get ready for the fall gardening season? I'd love to hear your garden goals? I'll be sharing ours very soon!

With Love and Hope,

Jennifer