Planting, Trellising, Mulching and Sowing!

     

As the temperatures warmed the peas broke through the compost layers and reached forward to sunnier days and warmer nights.

I spent a couple hours constructing a small cold frame using some found materials so I could get my seedlings out of the basement. The results were great until I had a few casualties due to a very early morning heading out to work when the temps were still below 40... by the time I got home later that day it was 80+ and the temp in the cold frame soared to 115. 

We also got a last minute appointment with a local arborist friend to come by and limb up the maples and oaks around the homestead that were long overdue for it and also had a few trouble spots that quickly got remedied. He always enjoys limbing, especially when I tell him to just leave the branches where they lay and I'll take it from here. Though it always translates into a much bigger mess than I anticipate. My general course of action is to go in with a big pair of lopers and clear out all the leaf bearing branches and start 4 piles. Green Branches/ Long Straights/ Short Straights and Firewood. This time I also made a point to set aside a dozen mushrooom growing sized logs as well!

Maple logs are ready for their mushroom inoculation!

(more on that process in a future post!)

 

Germination !

Hazel has been a great garden helper this year at age 3 and a half... her favorite garden projects are watering the thirsty plant and you may have guessed, DIGGIN BLACKBERRIES!

Everyday like clockwork Ive been hitting the trench with Hazel and our shovels, digging up the numerous blackberry shoots that pop up daily. Eventually I will either cover all this area with tarps to smother the remains or sheet mulch with cardboard and woodchips to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

Did someone say mulch? We got a drop from the local garden supply that gets their mulch from a local lumber mill and this one was hemlock which is completely natural and has some pest resistant oils that is a bonus for using around the perimeter of our raised beds. 

The process is pretty simple, make a woven layer of cardboard, make sure you remove all stickers and tape, I use some that have limited ink on them but not sure its all that big of a deal especially because Im mainly using this process in the pathways of my raised beds and to smother overgrowth. Anyhow, use a hose and wet the cardboard thoroughly and then apply 2-3" of mulch on top! 

I also used a hand edger and carved a nice trench with a shovel to delineate the line of grass and mulch that hopefully that will minimize the weeding in our growing space. 

Don't forget to make the homestead a little more homey with a fresh mulch on the front rock beds we constructed a few years ago too!

First section complete... now on to edging around the tomato bed and smaller flower beds.

Sugar snap peas are climbing, lettuce is getting harvested by the leaf, onion, kale, cabbage, various peppers, eggplant, beets, chard, pickling cukes, nasturtiums, corn and chard in these beds.

Three varieties of beans, osaka greens radish and carrots in this bed.

In the foreground is our potato tower that is sprouting with Adirondack Blues and Green Mountain taters followed by the added half moon bed thats planted with two types of cukes, sugarbaby watermelon, some strawberry transplants and marigolds.

I found the tomato bed to be successful but really only the left side receives enough full sun to ripen tomatoes to a suitable sizing, therefore I transitioned the right side into a salad bed where I spread various leftover seeds including multiple varietals of arugula, watercress and various lettuces along with cilantro and parsley! This section will get planted every 2-3 weeks and hopefully that will provide us with our daily salad provisions throughout the growing season.

Loving the organic curves of the beds as they lure me in and invite me to weed and pay even more attention than typical.

 Overall Im very excited and motivated to continue pushing the homestead into the next chapter and really harnessing the useful space by smothering the negligence of past seasons and enriching the productivity and potential of the rest of the land before us. 

Ladyslippers where in high production this year, usually I count 5-8 around the homestead, on one occasion this May I counted 14!

Stay tuned for a Mushroom Log Inoculation post as we wrap up this week

Maple Season 2020.

Greetings from the Localrootz Homestead!

It has been awhile and I wanted to thank everyone who over the last couple years, has utilized the past blogposts for help with their own homesteading as well as reaching out with questions and advice! It has truly been a whirlwind of a few years with my wife Cassi and I welcoming a child into our lives. Hazel who is now 3 is full of curiosity, humor, love and even a little of dads stubborn work ethic! Projects slowed down a bit around the homestead but slowly but surely we are working our way back to a self sustainable lifestyle. Anyhow I don't want to get too personal or wordy to get things on the blog rolling once again, so on to maple syrup season 2020!

One new addition to the tool shed is this lovely sled from LL Bean that Hazel loves and sometimes Daddy finds useful for projects like this, its tapping time!

I think in all we tapped about 12 trees this season, and it started off great, but froze up quickly, then came on strong again two weeks later. It was a little touch and go but in the end we ended up with about 50 gallons of sap for boiling day!

Im always so grateful for the land in which our homestead inhabits, especially when the relationship seems to mutually beneficial!

Our rustic sap house, basically an iron grate spread across the firepit with two buffet pans from a restaurant supply shop.  The great thing about sugaring is I think the first year I spent $150ish dollars on supplies and since then its cost nothing but time and energy to make at least a gallon of syrup for the homestead every year, this being our 4th season!

Having a good amount of wooded acreage on our homestead means wood is usually easy to acquire, especially in the Spring season when all the blow downs from the winter are dry and plentiful!

The boil takes a longtime with these methods, I think I got the fire started around 6:30am and by 10pm I had it reduced enough to move it inside onto our cookstove where I could finish it off and monitor it more closely!

After boiling it down to taste, I cold crash it in the fridge overnight which helps clarify the syrup as the floaties tend to drop to the bottom of the pot. I then use a piece of layered cheesecloth to line a fine screened colander for a final filtering. Bringing the syrup back to one last boil, we then checked the brix levels with a hydrometer to ensure our syrup is of the right sugar content and consistency!

After sanitizing some corks and bottles we fill them and cork them!

The final haul for this year:

2- 750ml bottles

6- 375ml bottles

Time to make some pancakes! 

In reality we use it for much more than pancakes, in fact we use it instead of sugar for baking or ice cream making and one of Hazels favorite treats is roasted carrots with salt pepper and a drizzle of maple syrup! YUM.

Stay tuned as I resuscitate this blog back into proper form. Rather than just posting about homesteading though, be ready for music reviews, artistic musings and just general ranting and sharing as I navigate this new land of uncertainty and opportunity!

Stocking the Cellar.

So the first week of September has come and the garden is still flourishing with delicious offerings. The wife and I decided this Labor Day weekend would be a great time to make some progress on our bounty and preserve plenty of summers tasty offerings.

Final Stock for the Weekend

12 Loaves Zucchini Bread

12 Pints Corn Salsa

11 Pints Tomato Sauce

6 Pints Maple Bread & Buter Pickles

4 Pints Sherry Bread & Butter Pickles

6 Pints Bread & Butter Pickles

6 Pints of Pickled Eggplant

5 Pints Salsa Verde

Here are the recipes we used... with some adaptations from the originals :

Zucchini Bread

6 Eggs

2 sticks of Butter

1 cup Sunflower Oil

2 tbls Vanilla*

2 tbls Blackstrap Molasses*

1 cup Maple Syrup

7 cups Grated Zucchini

8 cups Whole Wheat Flour

2 tbls Cinnamon*

2 tsp Baking Soda*

1/2 tsp Baking Powder*
1/2 cup Chocolate Chips*

2 tsp Applewood Smoked Sea Salt

We used a recipe from one of my favorite local food blogs Diary of a Locavore !
Added some maple syrup and doubled everything up pretty much... we used these great 4 loaf mini bread pans we scored for $3ea @ Mardens.

Corn Salsa

10 ears Fresh Corn

5# Heirloom Tomatoes

5 Hot Peppers (Poblano, Serrano, Cubano and Anaheim)

1 Large Onion

6 Cloves Garlic

1 cups Apple Cider Vinegar

1 cup Red Wine Vinegar*

1 cup Moscatel Vinegar*

1 cup Maple Syrup

1 tbls Cumin*

4 tbsp Sea Salt

Found this recipe from Mother Earth News but we amped up the Garlic and variations of vinegar varieties to add more complexity and to be all fancy and cool. Really we just had a few partial bottles in the cupboard and I figured it would be a good experiment !

Tomato Sauce

25# Heirloom Tomatoes

2 Medium Onions

1 Bulb Garlic

1 Quart Ace Peppers

Smoked Applewood Sea Salt

Fresh Thyme, Sage, Savory

Zinfandel Wine*

Olive Oil*

We don't get all fussy with tomato sauce, peels, seeds and all go into the caldron and simmer for 6 hours of so... start with the Onions, Garlic and Peppers browned in some Olive Oil and then unstick them with a dousing of red wine then pile the tomatoes in as you chop. Simmer for 2-3 hours skimming occasionally. Puree with a submersion hand held blender and simmer for a couple more hours till the liquid thickens slowly seasoning to taste as it nears completion. I always am very gentle on salt and herbs till the last two hours... if you over salt early it just gets more pronounced as the sauce concentrates and thickens.

Bread & Butter Pickles

8 cups Sliced Cucumbers

2 Large Onion (1 Red 1 White)

8 tsp Sea Salt

14 tbls Pickling Spice*

(Mustard Seed, Peppercorns, Red Pepper Flakes, Dill Seed, Clove among more)

2 cups Apple Cider Vinegar

2 cups Red Wine Vinegar(

1 cup Maple Syrup (Maple Style)

1/4 cup Pedro Ximenez (Sherry Style)*

We are new to pickles... I have done a couple quick pickle batches using baby cukes from our old community plot but the excess of cucumbers at the homestead got me excited to play this year. We also have acquired some whey from Swallowtail Farm to make a big batch of lacto fermented pickles. Ill be starting that and a kimchi this week and discuss the pro's and con's to using vinegar and canning vs the lacto fermenting method.

Pickled Eggplant

5# Eggplant 
6 Cloves Garlic

2 cups Distilled Water
1 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

1 cup Red Wine Vinegar*

4 tbls Raw Honey

Fresh Thyme, Savory and Sage

4 tbls Sea Salt

So much eggplant... after a few eggplant parms, grilling them whenever possible and thinking about other methods of eating them on a daily basis I was searching around to find a good eggplant canning option and this was the best one I could find that seemed plausible with what I has on hand. I found it on Ball's Website.

Salsa Verde

10# Tomatillos

6 Cloves of Garlic

3 tbls Grated Ginger*

1 Large Grilled Onion

1 Grilled Poblano Pepper

1 Grilled Cubano Pepper

6 tbls Smoked Applewood Sea Salt

1 Lime Squeezed*

We got a deal from a local farmer on some ripe tomatillos and went to town washing them, scorching them under the broiler, grilling up some veggies and filling some jars with this tangy green taste of summer. Looking forward to pouring this over some whitefish in the winter to get a glimpse of summer heat in a jar.

*Denotes Ingredients not from Maine and Italics means it was homegrown !

What a productive weekend spent with my wife working hard in the kitchen and filling some cellar space. These are hopefully going to taste amazing once the snow starts flying.

Till next project.

the Localrootz Homestead.

So the years have been turning season by season, day by day and hour by hour.

My wife Cassi and I have finally settled into our own home, nestled in the woods of Maine. The past years have been quite the learning experience as we did our best to live as sustainably and close to the land as our lives in Portland would allow. 

Now the new chapter has started and we have the space to really learn and create a life together that encompasses all of our passions and curiosities. 

Sitting here working on this new blog entry I am realizing that we really have been busy these first six months. We have so much to learn, so many dreams of what we will do with our humble 5 acres and I look forward to reacquainting with my old readers and making new friends with fellow homesteaders from New England and abroad. 

The first six months...

We moved in just in time to get two plus feet of snow dumped on us on our second day here !

We found we have quite the herd of deer that were always interested in what we were up to from our kitchen window.

I learned how to move lots of snow with a shovel and also how easy many shovels are to break... three shovels broken in the first winter.

The wood pile got a bit buried and after burning through our basement stash I learned that keeping a path to the reserve woodpile maintained, is smarter than having to shovel through a four foot pack of frozen snow when your supply is running low.

I also learned my old bike trailer works pretty well to cart wood to the basement, but a wheelbarrow would probably be a good purchase come spring !

 After a couple months of staring at a snow packed landscape I started getting the urge to make the best of the situation and decided we should make some maple syrup... shoveling out a path to a few of what I hoped to be maple trees and the firepit, I figured why not carve a few benches for some outdoor seating options while I was at it.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

As the sun started rising earlier the snow pack slowly recessed. 

Home sweet home.

Getting the firepit ready for the second boil of the season.

A couple steam pans from a local restaurant supplier worked quite well for boiling about 30 gallons in a 6 hour span... carefully topping off the pans as the water evaporated.

Some good company, baked beans and a extended bottle share made quick work of the boil.

Found it best to finish the process off in house on the wood fired cookstove.

Localrootz Maple Syrup Batch one !

As always anything you make yourself taste better but honestly the added complexity of smokey wood from boiling on an open fire made it way more tasty than we ever expected.

The constantly shrinking wood pile... I really do enjoy the process of heating a home with wood. Ask me if I still enjoy it in 2o years though !

   
After a couple weekend boiling sessions we ended up with just under 2 gallons of maple syrup for ourselves. About a half gallon or so was jarred up and given to friends and family but the rest is still being used on a regular basis for homemade ice cream, pancakes, cocktails and various other delicious concoctions !

 

After all that work we decided to celebrate the end of maple season with two of my favorite maple syrup laced beers !

Hill Farmstead Beyond Good and Evil

Jackie O's Black Maple

Both extremely decadent and delicious maple syrup based beers that were also aged in bourbon barrels, YUM.

Another much needed purchase for spring homesteading in Maine is a good pair of muck boots. These are great for those wet spring days and will be very practical when we expand our homestead to include some livestock.

Speaking of livestock... this well fed turkey found its way to the bird feeder dropping outside of the kitchen window.

With the ground thawing and the sun warming the ground I decided I would spend a morning seeing what type of raised bed situation I could come up with... I told the wife I wasn't going to grow anything our first year until I knew the best places to plant and got a better assessment of the landscape around us, but that didn't mean i couldn't have some fun with a hacksaw, hatchet and some blow downs I dragged out of the woods.

I lined the bed with a weed blocker and raked all the old straw bedding from the goat shelter the previous owner had left behind. 

This not only added some nice drainage but also had lots of nutrients from the 

goats had left "behind" !

As Spring continued pushing forward we mowed the lawn for the first time... but before that happened I had to make use of the first blossoms of the season.

Localrootz Dandelion Wine batch one !

I like getting a bit creative when Im cooking up some concoctions in the kitchen.

Lots of adjuncts were added to the carboy including some fresh squeezed citrus, ginger and dried chamomile. 

In fact I should probably go rack that sooner than later now that Im looking back at when it was put into the carboy.

So as I was saying to the wife, Im not planning on growing anything this year.

Beep, beep, beep goes the dumptruck with 10yds of dank organic compost !

After a nice dinner with my favorite local farmer friend I didn't think 10yds would go very far but our math seemed a little off after filling the raised bed, I quickly realized I needed to make more.

Lots of compost to move, got a wheelbarrow though !

A couple hard working weekends and I found a few bales of straw in the woods leftover from the goats to make one of the beds an easy build.

A late planting but we eventually started getting things planted by the second week of June.

All this work was done under the watchful eye of a feisty woodpecker family.

Called it good at three for a start but have since built another one that will house the garlic for my fall planting. Still have a good amount of compost as you can see in the pile tarped off in the driveway.

Flowers are starting to bloom and the landscape is coming alive all across our homestead.

Integrating a nice little grouping of herbs in with the perennial flower bed from the previous owners who built our house.

Soaking up the sun... now we need a fence before that deer herd finds our bounty !

Shed is cleaned up and tools are organized and are slowly being acquired.

After seeing a bounty of fungus and mosses all around our land and beyond in the miles of woods that abuts our homestead... Im finding myself in need of some foraging resources.

But I know for sure these are chanterelles and boy were they delicious !

Amanita Muscaria

Fence is built ! I used a temporary t-post design to ward off the deer but plan on a more permanent cedar post fence once we come up with a solid plan of where the future livestock will be located and more raised beds will be built. 

Trying to do everything as inexpensive as possible so made a gate that seems to be working just fine !

Summer is now in full swing as you can see from this sunflower !

Things have also gotten a bit out of control and Im seriously considering a greenhouse for next year to separate the tomatoes as they have gotten a bit out of hand even pruning them once a week or so !

The cages proved to not do a whole lot once they got 6 feet tall and a good thunderstorm gave them quite the lean and pulled the cages with them.

Definitely the best cabbages we have grown to date.

Eggplant, cukes, chard and peppers are doing very well in this bed as well !

Some of the summers bounty so far... finally after weeks of just picking what we needed for dinner we had to just pull a BIG harvest and stock the fridge.

Such perfect produce ! So excited that the season has gone so well considering the late planting.

Stashing some fresh greens into some freezer bags for some summer memories when the cold weather comes back.

Gonna do some cellar stocking soon and hope to start posting projects more frequently as to not have an epic post like this once every six months... 

Stay tuned for more from the Localrootz Homestead.