You Might Be A Homesteader If....

You might be a homesteader if...

You've ever put on a jacket and found eggs in your pockets.

You know how many cubic feet are in a cord of wood.

You've ever picked feathers out of your chicken soup.

You've ever taken a bite of something and said, "Is that a bone or a bullet?"

You've ever laughed so hard that you were asked to leave the John Deere store at the mall.

You've ever had chicks in your bathroom (the feathered kind).

The muck on your muck boots is really muck.


You have ever gutted something and then eaten a bowl of chili.

You can identify the plants in your yard, and know at least three uses for each.

You know the difference between straw and hay.

You know that "free range" actually means "chicken poop on the porch".

You know how to pronounce "scythe" (hint: the c is silent).

You've ever given mouth to mouth to a duckling.

You've ever been stalked by a duck.  (Our drake follows Little Sis everywhere, even hiding behind things to stare at her. Weird.)


Got any more??

What I want to be when I grow up...

Little Sis picked this up at the library:  Swamp People

I'm only a couple of episodes into the first season, but I have decided that I will hunt gators at least once before I die.

I'm lovin' that accent, too.  Thick as molasses and twice as sweet.

Any of you actually live in the Louisiana Bayou/swamp/wetlands/gator hunting country?  Tell me what it's like!!

Slow Food

A friend of mine asked, after my A Day In The Life post, how many meals I cook per day, and when I find time. I told her she probably didn't really want to know; around here, if you ask for fried chicken, someone will hand you a hatchet.

I thought it may make an interesting post, though.  She's not the first one to ask about how we eat.

We don't grow absolutely everything we eat.  I like Pop-Tarts, and I can't seem to find seeds for a Pop-Tart bush...or is that a root crop?  We do grow as much of our own food as possible, but we also try to enjoy life, and if we want the occasional take out pizza or frozen egg roll, I'm ok with that.

I used to post on a "What's for dinner?" thread on a homesteading forum.   Some people took offense when others listed things as homegrown, home canned, fresh picked, etc.  They said it sounded "uppity" and a bit like bragging, or some such nonsense.  I say if you plant it, grow eat, harvest it, raise it, pluck it, hunt it, gut it, or even just barter for it or buy it locally, then BRAG AWAY!! If you only tossed ingredients into a bread machine, it still deserves kudos, so give yourself a pat on the back.  Take pride in what you do, and don't worry about those jealous ninnies that can't do anything without a microwave and a can opener.

Anyway, I've listed our meals for the week.  My "uppity" details of how the food was harvested, etc, are for informational purposes only.  I certainly would never brag. **clears throat** I GREW THAT!! I CLEANED IT!! I COOKED IT!! WOOT!! GO ME!! I'M AWESOME!!  (oh dear, was that out loud?) *snickers*

This will also give you an idea of the way I cook.  I rarely measure things; I toss things into a pot and hope for the best, generally making stuff up as I go.  If I screw it up, the chickens happily recycle my mess into edible eggs.

Lunch is normally our big meal of the day.  We aren't breakfast people, thank goodness.  Sometimes, when it's just us girls here at dinner, we eat leftovers from lunch,  have sandwiches, or just snack on popcorn.


Sunday:
Brunch:  Homemade cinnamon rolls.

Dinner: Veggie soup and homemade rolls.  I haven't harvested the carrots and potatoes yet, so I had to go out and dig some up for the soup.  I picked some loveage, thyme and basil while I was outside.  It took a bit of scrubbing, but the root veggies were finally ready for the pot, along with some homegrown onions that had been stored in the fridge.  I added a quart of home canned tomatoes, some water, salt, and a couple of handfuls of brown rice.

Dessert:  Pear Crisp Pie.  Sort of like Apple Crumb Pie, but made with pears I picked right off our own tree. Finally.  The poor tree didn't have any last year, and only three the year before that.

Monday:
Lunch:  Leftover soup and rolls.
Dinner: Burritoes.  I was making Tuesday's Mexican Lasagna, so there was a bit of meat/pepper mix leftover.   I wanted something quick for Tuesday, so I made the Mexican Lasagna and put it in the fridge; all I had to do on Tuesday was bake it.

Tuesday:
Mexican lasagna:  Ground beef from my friend's farm, onions, fresh picked cilantro and peppers, a quart of home canned, chili-seasoned crushed tomatoes.  I cooked the beef, then stirred together with the rest of the ingredients, then layered with corn tortillas and cheese. Bake at 350 for about an hour.  This was lunch and dinner.

Wednesday:
Lunch:  Leftover mex lasagna again.  No one complains about leftovers around here, in case you were wondering.  I'm not a food nazi; if someone doesn't like what I cook, there's plenty of peanut butter for sandwiches.

Dinner:  Greek pizza tortillas.  Garlic crushed in olive oil, brushed on flour tortillas.  Tortillas are topped with basil vinegar peppers (yes, I made them), calamata olives, and onion, baked until crispy, and then topped with feta cheese.

Thursday:  Texas Italian:  Chorizo sausage, browned, then put in the crockpot with onions and lots of fresh picked green peppers.  Added one quart of home canned crushed tomatoes, plus two pints of home canned italian crushed tomatoes.  Served over Texas toast, made from leftover homemade bread, sliced into thick slabs, coated with a mixture of olive oil, butter, and fresh crushed garlic, then broiled.  Eöl calls this dish "spaghetti western".  (lunch and dinner)

Friday:
Lunch:  Leftover sauce from Thursday served over spaghetti noodles.
Dinner: Potluck.  Which means: raid the fridge for whatever you want.

Saturday:
Cheeseburgers, made from ground beef from my friend's farm. Topped with homegrown veggies and served on homemade buns.  Side dish: onion rings...from Aldi. lol   We were so stuffed from the late lunch that we really didn't eat much else that day.

Sunday:
I had a chicken soaking in salt water in the fridge overnight.  This was our old mean roo, and I knew he'd be pretty tough, so I put him in a pot for stew.  After cooking for a few hours, he was still a tough old bird.  So...into the crockpot (slow cooker).  We ended up having him for lunch on Monday.  Anyway, for Sunday, it was sandwiches.  We were working outside so I really didn't want to waste a lot of time in the kitchen.

Monday:
Lunch:  The old red roo, now tender as can be from cooking overnight in the crockpot, baked squash and greenbeans (both from the garden).

Dinner:  Leftovers.

Tuesday:
Lunch: Chicken Stew.  I fished all the bones out of the crockpot, and added some veggies, and cooked overnight.  There was still some stew leftover, so that went into the freezer to be made into pot pies.

You may read through this and think, "Well, she doesn't even cook every day!"  And you'd be right! When you  cook slow food, it really is slow. S. L. O. W.  Who has time for that every single day?  But we still want to eat something healthy, tasty, and filling every single day... preferably without my being stuck in the kitchen when the weather is nice.  What's a gal to do?  I cook big portions, and find ways to reuse those leftovers in meals the rest of the week.

There are days that I make a huge pot of something, counting on leftovers, only to have every bit eaten that first meal.  Well, I'm sure not going to complain about that!! Either it means we were very hungry, or it means I'm a pretty good cook.  Probably we were just starved. lol

One thing about homegrown food:  it's more filling.  We could eat an entire bucket of KFC in one sitting, but a single home grown chicken can make several meals.  I'm not sure why that is.  It could be that the home raised chicken had access to grass and feed every day, plenty of sunshine, fresh air, and clean water.  Basically, there's just more to the meat that way, if you know what I mean.  Compare that to chickens raised in overcrowded cages, indoors, the air full of the reek of chicken manure (boy, I can tell ya, that stuff STINKS!!), fluorescent lighting instead of sunshine...you get the idea.

I have several older hens in the freezer.  Anyone have any good chicken recipes for a slow cooker?

On the homestead

I have about a dozen posts in progress, but never seem to find time to work on them.  Maybe, with knee recovery and rainy weather, I'll get around to finishing them up.

I still don't have the garden put to bed. In fact, it was just Monday that I got the rutabagas and beets harvested, with Eöl's help.  Then it was on to potatoes.  This was not our best potato year, by a long shot.  Little Sis helped me work on digging those up, until my knee got too painful and I had to give up for the day.  Since then, it's been nothing but rain.

The hardest part of this whole knee crisis is being unable to finish up all the farmstead chores on my own.  Thankfully, harvest is pretty much over, and other than putting the garden to bed and doing that scaffolding project, I can rest my knee and concentrate on physical therapy.

You know, that is something to keep in mind, if you are considering the homesteading lifestyle:  chores go on, even if you can't.

Eöl has been working a lot of overtime, and I'd taken up a lot of the chores he normally did, in order to make life a bit easier for him.  Now the poor guy is still working overtime, and helping me as much as possible.  I feel guilty about that.

Ok, maybe the actual toughest part of this is that I have to say, "I can't."  I am not great at asking for help.  I'm even worse at admitting defeat, especially out loud.

It's probably a direct result of my stubbornness that my knee is so bad.  I just kept going, no matter how bad it hurt.  I had things that needed to be done, so I did them.  I don't give up easily.  My body, however, refuses to keep up with my spirit, so here I am, with my leg propped up and the keyboard in my lap...whining.

Oh dear gawd shoot me if I become one of those whiny women that bursts into tears at the drop of a hat...even if it's a very nice hat.

Laundry Challenge Update: It's a wash

I suppose you remember the washing machine challenge.    I was doing pretty well with that over the summer.  After all, washing and drying the laundry outside wasn't too big of a deal, especially when we were wearing summer clothes: shorts, tank tops, etc.

Now that I'm doing the laundry inside, it's another story altogether.   Fall and winter clothing are bulkier, and more difficult to wring out by hand.  Sure, I've got these awesome forearms and biceps to show for it.  But you know all that water that doesn't get wrung out of the clothes?  It has to go somewhere.  My house is now a sauna, the windows are thick with condensation, and I'm pretty sure there are some lost rainforest animals living in my potted plants.

The time it takes to do the laundry is getting ridiculous.  It's not too bad if I can manage to get it done daily, but if I skip a day, yikes.  I can end up spending three or more hours on it.  Really, with all the other stuff I hope to accomplish on my free days, laundry is sucking up way too much of my time.  I have little enough free time as is, and life is short, ya know?

There are some good points to doing the laundry by hand:  I'm using less water, the clothes are cleaner, there's absolutely zero lint in my life (the army of dustbunnies living under my bed and seeking new recruits doesn't count), and the laundry is softer than if I had used a quart of Downy.

I've looked into getting a wringer.  A good one costs almost as much as a new washing machine.  I've looked into a few other ways to wring out the laundry.  But the more I think about it, the more I think I'm ready to go the lazy route and get a new washer.

I'm not saving any electricity with hand washing; I have to run the whole house fan to help cut down on the water vapor in the air.  Oh, and there's my knee, of course.  *exasperated sigh*  Even sitting to do the laundry is painful, and sitting for a long period is misery.

So, add me to a list of whiny housewives if you like.  Revel in the schadenfreude if you must.  I see a washing machine in the near future; I'm taking my life back.

The bee's knees

Or should that read "The B****'s Knees"? lol 

Finally, I made it to the orthopedic surgeon about my knee.  I had to go early to do the paperwork.  Holy cow, that took most of my visit between the waiting room, x-rays, and waiting in the exam room, just to finish up the pile of paperwork! 

They had special forms for knee patients, full of multiple choice questions about what I can and can't do.  None of the multiple choice answers included, "It hurts like hell, but I'm doing stuff anyway."

The knee has been bugging me since spring.  I didn't think too much of it at first.  Probably just overuse, biking and working after a long winter.  Toward the end of summer, it was hurting a bit worse, but stuff still had to be done around the farmstead.  A few weeks ago, it progressed to serious pain.  When I say serious pain, I mean OMFG THAT HURTS!, which is about the point I finally broke down and went to the dr.  She referred me to the orthopedic surgeon, an appointment that had to be rescheduled twice before I finally made it there.  By this time, just doing household chores was pure agony; farmstead chores were pure hell.

The doctor was great - very thorough. He manipulated my good knee first, which left me pretty tense, knowing what was coming on the bad knee. Sure enough, I nearly fell off the table in agony when he was twisting my bad knee like a Gumby toy.

My biggest fear was that he'd recommend surgery.  Lately, though, the knee has hurt so badly that I was ready to do the surgery myself...with a spork.  Much to my relief, he said no surgery.  Instead, I get physical therapy for a few weeks.  Even better, I'm under doctor's orders to get back on my bicycle.  JOY!!!!  I've seriously missed riding.  I haven't really had time, and I've been kind of leery to get on my bike with my knee getting steadily worse.  So, now I have to make time to ride, which is kind of a nice excuse to spend an hour out cruising through the falling leaves.

I'm off my knee for a couple of days, at least as much as possible.  I feel pretty guilty about the amount of chores being handed off to Eol, and all the projects now on hold.  It really bugs me to let things go, or to ask someone to do things for me.  I'm not sure that's a bad thing, though.

Of course, if this doesn't work and the knee is still a problem on my follow up visit, we'll explore other options, like a vial of toxic, glow-in-the-dark sludge, injected into my frightened patella.  Or maybe it was just cortisone.  *shrugs*  Beats spork surgery, anyway.