We follow a homestead in Washington State and she had a pasta making class this month. Two of my girlfriends and I watched the class and we were inspired! We had a girls night and made four different kinds of homemade pasta. It was so fun and easy!
Tortellini and ravioli made with goat cheese and basil
The lady who buys bread from me was unavailable last week so we tried a different bread recipe. I used Einkorn and soft white wheat berries and it turned out so delicious. It uses yeast instead of sourdough but I was excited to work on perfecting a new recipe!
I really love mason jars; they serve so many purposes. I use them for canning, organization and storing things from laundry detergent to yogurt. Here are some pictures of different ways I use mason jars.
Homemade applesauceYou can’t see it very well, but we use them as drinking glassesFresh milk organizationMJ labeled all my milk jars for me!Top shelf: pickle juice, water Kefir grains, elderberry syrup 2nd shelf: bone broth, milk and yogurt 3rd shelf: Kombucha, water Kefir, OJ, milk and whey
A few other things I organized/prepped recently: washcloths and cheese. A friend had given us old towels when Reba had her kids. We decided to use the small hand towels for milking. The first few weeks I realized the hand towel was too big for wiping her teats and I was doing quite a bit of laundry. I cut the towels into washcloths and my mother-in-law is going to sew the edges for me. I order our cheese in bulk. It comes in large logs and I slice it and vacuum seal the cheese for the freezer.
The elderberries are at the end of their blooming season and the flowers are turning into berries. I was low on elderberry syrup so I pulled out my frozen elderberries from last year to make syrup. It’s one of my favorite things to make because it makes the house smell so amazing. I don’t like to waste anything so I saw an idea for the berry mush that is leftover after making the syrup; I scooped the mash into individual tea bags. When I make Kombucha, I will put one tea bag for each gallon of tea and give the Kombucha some extra immune boosting power. Bone broth, water Kefir and Kombucha are also immune boosting things I make consistently. Bone broth is made whenever I have a carcass or extra bones (typically weekly), and water Kefir and Kombucha are made when the supply is low. I’m hoping to harvest some elder flowers in the next few days to make a cordial. We are still using the Bidens Alba tincture from last year and I have a Fire Cider concoction that should be ready soon; it’s been sitting for about five weeks.
Water Kefir, first fermentWater Kefir, second fermentBone brothElderberry syrup
During the week, Adam and I discuss what is on our list of tasks to accomplish for the weekend. It is always good to have a plan but things don’t normally work out how we planned them. For example: a few weekends ago we wanted to finish some fencing. The week prior it had rained for four days, which we were so thankful for the rain. On Saturday (it was actually my birthday), both of the hives had fallen over. We think the ground was so wet that the cinder blocks sunk into the ground. The hives were top heavy because they are full of honey, and they toppled over backwards. The rest of the day was spent fixing the hives and harvesting some of the honey. Needless to say the bees were very angry and it took hours for Adam and Graham to get the hives set up again. Adam was stung 12 times so by the end of the day he was exhausted not just from the labor but also from all the benadryl. The boys were each stung once as well.
The hives back in placeWe didn’t get a picture of all the hives knocked over but you can see in the background the super on the groundBeeswax to be renderedIt’s so beautiful!This is just a small portion of the honey we will harvest this yearRendering beeswaxThe chickens enjoyed the dead bees and larvae after it was renderedI didn’t take a picture of the circle of beeswax but we saved the honey water that was leftWe put the honey water through a sieve and we have 4 of this sized pitcher. We have been giving the honey water to the animals in small portions.
We finally did get around to fixing fences the following weekend. And wouldn’t you know as we were fixing one fence, we found another area that was damaged from a large limb. It’s the never ending task list! While Adam worked on the fence, the kids and mulched limbs and brush from the half acre. In the middle of that, the mulcher stopped working so we had a bonfire instead. Just add fixing the mulcher to the list!
This kid is such a hard worker. And he is stronger than me!Our sweet girlThe limb we found on the fenceThe come-along is one of our most used tools!
As with most Americans, we are watching food prices soar at the grocery store. While we don’t go to the store often (maybe once a month), our kids do eat quite a bit of snacks. They are outside most of the day either working, climbing, riding bikes etc and they eat several snacks a day. We sat down as a family and talked about grocery store prices and how we can challenge ourselves to make our own snacks. The kids learned how to make energy bites in Spanish class recently and they already know how to make muffins. We also made homemade cheez-its; it was easy but time consuming and the kids now cherish each bite of snack because they are the ones making them! When they run out of energy bites or popsicles, they have to make more. It has taken a task off of my plate and made them more conscious of what they are eating it and how much work goes into making it.
We don’t spend time away from the homestead often but sometimes we just need a break. At the beginning of June, on my birthday, was the day the beehives fell over. We had planned to have a date night that evening but Adam was very drowsy from Benadryl by 4pm. The three younger kids still went to stay the night at my in-laws but Kathryn wanted to stay home with us. That evening I had this craving to go kayaking. I texted a friend to see if we could borrow her double kayak and we made plans for the following day. Conveniently, this friend also has a “river camp” near their house so they offered to help transport us as well. We woke up and fed the animals and strapped our kayak to the Subaru along with snacks, drinks etc. We drove to our friends’ house to help load the other kayak and we left our car at their river camp. They drove us back towards our house and we dropped-in on Yellow River near our house. We knew it would be about a three hour trip but we have never kayaked down Yellow River so we didn’t really know what to expect. The river was high because of all the rain we have had and the first two hours were very laid back and relaxing. We didn’t have to paddle much because the current was quite strong. Kathryn, Adam and I talked a little but mostly we just enjoyed the quiet of nature; the lapping of the water against the kayaks, the birds chirping, the fish jumping. It was just what we needed. We stopped for a snack and to stretch and headed out again. We knew it was supposed to rain later in the day but according to the forecast, we had plenty of time. About 45 minutes from the river camp, the sky became very dark and it began to thunder. We paddled hard at that point not really knowing how far we had to go and if there would be a place to pull off. The thunder and lightning continued for the rest of our trip (and we were paddling hard) and as soon as we pulled on to the boat ramp, the rain came down hard. The cloudy weather ended up being a blessing because we didn’t get on the river until 9:30 and about 11, the heat was becoming unbearable. We had a lovely time and I’m pretty sure we have convinced the kids to forego birthday gifts this year so we can save up for kayaks for the family. We live so close to the river and we all enjoy being in nature and on the water, it would be a great way to have a much needed break and to spend time together away from the homestead.
June has been busy with food preservation. Because we homestead on less than an acre, we harvest daily. While we do eat out of the garden every day, we need to preserve a lot of what we harvest for winter. Squash and cucumbers don’t sit well for very long. We have been busy dehydrating squash, canning pickles, shelling peas and making sure that nothing goes to waste. In addition to making cucumbers and dehydrating the squash, we are also eating squash daily and we each have at least one cucumber a day.
My in-laws also have a bountiful garden so we have been receiving okra, peas and corn from them as well.
Last Monday was Memorial Day and we had many things to catch up on after 4 days of rain. Fences needed mending, new garden beds needed to be planted, chicks needed sunshine, dogs needed to be trained and so on. Our week began in catch-up mode and we continued with that for the remainder of the week. The beauty of homeschooling is every day is a school day and we are teaching life skills, not just the core “subjects.” (honestly, “core subjects” are not the focus of our school day, but that is a post for a different day). Kathryn and Graham are learning the metric system in math so we thought to learn in it a more practical way this week: in the kitchen.
Squash gets eaten at every meal in the summer and Monday began with a truly homegrown meal: scrambled eggs with squash and goat milk served with homegrown sausage. Later in the day we made our first small batch of pickles and then on Wednesday and Thursday we spent all day in the kitchen. Wednesday we bottled water Kefir and Kombucha and we made: granola, smoothie for popsicles, energy bites and blueberry scones. Thursday we dehydrated squash for winter, canned pickles, finished baking bread and made blueberry muffins.
scrambled eggs with squash and goat milksausage we made from a pig we butchered with friendsblack bean salad with squshenergy bitesI’m so thankful they make these themselvesblueberry sconesgrape juice was added to water KefirBlueberry mint Kombuchawater Kefirflaking oats for granolanatural peanut butter is so much easier to work with when heated with honeychopping pecans for granolaThe house smelled so good!Graham milling flourMore eggs with squash and goat milk served with smoothiedehydrating squashwe ran out of flour for the muffins so we pulled out the small millmy new bench scraperThis book is so beautiful and all the recipes use metric measurementspickles and dehydrated squashbread dayblueberry muffins
We have been growing cucumbers for many years but most of the time, we eat them as soon as they are harvested each day. When I say “we,” I really mean the kids. Adam decided to grow more cucumbers this year so we could make pickles. Dill pickles is one of the kids’ favorite snacks. When you have a smaller homestead like us, our daily harvest is quite small. It is plenty for us but most pickle recipe calls for a large amount. Cucumbers get soft quick and we want crunchy pickles. Adam found a small-batch pickle recipe and it has been perfect for the amount we harvest. He taught Zeb and Madelynn how to can the small batch pickles the first time and I was in awe that Madelynn had the recipe memorized for our second time. Hopefully we can make 2 batches a week during summer and we can enjoy dill pickles all winter.
I, Kathryn, decided to make a flower garden. Daddy (in the picture above) tilled up the garden bed and then we planted some lantana. The next day Grandmommy (Linda Tuggle) came over with some plants; we had lily and amaryllis and pansies and some other flowers. I can’t remember their names. Here are some pictures.
me getting rabbit poop for the gardenwhat good soilObi, the gardenerplanting
This is the personal journal of Debo Bryson and is an experiment in being human, living for Jesus and loving others. I love my sweet Leah, and two kids. I'm addicted to great coffee, burgers and Jeep Grand Wagoneers.
Growing Milligan Hill 