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Whole-Fed Homestead

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You are here: Home / History / The Homestead Monthly: July 2015

The Homestead Monthly: July 2015

August 7, 2015 by crystal@wholefedhomestead Leave a Comment

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What a Difference a Month Makes!

The garden is in full swing- we’ve been eating kale, lettuce, summer squash, and peppers for weeks! The tomato plants are heavy with green tomatoes that should be starting to turn color any day now. And just yesterday I spotted a tiny little broccoli crown forming- which is late… but I’m just glad they decided to show up at all.

Garden end of june Garden Aug

We harvested our first hill of potatoes for dinner the other night, and I’ve starting picking carrots for fresh eating. We have the most incredible carrot variety this year- they are such a deep purple they are almost black (read: loaded with good vitamins) and they are supposed to be a good keeper.

And it hasn’t been without a challenge- we’ve been battling cabbage moths, blight, aphids, and now just this week the squash bugs showed up. I think we’re mostly winning though.

We also have herbs planted all around the homestead (I like to work them into the landscaping where I can) and we have a good amount of mint right now, which prompted me to make these Chocolate-Dipped Mint Leaves!

Berry Harvesting
Last year was a bad year for berries in our area, so we didn’t get to preserve many. This year we had a tremendous berry season. Our patches are not yet established, so we visit some local pick-your-own farms for our supply. We picked about 20 quarts of strawberries and 70 pounds of blueberries. Mom and dad helped pick too!

Dad picking blueberries

We’re not big jam and jelly people, so freezing is our preferred method of preservation. And we dehydrated some too! For instructions, and more ideas on how to preserve blueberries, check out: The Complete Guide to Preserving and Using Preserved Blueberries

The Lone Turkey
I know some farmer’s and homesteaders are a little more hard-hearted than we are (I can understand why). We’ve had a turkey living in our bathroom for over two months now. And he’s really no trouble- in fact, he’s as sweet as can be and very quiet. But he smells. No matter how well and how often I clean his cage, he smells. And it’s getting worse. The problem is, he’s attached to us, and I knew this would happen, but we really didn’t have a choice. He was the only one that hatched, and needed our protection and company until he was big enough to hang with the chickens.

Turkey 2 months

That time is starting to happen. We’ve been carrying him out to the the chicken yard every morning and putting him in a fenced off portion of the chicken run. He is safe but can interact with the rest of the flock. Then in the evening we bring him inside to sleep in the house. I suspect the roosters would go after him if we let him run free with the chickens.

I see the light at the end of the tunnel though! Hopefully in another couple weeks he will be big enough to hold his own. And I’ll have my bathroom back. No more barnyard smell and random meal worms on the floor.

Knock on Wood, We Might Have a Honey Harvest
Last year was our first year keeping bees, and it was a rough one. We didn’t take a drop of honey, not even one taste. Heck, one hive didn’t even make enough for themselves to get through the winter. We began wondering if bees even really made honey…

Side Note: In this photo, what happened was a chunk of honeycomb broke open, allowing honey to drip down the frame. The bees immediately rushed over to it and started sucking it up. See them in a line down the frame? Every drop is precious.

Honey comb dripping

Well this year has been different. We have two hives brimming with bees, and one overflowing with honey. Anything can still happen of course, but from the looks of it now, we hope to harvest enough for our needs for the year, and then some! It’s so much more exciting to be a beekeeper when the prospect of harvesting honey is actually on the table!

Now that we’ve had chickens and honey bees for over a year,  I wrote about the ins and outs of Raising Chickens & Honey Bees Together!

 

Enjoy reading about what’s happening on our Homestead?
—> June Homestead Monthly
—> May Homestead Monthly
—> April Homestead Monthly

—> February/March Homestead Monthly
—> December/January Homestead Monthly
—> October/November Homestead Monthly
—> September’s Homestead Monthly

—> August’s Homestead Monthly

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click through them and end up purchasing an item (any item, not necessarily the one I recommended even!)  I may receive monetary or other compensation. The price you pay is unaffected by using this link, and buying stuff you were going to get anyways through an affiliate link is a great way to support your favorite blogger and fellow homesteader! Thanks!

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🥔🎉 I haven’t finalized this year’s potat 🥔🎉 I haven’t finalized this year’s potato list quite yet. If you have an absolute favorite variety, I’d love to hear it! Here’s what I have so far:
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German Butterball: this is our favorite potato! A must-grow for sure. It’s an all-purpose variety, and it’s a gorgeous grass-fed butter yellow inside.
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Papa Cacho: the most amazing red fingerlings, digging these looks like pulling red bananas out of the dirt because they’re nearly a foot long! They are so fun!! Delicious too and gorgeous rosy color inside (pictured above).
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Upstate Abundance: this is a new variety for me from Row 7, who specialize in good-tasting varieties. It’s also supposed to be high-yielding and fairly disease-resistant.
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Norkotah & Burbank Russets: we’ve been growing both of these for years. I was hoping a winner would emerge and I’d just grow one of these types, but so far that hasn’t happened so I keep planting them both! They are good but I’d love a russet type that blows me away.
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What say you- what are your must-grow potatoes?!
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#potatoesarelife #homemade #homegrown #fromscratch #spuds #homesteaders #homesteading #homesteadlife #organicgarden
Thanks for all your enthusiasm yesterday for the k Thanks for all your enthusiasm yesterday for the kick-off of the grow along, and thanks for following along!
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We put together this little video, and I’m really lucky to call these fun, creative, and kind gardeners my friends!
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In Order of Appearance:
@barbebeaty -5b
@honeyblumfarms -7a
@bailey_vantassel -10b
@azurefarm -7b
@dawncosgrove -3
@smarterbynature -8b
@dolledupandmuddy -6b
@hostilevalleyliving -5a
@wildoakfarms -6b
@ajwildwayfarm -5b
@mountainwoodsfarm -5b
@shesrootedhome -8b
@soulgardener74 -9b
@wholefedhomestead -4
@fowlcreekfarm -6a
@tanglewoodhollow -5b
@mybackyardtxgarden -8b
@axeandroothomestead -7
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#homegrown #fromscratch #homesteaders #homesteading #homesteadlife #organicgarden #zone4 #gardening
🧅🎉 I “winter-sowed” some more onion seed 🧅🎉 I “winter-sowed” some more onion seeds today (and showed the whole *very easy* process in my stories!). This is a fantastic technique if you don’t have a grow light set up or don’t want to babysit any seedlings! Mother Nature does most of the work.
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On that note, today is the start of The Great Grow Along!! A whole bunch of us gardeners are getting together to share real-time updates from our gardens every week on Wednesdays —> find us all here @thegreatgrowalong and thanks to our sponsors, @tractorsupply and @gurneysseed.
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#gardening #organicgarden #homegrown #wintersowing #homesteaders #homesteading #homesteadlife #wintergardening
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