What are your favorite things about homesteading?

These are a few of my favorite things!

As we move into the middle of summer and head into fall, I'm reminded of so many of the things I love about homesteading (urban, suburban or rural, it doesn't really matter, now does it?).

I spend the long, summer days working in the garden with my son, watering and harvesting food for my family. I spend the evenings knitting or sewing blankets and quilts or working on the next project to keep my family warm when the weather cools. I spend the weekends baking or cooking from foods, fresh out of the garden or preserved in the pantry. And, finally, I get to share my experiences with the community of friends I have online. That's you people!

As such, I wanted to find out what parts of homesteading you like the most. I know it's hard to choose, so I made this a multiple select poll. Try to keep it to your Top 5, if you can:

survey service

If you could only pick just one thing, what would it be?

Top 10 Homestead Goals for 2012

Erica over at Northwest Edible Life is running a giveaway of The Urban Farm Handbook and, as part of the giveaway, she's asking what the entrant's Big Urban Homesteading goal is for 2012.

Well, since I already have the book and I have a lot of goals, I decided I wanted to share them in a post. I also wanted to find out what your homesteading goals are for this year, urban or otherwise.

Here are mine (in no particular order):

Top 10 Homestead Goals for 2012

1. Double the number of chickens we have (we are getting 3 more chicks in March)
2. Go in on a pig share (done this past weekend - post to follow)
3. Add one more raised bed in the backyard (work in progress)
4. Get front yard re-landscaped to remove grass and put in edibles (March/April 2012)
5. Get started with meat rabbits (May 2012)
6. Buy some pasture land in Eastern WA (working on convincing the hubs on this one :)
7. More canning - tomato sauce and pickles, relish and, of course, jam
8. Join the Honey CSA from Urban Bee Company since we won't be hosting a hive
9. Get into goat cheese making (working with a local source)
10. Learn how to dispatch rabbits and chickens (hooking up with The Urban Farm Handbook authors Annette, for rabbits, and Joshua, for chickens)

So, what are your homesteading goals for 2012?

Pig pic from the wonderful Conyac Brothers' Farmstead in Marysville, WA.

Pin It

This post is part of this week's Homestead Barn Hop.

Top 5 easy homemade cheeses

Making your own cheese always seems to be an extremely daunting undertaking and it can be, especially if you are trying to make hard cheeses. But there are a number of soft cheeses that are quite easy to make at home.

The issue with most cheese making recipes is that they require a bunch of difficult to find ingredients. And, if you are lazy or last minute like I am, tracking down cheese salt, cultures and rennets and whatnot just isn't going to happen.

1. Mascarpone: This Italian cheese (shown at right) is very expensive to buy in the store (if you can find it) but very easy to make yourself. All you need is heavy whipping cream and lemon juice.

2. Ricotta: This one is, hands-down, substantially better homemade than anything you will find in the store. Especially if you go for whole milk (which I recommend). Just add a little heavy cream and lemon juice (or white vinegar) and you're good to go!

3. Cream Cheese: This one is idiot proof. All you need to make your own cream cheese is yogurt!

4. Sour Cream: Okay, this one isn't exactly a cheese, but I couldn't not include it because it's so bloody easy to make. All you need is heavy cream and sour cream or buttermilk.

5. Paneer: This Indian cheese is fantastic even if you don't use it in a traditional Indian dish. Unlike some Indian recipes this one only requires foods you already have in your kitchen: milk and lemon juice.

This post is part of this week's Homestead Barn Hop and Simple Lives Thursday

Post Harvest Blues

The tomato plants have been pulled. The last of the zucchinis are safely stowed in the freezer. And, the rest of summer's bounty is but a memory. Sure, the ground is being prepared for garlic and fava beans and the hoop houses are still working their magic on the chard, lettuce and carrots but, for the most part, the main season is over.

For those of you who use gardening as therapy, working the soil, tending your plants and enjoying the sunshine when times get tough, post harvest blues can set in.

I, personally, switch gears to baking, sewing, knitting and other projects that make me feel like I'm still producing something. But that doesn't mean I still don't gaze longingly to the backyard, plotting next year's crops and looking forward to another year of fresh fruits and vegetables from just outside.

So, what do you do between the last of the crops and when the seed catalogs start arriving in January, reigniting dreams of another year of voluptuousness in the garden? Do you immediately start planning or put everything aside?

Olive Oil Lamp for Emergencies

If you live in an area that frequently experiences power outages due to hurricanes, high winds and other storms, one of the things you want to have on hand during storm season is backup lighting. Candles are a sure bet, but they don’t put out much light and — if you want to choose options made from renewable, organic materials — beeswax and soy candles can get mighty expensive.

There are hand-crank and battery-powered lanterns, but what if you don’t already have one on hand when a power outage strikes? The same problem exists if you’re looking for a kerosene or other oil-style lamp. So, what do you do during an emergency for light? How about something that is easy to acquire, inexpensive and gentle on the environment?

The answer is you can make your own olive oil lamp. You don’t need much in the way of equipment and if you don’t have olive oil, you can replace it with other types of cooking oil — or any kind of liquid fat or grease in a pinch. However, I must warn you that while olive is a 99 percent pure renewable fuel that won’t produce smoke or odor, I can’t vouch for canola or corn oil as being smoke-free or that it won’t make the house smell like burnt popcorn.

Making your lamp is relatively easy, and most likely you will have many of the materials on hand already. Here’s what you’ll need:

• A wide-mouthed glass jar (a quart-size wide-mouthed canning jar works really well)
• A short length of flexible steel wire (1 1/2 or 2 times the height of the jar)
• A wick
• Olive oil

Putting Together the Lamp
1. Form one end of the steel wire into a long hook, about the same height as the jar. This hook holds the wire on the jar and doubles as a handle to pull the wick up for lighting.

2. Take the other end of the wire and wrap it into a coil, creating a wick stand about an inch or two tall that sits on the bottom of the jar.

3. Pinch the top of the metal coil onto about 2 inches in length of wick so that about a quarter inch or less of the wick is sticking up above the wire coil. Any longer and the wick will smoke. The other end of the wick will be soaking in the olive oil.

4. Add enough olive oil to your jar so that the level is just under where the wick is pinched by the wire. Any higher and you risk putting out the lamp with the oil.

How the Lamp Works
The olive oil is drawn up the wick where it vaporizes and gets burned by the flame. A few ounces of oil will burn for several hours, so if you are concerned about the cost, it is much cheaper than most candles. If you can find lampante oil (olive oil not suitable for eating, but for burning), you can save money by buying that instead of culinary olive oil.

Want to get fancy with your olive oil lamp? You can infuse your olive oil with herbs, spices or essential oils for a more scented experience.

Olive oil lamps have been used for thousands of years and people have relied on oil lamps in general up until the last few generations. They are reliable, plus they burn bright and long. The benefit of olive oil is that if the lamp gets knocked over, it stops burning because it has a high flash point, meaning that it’s not a very flammable material. As a result, an olive oil lamp is far safer than a candle or kerosene lantern. If you are having problems with it smoking when you blow it out, use wet fingers to put out the flame, or just douse it with the oil in the jar.

Notes on Materials
One of the benefits of using a canning jar is that, when the oil lamp is not in use, you can put a canning lid on top for storage. A wide-mouthed pint jar will also work well, you just need to adjust the size of the wick holder.

For your wick, you can use 100 percent cotton string or twine and salt it to ensure that it burns long. To salt your wick, take your cotton twine, put it in a bowl with a little water and then cover with table salt. Squeeze it dry and let it dry overnight, or until it is no longer damp.

If you need or want your lamp to emit more light, try using a braided, flat wick (a half inch or narrower), adjusting the way the wire supports this kind of wick by crimping it to accommodate the extra girth. You can buy flat wicks from stores that carry supplies for oil lamps (such as Lehman’s). Or, you can cut up an old 100 percent cotton tea towel into strips and use that instead.

Commercial Products
If this all seems a bit too complicated to manufacture on your own and you would rather buy an olive oil lamp, you’ll find old fashioned oil lamps online from Lehman’s. Be sure to check out the book I Didn’t Know That Olive Oil Would Burn! while you are at it.

Homesteading skills to learn in 2011

Every year I like to ask what kind of new skills people are wanting to learn either to be more self-sufficient or to finally pick up that hobby they've been wanting to try.

Last year we didn't do as much canning and food gardening as we usually do, but we did get chickens! This year I'm looking into getting rabbits for fiber production and spinning, starting up a chicken poop composter (more on that later) and maybe I'll dust off that solar cooker.

Which of the following skills do you wish you knew more about or would like to learn?

• Food gardening and food storage (canning, dehydrating, pickling, fermentation, etc.)
  
• Seed saving and/or fruit tree grafting
  
• Foraging for wild foods, mushrooms, etc.
  
• Composting
  
  
• Animal husbandry (rabbits, chickens, goats or larger)
  
• Beekeeping
  
• Animal skinning, processing
  
• Sheep or other animal shearing
  
• Spinning wool
  
• Knitting
  
• Sewing
  
  
• Cooking, baking
  
• Making own cheese and/or yogurt
  
• Making beer and/or wine
  
• Solar cooking
  
  
• Alternative medicine and/or first aid
  
• Making soap (cold process from oils and lye)
  
• Making candles
  
  
• Carpentry
  
• Plumbing or electrical
  
• Bike maintenance and repair
  
• Appliance repair
  

What is the biggest thing preventing you from learning to do these things? Time, money? What would make it easier?

Related books:
The Backyard Beekeeper: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden
The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!
Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills
City Chicks: Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-reyclers, and Local Food Producers
How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time
Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Delicious Cheeses
The Soapmaker's Companion: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes, Techniques & Know-How
My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method
Homegrown Whole Grains: Grow, Harvest, and Cook Wheat, Barley, Oats, Rice, Corn and More

Note: There are affiliate links in this post.

Urban homesteading giveaway week!

Welcome to all my new readers! I'm happy to have you visiting my little virtual homestead on the intertubes.

To begin, I have an announcement. Last month this blog reached 2 million page views after going live almost four years ago. I can't believe that many people have stopped by (granted, many of them were looking for "goat porn") and I'm pleased to have a new crop of readers as well.

Starting tomorrow, in honor of preserving the freedom of urban homesteading, I'll be doing reviews and giveaways of a number of books and few something-somethings related to urban homesteading. (And, no, it won't be live chickens.)

Stay tuned for the fun and action!

Ladies who lunch

Here are the chickens on our urban homestead, working on some leftovers and a few dandelions. In goes food scraps. Out comes eggs.



If you just can't get enough hot, live chicken action, here's a new video for you. With some random commentary in the background. Enjoy!

Urban homesteaders: cease and desist

Talk about shooting yourself in the back...

There's a bit of hub-bub going on on Facebook right now about how the Dervaes family (of Path to Freedom fame) has successfully trademarked the terms "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading" and is forcing Facebook to shut down pages that use the term and sending legal notifications to businesses with the term "urban homesteading" in it.

I don't know where this is all going or how much of this is true, but if it is, I'm going to be seriously disappointed in the narrow-mindedness of their actions. I do hope they clarify what they are up to. I can't see how they could possibly take ownership up the concept of urban homesteading since it's a common term.

At the bottom of their website it states:

Path to Freedom, Urban Homestead, Urban Homesteading, Grow the Future, Homegrown Revolution (and trowel/fist logo) are registered® trademarks of Dervaes Institute.

I don't know about you, but this sure doesn't sound like a path to freedom to me but rather a branding of a lifestyle that doesn't belong to them. It's like trademarking "farming". Hopefully they'll clarify their position here soon.

Yeesh. Anyone know what the scoop is?

Update:
Given the response to the actions by the above mentioned institute, several grassroots groups and petitions have begun:

Petition to cancel trademarks on "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading"

Take Back Urban Homesteading Facebook page

Urban homesteading on the rise

The New York Times has an article out today talking about how urban homesteading is become much more popular:

In cities across the country, the term "homesteading" has taken on a new meaning. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it referred to settlers occupying land, cultivating it and claiming it as their own.

Today in the Bay Area and beyond, urban homesteaders like Ms. Stone and her roommates are raising their own food in their backyards, in community gardens and on derelict and undeveloped spaces in the city. They’re preserving and pickling vegetables and fruits, sewing their own clothes, baking bread, making alcoholic beverages, and much more.

As the movement has flourished and become more mainstream — embraced by activists and food lovers alike — so too have the resources for would-be urban homesteaders.

For all you urban homesteaders or wannabes out there, go check out the article.

If you live in an urban area, are you seeing more interest in urban homesteading? Are you seeing more classes and clubs available to help support that growing interest?

I will be soon working with some of the production crew of Mission: Sustainable to offer our own urban homesteading classes as well. We're still really early on in the planning stages, but for those in the area, keep your eyes peeled!

What kind of critters would you raise?

Since yesterday's post about garden favorites was pretty popular, I thought I'd do a follow-up post in the same vein.

I know we all have space and legal limitations about what kinds of animals we can keep that prevent us from raising them. Now, I'm not talking about the usual "pet" animals (dog, cat, fish, bird), but something more along the lines of a homesteading critter.

So, today's question for you is kind of a multi-part one. What kind of critters would you raise (do you raise) if you could?

1. Do you already raise animals? If so, which ones and why (companion, meat, fur, fiber, milk, etc.)?

2. If you had the time/space/ability, which animals would you raise and why?

I would love to have some chickens and honeybees in my urban environment. If I had more space (lived out of the city), I would consider waterfowl (ducks) and turkeys as well as pygmy goats, rabbits and those childhood fantasy horses.

I still can't believe my parents wouldn't let me keep a horse in our suburban backyard! What were they thinking? There was plenty of space :) Needless to say, I was totally obsessed at the time and it seemed like such an injustice.

Making goat butter

With hobby and backyard goat keeping on the rise, I was wondering this morning whether or not you could easily make goat butter with goat milk. Nigerian dwarf goats can deliver up to two quarts of milk a day, so what better use of all that milk (besides making cheese, of course), but to try to make goat butter?

Well, it turns out that goat butter, although different in taste from cow's milk based butter, is totally possible for someone who raises goats. The butter produced is perfectly white (since there is a lower amount of Vitamin A in goat's milk versus cow's) and has a lower melting point given the higher percentage of unsaturated fatty acids.

How does making goat butter differ from making butter from cow's milk? Well, really, all you need differently is a cream separator for larger volumes and, if you don't want to spring the money for this expensive piece of equipment, you can read about how to separate it manually here. If you don't have enough cream initially to make butter, just freeze what you do get off, cream-wise, until you have enough. One quart of cream makes a pound of butter.

So, once you have enough cream stored up, head on over here for instructions on how to turn it into butter - the method is the same. The resulting butter is (from what I've read) creamy, mild, and not "goaty" tasting. Store your butter in the fridge or, for the long-term, freeze it for up to six months.

I'm not sure how possible it is if you are relying on homogenized goats milk from the store, since it would be too difficult to separate the cream, but if you want to try and report back, by all means, go for it!

Any of you out there ever made goat butter?