The White Family Homesteaders

We've been enjoying our delicious rewards from our garden.  It's hard to explain the feeling you get when you feed your family food you've grown.  To know we started all of our plants from seed and have taken care of them and they've grown into these beautiful plants and are now providing us with food makes me a bit speechless.  It's pretty awesome to provide our lil farmer boy with food we've grown and he's having a blast helping us.  Going out every day to the garden and finding a new surprise, whether it's finding something new producing or just seeing lil man get so excited about it warms my heart so much. The other night I prepared dinner from a Rachael Ray recipe I've been using and adjusted it by adding more veggies.  Our broccoli was ready and used some our endless supply of zucchini, it was pretty delicious, the boys devoured it.  To use up more of the pile of zucchini we have I spent the day with my sis baking zucchini bread.  We needed s...

We are extremely happy with how the garden is doing. Plants are producing vegetables, flowers are blooming and we have a big grin on our face.  Our peas are producing a lot and so are the zucchini plants.  Little farmer boy is in love with the peas and picks at least two every time we go to the garden to nibble on.  One of the many sunflowers in the garden, I'm in love with them. The zucchini row growing steady. Our goal this summer is to can more of our fortunes from our garden along with some delicious pickens from local farms.  Last summer we canned some peach jam and we wanted to try strawberry jam this year.  We found a recipe from Certo and picked up some strawberries and had a day of canning jam.  Luckily we did it on a day that wasn't in the 90s, cause boy was our kitchen hot.  There were a few incidents of burning our   finger tips but nothing too serious. Our other challenge was our two year old wanting our attention and ...

I'm trying to catch up on here, we've been so busy lately.  We get going on the homestead with chores for days then we have to go back to the real world of our actual paying jobs and then next thing I know it's a new week.  Last week we did some much needed maintenance on the homestead of trimming up some trees. That was an all week project with a little work on the garden. We have at least a handful of trees that are in need of some desperate trimming. We got to two of them and the process is still continuing. We still need to take what we trimmed off to a local tree limb drop off site. It's amazing how much better and happier the trees look.  Besides trimming them up for landscaping reasons we also did it to discourage the deer from hanging out under them. We don't want them getting comfortable on our property close to our garden. The first tree was pretty simple of just cutting limbs down. The second tree was more challenging, it didn't want to let go...

Wow our weekend went by fast for us but we managed to get most of the things on our "to do" list done. I'm starting to lose it...I can't recall what we did on Tuesday. So I guess onto the rest of the week.  I picked up a new skill this week that I'm stoked about. I learned how to engage the PTO on the tractor so now I can mow the pasture. It takes some caressing here and there of Colonel Mustard (our tractor)  to get the brush hog going but I believe we've figured it out now. It took a few hours one day and an hour or so the next to get most of it mowed, I still have one patch to do but I'm pretty proud of myself. While I did that the hubby was on wood cutting duty.           My view on Colonel Mustard.  We had his mom come over and watch the kiddo since we had to do some chores that took focus. But of course since we had a plan of divide and conquer something had to go wrong. This time it was the chainsaws...darn things didn't want to work. ...

This last Friday I was home relaxing on our front deck drinking wine. Wine has of late became my drink of choice here at the homestead thanks in large to my generous wino friend John. He gives me cases of wine that he grows tired of and being that it's free and quite tasty I have indulged in it quite frequently lately. Any how I had just swallowed the last sip of the bottle I decided to kill all by my lonesome when my dog Tuff let out a wicked growl followed by some genuinely concerned barking. It had just become dark enough to force me to look for a flash light so in my drunken panic I grab a tiny key chain flash light, my pistol and an Axe handle just in case whatever it is needs a good beating. Finally I waddled my dumb drunken stumbling ass down the hill to find Tuff all up in the backside of a good size skunk. One thing about our boxer is he is fearless when it comes to defending what he thinks needs defended. This particular time he was exceptionally tenacious and would not b...

We are getting so close to having the garden all done and planted.  I love gardening but I want to move on to other chores.  Hopefully just one more week of transplanting and the garden will be in.  The cantaloupe seeds I saved and planted have popped out of the ground. I wasn't sure about them but so far it's a success which makes me smile.  The cantaloupe sprouts saying hello. The peas are growing fast, so we put up some T-posts and fencing for a trellis for them to climb up.  The T-posts we already had and the fencing we acquired from family that didn't want it anymore.  I took video to show how we wrapped the fencing onto the posts and I'll be posting that on our you tube channel.  The drip system is all laid out and in place for the most part.  There was an unexpected chore that came up this week. The trellis for the peas.  I was minding my own business doing the dishes the other morning when I realized our water pressure had dwindled...

I hate poison oak I get that stuff about once a month during the summer. Not bad break outs but itchy little rashes. Our Lil man here is at the age where he is walking about our property by himself.  So I decided to do battle with the Grove of poison oak in our back 40. Armed with an Axe a hand saw and a hand powered brush/weed cutter I ventured out. Everything was going well until I cut a thick trunked bush out, that vindictive sucker fell right on top of my head. Well needless to say I freaked out I ran in circles throwing clothes off in a frenzied panic. Then I realized my beautiful homestead wife locked the back door to keep Lil man in the house while I was in the heat of battle. So there I am standing in my chonies in the garage, door locked poison oak seeping into my pores. Luckily my beautiful homestead wife must have heard my panicked frenzy and came to see what was happening. Long story long I washed in dawn soap and only have a little rash behind my right ear.