NEW STRATEGIES for Growing a YEAR’S WORTH OF FOOD for a Family of 6 (part 3)

two weeks ago we planted potatoes tomatoes and a whole raised bed full of herbs last week we planted corn onions carrots and red bead and this week we're hoping to finish out the garden by planting beans popcorn sweet potatoes squash and cucumbers and a few more things that are a bit more creative than is normal for me hopefully we won't get rained out again though this video is sponsored by Thrive Market it rained quite a bit earlier it's just drizzling now we are really hoping to plant the rest of our garden today so I guess we'll see once if it's going to be possible my fridge is full of asparagus and rhubarb that really needs attention so I'm going to quickly Harvest and preserve like a really quick preserve a bunch of this asparagus and rhubarb before we get started [Music] today a lot of people have been asking about my rhubarb and how it gets so big I don't have like massive rhubarb tips like this plant right here is like 7 years old I think some of it's just going to be how established your plant is also though I mulch this you can see here I mulched it with leaves we put compost on it I really think that mulching makes everything bigger and heartier and another thing is is that when you are harvesting your rhubarb you don't want to cut the stocks off you want to pull it out [Music] we've been eating tons of asparagus and just like cooked or sauteed and my children are getting a little tired of it and they love pickles and so I was like you know what I have Dill in my raised bed I am going to try to make some pickled asparagus and see if they like [Music] it Cody is kind enough to to make breakfast while I work on getting these things preserved I'm going to start with the rhubarb since it's the biggest and get this out of the way so I have this problem with rhubarb it's so sour that I feel like it takes quite a bit of sugar to make so that it's palatable for kids and just for anyone really like pies and stuff I feel like they take a lot of sugar but one thing that we really really love rhubarb for is Jam I mix it with strawberries and that's my family's favorite Jam is strawberry rhubarb rhubarb and strawberries aren't always ready at the exact same time so I am just chopping a whole bunch of this and putting it in the [Music] freezer I have rhubarb and asparagus in my fridge too that's all needing to be used up so I'm just going to do it all at once one thing that I don't feel like I talk a ton about here in our Homestead is all of our perennials I really really love perennials they save so much time and money so you plant crowns like for asparagus and rhubarb you buy them once plant them once and then they will feed you for years to come so I feel like they're very cost effective as well as timesaving in my experience perennials are also pretty hearty and they come up on their own so you don't have to have any decision fatigue about like when to plant them things like that they're just very hearty and very simple the thing with perennials though is that you really want to get them started right away I I wish we had focused on getting perennials and things like that started immediately when we moved here because they do take a few years to get really fully established I do make breakfast usually once or twice a week and often what I make is a potato egg and cheese Skillet thing and what Michelle does she'll make potatoes like for supper sometimes or something and then I'll take them and use the leftover potatoes put in the skillet this thing is my new best friend I hate slicing potatoes Michelle is not a gadget person she doesn't like to have a lot of gadgets around but this is one that she fell for this is Michelle's Burger she has a burger every morning for [Music] breakfast we used to eat eggs and pretty much only eggs for breakfast for several years we were just like dead broke all the time couldn't afford to buy other stuff and I guess we were also just like not very creative but eggs were like very abundant because we were selling eggs and we kept all of the cracked eggs for ourselves and we had so many so we kept using up eggs and our kids finally got very tired of them so can't really just serve up straight up eggs anymore for breakfast but this is one way with a Cheesy egg potato Skillet that the kids will eat the eggs and we've got plenty of potatoes and the root seller so works out really good one way that we have found to save money on our grocery bill is Thrive Market Thrive Market is an online membership based grocery store and their mission is to try to make healthy living affordable for everybody and there's guaranteed savings on every single order in fact if you find a place where the price is lower they will actually match that for you our local grocery store doesn't carry all the flowers that I want for making my sourdough bread here at home for some reason when they do have organic flour it's like really really expensive like $12 a bag so I'm really liking getting allpurpose flour and organic whole wheat flour and also organic bread flour from Thrive Market I also really love the Seventh Generation dish soaps I like their dishwasher detergent and also their dish soap our local grocery store does have some of the Seventh Generation products but they're always like way more expensive so I like to get these on Thrive because it saves me a lot of money Thrive makes things as simple and cost cost effective as possible by being able to filter your search by diet type and also offering free shipping over $49 so go check them out and if you use our link you'll get 30% off your first order plus a free gift worth up to $60 so go to thrivemarket.com morean Farmers the link is in the description box I am going to pickle some of this asparagus and see if my kids like it that way I'm not actually going to can these pickles I'm just going to make refrigerator pickles where in the thick of um planting season gardening season and I just don't have time to can anything so we're just going to keep this really quick C for breakfast [Music] there you go eat [Music] it Cody makes a mean [Music] [Music] breakfast I'm trying to keep all the fat asparagus is out because they're probably not gonna soak up all the flavor as [Music] quickly when I'm cooking up asparagus or preparing it in any way I always snap it at the bottom and let it snap where it wants to snap this piece is going to be tough so where it snaps is where it starts getting soft could we take a moment of silence for this onion it is 9 months old [Music] I'm just going to use a very very simple brine recipe it's like equal parts water and vinegar and then a couple tablespoons of sugar I'm just using the recipe from Love and lemons blog and this is me not measuring going to go one 2 3 four I'm in a big hurry because we really need to get outside and get to planting so today is looking a little bit dreary and rainy Welcome to our life I feel like we said we've said that in every single video but it's just truth we are just going to plow through with the planting even if it looks a little bit rainy because I am flying out of town this weekend to help my sister move I'm taking one of the kids with me and then Cody is staying home to hold down the PT here and I just want to have my garden all done before I go so that I can enjoy my weekend and could we take another moment of silence in honor of this beautiful stove that Cody got me for Mother's Day we we have been saving for a double oven like this for about a year now when we got married I got a double oven it was just given to us we didn't pay anything for it and a year ago it gave out and I was devastated because I was so used to having the two different ovens and we started looking into how expensive they are and they're pretty expensive much more expensive than just a normal oven and so we used a freebie single oven that we got for a year while we saved for this one the thing that I love about this oven is that I can like cook something at really high heat in one of the ovens and then something at a lower heat in the other oven that way I don't have to try to make meatloaf and potato fries in the same oven and either have a rock hard meatloaf or mushy fries Cody also got this stove at like a Ding and Dent place and so it had a bunch of dings in it that he magically made disappear so we did get a discount for it which was nice o I think the kids are going to think that's too sour H I'm going to put a tiny bit more sugar in it cuz it's really sour you could also lacto ferment asparagus I'm sure it would work pretty good um I was a bit afraid that the asparagus would get kind of mushy and my kids wouldn't eat it that way my children do enjoy some lacto fermented Foods they really love Dilly carrots but those don't get mushy they stay crunchy I just didn't feel like taking any chances on this one so oh man I'm going to have to make way more brine all the brine on one [Music] jar well that couldn't have come out more perfect if I tried nice I'm just going to let these cool and then I'm going to stick them in the refrigerator the purple is like just coming off of that purple asparagus and making the water pink I guess maybe my toddler will eat them if they're pink pickles it's raining it's not raining hard so if it stops I think we'll still be [Music] fine the first thing I'm going to plant today is sweet potatoes I got these the greenhouse yesterday and they're looking a little sad um they were just transplanted over into the pots and they haven't like gotten established yet so I really wanted to plant these right away I don't know hopefully they will do okay last year I planted 40 sweet potato plants and it was perfect we just are eating our last sweet potatoes and they weren't storing very well in the root Celler anymore so this is about as long as we can have them store so I'm going to do exactly the same again I'm going to plant four beds with 10 sweet potato plants in each bed I don't have quite enough I'm going to put in another order from Berlin seed I went to the green house to get them yesterday and they didn't look very nice so I just decided I'm going to order them [Music] online my favorite sweet potato variety to plant is Covington so I'm doing mostly Covington this year and the greenhouse yesterday had a new semi Bush variety that I decided I'm going to try called goldar so I'm going to do one bed of those and see how those do I also really like to do vardaman I don't like those sweet potatoes quite as good as far as the texture of the actual potato but they're a dream to dig because all the potatoes are right at the base of the plant one thing that I always like to do is plant bush varieties of sweet potatoes so that they don't Vine everywhere and then you have to like dig up your whole garden to find the potatoes one thing that I always always do do with sweet potatoes is I cover them with these buckets for quite a while sweet potato slips can be a little bit tricky to get started sometimes like the sun will singe the leaves they're just really fragile for some reason these are the goldar potatoes it says semi Bush variety high yield uniform shape and size deep orange moist potato so it sounds perfect we'll see these are looking pretty sad I actually got a discount on these because they were looking so sad but I'm going to try it and if it doesn't work I can always get some more and replace these sweet potatoes like really warm weather so while it's cooler here in Ohio in the spring they don't grow like really fast so it'll be [Music] fine I had to go to Tractor Supply for cattle panels for trellising in our last video but of course I didn't think to get enough for the trellising we need to do this week so here I am again and the words of great dad's everywhere that ain't going [Music] [Music] anywhere don't stretch my P tra [Music] something that I found even more useful than duct tape electric fence wire many a thing on our Homestead held together by this [Music] wire we're ready to plant cucumbers in here and then we're going to plant the butternut squash down there and those both need to be trellis plus we want to Trellis something else that we'll tell you about later but first I did want to give you an update about what's going on like with our chickens and our Broiler chicks and everything like that so I'm going to take you back in time to yesterday tell you about them this is where these Pens have been sitting all winter sometimes I kind of feel like it kills the vibe going down this pretty Wooded Trail but it is what it is this is where we have to put them we've got the pen right here for the layers then the one for the broilers we're going to pull this one out here first and get the layers out on pasture they've been cooped up pun intended in their winter housing too long now this pen was built as a movable chicken pen for our oldest son Izzy to have a few chickens of his own it's used a little differently now which you'll see in a bit we believe that overwhelm is the enemy of beginning homesteaders you might take on too much at once and then burn out and quit the homesteading life completely we've seen it happen and it almost happened for us the way we keep chickens around here has been a process over the years first we had a few backyard chickens then we started an egg business with around 150 hens we got it to the place where it was actually doing pretty well but that was at a time where our goal was to build a business out of selling farm products once we started creating online content we realized we just couldn't do everything I was working a full-time job off the homestead working almost full-time hours on our YouTube channel and running a homestead oh darn it Michelle was washing and packaging over 500 eggs a week and I was delivering them we were selling through a local store and to a small restaurant and we were proud of what we had made of it we had dreams of building the egg business to eventually hand it off to our oldest son so it was a really hard thing to let go of but we did whatever stage of Homestead you're in you have to decide where you can put your time and what is most important to you it's not always an easy [Music] decision these chicks are about 3 and 1/2 weeks old now they're still in that like what I call the teenage pimple face stage feathers are still coming in and stuff they're starting about come out of it especially those Ducks man those are getting big the Ducks are going to stay in here for now until I get their duck pen ready that'll be in another video but the laying hand chickens those I'll just I think I'm just going to put them out with the broilers that way I can just keep feeding them the same and everything they'll do fine with them out there so I'm ready to get these things moved out on the pasture this pen here that I use for the broilers is 9 by 13 which I think is slightly ironic and yes I know that most of this would come off when it rains but until then it doesn't look very good so I wanted to clean it off raising your own Broiler chickens is a really good and easy way to start raising your own meat on your homestead you don't have to do this many to start out with and you can easily raise them in a small backyard I'm not going to go into much detail here about how we raise our Broiler chickens because I'm planning a video for later this Summer that will cover our entire process from start to finish they're doing great though and it's very fulfilling to watch them grow and thrive in a good environment like this it's so much fun giving these chickens a good life most of the chicken that you buy at the grocery store has never seen actual sunlight they've never been out on grass they don't get to live a life like that they live a life on concrete and just eating grain all day [Music] long it really feels like it's going to rain soon [Music] again cucumbers and butternut squash are definitely the hardest things for me to grow I know most people can grow cucumbers so easily for some reason here they get diseased so quickly we have squash Vine bores we have cucumber beetles and we have squash beetles it is so so so hard for me to grow any kind of squash or pumpkins or cucumbers or anything like that so this year all kinds of people were telling me plant nestum plant merry Golds so I am planting nestum and marry Golds all through my cucumber bed and my squash bed we shall see I also had a lot of people telling me that I should start my cucumbers and butternut squash indoors instead of direct seating like I normally do so that they can get good and established before the bugs hit I have my doubts I have always heard that you should not um try to transplant these because they're very sensitive to their Roots being messed with so I'm going to do an experiment I'm going to do half and half I'm going to do some direct seeding and I'm going to do some uh seedlings and we'll see if any of them do better I'm also trying to do varieties that are supposed to be hearty against bugs and disease that has not worked for me in the past but I'm just going to continue trying I'm trying to be as gentle as possible with these cucumber seedlings because they do not like to be disturbed which makes sense I'm kind of with them there we want to be on top of the trellising instead of you know a step behind and hopefully that will help as well so that these young seedlings can train very easily to these trellises last time they were already partly grown before we put the trellises up we didn't we hadn't planned it out before we planted so hopefully this year the trellising will help as well I put the seedlings along this Edge and then I'm going to plant seeds along this Edge for our little experiment I am going to guess that the seeds that I plant are going to actually catch up with the seedlings that's my guess but we shall [Music] see I'm planting in quite a few seeds on top of these Hills that way if not all of them germinate there will still be quite a few I can always thin stuff like this is so much easier to thin than to have to replant and then have some of the plants be way behind the others I am going to plant some Mar Golds just kind of in among these cucumbers do everything we can to try to deter the [Music] bugs this soil in these raised beds is just like a [Music] dream around these raised beds there's like lots of tall weeds and the really bad part about it is that with the tall foliage there's snakes that like to hide in around my raised beds which I do not like because I'm always Barefoot and so I really badly wanted to put pavers onto this whole section right here like up and around my raised beds but we did some figuring and pavers are really expensive we really didn't feel like spending the money it would take to pave to put pavers over this entire space and I know that I could just put down plastic and put wood chips on top or gravel or something like that don't really like the idea of gravel and wood chips I just don't feel like having to put those down every single year to me that sounds like a lot of work so I'm not exactly sure what we're going to do I'm spending a lot of time weed eating around these raised beds right now and with all the rain and it being spring in Ohio it's so hard to keep up with the weeds anyways I personally think that one of the biggest threats to beginning homesteaders is thinking that everything needs to be perfect and trying to do things all at once have everything um done have all of your ducks in a row and I'm just finding that sometimes you just have to let things go and be okay with imperfections eventually things will get done there's a lot to be said about contentment put it that way check out all of these strawberri guys just look at that they are hanging in clumps I'm so excited I'm going to guess that in a week or two we're going to have strawberries to pick my cabbages and broccolis are loving this weather they recovered from the frost really well and they are really taking off now it always seems like after I mulch them they just take off they love leaf mulch [Music] it's too long that's dumb Cody has to go and cut that trellis down and since we are in a bit of a crunch for time because of the rain imagine that I am just going to start planting flowers real quick here I'm so determined to get all of my garden in so that I can relax this weekend I just want to know that everything is in the ground growing and that I'm not late for anything right it's a wee bit shorter I was weed eating the other day and I hit three snakes with my weed eater I atte [Music] snakes I started these Butternut seedlings from squash that I had down in The Root Cellar so hopefully these will be nice and acclimated to our climate and do really well this year for [Music] me in the past I've had issues with birds coming and like picking these seeds up out of the little Hill that I plant them in so I started covering all of my cucumber butternut squash Hills with a bucket just so that the robins don't steal my seeds so if you're having issues with seeds germinating it might just be that the birds are eating them and they're not even having a chance to germinate probably not all of these seeds are going to germinate when I started them indoors quite a few of them didn't Sprout so I'm just planting a whole bunch and I'll send them out a this is going to be an arched trellis like I've always wanted to do here you go what am I supposed to do go on the other end it's going to like Snap okay I don't think I was very much help this stupid bag of zip ties was $13 starting to rain let's go no signs of growth inside so confused I planted this entire bed in garlic like a month ago and not a single one has germinated and I'm so confused I've planted spring garlic for years and never had this issue these little cloves of garlic just sit there they're not rotten like the inside looks perfectly fine they're just not sprouting whatever [Music] I had two subscribers who sent us luffa seeds which is why I am planting them and experimenting with them this year I have never planted these before so I'm just going to give it a shot I'm going to plant one one subscriber's kind on one side and the other on the other side so if you're the subscriber who sent the ones in the paper packet yours are going on this side so keep track of that and see if yours does better than the others it's starting to rain a little harder we still have pop corn and beans and wild flowers but I think we're going to get rained out again is he if you can see anything that needs to go in grab it and run that is all that we are going to get planted today we got rained out again if you missed our last few planting videos they'll be up on the screen the rest of our plantings will be in next week's video and that will be on the screen as well when it comes out my honest feeling is is that those cucumber and butternut seedlings are going to struggle this just my like my green thumb your Gardener's intuition yeah that sounds better than Green Thumb gut

Channel: More Than Farmers

Views: 96,458

Keywords: homestead, organic farm, simple living, how to grow food, homesteading, homesteading family

Id: EwJ65nf4gtM

Length: 27min 8sec (1628 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024