One of many driving forces behind the delivery of Frugalwoods was our need to depart town and purchase a homestead within the woods. That occurred in Could 2016 and let me let you know, we had A LOT of preconceived notions about what it might be prefer to reside rurally, a few of which turned out to be true and a few of which… not a lot. It’s straightforward to gloss over the specifics once you’re dreaming about transferring to the nation. It turns into very a lot in regards to the specifics once you lose energy and water for per week within the lifeless of winter because of an ice storm. It’s these specifics–these highly effective particulars–which have formed our lives out right here.
A gargantuan assumption was that we’d develop all of our personal meals.
Earlier than a lot as beginning a single tomato plant, I nurtured an idyllic imaginative and prescient of us rising all of the vegatables and fruits we may ever need every summer time. There I used to be among the many rows, singing to every vegetable, encouraging it to flourish. Then I noticed us within the kitchen–with our youngsters gracefully helping–as we meticulously preserved every harvest for winter. We then pan to us consuming from our larder because the snow falls and the woodstove warms us with wooden from our land. Little Home On the Prairie with out the problematic gender roles, starvation, abysmal therapy of indigenous peoples, and lack of antibiotics and trendy medication!
I’ve a robust creativeness and along with rising vegatables and fruits, I assumed maybe we’d elevate meat chickens, pigs, goats–why not!–and have a dairy cow for milk from which I’d church my very own butter and make my very own cheese. Absolutely we may present for all of our wants and reside out a modern-day sustainable, free vary, natural paradise of our personal making. To be clear, all of this IS technically doable. And sure, loads of of us do it.
Nonetheless, I’m not destined to be a kind of of us.
My husband Nate and I moved to our 66-acre homestead within the woods of rural Vermont on Could 18, 2016 and at the moment, seven years on, I need to share what we’ve discovered, re-learned and are nonetheless studying about rising our personal meals. I’ll share extra of our rural assumptions in upcoming posts, that are all a part of a sequence on…
Outdated Me vs. Present Me: A Showdown
April was the NINTH anniversary of Frugalwoods and to rejoice, I’m typing down reminiscence lane with reflections on a few of my most influential outdated posts. 9 years is a very long time to do something and I’m curious to see if I agree with my outdated self or if my ideas have modified within the intervening years. Since Could is the SEVENTH anniversary of our transition to rural life, this appears the proper time to replicate on rural.
You possibly can try my first three Frugalwoods nine-year retrospectives right here:
Now let’s get to debunking!
Rural Assumption #1: We’ll Develop and Elevate All of Our Personal Meals!
Truth Examine: That’s a nope.
The first purpose? That is an all-consuming, full-time job throughout harvest seasons and I don’t need to develop, harvest and protect meals full-time.
I prefer to perform a little little bit of a whole lot of various things, and that features some gardening and a few canning and preserving.
To simply accept this, I needed to let go of the picture of myself as an ideal homesteader out right here homesteading away. It’s simply not who I’m. I like what we do on our land, however I don’t need to do all of it day, day-after-day. After seven years, I lastly now not really feel responsible for not rising and elevating all of our meals. I truly be ok with shopping for meals from our farmer neighbors who decide to this work full-time. I like supporting their efforts. Plus, they’re loads higher at it than me.
For Nate and me, the entire level of this way of life change was to let go of town rat race, the exterior pressures and the societal expectations.
We wished to now not work for different folks and now not always rush round. Rural life, for us, means pleasure, time, freedom and area. And right here’s the factor:
I’ve discovered that chaining myself to my vegetable backyard is de facto no completely different than chaining myself to my desk and laptop.
A backyard has countless wants, doesn’t care about your time/vitality/plans and exerts a whole lot of time-bound pressures. Something that saps all my time and vitality–and calls for I do issues I don’t have the will to do–isn’t why I moved right here. Extreme gardening confused me out. So now, we develop just a little little bit of this and a tidbit of that and we name it a day. Let me let you know the story of how I obtained right here.
The Kale & Chard Apocalypse of 2018
Detailed in this outdated submit, this was the harvest that did me in. Nonetheless early in our gardening experiments, Nate began from seed, planted, weeded, watered and harvested 80 kale and chard crops. Sure, EIGHTY.
That was 70 crops too many. As a result of let me let you know: that kale and chard LOVED rising right here. It was essentially the most profitable factor we’ve ever planted. All 80 of them.
Nonetheless below the delusion that I used to be maybe truly Laura Ingalls Wilder reincarnated, I used to be decided to protect and save EVERY LAST STALK of kale and chard we grew. I wished to see if we may do it–truly present for all of our sustenance wants (insofar as kale and chard are involved).
I spent hours harvesting, washing and drying these greens. The leaves had been so monumental that I had to make use of our child pool and several other big plastic tubs for rinsing stations. My poor mother and father made the error of coming for a go to throughout this debacle and obtained roped into serving to (sorry once more about that, mother and pa!). When stuff comes ripe, there are by no means sufficient arms to assist. However you by no means know fairly when that ripe day might be, which implies you reside on the whims of the backyard.
After we’d harvested, washed and (kinda) dried the leaves, we took them into the kitchen for processing, which entailed:
- Chopping them up
- Blanching them to freeze
- OR canning them in a scorching water tub canner
- OR turning them into kimchi
And we did it. It took DAYS. A plural variety of days. Whereas there have been enjoyable moments, it was traumatic to do with two tiny youngsters underfoot. I used to be exhausted from bending over to reap within the backyard and stooping to clean and standing within the kitchen for hours to course of. And that was simply to course of ONE crop. Extra exactly: ONE harvest of ONE crop.
Absolutely the worst a part of it’s that we didn’t have an opportunity to eat all of that hard-won preservation earlier than a few of it went unhealthy.
Broke my coronary heart to dump it out into the compost, however alas, home-canned stuff doesn’t final endlessly and I didn’t know how you can calculate our consumption fee.
After that draining expertise and the demoralizing realization that we couldn’t even eat all that we’d labored so laborious to place away, I made a decision to alter our homesteading meals outlook. We’re profoundly privileged that we’re not subsistence farmers. We wouldn’t have to do that to ourselves. I used to be competing towards an idyllic picture I had of people that homestead and develop their very own meals. I’d learn the blogs and books and Instagram posts and I felt strain to reside as much as that customary.
I’d succeeded in transplanting the stress and anxiousness of my workplace job onto my gardening.
I wanted to alter this outlook or I’d quickly begin to hate what I’d labored so laborious to allow myself to do.
The place We’ve Landed In 2023
It’s taken years and I’m nonetheless working to divorce myself from the self-imposed strain to be an ideal homesteader. However I’m now much more real looking about how I need to spend my time throughout the summer time months. I don’t need to be tethered to the backyard. I need to take the youngsters to the native lake with buddies, I need to go hear reside music at our neighbors’ farm, I need to hike and play. I don’t need to spend 12 hours chopping and blanching monumental stalks of chard. I would like steadiness and freedom in my life.
Lots of you have got requested me to re-start my This Month On The Homestead sequence and to be sincere, I haven’t as a result of I really feel like we’re letting you down as homesteaders! We did SO MUCH work our first few years and now, we kinda simply rinse and repeat with every season. The infrastructure set-up of our first years was staggering and I’m glad it’s over with. I definitely may re-start the sequence and let you know the way issues are going, however don’t maintain your collective breaths.
Gardening Areas as of Could 2023
We nonetheless backyard and we nonetheless have a bunch of various food-growing areas across the property, so I’ll element every. I did an exhaustive overview a number of years in the past in This Month On The Homestead: The Full Backyard Rundown Together with Constructing Raised Beds. When you’re a backyard nerd and need to nerd out, that submit’s for you!
Right here’s the place we plant meals lately:
1) 4 raised beds proper subsequent to our again porch.
Nate constructed these again in 2020 and I really like them due to their proximity to the home. Straightforward to stroll out and snip a number of issues for dinner. Right here’s what we’ve executed with them:
Beds 1 and a couple of: Strawberries
- We planted 100 strawberry crops again in 2020 and I can’t say that was the perfect concept. The strawberries appeal to each sort of pestilence, together with however not restricted to:
- An prolonged household of backyard snakes who tunnel ‘neath the roots and pop their little headsies up anytime I’m on the market weeding or harvesting. I don’t thoughts snakes, however I’d choose they not POP up at me. A extra gradual method could be appreciated.
- A whole daycare of child chipmunks who’re a scorching mess in there. Stomping on crops, rummaging round within the grime. Mess.
- BIRDS. Allll the birds. We put hooped netting over the crops, however the chipmunk daycare class knocked them over and ate holes within the nets.
- Our personal youngsters. So desirous of recent strawberries that they regularly, routinely, yearly pluck pre-ripe berries, rip crops and destroy my intelligent netting system.
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Making our personal apple cider with Kidwoods on the crank Additionally, since these are raised beds, the soil degree sinks every year. We put a ton of logs within the backside to construct up the bottom, however as these decompose, you really want so as to add extra soil yearly, which we will’t do with the strawberries in there until we replant all 100 of them.
- This yr, I turned one in every of these beds over to Kidwoods, who was begging for her very personal flower backyard. Half of the strawberry crops in there have been lifeless and I helped her transplant the surviving strawberries into one half of the mattress and she or he planted flower seeds within the different half.
- TBD what I’ll do with the opposite mattress, which remains to be filled with strawberries (and snake tunnels).
Beds 3 and 4: herbs and greens
- That is the place I put our herbs: basil, thyme, rosemary, dill and oregano.
- In addition to our salad greens: lettuce, greens combine, sorrel, arugula.
- I begin the herbs and lettuce from seed and I direct sow the remainder.
- The greens could be succession planted, that means I rip them out once they begin to flower and plant new seeds. If I sustain with it, we have now recent greens all summer time lengthy.
- I began carrots in right here a number of years in the past, however by accident put them proper subsequent to the dill plant and–wouldn’t you recognize it–carrot leaves and dill look ALMOST IDENTICAL. There have been some casualties.
- This method appears to work fairly properly since most of these items is annual and never perennial. We added extra soil final yr and might want to add extra once more subsequent yr.
2) The “Huge” Vegetable Backyard
The “large” vegetable backyard is the place we develop the vast majority of our annual veggies. Annual means you must plant new ones yearly versus crops which can be perennial, which implies they arrive again yearly. This backyard is fenced in and has cattle panels–which I put in on my own one yr, may I add–for issues like tomatoes and snap peas to vine up. A lot simpler than trellising every particular person plant. I gently bend the fronds up in the direction of the panels they usually take it from there. Extremely suggest.
On this backyard, we develop a reasonably large variety of greens each summer time and love consuming recent tomatoes, beans, squash, snap peas, cucumbers, peppers, and different misc crops I’m now forgetting. I additionally adore rising pumpkins and gourds for fall decorations, which I feed to our chickens when the season’s over.
That is the backyard the place the youngsters every get their very own row to plant, have a tendency and harvest!
- Every child will get to start out her personal seeds. No matter seeds she needs! We put them in their very own little seed beginning trays and–upon Kidwoods’ insistence–label them by title. My trays say “Mama.”
- I begin about three trays value of crops and I solely do a number of of every variety. I’m properly conscious that we don’t want 89 tomato crops (like I did a number of years in the past… ).
- We begin all of those from seeds within the spring and plant the begins within the floor in early June–too chilly to take action earlier than then!
3) Mr. FW tends our perennial meals scenario, which he’s grown to incorporate:
- 28 blueberry bushes
- 3 currant bushes
- 3 Saskatoon berry bushes
- 3 plum bushes
- 4 cherry bushes
- 10 apple bushes
- 4 cider apple bushes
- 5 pear bushes
- 2 peach bushes
- 4 elderberry bushes
I’ll admit that seems like loads. And by way of sheer variety of crops, it’s a lot, however by way of how a lot fruit we truly get? It’s not all that a lot.
Right here’s Why:
1. All of these items takes a few years to ramp as much as its full manufacturing potential.
It takes an apple tree ~6 years earlier than it bears a single apple. The blueberry bushes took two years to make an edible blueberry. Related timelines are connected to all of those perennial fruits.
2. Different issues prefer to eat these candy treats too.
And by “different,” I’m certainly referring to the Intelligent Varmint Patrol (CVP) who, up to now, have managed to eat EVERY SINGLE plum and cherry we’ve ever grown. They stalk these crops after which, I swear, the minute the fruit turns completely ripe, they snatch all of it and take it to their lair(s). We don’t need to use pesticides, constructing a fence is simply too costly (and would damage the view)–plus a mere fence isn’t any match for the CVP–and we’ve tried netting and chicken-wire cages. We are going to attempt netting once more, however all that appears to occur with the netting is that our youngsters get tousled in it…
Moreover, a flock of untamed turkeys as soon as flew into our blueberry patch–which is enclosed by a fence–after which COULD NOT GET BACK OUT. They’d trapped themselves so completely that after we went to shoo them away, they repeatedly RAN INTO THE FENCE. Nate needed to go contained in the fence and herd them out. I simply… what’s there to say about flight-enabled birds who neglect how you can fly in moments of disaster?
3. The climate, am I proper?
If the CVP doesn’t devour them, it’s extremely doable these fruits’ll die/underproduce as a result of an excessive amount of solar, too little solar, an excessive amount of rain, too little rain, a late frost, an early frost, a too-cold frost, a not-cold-enough frost…
4. Then, harvesting occurs !
Most of those perennial fruits come ripe all on the identical time. In different phrases, all of the apples on one tree flip ripe on the identical day. And as soon as the fruit ripens, you’ve obtained to choose it ASAP. When you don’t, the CVP will eat it or it’ll fall to the bottom and be consumed by ants and different ground-hugging creatures. Fruit bushes, very similar to youngsters, haven’t any curiosity or concern on your schedule. They ripen when they need, how they need. When you’re not able to drop all the things and harvest all day lengthy? The CVP will maintain it for you.
5. Preserving! Canning! Urgent! Oh My!
If we’re fortunate sufficient to come back this far, if a winter frost didn’t kill the crops, a late frost didn’t burn the blossoms, the CVP didn’t actual its revenge, bugs didn’t illness the tree AND we managed to reap all the fruit on that one, good, magical, wonderful day… NOW WHAT?!!!
This, my buddies, is how I’ve discovered myself with a kitchen bursting with ripe vegatables and fruits. With a lot chard and kale I needed to retailer it within the youngsters’ plastic pool. With so many apples–!–that I can’t match all of the barrels within the kitchen and must lug some right down to the basement.
It’s an unimaginable privilege to have all this meals, however with out an industrial kitchen and a piece crew and countless time… it doesn’t all get preserved. THOUGH I HAVE TRIED. That kale/chard harvest was the defining second that modified my thoughts about how deeply I need to decide to meals preservation. Now, I do what I can.
I now not really feel guilt over not turning Each. Single. Cucumber into pickles. We eat a ton, we give a bunch away to buddies and neighbors and perhaps I make a number of jars of pickles. However not 100 quarts. I did that a number of years in the past and simply, wow. Folks requested me to please stop giving them jars of pickles as presents. There’s such a factor as over-gifting your preserved meals. Ask me how I do know.
Right here’s how I now protect the perennial meals:
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The littlest currant picker Blueberries are the simplest as a result of the youngsters can harvest them on their very own–there are not any thorns, it’s very apparent when a berry is ripe and the bushes are low to the bottom. Then, all I’ve to do is rinse them and throw them into baggage within the freezer. Straightforward.
- Apples are the toughest. Nate or I’ve to do many of the harvesting as a result of they’re so excessive up within the bushes. That doesn’t cease the youngsters from serving to they usually each get beaned on the pinnacle by apples yearly. Apples are additionally powerful as a result of they require a ton of labor to course of. I prefer to make applesauce, apple butter and dried apples, however all three require me to first wash and dry the apples, then peel and core them, then cook dinner them down into sauce or jam, after which scorching water tub can the sauce. Repeat this MANY occasions till you’ve used up all of the apples (or they’ve gone unhealthy ready so that you can get to them). We’ve additionally pressed them into cider in previous years–and doubtless will once more sooner or later–however that is one other large funding in time (to not point out provides).
- Strawberries get eaten recent (largely by the youngsters, largely earlier than even making it inside). Straightforward!
- Plums and cherries get eaten by the CVP.
- Currants are made into jam, which is pretty concerned, however we do appear to eat that up and it’s worthwhile to make it.
- Nothing else produces fruit but.
Typically we protect annual meals, together with making:
- Tomatoes into sauce
- Cucumber into pickles
- Beans into pickled beans
All of that is enjoyable to do carefully and we do eat it, however carefully. Since we don’t must eat pickled chard stems to outlive the winter, we don’t have to make 90 quarts of pickled chard stems. To be clear: many of us select to develop and protect all of their meals and that’s nice! Many of us do it efficiently and have very low grocery payments due to it! Not me.
Acceptance
The ultimate stage for each gardener: acceptance. Acceptance that I don’t like being out in a backyard all day OR in a kitchen canning all day. I prefer to be in a backyard for awhile and I don’t thoughts canning for awhile. I like doing it with the youngsters since I believe it teaches them some nifty abilities.
However it’s now not a race to final homesteader for me. I’ve realized that the strain for perfection isn’t restricted to highschool or conventional jobs–it will probably take over something. Even gardening!!!! So we’ll plant our little crops this yr and perhaps keep in mind to weed and water them. And I would can a number of quarts of apple sauce. Or I may not. And both method? We are going to nonetheless be grateful to reside out right here.
