Homestead Archives - Our Homestead Adventures

How to grow a garden through plastic sheeting

Two things that can frustrate a hopeful gardener are weeds and slow growing plants. Planting your garden through agriculture plastic can be a cure for both of those worries. Here’s how to get growing.

Ms. Olivia’s Sweet Peaches

A peach buzz began to swirl. There was a buzz among the locals that a peach truck was scheduled to deliver in our small town. There is nothing like access to good foods that aren’t typical of your area. A friend called to let me know it was coming and we started thinking about all…

Chestnut Jam Recipe

When life gives you chestnuts… you make chestnut jam. When you have more chestnut trees than you can easily count, and they produce an abundance of chestnuts, you find a way to use them, unless of course, you are only using them to feed the local deer and squirrels. Since we have enough nuts to…

Sweet Potatoes Sunday

Hunting for sweet potatoes on a sunny Sunday. Sweet Potatoes are one of Amy’s favorites. The kids like them too, especially with a little cinnamon. Our summer crop yielded a handful of the red-orange beauties. Most of them were found peeking above the heavy clay soil (we mixed in a heavy dose of compost this…

Persimmon Seed Weather Prediction

The first year we lived on our property, we discovered we had a few trees with small, orange, crab-apple sized fruits on them. We weren’t sure exactly what they were until, one day in the fall, we tasted one and then we knew exactly what we had- a persimmon. The next year, we worked on…

Make as You Go, Pico de Gallo

As summer’s end brought inconsistent weather, autumn stepped in, and we began to bring in less and less tomatoes. This just about puts a damper on canning tomatoes. We had too many to have for just sandwiches, but not enough for major preserving… What can you do? Use the tomatoes for a refrigerator jar of…

Lavender Vanilla Cake Recipe

A touch of Lavender adds a delightful touch. This is the first year that I’ve successfully been able to keep a lavender plant AND IT GREW! As my confidence bloomed with more and more purple buds, I started collecting the flowers to dry in order to use in baking. The first time I’d ever had food…

Beauty in the Fade, Fall on the Homestead

Finding meaning in fall. The leaves swirled down from our persimmon tree with a wind rushing up our hill. The chickens have lost quite a few feathers, as a palette of various shades have been wind-blown lining the sides of the chicken run like a tossed feathered boa. Our majestic sunflowers with multiple heads of…

Preserving Eggs for Winter

Fresh eggs long after the hens stop laying. People ask all of the time, what do you do with all those eggs? You can eat that many eggs? The truth is, we don’t get tons of eggs all year ‘round. We think we’ve found a way to continue to have fresh eggs in the winter.…

Candied Jalapeños Recipe

Call it “Candied Jalapeños”, “Jalapeño Candy” or “Cowboy Candy”, it’s just yummy! Our nephew’s family joined us for a gathering and brought a tray, a block of softened cream cheese, and a jar of sliced jalapeños in a sweet, clear syrup, and dumped it over the cream cheese. There were crackers and tortilla chips to…