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Preparing Your Vegetable Garden For Winter – A Homesteader Interview
The garden is the heartbeat of the homestead. It is the place you spend your entire summer tilling, planting, and weeding. Then fall hits and it is harvest time and you spend the next month picking, canning, and preserving. But what do you do after harvest? How do you begin preparing your vegetable garden for winter? Whether your plan is to have a fall/winter garden or close it down until spring, we are going to discuss it all with our homesteader Charis Scofield. Before we dig into the interview, let’s talk about some of the decisions you will need to make before you start preparing the vegetable garden for…
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Benefits of Seed Saving and How to Start (an Interview)
Seed saving is an important part of any homesteaders or gardeners preparation for winter. As the garden comes to a close, it is important to be planful of the upcoming year and a new gardening season. Seed saving is at the heart of true sustainability and self reliance. All Photo rights in this post belong to Ashley at The Homestead Mother Today we are going to be talking seed saving. I will be interviewing Ashley from The Homestead Mother and we will cover everything you need to know to have a successful seed saving year as you prepare the homestead for winter. We will explore how Ashley got started in…
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How to Use Herbal Remedies on the Homestead (an Interview)
With cold and flu season upon us, what better way to prepare the homestead for winter than with Herbal remedies. These remedies are what our ancestors used before modern medicine came into play and continue to be a great way to keep your family happy and healthy on the homestead. Herbs are a multi purpose plant at the homestead. They can be used to make mouthwatering recipes, in cleaning, and as medicine for animals and homesteader alike. There are many different uses of herbs in medicine and wellbeing that we will talk about today. Before we meet our homesteader let’s learn a little more about herbs and their uses…
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Pawpaw Oat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Pawpaw Oat Chocolate Chip Cookies are so delicious you will be dreaming of pawpaw season every year. Pawpaw lends its uniquely citrusy banana notes to a classic oatmeal chocolate chip cookie that is to die for. Pawpaw Season I look forward to pawpaw season every year. I carefully monitor the four small wild groves that we have found on the farm for spring blooms and the tell tell signs of fruit formation. As summer starts to wind down, I visit the groves weekly to check on their progress and start planning how to use these delicious treats. This year my goal was to preserve the pawpaws that I found so…
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Preserving the Pawpaw Fruit
The Pawpaw fruit is a highly perishable fruit native to North America. It can be found up and down the East coast and as far west as Nebraska! Once on the ground, the fruit only lasts a day or two. However there is a simple method for preserving the Pawpaw fruit to have access to it throughout the winter months. Today we will talk about preserving the Pawpaw Fruit, but before we get started, a little history. What is the Pawpaw Last fall we discovered a small Pawpaw grove just inside the wood line at our home. Once we figured out what it was and how delicious the fruit is,…
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The PawPaw- What It Is and How to Grow It
Growing up in West Virginia, I had heard of a PawPaw, but never in my life had I ever seen one. I honestly didn’t really even know what it was until my husband walks into the kitchen a few nights ago and says “Babe, what is this?” cracking open a 5 inch long oval greenish maroon fruit. The smell was sweet and delicious like a banana mixed with citrus. It was a delightful scent, but I still had no idea what he had found or if it was something we should try to eat. So I did what I always do when I have no idea what a plant is,…
