April is prep and planting month. Mostly, I've been busy outside, spot seeding pasture and doing final garden bed prep, but when we had a forecast for three days of rain, I reckoned it was a good time to work on one of my winter project goals, i.e. trying to make the front bedroom functional again. The motive for this is to begin setting up my Glimakra floor loom.  There have been a lot of steps to reclaim that room as living space. The first (and a biggy) was unpacking, sorting and purging things we simply don't need. Next is figuring out what to do with items we want to keep: mostly se ..read more

April is prep and planting month, so our other projects pretty much take a back seat. Even so, I have a couple of things in the greenhouse to show you. The first is progress on our rainwater collection tanks/thermal mass. They still need to be connected to the front porch gutter spout, and the overflow needs to be finished, but the big pieces are in place.  The second is a solar patio light.  I don't plan to work in the greenhouse at night, but it will be handy for fetching lettuce when winter dark comes early, or to check to see if any cats are out there. (I say that because Riley ..read more

I gave you a sneak peek of River's twins at the end of my March Gardening Notes post. They were born at lunchtime last Friday. The next day Ursa delivered triplets around dinnertime. I've finally sorted through the photos to show you the new additions. All went well and everybody is doing well.  River A little doe was first The second was a little buck Big sister Saluda was surprised at the appearance of her half-siblings. I took this 27 second video clip the next day. Ursa Ursa's doeling was born first One of Ursa's two bucklings.  ..read more

March is peach blossom month Rainfall 1st: 2.44" 6th: 1.65" 8th: 0.2" 9th: 1.48" 15th: 0.37" 22nd: 0.73" 23rd: 0.15" 26th: 0.77" Total: 7.79 inches Temperature range of nighttime lows: 27 to 55°F (-3 to 13°C) range of daytime highs: 40 to 79°F (4.4 to 26°C) Weather Notes We've had beautiful spring days with enough frosty mornings to not get too eager on spring planting. Garden Notes Weeds are thriving! Most of my time in the garden has been spent scraping grass and weeds from the aisles, and remulching them. I discovered some volunteer potatoes in last year's potato b ..read more

River and Ursa Anticipated dates are the first couple of days in April. In the meantime . . .  Waiting © March 2024 by Leigh at  http://www.5acresandadream.com ..read more

One of the items on my grid-down wish list has been a house fan. Even though we quit using air conditioning years ago, we rely heavily on fans to keep the house tolerable. But what to do if the power is out for an extended length of time? This is why I was extremely pleased to be asked to review the Marchpower 10-inch rechargeable, portable, folding fan. First impressions When I unboxed the components, I was pleased with their weight and sturdiness.  Fan, fold-able stand, remote control, USB charging cord, carabiner, and owners manual. The fan itself has a carrying strap ..read more

Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking by Kate Downham I am so pleased to tell you about this book! It's the small batch homesteader's dream. Not only does it tell you everything you ever wanted to know about cheesemaking (and then some), it's geared toward the homesteader who doesn't have large quantities of milk to work with. So many cheesemaking books call for two to five gallons of milk per batch of cheese. These same books use purchased commercial cultures. With Kate's book, I can make a large variety of cheeses with smaller amounts of milk and with natural, homemade cheese cultures.&n ..read more

One of our favorite television shows is the original 1978 series of All Creatures Great and Small. A minor theme of the story that we especially appreciate, is the worldview and attitudes of the Yorkshire Dales people themselves; the smallhold farmers who were the clients of veterinarians James Herriot and Siegfried Farnon. Their individual personalities were as varied as anywhere else, of course, but it was the way they faced life and especially hardship that is notable. Typically hospitable and generous, when difficult circumstances came, they would take it in stride. "These things happen ..read more

February is daffodil month Rainfall 10th: 0.19" 11th: 0.29" 12th: 2.9" 23rd: 0.67" 27th: 0.1" Total so far: 4.15 inches Temperature range of nighttime lows: 27 to 55°F (-3 to 13°C) range of daytime highs: 53 to 72°F (12 to 22°C) Weather Notes We had some lovely outside days this month. We also had days with warm thermometer readings, but the wind was strong and relentlessly cold. Warm temps came with rain. Cooler temps came with clear skies. Greenhouse My cool weather greenhouse experiments have done well, even with no supplementary heat. Broccoli. I only planted a ..read more

Last year my purple sweet potatoes did really well. These made up the bulk of my sweet potato harvest, and we've been enjoying them as oven fries or cubed and roasted with turnips or sometimes other veggies. The other day, I decided to try them in a sweet potato pie for our weekend dessert.  I peeled a couple of them, cut them each into several large chunks, and simmered until tender. Then I ran them through the blender. I thought the resulting puree was a gorgeous color.  To make the pie, I used my no-dairy Sweet Potato Honey Pie recipe. The addition of the golden honey and br ..read more