Month: July 2022

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer. Honestly, I wish summer would slow down, it’s going way too fast. I’m that crazy mom who is not looking forward to school starting this fall. I love having the kids home every day. They grow up so fast, and with this being Lillian’s senior year, I need summer to last a little longer.

While summer is flying by, the homestead is in a phase of maintaining. I titled this post “Calm Before the Storm”, because while we are starting to get some produce from the garden, soon we will be overwhelmed with produce as the season comes to an end, and then the long days/nights of canning will begin.

This reminds me of the Bible verse, Matthew 6:26 “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” If God feeds the birds, He will also feed those who are worth more to Him than the birds, you and me. We are not supposed to live in fear or worry over our basic needs, for God will provide, and this is evident in growth of the garden.

After all the work to get the garden planted this spring, what a tasty reward we have in store. Here’s what we’ve been up to. There’s an old wives tale that says “not to let onions see the August sun”, so in following the “old wives”, we pulled our onions. I think this year is one of the best years we’ve had for onions! We had some pretty good sized ones. They are currently hanging to dry so we can store them for using through the winter.

Our Roma tomatoes are slowly but surely starting to turn red, and we’ve picked enough to start putting in freezer bags to freeze. Last year, we didn’t have time to can the tomatoes as they came off the vine, so we put them in freezer bags and put them in the freezer. In February, we needed to make room in the freezer, so I thawed the tomatoes out and made some tomato sauce. It was some of the best sauce we’ve made! Freezing the tomatoes and then thawing them drew out a lot of the water in them. We didn’t have to boil the tomatoes as long, and the sauce was the thickest we’ve made.

We are getting some zucchini, so if anyone wants some, let me know! We did have vine boar get to one of my plants, which is killing it…but I have others that are still going strong.

Our cabbage plants have given us several heads already, and more are already starting to come back on where I harvested these from. There were a few cabbages that didn’t fare well with the drastic fluctuation of too much rain and then a lack of rain. Several of the heads split down the middle and were not salvageable, but they did not go to waste. We try to use all we can on the homestead, so the chickens had a nutritious snack of cabbage and turned them into eggs!

The green bean plants are thriving! We got our first picking, and what a jackpot! The whole family helped in the snapping of the beans, and we ended up with 3 freezer bags stuffed full! Not bad for the first round of picking! One of those bags we ate that night (the recipe for my roasted green beans has been added into the recipe tab on the website. More recipes will be coming soon), and the other two bags are in the freezer. Now, full disclosure, freezing is NOT our preferred choice for green beans, but we did not feel like dragging out the canner for such a small picking.

Lastly, for today, my herb garden is doing amazing! Full disclosure, this is my first time doing an herb garden, and I’m not sure I gave all of them enough space…..but I’m thrilled at how well they are doing, and they are delicious!!!

I hope everyone has a blessed week! If you are interested in any produce, let me know, as I will not be attending any farmer’s markets this year, and just selling from the homestead.
This weeks reader question: What is your favorite fresh herb? This is a hard question for me, because I really like so many, but if I had to pick one, it would be basil.

There is a lot of debate out there between organic vs non-organic. This blog post is not to try to persuade you one way or another, just informational and random thoughts about it.

I’m going to come right on out and say it, we are not organic. We can’t be. Due to being surrounded by fields and the farmers putting spray on their fields, due to the nature of things, I’m sure that my garden gets drifted with whatever they are spraying. This does not bother me, as we have also been known to use some store bought pesticides to help rid some of the bugs in our garden.

For those who say that we need to be more cautious about what is going into our bodies, and choose to eat organic, I completely understand. I agree that there are too many chemicals being pumped into our bodies every day, via medications we take, immunizations, and yes, even some of the food we eat. While I do try my best to not put chemicals on the garden, unless we have a big issue (usually that issue is squash bugs or tomato worms), I am not opposed to pesticides for our garden. Our garden is large compared to some, but even still, we need to make sure that we get the best harvest out of every plant we have. If tomato worms decimate even a couple plants, that is a lot of tomatoes that we are out of.

All that being said, I have also tried some natural measures to see if they work. I found a recipe for weed killer that consisted of water, vinegar, salt and dish soap. Honestly, I am a little skeptical, but I gave it a shot. I also read an article that offered a natural remedy for ridding squash bugs, containing just dish soap and water. Now, I’m not sure how these nasty little bugs are supposed to react to the soapy water…but when I sprayed them, they walked TOWARD ME!!!! So I just kept spraying, and spraying….I didn’t want them to reach me! LOL

Maybe once we get the greenhouse up and are growing in it, I will be able to be more organic with those items, but first things first…I need to get the greenhouse constructed. It’s in the planning process, and hoping to get it constructed this year yet…but we will just have to see. *Fingers Crossed*

When it comes down to it, we do try our hardest to not use chemicals on our garden… As much as we would like to be “organic” and be able to advertise this, it just isn’t realistic to do so and have a clear conscience. We are Faithful Friends Homestead, and as we aim to utilize what God has blessed us with to help bless others, we have to stay true to this and be honest in all our dealings. So, Semi-Organic maybe.. but not going to be organic 100% with the drift that occurs in the windy countryside we live.

I hope you all have a blessed week!! Be sure to follow Faithful Friends Homestead on Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Instagram for postings about day to do life here on the homestead! If you have any questions or have a topic you would like me to write about, or just want to touch base with me, please leave a comment and I will add your suggestions to my blog topics to write about.

Hey everyone! I hope everyone is having a great summer. There’s been a lot going on around the homestead.

As of last week, I officially left my job in corporate America to be home and full-time homestead! This was a huge leap of faith, but as a family, we all agreed that this is where we felt I was being led. This bring to mind a Bible verse that has been in my mind a lot lately. Proberbs 16:9 says “We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps”. Deciding to homestead full-time was not an easy decision, and there are still a lot of questions that haven’t been answered for us, but God is leading our steps. He has led us to this moment and this time, and this is what I was led to do. And with that, my work days have gotten longer and harder. HAHA! I am truly enjoying it though, getting outside and getting my hands dirty, building things, taking care of the animals, tending the garden….It is my happy place for sure! God rewards those who work hard, and that comes in a variety of ways, but if you are working as if for the LORD, then you will be fruitful. Psalms 128:2 “You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you”. Amen to that!!

With deciding to homestead full-time, we took the opportunity to get our signs hung up! The log sign was taken out of a section of tree that we fell ourselves here on the homestead. I was excited to be able to use a section of it to make a sign!

With the long holiday weekend, I enlisted the help of Luke and the kids, and we were able to get some other projects done around the homestead as well. The weeds all got pulled (but it’s a never ending job, and could probably be done again already), Ella and I worked on putting in a path to the duck house…but ran out of time and materials to get the chicken path done (we need to tear apart the stack of pallets to get some more boards), the girls and I cleaned out our shed, and Luke and I started the construction of our chicken tractor for the meat chickens. We are notorious for “over-building”, and this project is no different. I will post pictures of the finished product once its completed.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day!! We had a wonderful time in Hilliard, Ohio attending a Dylan Scott concert! We were also able to participate in the “meet and greet” and got our picture with him!!! Then, we ended the night with one of the most amazing firework displays I think I have ever seen!

It was a crazy busy weekend, full of late nights, but it was wonderful!!

Now back to the work week, and I will just say that I am super thankful for the thunderstorm last night! Yes, it woke me up at 5 am, but I don’t have to worry about watering my garden for a couple days! Halleluiah!!!

Hope everyone has a great week!!! To see who reads my blog…..let’s do a fun question. What is your favorite side dish at a BBQ? (To post an answer, on your computer select the blog title on the right of the screen and go to the bottom of the post…on your mobile device, scroll to the bottom and click on the blog post). Take care and God bless!!!