... chicken stock

Hello everybody ...

I hope everyone is having a terrific weekend. The sun is shining brightly here in eastern Ontario even though it is still colder than normal.

I read not too long ago some statistics about food waste by North Americans. It stated that 30% - 40% of the food purchased was thrown away. I find that to be absolutely staggering. If you have read this blog before you know how I feel about wasting food. So today I thought I would share an idea about how to turn some scrap materials into something delicious. Chicken stock.

We eat quite a bit of chicken at our house. We are hoping that we may even have our own meat birds later this year. In the meantime I purchase chickens, usually whole, at the grocery store like most people. We either eat them whole as roast chicken or cut them up and use the pieces in a variety of ways. 

When we have a roast chicken we strip the carcass after dinner and pop all the bones into a bag in the freezer appropriately labelled "Chicken Bones". When the bag is full, I make chicken stock. That would usually be about 4 chicken dinners. 

For those of you who prefer not to eat meat, I also have a bag in the freezer labelled "Vegetable stock" into which I put bits of onion, celery trimmings, etc. and when it is full, I make vegetable stock. Same principle.

Now, back to the bag of bones. When it is full I simply dump it into a large stock pot. No need to even defrost. 

I add some chopped onion, carrot, bay leaves, peppercorns, parsley and a pinch of course sea salt. Fill it up with cold water and bring to a boil. 

I bring it to a boil and then simmer for a couple of hours. Then I just turn it off and let it get cool enough for me to handle it.

Now it needs to be strained. I know a lot of people use cheesecloth but I prefer to use a tea towel. I can use it over and over again and I just toss it into the laundry after use. I wet it thoroughly first and wring it out. Then I drape it over a large colander over a bowl large enough to hold all the stock. Pour everything from the pot into the colander. Most of the liquid will drain through right away. Now, gather up the corners of the tea towel and give it a good squeeze to get out all the good stuff.

Now you have a nice clear bowl of stock and a tea towel full of bones. Dump the bones back into the pot.

At this point I know that you will be tempted to just chuck all those bones into the garbage, thinking that they have done their job. Please think again.

I take the time to sort through all that stuff. There is usually quite a lot of meat still stuck to those bones. I pull all that meat off and put it into a bowl. I also pull out all the carrot pieces as the dogs will have that as a treat with their dinner. NOW, you can toss what is left into the rubbish bin.

There is usually enough chicken to make a small pot of soup so I add some vegetables, maybe some rice or noodles and a few cups of the stock and I have a lovely pot of soup for a few lunches.

I then put the big bowl of stock, covered, into the fridge. Any fat will rise to the surface and solidify and I can easily remove it the next day. I then pour the cold stock into plastic containers, label and date them, and put them into the freezer. A large pot of stock will usually give me about 20 cups of stock.

I know what you are thinking. That is an awful lot of work just for a few cups of stock. Why not just buy it? Well, first of all, why would you want to waste all that wonderful chicken when the stock you are making is basically free! And really, how much work is it? Just a bit of chopping and picking off the meat. Most of the time the stock is just cooking happily without any work by me. Also, where I live, chicken stock is expensive. And lastly, you know what is coming I am sure, just what is in that purchased stock. Have you ever read the labels? I know exactly what is in my stock ... just the good stuff.

So have a go at making stock. It is well worth it.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope you visit again soon. Cheers.

... time to cut wood

Hello everybody ...

I am back again with one more post for today.

We have two different heating systems in our home. We have a propane fireplace and a propane stove (it looks just like a wood stove) and we also have a wood burning cookstove in our kitchen.

That cookstove is the apple of my eye. It is a Pioneer Princess and it is just wonderful. Because our home is passive solar, we seldom have the woodstove going. I usually will light a fire in it around 4:00ish or so and then it warms up the house and I use it to cook on the top surface and in the oven also.

We absolutely love it here where we live, but, if we had just one thing that we could change it would be to have a hardwood wood lot. We have almost exclusively softwood here, mostly pine, spruce and cedar. Now the cedar is great for kindling but we prefer to burn hardwood for real heat, especially oak or ash.

So, the other day we purchased a tandem load of wood. It is sitting out there right now, just staring in at me. I will not be the one to cut and split it. That will be Frank's job. I will certainly stack it after it is cut. You know what they say about heating with wood. It warms you when you cut it, warms you when you stack it and then warms you again when you eventually burn it. So true. 

I got to thinking about that pile of wood and happened to look at the fliers that come with our local newspaper. And what did I happen to see but a sale on a 5 ton electric log-splitter from Canadian Tire. It was $200 off the regular price.

Off I went to the store and asked lots of intelligent questions but the most important one was "can I return it if my husband does not like it AFTER he tries it out". Absolutely, was the answer. Save your receipt.

So, in the next week or so Frank will start to saw up all that wood and we will get to see this puppy in action. I am hoping it is all that they say it is. Since it is electric, we are not using any fossil fuels to run it. I know it will not be as powerful as those huge gas guzzling 22 ton behemoths but if it can help out and make less work for Frank, then I think that it will be worth it. I really hope he likes it.

Stay tuned for the results.  Thanks so much for visiting. See you soon. Cheers.

... the joys of country living

Hello everyone,

A very good Monday morning to you all. It is a glorious day here in eastern Ontario. Lots of sunshine and it is supposed to warm up a little bit closer to seasonal today.

When we bought this little hobby farm we told our amazing Realtor Pat that we wanted to be out in the middle of nowhere. We did not want to see big box stores or strip malls or subdivisions springing up. 

What we did want was to be able to see nature all around us. And we got that.

I took this photo yesterday. Three lovely dear were wandering around the OUTSIDE of my kitchen garden fence nibbling at whatever they could find to eat. I took this shot from my living room window. They are really such beautiful creatures and I would never have had this view from my previous house.

This is truly one of the blessings of living a country life. We had friends staying here a few weeks ago. They are absolute city people. They love the hustle bustle of city life and all that it has to offer. 

Cathy got up the first morning they were here and commented " You guys have made this a little slice of heaven out here". Pretty high praise indeed from a city girl. We only built the house, the glorious meadows and trees were already here for anyone to enjoy and appreciate. Yes sir, the joys of living in the country.

Thanks a lot for visiting. Get outside and enjoy this beautiful Spring sunshine. Cheers.

... experiment update

Hello everyone,

I wanted to update you all on my little experiment of growing some veggies on the window sill in the house.

The micro greens are doing simply amazing. Here is a photo of them. They look wonderful and will be turned into a salad next week. I will just cut them off without pulling them out in the hopes that they will all regrow as they would outside in the garden, cut and come again.

Now these photos are of the green beans. These are the ones that I was told you cannot grow in the house. Well, just have a look at those lovely blossoms. I have been running my hands over the plants every day for a week or so now to simulate the wind outside.

And .... what should my wondering eyes see ... but... 

I do believe that is a very tiny little green bean, right in the middle of the photo. So cute!

Even if this never really produces very much, or even anything at all, I have enjoyed giving it a try.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope you have a terrific weekend. Cheers.

... stretch the food budget

Hello everybody,

Let's talk about food budgets. 

Our family, not unlike millions of others, has a budget for food shopping. And we stick to it. Like glue.

We set aside a specific amount each week for groceries. When I take the money out of the bank (I know, very old fashioned but it works for me), the first thing that I do is to take $20.00 out and set it aside. I do this each and every week. Then the balance of the money that I have is used to buy groceries.

I put that $20.00 aside and use it for the big holidays when you need to spend more on the groceries. You know, the Easter ham, Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys, things like that. It is very easy to blow the budget to smithereens at the holidays. However, with this little nest egg tucked away, I have something to fall back on. Over the course of 52 weeks, that grows to $1040.00. I can very easily purchase ALL of the holiday goodies with that and in fact there is often some left over. 

It may seem like such a very small thing but this is how they did it for many many years in the past. Back then, they were called Turkey clubs or Goose clubs. The idea was the same. You would deposit a small amount each week with the club manager and at the end of the year you would get your turkey or goose for the holidays. It is like making payments on time for the bird.

The beauty of this simple plan is that you can choose to set aside whatever amount you want depending on the plans for the year and how much holiday entertaining you want to do. After a few weeks it is easy to forget all about that little nest egg until you need it. Give it a try.

Thanks for visiting today. Hope you have a wonderful Spring day! Cheers.

... plant hardiness

Hello everyone,

I subscribe to a wonderful Canadian gardening magazine simply called "The 
Gardener". Their main focus is gardening information for cool climates. 

Where I live in eastern Ontario, about an hour west of Ottawa, I fall within the parameters of their magazine. What I like most about it is that whatever they can grow out there on the Canadian prairies, I should be able to grow here. Also, much as I adore British gardening magazine and I do buy a couple, The Gardener is much more realistic. They do not feature exotics that I do have a hope of being able to grow. I love that.

In the latest issue, Spring 2015, there is an article which states that Canada has changed the Canadian Hardiness Zone map. This has been based on data collected between 1981 and 2010. 

I immediately went to the website, www.planthardiness.gc.ca, and found out that my zone has changed from 4b to 5a. I am very happy about that but the fact that I lost three zone 4 fruit trees last winter makes me beg to differ with that data. I suppose the "polar vortex" had something to do with that but we have certainly had our share of frigid temperatures this winter also.

The government website also includes the USDA Hardiness Zones which actually gives you the "Extreme Minimum Temperature Zones". When I checked that one, I am still in zone 4b.

While I think it may be very tempting to accept the change to zone 5a, the prudent gardener in me prefers to err on the side of caution and make my important planting decisions (like the replacement fruit trees) based on the USDA model of zone 4b.

I am certainly not averse to trying a few plants from zone 5 to have a go at them but I would not want to bet my winter food stores on it. The apple trees should certainly be OK for this area, in fact, all of them made it through last winter just fine. I did lose my peach (a rare Zone 4 hardy specimen called Reliance), a Pear and a Cherry. The Nectarine was hanging on by the skin of it's teeth, as they say. I will not be surprised if it is gone this spring due to another brutal winter.

I will remove the dead trees this Spring and prepare the sites for the newcomers which I will not likely plant until the fall. I will have to do some research to decide which trees to buy. While I may be tempted to have another try at the varieties that died, I think I will likely stick to the safer ones, namely zone 4 or cooler. 

Thanks so much for visiting. Hope you have a wonderful day. Cheers.

... passivhaus

Greetings to your all ...

In my last post I noted the extraordinary benefits of having a passive solar home. Admittedly the weather is much warmer here in Eastern Ontario than it has been but I have had no heat on in my house at all since Sunday night. As I type this I am wearing a tank top as I find the house, even at 6:30 in the early evening, to be very warm. The sun is now pounding in my living room window which has a completely west exposure, which is where I am sitting, and it is still 71 degrees in here. Completely amazing.

Now, on to another topic relating to passive solar.

Have you ever heard of "passivhaus"? We were introduced to it when we were designing the house.

The basic theory of passivhaus is to have the "envelope" of you house made as well as you possibly can. It should be insulated to the max, have the best possible windows and be virtually air tight.

We kept all this in mind when we were building. I do not believe that our home would qualify under the very strict passivhaus guidelines but we have incorporated their principles where ever possible.

For instance. Our home is built of straw bales. When we were sourcing out the bales we found someone who would bale them to our requirements. That being, very very tight and very very dry. What that means is that there is a whole lot of straw in these bales, thus providing a very good R-value.

When it came to the windows, we bit the bullet and bought triple-glazed windows. Our doors are virtually all glass and they are triple glazed as well. The company who made then, quite frankly, is better at windows than they are doors and we have had a few issues with the doors. On a whole though, we are very pleased. On a sunny day, the windows are actually hot to the touch.

Now let's talk about insulation in the attic. We had decided right at the start that we would go big on this area. And we did. We have R80 up there. Two feet thick of blown cellulose insulation. The fellow who put it in said he had never put that much insulation in a home before, actually not even a barn. It was worth every cent.

The last thing that we did was Frank did a very thorough caulking job all around all the doors and windows. He sealed where the window meets the jamb extension and then he also caulked there the bale wall meets the jamb extension. You need to seal up all those teeny weeny little cracks that can weaken your building envelope.

It may not be the most glamorous part of the construction process but all these things make the most difference in your home. Our house is now so tight that Frank has installed a "Saskatoon Loop" to being in fresh air. This is basically a piece of flexible duct work that is folded up into a sort of "J" shape that allows fresh air to travel down into the house. This little tip was given to us by our building official. He said that would be all we needed rather than a mechanical system, and he was right. 

Get the envelope right and then you can have fun on the inside later.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Have a great evening. Cheers.

... the beauty of passive solar

Greetings everyone,

If any of you are even considering the idea of building your own home I would very strongly urge you to consider a passive solar design.

When I designed our home that was one of my most important considerations. Accordingly, a very large part of the south side of our home is all windows. When we sent out the design to have the technical drawings done, the calculations were done to make the maximum use of passive solar.

We had friends visiting us a couple of weeks ago. They had planned to go skiing with my husband but when they arrived at the hill it was so brutally cold with a wicked wind chill that they just returned to the house. It was about -28C outside with a wind chill approaching -40C and yet when they got back to the house it was warm and toasty without any heat on.

It got somewhat warmer here yesterday with the temperature approaching 0C and the sun shone down all day long. The house actually got uncomfortably warm for me. I was tempted to open some windows but sanity prevailed and I did not. However, even by the time I went to bed around 11:30, the living room was still a very comfortable 69F degrees and I had not used any heat of any kind. When I got up this morning, it was 65F degrees which is not as warm.  :)

However, the sun is blazing away again today and the four rooms at the front of our house are presently 75F degrees and our living room and kitchen at the back of the house are 68F degrees. As the days get longer, the sun starts to sweep around the side of the house before setting and comes blasting in my living room windows, thus making it just that little bit warmer before the end of the day. 

These are the thermostats that are in the front and back of the house. They actually regulate the propane fireplace and propane stove but with these temperatures, they never need to come on. :)

If you live in a cold climate such as we do, eastern Ontario, you need to worry more about keeping yourself warm in winter than cool in the summer. With rising fuel costs, despite the lower cost of gasoline at the moment, it is going to simply get more and more expensive to heat your home. With passive solar, the sun is heating your home for free and with no resulting damage to the environment. It is a win-win situation. 

Thanks for visiting, have a wonderful day. Cheers.

... the kitchen garden fence

Hello everyone...

In continuing with the theme of having a plan with regards to your homestead, I though we would just continue along with what we did.

At the beginning of 2011 we already knew that we would not be ready to build that year. However, we did not want to waste our time at the farm so decided that we would use our vacation weeks to start to put in the kitchen garden and the absolutely necessary fence. 

We are hoping in a couple of years that this garden will supply most of our needs with regards to fruit and vegetables. If you have ever grown a fruit tree you know that even if you buy a tree that is several years old (and that is what you will find at a typical garden center), it will still need several more years to reach maturity and really begin to produce some fruit. The time can also be effected by whether the tree is standard or dwarf but that discussion is for another time. :)

A major concern for us here is the deer. The deer pressure, especially in the winter and very early spring can be quite severe. There was absolutely no way that I was going to allow all my lovely little fruit buds to be gobbled up by hungry deer. The only sure-fire way to protect the trees and everything else for that matter was with a fence. Now deer can jump pretty high. The recommended height of a deer fence is 8 feet. We chose to build ours at 9 feet.

We chose to use cedar posts for the uprights and livestock fencing with 1/2" hardware cloth at the bottom. We do have quite a bit of cedar on our farm but it would have taken a lot of time for Frank to cut and peel all those trees. In the end we bought just enough poles from a neighbour. He cut and peeled them and delivered them to our property. Win-win situation. 

The cedar poles were all 12 feet long (approximately) and most were 6" in diameter. The corner posts and the posts for the gate were 8" in diameter for added strength.

We rented a gas powered post hole digger and poor Frank started to dig holes. I mentioned in my last post that we live in the Canadian Shield. That means rocks. I have come to believe that you cannot dig a hole the size of a nickle on this land without hitting a rock. Some rocks were small and easily removed and some were huge and several times we had to move along and re-site the post hole. As Frank dug the holes, we shovelled a bit of gravel into the bottom and I hefted up the poles and dropped them into the holes. We then leveled up the posts and backfilled the holes with screening and packed it well down into the holes. This task took a full week on non stop work. I remember one day we worked in the rain the entire day setting in the posts. Dismal work, I tell you.

The next step was to stretch the fencing. We used heavy duty staples to attach the fence to a corner post and then we wove a piece of rebar through the fence and attached it to a cable on the truck and gently pulled. I got to be pretty good and just feathering the gas enough to pull it taut without distorting the wire fence. For the top portion, Frank rigged up a wooden bracing structure on the back of the truck so we could pull the top portion. When that was finished, we attached 1/2" hardware cloth all around the bottom of the fence, just setting it in the ground slightly. This will keep out the wee beasties. We will still need to lay some fencing flat on the ground on the outside of the fence and cover that over with stone but that will be done this summer. At the time, we were mostly concerned with keeping out the deer.

When the fence was done we began to plant fruit trees. We planted 20 trees in total. All the usual suspects: apples, pear, plum, cherry, peach, nectarine and apricot.

Now, we are in zone 4b here and it was a risk with the peach, nectarine and the sweet cherry. They actually did OK for the first three years but we lost three trees last winter when the temperatures were brutally cold. We will actually replant this year but choose different cultivars.

So that was most of the work for 2011. In addition to the garden, we finalized the design of the house and sent out the design to have the drawings done. More on that next time.

Oh, here is a shot of the garden from my living room window. We are very much in the deep of winter here but you can get an idea of what it looks like.

Have a great weekend. Thanks for visiting. Cheers.

...you need to have a plan

Hello everybody,

If you are starting from scratch, as we were, and you want to end up with a working homestead, you need a plan. And you need to stick to it, at least as much as possible.

The sale of our land closed at the end of August, 2010. We knew that we would certainly not get anything done that year but we planned for the following year. 

The first thing we did was to buy an old house trailer. It truly is old. 1973 to be exact but the price was right, the sellers very kindly towed it to the farm for us since our little Honda Civic certainly could not, the stove and fridge worked and it did not leak.

We chose to use the same access into the property as they had used when it was a hay field. Frank bought a heavy duty line trimmer and I had a wicked pair of tree loppers and we set to work to clear the entrance. We met almost all our neighbours on that first day. One chap went home for his chain saw and made very short work of all the tree saplings that I had started to cut. Our neighbour across the street came up the road on his riding lawn tractor and as soon as Frank had blazed a trail through the waist high grass and weeds he drove up and down the new driveway to cut it all down nice and short. We never cease to be thankful that we have such wonderful neighbours here.

The trailer was delivered and we spent the first night in it on our own land. We were thrilled.

Over the next two months all that we really did was wander all over the property and begin to make decisions about where things would go. By the end of that year, we had the start of a plan. We knew where we would put the house, the kitchen garden and the solar array. We also knew that a number of trees would need to come out but we tried to keep it to as few as possible.

Even though we really did not work that year, we did start the plan. And once we made the really important decisions, we did not change our minds. If you start changing your mind after work has begun, it can end up being very costly. Now, naturally if there is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with, that is a different story.

We were prepared to start 2011 by removing the necessary trees, cutting the grass/weeds where the house would go so we could stand on the spot where the house would be and we would start on the kitchen garden. That meant putting up a fence. Did I mention that our property is located smack dab in the Canadian Shield. That means rocks, lots and lots of rocks.

Stay tuned ...

Thanks for visiting today. Let me know if I can answer any questions you may have as we work our way through this building process. Cheers.

... quick tip on using leftovers

Hello everybody,

It is a simply glorious day here in eastern Ontario with brilliant sunshine. Our solar panels are cranking our power and after I write this, I am going to do my ironing.  :)

You just know that these little post of mine about not wasting food are not going to end, don't you. I feel very strongly about this issue. But lets keep things light ...

We had very very dear friends come and visit on the weekend. Actually, they gave us a hand on more than one occasion when we were building the house. They helped us to stack that very first bale of straw. Although we now live about 4 hours apart we do manage to see each other every few months or so.

They arrived last Sunday and I had decided to cook a roast chicken for dinner. I added garlic mashed potatoes ( I just love them) and I steamed all the veg I could find in the fridge which turned out to be carrots, green beans and broccoli. I usually make substantial quantities when entertaining friends. I do not want to run out of food at dinner so there is ALWAYS leftovers. As you have no doubt realized, I have a love affair with leftovers. I do, I really do.

So, naturally, there was buckets of food leftover after dinner. 

We stripped all the meat off the chicken carcass. The bones went into the bone bag in the freezer. I rarely purchase "cold-cuts" for lunch sandwiches as I prefer that we eat single ingredient foods like the chicken we just cooked so all the meat went into a container for Frank to use for his sandwiches. That left a mountain of potatoes and a large bowl of steamed veg and the gravy.

Now, I wanted Frank to be able to use the chicken but I had already decided that all of the remainder could be used up in a pie. I took a package of boneless, skinless chicken thighs out to defrost. Chopped up a couple of onions and sauteed them in a drop of olive oil, added the chicken that I had cut into chunks and cooked until just no longer pink. I let this cool for a few minutes then added all the steamed veg and a good dollop of the gravy. Mixed well and popped that into a casserole dish.

Back to the bucket of potatoes. I smashed them up a bit with a fork and added a couple tablespoons of cream (just 5% cream, not the really rich stuff), a tablespoon of dry mustard and then added copious amounts of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Mixed well and layered this on top of my chicken/veg mix. Grated more Parmesan cheese over the top.

Popped this on a baking sheet lined with aluminium foil (I do not like to clean up oven drips) and into the woodstove oven it went for about 20 - 30 minutes. I am guessing that the oven was around 400F degrees. It came out bubbling (hence the cookie sheet) and golden and was utterly delicious. We had it for dinner on Tuesday, I had it for lunch yesterday and there is still enough left for two more lunches for me. No waste. Absolutely delicious meals.

And by now you are thinking to yourself ... what did she do with that little bit of leftover gravy. Well, you should know that I did not chuck it out! Actually, I mixed it up with a little bit of warm water, added a few pieces of carrot and it was a treat for the dogs for their dinner for a couple nights. They each got about a tablespoon of it and they licked their bowls for about 10 minutes. All used up.

I am sorry that I do not have a photo of my chicken pie but it did not occur to me at the time and now that most of it has been gobbled up there is not much left to photograph. :)

That is it for me for now. Thanks ever so much for stopping by. Have a wonderful day. Cheers.

...wanna be homesteader - part two

Hello everybody...

We are back again to take a look at the idea of buying land with a house already in place instead of buying vacant land. 

My hubby and I have bought a house in the past and a lot of the same principles will apply if you are buying in the country. 

However, some things are going to be different. Here are a few of the things that you should be keeping in mind. There will be lots of others based on your own individual wish list.

- distance to nearest fire hall, school, church, shopping 
(Actually, that also applies when you are buying land )
- Does the house already have a well, what is it's condition and the water should be tested
- Does the house have a septic system in place and what is it's condition and does the tank need to be drained
- For goodness sake, have a home inspection done, especially if it is an older house. If you are a newbie to buying a house you may miss all sorts of things. Remember the old saying " Let the buyer beware ". This cannot be more true.
- Is the property zoned for what you want to do there? Maybe you want to raise dogs - well, where I live you need a certain amount of acreage or you have a limit of 4 dogs. That sort of thing.
- Are there any outbuildings on the property and what is their condition
- Are you connected to hydro or not
- Do you want to be connected to hydro 
- If the property is already off the grid, what is the condition of the panels, the inverter, the charge controller and the batteries - ESPECIALLY the batteries - have they been looked after and what is their life expectancy

There will of course be a number of other things you may wish to consider. If you are looking at a small farm, it may well have a veggie garden and orchard in place. If that is the case, you may be very lucky indeed. If not, is there a suitable place to put one. If you buy a house in the country that is COMPLETELY surrounded by trees, there is going to be a lot of backbreaking work done to clear an area for a garden. Also, if you are planning to garden organically, is the garden clean or has it been sprayed with pesticides for years on end

If you are planning to supplement your heating with wood, does the property have any hardwood on it that you can cut. Softwood is fine for kindling but it is a generally accepted practice that you should burn hardwood for the cleanest burn and less chance of build up in your chimney. We burn mostly oak and maple with a bit of elm and poplar in the shoulder seasons. And while we are speaking of wood, are you prepared to cut and split the wood yourself or will you be buying it already done? The cost savings if you do it yourself is considerable, close to 50% less at least.

Now, lets turn back to the house itself. You will of course have your wish list and perhaps this house has a lot of what you want. There are a few other things to consider, especially if you are going to be off the grid. It is very unlikely that you will have any of the following - air conditioning, a dishwasher, clothes dryer, hair dryer .. you can see where I am going here. Appliances that love heat or have compressors are not going to be your friends. If you are on the grid, go wild and have anything you want but remember that it will be reflected on your hydro bill. Where I live, hydro is quite expensive. Be prepared for that.

That is about all that I can think of for the moment. When we resume this discussion, we will go through the process that we went through from the day the sale closed up until we moved into the house. Hopefully it may be of some help to anyone dreaming of a self-sufficient lifestyle in the country. It is something that anyone can achieve with some work. And you will love it... :)

Thanks so much for stopping by. Have a great day. Cheers.

... an update on the experiment

Hello everyone,

Thought I would pop in with a very quick post about how the various experiments are working out.

As was to be expected, we did not harvest anything of any kind during the month of February so we are still in the same spot as January, which means we are still in the red as far as garden expenditure vrs. garden produce is concerned, namely $158.49.

However, just have a look at these little beauties. These are the micro greens that I planted. They are just growing their little hearts out. A few more weeks and we will be eating them. 

Also, these are the bean seeds I planted to see if the seed was still viable. Clearly it is and these are pretty happy and healthy plants. Now, beans are self pollinating so I will be very curious to see what happens when they blossom, as in, will they actually produce any beans. I was told that I could not do this so that was all the challenge that I needed to give it a try. I do like a challenge. :)

The leeks are coming along, not really fast but most are about 3" - 4" tall now. I will trim them back when they hit about 6" so that they will get a bit stronger but they all look good.

I will be back shortly with part two of the homesteaders big decision about buy land and build versus buy a farm with a house on it.

Thanks so much for visiting. See you soon. Cheers.

...so you want to become a homesteader

A very fine good day to you all.

I have decided to do a few blog posts on the process of becoming a homesteader and what that entails. As we have gone through this process, we can tell you what happened to us. So here goes ...

Our dream to live a self-sufficient lifestyle in the country began well over 10 years ago. We had gone to an "Eco-Fair" in the town where we lived and there we saw a demonstration of how to build a straw-bale building. I happened to be a dog house but it was still built of straw bales. This, for us, was the "light bulb" moment. We knew this was what we wanted.

Now, do to Frank's job commitment we knew this was going to be a long term plan but we were OK with that. It gave us lots of time to plan, do research and most of all ... dream!

One of the most difficult decision that you may have to make when choosing to move to the country is do you want to buy land and build, as we did, or buy a farm with a house already standing. Both have advantages and disadvantages. 

We chose to buy land and build as we specifically wanted a straw-bale house. We will deal with that type of decision in this post.

We both feel that the most important factor in finding the piece of land that you want is working with the right real estate agent. I have to say that we were incredibly fortunate as we found ourselves a real gem right off the bat. We saw an add in a small local paper and here was this photo of a woman who said that she liked to help folks buy land. We made an appointment and off we went to meet her.

Her name is Pat Forrest. At the time she worked for a large Realtor in Arnprior, Ontario. We told her what we were looking for and what we wanted to do. We walked so much land with this woman and saw so many properties that I lost count. It took us almost 2 years to find the land that we bought. Pat was terrific through the entire process. She just kept saying that we would find the place that we were meant to have, we just had to be patient.

And she was right. We now own a small farm, 8.6 acres actually, that our neighbour had severed from her property. The day we first saw this land we wrote up the offer on the hood of Pat's car. She presented the offer immediately and by the time we had driven back home again, Pat had called to say that our offer had been accepted.

The important thing here is that Pat stuck with us through all of this. She kept us from getting depressed about the whole situation because it can take a while to find that perfect piece of land, or what you deem to be perfect. Our small farm may not be perfect to a large scale farmer but it is absolutely ideal for what we wanted. There was a mix of open areas (that had once been a hay field) and lots of tree cover also. We would have preferred more hardwoods but no matter how long you look, you will never find absolutely everything you want.

This is where you make yourself a little list. What are your priorities. 

Here is what our list looked like.

- Out in the country, a good distance from towns and cities
- Zoned rural as we knew we would want to keep livestock eventually
- Able to build a straw-bale home on it 
- A mix of open areas and treed areas, I called them outdoor rooms
- A minimum of 5 acres, more would be better
- A good open area for the house, preferably on high ground
- A good large flattish area for the kitchen garden
- Close to a ski hill as Frank is a very avid skier - this was VERY important
- Not too much tree cover near where the house would stand as we would be off the grid and would need to build a solar array

We got pretty much everything on our list. We did need to remove 3 trees that were inside the kitchen garden area and I believe we needed to take out 4 trees that were where the house would be built. After we built the solar array we also removed one large pine that was casting just a bit too much shade and also some much smaller younger pines that would eventually grow up to be a problem. More hardwood trees would have been nice to cut for firewood but that is just about the only thing we did not get.

Next post will deal with the idea of buying a house in the country instead of land and then we will go from there about our process of building and starting our homestead.

And by the way, in case anyone in this area of eastern Ontario is looking for a fantastic realtor to work with, we would both highly recommend Pat. She took the giant leap a while ago and has started her own firm. It is called Prime Valley Realty. She is an absolute treasure. You can find her at www.primevalleyrealty.com

Thanks for visiting. See you next time. Cheers.

... wonderful new tool

Hello everyone...

I have a fantastic new tool to tell you about.

If you are a bread maker as I am, this tool is going to make your life much easier. 

The tool I am talking about is a "Danish Dough Whisk" as you can see here in this picture.

I decided a little while ago that I wanted to try to bake all the bread that we eat. I have to confess that I do still buy the occasional loaf.

Sometimes I make the no knead kind and sometimes I make the traditional variety that does require kneading. Either way the dough initially needs to be mixed up ready for the first rise. This is where the Danish Dough Whisk comes in. 

It gets right in there and I have to say that I was amazed at how easily and quickly I was able to mix up the ingredients. Also, and this is always a concern if I am purchasing a new tool, it cleans up very easily.

I purchased mine at a store in Kanata, Ontario just outside Ottawa called Grace in the Kitchen and I found it to be a reasonable price at $8.99. Well worth the price because of the time and labour saving aspect. I am sure that you could find one at any good kitchen shop, or most likely, online.

That is all from me for today. Hope you are having a wonderful day. Thanks for visiting with me. Cheers.