We are calling this month “Junuary”…

…What a great time to get out doors and do some garden prep and pre-spring cleaning!  We all got out into the garden this morning, and have been working since, with a pleasant break for garden brunch.

This will be Gabriel’s personal garden bed. Here he is with his pint sized shovel, helping to turn in some compost.

The first bed that we worked on is going to be Gabriel’s personal garden this summer.  This is going to be the first place that we plant seeds, starting with peas here in the next week or so!  To get the soil ready we took out all the sod and tilled in compost, manure and a bit of perlite to increase aeration and drainage.  Now that the soil is prepped and fluffy, all we need to do is put of a trellis, and we will be able to plant peas in the ground in the next week or so.  We are so excited!

The Mantis is my favorite tool! It is a small, easy to handle, electric tiller. See also the sprouts of my elephant garlic, freshly mulched with compost. 

New raised bed surrounded from repurposed timbers. This bed will be for shade loving wildflowers.

I got to use my favorite tool, the Mantis, which is a small, easy to handle, electric tiller.  I put it to work amending current beds and also establishing a few new raised beds.   I cannot wait to plant my new bed full of shade loving wildflowers to bring a big pop of color to that area.  I may finally experiment with the surrounding timbers and try to seed moss for the first time using the yogurt+moss+blender method.

I also rehabilitated a few super compacted, blackberry overridden raised beds and started to create another one too.  These are in one of the sunniest areas on our property, so will be great for sun loving plants that like to be a bit more dry.

All in all, a very productive day 🙂

Misty winter on the homestead…

…is a good time for clearing brush and dreaming about projects that we want to develop in the seasons to come.

Nicholas just cleared this area, there is a lot of ground and a creek-side beach that had previously been inaccessible.

Gabriel and Nico explore the new beach.

Here in the Coastal Range of Oregon, we are constantly being overtaken by several species of blackberry, along with salmon berry, nettles, vine maple and many more.

Yesterday Nicholas spent some time with the weed whacker and the mower and cleared a substantial area of land along the creek and in both our near and far orchard zones.

The brush has been cleared back to expose a lone bamboo.

One of my favorite areas on our property, especially in the winter. I love this mossy tree, and this area of the creek is the deepest swimming hole on our property.

It is always very interesting to see the new territories once they have been cleared, and to dream up ideas of what we will do there in the coming spring and summer.  Among other things, we are always looking for new beaches to play at, swimming holes, places to plant trees, and areas for more green tea cultivation.

Meet our chicken ladies!

Nico and Gabriel observing our new baby chicks. Of our 6 original chicks, one perished as a baby, and two were roosters which we rehomed.  This left us with three full grown brooding hens. 

Because our chickens reached egg laying maturity right as winter hit, they are laying eggs well in winter. We have three chickens and there are about three eggs per day in the coop, though I suspect that one chicken may be doing most or all of the laying.

Now that our chickens are laying eggs, we no longer purchase eggs from the store and limit our egg intake.  The eggs from our chickens are incomparably more tasty and a deeper orange color compared to even the most expensive of organic grocery store eggs.

Gabriel and our chickens have all grown a lot since this spring!

In addition to organic, non-gmo crumble pellets and scratch grains, I like to feed our chickens our produce scraps. Chickens can eat ALMOST anything and benefit from the fresh nutrition of kitchen scraps.  There are however a few foods that chickens should not eat.

(See list below, sourced from readynutrition.com)

10 Foods Your Chickens Should Avoid

1. Plants from the nightshade family – Nightshade plants such as potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants have a toxic substance in their unripened fruit and leaves called solanine that could be harmful to your flock. Even the peels of potatoes are potentially harmful and should be avoided. If you have a large amount of leftover nightshade vegetables (potatoes or peels), cook them first and your chickens will enjoy the treat even more.
2. Salty foods –  Foods containing large amounts of salt can lead to a condition known as salt poisoning, salt toxicity, hypernatremia, or water deprivation-sodium ion intoxication. The small bodies of chickens are not meant to ingest large amounts of salt. Chickens can tolerate up to 0.25% salt in drinking water but are susceptible to salt poisoning when water intake is restricted.
3. Citrus – Some varieties of chickens can be very sensitive to citrus. Many believe it is a build up of citric acid and vitamin C that can cause excessive feather plucking.
4. Onions – Onions contain a toxin substance called thiosulphate that destroys red blood cells. When excessive amounts are fed to chickens, it can cause jaundice or anemia in your hens or even death.
5. Dried or undercooked beans  – Raw, or dry beans, contain a poison called hemaglutin which is toxic to birds. Cooking or sprouting the beans before serving them to chickens will kill this toxin.
6. Dry rice – If we feed them rice, we cook it beforehand. Chickens that are fed dry rice are put in danger of the rice blowing up when it is introduced to moisture and will cause a gut problem in chickens.
7. Avocado skin and pit – Chickens do not care much for avocados. They probably sense or smell the low levels of toxicity in the skin and pit.
8. Raw eggs – Introducing raw eggs to your chickens could result in your flock turning cannibal. If they are doing this, it could be a result of a deficiency in their diet or because they are stressed. Adding crushed oyster shells to their diet usually helps as well as adjusting their environment (more nesting boxes, lessen the light in the coop, etc.)
9. Candy, chocolate, sugar – Chickens do not have much of  sweet tooth. In fact, they only have around 25-30 taste buds, so more than likely, they wouldn’t realize they are eating anything sweet. Further, it’s bad on their digestive tract and chocolate especially contains a toxin called methylxanthines theobromine and is poisonous to chickens. Therefore, adding sugar to their diet wouldn’t be advisable.
10. Apple seeds – Apple seeds contain trace amounts of cyanide that could kill your chicken. As much as chickens love apples, do them a favor and remove the seeds.

A brief break from background information about our homesteading beginings…

…to talk about QUINOA and about crop planning.

Winter is a time for maintaining the land and for planning which crops you want to plant come spring…   This past year we succeeded in growing and harvesting our own quinoa crop, which was very exciting because this is a food that we eat frequently and it happens to come from a different continent.  However, despite our excitement about garden fresh quinoa, we have yet to eat any of it!  Why?  Quinoa is coated in saponins, which have a bitter taste and can cause stomach discomfort; despite washing our quinoa about 5 times before cooking it in our experiment, the bitter taste remained, and we didn’t want to chance a bad feeling in our tummies….   Will we figure this out so that it will be worthwhile to plant quinoa again in the spring?  I hope so, because quinoa is a gorgeous crop in the field, and it is something that I enjoy having on my plate.

I very much am looking forward to a new planting season this coming spring.   I will strive for more diversity and better spaced, smaller plantings, in hopes that we will always have the right amount of fresh produce for our family to eat.  This past year, because we planted all the seeds we had saved (in case they were no longer viable) we had huge harvests of many crops.   This was not bad, as we steamed and froze many greens and put them up for winter, but I am looking forward to more strategic planning in the coming year.

Late April 2014; Gabriel, Elke and Nico are the first to arrive at the new land.

This is where the previous land steward had his garden, but he had let it go wild.

At the end of April 2014, it was time to move to our new land in the Coastal Range of Oregon.  We packed all of our belongings into various vehicles and left the suburbs outside of Seattle to pursue our dream of a life with our hands in the soil.

Nicholas using the tilling feature of a machine that came with the property.

We arrived at the perfect moment to till garden beds and prepare the soil for planting of our garden.  The area inside the fence had previously been tended as a garden, but the cover crop had gone wild and seeded everywhere. After clearing this as best we could, and tilling beds, it was time to plant.  We had a full supply of seeds left over from a homesteading experiment in Costa Rica that had gone awry; we decided to plant almost all of our seeds because we didn’t know their current viability.

Elke and Gabriel planting the first seeds in the new garden beds.

Adding mulch to the blueberries to prevent weeds, amend ph, and increase yield.

Along with new tilling and planting, there were also many established projects and resources that needed to be upkept.

In anticipation of bountiful berry harvests later in the summer, we lovingly dove into the labor intensive job of mulching around all 120+ blueberry bushes.

Our first up close meeting with our new bee friends.

An integral part of any homestead, the beginnings of our compost heap.

We also had a man come over who was able to help us open the bee hive that came with the property and introduce us to our new bee friends.  The hive was healthy and thriving, to the point that we were just in time to maintain it before they left looking for more room.  He helped us to add a “queen excluder” and a “super” to the hive so that there would be more room to store honey in an area where the Queen bee would be unable to lay larva. This would mean that we would be able to consume honey later in the fall, without disturbing the store of honey that the bees had created in the main section of the hive for their own nourishment.

Gabriel and Nico found a new play sanctuary on the stream.

During this initial period of activity, driven by our excitement of being freshly activated in our homesteading projects, we also made sure to take time to explore the more wild areas of our property, in order to harmonize more with the spirit of the land.  These were also moments that helped Gabriel to acclimatize to an outdoor lifestyle in the woods after living in the suburbs of a city.

These very initial phases, when the members of our small family unit were the only people on the land, were a very exciting and idyllic phase for us.  We were in love with our new home and full of energy to invest and create there.

April 2014 – After much search, we found our place…

Since I graduated college in 2007, my mother and I have had a dialog about moving somewhere where we could live near each other and try to form a more simple and sustainable lifestyle where we were living closer to nature’s rhythms.  As I have honed my friend group, this same line of dialog was also very popular among my peers, however one question remained: Where will it be, and how will we identify and purchase the land.

This is the aerial view of the property that we sought immediately after seeing the land from the ground.

In April 2014 after much searching, around the world and specifically in Idaho, Hawaii, and Washington, we moved our search to Oregon.  On the very first day of the Oregon part of our adventure, we found ourselves guided (by a very obscure Craigslist ad) to the middle of the woods in the Coastal Cascade region.

As we pulled down the steep driveway, I knew that we were about to see something truly unusual.  This is what I had been seeking; something with quirk, personality and spirit coupled with strong bones and a practical layout.

The native plant diversity in the woods surrounding our house is spectacular. Most of the plants are edible or medicinal.

We found ourselves greeted guided about the land by its steward of the past 20 plus years; a man to whom I am sure an entire tome could be dedicated, and a being who was very in synch with the land which he inhabited.  As he showed us about the property and introduced us to the plants, animals and spirits of the land, I was completely enchanted.

Palmetto and Green tea bushes, only a bit worse off after a record cold winter, outside the solarium bedroom.

As those who have visited this region of the Pacific Northwest will know, the lushness of the plant life here and the clean moist air, imbue the land with a vitality enriching beauty.  At the time of our first visit, the area of the property that had been maintained in its natural state was in full springtime abundance of medicinal and edible plants.

Not only was the natural beauty of this property amazing, it had already been inhabited and cultivated for over two decades by a man who was truly part of the original “Back to the Land” movement.  He had tended the land in integrity and built systems and structures that showed ingenuity and great skill.

This house truck, which frequented many communes in the 60s and 70s, was listed as a Victorian cedar shingle guest house in the Craigslist ad.

His methods were unusual and inventive and he had added plants and structures to the property that not only gave it its quirky personality, but added great value to it as a place to root a homestead.

Small green tea bushes (2 years old) and a cold-frame greenhouse constructed of old windows.

This is exactly what I had been looking for; a secluded place with great beauty and natural resources, an interesting and structurally sound house with personality, and already established plants, trees, systems and resources to increase the creative diversity and sustainability in my lifestyle.

The solarium bedroom in which we slept when we visited the property. There is a papaya tree and amazing bathtub in here also!

Upon my first experience on this property, I knew that there would be no better land to fit our family’s desire to explore the practice of homesteading.