I love eating tomatoes, growing tomatoes and cooking with tomatoes. There is no better taste, than a tomato from the garden that had an opportunity to ripen under the warm summer sun. In fact, I consider myself to be a tomato snob enough to not buy grocery store tomatoes. We grow enough to indulge during…
Meat Birds Fall 2019—Major FAIL
Paul and I experienced our first major loss on the homestead. In the last few weeks we started processing our fall birds and were quite happy with the way the birds were growing. When we harvest any animal, we always do a thorough examination of the way the animal looks, on the outside and the…
Reflection and Resolutions: You Reap What you Sow
You reap what you sow…a wise friend said that to me the other day without realizing that those were the exact words I so desperately needed to hear. The meaning is so simple yet so deep. In more technical terms, your output is directly correlated to your input (of course with some exceptions). I have…
Getting Ready For Christmas Dinner–Learning To Butcher A Lamb
The feelings of excitement, horror and appreciation have been on my mind this past week. Today, Paul and I got to learn how to harvest and butcher a ram lamb. Our friends at Full of Sheep Farm have been raising a lamb for us. Danielle and Ed run a successful dairy sheep farm and supply us…
The American Dream
Paul and I were both really good kids. Our parents say so, really. We did everything we were told. I was an immigrant to this country from Baku, Azerbaijan. We immigrated to the US when I was 10, in 1992. My parents were amazing. They gave up comfortable professional jobs and moved their whole lives…
Our first official homestead presentation
Recently, Paul and I had the pleasure of speaking at our local SubUrban Farm and Garden Expo. We met so many wonderful people and had so much fun talking to our neighbors about our journey of homesteading. If I can do this (and make cheese) for a living, I think I would be the happiest…
Open House: How to preorder your starts
For the last two years, we have organized an open house gathering for our friends, family and neighbors. It has proven to be a ton of fun! We’ve gotten to know our neighbors, mingle with friends, make new friends, talk chickens and gardening. Last year we had our plant sale and were able to recoup…
Planing, dreaming, experimenting and incubating, thats what we do in January
January is a a great time to start contemplating plans and new projects for the approaching growing season. Even here in the temperate Pacific Northwest, January tends to be cold, dark and mostly wet. These conditions makes it easy to forget that the first of the seedlings will need to be ready to transplant in…
We went back to Eden!
A year or two ago (we have four kids so time is a little fuzzy at times), Paul and I watched a documentary Back To Eden. It is about Paul Gautsci and his method of vegetable gardening. He uses wood chips everywhere as mulch and is known to be the man who doesn’t water his…
May 2018 Be a Good Year!
Wow, 2017 flew by very fast–we must of had lots of fun!! I think we did!! We accomplished most of what was on our 2017 to do list. We got our greenhouse up and running! Paul got the greenhouse done just in time to transfer our starts and give them the daylight they so desperately…