Homesteading Home 🏡

[Neome]

Welcome to Homesteading Home for anyone with little or no direct contact with people outside their household.

This might be due to self isolation, precautionary low contact due to preexisting health conditions or living miles from anywhere and enjoying being a bit of a hermit.

What are we all doing to keep our lives and our children’s lives in balance today?

A day of screen time and popcorn may be called for or a day of baking, knitting and family yoga. Whatever you’re up to please feel free to share your triumphs and tribulations.

Best wishes to all who enter 🏡

I'm furiously crocetting atm, after listening to BJ and getting angry

Hmm, don’t slip one, knit one, pass the slip stitch over, in anger...

Hi, I've been a preppier for ages and I feel relatively confident about having to self isolate. I'm more worried about my dad who is in his 80s and has loads of underlying issues (although all the food in the world as he is a horder). Also his partner has cancer and they are having to go to hospital appointments lots for her chemo/checkups.

Anyway I have a question. We moved house in October and now have a lovely little garden. It was very overgrown and unkempt but we have gradually cleared it so it still has lovely trees and some nice (now much smaller) shrubs. I would like to grow fruit but we are very urban and there are cats and foxes everywhere. Has anyone put up a fruit run? I mean a basic structure in wooden posts covered in chicken wire with a similar gate? Would that be successful in a small garden? I used to work for a family who had huge grounds and they had one slightly larger than a tennis court at the side of the house but perhaps it only worked because it was huge. Has anyone done this? And do you have any advice on it? Thank you all, lovely people.

One of my allotment neighbours has a giant walk in fruit cage, very allotment built ie bits and pieces of timber. It's great! You need to make sure you can remove the top netting in the winter if it will be vulnerable to snow piling up and bringing it down - hers seems tough enough not to need this.

If I had the spare cash and a big enough space I'd go for this hubs fruit cage which is beautiful as well as functional.

Thank you! That cage is lovely and I'm very much coveting it now. I think our garden might be too small for it though (unless we cut down some more trees and I'm not keen on that). The garden is 12m by 7m so not huge but gets lots of sun.
I think I might design some kind of heath robinson type thing like your allotment neighbour. Also good call about the snow I wouldn't have thought about that. I'm in Scotland and will be picking some hardy fruits anyway but want to protect what I can!

We are doing a jigsaw puzzle today. Lovely simple slow and calm. I’m consciously reducing online time, looking at news, forums etc. It’s just making me feel worse.

If you fancy watching other homesteaders on YouTube: Liz Zorab - Byther Farm is great. She's in Monmouthshire.
Or OffGrid with Doug and Stacey. They are in Missouri. Very engaging if very different to Uk llfe.

When i first met dh, i went straight to his book case to have a nose (suss him out ), to my delight we had a huge number of books in common, one that really stood out was his copy of John Seymore's 'The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency', i knew then that he was a keeper . Very good book, well worth getting a copy for all those that enjoy such things.

Today i have been having a quiet day, far too many early mornings have been happening this week, waking up at silly o'clock. I have finished painting dd's white trainers, am very pleased with them, i hope that she likes them! She is a Marvel fan so they had to have certain 'badges' on them.

The dehydrator is on 24/7, currently doing lots of spinach.

A jigsaw sounds like a great idea CookiesAreForEatingNotStoring.

I’ve woken up at a silly time so I might try those Youtubers bellinisurge I intend to plant out some perpetual spinach tomorrow, lovely to be reminded of John Seymour,KundaliniRising, my mum had it when I was growing up.

Morning all! I also woke really early, thinking about what to do today...
Yesterday DH made a third raised bed and I filled it with manure and compost and planted four raspberry plants. The kale and tomato seedlings are growing really well but won’t be ready to go in the ground for a few weeks yet so the beds are empty apart from the raspberries and a couple of rhubarb crowns!

The DC have been off school all week - one has a horrible cold but the others we decided to pull out because of my immune suppression. Because I’ve also been ill I came off my meds but now I am in agony with arthritis in my hands so I might have to go back on them again!
We have a big puzzle to do too - not sure whether to crack it open now or wait for a rainy day a bit later on. Think we are in for the long haul with this. I had been off my antidepressants for 8 months prior to this week, but took the decision to start them again as I was feeling so anxious about the situation. I am feeling a bit better so definitely helping.
So my plans for today:
Help DH put in another raised bed
Play a board game with the DC
Washing
1 hour clean the house
Rest
Clean out the chickens

Have a good homesteading day everyone

Has anyone any ideas for a lazy teenager! I've lots of projects for my 6 year old but 13 year old boy I'm really struggling with ideas and do not want a constant battle to get him stop stop playing the xbox and online gaming.

When I was a stroppy depressed teenager before the internet I read a lot to escape. I remember reading some rather dark things and sci fi and I know friends who read tons of horror🙈

Is it even possible for the Xbox to be played outdoors at all? Apologies if dim question.

Morning all

Been dividing up my day so I don't get sucked in to non stop work outside, now its getting longer days. This is not a new thing, I have to do it this time every year as otherwise I'd be outside working all day. Normally there would be trips off farm though to break up the days.

So, I have a reading break scheduled for mid morning coffee, a meditation break for after lunch, a yoga/stretching break in afternoon and then crafting or reading early evening.
I don't have to do it, but knowing it's on my schedule makes it easier to remember and make time for, rather than non stop chores

It isn't mine, but a family member has fashioned a fruit cage from scaffolding poles and netting. It is very sturdy and has been in place for almost 20 years. The most important thing seems to be that the netting is very good to prevent small birds from getting in and that the door fits well. I love picking fruit in it and hope to have a similar fruit cage in the future.

May I join? We're battening down the hatches here, but largely it's continuing the trajectory we've been on for the last few years. We live in a small town, but are fairly socially withdrawn anyway.

Don't have a proper fruit cage, but weighted netting over tall bamboo canes topped with plastic bottles - doesn't look as lovely as the Hubs one. I only net rapsberries as blackcurrants and gooseberries seem ok without it.

Blackcurrants and gooseberries are OK without netting but blackbirds love redcurrants and they do need good netting. The main reason for the fruit cage was to protect the redcurrants. Now the bushes are so big and prolific we don't know what to do with all the berries. I still dream of having a a large fruit cage though, it is like a little oasis in the backgarden. The one I am used to is big enough for redcurrants, blackcurrants, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries and rhubarb.

It’s really helping to keep me grounded being in the garden

Today we made another raised bed, and I planted the bed we made yesterday with soft fruits - two gooseberries, two blueberries, a black currant and a red currant bush. We planted a bed of raspberries yesterday.

The bed we made today is for french beans.

apples I've never tried growing redcurrants - would you recommend? How do you use them?

Today I planted some trays of spinach and listened to library audiobooks - have started working my way through all the Poirots. They are a lovely distraction from current affairs. Love the library apps for ebooks and audiobooks - we have started listening to swallows and amazons in the afternoon all together with DC too.

I only use redcurrants to make jelly. Would be interested in other recipies. Good netting is a must though. Before the bushes were covered blackbirds could eat through most of the berries in a day or two.

Poirot - brilliant idea.

Today hasn't gone completely to plan but did contain freshly baked breadmaker bread 🍞 and DS trying to play the Star Wars theme on harmonica.

I’ve been very half hearted about my gardening for the last few years, and happy enough to leave the most of the fruit to the birds and snails but I think I’m going to have to be a bit greedier this year. We have black berries, strawberries, raspberries and red currants (fabulous with cheese) and some herbs that need very little looking after. I’m going to have to look at netting. Would a net curtain work, do you think, or would it block too much sun?

Any tips for discouraging snails? I’m too soft hearted to be a successful gardener, I think!

Net curtain might work. One problem we found with using nets is that the blackbirds have long beaks and can reach through large holes. To be successful the net had to be at a distance from the bush.

I've just finished making blackcurrant jam using up berries that were in the freezer from last year to make space for other stuff.

Net curtain will block too much light if it's on for any length of time. You want Enviromesh or Envirofleece.

For slugs , plant lots of soft leaved sacrificial plants for them to eat, instead (lettuce are good, use thinning and transplant them) or beer traps.

Even so called safe slug pellets do harm to wildlife, use organic methods instead

Try ideas from this article, all good stuff.

www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/20-ways-control-slugs-permaculture-garden-or-allotment

Hope you’re bearing up BanKittenHeels 🌱