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 🏡

Another day, another raised bed filled with manure!

Though I realised that where we put our bed we were planning to put our french beans in is no good as it will shade the broccoli and sprouts

Have to rethink which bed is for what, which is a bit of a pain as we made the bean one narrow to take the wigwam things neatly...

anyway, was gorgeous to be out in the sunshine. Hope you all managed to get out too and enjoy some peace today

Anyone ideas for getting rid of snails? I've used nematodes for getting rid of slugs before and that's been brilliant - but we are over run with snails now!

The struggle is real
I've had success with beer traps. Jar 3/4 full of beer set in the soil so the darlings check in but don't check out.
Crunched up egg shells around your precious crops.
Trip at sundown with a torch , a heart of stone and a good throw.

Hello,

I’m coming across from prepping for pandemic as I have been reading and enjoying your lovely gardening tales.

I grow redcurrants and red currant jelly is an absolute staple in our house. Without it I couldn’t possible make gravy!

We tried raspberries but they didn’t take. However for anyone short on space we find beans easy peasy and high yielding.

I’m hoping to get tomatoes going and would be very interested in anyone with canning experience or preserving in Kilners presumably in brine?

My other love is sourdough, I’m pretty sure one of my creations lurking at the back of the fridge could be drained any used as hand sanitizer 🤦‍♀️

@Posharmchairs , I dehydrated loads of home grown tomatoes. And, because I made the investment in an All-American pressure canner: I've pressure canned homemade passata in jars.

@bellinisurge homemade passata? Wow!

@Posharmchairs you wouldn't be willing to share your reducurrant jelly recipe would you? I've been using the Delia one but find that it goes a bit runny, even when I use the sugar thermometer.

@applesandpears33 of course! I’ll find it. It was off a foodie blogger page I think. It’s the overnight method where you strain the currant juice through a muslin. Mine isn’t perfectly clear but it’s a dark ruby red and sets very firm.

@applesandpears33

I loosely followed this method:

www.thespruceeats.com/red-currant-jelly-recipe-1327859

I did find I got a bit of a cloudy finish but the set, flavour and ability to keep is fantastic.

Delicious in sauces, gravy's, with meat, with cheese you name it.

Thanks so much. Mine has been a very runny jelly, so that'll be great. I think it goes cloudy when you squeeze the jelly bag to get the last stuff out. I've found if i don't squeeze the bag the jelly is much clearer.

I’ll remember that tip.

I always over squeeze. I went to strain some cream cheese a few weeks ago and ended up with it squirting out the other side of the cloth, whoops!

I went outside for the last time for 14 days today. Flat dweller. Self isolating. We may check whether we can walk round the communal garden later, but we are top floor and have to pass other flats to get out.

Do you have a balcony or sunny window BlackeyedSusan?

I’m sat listening the the birds outside with a cup of tea in our dimly lit sitting room.
It occurred to me that we have something in our house that is known for “keeping forever”.
Dh and I had a big white wedding with a traditional multi tiered fruit cake. I’m sure there is still a tier left lurking around somewhere! We have already done the christening one.

But where could I have hidden it 🤔

I can hear birds too Posharmchairs.

DS had quite a disturbed night (typical for him) so I’ve got Classic FM on in the background.

I remembered Readyme’s advice upthread

My advice would be to break up your day into chunks morning / afternoon / evenings etc and plan a different focus for each part of the day it breaks up monotony and it helps to keep the mind focused.

For us morning are about being outside in our garden, it's large and isolated and takes a lot of work. if weather is very bad We will do online work out regime
Afternoons are for school, afternoon activity (craft project, sensory play etc) followed by 'quite hour ' when DC plays independently and I read a book.
Evening Family time.

I’m starting to find a new rhythm, best wishes to all 🏡

I bought lots of seeds and compost yesterday along with seed trays and plastic cloche covers also I became slightly over enthusiastic and bought a sort of walk in green house made of plastic from Homebase. I grew quite a lot from seed last year to go on the window sill and ended up with lots of good stuff (or in the case of courgettes too many).

Only problem is in the new house everywhere is cold and not many rooms have much sun.

Going to plant a few things today design a fruit run and cross my fingers!

Some lovely ideas here this feels like a very relaxing thread.

We are going to paint the shed, do some jigsaws and settle into a new rhythm of life too.
Aside from concerns about health I am quite liking the idea

Shed painting sounds lovely! I bought some outdoor paint because the previous owner left over 300 pots in the property (she was a very old lady and the house had been empty for a couple of years before we moved in). Lots of the pots are broken or too small but some I'm going to paint the better and larger ones nice colours so the garden looks bright without much greenery. I thought it would be cheerful, then I can plant out when the seedlings are more established. Think a little long term planning gives us something to look forward to. Hearing the birds is lovely :-)

Joining the thread if I may. We are now in 14 day isolation. DS2 came home from school with a cough. I now have it. I pulled them out of school on Thursday as a preemptive move (and because they had sport all day Thursday and a charity day Friday and so they weren't missing anything). The plan was to reassess on Sunday but now they won't be back in before the Easter hols. DS1 is year 10 and so we went to the library last thursday and got a load of revision guides and books from the reading lists and they are now set up for home schooling. DS2 is Year 8 and got a pile of books plus some 1000 piece jigsaws which he is looking forward to doing.

I have seeds to plant and a mountain of jobs to do around the house. In the meantime however I am still working and am extremely busy as clients panic about how to pay people (Im an employment lawyer). Lots of clients will collapse I'm afraid.

Hmmm, well I only got as far a the seed potatoes in an egg box on a windowsill yesterday but I'm about to do the seeds for veg. I had a lovely long phone chat with my best friend this morning - she was giving me tips from last year (her first year of veg gardening) and is at the stage as me as in sewing seeds. It was such a normal conversation about family and gardens and hardly any cv (even though she is a doctor). Sun is now shining so I'm hoping to do some normal today. Hope you are all well and able to take some time out today.

@Knickersinatwist36 sounds like a great idea since you have so many but I have found terracotta pots are soooooo much thirstier than plastic pots, So be prepared for lots of watering. Having said that, painting the outside may help prevent evaporation so maybe thats the best plan.

Thank you that hadn't occurred to me! (I also bought a watering can but remembering to use it might be another thing, a kitchen chart might be the thing). I don't think if I plant the seeds they will be anywhere near ready to go out in the next few weeks so a bit of time to paint the pots and position them where I want them. I'm finding this all a very welcome distraction and I'm excited about growing stuff outdoors.

Thanks everyone this thread is right up my street. Have done a lot of mending today, holes in trousers, teddy bears arm back on! Getting round to the little jobs. Am self isolating due to dh RA and my asthma. Got 4 kids pulled them out of school Monday. Going to plant some sunflowers tomorrow found a packet in a drawer, I know not much good for eating (until they're grown and can eat the seeds?) but will look beautiful and be good for morale!

You're all doing so well. I've only got as far as labelling the jars of jam I made, and putting potted herbs that I bought from the supermarket on the windowsill. Tomorrow I'm going to try planting chilli seeds. Ideally, I'd like to grow tomatoes too but I've tried it on a windowsill in the past and the amount of humidity they create caused damp.

If you’re going to the trouble of painting a terracotta pot painting it on the inside will reduce the amount of water absorbed by the clay, painting on the outside will reduce evaporation. I’d guess painting on the inside would increase it’s frost hardiness but no guarantee there!

My gardening time was the best bit of my day and is keeping me grounded. I feel really lucky to have outdoor space, a tiny patio, I’m determined to do as much vertical gardening as possible and try to make sure we always have some fresh greens available.

I’m very slowly finding a new rhythm. Hope everyone is feeling comfortable in their own sanctuaries.