restoring the roost

North Carolina Country Living and Farmhouse Style

North Carolina Country Living and Farmhouse Style
since 2010

gardening

Spring Garden

· gardening, Homesteading

I love this time of year in North Carolina. I’ve been meaning to post a spring garden update for quite some time and now that it’s almost summer I’m finally getting around to it! Such is the life with toddler twins…

collards

Even though most of our free time is occupied busily raising seedlings and transplanting them into the garden, planting new seeds and prepping garden beds, and trying to stay on schedule with our garden plans despite the weather, I feel that the season offers hope of new life, rebirth, and the excitement of a new growing season (and hopefully a better harvest!).

sugar snap peas

beautiful sage

This year was our first year of actually testing the soil in each of our raised beds and sending the samples into the state lab for results. The testing showed that our beds has an abundance of phosphorus–far too much. And the ph was off. To remedy this, we added various amendments to help balance out the soil in order to make it healthier. As you can see, it has definitely helped and we have greens coming out of our ears!! We simply cannot eat all the kale, collards, lettuce, and arugula fast enough –we have SO much.

arugula

this raised bed holds kale, collards, some onion, and sugar snap peas along the back

We also cut down a few trees around the raised beds that were shading the plants too much and preventing much needed sunlight. Our yard doesn’t get a whole lot sunlight anyway from being so wooded, but hopefully this will help a little bit.

some of our raised beds

We started seedlings in February and again in March for broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. Using our DIY grow light, we cared for the seedlings until the first batch was ready to be hardened off for a couple of weeks prior to transplanting.

this raised bed holds tomatoes, carrots, and spinach

Don’t have enough space in your raised beds? Try planting tomatoes or peppers in post, like we have with this cherry tomato below.

cherry tomato plant in a pot

tiny cherry tomatoes- I can’t wait until they are ripe for the picking!

We also sowed seeds directly into the garden starting in March and each week have planted a little more now that temperatures have really warmed up and we are past the threat of frost. I’m not sure if it’s because we don’t get a whole lot of sun, but for some reason when we try to plant cold-weather crops during the early spring when it’s still fairly chilly, they don’t do well despite claims that certain cold-weather veggies thrive in colder weather.

a bed against the side of our screened porch holds turnips and beets

Right now we are growing  kale, collards, peas, onions, beets, turnips, arugula, spinach, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, okra, radishes, pole beans and a variety of herbs. Also planted are squash, cucumbers, potatoes, and bush beans. We recently harvested garlic in May and planted in its place radishes and more peppers.

this bed in our side yard contains potatoes, squash, cucumber starts and October beans

a recently transplanted pepper plant

lettuce mix

New additions to the garden include strawberries and a blueberry bush. The strawberries are showing signs of growth but I doubt the blueberry bush will be fruitful until next year. Overall, the garden has definitely improved from last year and I’m so excited to see how the rest of the plants do (and I’m patiently waiting that harvest of the first ripe tomato!). Then comes the hard work of preserving all the veggies so that none go to waste!

chives and pretty chive blossoms 🙂

Happy Gardening,

Testing Old Seeds for Viability

· gardening, Homesteading

Each year we always wind up with lots of leftover seeds for most of the vegetables we grow in our garden. We try to reuse what we can, but after a few years it becomes hard to determine whether it is worth it to plant them in case of low germination rates.

old seed packets from last year or the year before

new seed packets that I received as a Christmas gift 🙂

That is where testing old seeds for germination can help save some money by reusing old seed! I think it’s a good idea to do this anyway with saved seed from your garden to see if you are doing a good job of seed saving methods.

To test for germination, the process was pretty simple and there are multiple ways you can go about doing it. What I did was begin with a wet paper towel, place roughly 10 seeds onto the paper towel and then fold it two or three times on each other with the seeds in it. Label the paper towel and seal in a plastic bag or other airtight container.

tomato seeds placed on a wet paper towel

paper towel folded over and placed into ziplock plastic bag with a label

Make sure the paper towels remain moist. I placed several seeds with labels on top together in one plastic bag to save on plastic baggies.

In about 3 to 10 days, you should be able to check and see if your seeds have germinated. With ten seeds, you want to have at least 6 of them germinate to have a good rate. If my rate on a particular veggie is less than 60%, I will plan on buying a new packet of seed for that plant.

The pickling cucumber seeds did fantastic- they passed with flying colors!

The KY Wonder Pole Bean seeds passed as well- these were given to me by a family member

This year in addition to using a lot of our leftover seeds, we plan to purchase new some hybrid tomato seeds (canning and slicing), Sungold cherry tomatoes, some spinach, strawberries, October beans, peppers, herbs, potatoes, onions, and garlic.

Seed catalogs- I love looking through them during the winter 🙂

It’s almost time to start our seedlings for veggies to be transplanted in the early spring. Yikes!  Have you planned out your garden yet?

More on Shuck Beans: Stringing, Drying, & Cooking

· gardening, Homesteading, recipes

I’ve had a lot of interest in my post on shuck beans, so I thought I’d expand on this topic and talk a little bit about my experience with making this southern mountain delicacy. Shuck beans were a way to enjoy beans during the winter, and from what I understand traditionally were eaten around the Holidays.

I first learned about and tasted shuck beans (some people call them shucky beans or leather britches) from my mother-in-law. She is from Harlan, Kentucky and grew up eating these beans.

The first time we dried shuck beans we really didn’t know what we were doing–in fact, we didn’t de-string them well enough. Oops! We strung them up and hung to dry in a cool spot in our house, and then I brought them home to KY with me for my mother-in-law to teach me how to cook.

These shuck beans were in the spring house of a mid 19th century home in Yancey County, NC. They had obviously been hanging there for many many years!

Instead of the traditional way of boiling with some sort of pork fat, she let them cook for a long time on the stove with olive oil for a healthier version. They actually turned out not too bad, but not nearly as good as I had had before. The next time we made them she brought back some wonderful shuck beans from famous heirloom gardener Bill Best, and we made them at my house together. They were very tasty.

To start, you need your beans. We grew greasy beans in our garden last year, along with some half-runners which I’ve heard are some of the best kind to use for shuck beans. If you can’t grow your own, see if your farmer’s market has some of these varieties. Some farmer’s markets will even have already dried shuck beans ready for cooking 🙂

Next you will need to remove the tough strings from all your beans. Then with a needle and thread, string them together in bunches and hang up in a dry cool spot. You may also be able to use a food dehydrator for faster drying of the beans. Or, you can break them into smaller pieces and let them air dry in the sun. Most of the time your beans will need to dry for at least a couple of months. I believe you can dry them for a very long time before they go bad.

Once they are ready for cooking, you will need to soak them overnight. Once soaked overnight you can start cooking them with whatever type of fat you plan to use. Some people use salt bacon, some use fatback, others canola oil.

one of my first attempts at hanging beans up to dry

A failed attempt at shuck beans–these beans I did not let grow large enough before picking. 

traditional shuck beans cooking on the stove

Cook the beans in enough water to cover until boiling and them simmer for a couple hours more or until very tender. Continue cooking until the water has cooked all the way down, stirring to avoid scorching the beans.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with shuck beans. Any tips for cooking them that I left out above? Please share!

Sweet Summertime

· decorating the roost, gardening, Homesteading

Summer seems to be flying by! Here at the roost we are getting back into a routine after being away on vacation for a week. June and Georgia had a ball on their first beach trip and we loved getting to spend time with extended family!

my cousins and our baby girls

Now that we are back there are a host of homestead projects to tackle. First and foremost starting with the garden.

Our kale and collards are still going strong and I have been lazy about harvesting them, so I need to get on it so that we can plant some fall crops in their place. We have been getting lots of romaine lettuce all summer long and a new baby crop of arugula is about ready for harvest.

Our tomatoes have done ok, but not great. One entire row all died and overall they have been slow-growing. Our garden definitely does not get enough sun for the crops that are sun-loving. If we can grow enough, I plan to can some and make some sauce to preserve. Same with the cucumbers.

The beans have produced a slow but steady supply of half-runners and Kentucky wonder beans, the harvests of which should increase as the summer goes on. Again, I’m hoping to preserve and and pickle the extra beans that we don’t eat fresh, as well as dry some for making shuck beans.

Our peppers aren’t doing so great but we will let them continue growing and see what we get. Our squash is growing pretty good but we don’t have much fruit from them yet. We did not grow any potatoes this year and didn’t have the time to get peanuts, melons, or sunflowers into the ground as we had hoped. I don’t feel so bad about not growing sweet potatoes because most of them in grocery stores are grown right here in North Carolina and they are super cheap. With sweet potatoes, I’m at least still eating local and saving money.

The chickens are still very much a part of our homestead life, although we don’t have the time to devote to them as we did before now that we have the babies. My hubby wants them gone as they have taken to wanting to roost on our porches since they are free range. Our flock never ceases to have some sort of drama going on. We recently had two of our hens go missing which brings our flock total down to ten.  Rosemary was also sick recently with flystrike and a swollen fluid-filled abdomen, and though she seems to be doing better, I think her days are numbered (she is over 4 years old!). Why is it always the good hens that go missing and never the roosters or the ones you don’t like?

Chicken-related projects include mending the fence and netting for each coop’s pen, repairing the wooden ramps to the coops, cleaning the coops, and dusting each chicken with DE.

Finally, I am still in the process of transitioning our diet to a real foods diet with sort of an emphasis on eating a low-gluten or gluten-free, paleo-based diet if we can. We already eat mostly whole, real foods anyway but there are several areas where we could use improvement and times when temptation or convenience gets the best of us. Meal preparation is key to overcoming the convenience of grabbing something on the go. Back earlier in the year we purchased a large package of grass-fed beef from a local farmer and it was fabulous! We hope to do more of this, grow more of our food, and purchase from local farmer’s markets as much as possible. One big problem is in the state of North Carolina it is illegal to sell/consume raw diary products, and with twin 9 month old babies THERE. IS. JUST. NO. TIME. LEFT. to do much of anything else!

It definitely seems overwhelming at times but in the end I know it will be so worth it to our health and well-being. Hope you are having a wonderful summer and that your gardens are giving you an endless bounty 🙂

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Homestead Barn Hop

Crape Myrtles

· gardening

In July at the roost our crape myrtle is blooming lovely pinky purple blooms.  It has grown from a tiny sapling (a cutting from a church friend) when we planted it into quite a large bush/tree in less than 5 years!

Crape myrtles do wonderfully here in the Carolinas. So much of the time people think they are overused and call it a “developer tree” as it is often planted in housing developments, shopping centers, and along roadways for its quick growth. This is true to an extent, but an older variety during the summer when in full bloom is always quite striking I think.

I like the old crape myrtles you see beside old farm houses in the countryside that are huge and full of bright, hot pink and fuscia blooms. I’ve also seen some gorgeous deep purple blooms on crape myrtles in some downtown neighborhoods in Raleigh.

Here are some examples from my neck of the woods:

My little crape myrtle doesn’t have many blooms but I harvested what I could for a pretty bouquet. I added a hosta leaf (our hostas are huge and doing great) to it and placed in it a small brown transferware tea/coffee pot in the living room.

I hope you are having a great summer!

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