restoring the roost

North Carolina Country Living and Farmhouse Style

North Carolina Country Living and Farmhouse Style
since 2010

Homesteading

Blueberry Jam

· Homesteading, recipes

I made some fresh blueberry jam over the weekend- it tastes like heaven on fresh biscuits, pancakes and toast. Our wonderful neighbors (who regularly watch our chickens for us while we are away) brought us back an entire flat of blueberries from Burgaw, North Carolina in Pender County, the home of the annual Blueberry Festival.

I was so excited to have a sea of fresh, plump, local blueberries to make jam with and enjoy in the weeks ahead!

This was my first time making blueberry jam- I followed a simple recipe below for a small batch:

4 pints ripe blueberries
2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice (bottled)

Wash and sterilize jars in a hot water bath. Heat and boil canning lids in a separate pot. 






Prepare jam by combining ingredients and bring to a boil, cooking for about 25 minutes or until mixture thickens and sets well. (when a spoonful is set into the freezer for a minute or two and when removed the jam doesn’t slide off the spoon easily, it is ready). 


Fill hot jars with jam and wipe rims with a damp cloth, leaving about a 1/4 inch of headspace. Place hot lids and rims on jars. Lift jars into hot water bath and process for 10 minutes. Remove jars from water and check seals, drying off jars. Let cool and label jars. Makes 3 1/2 pint jars of jam. 






Jams are so much easier to make than canning other vegetables and a great way to use up extra fruit on hand.

We are enjoying the fresh jam on morning treats and look forward to enjoying it all year round.

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Smokehouses, Privies, and Corn Cribs: Historic Outbuildings on the Farmstead

· architectural history, Homesteading

I’m kind of obsessed with old outbuildings. I LOVE them and find so many uses for outbuildings on today’s modern homestead or small farm.

likely and old dairy barn, Alamance County, NC

gabled barn, Pamlico County, NC 
either a privy or smokehouse, Franklin County, NC

A couple hundred years ago and earlier outbuildings were essential to the farmer– a profession in which the majority of Americans participated. A farm was not complete without a handful of dependencies including structures such as:

– detached kitchen
– privy (or outhouse, sometimes called a “necessary”)
– smokehouse
-spring house or dairy
– corn crib
– livestock barn
– chicken house
– tobacco barn
– storage sheds for hay or grain storage
– pack houses
– dairy barn
– horse barn or carriage house
– greenhouse
– well house
– canning shed

small cottage possibly used for overseerer of farm or servants cottage, Pamlico County, NC
former smokehouse, Yancey County, NC
spring house, Yancey County, NC

most likely a former dairy barn, Iredell County, NC

Most farms didn’t necessarily contain all these outbuildings, but at least a handful of them were needed. Even older urban homes sometimes contained a privy, detached kitchen (if in the South), and a carriage house.

farmstead with collection of surviving outbuildings, Duplin County, NC

The placement of outbuildings either behind or to the side of the main residence or farmhouse often followed a pattern depending on geographical region or type and purpose of the farm. Several architectural historians have looked at this in their research and one of my favorite books on the subject is John Michael Vlach’s Back of the Big House.

Livestock barn, log construction double crib, Hoke County, NC 

Most outbuildings were constructed with wood as the primary material but there are many also constructed of stone, brick, stucco or other hardy materials. More recently farm outbuildings have been commonly built with concrete or metal. I still think outbuildings are incredibly versatile today for the modern homesteader. First of all, we can never have enough storage, and many older outbuildings can even function in their original purposes. Minor updates and careful repairs may be all that are needed to stabilize and preserve historic outbuildings.

I know wherever our family ends up buying a permanent home I hope the property comes with a variety of old outbuildings- I can find uses for all of them!

Turkey Poults!

· Homesteading

The turkeys are here!!!  (Ok, we’ve had them for about five weeks now). 

We got them as sweet tiny day-old poults, and boy have they grown and changed fast! They required more care and patience than chicks, because it is harder for them to figure out how to eat and drink on their own. We put colorful buttons and beads in their waterer to encourage drinking, put their food on aluminum foil, and put paper towels down in the brooder so they wouldn’t slip. We had to dip their beaks and encourage eating and drinking a lot more than with chicks who naturally take to it.

This particular breed is the heritage Bourbon Red. They are supposed to be hardier than some and have a great flavor for meat. I have always been partial to Heritage breeds. An added bonus, the breed originated from Kentucky (my home sweet home).

turkeys are obviously very flexible- this one seems to be scratching his bum 🙂

We finished up the turkey pen at the back of our shed just in time! Using chicken wire, metal fence posts, and scrap wood, we built a pen for the turkeys that has a roost underneath the covered portion. My husband draped netting overtop to secure from above-ground predators. A full-sized door allows easy access for us to go inside. We also cut out a “window” screened with chicken wire for us to easily see what was going on in the pen without having to walk all the way around to the back of the shed.

(Pictures of the pen to come very soon!)

Oh my goodness these turkeys are too funny– they are SO attached to us already. Way more than the chickens. When we leave their pen after coming in to change food/water or it visit, they cry and cry and CRY! If we come back before they have settled down or really anytime we show up to their pen they rush up to us so happy and cheeping. They like to be so close to us all the time and love to jump up on our knees or arms or whatever is available to them and be petted– ahhhhh!!! My turkey poults must have separation anxiety or think that we are their mama turkey.

I’m not sure of the sexes yet, but if I had to take a guess I would say we have two boys and two girls. It’s hard to think that we will be eating a couple of these birds around the Holidays, and will be very tough to let them go, but I’m glad at least knowing that the delicious bird I’m eating had a good life while it lived, raised in healthy conditions. 

Do any of you have turkeys? What do you find most interesting about their personalities?

First Spring Harvest

· gardening, Homesteading

Our first harvest of the springtime has arrived!! We were hoping to get some lettuces and greens earlier in the  colder months of spring, but it just did not work out that way. We will try again next winter 🙂

But right now, we are enjoying some beautiful red and white radishes harvested from the garden, along with some spring onions, lettuce, and baby spinach!

red and white radishes, spring onions
we have been harvesting the lettuce as we need it

Our sweet friends that live not far from us brought us fresh asparagus harvested from their garden–isn’t is beautiful?

Pretty soon we will have kale available for cooking with collards following not too long afterwards! Our garlic is doing really well and should be ready perhaps in the next month. Fresh herbs have re-grown on their own, and we have TONS of lavender.

garlic
chives (they grow back every year on their own)

one of the lavender plants

So incredibly excited, I feel like our garden is finally at the productivity level we’ve always hoped for. After a couple years of only so-so harvests and a lot of total flops, we have learned how to make our garden healthier and give it what it needs most.

onions

This includes lots of extra compost, little natural fertilizer and extra sunlight. The sunlight may have to be achieved by cutting down one of our trees. Although I really hate to do this, our yard is heavily wooded and there aren’t many other places we could put it to receive that needed sunlight.

Another thing we have invested a lot of time in is starting our seeds indoors, moving them to bigger pots and hardening them off before transplanting outside. We use a simple home-made grow light that I showcased in this post as well as our cold frame for giving new seedlings the warmth and light they need.

My hope is to be harvesting something every week or two from our garden! How does your garden grow this spring?

Happy Harvesting,

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Using the Forest’s Free Resources (edible or not)

· Homesteading

How many of you have heard of cultivating an edible forest (or perhaps gleaning from its yields if you already have one)?

I have been trying to learn what edible or medicinal wild plants, nuts and berries are growing in our region that we could potentially harvest from the wooded land that surrounds our property. I love foraging. I think it’s so cool to identify the useful plants growing right under our noses.

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

  • Lots of hickory nuts…..

  • Wild poke weed. The only parts that are harvestable are the baby greens. Once the stems have turned a pinkish red color, the plant is already too mature and very toxic if eaten. The greens are quite good sauteed or with soups or stews.

  • Chickweed. Chickweed can be used for a variety of medicinal purposes. It can also be eaten as a nutritious addition to salads. 

  • Wild onions (use them like scallions)

  • Dandelion greens
  • Other Greens. I’m not sure what this is but we have several patches of it growing in our yard. It grows in clumps. Anyone have any ideas? 

There aren’t as many wild berry bushes and vines as I’d hoped, but I did find a few that might yield something for us as long as we can get to them before the birds do.

We have found lots of plants in our woods that we are using just as much even though they are not edible. For instance, we kept finding these growths of some type of bushy ornamental grass. It was all over the woods in our yard, grows well in shade or sun, and seems to like our soil conditions, so we dug up several of them and planted them all around our house as free landscaping!

We also have done this with wild fern, which is beautiful and grows all over our woods. Fern is also great for adding to flower arrangements and for decorative use, such as botanical framing or pressed leaves for artwork.

Additionally, BJ uncovered tons of native rock and stone that was dumped and covered when our house was moved and put upon its new foundation. He dug it up and has been using it as a nice border for the flower beds. More free landscaping!


A great article on creating an edible forest or working with a semi-existing is located here. Do any of you have a type of edible forest or plan on growing one?






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