Taking a Break from Homesteading

Hey friends, it is Saturday and we have just a lot of stuff to do here at the farm. One of the things we're really excited about doing is getting open shelving done in our kitchen, something we wanted to do almost three years ago and have just never gotten around to it. So we're going to get that put up. We ordered some shelves from Ikea, really low cost. I'll link them in the description below and we are going to put them up around the window and obviously don't mind just a messy kitchen right now. That is on the agenda today. We also need to do some mowing, brush hog one of our pastures and clean up. We have an exciting trip coming up next weekend. Real quick little trip and I can't wait to share all about that with you guys. It involves the Airstream and a little bit of a road trip. So we'll share more about that in the next video. Malachi says hi this morning. Don't you little man? What you doing? There's stink bugs in there. In the box? Yeah. Stink bugs? Yeah. He's got my shoes. What are you doing with my tacos? Mama, put these on your feet. You can put them on my feet. Put them on my feet. Thank you. Give me the other one. Thank you so much. Good job. It looks nice. So essentially then we'll have another one stocked. Give me the camera. Can you say please? Can you say hi? Okay, so the kitchen we remodeled. We remodeled in 2017, 2018. And we had always intended to put open shelving around the sink. But the types of hinges that we ordered, I ended up not liking how bulky they looked. So it's just something we haven't done for years. Are you snuggly? So they're about $20 a piece. So it's like $100 for four of them. We're going to have two stacked on each side of the window. And then I'm going to be able to use them to put things like little plants, cookbooks. We're also going to put some of our spices and herbs and things like that that I grow in the garden in some mason jars with some sealed lids. He's so snuggly right now. Malachi is 10 months. 10 months and a week old. And he's crawling. He's standing. He's very close to walking. And he's starting to point. He says, Dada, what else do you do? He says, Rawr. Do you want to say rawr? Rawr. He says, Doggy. He's going to be one soon. Can you believe this little chunker? He's going to be one. So one thing that has been going on this summer, fall, is we've taken kind of a break from homesteading. We still obviously live on a farm and we still have large gardens and we still eat food from the garden. But I would say mentally I've just kind of relaxed what my goals are in terms of growing our own food just because he's a lot of work. We're both working full time from home. I'm working on my PhD. It's just been a lot, guys. The idea of feeling like with homesteading, wanting to grow our own food and wanting to do all the things is a lot of work. I just don't have the time available to me to work out in the garden or the energy. So we grew all of our own sweet potatoes this year. We haven't harvested them yet. We grew all of our own pumpkins. We did not can any tomato products because all of our tomatoes died. And that's okay. We still have tons of tomato products from last year. We shouldn't have to buy any of those from the store, which is really grateful for. We made our own pesto. We grew our own popcorn, which is fun. What else did we grow? You sleepy? I grew all of my own cut flowers this year. I chopped and froze peppers. We've been using a lot of our spinach and smoothies. What else did we do? We're going to make some hot sauce. We're going to make some pepper jelly. But all that to say, we did zero pressure canning this year. Oh, kitty. And I only did a few hot water bath can things. I think I made some jam. And I made some pickles. And that's it. That's it. So low key, it's been really nice. It's been really nice not to stress about that. So next year, we'll get back to preserving a lot of our food. And, you know, it's okay to take breaks in seasons of life. Take the pressure off yourself and just do what you can. Enjoy your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are seasons for everything. And right now the season is being a new mom. If I wasn't working full time, I would have more time to do those things. And that's just the way it is. But all that to say, if you're struggling and you're not doing all the things that you wish you were doing, give yourself a break. Give yourself some grace. And just celebrate the things that you are doing. Because in my case, raising a tiny human is a lot of work. And he's pretty special. Wow. Uh-oh. He's also learned how to whisper. Do you want to whisper? Let's whisper. I love you. You want to go down? We have some fall crops growing. And a lot of the summer crops are still alive because we haven't had a frost yet. Last year we had a frost in September. And this year I'm hoping we hold out until October. Just a week left. So we'll see what happens. More on center. Okay. Life is a winding road No telling where it goes Driving through days and nights Won't stop for traffic lights And I I really want to know, really want to know If I Let me figure out where the road goes Even if I'm falling down I will keep on searching for my highs You can say I lost my mind I will keep on searching for my highs Every sky is falling down Jumping from cliffs so high Trusting our wings to fly Sometimes we're crashing down But we get up and start from the ground And I I really want to know, really want to know If I Let me figure out where the road goes Even if I'm falling down I will keep on searching for my highs You can say I lost my mind I will keep on holding my head high Even if the sky is falling down Sky is falling down There we have it. The tape down there is where the caulking is getting done now. Alkai's enjoying his vegan chicken nuggets with homemade tomato sauce. Was it yummy? You're such a mess. I'm just going to go pick you some raspberries, okay? Good morning friends, it's Sunday and today we are back at work this weekend. We finished the kitchen shelves, but we still have to clean up the rest of the kitchen. I'll show you that in a minute. Hey you, where are you going? I also want to go outside and harvest peppers because we are starting to get temperatures into the high 40s at night. Soon, it's not going to be long before we get a frost and we have a lot of peppers out there that I need to harvest. I want to plant spinach because I haven't gotten around to planting it yet. And yeah, just do some cleaning, tidying up. And then real soon, I'm going to be transitioning our outdoor plants that are not hardy to the winter. Like our lime tree, our lemon tree, our orange tree. Bringing them in the house and having an indoor garden. So I'm excited to show you guys all of that. So yeah, it's just kind of a busy season around here. A lot to do. There is a lot to do. Right, Moo Moo? What do you think? Are you ready for all the work? That's a vacuum. It's a vacuum. Mm-hmm. It's so fun. Okay, so here's the kitchen. So we have the open shelves here. They look really nice. I'm really happy with them. And then we moved the toaster over here. It used to be over there. And then we just have like, we're donating all of this stuff here. And I just have to clean up these mason jars. And we have to move the blender back. But as you can see, looks a lot different with the shelves. So really happy with those. We are going to be using these two bottom ones for some bulk storage. So I have like a lot of my herbs and spices that I harvest, dehydrate, and blend from the garden. Then over here we're going to have some other bulk storage. Things like chia seeds, flax, hemp. Things that we use often. So this week I'm going to be placing my first order with Azure Standard. It's basically like organic goods, dry goods, in bulk that you can buy online. And then they ship to a drop location. So this is going to be really nice because we can reduce our plastic. We can get more stuff in bulk. It's kind of like Costco without a lot of the packaging. And a lot more organic goods, a lot more options. So we're going to be starting that. So as I place an order for Azure Standard, I'll kind of show you guys what we're getting from there. In future videos and let you know how it goes. But I'm excited to be able to get things like flour, rice, beans, seeds, and nuts. Things like that. Granola and just things that we really enjoy and use on a daily basis. But often have to get in like plastic packages. So I'm looking forward to taking a break from plastic. There's one other thing that I wanted to tell you guys about. And that is we're doing this kind of course, this apprenticeship type program. This summer, fall, winter through Twisted Tree Farm. Which is a permaculture orchard and nursery a few hours away from us. And what they do is they send us seeds and like cuttings as well as information. So I have a package here of a bunch of different seeds. I'm going to open that up and show you guys what's in here. But we've already received things like mulberry seeds and what else? Siberian pea shrub seeds. A few other things as well as information on how to start them. So my goal is to learn more about permaculture. And learn more about starting seeds and trees and perennials. And hopefully eventually we can have a little nursery here. Where we sell perennials that we've started here on our farm. So that's exciting. Twisted Tree Farm is a really great resource. If any of you are looking for more education on permaculture. And I will share what I learn along the way as best as I can. But right now it's really learning about cold stratification and starting seeds for perennials. So let me show you guys what's in this package. Okay, so we have Burr cross with Gamble. I'm guessing these are chestnuts. That's what it looks like. And this is Chincobin. Oh, and some of these are already sprouting. So I'm going to get these in the fridge. Black locust seeds. A lot of seeds in here. This is hazelnuts. Looks like. Aronia berry seeds. Okay, so we have hazelnuts. Chincobin. I think these are chestnuts, but I'm not sure. It says Burr cross Gamble. Black locust seeds and Aronia berry seeds. So here are the seeds there. Oh, you're going to get the camera. Ah, you're going to get the camera. Watch out, Malacca's going to get it. Good job standing.