It’s been a pretty good month for us. Here’s the latest homestead recap, September 2023!
It’s one of my favorite times of the year, FALL! Okay, I love things about all the seasons, but fall is one of the top. Nature’s beautiful colors, harvesting so many plants, and the crisp air. The foods, fashion, and the holiday season!
PS. FYI these homestead recaps tend to be photo heavy.
Seasons changing
Clean Up & Projects
It’s been a month full of yard work, and winter prep.
We added a temporary covered area for the chickens, they do already have a coop/small run to cover from the rain. It just wasn’t big enough for them to comfortably roam around. We made it so we can easily move it if strong winds or heavy snow fall. Here in the PNW they need extra cover in the rainy months.
Another thing my oldest(with a little help from me) worked on was tearing down the playset. It was a very loved playset(from previous owners), and my daughter didn’t use anything but the swings. We plan on putting the swings either on a branch or building a stand for it. The trampoline now sits in it’s place.
Goodbye playset
How’s the garden doing?
The garden continued producing for us all month long. We picked lots of blackberries, tomatoes, green beans, herbs, cucumbers, seeds from parsley and calendula. A couple zucchinis, peppers were harvested. Preserved lots of green beans for the off season, roasted lots of tomatoes, made delicious homemade pasta sauce.
We picked our two Granny Smith apples, they were delicious! Looking forward to seeing what other fruit trees produce next year. One other tree did produce apples, but I had to remove them because I was worried the branches would be too weak and break.
I’m a newbie with growing grapes, I learned how to prune them this year and they have produced so many grapes. There seems to be two different varieties, a purple one with seeds inside and a red one without seeds. Both good, but the red ones were sooo amazing!
I started putting some of the garden beds to bed for the winter, topped it off with some compost(chicken poop and straw) to sit for the winter.
Hoping more red grapes grow next year, they were so good!
We got 3 tiny corn, the chickens enjoyed two and we added one to a soup.
Animals On The Farm
Animals are doing good, enjoying the sunny fall days. Annie has gotten to go to the dog park almost every Sunday, it’s her favorite day of the week. Especially the park down the street from us, it’s fenced in, has a bunch of walking trails she can walk unleashed and dogs to play with.
Sundays are family dog park days
Sylvia, Gemmy, Rona, Poppy, Coco, Peaches, Ducky, Gloria and Ruby – yes all our chickens have names!
Chickens are all doing great! Loving the weather, all the veggie scraps, dust bathing, and escaping the chicken yard. We’ve got two chickens who escape all day long, and then one morning someone forgot to close the gate and hours later when I got home they were all scratching the garden area. Living their best life! We only let them roam (outside the chicken yard) when we are home and present, because of predators.
Living their best life, escaping the chicken yard!
In The Kitchen
We’ve still been eating a lot of tomatoes, and green beans from the garden. Using our farm fresh eggs; lately it’s been a lot of hard-boiled eggs, scrambled, and German/Dutch pancakes.
The kids have started school, so I’ve had a little more time planning and preparing foods. We have themed nights a few days a week, it makes it easier to plan. Pasta on Mondays, Tuesday it’s Mexican, Fridays is our pizza night.
We’ve made a lot soups, breads with sourdough discard, cookies, and pies.
I’m getting really good at homemade Mexican rice, and refried beans!
Roasting tomatoes to preserve!
Life outside of the “Homestead”
This past month has been busy with back to school time; driving kids around, helping with school work, filling out paperwork, and school events.
School’s going great for both kids, youngest is loving school, learning a lot and making new friends. She participated in her first cross country meet and loved it. Oldest kiddo’s school is going good, he only goes in person two days a week and has his friends for the in person classes. He also started D&D Club which he really enjoys!
Hanging out at the park while oldest kid is at D&D club.
Visited one of our favorite places near our old home!
Have a great October & Halloween!
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