This past Tuesday, Nick and I learned that Meadowbrook Farms won’t be able to bring us the butter we use every week from The Country Creamery in Canestota, NY any longer. The news was a bit alarming; we use 18 lbs of the stuff each week for croissants, scones, muffins and cookies. We love its…
Category: Homesteading
{community sharecropping} How to Braid Garlic
This year we harvested our garlic on July 10, let it dry for two weeks and then decided to braid some of it. Most years we make a mixture of hard and soft neck garlic braids but this year we were only able to braid our soft neck garlic. While we can usually braid the hard…
{Dispatch} from a small kitchen
Editor’s Note: We are interrupting today’s normally scheduled post* to bring you the coolest rental kitchen of 2011 which happens to belong to our contributor Christine! Do you have a teeny kitchen? Do you need inspiration on what to do with said space-challenged room? Where to place all those gadgets when you have no drawers…
{community sharecropping} July is for Garlic Harvest
Garlic is an easy crop and should have a place in every home garden. The individual cloves are planted in October, lie dormant in the ground all winter, and then are among the first plants to sprout in the spring. You can buy garlic heads from your local farmers market this fall, break them up…
{Hello} I’m Liz
Hey there readers! This is Liz, from Brown Betty Farm. First of all, a big thanks to Chris for inviting me to share something with you here… especially considering the perpetual ‘construction’ state of my humble little homemade web page and the less-than-frequent posts that occasionally show up on my blog, {semi}veggie sisters. I am utterly…
{Simple} Homemade Yogurt Cheese
When we moved to upstate New York around twenty-five years ago, we became friends with Martha and Seth from Slack Hollow Farm in Argyle. The first time we went over to their house for dinner, Martha gave us some soft goat cheese she had made. I was so impressed and enthusiastic about their advanced state…
{hello} I’m Jillian
Editor’s Note: You’ve met Erika T, Britin F, and now its time to meet Jillian E, blogger of Everday Life, For Four Seasons. Jillian introduced herself via email one day, after reading the blog. She shared a connection we shared: severely food allergic kiddos. What I didn’t know at the time, is that I’d been…
{community sharecropping} Composting 101
It is May, which means that the community sharecropping season, in which we garden on other people’s former lawns, has begun. They are the lawn lords, my husband is the fanatic sharecropper, I am his opinionated side kick. We had a cold, late, wet winter, so couldn’t really get into the gardens with equipment until…
{Paneer} Simple Homemade Frying Cheese
Back in the day when we lived in the country and had milk goats, I used to make different kinds of soft cheese on a regular basis. The easiest of the cheeses was paneer, an Indian frying cheese used in curries. I hadn’t made it in years but decided to try it with cow’s milk…
{hello} I’m Erika
Editor’s Note: We are pleased to announce that we’re growing. We’ll be introducing new guest contributors throughout the weeks to come. First up, Brass Snuggles, aka Erika, blogger at Our DIY Life. I’m very excited to bring her aboard; I met her through my new job and I think her point of view and day-to-day…
{recap} Power to the Boil 2011
Editor’s Note: I’m pleased to announce that Dianna has her name in lights {finally} and that I’m not credited with her wonderful posts any longer. Dianna has her final post on the 2011 maple syruping season. If you missed the “How To” or my photo diaries on: tapping and one their three “big boils”, take…
{My} Locavore Roots
Editor’s Note: I don’t know about you but I find Dianna’s posts so fascinating. In My Local Roots, Dianna gives us a peek into her past and a little homesteading history. Test will be on Friday. -Christina The first cook book I ever bought was Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet. I pretty…
{photo diary} The Big Boil
We have moved beyond the “tapping sap” stage to the “big boil”. Dianna & Michael are in the midst of their 2011 maple syrup season and had their “big boil” on two separate days this year. I won’t go into the details because Dianna will be writing up a recap of this year’s antics in…
{weekend reading} NATIONAL EDITION
NEWS I’m gonna start with the only really “big” food story of the week; the UN report that I mentioned yesterday that states that the myth that only Big AG can feed the world is bullocks. The UN Right to Food Report in PDF format. Grist has a commentary. Bittman concentrated on the subject this…
{How To} Tap Your Own Maple Syrup
Editor’s Note: We’re back with a post not to be missed. Dianna and her family boil their own maple syrup from tapping trees around their urban neighborhood. Tapping time is now, so read the post and examine the pictures carefully and get out there and do it! There is a {photo diary} to accompany this…
