July 27th, 2021
It’s been a long time coming, but we are finally moving! We have been very busy looking on real estate websites, and preparing our home for the market, but now it has come to fruition, and God has blessed our move. Here is a picture of our future homestead!
As you can see, the front yard is HUGE!, and will be the area we will practice our homesteading skills with a garden, some chickens, and in a few years some goats for fur and milk! Our son wants to have some fruit and nut trees, and I’m not going to stop him.
VEGETABLES
Speaking of homesteading skills, I recently canned up 22 pints of homegrown beets. Here are a few pictures, and some things of how I did it.
To get the beets ready to can, first you boil them a few minutes to loosen the skin. Then you take the skin off, and cut into either rounds or cubes.
After cutting them, I put them into mason pint jars that had had boiling water in after cleaning the jars to keep them hot, empty the water, put the beets in, cover again with boiling water to within one inch, clean the rim, then seal them before using the canner.
The picture above shows them in my canner stacked two high. This is the first year my beets have really grown well, and I canned 22 pints!
Here are a few pictures of the garden we are leaving to new owners.
Feelings, and musings
When we got the news of the offer on our present home, I was so overcome with both joy for the new place, and grief on leaving the old place. What a mixture of feelings that was!
Making an herb garden
Another thing I have recently done is to create an herb garden. I had a half whiskey barrel that had a rose that was always a lot of work from diseases, and pests, and also was over filled now with daffodil bulbs, and tulip bulbs. So I dug them out.
In digging them out, I discovered the ant hill in it that had the ants that were trying to invade our home. Good thing I was getting rid of them at the same time!
When filling up a pot, or large planter, it is important to put in a good potting soil, not soil from your garden. Soil from your garden would become too compacted, and ,unless you sterilize it, will have weed seeds, pests, and diseases.
I situated the herbs I wanted to plant, then planted them even with the soil level in the pots, watered them in, and that was my new herb garden that the next owners will also enjoy!
Good things to look forward to in the future, and good things to remember from the past. Thanks to God for all.
Blessings to all,
Grandma
Grandma's Garden 