As a reminder, I organize my week’s accomplishments according to my ultimate goals for this homestead property. Here’s what I got done this week:
Food Production
The garden dreams are at their peak while the actual productivity is nonexistent. The seedlings that I started back in January are ready to be transplanted into the cold frame, but the cold frame is still under the snow. I’d love to stake out my garden location and start soil prep with layers of cardboard and compost, but it will have to wait until everything is accessible.
On Saturday, on a total whim, I tapped one of my maple trees. To my surprise, sap started pouring out. I cut a hole in a coffee can to hang from the tree, then tapped two more with my remaining spiles. Emboldened by my beginner’s luck, I immediately panic-ordered more supplies and look forward to installing them ASAP.
Maple syrup production was always part of my homestead dream, but my adopted family’s farm is surrounded by conifers. It’s simply serendipity that I managed to buy the adjacent property that happens to have a dozen maples in a spot I call ‘the grove’. I didn’t think it would be enough to produce syrup, but I purchased a three pack of taps in the fall just to try the maples and birch as part of an ongoing self-education in foraging. Now that I have over a gallon of sap in my fridge, I see that I might be able to produce a little syrup after all.
Resource Acquisition & Preparedness
When digging around in the chest freezer to find a loaf of sourdough, I realized that I have amassed an unreasonable number of bags of vegetable scraps, so I made a batch of vegetable stock. This process is absurdly easy – I threw the scraps in the pressure cooker, covered with water, added some salt, and ran it on high for 45 minutes. I’ll use almost any scraps – onion skins, kale stalks, wilted celery, carrot tops and ends, pepper pith.
I produced about three quarts of broth, two of which I froze and one I stashed in the fridge for cooking throughout the week. I probably have three more batches worth of scraps to process.
This is a particularly satisfying process because it feels like I’m squeezing every morsel of value out of the vegetable. Take a carrot, for example: I select the carrot from the fridge, and then peel it and chop off the ends. The bulk of the carrot goes into something delicious. The ends and peels get boiled, and their micronutrients diffuse into the resulting broth. The broth is used for something nourishing, and the boiled bits go to the compost pile, where any remaining nutrients feed the detritivores and decomposers that dwell there. Eventually, the compost can be used to support the growth of another batch of carrots, and the cycle is repeated. That is homesteading at its best.
Energy Independence
The snow accumulation made me realize something that absolutely should have occurred to me sooner – just because a tree is on the ground, does not mean you will be able to rely on it for firewood during the winter. It seems obvious, but my recent memories of winter in Connecticut are dreary and slushy – not white!
Since the big snowfall last month, I have been very limited in what I’ve been able to bring in from the forest. That changed this week; I was able to dig out some rounds that have been sitting on the edge of the woods for years. Once I processed those, I traced their trajectory to find a large and accessible downed tree, just waiting to be bucked. Unfortunately, it is up a small but very steep hill – but it is propped up above the snow, so it’s worth the scramble.
It’s a white oak, as evidenced by the fact that it smells SO STRONGLY of pickles while I’m cutting it. Seriously, I’m starving by the time I’m done with a cutting section. It’s also about 18 inches thick, meaning one round produces a great deal of firewood. The wood is testing at appropriate burning levels (less than 20% moisture), but unfortunately it does sizzle when placed in the wood stove and has trouble lighting, leading me to believe the snow has resulted in a lot of extracellular moisture. In the meantime, I’ve been burning what little I have left while stacking the new oak around the wood stove to encourage evaporation.
Moving Forward
I recently posted a winter tour of my homestead on TikTok, if you’re interested in video footage:
In housekeeping news, I (finally) added a newsletter feature to my blog. If you’d like to receive an email each time I post a new update, sign up here. I won’t send you anything else!
Talk soon,
KC