My Productive Homesteading Weekend

Urban homesteading - The act of transforming a suburban home into a property that produce some or all of its residents own food and other subsistence needs. Participation in home-based activities such as gardening, raising poultry or small livestock, minimizing consumer purchases and generally seeking ways to increase self-sufficiency in a city or suburban environment.

The creation of an urban homestead with the goal of reducing one's environmental impact and returning to a home-based, family-centered, self sufficient way of life. - as defined by urbanhomestead.org.

Every now and then, or at least once a month, I spend a good part of the weekend doing things that many would find odd. I juggled the oven and spent hours in the kitchen. So here is what I did this weekend:

Grinding saved egg shells. This will be used in my garden, mainly with my tomato plants, boosting the calcium.

Made my bi-monthly granola with the finishing perks of dried apples and pears.

Made my almost, whole week of morning green smoothies. Its been almost a year of having mainly green smoothies for breakfast. This batch is spinach, blueberries, peaches and bananas. Stored in mason jars in the fridge, a little shake and you are good to go.

My indoor lettuce seedlings are sprouting and growing towards the sun. Can't wait to enjoy my indoor salad bar. 

Painted my dining room part of the kitchen, below the chair rail. Soon we'll update the wall color above the chair rail and kitchen to do list will be complete.

Pancakes, breakfast during the week can be a lot easier with homemade frozen pancakes in the freezer. I made a batch of pancakes, from my homemade pancake mix, cinnamon pancakes.

Baked two loaves a sandwich white bread, which will last my family roughly two weeks, depending on my husband's appetite.

Not bad for a weekend trying to get things accomplished and ahead of the game. All this and I still got frozen yogurt with my family, went to swimming lessons, going to a consignment sale, cleaning and gardening, including reseeding tomato plants I killed in the greenhouse. This is a year of learning as I try to expand my gardening skills.

Time to raise the beds

Last fall my husband and I worked to built several raised beds for our garden. We used left over wood we had around our property. All together we made (8) 4' x 4' beds, (2) 7' x 3' beds and (2) 3' x 3' beds to our current (4) 3' x 4' ones.  So currently our garden is 34' wide and 14' tall. We then purchased some top soil for a local nursery down the road and filled all the beds. Then put a layer of straw down.

Now as you can see above, the layout of the garden. This year I'm trying to use the square foot garden method, so each plant type needs a specific amount of space. So this took some reading and laying out how many plants I could fit in each section.


Seedlings for the tomatoes, peppers, watermelon and cantaloupe we started indoors from seeds.


To get the garden started this year, I need to do something with the pathways. They were filled with weeds and ones that bite back. Since I wanted the garden to be kiddo friendly something needed to be done. I was this idea on pinterest and decided this would be the best method. I gathered cardboard from my work then cut the card board to fill the pathways. Then put mulch on top.

So with the pathways filled I added stepping stones throughout to keep the cardboard down and in place.  Over the existing blueberry and raspberry plants I added for post, one in each corner and tied bird netting over the area. Last year the deer ate all but 3 blueberries and luckily this is our first year to get raspberries.


So now I had to wait, cause from my hometown, "you don't plant your garden until after derby". Weather is very crazy around here. So its the weekend after derby, Friday night my husband surprised me for mother's day with 2 scoops of compost filling is truck. Only my husband could get away with a gift like that. Then the next morning he went out and filled all the beds! Extra bonus.

Then my mom and dad came over and we planted all the seedlings into their spot. Then planted all of the seeds into their home. It was a great way to spend time with my mom on pre-mother's day.

Photos from a few days later, mostly everything is still living. A few plants didn't make the transplant, but overall a good turn out. Above is the kale and chard I planted the week before, already sprouted!!


Now here are some photos from my container garden on the deck, which is doing fantastic.

And here is my future grower, I love that she will be raised always having a garden. Its one of the skills I want to make sure she learns.

My Fairy Tale Weekend

Purple Carrot Harvest

Cucumber in the making

When you feel bad, dress pretty

Rainy Mama Day