Category: Farm Life

Posted in Farm Life

Repurposing a Trampoline

Posted on by Liz Walker

Love my chickens! They eat a ton of bugs around house by digging under bushes and leaf piles. Unfortunately they also love to eat new shoots and flowers. I admit my landscaping has been neglected a bit because of the chickens. They take care of weeds but I am left with just bushes, no flowers.

So last Fall I started a new flower bed knowing by Spring I would have to find a way to keep the chickens out. Yesterday I spotted some tiny specks of the daffodil bulb growth peeking through the surface. I had a roll of chicken fencing but didn’t want to put permanent fence posts in the ground. I got creative!

We have a 20 year old trampoline that isn’t safe for kids anymore although the pets certainly enjoyed napping up there in recent years. I removed the springs and cloth, turned the frame upside down and wrapped the chicken wire around the frame. I even used some of the springs to attach the fencing to the frame. The roll of fencing I had wasn’t quite long enough so I’ve got a temporary tarp in place until I get more fencing. It’s a short term fix until the plants are established and then I can hopefully remove it. Yet, I just might get some kind of vine style plant to grow along the fencing.

Posted in Farm Life

Easiest Vegetable to Preserve

Posted on by Liz Walker

Peppers are the simplest garden vegetable to preserve! It literally takes just a few minutes to put a years worth of peppers in your freezer. Ready for it…. Wash, slice and put in a freezer bag. That’s it! No need to blanch them before freezing and certainly don’t bother canning them.

The frozen peppers are perfect for adding to soup, casseroles or in my household I use them most in jambalaya. Freezing them does change the structure a bit, they lose their crunch but who cares when you cook them anyways. You don’t even need to grow these yourself. If you see peppers on sale in the grocery store or there is an abundance at the farmer’s market put some in your freezer. You’ll avoid that $4.99/lb price in the dead of winter and you will conveniently have them on hand.

Posted in Farm Life

Freezing Sweet Corn

Posted on by Liz Walker

Eating garden, fresh tasting sweet corn in the dead of winter is pure joy. If you have never frozen corn before, you are really missing out! It’s such a simple task to do. I’ve tried to grow sweet corn in my garden and while it was successful, it just didn’t yield enough for the amount of time and expense. So this is one produce that I just plan on buying from a farm stand every year.

I have memories from my childhood of the whole family spending an afternoon freezing an insane amount, seriously it was many bushels. We each were assigned a task in the process, the kitchen was hot and it took several hours. My method is completely different, as I do it in small batches. I grab a dozen ears and boil all of it while I’m making dinner. We eat a few cobs and the rest I freeze, usually 3 bags worth. Over the course of the summer if you were to do this weekly you’d easily have a couple dozen bags worth tucked in the freezer.

The process is simple. Boil the cobs for about 5 minutes, cut the corn off the cob, and place in freezer ziploc bags or vacuum seal bags. I stack them in a single layer in the freezer until they are solid because the bags can get stuck together. Super easy and cheaper than buying from the grocery store.

Posted in Farm Life

Gardening Woes

Posted on by Liz Walker

What a difference a year makes! Last year we were dealing with drought conditions most of the summer so I had to water my garden weekly, sometimes twice a week. Flash forward to this year and it doesn’t stop raining! My garden has been under water for most of the last 6 weeks, or basically since I planted my tomato plants. Last year I had lush, full plants and this year my plants are spindly, withering things.

There is no chance at this point of recovering this growing season so I’ll be buying produce from a local farm market stand instead. Thankfully it appears they haven’t had the same water problems I have. If you are in the same position as me, check out Flyte Family farmstands in Mauston behind The Log Cabin Deli, or in Necedah along the river.

Posted in Farm Life

Mulching to avoid Weeding

Posted on by Liz Walker

Maintaining a garden can be a lot of work! Weeding, watering, and fertilizing for 3-4 months requires weekly hands on work. I try to work smarter, not harder so my method of gardening incorporates many facets into one task, mulching. I’m not talking about using landscape fabric. Using fabric is great at keeping the weeds out but it also causes soil compaction while eliminating healthy bugs like worms and nutrients you get from composting organic materials.

I like to mulch with things like newspaper, cardboard, grass clipings, and leaves. All of these items become compost food for worms. The worms break them down which then provides nutrients for the plants and improves the soil. As a surface barrier the mulch is holding in moisture (so less watering needed) and detering weed growth. Best of all, at the end of the harvest season it can be tilled into the soil right along with the dead garden plants. This is eliminates the need to add fertilizer. Bonus feature, these items are free!

This is how I build my mulch layer. Row crops like tomatoes and onions get surrounded by a layer of cardboard then topped with heaping piles of grass. The cardboard suppresses weeds, holds in moisture while the grass keeps the cardboard from blowing away. Make sure the cardboard is free of colored ink and wax coating. I use shredded newspaper for crops that aren’t in nice rows, like my strawberry patch. You can sprinkle the shredded paper around individual plants and top with grass. Newspapers should also be the basic black ink, avoid the colored ad inserts.

I also use other things for mulch like the leaves of rhubarb. They are huge! Plus you can tear the leaves to make it easier to wrap them around plant stems. Don’t worry, they may be poisonous to eat but they are perfectly fine to use as compost or mulch. In the Fall I will rake leaves from the surrounding trees to help cover the garden for the winter and come Spring what’s left will get tilled into the soil. This whole process is an organic way of gardening. I don’t need to add fertilizer and the organic items I’ve added to the soil also help to maintain moisture. This is working smarter, not harder plus I’m feeding the family food that is free from chemicals.

Posted in Farm Life

Invest in Perennials for your Garden

Posted on by Liz Walker

I’m fortunate that my garden has been in the same spot for the last 20+ years. It has allowed me to slowly add perennial plants so that at this point I am harvesting asparagus, blueberries, chives, mint, raspberries, and strawberries for “free,” an yes, there is a little bit of labor involved every year to pull weeds, prune or transplant new strawberry sprouts.

Asparagus is one of the few plants that is ready to harvest at the beginning of the planting season. The pictures above are the plants that are currently peeking up in my garden. I started picking the asparagus near the beginning of May and it probably has just a couple of weeks left to harvest. The local grocery store is currently selling it for $3.49/lb. You can buy the asparagus bare roots for $15 or less. It may take 2-3 years before the first harvest but the roots will sprout every year, indefinitely with no additional work from you.

Posted in Farm Life

Frugal Food Tips

Posted on by Liz Walker

Food is so expensive, right? This is a constant topic among all demographics of people I interact with. I’ve come to realize that I take my “life skills” for granted by thinking everyone shares the same knowledge I do. Now I’m not stating I’m at expert at anything but growing up on a farm did drill home some pretty basic concepts to feed a family. Farmers by nature are frugal of course and they have the land for a large family garden. So over the course of the next 6 months of my gardening I’ll post some ideas to help those of you try to save a little bit on that grocery bill.

MEAT – I’ll start with this one first since it doesn’t fall under the gardening category. This is the biggest expense in the grocery store. In order to save money you have to think differently about how you buy it. I rarely pay full price for any package of meat. I don’t meal plan, write a grocery list and go buy those items. Instead, I shop the sale items I see when I walk through the store. Typically there is a 6-8 week rotation of sales. So if chuck roast is on sale today it might be another 6-8 weeks before it’s on sale again. When it’s on sale I might purchase 2 roasts so at least 1 goes into the freezer to be used in the next few weeks before it goes on sale again.

Buy meat in bulk if you can to save even more. We typically buy a side of beef from the local butcher but stores often have great savings on bulk packages. If hamburger in a 10 lb package is cheaper than a 2 lb package, buy the 10 lbs and then repackage it into 5 smaller portions and put them in the freezer.

Chicken packaging these days is bizarre! It’s difficult to find a store that will sell you a whole bird. You can get a package of legs, wings, or breasts but none of them combined in one package. I have a family that is split on the white meat/dark meat preference so I need both. You can buy 3 breasts, 4 leg quarters or a dozen wings but not just the parts of one bird. It just doesn’t make sense! The answer is to buy a package of each, combine and divide into two bags with both cuts of meat. One of those bags goes into the freezer.

The concept is to slowly build up a reserve of meat in your freezer so you have multiples of the same things and all items were bought on sale. This might take 6 months to a year depending on how much space and budget you have. The end result is I make dinner from what I bought on sale.

This works for pantry goods as well!

Posted in Farm Life, Homeowners

Don’t Rack the Leaves!

Posted on by Liz Walker

I took this photo Nov 21st to show my chickens hard at work digging through the leaves for bugs to eat. The ground isn’t frozen yet but we do have a hard frost every morning. It’s a natural assumption that the cold night temps would have killed off the bugs by now but this picture tells another story. The bugs have tucked themselves into the leaves to hibernate for the winter.

The leaves serve as food and insulation for the bugs which eventually becomes compost for the soil. This natural process is the best source of fertilizer for your lawn. Using chemical fertilizers and pesticides may give you the appearance of a great lawn but in reality it’s killing off the bugs’ ecosystem. This in part is why we have a declining bee population.

It’s cheaper and easier to just let the leaves lie over winter. If you have an abundance rake them into your landscaped beds or garden or mulch them with your lawn mower to spread them around. This is a great natural mulch that will add nutrients to the soil, hold in moisture and attract healthy bugs like worms. Healthy soil equals a healthy lawn.

Posted in Farm Life

The Miracle of Duct Tape!

Posted on by Liz Walker

Some days the struggles are very annoying! While cleaning out my chicken coop in preparation for my baby chicks, my pitchfork separated from the handle. I know many of you have better options than the one I chose, but seriously duct tape was the quickest! It actually works well enough for hauling out the crap. After two weeks in this box, they are ready for more space and it’s finally hot enough outside for them to upgrade.