Gardening – ~Our Holistic Homestead~

Less is definitely more when it comes to work on the homestead, and this season we have finally had a taste of it, and we want more!

This spring on the homestead is the first I can honestly report we have been able to do less work and, as the balance of the universe goes, banked more time to smell the apple blossom, follow the swallow, and picnic on top of the world.

There has still been plenty to do, mind you, but I think the heaviest of the slogs are behind us. Either that, or we’ve gotten stronger and more resilient to this homestead life. But before we sit down in the garden and enjoy that glass of well-earned iced tea, come along with me for a little stroll through our mountain spring.

EVERYTHING WE DID OUR FOURTH SPRING ON THE HOMESTEAD:

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Traded our trees’ grass skirts for coconut!

BEFORE (all wood chipped and chipper too)
BEFORE (so lovely but wait for it…)
High on grass.
Let ‘er RIP!
A new, fashionable skirt.
Coming together!
Norbot: “Neat and tidy!”
Lawn mower ready!

Satisfying is the word that comes to mind for this one. Especially because I just got to watch! 😆

Having read that it is prudent to cover the bases of your trees with wood chips to deter grass and weeds, we diligently did so three years ago when we planted our fruit trees. The only problem is that nobody told the grass and weeds that they aren’t supposed to be friendly with chips.

Fast forward to this spring and it was as if the grass were happiest where it was supposed to be deterred, much like teenagers with a curfew.

Well, my hubby was through tugging fistfuls of grass month after month and whacking the rebels in between. So, he and the Captain spent the last two weekends cutting out the grass around the trees, replacing a layer of wood chips, and then topping each with a coconut coir tree skirt. The claim of the coconut, and our dearest hope, is that it will allow the tree to breathe while suffocating the grass. We will update you a happy hurrah or a dismal disappointment later in the season.

Tapped birch trees and made homemade syrup!

Drill baby, drill! (I couldn’t help it)
Tap that tree!
Secure and wait 12 hours.
Birch water!!
Boil and bubble, toil and trouble!

THIS was such a cool project. We successfully made syrup and learned a lot along the way. First, we learned that tapping birch trees for sap is super simple and easy! Second, we learned that when the sap runs, it runs fast! Third, we learned that birch water is incredibly healthy for you to drink straight as a tonic with a myriad of health benefits. Fourth, we learned that making syrup from birch water is very easy but does take patience (took us about 48 hours to bring a full pot down to syrup on a very low temperature because birch does not want to be boiled). Fifth, birch syrup is incredibly yummy stuff. And sixth, we learned that you need an incredible amount of sap to make any appreciable amount of syrup.

We all got to taste this truly DELICIOUS SYRUP but that’s about all. It takes roughly 100 times in volume of birch water what will be yielded you in sweet syrup. So, our family concluded that this was a very fun experiment and a tasty treat, but that birch syrup is not something we will be procuring regularly for our family on the homestead.

Laid weed barrier & wood chips to cut down on weeding!

Last summer’s BEGINNING
TA-DA! Almost fully chipped!
Last summer’s BEGINNING
This spring’s progress . . . almost done!
Sittin’ down on the job. Literally.
We left holes for the perennials in the ground.

This was the hubby’s call and it was a good one. I was hesitant to cover the entire ground surface of our garden in weed barrier and wood chips but my mind, body, and soul are grateful this spring. We have banked a fraction of the need to weed this spring. And by the way, weeding from raised beds like our Birdies above is a breeze. STAND AND PLUCK is a fabulous thing.

Planted in and planted out.

Our tater tots!
Red, purple, and yellow spuds!
Learning that veggies need personal space, too!
Tomatoes, peppers, & cucurbits getting their sun bath!
Plants heading out!

Up here in mountainous Montana, we winter sow, we indoor-sow, and we direct-sow outdoors. Each thing we plant has made it into these three categories through trial and error. A lot of it. So, here’s where and what we sow, just so you know!

Winter sow (more on this one below):

brassicas
radish & beet
dark leafy greens like kale, chard, and spinach
lavendar
parsley

Indooor-sow:

herbs (February & March)
onions (March)
tomatoes (April)
peppers (April)
eggplant (April)
marigolds (April)
cucumbers (May)
pumpkins/squash (May)

Direct-sow:

wildflowers (early spring and late fall)
brassicas (early spring)
radish & beet (early to late spring)
cilantro (early to late spring)
spinach (fall & early spring)
peas (early spring)
calendula (mid-spring)
carrots (mid-spring)
zinnia, hollyhock, salvia, etc. (mid-spring)
potatoes (mid to late spring)
green beans (early summer)
basil (early and mid-summer)
cucumbers (early summer)
sunflowers (early summer)
garlic (in fall)

Celebrated winter-sowing success!

Ready to plant!
drilled drainage holes
Our winter setup:
radish & bok choy sprouting out in the snow!

This actually worked. I’m as shocked as you are. In the winter, I wrote you all that I was giving the ole Milk Jug Winter Sowing kick a go, with a salad-container spinoff and that I would update you all on the success. Well, it worked wonderfully well. I planted greens in recylced salad tubs, watered them, and literally dumped them with their lids on out in the snow. On warm days, I opened the lids and watered as needed. THAT’S IT.

The results? Wonderful. Veggies that usually bolt on me, like broccoli and cabbage, grew beautifully as the snow fell and developed strong necks and roots. Plus, the whole process was so much simpler and easy than indoor sowing is. I planted out entire beds full of greens from winter-sown veggies which saved me hours upon hours of careful sowing in seed trays.

Threw a party for perennials & trees!

Voted our most beautiful for blossoms: King Red Flesh Apple
A pretty pot I didn’t have to plant!
Pretty peach!
Volunteer red leaf spinach!
Serviceberries exploding in the forest.
Peachy Paradise for pollinators!
Chives & Strawberries are best mates.
A beauty queen nectarine!

Everyone knows you reap what you sow. But when you sow perennials and trees, you reap year after year! This spring we’ve felt spoiled with everything coming up through the snow and thaw without our lifting a finger. . . this year anyway.

Joyous are the buds, blooms, and blossoms from labor three years past.

Check out the many, many fruit trees we planted our first spring on the homestead that we are now reaping the thrilling rewards of! Adopting 26 three-year-olds!🌸

Added more to the wildflower meadows!

BEFORE (last spring)
AFTER (this spring and about to burst into bloom)
BEFORE (last spring)
AFTER (last summer)
AFTER (this spring and about to bloom!)
Plucky Pansies!
Poppies really do pop out of nowhere…
Preparing to scatter our own seeds we harvested last year!

This has been a labor of love but I’m so thankful we gave it a go. I can honestly tell you that while this has taken time, grit, and a lot of patience, the entire eco-system in our clearing has changed in just one year’s time! The insect populations have balanced; we have more bees, butterflies, ladybugs, parasitoid wasps, and far fewer actual wasps, flies, and bad beetles. I could not have anticipated the sheer drama of these changes and cannot oversell you enough on the power of a pollinator meadow! Add to that a stubborn refusal to use pesticides, herbicides, roundup and the like, and watch nature explode around you (for better and for worse).

Pruned & weeded!

The Captain-approved “Gardena” weed stick
Pruning: the picnic of homestead chores!

That’s right; a ten-year-old can use this weed stick! Papa and the kids pruned all the trees in one lovely afternoon. The weeding, meanwhile, has sucked up about half of our spring. So far this growing season, our family has pulled, plucked, dug, and ripped about ten wheel-barrows full of dandelions alone. The kids get paid per dandelion so we currently owe them big-time cash.

Explored in our homestead’s wild side (the woods)!

Arnica
Indian Paintbrush
Lupine
What could be better than throwing rocks down a ravine?
Throwing them with your best pal.

“The flowers, it is true, are not new; but the children are; and it is the fault of their elders if every new flower they come upon is not to them a Picolla, a mystery of beauty to be watched from day to day with unspeakable awe and delight.” -Charlotte Mason, Home Education

The “new” delight highlights among our spring scoping have included: a pileated woodpecker, a host of hummingbirds, a mama mountain lion communicating with her cub all around our clearing but just out of sight, and a mama black bear with her two tiny twins who we accidentally treed by stumbling upon them.

We watched the two cubs (smaller than our little six-year-old Goldilocks and adorable as teddy bears) scramble to the tip-tip top of an enormous pine tree where they perched like a pair of Christmas tree stars. We were so worried they wouldn’t be able to climb down that Papa went back out an hour later as the designated search party. We are relieved to report that the mama and cubs had got down and our kids were able to sleep the sweet sleep of the tenderhearted who have not caused unnecessary harm.