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Homestead Blessings

Summer on the New Homestead

6/21/2016

11 Comments

 
Hope y'all are having a wonderful summer! We are just tickled with our new home and are having so much fun unpacking & fixing it up! 
We've been staying cool on these hot days by keeping the windows open at night & shutting them in the morning before the temptature outside warms up, trapping in the cool air. Thankfully the house is well insulated & stays fairly cool-in the late afternoon, just when it starts to warm up inside it's beginning to cool down outside & the windows are opened up again! We have a couple of small battery fans that we can run at night-the O2Cool Fan runs off of D batteries & comes with an adaptor so we can plug them in when we turn on the generator. For now we run our generator in the early mornings to juice, do a couple loads of laundry, charge up the computer & the battery for the screw gun ( that also powers a light) & run the well pump. Our water tank is 20 feet or so above the house on a hill in the woods & gravity flows to the house- there's plenty of pressure!
The spot where our house was moved had been overgrown with poison ivy for years so Mom found this amazing recipe to eradicate it & has been faithfully spraying the noxious weed every time she sees it sprouting up!
Poison Ivy Spray
1 gallon of white vinegar
1 cup of salt
2 tablespoons liquid dish soap
Mix the salt into the vinegar until it dissolves, then slowly stir in the dish soap. Pour into a sprayer. This works even better if you spray the poison ivy while the sun is out!  It may take several applications over time- it is a battle, killing poison ivy, but this is a good natural recipe!
Our garden was a field for years with clay soil and a verity of weeds,a few good and a few not so good! 
We built raised beds for early crops-the potatoes, cabbage, other herbs and flowers we planted in the ground then surrounded with cardboard & mulched with hay.
In the part of the garden that we didn't plant in veggies, we sowed a cover crop of buckwheat! It works wonders for keeping weeds down and it reseeds nicely, when we turn it back unto the soil it will feed the new garden spot with wonderful nutrients, it looks beautiful &
our honey bees love the blooms.
Hope y'all enjoy these pictures!
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opps! it's a bit dark- the buckwheat is blooming white in the back. Comfrey in the front.
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Fresh from the garden!
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A good weed & one of our favorites! Lamb's Quarter is a nutrient packed & grows all over! Find a recipe in our cook book!
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Many Blessings-
​The West Ladies
11 Comments

In Our New Home!!!

6/8/2016

23 Comments

 
 
How thankful we are to be able to tell y'all we moved in our new home June 2nd!!!! It is so wonderful to be in a house again, & even more wonderful to be in one that is our very own that was built & made possible with the help of so many! Thank you all for the prayer, love, encouraging words & support that you showered upon us this past year!
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We're still setting up furniture & unpacking so here are a few pics taken before the boxes came in! 
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Decided on a tile counter top. Since this pic, we've put up some shelves to the right & left of the sink.
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Awesome door before applying tung oil.
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Awesome door after applying tung oil- (from The Real Milk Paint Co.) Now isn't that amazingly awesome?!
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This is the second coat. The first we made with fresh milk this we made using powered milk.
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Very pleased with the homemade milk paint! We hope to write more about it soon! The floor finish (Rubio Monocoat) looks great although we didn't realize it was a matte finish! As long as it cleans well- we'll let y'all know!
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Potatoes are making! Last night we robbed a few for dinner!
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gardens a' growin'
Check out The Real Milk Paint Co.  we love their awesome products!
While it wasn't easy dividing our time between the house & the garden, we are so happy we did! It's such a blessing to be able to pick fresh veggies for a meal or greens for juicing right out the door! Hope y'all are enjoying this abundant season! 
With thankful hearts,
 The West Ladies
23 Comments

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      On Our Bookshelf 

    We Love This Book!
    Learn the principles of cooking from scratch.This book will also help you be able to create recipes & substitute ingredients in others.
    We refer to this book a lot.  Canning  fruits & veggies, making jams with & without sugar, cheeses, preserving & more.
          9 Book boxed set.
    Granny gave this to us the Christmas before we moved to our homestead. 
    What an inspiration!!
    The Little Britches Series is a perfect read aloud for the whole family. 
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