Do any of you keep a journal? None of us has ever been faithful at journaling except for a garden journal we've been keeping for over 20 years! It has really helped us stay on track and remember plantings and harvests from year to year. Methods that worked, things that didn't. Sometimes we jot down other homestead happenings too!
Thought y'all may like to read an entry from our garden journal (in italics) from earlier this month.
Check out the SUPER Savings SALE going on in the shop!
Enjoy!

In the next few days we plan on starting more lettuces, radishes, beets and lots of greens! These will be sown directly in the garden beds!
So if you haven't sown any seeds yet there's still time! Especially if you use row cover or have a green house, hoop house or row cover! 

It did indeed rain for a couple of more days and now we are enjoying some nice, humid free days, which is rare for Tennessee  summers! That's why the car is the best place to dry herbs and berries!
Hope y'all are enjoying these last days of summer and are encouraged to sow some seeds!!
For the next few weeks we are running our biggest SALE ever! Take advantage of these super savings (plus FREE shipping) for a limited time only! 
Many Blessings,
​The west ladies

Greetings to you all this beautiful spring!
​The sun came out beautifully this afternoon, it was so nice to walk down to the creek that is flowing quite rapidly making its roaring sound from all the spring rains we have had. With more hours of sun light and abundance of rain, the bright green colors of dandelions, chickweed, plantain, lamb’s quarter, violets and other wild weeds are making their delightful appearances. What a blessing it is to forage these nutritious wild edibles! It was quite a surprise to find bluebells in full bloom a few weeks back, I was almost certain that the last flood had washed them away! What a treasure to behold near the banks of the creek! I really enjoyed taking photos of these lovely plants!
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Order the Homestead Blessings Collection Two (Canning, Gardening and HerbsDVDs) and receive a free Crafting DVD!

Now is the time when we’re back in the garden, here are 5 of our favorite vegetable varieties that we have grown for many years that keep on growing and giving!
 Sweet BASIL 
Sweet Basil is one of my absolute favorite culinary herbs! This very flavorful herb is excellent in soups, casseroles, spaghetti sauce (of course!) all kinds of tomato dishes, sauces and more. It makes a great Italian salad dressing! You can make basil vinegars to use through the winter and pesto, one of our favorite ways to enjoy basil! 
Basil is an easy to grow annual. It is a sun loving, warm weather plant and grows for most of the summer season.
 A secret to having nice healthy basil plants all season is to keep the flowers and any seed heads pinched off. Doing this will keep the basil plant from going to seed, giving you those large, wonderful, fragrant leaves and full strong basil plant for a long time.  In late summer we do let a few plants bloom and develop seeds on purpose to save for next years planting, another easy and frugal way that basil keeps giving!
  You can start your basil from seed by direct sowing outdoors after all danger of frost has passed or you can plant seeds indoors for an early start, then transplant your basil when the time in your area is right to plant outdoors.
Watch our Basil video for more ideas!

Many hardware stores, nurseries or garden centers have packets of basil seeds and  young basil plants available that can be transplanted right into your garden.You can also order seeds from your favorite catalog. When starting basil from seed they come up easy and fast -but some times, we have had what they call “damping off”. The little seedling just falls over and dies. :( What we have found to remedy this problem is to sprinkle a little  cinnamon all around the tiny plants (some folks use sand) this helps absorb any extra moisture which seems to encourage damping off. This cinnamon treatment should work for other kinds of little seedlings as well.
Also, we like to space our basil a foot or so apart which makes nice room for them to grow and get plenty of air circulation. Basil seems to grow in most any soils and thrives with comfrey tea or worm castings applied around its base.
 Sometimes basil will reseed itself from the spot it grew last year, which I find handy! So keep a look out and you may see that you have free little basils! 
You can also get a cuttings of basil from a friend or a plant you bought or started that has gotten at least six inches or so tall. Just cut a few inches of the main stem take off bottom leaves and place the basil stem in water. The herb should root for you fairly soon, when it does - place your now completed basil plant in the garden.                       
As you can see there are many ways to get these wonderful plants going and keep growing! We grow sweet basil more like a crop. We grow it by the rows:)  
Another added bonus about basil is that pests don’t seem to bother it and planted here and there among your vegetables really helps to keep pests away! Im gonna make more of an effort to plant basil all through out the garden this year!
When working in the garden, I’ve grabbed basil leaves right from the plant and rubbed the leaves right on my skin when I was being bothered by gnats and the bugs quit bugging me! 
So why not give Sweet Basil a try this year? You’ll find out how sweet and giving it is ! :)
Speaking of Sweet …..
 The Sweet Potato is an amazing, easy to grow, very tasty and highly nutritious wonderful food! The nice sized tubers once harvest can be prepared in many ways, such as peeled raw into salads, sliced up for French fries (we like to use coconut oil to fry them in) baked sweet potatoes with butter, mashed sweet potatoes, sweet potato salad and sweet potato pie! 
The beautiful leaves from these plants are also edible! So while you are waiting for your tubers to grow you can enjoy harvesting a few leaves and putting them in smoothies or tossing a few in your salad for extra nutrition! You can even cook the vine tips and leaves as greens!  Now that's what I call a plant that keeps on giving!
This plant  loves very warm temperatures, day and night and does well growing in more of an acidic soil. 
Propagating your own sweet potato plants (called slips) inside gives you a jump start and can save you a little money too. 
Click here to see how to start your own slips. 
In late spring many Co Ops or garden centers will have sweet potato slips and or plants for sale that you can purchase to set out when all danger of frost is gone.
We harvest sweet potatoes before the first frost in the fall, or after leaves start to yellow. The potatoes will need to cure first. After harvesting the sweet potatoes spread them out, carefully, not to bruise them, in a barn or out building (we have cured ours on the covered porch just fine) for 10 days or so, this makes thicker skins. After the potatoes are cured, store in a dark, dryish, place that stays around 65 or so degrees. We have stored our sweet potatoes in boxes under beds and under other shelves or benches and they stored good for us that way. The sweet potatoes should last you through the winter and maybe till next harvest! Don’t forget to save a few potatoes for making more plants!
We have heard of folks who have kept their sweet potatoes going for generations! Now thats a food that keeps on giving!
Our three favorite green beans:
*Royal Burgundy Bush Beans make delicious, purple pods and are easy to grow and find among the green foliage. These beans can handle cooler weather better than others and can be grown in containers! They turn green after cooking!! Super fun for children!
*We were introduced to Jade green beans last summer at a farmers market. These beans are a rich green with a wonderful flavor! They also kept a good color and texture after pressure canning! The taste of these canned green beans was wonderful, almost as good as fresh!
Another type of green bean we love to grow is called Roma Bush Bean. These beans are very easy to grow. They develop a large, flat bean pod which makes great green bean casseroles and other green bean dishes- they are almost meaty! They can up real good too with lots of flavor! 
Growing green beans is easy, wait till all danger of frost is gone and “direct sow” into the ground . You can plant green beans right along with us by watching our Homestead Blessings The Art of Gardening DVD, available in our shop (Mother's Day Special going on NOW!)
You can let some of your green beans go to seed by letting them dry on your vine or bush until the plant has stoped growing and the beans inside the pod are very dry. After harvesting your dried beans you can save them for next years planting! 
Make sure you get some good, organic, heirloom seed from a trustworthy seed company so your seeds will grow for you again and again!
Green bean seeds are one of the easiest plants to save seed for the next year and the next-so if you are new to saving seed you might want to try and learn how with green beans, and you will find how your green been plants can keep giving great food for you and your family!​

Cabbage! 
We love growing and eating cabbage! It is such an amazing food! Even one cabbage head makes a lot of food! If you plant a row of them you will be able to enjoy your home grown cabbage for quite some time!
You can enjoy cabbage boiled, stir fried, stuffed, baked, fermented (sour kraut) and in many other dishes and or food combinations, such as Cole slaws, soups, salads and more! I’ve heard of folks who even use cabbage instead of lettuce on sandwiches. 
 Cabbage was the first food we ever fermented by making sour kraut. See our Homestead Blessings The Art of Canning DVD and make it with us. Once you make sour kraut and you experience how easy it is, you’ll be ready for making many other wonderful fermented foods! The health benefits are amazing! Click here for a great recipe!
As you can see this is a very giving and versatile food!
One of our favorite types of cabbage is a hybrid called StoneHead. It grows very tight, smaller, 3-4 pound, round heads and matures in about 50 days and holds well in the garden without splitting.
You can sow cabbage seeds inside for an early start yourself or you can pay a few dollars (just pennies a plant) for cabbage plants that have already been started for you! Your local nursery, garden center, co op or hardware store will have cabbage plants in packs of four or six or by the flat containing up to 36 plants or so! Just think that would make a lot of sour kraut, if you put it up, that could give you food all winter!
Crowd your cabbage! Cabbages can grow close (10"-12") and can go out very early in spring you may need to use row cover or fleece for protection on very cold nights and or to keep out the cabbage moths. One year we planted Hyssop all through the cabbage beds, there were no moths and we had a great harvest!​

Well we are going into the fall now and I must say its such a beautiful time of the year!The trees haven’t started changing color here yet, but leaves are beginning to fall, walnuts are hitting the tin roof of an old building, and we have harvested the persimmons off the ground! 
Even though the fall rains have given us quite the shower for days now, the weather is cooling down a bit and we are looking forward to days of sunshine ahead, for a while before winter anyway and really looking forward to the colorful, fall leaves show!
We have fired up the Kitchen Queen wood cookstove and have a pot of hearty, vegetable soup simmering and loaves of Persimmon Bread in the oven. After a long, hot summer it's funny how much we welcome the warmth and heat this amazing stove brings, but welcome it we do, along with the convince of cooking indoors and hot water in the tap! (In the summer we cook on our summer kitchen porch & if we need hot water it must be heated on the summer cookstove or small propane burner. Our Kitchen Queen has pipes through the fire box, and after the fire gets going the water circulates, heats up and is then stored in a tank and runs right to our sinks and tub! So nice!)
While the days grow shorter and the sunlight begins to wane our home will be filled with the warm glow of candlelight.

As the weather gets colder our thoughts turn towards making our home cozy for the winter and ideas start flowing for special meals and handmade gifts. Cranberry, orange Cinnamon Rolls, Cornbread Dressing with sage from the garden, Quick and Easy Breakfast in a Loaf for those hectic holiday mornings. Hand dipped candles, herbal soap balls, wax ornaments, oatmeal soap, wooden puzzles for children, hand woven potholders and more!
If you need some inspiration or fresh ideas look no further than our Homestead Blessings DVDs!  
Fall is the perfect season for making hand dipped candles. The beeswax will melt nicely on the back of the wood stove and the air outside is just right to cool the growing candles between dips.
This is also the traditional time to make soap, right after butchering with lots of fresh fat and the weather is still nice to be outside to mix up luscious bars of soap to last the whole year!
There's no better time to fill the oven with fresh breads and rolls and fill the house with warm, tasty smells of cinnamon,  butter and herbs!
Take our Cinnamon Roll recipe (place The Art of Bread DVD in your computer to access the PDF version) and add cranberries to the dough and orange juice to the glaze topping and turn them into Cranberry, Orange Cinnamon Rolls! Our Corn Bread recipe makes wonderful Corn Bread Dressing with sage from the herb garden, yum! There are many was to embellish your home made candles and soaps with pine needles and essential oils that will brighten your holidays! We hope you will have a wonderful time with your family making and baking up some holiday fun! 

Hello Everyone!
Hope this writing finds you all staying cool!  It sure has been good and hot this summer!  Yes, I say good cause the tomatoes, peppers and okra, and many other veggies sure like it, they thrive in the heat!
 So even though it is very hot for us folks - we can bare it -just knowing that the food we are planting and tending, will be filling the canner and crocks and stocking the pantry shelves for many a meal in the future and feeding our families. All that hard work, waiting and weather is worth it!
 Corse it’s always quite a pleasure to eat vegetables like sweet corn, fresh from the garden, right off the stalk or picked from the patch and chilling in the spring, mouthwatering watermelon! Or how about fresh picked blueberries! If you have never tried blueberry smoothie I’d like to encourage you to give it a try, it’s so refreshing and good for you on top of that! We make ours with coconut milk, bananas and fresh blueberries and greens. (you can use frozen fruit to make a very cold drink)
While our lettuce is over at this time will still have plenty of kale and other greens, even wild greens like lamb’s quarter we can harvest and prepare. Greens can be added to smoothies, pesto salads, fried eggs and more
We had a very late garden this year. The tomatoes, peppers, and watermelons will come on a bit later but they are looking good so far and here we do have a long  growing season!
Cucumbers are coming in great right now and we have enjoyed making juices, like cucumber, kale, apple and lemon! This drink is so cooling on the very hot days! 
Its also been a blessing to have plenty of cucumbers to make easy-very crunchy-pickles! 
Here is a recipe if you’d like try them!


              Fermented Dill Pickles
                                                                    
Small cucumbers to fill a wide-mouth quart jar
Head of dill
Clove or two of garlic 
Tiny pinch of turmeric
1 &1/2 tablespoon sea salt
1 cup filtered water
A few grape or red raspberry leaves ( this keeps them crunchy!)
Wash cucumbers and pack them into the jar along with the garlic, dill and leaves leaving a 1 1/2 inch head space. Combine the remaining ingredients and pour over cucumbers leaving a 1 inch head space, you may need to add more water to cover the cucumbers. Place a plastic lid on loosely, and keep at room temperature of 3-7 days depending on your taste preference. Some folks let them ferment for several weeks, this will also depend on the temperature of the room. They are now ready to enjoy and move them to cold storage to slow the fermentation. For more fermenting check out the books on the sidebar!
You can enjoy these pickles in all kinds of great summertime dishes like potato salad, salmon salad (or tuna- we use canned salmon instead of tuna) and egg salad . The pickles can be sliced thin and laid and stacked on any sandwich or you can eat them just like they are! 
For more food preserving, gardening and herbal inspiration check out the SALE we’re having on the Homestead Blessings Collection Two! 
The Art of Canning
The Art of Gardening
The Art of Herbs
DVD 3-Pack on SALE now for $35.95 
(Regularly $49.95)
Sale ends July 10th PM

Hope y'all are having a great summer and your gardens are growing well! If you have these DVDs in your collection already they make great gifts. It's really fun to make gift baskets with them and add some seed packets, gardening gloves, canning lids.....and other homestead goodies that would bring blessings and joy!
Until next time,
​the West Ladies

Hello Everyone! Are y'all keeping cool in this EXTREME heat? We make daily trips to our swimming hole in the creek in between gardening, and canning! We have a great DEAL to offer y'all- the Homestead Blessings Collection Two is on SALE now through the 10th. July 6-10! Maybe you're new to homesteading or need some fresh inspiration, these DVDs are sure to encourage and bless! Come and join us in the garden, as we share with you hints & tips we've learned through the years. Tour our herb garden and learn to make herbal tea, tonic and more! Can with us in the summer kitchen, tomatoes, raw kraut green beans and more (water bath and pressure canning). 
(If they're already in your collection tell your friends about this SALE! Thank you!)
Click here to get to our Shop!

Blessings,
​The West Ladies