TheReturnHomestead

After we trellised the tomatoes, we got busy with other projects, and the plants shot up. Almost every plant has reached the bottom of the trellis and we have plenty of room to prune. Time again to take off lower branches, tie up to the trellis, and talk about why.

Hens sometimes decide to brood when the homesteader would prefer that they not. If you want to grow your flock stick as many fertilized eggs as you have under the broody hen. At The Return Homestead we have all the chickens we need for this year, so we want to stop any broody behavior. The daily egg tax means a broody hen has not eggs that will eventually hatch. If she continues on the nest she could starve herself, so we need to break them of just sitting all day. Nutmeg chose herself as the next queen of the coop after we moved Momma in with the Spring Chickens. We moved Momma to stop her from brooding and we hope that will be a good solution for Nutmeg as well.

We have been working on the garden since February. The plants were started inside using grow lights. We began hardening the plants off in late April by moving them outside during the day. In early May, we started planting, and we were apprehensive about the outcome, as we are every year, because the plants were so small. We have vigorous, healthy plants a month later, some exceeding our expectations. There are a few problem areas where pests are making themselves at home, but we have a mitigation plan. Come with us as we walk around the garden and assess its progress.

Sunshine joins the drywall crew to help us finish hanging the laundry room. We covered the basics in the last video and now have more complicated puzzles. We provide tips and tricks to help you figure out how to cover and uncover essential areas of the wall.

Time to hang the drywall. Once it has some walls, the laundry room will look like a room again. Hanging drywall is probably the most disliked construction task for DIYers. Probably because of the mess, needing to lift 4x8 sheets of drywall, the mess, getting covered in mud, the mess, sanding, sanding, sanding, and of course the mess. The effort is worth it when you finally get the last coat of paint on and you have a finished room. Today we are dealing with the basics to get started.

Our tomatoes have been growing fast. Soon they will need a trellis to climb, so we are installing some today. We have chosen to use cost-effective 2x4 welded wire fencing. We purchased the fencing from Tractor Supply on special for Memorial Day, costing only $1.07 per linear foot. _____________________________________ Corncob - Country by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100565 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ ______________________________________ Bama Country - Country by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100359 Artist: http://incompetech.com/

No electrical plans are available. We need to know how each wire fits into the circuit so we can replace a switch. While we have good access to the wires with the drywall off, they are not labeled. One wire at a time, while being aware of electrical safety, we untie the knot of wires. Once we know what each wire does we can construct a new circuit for the light switch.

The demolition is done, and we have made our plans. Now we are off to Lowe's for lumber, drywall, and electrical parts. Once home it is time to measure, cut, and nail up the new studs.

Where to start is the hardest part. Demolishing the walls is easy, but rebuilding them takes planning. This video demonstrates a simple process to plan the rebuild of one room, including framing, drywall, plumbing, electrical, lighting, flooring, and tools.

The high road that leads to the lake has a thick canopy of trees. We want to slow down the erosion and the fastest way to do that is get the grass to grow thicker. Grass needs sun so the trees have to go. This is more of ongoing maintenance than a quick project, so today our objective is only to make a start. Let's make some sawdust!

We have a busy day planned and an early start. We need to move the Spring Chickens from the barn to a coup. We also need to buy and mix some more chicken feed. We will show you the types of food we use for our chickens to supplement their free-range foraging and the systems we have to distribute that food to the chickens.

Weekly progress is the only way we are going to finish this year. Marti is planning the laundry room, and we need to erase the current laundry room to help us plan. Today we tear down the walls and show you what we find, explain what we see, and discuss how it effects our plans. Check out this video from DIYfferent to see a mobile home roof truss system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUqn2MRi7Zk

As promised. This is our return up the high road back to where we started. Yes, it is a long walk. Every time we make it, we see more detail, more beauty, and more work to do. Each discovery sparks renewed excitement about what our Secret Hidden Garden WILL be someday as we transform the land through labor to improve our life. God willing.

Ray wanted to see more videos of the property, and here it is. We follow the low road down to the lake. We explore the forest, creek, plants, and the ambiance of nature. Quietly sitting at the lake, we enjoy a few moments of planning for upcoming projects. To keep the tour short enough to be digestible, we put the tour on pause for another day, but we still have half of the property to see.

Untended garden beds grow more weeds than food. They grow wild, like thoughts in our minds, and can overwhelm us. When weeds fill the bed, grab a handful and pull. When thoughts fill the head, grab a handful of weeds and pull. The one activity improves the garden and your perspective on life. Working garden beds gave us time to think about what we wanted from life. Our first beds were behind our suburban dream home in Sparks, NV. Odds were that we would still have a mortgage if we stayed there till we died. Our first harvest overwhelmed our tiny pantry and spilled onto the dinner table every night. The quality of nutrition and taste helped change our minds about what we wanted. As we learned to discern between helpful plants and weeds, we learned how to choose a piece of land to homestead. By the time the garden was spent for the year, we had begun driving across northern Nevada weekly, looking at potential sites. The new land led to much larger beds, more weeds to pull, and clearer thinking. Now living mortgage free in Kentucky, we see in hindsight that pulling weeds clears beds and minds.

Gardening plans change, and everything can be moved with some work. The flower beds in the front yard are Marti's Art Garden. Any bulb, bush, or bee-attracting flower that catches Marti's attention is grown to become a subject of her oil paintings. The large plot of bulbs in the middle of the yard is consistently flooded when it rains, so we are moving the bulbs and the edging today. This is not the correct time of year to move the bulbs, but they are not doing well in the flooded area. They have to move. Then we want to reuse the bricks for better edging on the other flower beds.

Sweet potatoes are one of God's superfoods. Nutritious, delicious, and easy to plant. Thank you to Pineview Farms for making the slips we needed.

We want to move down to our guest house, but first, we want to make it an amazing place to live. This is our second major remodel, so we have many ideas about making it great. There are some structural and landscape issues to address. This is the first in our guest house remodel series. Today we start with a quick walk through before starting the demolition work in the laundry room.

We use a LOT of tomatoes at The Return Homestead. This year we are planting just over 200 plants. We have Jet Star, Taracata, Pink Ox Heart, Baxter Bush, and our favorite, Cherokee Purple. Yes, that is a lot of tomatoes. We will can both tomato sauce and cooked salsas. Most of them will be freeze-dried and ground into powder. The powder is shelf stable, easy to store, and all we have to do is add water to the consistency we want for paste, sauce, or soup. And, of course, we will slice and eat them right off the plant.

Corn is easy to grow, harvest, and store. We can freeze, can, pickle, and freeze dry it. But first, we have to grow it.

When we bought this property, it was in reasonably good shape because someone had been working to keep it up. We live here differently than they did, and not all plants are where we need them. This boxwood is in our way, and it has to move. We want to plant corn on this end of the house. Boxwoods are shallow-rooted evergreen bushes with small leaves and a bad smell. They produce no food but are useful as a barrier plant when grown in a hedge which is a type of fencing created by growing bushes or shrubs tightly together in a line. While this boxwood is not a food producer it makes a fantastic hedge that prunes well and is well suited to creating a boundary.

Sometimes a solution is not wrong, but not complete. The chickens are still able to get across to the goat yard. A little more work to do. While I was under the stairs, Marti was getting under the flooring, and she found another kind of leak.

Time to break out the chainsaw and clear some brush from the dam. Our fish pond has a dam that separates it from the creek below. Trees have been growing on the dam for several years. The roots will eventually grow through the dam to the water in the pond and provide a path for the water to seep out. So the trees have to go. Pioneers by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Sometimes the animals are not the problem. Keeping chickens on pasture means keeping them from flying out. I have noticed that chickens do not seem to fly over fences; instead, they fly up to a perch and down on the other side of the fence. I have a few handy perches to block them from using. Wooden fences and posts are enough of a perch for chickens to convince themselves that they can escape. I plan to put scraps of fencing on the inside of the wooden fence pieces to keep the chickens from seeing a clear path to a landing spot. A low cost solution.

Wow! The green beans just keep coming in. Marti has frozen all that she needed but still . . . more beans.We have been harvesting a couple of gallons every two days, and they show no signs of stopping. We don't want to run out of freezer space, and we don't have a pressure canner, so Marti is making Spicy Dilly Beans. These can be stored for a couple of years on the pantry shelf. They can be served as a side dish, or even presented in a salad.