Homegrown Foods

One of the main reasons we moved on up to the country was to try our hand at homesteading. We're a long way from self sufficient, but we do raise a good percentage of our own food. We expand our efforts each year, with a goal of producing 90% of our food by 2012. Its a lot harder than you would ever think possible, and has created in us a newfound appreciation for the ease of going to the grocery store.

Our Garden

Our garden provides us with a huge array of foods. In 2007, we grew a variety of salad greens, 3 kinds of kale, 2 kinds of carrots, potatoes, corn, summer squash, zucchini, blue hubbard squash, acorn squash, butternut squash, buttercup squash, spinach, parsnips, 3 kinds of cabbage, belgian endives, beets, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, green beans, wax beans, gourds and pumpkins.

We also have a 2 year old asparagus bed which should start producing this year, several apple trees, two pear trees, blackberry bushes and high bush blueberries.

In additon to the many food plants which we cultivate, we also enjoy a variety of wild foods like fiddleheads, raspberries, beechnuts, elderberries and lamb's quarters.

The garden feeds us not only in the summer months, but througout the year. We spend a lot of time freezing, drying and canning the harvest to preserve it for the winter.

One of our favorite times of year is County Fair time. This year we submitted several entries for the judging and walked away with blue ribbons for every vegetable we entered, as well as a third place for our maple syrup.

Free Range Poultry

There's nothing as satisfying to us as knowing where our food comes from. This includes the meat we eat. In 2006, our first year raising poultry, we raised 50 Cornish Cross Chickens and 12 Bronze Turkeys. We processed them all at home and really enjoyed it.

In 2007 we raised 100 Dark Cornish chickens. This breed of chicken is just what we wanted. We found in our first year that the Cornish Cross birds just didn't have the ability to forage that well, and the Dark Cornish promised to be much better suited. Our birds are allowied to range far and wide to forage for insects and plants to eat in addition to their natural roaster grower ration. The Dark Cornish birds took to this system with gusto and were much heavier than we expected come butchering time.

This year we plan to stick with the Dark Cornish and will likely raise about 100 again.

Free Range Eggs

We also keep a flock of hens which provide us with the best eggs on the planet. We have 4 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Barred Rock, 1 Rhode Island Red, 2 Black Australorps and 3 Dark Cornish hens. These are hard working girls, produce at least 4 eggs a day in the coldest winter months with no supplementary heating! In the warm months, we get an egg per hen per day most of the time. Our girls have the run of the farm and spend a lot of time foraging for whatever they can find to supplement their natural layer ration.

Maple Syrup

Sappin' season is Amy's favorite time of year. There's something special about that first sip of fresh Maple sap right from the tree. It is the best Spring tonic anyone could ask for... and the syrup it creates is pretty good too. Of course Ross's favorite part of making maple syrup is what he calls Snappin' - Sappin' + Nappin'. This complicated procedure involves a cot and a hot pan of maple sap.

We've been making maple syrup for two seasons and have loved it from the start. The first year we tapped about 60 trees and hauled the sap to a friend's sap house for the evaporation process.

Last year we tapped about 80 trees and used our own sap house to make the syrup. We borrowed an old fashioned sappin' rig (see picture) from a neighbor who had upgraded to a fancy commercial evaporator. This evaporator, made from an old oil barrel, worked like a charm and we produced about 10 gallons of syrup for our season.

Beer & Wine

What root cellar would be complete without several varieties of tasty libations? Amy is the brewmaster of the house and makes a variety of artisinal beers. She is a big fan of meade and primarily uses honey as her sugar source. The beers are flavored with an array of wild gathered medicinal herbs including Mugwort, St. John's Wort and Juniper. She has also recently tried her hand at winemaking and produced 40 gallons of old fashioned Elderberry wine this year.