Looking Back

2014 was a big year for my family.There have been lots of really good things happening and a few not so good, but all in all it has been a great year. I am grateful and exhausted. Before we dive headlong into 2015, here is a quick look at what went on at Heart's Ease Cottage this past year.

Early in 2014 I had a several month bout with pneumonia, which put me behind on many of my garden tasks. The fact that we had a very long winter and late spring gave me a chance to play catch up once I was feeling some better... So we managed to have a nice spring garden in spite of sickness. Our summer garden suffered when our normally dry hot summer, was wet and cool instead. The tomatoes and peppers drowned in the months or so of non-stop rain, but I planted a second round of both peppers and tomatoes after then rains stopped. Other plantings seemed to cope better with the wet weather, so we still managed to have lots of beautiful fruits and veggies to eat, preserve and share.

We have waited 5 years for a harvest of Hardy Kiwi. There weren't many this year but next year we should have more.

Our Currant Tomatoes never fail to provide us with an abundance of tiny bursts of tomato goodness.They are larger than a pea and smaller than a grape tomato, but are packed with intense tomato flavor. They also provide plenty of volunteers tomato plants to share.

Some of the heirloom tomato varieties we grew.

We added some really nice elements to our homestead this year, and subtracted a few as well. Da's work kept him hopping this year, but he still managed to run several large projects at home. I got a lot of planning and designing done while I was recovering from being sick, so that in May we could proceed to put the plans into action. We are very excited about how things turned out!

The veranda and the gardens were both projects that were finished in May of 2014

I designed the deck rail to reflect the theme of Heart's Ease Cottage

I have finally gotten the bathroom walls finished. This painting is a depiction of a happy memory...maybe I'll tell the story some day if you are interested in hearing it...

A close up of the dragonfly.

In September my husband and I made a 2 week road trip to Hamilton Ontario. On the Trip to Hamilton, we stopped in Niagara Falls, Ontario, stayed in some very unique AirBnB  locations along the way, stopped in Pennsylvania to visit friends and saw a lot of countryside as we drove, both in the USA and Canada. We haven't taken a vacation in years, so this was a highlight for 2014. We had a lot of fun and put a lot of miles on my odometer. Niagara Falls was of course breath taking, but I really enjoyed the beauty and variety of the falls in Hamilton, Ontario.

The Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls 2014

Da and I at one of the many waterfalls in Hamilton. Photo by Monique Campbell. 

Webster Falls, Hamilton Ontario

We also had a couple of land mark life changes this year. Our youngest son married his sweetheart and the company that both my husband and one of our sons works for was sold and now they are working for a new company. The marriage was reason for much joy, but the business being sold lead to some scary times wondering if the new owners would be laying off current staff. As the dust settled and the shock wore off things stabilized and in the end, the entire staff was kept on the payroll. Whew!

December was full of taking care of medical things, three family members had some kind of surgery. Everyone is doing well and on the slow road to recovery. We have much to be grateful for! Now I just need to get caught up on all my winter garden chores and spend some time perusing the seed catalogs that are coming in daily, so that I will have some seed for my next round of plantings.

I hope that this finds you all well and happy and that you also had a good year. If you want to share some highlights of your 2014, feel free to leave a comment, I would love to hear from you!  Until next time!

A Day At Heart's Ease Cottage

Well, the weather is warming up and it is time to spend our days outside. I thought I would do a pictorial "Day in the Life" at Heart's Ease Cottage. Just for fun!

We started our morning by making our three day supply of vegetable juice, we buy organic carrots and a few other veggies, but all the greens come from our garden.

After juicing the next job was to clear the bolting lettuce from one of the beds and replant with the starts that just came out from under the lights inside.

Bibb lettuce seedlings go in where the mixed leaf lettuce came out. The romaine in the front of the bed is still tasty so we will try and get it used up before it decides to go bitter and bolt.

My husband took the plastic off the green house tunnels, cleaned them and spread them out to dry so they can be stored until cold weather requires them again.

Da is top dressing the beds with compost before I plant the next round of veggies.

The compost is very friable and full of earthworms.

While Da is top dressing, I am clearing the cabbages from the bed and preparing them to go inside to become sauerkraut, dehydrated cabbage and stir fry for dinner.

Cabbage heads and trimmings. The cabbage heads go to the house, trimmings go to the compost pile.

After the most of the cabbages are cleared from the bed I rake it clear of debris. Da will top dress once it is cleaned up and I will replant with the next crop of late spring cabbages.

My next task is to prepare the cabbages to become sauerkraut and dehydrated cabbage.

We will use the dehydrated cabbage in soups and casseroles. We eat mostly raw, but on occasion I like to have something cooked. The rest is stored for long term storage emergency pantry use.

By 2 o'clock the  green drink and mountain of fresh fruit we had for brekkers have disappeared and tummies are grumbling. It is time for me to make lunch! I will start with a base of fresh picked and washed mixed lettuces, chard and spinach from the garden.

To the bed of greens I will add grated organic carrots, bell pepper, red onion, broccoli, home made raw sauerkraut (see tutorial), home made raw daikon radish and carrot pickles (see tutorial), and top it with a few soaked raw cashews. There is no need for a salad dressing since the kraut and the pickled veggies add both a burst of flavor and a little moisture.

I topped the salad with a sprinkling of dulse flakes for extra vitamins and iodine and add a side dish of fresh mango, pineapple and kiwi. A healthy, tasty and beautiful lunch that is a feast for the eyes as well as the body!

 The rest of the afternoon was spent preparing dinner and working on this blog entry... I am beat. We got a bunch of things done, spent time in each others company and even got a start on a bit of a tan, it has been a lovely day!

Blog Hops this post is linked to:
Clever Chicks Blog hop #30

Getting Started

 There is so much to tell about our life on this little homestead, to get us to where we are today. I have struggled with how to go about doing that. We have homesteaded here for more than twenty years, much has gone into the developement of this place and much has happened to change the dynamics of what we are doing now.

  It is my desire to tell our story for several reasons, the one being that we carved out a functional homestead on an one acre of unyielding clay, how we did it might help someone else who dreams of  a homestead. We have produced much of our food, kept livestock, homeschooled children, and developed an asthetically pleasing, healthy environment for our family and other living creatures to enjoy. Many of the stories I want to tell you are in the past. When we were developing our place, growing food and raising kids, there wasn't much time for writing. I was lucky to keep a garden journal...

  Now things have become established, and the kids have grown up. We still garden and put up our food, I am diligent to keep our pantry stocked with goodness, so that whatever life throws at us, there will be something for us to eat. We still have one son living at home, and he works with us to keep things going, but the days of biology being conducted in the garden and projects with his education in mind are in the past. Now he is spending his daylight hours in an apprenticeship, learning a trade and preparing for his future. But what we did here worked. I believe that sharing what we did to create our "homestead", could be of use to those who have dreamed of doing the same but felt like it couldn't be done with whatever resources they have. I believe we also can share what we've done with those who are in the process of establishing their own homestead or who  like us, have been doing this awhile. I would like to make some new friends among those intrepid souls that have shared the dream of sustainable living, in the hopes that I will continuing to grow, learn and experience. I want to talk about our homestead, past, present and future and I want to encourage and inspire others to try their hand at a "simpler" life.

  Please drop in and make yourself at home...I love company!

Heart's Ease Cottage

  A long time ago, in what seems like a different lifetime, my family and I moved from the city to the country.  The little yellow cottage we bought, needed a lot of tender loving care and the land it sat on was poor, sun baked clay, but to us it was the beginning of a dream come true. From the start of our lives together we talked and planned, drew floor plans and mapped out gardens. We were in the military, moving from place to place, without any ground to grow in except a few terracotta pots on the stoop of our apartment, but we were preparing for the day that we would have some ground of our own. We read everything we could get our hands on about organic gardening, raising livestock, and food preservation and hoped and prayed for a place in the country where we could a simple homesteading life.
  The path to our dreams was not a direct one, there were many false starts and unforseen events that diverted us from our goals. Hurricane Hugo came 180 miles inland and destroyed most of the house just days after a new addition was dried in. Insurance didn't cover any of the new construction, so we couldn't afford to have help rebuilding. Da and I did most of the reconstruction ourselves, except for the roofing and siding, which we hired out. It was five months before we had electricity, due to the fact that we had to totally rewire the house, after we got what was left of our house under cover.We lived somewhere else while we got the roof back on and the floors mostly replaced; then our funds ran out so we had to move into the shell. We had no electricity, no heat, no doors (exterior or interior), no running water (wells need electricity...). Our baby, who was 6 months old at the time of the hurricane was at 8 months, in need of surgery that we couldn't have done until we had a warm clean place for him to recouperate. We lived in the only room in the house that still had four walls, hung a wool army blanket over the door to try to keep out the January cold and everyone but the baby slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. In Mid February we finally had got electrical inspections and on Valentines day we had power! There was no sheetrock on the walls or ceilings, my kitchen sink was sitting on 2x4's, but we had exterior wall insulation and an indoor toilet, so we thought we were in heaven! It would be another 3 years before we had interior doors or floor coverings. Meanwhile, life went on, Da worked, our oldest went to school and the baby and I spent the day in a construction zone. I cut and numbered each piece so that when Da got home from work he could nail the stacks of marked 2x4s in place by the numbers... E.M.napped to the sound of a chop saw and learned to walk on rough waferboard subflooring, N. helped to build his room and left a little time capsule in the wall before we closed it in with sheetrock, and Da and I worked night and day to get the house finished.
  That Spring, Da and I dug into the unyielding clay with shovels and mattox and formed up our first little garden. It wasn't very big but it produced and more importantly it was a ray of hope, when things looked pretty bleak . Years passed, the garden and kids grew, the house got finished and the grounds took shape. It has been more than twenty years since we moved to Heart's Ease Cottage, there were other setbacks and heartaches, some large and some small, but through it all we continued to work the ground, plan, hope and pray. Today, as I look out the window of my cozy little cottage, at the mature fruit trees and the raised vegetable beds of good rich soil, I know that God heard our prayers.