Happenings Around the Homestead

Tried to upload some pics but blogger not corporating tonight. Anyway, remember our experiment of growing greens in side with a grow light. It is slow go but we do have some spinach and oak leaf growing. Hopefully blogger will allow me to get some pics up soon. Our sprouter is working great. Already been through three sessions of sprouting. Some for us and some for the chickens. I bought some non treated or coated grass seed from the feed store a couple of days ago and hope to plant it soon for the chickens to graze on. Their runs are barren at the moment. Normally because of the non option of free ranging them I supply them with greens but with groceries becoming so expensive that is just not an option at this point. When the garden is up and running again we will have plenty to share with the chickens. On payday we will order the remainder of our garden seeds and will start planting the greens in April. On the cooking front we are trying to incorporate more meatless meals. Not vegan or vegitarian meals just meatless because of the economy and the more I read about feed lots and such I just don't want to support that. A couple of weeks ago we tried our first Bocca soy burger and liked it. But of course then we did research and noticed all the problems with eating alot of soy ( GMO, and the processing part with chemicals) and that kind of turned us off of eating alot of soy. It is really hard to find organic soy products other than milk in our town. Last week I prepared our first black bean burger, it was also pretty good. I have purchased some soy crumbles to use in spaghetti and a newer product made out of fungi to take the place of chicken. I will let you know how that works out when it is cooked. Something else I am looking at is bartering. I have a friend about a hour from us that has a cow and can make her own butter and cheese. I have sent her a message asking if she would like to do some bartering this spring and summer for produce from our garden. I emailed another friend that bakes really good bread (which I am awful at) and asked her about trading loaves of home made bread for our eggs. We are getting about 4-7 eggs a day and soon that number will go up to 5-10 a day which is more than we can consume. Hoping both of those endeavors work out. The fish pond has been put on hold a bit with Scott now working 5 days a week and preparing for a bit art show this weekend. Hope to get back to that soon.