Tuesday, January 17, 2012

weekend work.

The basement bar project is getting closer. Me and my son got 1/2 of the basement cleaned and built some new shelves for our canned food storage.



The top 2 shelves will be for our food storage, the bottom 2 will be for our canning supplies. Doors will be going on in the future.

We moved a giant cabinet my sister had given me months ago into its place and got it filled with the wine making supplies.


We made a trip to a local bulk store and bought 25lbs of flour, and some spices and other baking supplies. We stopped at a local dairy farm and bought 3 gallons of raw milk, one gallon we traded to a friend for a dozen eggs from her chickens. One gallon is for drinking and the other is for making mozzarella cheese. We bought some hamburger from the farm and it was the best beef burger I've ever had. Will definitely be buying a larger amount to freeze in the future.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

It's been a long time since the last post.

The big news from Dirty Hippy Homestead is that we're expecting. Due date is August 2nd. We can't wait to meet our new little dirty hippy.

We've been very busy the past month with the holidays, cutting fire wood, brewing beer and making wine. The garden is pretty much done, although we're still picking brussel sprouts,carrots and the collard greens are still going strong.

With the early winter snow storm and a since a friend had a huge tree cut down we should have 1/2 of next years wood cut and split before this winter is over.

Our cherry and grape wine are bottled. Still need to bottle the dandeline wine and the mead. Beer brewing has been going good. Just kegged a dunkle last night and have the ingredients to make a gluten free beer this weekend. Next beer on "tap" will be a stout, so we can use the spent grains to bake breads. Organizing the home brew equipment and building a bar are in the works. First step of cleaning and organizing the basement is going slow, but once I get to the fun part of building it will go a lot faster. We have friends coming from New York for a visit in early March, and the goal is to have the bar finished by then.

The rabbits are doing well, expecting a new litter this Thursday.

We have a lot of plans for this gardening season. We are building a new raised bed so we will have a total of five 4x6 raised beds. We have permission from two of our neighbors to use some of their garden space also. Planning on building a new shed to house the rabbitry, and yard & garden equipment so the existing shed can go back to being the work shop. Also planning on adding another doe possibly two, to the herd.

We have been looking through seed catalogs and making lists. Hopefully in the next week or two we get our orders in. We are looking forward to using the cold frames and hoops to get an early start on some things.