The Doctor Aloe Vera is sick

My beautiful Aloe Vera has become sick.

The leaves simply rot at the base, even though the dirt doesn't seem too moist.

New dirt and bigger pots for house plants

During my detailed cleaning in the house, it happens, that I find a forgotten plant in a window behind a curtain.

Very often they look ready for the compost, and sometimes that's also the only option.

But that's a sad ending for a plant, that might be valuable of sentimental or other reasons.

First snow of the season

We got the first little drizzle of snow today (2019) 

Not enough to make it fun though.

I guess everyone is hoping for the wonderful perfect white Christmas (it's almost a tradition to hope for that) and my best bet is, that we won't have snow on Christmas eve this year either.

Step 4: Planning the final details

Of course it's now the details we're working on.
This goes mainly for production of food for people and livestock.

Let me ask you a quick question...

Step 3: Planning in rough lines

Its time for planning the rough lines for each area and make a connection between the areas and the buildings. Don't leave anything to itself.

Step 2: Planning Individual Areas

To avoid making tasks you hate, the daily maintenance must be easy. The priority of farming must (allways) have higher priority than joyful places.

Step 1: Planning and wishing

I've lived on a hobby farm twice.
The first time I was only lucky not to make the same mistakes as here, just other mistakes. At this second farm, it's not MY farm, and stuff has been made already....

The attack of the mushrooms

2 days ago they were not ready to harvest.

Then I forget about them for 2 days, and bam, as you see, they've become huge.
Also a bit bigger, than I prefer.

If you managed to get a lot, I hope you have success and fun with it.

Who stole the sun?

OMG sometimes I think I'm going crazy, if I don't see the sun soon. Just for 10 minutes to feel the warmth on my face for once in a long time.

Well I definately understand totally, why so many people gets depressed during winter time. I miss the sun too.

Free avocado the self suffient way - update

Update.

I made the try out with the peeled avocado stone  in a previous blog. Just to try it, it didn't work out.

Free pomegranate self sufficient style- update

Honestly I didn't know, that the pomegranate seeds we made some time ago, would work out so well.

All those little plants, what to do...

OMG the champions exploded

Look at that...

This is how fast mushrooms grow, isn't it impressive?

I don't keep them in the window, it was just to get light enough to get a decent picture. 

Season cleaning continues

And fall cleaning will continue for quite some time.

I discover a lot of stuff we don't use anymore. I'm thinking about starting a barn sale to get rid of it.

Brown champions self sufficient style

Well, you can't very well call this self sufficient, but if you don't have the time and outdoor space to make the process of homemade mushrooms, this is a fun option.

Free pomegrate the self sufficient way

Some tine ago we started to experiment with pomegranate. If you missed it, here's some links to previous posts...

The healing ability of plants

There's an uncountable number of plants, which we use (or have used) for medical purposes. "Doctor plants".

Update on free homemade safran

It's still a bit early, but our safran crocus has started to show themselves with tiny little purple flowers that will soon bloom, and then we'll be ready for harvest.

The first rime

For the first morning this season, I woke up to the sight of everything covered in rime. 

Geez, now we have to ice off the car before driving. I really don't like this sign of winter on the way.

Dust off the pepper corns: organize your spices

A big part of the fall cleaning is the kitchen, and in this case spices.

In some areas of spices we are self sufficient, and we get our herbs for free from the garden.
Spices, we don't (can't) grow ourselves, we have to buy in the store like everybody else.

Fall cleaning

We have 4 weeks a year which are marked cleaning (order and organising storage) Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. 

Many tasks are the same, and then trees the seasonal tasks.

When living self sufficient it's important to clean out cabinets and make order, to be sure nothing is wasted and must be thrown out. Cause that's a waste of money and resources.

Climate and gardening

Here we live in temperate climate. (Cold winters, warm summers)

If you live further to the poles or equator than I, the temperature differences will most likely effect the plants you can grow, effect when you are able to plant outside and when the plants are ready for harvest.

So just to make everything clear, before I get people from the the North Pole to chase me with an icepick for giving bad advice;
This is written with my experience from temperate climate.

But as I wrote in another post; nature  is confused. We gave had the most warm summer in a hundred years.
The change from summer to winter was fast though. Like Indian summer never really kicked in, and now it almost feels like winter.

Today the wind is blowing hard, it's difficult to close doors to the outside, because of the power of the wind. 

Even the dogs didn't want to get out, and then you know it's really bad.
I was also quite scared of the puppy being taken by the wind and get hurt bad. So we spend the day inside close to the fireplace.

An there we are creating our new plans along with a to do list for indoor tasks.

I just noticed the forecast, and this week the cold nights continues and the temperature will drop below 0C (32F)
The day temperature has dropped to 5C (41F) or just above.
Perhaps the winter will be as surprisingly cold, as the summer was warm.

With changes like described above,  its very hard to predict anything. Well just have to go with the planning as usual. 

Potting, preparing and planning

Harvest and storage is still going on. Potting plants is going steady, but we need decent containers for the plants in the living room.
So off to the market, but without result, they were all too small.
So until we get more containers, the potting is on pause until we find some.

Evening hours goes with planning.

If you are lazy, you just plant stuff here and there, when you find it.
The kitchen garden is just planted in the order, you drag the bag of seeds out of the bag.

Egg shells for many purposes

Right now we sadly don't have poultry. All hen houses was "cleaned out" by a huge dog, which slaughtered our beautiful chickens.

We therefore have an overstock of chalk for chickens and don't need some until spring.

Even though, there should still be an overstock of chalk, since the chickens also pick in the ground and eats insects, worms... and gets it naturally.

Fresh soil for indoor plants

While we are getting plants like tomatoes, peppers etc. ready to take inside through the winter, we might as well bring the indoor plants new soil as well.

Here's my favourite indoor plant. You can grow it outside during the summer, but this one I always keep inside.

It's Aloe Vera doctor plant aka doctors aloe Vera. There's many sorts of this plant, but the "doctor aloe" I had difficulties to find.

Yes the pot is fairly large for this plant, but I want to give it room to expand and make new plants. Actually it's a rare sight to see this one so "pretty", since I use it for many purposes.
That's however another subject: doctor plants or plants with healing abilities.

We're not yet finished with all we wish to take inside. The windows however, is more than "finished" :-)
They are overloaded. Ah yes, whoever has the ability to limit oneself, truly poces some kind of magic power :-)

Get your dirt ready for winter

Think about all the different kinds of seeds we come along during a period. We plant many of them just for fun.

Now we have to be prepared for "funny seeds", the ones we just try to grow for fun.

If we don't want to carve out an block of frozen dirt each time, we need to prepare some pots with soil for planting.

The last harvest

I think we almost got the last fruit on stock.
Most of it doesn't keep for a long time, so we use as much as possible as long as it's fresh. Then we store otherwise, by drying or freezing.

It's a well known quote that "one bad apple can spoil the bunch" - and it's true.

When the fruit start to ripen, the picking of fruits start.

Follow up on the indoor garden

As written before, we unfortunately do not have a winter garden, where the plants can grow until spring.
We simply have to use all our windows.

It's not always nice to look at, but if you have the "skill of decoration", I'm sure you'll come up with great ideas.
Most of our ceramic pots are broken, but we manage :-)

Dates with potential

Some time ago we made our free date seeds and started up some of the to sprout.

Some we planted in dirt immediately, others we put stated with moist kitchen towel in a plastic bag.

Let's unwrap our little "gift", and see how the date seeds are doing. At least we once in a while have to change the air and the paper around the seeds to avoid them from going bad.

Let's give the mango another shot

We have previously, without luck, tried to make a mango seed sprout, so I think I'll give it another shot.

Pomegranate update

Some time ago we made our own seeds from a pomegranate.

Let's have an update on that.

The seeds wrapped in kitchen towel has not yet sprouted. However our homemade seeds planted in dirt is starting to show potential.

Just look at that...

Nature is confused

The temperatures here makes everyone, and especially Nature confused. 

Look at the forecast!!!
I've never seen anything like it. 

The strawberries blooms the 3d time this year, 3 days ago I harvested a handful of raspberries. 

I'm a bit concerned and also curious of what's going to happen next.

Visit at the Veterinarians Hospital

When we decide to take in a new type of animal, we always consider veterinarian bills. Can we afford it?
If we can't, there's no reason to take in pigs or cows.
That's one reason we don't have more livestock, but as for now we could afford it, but we wish to move closer to the ocean to be able to catch fish without having to drive to get there.

But always always consider the bills before you buy livestock. It's our most important job if we own animals: to take good care of them.

Weekly shopping saves on driving

Google Keep

Even though we try to live self sufficient, we cant do that totally. For instance we do not have any livestock besides chickens (yet).

I tried to make homemade cheese once, but that's a task so difficult, that before I learn, i will have wasted way too much. So I rely on the stores for that.

Furthermore we are not fanatics, as you watch in some tv-shows. We don't burn our own bricks, and we don't produce our own tools, we buy them. 

Today we have spent the time shopping for the week, in that way we don't use the cars as much. The "shopping" car is a Hybrid, so when we do have to drive, we don't use an obscene amount of gasoline.

Homemade sunflower seeds for free

Sunflowers are so wonderful to have in the garden. Its nice to look at, feeds the wild birds, can make a hedge when the summer is best and makes great food for poultry. A wonderful plant.

It's always nice to be self sufficient in food for livestock, but almost always impossible if you want to feed them thru winter without buying anything.

Also this almost always happens for one or more types of seeds... As soon as the summer is over, the rain and moist starts to make everything go bad.
Last year our corn seeds went "down with the rain", so we had to use store bought seeds for this year's harvest.

Otherwise sunflower seeds is easy food... You just dry them and give the hens a "head" a day, they enjoy picking the seeds free of the dry plant. But this year...

It's pouring down, windy and cold

The weather is really uninviting. It's pouring down with rain, windy and rough cold.
So besides the normal chores like growing sprouts and experimenting with growing exotic plants from homemade seeds, we don't do much visible during days like this.

I'm still "fighting" with my camera and especially video editing software, frustration one on one ;-)
But still there's tasks for days like this, so  let's get more serious than just my stupid lack of ability to do video editing.

It's time for planning....

 

What's happening?

Yeah, why am I so slow and don't give daily updates this week(?)
Well, I actually bought a "thingie" to hold the camera for me, when I do something, I would like to show you.
But...
It's not as easy as it looks. Taking the video is no problem, it's the editing!
You see, I did this to be able to show and explain more easily, but it takes time to learn to make a decent video. I want to make it as short as possible, and cut out all nonsense.
I hope it'll turn out to be ok, and become better with each task, and in the mean time nothing seems to happen here...
But trust me, the chilli is still growing strong ;-)

Make your own safran

The most expensive spice on earth: safran. Why not try to make it myself, just in the spirit of living self sufficient. It's not like I want to start a production to sell safran, but I want to grow it for own use and mostly for fun, just to be able to say with pride:" safran, yes of course we have it :-)".

Safran crocus (sativus) differs from the normal crocus (the kind I know and love). Safran Crocus flowers in the fall. 

You plant the flower bulbs in August-September, and the flowers bloom October-November. 

So in a well prepared area with a lot of chicken manure, I planted my bulbs and cant wait to see the result and how difficult it is to harvest and dry the safran. Its going to be a new experience.

Herbs in the freezer

When I know, that I'm not going to use all my herbs, I cut and wash them and stuff them in the freezer.
Actually we strive to do this with anything we grow: we freeze all the stuff, we don't use. Also in order to be self sufficient, you of course have to grow a huge surplus, to feed yourself and the animals thru the winter.

As you can see from this tiny area of my garden, it's time to harvest herbs. Here the price for fresh herbs is approximately 1,5€ when it's cheap, so freezing herbs is a good way to save some money.
Further more, like all the tasks we do to be self sufficient, it's a satisfying feeling to have grown it yourself

Winter garden

We dont have a winter garden or alike. But even though the temperature is getting low outside, we can still grow a bit indoors.
I don't want to just "clean out" the garden. I select some plants to take indoors.

I have a low cayenne and bush tomato, that can easily be nice in the kitchen. Also a jalapeno and herbs could be nice to have in the window.
It's not like I think these plants will get us through winter, but it's nice to have a little homemade stuff to nibble on. So I dig them up and plant them in a pot indoors as a reminder of the summer and a little self sufficient like production.

Make your own Pomegranate for free

I love pomegranate, the taste is wonderful and the pips can be very decorative in salads, desserts, drinks etc.
It would be lovely to have my own plant...

So let's see what we can do ourselves to get a pomegranate plant for free, just by using the seeds of a fresh fruit we had anyway.

Peaches and nectarines for free

Remember we got the seeds from the fruits some time ago, cause it could be fun as well as it could be great to harvest our own fresh fruit. I cleaned them and put them in water, and now I have just rinsed the stones again.

So it's time for planting, quite easy really. It's big stones, I'm going to plant, so I use one pot for each stone.
Now we just wait and see, if we are lucky and something starts to grow.
If so, well have our own nectarine and peach plants for free. There's nothing boring about self sufficiency. The bigger your imagination, the better ideas.

Make your own wine for free

It's not like I want you to perform miracles like Jesus, but it should be easy to make your own wine plants for free.
We have a wine plant with blue sweet grapes, that tastes delicious. I don't know the exact name though, since the plant came with the buildings. But since it's able to grow and give delicious fruit in our climate, I would love to have more plants in the garden. So as a self sufficient household, I cut some branches, when I was harvesting grapes anyway.

Let's face it... I have absolutely no idea of what I'm doing. I have read everything I could, but didn't find a well described explanation.
But we'll, what's the worst that could happen(?)

Chickpeas sprouts

As normal procedure, I put the seeds in plenty of water and let it sit for 12 hours, rinse the seeds and change the water, and let it sit for 12 hours more.

Now we just rinse the sprouts each 12 hours (morning and evening), and pour out the water.

This kind of sprouts however, you have to cook for 5 minutes because if natural toxins. So put it in a dish, where you eat them cooked.

Get dates for free

Oh my, if only real dates were so easy to get 
After eating through a whole box of dates (NOT!), I have finally got some stones to plant.

First procedure as often with large stones; plunk it into a glass of water and let it rest for a few days, but remember to change the water each day.

WIP

Pictures of our hobby farm

So many people have asked of an overview of our farm, so lets have a tiny look at what we're working with here..
When I arrive in the garden the entertainment has arrived.

Our dog, the puppy and even the cat has come to have a look at what the two legged is doing.

All over the garden it's always a little mix of entertainment, relaxation and production.
The black dirt shows, where the pool were during the summer. The grey round concrete us a grill for many people, and chairs and tables are normally "shattered" over the property, where ever we need them.

Homemade Mung Bean Sprouts - WIP

Mung bean sprouts is made in the exact same way as Azuki Bean Sprouts.

Here I have 2 tablespoons, just to get an idea of how much, we as a family, eat here.

I soak the beans in water for 12 hours.

Then I rinse the beans and soak in water for another 12 hours.

And then lets see what happends further in the test.

Male your own free Blackcurrant plants

When harvest is over, it's a good time to make more blackcurrant bushes.

You want to cut the bushes anyway, and I find it most easy to cut, when I pick the berries anyway.

Actually I do, what you are not really supposed to.
I just clean the cut off branches from leaves at the buttom, and plunk it into water.
A couple of months later, I have all the bushes I need. They look dead at the picture, right(?)

Mushrooms grow kit - WIP

There's a lot of different types of grow kits from different suppliers and several types of mushrooms to grow.

The package is pretty self explanatory, and since the process can vary a bit, I'll refer to the description on the package.

But as an example of how easy it in fact is, I started a grow kit to show you. I'll keep explanations short...

Day 1:

The package contains a black bag of dirt, which I soak I water in a closed box over night.

Homemade azuki sprouts - WIP

Sprouts come in many types and taste.
It's easy to make your own sprouts, and if you want to take it to a level of  total self sufficiency, you grow your own plants and harvest seeds during the summer. Store the seeds until you want to use them during winter, and the cycle is closed.

Day 1

Today I'll make my own azuki sprouts from some Azuki Beans.

It's the first time I sprout azuki, I don't know exactly how much space they need.
So to be on the safe side, I take a large glass with lid, so I'm sure the sprouts have the space they need.