Dottie Kinn

For 2 people, I plant 3-4 4x8 raised beds. Some years are a bust and I'm always wishing I grew more.  If the harvest is a bumper, they get canned since I don't have decent cold storage and they always sprout.

Regarding voles, ground squirrels, etc. We had to dig up EVERY raised bed and put 1/4 inch hardware cloth in the bottom, then re-fill.  No way to keep out the voles and they are voracious!  Got a German Shepherd and haven't had one day of trouble with the ground hogs...  Before getting the dog, the GHog took ONE BITE out of every watermelon, melon, butter nut squash, etc. and ruined the whole crop of several things.  Choice words said loudly.  

I wouldn't have minded the monster taking the whole melon or whatever and eating the whole thing, but to just take one bite out of all that was beyond words just wasteful!!!

My theory is always plan more than you need and give away the extra. You just never know what the weather will do to your harvest.  Good for you growing your own food!! Happy 2024!

Be glad to!! The original recipe called for 20 lbs or so of tomatoes, which my crock pot won't hold. I scaled it down to a more manageable quantity. Now that I have a new, and larger, crock pot, coming, I'll give it a go on the larger batch.  It is a pretty good recipe--much better than several I've tried using tomato paste.  You might want to start with a small batch and see how you like the seasoning and adjust if needed.

Hmmmm, don't see a way to attach a pdf so it is copied below.

KETCHUP
 8 pounds tomatoes-cut in 4ths
 1 cup diced onion
 2/3 cup sugar
 ½ cup apple cider vinegar
 ½ cup white or rice vinegar
 1 T salt
 1 T garlic powder
 ¼ tsp pepper
 Couple shakes celery seed
 Couple shakes dried mustard

In crock pot on hi and covered, cook tomatoes overnight.

Add rest of the ingredients, cover and cook until boiling.

Once boiling, set lid off center to let steam escape and cook down until
seriously thick.

Puree in Vitamix and then can.

Makes around 3-4 pints. Recipe can be easily doubled/trebled etc.

ABSOLUTELY a pressure canner is worth the money. I can at least 500 jars (quarts & pints) every years--sometimes more. Last year, I bought a 2nd pressure canner and it was the best money ever spent.

I can pretty much everything with the pressure canner, excepting jams and jellies. I use a raw pack method for everything and it comes out perfect. So much simpler and more nutritious than cooking all your food and then cooking the tar out of it again in a pressure canner.

Now, my reasons for using a pressure canner are simple.  Water.  I can't bring myself to use all that water in a huge pot that I'd never be able to lift when full.  A pressure canner uses just 1" in the bottom of the pot vs. 10-12 inches to cover the jars!

Also, we used to live in a small apartment. I canned there also. Jars were stored EVERYWHERE. Under the bed, in every nook and cranny of closets, in the pantry, in the ....... fill in the blank.

We eat organic and organic food is seriously expensive and mostly can't be had where we now live. I garden and can for the year. We eat soup---veggie, potato, stew, split pea, lentil, squash soup. I can green beans, green peas, 7 bean mix, meat (yes raw pack). Salsa, spaghetti sauce, ketchup, etc.

I haven't seen anyone mention the spaghetti sauce and salsa you want to make. If you add over a certain percentage of items that aren't tomatoes, hence raising the pH, you should use a pressure canner.

To me it is very simple.  My Ball Instruction book has instructions for raw pack ingredients or cooked ingredients. And they have recipes. Like another poster said, it is nearly impossible to blow up a modern pressure canner.  And a pressure cooker isn't the same as a pressure canner.  Do some more research.  I love using both and have both but they are not the same piece of equipment.

Good luck and happy canning!!

We began a homestead from scratch 4 years ago. What I wish I had done during year one:  plant fruit trees, then plant more fruit trees, then plant some more fruit trees.  Plant fruit perennial bushes, then plant 3x what you think you want/need.

Canning fruit or dehydrating it is imperative for winter consumption of vitamins and minerals that can't be had in other ways. Food security is very important!  Chickens and other critters also love the fruit.  Think free food!!

Also, bartering with food (fruit, veggies, eggs) may become a necessity sooner rather than later.

Can you "borrow" a few goats from a neighbor to help tame the overgrowth?  They'll deposit nice fertilizer whilst they mow.

I use grow boxes for many reasons: a) I'm 64 and don't want to be crawling around on the ground gardening, b) weeds are much easier to control, c) line the bottom with 1/4 inch hardware cloth and tunneling critters can't eat your garden, d) easier to keep rabbits and other critters out of your garden, and e) easier to control soil type. Better yet, start learning about wicking beds---people in desert climates use them successfully to grow gardens. I'm converting my wooden boxes to them since we always have a drought in the summer.

May I suggest the following youtube channel--it revolutionized my thoughts on gardening. You want to focus on soil health, then you'll have a healthy garden.  I Am Organic Gardening at https://www.youtube.com/@iamorganicgardening/videos. Even before I had a garden, I was learning from this wonderful man. Go all the way through his videos to the very beginning. He teaches in an easy-to-understand manner.  

Start preparing your soil now and you'll be ahead of the game once you move to your new homestead.

Can't believe no one has mentioned the indispensable duct tape.  Seriously, can anyone have a homestead without it??

For the kitchen, I'd get the tools you need to preserve your harvest so you can eat yea-round.  Canners that hold 7 quart jars, 8 pint jars. Presto (in the US) makes a good canner that is easy to use. I have 2 that I use simultaneously as I put up 500-800 qts of food a year.  A dehydrator is also good to have but not as essential as the canners.

Best of luck to you! And may God richly bless you and remember to ask Him for Wisdom on what to do and when!!

Hi neighbor, I'm also in SW Missouri. Every year the squash bugs are horrendous! A friend told me about using the Blue Hubbard squash as a trap crop, also mentioned above in a link, so I'll be doing that this year. Can't report on its efficacy but it was highly touted as an excellent remedy.

I have a roll of duct tape in my garden bag that I use to remove eggs. Roll a piece sticky side out around your fingers, then press it against the egg cluster to remove them. Might take a couple of times to get all.  Just rotate the tape to get fresh sticky. Replace as needed.  This is a fast and easy method that doesn't damage the leaves as much as other methods. It is also refreshingly satisfying to destroy all those eggs on the duct tape once you're done.  

A couple weeks ago, I turned loose my chickens into the grow beds in hopes that they will reduce the egg population. Won't know how effective this was until later. Also, I use netting to cover all the vulnerable crops, like cruciferous and curcubits.  I hand pollinate and also remove the netting on occasion.

An old remedy is to wrap the stem of curcubits in foil just below and above the soil line so the borers can't penetrate the stem. You'll need to do this early. I'll try this as well.

Also read that the stem of the infected squash can be cut and the vine borer destroyed.  Make a parallel cut on the stem where the vine borer is and destroy it, then press the stem above the cut into the ground and cover it with dirt. It will, reportedly, re-root and the plant will be happy and continue to grow.

All of these methods are hypothetical for me at the moment. They will be put into practice this year, for sure.  Good luck with your garden war!!

Most seed starting heat mats don't go over 80 because you'll fry your seeds. 90 degrees is way to hot, even for tomatoes and peppers. I have several seeds mats and one does get hot but I have terrible germination due to the excessive heat. My book, written exclusively about seed germination and seed saving, indicates most seeds germinate best at temps in the mid 70s.

Get a good LED light for your seedlings and they won't get spindly. Hang it around 6 inches from your seedlings and set it on a timer so they get around 12 hours of light. Also, be sure to water from the bottom so you don't end up with fungus and damping off problems.

I've made every mistake possible in the learning curve.  Most of us have so just keep working at it.  Saving seeds is a bit tricky so it is worth every penny to invest in a good book. Some plants have unique tricks to end up with viable seed.  You don't want to bet the farm on your seeds and end up next year with nothing growing!

"The New Seed-Starters Handbook" by Nancy Bubel is excellent. It's nearly an inch thick and covers seed starting from start to finish for fruits and veggies, herbs, flowers, trees, bushes. Worth it's weight in gold! Hope this helps!

WOW!  Sounds like Azure Standard is unknown on this blog.  www.AzureStandard.com.  Everything is organic. One can buy a little or a 50 pound bag of many items. Everything you can find in a grocery store, they carry. My drop is once a month so planning is important.

Here's the link to see if a drop is in your area. https://www.azurestandard.com/drop-point-locator
They are expanding every month so don't give up. Sign up, if you're interested, to sponsor a drop.

The pricing is way less than Misfits. My first, and only, experience with Misfits was a huge disappointment. The fruits were tiny, if they survived the shipping, which was 5 days late. EVERYTHING was thrown into a large box.  So, plums and apples were being tossed around with the watermelon.  Needless to say, much of it didn't survive. So, plan ahead so you can eliminate damage by ordering small things together.  They did refund the price of the damaged goods.

Azure Standard has a lot of "their name" products that are grown on their farms. All organic, many heritage seeds.  

Locally, we have Amish produce auctions during the growing season. Talk to like-minded people around you who have been in the area a long time to see if you can find something like this. I drive to a dairy farm to buy raw milk; another referral from a friend.

We support the local building supply stores and small stores. There is very little choice here since we're in a rural area and in a small town. I've begun avoiding Amazon as well. Just yesterday, I was looking up a prior purchase and saw that I hadn't ordered anything from them in 8 months.  My purchases have been from online stores, and the prices have been better than Amazon. Yep, I order and shop Walmart. Hate it but there just isn't much choice. The local grocery stores can be $1+ more EACH item. Just can't do it as much as I would love to support the local store. They also don't have but a couple organic items.

As much as I dislike Facebook, I use the Marketplace to buy and sell things. Hubby is a retired Home Inspector and I've been selling his gently used equipment.  We've also purchased quite a few things.  I gave up on Craigslist because the only responses I ever got on ads were from spammers.

Hope when you re-locate, you're planning on buying some land and putting in a garden. One of the Proverbs in the Bible says to plant your field first, then build your house.  We did that!! I have 28 grow beds (can't grow in rock) and are just now working on transforming this industrial building into a home.

Best of luck to you and your journey!!

You have an incredible writing gift!! Loved your post and even read it to hubby who enjoyed it.

To the point, no one has mentioned that your little lady may be mourning. Animals of all sorts mourn the loss of a friend and companion. I've watched my girls mourn the loss of a rooster who was a real gentleman. I, too, mourned his loss but for different reasons. He wasn't in the "jerk" category and he was part Brahma, which I wanted to introduce into my flock via hatched chicks.

It took them a couple of weeks, but they eventually got over it. The new rooster had longer to wait for their acceptance, but they did eventually accept him and his role. I see that as a part of life regardless of the species. If my hubby died, I would mourn terribly and I seriously doubt I would accept another "rooster", ever.

If she has made a new friend in the coop, let her be more with her friend. Like mentioned by many others, there are too many lung issues that can be caused by the dander to let her be in the house permanently.

My position is probably more harsh than others because my chickens are for food (eggs and meat). They are well cared for and treated with respect, just not pets.  I have 2 cats and 1 dog that are pets.

I've had a couple hens who hung out near me and talked while doing chores but I still see them as chickens, and they still act like chickens around me. None of mine are as old as yours so I don't know if that makes a difference.

Just my 2 cents worth. God bless you for being so concerned about your hens!

Continuing my research on composting..... Just read an article posted from a study in Scotland www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Fate%20of%20toxins%20in%20hemlock%20and%20yew%20during%20composting.pdf.  The toxins in Yew and Hemlock are negligible by the end of the composting procedure.  YES!!!

This is quite interesting. We have loads of P. Hemlock and my research led me to believe that goats, etc. shouldn't eat it. I'm delighted to see that they can with no adverse effects and it is actually beneficial for them. My chickens won't eat it. Everything said not to compost it, not to use it on the gardens, etc.  Obviously, the "researchers" are being overly cautious.  My husband has been mowing it with mulcher engaged so he's essentially chopping land dropping.  I'll be dumping it on the compost pile or chopping and dropping it from now on with an easy mind. I was afraid we were poisoning the ground.  Good to hear that the poison is short-lived and degradable.  Thanks for the good info, everyone!!