The House of Riona, Micro Homesteading 2026

Its a new year, so starting a new thread about my processes and life and growing things and living my life in a way that works for me.  Navigating disabilities, learning to be an ever-improving gardener, and doing the things I do.

Its 2026:
So the holidays are over, I met all my familial obligation goals for the end of the year etc.  I love Christmas and new year's don't get me wrong.  But they come with a lot of stress and high expectations of myself, and yes some expectations from others.  But we sailed through it and now are coming out the other end.
And we finally had a freeze the day before NYE.  Generally we have our first freeze in early Nov. so this was new territory, flowers at Christmas, etc.
Christmas activities and New Year's Eve went as usual for the most part with family traditions etc.

Logan is in the process of making our first batch of mead, it will be low-proof to start, because that's the quickest and easiest, from a Midieval recipe that families would have used on the daily.  If we want proper feasting mead it takes longer to ferment of course.  Once we see how this goes we'll probably do more of the feasting mead, that's what is familiar to us re. mead.

I've decided that we're lowering Logan's hours at work, which looks like a terrible idea on paper, but which I feel will be better for his quality of life, especially since he still has a lot more school to do, five more terms.  We've talked about this before, lowering him from 40 hours a week to 32 hours a week, but I think maybe now we may be able to pull it off, though it won't be easy financially.  Thing is though that if he works four days a week instead of five then he'll not only have more time to do school and relax but he'll have more time to help me with my projects which can earn some money.  If his work allowed 4 10s we'd just have him do that and we would have done that years ago.  But since they don't we're trying this.  We're stepping out in faith that God will guide us.  I think that always striving to have a better quality of life while spending less money is the best way for us.  I want sustainable situations for both of us and I think this is the next step for us even though our parents would kill us if they found out.  They don't need to know.
More oppertunities to have the yard stand open, really getting the swing of that and getting neighbourhood people used to it and things are starting to sell when I have it open, which I can only do certain times and days.  But that will improve too I suspect.
Logan smoked the most mindblowingly good roast the other day, wow, he's getting really good at smoking meat.  He's a good cook at most things but this is so so tasty.

I think from now on I'll have a seperate thread in the Cascadia section to talk about when I'm having my stand open, when I'm performing, etc.  That way people who are local can check it and all y'all who aren't local don't have to wade  through those bits.

Love how you’re making micro-homesteading work for your life — learning, adapting, and still finding joy in the little wins! 🌱✨

The first batch of mead:
So my husband made his first batch of mead, from a Midieval recipe which is for low-proof mead, like what the family and kids would drink on the daily because water wasn't always safe to drink at that time but a twitch of alcohol would sterilize for improved safety.  Anyways its very different than the feasting mead we're used to buying and drinking.  We're thinking about buying one of those containers with the spigget to pour out of that we could ferment in, since that way the yeast doesn't get disturbed when we pour a cup.

Well our shallow freeze didn't do much, calendulas still alive, though no more blooms.  I think I'm going to bag the last of the leaves to give to friends tomorrow as salad greens, because I seem to have developed a mild allergy to them, I noticed it back in summertime, my throat gets weirdly dry and a tad constricted when I eat them in salad.  I kept eating them for a while since we have them, but I'm going to sell all of the seeds and not grow anymore if my body is going to keep saying it wants me to stop eating them.

I planted a garlic clove and its started growing, I'm hoping it can self-regulate and not get ahead of itself.
I'm going to do some transplanting while my trees are leafless, moving the ornamental plum saplings into their own pots for year 2, moving my maple sapling into a bigger pot for year 2, I'm hoping my Italian plum tree which I transplanted last winter can stay in the same sized big pot for year 5, and hoping this year it will flower _and fruit instead of just flowering like it did last year.  And I want to transplant my blueberry bush into the barkdust-which-has-basically-turned-into-soil next to my front door, I think it would be happy there.  Its one of the few spots in my yard where I can easily plant directly into the ground.

The Christmas tree is down now and waiting for my husband to take it to drop in the bushes behind his work.

For when I'm singing, when I have the yard stand open and any other events I host check out my post in the Cascadia forum.