The House of Riona: Micro Homesteading 2025

Nancy the reason I haven't pursued online sales is because its pretty visual with picture taking and a lot of other logistics.  But for most people it would really be a good idea.

Mushroom kits and jars:  Well the mushroom kit is going, and I've got the wide mouthed jars with rings I'd wanted to expand my microgreen growing.  I still need to order the screenlids, but first we had to order a cot, because the futon we bought for the second bedroom isn't big enough for 2 people and we have friends coming in from out of town next week to stay over.  Its fun to have friends stay over for a couple of nights.  So we bought that to shove next to the futon.  I will admit that my husband has pulled me into the world of buying things online, because its convenient, but sometimes they send you the wrong item, like what happened with the futon, but once it was put together and we realized it was smaller than we thought, I couldn't conscion taking it apart and sending it back because my husband worked so hard, through a lot of frustrations, to put it together.  So here we are.
Lots of rain here, I moved my alovera plant up on the porch because its gotten PLENTY of rain.  We got a single roll of thunder which made my day.  When the weather is like this I'd rather sing on facebook live with tip links listed, no singin' in the rain for me haha.

The bad news is no beach day visit for me, my poor boogieboard is hiding dejectedly in the closet.  The good news is that my husband is finally doing better after a lengthy throat thing, we finally found antibiotics that fixed the bacterial infection and we're so thankful.  And in other news I got my annual haircut, I can't conscion spending money on a haircut more than once a year, especially because I go to a friend and we always end up eating out afterwords together, so yeah it becomes a very expensive haircut haha.

Hello flu, horrid to see you:
So its my turn to catch it.  I'm on day 7 and its brutal.  I think the fevers are finally done, but the coughing and lung issues and fatigue continue.  I think this is the lenghtiest sickness I've had as an adult, as far as being this heavy for this long.  It will likely be a couple more weeks before I can sing properly.
But since I'm eating real food again we have been enjoying my oyster mushroom kit bounty, the kit is fun if not a tad high maintainance haha.  I'm going into the dr. tomorrow and hoping I don't end up with any secondary bacterial infections like my husband had.  His initial sickness was better than mine, but his secondary shit was where the problem was for him, I'm hoping to avoid such.

And no, our friends weren't able to come in from out of town to stay over after all, because flu.  I feel frustrated that this thing is taking so long to be done with, it just keeps dragging onward.

Boring November:
We enjoyed our first harvest from our mushroom kit, we'll do a second round soon.  Then at some point we'll bury it in straw outside and see what happens.
But not much else happening.  I ended up with that secondary bronchitis infection I was hoping to avoid, and after antibiotics the coughing continues but manageable, everyone's getting it this year and its very lingery.  My body is balancing itself back out post anti-biotics, little issues, but getting some goodguy bacteria back in there.  Hoping to sing by the end of the week or early next week, time to get back on track.  Long interuption in getting things to the consignment store, but getting back on track there too.

We still haven't had our first frost.  It usually comes in early Nov. around here, we only have a handful of frosted/snowy/icey nights here, but its odd that we haven't had our first frost yet.  It means my calendula are still blooming and we can still eat them in salad.  I need to figure out how to eat the day lilies we have, they have lots of shoots and I've heard the little tubers are edible.  The pumpkin plants are finally truly dead, that little after thought baby pumpkin didn't end up amounting to anything, but I will take the seeds from our porch decor pumpkins I grew and use them next year for the same thing, a tiny variety which isn't phesible to eat.  I'm thinking about harvesting what is left of my fava bean plants, they weren't successful at making beans the way the plants I planted in the springtime were, but I can eat the leaves off of them, or should I just leave them overwinter and see what they do?  Harvesting little bits of the last things.  Oh and the kobucha squash didn't go, I think the neighbours planted it too late and so it fizzled.

I'm glad you're feeling better - we've got some pretty nastry seasonal bugs in this area too. My husband has been pretty poorly, but OKish now.

Let us know what you find out with the daylily. It's the sort of thing that is recomended for forest gardens as an edible perennial, but I've not done more that take a nibble so far. The flower buds, leave shoots and root tubers are all supposed to be edible. When I've planted mine I did notice some little sausage shaped tubers, but the plant was new so I didn't take any.

As regards fava beans. I don't overwinter them here (the season is just too wet and windy for too long and the stems rot), but planting in the autumn to get an earlier crop is definitely a thing further South in the UK. If they've flowered I don't think they over winter, but young plants will take a bit of frost and snow. I would try cutting them back (and use the leaves as a green vegetable) and see whether the roots survive and grow on in the spring. Nothing lost unless you want to plant something else there early next year.

Great suggestion about the fava bean plants Nancy, going to do it tonight for our Greek-style salad.

First pop-up garden/vintage+ stand:
So I set up with microgreens and some items to sell, I don't know of anyone who does edible things and non edible vintage items in their farm stand, so I'm doing it.  It will be occasional, maybe once a week if I'm lucky between doing other things, and it will be on days when my husband is around just in case.  And I will bring things out and put them away afterword, I'm afraid if I have an honour stand out all the time the landlords will catch me, and I'd rather ask for forgiveness than permission in life..  But when I did it a couple of days ago it was a start, and I felt that it went reasonable as a beginning.  I think I finally found a formula that is sustainable for me since other modalities of doing similar weren't phesible.  And of course this means I have multiple jars of microgreens going at once now.

I had my birthday and turned 40, so have entered middle age.  I'm thinking of it as a positive, like I've gained enough wisdom points and experience points to level up.  So far it feels okay.

I've shifted over to Christmas and winter songs now for singing, I will be doing such until early Jan.

I've learnt that I should leave radishes in the ground longer than they're supposedly ready, at least in autumn.  The one that survived the ravages of the squirrel has grown and is huge!  Eating that in our salad tonight too, plus leaves.

The End of Autumn:
And we still haven't had a freeze, calendulas still blooming.  I'm almost ready to leave my current compost pile alone for a while and start my second.  
My goal is to alternate which pile I'm building and which pile I'm using, so once I start building pile no. 2 I will leave pile no. 1 alone for a few months to hopefully finish for spring use.  We'll see how it goes, I'm still pretty new to composting.

The last few months have been rough with sicknesses, I have a small cold right now, better than other things recently but still a nusance for singing.  I'm thinking maybe I need more vitamin C, but my lab work I get twice a year doesn't ever say I'm low on vitamins, so I'm hesitant to start taking them, as I know vitamin toxicity is a thing and it happened to me once a few years ago  So I'm very carefull about that now.

We had a nice Thanksgiving, harmonious, there were five of us and my husband smoked the turkey in our barbecue/smoker combo and it turned out well.

When it comes to harvesting radishes, the lesson was reinforced that if I leave them in longer there are bigger leaves and bigger radishes, but they're all more intense.  Plusses and minusses.
When I don't have a chance to open my garden/vintage+ stand I've decided to give some of my microgreens to friends and family to just share.  Even so I'm pleasantly surprised at how well they store in the fridge.

December calendulas:
Yeah you guessed it, we still haven't had a freeze yet, so yes my calendulas continue to bloom.  We've been having a pineapple express, where the air is warm for winter and there's tons of rain.  It has made my creek around the block (Phillips Creek) bigger and happier, just taking a bit of time looking at it and listening to it when its running well is a real pick-me-up.  In the summer its just a ditch with some mostly stagnant water in it, but we could call it a year 'round creek because it doesn't fully dry up.  Anyways I made my husband go on a walk with me today since we had a break from the rain and I showed it to him.

We have our Christmas tree and its decorated, plus our door wreath.  Continuing to off-load inventory at the consignment store and wish it made me more money, hanging onto good items for my yard stand.  Speaking of which it was too breezy outside for that today, I'd hoped to set up today but didn't want wind issues.
Our vacuum broke so I'm taking it to drop off at the vacuum store, they repair them and take old ones and fix them and sell them to new people.  I'm really happy with the rechargible one we bought, not only do I not have to wrangle the cord anymore, but it is quieter so its way less sensory yucky for me.  I think I will hate vacuuming less and someone else can have my old one once its fixed, someone who doesn't mind overstimmy machine loudness.

Almost Christmas:
And still no freeze, and still calendulas.  I don't know whether to be scared, excited, or neutral and just take things as they come, probably the latter.
Family holiday drama from my husband's family, we found a compromise that got his mom to behave.  She is so challenging because there are things about her I really like, but the things I don't like have become bigger over time.  
I went to pick up some organic fertilizer at a nursery in Portland and got an injury while there.  I lied and said I was fine so they don't have to worry about paperwork shit.  But it wasn't good.  I'm someone who needs more sleep than the average person, but I've been sleeping even more the last few days in order to give my injury the best chance to heal without medical intervention, and so far so good!
The tons of rain have continued, it's hard to be motivated to do anything out of doors with the yard and plants right now.  But we did have dead nettle leaves the other night in an instapot cook.  All my holiday singing thus far has been on facebook live due to weather.  But I will be performing at The Grotto's Festival of Lights in NE Portland on Sun. Dec. 28th at 7pm in the cathedral, Christmas carols of course, I look forward to it each year.