It’s been a while…..
Just a little hurricane Fiona update
It’s been too many days since Sept 24th…. we are doing well, we still have lots without power…. most of our neighbors finally got power this past Monday. The island will never look the same:(
Thanks for your thoughts and prayers♡
It’s that time of year, notifications have come up in our feeds the last couple days…. the snow, the wind, the power outages.
This year we have not had any snow to speak of yet the odd flurry, but it is coming….. perhaps tonight or tomorrow.
One of our fall chores is to get the snow blower back on the tractor. We need to make sure she is well oiled and greased and that we have extra shear pins and bolts extra diesel fuel etc.
This year the other half needs to learn how to use the snowblower just incase.
But for now we got the blower attached, oiled, working and ready for whatever winter has instore for us.
Of course the manager in charge was watching from a distance making sure Rusty gets it all done right.
Murdoch making sure he parks it just right♡
So you want a tasty homemade treat for dinner?
Try my famous honey garlic wings…. our wings are like jumbo wings of course that’s because we raise our own chickens.
I like to broil the wings in the oven about 15 mins per side depending on the size of your wings. They get nice and crispy.
You can serve them up with ranch, blue cheese or your favorite dippy sauce and or carrot and celery sticks
Yummy. I make the honey garlic sauce very easily by adding all the ingredients in microwave safe dish for about 2 minutes(til its boiling).
When the wings are cooked I pour the sauce over them toss them up and serve them out
Enjoy….. Vanessa
A little bit of food security for us♡
Farm to freezer (plate)
We want to wish all our friends and family a very, very blessed Thanksgiving.
We are so grateful for God’s hand, protection, leading and guidance this year. We started the year with many uncertainties, but He was so good to bring us through.
Vanessa had some health challenges that began at the beginning of the year and now into the fall she is finally getting better.
God has taken care of our needs providing time in and again. God provided Russ and Bob with work and they have not gone without the means to provide for thier families.
The gardens even though not as full as they would normally be for veggie boxes provided a beautiful harvest that was eaten fresh all season and now canned and stored on our shelves for fall and winter.
We have an amazing stack of firewood going into the basement that will provide our old house with plenty of warmth this winter season.
The animals growing out in the barn area will provide lots of food for days, weeks, and months.
So we have so much to be grateful for and we thank God for the protection, health and provisions.
We also thank God for the freedom and ability to share our faith and His love to those around us♡.
If you don’t know Jesus, get to know Him he is the greatest part of our lives and He makes such a difference.
Hi, just me, thinking about what is next on the list of homesteading, farmhouse movement, old fashioned living chores.
I got my apron on and I am thinking of the ways I am gonna put away 50 pounds of awesome carrots. To start….. dill carrots
They are made the same way my best dill pickle recipe is…. garlic, salt, dill, vinegar, water and a hot pepper. They are going to be so very good.
Next, probably pressure can a bunch in water with a smidgen of Himalayan salt. These carrots will be hugely versatile in so many applications. Stews, soups, as a side you name I they will be used. This way they won’t take up any space in the freezer.
After that, I will be grating a bunch and freezing them in one cup measurements to use for cake, loaf and muffins.
Some will also get dehydrated and put in a big jar for soups etc….. always a nice way to get some awesome rich taste.
Lastly, if I didn’t forget a use….. we will put a bunch in cold storage for use a fresh carrots into the winter.
So all in all not bad when it comes to all the ways you can store root vegetables for long term use.
Hope that you all have a terrific awesome week.
God Bless, Vanessa
There is some serious harvesting going on at the farm these days. We had a frost warning Tuesday night but we do live on a hilly part of the island. We threw a sheet over the basil patch and I harvested all afternoon. Basil made it…. so it wasn’t a big deal. There is of course so much more out there but I did what I could. This quite the haul and I shall be very busy in the the kitchen the next couple days. There is some work in the greenhouse to do but it will have to wait until I make a dent with all this beautiful food.
So does anyone have some good recipes for eggplant? I’d be interested to hear from you.
Thanks for visiting the blog.
Well suffice to say my blog efforts didn’t quite pan out the way I intended in 2015. Not to say that progress hasn’t been made on Our Old Island Home, I just haven’t been faithful in sharing our progress with you.
Vanessa and I have been working full time at our new jobs. I’m with Paul Davis Systems, an insurance-related restoration contractor on the island. Vanessa is working at Cavendish Farms, processing one of PEI’s grandest commodities.
The gardens did equally well for us this year as the previous year. We had greater success with some of our crops – our winter squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, garlic and onions were not only superior to 2014, but provided above and beyond our needs for the year.
Some of the successes in 2014 however, were failures in 2015. Our corn was one such crop. Between the dry summer, our neglect resulting from working full-time to just bad luck we didn’t have a single ear come to maturity. Most formed on the plant, but went directly to the chickens where the ears were picked (pecked?) clean. Our beets and cucumbers didn’t come to much this year either. I blame the new garden plots we haphazardly prepared in the spring for their lack of contribution to our table.
Otherwise, the remaining crops (carrots, potatoes, turnip, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, beans, peas, greens and zucchini) did as well as the previous year’s effort.
The hen house welcomed six new layers this year. We did lose a couple of birds, but the remaining nine hens are providing, on average, seven eggs per day. We’ve been selling our excess eggs to friends and co-workers. The sales cover the cost of feeding the birds, but even still as I’m writing this, we have thirteen-dozen eggs in our fridge. Vanessa has already frozen a couple dozen eggs for baking (yes, that’s do-able) and I’ll be pickling a couple dozen this weekend. No, I’ve never had a pickled egg, but a co-worker of mine suggested it. Hey, I’m game to try anything.
As the gardening season was drawing to a close, our attention was refocused on the house restoration. This year, we completed the insulation in the attic, installed several new windows on the second floor, started taping and seamfilling the drywall, started setting the piers for the new porch and framed the floor for the new mudroom addition. With fall coming to an end and winter bearing down on us, the added insulation, vapor barrier and windows will make for a much more, um, comfortable winter than last year.
That’s what’s been happening here. On a more personal note, here’s how we’re doing: good. Very good, in fact. Life is busy and looking back, I cant believe another year has passed. But we’ve made intentional changes this year. We’ve made time for each other. No matter how busy life gets, we take time to watch the moon rise over Pleasant Valley and the sunset at the beach. We go for long walks together with Murdoch along the trails behind our house and explore parts of the island we’ve not seen before. Ultimately, this is the one true gift we can give each other – time. Virtually every other gift will fade, tarnish, wear out or breakdown, and instead of filling our lives with stuff, we rather make memories and experiences.
And finally, in spite of my rather sporadic posts, we still get people asking how things are going here. For whatever reason, some say we inspire them, others just enjoy the read. Whatever the reason you find yourself reading these words, I make this promise (no it’s not a resolution): I will do my very best to keep posting and updating our progress regularly at Our Old Island Home. That’s all I can do: try.
Vanessa and I wish you all the best that this new year can bring. Blessings!
….makes for a dull blog?
For what it’s worth, I’ve written several updates since my last post. Unfortunately they’re tucked away in the recesses of my brain waiting patiently for someone to shine a flashlight into the void, guiding their way out the darkness and onto your computer screen.
Until then, I humbly offer the following review of our summer.
My last post was full of anticipation for the upcoming growing season. Now we’re enjoying the early fruits of our labor and impending harvest.
For weeks now, the zucchini have been growing to mammoth proportions (which we’re processing into zucchini relish) and the zucchini we rescue from that fate end up on the grill with a little olive oil, sea salt and cracked pepper. Mmmm.
We harvested all of our garlic a few weeks ago, pulling them from their beds and hanging them to cure.
Each “leaf” of the garlic represents a layer of the paper surrounding the cloves. While the garlic is ready to use after harvesting, it’s important to dry the heads in order to store them for an extended period.
We let them cure for a couple of weeks in the warm, unfinished second floor bathroom of our home. Once sufficiently dry, we clipped the leaves and roots and have them ready to use for the next few months.
The beauty of growing our own garlic (aside from, you know, eating it) is that we have all we need to plant and grow next years’ supply. We’ll set aside the largest and best garlic heads and plant those cloves this fall for next summers’ harvest. Fresh food is awesome. FREE, fresh food is awesomer.
We’ve had a beautiful summer. Although dry, it’s been downright hot for weeks. The tomatoes are thriving and just starting to show signs of their maturity.
The peppers are plumping and the potatoes are nearing their harvest time. We’ve had one crop of peas already picked, another almost ready and a third crop growing for a fall harvest. Likewise with the carrots, beans and beets. Squash and pumpkins are flourishing in our lasagna beds and our second planting of cauliflower, broccoli, kale, collards and kholrabi will be ready in a few weeks.
Aside from the gardens, our flock of hens grew by six this summer.
Violet, Pansy, Dahlia, Sunflower, Petunia and Lily have joined the Golden Girls – and at 18 weeks of age, they should start fulfilling their end of the bargain and begin to give us a daily egg each.
We had the pleasure of having my Mom visit for the majority of July. As much as she was looking forward to a visit, I think we enjoyed it as much or more.
Well, we certainly enjoyed exploring and discovering new restaurants and shops that Vanessa and I intended to (but never have) tried. But more than that, we just enjoyed the company.
Vanessa and I both are working full-time at new jobs. I’ve been working for a disaster restoration contractor for the past several months. Although I have to admit, after a long day (or week) of working on other people’s homes and properties, it’s hard to find the motivation to do the same for ourselves. Vanessa is now at Cavendish Farms processing one of PEI’s most famous commodities: potatoes! It’s actually working out very well for us. I work a fairly typical work-week: Monday to Friday with occasional evening or weekend projects. Vanessa works two day shifts, two night shifts and then has four days off. Those four days have proven invaluable to us as she’s able to tend to things around the homestead (like curing garlic and raising chicks).
So. There you have it. Sort of. Its hard to wrap up three (four?) months in 600-or-so words, but I think I managed to empty out a few things rattling around in my head. I’ll do all I can to right-this-ship and resume my regular updates. It’s looking like an exciting fall around our old island home. Just do me a favor and let me know you’re still out there. I get a lot of my motivation and inspiration after hearing from you.
Thanks – and blessings from our home to yours!
Exodus 23:25 – “Worship the Lord and his blessing will be on your food and water.”
The best place to greet spring is in the garden and like every year, as soon as winter’s grip is loosened, Vanessa and I grab a shovel and pitchfork and head outside.
Spring marks winter’s (long overdue) departure and the awakening of – well, everything. The birds are back, the frogs are “peeping” from the creek down the hill from our home and plant life is bursting in anticipation of another growing season. All of this makes spring my favorite time of year.
Back in March, we started our onion and leek seeds. As soon as the ground is workable, these frost-hardy plants can be transplanted into the garden. If we were able, we probably would have planted these out a couple of weeks ago – even the end of April isn’t too soon – although the weather wasn’t as agreeable.
This year we planted about 100 plugs – and each plug has at least two or three seedlings. We’ve learned the onions can be planted in small groups, given enough space between groupings, and the onion bulbs will form without any problem. This saves a tremendous amount of time in planting – and eventually harvesting, as it takes the same time to plant a one-seedling plug as it does a three-seeding plug.
We adjust the spacing between the plants to accommodate the groupings. Individual onions would be planted about 3-4″ apart. We keep our groupings spaced about 8″ to allow for the plants to bulb when they mature.
Our leeks are planted similarly – with two seedlings in a pot. With the leeks, though, we dig a deep hole about 6-8″ deep and drop the whole newspaper pot in it.
As the plant grows up and out of the hole, the soil will be gradually filled in, thereby keeling the lower part of the leek white: a process called blanching.
And it’s just amazing to watch the garlic grow – seemingly right before your eyes.
So while Vanessa was planting the onions, garlic and leeks in one bed, I started preparing another bed for a different crop.
Last year, we ran out of space for our broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards and cabbage. This year, we’ve dedicated two beds for these cruciferous veggies. This weekend we planted our cauliflower, broccoli, kholrabi, kale (two types), collards, turnips, rutabagas and cabbages.
In the other bed, we’ll plant additional broccoli and cauliflower every couple of weeks for a continuous supply of fresh vegetables, along with brussels sprouts, cabbage and whatever else we’d like more of.
In addition to planting out some of the seedlings we started inside to get a jump-start on the season, we directly seeded our peas (snow peas, sugar snap peas and a shelling pea), carrots, beets, radishes, spinach and swiss chard.
All these plants can be started a few weeks ahead of the last expected frost date without any concern. Other vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn and cucumbers are heat-loving and wont tolerate even a light frost, so we’ll wait until June before introducing these to the garden.
The chickens are happy and doing their thing. 
Murdoch is just content to be a part of whatever we’re doing. 
Even Jill and James come over to see what we’re up to.
Our Old Island Home 