homesteading..... suburban style!!!

so this is what my home looks like now......

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I WISH!!!!

i tell you what, if that was really my house i would not have time to sit here on the computer and do this blog. instead, i would be outside hugging and kissing my house and dancing around doing a gig of pure joy. while other girls i know fantasize of dreamy vampires and the teenage werewolves that hate them, i dream, no OBSESS, about little white farm houses with inviting front porches and tin roofs. oh a girl can dream.

this is my actual house.......

not bad, but really not the same.

but instead of just sitting here on my rear and sulking, i have decided to turn this suburban track home (a type of home that i once swore i would never live in.... but that's a whole nother story), into my own little homestead...... suburban style!! now there is only so much i can do because this neighborhood comes with a book of rules as to what you can and can not do to your house and property. one rule being i can only have a veggie garden in the back yard, which as we all know belongs to the dogs, so i am confined to growing things in the flower beds laid out by the builder on the front and sides of the house. oh and i will be growing veggies, i'm just going to try to keep it as low key, yet productive, as i can. i can't even have a green house in the back yard, but at some point i plan on perhaps construction something similar on the big back porch. but for now i am starting a few tomato seeds on a table by the dining room window and it seems to be working pretty well. unfortunately any kind of farm animal is out of the question, although for one brief moment i though i might be able to sneak in some chickens. the big book of rules stated that as pets we could have..."dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, and caged birds." CAGED BIRDS.... did i find a loop hole.... birds in a nice wired area with a super cool cope.... CHICKENS!!! but then ray said NO! darn. so close!! but that's ok, there are quite a few farms around me that sell pasture raised fresh farm eggs, so i am covered in that area. anyway, back to the veggies. here are some pictures to show you where i am at and what i am starting with. let's first go inside to check out the itty bitty seed set up.

table and window.
doesn't get more basic than that. oh yeah, did i mention that i am doing this whole project on the cheap. reusing and recycling what i already have before i venture out to purchase any additional garden items. so simple simple seed set up. no shelves, no lights.

and the little tomato seeds seem to like it just fine.
ok, so i did have some trouble with the first round of tomato seeds, but the second round are growing like gang busters, so back to the garage to re due the first round while trying to salvage just a few already growing from the first round. wow, that doesn't make much sense, so looks like a tomato seedling post is in order.

tomato seedling saga to be continued.......

let's step outside and get a lay of the land.....

front porch, stairs, and walk area.
i see lots of potted veggies and herbs.
maybe some edible flowers as well.
good thing i brought along all the clay pots i found in the garage of the memphis house.

front of the the north field (so to speak). i salvaged some wooden drawers from the old building at work for a portable raised bed project for growing greens and herbs. some of those will go here. that way if the sun gets strong and hot we can move them to shade on the north side of the house.

side of the north field . this is where most of the greens will be growing. after all the flowers come and go, i will be moving them again to the south flower field.
gotta have some flowers.

pretty!!!!

left over spinach from last fall, survived the winter, and growing again in the sunshine.

new little lettuce patch.
more still to be planted.

grandpa admire lettuce.

the swiss chard seedlings are sprouting. i originally thought these were a goner when the snow hit, but nope, coming up ok.

this spot is where i buried some kitchen scraps weeks ago. i do believe this is some sort of onion that is sprouting. can't keep a good veggie down. i don't think swiss chard and onion co-habitat very well, but i'm just to curious to see what happens to the onion to dig it up now.
we'll have to wait to see who wins, the big bad onion or the tiny little swiss chard seedling.

front of the south field.
right there by the drive way will be the new flower field and veggie swill grow on the other front spot and side of the house.

future veggie and herb plot of the front south field.

side of the south field. kitchen scraps are being buried under the dish.
there is an onion growing there as well.

peas if you please.
after i took this picture i decided to go ahead and stake up the peas even though green arrow is a bush variety. they were starting to fall over and i lost one. after staking them they are doing better. next time, this fall perhaps, i want to build them a little net to hang on to.

future site of the tomatoes.
i've been adding crushed up egg shells to the soil in the hopes of getting a good PH, but i am still refusing to buy a soil tester at this point. my soil sucks, i don't need a tester to tell me that.

i guess in this post we can discuss how crappy i have been feeling lately, which not surprisingly, has coincided with the lack of home cooking that's been going on around here. so i'm back on the home cooking train again. i got some chili doing it's thing in the crock pot as we speak. chick-fila might be good on the way down, but the days of headaches and constipation that follow are not worth it. not to mention that i passed a chicken truck the other day on the way to work and i wasn't hard to notice that half of them were already dead.. gross!!! so folks now is the perfect time of the year to get back on the local food wagon. so what is on the menu for easter dinner.... you guessed it, rabbit. now i just gotta figure out how i want to cook it this year. i'm thinking perhaps fried with a nice white gravy and homemade biscuits. we'll see.

aaahhhh. local foods. i love them.
left to right....
wrapped in the foil is raw milk butter (2 sweet, 1 country), gallon of raw milk, pastured raised local chicken, jar of coconut pie filling (local??), jar of pasta sauce (local??), local pastured raised bacon and sausage, happy cow grown asparagus, cheese curd (not local), and farm fresh free range eggs from the raw milk dairy.

and since i am starting to get back in the kitchen, while i take a break from reading about vampires and werewolves, let's talk about soup. ya know i am the soup queen so when i needed to finally harvest some spinach a few weeks ago (yeah i made this soup a few weeks ago. and now that i think about it, once this pot was long gone and i stopped cooking, yep that's when the over all crappy feeling came on) and i got the pork sausage it was time for some homemade Italian wedding soup.

the spinach says... please eat me.

i miss this soup already. she was soooo good and nutritious. i will be making her again.