Just a short little post I put up over a year ago about our trailer transformation
November 8, 2013
Today I’m going to begin working on the girls’ bunkbed in the trailer. We are not done with painting yet, though. In fact, we’re not even done putting primer on everything. But I just couldn’t wait to get some color on the walls! Seeing the finished product on at least a little section makes me excited to keep going.
(Edited 2-7-2015 – I just love a sunny yellow kitchen, don’t you?)
I went grocery shopping yesterday. I spent $315 and that will feed us for the month other than weekly milk and egg runs (can’t wait till the chickens start producing!) and a mid month produce run (can’t wait till the garden starts producing!). The cart was filled mostly with produce and cheese and meat, but there were also some canned goods. I try to buy products with the least amount of ingredients. My dream is to be able to grow enough veggies that I am able to can them for our family for the whole year. But that dream is quite a ways in the future. So, for now, I make do with store bought stuff and try to buy as healthy as possible. But there was one thing on my list which I hated to put in the cart. Condensed Cream of Mushroom soup. Have you read the ingredients on those cans? First of all, they use wheat as a thickening agent and wheat is a major cause of inflammation in the body so I try to avoid it like the plague so my knees don’t flare up as easily. Also, they all have msg and a bunch of other questionable ingredients. But they are conventient! I have made cream of mushroom soup from scratch numerous times and it is absolutely delish. But when your 9 year old wants to make her old standby, greenbean casserole? Or you’re pressed for time? Or you don’t have fresh mushrooms in the fridge (a biggie for me!)? That’s where the canned stuff comes in handy. I think we’ve all been there. But I still hated putting it in my cart and I swore it would be the last time.
But what about convenience? my brain rebelled! That’s when I determined to finally get around to making and canning a big batch of mushroom stock which is the basis for cream of mushroom soup. Open a jar of home canned mushroom stock. Add it and some cream (or even just milk) in a pot and cook it down till as thick as desired. Defitely more time involved than cracking open a can of the condensed stuff, but still easy enough my 9 year old could handle it when she makes greenbean casserole. And waaay easier and faster than starting from mushrooms which may or may not be residing in the fridge.
So, mushroom stock got added to my to-do list, and I started wondering what other things I need to put on that list. So below is a bunch of homesteading type to-do items which need to get done in the near future, in no particular priority other than that’s the order they can to mind.
-Render bacon grease into lard
-Make and can mushroom stock
-Make yogurt
-Make canned diced tomatoes from the ‘maters in the freezer
-Clean out the chicken coop
-Fix the bottom hinge on the chicken coop door
-Do something with the blackberries in the freezer. Jam? Syrup? Cobbler?
-Make bone broth from the chicken bones accumulating in the freezer
-Build a raised bed in my little garden space my FIL gave me and fill with garden soil so I can plant some early spring stuff (still amazed I can start this early!).
-Fill the containers with soil so I can plant stuff.
-Get the peas and broccoli and lettuce and carrots and… planted! (See above)
-list ebay items to sell
Ok, so that last one isn’t necessarily related to homesteading, and yet it is. The money I get from selling some of my extra costumes (I used to be a professional seamstress and made historical costumes) will go into savings toward building our house when we eventually move back to Nevada.
And yeah, I crossed the bacon lard off the list because technically I finished that this morning. But you know the saying. Put one or two items on your list which you can immediately check off so you feel accomplished. 😉
So there you have it. A list of things to get done amonst all the other chores and responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, caring for people, and homeschooling. A lot to get done, some of it immediately, some it may be a while to find the time for. But a good list nonetheless.
What are some of your homesteading chores you need to get done?
Maridy
“I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.” Ps 121:1-2
Here’s another of my old posts about our trailer transformation (gosh, I miss that old thing!)
November 2, 2013
We started painting the trailer. So far, we have a coat of primer on most surfaces (even some of those surfaces that did not need paint on them!). It’s interesting painting with a 12 month old hanging around and an almost-eight-year-old helping. Let’s just say that we found out that latex primer does not come out of baby hair very easily. We have another bucket of primer sitting in the house and we’ve chosen colors and bought wood to make the bed frames. And this coming week we should actually have some time to work on these projects. We had a meeting with my parents to hash out some of the logistics in moving to the property: where my handicapped brother who currently lives with us will live while we are in the trailer, if we can use their shower and get water from them, etc, etc, etc.) We also figured out that we are going to put the house we are currently living in on the market this spring. So not only do we need to get our new home ready to live in, but we have to clean, finish projects, and downsize in our current home. Whew! Gonna be a crazy winter!
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| Beginning Primer |
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| Our big helper |
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| Our beautiful girls |
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| Princess Girl learning to use the driver |
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| She really got the hang of it. |
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| Bye, bye ugly 80’s wallpaper! |
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| Loving that my painting overalls are being put to good use again! |
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| Hubby wanted the inside of the cabinets nice and bright! |
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| It’s inevitable that paint gets everywhere |
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| In process and already looking better! |
I’ve been trying to get out and go for walks every day. So far, so good. But it’s only been 4 days :-). Some days, like today, I can go about 2 miles in 40 minutes. Other times I take the girls with me and it’s sigificantly slower than that. In fact, yesterday’s walk was less than half the mileage in a longer amount of time because we were picking up trash in the neighborhood for a service project. (Ah, the joys of living in town.)
My plan when we lived on the homestead was to get out and go for hikes every day. No reason I can’t at least walk around the block here, other than the fact the view is less than inspiring. However, Hubby has been taking afternoon walks every day after work for about a month now and his persistence has inspired me to start doing the same. And what I’ve discovered is that our neighborhood has some fun little surprises. Like the wooded area with trails intersecting all the through it like a spider web. Sure, the sounds of the city were still there, but my feet were on a dirt trail and the birds sang over head. It felt somewhat secluded and peaceful.
And then there are countless pathways like this…
…just waiting to be explored.
Or there’s the blueberry farm literally just down the street (coincidentally owned by the same people who own a u-pick oyster farm we discovered near Tillamook, OR around Christmas).
Or, you see into the back yard of some house as you pass by and become instantly jealous.
Look at all those raised beds! I counted at least 10, and in the far back corner is another raised bed with a small grape vine on it. Oh, if only we had that much land here! But then, if we did, maybe we wouldn’t be as anxious to get home to Nevada as we are.
At any rate, I plan to take pictures of interesting things as I find them to remind myself that there ARE cool things about living here.
Maridy
“I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.” Ps 121:1-2
I was reading back through a different blog of mine which I used to use (closed for various reasons) and realized that there were several posts on there which might be interesting to readers of this blog since the posts are all about our transition to the homestead and our trailer transformation. So over the coming weeks (or months, knowing me) I will be copying those posts to this blog. I will try to make it very apparent from beginning of each post that it is an oldie.
For today’s offering, we have our very first announcement that we we making serious plans to move to Castle Rock.
OCTOBER 21, 2013
I’ve been waiting to write this post until our plans were more than a dream. Well, last week we plunked down a large chunk of change to get this ball (or would that be “tire”?) rolling. Here’s a picture of our new home (sitting outside our current home)!
Ok, so it’s not our new home quite yet. But it WILL be, hopefully within the next year.
She’s not much to look at right now. She’s got some issues. But really, considering the thing is 33 years old, she’s been very well taken care of.
The only picture I have of the “living room”.
Learning to live in the trailer already
So, WHY are we eventually moving into a trailer you might ask. Well, that’s the only way we’ll be able to afford to build our house. Yep, we’re building a house. If you are friends with us on Facebook, you’ll have seen where we’ve gone camping at Castle Rock (our property) a couple of times this summer. Here’s some pictures.
Look closely (click on picture and it should enlarge) and you can see the Suburban and a blue EZ-up – they are sitting on the house pad.
Beauty at Castle Rock
On top of “Castle Rock”
The valley (and town) is in top left of pic, house pad just to right of center
Eventual house site
See, with a bit more water, cottonwoods can grow here – this is down in the bottom of the canyon.
Neat crevice down in the bottom of the canyon below Castle Rock
So, no, it’s not lush and green land (which is nearly unheard of here in Nevada) but it’s 40 acres and quiet and secluded AND close to town (see panorama above). And here’s the biggest deal, it’s my family’s land, so it’s already paid for (though there will be some sort of rent/mortgage to Mom). The only thing that’s been improved on the land is a driveway and house pad cut. Which means we will need to have a well dug, bring in power of some sort, improve the driveway, AND build a house. All on a cash basis, so it’s gonna take a while. But that’s why we bought the trailer. By living in the trailer on the land while we are building, we cut out a lot of our current living expenses (minimal rent, no electricity to pay for since we’ll be on solar, etc.)
We’re pretty excited about this next stage of our lives. We’re looking forward to downsizing (some things will go into storage), to living in close quarters with each other, to working hard and accomplishing much in the next several years. We’re also looking forward to getting out of our neighborhood where things are stolen from our front porch and our neighbors are just right there, to having more land and bigger gardens and more animals.
It’s gonna be fun!
I found this graphic through a Pinterest pin. Now I’m excited. I really could garden year round here in Portland. I need to get some seeds in the ground! 🙂
Zone 8 – where we live now http://veggieharvest.com/calendars/zone-8.html
As a comparison, here’s a graphic for where we lived in Nevada.
Zone 5 – where we used to live and will again! http://veggieharvest.com/calendars/zone-5.html
Eventually I want a greenhouse on the homestead in Nevada, or at the very least some cold frames so I CAN extend the growing season. There is a small part of me that feels as if it’s cheating to have it so easy up here. On the other hand, there’s a very big part of me that’s happy to not have to deal with all that for just a little while longer. 🙂
Since we don’t have enough south facing window space here and not really any place in the house to start seeds anyway, we’ll be purchasing tomato and pepper starts, but I think most everything else we want to grow can go directly in the ground as seed. And I found out that our last frost date is March 15th, not April 15th like I previously thought. That’s a full two and a half months before the Nevada Homestead! And since even the winters are mild here, things like lettuce and broccoli should be able to survive the full winter weather even without cold frames. Oh, this is exciting!
What about you? Can you garden in the winter where you live?
It’s February 2nd. And Spring is starting in the Pacific Northwest. Shoots are popping up all over the place.
Grocery stores are selling blooming tulips, buttercups, hyacinths, primrose, and pansies. The trees are starting to put out buds.
And this is completely normal. Back home in Nevada, the same thing is happening, but everyone there knows that the temps will dip again and everything will die back and wait for real Spring. Here in the Portland area, Spring really is on it’s way.
It’s exciting, knowing that our growing season is starting. My father-in-law and I were comparing seeds today. Later this week, we are going to break out the graphing paper and start plotting the garden. I may actually, finally, get a good pea harvest by starting early. But it’s a daunting task to be learning everything new. The climate here is completely different, and I have to learn a new plot of land: what’s the soil like, where does the sun hit in different seasons, where’s the best place for certain veggies, etc.
I want to take advantage of the extended growing season here. If we were planning to stay long term, I would look into learning to grow year-round. In fact, I want to do that back in Nevada, too, it would just be easier here in Oregon. But we’re hoping this is our only winter here. So, as we head into spring, I want to take advantage of living here, get some things planted early, grow things that have a hard time growing back home because of the climate. But it’s only February 2nd and I already feel like I’m behind the curve. I’m not sure I’m ready for this. But I’m sure gonna try! 🙂
Maridy
“I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.” Ps 121:1-2
Castle Rock Homestead 