Author Archives: Maridy

About Maridy

Hi, I'm Maridy. I have many interests in life. Right now, my husband and I and our two girls (ages 14 and 7), along with a couple of dogs currently live in a 33ft trailer while we build our house on our homestead property in Northern Nevada (Castle Rock Homestead). Follow us on that journey to building our high desert homestead from the ground up! I also have a passion for hiking and have a blog for that, too. (Journey in the Wilderness) Join me there as I explore the beautiful outdoor landscapes of Northwestern Nevada and Eastern California. And finally, I love historical costuming. Though I haven't been able to do much of that in recent years, I'm hoping that "once the house is built" I'll be able to get back into it more. See what all we've done with that on my Yesteryear Productions blog.

Seamstresses in the making

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Why, yes. I do let my nearly-three-year-old play with my sewing pins.

Just as I let her sister before her when she was young. And now Princess Girl loves designing.

Sewing is a big part of a sustainable lifestyle. When purchased thriftily, buying fabric can be much cheaper than buying ready-made items if you have the know-how. But sewing is so much more useful than making your own clothing from scratch.

Mending a blanket.

Being able to repair those things which you already own is a first step toward living sustainably.

And you don’t need to tons of fancy gadgets and gizmos. A simple machine and a rudimentary knowledge of a few techniques will get you a long way. I myself have a rather simple machine.

I only ever use a couple of the available settings. But it serves me well.

If you have a machine but learning to use it is a daunting task, find a friend who can help you. (It’s hard to learn sewing from the internet unless you already know how to handle your particular machine since they are all a bit different.) As stated above, you don’t need to know how to use every setting on your machine. You basically just need to know how to thread it, how to load and refill the bobbin, how to do the straight stitch and zig zag stitch, and what the length, width, and tension dials do. You can do an awful lot of sewing with those basic skills. And as you practice more and become more comfortable, you can start learning all the other things your particular machine can do.

If you don’t have a sewing machine and can’t afford even a basic one, at least learn how to hand sew. Knowing a few easy stitches can be the difference between repairing that blanket and buying a new one, or paying someone to hem your pants or doing it yourself. And hand sewing is easy to learn from videos on the internet.

And remember, if children can learn to do it, you can, too!

Let’s hear you chime in. Do you think that sewing is an important skill to know? Do you know how? Wanting to learn?

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.” Psalm 121

Christmas sewing

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Alright, alright! I’ll admit it.

I’m a fabric junky.

There’s a picture floating around Facebook of fabric being stored oh-so-neatly in a filing cabinet drawer.

Here’s what I said about it.

Yes, I actually chuckled when I saw that picture. There’s no way my stash of fabric could ever be that neatly organized. I have too much. It would take 5 whole filing cabinets! The yardages I have are too big. Some of my fabric pieces would nearly fill their own drawer by themselves. Or they are too small.

And yet, I WISH my stash could look like that.

Oh wait. That’s right.

I don’t HAVE a stash!

At least, not here in Oregon.

And not really in Nevada either.

When we moved into our trailer on the homestead last year, I downsized drastically. My “stash” consists of three boxes (albeit two big ones and a medium one). And you know where those three are?

That’s right. They are in Nevada. Awaiting the day when our house is built and I have a sewing area again.

In the mean time, I have a million ideas running around my head of things I want to sew, especially Christmas gifts.

So, I went shopping. I went with one project in mind.

Here’s what I ended up with:

I couldn’t help myself. All this fabric was only $15!

Yep, though they are all sheets, it turned out to be about $1 per yard. Pretty good deal, I’d say.

How, you ask?

Thrift store.

And not the overpriced big name ones either. A small, locally owned store in our neighborhood. The type of store where the proprietor is willing to give you a deal on things because she knows that money earned is better than items sitting on the shelf.

So what am I going to make with all that fabric? Well, I can’t tell you. Most of it is for Christmas gifts, afterall. And I know the intended recipients read this blog.

However, I can say that the purple fleece will become three matching pairs of pajama pants for the girls and I, to be given on Christmas eve. I’ve been wanting matching jammies for us for a long time and almost bought a set online the other day. But couldn’t quite shell out the $32 + shipping it would have cost. And buying fabric from a traditional fabric store wouldn’t cost much less.

So, $5 and a little work, and I’ve got them.

Thrifting for the win!

What about you? How do you save money when it comes to Christmas gifts? Do you make your own?

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.” Psalm 121

Garden Journal

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I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I keep a garden journal.

It’s a journal which helps me remember when I planted, how long it took for things to germinate and produce, how well things did, etc.

I started my first journal in 2009 and finished it in 2013 (I didn’t garden in 2014 since we moved twice that summer). I started a new book in February of this year. I usually use whatever blank journal I have on hand. (And since I’m a journaler by nature, I always have extras laying around.)

I don’t like pre-printed journals which have questions for you to answer since I find them too confining. I want to write about what I want to write about. Or more than likely, they don’t leave me enough space to write. I like to use a conversational voice when I write and tend to write a lot (have you noticed? 😉

So even though I just started a new joirnal this year and it will take me a while to fill it, I bought a new one yesterday at Michaels craft store.

I just couldn’t pass it up.

Look how incredibly perfect it is for gardening and farming and all sorts of homesteaderly stuff! (Yes, I just made up a new word!) In fact, I’m wondering how I can use it sooner, because I don’t want to wait till my current journal is finished. 🙂

I know a couple of homesteading friends who might just end up with one for Christmas.

And I have a 50% off coupon!

I’m thinking I see a trip to Michaels in my near future.

How about you? How do you keep track of all your homesteading endeavors?

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.” Psalm 121

Garden update

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While we were in Nevada, Dad decided that the big garden was done for the season. This is good news for the chickens.

They are happily roaming the backyard again.

Scaredy thinks the garden is her personal dust bath.

Our small garden is going pretty well. The kale is finally taking off. I’m thinking I might still plant some spinach in the spot that the lettuce was in this spring. But I don’t know.

The carrots have done well. We have really enjoyed eating those straight out of the garden this year (after a washing, of course!). I don’t think my squash is going to do anything. But you never know. We still have a month or so left of growing season (I know, right?!) Yes, it’s fall season, but on average, we won’t get our first frost for another month or so.

My container garden did not do so well this year. At least not nearly as well as I would have liked.

The tomato plants were tall and scraggly and only produced a few tomatoes each.

Nearly all the bean plants and flowers have struggled or flat out died.

Really, the only thing I can say did half way decent was the jalapeno plant.

And even then, the only reason I think it did well is because I don’t use jalapenos very often, so it has produced more than enough.

Oh, and the garlic actually survived. I was shocked to see it growing back after not being watered all summer.

So, nothing did very well in the containers. I’ve been trying to figure out why and I think I have it nailed down.

Neglect.

Yep, that’s right. When a person travels at least one week out of nearly every month, things at home tend to get neglected. Especially since for me, all the days in between are filled with catching up or preparing for next time. Somehow, making sure the plants had the right nutrients, enough water, the proper sunlight as the season change, etc wasn’t high on my list.

Though I was glad to see that the crushed egg shells I put on the tomato plants stopped any more blossom end rot. And I did give them all a compost tea at some point. But it just wasn’t enough, I don’t think. That and maybe I didn’t have big enough containers. Or maybe they got too much sun. Or not enough.

And now here it is, the beginning of October and I really haven’t gotten much out of my plants.

But. They still have fruit on them, and I’m reluctant to give up on them when I know they can survive a while longer.

However, where they were on the deck was getting too shady with the waning season. So I moved them down to a corner of the otherwise barren big garden.

They still look forlorn and scraggly, but I’m hoping that at least this was they’ll get the sunlight they need to survive for a while longer. Hopefully long enough to get me a few more tomatoes.

Well that’s it for now. How did your garden do this year?

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.” Psalm 121

Another day on the homestead

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I can’t believe it. I spent an hour last night writing this post (while being distracted by the homesteading videos Hubby was watching on Youtube) and when I went to publish it, it was just gone! Grrr…technology sometimes!

At any rate, I wanted to share about our last couple days on the homestead before we came back to Oregon.

Oh, it was simply wonderful to be back in the wide open spaces, with only the sounds of nature around us. To sit for hours with the Hubs and just talk and dream of our plans for the house and homestead.

We’re hoping that when we go back in December, that we’ll be able to stay in the trailer again. But then again, we’re hoping that Nevada has so much snow that we can’t even get up our driveway. They need moisture so horribly. I guess we’ll see.

Oh, before I forget, let me introduce you to our new/old membet of the family.

This is Obsidian (ie Sid). He’s a 6 year old black lab whom we’ve had since he was just 7 weeks old. But, for the last year, he’s been staying with friends in Nevada. When we had to move so unexpectedly, it was just too much to try to figure out how to bring him with us. But we have some wonderful friends who offered to take him for us.

Well, a couple months ago, their circumstances changed and they could no longer keep him for us. So, the Hubby and I talked it over with Mom and Dad and we decided that we were in a position to bring him to Oregon to live with us.

And so now we have a very large dog living in our small back yard. But we play ball with him. And take him for walks. And so far, he’s adjusted well. Scooter is not sure what to think of him, and the cat just avoids him. But eventually they’ll all be friends.

So, that’s Sid. We can’t wait till we are all back on the homestead and he can roam free again.

Ok, back to our regularly scheduled program (yes, I’m aware I don’t actually post regularly :-). Here’s how we kept ourselves busy our last couple days at Castle Rock:

Cooking in the outdoor kitchen. Because even though we did hook up the propane to the trailer, who wants to be cooped up inside on a beautiful day?

Playing. Our girls LOVE swings! And I love that our carport frame is sturdy enough they can play on it.

More playing. We call this area next to the driveway “the Sandbox”. The sand there is only a bit more coarse than beach sand.

Taking some time to just relax and take in the view.

Playing with bugs…well, their casings at least.

This is the shell of a cicada. At some point in their lifecycle, they shed their exoskeleton.

Do they remind anyone else of aliens? And they are everywhere! The more you look for their shells, the more you find. On branches. In bushes. On the ground. It must have been a noisy summer on the homestead!

As an aside, for those of you who might be wondering, this is our bathroom while we’re at the property. Not looking forward to using that in the middle of December if we are able to stay in the trailer while we’re there.

The Hubby decided to repurpose an old gas grill. After gutting it and cleaning it, he made it into…

…a GRILL! yeah, yeah, it still functions with the same purpose. So not really REpurposing. But now it is a charcoal, rather than a gas, grill.

And it worked great. Look at all that meat! Good thing we had a bunch a family over to help us eat that.

That night we had a spectacular sunset.

Signs of fall on the homestead. Our apple trees have survived the summer. Here’s hoping we get a super winter to keep them hydrated.

Princess Girl is such a good helper. I can’t believe she’s almost 10.

It was a great several days on the homestead. A time to dream, a time to rest, and a time to plan.

And now we’re back in Oregon. Now it’s time to concentrate on schooling for the girls. And working on some canning projects I’ve needed to do fo a while now.

Ahhh…fall. I’m looking forward to cooler weather, soups, canning, and baking.

*sigh*

I love this time of year.

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.” Psalm 121

Camping out

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We’re spending some time in Nevada camping out on the homestead. We used our time today to get our trailer put back into livable order. It had become a catch all for storage and we want it ready so that when we come down from Oregon to work on the house, we have a place to stay on the property.

And speaking of the house plans, we meet with our Residential Designer tomorrow! We’re finally almost done with the engineering phase! Next will be the permitting phase. Lord willing it will go quickly. We’d love to be able to get the footings done and the main shell of the building put up this winter. But if this winter is as bad as all the forecasters are predicting, there won’t we any building going on. I guess it would be a good trade off. In the grand scheme of things, an extra 6 months to build our house is worth it if we get the snow we so desperately need.

Flower Girl passed out on the living room floor after a busy morning of getting reacquainted with the homestead.

Found this checklist from when we first bought the trailer. It is a huge accomplishment that nearly everything on that list is marked off (and most of the “want”s we decided to either wait on or just forego all together.)

We decided we needed a little treat tonight. I didn’t even look at the ingredients. I know there’s a bunch of stuff in there I usually choose not to eat or feed to my family. But every once in a while life demands cookie dough ice cream.

And the four of us sitting on our recently cleared off back bed in our home-away-from-home on our own property seemed like one of those times. 🙂

Tomorrow I’ll try to get some more pictures of the trailer and our newest member of the family, who just happens to be an older member of the family.

Stay tuned!

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.” Psalm 121

Revelation

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Hey, guys! Listen to this, guys. I’ve had a revelation, guys!

(Edited: Where did my post go?? I had it all written out, I hit publish, and half my post is gone! Grrrrr! Well, here we go again.)

So I used to buy pre-shredded cheese for the convenience. I mean, who has time to shred cheese by hand when making quesadillas or quiche, right?

But then we started on this journey to a more natural life. And that’s when I started reading labels. And I learned that shredded cheese you buy from the store has extra ingredients in it to keep it from sticking together like the cheese you shred at home does (duh, Maridy!). I can’t remember now what that ingredient is, but even if it’s a “natural” ingredient, it is one that isn’t supposed to be in cheese.

So about a year and a half ago, we started buying only block cheese.

And here’s where the revelation comes in. I realized this morning (while shredding cheese) that I no longer miss the pre-shredded stuff. And I haven’t for a long while.

In fact, I used to shred a bunch ahead of time so I had the convenience on it in the fridge. But some time ago, I gave even that up. I mean, how hard is it to shred some cheese real quick for your quesadilla or quiche, right?

It’s amazing the things we think we can’t live without. And then learn we can.

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.” Psalm 121

Preserving the harvest

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There is a house in our neighborhood which is vacant and for sale. In the back yard stands two apple trees and five (yes 5!) plum trees.

Last year I got permission from the owner/tenant to pick their apples since it was obvious by the number of apples on the ground that they were not going to be doing anything with them.

This year I called the realtor and he gave us permission to take all the fruit we want.

Yay!

So I’ve been supplying us with plums to snack on for a couple weeks now. And I’ve had a basket of apples sitting in the corner waiting for me to do something with them.

Then two days ago a friend gave me some cucumbers and zucchini that she had left over after making all the pickles and relish she wanted.

So today, I sat down with my recipe books and a pad of paper and made some lists.

Apples : make into cider
Cucumbers: pickle them
Zucchini: shred and freeze
Plums: unknown (I don’t care for plum jam/jelly. What else is there to do with plums?)

As you can see, I had some research to do. I finally decided to make plum butter amd a plum bbq sauce. But first we gotta go pick the plums!

Fist on the agenda for the day was to make the pickles since they are best when the cukes are fresh and they were already 4 das old.

I’m not going to give a tutorial on how to make pickles. There are already a million of them out there, and I followed the instructions from the Ball Blue Book (one of my go-to canning guides). The only thing I changed is that I left out the sugar. I mean, really. Dill pickles do not need sugar!

However I did want to mention one tidbit that might be handy. The instructions say to tie the spices in a bag. I’ve heard that you can use a tea bag (the kind you buy empty and put loose leaf tea in to steep). But I don’t have any of those lying around, besides, I don’t like to use disposable if I can help it. You can tie the spices up in a square of cheesecloth or fabric, but that just seems awkward. What I’ve done for years now is use panty hose.

Yep, I purchased a cheap pair specifically for this purpose so they had never been worn. I gave them a good washing. Snipped off the foot portion and tied a knot in the end. Then I just fill the tube with the spices and knot the other end.

Because the fabric is so stretchy, when it is time to clean, it is a simple task to unknot it, turn it inside out over the compost bucket, and then rinse and wash. And since it is nylon, it dries almost instantly, too.

So once I had the pickles all canned, it was time to deal with the apples. The Hubby and Princess Girl helped cut them up. Because they were so wormy we only got about half of each apple for the pot. The wormy parts went into a bucket to be fed to the chickens. No waste that way.

I put them on the stove to cook a bit and while they were heating, Princess Girl and I attacked the zucchini.

I shredded, she packed. We put approximately two cups into each bag since that’s what most of my recipies tend to call for.

We did not blanch the zucchini. I have seen directions that call for it, but in my experience, it has never made a difference in the end product.

I got called away to help Mom with some stuff and when I came back I found that the apples on the stove had cooked down to apple sauce!

I realized I had cooked them too long to make cider, so I changed my plans and decided to make apple butter instead. Unfortunately, all the peels were still in there. I know some people cook their apple butter with the peels on and they eventually break down into the sauce, but I believe that lends a bitter taste to the sauce and resulting butter. So, I strained out the peels.

(Gotta teach Princess Girl how to take clearer pictures!)

I spooned the peely sauce into a mesh strainer and by tapping the strainer “ears” on the rim of the bowl and stirring the sauce in the strainer, I got most of the sauce separated from the peels.

Another of Princess Girl's photos

Even though the apples were not real sweet, the sauce is some of the best I’ve made. I think that is because usually I use the Victorio strainer and it mashes the peels up and strains them out. And while the peels don’t end up in the final product, I think some of their flavor does.

Princess Girl told me I have to keep this picture and post it. 🙂

At any rate, I got all the peels strained out of the sauce (more food for the chickens!) And ended up with 10 cups of sauce which I put in the slow cooker with some cinnamon and clove. I will let it cook over night.

I have to buy some honey tomorrow to use as the sweetener since we don’t have enough at the moment.

Princess Girl helped me finish up the zucchini and get the bags ready for the freezer.

Twelve pints of pickles canned, 6 bags of zucchini in the freezer, and apple butter cooking in the slow cooker. I’d say it was a productive day.

And tomorrow we go pick apples and plums.

I love harvest season and knowing that I am providing healthy food for my family. And it’s especially great when I get that food for free!

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.” Psalm 121

Better late than never

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Went blackberry picking today.

It’s kinda late in the season, even though it’s only August 24th. But the blackberries came on early this year, along with everything else in the Pacific Northwest. Usually you can still pick all the way through Labor Day weekend.

Not gonna happen this year.

Sure, there were plenty of branches like this:

But for every one of those, there were five like this:

Blackberry raisins anyone?

But then, every once in a while, I’d run across a bunch like this:

Jackpot!

It took me about 40 minutes to pick 2 quarts full and I had to wander all the way along the edge of the clearing to find the good ones.

And I’d like to say that as I sit here in the nice shaded clearing and write this that I happily munch on berries. But, alas, about a month ago, I got violently ill after eating a bunch of blackberries, and now have an illogical fear of eating them off the vine. Oh, well, more for the bucket, eh? Who knows how long it would have taken me to pick enough had I been snacking on them along the way.

But it just wouldn’t be summer in the PNW without at least one fresh blackberry cobbler.

And THAT I think I can stomach.

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.” Psalm 121

Summer Doings

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I know I’ve been horrible at posting for months.

So, what have we been up to this summer?

Take a look and see!

We went camping:

We traveled to Nevada to work, see family, and spend time on the Homestead (click or hover over pictures to see captions):

preventative maintenance on the drainage ditches so they don’t wash out the driveway.

My little helper

Can you see the orange markings on the dirt? We started laying out the house!

Tea time with my sister and nieces

Working at the Ropes Course.

We worked on house plans:

And found a building almost the exact size of the one we are going to build:It’s cool (and helpful) to see the dimensions in real life rather than on paper.