BLACKHAMMER ACRES

One gardening challenge we have had is our attempt to grow strawberries. I think our strawberry bed is on at least Year 4. The first year we had a drought and no fence, and thirsty critters dug up our plants. We built a fence and replanted the following year, and fought weeds to get plants established. Last year, I accidently burned part of the bed trying to flame weed, and replanted yet again. This year, the bed has filled in pretty well, although there is one bare spot. Wee

Maggie was able to get another couple of gallons of milk from her Amish friend last week, so we made another wheel of cheese. We again made a simple farmhouse cheddar. After air curing for several days, the wheel of cheese was vacuum-sealed and placed in our 'cheese cave', which is a wine refrigerator I bought off Facebook Marketplace. We just need to wait 2 months for it to age, before we give it a try. Some may ask what happened to the first wheel of cheese we made. Most of

While at first glance it seems like this is the start of the garden season, in reality we have been working on our garden for the past 5 months. During January snow, we prepared our garden plan and paged through seed catalogues. In February, we went from generalities like 'tomatoes' to planning which eight varieties we were going to grow, checked our seed vault, and ordered seeds as needed. Things began to pick up speed in March as we started onions, peppers, brassicas, and h

Garden Seedlings and Baby Chicks First Year of New Daffodils Planted In Orchard Grass New Mama Chicken Sitting on 2 Just Hatched Baby Chicks It's a time of new life here right now and we're trying to steward this new life as best we can. We ordered a layer mix of 12 new pullets that were picked up 4 days ago. So far, they are doing well in their big tub set-up. We've got to wait about 6 weeks before we can move them into their transition coop outside. In addition, our hen

Straw As Mulch Around Newly Planted Blueberry "Bushes" Back in early winter when things were dreary, we got a fruit plant catalog in the mail. Looking through it, I got carried away and made a pretty significant and somewhat crazy order. I ordered blueberry bushes (we really don't have the right soil and will need to stay on top of amendments), gooseberries, elderberries (we have wild elderberry bushes but I wanted more...), a rhubarb variety that I wanted to add to our "col

We took another step in our cheesemaking adventure this weekend, as Maggie's Amish friend gave us another couple of gallons of fresh milk. So far we have made mozzarella and paneer, which are sort of free form, soft cheeses made by adding acid such as vinegar or citric acid to curdle the milk. We bought some starter culture, rennet, and a small cheese press to make a hard cheese that can be grated or sliced. We are starting with a simple farmhouse cheddar. This cheese does no

One of our goals this year is to raise chickens for meat. The chicks will be coming later this season as we first want to raise a new batch of laying hens. This gave me time to build a chicken tractor to house them. Our chicken tractor is modeled after one developed by small farm advocate Joel Saladin. The idea is that every day or two, the unit is moved to give the chickens fresh grass. Our version is a little heavy, but it only needs to move 10 feet at a time. The wood was

Despite the freezing rain we got earlier in the week, the calendar says we are slowly marching towards spring. April is a month where it seems like you should be able to do more things outdoors than you actually can. It is too cold to plant, too wet to work soil. This is the month we use to wrap up stray projects and start getting ready for warmer weather. We have most of our seeds started. This year we are trying to grow onions from seed, and the results have been a mixed ba

It has been a long season, and this weekend we pulled the plug on maple syrup. The weather has been a mix of either continuously warm or continuously cold days and nights, which is not conducive to sap flow or storing collected sap. I ended up boiling three times, and produced a little over 2-1/3 gallons of amber gold. I probably could have gone one more week, but the weather was going to once again be mostly warm days and nights, with only a couple of cold nights to stimulat

Even though we do not have a cow (or sheep, or goats), I have been reading up on cheesemaking lately as something to potentially try. This week while Maggie was taking one of her Amish friends shopping, she mentioned cheesemaking. Her friend's family has cows, and gave Maggie a couple of gallons of milk. This created a little stress, as we don't really have any cheesemaking supplies, and now had perishable milk. Maggie did have some rennet she bought for some past project, an

This week, we cleaned up our seed starting shelves and re-installed all the outlets, timers, and heat mats. We then kicked off the 2026 garden season by planting two flats of onions and shallots. We usually grow onions from starts, but since we were successful in growing shallots from seed last season, we decided to try our hand at onions. We are trialing four day-long onions from Johnny's Seed: Red Carpet (red onion), Frontier (white onion), Patterson (yellow onion), and Ail

It has been a relaxing winter season. The beehives are ready for spring, I remodeled my closet, and we have been doing a lot of baking. Although it has been cold, and snowy, we have been able to take projects on at a slower pace. That ends this weekend. With the recent warm spell and the end of February, it is time to tap some trees and kick off maple syrup season. I am washing out jars, ordering new lids, and getting equipment ready. Yesterday, I cleaned our reverse osmosis

Maggie and I are gearing up to go to the Madison Garden and Green Living Expo next weekend, February 13-15, 2026. It is held every year at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison. Information on the Expo can be found here . The best part of the Expo (other than seeing green plants), is that a series of volunteer presentations are given. The slate of presenters and topics change each year, so there is always something new to learn. This year I am looking forward to learning about

February continues our winter baking efforts. We just finished eating another loaf of sourdough bread and a batch of raspberry scones, which Maggie made from frozen garden raspberries. Maggie and I both love magazines and have over a dozen bookmarked on our Libby library app. One recent additional was Bake from Scratch magazine. I noticed the magazine appeared to kick off a 'cookie of the month' series with the first issue of the year. Because magazines now seem to be issued

This weekend was my first attempt at making a loaf of sourdough bread, using my newly created starter. I do not have a photo of the result, as anyone who has produced a failed loaf of bread would recognize it. It was flat on the outside and gummy on the inside. We still ate it, but I was dogged by the failure. I did learn a few things, such as how to use a dutch oven and how to get a thick, dark crust. Determined to succeed, I decided to try again midweek. Making sourdough br