Each year, I try to create a theme for the upcoming work on our farmstead. It provides direction and helps us tell our story. This year...

Last fall I harvested a boatload of hickory nuts from our front woods. Instead of tossing the husks, I saved the husks / shells to use...

I had purchased my hanging tiered "solar" food dehydrator that has internal shelves and zippers to access each "shelf" from Amazon...

The pad looks different than I remember it, but all is installed now and ready to go. The installers were nice enough to walk through...

I wish I would have noticed the time that the installers arrived this morning. It was early - maybe 8 or 9am. They left at about...

I watch homesteading YouTube videos. I watched more of them prior to our getting our property 3+ years' ago; but, I still do watch some...

After several weeks of what has been the coldest, cloudiest, and dampest spring I can remember, we have immediately bypassed spring and...

This weekend, we crossed a boundary, going from solely raising plants to an addition of animals to the mix. While bees are technically...

It has been a cold spring, even by Wisconsin standards. We have not even had 'fool's spring' yet. The cold weather has not been kind to...

Picking a date to tap maple trees for syrup is tricky. The sap runs on days when the temperature is above freezing but the nighttime...

Writing '2022 feels odd', but time marches on. Come March, we will be entering the fourth year of working on our property. It is hard to...

Over a year ago, I wrote a post about carving a wooden spoon from an oak tree that came down during a storm. Since then, we have had...

Our last garden report for the year of the garden... The first part of October saw us starting to pull some of the more cold-sensitive...

It is hard to believe our garden has only been growing for four months. After our fool's spring, the garden got a foothold, survived a...

We have reached the point in the gardening season when we are tired of produce. We have eaten our fill of beans and summer squash, and...

One of the crops I was most excited about this year was our cucumbers, because I wanted to make pickles. Fortunately, we have had good...

The weather in August has tried to make up for the earlier part of the year. In Wisconsin, the wettest months are usually April, May, and...

As we flip the calendar from July to August, we move into the final month of summer. Rain has been scare, but has come at opportune times...

Our garden is entering a bit of a pause in production. The greens have bolted and the peas are nearly spent, and the cucumbers, tomatoes,...

One of our side projects this summer has been figuring out a better way to get water out of our rain barrel. We have a 30-gallon poly...