Wordless Wednesday – Ship Rock
Category: Wordless Wednesday
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Making Vegetable Broth
I started making vegetable broth a couple of years back. I just save up my veggie scraps, peels, and herb stems in a baggie in the freezer. When I’m ready to make broth I dump the baggie contents into my crock pot and fill with water. I usually do a quick fridge check to add any vegetables starting to go limp, and snip some fresh herbs from the aerogardens to add to it.
You want a fairly small ratio of vegetable matter to water. I think mine ends up being around 1 part veggie “stuff” to 4-5 parts water. My”stuff” ends up being largely potato peels, onion ends and papers, carrot tops and tails, and celery trimmings. It’s let to bubble away all day on high for some rich tasting vegetable broth. This one can only be seen through because I had to use the flash.
When it’s done I use a strainer to scoop out the veggie scraps and press the liquid out of them. I’ve heard of people adding soy sauce at this point too for added flavor and the sodium content we’ve come to expect in broth. The scraps are added to the compost bin and the rest is ready to use in soups!
Category: Household
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Around the Urban Homestead
I came down with a cold this week and am just getting over the last sniffles now. I spent two days of my usual sick routine: laying around with blankies, feeling sorry for myself, and sleeping a lot. Needless to say it wasn’t one of my most productive weeks.
I did clean and re-arrange the bunny room. It’s been sunny for almost 2 weeks straight here, which is unprescidented. It also means the sunroom has been heating up to about 80 by late afternoon. So I moved the cages to the North wall to make sure they were out of the light. My next task will be to put some of the screens in so the poor girls don’t over heat in there. What a wonderful problem at this time of the year though…overheating! I’ve been seeing some sun delays on the freeway too…spring is coming slowly but surely!
I started some new indoor veggies this week. I filled the half barrel planter with carrot seed and left it out in the sunroom. Indoors I started a fresh batch of green onion bulbs and a pot of lettuce. I think these two are my favorites to grow indoors because they grow so fast. The green onions grow visibly each day and are wonderful to have on the kitchen counter to snip fresh scallions right into my dishes. The lettuce pot is already full of inch tall seedlings.
I did my 1 3/8 ounce cucumber harvest yesterday, and have 1 1/8 ounces of herbs from the Aerogardens in the dehydrator now. That brings my yearly harvest total up to .59 pounds of winter harvest. It looks like there will be heavier fruit coming soon, as I also had the pleasure of finding the first itty bitty tomato on the cascading tomato today 
Category: Around the Urban Homestead, Tomatoes
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Mini White Cucumber Harvest
Veeeeery mini.
These are the Miniature White Cucumbers I grew indoors this winter. I’ve had very mixed results with my indoor growing. Some things seem to thrive and some just peter out like these poor cucumbers did, even after such lush vine growth at the beginning. I left them on the vine for a very long time, checking them hopefully each week. But this week I finally gave up and harvested them. It was clear they weren’t planning on growing any bigger than this. I took the picture with a banana for scale. Sad little things were just 1 3/8 ounce, about the average of my herb harvests..lol. There are still a few left growing on there, but I’m not expecting any better results with them at this point.
I’m not overly disappointed with this. It was just an experiment and I learned some things in the process. Next winter I’m going to try my regular cucumber seeds indoors. It’s quite possible this particular variety is what I’m having problems with. I’ll have more space and more lights, which will help. I’ll also start the seeds much earlier than I did this time.
Category: Container Gardening, Cucumber
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Frugal Friday – community events
One of the free/donation events I found was for Vermicomposting. Or as I think it should be called, squirmycomposting. The Victory Garden Initiative hosted the class last week and I thought it was a lot of fun. This is another project that’s been on my to-do list, so this seemed like the perfect time to start.
Photo courtesy the Victory Garden Initiative
Matt Ray from the Fernwood Montessori School shared a lot good advice and tips about keeping our red wigglers happy and producing lots of worm castings for us. The class ended with us each making up our own bins. I bought a 10 gallon bin from Menards for $4 with tax. Holes were drilled in the bottom for drainage and it was filled with a layer of wet shredded paper. That was covered with 3 quarts of soil. The owner of the store Future Green, where we met, even donated his worms and gave us each a handful from his own bin.
The handout for this class was emailed out, I’m sure there’d be no problem with forwarding it to anyone who’s interested. Just comment or email me
Category: Worms
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Cast Iron Muffin Pan
I went to Cabelas with my dad this weekend so I could check out their cast iron section. I remember that they had a whole row devoted to it. I only have an 8 inch pan, so my plan was to pick up a 12 inch. While we were browsing though we stopped to comment on a cast iron muffin pan and tryed to figure out the odds of prying muffins out of those deep wells.
He ended up finding a muffin topper pan hiding on a shelf. We were both so tickled by the idea of muffin tops and shallow wells that muffins were sure to slide easily out of that he bought it for me when I tried to limit my purchase to the one thing on my list. So I came home with two pieces of cast iron for the price of one…lol.
I really like the muffin tin, and the muffins slide right out of the pan Thanks Dad!
Category: Household
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Around the Urban Homestead
I’ve been looking ahead at some of my upcoming expenses and worrying a lot. Our new health insurance has a large deductible I’ve started putting money aside for. I need to put on a new roof and my first estimate was $8,000, which was considerably more than I expected for my cozy little house. It looks like I’ll be headed back to school in fall and although it would be employer funded, I have to pay tuition up front and wait for reimbursement after the semester is over. I’ve also re-evaluated how much emergency funds I want put aside and will be increasing that amount.
I’ve been living on the frugal side for a while now. But with these things in mind I went over the budget again and got rid of some nice to haves. I had allowances for entertainment, clothing, and eating out (having a cafeteria in my building is waaaaaay too convenient) that I can cut now that I’m tightening my belt. My netflix and very discounted gym membership were canceled immediately. I still have a spending allowance for daily expenses and projects, so I’ll be able to do a few more planned additions to the “farm” and keep household supplies up. But some of the less necessary projects and expenses I’ve been looking forward to like putting up a privacy fence and getting my 2 year old perm refreshed may not happen.
I’ve done a few practice sessions on the spinning wheel, and am glad I took the advice I heard to spend 10 minutes each time. It’s long enough to practice, but short enough you don’t frustrate yourself. And I’ve started having problems with the juvenile rabbit. On a few mornings she’s become suddenly very aggressive when I feed her, growling and once even biting me. Then the next time I go to feed her she’ll be herself again and not mind being petted. Not sure what’s going on there.
To fill in my new entertainment void, I’ve found a few interesting sounding events and classes that are either free or with a small suggested donation. They sound like fun and I’ll get to learn something in the process. I’ll tell you about them as they come up Now I’m glad that I have such a good book collection and a library nearby to keep me busy. I’m sure that once gardening season gets underway I’ll be wishing I had enough free time to worry about entertainment.
Category: Around the Urban Homestead
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First seeds started
Although I can’t plant out until Mother’s Day, I do have a few seeds that like a very early start. This week I hauled in a bag of potting soil to allow it to thaw out, and filled some of my saved yogurt containers. The first row is German Chamomile and the second is St. John’s Wort. Boy, do they ever have microscopic seeds!
Taking over the plant stand for seed starting meant I had a few displaced plants. My cascading tomato and sad little strawberries are now hanging in my citrus window. I hope the change from bright plant lights on a timer to our sad Wisconsin winter natural light goes ok for them 
Category: Chamomile, Seed Starting, St. John's Wort
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Repurposing
I’ve been keeping an eye out for useful items to scavenge, and trying to think of creative ways to reuse things. When I saw this message board lying by the dumpers I got my chance. I thought of the tangled mess of cheap jewelry I’ve collected through the years and how nice it would be to hang them all up. I didn’t have cute little hooks to use which would have been ideal. For now, I used thumb tacks to hold each item up. When I find my push pins I’ll upgrade the board to those, because then I can hang the items right on the pin heads rather than removing them each time. I just hid this board behind my bedroom door, which is always open, where it’ll be out of sight. I’m pretty happy with my free organizer
Category: Frugal
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