Here's What We Get Up To In Our Homestead Life

1. Salmon

My husband went salmon with some friends and came home with a bounty of salmon. This is probably about a year's worth of salmon for us, so we were super grateful, but it was a lot of work.

My husband fileted them out before he came home, then he and I started pulling out bones, and that took a hot minute. Then we went ahead and started figuring out what filets we wanted to keep whole.

What we ended up doing is leaving two of our biggest filets whole for either Christmas or Thanksgiving or something like that, two of them we smoked, and we vacuum sealed the rest of them, put them in the freezer and labeled them.

2. Weeding

My family got hit with the flu, so we were out of the garden for about a week, in which time the weeds took over. This is especially prominent in our new garden, because as you might know, the grass grows like crazy the first year or two, until you kind of work through all those seeds and get the grass seed out of there.

On Friday, my husband was running some errands and he took our baby with him, so I needed to make the best of my time without the baby. I was trying to weed the green beans and peas, so that over the weekend I could get some fertilizer in there.

I only had enough time to finish half before my husband came back and I was summoned for the baby, but my seven year old was helping me, so even though it was choppy toward the end, it was enough progress to make me feel less overwhelmed.

Before I went in, I needed to fix a fence that a storm had blown down, which led to some deer coming in and eating down our sunflowers.

3. Biscuits

For dinner today, I am going to make Swedish meatballs, either over pasta or over rice, because we prefer to only have mashed potatoes in the cooler months. To go with that, but also obviously for the freezer, I am making some biscuits.

I do not have any milk right now, but I always keep powdered milk in my pantry for things like this, and you cannot tell the difference between milk and powdered milk if you are baking.

I have found a super easy recipe, and I am going to test it out and make a batch tonight. If they go over well, I want to make a big batch of them and get around a hundred of these in the freezer.

We eat a ton of those throughout the hunting season and through the winter, and I think it is also convenient to have them to have alongside breakfast, for egg biscuit sandwiches or just like biscuits and gravy.

I found the recipe on Pinterest, and it is so easy: four cups of flour, two tablespoons of baking powder, one teaspoon of salt, one cup butter, and 1 ¾ cup of milk. I am going to use my KitchenAid to make this process a little easier, as well as my rolling pin, and the lid of a mason jar instead of a biscuit cutter.

These biscuits ended up being unbelievably easy to throw together, and the dough was very easy to work with. I actually did most of it with one hand because I had the baby. I did make them a bit thinner than I should have, expecting them to puff up more, but I will not make this mistake next time.

I made around 30 biscuits and set aside ten for dinner tonight, freezing the rest.

4. Garden harvest

Finally, our first big(ish) garden harvest this season came today. We went out and harvested this beautiful cauliflower head. It made me really happy because I have been feeling recently like nothing has been coming out of the homestead garden.

We cleaned this bad boy out and made a beautiful stir fry for dinner tonight. I am hoping that many more things are coming out of the garden very soon. I am eyeing the tomatoes, waiting for them to turn any sort of color.

5. Eggs

On another day, I was washing eggs. Washing the eggs and getting them in the fridge is another homestead chore I have to do. We mostly hard boil the eggs, but this day I also ended up making a big batch of freezer breakfast burritos with those.

6. Chicken coop

On the 25th, I had a really rough morning with my baby teething, so at 10, when I finally managed to get her down for a nap, I grabbed the baby monitor and the kids, and we cleaned out the chicken coop, which really needed to happen.

I also restuffed the nesting boxes with fresh hay and cleaned out some trash that somehow got into the chicken run.

Because it was so hot, over 90 F, I sprinkled some frozen corn out in the coop to give the chickens something cold.

Finally, I refilled their five gallon water tank with fresh water from the hose and got a bunch of ice in to keep it cold for an extended period of time. It is important to keep the chickens cool and well watered, because they die of heat stroke very easily.

7. More garden

Then I took a stroll through the garden and found that my green beans are doing surprisingly well, and my pea plants are starting to sprout up and come through. I also noticed a lot of my squash are finally starting to blossom.

I also went down into the chicken run and picked up all of my dishes which I tend to forget there. For the rest of my baby’s naptime, I was hanging out with the older kids, coloring and watching Tom and Jerry.

Homestead life

I hope you have enjoyed my bits and pieces of a homestead day in the life. Which part seemed the most fun or the hardest to you? Leave a comment!