A Jammin' Homestead

It seems like the older Julie and I get the farther we drift into a more organic and natural lifestyle. Sometimes its almost like an inner hippie is starting to emerge and one of these days were gonna wake up just like Dharma's parents (you all remember that TV show Dharma and Greg I'm assuming.)

This idea of living organically got its roots in the birth of our daughter and has not let up ever since. I gave up on "Miracle Gro" for the garden years ago and have composting since as long as I can remember, probably not long after O was born. There was just something about dissolving blue granular something or others in water and feeding that to the veggies we were about to eat that didn't seem right. So my organic growing methods in the garden continue to evolve and now include cover cropping as yet another soil building method.

Last spring Julie won one of those house parties that everybody seems to be getting in on these days. This one, however, had real substantial value in my opinion. It was a canning party. This canning party could not have come at a better time because it was right around when we were picking buckets and buckets of fresh blueberries from the farm. Julie and her friends got together for a canning party which lead to jar after jar after jar of canned and preserved blueberry goodness.

Julie's love of canning is still burning strong and even today I am enjoying last year's blueberries in yogurt and on toast. She took our last batch of fresh strawberries and like magic whipped them into a jar of fresh jam, no more going to Publix for the "Smuckers" anymore!! We've each made and outstanding soup, her's being lentil and my being old fashioned bean. Of course the canning process was left to the expert herself!

Someday we'll have that homestead with pathways winding around raised beds of herbs and veggies and fruit and we might even have some of those chickens that we talk about having. Until then, we'll make the best of our mini suburban small acreage homestead.