Project Homestead

stacking wood

 

Woodstacking lends itself to folksy phrases (which I'll translate later). My favorite is the old dandy, "stack it loose enough for a mouse to run through, but not for the cat to follow." Perhaps it's because every step of the way—from cutting the timber, to splitting it, to hauling it, and, finally, stacking it—leather-gloved hands are handling the wood. And those hands have time to think.

Burning wood is said to warm you three times (splitting, stacking, carrying it inside to burn). In our case, it's four. We made a mistake of inexperience our first year, when we we ordered "seasoned" wood. It was supposed to have been dry, ready to burn, we thought. But it wasn't. Wet wood takes far more time (and cursing) to heat up. So, that year, we burned through far more fuel oil—our heating insurance. That lesson taught us to season it ourselves. That means we order our firewood at least a year in advance. We stack it once in a "fieldstack" back behind the house, where it dries in warm sunshine and cool breezes. By the time we're ready to stack it near the house, patience has turned what was green and damp a warm, silvery gray. Deep cracks through its ends, known as checks, reveal that it's ready to burn. Then, we stack it once more. 

Well, by we, I mean Michael. He's got a knack for spacial relations and details. So we specialize. I haul it. He stacks it. And here's where the folklore comes in. He tells me that he learned a lot of what he knows about burning wood—from BTU output to stacking to fire-starting—from the astonishing Woodheat.org. (Go there.) Stacking wood takes ample patience and a fair bit of problem-solving ability. But one good trick is to bookend each unsupported pile with the familiar "Lincoln Log" pattern. It's bomber.

From there, you can get fancy. We left our stack ends wide open in the middle (using two logs per row instead of three) to allow for even more airflow ... we were also getting tired. In fact, this is a great way to ensure that your well-dried, well-built pile stays put through the coldest days of winter. As for the rest of the pile, we stack it straight on, piece by piece. And we nestle the logs together with gaps that are "loose enough for a mouse to run through, but not for the cat to follow." In other words, no gaping holes. But airflow is key. Remember: Dry wood = hot fires.

Woodstacking is a rite of autumn around here. But, log by log, it's also one that feeds a tangible, monetary, sustainable fire. Once finished, Michael couldn't help grinning and taking deep breaths of satisfaction every time he looked out the window at our pile of winter heat, waiting to be burned.

I'm off to bed, and feed the woodstove...

stay in touch.

If you're here, I can't thank you enough for your support. Shepherding aside, we've got plenty of exciting homesteading projects in the hopper. [Apple picking and cider vinegar, wood stacking, and a pickled egg tutorial are coming soon.] Just enter your email address in the box to the right, then press the "subscribe" button. Instant inspiration—and connection! Thanks again for reading; we'll keep you posted...

Getting our goats. Someday.

 

Well, dear friends and family, despite your overwhelming support, kindness, and more than 300 votes, I have some disappointing news: We did not win a starter flock of angora goats. Thanks to you, our essay  earned the 11th largest number of votes among 49 worthy contest entries in Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm's great Goat Giveaway. We can't thank you enough.

Truth be told, I'm actually OK with it. There's plenty of fall gardening yet to do. We're keeping a watchful eye on this year's chicks (now four months old), who just moved into the henhouse with our big girls. A few pecks aside, they seem to be getting along well. Besides, it's apple pressing time here. I'm itching to try my hand at making apple cider vinegar and, if I'm feeling really oatsy, a foray into hard cider. Both make good use of the fruit from our solid but less than scrumptious old apples trees.

Possibility is a heady thing. Word was still spreading about our goat project while we buzzed around the Common Ground Fair late last month. With each friend we ran into who told us, "I voted for you and asked my friends to, too!,"  I couldn't help but feel like we'd already won—with the warm wishes from all of you behind us.

We were quizzing everyone we could about goats in general and mohair in particular, when we met possibly the most entertaining breeder/lover/dealer of angora goats in Maine. Pogo of Friends' Folly Farm, whose own hair curls a lot like the little one's above, assured us how delightful angoras are to have around. Who knows, maybe we'll become shepherds yet one day.

It's a cozy comfort indeed to know just who to call when we're ready to dive in, head first.

Fairly full from Common Ground

I just returned from a glorious, enriching day of lapping up organic living and growing in Unity, Maine, home of the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association. The group's annual Common Ground Fair is so full of information, friends and amazing food, I left feeling full to bursting. Here's what I can remember...

• Angora goats are “addictive.”
• Organic, locally grown fair food is VERY expensive.
• The Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association, a.k.a. MOFGA, is magic: Its fair is simultaneously down-home and ethereal.
• Young bulls are called bullocks.
• Who needs roller coasters, when kids can slide down a grassy hill, using only cardboard, for two hours and 17 minutes?

• Top-bar beehives give bees room to build honeycomb in the size they naturally need. Some beekeepers plant lavender and thyme beneath their hives to keep mites at bay.
• If you have a cordless drill, you can whip amendments into worked soil with the nifty Tilther from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. 
• I pine for Johnny’s Six Row Seeder.
• “Chestnut” crab apples are sweet, juicy and bright; the perfect size for little hands or a few big bites.
• Apples are the most interesting fruit I know.
• You can make fire by rubbing two sticks together … after tying a basic bow, carving a peg to rub in a whittled plank, and kneeling very carefully while rubbing furiously. Having a friendly Maine Guide nearby is a big help.

• Sheep are far easier to herd than goats. Sheepdogs have an easier time doing it than kiddos.
• Spinning wool is a quiet art; spinning "in the grease" works wonders on dry winter hands.
• “Fingers look like carrots” to livestock.
• Friendships made in the course of pursuing your passions are lasting and real.
• Forests selectively harvested and replanted with varying species are less stressed than single-species stands of timber.
• Hula hoops whirl around hips longer if you stand with one foot in front of the other, spread apart a bit. If you can manage it, your kids will cheer.
• You can live without cell phone service for an entire day.
• Garlic is easy to grow in fertile soil (6 inches apart on 12-inch rows). Hardneck varieties are easier to peel than softnecks. Curing bulbs in a dry place will help them store them well for months.
• Abundance is all around us.

It's time to harvest just about everywhere. Eat up, and enjoy.

Vote for Goats!

Goat heaven.

There comes a time in a homesteader's life when a dream (of raising friendly livestock) and chance (the possibility of winning a herd of goats!) overlap. That's just what happened when a dear friend forwarded me word of the amazing Goat Giveaway from Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm and its uncommonly generous owner, Susan. Our essay is in—and we can use all the help we can get. In a hurry? VOTE for us here. If you've got a moment, read on...

Here's what I wrote:

When our young family settled in coastal Maine five years ago, we did so with an eye toward planting some deep roots—and tapping into a simple, grounded life we always wanted.

We feel blessed to have found a 7-acre property that flanks a sunny four-acre fresh water pond and a broad hill covered with shrubs, maples and white pines that shelter us long after other trees have turned in for the winter. Our log cabin overlooks our chicken coop, which we built ourselves near the house to make daily visits to our dozen “girls” easy. (Our two boys collect most of the eggs.) We also tend to a productive hillside berry and vegetable garden and small orchard. We plan to welcome our first batch of bees next spring. And I’m sewing a lot of my family’s clothes.

We couldn’t have imagined how quickly we’d take to it all. Now we can’t imagine living any other way.

That’s because we found a clutch of good friends here who build, bake, knit, sew, quilt, felt, grow and raise as much as they can themselves. Luckily, they are happy to share what they know with us. We buy raw milk from dairying friends. We all raise backyard chickens (and a few sheep). A few garden year-round in hoop-houses. And we stitch handmade birthday presents for all of our little ones. When I brought it up, the idea of this contest was so exciting that a handful of friends jumped at the chance to form a “village” that would help raise (shear, feed and pet) this wooly herd.

We’re not sure if it will be a cooperative, a collective, or a CSA like yours, but our goal is the same. We want to share with others the experience of raising and caring for animals that nourish us, our families and our crafts. We have the land and the animal know-how. Others have skills to help us erect the shed that will house the flock. Still others have spun and dyed yarn. Most are knitters, crafters and mothers.

The longer we’ve lived here, the more we feel empowered to see the possibilities of what we can do with what we have—and how rewarding those accomplishments can be. I even started a blog to keep track of it all. It’s called Project Homestead. (Not all of this is new to me, though. I grew up riding and caring for my family’s horses, and rising before the sun to milk our Nubian goats. My sisters and I loved everything about them—from bottle-feeding our first kid, to their velvet-soft ears and their winsome souls.) So when we added chickens to our family last year, we all knew we were onto something. Caring for animals who help care for us is a cycle that feels organic, in the deepest way.

That cycle is what grounds us and our boys to this place we love to call home. And we think your beautiful goats would feel happy and at home here, too. In fact, our young would-be shepherds have a few ideas of their own.

“I would like to give our goats leaves and carrots and peanut butter crackers,” explained three-year-old Caleb, who often upends his bike and pretends it’s a spinning wheel. After hearing this, Owen, who is 6, agreed (what’s not to love about peanut butter crackers?). He continued: “I’d like to have goats because they would be fun to be with. I would like to help take care of them. And feed them. And give them love.”

We all would, more than anything.

Thanks so much for considering us for your unbelievably generous gift.

Fondly,

Victoria, Michael, Owen and Caleb Stefanakos

Freeport, Maine

Of course, there are DOZENS of other knitters, spinners and animal lovers who also entered the contest. To help them choose, the grassroots Fiber Farm has asked its devoted readers and supporters to vote for their favorite essay. We'd love it if you'd take a minute to support us, The Stefanakos Family shepherds, by clicking on the star at the bottom of our essay. Please vote only ONCE, as folks clogging the works get disqualified.

Thanks SO much for your support. I'll keep you posted.

a fine day's rest

I tend to fill most free time with activity, like switching loads of laundry or planting neglected leek seedlings, or chicken tending or sewing (just one more seam!). But on my birthday, yesterday, I took a detour: I decided to simply recline. In every way. I let dear friends plan. I packed no lunches. I watched boys entertain themselves on the beach. And, I must say, it got me to thinking how restorative such rest days can be. DOING at all times takes doing. For those of us with unfinished gardens and dishes, not to mention conscientious lives to attend to—all of us, that is—being does, too.

After such a fine day, I remember now that doing nothing is worth the effort. Gazing, lazily, at trees jutting out of the endless blue makes the forest that much easier to see, once back home. Of course, bare feet, sand, and ample sunshine (following weeks of wool socks, mud and rain) may have improved my vision a bit.

Repeat after me: Take a load off... The weeds won't mind a bit.

promise

My three-year-old early riser and I awoke early the other morning to an unfamiliar friend — the sun! As it peeked over the eastern edge of neighboring pines and ponds, these gorgeous, plump, popcorn-like blackberry blossoms nearly glowed. They hold such promise... for birds and bees, for lovely blooms, for berries green-then-red-then-purple-then-deepest black, by summer's end. In the past, I'd say "I can't wait." But this year feels different.

I've planted so much more, from strawberries, blueberries and raspberries (to harvest next year), to many veggies in an entirely new and experimental garden site, that I'm excited to watch what happens next to each of them, one by one. I feel like a proud new mama of a happy but scattered brood. (Not all of those babes are in the ground yet, either.)

It's the middle of June, but days of cool and rain make it feel like summer is still just around the corner here. The Summer Solstice arrives this Sunday, so I suppose it is. It's the day the sun reaches its farthest point north of the equator, lazing its way through the year's longest day; this year, it falls on Father's Day (lucky papa!). And, lucky for us and the blackberries that surround us, the sun will be warming us even more as the days march on.

As much as I'd like to take credit for their vitality, the truth is, nothing here grows more effortlessly, and with as little human intervention, as these generous canes. Coaxing bud into blossom and tart into sweet, I am sure, is some benevolent and powerful force; one the dew drops on spring leaves, my early riser and I have been waiting to greet.

Welcome, summer. Go ahead, stay awhile.

garden planning with google

Whenever I have looked up from the mud while trying to outrun the rain to plant two peach trees, one nanking cherry bush, three high-bush blueberries, 100 strawberry plants, and a new raspberry hedgerow, I have been madly envisioning where the rest of our food will go. The tomato and pepper seedlings, the greens waiting in flats, and the pumpkins, gourds and corn all need fertile homes, too.

This is the "year of the garden." It's the year I stop dreaming and reading and surfing YouTube (for swale-building tutorials, no less) ... and START PLANTING. It took me a few years, and as many meager harvests, to locate just the right site for really productive fruit and vegetable gardens. This process took a while because, along the way, I became obsessed with permaculture and forest gardening. Lucky for me, deep contemplation is as necessary as good compost for gardens that are high-yield, low-maintenance and as perennial as can be.

Well, the tines hit the topsoil over the past few weeks (please forgive the long lapse between posts), and our new hillside garden is well under way. (The tomatoes are stretching their toes as I type.) A tool I found especially helpful was one I learned about from my friend, Lisa, who runs our impressive local permaculture meetup. She told me that she uses Google Earth to track the layout, patterns of sunlight and even make measurements on properties for which she's designing gardens. I downloaded it, zoomed into our location (the top image is a snapshot of our fledgling homestead), and then traced everything from existing gardens to a tiny future vineyard. A girl's gotta dream, right?

the sap runneth over

Thanks to warming days and still-cool nights, the sugar maples are pumping in these here hills. All over Maine, craggy old trees are wearing silver necklaces of galvanized steel buckets, ready to catch whatever the trees will give them. 

Every time I pour some Grade A Medium Amber all over my plain yogurt or blueberry pancakes or vanilla ice cream (try it, you won't look back), I realize that I could nearly live on this earthy-sweet nectar of the gods. And I'd better get tapping to make some of my own.

It's simple alchemy, according to the kind Cooperative Extension folks at the University of Maine: In late summer and fall, maple trees stop growing and store excess starches in their sapwood. It stays put as long as the temperature in the wood remains below about 40 degrees F. Whenever the wood warms up, the starches miraculously convert to sugars, which flow into the tree sap. It's finite, though. When temps reach about 45 degrees, the conversion stops—and so does the sugar. 

Moved along by alternating spells of warm and cold, the sap pours from the tree into our waiting pails. Each tap hole, like this one, can yield anywhere from five to 15 gallons. But it takes about 10 gallons of sap to produce one quart of syrup. The time-consuming part of the operation is the boiling—the sap is mostly water, so it bubbles it until you're left with 66 to 67 percent sugar content at about 7 degrees F above the boiling point of water (here at the water's edge, that's 212 degrees F). 

I found a great home sugaring primer that lists a slew of resources and supplies, not the least of which is Lehman's, which I love. I'm pining for a hobby-sized maple syrup evaporator, essentially a wood stove beneath a large, shallow pan. The Half Pint Evaporator should do just fine...

Until then, I've been plowing through fresh syrup with this wonderful recipe. These cookies are both yummy and healthy, so I eat them with abandon. Try them with vanilla ice cream ... drizzled with a bit more syrup, of course.

Maple oatmeal raisin cookies

2 sticks butter, softened

1 cup Maine maple syrup

2 eggs

1 tsp. Maple extract

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. Baking soda

1 tsp. Salt

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 375. Beat the butter and maple syrup together until well blended. Beat in eggs and maple extract. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt and sift together. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter maple mixture and mix well. Stir in raisins. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake for 12-14 minutes. Cool for two minutes before removing to wire racks. Store in a tightly covered container (if you can).

a plug for inconvenience

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why, when we visited family in suburban Cleveland over the holidays, my family and I were as sedentary as hibernating bears. We’d leave the house for periods of play—like pulling the new Radio Flyer wagon, heavy with little ones, around the yard. We’d walk to the car to drive somewhere to buy something we probably didn’t need. And we watched far more TV than usual. As much as I love them, I couldn’t wait to come home.

Most winter days here, we’re up before the sun (I’d love to change that, boys). We collect eggs and feed and water chickens. We haul, split and stack firewood. We feed the woodstove three times a day. Ditto for our hungry bellies; we (sometimes grudgingly) cook all of our meals, mostly from simple, natural foods. And it’s at this time of year, when snowstorm after snowstorm lays lovely layers of winter’s cloak down all around us, that we snow blow, shovel and rake our roof to keep the ice at bay. 

I realize that this work, the work that we've taken on by choice so we could feel more connected to the land and a simpler way of life, takes time and effort. It’s not optional for us, either. If we don’t clear snow, we can’t leave our hilly driveway. Same goes for the roof; ice dams and leaks are inevitable if we don’t lighten the load. (This season, we may resort to this inexpensive fix for menacing dams. If you're not from the Northeast, happily read on.) And heating with wood keeps the cost of warming our drafty 60-year-old log cabin in check. Naturally, it’s far more effort than simply tweaking the thermostat.

But all of these “chores” keep us busy and productive. It just dawned on me that they also force me outside for at least part of the day. And that’s a boon for my mental health now, when daylight is in such short supply. The conveniences of modern life can make it almost unnecessary to leave the house when the weather is less than wonderful and we’d rather not. No need to move? Even the most active among us can sink into complacency, which can be habit-forming.

Getting out there, simply because we have to, is as good a reason as any to do it. Besides, it helps me justify eating homegrown eggs and bacon as often as my heart desires.