Small Homestead

I live in an area where almost everyone  learned to plant from their parents and grandparents.  You plant corn when the whippoorwil starts calling.  You plant above ground vegetables in the light of the moon and root crops in the dark of the moon.   This is the way things have been done for generations.
Being new [...]

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I have decided to document the kinds of vegetables that I plant and their progress through the year.  I have been experimenting with different types of the same vegetables and really need to keep track of how they do.  Last week we planted 30 cabbage slips.  I believe they were Market Pride.
Today I put down [...]

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Spring is here!  Although last week, I thought we had jumped right into summer with temperatures in the mid 90s.  This week we are back to spring with temperatures in the 60s and 70s and nights in the 40s.
The garden has been plowed and disced and then smoothed with the harrow.  You might notice that [...]

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The holidays are over and the ground is frozen here in Virginia.   It’s too cold outside to want to do more than the bare necessities and you would think that gardening would be the farthest thing from my mind.   I actually like to spend these cold winter days planning my garden.  As I have mentioned, [...]

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Rosebud is a very special mule.  She came to us as a rescue and was severely underweight.  She has been my project for the last 4 months.  Because of her age, it has been an uphill battle to put weight on her.  Randy has told me several times that it would be impossible to actually [...]

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It’s almost Halloween and I am still getting vegetables out of the garden.  I have to admit that I am tired of picking tomatoes.  I have frozen more than we will eat this winter and the extended family hasn’t wanted to pick anything.  I am also still picking cucumbers, squash and a few stray limas.  [...]

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R is home from the hospital and doing as well as can be expected.  He is pretty much house bound and hurting enough that he hasn’t complained.  He is managing to walk around the house a good bit though.  I am very glad not to be making the hour and a half drive to the [...]

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July has been a strange month here.  It was hot and dry for the first three weeks, so much so that we feared losing the garden altogether.  The last week and a half of July it rained just about every other day.  The rain gauge showed approximately 4 1/2 inches over that time period.
However, the [...]

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My Small Homestead was included in several carnivals this week.  I have found that carnivals are not only a great way for other people to discover my blog but also a wonderful way to find other blogs that interest me.  So this week, I decided to share some of my favorites.
The first post that caught [...]

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There is nothing worse than going into the garden and finding that something other than you is eating your vegetable plants.  There are a host of pests that will cause havoc with your vegetable garden and there are as many ways of combating them.
Squash Bugs
I have picked squash one day and gone out the next [...]

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