Summers here seem to always fly by before I know it. And somehow with the long daylight hours and everything that needs to be done before winter returns, I just don't get time to keep up with blog posts. But winter is rolling in once again, the daylight hours are getting short, and once again I have some free minutes before falling asleep to write.
So, a brief recap of some of some highlights that have happened over the past months. One of the fun things was our Mrs. Quack laid a bunch of eggs but then decided she didn't care about sitting for more than one day. And one of our hens, Ember, looked at the abandoned duck eggs and decided they needed a mother. So she sat on them till they
The snow drifts are just deepening around here. But spring will arrive eventually. Even here where I probably won't see the ground for 4-5 months yet. Though it's going to show up a lot sooner for almost all of you! Do you have the seeds you need for this year for whatever you are planning to grow? Tiny green things will soon be ready to start popping out of the ground for many of you. Even if you only have a deck, balcony, or window sill, you can
Now that I have a bit more time to catch up on some things thanks to winter slowing my life down, at least compared to summer, I wanted to check in on how the garden actually produced this year. Does the work it takes to grow fresh food here produce something useful? How much food did I get? This year I did something I've never taken the time to do before and weighed all the various things the garden grew as I harvested them so I would know the total poundage of food produced through the year. What would you guess that total ended up being?
So far this year the garden has been thriving overall. Which is wonderful since gardening is one of my favorite things to do. As is eating wonderful fresh foods. 😊 While the weather has been pretty cool (here high in the mountains, that means around freezing) for most of the spring and early summer, the frost covers have continued to do their job well. I probably covered the garden 85% of the nights, as well as some days, from planting in early May till
Planting a garden in a mountain corner of Wyoming where there is no official growing season... As in most areas have a "last frost date" and "first frost date" and in general (though not always!) you can pretty much count on plants growing with no frosts and freezes in between. If you don't know what your growing season is, you can put in your location in this handy little calculator - https://davesgarden.com/guides/freeze-frost-dates/index.php and it will tell you some general info. Like in my parent's area, they generally have a frost free growing season a little over 150 days long so they can plant things that take up to that many days to mature without freezing. But in my area, there's always a chance of frosts or freezes all summer. So really what I grow is kind of what many people would call a
The garden above is the one I started as soon as the snow melted my very first spring here in the tiny house. And after a lot of work to create it, mostly involving removing truckloads worth of rocks from the size of chicken eggs to dinosaur eggs (seriously, some weighed more than me! 💪), it thrived for several years. Those rocks all went into helping form the lane that leads to my house. Then that lovely garden was discovered by evil marauding little demons. Otherwise known as
I know that currently much of the world is in some kind of quarantine or lockdown either voluntarily or mandatory. And many are struggling to find things to do to entertain or occupy themselves with much of their regular activities canceled or closed. Since I feel very blessed that little has changed about my life here in my tiny house, I thought I'd try to make a little list of what I stay busy with. Maybe some of them will be things you are interested in or enjoy too, or maybe they'll just inspire new ideas of your own! I sure there's no way that all of them will work in every place or interest everyone, but I feel like I have so many interests, hobbies, and things I'd like to learn that I could fill several lifetimes before I got bored! While this is by no means an exhaustive list, here's a lot of what keeps me busy at various times during the year or
Since my last post, there was about one more day of clear skies, but with a pretty hard frost. I was able to get the garden all put to bed for the winter just in time before the real snow and cold all poured in!
And I did a short video on what I've done to try to remedy the poison in the garden problem. And another explaining how my water system works here in my tiny house.
The storm rolling in created a pretty stunning sunset that night.
And the next morning, I woke up in a fairy tail world with snow sticking to everything!
And, then probably my biggest news recently, I quit my job! And did a whole video about how and why.
A few other things I've done recently.... I've had a lot of visitors this fall. Like one of my brothers, my sister-in-law, and newest niece or nephew. Yes, it is possible to have visitors in a tiny house, including overnight guests!
One of my Aunt and Uncles came by for a week as they explored some of the west as well.
And my Grandmother and another Aunt were the most recent visitors.
I've continued to wrap up storing food for the winter. Like canning 23 quarts of spaghetti sauce couple days ago, and working with a friend to put an elk in the freezer (mostly their freezer since my space is very limited) that should provide almost all of the meat for both of us for the next year.
Snow has continued to fall off and on, with I think a permanent white layer having set in for the year now. And with the changing seasons, (which I love!) comes some challenges when you live off a long dirt lane.
And as always, I've been able to see a lot of spectacular wildlife!
And just as a teaser...... I'm working on a video right now on how I handle safety and security as a single woman living in an off grid tiny house. :)
Happy first day of fall! Though there's been days of snow here, that's what the calendar says it is. :)
Though it's not firewood destined for my little stove obviously, here's a quick video showing some of the huge variety of chores I help with around the property where I live which vary constantly with the seasons. (If you are new, I do not own the ground where my house is parked, I trade work to the owners for being able to park here.) These logs are headed for a much larger stove in a very much larger house, but firewood is something I really enjoy doing.
As summer wraps up, I've have a few friends over for dinners with a bonfire.
I'm not sure if the weather will allow any more of these this year or not, but maybe if everyone brought a good warm jacket!
And sometimes even in the summer, the cool temps late in the evening make everyone want to hang out inside instead.
The garden and flowers overall have continued to look wonderful this summer. Maybe partly due to having no freezes through out the summer which is more normal.
As things wrap up, I've been busy preserving all the food I can. Pickling, canning, drying, and fermenting as much of what I does grow here as possible. Some day my goal would be to eat almost nothing that is not produced on my own property, but in this cold climate, I don't think I will quite pull that off.
I baked bread for the first time in years. Due to several food intolerance, I'd pretty much stopped eating it for a while. But I do love eating and making fresh bread so I decided to experiment with a much older variety of wheat and see how that made me feel. It turns out I experienced none of the lethargy, brain fog, or indigestion I have normally had when eating most wheat products so this is an experiment I might have to repeat!
While most things are still green, and fall colors never really appear around my house with almost all the trees being conifers, you are starting to be able to see fall colors in the small brush and weeds.
Smoke continued to blanket the area for much of the summer, mostly from more distant fires as there were none very close to my house. And thankfully the smoke was not as thick or choking as it has been in many other places in the west. But still, midday should not look like the above photo.
This is a no filter shot of the setting sun where you can see the smoke is thick enough to even allow you to see sun spots on the lower right side!
And then it turned to winter as you could see in my last video. Washing much of the smoke out of the air and putting a damper on most of the fires thankfully.
And the snow sped up my need to harvest as much as possible from the garden. :) So that's been keeping me busy all week as I try to juggle what to harvest now so as to not loose it to freezing, and what to wait on because if it survives under the garden covers, it may grow and produce a little more.
Enjoy the start of fall whatever the temps in your area!
