Yesterday I was in the big garden with my Mom and I found a strawberry! It was not attached to the plant anymore, I guess maybe Vinny picked it. I don’t know how it could have grown not on the plant.
Our first strawberry!
The strawberry was a little bit tiny and red. We took it inside and washed it off. Mom said it was a little too ripe and we shouldn’t eat it. I’m so excited for more strawberries to come! And for the peaches and blueberries to come too! The blueberry bushes have lots of flowers that are almost going to grow to blueberries. We don’t have peaches yet but Momma bought some at the store.
Me by our peach tree with my strawberry
When we get more strawberries we will wash them and eat them. We can make strawberry pie, strawberry cake… I had strawberry cake for my graduation. Did you know I graduated pre-school?! I’m going to Kindergarten next year! I’ll get to ride the bus with Ella and Brian. I’m so excited!
Okay, bye!
*This post was dictated with an app by Grace and edited for spelling and punctuation (and a little bit of clarity) by Mom.
I think wildlife is fascinating. When I find bugs and animals I want to take care of them.
Ziggy is a bug. When I found Ziggy last week, we were in the garden. We were looking at the kale, green beans, and other stuff. I was walking when I saw him. He had stripes on his wings that made a zig-zag pattern.
I scooped him up with my hands then I walked around with him and put him the pot with pansies and forget-me-nots on the back deck. I wonder if he is still there.
A few days later, when my Dad was in the hospital and our Aunt Rosey was taking care of us, we found a toad. We named him Harold but I wanted to name him Kyle.
We let him swim in the pool. Brian swam with him. 🤣 We were going to to keep Harold but the inernet said not to keep wild toads. Now I’m asking Mom and Dad if I can get a pet toad from the store. Mom’s not a fan of the idea.
I love that our house has a big yard full of wildlife.
Despite being stuck inside most the week, this week was an eventful one; full of hard work, celebrating the birthdays and mourning the loss of those we love. We celebrated Brian Sr’s birthday as well as one my best friend, Rachel’s birthday. We attended the funeral of my Opa virtually and spent time telling stories of his life.
Last Sunday was a busy day! Ella Rose helped me use some old lumber we found under the pine trees to build a raised bed for our new cut flower garden and then fill it with a combination of dirt from an old compost pile on our property and cheap topsoil from Tractor Supply. I also made a small bed around the mailbox for a little curb appeal and filled it with a few new plants and the tall marigold variety we started by seed a few weeks ago. It rained like a monsoon most of the week but weather cleared up for the weekend. Ella Rose and Grace helped sow seeds in the new cut flower garden more on that later.
We also made our first “cooking videos” as we made our rhubarb pie for us and a few friends. 🤣 Tune into tomorrow for the first.
Garden to table!
After all the rain, the coop was starting to smell. The chickens are getting to big! Our coop “for 4-6 chickens” is getting a little tight. Jr. helped me clean the coop on Friday while the girls and a few neighborhood kids kept an eye on the chicks as they roamed the yard (maintaining a social distance of course).
This weekend we FINALLY added a gate to the garden, it’s the epitome of half-ass but it gets the job done for now.
We also planted the last of the new plants including two new strawberry plants, two blueberry bushes, eggplant and our special peach tree.
Grace’s take on Saturday’s planting.
Brian Sr. was also busy getting the lawn on the Camp Farm in tiptop shape and working on the “super Chevy”. Look at that pretty green lawn!
Looking ahead to next week we hope to build (or buy) more space for the chicken to run and get mulch in the growing rows.
Last week, fall finally showed its beautiful temps here in central Ohio and I decided to make the most of it. Thursday afternoon I spent a few hours unloading pea gravel between meetings (since it was cool and … Read More
Last time I shared with y’all I was fresh into redoing the backyard, so excited about the possibilities. It’s been a month and a half and until this weekend the project hadn’t gone any further. Luckily the stars … Read More
Last summer, despite Sr.’s disapproval, I put a pool up. He was against the idea for two reasons 1. He’s not a fan of pools(unless there’s a slide going into the pool, he doesn’t see the point) and … Read More
Earlier this week we lost Opa, also known as Opie to my kids. (Opa is German for Grandfather.) He was 97 and always full of laughter, stories mischief and occasional a song.
Opa and the girls singing one of his favorites (2017)
A self-made man with experience with just about anything. He was a rancher, a gardener and friends with President Lyndon B. Johnson. He flew planes, played the fiddle, and other instruments, sold Massey-Furgeson tractors, and grew and sold peaches, by the truckload, to name a few. This is how I remember him most… that and him flipping the bird every time we asked him to smile for a picture.
Kramer Family Reunion 2017
Peaches are still my all time favorite. I remember he’d put me to work helping him sell his Fredericksburg peaches in the summer. All I had to do was stand by the road and eat peaches. They were so juicy, people would pull over and buy them. My Mom made me a special shirt with puffy paint that said “Opa’s Little Helper”. Opa always joked that I ate all his profits.
Coincidentally, last weekend when Tarin and I were doing the last of our garden shopping at the nursery we made a few impulse buys. A peach tree was one of them. I told her about my Opa and how proud he’d be. I had planned to talk with Opa yesterday about our new tree and get all his peach farming tips. Unfortunately that call was scheduled a day too late.
He’s going to be missed by all his children and grandchildren. Everyone drove up for his funeral today. Unfortunately, with Brian Sr.’s brain surgery early next week, we are quarantined and travel isn’t an option. It was devastating not being able to be in Texas with family for his memorial. Thankfully my cousin, Cassandra, FaceTimed us during the service.
Afterwards, we held a little memorial of our own and planted our peach tree in his memory.
It’s sweet and special new addition to our garden. In the next few days we’ll go down to the creek to find the right rock to paint and lay at the base of the tree.
Hi! My name is Ella. I go to 2nd Grade. So far, I have had the best teachers.
Me on my 7th birthday
We have a creek. I love to go there and get into the water past my rain boots. Then run around with all the water sloshing inside it. I think it drives my Mom crazy. Sometimes we look for salamanders. We had a pet salamander from the creek but sadly he\she died.
At the creek.
This year for Halloween I think I will be Mal from Descendants. Grace and I both like those movies.
For Christmas, I think I want my own kitten but my Mom has two reasons she doesn’t want me to have one…
She does not want two cats
My sister, Grace, is kind of allergic to cats.
Now, I want a cat or a dog . Once our dog Jack ran all the way down the neighborhood. My Mom had to drive in the car to get him. I think he ran down the neighborhood because he was looking for his toy (it got stuck in a tree). When we got it down for a second he did not recognize it, then he was so excited.
Our dog, Jack.
I like playing outside when it is warm because when it’s cold and I have a jacket, I get hot take, it off and get cold, then put it back on again. It’s annoying.
I think bugs and worms are cool. My Mom asked me to help make out new cut flower garden so I did but then I saw lots of bugs in the dirt and wanted to watch them instead. I also like pulling weeds in the garden. I like flower gardening and vegetable gardening because they both include pulling out weeds.
I like to paint and craft with my sister, Grace. I also like to make paper Airplanes. Last summer I did an acting summer camp and was in the play, Winnie the Pooh.
I love cooking cakes and cookies with my mom. For Christmas last year we got a cool old cookbook. I can’t wait to make cooking videos. I like making muffins and eating them. I have never made cupcakes and don’t like their icing. One time I made a chocolate layer cake.
I love 💕 BUTTERED BREAD more than anything in the world!
I like raising chickens. When Penny peeps I get scared and put her down. Penny is growing so fast. Since there is a couple more months until she is full grown, I am going to miss her fuzziness.
My best friend Ava lives next door. Our family and her family share the big garden. I like living next door her because we can play almost every day. Im the summer, we have picnics and tea parties.
We also throw a Galentine’s party every year for all the girls in the neighborhood plus a few special friends!
2019
2019
2020
2020
*Posts are proofread by Mom for some spelling and punctuation.
Last week, Grace couldn’t get enough of the big garden. From taking the chicks out, to seeing the seeds we planted a few weeks ago sprout from the ground, to stomping all over the growing rows when she was thought no one was looking 🙄 . She also decided hats were essential attire.
We’ve made a LOT of progress in the 4 days since we recorded this, can’t wait to show you all this week!
Y’all! It’s almost time for this years’ first harvest of rhubarb!!!
In the back house garden I have two green rhubarb plants side-by-side that provide a steady harvest all from May to Fall. Rhubarb is one of my favorite crops to harvest from our gardens because it means I get to put my love into making something delicious for my family and those around us.
Grace says, “Yay for rhubarb!”
What is rhubarb?
Fun fact, while rhubarb is technically a veggie but it’s often categorized as a fruit because of how it is prepared and served. Looking a lot like celery and ranging from red to pale green, rhubarb has a tart, slightly sweet taste and therefore typically cooked with sugar and fruits, like strawberries, to make jams and baked treats.
Rhubarb is a perennial that requires a cold winter to grow, so it wasn’t too common Texas. I first had rhubarb in college when visiting my Great Aunt Bertha in Washington State. She lived on a country cul-de-sac where she and her neighbors shared a garden (sound familiar?). My Mom and I trekked out to the garden to pick a few stalks then spent the afternoon with her in the kitchen as she taught us her secrets to making rhubarb pie. I don’t remember much about what she said, but I certainly remember there was lots of wine, laughing, and taste testing. I also remember tasting the rhubarb before it was cooked and wondering why the hell Aunt Bert would put it in a pie. That night we ate pie for dessert, went back for seconds and made more pie the next day!
Fast forward about 15 years and I’m walking around the house gardens with Kay, the original owner of our then new home, as she gives me the low down on all the perennials she planted in her 40+ years living her. It was overwhelming trying to consume all the information and knowledge she was spewing out that spring day but as she pointed out what were weeds, what would bloom when, and what we could and couldn’t eat, I was elated to hear her point and the big-leafed green stalky plant and call it rhubarb. I hadn’t recognized it as it is the green variety and not the red rhubarb I had picked with Aunt Bert. Needless to say I was baking rhubarb pie that weekend.
What I’ve Learned About Growing and Harvesting Rhubarb
First off, I am no expert. I mean the first year of harvesting, I used garden shears to cut nearly ALL the stalks at the bottom, even the short little ones. Like a rhubarb buzz cut–rookie move. I was also just letting the plant do it’s thing and flower until Kay told me to stop it. So what can I share?
What Part of the Rhubarb to Eat
First of all, it’s important to know the leaves of rhubarb cannot be eaten, they are poisonous. You can compost them as they break down pretty quickly in the compost process. It’s the stalk of the leaves that you eat. I’ve read the flowering stalks are edible but I haven’t tried them.
Flowering or Bolting Rhubarb
When rhubarb produces flowering stems, this is called bolting (a term I’ve only known for a year or so). These flowers are pretty and don’t harm the plant or taste but do impact your harvest as the plant exhausts energy on the flowing stalks rather than producing more stalks. This means if you want a lot of harvest, your best bet is to remove the flowering stalks with a sharp knife at the base of the plant. Actually, even better is to remove them when they are seed pods, before they become a flowering stalk. I am still working on my confidence in recognizing these seed pods and just staying on top of these stalks.
Harvesting Rhubarb
You’ll want to harvest stalks when they are about 10 inches long. You can either use a sharp knife to cut the stalks at the base, or simply need to grab the stalk toward the base and pull with a twisting motion. Don’t harvest ALL of the stalks at once, like I almost did. This could kill the plant. If your rhubarb plant is new, you’ll need to wait 2 years before harvesting your first harvest to that the plant can become well established. You can keep harvesting those 10″ stalks through the summer and even into the fall but you’ll want to slow down your harvesting after mid July to let your plant store up energy for winter.
Cooking and Baking with Rhubarb
As mentioned before, rhubarb, because of its sour taste is often paired with sugar and fruits. That sweet and tart combination makes it perfect for summer! Honestly, I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to rhubarb. My go-tos are strawberry rhubarb pie and jam but I am looking at expanding my rhubarb recipe collection this year! In the 2 summers I’ve been baking with rhubarb I’d say the pies and jam have definitely become a fan favorite. I always make 2-4 pies at a time and at least 6 jars of jam so there is plenty to share with neighbors and friends. My kids refer to these pies and jams as ‘famous’ and Brian Jr. claims I could profit well at the farmers market. Not sure about that but I’m excited to share these recipes with you this summer.
Cory’s “famous” Strawberry Rhubarb pie
Making strawberry rhubarb jam
Canning for delivery
Grace taking a picture of the rhubarb plants for a post. 🤣
Hey, y’all! I’m Cory and I’m excited to introduce myself! Well, actually not really. I’ve never been great at introductions; I never know what to say and usually end up rambling on and on… so here we go! I’m a wife, Christian, mom, educator, educational consultant, speaker, perfectionist, pie lover, art maker and proud Texan, born and raised. There! Oh, and I also run a half-ass homestead.
I met my husband Brian (also known as Brian Sr. or Sr.) in college while he was in the Army stationed in Texas. We went on one date and didn’t spend a weekend apart despite living nearly two hours apart. We got married less than 3 months after that first date, just before Brian shipped off to the Iraq War for 14 months. We’ve been married for 13 years this year and together we have three children, Brian Jr (10), Ella (8) , and Grace (5). You’ll get to know these guys more in future posts (the kids are planning to create their own pages #ProudMomma).
So, why am I writing about my half-ass homestead? Who am I to talk about homesteading, or half-assing it anyway? Well, I grew up with two of my four brothers in semi-rural home with a couple of acres on a red dirt road outside of Houston, Texas. My parents are DIYers and entrepreneurs and had their own business, which meant they often didn’t have much money to spend and even less time. But that never slowed them down.
At our house, we always had some sort of project happening at home whether home renovations, landscaping projects, or the latest project car of my Dad’s. Now our land was by no means a farm but we had plenty of animals to keep us entertained and busy. It was quite an adventure. There were the poodles and malamutes we bred, and often dressed up; our crazy outdoor cats with extra toes; Blitz our shetland pony that thought he was a dog, liked to swim and had a slight drinking problem; Jake my stubborn Palomino-Welch horse who liked to buck and nearly killed me, more than once; the hens that laid our eggs and lived in the old storage shed; and the mean old rooster that terrorized the coop until one day he attacked my Oma (German for Grandmother) and became dinner. More on these adventures in future posts, I’m sure.
That’s our sweet, crazy Blitz in the middle. We couldn’t leave any alcohol sitting less than three feet from the ground or he’d steal it and wind up a complete mess.
In addition to our daily home, our family always had a home away from home on more land–whether a hunting lease, our own ranch in Eden, Texas, or my Opa’s (that’s German for Grandfather) ranch in the Texas Hill Country. We spent every opportunity we had on a ranch tending to livestock, hunting, fixing fences, working on the camp house, riding four-wheelers, and spending time as a family around a campfire.
At our old ranch in Junction, Texas
I feel these experiences have prepared me well for a homestead lifestyle. I can mend a fence, plow a field, dress a deer, shotgun a beer, ride a horse, assist with birthing a calf, wield a power tool, and shoot a riffle like nobody’s business. I can also can food and bake just about anything. You know, at one point I dreamed of having my own ranch with rolling hills full of livestock and a garden that produced enough that we barely needed to go shopping.
However, that life, at least for now, is not the reality especially on the income of an educator and military veteran with three kids. Regardless, we are living our best life, especially since moving from Texas to our 1+ acre home here in Ohio in 2018. Why move? My husband is from here and begged to leave the blazing Texas heat. Just his luck to fall in love with a stubborn Texan. I even vowed to never leave The Great State when he proposed–a condition he agreed to for the first year or so before the heat wore him down. It took him about 10 years to sweet talk me into moving—though if you talk to him he’ll tell you it was my idea to move (even if this were true, he planted the idea). Despite the stress and anxiety of moving a family of 5 across the country and starting a new job, it was the best decision WE ever made. We’ve enjoyed the more mild summers, four seasons, SNOW, and year-round green grass the Mid-West has to offer. I mean it’s amazing; the plants don’t automatically die here come June! Until recently I could kill anything green with out trying. Now, not only do I not kill the plants, I’ve been known to accidentally give special care to weeds I didn’t know were weeds (I’m still learning).
We’re blessed to have a home in a wonderful neighborhood full of friendly neighbors and younger families like ours with children the same age as ours. We’ve become great friends with our neighbors Tarin and Clint who have a daughter the same age as our Ella and a son a two years younger than Grace. The kids run back and forth between our two yards almost daily, we have spontaneous family meals together, and I can always count on Tarin to join me in a glass of wine or three. Last year, Tarin I started talking about wanting to start a garden. After a few more conversations and a little research, not much money, and no real time do do it all, we were suddenly marking off a not-so-small plot of land on the border of our adjoining properties.
Our city friends refer to our little plot as a “farm” – though it’s far from it. This year we’re raising chickens and expanding the garden crop. We’ve learned a lot in the past few years and more each day. I don’t plan to give you advice but I will share what has and hasn’t worked for us. But more than the lessons learned are the adventures and stories that come from living the half-ass homestead life while raising kids. We can’t wait to share it with you.
THE HALF-ASS HOMESTEAD 