Most Reliable Crop...

Several years ago, I went to the local grocery store looking for something a little different to prepare for a side dish to go with dinner. In the produce department, I found red and blue fingerling potatoes.


They came in itty-bitty mesh bags with probably no more than 10 potatoes in each bag. The sign next to them proclaimed that they were "on sale," 2 bags for $6. I was completely appalled. For $6, I could buy a BIG bag of potatoes and eat for a couple of months.


I really wanted the fingerling potatoes, though, so I bought them. I made pasta salad as a side dish that night and planted them in my front yard in the flower bed the next day. That fall, we had a wonderful crop of red and blue fingerling potatoes. The following year, I made space for potatoes in my regular garden and planted a few of the (now sprouting) fingerlings that remained in the kitchen. That crop did poorly, but I had a few volunteers in the front flower bed again. Each year, I would dig up the potatoes from the flower bed, certain that they had all been removed only to find more growing during the next gardening season. Here is a photo of this year's volunteer crop:

I expect to dig them up this weekend. I think that I got my money's worth all of those years ago. They are like the gift that keeps on giving!

New Homesteading Projects...

Yesterday's weather was sunny and beautiful! The high was somewhere in the vicinity of 68 degrees. We had received an email from the nursery, stating that our raspberry canes would be arriving this week. After months of trying to figure out where to plant them,I finally had to make a decision. After consulting with TheMartianMan, I decided that the best place was near our second driveway. It was important that the raspberries not be too close to our chain link fence as they can become entangled in the links. But it was equally important that they not be able to spread willy-nilly all over the yard. We wanted a controlled bramble patch!


I hauled out the edging bricks that I got at the Habitat Re-Store and arranged them in an arc, right at the end of the driveway.Then I tilled the space and pulled out any rocks that I found. I added some maple leaves and tilled again. A topping of mulch completed the task. We are supposed to get some rain this week, so the soil should stay nice and moist until the plants arrive. It looks a lot nicer in person. I waited until today to take the picture and our weather is fairly gray, rainy and dreary. When I plant the raspberries, I will also add some companion flowers to brighten things up and attract bees and other pollinators. My neighbors are used to my yard always looking neat with lots of flowers. I don't think that they'll be disappointed with the outcome in a couple of months.



The tiller that I used was the Mantis tiller that I picked up on Craigslist last year for $150. It wasn't even one year old at the time of purchase. For anyone who is not fond of equipment that makes a lot of noise, the electric Mantis tiller is a very quiet option and does not require a lot of muscle power to keep it under control. It really does a good job for such a small machine!

I also finished the Quail Jail! Well, sort of... We have all of the pieces cut but assembly is not possible for two reasons: 1) We need to buy longer screws to hold it together and 2) There is a truck in the way of the stairs that lead to the 2nd floor of the carriage house. The truck was a freebie from my dad. It needs a new transmission and does not move on its own. Unfortunately, it is in the wrong parking bay and blocks the only access to the 2nd floor. So, if we put the Quail Jail pieces together now, we will have to carry it in one piece to the second floor. Although it won't be extremely heavy, it would be pretty awkward to carry.

The good news is that TheMartianMan and his friend should be pulling the truck out of the carriage house and replacing the transmission. A working truck will make it much easier to haul firewood that we find at the curb after people have had trees cut down and reduce our firewood expenses.

The Local Habitat Revisited

We went back to the local Habitat Re-Store again today. We are going to try to go every Monday on my lunch hour. We scored again, spending only $15, but some of what we picked up will NEVER be used to build a chicken pen or a raised bed. We got several pieces of maple lumber. I'm not sure what we will use it for, but there was no way that we were going to leave that in the store! It wasn't of the quality that I would want to use for shelves in my house, but maybe it could be used to build outdoor benches? I don't really know. I am open to any ideas that you all might have. Each board is about 4 feet long and 8 inches wide.They are really heavy. I guess I'm used to the weight of similar sized pieces of pine.

Counting Coins

I thought that I should take a few minutes to tally up what we've spent so far to get our property ready to be an urban farmstead. I have separated the expenses by category:

CHICKEN EQUIPMENT - Budget $200
Children's Playhouse..................$80
Plastic Dishpan.......................$ 1
Plastic Crate.........................$ 1
Diatomaceous Earth....................$15
Crushed Eggshells.....................$ 0
Poultry Waterer Heater................$ 0
Poultry Feeder........................$ 0
Oyster Shell Dish.....................$ 0

Garden - Budget $300
Member to Member Seedswaps............$ 5
Mushroom Kit..........................$28

Aquaculture - Budget $300

Miscellaneus - Budget $200
1000 Mealworms........................$20
Oatmeal...............................$ 4
Aquarium..............................$ 0

Groovy Mushroom Madness!

TheMartianMan and I have quite the affinity for mushrooms...If you are having hazy memories of your time spent at Woodstock, now is the time to stop. I am not talking about the psychedelic shrooms, just the everyday kind that you might top a pizza with. We like to buy them from the local farmer's market in the summer, but have difficulty in obtaining them during the winter unless we get them from the chain grocery stores. We hate to do that because they really aren't as fresh. Anyway, some weeks back we ordered a mushroom kit. Essentially, it was a cardboard box of dirt and manure that had been inoculated(or seeded)to grow button mushrooms. I checked on the kit a few days ago and it had several smallish white clumps.They were rather disappointing to look at then, but not anymore! Some of these are about 3 inches across. Mmmm...gotta figure out what to make for dinner...



I decided to add a picture of the mushroom that I actually cooked for dinner. These things grow exponentially.A few hours really do make a difference. For scale, I placed a quarter next to it. Keep in mind that these are the same kind of button mushrooms that commonly come in a cute little can. I really don't think that one of our "Martian" mushrooms would even fit in a can!

Blast Off!

We've always been fans of science fiction books and movies.The idea for Mission: 2 Mars urban farmstead began with a single premise... a fictitious trip to another planet for scientific study. If humankind were to travel to Mars there would be many things that would be critical to survival. Strong shelter, capable of withstanding the forces of nature and sealed for energy efficiency would most certainly be a necessity.

The ability to replenish the food supply would be of great importance, too. A renewable source of power to propel devices and provide heat would be crucial to survival since Mars receives significantly less light than the planet Earth. Whatever vessel our fictitious space travelers pilot, they would essentially have to bring along everything that they would need, relying on little assistance from the dying red planet. Soil would need to be replenished in order to support the growth of crops for food. For city dwellers like us, this trip into self-sufficiency was just as foreign as a trip to Mars. We would become our own grocery store and our urban home would be the vehicle to help us to achieve our goals.

Most of our city friends probably think that we really are from Mars because we have ideas about how to green our lifestyle and want to do alot of things the old fashioned way. But it just seems that modern isn't really better if it means that you cannot function if the power goes out. It certainly isn't better when kids (and some adults) don't really know where their food comes from. It definitely isn't better when it creates conspicuous consumption with everyone thinking that they are somehow entitled to every gadget that is released on the market.

Our journey into homesteading was guided by many factors, the economy, the state of global affairs, tainted food recalls, the state of the ecology and abhorrent factory farm conditions. We are guided by our principles and led by a craving to be free of the materialism that is so pervasive in American society. Our story begins here:

We were ready to blast off!! Tired of the rat race of city living in the Northeast, we were completely engrossed in creating a plan to escape it. With the financial crisis and subsequent bailout of the banking and insurance industries, we found ourselves feeling really insecure about taking on another mortgage in a state with a warmer climate. With the high rate of foreclosures, soaring grocery prices at the supermarket, the increasing costs for fuel, high unemployment rates and two kids enrolled in college, my husband and I decided to try a different approach...If we couldn't find our own place in the sun, then maybe we could bloom where we were already planted.

Hmmm...It did seem a bit overwhelming. I mean, we had already worked out a plan for a mini-farm on five acres. We'd have chickens and ducks and maybe a greenhouse for hydroponics. We'd grow tilapia fish in tanks and we could live off of the bounty that we harvested from our land, rather than from the SuperWalmart. We'd reduce our carbon footprint where we could and invest in solar power on a small scale to supplement our need for electricity. The question was: How could we do this in the city on a 3/4 acre lot?