Planning the kitchen garden 2017

Although it’s still winter I’m already planning for the new planting season. Every year I read as many kitchen garden books from the library I can. It’s so much fun to plan for the new year. I’m making a list for all vegetables I want to grow and a shorter list with flowers and herbs.

A lot of things are every year the same but I also try some new variety of vegetables to.

This year I will have purple carrots, and purple cabbage. I hear you think, purple carrots??!! Yes, exactly the first carrots ever grow were purple! But in 17^th century in the Netherlands they get there first orange carrot. And it became a great success! I will try the purple carrots and I hope we will enjoy it….

Because my husband and I eat both  vegetarian, we eat a lot of chickpeas. They come from a warm area and we can’t grow them here. But now I did find a old verity of peas called “gråärt” in Sweden it will have the same nutty flavour.

I did find some information about co-culture some will help against the cabbage butterfly. I read about to plant peppermint, celery and marigold between the cabbage plants. The have a smell witch makes that the butterfly not knows where the cabbage plants are, I hopes it will help and otherwise it will look nice also. 

happy new year

A new year is started and we’ve a lot of new ideas we want to do this year!

I have some new ideas for my vegetable garden, I want to grow a lot more for to sell. We will make a new fence we can put around the cabbage plants. Last year I did grow a lot of cabbage, but one night after a little bit of frost, everything was gone. That were the deer and elk some loved to eat cabbage to L. This year will that not happen again! So a fence it will be made!

Still we don’t need to buy potatoes and vegetables. But we need to build a place underground were we can store our potatoes and beetroots, now we store it in the barn but when it get to cold, we need to get everything inside. A ‘jordkällare’ is it called in Swedish. Sander made a start to dig it out last year but it is al lot of work, you find a lot of stones, small stones and BIG stones! Maybe he will finish it this year.

I started to make a ‘to-do-list’ for this year but it still grows longer and longer, small projects, bigger projects and huge projects J maybe I can better call it a 5 or 10 years ‘to-do-list’……..

After making new ideas and while talking about it, I got hungry and decide to bake a ‘raisin bread with almond’.

Recipe

You need for 1 large bread:

500gr flour                                                                  for the almond filling:

2 tsp salt                                                                     marzipan

35gr yeast                                                                   juice of a half lemon

4dl milk (37°C)

25gr butter

25gr brown sugar

1tsp cinnamon

250gr currants/raisin

½ lemon peel grated

1. Make a ordinary bread dough with the flour, yeast, salt, milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon and the grated lemon peel. Set aside to rise for at least an hour.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Do at the same time the currants and raisins in another bowl and add that much water to cover them all. Set aside to swell up.
3. mix the marzipan with the lemon.
4. after one hour, put the raisins/currants in a sieve and let the water leak out. After that mix the dough with the currants/raisins and make the dough a flat rectangle about 3 or 4 cm thick. Make a roll of the marzipan and put in the middle of the dough and roll it all up.
5. set aside to rise another hour.
6. Bake it in a moderately hot oven for 30 min after that sink the temperature till moderate and bake for another15 min. Let cool on a rack.

Homesteaders or farmers?

When I talk about our home, I call it a homestead but sometimes I call it a farm too.

But what is the right definition or maybe there isn’t a right definition?

Looking in the dictionary I found:

Farm

1. Land cultivated for agricultural production.  2. A.   Land used for breeding and raising of domestic animals.    B. an area of water used for breeding and raising of a particular type of aquatic animals.

Yes, we are farmers! We have land for agricultural production but….

Homestead

1. A family’s house, esp. a farmhouse, with adjacent buildings and land. (think on” the little house on the prairie” series)   2.  A tract of land granted, as under the homestead Act, to a settler who cleared, cultivated and lived on it.

We have also a family house with buildings for our livestock, we cultivate the land. I think the difference can be found elsewhere….

A farm,  generates money by raising and selling livestock and/or produce of the land. Like the definition it’s about production. A farmer has a different goal then the homesteader. A farmer will have a income of it’s land and make profit.

A homestead is a place were a person or a family cultivates the land and try  to become more self sufficient. On a homestead they try to live on the land by growing and raising their own food. Though they maybe will sell some products of their land, it’s not the most important goal they have.  They like to use what they can on their land to make it more sustainable.

We have our home not only for to generate income for we do have another income, but we try to live of the land, by growing our own food, and use what we have. Trying to save money, by doing things by ourselves without the need of buying. That is what we want, what we love to do.

So maybe we are homesteader or maybe you could call us something else, or maybe we are just some foolsJ

sewing room

A while ago I decide that I would have other curtains in my sewing room. The old ones didn’t really have the right colour and shape. I made them 5 years ago for the living room but after a year I get some really heavy velour curtains that I used instead. I thought a lot about it, and yesterday I get a idea! I could use the velour curtains in the sewing room and use the old living room curtains in the living room again.

In the evening I started to take away the old curtains and change them. I turned out so nice! I love it! But the room itself needed a little clean up to, after all sewing’s of the last weeks. That is what I did today. A lot of  patterns, bits of fabric, books etc. etc. I was a bit lazy so I put everything in my fabric box and have to assort them later. But the room itself was on the end of the day ready for some pictures!

On the second picture you can see a bit of a painting. I got it after my grandfather when he died. It was a wedding gift they get.

Christmas Dinner on Toftaholm herrgård

It is a windy day today, it’s not raining, but now en then you see a little rain splashes on the window. But I’m sitting inside for the fire, soon it will be dark and can we light our candles and oil lamps. I’m listening to a great Celtic harp player, Patrick Ball. Very peaceful and beautiful!

The last weeks I have been very busy with sewing a new dress for the Christmas dinner. We were invited to eat there together with everyone who danced or played music there in the past summer season.

Toftaholm is a very old manor that dates from the 14^th century. The first time we can read about it, it’s in 1387 when it was only a little farmer-village. In 1470 a man with the name “Gustav Ollofsson (Stenbock)” did buy the 8 farmhouses to build the manor there. 1475 was the manor house ready and called “Toftaholm”. Now you can only visit the ruin after this building. The current wood house was build in 1871.

 Sander s new kilt and vest, sporran and belt

 my new dress

It was a great evening, pretty company and the new owners were very charming. Lots of traditional Swedish Christmas food. 7 courses! Lots of fish, meat, both cold and hot dishes, very delicious desserts.

and a picture of my corset

corset making part II

some  pictures of my corset sewing

It's almost done now, yesterday I fit it the first time, and it fit's perfect!

 Iron the seams flat, I'm heating the iron on the stove

and a little movie, I'm sewing in the sewing room, unfortunately it's a little dark, but it shows a bit how I'm working on the corset.

FRESH VEGETABLES –HOME GROWN-

The last few summer day’s are gone, and the autumn with the cold and windy day’s has arrived. We’ve got some rain in the last week but the well is still dry…. Lucky to us have we a nice neighbour were we can go and get some water from his well. His house stands about a 500m from us and lays closer to the lake. He has a 1/2m water left in his well. So every day we load our wheelbarrow with empty jerry cans, go to the neighbour, fill them all and go homewards again. It is a little more work but the animals need water, a lot of water, only our big work pony needs about a 30L each day!

For the vegetable garden wasn’t it that bad that is was dry, the beans need a dry period at the end of the season. We got a big harvest this year! A lots of kidney beans and French beans, 180kg potatoes, lots of parsnips and carrots, sweet corn, tomatoes, lots of tomatoes!, onions, cabbage, beetroot, leek, zucchini, peas,………This was the first year I had a poly-tunnel, and the tomatoes grows so fine in it. Now the last tomatoes are still waiting to be made into a green tomato chutney. I think I have had over a 15kg!

We had broccoli for the first time this year, and they went big. The first we eat was about a 500gr, but the second was almost 1kg! They really taste different then the ones you buy in the store. I loved it very well, and try it again next year.

I bought for 500SEK seeds this year and had some seeds left from 2015, all the seeds were ecological, and after the first of June we didn’t need to buy fresh food in the store. Except for some garlic that I didn’t have. At this time we eat already 5 months our home grown food and we have much more we can eat during the winter months. Now the growing seasons is over, I can looking back on a very well seasons. We’ve got lot of fine and healthy food.