After five months of applying (and reapplying) for a HAMP loan to stay in our home, we’ve decided to let it go into foreclosure.  It could be many months before the bank will even look at our continually resubmitted paperwork and in the meantime we’ve had time to consider the direction our life has been going in, what our true needs are, and what “home” really means.

We’ve been homeowners for 10 years and I admit that I fell into the faulty belief that if I owned a home I would be stable, wouldn’t ever have to move, and I could plant fruit trees and watch them mature.  When I moved into my first home and gushed to my dad that I would never move again he said I was wrong, that I would outgrow that house and move at least once or twice more.  Turns out he was right.

I’ve planted fruit trees in three out of four homes I’ve owned in a decade and seen not a single one mature because we have either outgrown our house, been forced to sell it in order to not to lose our equity in it, and then two more homes later and we just keep moving, just keep moving.

Owning a home gave me the freedom to discover cooking, gardening, housekeeping, and keeping hens.  It gave me the inspiration to learn to can my own food and it taught me to ask what I can do for myself so that I can avoid calling someone in to do it for me. 

Owning a home guarantees nothing.  Most people don’t own a greater percentage of their home than the bank does.  Most people don’t live in the same home for more than a few years because in spite of how far civilization has come, people are becoming more nomadic again. 

I think it’s funny that when I’m in the middle of canning it’s almost impossible to prepare actual meals.  I end up eating a lot of sandwiches and easy food.  Back when we had more money it was a great excuse to order in from restaurants.  This week the best thing I ate was this pan of roasted vegetables all of which I got from the two organic farms I buy from.  The tofu isn’t organic and came from the regular market. 

I cut up two sweet potatoes, a few small Yukon potatoes, an enormous fennel bulb cut into six wedges, one whole block of tofu, and an entire head of garlic on my roasting pan.  I cut everything into (roughly) 1.5″ size pieces.  I sprinkled it with salt and pepper and drizzled a generous amount of olive oil over the whole thing.  I cooked them at 400 degrees, turning them about every ten or fifteen minutes for an hour.

Best meal I’ve had all week!  I’m not usually a huge fan of fennel but I have to say that eaten this way has changed my mind.  I can no longer remember how I’ve fixed them in the past.

The best thing I ate the previous week was a pasta sauce I made with chanterelles and caramelized onions added to a sharp white cheddar cheese sauce.  The sauce was so thick it worked well to spread on toast and broil. 

All my other meals have been breakfasts of eggs, cheese, and tomatoes or lunches of cheese tomato sandwiches. 

I did make (and freeze) some tomato soup.  I consulted friends for herb ideas and everyone has something different to suggest.  I ended up using fresh thyme from the garden and the very last of the fresh local basil.  I thought it was really nice but Philip preferred it as a dip for a grilled cheese.  He didn’t love it on it’s own merit, which is why I didn’t bother posting my recipe here.  It needs work.  All soups should be worthy of standing alone. 

I made my annual trip to the local farm Bernard’s this year for tomatoes, summer squash, and eggplant – all upick.  I ended up getting some jalapenos even though I promised myself I wouldn’t.  Here’s what I packed on my scooter:

74 eggplants
3.5 pounds jalapenos
34 pounds green and red tomatoes

All of this food cost only $36.95.  I am not kidding.  The eggplants were 25 cents each, the tomatoes were 47 cents a pound, and the jalapenos were comparatively expensive at 99 cents a pound.

Last year my friend Laurie brought me a box of walnuts she’d collected from her mother’s tree.  I put them in the freezer and only just cracked them all open in the last few weeks.  I portioned them into vacuum sealed bags and put them back in the freezer.  Walnuts are expensive to buy and I can go through a lot making this recipe for walnut pesto sauce.

The day I brought home my giant bunch of dill-heads I was so giddy with excitement that I got chatty with the Rite-aid check-out guy who could be expected to have no interest at all in pickles.  To my surprise I was wrong.  I said “Dill!!” and he said “Pickles!” and I spazzed out at him when I found out his grandmother makes cauliflower pickles and it turns out this barely-twenty-something kid is a fan of cooking blogs and home canning. 

Those dill-heads would turn out to be a grim* reminder of the superiority of insects.  For anyone who doesn’t know, it is generally best not to wash herbs any time you can get away with it.  I have been pickling for 4 years and have never had any problems with my dill.  I’ve grown complacent and careless, apparently.  I canned 17 quarts of pickles and every single one of those jars has a few tiny floating pickled aphids in them. 

I thought I was going to have to dump the jars out and cry over a very large beer.  Luckily my husband and my mother are more intrepid eaters than I am and have declared that they are perfectly happy to rinse the pickles before eating. 

I obviously had to make some aphid-free cauliflower pickles for myself.  I got more dill heads, really nice looking ones that didn’t seem to have any aphids on them.  But I wasn’t going to take any risks so I soaked my fresh dill heads in vinegar for a few hours thinking this might make all the aphids die and let go.  It worked!  (Yes, there were aphids on these ones too.)  But then I made the mistake of taking them out of the vinegar and waiting to use them the next day by which time they had developed a truly suspect odor.

In the end my last 14 quarts of pickles had no dill-heads.  Instead I used a quarter teaspoon of dill seeds and a quarter teaspoon of dried dill leaves.  I have no idea how they will turn out.

I am now done with my preserving season!  I am ready to concentrate on actual cooking, curtain making, and writing. 

The corn is good this year!  The corn is very very good and plentiful and not too expensive but I still choke at the thought of seven ears wasted!  However, the cobs, after giving up much of their flavor to a stock, made the chickens very happy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been working on a corn chowder recipe.  One version had too much heat and too much cilantro in it but was otherwise PERFECT.  (I know this because right before adding one too many jalapenos and the entire bunch of cilantro I tasted it and it was so incredible I almost stopped right there.)

My basic roux always has a little dash of cayenne in it- but for this project, the corn chowder, it made it too hot! 

So yesterday was my remake day and I was really excited.  Not just to make a new better batch which I suspected would then be ready to share with you, but because I was simultaneously experimenting with an olive oil roux in hopes of making a superb vegan version for my vegan friends.  I had already made some corn stock (more about that when I write the recipe) and the roux worked beautifully, the sauteed vegetables were added and then, then was the moment of truth: adding the corn.

Knock knock?  Anyone home?  Can I come in?  Surely there’s a grub or two you need cleaned up?

When these kind of things happen you just have to let it go.  Now that I’ve shared my calamity with you and come clean about not composting, I am letting it go.

In other farmhouse news: the hens are LOVING their free-ranging in the early evenings.  The big girls have become much mellower and follow us around in the garden and up to the porch where they hope to be included in all family activities such as family movie night.  Sadly, they must be put to bed before the movies start. 

The adolescents have no problem finding their way back to the coop when the sun sinks but our big girls gather up on the porch railing instead and we have to put them away each night by carrying them to the coop.  They are already in their middle age and this is the first time in their lives they’ve been allowed to roam around outside their run a couple of hours a day so they don’t really know what to do.

They’ve been eating all the blackberries that I haven’t wanted from the garden (the too sour ones and the overripe ones).  It’s made for colorful messes on the patio.  While I am not loving all the messes, the benefit to my hens is obvious and I can tell that they are feeling much more fulfilled and happy.  Yes, you really can tell.  Birds may not be as smart as pigs but they are sentient beings and they do have some thoughts and emotions.  

Hey Dot, whatcha peckin’ at?  Thanks for dropping in the kitchen for a chat!

 
Dot even made it inside the kitchen once!  She didn’t care for the slick texture of the floor but was much interested in joining me in the cooking… lest you think I am a completely dirty scary person who lets her farm animals make a manger of the farmhouse… I audiosed the bossy gorgeous Dot almost at once.

Though I secretly really do wish my chickens could follow me everywhere. 

For all you germaphobes out there, I promise you this floor has since been mopped well.

The first two artichokes!  They are so gorgeous.  I haven’t eaten them yet.  I plan to cook them today because I’m leaving for New York tonight. I’m so not freaking out.

Is this Curly-Sue or Mo?  They grew up to be the same size so I can’t tell!  The flock integration has worked out well.  There are enough of the young ones to huddle together for safety when Dot charges them.  Yes, Dot wants dominion.  Actually all of the older hens rush at the young ones but there has been no substantial bullying, no eyes have been pecked out, and the little ones are getting bigger every day so that soon I think there will be less rushing at them and a true pecking order will be established.

I love the way the Speckled Sussex hens look!  So pretty!

It has been such a pleasure to see all the hens running around in the garden.  They’ve been plucking at the low growing blackberries.  That’s fine with me.  It will make their eggs richer and better.  But they probably won’t taste like blackberries.

This is the market tote I’m making for my Etsy shop but will offer a tutorial on later so you can make your own.

Here at my farmhouse in town winter is really getting under way.  This morning we had our first hoar-frost with the temperature down to 22 degrees.  I know that in many areas across the country it has already gotten much colder and everyone is bundled up in their wool and mittens.

I am busy making market bags for my Etsy shop.  We have long since stopped using paper or plastic bags to put our groceries into and use cloth grocery/shopping bags.  Every time I leave the house I grab at least one of them because I can never be sure when it will come in handy, when I return home I hang it up on my bag hook.  We have many shopping bags because our kid can’t go anywhere without an entire tote bag filled with snacks and things to amuse himself with.  He’s an intensely picky eater and a grazer so he’s always hungry when we’re out and about but there is rarely anything “out there” for him to eat.  We always travel with a protein bar, some crackers, and filtered water.  He also has ADD and it has been a lifesaver to us since he was a toddler to always bring a collection of things/toys for him to play with while we’re out.  He will panic if he doesn’t have a bag of his things because his view of the world, depending on his mood, is that it’s either insanely boring or very hostile.  In either case, we never travel light and so some of our market bags are always packed with his things.  Some are also always in the wash.  So we have three hooks in our kitchen dedicated to aprons and market bags.

It took me a long time to get into a good habit of always having a cloth bag with me, and even now I forget once in a while, but the real trick for me turned out to be having those bags near my kitchen door, which also serves as our front door.  So if you have trouble remembering to bring bags with you, try this out.  Also be sure you have an abundance of them.  If you only have one or two you will never have them handy.

The bag I made (in the picture above) is a simple tote with no pockets.  It’s lined with muslin and has sturdy woven cotton handles that are long enough so that you can carry the bag on your shoulder.  This bag is currently in my Etsy shop and when I’m done with this post I am heading to my sewing machine to make several more in a couple of other patterns so if you would like to buy one please visit the Etsy shop.  If you want to make one of your own I have decided that this is one of those sewing projects that is ideal for beginners so I’m going to do a tutorial on how to draft this bag to your own sizes needs and how to make it.  But if you are already familiar with my timing you will understand that it may be a while before I pull it all together to present to you.

In a little garden news I want to share the surprise I found underneath my bean tee-pee: 4lbs of carrots!  I will probably do a separate post to talk about underplanting in the garden, but today is just a little post to share what’s been going on around here.  The carrots were completely neglected and thrived- they are so sweet I’ve actually been snacking on them raw.  I don’t often like snacking on carrots raw and plain but these are so sweet I am really enjoying them!  I absolutely love garden surprises whether they are volunteers shouting up at me from the ground (often the legacy of previous gardeners) or if I planted something and thought it died only to find it thriving later on.

It’s time I got to my sewing room so until next time- happy homesteading!

Come visit the Stitch and Boots Etsy Shop!

Here on Stitch and Boots my main objective is to help people learn as many of the skills an urban homesteader might need to know that are within my realm of expertise to share.  I want to be a conduit to DIY success in cooking, sewing, fixing, cleaning, and growing.  Sometimes with the help of much-loved and respected friends, often on my own.

In my former life I have been many things including: fast food cashier, electronics salesperson, shipping manager for Weston Wear in San Francisco, custom costume designer, needlewoman, assistant designer at Mulberry Neckwear, color swatcher at Mulberry Neckwear, coffee jerk (several times), technical writer, unpaid novelist, retail store owner, product designer and manufacturer for my own retail store, metal grinder (very briefly wonderfully satisfying), housewife, stay at home mom, and currently I am a headline editor for an online ad network.

I shut down my Etsy shop that followed my retail brick and mortar store because I wanted to be done with sewing for commerce.  I have a good job and not a ton of time.  Having a good job at this time must be counted as one heck of a blessing and I couldn’t be more thankful that I have one.  However, in spite of both my husband and myself being employed, like so many people we know we make very little money together and we are facing the tough prospect of a winter with no extra room in our budget for things like heating our house*.

I have some wonderful back-stock from my retail store that I made myself and I have decided to reopen my Etsy shop to sell what I have and to make some new things for it as well.

I have thought a lot about what my purpose is, what my usefulness to people is, and I believe that the real service I can offer to people is to help them learn to do things for themselves.  Trying to sell people ready-made things isn’t my main goal nor my ultimate gift.  The service of helping to teach others to do for themselves needs to be free.  I need to offer this as a real service.  A thing I do not for commerce but for sheer joy and personal fulfillment.  Money, just to have lots of it, is not an end goal I have, though I admit that like most people I don’t despise the dream of being  comfortable.

Most of the things I am listing in my Etsy shop are things I’d like to do as tutorials  here so that everyone can, if they want to, make them for themselves.  What I would ultimately like to do is to offer tutorials on how to make all these projects for yourself and then offer patterns only for sale at some point.

One pattern I will be working on this coming week is a little pattern for the mushroom applique I designed for the men’s shirt smock project.

I hope that all of you will visit my shop if only to say hello and see what’s going on there.  I know that so many people are in the same situation that I am financially and aren’t in a position to be shopping.   I am going to include links to my Etsy shop in any post where it seems appropriate but I ask you not to feel importuned in the least nor pressured to buy.  If I have something for sale that is exactly what you need or want then I will be delighted to provide it to you, but what I really want is for you all to continue visiting to see what new recipes, projects, and plant profiles are being added to this urban homesteading database.  I want all of you to continue to feel empowered to do things for yourselves.

Here is a link to my newly minted Etsy shop:

Stitch and Boots on Etsy

I have some new recipes to post in the next few days so come back soon!  Thank you all so much for spending time reading Stitch and Boots, this is one of my greatest achievements in progress!

*I’m not kidding.  The interior of our house has been between 53 degrees and 56 degrees all day.  We’ve always been known to keep our house at a fairly crisp cool temperature but this is ten degrees lower than we usually go.

For the past ten years my summers have been punctuated by preserving projects.  Every summer I make jam, pickles, dry tomatoes, dry herbs, make relishes, and put up dilled beans.  This is the first summer in a decade when I have not had the time or the energy to do my usual preserving projects.  It was my plan to do at least a few of my usual projects and photograph them for tutorials to share with all of you here.  I want you to be able to come here and find all of the basic canning projects you might want to do and feel confident that you can do them with really clear instructions.  I was putting off posting much because I didn’t want to post unless I had a tutorial of use or an informative article.

But then I realized something; I realized that many of you out there are in the same boat as I am in myself: you’re working many hours a week to pay your bills and are scrambling to find the time to do the homesteading projects that you love doing.  I have been lucky to have been able to have stayed home and not worked outside the home for most of the past decade.  I am equally lucky that when the time came that I had to get paid work in order to keep our house and our son clothed, I landed an excellent job.  So I’m not complaining about having to work, but trying to figure out how I can work 30 hours a week and still find time to make my own lip balm, can tomatoes, and sew curtains for my old house.

What I have been telling other people for years is that urban homesteading is about doing things for yourself within a modern and urban context.  It isn’t a contest in self sufficiency.  It’s an exercise in learning to make things that are higher in quality than you can buy.  It’s about empowering yourself with the know how most of our grandparents had because there is something deeply satisfying in being capable of taking flour, water, salt, and yeast and producing a loaf of bread that is as good or (often) better than you can purchase in the store.  When the bread shelves in the grocery store are empty you won’t be afraid, you can make your own.  It’s the spirit of doing things for yourself even though it will take longer than it would to pay someone else to do it.  I have begged people not to feel left out if they live in small apartments in a big city because the spirit of urban homesteading can exist and be satisfying  on all scales.  In a small apartment you may not have room to store a year’s worth of tomato sauce and jam but you can do small batches that will still give you a profound enjoyment and satisfaction.  You can still make your own dinner napkins and you can do all kinds of repurposing projects.

What I realized this week is that no one is reminding me of these things.  No one is telling me to stop worrying about the fact that I am quite possibly not going to have the time or energy to can at all this year and instead just make spectacular use of the seasonal produce we have right now.  I might not be able to make tomato sauce to last me all winter (I usually can about 500 pounds of tomatoes) but I sure as hell can make some tomato sauce from scratch right now while the tomatoes are flavorful, local, fresh, and properly ripe.  It’s so easy to forget that the most natural thing any of us can do is to eat seasonally.  Soon enough I won’t be buying any tomatoes at all because their season will end.  So why waste time fretting over what I can’t do and simply enjoy what’s fresh now?   So this post is to remind myself, and anyone else in my position, to not get overwhelmed by what we don’t have time to do and instead make the very best out of what we do have time for.

I believe that if I prepare better this fall and winter around my house and garden I might be able to make more time next summer for the kinds of projects that I look forward to each year.  If I find good ways to fit more homesteading into my schedule I’m sure you’d all like to hear about it so I promise to share details.

In the meantime I will start posting more often.  It won’t be the preserving tutorials but there are smaller projects I have going on around here like saving carrot seeds from the garden, cooking (more recipes for making the best of seasonal produce) and I realized that it isn’t particularly time consuming for me to write plant profiles.  I want to have a ton of those for people to reference so that you can come here and access a comprehensive volume of information on all the vegetables, fruits, and herbs that an urban homesteader might find useful to grow.

So this post is to remind you and me to go easy on ourselves.  If you are working full time and don’t have a ton of time for homesteading activities, don’t let yourself become mired in frustration.  Rejoice in the things you can do with the time you do have.  It’s the spirit of urban homesteading that feeds our spirits and builds our confidence- it isn’t about doing everything.

On this happy note I’m going to go clean my kitchen and then do an experiment with substituting lemon juice for citric acid for curdling milk.  The question has been asked how this substitution might be achieved and I’d like to discover and share the answer to it which I can do today since I have the milk for making ricotta and plan to make a casserole of grilled vegetables in ricotta. 

Happy homesteading!

Headmistress Mrs. Williamson (Stitchy)

 Homemade Ricotta (A tutorial on making your own ricotta)