SWEET BRIAR COTTAGE JOURNAL: A TOUR OF OUR URBAN HOMESTEAD

Hello dear friends!   Hope you had a lovely weekend!  The last few days have been beautiful and it looks like today is going to be another perfect spring day.  I'm overjoyed because it means that we can take down the plant light system and reclaim our dining room.  Which means, today I will be cleaning and rearranging.  But before I start on that, I'd like to take you on a small tour of our urban homestead, or farmette, as I like to call it, so many people have asked about it in the past.

We start at the front door.  As you can see leaves are just beginning to sprout on the bushes here, everything is so late because of the brutal winter we had.  Trying to get anything to grow here is a challenge because this side of the house receives the full brunt of the wind directly off of the lake.  This is just a humble little house, less than 1000 square feet.

The south facing side is in another climate altogether.  Protected from the wind, the flowers bloom several weeks ahead of other areas in our yard.  Unfortunately, there isn't much yard on this side, or my vegetable garden would be planted here.

Through the arbor to the back yard.  This arbor is planted with New Dawn roses.  Unfortunately between this year's winter and last year's even harsher one,  the roses have died back to almost the ground and need to be pruned back.  I'm through with roses!  Even the hearty rugosa roses are struggling after the last two winters.  You have to be tough to survive in the north, and that applies to people as well as plants!

Here is an overview of the garden plots.  We have an herb garden, a strawberry plot, a blueberry plot (that's the ugly fencing to the left. The deer love tender blueberry shoots!), a fenced in garden to foil the groundhogs, another plot that isn't fenced, an asparagus patch, grapes and blackberries growing along the fence, and a potato/corn plot. Oh!  and a small orchard with apple, apricot, pear and peach trees.  Our beehive is operable, but the village doesn't allow bees, so for now, it is just a garden accent.

Here's the garden from another angle.  As you can see, the tomatoes are growing out of their cold frame and the onions  and garlic are coming up.  That's my favorite pie apple, Rhode Island Greening, in the foreground.  Along with a meddlar and a Smokehouse  (good keepers) apple tree, these trees have a place of honor in our garden.  The others grow here:

In the orchard!  Altogether, we have about fifteen fruit trees and a hazelnut bush.  When we bought this property eight years ago, there was nothing here, just an vacant lot and a ratty old house (it had been on the market for years).  By working slowly but steadily, we have changed this property into a productive piece of land.  And my husband commuted  here every other weekend for most of those years, so if we can do it, so can you!

A Nice Spring Meal

Strawberries have been inexpensive and plentiful this spring, so we had one of our favorite springtime meals.  Balsamic Strawberry pizza.  I know it sounds strange, but it is really good! (And it uses up some of that jam that you preserved, too!)

Balsamic Strawberry Pizza

1/2 C. strawberry jam
1/4 C. balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1 prepared pizza dough
a few rashers of bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 med. red onion (or any sweet onion)
1 C. cooked chicken breast (diced)
1 C. strawberries, sliced
1 -1 1/2 C. mozzarella cheese

Spread your dough out onto a pizza pan.
Combine the jam, vinegar, and brown sugar in a saucepan and cook until thickened.  Spread on the dough.
Top with half of the cheese, then the bacon, chicken, and onions.  Sprinkle with remaining cheese  and top with the strawberries.  Bake at 425 degrees for about 10 minutes or until the bottom of the pizza crust starts to brown.

Makes a wonderful meal if you serve it with a nice spinach salad or go totally springtime and forage some dandelions and make a salad from them.

 We always keep some fried crumbled bacon and prepared chicken breast in the freezer.  It's a quick and easy way to prepare a meal when you are in a hurry.  Just take out and heat in the microwave or toaster oven (we don't own a microwave), add it to a salad to make it a main dish salad,  or use them in casseroles or to top a potato.

Don't Buy It, Make It

Pizza Dough

1 C. semolina flour
2 C. flour
1 pkt. dry yeast
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 C. olive oil
3/4 C. warm water (approximately)

Proof the yeast with 1/4 warm water and the sugar.
In  a large bowl combine the semolina flour, 1/4 C. water, 1/4 C. olive oil and the salt.   Add the yeast mixture and 1 C. flour. Stir. Add the remaining flour and add enough water to make a soft dough.  Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes until it starts to fight back (anyone who has made bread knows what I'm talking about).  Cover and let rise until dough is doubled in size.  Punch down and  spread dough into pizza pan.  (makes 2 pizzas) Semolina is the secret to a good crust.

 Projects

Besides gardening, we painted our garden chairs with a mixture of paints that we had in the basement. 

Use it up and make do!  Love those old-timey chairs.  My grandparents had some on the farm, and I remember many a warm summer afternoon  sitting in them under an ancient willow tree.  A few years back, we drove past the old farmstead and the willow was gone.  Everything was gone, except an old chicken coop that my grandfather had built out of stone found on the property and some Model-T car windows that my great uncle had left there during the depression.  Now there's a big grand house on the land and it isn't a farm any longer.  Such a shame,  it was a wonderful farm!

I realized that we are almost half way through the year (can you believe it?), and I haven't finished any of my Christmas knitting projects yet this year!   So I locked myself in my room and didn't come out until I finished this sweater:

Ragg wool doesn't photograph very well.  You'll just have to take my word for it when I say it's adorable. You can't even see the two little pockets that are just the right size  for little toys.  The pattern is from one of those vintage knitting pamphlets and the buttons were salvaged from a blazer that I used for my woolen quilt.  It's a sweater for grandson, Ezekiel. Only took two skeins of wool. If anyone wants the pattern, just let me know, and I'll e-mail it to you.  Haven't figured out to attach the instructions to this post.

Baking

I know, I know, you are getting tired of my rhubarb recipes, but we eat what is in the garden here, so that is what I have.  So here is one last and my favorite recipe for rhubarb.  You can use other fruits, if you wish and I think peaches would be wonderful.

Rhubarb Flip

5 C. diced rhubarb
1 1/2 C. sugar
1/4 C. cornstarch
5 tbsp. water
2-4 drops red food coloring (optional)
1 pkg. yellow cake mix
1/2 C. coconut
1/2 C. nuts, chopped
1/2 C (1 stick) butter, melted

Place rhubarb in a greased  13X 9" pan.
In a small saucepan combine the cornstarch, sugar and water.  Bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook and stir until thickened.  Stir in food coloring.  Pour over rhubarb.
Sprinkle cake mix over the rhubarb. Top with the coconut and nuts.  Drizzle the melted butter over top.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until the top is lightly browned.

I added strawberries left over from the pizza to mine.  And don't forget the whipped cream!

Also eating lots of this:

Harvested six pounds today!  Yes, you can get sick of asparagus! But we are thankful for it, all the same.  Sure beats starving!  I will be glad, though, when the lettuce gets big enough to pick

Update

.We received our electricity bill and it was $20 less (usually $60) since we began turning off all the cable boxes, computers, dvd players, etc. at night.  So we will definitely continue to do that! Just plug them into a surge protector with a on/off switch, then you only need to flip one switch to cut the electricity for all.  We've noticed how little we use the TV, because some days we forget to turn it back on.



Thrifty Things We Did This Week

Attended an estate sale and bought 3 dozen canning jars for $4.
Cut Jamie's hair.
Painted the lawn chairs with a mixture of paint we had on hand.
Finished knitting a sweater for a Christmas present.
Harvested and ate rhubarb and asparagus
Transplanted herbs from the garden.
Started some free Chinese cabbage seeds.
Hung the laundry outside.
Started cross stitching a baby gift from materials I had on hand.
My husband got his cholesterol  checked for free at a medical fair.
Sent away for the parts to repair our car's gas latch.
Since the weather has been nice, we've used a lot more leg power and a lot less gas.


By the way, I got the idea to list my thrifty things list from Brandy at The Prudent Homemaker .  She has a beautiful and inspiring blog.  If you haven't already, you should check it out.