Lilac Hill Homestead

Located at 1527 Frisbee Hill Road in Castleton. Please use http://mapquest.com for directions.

Miscellaneous

Scroll all the way down to see our latest entries. Newest entries are at the END of the page.

A variety of topics including making your own cleaning products, general maintenance, wood and more.      

This is our home in the winter.     This is our home in the early spring.
                                                   You can see the beginnings of our
                                                   container garden on the front steps.

Our home in mid May. The lilacs           This is the start of our wood
our home was named for are starting     for winter heating. We need
to bloom toward the right side.             to add a few more cord.

11/10/06: Year end update: We did some basic home maintenance including pruning trees. Marty also finished the wood shed so that will be easier for us to deal with this wnter.

For 2007, the lilac trees need some serious attention. I want to prune them and then weed & mulch around them.  We need to put insulation around the basement walls to help keep out the cold air.

04/28/07:  Spring has definitely arrived here and I have a huge list of things to be done.  Most will center around the gardens as I prepare them to start growing so make sure to check out the gardening & herb pages.

05/04/07:  I've been keeping very busy trying to get the gardens ready.  I've been mulching the herb gardens, have planted our early spring crops and have been transplanting seedlings into peat pots.

06/22/07:  Last night close to midnight we were awakened by a crash & sparks.  We woke up to figure out what happened & saw that the huge old maple tree at the corner of our property had split and part had come down.  We called the electric company and at midnight they were out there with chainsaws righting the telephone pole, fixing the transformer & reconnecting wires.  The tree landed less than a foot away from the house and smack dab in the middle of my garden :(.  It took down the fence that I just barely finished putting up around the garden.  I'm hoping the damage isn't too bad since some of our plants are still fairly small but looking at it now I don't know.  I'll be out there after breakfast hauling away branches.  I need my Dad to come over with his chainsaw since we don't have one.  This thing is huge.  On the plus side at least we have some free wood for winter.

01/14/08: It's been a heck of a winter.  One of the heating pipes to the furnace fell out & we didn't realize it and we had all sorts of fumes in the house before we could figure out what caused it. We fixed the furnace ourselves (or rather Marty did) and then the kitchen sink sprung a leak and we had water all over everywhere.  Again, Marty fixed it after much frustration. Then the alternator went in our car and we had to have that fixed at the garage since that is beyond our handy man abilities. Then the dryer died and again Marty was able to fix it. I'm hoping things will start to look up a bit now that 2008 is here.

02/14/08: Thoughts of spring are ever present but the weather is not cooperating. The ground is covered with ice and snow but I know that in a few more months, green grass will grow.

02/22/08:  I'm trying to patiently wait for spring but it's hard when the ground is still covered with ice and snow and the temperatures hover around 0 degrees.   We bought a small dutch oven to cook on the woodstove with.  It's only three quarts but it's the largest I found.  Last night I made chicken and vegetables on top of the woodstove and it turned out really good. We're heating mostly with wood now. The furnace doesn't come on unless the temps in the kitchen go below 60 degrees which is usually early morning or late evening.   I'm making a list of projects & things we need to take care of once spring gets here.

02/23/08: Trying to reduce our reliance on electricity & propane so I'm using the woodstove to cook dinner tonight. Spaghetti is a fairly simple thing to cook on the woodstove. Note the clothes drying on the rack so we don't use the dryer!

03/09/08:  I'm doing well cooking dinner on the woodstove. I've done it all week and we seem to be having a nice variety of foods. Soup, spaghetti, chili, eggs, steak, etc. I haven't figured out baking yet but I have a recipe that lets you make bread in a dutch oven on the woodstove. I need to get an oven thermometer so I can judge temperature in the DO. I'm still not sure how we'll do things like pizza, muffins, etc. but at least I am making progress. I have bread rising in front of the woodstove but for now it will be baked in the oven.

We have our first wind up alarm clock so one of our electric ones is gone. I am trying to replace as many electric things with their non electric versions when I can. Not possible in all cases but I'm making progress.

03/14/08:  We bought one of the wind up radios & wind up flash lights.  They both work really well. I got them from http://batterysavers.com.  We're trying to reduce our electric usage.  I hope to get a few of the wind up lanterns for our bedrooms as well.

Still making bread here.  The last loaf turned out great. Very light and fluffy.  I want to see if I can find a good recipe for a multi-grain version.

03/16/08:  How I hate winter. I have all these plans and lists of things that I want to get done and I look out the window and all I see is snow covering the ground. I know that spring will be here some day and that in August I will be complaining I want a break, but it just seems to take so long for nice weather to get here.  I am going to try to put up the plastic on the back door in our pantry today.  The door doesn't close properly and I know we are having heat loss out the back door.  It's a totally useless door that no one uses so covering it with plastic is a good idea.  I have an awful cold today so I am lacking in energy but I am going to try.

03/26/08:  Well I am officially unemployed.  I figure this is God's way of telling us to give homesteading a try full time.  The plastic is up on the back door & it seems to be helping some.  The Ecofan has been ordered to help circulate the woodstove heat.  We have our first load of wood for next year drying now. Signs have been made up for our jellies, eggs, typing, etc. to try to give this a go & I'm starting a barter network in our area too.

03/30/08:  We have our Ecofan set up on the woodstove to help with hot air circulation. Wow what a difference it makes on the heat getting into the kitchen.  I am really impressed.  It works on top of the woodstove & the blades move because of the hot air.  We got ours here: http://www.wttool.com/landing/caframo_ecofan Totally free way to circulate the air!  Soon I will be ordering one of the Global Sun Ovens.  That way between the sun oven & the woodstove, we hopefully will not need the propane kitchen stove.  Should help keep our propane/electric bills pretty low.

Today I made cornbread on top of the woodstove. I've never baked on the woodstove but it came out fantastic & everyone wanted more!

04/07/08:  Today I decided to experiment with our Global Sun Oven.  I did pork chops in the oven.  Worked well but I needed about 1/2 hour more sun than I got so I had to finish them on the stove.  I'll start them about an hour earlier next time and see how they do.

04/21/08:  We've stacked our fist cord of wood outside in the wood shed.  A lot of work but it is done. We still need to get about 5 more cords! I really want to heat & cook all year with wood next year and I think that should do it.  As a note, we tried chicken & veggies and beef stew in the Global Sun Oven and wow did they come out great!

04/23/08: Yeah! The dandelion greens are up! I am making an herbed casserole with eggs, broccoli, cheese, and dandelion greens for dinner.  I wish it was sunny so I could cook it in the solar oven!

05/01/08:  I've been doing some more wildcrafting.  I went down to the stream about half a mile from here and picked a bag full of wild leeks (ramps).  I'm going to make Wild Leek & Potato Soup tonight for dinner! (as a note, it came out AWESOME!)

05/18/08:  It was rather cold and damp today so I made some sun tea early in the morning when the sun was still out and now I am making a loaf of sweet no knead bread.  I'm going to have that with a seafood casserole for dinner tonight.

06/09/08:  Record breaking temps in the 90s for the past few days. YUCK.  I have pork chops and baked potatoes in the solar oven.  I added a few of our fresh chives. I think soon we'll be getting a bit of lettuce and arugula and possibly some radishes!

06/29/08:  The garden desperately needs sunshine & warm temps.  We've had rain for weeks on end now and it is too muddy to do much in the garden at all. I really need to get more weeding done but I need things to dry up a bit first.  We have been managing to use our rainwater barrels to water the animals so that is a small improvement.  We haven't needed to water the garden with all this rain.  I have the materials to trying making cheese.  We've started to buy our milk from an organic dairy up the street so our milk is now raw & organic!!  We're still hoping to add in solar hot water this summer. We have a tentative date of 7/9.

07/03/08:  Yesterday, I made panir which is an Indian cheese that is sort of like cottage cheese or ricotta. It came out really well & worked in my recipe just as well as ricotta does!  It was very easy to make and only took about 45 minutes total.  I used the raw organic local milk we've been getting & saved the whey. Not sure what I'm going to do with the whey yet but I'm searching! not the best picture but you can sort of see the panir sitting on the cheesecloth.