garden Archives - Yankee Homestead

Spring Garden Tour on the New Farm

06/05/2018 By Kathleen Leave a Comment

Wouldn’t it be fun if you could swing by for a spring garden tour on our new farm?Read More

Kathleen Henderson is the Yankee behind the Homestead, where she keeps up with Mr. Native Texan, three busy boys, a large dog, an assortment of chickens and an organic garden on three beautiful acres in Northern Virginia. Yankee Homestead is where she organizes her tips, tricks and resources for a healthy life. Favorite topics include real food recipes, gluten-free living, essential oils and home remedies, all things natural and nontoxic, plus mommy musings and homeschooling resources. Find out more on the About page

Our 2017 Homesteading Year in Review

01/23/2018 By Kathleen 2 Comments

2017 was a big homesteading year for us. Most notably, it was our first year to raise pastured poultry from start to finish. What an adventure!

There were triumphs (chickens) and defeats (broccoli). We learned a lot and worked our tails off, and have spent the winter recuperating and gathering ideas and energy for year 2018 on the homestead.

Kathleen

How to Build a Cold Frame Out of Pallets

04/04/2017 By Kathleen Leave a Comment

Did you know you can build a cold frame out of pallets for next to nothing?

It’s true! If you have a few old windows and an assortment of random hinges on hand, plus access to free pallets, these cold frames will cost you nothing. Don’t have these supplies on hand? No worries, they’re not hard to track down. Read More

Kathleen

How to Harvest Sunflower Seeds for Replanting and Gift-Giving

08/25/2016 By Kathleen Leave a Comment

Did you grow sunflowers this year? Now is the time to harvest sunflower seeds for next year! Collecting seeds from your own sunflowers is super easy. Homegrown sunflower seeds make great gifts, and saving your own seeds will free up a bit of room in your gardening budget for next year.Read More

Kathleen

How to Build a Chicken Run

08/10/2016 By Kathleen 1 Comment

If you’ve kept chickens for any amount of time, I’m sure you know the heartbreak of raising chicks to adulthood only to have them nabbed by a predator just when they’d started laying eggs.

Losing even a few chickens from a small backyard flock is enough to make any homesteader sad, mad and determined to outsmart those wily predators!

In more than four years of raising backyard chickens, we’ve discovered snakes, a possum and a raccoon in our chicken coop. We’ve also had trouble with foxes and hawks.

Our three-acre homestead is situated at the top of a hill with few trees, and hawks are definitely our worst predator.

At least they were.Read More

Kathleen

The Very Best Way to Use Up Lots of Lettuce

06/22/2016 By Kathleen 2 Comments

All spring long, I needed a good way to use up lots of lettuce. We’re talking buckets and buckets full.

It was growing like crazy in our garden! It was way too much lettuce to eat, even if we’d had salad for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I hated to waste it, but you can imagine how salad three times a day would go over with the youngest people at my house.

So I searched the internet for great ways to use up lots of lettuce. I found ideas like “lettuce soup”. It tasted just like you’d imagine. Mr. Native Texan said lettuce soup reminded him of an appetizer at a fancy restaurant.

If you’re a true foodie, you may love it. My family did not.

There were a few other good ideas for salads and stir fries and tossing lettuce into smoothies. We fed lots of lettuce to the chickens and even gave bags away to family, friends and neighbors.

Still, none of this put a dent in our lettuce supply.

So I did a little experimenting, and found a brilliant solution…Read More

Kathleen

Organic Gardening: Want Better Veggies? Try Companion Plants!

05/11/2016 By Kathleen Leave a Comment

Avoiding all chemicals on your veggie crops can be a challenge, but it can be done. We haven’t used chemicals in our garden in years! One of the best tricks for the organic vegetable gardener is companion planting. Read More

Kathleen

Home Canned Tomato Soup

09/15/2015 By Kathleen 44 Comments

This Home Canned Tomato Soup is a great way to add some veggies to your family’s meal plan. And during those long winter months, what could be better–or easier–than popping open a can or two of fresh garden goodness, heating it in a pot with a few other ingredients and serving it to your family for dinner?Read More

Kathleen

Home Canned Salsa with Lime Juice

09/10/2015 By Kathleen 15 Comments

Have I mentioned I’m married to a native Texan? Back in Texas, salsa is practically it’s own food group. And boy howdy, do we go through a lot of the stuff.Read More

Kathleen

Roasted Tomato Sauce for Canning or Freezing

09/08/2015 By Kathleen Leave a Comment

It’s tomato season, y’all! I’m dropping in from a long summer break to share a few of my favorite tomato canning recipes. Stay tuned over the next week or so for a few more recipes, including salsa and tomato soup. Here’s to that last great tomato harvest of the year–may yours be a bumper crop!

Roasted Tomato Sauce is amazingly versatile–add it to Chili or soup, turn it into Tomato Soup, add ground beef and seasonings to make spaghetti sauce, or try it in this delicious Bolognese Ragu Sauce, etc. I’ve even cooked it down, added seasonings, and called it pizza sauce.

Kathleen