Sweet Potato Homestead

🍂fall activities🍁

Summer in Maine was practically perfect. Our hottest days came at the end of the season but with a stiff breeze and a weekly trip to the lake, I barely noticed at all~

With the end of September fast approaching, I’m beyond ready to get into cool weather crafts, cooking, baking and warm sunggles from PotatoChip~

garden plans 🌿

While there’s plans to acquire a tractor for our ever-growing to-do list, I’m planning on another container garden for next year, along with some in-ground plantings. Next year I’d like to get more tomatoes and squash going sooner so they’ll have a chance to thrive in our somewhat short New England summers.

As for in-ground plantings, more trees and bushes will probably be involved as I transplant what pops up naturally around the homestead and bring in new ones to get established.

over winter prep

To get started for next year, I’ll be saving what seeds I can from the tomatoes, squash and peppers that came up this summer. That’ll save me some time picking out new varieties and I’ll be a little more confident in them when it comes to dealing with cooler temps.

After getting seeds saved, it’ll be onto drying what I can. Kale and chard will make great dried soup additions, dried hot peppers to help light up a winter chili and any and all herbs will be added to the spice drawer.

Along with preserving, re-awakening my kombucha and sourdough starters is also on my to-do list. I had some success with both fermentations and I’m looking forward to trying more recipes with them. My sourdough is dormant in the fridge, hopefully not going bad. While my kombucha scoby has been untouched for several weeks, it’s been happy to eat any sugar left in its jar and has been growing into a booger-like culture that will probably outlive us all.

baking & cooking projects🍞

Not even the summer heat stops me from baking bread, the fall and winter is the best time of year for it. Adding in aromatic mix ins like rosemary, garlic or thyme make the house smell wonderful and will help us to ignore the cutting winds outside. I’ll be continuing my yeast experiments and plan on getting better at more delicate designs for my sourdough loaves. I’d also like to branch out into different breads like bagels, english muffins and any other carb-based foods I can make from scratch.

Here’s to the colder months ahead, comforted by crockpots of chili, loaves and loaves of bread and bubbly kombucha~

just one of the many pretty loaves I’ve baked~

property wide field guide

Being able to see new plants popping up as spring turned into summer was so rewarding and helped me feel more in touch with the seasons. Using the Seek identifying app on a hourly basis helped expand my knowledge of plants, insects and spiders and motivated me to get started on a field guide for our homestead.

With a week of off and on heavy rains, our forests have been exploding with so many mushroom varieties. While the Seek app isn’t perfect, it’s been helpful as a jumping off point to get to know our native fungi neighbors.

Even with cooler temperatures moving in as September rolls along, the forest is still lush and green and I’ve been finding little treasures in dead stumps, mossy spots and right in the open.

This field guide is going to be a multi-year process with plenty of revisions and updates as I help bring back some native plants and insects to our little patch of heaven.

end of season garden update🌱

Maine has decided it’s had enough of summer and has ushered in plenty a chilly night and stiff breeze as September has ticked by.

Despite the lack of 80 degree afternoons, my baby container garden has been growing along pretty well. My herbs, chards and kales have shown no signs of stopping and have been harvested greedily for making herb blends and to die for vegan lasagna. The single butternut squash plant that survived the spring was only able to give me a tiny baby in return. We roasted it for fun but the taste was not yet developed and bitter. 5 seeds were packed inside so I’ll be saving those for next year.

Taking a chance on a store bought potato gone rouge, I found some starchy treasures hidden beneath large chard leaves and a very sad and dead potato plant.

squeaky clean after a quick bath. not shown were 3-4 quarter sized potatoes that were cut in half and replanted for next season~

Harvesting potatoes is by far my favorite garden chore and I hope we’ll be swimming in them next season.

Against all odds, my hot and sweet peppers are showing off their hardiness. I’d like to dry them and save the seeds for next year as they were relatively cold hardy for hot peppers and seemed to tolerate a couple nights of temps in the mid-40s.

Purple cayenne ripening to red along with some sugar rush peach peppers. Not shown are some cute lilac bell peppers and a traditional green.

To round out the ragtag crew of the container garden was my Amish Paste roma tomatoes. While the plants grew like weeds in a pot that was too small, not many flowers came to be delish sauce tomatoes. I harvested what green ones were left and am crossing my fingers for them ripening well inside. If all goes well, I’ll probably be able to make a small batch of sauce for pizza, lasagna or soup.

Overall, this was a great first year at our homestead. With all the gravel littering our immediate area outside the house, intentional growing was a challenge. The weeds and wildflowers had no issues and were delightful to watch come and go but next year I’d like to expand into the earth proper.