(VIDEO) March Homestead Hangout
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Welcome to the March Homestead Hangout! In this monthly series we give a glimpse into our own homesteading activities. March highlights include exciting progress on home improvement projects, signs of spring, and planting the first garden seeds. Plus an important announcement.
Below is a transcription of the video
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Kevin - Hey there neighbor Welcome to wild homestead living. I'm Kevin.
Julie - And I’m Julie. Welcome to our March homestead hangout. This is the time where we give you an update on our own homesteading journey over the last month.
Kevin - From advancements in our home improvement projects to getting a start in the garden and wildlife getting a start on spring on the property, March was a pretty eventful month and we have a lot to share with you. We do including a really important special announcement so be sure to stick with us till the end.
Julie - Let's get started.
Home & Construction
Kevin - In earlier homestead Hangouts, we talked about how some of our ambitions had to be delayed due to the need to re roof and recite our house. The siding project started in November and has gone less than smoothly but is now nearing completion. The original late 80s early 90s aesthetic of the house has been replaced with a closer similar to the farmhouse look we were envisioning only a few minor details and painting the trim remain. But we're mostly happy with the results and we'll be relieved to see the completion of this project.
Julie - We continued with our farmhouse guestroom makeover and the faux beams. Last month we put together the actual boxes but this month we beat up the wood and aged it and made it look as if it might have been in a barn for a 100 years. We applied braces to the ceiling attached the joists and then put the beams on those. We are really pleased with the results.
Grow & Tend
Our worm bin continues to flourish so much so that we had an abundance of worms. We've often heard that worms will regulate their own population to the size of their bin. That has not been the case for us. We have experienced our worm population exploding and getting very crowded in our bin. But that has not been a problem. We put out an announcement to other homesteaders in our valley about our overpopulation of worms and were contacted by another homesteader who had a surplus of eggs, but was looking to start a worm bin. We exchanged some of our bounty to the benefit of all.
March is a very exciting time for vegetable gardeners in the Great Pacific Northwest, otherwise known as gardening zone 8B. This is the time when we can finally start planting some seeds outdoors and start seeds indoors. We are really big fans of using soil blocks to start seeds indoors. But after our issues last year with potential herbicide contamination we've become very cautious and decided to go back to the old school plastic seed containers and even though it's not what we expected, it's okay. Every season is a new opportunity to grow and learn with nature and with us.
We planned our 2022 garden over the cold dark winter months and now it was finally time to put that plan into action. Starting with peas are the first thing that can be planted directly in the ground outside in our area. Peas are not only delicious as garden vegetables, but they can actually help enhance your soil or some plants only consume nutrients from the soil. Peas and other members of the legume family actually add nutrients back in. In particular peas and other members of legume family are really good at fixing gaseous nitrogen that's in the air into the soil in a form plants can use. It often shows up as little nodules on their fruit system. After these peas have lived a good life and produce copious fines and tasty pods. We'll cut them off at the soil line and those roots will decompose and the nutrients in the roots will be available to the next crop that follows.
Last spring we planted bare root strawberries in cloth grow bags. While they're doing really well, in the winter time we moved them into a greenhouse. This was to protect them from the cold winter that we had but also to protect them from the construction workers who are resigning our house. During their first year with us we plucked all of the fruit before it can ripen so they could focus their energy on their roots. We're very much looking forward to fresh strawberries this season.
Outdoors & Wildlife
Despite the arrival of spring most days were surprisingly quiet in the wodded sections of our homestead in March. A few species of birds could be heard singing in the morning, but on many days I've heard nothing but the sound of my own footsteps as I walked our trails looking for signs of our wild neighbors.
I did see other signs of spring as native plants like this Oso berry came into bloom and salmon berry also started leafing out and flowering. These two species provide early nectar and pollen for hummingbirds and will later provide fruit for a variety of other animals.
Red elderberry that began leafing out and in March will provide fruit for wildlife later in the summer. As with the thorny swamp gooseberry plants that are found in and around the seasonal wetland on our property. The Wetland itself has already begun to shrink, but the local frog population is currently using it to welcome the next generation.
We turned branches from trail maintenance performed in march into a large brush pile for wildlife habitat. We use old shipping boxes for our ongoing fight against invasive knotweed. But the packing tape just makes a non biodegradable mess so we remove it before laying the cardboard out to smother the plants.
We continue to monitor wildlife using trail cams in March and we now have two cameras with solar power cells at the back of the property. We've had one at the edge of the woods for a few months now but March was the first month in which we had a camera monitor in detail through our upper woods. It turned out to be our most active cam for the month. On March 9 We had six black tailed deer move past the camera in quick succession they appeared to all be young bucks that had dropped their antlers.
The only other species captured on the new trail cam was this eastern cottontail and coyote but I somehow managed to delete the coyote footage so you have to use your imagination. On the 24th bucks timidly came out of the woods. One of them again paused. Another doe passed a minute later to give a half hearted stop. American robins were also seen at the edge or our drive.
At the end of March a male pileated woodpecker was seen eating and excavating exploratory nest cavities in our large cotton. They are fairly shy birds but this mle hung in there even when our neighbor fired up a loud machine. We are keeping our fingers crossed that will eventually be able to share footage of these amazing birds raising this year.
Food & Drink
In late March, we partook in our annual traditional spring metal gathering. Many people are only familiar with stinging nettle as a plant that has to be avoided at all costs. But if you can get past the plant, unpleasant defense mechanism, there's a lot to like about it. Still, the plants are best harvested with care as their needle like projection can cause serious discomfort if you so much brush up against them.
Over the many years we've been collecting nettles, we've gotten pretty good at avoiding being stung, although we always end up with at least one or two wells for back on the homestead we have a favorite recipe in which we use the harvested nettles. The cooking process effectively removes the sting from it does not remove the many nutrients the metals contain. We always look forward to enjoying this delicious taste of spring.
Wrap Up
Kevin - So there's a glimpse of what we've been up to in the past month as Julie mentioned, though, in the beginning of the video, we do have a big announcement.
Julie - And that announcement that this is going to be the last in our homestead hangout series. We have done 12 months in a row. And over this time we have learned and grown so much along with you and this community we have lots of really exciting ideas and projects in the works. But with both of us also working full time jobs, we don't have enough extra time left over for everything. So we've decided to call this a wrap so that we can devote our time to bring other content that you have been asking us for but it's not good.
If you would like to stay in touch with us, we really encourage you to go over to our website which is wild horses living calm and sign up for our free newsletter or one of our free guides or both. We have one about getting started with vegetable gardening and one about getting started with homesteading whether you live in a city country or somewhere in between. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.
