It's pretty neat to have an adjustable temperature-controlled space. People also use this set-up for home brewing beer and such.

I plug the freezer into the controller and then plug the controller into a regular wall outlet. There is a temperature sensor which is connected to the controller that needs to go in the freezer. The controller allows the freezer to run until the sensor gets to the temperature that you set.

These are the last of the Desiree and German Butterball potatoes that I harvested in fall 2024. I keep them in a chest freezer that is held around 36 F by an Inkbird temperature controller. They store in really good condition all winter long using this method.

I spent several years being disappointed to find my homegrown potatoes getting wrinkled and sprouting like crazy before I could eat them. This is the solution that works for me.

#homesteading #storagecrops #gardening #grownostr

Datil peppers look beautiful! But they are too hot for me.

Started several varieties of peppers and tomatoes at home for my summer garden. My top favorite tomatoes are Carbon, Apricot Zebra and the old faithful Brandywine.

Pepper varieties that I like include Sweet Bell and Banana peppers (for pickling). Mildly spicy peppers are Black Hungarian and Anaheim. I don't grow the super-hot peppers since I've been burned one too many times 😄

What are your favorite tomatoes and peppers?

#gardening #gardenstr #homesteading #seedstarting

Happy to announce that Little Star is due in October! I have finally made it past the first trimester symptoms of extreme fatigue and mild nausea. Looking forward to this upcoming spring and summer of gardening before we meet our first baby in the fall.

I don't see the logic there. The Catholic Church is global. The Pope is the head of the Church. Why should he be an Italian?

I wish my chickens would eat comfrey, but they have consistently refused to do so. They greatly prefer Swiss chard so that's what I grow for them.

If you have a health food grocery store near you then I'd go there to look for sweet potatoes. I've found many different varieties that way. The only challenge is that you won't know the growing information (days to maturity).

Turkey soup with onions, carrots, garlic, thyme and rosemary from my garden. I bought the celery.

The turkey was already in the freezer from Thanksgiving.

Gardening can be a lot of work but it's all worth it when you sit down to a delicious meal in the middle of wintertime made with homegrown vegetables.

#cookstr #homesteading #soup

This is the gum that I use. The company also makes mints but I haven't tried those.

Alby Hub forced one of my channels to close. The photo below is how I found out about it. I did not initiate the action.

It appears that it can happen if the channel isn't used very often. That's the only explanation I can find.

We use a prong collar for walks with our dog too. She gets very excited for walks and runs right over to get her collar put on. It doesn't seem to hurt her at all, as you mentioned.

Average last frost date is May 15th.

Most of these seedlings will be planted inside of a hoop house (unheated). It really helps us to get a jump start on the growing season.

The onions will go in the ground outside, but I have frost covers if we are going to get a hard freeze. We have had success planting onions around mid-April here.

Seedlings for zone 5b are growing indoors. I have started:

Onions

Kale

Lettuce

Parsley

Lavender

Beets

Swiss chard

Dahlia (flowers)

Snapdragon (flowers)

Stock (flowers)

Looking forward to spring!

#gardenstr #gardening #seedstarting #grownostr #homesteading

Beets are a good cold weather crop for the spring, but I can't say that I've ever enjoyed their flavor. Pickled beets are okay because they mostly taste like vinegar.

This year, I'm growing golden beets for the first time. Maybe their flavor will be better than the average red beet.

#grownostr #beets #gardening #homesteading #seedstarting #gardenstr

I bought this one in April 2024. It is easily worth 2x the price.

I understand that would be best for preserving genetic diversity, but it probably doesn't matter in the short term.

I could save the seed from a few plants for a couple of generations and then get new seed from the professionals.

Thanks! I did try saving onion seeds one year, but I don't remember what variety they were. The resulting performance of the seeds was very underwhelming so I didn't continue in that direction. I'll look into growing some Newburg onions next year and perhaps try saving seeds again.

It looks like you're making compost inside of a hoop house. Does your weather get below freezing overnight right now? That could be slowing down the microbial activity.

Besides that possibility, the best way to heat up a compost pile in my experience is to turn it over and add some nitrogen to each layer as you turn it. Green plant waste, urine or animal manure is great.

If you don't have anything like that then you can use a bit of fertilizer or soaked alfalfa pellets (sold in feed stores for animals). This adds to the expense, but it does work really well.

What is your end goal? Do you want a new avenue to increase your own freedom and self-reliance? Or are you trying to get other people interested in Bitcoin?