We're Prepping Our Homestead For The Long Winter

There's a point every year where the homestead starts to feel different. The garden slows down, the days get shorter, and we know what's coming. Winter. Last January we had temps as cold as negative 19 degrees and it's times like those where you're either inside staying warm by the fire or you're outside in the snow doing all the things you wish you got done in the fall. So before the ground freezes, we're trying to get this place ready. Today Brie is going to be making a bunch of elderberry syrup to get our family through cold and flu season. We need to get some very last minute winter crops planted and protected and we also plan to expand our goat paddock before it gets too cold. Thanks for joining us. We spent all summer growing as much food as we could and overall we were really happy with how the season went. Some of our harvests in the garden were smaller than we'd hoped for but others were bigger than we expected. Now that we're at the end of September, the rest of the fall going into winter is all about taking everything we've grown, built and learned and making sure it carries us through the next few months. All right, so today I am making elderberry syrup. I love making this. It makes the house smell so good. It is a chilly rainy day here in Michigan. I make this every year. Last year I sold bottles and bottles and bottles of this. I love having this on hand for colds or flu or any kind of sickness that comes our way. We actually just got over a cold and I didn't have it ready. I didn't have it ready so I'm going to just do it right now so when the next wave comes we have it. I'm going to link the recipe in the description for you guys and also where I get my elderberries and most of my herbs which is Wells of Health on Etsy. This is a tried and true recipe. It's really basic. There's nothing fancy about it but it does the trick every year and it tastes so good. My kids have a really hard time not asking for it like juice but we don't do that because that might do something to your bottles you don't want to happen. So I got everything mixed together except the honey. That goes after. Never put your honey on the boil and I'm just going to let it simmer and reduce to about halfway and then we will put it into jars. My first project today is expanding our goat paddock for winter. Now if you're new to the channel we have two Nigerian Dwarf goats and when we first got them they were eight weeks old. A lot smaller than we thought they were going to be. We weren't sure how they were going to do with our dog. They were getting right through the fencing that we have over here. So in a night we cobbled this fence together with pallets and old lumber that we had. Now that the dog gets along well with them and we know how they're going to do it's time to take this down and give them more space for winter. All right I am hoping to accomplish my next endeavor by the time Cameron comes over here so that he can do his part and then once he's done with this I need to keep him focused on the goat pen because that is a pretty big project for him today. We've already reset our beds like a month or so ago so I am just taking out the rest of these zucchini plants and kind of stirring up the soil so Cameron can plant our winter crops in here. I think this bed itself is dedicated to kale and greens and things like that. So I could technically get a few more zucchinis off of these plants but I am zucchinied out. I have stored so many, so many. They are packing my freezer full so I think I'm ready to call it quits with these guys and get started on the next thing. We got all these beds cleared out and I am over here to start planting. Typically when you plant for a winter harvest it's better to use transplants unless you have enough time for the plants to mature before the first fall frost but you can get around that a little bit by adding some infrastructure. Today we're going to be using hoop tunnels and some insect netting for the time being and that will help us to extend our growing season a little bit and hopefully get some greens going into winter. In this bed right here I am going to be planting kale. I got a big old bag of it right here and then some lettuce and spinach that we just had left over from earlier in the year so we're going to get those used up because I don't really want to plant these same seeds next year. So I just took this off the stove. It is simmered down to about halfway and basically elderberry syrup is super good for anti-inflammatory properties when you're sick. It helps reduce the oxidative stress in the body and helps boost the immune system. This is what we do. I put the honey in after I strain the berries just because I feel like I waste less honey that way. It makes most sense to get the honey from Azure like I usually do but I did not have that on hand so we're just going through all of this Costco honey which tastes very delicious by the way. And it is a lot of honey. It truly is a lot of honey but it is pretty bitter when you don't have the honey and honey in itself has many, many, many benefits to it anyway so we're going to let it slide and you only take like a tablespoon two or three times a day depending on how sick you are or if the sickness is coming on so when you're just having that little honey anyway per serving it's not a big deal. And also you want to add the honey when it's still warm. You don't want it piping hot like boiling while it's on the stove but after it's cooled for a little minute that's when you can put the honey on. Really good. Yeah yummy. Yay! Success. There was a video we posted when we first started doing YouTube like six years ago where I showed how to build hoop tunnels and I was using these very same PVC pipes so they last forever. Super easy thing to do. Alright we got all the seeds planted. We got them watered in. Change of plans. I am actually going to put plastic on the hoop house. The weather is starting to get a lot cooler and I want these to germinate so I want the temperature, the inside of it to kind of have that greenhouse effect to give them a warmer temperature to germinate. Alright so we got our three hoops up here and I have this top support, the spine we'll call it, that I'm going to hook up with just some tiny little zip ties and that should keep it from leaning one way or the other. I got a sneeze. I lost it. Alright we got our bed of greens completely covered up behind me and we'll be able to keep this plastic on there all winter. Any hot days that we have for the remainder of September and October here we can just fold the plastic back and allow some ventilation to get in there so we don't cook our seedlings. We're really hoping for greens throughout the winter, at least through the first part of winter, but we'll see how it goes. Alright we got this all knocked out of here and that is all we are going to get done with this today. I eventually need to take that gate that's behind that pallet right there and I want to reinstall it right here but we're not going to get that done this weekend. They at least have more space than they did. We just got all of our sweet potatoes harvested and the next thing we need to do is get our garden all cleaned out for the winter. We have a bunch of bean plants here that we have to tear out, our tomato plants, all of this stuff here because we're going to end up putting a cover crop down to add some nutrients to the soil over winter and prevent erosion and things like that. So we have to get all of this cleared out so we can get that planted. You got to pull hard, there you go. I picked the very last cherry tomatoes that we're going to get this year so it is sad but also we're ready for the next stage of our life. Last tomato. It's got that full sweetness to it. I'm going to miss that so much. Last week we made a post on our channel of an announcement we were making for this video. Someone guessed that we were going to be from 4 Brothers Farm to 5 Brothers Farm. Wrong, I am not pregnant. The announcement is we reopened our Etsy shop. So all of the things that I make in my episodes, I needed somewhere to put them and to get rid of everything because I don't need 50 bars of soap, it turns out. And so if you are interested in any of the things that I make on this channel or off the channel that I don't record, it will be in the Etsy shop. Things like soaps and salves and tinctures and detergents and all kinds of stuff. I have a little bit on there right now for you to go check out. It's going to kind of change all the time. I'm really excited to have a place to put all of my creative things and I'm also super excited for you guys to be able to try it. So the website is 4brothersfarm.etsy.com and I will put that link in the description of this video as well and happy shopping. For the cover crop that we're using today, I'm using the rest of that pound of kale that I bought to plant in the raised bed over there, or you saw earlier in the video. So we're going to throw that down here and then we also got this mix, which has a mix of clover, looks like there's some radish seeds and peas in there. So a lot of these things are just to help with our nitrogen deficiency and over the winter time they can mend the soil in that way. But also soil really doesn't like to be uncovered. So we're planting this now here in late September and then we're going to terminate it and till it into the ground in April or May of next spring. We were just about to till up this area over here for the cover crop and we actually made the executive decision to not plant there anymore directly in the soil. So we're going to do some garden boxes there next year just because we've never had luck growing anything on that side of the garden. It's too close to all these big trees and I'm pretty sure all of the roots from those just steal nutrients from whatever we're trying to plant. Did you say we're doing garden boxes? Yeah. Okay, I wasn't paying attention. We'll do some garden boxes there next year. I'm so fine. No, this is so fun. I heard you the first time. As a holistic health care... As a naturopath... I'm tinkering on the seat. Pause. As a holistic health practitioner... A lot of pressure. There was a video that we put out... There was a video that we released, no? And it makes you feel more relaxed. So that is... That is what I love doing. They have lots of antimicrobials to help protect the cells. Helps boost the immune system. Immune system. Shouldn't have worn white. Stinky. That's never going to happen again. Can I say that? We're just a bunch of little squirrels. It just feels a lot more... Like I'm more...