Oak Hill Farm

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing! Ted here! I’ll be leading a Beginner Gardening workshop at the Memphis Mushroom Festivalon Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023 from 10:30 – 12:30. The web is full of resources for gardeners–so much so that it can be overwhelming. Here are a few that I find really useful: What to plant (based on your area): Baker Creek Seed Co. (mostly veggies) Oak Hill Community Nursery(Shameless self-promotion) Wild Ones Mid-South Chapter(Native plant resources) For veggies, see the Urban Farmer planting calendars—look for Memphis in Zone 8. For perennials, including trees, the best time to plant is usuallyearly Fallorearly Spring. The worst time is usually mid-summer. Plant garlic in the fall—after Labor Day but before Halloween. Planning for Square Foot Gardening Propagating plants from cuttings Since we’ve both been working off the farm, it’s been awhile since we’ve posted here. We’ve taken a breather from hog shares and CSAs to get a feel for where we really want to go with the place, to work on our infrastructure and hardscaping, and to dig into the work of making this home a place we’re proud to pass on to our daughter when the time comes. With help from the whole extended family, the house has gotten a major foundation repair, significant carpentry on the outer walls, a new paint job and columns, and a complete kitchen remodel. It’s been a blessed time in so many ways. We’ve added fruit trees to the orchard, a circular herb garden in the side yard, and a new garden patch by donkey’s lot. Our daughter is growing up and taking off. At eleven, she’s developed an interest in homesteading all on her own. She’s spent the whole summer raising chicks for a 4-H project and is now selling eggs herself. She does the majority of the work on her own… feeding, cleaning, providing fresh hay for the next boxes, collecting eggs, washing and boxing. Now, she’s ready to expand to rabbits! Updates to follow, y’all. Pray for her parents! We’ve decided to spend the next year exploring what homesteading means and how we can move in that direction. It’s a big word with lots to unpack, and like anything in this world it means different things to different people. For us, starting small, it means making more and wasting less, growing or raising what you can, and being careful with our energy use and choices. Being good stewards of the earth. We’re starting small – for her birthday I gave her a subscription to Annie’s Hook & Needle Kit Club. This month we’re crocheting dish cloths for the kitchen. She’s already quite a steady knitter – simple knit-only fabric for now, but her stitches are getting more and more even and regular. Maybe most important, she’s already learning to pick up dropped stitches and both see and fix mistakes – she’s a natural. We’ll probably be making these for holiday gifts this year, along with our canned goods and most likely some cookies and candy. For now, we’re exploring what other actions we want to take this winter: shoring up fences and building hutches, preparing for springtime livestock. Splitting and carrying firewood, making candles, cutting down on our uses of central heat and electric light. Making this winter’s presents instead of buying. We’ll blog here as we go along – it’s going to be a wild ride! …aaaaand, we have an ice cream churn. This is probably a bad development overall, since it takes less than an hour to make a batch of ice cream and the result is better than what we can find in the store (and gluten free). I’ll be honest here: I like Ice Cream waaaay too much, especially on a hot day but even in winter.  Since we will be experimenting with recipes, I’ll be logging them here. Feel free to use, adapt, and comment. 4 cups heavy whipping cream2 cups 2% milk1 cup sugar1 tbsp vanilla1 cup mini bittersweet chocolate chips Mix the first four ingredients in the ice cream maker, set up (with salted ice around the outside) and let it run