The Helmstead

07/25/2024

Fresh from the garden chimichurri! Basil, mint, and Peppi red pepper. ("Additional" ingredients from the market.)

07/07/2024

Nice to come home after a long vacation to the sauerkraut and kimchi ready to eat!🥬🥕🌶️

06/13/2024

More harvest. Just in time to plant the sweet potatoes 😅 🥬🥦

06/10/2024

Kimchi round 1. 2 more to go...

06/02/2024

Getting a late start planting tomatoes and peppers. 2 of 3 cabbage are coming along nicely. The dumb worms may have stunted the 3rd 👎

Tomatoes:
Roma
Speckled Roman
Orange Banana

Peppers:
Peppi Red
Habanero
Hungarian Hot Banana

06/01/2024

The Napa cabbage really showed out this year. Thanks to Mother Nature for all the moisture this spring. I didn't have to supply any supplemental water! Up next the green cabbage and broccoli need to hurry up to make room for sweet potatoes!

05/19/2024

Finally had a day with no rain and no other responsibilities to finish up the garden area hardscaping. The cabbage is coming along nicely despite the cabbage worms' strong attempt to eat it all

05/04/2024

Added a 2nd raised bed and used the extra soil for the beginning of a path around the beds. How to figure out what's eating my cabbage so I can gently eradicate those little fu***rs 

01/13/2024

Trying out a new deodorant recipe for the applicators I recently purchased (https://kiima.co/en-us/products/kiima-refillable-deodorant-applicator). Tip: When someone says you can substitute zinc oxide, DO NOT DO IT. I repeat. DO NOT USE ZINC OXIDE in your deodorant recipe. This was a fail 😅🤣

12/08/2023

1 hour of peeling garlic later and it's time to tuck these jars away for about 6 months. ⏰ 🍯 🐝 🧄

08/31/2023

Nearly a gallon of pasta sauce with tomatoes and basil from the garden! 🍅 🍝 😋

08/30/2023

Starting the pepper ferment. Jalapeño, cherry, and habanero this time. Shooting for 6 months.

08/19/2023

Leave for a few days to go to the Bahamas and a tomato and pepper explosion happened!

08/06/2023

Picked some tomatoes and peppers today. Lots more to go!

06/19/2023

Checked out the pollinator garden last evening and saw dozens of these hummingbird hawk-moths enjoying the milkw**d! 🦋🌸

05/21/2023

Upgraded the garden bed with a drip system this year. Using Orbit B-hyve timers for the automagic "smart" watering. Also, my shed door was left open for a few days... some feral honey bees found the hive I have stored in there and have made it home. I'll be moving it out of my shed some evening after they have gone to bed. 🐝 🌱 ✌️ 💚

03/14/2023

First time planting garlic. I think it's starting to pop out! If everything goes well, I'll be harvesting on the summer solstice 🤞

01/15/2023

Hot Sauce bottling day. Jalapeño & Hinkelhatz peppers from the garden with a little local honey. Fermented 3 months. I ran out of labels. 🔥🌶️🔥

10/21/2022

Packed in the brine and ready to ferment for a few months. Eventually, hot sauce! 🌶 🌶 😋

10/15/2022

That feeling when you ignore the garden for a month (or more) and then you go out to assess cleaning it up for the year and whoa what a nice final harvest!! 🍅 🌶️

08/13/2022

Fresh picked from the garden this morning. Bronze Torch tomatoes and basil with a little fresh mozzarella 😋

07/17/2022

A small first harvest. Biggie Chile pepper, Emerald Fire jalapeño, 10 Fingers of Napoli tomato, and Bronze Torch tomato. Looks like I’ll be starting a fermented salsa today!

07/16/2022

🤩

07/08/2022

Fermented hot sauce. Over 1 year in the making! 😋 🌶
This is a combination of Filios Blue, Buena Mulata, and Jigsaw peppers!

07/05/2022

🤔

07/04/2022

Nice little first pepper harvest today. Light green are Biggie Chile Pepper and dark green are Emerald Fire Jalapeño Pepper.

07/04/2022

“There’s a huge movement away from fertilization and herbicides and a big movement towards getting rid of the toxicity of our own landscapes”

Clover is a great option too!

Patchwork grass is pretty

06/22/2022

What do you call the leader of all the butterfly kingdoms?

A monarch!

Something like that. Did you know more than 75 percent of the Earth's flowering plants depend on bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and other pollinators?

Learn more about pollinators, why they are important, and how we can help them. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/pollinators

Image: A Monarch Butterfly rests on a large cluster of Asters at Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.

06/17/2022

05/08/2022

Local homeowners have taken up the cause of No Mow May, which encourages people to temporarily pause their lawn-mowing in order to support the bees, butterflies and moths vital to pollination. In early spring, w**ds are some of their prime food sources.