It’s that time of year again, not quite at the 11th hour – it’s reflections on the year! Stay tuned for our cool plans for 2024 next month.

Trials

• Chicken losses. This year, we lost three of our ladies to various causes. Tikka ran away after being spooked by a neighbor’s dog and never returned (presumably, she was eaten by a predator), Piccata died of natural causes, and Parma was attacked by a fox in the night. Not the best, but we do count it as a win that it took over three years for us to lose even one chicken. And the rest of our ladies are doing fine.
• Cat loss. This one was a really tough one for me, as well as the rest of the family. I won’t go into detail today, as I’ve already done so in a previous post, but it was certainly a trial.
• Strawberries and stray chickens. Without the chicken tractor last winter, our chickens frequently flew out of their run (or were released), and ended up scratching up just about every strawberry plant I’d planted the year before. I’ll be putting a small fence around them this year, because the few plants that did survive produced beautifully.
• Peach tree and freak warm weather. Ugh, a total of about 10 edible peaches in our harvest this year, thanks to that weird warm spell we had in February, followed by a (perfectly normal) hard freeze in March. It also killed every bloom on my blueberry plant, which I forgot for the second year in a row to pull inside before a hard freeze. Sigh.
• Cucumbers. I got a few, but never enough to pickle – they just never really came up, even after three plantings. The weather was weird this year.
• Winter plant bed. With slugs, aphids, fluctuating temperatures, and my general neglect, we’re having yet another winter without hardy veggies. Here’s to next year and better winter planting and harvests!

Triumphs

• Blackberries. Thank goodness blackberries don’t bloom until long after the “last frost” of the season – we got another excellent harvest this year from our two full rows. We hope to expand the bramble into yet another row next year and get even more for canning, market baked goods, and maybe even selling blackberries at market!
• New chicken tractor. Our carpenter friend (who has sadly since moved across the country) helped build us a new, lighter tractor that is much easier to maneuver and repair than the old model. So far, it keep our hens happy, and stays mostly together, especially the attached tarp for sun and rain protection.
• Beans! This is the first year we managed to successfully grow runner and bush beans, and boy howdy, did we get a ton of them in a small patch. They were super fun to pick and find (and Toddler Homesteader had a blast picking and eating them), and I managed to pickle a good portion of them for cold weather eats. Mmmmm.
• Hot peppers, tomatoes, etc. We also got a good number of other crops that kept us eating well throughout the summer and fall – enough paste tomatoes to make sauces, dehydrated tomatoes, and the like, hot peppers for Indian cooking and just slicing and eating, okra for frying and roasting, corn, etc.
• Summer squash and weird hybrids. These were fun. This was the first year that I personally have successfully grown summer squash, and Husband was happy to finally get some again (he’d been growing prolific amounts in his previous home). I don’t know what y’all are eating who say you get too many zucchini, but stop turning it all into sweet bread and just fry it. I never had enough, and we got A LOT. Also, those weird bumpy squashes were just fun to find and play with, even if we simply put them in our fall “cornucopia.”
• Moonflowers. I started them in February, and it paid off – I got a bunch of them to bloom this year, and our extended warm season meant that they stayed around throughout most of October. Yes, they’re a lot of work, but they’re so, so worth it.
• Baking classes. I am super stoked that I got my classes off the ground this year. It always felt like a bit of a pipe dream to run my own “school” of sorts, so it was crazy that I actually took the steps to just do it. Every class has been a blast, I’ve enjoyed meeting new people and giving people confidence in the kitchen, and I can’t wait to do even more classes next year. Come on down and bake with me!
• Toddler (soon to be Preschooler) Homesteader. No matter how trying our toddler can be, she is always under the Triumph category, year after year. She constantly wows me with how smart, funny, and beautiful she is. Whether she’s begging to help open up or close the chicken coop, feed our Little Orange Buddy, or pick blackberries in the middle of winter (haha sorry buddy), I love watching her grow and become more of a kid, of a great human every day, and I just hope I’m living up to what I can see her become.

Cheers, y’all, and Happy New Year!