This Week's Pretty Uneventful Trailer Park Homestead Update

Of course, uneventful is a relative term. The new trailer a couple doors down is almost all the way in so we will possibly be having new neighbors in a matter of weeks (days?), the mushroom kit produced mushrooms, and an "oops" by the kids may produce a lot more broccoli than I'd planned, but I'm still longing for the later days of summer when I have harvesting and/or canning to do nearly daily (which reminds me, I probably should can some venison soon....).  Anyhoo, here's what's going on in pictures:

I think the new neighbor's house won't even interfere with my garden's sunlight.  Yay!

Defintely should think about getting that spinach out of there and eating it or freezing it!  Either way, it is getting pretty big!

Strawberry flowers in mid-April?  Really?  The lilac blooms are starting as well.  It certainly has been a weird spring!

Only about three of the original broccoli plants I started in the back box as still there, but I started more last week in some of the spots and then this week I found this....

Apparently, when I gave my son and his friend a little garden area and some seeds to play with, they had a little "oops" and spilled broccoli (?) seeds in the former potato bin (which is currently just a soil holder).  They neglected to mention it to me when it happened, so I can only make an educated guess about which seed packet spilled.  Regardless, it is something we'll eat, so I figure I should try to find someplace to stick these were they can grow rather than killing them off and letting them go to waste!

Speaking of seedlings, I haven't managed to kill off my tomatoes, peppers, and ground cherries I have started inside yet.  There have been a number of times that they've gotten pretty droopy from lack of watering though, so I'm hoping frosty nights are almost over (no more than a month, max, maybe considerably less with the weird weather we've been having).

And here is one of the reasons I'm not too worried about my current over abundance of seedlings.  I scored a bunch of cast off wood that used to be part of a chicken coop from Freecycle yesterday.  My husband thinks it was treated so is hesitant about using it for garden boxes, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't (you wouldn't use treated wood to build a chicken coop many, many years ago, would you?), so we are trying to figure out for sure.  Even if it is treated, and therefore unsuitable for planting edible plants in, I can still use it as a facade to conceal "unacceptable" gardening containers (according to trailer park management) like buckets.

And, finally, here are three of the world's cutest kids (I might be biased, but I doubt it) with the first mushrooms from our mushroom kit (ordering information to get your own awesome mushroom kit is on the sidebar----->)!

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Another Day at the TPH--a Trailer Park Homestead update

There is absolutely nothing exciting going on here.  Well, the new trailer going in a couple lots down might be exciting, but until we see what sort of people move in, we won't know for sure.  Here's what I do know about what's growing on this week at the Trailer Park Homestead:

I probably could harvest those carrots and the spinach in the middle of this box anytime, but I think, other than harvesting a little spinach leaves here and there as needed, I'm going to leave them until next month, when I need the spots for something else.

My front "yard"

Onions and broccoli hanging out with my latest garden ornament (bought almost entirely with those "$$ off your next purchase" coupons!)

A number of my broccoli plants seem to have gotten eaten, but I still have plenty of time to replant.

Pretty soon, these peas will be big enough to start twining around the rails on our front steps.

My seedlings are excitedly waiting to go outside next month.  I currently have four varieties of peppers (jalapeno, cayenne, grand bell pepper, and California wonder bell peppers) and three varieties of tomatoes (beefsteak, brandywine, and silvery fir Russian).  I used to have a couple other varieties of tomatoes, but I only had one each and they died.  I might still end up with more though, since I still have seeds I haven't given up hope that they will germinate.  Ground cherries will soon be joining this collection of indoor starts as well.

Less than a week after starting my mushrooms in my kitchen, I already have very encouraging lumps!

I'm starting to wonder if my zombie pineapple is going to make it.  It is still looking pretty sad!  My zombie celery never recovered from its visit to the outside and was pronounced dead earlier this week.  I'll have to pick up another bunch of celery and another pineapple one of these days to try again.  In other zombie news, my avocado pit has split open, so I think it is trying to do something.

Making a Coupon Binder

For a couple months now, I've been practicing what I've been calling "extreme-ish couponing."  I told myself I wasn't a "real" extreme couponer because
A) I still have pretty high standards about what I will and won't buy (no artificial colors or MSG in foods, no artificial fragrances or nasty other chemicals in cleaning or hygiene products)
B) I've "only" been saving an average of 30-50% on my shopping orders (this week was 43%) and
C) I didn't have a coupon binder, just a little coupon wallet.

"C" is no longer true.  This past weekend, I broke down and put together a coupon binder.  It was just getting too much of a pain to flip through all ninety billion coupons to find one little coupon that I found I needed when I was in the store, like the pistachio coupon I needed a couple weeks ago that I spent about ten minutes searching for when I found an unadvertised sale.

One of the reasons I put it off so long was I was afraid it would cost a lot.  I've seen coupon binders on sale on various tend to run about $30!  No way was I paying that much for a coupon binder (even though that is about what I save with coupons every week now)!  I knew I had unused binders laying around the house, so I just needed to put the right stuff in it to make it a "coupon binder".  I bought some baseball card holder pages (regular price $5.99 for 35 sheets of nine slots, so space to hold 315 different products; you might want more than one set if you aren't as picky about what products you might buy) and two packs of 8 dividers (regular price $1.27 each).  Then it was time to assemble it.

I used a 2 inch binder, since that seemed to be the smallest thickness I could get away with (since I'll be lugging it to stores every week).  The binder I found has pockets inside so I figured I could use them to hold the coupons I'd be using the current week.  If it didn't, I probably would have added a zippered pouch or a sheet protector to store my stack.  I have some sheet protectors lying around the house (I use them a lot for my various binders), so I stuck one inside the front to hold my grocery list(s) for the week.  Next comes the different sections for my coupons, with a few (or more) baseball card holders per section, depending on how many coupons I'm likely to have for that section.  I divided my binder into produce/meats (lumped together because they are physically right next to each other in my most frequented store and the first section of the store I hit), dairy, canned fruits & veggies, baking supplies, food storage (anything from that horrible middle section of the store that I don't usually go in, but might wander into if the price is low enough to build up my 1 year + emergency food storage), snacks/crackers, breakfast aisle, beverages, frozen, bakery, pharmacy, paper products, batteries (so my husband doesn't have to dig through a bunch of other stuff when he gets the urge to buy batteries), toys, other non-food, and a section for blank pages that haven't been assigned to a section yet.

Then it was just a matter of sticking the coupons in the right section!  Printable coupons are pretty big, so I folded them down (usually just in half) so I can see what the product listed is.  Coupons for identical products all go in the same pouch, soonest to expire on top, regardless of whether they are store coupons or manufacturer coupons, so I don't miss anything.  When I find a sale for that product, I can pull out that whole pouch to figure out which applies and which offers the best deals for the quantities I want.

Diabetic Friendly (no artificial anything) Peach Crisp

I made this as a dessert to share for our Easter dinner and it got rave reviews.  I don't think it hurt that I used peaches I had canned last summer (not in a sugar syrup obviously), fresh from the farmers market.  I'm not sure if store bought canned peaches can be bought without a horrible syrup, so you might want to use frozen peaches or stick to fresh.  One of the comments I got was that the peaches tasted fresh picked!  I guess I got that sealing in the freshness down!  If they were in season, I would have used fresh.

I made a larger batch of this, since it was for a family gathering, but it could be easily halved for a single family (or piggy individual).  Just stick it in a 8x8 baking dish rather than a 9x13.

For the batch I made this weekend, "to taste" on the seasonings meant that I handed the cinnamon to my 2 year old and the nutmeg to my 7 year old and told them both to "just put in a couple shakes", knowing full well that the 7 year old would probably listen and the 2 year old would get excited and just start shaking until I told him to stop!

Diabetic-friendly Peach Crisp

2 quarts canned peaches, drained, or about 7 cups fresh
1 cup quick oats
1/2 cup whole wheat, nut (almond, acorn, etc), or other low-glycemic flour
cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
2/3 cup agave syrup

Preheat oven to 375.  Arrange peaches evenly in the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish and set aside.  In a small mixing bowl, combine oats, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Stir in agave.  Gently spoon mixture over peaches.  Bake for 20 minutes or until golden.  May be served warm or cold.