Cèilidh Nam Freumhan

Tag: homesteading

  • My Garden Compendium Has Already Changed

    My Garden Compendium Has Already Changed

    The garden compendium was originally meant to be a catch-all. It included medicinal herbs with drawings, uses, and recipes; planting, care, and harvest instructions for all of the herbs and vegetables I planted; a diagram of this year’s layout; a planting calendar; and a journal of what I did, what happened, and how I could fix my mistakes.

    That plan hasn’t changed. The notebook will continue into next year, or however long it takes me to fill 300 sheets.

    What has changed is everything else.

    Originally, I wrote herb recipes on the back of each herb page. It didn’t take long to realize that a tincture is a tincture, my handwriting was getting messier, and my fountain pen was ghosting through onto the drawing on the other side. So the recipes are getting their own section, but only for the preparations I’ve actually made with herbs from my own garden. The herb pages themselves will stay as a high-level overview with drawings and uses.

    Then there are the medicinal herbs.

    I have become fascinated by them and have been researching them like crazy. That rabbit hole is deep enough to fill 300 sheets all by itself, which wasn’t the original purpose of the compendium. I wanted this notebook to be something I could leave behind someday—a record of the garden that my descendants could flip through and (hopefully) ooh and ahhh over.

    So, naturally, I’m making another notebook.

    Medicinal herbs deserve one of their own. The subject is practically endless, and if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that I’m incapable of leaving well enough alone.

    I’ve also started color-coding the page edges. The notebook only came with two ribbon bookmarks, which isn’t nearly enough anymore. By highlighting the edges of each page based on the section—herbs, vegetables, diagrams, journal entries, and so on—I can find what I’m looking for without even opening the book.

    And finally…

    I did the one thing I swore I wasn’t going to do.

    I started an Excel workbook to track planting and care information for vegetables I haven’t even decided if I’m going to grow yet.

    Just in case.

    table with seeds, twine, and scissors for gardening
    Photo by Micheile Henderson on Pexels.com
  • The Garden Doesn’t Care About My Plans

    The Garden Doesn’t Care About My Plans

    No matter how much research I did before planting my garden (and I’m certainly not finished), there were still plenty of surprises. Some things completely failed, while others did far better than I ever imagined.

    I organized my garden into separate beds based on companion planting, water needs, soil type, and a handful of other factors. It definitely created more weeding than I would have liked, but I needed to see what worked and what didn’t.

    In some beds, none of it seemed to matter. I planted starts at the right time, paired them with their companion plants, and they promptly died. I direct sowed whatever I could, and sometimes nothing came up at all. I even moved some of those stubborn plants into bins with fresh potting soil. A few are thriving, while others are either refusing to grow or have become an all-you-can-eat buffet for whatever animal keeps digging them up.

    Then there are the pleasant surprises.

    The borage is so big that I’m honestly not sure what to do with all of it. I’ll keep tossing the flowers into salads, and the rest will probably go to seed. It’s one of the best bee attractors in the garden, though, so it’s earned its place. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s gorgeous.

    The calendula is massive. I’m drying flower heads for a future tincture, chamomile for tea, and I have dill coming out of my ears. The lettuce just keeps producing, and the carrots have done far better than I expected.

    All that being said, the garden has been a fruitful learning experience. (Fruitful. Get it?)

    As the season goes on, I’m no longer fighting the garden. I’m letting it show me what works, what doesn’t, and how I can make next year’s garden even better.

    And as the universe is my witness, I will not let the quince from hell win.

    stock photo of a calendula head
    Photo by Prashant Gangwar on Pexels.com
  • Finally Some Small Bounty

    Finally Some Small Bounty

    After weeks of weeding and sending good thoughts into the universe, I finally have some legitimate progress in my garden.

    My calendula and borage are starting to bloom. It’s a small thing, but it is so nice to see something that isn’t a weed.

    blooming calendula
    Calendula!

    The borage is starting to bloom, too.

    borage blooms
    The borage is starting to bloom!

    Speaking of weeds…

    I took a picture of something growing all over the garden, and Apple told me it was black nightshade. I wasn’t convinced, though, and looked up potato plants instead. Last year, I’m fairly certain I pulled up tiny potatoes when I cleared the beds out.

    volunteer potato plant
    Unwanted potato.

    As it turns out, potatoes are part of the nightshade family, so Apple was mostly correct. I also found some datura, which is a very toxic member of the same family. Even though the flowers are pretty, it is not welcome in my garden, just like the potatoes.

    datura flower
    Deceptively pretty datura.

    My vegetable beds are finally clear of weeds, so at this point I just need weekly maintenance. Right now, I’m working on weeding everything else so nothing can steal nutrients from the things I actually want to eat, and definitely yanking out those darned nightshades.

    Except tomatoes.

    Tomatoes are yummy.

    For the record, potato plants stink for some reason.

  • Middle Age is Realizing You Can Just Learn Weird Things

    Middle Age is Realizing You Can Just Learn Weird Things

    I think a lot of us are taught that life follows a fairly straightforward path: go to college right after high school, find a career, and work forty or more hours a week until retirement. I never really followed that plan, and for a long time I felt like I had somehow done life incorrectly.

    As I have gotten older, though, I have realized that the things I didn’t do made me different in a way that I actually appreciate. I have always been curious, and I finally feel like I have given myself permission to simply learn things because they interest me.

    So these days I find myself learning crafts, bookbinding, languages, gardening, and even some homesteading skills. There is always some new rabbit hole waiting to be explored.

    Not always having steady work has certainly been stressful, but it has also taught me that life is about more than giving decades of yourself to an employer who may never appreciate you the way you deserve. There is value in creating things, learning things, and following your curiosity.

    At this point, if something sounds interesting, I want to try it. Some people may think that is strange, and perhaps it is. But I enjoy it, and I like the idea of keeping my mind active and open to new experiences.

    Maybe I am making up for lost time. Or maybe I am finally becoming the person I was always meant to be.

    Either way, I think Hannah Montana had it right:

    “Life’s what you make it.”

    Photo by Paweu0142 L. on Pexels.com

  • Bring Back a Shrubbery!

    As someone who has become increasingly committed to using what I already have, I’m always looking for creative ways to avoid wasting food.

    Which brings us to three persimmons.

    Two days ago, I had three persimmons that had become far too squishy for me to willingly allow into my mouth. It’s a texture thing, okay?

    After some searching, I found a recipe for something called a shrub—a sweetened vinegar syrup that can be mixed into everything from bourbon cocktails to sparkling water.

    Naturally, I had to try it.

    The process begins by peeling the persimmons and squishing out the insides.

    Shudder.

    The resulting pulp goes into a bowl. The basic ratio is about 1:1 fruit to sugar, so I combined 1 cup of persimmon pulp with 1 cup of sugar. I also added roughly a tablespoon of ginger powder because it sounded like a good idea at the time.

    I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and left it in the refrigerator overnight.

    The next morning—at approximately 6:40 a.m., for reasons I still cannot explain—I strained out the solids and was left with about 2 ounces of syrup.

    solids separated from syrup
    This will be great in yogurt or something later.

    The solids weren’t wasted. I saved them in a separate container with plans to add them to yogurt later.

    Next came the vinegar.

    I chose apple cider vinegar because I thought it would pair nicely with the sweetness of the persimmons. Most shrub recipes call for a 1:1 ratio of syrup to vinegar, but since this was my first attempt, I approached it cautiously.

    After all, you can always add more vinegar.

    You cannot un-vinegar something.

    I started at about 50% of the recommended amount and gradually worked my way up to around 75%, tasting as I went.

    Once I was happy with the balance, I transferred everything to a mason jar and gave it a good shake.

    Then I tasted it.

    Wow.

    This is going to be good.

    4 ounces of shrub in a jar
    At least this wasn’t days of work to only get 4 ounces.

    At the time of writing, I haven’t actually used it in a drink yet. I want to give the flavors another day or two to mingle before I start experimenting.

    Besides, I only ended up with about 4 ounces of shrub.

    If it’s as good as I think it’s going to be, I need to exercise at least a little self-control.

  • More Garden Mishaps

    I had to leave town for a couple of days, and when I got home, I was greeted by an overgrown nightmare. Okay, maybe “nightmare” is too strong, but the green carpet across the whole area made it incredibly difficult to find the things I actually planted.

    Over the past three days, I’ve spent eight or nine hours trying to catch up. I’m finally starting to see a modicum of progress, but overall, it’s been pretty discouraging.

    I lost a whole row of herbs because they were planted too close to a quince bush that I cannot get rid of no matter how hard I try. I lost several more herbs for unknown reasons, too. One of them grew perfectly fine last year, but not this year.

    I also found an insect that immediately triggered the “OMG what the heck is that???” response.

    The bunching onions and chives never sprouted, either.

    After about 90 minutes of work, I finally started to feel like I could at least see the garden again.

    Two hours later, I was still pulling weeds and trying to identify what was actually growing versus what had invited itself into the beds.

    At around the five-hour mark, things finally started looking a little more manageable, and I could focus less on panic-weeding and more on checking on the vegetables that were actually doing well.

    Okay, now for the better news: my tomato plants are doing well. I have a lot of carrots, lettuce, arugula, and an absurd amount of dill and cilantro.

    After all of that work, I finally harvested my very first thing of the season: one single radish. 😀

    I know that in a week or two I’ll probably feel much better about all of this, but right now I mostly feel discouraged and overwhelmed. I guess the “silver lining” is that I also just lost my job, so now I get to spend a lot more time out there…

  • Too Many Interests, Not Enough Lifetimes

    Too Many Interests, Not Enough Lifetimes

    woman writing in a book while holding knitting needles with a water canner next to her.
    This is not an actual photo of me – credit to ChatGPT for the image generation.

    I have spent years feeling inadequate because there is so much I want to learn that I eventually become overwhelmed and end up touching none of it.

    At the moment, I am studying four languages. I am still in the phase where my brain immediately reverts to French because it was the first language I learned outside of English.

    There are currently four commonplace books in my bag. One of them is completely blank, just in case.

    I carry a pen case full of stationery tools I “might need,” along with a Kindle Scribe.

    I want to write a dissertation on the Scottish Highlands around the time of Culloden. Or perhaps another period of Highland history. I still cannot decide.

    I want to learn to knit so I can make beautiful sweaters and shawls.

    I am trying to grow my own food and learn how to can it, partially because gardening fascinates me and partially because apparently some part of my brain is preparing for a zombie apocalypse.

    I want to make paper and ink.

    I am going to spin my own yarn someday and dye it using plants I have grown myself.

    I am designing a planner that actually fits the way I think and work instead of settling for something mass-produced.

    I am binding notebooks by hand because it turns out I genuinely enjoy it.

    For a long time, all of this made me feel like a failure. I constantly felt behind. Surely, if I were more disciplined, more focused, or more organized, I would already be proficient at half these things.

    Eventually, though, I realized something important:

    You cannot dedicate your entire life to mastering dozens of subjects simultaneously.

    Some seasons of life are for language learning. Some are for gardening. Some are for theology, history, sewing, bookbinding, or note-taking systems.

    Some days I spend hours studying Torah. Other days I spend six straight hours documenting Norwegian vocabulary and grammar rules in my learning compendium like a Victorian scholar who has just discovered Scandinavia.

    And honestly? That is fine.

    I have stopped trying to force myself into becoming a hyper-efficient machine optimized for productivity and mastery at all times.

    Now I mostly try to ride the wave of whatever is currently lighting up my brain.

    The interests eventually circle back around anyway.

    You do not have to learn everything at once.

    You just have to stay curious enough to keep returning to the things you love.

  • My Garden System is Getting More Sophisticated (What’s Working)

    My Garden System is Getting More Sophisticated (What’s Working)

    in progress garden with no growth yet

    The garden overview photo was taken as I began this three-hour tour.

    On the left side is a cover crop of clover that I definitely did not plant. That is supposed to be a row of greens, but unfortunately nothing has grown enough for me to distinguish between actual food and the three-leaf version of a leprechaun’s dream.

    layout of garden with numbered beds and location of plants

    Why Everything Is Numbered

    I have a tendency not to plan things out, which becomes problematic when trying to grow food and medicinal herbs.

    So everything is divided into numbered beds. What you don’t see is why they were placed where they were.

    The bottom half is all herbs:

    • #1 loves water
    • #2 likes a moderate amount
    • #3 prefers it drier, grows taller, and would otherwise shade the others

    The rest is organized by nutrition, water needs, and companion planting.

    planting dates for 2026

    My Planting Spreadsheet

    This spreadsheet tracks:

    • frost dates
    • indoor starts
    • transfer dates
    • direct sow timing

    I had to start marking completed tasks with little stars because apparently I cannot be trusted to remember what I already did.

    Eventually I’ll rewrite it in fountain pen like the rest of the commonplace book, but growing actual food takes priority.

    journal with drawings of medicinal herbs and their uses

    The Commonplace Book

    This idea sprouted (yes, I did that intentionally) from a terrible mistake last year: I didn’t know what any of the herbs looked like beyond the seed packet photos.

    So I started drawing the herbs and writing what they’re useful for.

    I’m doing something similar with vegetables, but without pictures. If I can’t recognize a tomato by now, I clearly have other issues that need immediate attention.

    Also, I’m not sure why I decided to write my capital A’s like that. I appear to be passing notes in 7th grade English.

    3 types of tomato starts

    Starts Actually Worked This Year

    Last year my starts failed because I made too many mistakes to recover from and ended up buying starts.

    This year they germinated.

    I’d like that entered into the record.

    tomato cages repurposed for zucchini and cucumbers

    Improved Trellises

    I still haven’t built proper trellises because I refused to ruin my cozy “don’t leave the house” weekend by going to the home improvement store.

    Instead:

    • I flipped two tomato cages upside down and secured them to fence posts for cucumbers
    • I used another tomato cage for pole beans, buried to the first ring

    Elegant? No.

    Functional? We’ll find out.

    similar picture with the tomato cages but includes my cute dog

    Bonus Content

    This photo is similar to the previous one, but I believe everyone deserves to see my good boy.