Simple Home and Hearth

We've been dealing with the scourge of Japanese Beetles for the past three years on the homestead. I'll show you how to identify them, what damage they do, how we trap and dispose of them. If any of you deal with them in a different manner, we welcome your comments!

Enjoy this short video, highlighting the projects we've been doing around the homestead this spring. Enjoy! Rain Catchment System - Start to Finish: https://rumble.com/v2uvqce-rain-catchment-system-cc.html

We installed a rain catchment system on our shed out back, as one of our warm-weather projects around the homestead. It wasn't without hiccups, as is the norm for most projects. But our awesome plumber became our weekend(s) warrior and worked on it until he got it right! It is now fully functioning! You'll notice in the video, the rain catchment "barrels" are actually "bags." We may (and probably will) replace them with hard-sided barrels, but these work really well for now. Enjoy!

Took a short trip to Aldi, and look what I found!

After 6 weeks of delivery SNAFUs and schedule changes, we were finally able to get our new greenhouse delivered to the homestead! So stinkin' excited!! Here's a short video of the new 8' x 12' greenhouse, and how it was offloaded and set onto the property. Enjoy the tour!

I did a daily video update on our seed sprouting to the members of my Marco Polo "Around the Homestead" Sharecast group. This is why the footage was taken in portrait mode, because that's how Marco Polo likes it. I captured all the videos and put them together in this montage to create a seed-to-sprout how-to video. Come along with us as we make our own alfalfa, salad mix, and broccoli sprouts, and show you the progression from start to finish! Our first attempt was a success!

As a visual tutorial to accompany the blog post I did on this recipe, I take you step-by-step on how to make a spiced Cranberry-Apple sauce from scratch. I also show you how to can it up in a water bath canner for long-term shelf stability. I also throw in a few "tricks of the [canning] trade." Hope you enjoy! You can view the written version of this recipe on my website: https://simplehomeandhearth.com/2022/12/22/cranberry-apple-sauce-from-scratch/

Here's Part 2 - the conclusion - of our flood/rain video. Enjoy, and thanks for watching! View Part 1 here: https://rumble.com/v29xkeq-it-rained-for-24-hours...-part-1-cc.html

Part 1 of a tour around the property after the past 24 hours of rain, up here in these Appalachian mountains. Enjoy! View Part 2 here: https://rumble.com/v29xktq-it-rained-for-24-hours...-part-2-cc.html

It was such a beautiful, peaceful winter morning on the homestead this morning, and I just had to go out a capture it! Enjoy!

We searched high and low for a heat source for our small coop during the winter that didn't use electricity or any burning medium, and we came up with a brilliant idea this past week that works!! Watch this video to find out how we did it. NOTE: We live in Zone 6b and don't have extremely cold sub-zero (Fahrenheit) winters, but it does get down into the teens and low 20ºs (F) most winter nights.

It's popcorn night! We're making popcorn the old-fashioned way. Here's the blog post on how we do it: https://simplehomeandhearth.com/2022/11/16/making-popcorn-the-old-fashioned-way/ (opens in a new tab)

This is a short video of how I used every part of the sweet peppers harvested from the garden, and how I saved the seeds and packaged them. This is the ultimate method of preservation without waste!

Here's the update on the compost tumbler, and how it is progressing in making compost 2 months later. Enjoy!

We finally put together our compost tumbler! This is the first video done on the first day, so stay tuned for more updates on the progress of the compost!

One of our pear trees looked like its upper canopy was burnt. Over the past week, whatever it was kept spreading. Thanks to the members of an online homesteading group, we learned it was fire blight! After doing some research, we learned what to do, and this is a short video about how we (hopefully) took care of it. Comments welcome!

One of our pear trees looked like its upper canopy was burnt. Over the past week, whatever it was kept spreading. Thanks to the members of an online homesteading group, we learned it was fire blight! After doing some research, we learned what to do, and this is a short video about how we (hopefully) took care of it. Comments welcome!

We've just experienced the first broody hen from our flock, and a new little chick has just hatched!

We finally put together our compost tumbler! This is the first video done on the first day, so stay tuned for more updates on the progress of the compost!

Although we worked for nearly 8 hours, this video is a bird's-eye view of what we accomplished around the homestead on Mother's Day 2022. Enjoy!

After a couple of days of heavy rain and flooding, it turned to snow overnight. This is an update on how we were able to drain the floodwaters from our property, etc. Enjoy this "Part 2" update of the January 2022 flood in which we welcomed in the New Year!

We've been dealing with a couple of days of extremely heavy rains. The creek on our homestead is like a river now, and this is the video we took this morning to check to see if the water level rose above the line of the chicken run fencing.

We had our first accumulative snowfall of the season this morning. We captured our chickens' first introduction to the white stuff!

I made a huge batch of banana bread batter and, after making two loaves, I decided to jar up the rest for long-term enjoyment. This video shows you how to preserve basically any baked good in a canning jar to last for a long time on the pantry shelf! Click here to see the written recipe for the banana bread: https://simplehomeandhearth.com/2019/12/25/moms-homemade-banana-bread/

We have an Australorp rooster who, when starting to crow, became quite surly and ornery! A couple of weeks ago we began the "taming" process each morning when letting them out of the coop. Max would run at us, peck our legs and/or hands and draw blood! We knew we needed to nip that behavior on the bud! This morning, as I let them out of the coop, I decided to take a video of Max's progress so far. He is worlds better than he was!