Veggie Chompers

In our journey toward homesteading, growing our own food is one of the most rewarding things I'm learning to do.  As a beginner gardener, I'm looking for reliable but interesting sources of information.  I also like to learn from people that are genuinely sharing their gardening experiences, tips and methods.   Here are 6 YouTube channels I recommend if you want to learn to grow your own food. 1. Roots and Refuge Farm ''A big family's small farm''  Jessica Sowards, mother of six, is vlogging everyday about what is happening on her beautiful farm.  Passionate about gardening, she shares her tips on how to start seedlings, choosing what to sow, seasonal gardening and she has the most amazing seed collection. She will make you dream of your perfect garden!  I can't write about this channel without mentioning her husband, ''Sweet Miah'', and her son Benjamin that is the cutest 5 year old gardener you'll ever see.  The most important ...

We started the season with a HUGE project.  It's was huge for two reasons.   First, this raised bed was to be big enough to (hopefully) allow us to grow lots of food for the year to come.  Secondly, the whole material getting and transporting demanded a lot of creativity and quite a bit of elbow grease.  We managed to do everything with our two seddans! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmgAqYwFFA8&t=70s The idea for this project came from The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni on YouTube.  Recently, he posted a video tutorial showing how to build a raised bed from pallets.  Since budget is an issue during these uncertain times, we started to look for FREE pallets.  Finding them on the side of the road or asking friends on Facebook, we were able to find all the pallets we needed to make our raised bed (and more!).  BUT, since we don't have neither a truck nor a trailer, we had to cut the pieces on site and transport the pre-cu...

Photo by  Francesco Gallarotti   on  Unsplash When March arrived, I was really excited to start planning the gardens.  This is only our second year of gardening witch means we are still in the learning process.  Growing our own vegetables is something we aim at becoming self sufficient, but we also know that when you're learning anything, you must be ready to fail sometimes.  Last years was a good exemple of trials and mistakes, wins and losses, but it was a 100% good learning experience.   I can't wait to see my gardening skills in 25 years! In the past month, I've been busy sowing seeds for our gardens.  You read that right!  We have two gardens and an apple tree to take care of this year.  My mother is kind enough to let us build a huge garden in her backyard.  When I say huge, I mean HUGE (well, for us begginers, it's HUGE)  And My father wants me to take care of his apple tree in exchange for his apple harvest....

As many other things, bread-baking became industrialised early in the 20th century.  Then, bread slicing and wrapping machines were invented to facilitate the process and people got used to buying their bread at the grocery store.  Baking our own bread is the easiest and most usefull skill we lost over time. Always with the objective of being more self-sufficient, I decided to learn the ancient skill of baking bread.  As I always do when I want to learn something new, I got on YouTube and research the subject.  There, I found Heather ''The Kneady Homesteader'' who inspired me and got me started with the process.  Her videos about bread-baking and food canning guide her audience through all the steps with footage.  I started there. In September 2019, I baked my first bread.  A simple white bread using the stand mixer to knead the dough.  It was the easiest thing I could ever bake.  Since then, I've been baking 4 loafs of bread every wee...

Homesteading.  A lifestyle of self-sufficency where you depend as less as possible on grocery stores to provide you with the majority of your food.  Growing your fruits and vegetables from seeds, seasonnal eating, home preserving and cooking from scratch.  Is there something more soothing than homemade raspberry and pear jam on freshly baked bread?   We lost so many skills from the times our ancestors lived off the land.  Sewing, knitting, gardening, cutting and logging trees, making soap or identifying differents mushrooms and wild plants to forage.  These are just a couple of exemples of the things we just don't do ourselves anymore.   Not that long ago, cooking and baking were the type of skills that would be passed on from mother to daugther, along with the family recipes.  I remember my grand mother, in the kitchen, making all kind of delicious treats with no written recipe.  It smelled so good!  Nowadays, prioriti...