Blog Posts

Super power healthy juice recipe that kids LOVE

11/8/2015

We have the Nutri-Bullet (got from costco)
Having 6 kids here, it is hard to get everyone to eat enough vegetables. We buy only organic and grow a huge garden, but still kids always seem to gravitate towards sweet and carbs.
This recipe almost ALL the kids love and look what is in it!
It is a powerhouse of health!
Ingredients:
Kale
Carrot
Ginger
Apple Cider vineagar
Honey
Lemon
Raw Almonds
Pineapple
Banana
Apple
Avocado
You can decide the amounts of each. I use one tablespoon of vinegar in each cup of juice and a couple small slivers of ginger. Those two ingredients can be strong, but if used a little almost give it a tangy lemony flavor. Use the milling blade and grind the almonds into a fine powder first, then add a couple scoops of the almond powder to each cup of juice before blending.
The Nutri-bullet is cool because it grinds everything into the juice so you get all the fiber and goodness and don't loose anything!
TRY IT and let me know what you think!

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Atz.. the orphan calf

11/8/2015

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Sunday morning walk

11/8/2015

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Arena is done!

11/8/2015

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The kids will be really happy to have the new arena to ride in! Got it done in time for winter too!..umm Kai, that is not a pony!

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Home-cured NO NITRATE bacon recipe

11/8/2015

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We raise our (all organic fed) pigs and butcher them at home. This is the fifth hog we have done here and I have gotten a lot of compliments on the bacon.
I thought I would share the recipe.

Recipe:
1.5 c Kosher salt
2 c brown sugar
1 c 100% pure maple syrup
2 tbsp black pepper

large zip-lock bags

Procedure:
cut pork belly into slabs that will fit into the zip-lock bags.
rinse pork, rub a handfull of mixture on top and bottom of pork making a coating all around it. Seal each slab into the zip-lock bags. (I usually double up the bags. 1 slab of pork belly per wrapping)
Place bags with the salted pork belly flat on refrigerator shelves.
Flip the bags over in the morning and evening every day for 4-5 days.
Removed pork from bags after 4-5 days and place into your smoker. Cook until internal temperature reaches 160 F (usually 4-6 hours).
After smoking I remove bacon and place in fridge for a couple hours to fully cool. Then I slice the bacon using our meat slicer to desired thickness and package into portion sizes using our vacuums sealer and then place bacon in the freezer to take out as needed!
When ready to eat, just fry it up like you would normally!

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Rusty Hill Farm's kid-run farm stand!

9/28/2015

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A while back our son, Andrew.. he is 11, had the idea of building a farm stand and selling stuff to neighbors once in a while. We thought it sounded like a fun idea, so we saved up old barn wood scraps and a set of nesting boxes that were too big to fit in our coop and pieced together the little farm stand.
The kids opened it for the first time recently and had a wonderful time. They picked vegetables from our garden which we had an abundance of. They put them in different baskets that I had been collecting from second hand store treasure hunting. We painted the front boards with chalkboard paint so they could write the prices below their items.

They sold cherry tomatoes, pablano, green and jalapeno peppers, butternut squash, tomatillos, herbs: rosemary, thyme, terragon, sage, mint. We sold bars of soap, body scrub, home-grown loose leaf herbal tea, eggs and alpaca wool. They created a lemonade stand with fresh lemons from our neighbor's tree. They saddled up our pony Elizabeth and gave pony rides and farm tours as well.

The kids made a price sheet for everything, they painted signs for on the road and ran it themselves, taking turns manning the stand, pouring lemonade, doing pony rides and farm tours and holding the signs. They collected money, made change, communicated with the neighbors and made a profit to share amongst themselves.

They are very exited about planting a bigger garden next year so they will have more produce to share.

Our honey and avocadoes should be ready soon as well as new holiday soaps and we are putting in the winter garden. We will be open again!

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Field Trip at Rusty Hill Farm

7/22/2015

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This last Spring we welcomed The Charter School of Morgan Hill kindergarten classes to the farm for a field trip. It was lots of fun. The kids got a milking demonstration, they brought old vegetable and bread scraps from home and made compost for the garden, slop for pigs and some treats for the chickens. They got to tour and see all the animals and hold baby goats, bunnies and chickens. Ella, Caden and Naia also did demonstrations with thier 4H animals and helps teach kids about the animals and garden on the tour. Above is Caden demonstrating how to do 4H chicken showmanship!

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Growing potatoes ..

5/13/2015

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Thought I would share how we decided to try growing potatoes. This does not take up much space and can easily be done in a small yard.
supplies:
wire with 2x4 openings (no climb type)
straw and soil with NO manure.
What we did was make wire cage about 2 1/2 ft diameter. lined it with straw and filled with a little dirt, then added potato seeds around the edges and covered with about 4 inches of dirt. We repeated this until almost reaching the top of the cage. Kind of like making a potato and dirt lasagna. The idea is the potatoes will grow and when time to harvest just dump over the cage and gather them up!

Click here for full instructions

Here is our potato tower today! looking happy.

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Welcome to our new babies!

4/29/2015

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Abby had her babies! She had two healthy does. The little girls were born on Saturday April 25 at around 12:30pm. They are all doing fantastic. We were so happy to get girls!

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First one, so it is a little long..

2/15/2015

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Rusty

First of all welcome to our site.. I plan to post anything cool I find about homesteading here on this blog along with happenings on our little farm.
When I met my husband we lived in the city and our backyard was about maybe 400 sq. feet. The neighborhood was nice. We had a chicken in tiny coop that got no sun so the sad thing hardly laid any eggs.
The last line of a poem I heard in a yoga class just wouldn't seem to leave my mind.. actually it serves a constant reminder to me to live this life! This line was, "..what will you do with this one precious life". One life. Here in this consciousness as the person you are now. What will you do with it?
In one of my semesters in nursing school I was working with an elderly gentlemen one afternoon. We sat and had a nice conversation. He said to me, "don't spend too many hours of your life working to make the dollar.. you don't hear people at my age saying, "I wish I had spent more time at work and less time with my family".. he said the parts of his life that were the most important was the time spent making memories with family.
One day we walked into our nearby gym and on the wall the seniors had done a project.. it was a "tree of wisdom" seniors had written on the leaves words of advise.. one read, "I would have been a farmer".. both my husband and I took pause at that and we both agreed.. we did not want to write that down one day... in honor of ourselves, our children and the stranger who wrote that on the tree of wisdom.. we decided to go for it.. it is what we both dreamed of for our family. So we did it!
It took a year of searching.. we started out with huge dreams of 40 acres...then 10, then at "least" 5..we were in Escrow 3 times each time the sale falling through for one reason or another.. each time it felt like a blow as with each property our hopes grew and we would begin to picture our lives at these places.. Then one day we drove up this quiet country lane and passed a huge bull standing out in a field two or three homes after the bull.. was a white picket fence with a little grey house with a large deck overlooking a pasture overgrown with willow trees and a blackberry hedge. The neighbors ponies galloped to the fence line.. we found our home, our farm. This time we closed escrow... on "at least" 2.9 acres.
So far it has been an amazing adventure: watching the kids run and play and learn about farm life, clearing land, building animal pens, one by one with almost all salvaged wood and materials. Slowly adding animals to the farm and experiencing all that goes with that. Our chickens here get sun and they lay 10 eggs a day! Rusty Hill Farm is named after our horse Rusty, he was the first animal we acquired after buying our homestead, he is an old roping horse with the kindest eyes. He lives on the hill in the horse pasture. We figured long after he is gone we will always remember the sweetest horse that ever lived every time we look up at his hill.
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us" J. R. R. Tolkien

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Forward>>

Super power healthy juice recipe that kids LOVE

Atz.. the orphan calf

Sunday morning walk

Arena is done!

Home-cured NO NITRATE bacon recipe

Rusty Hill Farm's kid-run farm stand!

Field Trip at Rusty Hill Farm

Growing potatoes ..

Welcome to our new babies!

First one, so it is a little long..

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