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Month: April 2016

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2016
Apr

To be off-grid

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Dave & Amanda

Welcome! You’ve reached Dave and Amanda’s website documenting our lives while we develop our 16 acre property in northern Ontario, aptly named Wilderstead, with the goal of becoming self-sufficient.

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The chills of Lake Superior continue. That’s one of the things about being lakeside. It stays chilly. End of June and the wood stove is still providing us with comfort.

#fire #woodstove #toastywarm

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Things are starting to take shape in the Wilderstead gardens. After a couple of weeks of very dry weather, we had upwards of 100 mm of rainfall over the past few days. Everything is peeking up nicely now that the sun is shining and warm again. Our little peanut plants have germinated and are looking great so far!

#mygarden #mygreenhouse #growyourownfood #homesteadhomies

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This is very cool. YouTube has featured us as today’s ‘Creator On The Rise’. Big thanks to all who follow our crazy Wilderstead shenanigans across our social media’s. We love ya!

#contentcreator #creatorontherise #youtuber #sharethelove #homesteadhomies

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#foraged wild daisy flower bud capers in a salt/vinegar brine inspired by @quebechomestead Looking tasty!

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This patch of broccoli blows my mind each day. So tasty! Oh, and we also managed to get our potato towers planted. We’re experimenting with watering methods this season. We’re also experimenting with planting methods to show the different ways to grow your own poutine. Video on that soon!

#broccoli #growyourownfood #potato #potatotower #wilderstead

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!! SOLD OUT !! EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA plants available! We have all of our gardens planted. A few of them we don’t have room for. Available for local delivery in the Goulais River area. All are heirloom varieties of interesting and delicious vegetables. Get in touch with us through DM if you are interested. Etransfer and contactless drop off.

Tomatoes are 3$ each:
•Purple Bumblebee - 10 plants
•Sweet Yellow Cherry - 2 plant
•Tye Dye - 14 plants
•Isis Cherry - 4 plants

Peppers are 3$ each:
•Cayenne - 12 plants
•Sweet Bell - 7 plants
•Hot Mix - 5 plants

Dwarf Curly Kale 2$ - 3 plants.

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Come meet the little fella in our latest video on YouTube! There’s a new goat in Wilderstead town!! Meet Orca! Or Orc, for short. This means we now have Orc & Beans hangin with us here.
We are expanding our herd of goats this summer! Woohoo! So that means we need to get an entire new goat enclosure and area set up. We’ve started by prepping and fencing in a large area. After a few unsuccessful attempts at pulling the fencing tight by hand, we made a DIY fence stretcher to use with our ATV. Also, the first peek at the newest goat addition on the Wilderstead! His name is Orca, and he's delightful!

The gate and the goat hut were both built from reclaimed materials.

#goatsofinstagram #goats #wilderstead

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A first for us on the Wilderstead. Peanuts! Starting small this year. Three boxes planted. If it’s a success, we may ramp that up next year. We definitely eat our fair share of peanuts and peanut butter here. Seeds from @bakercreekseeds (rareseeds.com)
#peanuts #growyourownfood #experiment #growingnorth

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The bumble bees are happy! They’ve moved on from the dandelions to kitchen garden. Which is awesome. Once those bean buds open up, they’ll likely help us out with them. In the mean time, fresh kale, romaine, oak leaf lettuce & radish. Gotta love springtime!

#pollinators #bumblebee #kitchengarden

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I’ve been spending a lot of time roaming the logging roads and woods here in search of springtime foragables. It’s amazing the friends you meet along the way. These are wood turtles. Doing their spring time thang. They’re endangered. And they are friends, not foes. So cool to meet these two today.
@algomacountry @algomaforestandnatureschool

#woodturtle #northernontario #endangeredspecies

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It all starts with a fresh wild brook trout, some fiddleheads and some pheasant back mushrooms. Add some taters and onions and you have a feast. It’s just amazing having all of this right in our backyard. Delicious. Lovingly fried in a Wilderstead grown CBD oil. It really can’t get much better than this.
#wildtrout #fiddleheads #pheasantbackmushroom #cbdinfused #wildfood #eathealthy #eatlocal

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New life on the Wilderstead this morning! Mother Clucker and Gertrude have been patiently sharing a nesting box sitting on eggs. We don’t know how many they are sitting on, but at least two little peepers have been spotted so far.

#mychickencoop #littlepeepers #broody #broodyhen

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How many various vegetable plants must one grow to ensure a harvest that will last until the next year? Just how much do you buy on an annual basis? Have you ever wondered that? The amount is quite staggering, actually. Here’s a little breakdown of what just TWO of us require for a year of both fresh veg during the growing season, as well as what we can and preserve. This list doesn’t include our cut and come again veg such as lettuce, Swiss chard, mustard and herbs. Nor does it include our direct sow crops such as cucumber, pea, bean, squash, pumpkin, peanut, potato, carrot, beet, onion, leek and various other veg. We’ll update on the numbers on those plantings as the season goes on. It’s a lot of work, but well worth the piece of mind knowing where your food comes from.

Peppers: 96 plants, a variety of hot and sweet.

Tomatoes: 144 plants. A large variety from paste to cherry to slicing.

Kale: 30 plants, a few varieties.
Celery: 28 plants.

Cabbage: 12 plants

#foodforthought #selfsufficiency #growfoodnotlawns #1millioncaloriechallenge #foodsecurity

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Spring has definitely arrived! We’re just about ready to start planting all of our seedlings into their permanent homes. We spent the last few days making sure our irrigation systems were ready to rock and roll. We’re running two separate solar powered irrigation setups. One in our main garden area which is fed by lake inferior. And a second system in our seedling greenhouse. If you’re interested in how we manage our irrigation with solar power, there’s a new video on our YT channel. Very simple solar powered irrigation.

#solarpower #irrigationsystem #selfsufficiency

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