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RyanHannah

Autumn on the Homestead

Here is a quick little update of what’s been going on around the homestead in the last month or so…

Made applesauce, apple butter, apple chips, & apple scones. Apple tea is still on the “to do” list.
Pumpkin puree & pumpkin butter
Honey spiced cake – (orange, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, coffee, & vanilla)
Autumn Spiced Cajeta (cajeta with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, & vanilla)
Honey toasted goat cheese ( cinnamon, cardamom, & goat cheese)
Barn & coop cleaning and straw restocking before the winter weather hits hard
Getting our new buck, Kosher, adjusted to life on the homestead. The girls took to him immediately and he snuck out of his pen the first week on the farm. We’re hoping to see some goat kids in the next few months!
Starting to transition from the summer go-go-go around the farm to more of the “hunker down, drink lots of tea & fire cider, do indoor projects and go to bed early” that winter tends to brings.
Ordered some new oils from Eden’s Garden for the upcoming holiday season. So far, my favs are Cinnamon Leaf, Nutmeg, & Sweet Orange – smells like Christmas and was super affordable.
Started reading the C.S. Lewis sci-fi series (again) – so good. Also, you should shop here for cheap books. Seriously – so much cheaper than Amazon.
Had several custom orders on my Etsy shop & several orders of udder wipes that sold this past month, which I think is kind of hilarious. But I obviously love it because IT’S UDDER WIPES.

We’re looking forward to what some are calling an”el nino” winter. Which for Colorado could mean feet of snow, gallons of hot tea, and truckloads of wood pellets for the stove. We have family coming for the holidays and we intend to be fully present this year (as opposed to last year).

Projects on the to-do list this winter: knit socks, knit mittens, sew a dress (or quilt), crochet a blanket with this pattern, develop a fodder feed system for the animals, build a magical book shelf (think Belle from Beauty and the Beast) complete with 12 ft aspen ladder for our ever growing book collection… I’m sure there is more, but I’ll stop there before I get completely overwhelmed.

Quote of the month:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts & be thankful.

Thanks for following our journey!

Linking up with Leigh Kramer.

October 30, 2015

High Altitude Chocolate Beet Cake

“Is it better to be feared or loved? Loved, because people associate with you because they want to, not because they need to. We need to eat beets, but we want to eat cake. Be the cake of the world.”
― Jarod Kintz

OR just be the chocolate beet cake of the world.

I haven’t done TOO much baking at our homestead yet – for many reasons. One being we are at 9,200ft elevation, and sometimes major adjustments are needed when baking. & I’ve been so busy milking goats, dehydrating veggies, and just getting settled on our farm, that I haven’t had a TON of free time.

However, once I saw this magical photo (taken by a homesteader in Vermont) a few weeks ago, I knew I would most likely be able to find a few free hours to make it happen.

Jessica lives in southern Vermont and can be found making all kinds of homemade goodies @sugarhouseworkshop or www.sugarhouseworkshop.com

The recipe below is from Jessica, who is somewhere around 1,500ft – however, I’ve made minor adjustments to work for our elevation. I included both recipes because I’m assuming that the population who would be reading this and live at 9,200ft is minuscule.

High Altitude (9K ft) Chocolate Beet Cake

3-4 medium to large beets, peeled and chopped
2.5 c all purpose flour
1 c sugar
1/2 c dutched cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
3 eggs
3/4 c warm water
1/4 c oil
1 tsp vanilla

Low Altitude (1K ft) Chocolate Beet Cake

3-4 medium to large beets, peeled and chopped
2 c all purpose flour
1 1/2 c sugar
1/2 c dutched cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
2 eggs
3/4 c warm water
1/4 c oil
1 tsp vanilla

Cook beets in lightly boiling water for 15 minutes or so until soft and easily pierced with a knife. Purée beets in a blender or food processor, and set aside 1 1/4 cup. Heat oven to 350. Whisk dry ingredients in a medium bowl, and in a separate bowl combine eggs, water, vanilla, oil, and puréed beets. Whisk to combine. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir together until thoroughly mixed. Coat a 9″ pan liberally with butter or oil. Pour in batter and bake 45 minutes until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool at least 20 minutes, then remove from pan and pour glaze over.

Chocolate glaze

1/2 c cream
1 tsp maple syrup or honey
3oz bitter or semi sweet chocolate, chopped

Heat the cream and syrup over low-medium heat until simmering. Add chocolate and stir to melt it throughout. Pour over cake and allow to set at least 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

*Feature image credit

September 10, 2015

Country Living, Eating Simple, Herbal Tea

Honeybush Sarsaparilla Herbal Tea

I love experimenting with new herbal teas.

I have no idea what I’m doing, I just buy loose leaf teas & herbs and try mixing a few together.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

This time, it did.

I recently bought some Honeybush tea from an herb shop nearby and hadn’t really experimented with it until recently when I was having a little bit of a sweet tooth after dinner. With the summer starting to end and temperatures dropping significantly after dark here in Colorado, some hot herbal tea sounded cozy.

And it was.

And here’s the recipe:

Honeybush Sarsaparilla Herbal Tea

1-2 TBSP Honeybush loose leaf tea
1-2 tsp Sarsaparilla root

Steep in boiling water for 5-7 minutes

Optional:

1 TBSP cocoa powder (for energy)
1/2-1 tsp Valerian root (for sleep)

Here’s where you can buy honeybush, sarsaparilla, valerian if you don’t have a local herb shop.

Here are some benefits of Sarsaparilla & Honeybush, if you’re curious. Also: Honeybush is very similar to Rooibos in taste & the fact that they aren’t technically a tea. They also are both caffeine free.

ENJOY & SHARE!

*There are, in fact, affiliate links in this post

** Feature image credit

September 9, 2015

Country Living, Eating Simple, Simple Living

Life with Goats

When we closed on our house at the end of June, we had no idea we were going to have goats by the end of the week.

Well, sort of.

We had been looking for some male goats to eat our 6.5 acres of very high brush (since we didn’t have and didn’t plan on getting a lawn mower). But when a local goat expert said she was selling some of her milking goats, we were super interested.

Now, just so you have a good idea about the level of experience we are talking about; before this photo, I’d never milked anything in my life.

I was a little nervous about potentially having goats because there was just SO much unknown for this city girl. However, after getting some brief milking lessons, tips on how to save money on goat feed (post to come on details of this, if you’re interested), and where to buy hay – we felt much more confident. I think that much of this was because our goat mentor made it seem super attainable. She didn’t have a huge list of organic materials that the goats just needed to have to enjoy a long, healthy life. She didn’t have a whole list of criticisms of what “other goat owners do”… you know the kind of criticism that makes you feel like you’ll never be able to do anything right?

Nope. Instead she shared money saving techniques and tricks, and contacts for buying hay – and most importantly, encouragement: “You got this!” Which was the biggest thing that we both (me especially) needed to hear; that this thing we were just jumping into blindly, that it was totally do-able. That doesn’t mean we’ve done everything perfectly, but we’re learning (reading books, listening to podcasts, & asking a lot of questions) and the goats are still alive and milking!

Here are some photos from the past few months

Here are some things that we & neighbors have made from the goats milk so far:

Mozzarella cheese (plain, garlic & onion, and pepperjack)
Yogurt
Cardamom ICE CREAM (so.good.)
Ricotta
Cajeta carmel
Homemade Fudge
Feed for chickens (super high protein is great for our little pullets)
Used it in baking in place of cow milk

Something slightly magical (yes, I said magical) happened when I first milked these animals. I got SO pumped about having our own homestead, taking large steps towards being self-sustaining. There is something so invigorating about taking care of your animals, and they in turn take care of you. Whether that is through milk, meat, or fiber. I’m learning so much through taking care of these animals.

September 3, 2015

Country Living, Eating Simple, Simple Living

Spicy Zucchini Chips

Super easy. Super amazing. Super Simple.

We use an Excalibur Dehydrator that we got last year when we were living in Brighton and we love it.We’ve made dried bananas, raspberries, blackberries, and dried apples are our fav.

But lets just keep it simple and get to the good stuff.

And here’s the recipe for you who will copy/paste/print the heck out this sucker.

Spicy Zucchini Chips

4-5 medium zucchinis
Cajun seasoning
Olive Oil

Slice the zucchinis as thin as you can without cutting yourself (OR use a food processor)
Toss in a bowl with drizzled olive oil
Sprinkle Cajun seasoning and toss some more
Lay the sliced and spiced zucchinis on your trays – not touching or layered on top of each other.
If you want them EXTRA spicy, sprinkle some more seasoning.
Stick them in the dehydrator for 2 hours or until as crispy as you like!

(You can also use an oven. This recipe says to stick them in at 235 degrees F. for 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours.)

Enjoy and share!

*Feature image credit

September 1, 2015

Country Living, Eating Simple, Simple Living

Life on the Homestead

Working full time and taking care of 50 animals takes quite a bit of time – but seriously loving every minute. Until I can update again, I’ll share a brief overview of whats been going on around the homestead.

– Made some Elderberry Ginger Syrup

– Experimented with making a high altitude adjusted Chocolate Beet Cake

– Learned how to save money and make our own goat feed

– Still learning about raising pullets

– Watching ducks make a massive mess everyday in their food & water

– Making reusable “utter wipes” for the goat milking

– Canning summer fruits and veggies

– Visits from family

– Homemade yogurt

– Using the dehydrator more often to preserve summer goods

– Goat cheese making

– Sourdough successes

Processing Homestead Life

After moving around and having constant change for the past few years, its been really great to have some routine and structure. Milking every morning and evening, feeding animals, making cheese and sourdough, finally being able to actually throw away moving boxes (!!!) and settle in. It’s been kind of crazy how fast all this has happened. It’s such a different life than what we were living before – and such a refreshing change. I don’t think I realized how absolutely peaceful living on a homestead, taking care of animals, and being SO busy with things that I love doing, was going to be. In the craziness of what our world & culture looks like these days, this verse describes perfectly what we sense God is calling us to and what we find joy in:

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and to work with your hands, so you may win the respect of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone”

We also have the most amazing neighbors ever. I’m serious. I can’t even tell you everything that they’ve done for us in helping us get going – not only are they pros at homesteading, they are just really fun people and we are super blessed to have great friends living just down the road. You should follow them here or here.

I also have to brag on the husband a little bit – he’s been working extremely hard over the past few months at work & sacrificing time spent on the farm, so that we can actually have this place. #imlucky

I hope to have time to post more updates with recipes, photos, and stories – but for now I’ll leave you with this quote from Abraham Lincoln

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”

Linking up with Leigh Kramer

September 1, 2015

Country Living, Simple Living, Tiny Living

Home Sweet Home

Quick update on our housing situation:

We bought a home in Westcliffe!

And it has a finished house on it!

With heat, water, electricity, AND a functioning kitchen.

And 6.5 acres. Also a barn & a couple of chicken coops.

And fun neighbors that we love.

We also ordered 30 chickens, 10 ducks, a couple kittens & 3 goats.

It may have taken us a couple years to get to this point, from starting to build a tiny house in Golden CO, to moving to Westcliffe last year, moving back to Denver area for work, and moving back to Westcliffe in March of this year.

Tiny House

Lots of folks ask us about our tiny house, so I wanted to talk about that a little bit here. It is currently on our neighbors land, waiting to be moved onto ours. We were initially told that the trailer was a better grade of metal than it actually is (thank you Craigslist) and we have been told by several knowledgeable folks that it needs to be put on a permanent foundation before we finish it/ASAP. SO: as of right now the plan is to move it onto our land and take it off the wheels & set it in its final resting place. There, we will either rent it out (nightly on Airbnb) or have it as a guest cabin for friends who come visit.

Our plans have changed so many times over the past two years. We’ve moved 15 times since we were married in April 2013.

But we’re hoping that this one really sticks.

In fact, to signify this commitment, we are expanding our family by 45 (before butchering most of them in the fall). We’ve got 30 chickens, 10 ducks, a couple kittens, and 3 goats headed to our little farm over the next month.

You better believe I’ll introduce to you them all and attempt to share our homesteading adventures over the next few months.

Welcome to our new adventure – we’re diving straight into this homesteading life!

(Photo cred for feature image: Susan Bonee)

July 6, 2015

ryan corson fishing in westcliffe colorado

Responsive Living

Hold Your Breath and Be Still

Do you ever feel like you just completely miss entire seasons?

It’s already April and I remember the snow, ice and cold weather (it’s mostly all still here in high mountain Colorado), but it still feels like winter has just….

flown by.

And more than the weather, the holidays and my sense of passing time seems…

off.

Christmas happened? And Thanksgiving? Wait…. is Lent seriously already over? I mean, I didn’t really participate this year. I just couldn’t. But it’s really already Easter??

Although it’s odd, mostly because normally I enjoy these passing milestones AND I obviously took photos of this season (as a Nikon ad I recently saw said, I am part of “Generation Image: Your Camera is Your Voice” #millennials) I just have this weird, peaceful sense that these seasons come every year, and it’s just OK that I completely missed them this year. I don’t really even have remorse about it. It just happened.

I think one part of it is the absurd amount of hours that Ryan has worked over the past 10 months. With him working so much, and with both of us being fairly introverted, we tended to hole up in the apartment to catch a couple minutes together. The downside of this was that we didn’t have many friends while living in Brighton (this was also an upside for two extremely busy introverts). But the reality is that community and relationships are what help mark the passing of time. They often help distinguish one day from another, one season from another.

It’s also hard to celebrate with friends when you don’t exactly feel like celebrating.

Another big part of all this weird numbness has been affected by my dad’s health issues. He has been in and out (mostly in) of the hospital since October with severe, acute pancreatitis. He’s doing better these days, but it wasn’t until after Christmas that the doctors even told him, “It’s ok. You can breath a little now, you aren’t going to die.”

I’m not even in the same state as my family, and those kind of prolonged health issues of a loved one weigh on a person. You kind of just hold your breath a little bit, hoping somehow that will shove all the health and healing into your dad from 800 miles away. You kind of just want to lay low for a while, while he’s forced to lay so much lower. It’s also hard to even want to experience life when you know your family is all dizzy and exhausted from the trauma of it all.

There’s a verse that my dad has had close to his heart (so its been close to mine) since this all started

Be still and know that I am God.

I was reading this, once again, a few weeks ago after feeling overwhelmed with my own life changes and adjustments, and I looked in the Hebrew of this word “be still”. I was slightly shocked to find that the roots of that word included words like

fail

be faint

be feeble

be idle

let alone

be slack

Um. Excuse me. That’s exactly how I have felt about life over the past few months. And here, with words that have come to be so dear to my heart, I am receiving permission to just be all of these things. It’s so wonderfully freeing when the God of the universe (or some dude who wrote on his behalf) tells you (a perfectionistic tight wad) to just go ahead and be the mess that you are. He can take it. He can handle it.

There is a lot of good news to all this. When life feels like a mess, it’s ok. When major seasons just seem to roll over your numb soul, it’s ok.

Those seasons are going to happen again next year.

There is some relief knowing that even though I’m not experiencing these seasons right now, that lots of people are. And that next year they will too. And perhaps I’ll join in then.

The seasons will come again.

Christmas. Winter. Lent. And Easter.

Side note: little brother is soon getting hitched, so there will be much celebration in Austin, TX in just a few weeks. !!!!!!!!!

Linking up with Leigh Kramer

April 1, 2015

Country Living, Simple Living, Tiny Living

Westcliffe CO: And Back Again

You people aren’t going to believe this. Some of you are going to think we are nuts.

And you’re definitely correct about that.

We’re moving back to Westcliffe – the land flowing with milk and honey.

Well not quite. At least about the honey part.

We’ve had quite the adventure over the past 2 years of marriage. We got married and started building a tiny house and lived it in for a few months, we moved to Westcliffe CO after dreaming about it for a couple years. We attempted to make it work (financially) in the small town – and figured out in order for us to get anywhere in life, we needed to make some substantial money first (otherwise, we’d end up living in cycles of poverty for quite awhile) – we moved to Brighton CO because Ryan got a job working in the oil fields in Northern Colorado.

Well, as you’ve all noticed gas prices are way down from what they used to be.

And while this is wonderful for lots of people, this has put his job at risk. In fact, he was pretty much guaranteed a lay off in the next few weeks/months. Since we are young and used to change, this hasn’t exactly shaken us too much. On the contrary – it feels like freedom to us in a lot of ways.

Most people know someone who works on the oil field, and you know that their work hours are unreal. Ryan has been averaging at 110 hours per week that he works (2 week on, 1 week off rotations). There are 336 hours in 14 days. 220 hours he has been working, 116 (58 a week or 8 hours a day – which always ends up being closer to 6) hours are spent sleeping, eating, showering, traveling to and from work, and anything else that comes up in life: like spending time with your wife.

Needless to say, we’re kind of DONE with oil field lifestyle.

So while this bring a tad of uncertainty back into our life, being the oldest children that we are, we both find some excitement in that.

Which brings me to the title of this post:

We are moving back to Westcliffe!!!

LOL

I’m sorry, I can’t help but laugh and roll my eyes at us. So its totally ok if you are too :)

Our goal in moving away to Brighton was to save some money so that we could *someday* move back, buy some land, and live simply. Well, this move back is certainly quicker than we thought it would be, but I suppose that’s life.

We are in the process of purchasing a piece of land in a beautiful valley (a couple lots over from this picture), with amazing neighbors who are already well on their way to living the homesteading lifestyle that we’re interested in. On the land and what we will live in is an…. (get ready to laugh and roll your eyes again)….

UNFINISHED TRAILER!

LOL! (Maybe I should have named this blog post “Déjà vu“…)

I couldn’t really believe it either when we started looking at this lovely piece of mess (sorry, no pics yet). I told Ry, “I’m really not sure I can do this again…”

I remembered last time we lived in a shed(tiny house), without electricity, without water, without a kitchen or bathroom… I mean, HELLO: I wrote an entire blog on it!! But before we saw the inside of this creature, we went through the things that were needed in order to make it livable:

Water
Electricity
Warmth
Functioning Kitchen & Bathroom

When we finally got into the tiny shack, we realized: it’s not as bad as we thought it was!! While it definitely needs some TLC, and a couple of major changes (like digging a well), overall, we don’t feel overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done. And that’s saying something.

Another question we’ve wrestled with: “can we/should we finish the tiny house?” And this is something we are still wrestling with. Because at this point where we are at with it is still: unfinished. Is it better to put money into tiny house or another unfinished housing project? Well, “what one requires less cash & stress?” is going to be the winning answer.

I haven’t found very many other tiny house people with a similar story to ours: except Casey and Jessica Friday (recently had their tiny house stolen). I empathize so much with this blog that Jessica recently wrote about why they won’t be living in their tiny house. While we do have several of the things that the Fridays no longer have at their disposal (land, lifestyle..etc), I totally get the basis of what she’s getting at here. The whole point of the tiny house movement is what? SIMPLICITY. So that’s our focus moving forward: do the simple thing.

So here’s to many more future blog posts about building chicken coops, milking goats, making cheese, and sharing life (and cows) with neighbors in our precious lil mountain town. Here’s to not many more moves, but an acknowledgement of “that’s where we are in life”.

Here’s to the kind of simple living that is sometimes more… complicated :)

(linking up with Leigh Kramer– because what I’m up to these days is moving and living the nomad’s life)

March 4, 2015

Country Living, Simple Living, The Year in Books

The Year in Books: Off On Our Own (Ted Carns)

Two words to describe this book: inspiring and entertaining.

Since I met husband, his passion for simple living has easily infected me. Probably because I’ve become slightly knowledgeable about tiny houses since meeting him, folks that live off the grid capture my attention a lot these days. I recently read Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America, by Nick Rosen. And will soon be starting The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living. I supposed its safe to say I’m nearing obsession.

But I really just like the stories that are found in all of these books. And this one by Ted Carns was no different.

Towards the end of it, I found myself writing lists of things that I want to work on either learning or creating to make our lives more sustainable. And I really want to make this someday…

Ted Carns appears to be slightly brilliant, although (like many folks who live off the grid) – slightly odd. This makes him endearing to me, and possibly just cooky to others who are less inclined to enjoy crazy people.

I say brilliant, because of all the various systems he’s concocted in his compound over the years. To start out, he has around 15 or so buildings on his property – all with very specific purposes.

He goes into LOTS of details (although not nearly enough to recreate it) with his various systems. Like their water filtration system (which passes through somewhere around 10 different filters before their grey water is deposited into the garden. They have MANY power sources at the “Stone Camp”: wind, solar, ethanol, thermoelectricity, methane, wood gasification, human power (bike with 12 volt alternator), hydrogen cell, steam generation, hydropower, and biodeisel. They make their own wine and maple syrup by the gallons. They are aspiring to make buildings made out of their trash from the past year.

Other impressive features to “Stone Camp”:
– a homemade, 40 ft windmill tower (which he CLIMBS in the middle of a blizzard)
– a “sugar shack” where he and he wife Kathy collect sap and create syrup
– His library which is described like a hobbit hole that I want to go snuggle in.
– I can’t remember what right now, but he makes something useful from hunter’s cigarette butts he finds while hiking. #nastyyetresourceful

I found myself wishing there were more pictures in the book. THANK GOODNESS I decided to visit their website, although I was quite surprised after reading their book to discover that they had a website.

Like most off-the-gridders, Ted Carns has really strong opinions about most things, and is also a deep thinker, and communicates his life philosophies in an overall inspiring way. He is super passionate about preserving nature, and mentions a little bit from lots of religions that support his deep roots with all things green, organic, and untouched by humans evil desire to conquer the world.

Overall, its a great and entertaining read that will have you wanting to go start digging a hole in your front yard with a backhoe and calling it a greenhouse…. that might have happened in this book…

Here’s a quote to either throw you off the scent of this book or get you completely hooked (I don’t see there being much middle ground):

“You can buy out a company and increase your net worth 20-fold, but that kind of shit pales besides getting up at 5am, firing up a the tractor and going out in the woods to gather sap.”

Also: this documentary-style video, made by some Buddhists missionaries, really paints a good picture of Stone Camp with Ted and Kathy Carns. In fact, if you watch this video, you might not even need to read the book.

(All pictures, unless otherwise noted, are from Ted and Kathy’s website)

January 30, 2015

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