It has been a busy past few weeks on the homestead. The baby goats are growing like weeds. We are still milking so even though breeding season is here, it isn’t happening just yet.

The goat milk is being turned into cheese, soap, butter, ice cream and of course, some is being frozen for winter use.

The chest freezer finally was moved into the kitchen, a task I had wanted done for several years. The hoops are in place in the garden and seedlings are started. It will simply be a matter of covering the hoops with plastic when the time comes then walking outside to harvest fresh lettuce, carrots, radish, broccoli and cabbage during the winter months.

The past few weeks have been spent dehydrating tomatoes, peppers, garlic, herbs and whatever else I have come across. I have been canning, mostly tomato products such as sauces and soups.

Last year I canned lots of grape juice with the intention of making wine. The year came and went without that happening. However I am happy to report that the grape juice has finally been turned into wine. I have four gallons of grape wine in the carboy fermenting now. It is a beautiful burgundy color.

Speaking of making things to drink, I made four gallons of cola as well. I chose to sweeten it with half clover honey and half regular sugar. Although it was flat when I bottled it, it did taste good. In a few weeks the carbonation will be complete and we will open our first bottles of homemade cola.

Besides making lye soap recently, I have been making hydrosols, essential oils and spinning wool into yarn. Winter is certainly not far off  and whatever is not used up of summers bounty will be lost. I have produced a number of hydrosols and essential oils. To date I have distilled chocolate mint, orange mint, spearmint and black stem peppermint.

I have some new lye soap creations I am excited about. I milled the soap so I could add spearmint hydrosol and goat milk to it. The new scents are Snowman Soap, a rich blend of spearmint, juniper berry and pine; Lavender Bliss, a relaxing and invigorating aroma made up of spearmint and lavender; Nature Soap, a mix of clove bud, spearmint and rose geranium and Peachy Dreams, a cool soap scented with lemongrass, clary sage and vanilla.

If  that were not enough, I am finally finding some time to spin. I started with Johnny’s lamb’s wool. Johnny is white, so on the spinning wheel I have almost a full bobbin of white yarn, single strand. I decided a little color wouldn’t hurt, so tonight I dyed some of his wool neon purple. It is a gorgeous color. Of course I will not know what the finished color will  look like until it dries and I wash it, card it and spin it into yarn. Besides spinning wool alone I have been coming up with other pleasing combinations of fiber. I have rolags made of a black alpaca/llama fiber; rolags of black wool from Pearl, silk noir and white angora from Gizmo; rolags of mohair dyed with walnut shells, silk noir and white angora from Gizmo and rolags of alpaca and cashmere from Tulip. These mixes of fiber should make some pretty interesting yarn.

Other current projects include making homemade noodles to put into the freezer for winter use and making beef jerkey to snack on. I also have plans to make some corn chips to keep on hand for late night snack binges. There are pears on the tree, the last batch, that need picked. Then it will just be a matter of waiting on the first frost to pick the persimmons.

Winter is indeed just around the corner, but our little homestead will be ready.