Garden Plans and Homemade Recipes!

Links:
-Blog : https://simplykatharinefaye.com/
-Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/simplykatharinefaye
-Buy me a coffee! : https://www.buymeacoffee.com/simplykatharinefaye

Hi hello everyone and welcome back to my channel if you’re new here we talk about all things homesteading homem making and just the journey to a slower more simple life today I am out in the backyard and as you can see we have quite a bit of

Trees back here and it is still winter but I am just so eager to get going on garden bed planning and I want to try to do it as cheaply as possible so I am just back here collecting all kinds of dead sticks and logs and just about

Anything and I’m going to try to figure out how I can somehow turn that into garden beds so let’s just pick up some Sticks some of it still kind of Frozen to the ground because it’s literally still winter but here I Am so this right here is deer poop so if you see this you know there are deers nearby and I do know that we have lots of deer even though I am in a suburb area it is quite a rural area and we have deer and turkey passed through almost on a daily

Basis and ever since I put the fence up in the front yard and keep my dog up there instead in the backyard the deer just come right through here so not surprised to see that at all one good thing about kind of doing this in the winter opposed to when it gets warmer

Is ticks shouldn’t be a problem cuz deer are a number one carrier of deer ticks obviously and in an area like this where there’s lots of leaves on the ground lots of just trees and brush and stuff like that it is the perfect habitat for

Tick so if I was in here during the summer I’d probably get tons of ticks on my legs and that’s something we don’t want to do because Lyme disease is very prevalent here in Maine so it is kind of nice to start getting this done when

It’s still colder cuz it shouldn’t be a problem as far as I know hello guys it is a brand new day we got rained out on actually the other day when I was gathering sticks and branches and uh actual trees pulling trees out of the

Forest so now I’m going to take you with me I’m going to show you how to make a couple things I’m going to show you how to make some homemade Mayo as well as some no baked cookies so making homemade Mayo is actually really easy you just

Have to be willing to eat raw egg but if you know where your eggs come from it really isn’t that big of a deal you just want to put it in a big mason jar is what I like to use something that you can get an immersion blender in or you

Could use it in a regular blender but just one egg about a tablespoon of mustard powder a cup of any kind of oil will work I don’t like to use olive cuz it gives it off a taste I like to use avocado oil as well as a tablespoon of

Lemon juice juice and a teaspoon of any kind of vinegar and some salt all you do is just mix it up with the immersion blender you might want to add the oil slowly so that it’s not all in there at once but it is the simplest thing ever

In one way I like to use homemade mayonnaise also helps me use up leftovers is making homemade chicken salad so I just get some onions ground up as well as I had a a whole roast chicken a few nights ago and I have some leftover chicken so I just throw that in

There as well and have that get all ground up and then I just add my homemade mayonnaise to it it is so simple and I love to have it with crackers dipping crackers in it I think it tastes so so good so that is a great

Homemade snack that has a good amount of Protein Now for our nobaked cookie recipe I found this recipe in a old recipe box and I haven’t made it before so it is actually a first for me as well but following the recipe I use 2 cups sugar A4 cup of butter which is about a half a

Stick 4 tbspoon of cocoa powder and a/2 cup of milk and that is the ingredients that you’re going to put in a pot to warm up on the stove now to be honest next time I make it I personally would add less sugar just cuz it was very

Sugary you might love it that way but for me it was a little bit too much but other than that no big cookie is kind of similar to a making of a fudge which you kind of need to set up properly or else it doesn’t Harden the way you might want

It to so you want to get all of those ingredients to a boil and have that boil for about a minute and a half before you take it off heat once it is off the heat then you might want to let it cool for a little bit and then you’re going to add

2 cups of oats I just used oldfashioned a/2 cup of peanut butter and I have my allnatural peanut butter here I’m sure that affects the texture and then just a teaspoon of vanilla extract and then you’re going to want to mix all of that together and then I put it on a baking

Sheet even though I’m not going to bake it to have it set up in that cookie shape and then once it hardens you should have a great nobaked cookie So I know I just showed you how to make some mayonnaise as well as how to make some nobaked cookies but another simple thing that I just happened to whip together and I thought I’d share is Italian dressing but even though it is early we decided for our family to get

Some salad ingredients and just have a salad cuz it’s been so nice this week it has been really warm for March here it’s been like in the high 40s today even hit like 51 for me 40° weather is like going out in my shorts time pretty much but I

Thought I should tell you how to make this dressing since I put it together real quick didn’t think to record it and it’s so easy you do about a cup of the oil and a little bit of a vinegar I use apple cider you can use red white

Whatever about a teaspoon of that and then just a teaspoon of a bunch of different spices so I like to use garlic powder onion powder oregano and basil and usually I put a couple little bits of red pepper flakes as well but that’s really all it is Italian dressing is

Nothing nothing hard to do and it’s a favorite of mine for salads because it is really simple it has quite a bunch of flavor to it and it’s not super heavy kind of like other things like Ranch for example if you would be interested in a

Whole video on just how to make a bunch of different condiments homemade please let me know cuz I’ve been thinking about doing that I want to compile just all the recipes I can think of so if you have a favorite condiment that you like

To use and would want to know how to do a homemade version let me know cuz I’m definitely thinking about doing something like that let’s do a quick little plant update here is one of the pumpkins do you see the size of that true Leaf isn’t that just amazing oh I’m

So excited all of the squash are doing really really well like that getting their true leaves and everything else is doing super as well everything is growing nice and strong we are on week three of them being planted still got a ways to go before it is time to put

Everything outside but they’re doing really well and I’m really excited hello hello guys so to finish up the video I thought I would kind of of give you my idea of my garden bed plans out in the garden is a little cooler today than it has been but it’s been pretty cold in

General compared to a lot of places it’s about 40 39 right now a little bit of wind but the sun is out and it’s beautiful so I thought I would show you oh but also I would like to point out my outfit which I don’t usually but I want

To give you a little show of it because I’m very proud I have been sewing some of my own clothes and this skirt that I am in is one of those things so I’m going to show you that really quick just cuz I’m proud sewing has been very very fun and

I definitely recommend it as something to take up if you need a little hobby but with that let’s show off the garden so here we are in the front yard and we have these beds already as well as some of the metal ones three metal ones and three beds made from

Non-treated planks as well as these kind of square cinder blocks with the slits so what I want to do is do a bed the whole length of the front of the fence that’s going towards the road and if I can as well do the whole side and so

That will create lots of space in order to grow things so that is my hope and we’ll see if I can get that far my thought of what I’m going to do is on two of these beds take one of the layers off and convert those beds to only one

Plank high so that I would say is about 8 to 12 in high off the ground and just have them be not as high because I don’t need them to be high for reasons of you know making it easier for me to Garden I can get down and get dirty but I just

Wanted them to be higher thinking I’d need more good soil I don’t think I do I think one plank high will be good and then I can take those and move them to right here and create two more beds for materials I already have and I think

What I’d want to do is here put a bed just for strawberries and a bed just for corn that’s kind of what I’m thinking now really the only things that need a deeper bed I think would be potatoes and carrots because of course they are kind

Of root crops and so they need more places to grow their Roots but other than that I really think I should be good with less depth and for ones that are deeper we have my metal beds those three and one of them I put onion and

Garlic in which you may know if you’ve watched for a little bit cuz I did it last year and they are starting to come up and that is very exciting I think with that and I think if I leave one I should have plenty of

Room to do stuff that needs it to be deeper and then with the whole front and side I think I will do those just one uh plank High as well and I think I’m going to go the route of the plank of wood with the cinder block blocks I really

Enjoyed how easy that was and how easy that is to take apart and to be able to move since this is not my forever place by any means this is hopefully going to be pretty temporary because the goal is to save and really have the land and

Some acres and so I want to make here nice but I don’t want to invest a lot I don’t need them to be pretty I even considered lots of other options that are not pretty at all let’s take a seat for a second I considered even just buying or getting off a Facebook

Marketplace or something tarp and just zip tying them to the fence and trying to almost kind of make a U shape with it and just put soil in something like that but I leaned against that because one I wasn’t sure if anything could Leech from the tarp material and I’m pretty uh

Concerned about leeching and things like that as well as tarps are cheap tarps uh can tear apart fairly easy so I hear I don’t have firsthand experience but I do know some people who have worked in construction stuff have told me tarps are not very reliable unless you get

Like the really good ones and those would probably be pretty expensive even secondhand and then I would most likely want to put holes in it to have drainage so just stopped thinking down that route altogether with the trees and logs I was collecting and will still probably be

Collecting in the backyard part of me thought maybe I could kind of do similar to the method of where you take live cuttings and weave it maybe I could just kind of Stack it in a way that’s kind of weaves around other um ends bits and ends and have it be stacked something

Like that and that would be all free I may still try to do that for a small bed out front just to see kind of how it worked but I was kind of discouraged away from that mind path because it most likely just would not stay very well and

Like I think I’ve said the soil or I should say really the dirt that we have in the front yard here is so extremely Rocky it’s so hard you you really can’t um put posts in the ground hardly at all because it is so Rocky like even with

The augur we did for the fence that was a process that somewhere else would have probably been done in a day for how you know few posts there were but it was a multi-day process because it kept hitting huge rocks and just it was it was quite the experience so to get

Anything in the ground like that to stand it up whether be Twigs or if I’d have to invest in like metal or something like that to keep the rest of the logs balanced in that way it I I don’t think it’ll work that well I think I’m trying to think so

Outside the box to save money that I’m would end up making it more complicated than it needed to be but that is not to say you shouldn’t uh think really hard about all your different options because if you want to Garden there is a way for

You to do so and you can do it with little little little money or a lot of money depending on what end you’re on so I think I’m going to continue the route of the planks and cinder blocks and maybe I’ll try some alternative things

As well and on the back deck where I’m going to try to do a whole deck Garden I am going to be using just a bunch of pots that I already have so that will be pretty much free I’m thinking and I’m kind of brainstorming different things I

Can do as well could build as well to kind of make the most out of that space so let me know if you have any thoughts I’d love to know I am definitely still in just the pondering stage of trying to make the most out of the budget and just

Trying to be as Scrappy as I can while also being reasonable if that makes sense I want it to be so nice so bad but my fingers I think you can see are getting red my nose is getting red it is chilly today it is definitely chilly beautiful beautiful blue skies but nonetheless

Chilly yeah I just looked it’s like 37 out right now which I’m not wearing 37° weather clothing that is for sure but so I’m going to wrap up this video there if you like this kind of content and would like to see more please consider subscribing so that you can

Join our community of like-minded folk I’ve been putting out videos every single Monday so please stop in and join me there is an exciting season ahead my favorite season of spring is just around the corner now and I can feel it and I’m so excited and we’re just going to have

A great year this year I’m sure but anyway thanks again for stopping in and I’ll see you in the next one bye-bye