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The Simmons Family Farmstead
United States
Приєднався 29 чер 2019
We started out on a .49 acre suburban homestead in Virginia. We've grown a massive garden on less than 1/4 acre, raised laying hens, started fruit trees and berry bushes and preserved our harvests through canning, fermenting, and dehydrating. For years we've longed for a larger homestead where we could raise more animals and grow healthy organic food in abundance and be debt free.
We stepped out in faith and our dreams are finally being set into motion! We would love for you to follow along on our channel as we document the good, the bad, and the ugly of our homesteading journey on what is now 20 acres.
We stepped out in faith and our dreams are finally being set into motion! We would love for you to follow along on our channel as we document the good, the bad, and the ugly of our homesteading journey on what is now 20 acres.
Exploring Luray & Shenandoah VA
We are back and sharing our family vacation to the mountains of Virginia. Join us as we explore Luray caverns, Shenandoah, fish, eat great food and have a lot of fun.
Переглядів: 29
Відео
Grow these 5 vegetables in your garden! **Giveaway**
Переглядів 2537 місяців тому
We discuss our top 5 vegetables we enjoy growing and harvesting from our garden. And one lucky winner will get a change to grow them as well when we give seeds away! Continue to follow our journey with us on social media at: Facebook The Simmons Family Farmstead Instagram Matt and Edith Simmons (@thesimmonsfamilyfarmstead) If you would like to contribute to what we will be doing on the farm, co...
Back to Eden Garden in a small space
Переглядів 7958 місяців тому
Have you been debating on doing a back to eden garden? We take you through our journey with the Back to Eden gardening method. The pro's and the con's and what our future plans are with next years garden.
How we raised chickens in the city
Переглядів 4548 місяців тому
If you are considering adding a small flock of chickens to your backyard and want to know what it's like. We share our experience with you over the last 9 years of raising chickens. Continue to follow our journey with us on social media at: Facebook: The Simmons Family Farmstead Instagram: @thesimmonsfamilyfarmstead) Fund the Flock Donations www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=W8JNRYQUD4WUJ
Why we quit raised bed gardening- Our Gardening journey part 3.
Переглядів 3,3 тис.8 місяців тому
Our Gardening methods have changed over the years. Which worked well and which ones did not work out so well. Part 3 of our Garden Journey Series Continue to follow our journey with us on social media at: Facebook: The Simmons Family Farmstead Instagram: @thesimmonsfamilyfarmstead
Food Freedom in your backyard. Our Gardening journey part 2.
Переглядів 6 тис.8 місяців тому
Utilizing the small garden space we have to its fullest, you will see how easy it is to produce a bumper crop year after year. Continue to follow our journey with us on social media at: Facebook : The Simmons Family Farmstead Instagram : @thesimmonsfamilyfarmstead
How we grew 1000+ lbs of food in our small backyard. Our Gardening Journey Part 1.
Переглядів 132 тис.8 місяців тому
Join us as we take you back 11 years to show you how we began our gardening journey and our march towards growing our own food for life. Continue to follow our journey with us on social media at: Facebook : The Simmons Family Farmstead Instagram : @thesimmonsfamilyfarmstead
The woods are alive 👀 Amazing footage from the farm!
Переглядів 26111 місяців тому
The woods are alive 👀 Amazing footage from the farm!
😋Early American Recipe. Chicken Croquettes
Переглядів 9711 місяців тому
😋Early American Recipe. Chicken Croquettes
Stark Bro's unboxing for our Small Urban Orchard
Переглядів 1124 роки тому
Stark Bro's unboxing for our Small Urban Orchard
Cheap Row Cover Hoops Without Rebar
Переглядів 2,9 тис.5 років тому
Cheap Row Cover Hoops Without Rebar
Late August Garden Tour 2019 THEY GOT ALL OF OUR CUCUMBERS!
Переглядів 385 років тому
Late August Garden Tour 2019 THEY GOT ALL OF OUR CUCUMBERS!
How to catch TOMATO HORNWORMS at night using a BLACKLIGHT
Переглядів 2365 років тому
How to catch TOMATO HORNWORMS at night using a BLACKLIGHT
Goodbye Yardlong Beans and something you may not have known about me.
Переглядів 445 років тому
Goodbye Yardlong Beans and something you may not have known about me.
GARDEN JERKS , homemade hummingbird nectar, and a quick morning walk through of the garden
Переглядів 385 років тому
GARDEN JERKS , homemade hummingbird nectar, and a quick morning walk through of the garden
MOLEMAX AND PEANUT BUTTER MIXED WITH BAKING SODA 50/50.
It saves me from buying both sugars. I also use molasses in our recipes.
You get it!!!🙌🙌😊
Stick to brown sugar. White sugar has all these chemicals in it, saccharin, sulfur dioxide, methyl and ethyl alcohol, hydrochloric acid, benzene and acetic acid. Do some research everyone.
American brown sugar has nothing to do with real brown sugar
Isnt brown sugar made from sugar cane and white wrom sugar beet ?
what în the 5 minutes crafts idiocy is this?
You buy the sugar and the molasses from the grocery store. Why not just get brown sugar
Thank you for your comment 😊. I use the sugar and molasses more often.. If I'm in need of brown sugar I can whip a batch up in a minute if the occasional need arises. 🙌
@@stonefruitlover You got it!😊
So you spent money on sugar and molasses to go back in the sugar making process... Yes sounds easier than buying brown sugar. Where do you live? Is brown sugar such expensive?
Brown sugar isn't that expensive here, but it's an expense I don't have, since I always have sugar and molasses on hand.
@@stonefruitlover 🙌😊
real brown sugar doesn't have molasses added back in - its just less processed so it already has it.
Unbleached sugar does not have molasses. Brown sugar does. They're not the same 😊.
@@TheSimmonsFamilyFarmsteadno it doesn't have molasses in it you get molasses from brown sugar when it's processed into white sugar hence why you adding molasses back in, makes it brown sugar again. So the user is correct brown sugar is just less processed white sugar
No, "real brown sugar" is raw cane sugar which has bigger crystals so it wouldn't stick like that.
@@Autschbruvif you leave natural brown sugar out in the open it will stick like that because of moisture
@@Carireplay any structure that is crystalline and water soluble will hold moisture. That doesn't make molasses magically appear out of thin air
Where do you get the granulated sugar and molasses tho
I don't purchase brown sugar, because I always have those two ingredients on hand. I see no reason for an added expense 😊.
Dollar tree.
oh my goodness I had no idea that is how to make brown sugar lol. I will do this in the future!
It's ridiculously easy 😊
You spelled large suburban yard wrong.
💓your garden is beautiful, thank you for sharing :))
Good morning and Asalammualaikum. Wow just wow. I've always thought about having a graden. So i did containers gardening. So so results. But i was so happy. To hear and see you're stories of beginning and continue small garden. Mind blowing. I now have a 1/2 plot in a community garden. I dont have a plan, i just plant😅. Like reg. You dont have enough space for these plants 😅. Having fun. Hop i can share a pic with yall. Just maybe you'll give suggestions. God bless yall. May Almighty Allah bless you abundantly. Ameen
Well done first year. So happy for you that you stuck with all the hard work and the joy of being able to contribute some of the joy to friends and neighbors even in the first year.
What critter is living on your head,
You can waterglass your eggs❤
I tried raised beds this year but im switching to inground permaculture methods much less costly and we have a thick amount of leaf mulch in our forest area so ill not be buying compost again. N ill be trying to grow from store bought fruits to have a tropical oasis. Zone 8b
Water in the evening, companion plant n learn the permaculture method
vườn cây rất đẹp, bạn giỏi quá
I want my front yard to look like this, but my wife wants grass instead....
Nice seeds giveaway
This is a great video, lots of info. My only complaint is about your editing not your content… your volume on your audio is so low that the music blasts you out of your chair when turned up enough to hear you talk. But again, love the content ❤
Cant wait to see your new farm! Good luck with the move and many blessings to you!
lol small backyard
Great Efforts!
Love what you're doing here, thanks for sharing your gardening journey and your family's fantastic efforts to be self-sufficient and healther!
Thank you so much!😊
I just found your channel with this video popping in my feed. I really enjoyed watching your garden progress. It's dream for me to own a homestead, meanwhile I'm renting and patio gardening. I love kolrahbi!
Awesome! Thank you for watching and keep growing! Kohlrabi is a winner here too! 😊
Your place is not small. Where I live, I could put it three times in your place. That’s small.. you have a huge yard.
“Small city lot”?! In most of the world’s cities that would be considered huge! Not undermining what you’ve achieved which is wonderful, but just to say in most cities people would give their right arm for a quarter of an acre so it can be frustrating to keep hearing how small it is ;)
I like this garden
Lets get this garden started! Beautiful soil...........great job
You're lucky you live in a town that let's you have chickens, even if it's only 4. In my town you can't even have 1.
Yeah they were forced to increase the number from 4 to 6 in this area because you couldn't buy just 4 from any shop, they only sold a half dozen.
Fabulous.
0:42 is what gardening is all about. Great and inspirational video. Well done.
Thank you so much for the encouragement!
Add on top of the soil. Don’t dig the he’ll out of it! Keep the microbes in and feed the microbes in the soil …
That’s a huge back garden.
I'm quite impressed with the thumbnails in your channel's videos, they look like something out of a fairy tale. It's great when you have a dreamy small garden. ❤
Thank you! We were going for the old time seed catalog look. We love that artwork!
Oh, I quite like this idea, good luck☺@@TheSimmonsFamilyFarmstead
I take care of a community garden, and the number one priority for a large producing garden is finding sources of organic matter. You need one nitrogen rich component, which can be compost, manure, grass clipping, spent barley from a brewery... Having tried all of those, spent barley is by far the best, and it's free if you have a brewery nearby. Then the most important part, mulch. Again tried them all, and the best is wood chips indeed, of a fine caliber. Not huge trunk wood chips. I put, if I can, 15-20 cm of those on top of the soil. And add 10 cm every year. But I do not want raised beds.They're expensive, they rot, and they drain water too much, because they're higher than the ground. After about 3-4 years of wood chips, you don't need anything else, any compost or manure. There's enough humus in the soil to feed everything. For taste, the issue is often too much nitrogen. With compost and wood chips, you never fertilize. And when people use manure they often put way too much. Americans are also big fans of various fertilizers, like all these type of "meals" like alfalfa meal or fish meal or bone meal... You don't need those in a normal garden... Besides, excess nitrogen is THE classic cause of pests. It weakens the plants, making big leaves with thin membranes, that pests will have an easier time chewing and digesting. Overwatering will also affect taste and attract pests. Another "classic" pest magnet is gardens that transition from the "usual" gardening methods (bare soil, fertilizers) to living soil gardening (such as the back to eden method). Again, you need about 3 years for pests to calm down, to have a balance ecosystem. BUT you should plant stuff to help with that : shrubs, perennials, trees. If you have a garden with ONLY veggies, and lawn or wood chips all around, then that's all there is to eat for pests in your garden. Instead you should have perennial flower beds, fruits trees (both to eat and for the birds), that kind of stuff.
This is smart and thrifty with the chip drop . I built a garden this way a few years ago with 20 yards of mulch but do have spots for vegetables but very low to ground just for order as it is a small garden. The yard long beans are fun and tasty. Nice to know about the amaranth! This freely seeds .
Congratulations! And thank you for the straight -to- it content. I love that you didn't make this video with repetitive rumbling. I'm very encouraged that I can do this along with my mother's experience of gardening.
Hi from Utah! I found that using powered milk really helped the end rot on tomatoes! I blend bananas peels and old bananas with the powdered milk with water to boost the blossoming as well! It works great!
Thanks for the pro tip, we have never heard of this one before. Certainly one we will give a shot in the future!
Most inspiring! Kudos! 👏👏👏
Thank you!
2 videos in and you got a new sub here in NJ! Loved watching Hollis and Nancy who were in VA now Florida…… so now I got a new VA homestead family to watch. Happy growing
Welcome to our channel and thank you so very much for the encouragement ❤ We appreciate your comment so much!
New subscriber here also! I'm just starting out and am so enjoying witnessing their journey. I'm finding it very encouraging; I only hope I have the same problems of having large bumper crops. 😄
Welcome! We are hopeful you will have such an abundant harvest that you will need to figure out storage for it all!
where are you located?
Central VA. About 30 mins south of Richmond
Thank you I'm in New England CT.
👍🙏😀
How about for every tree no matter why you had to take it down, You plant 2 saplings in it's place..??????
We have a rough plan established already that will add many fruit bearing trees, as well as native hardwoods that the property currently lacks. The property appears to have been timbered around 25 years ago in the wooded acreage and many of the native species were replaced with pine 😕
When those leaves start dropping, well there is free carbon right there which you will need later on. I also suggest that you think about some of the essential tools that will pay for themselves over time , that you will use every season. Like a chainsaw,, a mulcher,, or even a small tractor with more than one attachment. Learn about Huglekultcher so you don't have to pollute the environment by burning old wood, sticks etc etc. You are now the custodian's of 20acres. Your job as a human been is to leave that land better than when you took it over. Everything takes time and planning,. Have fun, and enjoy it all.
Drawing a map of your property , where everything us including mature trees and bushes. This will give you some concept of what you have bought and how you wish to utilize it. The rising and lowering sun direction is a good idea to place on your map, for all seasons. And this way you can change things before putting things in stone as they say. However if this was me I would be looking the place for fruit & nut trees, berry bushes etc etc. They take time to grow and nurture. Not like food for your animals that grows seasonally. These are some of my opinions. Plant / tree protection from those roaming browsers will also help. But remember all animals have to eat, If you could spare some space for the wildlife that are in your area, that wont be a bad thing, as will be wildflowers for the bees that will pollinate your orchard for free..I subscribed.
You must be reading our homestead planning journal!! So many of those same thoughts and plans are in it. We just went to look at fruit trees today as well. This upcoming year and our channel will capture these plans unfolding in the near future. We also have plans to clear some of the wooded acreage and plant food plots for the wildlife and allow sun into those areas. Thank you for the comment and for subscribing!
Nice
Thank you so much!