A Homemade Countertop Compost Container

 

I did a project yesterday that is super cute and super easy to do with just a few supplies. I made a countertop container to collect my kitchen scraps and I love it!


SUPPLIES:

Empty large coffee container

Carbon filter sheet

Hot glue gun

Screw driver

Duck tape

Chalkboard tape

Chalkboard pen

 

 

DIRECTIONS:

 

1. Plug your hot glue gun in so it's ready to use.

2. Take your empty coffee container and punch 8-10 holes in the top with a screwdriver.

3. Lay your coffee container lid upside down and trace around the smaller part on your carbon filter sheet with a white colored pencil.

4. Cut out the part that you just traced and glue to underside of coffee container lid with hot glue gun. This is going to eliminate any smell from your container

5. Choose a duck tape pattern that you like and line the outside of coffee can vertically while overlapping strips to fit the coffee container.

6. Write "Compost" on your chalkboard tape with your chalkboard pen and attach to container.

 

 

 

This is a fun project that even a child can do and it would make a great Christmas gift for those who want to start collecting their compostable food scraps and don't want to buy an expensive countertop container. You can collect several used coffee containers from friends and family and the rest of the supplies listed above will make you several of these homemade countertop compost containers.

 

Let me know if you make one and put a picture of it on the Facebook page!

 



KEEP READING

Little House's Freezer and Canning Inventory

 

Do you keep an inventory of your freezer and pantry? I decided today to do just that today. I am going to try and keep a list of all that we have available to make it easier to meal plan. I am not sure how many of you will find this interesting, but here ya go!

FREEZER INVENTORY:

Venison Burger - 69 one pound packages

Venison Steak - 4 one pound packages

Venison Roast - 4 roast


Venison Back Loins - 2

Corn from our garden - 33 quart bags

Green Peppers - 9 half quart bags

Strawberries from our garden - 1.5 gallon bags full

Multicolored peppers - 2 half quart bags


HOME CANNING INVENTORY:

Canned venison - 17 quarts

Canned Tomatoes - 43 quarts

Applesauce - 7 quarts, 6 pints

Apple Jelly - 4 jelly jars

Blackberry Jam - 3 pints, 3 jelly jars

Dill Pickles - 5 quarts, 3 pints

Pears - 9 quarts, 3 pints

Squash relish - 5 pints

Apple pie filling - 4 quarts

Green beans - 14 pints

Kidney beans - 10 pints

Pinto beans - 6 pints

Navy beans - 1 pint

Chicken broth - 4 quarts, 1 pint

Potatoes - 4 quarts

Spaghetti sauce - 16 quarts, 1 pint

Salsa - 6 quarts, 5 pints

Pizza Sauce - 7 pints

Bread and butter pickles - 3 quarts

Peach sauce - 3 quarts

Strawberry jam - 1 jelly jar

Peach jam - 1 pint

Ketchup - 9 quarts, 1 pint

This is not all the food we have in our freezer. We also have stuff like butter, leftovers, and frozen fruit we bought from the grocery store. I also have a pantry with pasta, flour, and etc. in it that I still need to inventory. What's on this list was put away from our farm or from a local farmer here in our town, except the pint of peach jam, which came from a friend, and the kidney, pinto, and navy beans that were dried beans bought from the store and canned here.

Living my dream right here on this farm!

~Jenn

 

KEEP READING

Spring On The Farm

Can I just say that I think I need a vacation this year already?

I wanted to write and update everyone on our crazy busy schedule right now. As I sit here typing this, it's pouring rain. It's supposed to rain all week. I can't help but think that God gives us rain on a homestead so that we can sit back and relax once in awhile. We cannot ever control Mother Nature and we should embrace what she gives us, even if it means you can't get all your plants in the ground when you want to.

The first exciting news I want to share with you is that we are starting up a business! It's going to be called 'Little House on the 100 Farm.' I have been busy getting all the legal stuff done and ordering business cards, seeds, and planting tomato seeds (affiliate link), and more seeds, and more seeds....

We are going to build a roadside stand to sell our garden produce and I will be participating in our local farmers market. I have also signed up to take a microprocessing class which will allow me, once I pass the test and I'm certified, to sell some of my canned produce and baked goods. We will be planting a good amount of sweet corn and pumpkins (affiliate link) with the hope of providing our local community and surrounding areas with using organic seed and having non-sprayed, high-quality produce.

I'm telling you my head is spinning with the possibilities of this adventure!

Easter weekend happened on April 5th and I decided to color my hair. I love my hair light blonde. I know I should embrace my natural dark blonde with gray highlights, but what can I say...I am still a bit vain I guess. Notice the photo bomb in the background?

This is my boy at our church's yearly Easter Egg Hunt. He is always such a happy boy.

Here are my other babies. Tomato and pepper seeds started inside on March 9th. In this picture, I am in the process of hardening them to be planted outside.

 

A trip to the library last week brought all this home with us. I am so excited about the Laura Ingalls Wilder annotated autobiography! I am about a third of the way through. It's an interesting read and it's fun to compare what she fictionalized in her children's series and what is factual.

We may or may not have a slight addiction to books in this house.

 

I finally broke down and bought my favorite Christian band's latest album. Casting Crown's music ministers to me in a way no other music does. I have been listening to it nonstop. Yes, I know they make downloadable music. I can't believe that a CD is old school since I grew up on cassette tapes.

 

I also bought this with some extra money I made last week. I can't explain how excited I am about this purchase! I have been using the fire out of it! I bought a reusable pod because I am frugal like that ;)

 

 Everyone should have a front porch to read Laura Ingalls Wilder's annotated biography on. Spring, how I love thee.



Here is a glimpse of the area we will be planting some of our produce in. My husband sure does love to work the dirt around here. He is in all his glory when he is on his tractor. 

My boy won first place at a literature fair he participated in last Friday with our local homeschool group. He was so happy to win! I am so proud of him and of his love for reading. He did his book on Dolphin Tale 2: The Junior Novel. He is obsessed with Winter the dolphin. If we earn enough money from our produce stand business this summer, I am taking him to see her in Florida this winter.

We put our tomato seedlings out Saturday afternoon. This is our first year using weed mat (affiliate link). I sure hope it's worth it because it takes a lot longer to plant when you use it. 

 

Here are the seedlings all nestled in their new home. We planted 63 of them. I have had some die already from transplanting. I may not have hardened them long enough in direct sunlight before transplanting them. I have about 150 more tomato plants I want to add out there. Yes, I'm serious.

This is the stray cat that has been hanging around our place. I was working on an article for the Molly Green Magazine yesterday morning and I looked up and saw this. She has finally quit running off the deck immediately when we go out there, but she still won't let us get close to her at all. We call her Fluffy. I think she is a girl because our other three spayed female cats don't seem to mind her around. I am a sucker for stray animals. 

 

 

My boy also started swim lessons this week and I have a 30 hour famine with our youth kids at church this weekend. I think I can say, after almost three years in Logan County, we have finally totally immersed ourselves into life here! We love it here, and with an uncertain future, which would require a totally different post to explain that, we pray this will be our forever home.

 

That's about all we have been up to lately here on the Hundred Acre Wood! How about you? Planting anything yet?

 

Jenn

KEEP READING

A Cheap DIY Compost

I have been wanting to do a compost for what seems like FOREVER. I just haven't gotten around to it until now.

The very first thing I did, before I even had the outside compost up and running, was to start one inside on my kitchen counter. I used an empty coffee container and started putting food scraps in it. I like it because it has a lid and doesn't stink up the kitchen or attract fruit flies.

 

 

I knew this would be a good project for my son so I put him in charge of making the compost bin for me. First, we pulled out a Rubbermaid tote we had sitting in our garage and he drilled holes in the bottom of it.

 

After the holes were drilled in the bottom, we turned it over and filled the bottom with torn newspaper. The reason for the newspaper, is to help add carbon to your compost. 

Then, he went and filled it to about a third of the way full with dirt. If your dirt is dry, you should sprinkle some water on it to moisten it. Ours was not dry because it had rained the previous day. 

 

 

Once the dirt was added, we emptied our coffee container scraps into it and mixed them in with the dirt. We will continue to do this as our container in the house becomes full.

 

We put the lid on it, drilled holes in the top, and stuck it in between the house and garden in a shady spot. That's it! It's so easy. Someday, we will have a better system, but until then I am happy to have taken the first steps in composting. The cost of this project for us was $0 because we already had the tote, dirt, and newspaper.

 

 

Jenn

KEEP READING

Spring Is a Busy Time of the Year

I am trying really hard to stay consistent with my blogging but life seems crazy right now! Is it just me, or is everyone else on the busy train right now too?

We are wrapping up Evan's third year of Upwards basketball next Saturday and that will free up Monday nights and Saturday mornings again. Evan has been wanting me to take him to Tractor Supply a lot lately just so he can look at these ducks. He wants some ducks and chickens really bad (so does his mama, but with age I have learned to be a little less impulsive and wait for the right timing.) We don't have a shelter to keep them in and we don't want to use our money to build one right now.

 

 

 

We finally got the grow light ordered and installed for our aquaponics system. I have some very happy tomato seedlings now. I can't wait to see how this turns out and if we can actually grow fruits and vegetables in it. I plan to do a post on it soon.

 

This has been top on the list of my priorities lately. I took the time the other day to plan out my garden and I went and bought all my seeds. Evan and I also went and put our name on the local Farmer's Market list to operate a booth this summer. We are pretty excited about that!

This is what I bought to start our seeds. We used these last year and they worked really well. It's pretty obvious that spring is in the air with all the garden stuff out at the stores.

 

We have started tomatoes and peppers inside. Last year we started all our seeds inside. With our growing season being pretty long in KY, I am confident that we can sow the rest outside in May and have a good outcome. We will be planting around ninety tomato plants and seventy pepper plants. 

 

My boys went for a walk in our woods the other day and found these old bottles. We looked them up online and they date back to the 1930's. The Lydia E. Pinkham's Medicine bottle is pretty neat. Here is a link to a little information about her - Lydia E. Pinkham. I will be adding them to the other old bottles we have collected here on the Hundred Acre Wood.



 

Evan had to give a speech Thursday evening for the 4-H district competition. Unfortunately he did not advance, but he learned a lot and can't wait to do it again next year. This is a picture of him before he had to give his speech. The ten and eleven year olds were in the library for their speeches so of course he found a book to read while waiting. 

This is my next project I am tackling. I have been talking about having a compost bin for years. I am going to start simple and work my way up from there. Now I just need to find the money in our budget to get it done.

 

 



That's what we have been up to lately. What about you?

Jenn

KEEP READING

How to Can Tomatoes the Little House Way

Have you always wanted to can tomatoes but it seems overwhelming to you? I did this step by step post so you can see that it's really an easy process. So get those plants started inside and grow you some tomatoes!

 

First thing you're going to need is tomatoes. Did I really need to say that....;) I've found canning tomatoes here cost about $7-$12 for twenty pounds. Once you get them you can put them in the sink and wash all the dirt and nasty from them.

 



KEEP READING

Planting the Garden

I've been pretty quiet on here lately, haven't I? I thought I would give you an update of what has been going on around here the last month.

My husband and son have been working on putting food plots in for deer season. We have five of them and two of them are quite large. We like to ride or walk out and check them often to see how they are coming along.

We also planted a garden and it seems to be doing well so far. This is the first time I have ever started seeds indoors and they have lived when being transplanted. I have a good row of tomatoes going. They are my prized possession since I want to put up as many canned tomatoes as possible this year.

KEEP READING

Starting Seeds and Prepping Food Plots

Just recently I posted on Facebook that spring is in full force around here. We have been getting ready to plant our garden and food plots for the deer. I'm also doing a bit of spring cleaning and de-cluttering. The weather is warming up and all the trees are budding and blossoming.

We took a trip to our local Wal-Mart last weekend and purchased some kits to start seeds indoors. 
This will be the first garden we've had since moving from Michigan. I am looking forward to it...I think. When I'm weeding in ticks and 110 degree temps, I might feel differently.

We planted some berry bushes and bought some strawberry plants too.

KEEP READING