Swank Homestead

I am obsessed with homemade vinegar. It is so easy and inexpensive. Granted unless you have an apple tree growing in your backyard and access to spring water it’s not as inexpensive as apple cider vinegar from the store. What I love about this is you can customize the vinegar. I first learned how to…

My mom definitely has a green thumb, especially with roses. She grows so many different rose varieties. Her favorite are Abe Lincoln and Peace rose. Her garden is starting to come alive with roses. Yesterday we harvested some petals from the flowers that were close to being spent. These are my favorite. I do not…

I did not have any luck with the seed starting heating pad. It got way too hot and it was too hard to control the temperature of the seeds. When something did start growing it dried out too fast and I didn’t notice it until it already wilted or died unfortunately. So I gave another…

Silver Bullet is the next alpaca blanket I have to process. He’s the one who looks like he’s wearing eyeliner lol. He is a beautiful bluish gray tone with some brown and dark blue spotting. I love the dark blue spots he has. I am simply repeating the process that I used to process Buster’s…

My husband bought me some beautiful strawberry roots from the store. I especially cannot wait to see the white ones. Super easy…just soak the root for a bit… Then they’re ready to plant. Since I don’t have a lot of room I decided to go vertical. I found these used gutters and bought the end…

I am using the method I found on YouTube. First we’re doing Busters fiber. As you can see he was a bit dirty. They usually suggest blowing out the Alpaca before shearing but she didn’t know which ones I would want and she actually doesn’t use the Alpaca fiber to spin so it wouldn’t matter…

This was an exciting day for me. I would love to raise Alpaca but after experiencing all of shearing day I am not so sure anymore Haha. A friend of the family owns 14 and they were all getting the salon treatment of haircuts and nail clippings. I am an avid animal lover and it…

This is my first year growing beets. I really didn’t do much research before planting other than when to plant. While doing my generic research almost every one says to plant more then thin later. Well I planted one seed per seed starting pod and started indoors instead of direct sowing. The ones I planted…

As promised here are some pictures from the new method I wanted to try. As y’all can see not all my babies popped. Rows 1-5 I’m waiting on peppers but I think it’s too cold. They may be rotting by now but we’re still going to put this greenhouse container on the heating pad and…

Today I spent time evaluating my current red raspberry bushes and planting a black raspberry and blackberry bush my husband surprised me with. This raspberry is flourishing. I didn’t think I would have this one come back this year. I barely got anything from it last year. This one was the heavy producer. It took…