I had a wonderful get together with some family and friends tonight. We had a lovely dinner and dessert from the homestead. It's always nice to share the fruits ofnpur labor with people we love, and they were so honored to get to eat from the farm. We had duck pot pie, with a beet arugula salad, and fresh bread. For desert we had wonderful lemon tarts. I will share some of the recipes with you all tomorrow.

So I'm not religious, I'll just start with that, however today is a special day for me and my friends and family. It's Imbolc also known as candle mass or ground hog day. It's a day where we recognize the returning of the sun and more day light hours. We will soon be dusting off our gardening gloves and putting our hands back in the soil, but first let's eat!! My family and friends will be coming together to night to break bread and simply celebrate the fact that the days are getting longer. Take some time today to reflect on the past year and plan for the year to come. Light a candle or two and enjoy sometime you harvested from your property, frozen or canned is ok. We will be having a duck pot pie with a cold beet salad and lemon tarts for dessert. No we didn't grow the lemons but a friend of mine did in her green house. The lemon is also to signify the sun. We see you sun and we're so happy. Remember this isn't religious in any way it's just something to do to recognize the changing of the seasons and reconnect with nature🥰

As we move closer to spring, yes I said spring, we start dreaming about our gardens or maybe going further with your homestead. Now I know a lot of you are possibly covered in snow right now, we're not and probably won't see any this year, and the thought of starting your garden or building a chicken coop aren't at the forefront of your mind. However this is the perfect time to start planning. So your assignment for this week is to map out your dream homestead, if you're not interested in ever actually homesteading (I don't know why you're here) you can just plan your dream garden. I want you guys to go big with this and have some fun, add anything you want, let's say if money wasn't and obstacle what would your homestead look like. I'll post mine for you to give you some ideas. This assignment will be due on Monday (you don't have to share if you don't want) The idea of this assignment is to give you a better idea of where you would like to go and what you would like to achieve. Your homework for tomorrow is to come up with a picture of your dream homestead, this can be a drawing or simply go on line and look for pictures of homestead, that's what I did, dosen't have to be perfect just a ruff idea. Ok you guys let's start molding our dream homesteads.

To anyone who checks out my canning course please I would love your feedback back on it, it's my first ever course I've put together that isn't in person so I would love to see what people think.

This is your first ever assignment here in our homesteading community, there will be many more to come. Please share with the community Assignment #1: If you have seeds and they need to be organized, cleaned out, or restocked now is the time to do so. There's nothing worse the realizing your out of a particular seed and need to order it or pick it up at your local seed store and they don't have it. When gardening it's always best to think ahead. Now if you don't have seeds and your just starting out now is the time to figure out what you want to grow and get some seeds. I would suggest going smaller rather then going to big and overwhelming yourself early on. Maybe pick 5 things you want to grow and stick to that. So you assignment is prepare your seeds and pick your crops. Your homework: Get a journal write GARDENING JOURNAL on the cover and your first entry is a list of the seeds you already have, what you need to buy, or if you don't have seeds, what you want to grow. I also want you to share on here how you plan to garden this year, in pots, raised beds, hydroponic ..., and what you plan to grow. *keeping a gardening journal is a great way to remember what you planted and when also keeping track of your yield is a good idea so you know if you should grow it again next year.