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Fall is harvest time. It’s rewarding to see the fruits of your labor, such as a full pantry or stacks of firewood for winter.

Homesteading can be physically demanding. Involving the whole family in chores can make them closer and teach valuable life skills.

The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly changed many aspects of day-to-day life and gave Americans more time at home. For some Cove residents, the fruit of the pandemic was literal, as this extra time at home led to more time in their backyards, reviving a love of growing food, chicken keeping, and overall awareness about their food sources.

Lisa Logan of Martinsburg had loved gardening for years, and since becoming involved with Friends Farm in Williamsburg and joining its CSA, she had a growing interest in where her food came from. During the pandemic, as her busy schedule slowed down and she enjoyed the extra time with family, and she realized how much she needed to simplify her life. For her, this involved delving deeper into gardening as she spent more time at home.

“Removing outside stressors made me realize that this [slower pace] is the way I like to live,” Logan said, adding it was a time to “sort out priorities.”

Since the pandemic, she’s taken local homesteading classes, watched many educational YouTube videos, and expanded her garden while making it self-sustaining.

She utilizes raised beds to save space on her property in the borough, as well as the “square foot method,” which encourages planting things next to each other that will help each other. This keeps the garden contained with the added benefit of less weeding.

Now that her son is at college, she has even turned his bedroom into an area to grow seedlings, joking at the thought of what her neighbors probably thought when the room “glowed” at night.

This April, she added five chickens to her backyard homestead, which she hopes will help bring it “full circle” as they will eat weeds and provide compost for her garden while providing eggs. When she was researching chickens, she called Martinsburg Borough and was surprised to find out borough residents were permitted to have them, provided they did not “free range” and minded the noise ordinance.

Other sustainable additions to Logan’s garden include the use of a rain barrel to help with watering, growing medicinal herbs such as marsh plants for reflux, and the use of a pollinator garden.

Logan has also picked up food preservation once again since her bountiful harvest required it. She has gotten back into water bath canning for syrups, jellies, dehydrating to make smoothie powder, and freezing for vegetables to enjoy all year.

With all she’s accomplished, Logan still considers herself a beginner, as there’s “always something to learn.”

Roseanne Conrad of Martinsburg has also been interested in gardening for some time. Growing up in a family of 8, she learned gardening, baking, cooking and other skills throughout her childhood. She is also a certified master gardener through Penn State Extension. However, she also acknowledged how much the trend of backyard gardens took hold during the pandemic.

Conrad said that it’s funny to see younger people getting into backyard homesteading since the pandemic. And it’s not only gardening, but also other traditional skills, like soap making, sewing, and candle making. Conrad herself revisited her love of sewing and started a sewing business during the pandemic.

“Parents through COVID did things they didn’t normally do; they had to stay home, they got pets, and they gardened,” Conrad said, adding that parents teaching skills to their children can establish a stronger bond between them.

As she gardens, she remembers the lessons that her great-grandfather, also a gardener, taught her, such as doing everything in moderation and being careful not to throw things away, instead finding ways to use them in your home and garden.

“All those things our great grandparents did out of necessity, we can now go to the store and get [those products], but it’s so much more rewarding when you do it yourself,” she said.

“It’s more like self-relance,” she said, adding that it’s all about finding ways to make your backyard work for you.

Conrad works with an average-sized backyard inside Martinsburg Borough, and she encourages others that a large space is not needed to start gardening, compost, chicken keeping or other activities that connect you with your food sources.

“You don’t need rows and rows to have a successful garden,” she said.

Conrad is mindful of what she grows, where she grows it, and how to minimize waste to make her small space work for her. This year, her brother, who is a contractor, built a chicken coop beside her garage with a run for them which fits seamlessly amongst her gardens and open space. She now has seven chickens that will provide her with both eggs and fertilizer for her soil, as well as the companionship of pets.

“There are a lot of things people have forgotten because they’ve gotten used to getting a frozen dinner at Walmart,” she said.

Conrad has used spaces all over her backyard to plant vegetables, herbs and more amongst her flowers. This year, she’ll grow and preserve heritage pineapple tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, potatoes, beans and herbs in her backyard. In terms of where to plant, she carefully plans, selects spaces, and sometimes uses trial and error when it comes to making the most of her space. For example, one area running alongside her garage was rocky and she wasn’t sure what would happen when she planted, but she ended up with huge heirloom tomatoes.

Of course, not all of Conrad’s projects have been this successful, but Conrad says she enjoys the failures and successes alike.

“It’s frustrating when you can’t get something to grow, but that’s half of the fun,” she said.

You make mistakes and learn, she said, “In the end, it’s all rewarding.”

Logan agrees, and discussed how much enjoyment she’s gotten from the learning process of gardening. She encourages others to make use of the resources they have, and to make the process as fun and simple as possible.

“There’s always something to learn,” she said, “The more I learned, the more passionate I got about it . . . For me it’s about simplifying things and make [the garden] as sustainable as possible.”

“Do what you can with the resources you have . . . at the end of the day it has to be fun,” Logan said.

Sharon Albin of Claysburg has used her resources to pursue backyard chicken keeping, which has become a passion for her. About 4 years ago, her daughters encouraged her to get some chicks, and she’s since expanded to have a large, fenced area to two large chicken pens with multiple coops, and a duck pond. At the time of her interview, she had 11 chickens and two ducks, but has since experienced a raccoon attack that killed six chickens and a duck.

“[I’ve] never had such an attack in over six years . . . [but it’s the] chance you take with a backyard flock,” she said.

Nevertheless, what started as her daughters’ passion project has now become her own, and it’s clear how much she loves tending to her backyard flock. She has multiple breeds of chickens, which she feeds a mix of traditional feed, food scraps and summer treats.

“They come running like dogs,” she said, when she brings out food, especially watermelon, which has become a favorite.

Besides companionship, the 11 chickens yielded about 7 to 8 eggs per day, more than she can eat, which is one reason she had cut back from an even larger flock in the past. She used to sell the eggs, and the duck eggs were a big hit with her bodybuilder friend for their high nutrient content.

Though Albin has friends who raise their chickens and turkeys for meat, she “could never eat [her] own,” she said, so for now she enjoys their eggs.

Like the other homesteaders, she’s also noticed an uptick in chicken keeping and homesteading since the pandemic, when she had a hard time getting chicks and feed. She’s also weathered through the difficult winters, venturing down to their coops “when it’s snowing and blow”when it’s snowing and blowing” to provide them food and warm water with crockpots. She’s even installed a switch in her home to turn on their heat in the winter. Despite many challenges, Albin has seen the benefit in continuing because she loves her backyard flock.

“It can be addicting,” she said.

Michelle McIntyre, Director of Roaring Spring Library and a Duncansville resident, has also pushed through many challenges and pursued extensive knowledge to chase her passion for homesteading. Though she’s not a chicken keeper (“yet”), she and her husband have utilized her backyard to provide a constant supply of fresh food.

She is also a Master Gardener through Penn State Extension, and she grew up on a 42-acre homestead. She watched her mother, grandmother and other family members “[live] off the land,” she said.

During the pandemic, she made 10 raised beds for her yard, and she has been continually improving her garden during the past several years. She grows blueberries, raspberries, corn, grapes, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, cucumbers and much more.

The pandemic allowed her more time, and she started looking at her property and made a plan for the most effective way to use the space. There are many considerations, she said, such as sun direction and what plants work well together.

She has also added grape vines, medicinal herbs, hoop houses to keep plants going all winter, and even an indoor Aero Garden.

She started beekeeping in 2022 as a way to make her garden more rich and sustainable, adding that pollinators are a tool to help both gardens and environments.

To preserve her food, she has a cold cellar in the basement, and she is an avid dehydrator and canner. She’s committed to making as much as possible from scratch and learning how to preserve what she grows in order to have fresh food all year long. Simply learning how to store different vegetables can preserve them for much longer, she said. For example, learning to store carrots in sand in a cooler in her basement and potato in newspaper has kept both fresh.

With all the time she has invested in preservation, she’s also been forced to consider what would happen if refrigeration is lost or other issues arise. She once had a flood in her basement that changed the pressure and popped the lids of her canned foods, making them unsafe to eat, so she is acutely aware of the need to think ahead to preserve all of the hard work she’s invested.

The pandemic made people more aware of supply chain issues as well as where their food comes from.

“If it’s in your garden, you know what’s on it and that it’s fresh,” she said.

She also suffers from a lot of food allergies, so knowing exactly what ingredients are in her food is crucial.

Logan, Conrad and McIntyre all encourage aspiring gardeners to seek out advice from others in the community, and all have been pleasantly surprised at the generosity of the community and its willingness to share advice.

McIntyre has held several classes at the Roaring Spring Library, and plans to offer more. The library is home to a seed library, where county residents can order up to 25 packs of seeds and have them delivered to any library in Blair, Bedford or Huntingdon free of charge. There is also a gardening group of youth and adults that meets weekly at the library to tend to its community garden. The garden’s excess harvest will be utilized in the pop-up food pantry at the library this season.

Anne Gray

Conrad poses with one of her chickens, who have become “like pets.”

McIntyre said that the RS Library has many books about gardening, preserving and homesteading, and she tries to tailor the library books to the local climate to help readers have success. She recalled books, for example, written by British gardeners that wouldn’t help gardeners in the Central PA climate.

The Penn State Extension office at the Altoona Blair-County Airport also offers soil testing, classes and expertise. McIntyre noted that upcoming class topics include dehydrating, canning and chicken keeping.

Conrad recently created a Facebook group, “Chicken Keepers of the Cove,” and it has grown to nearly 150 local members. She wanted a place for backyard homesteaders to share advice, tips and local resources, she said. She also wanted to raise awareness about the community, and share the growing mentality regarding “what you can do in your backyard,” she said. She hopes more people will connect and meet others who love this trend in the local community.

“In the end, it’s all rewarding,” Conrad said.

Source: mcheraldonline.com