sheet mulch

I have had a couple of questions about preparing new soil for planting. I have used a sheet mulch with good results. After staking out the plot I want to ready, I cover it with a layer of compost, followed by a layer of wood chips and then a layer of cardboard or newspaper. Wet this well then leave it be. You want this good and thick so no weeds or grass will grow. Left like this for a few months, worms and good soil microbes will go to work and produce soil that is loose and ready for planting. It is the lazy way to do it, requiring little else beyond poking it with a pitchfork on occasion.

Today was lovely Indian summer day with temperatures near 70. I got up early, got the healthy children off to school, got some tea and toast into  ”>jackie and set off with Bruce to pick apples. We got two big bushels full that we will press tomorrow. I made some bread and started a big pan of stuffing to have with dinner. While waiting for the bread to rise, I took a walk to the post office for the mail and stopped at Heather’s (faith, fun and family blog)for a short visit. She was working in her garden and sent me home with a gorgeous cabbage. I will put that up as kraut in the morning. Not much else happened all day. I read some and did some laundry and picked up the house. A friend stopped by before dinner and we admired the beets I was cooking. I helped Phoebe with her homework and took a walk with Karen. It was such an ordinary day. Still, I feel so satisfied tonight. I spent time with my kids and my husband. I prepared good food for my family. I enjoyed my friends. My house feels well-tended. I am engrossed in a good book. Just a day. Just a life. Ordinary. Extraordinary.

PS: Thanks to all who contributed to the book list. I wrote them down and will take the list to my library on Saturday. We have a tiny library but we can get whatever we like through inter-library loan. The list will see me through the winter.

 

catching up

Good morning and welcome to our new readers. I spent a long, lazy weekend catching up on things. I visited my favorite blogs (love the new picture Amy @rock cottage) and checked out the blogs of some of my readers. The problem with this is they link to new blogs which link to new blogs which link….. and they are all the kind of things I love. Woman, mostly, writing about homesteading and food and preparedness. I will confess I got a bit lost and found that a couple of hours had gone by but I had so much fun. I was writing down recipes and ideas for future posts and preparedness tips.

I have another kid down with the flu. My 18 year-old foster child has it and she is one sick puppy. I am so glad to be ready for this with elderberry cough syrup, lots of herbal teas, chicken soup in the pantry and fever reducer in the medicine cabinet. We live a good ten miles from a pharmacy. I like to be ready should one of my kids wake up in the middle of the night with a raging fever and sore throat.

Did any of catch 60 Minutes last night? They did a segment on the risk of cyber attacks bringing down our power grid. It was a truly frightening scenario. I would  hate to find myself needing to can more than two hundred pounds of meat from my freezer. I am still debating the wisdom of getting a generator. Bruce thinks we should get one and I am on the fence. A generator is loud and needs stored fuel and is really only a stop-gap measure at best. Still, it would buy us time to get the freezer food canned or dried or jerked. I don’t have enough jars at this time of the year to can it all anyway. I have only an extra 180 jars at my low point although I empty a few more every day as we eat up the food. I could come up with another 30 or so if I transferred my dried food to plastic containers. I am trying to get rid of all the plastic food storage containers in my house so that won’t be an option in the future. I store cases of lids and rings and I have two canners I could put to use. So much to think about.

If Jackie is well enough to leave for a few hours today. I want to take advantage of the fabulous weather to pick more apples. We have been making both pear and apple cider every chance we get. I have been reading in the Little House books that they used to press cider in the fall and have it all year. They kept it in barrels in the cold basements. I am thinking about trying that. The worst case is that it gets hard or turns to vinegar. I don’t care for hard cider but I am sure I could find a home for it and I use a lot of vinegar. We are finding we are drinking a lot of cider which gives me more milk for cheese making. I read in another one of the Little house books about making hard cheese. They make it sound so easy and I would not even have to butcher a calf for the rennet. I have lots of that. Bruce could make me a press. The cheese stored in the cold cellar too. 

I am looking to do a book list. Could you all recommend you favorite books? I am thinking of books with a preparedness or homesteading bent. I love first-person accounts. I could get things started by telling you that I got a copy of Sharon Astyk’s new book, Independence Days. A word of warning. Don’t start it when you have things to do. You will not want to put it down. I know she is planning another book on adapting in place. I can’t wait. I am nearly through with the Little House series and I need some good reads to get me through the long, cold winter.

 

brain dead

There are days when, no matter how much thought I put into it, a topic eludes me. Today is one of them. I think I am perhaps still in a wierd place after the Fort Hood attack. I believe it will turn out to be the work of one very disturbed man.  One can not help but think of the families of the dead and injured and hold one’s loved ones a bit closer. I am actually going on a news sabbatical again. I do that from time to time, especially after a spate of particularly violent or troubling stories. The past few weeks have been like that. The stories all seem to be the stuff of nightmares. I don’t need the images and I won’t watch them. I don’t need to be that well-informed.

So a topic has just come to me. A friend suggested this idea a couple of days ago and I think it is a good one for the slightly OCD among us. I often want to start a project but find that I am always missing one major component and the moment is lost. A friend talked about project kits and I put one together. I want to learn to make slippers. I ordered the pattern from a little catalog I have, got the material and notions and put it all together in a bag. Now, if I am moved to work on the slippers, I have only to pull out my sewing basket and the bag and I will be good to go. I got the pattern for making a simple elastic waist pants too. I did the same thing. I put the pattern, elastic, fabric and thread in a bag and now I could make the pants in an hour without a hunt for some necessity. Maybe today is a good day to make the pants. Phoebe likes to wear pants with a non-binding waist and I have some great woollen fabric from a skirt I picked up at salvation army. As my brain does not seem capable of much thought today, that seems like a plan.

I wish you all a happy day. Try to find some joy, some peace, some beauty. The stuff on the news is not the real world. It is a tiny bit of evil. When it is reported to millions, we give it too much weight. It is no less harmful than consuming a toxin. We need to chelate our minds from these images with good books and flowers, with kid giggles and good food. That’s the real world.

 

good reads

I was straightening my daughters book shelves yesterday and found her Little House series. I realized there were a couple of the books I had somehow missed so, with a few minutes before my friend, Leni, and I were due to set out on a foraging expedition, I picked up The Long Winter. I was so engrossed that it was hard for me to pull myself away from it. But I did and the benefits were worth the delayed gratification. In just a couple of hours we had 4 bushels of apples and two HUGE grain sacks full of seckle pears. The pears were tiny but delicious. I know from experience that they don’t hold all that well, even if kept cold so the problem of what to do with them was front and center. We brought our loot back to my house and Bruce pulled out the cider press. The plan was to press just some of the apples but after a bit we found ourselves with one jar that needed more cider to be full. Why not try the pears? We did and the results were amazing. I love pear cider. It is sweeter, richer and more complicated tasting than apple cider. We ended up pressing most of the pears into juice. Some of the juice will get put in the freezer, some drunk on the spot and some may be made into wine. There a lot of these little seckle pears around and you can be sure I will never look at them as a nuisance again. After a fabulous lunch (Leni made a red cabbage and apple slaw with gorgonzola cheese and I grilled some sun-dried tomato, portabella mushrooms and mozzarella cheese sandwiches, I got back to my book. It is a harrowing story of the Ingalls family’s winter spent on the Dakota praire during the worst blizzard season im memory. By the time supplies arrived, the family was living on just a few pieces of wheat bread a day, made from some salvaged wheat ground in a coffee grinder. There was a part in the book where Charles talks about how dependent the family had become on modern conveniences like kerosene lamps and coal stoves and how hard it was to manage without them. Who would have thought it? Charles Ingalls was a closet prepper! After reading about the families brush with starvation, it was a pure pleasure to sit down to dinner. That chicken never tasted so good.

It may seem silly that a grown woman is sitting around reading kids books but a good kids book has the hero or heroines battling the forces of evil without the benefit of a parent figure to solve their problems. I think there is much to learn about learning to use one’s whits and acquiring independence. I am going to reread several that I came across yesterday. It may be a long, cold winter and I can use all the inspiration I can get.

 

latest preparedness purchases

I been doing some end-of-the-season shopping and I found some real bargains. I got open pollinated seeds for 1/2 price. I now  have enough seeds to plant for next year even if I bought no more. I made sure to get the basics like corn, beans, squashes, tomatoes, beets, carrots, turnips and peas. I could always forage enough greens to see me through but the root crops are the basis of my storage food as they require no energy to store. I can dehydrate the corn, beans, peas and tomatoes. Squash keeps well at cool room temperature. I did get a lot of other seeds and duplicates of many. I can always give them away if seed is hard to come by next year. I got my order out for my herb garden too. I am planning two gardens. One will be culinary and one medicinal. I want the culinary garden closer to the house but my yard is not really set up for that to be possible without tearing up the flower gardens my husband has spent years developing. 

I am putting a lot of effort into planning our garden. If your garden is a hobby you can afford to wait until the mood strike in the spring to start thinking about it but if you expect it to feed your family the time to plan is now. If you want more space, now is the time to put in some sheet mulch so the soil will be rich and ready for planting. I put down well composted manure, shavings and newspapers or cardboard down. I also poke some hole first with a pitchfork. As the paper and shaving decompose they add organic matter to the soil while killing the grass underneath.

It is not enough to say you want to grow beans. You need to decide which variety based on what you plan to do with them. You also need to be planning meals around what you have preserved and decide which things are winners and which just not worth the effort. We have gone through most of our dilled green beans. Next year, I will do many more. Last year they were not as popular but I switched to a haricot verde variety and everybody loves them.

This is where your notebook comes in handy. You need good records to make decisions. I know. You think you will remember. You won’t.

My greenhouse is very productive right now. We aren’t eating huge salads but we are getting enough greens to top a pizza, add to soups and put on sandwiches. Just sitting out there, in the warm, humid air lets me forget for a minute that winter is just around the corner.

I am increasingly worried about the state of our economy. I fear that many will struggle to put food on the table in the coming months. When you plan your garden, think about how many you will be feeding and add a few rows for your adult children, aging parents and neighbors who might be in need if you can manage it.

 

waste

We are a disposable society. From diapers to razors to relationships, we are use to tossing things out when they no longer suit. I am trying to change my habits. I want to toss less and repurpose more. The thing that is hard is not letting what I save just become clutter and refuse in my house as opposed to clutter and refuse in the landfill.  For instance, saving leftovers in the fridge is only useful if I eat them in a timely fashion. Otherwise, I am just postponing the inevitable. There is no virtue in tossing the stuff only after it molds. Yesterday, I was throwing out a twenty year old sweatshirt that had finally had it. It had been through about ten kids and could not be mended again. It was not even good for rags as it was a synthetic blend. It did, however, have an actual metal zipper (I told you it was old). I removed the zipper and put it in my sewing notions. Now I have to use it. Otherwise, my kids will find it and toss it out when I die. They will have to suffer the inherited guilt that rightly belongs to me.

Clutter is a real problem for those of us who save stuff and I am not sure of the solution. I am trying to make sure I have a plan for what I keep. The jeans will be patches or maybe a quilt top. The leftovers will become soup. But what about the dead electrical stuff. I know I can not be the only one with a box of phones, hair dryers and VCRs that will never work again.  Bruce can fix most things but the new electronics are so complicated that without special tools and the schematics the average person will never do it. I guess the solution is not to toss less but rather to buy less and to make sure what you do chose to spend money on has some real value. It is generally better to spend the money on something that will last for 20 years than it is to save money on something that is destined for the junk heap after 6 months. Maybe that is the problem with the economy. If it is consumer driven and the consumer is sick of driving, especially to the dump, the economy is doomed.

Bruce and I went hiking yesterday.  We went to an amazing series of waterfalls called Tannery Falls. We stood in the damp, cool air and soaked in the beauty. In that spot, it was possible, at least for a few minutes to forget the problems that face our planet. There was no problem with climate or pollution or population or resource depletion or species extinction. It was just primordial beauty. We returned to the parking lot and were greeted by a waving plastic bag and discarded beer cans. Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope for a person who can leave their trash in a place like that. It felt like desecrating a church. Evil.

 

fat chance

This post is going out early as everybody in town is sick and I am feeling a bit under the weather too.

Our pigs were butchered this weekend and I got a big sack of fat to render. I had not done this before so I want to share what I learned. First, I had always associated rendered fat (lard) with Crisco. Nothing could be further from the truth. Shortening is one of those not-really-food items full of  trans fats and chemicals. There is a reason it will last forever. Actual lard is full of vitamin D and has no trans fats. Lard makes the best pie crusts and is the thing to use for frying food as the smoking temperature is quite high. Fats are one of the foods that can be hard to come by in a crisis and you need quite a bit of it. Oils go rancid quickly so you can’t store huge amounts but lard freezes well so I am delighted to have  a big batch of it.

There are two ways to render lard. It can be done on a stove top or in the oven. I did mine mostly on the stove top. I can tell you one thing for sure. This is one of those chores better done outside. It is also one of the few times I wished for paper towels. I don’t use them but cleaning up greasy messes leaves you with greasy rags and I would have used them if they had been here.

The first part of rendering is to cut the fat up in small chunks. It comes in long strips and you can’t melt it like that. I used kitchen shears. Some people add a bit of water to the bottom of the pot but I didn’t bother. Now melt the fat over medium heat. This will take at least an hour. You will need to stir from time to time but wear a pot holder mitten and don’t lean over the pot as the fat pops and spits and a burn is likely. Keep the kids elsewhere too. I kept two pans going at once and kept one pot in the oven with the last of the fat. As the fat melts you will find bits of fried meat called chitlins left in the pan. Lift these out and save them. I put mine in pint-sized mason jars. Chitlins are lovely additions to cornbread. I put some in a pan I was frying mushrooms in today and they tasted terrific but they are really rich. A little goes a long way. When the fat has melted, strain it through cheese cloth into a container. I used quart mason jars but I learned from a friend that I could have used loaf pans and had a solid block of lard. I wish I had done that as it would have frozen a lot better and taken up less room. My first batch of lard looked a bit dark. I didn’t let the lard melt as long for the next batch and it was a lot lighter. I did put a raw potato in each pot of lard after the chitlins were removed and let it fry for a few minutes. That is supposed to leave you with very white lard. I forgot with one of the pots and could not see much of a difference. The whole thing, from beginning to cleaning up, took three hours. My friend, Heather, will need to render her fat soon. It is not a job to do with a two- year-old and a newborn. I hope she will let me give her a hand.

20 pounds of fat provided me with 6 quarts of lard and 20 pints of chitlins. I am pleased to have used something that is often thrown out. I am looking forward to making a pie crust with the lard. My son and his family came over today. I prepared a feast for us. We had pork chops with applesauce, a delicata squash casserole, oven roasted potatoes, home-made rolls, dilly beans and a big pot of mushrooms and onions sauted with chitlins. We served cider with the meal and we all ate until we were stuffed. I didn’t bother with dessert. It was such a fabulous meal and all of it came from our little patch of land with exception of the wheat and spices. Nathan paid me a lovely compliment. He said that if he lived here he would put on fifty pounds. He would probably not have to worry about it. We work hard to put this much food on the table and we burn off a lot of calories.

 

uphill both ways

The Saudis have a saying about going from camel to car to jet to camel that has to do with the futility of an expectation of exponential growth. We have similar sayings but for most of us the myth is that continued, constant growth is both possible and necessary. My father walked 5 miles to school and it was uphill both ways. I went to school on a bus, my son drove his own car and his son will go by personal jet pack. My father never saw a doctor, I saw the first polio vaccines, my son has had the benefit of excellent medical care and his son will have  a health care plan designed around his DNA that will prevent all future illness and allow him to live well into his 100’s. My father knew real hunger during the depression, I ate Wonder Bread, my son has access to foods from around the world in all seasons for prices that in no way reflect their real costs and his son will eat a wide variety of enhanced foods that will be palate pleasing, nutritious and cheap enough to feed the masses. My father dropped out of high school to help feed his family. I went to community college after my children were born. My son went to a state college. His son will attend an Ivy League school. You get the picture here. We all want the best for our kids and the best is generally translated as more than what we had. Sorry friends, but I don’t think so. There is not enough stuff left to go around. A lucky few may well have all of the good stuff they want but the odds are that a whole of other people going to do without in order for that to happen.

I am planting trees that will not bear well in my lifetime but my kids will eat the fruit. I am beginning a honey business that has some significant start-up costs associated with it but may provide my kids with a way to earn a living. I am investing in my community so it will remain a good place to live. I am investing in my home so it will be available to provide free shelter for my kids and their kids. I am building permaculture gardens in order to assure a healthy, stable food supply for future generations. My library holds the wisdom of generations of gardening and animal husbandry experience. I am accumulating tools rather than hording cash, buying land rather than new cars, acquiring experience rather than enjoying leisure. I am writing all these things down so my great-grandchildren will know they were loved, even before they were born.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of our new readers from around the country and around the world. I say our readers because the pleasure of this blog is that is enriched by the experience of so many who write such useful comments. We are certainly a diverse bunch. I really appreciate the level of respect in your posts. I want all to feel welcome here, no matter what your belief system is.  As the old meditation goes, Dear Lord be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small. We share the boat and we need each other.

 

fixed income

Rumor has it that today’s GDP numbers will show that we are out of recession. Say what? I fear that any recovery is based on cash for clunkers and the $8,000.00 housing gift. I also think any recovery will be short-lived as we run into energy problems. I hate to sound so negative but I still think we are in economic trouble in this country and it is not time to break out the credit cards and start spending just yet.

Financial preparedness is just as important as having food and water on hand. We all know the steps to getting out of debt. It is a no-brainer to keep track of your spending and pay off your high interest credit cards first. But real life does interfere and there are pitfalls everywhere. Let me share a personal story. My daughter asked me to pick her up a black cape for Halloween. I went to a couple of thrift shops and couldn’t find one long enough for her so I did something I nearly never do. I went to Wal-Mart and plunked down $10.00 for a made-in-China cape. Not only did I spend money on something evil but now it turns out Karen no longer needs the cape. Today is one of those days when I will be leaving here at 10:00 and not returning for more than an hour until 5:30 tonight. The pizza parlor looks mighty appealing on a night like this. I have to treat discretionary spending like an alcoholic has to treat a gin and tonic. I have to begin my day by making a committment to resist, at least for today and I will need to avoid the places that are just to tempting for me. Avoiding the pizza parlor will mean that I have to get a meal in the crockpot. I have leftover chicken and lots of frozen vegetables for a chicken stew. Remember those mixes I put up a few weeks ago> The biscuit mix is quite good and I can have biscuits in the oven in about 3 minutes. Not pizza but healthy, quick and cheap.

This is just an aside. I ran spell check before I posted this. I find it telling that canner is not in the computer dictionary but Wal-Mart is.

 

My new favorite thing

I went to my permaculture group last night. It is my new favorite thing. For one thing, it’s small. Only four of us attend every meeting. We are all already growing a lot of food and have the basics down. The thing which really appeals most to me is that this is a true working group. We are working on the specifics of our orchards right now. My job for the next meeting is to research which mushrooms species are the most beneficial to inoculate the soil with. Others are researching similar ideas like dear deterrents and insect control. All of the complementary plants come together to form guilds. A guild is like a plant community. I have already learned that I can plant daffodil bulbs around the base of my young trees. This will deter the critters that like to borrow down and girdle the trees in the winter.

I had a lovely thing happen last night. The young woman who hosts the group just sold a book store and she has a ton of wonderful books. She was planning on selling them on-line. Of course, I could not resist looking through the boxes and came up with three books I had to have. The first was Gaia’s Garden, the text our group is reading together. There was also a copy of Barnyard in the Backyard and the Backyard Beekeeper’s Honey Handbook. I went to give this girl the money and she asked if I would barter instead. I asked what she wanted in return and she asked for some lessons in kitchen organization and canning. She is young and her mom died several years ago. I was so moved to be asked. I would have done it for free, of course and I offered to do so but she seemed to be more comfortable with the barter arrangement. I will make sure she goes home from our lessons with some food and cider. One of the other women who attends is an herbalist. We are doing a field trip to her house to learn to make Echinacea tincture. The fourth woman worked for years in a green house and knows about pruning grapes.

The news is so grim right now. Every day brings more violence in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Every day more people are losing jobs and homes. I want to be informed but I also need to protect myself. I am starting my days with a few minutes of reading something beautiful before I face my day. I will write here and plan for something joyful everyday. Even something as small as walk around the perimeter of my land will bring some peace to my day. I make sure to talk with friends and family and play with my little girl. I made her Halloween costume yesterday. The fabric came from my dear friend, Barbara. It is sweet little fairy costume. I spent a few minutes in gratitude tha Phoebe is well enough to go trick or treating and would not consider dressing like a hooker. Every year I see little girls dressed  in costumes that curl my very straight hair. Small things. Big gratitude.