We hit the road at the crack of dawn on Saturday to head to Worcester for the winter NOFA conference. Our dear friend, Pepper tagged along as she was presenting a workshop on Micro-dairies. Pepper runs our raw mild CSA. Thank goodness the roads were clear and the traffic light.
The high point of the conference was watching another good friend, Ed Stockman, receive the Person-Of-The-Year award for his work with GMO awareness. It was well-deserved. In addition to running an organic berry farm Ed works tirelessly to educate people about the hazards of GMO food.
I wish I could say that the keynote by John Jeavons, something I was really looking forward to, was fabulous. It was heavily geared toward agriculture in California. As it was about 3 degrees while he was speaking, hearing about citrus and avocados was not really where my interest lay. I expect he had a lot more information at his workshops but the keynote was just not useful and we slipped out early to get lunch.
My workshop didn’t go well at all. I should have know better. I demonstrated canning chili. It takes 90 minutes and, as most of you know, waiting for something to process is about as interesting as watching paint dry. I was still a good 30 minutes from being done when the tiny propane cylinder they gave me to cook with ran dry. They didn’t have another and it was just awful. I brought the chili home and froze it so it wasn’t a complete loss but it felt disorganized and unprofessional.
I did take agood workshop on lacto-fermentation that explained a lot of my problems. I still have some cabbage in the root cellar and I plan to make some kraut later this week. The stuff she gave us to try was delicious. Bruce took a workshop on raising bees using a method called top bar hives. He came away all excited and is planning to give this method a try with one hive this spring. We just ordered our bees and now just need spring.
A lot of the talk at the conference was about resilience. It got me to thinking about what that really means. One dictionary definition refers to things returning to “normal” after a compression but I find another definition more helpful. It says that resilience is the ability to recover or being buoyant. For the many who are struggling with debt or lack of employment, for families what are not able to feed their families without help or who dread the day they have to put gas in the car, the idea of returning to normal may seem foreign. What and whose normal? Buoyancy is different. I see that as a way of adapting to what is rather than hoping for what may never be. I’m going to be looking at my resilience this year. What steps can I take and skills can I cultivate to improve my resilience? We are facing some cuts to our income over the next few years. In the old days I would have been thinking about how to earn more money. Now I’m thinking about how to spend less. I have one idea that I can put in place right now. When we were raising two pigs a year we bought a gigantic freezer. We also have a small, upright freezer that we use mostly for fruits and vegetables. We have found two pigs to be a bit much for us and only got one this year so I have a lot of empty freezer space. I think I can reorganize the food and manage with just the one freezer. I’ll sell the other and save the electricity costs, considerable on such an inefficient model. I also talked to Pepper about turkeys. She wants to raise some but can’t afford the cost of pullets this year. I can afford the chicks but I have no place to put them without a fairly big investment in a shelter. We came to a meeting of the minds. I’ll buy 25 babies. She’ll raise them and we’ll split the cost of butchering. I’ll get terrific birds for far less than the cost of the free-range ones I buy now ($60.00 a piece this year), and I don’t need to build a coop to protect them from the neighborhood foxes. I’ll have a canning marathon and get a year’s supply of turkey, ready to eat for about $225.00. That sounds like a lot of money but it’s really a deal.
I need to get much better at planning for food and fuel, clothing and other essentials in an intentional way. I look forward to hearing from you all about how you save money and prepare for an uncertain future. I learn so much from the folks who visit here.
January 16, 2012 at 8:53 am
Kathy, another of my favorite blogs linked to a word list rather than New years resolution. It gave you a list of words and one was supposed to jump out at me. I was skeptical. But one did. It was Abundance.
Sometimes, I tend only to see the lack. I think God is really pointing me towards looking at the areas in my life that are overflowing and to be grateful and gracious in those areas.
It sounds like you have found your “word”.
Here is the link to my friend’s blog and the link to the word list. I found this to be a very intriguing exercise.
http://remarkablewrinklies.com/2012/the-power-of-words-new-years-resolutions-finally-get-real/
http://christinekane.com/resolution-revolution-a-better-way-to-start-your-year/
January 16, 2012 at 8:56 am
Ed’s checking out the top bar hives, but we are wondering how they’d do up here in extreem cold. I’ll be anxious to hear more about it.
If you are selling your upright, we’d be interested.
January 16, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Great post, sorry your weekend didn’t go as well as you had hoped
We are starting the new year off much like we left last year with doing more with less $$ spent, learning more ways to find a simpler life and sharing with others, the things we can donate as well as the joy of making do can bring. Hats off to you for finding your new path for 2012. Look forward to following along!!
January 16, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Don’t you just hate it when what you know you do well doesn’t work well in a demonstration? After years of doing presentations, I learned what worked and what didn’t. The people doing it on t.v. sometimes have several stages of the same thing going on.
I so enjoy reading your blog and about how you are living what I only dream of. I can’t do what you are doing because I live on a city lot with poor soil (better every year), and lots of shade in the back yard. I am waiting for the city to tell me I can’t garden in the front yard.
January 16, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Like every year the last 5 years (early retirement and all the financial suff we all know about) I combed through the budget looking for leaks. I had a couple of leaks due to ISP and another internet service being automatically charged to a credit card. I could never remember to subtract it in the check book so it always seemed a surprised when the card bill came!
I’m going to do better with that this year. Also, cooking more from scratch has its rewards as my yearly blood tests showed my cholesterol and a couplel of other numbers (LDL HDL??) dropped noticeably. We’re not talking about Lipitor anymore! I won’t bore you all with the other numbers except that they are all still in the normal range. Even as food prices increase, I’m getting better at handling food and leftovers, etc.
Kathy, would you be willing to elaborate on what you’re planning for with your income dropping in the next few years?
thanks for your blog and thanks to the commentators.
peace, Shamba
January 16, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Sorry to hear Jeavons wasn’t more relevant. We’ve been using elements of his bio-intensive method for years (but no longer double-dig established beds, because we think it disturbs the soil structure).
Weedygarden, our shady yard with its not-entirely-approved front beds sounds very similar to yours. Do you have a hill with houses on the south side too?
January 16, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Sorry about Jeavons. I was really looking forward to what you’d share from him. Same issue with Barbara Pleasant. She gave a great presentation and really put forth the effort for the rest of the country, but you still walk away thinking how it’s great for California, but wouldn’t work in the northeast. Although I’m really impressed with your citrus inside. I like the idea of growing lemons and may have to try it.
My words for the year would be “not ready”.
I am so far behind you all, but I’m trying. What I’d really like to do is move back where I was born and raised. I feel I could be far more resilient there, than near a large city, but sometimes ya just gotta “grow where you’re planted”. Thanks for everything. 
January 16, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Hi Kathy,
I see that you taught canning chili and am wondering if the pressure canning process for cooked black beans is the same? What is your recommendation for pressure and amount of time for canning cooked black beans (its almost a black bean soup)?
Thanks,
Emma
January 16, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Under 1000 feet it’s 10 pounds of pressure for 90 minutes. Over 1000 feet it goes up to 15 pounds of pressure.
January 16, 2012 at 7:56 pm
Kathy-
Do you have an opinion on the Tattler lids? (I haven’t been reading your blog for too long so forgive me if you’ve already covered this topic.) I’m interested in trying the Tattlers but I’m skeptical about the little red rubber ring. That seems to be the weak link. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Elizabeth
PS I just finished reading Carla Buckley’s The Things That Keep Us Here on your recommendation. Her novel pointed out many areas of our own preps that are lacking. Thanks for the recommendation! More work to do!
January 16, 2012 at 8:41 pm
I have used and reused my Tattlers many times with excellent results. The rings have lasted well. So far I have not had to replace any. You do need to be careful when opening jars. I just slip a butter nife between the rubber and the jar and the lik pops off. I hand wash the rings and store them in a cool dark, damp cellar.
January 16, 2012 at 10:01 pm
Thank you so much for calling attention to the NOFA event, which I had been unaware of. I went and learned a great deal. However, like you, I was disappointed in the Jeavons keynote. It seemed like one long infomercial. The top bar beekeeping workshop was excellent, and I also got a lot of information from the quarter-acre farm presentation.
My word for the year is “declutter”, and I am determined to do it!
January 16, 2012 at 10:19 pm
I wish I could have gone to that one. I love that knd of thing.
January 17, 2012 at 11:25 am
Sorry your demo didn’t go well. We’re also facing a severe reduction of income this year. My husband will lose his job this spring. At least we know it’s coming. I’m going over our routines with a fine tooth comb, looking for any reductions that can be made. On the one hand, it’s really tough to find places to cut, because I went super-frugal a few years back. On the other hand, all those frugal measures mean that we’re not so bad off right now, even though we’re losing that income. Our mortgage is paid off, we have no other debt, and we have lots of infrastructure in place that gives us a degree of resilience. So yeah, I’m going over the accounts, but I’m also not that worried about losing our income stream.
January 17, 2012 at 11:32 am
We’re in the same position. It does make it a lot easier. A lot of us use you for inspiration.