Tools of the Trade

So the question is if you have a bit of money at this moment; but, you know that you will not have this money in the future, which tools would you purchase to improve your self sufficiency?

For the sake of this post I think that we should consider tools that someone just at the beginning of this journey would need.

This is a partial list. I invite you to include your ideas and I will post an updated list with everyone's ideas on it.

So this is my partial list:

One hot water bath canner. If you did not have the canner maybe you could find the rack to put inside a big stock pot at a Goodwill or antique shop. A pressure canner is nice but can be a bit pricey. I find that when I first started canning I would can anything and everything. What a lot of work. Now I can tomatoes, jams, jellies, some vinegar pickles, some salsas and chicken stock. The pressure canner gets used for some tomato product, salsas and chicken stock. But I use the hot water bath primarily.

Which brings me to my second important food preservation tool. A dehydrator. I started using a small electric dehydrator from RONCO ( off all places). But ideally I would like to make a solar dehydrator. Dehydrated food retains its nutrition. It is so much easier to chop some veggies or fruit than it is to heat water on a warm August day.

Jars. Canning jars for canning but any ole jar will work for dehydrated food. Most of my canning jars have been purchased second hand. I just make sure that they are not chipped. If I had my druthers I would purchases some TATLER reusable canning jar lids and use them for those foodstuffs I know I will be using just for myself and not giving as gifts.

5 gallon buckets have many uses around the homestead. I use them for making compost tea, rhubarb leaf tea. These teas are used in the garden for amending the soil and garden pest control. They can also be used for growing tomato plants on a deck or patio, thus saving you room for other crops if you have a small garden.

A rain barrel. I can not say enough for water storage. We have lost our water several times due to power outages. Water from the rain barrel can flush a toilet, it can be used for washing.

Chainsaw, safety helmet, ear protection, chaps and a good ax. Especially the chaps. Mark wears his everytime he uses his chainsaw. Safety first!

I love my pitchfork. I use it for harvesting some food, turning compost, loading up the wheel barrow with soil amendments. A couple of good hand tools for the garden.

A small lunch box sized cooler. I use this for making yogurt.

If I were to invest in any home improvement I would consider building a rootcellar. If you do not want to dig a big hole in the ground you can build a small room in a cold part of your cellar to preserve food for the winter. With a rootcellar you can store winter squash, potatoes, apples, onions, garlic, cabbage and so much more.

Or a chicken coop. Chickens are cheap to obtain, they eat food scraps, they provide compost for the garden, the eat slugs from your garden and they provide eggs. Some of they can be a source of meat.

Finally, the ultimate resource of knowledge The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. This book has all sorts of information on growing and preserving food. It also is a first resource for information on livestock and homesteading skills.

So, are there any other suggestions? Please share your ideas in the comments.

Thanks!

Waste not...

There have been some cold nights and some warm days. The sap is still running on some of our maple trees. More than likely this is probably very grade B sap.

A little while ago I took a walk though the sugarbush. Some of the trees have completely shut down. Some of the buckets have colonies of spiders and flies. A good observational experiment for the little guy;). But some of the buckets were overflowing with sap. Some of the sap had become a little milky;which means that it has started to ferment. So I collected what I had. It turned out that there was still about 10 gallons of sap.

So this is what I am thinking...I am going to boil that ten gallons down to about about 1 quart. In past years we have used this kinda-gone-past sap for making a pretty potent ale. This year I was thinking about making a maple mead.

Think I'll use the recipe from this site.

Independence Days Challenge Update

So yes we bought a Mega-Millions lottery ticket. Yup. The odds are stacked against us. But in the end someone picks the winning number. Could be us.

In the meanwhile we daydream about what we would do if we had half a billion dollars. There are some pretty big dreams. I would love to open a whole foods restaurant. Mark would like to start a premier entertainment venue here in the foothills that would be small and intimate but would attract some big names. In terms of the way we live; well it would be nice to have the money to take care of that big to-do list. Build a good barn, build a greenhouse, get off grid. Maybe some travel. And we would take care of our friends and family. I would love to create a fund that would make sure that low-income folks have warm homes in the winter by improving efficiency and subsidizing some heating costs. There are several good community gardens I would like to help.

In the meanwhile we tend our own garden.

Plant: Gosh there are a lot of seed pots sitting under lights and hanging out in windows. I hope I can remember them all. 2 kinds of peppers. One of them is from seed saved from a really cool looking organic sweet pepper I found at the local health food store. Brussel sprouts, motherwort, stinging nettle,broccoli cabbage, kale spinach in the cold frame, lettuce, nasturtium,hollyhock. A friend who is new to gardening gave me a bunch of strawberry daughters. I put them in the ground last week. Hope they make it.

Harvest: nope not yet. But I did notice some new sprouts on the french sorrel. OOOhhh I can't wait. If you ever have the chance to grow this perennial green I highly recommend it. It makes a lovely quiche.

Preserve: the final tally on Maple sugaring was 10 quarts and 1 pint. Just over 2 and1/2 gallons. We will have to be frugal in our syrup use this year.

Local Food: Just the usual but we did find a local CSA called the Pickup that is a farmer's market over in Skowhegan. The weekly pickup includes goods from several farms and includes eggs, meat, milk, veggies, some prepared food, locally roasted coffee, maple syrup and honey. We are thinking about it. It might just be the perfect supplement to our diet and help to reduce the amount of money we spend at the grocery store. We are still trying to balance how much food we can afford that is local with what our actual bottom line is.

Eat the food: We are still eating a lot of winter salad. Egg meals are more common as the price of local eggs drops a bit as supply increases. We have one chicken left in the freezer from the roasters we tried last fall. Not a bad result since we harvested them last November.

Waste not: We have a children's clothing swap in town. I took a bag of outgrown clothes there and found some f shorts, hats and mittens. I also sent a quite a few bags to the thrift store. I rescued some cardboard boxes from a neighbor's recycling. I use these for sheet mulching in the garden. I gave my cold room a really good cleaning and found a I had some extra canning jars to give to my friend who is just learning how to learn to can.

Want not: Kid's clothing swap and strawberries from my friend.

A rainy day in the orchard

The rain did not keep us indoors today. The weather is damp but not torrential. The light is bright for a rainy day. So we donned our mud boots and raincoats and headed outside to putter. Last weekend we were simply excited to hang our laundry outside instead of indoors. One week later we have had summer temperatures. The snow has completely melted from the garden. Some of those leafy herbs; catnip, horehound, mint, have started showing new spring green.

I have discovered that I have matured as a gardener. I poked my trowel in the soil of the cold frame, moved a little soil around and tossed a few spinach seeds in there. Otherwise I have resisted the very great temptation to do too much else in the veggie patch. I know that although the earth is waking up from her long winter's sleep, she may decide to go back to bed for a little while longer.

I've had my nose buried in garden books this weekend. I've been excited to start planting guilds under the fruit trees this year. I began with planning last fall by transplanting a couple of volunteer comfrey plants under a granny smith. I mulched a ring around the tree's drip line, the furthest point where the rain drips off the tree. My plan was to plant bulbs along this line. But I have a good amount of bunching onions seedlings started, so I think I will start with those instead. Around the base of the tree I will plant nasturtiums. This will help deter borer's.

So we headed out to putter in the rain. I started picking up the branches we trimmed from pruning the apple trees this past month. Mark and Evan were picking up brush from other areas. Evan was mostly playing in the mud.

I looked out into the orchard and noticed that it could also use a good raking. A clean orchard is a happy orchard. So I started raking up the leaves and laying down mulch and some defrosted compost to continue my work in the guild. I will not till the soil when I plant the guild so having some killed sod will make the ground nice and soft for planting. I read in Gaia's Garden, by Toby Hemenway that placing a few small piles of stones around the guilds is also good for attracting snakes and frogs.

While toiling away in a happy frame of mind my thoughts wandered to the trouble spot behind me. It will be a challenge. There is a forsythia planted too closely to another granny smith tree. Mark cut down some overgrown chokecherry bushes there. The whole area is crowded by wild blackberry bushes. I love picking wild berries but I also know that paper wasps like to build their nests in overgrown patches like this. The patch is just on the other side of veggie garden fence. There are some big boulders buried in there. There is another very interesting looking chokecherry tree that will stay. My long term plan is to build a small bench for this area and perhaps plant a few shrubs for attracting beneficial insects. Butterfly bushes, maximillion sunflowers. I will plant everbearing raspberries from Fedco this year so the berries will be replaced.

As I ponder all this stuff I look up at the apple tree I have been working under. There is a small bud of white. At first I thought it was just the rain dripping off the limb. A trick of the light. But no. It is an apple blossom breaking free from its winter coat. I know something this tender bud does not. I know that night time temperature will reach the low teens in a couple of days. I know that apple trees should not be blooming this time of the spring. I walk around to check on the other trees. The green varieties are starting to bloom. The reds are still nestled deep in their coats. This is not good. It could mean that if those blooms have been coaxed open by some warmer temperatures that those trees will not bear much fruit this year.

This is what I know, we had a warm winter, and an extraordinary stretch of summer weather; which started before spring had even arrived according to the calendar, that shattered all sorts of records for temperatures for this time of year in Maine. This is just weather. But when we think of climate change we have to pay attention to the variability in the weather. Climate change can be seen in the extremes in weather we have been experiencing. This has all sorts of consequences. For our small homestead it has meant that this warm weather slowed and then stopped the flow of maple sap so that we did not get as much as we did last year. If the apple blossoms come early, before the pollinators, and then get zapped by a hard freeze we won't have many, if any, apples to put up next fall. For farmer's this can have harder consequences. They grow the food that we eat.

I know that every gardening season is a bit of a gamble. Sometimes you get a good tomato year, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get a lot of rain, sometimes it is dry. But what happens when all those interconnected species of flora and fauna are thrown askew. Pollinators need the food they need when they wake up, migratory birds need the food they need when they arrive. It really is an interconnected web. When one piece of the web missing it has a cascading effect.

In my way of adapting to the changes we are experiencing I will probably try to make some more fruit syrups to replace the maple syrups. I will probably buy some maple syrup or honey to supplement our shortage this year. If we do not get many apples here, perhaps we will find an commercial orchard that will might have a colder micro-climate. I will hope that other crops will have bumper years to balance out what we have already lost this year.

In the meanwhile, I will continue to work on that apple tree guild. I know that my work this year will benefit my garden for years to come. Even if we do not get apples this year.

I place my hope in those little bunching onions.

Maple Season 2012

The snow crunched under our snow shoes. Mark broke trail and carried the drill and hammer. I carried the buckets and taps. We wandered around the sugar bush looking for the tell-tale holes in the trees from last year's maple season to be assured that we were tapping maples and not an ash by mistake. After so many years of tapping maples you would think that we would know a maple in winter, undressed of leaves we have to know them by their bark. We were 29 for 29 taps!

The start of the season was slow. From conversations we've had, we missed a run at the beginning of February. We tapped 2 weeks early because the season seemed like it would be early. At this time we tapped 15 trees. After a week or so the trails were well trodden. But my bucket remained empty while I walked from tree to tree. We tapped 10 more trees. We tapped 4 more trees a week later. The sap started to flow and by the following weekend we were boiling sap down.

This process has evolved over the years we have been making syrup. The first year we just used the stove in the kitchen and a big stock pot. It was great humidity for my skin and hair ( wild Irish hair) but terrible for a process that is essentially a free food source. We used gallon milk jugs on the trees. Inevitably a new spring chore would be to find the jugs that blew off the trees and around the yard in one of those March winds. The next year we boiled it down in our big stock pot and an old pressure canner on an old wood cook stove outdoors. The following year we repeated this process. Those three years we tapped about 20 trees and got about 2 gallons of syrup which would last until September.

When we moved to our current country eden we decided to try and perfect our set up. Ideally it would be great to have an evaporator pan. But those are pretty pricey for our small operation. Our outdoor arrangement has become an old woodstove that was in a shed on the property. We created a small channel of cinder blocks that comes out from the stove. We saved all the brush that remains after cutting trees for firewood for the winter and used this to fuel the fire. Mark found a pretty awesome chaffing pan at cooking supply store that sells second hand and vintage kitchen ware.

Our sap boiler sorta looks like this one now; only ours only has one pan.

Four weeks after we tapped the trees our season is over. A bit disappointing. Last year we got 4 gallons of sap. This year, when all is said and done, we will probably get 2 and 1/2 gallons. We put out 29 taps all together. The last two weeks the nights were cold enough and the days were a warm enough. I could walk in the sugar bush and hear the plink of sap filling the metal buckets, that we use now instead of milk jug. But now it is too warm. Even if the night were to get cold again the trees have probably shut down for the season. So now I walk from bucket to bucket; my boots crinkle old leaves or make smucking sound in the mud. Spring is here and other seasonal work awaits...

Spring Cleaning

Yesterday was a throw the windows open sorta day. It was sunny and warm. A little guy in our home spent most of the day outside building gnome homes, playing in the mud and aspiring to make progress with his scooter on the still soggy ground. At one point he had short sleeves on. His cheeks revealed a bit of pink left over from all that sunshine.

Mark started his day by hanging up a new clothesline for me. The old one fell victim to snow fallen off our roof this past winter. He then hung up the two loads of laundry. How great is it to have your laundry dry so quickly, in a day; instead of over several days , as it is done in the winter? Pretty awesome.

The sap was running yesterday. We may get another run today. It was pretty crispy last night on this little hill we have here. This has saved us. Because of the warm weather we have had this past month or so the sap has been slow to run. So far we have put up just over a gallon. Last year we put up 4 gallons. Mark and Tristan spent a better part of the day boiling sap down. We got over 30 gallons collected late yesterday so hopefully we'll get close to 3 gallons when all is said and done.

What did I do? Spring cleaning. Seems a bit contrary to clean house when it is mud season. I am not usually one to do spring cleaning. I save the big cleaning for winter but we have been painting Evan's room and the house has been discombobulated. After we put Evan's room back in order there was a leftover piece of furniture that I had planned to put in the cold room. Isn't it always the way ? Like dominoes one project leads to another until all all the pieces lay down in a nice neat line. Anyway, the cold room got a really good clean out. There were boxes and boxes of canning jars. They have been rinsed out and put on the shelves in the empty spaces. All ready for canning season. Mark brews his own beer. He had too many beer bottles stashed away for the eventual day when he might fill them all up. We negotiated an amount that would work for both of us without being left on the floor. There were a couple of science experiments in there that have met the compost pile. Lets just say this was my room of shame. Now it is efficient, spacious and shameless. Nothing like a clean conscience.

Meanwhile, there is still that piece of furniture still looking for a home. It might just have to find a home in someone else's home. Today I plan to tackle the upstairs entryway. It is where all the winter gear is kept. With all the mud I do not think we will be using the snowshoes and cross country skis again this year. Our home is small and cozy and anything that is not being used can not sit around.

For now I will take this sunny warm weather and work indoors. Soon enough the garden will beckon me and any cleaning indoors will be simple; with a broom and mop. I have until the snow melts off the garden. Better get crackin'.

Independence Days Challenge Update

We had some very spring-like weather this year. It was wonderful to walk outside with just a sweater on. Evan spent most of the day playing outside, in the snow and mud! Perfect boy weather. I spent the day procrastinating on indoor projects and often just found myself standing on the front stoop soaking in the warmth and sun, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the change in light.

We've lost another ewe this past week. They are old girls. Twelve years old. At one time we had 8 sheep and one goat. Now we have 1 sheep and one goat. We sold Rama-a-lama a couple of weeks ago to a farm where he will be able to frolic with some young beauties. This is sort of a cross roads for us. Should we accept that this is the end of our ovine adventures or adapt our plans? I think we have settled on finding a couple more ewes. The sheep are an integral part of our homestead. They are important to our orchard management plan. They keep the grass cut for us. They feed the trees with their manure. They eat the windfall. Mark freshens up his shearing skills on our sheep before he starts shearing for other folks. We have arranged and barter with a local alpaca/hay farmer to help with haying in exchange for hay for next winter. This should defray the cost of keeping them.

Lots of other things are taking place on our homestead as well.

Plant: kale, motherwort, cabbage, stinging nettle

Harvest: maple sap

Preserves: It has been a slow sugaring season. I do not think we will get the volume of syrup that we got last year. Last year we got 4 gallons. We have only put up 1 quart and 1 pint. We will be boiling again this weekend.

Local food: Tristan has been helping a local farmer and has come home with some very yummy spinach from a greenhouse.

Eat the food: We have been eating lots of things with spinach. Green pie, salads ( SO GOOD!)

Want not: I shoveled off the snow from the cold frame. I hope to get some of my own spinach planted in it this week. I picked up some yellow clips for our solar electric fence. These are going up on the pasture fence this weekend. Mr. Leroy Brown Goat has been flaunting the weakness in our pasture fence. This is okay for now because the snow has been keeping him away from garden and orchard. But he needs to stay behind his fence.

Waste not: I have been purging and getting into spring cleaning mode.

Indendpendence Days Challnege ...Year 5!

This is my 5th year of participating in the Independence Days Challenged offered by Sharon Astyk of the blogs Casaubon's Book and The Chatelaine's Keys. Five years. Wow. After all this time it would seem that many of the lessons to learn from this challenge would be learned. But I find that every year that goes by my thinking about growing and preserving food, preparedness, and local living have evolved to refine or distill my approach to these skills which make our homestead run a little better every year.

For example, we are growing much more foods from seeds; instead of buying seedlings. A few years ago, I spent weeks and weeks; usually very hot weeks, canning every single veggie that came out of our garden. Now I practice lacto-fermentation, more cold storage of veggies and season extending practices. We used to grow a pig every year; a much more expensive venture than the roasting birds we grew last fall. I have expanded the amount of wild foods that grace our plates. My herbal knowledge has grown and I use herbs in our daily life. I still have a bit of decluttering to do. But I also am much more aware of everything that comes into our house and whether is serves a use or is just another thing to dust. I am very aware of sources for local foods incorportate them into our meals as much as possible.

So here is to another year!

Plant: leeks, celeriac and bunching onions.

Harvest: Maple sap

Preserve: not yet but we will start boiling sap down this weekend.

Local Foods: Local milk, local meat, local spinach, local potatoes

Eat the food: The yummy spinach has been gracing every meal. Our favorite is a chard pie we have substituted spinach for.

Want not: A friend gave us a big bag of children's clothes for Evan. We finally found and awesome chaffing pan to use for maple sugaring this year. Mark found it at this great kitchen supply place we have in town that sells, second hand and vintage cooking equipment. We also bought some new cinder blocks for our sugaring set up. Mark got our '81 Mercedes working so we have two cars working again.

Waste not: That Mercedes is a biodiesel. So we have been able to cut our gasoline bill and emissions significantly. We pick up used cooking grease from some local restaurants. Mark processes it to clean it out of chunky bits and we are good to go. I passed on any of the clothes we did not need for Evan to another friend. We are using a lot of brush and fallen branches in our sapping fire. Mark is cutting some big field pines down. We plan to mill up some of the tress for some building projects we have planned....( a green house!!)

Eating my lawn: Red Clover

Each morning I take a walk outside before the sun rises too high in the sky. I look to see if the peas have plumped in their pods. I count the little yellow flowers forming on the tomato plants. I harvest herbs before their oils are diminished in the heat of the day. My path to the garden is surrounded by red clover. These small red flowers also find their way into my harvest basket.

Red clover is as ubiquitous as dandelion. It grows in hay fields, lawns and road sides. It blooms from mid June and will have a repeat bloom later in the season. Red clover can be identified by its red flower, but it's leaves also have a small stripe on its leaves. It is a legume and can work as a nitrogen fixer in your soil. We have grown it in the past as a cover crop. Both the leaves and flower are edible.

In the spring we let the lawn grow up around out house until the dandelions have bloomed so we can take advantage of the greens and flowers. Then we mow just a little spot around our house. The we let the lawn grown until the clover blooms.

Red clover flowers can be made into a tea and the leaves make a nice addition to a salad. There are many uses for red clover. The tea can be used as a wash for acne, psoriasis, athletes foot. According to Deb Soule in, A Woman's Book of Herbs," it will cleanse the blood of wastes during or after sickness..." Clover is also a source of phyto- estrogens, for alternative and alternative to hormone replacement therapy for menopause. It is also an inhibitor of cancer. I learned at the wild herbs for health class that tar can be made from its leaves and flowers and used as a drawing paste.

Well, the sun climbs over the trees, must go for my morning picking...

Closing the Loop: Sheep

Caring for sheep was never on our radar when we thought about homesteading. We were excited to just have chickens. Mark was a paid solo singer for a Christian Scientist church. One Sunday, Evan and I were waiting for him in the nursery with another parent. I was knitting. The other parent said," So you like to knit, do you spin?" I said "Yes I spin but I am still a novice." "Would you like some sheep? We'll give you our sheep."

And so we had sheep. Three, sorta wild, shetlands. We built them a shed and then a barn. We bought a solar electric portable fence. Mark took a shearing class offered through the cooperative extension.We chased them around the yard plenty of times. They mowed our lawn for us and we had a source of manure for the garden.

Since those first three sheep came to live with us we have been given more sheep. Mostly elderly sheep who needed a retirement home. I have used their fiber. Mark has earned income from shearing. Our compost pile is rich in sheep poop. According to the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening by J.I. Rodale, each ewe can provide a ton of manure. They will clean up overgrown areas. But when I think about closing the loop the sheep have to be an integral part of our homestead. The sheep need outside inputs in the form of feed, hay, some mineral feed to supplement those minerals that are not available in our Maine soils and diatomaceous earth; for preventing parasites. In the last closing the loop post I discussed how we are growing mangle-wurzel beets as one source of winter fodder. For now, we will buy hay from some farming friends. But long term we would like be able to grow some of our winter hay. This year we will plant a pasture mix of grass in the orchard

In the summer the sheep graze on our yard. In past years we have simply moved the portable fence around the yard wherever there was tall grass;which is most of the time because we do not mow, much;) This year Mark puts the girls out on pasture and scythes up grass for the boys. The boys do not go graze too much because Leroy Brown goat is more of a garden/orchard pest (he jumps the fence).

The girls grazing is a little more intentional now that we have an orchard to maintain. One key to good orchard maintenance is keeping a clean orchard. A clean orchard is less likely to be a source of disease and pests. So our ladies' fence is put under the trees. They eat up any fallen leaves. After fruit has set small apples fall to the ground. These small apples become a source for the larva of an insect that lays its eggs in the fallen fruit and then as a mature insect infest the mature fruit. The sheep also fertilize the trees at this time. In this way we do not need to bring in outside inputs to control this pest or feed the trees.

Our girls are getting old. We are thinking that next spring we may get a lamb or two. One of the considerations for these lambs will be that they will be a breed that can provide both fiber and meat. In this way the sheep will be integrated into our food chain; another loop we hope to close.

Around the Homestead

Lovely Gwen enjoying a summer salad:)

A new Friend has come to live with us. His name is Wilbur. He is a geriatric old boy enjoying his retirement:)

Happy Wilbur sitting in a sunny window.

A big harvest of Garlic Scapes. I think these will make a nice pesto. Perhaps a few small jars or should I freeze it? Decisions. Decisions.

Independence Days Challenge: Solstice and Strawberries.

I finished planting the garden this past weekend. This is always a sort of a transient notion because as some crops are harvest others are planted. But for now, it is time to watch stuff grow.

The garlic scapes have escaped from their green garlic shoots. It has been a while since we have had anything that taste like garlic. I hope to make a big batch of garlic scape pesto this year. I will probably supplement some of the scapes I have grown with some from the farmer's market. I did not plant as much garlic as the year before simply because life was a little crazy then. This year I will plant a bit more.

Strawberry farms will be opening up this coming weekend. A friend and I plan to go picking and do some canning together. The strawberries are one of the first crops that go into the freezer so I guess I should finish cleaning the freezer out. Oh that to-do list....

Plant: Tomatoes, peppers, pole beans, pie pumpkins, butternut squash, sunflower, lettuce, cabbage.

Harvest: lettuce, swiss chard, kale, basil, jewel weed, red clover, strawberry leaf, plantain.

Preserve: Jewel weed salve, dried strawberry leaf, dried plantain leaf.

Local foods: Farmer goodness from Mark's gig. Our local brew supply store sells mozzarella kits. I am hoping to give it a try this coming weekend. Local meat, eggs and milk. One local farmer grew cucumbers in her green house. She selling some the other day. Yum! She also had broccoli. Such a treat!

Eat the food: Spring greens quiche, homemade tacos with local beef, saute of beet greens and green onions. Grilled cheese sandwiches from local bread, local cheese.

Waste not: A friend was cleaning out her closet ad gifted me with a big bag of free clothes. I took whatever did not fit and gave them to the local thrift.

Want not: I made a compost tea to give the garden plants a little boost.

Today is the longest day of the year. We plan to go out after dark and watch the fireflies! Enjoy the day!

Right Work

The last day of Mark's school year was yesterday. This was a tough school year for us. Our family was in transition as we adjusted to our recent move and new community. The demands of his job are more than any other school district that he has worked for and it has been difficult to manage the balance between home and work. Now we move into summer mode.

The last two years our summers have been very busy; getting ready to sell our old house, moving to our new house. It has propelled us into a habit of always having too many irons in the fire. We have resolved that this summer will be different. We originally had grand plans for this summer. We were going to mill up some wood on our property to build a barn. Those plans have been scaled back so that we will be milling less wood and building a 3 and 1/2 walled shed for the sheep and a wicked decent chicken coop:) We have a few other small home improvement projects on our to-do list. For the most part our summer plans include getting together with old friends, canoeing, fishing and plenty of weeding therapy for the "mama". It is nice to have the luxury to give the garden the full attention that the garden of the last few years have not had.

Mark will still be teaching music lessons this summer. I will be developing a curriculum to teach knitting at Adult Ed and to the 4th, 5th and 6th graders at Mark's school. I have a couple of other small knitting ventures I am working on that will generate a small amount of income. Some of these I hope to share soon. Mark will also be gigging.

Some of these performances have already occurred. Last night he performed at a local restaurant, today he performed at the local farmer's market. Both performances were fun for him. It is a way for him to share his talent, connect with the community and it brings in a little extra money. The farmer's market gig was a gig of a different sort.

Mark was able to put out his tip jar and it was generously filled. But in lieu of payment for playing at the farmer's market, he was given a sampling of all the participating farmer's had to offer. He was given 3 large bags filled with local cheese, duck eggs, local eggs, locally produced bread from local wheat, beet greens, mustard greens, salad greens and cookies. We both commented that there was a richer sense of connectedness and satisfaction from his job well done than from receiving simply a paycheck. A good barter, indeed.

Closing the Loop

This is the first post, of an occasional series of posts, on closing the loop on systems within our homestead. By closing the loop I mean to explore ways to develop systems on our homestead that reduces our reliance on outside inputs. The loop is the cycle of the use of resources that exist on our homestead.

Sometimes this will mean making an investment in infrastructure that is the final piece in closing the loop. This could mean buying a new tool that will close the loop and allow us to make use of existing resources. Other times it is learning a new skill that will help us to utilize what resources we already have. Many times it will be learning to re-use or repurpose things to reduce our need to spend money. Sometimes it will mean recognizing when the cycle of a system is working well. If the cycle of the system is not working well, then it is valuable to understand why it is not working well and whether it could be improved; or should not be part of our overall plan.

This all sounds very technical. Homesteading as science. But really what I hope to achieve by exploring this topic is not only a more efficient homestead but one that is as self-sustaining as it can be. This will save us money. It can also help to localize our homesteading efforts to the best of our ability. It can increase our understanding of how our land provides for us. It can be a valuable exercise to understand how, exactly, energy is connected to the things we do on our land. Once we have this understanding we can either reduce the amount of the energy we need or find an alternative to a more energy intensive practice.

So what does this mean in a practical sense? Well, one small project we are working on this year is growing Mangel-Wurzel Beets. It is my hope that this will be a way for us to provide winter fodder for our livestock. I planted them early this spring. When they get a little bigger I will be able to give the greens to our sheep. The roots can be kept in our cold room for the winter. According to the book, Traditional Feeding of Farm Animals, "Danish feeding experiments have shown that the dry matter of Mangels has a feeding value similar to grain feed..." The mangels need a few weeks to season before feeding them to our sheep; which fits well into the timing of when we will be taking them off pasture and moving to our winter feeding regimen. During the winter we give our sheep hay and grain. If we could reduce the amount of grain that they eat, we will be less dependent on a food resource that, most often, is imported by truck. The grain that we use right now is trucked in from large industrial farms in Quebec. There is a local farmer that grows organic grains but the price is a little outside of what we can afford right now. But if we could supplement the grain with mangels we could source or grain locally.

But the loop can only be closed if I save the seed from this years beets. This can be a little tricky. According to the book Seed to Seed, by Susan Ashworth, all beets are wind pollinated and will easily cross pollinate with other beets up to five miles away. So this year I planted half the seeds that I ordered from Fedco Seed Co. This fall I will leave about a dozen beets in the ground and heavily mulch them. Next spring when they start to flower I will cover them, six each, so that they will only pollinate each other. In order to hedge my bets, I will plant the remaining seed from this year. I will collect the saved seed and try a test plot with some of the seed. If my efforts were unsuccessful then I will have my chance to try again the following year.

Many other systems exist on our homestead that I will be exploring as I try to close the loop. Water collection and its use, making the best use of food stuffs that are available on our homestead, providing soil fertility without outside inputs are just a few examples. I think this is going to be an exciting project.

So do you have closed looped systems at your home? How are they working?

A Book Review: Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs

There is a book that has been sitting on our night stands, Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs, by Wendy Brown. Wendy blogs at Surviving the Suburbs. She lives in southern Maine. Most book reviewers are able to approach their book reviews with an unbiased opinion. I, actually, have met Wendy. I have also been to her home. This being stated, however, also means that I have a perspective that other reviewers do not. I have seen her suburban homestead and I can attest to the amount of food she can produce on her 1/4 acre. Wendy has a yard with mixed fruits, raised beds and livestock; including, bees, chickens, ducks and rabbits. The day I visited her home there was a large can in her home of acorns being prepared for making acorn flour.

So it was with this knowledge that I began reading her book.

I have read plenty of books about preparing for The End of the World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI). Among some of my favorite is Depletion and Abundance by Sharon Astyk, When Technology Fails by Matthew Stein and Peak Oil Prep by Mick Winter. So I have read enough to wonder how Wendy would approach this subject. Wendy sets up a scenario where a world altering event will take place in 21 days. We have 21 days to prepare for this change. She suggests that most folks will not be able to "bug out" to a secluded bunker in the middle of no where with an endless supply of MRE's. Instead we will have to learn to grow where we are planted.

Each of the 21 days she chooses one topic for consideration: shelter, water, fire, growing food etc. She takes a careful consideration of the existing systems in her home; for instance, with sanitation or water supply, and thinks how to recreate these systems,using existing infrastructure, in a low energy future on a 1/4 acre suburban lot. She tackles some challenges unique to suburban home owners such as Home Owner Association restrictions, limited space. She also takes careful consideration of what is available to her beyond her small suburban homestead.

All in all, the book is rich in practical advice and information. Wendy has really thought about the practice of substitution. If our lives become more local many of commodities that we take for granted will not be available to us; either because it is no longer brought to us on semi trucks or because our limited financial resources will prohibit us from using them.

The book also challenges the reader to think beyond their own lot. She shares this in terms of foods available in the wild. But also asks us to think about the connections we make within our community. The final goal after the 21 days is to try to think of self-sufficiency in ways the really source our needs on a very local level. It is this approach that I find to be the best aspect of the book.

I think there could be so much more information that could fill this book if we were to think beyond the first 21 days. But for the sake of this book it is a great start. Some of the topics are still works in progress on Wendy's homestead. I look forward to perhaps a second book that shares more of her personal experience as she follows down this path. There were moments of humor and tenderness that a reader would not expect from a book that is geared towards someone trying to prepare for TEOTWAWKI. In the end Wendy imagines a world after the 21 days. It is a world of lower energy but a connectedness with the earth and her community that adds a depth to life that one does not associate with life in the suburbs.

Independence Days Challenge, Hard at Work.

We have been blessed with some really nice weather! Life is full of busy-ness in a good way. Many seeds are sprouting and growing. The sheep are mowing and fertilizing the orchard. Small little projects are taking shape while others remain on the to- do list. I have been taking a lot of pictures of the doings around here and hope to have a post rich in photographic content when I have some time to get to the library. Also, tomorrow I will have a plant-a-row update for Many/June. It is never too late to join the challenge!

Plant: sunflower, pumpkin, pole beans in a small garden for Evan. More spinach, lettuce, thyme, rue, sage, petunia. The big push is on for this weekend to get those warm weather crops in.

Harvest: lettuce, chard, sorrel, strawberry leaf, dandelion, rhubarb, spinach.

Preserve: dandelion and pepper jelly, strawberry leaf for tea.

Local foods: local meet from our feed store, eggs

Eat the food: plenty of salads and egg dishes with greens. We are also using up the last of last years berries with rhubarb for crisp. Bonus! We sound 2 quarts of blueberries hiding a the bottom of the freezer. I made a nice quick bread using wild blackberries from last years harvest.

Waste not: The rain barrel is very full. We have our big 280 gallon container. We are planing to hook that up to the back of the shed. It is just uphill enough that it should be gravity fed to the garden. Our old subaru is back off the road. It's state inspection is up and it is not worth putting any more money into the old girl. Mark is working on a barter for it that would glean a 4 wheeler for us. We are folks who saw much merit in the noisy smelly things. But after this last mud season we found we really needed something to get us to the pavement, 2 and 1/2 miles done the road, when the road is closed. We also needed something to pull larger logs out of the woods that we will be using to mill up for small building projects around here. We finally got the lawn mower out this weekend. The sheep can take care of a vast portion of the yard. We don't let them free range because we want them to not eat the garden. There are some parts they just can't reach with their electric fence. So I got the mower out. I save the grass clippings to use as mulch in a sheet mulched keyhole bed. I also added some to the compost bin.

Want not: A neighbor has gifted us with a large box of dahlia bulbs. I have begun to exercise. I finally came to realization that as much as my lifestyle keeps me fairly active , I do not get enough aerobic exercise. So I have begun to go for a jog a few times a week. I used to be an avid runner but that was years ago. It feels pretty good. When the heat comes this summer I may have to make adjustments for my MS but for now I am going with it.

Eating my lawn: Strawberry Leaf

After a week of rain it is a difficult task to ward off the man of the house and his lawn mower. Fortunately, the mower did not start today and he had to resort to scything some grass for the goat and ram. We set up the netted electric fence to move the ewes into the orchard to start fertilizing some of the trees. They enjoy the fresh green of pasture and after a week of rain they are grateful for the change of scenery from their damp shed. Mower! We don't need not stinky mower!

The sun is still a little shy today and we are supposed to have rain for a few more days here. A lot of seeds have sprouted in the garden but they all could use a little sun and heat to really take off. In the meanwhile I am still collecting dandelion greens and flowers and strawberry leaf.

We have an abundance of wild strawberry in our yard. I have been collecting bunches of the leaves to dry. Strawberry leaf is very high in vitamin C. Juliet de Bairacli Levy, in her book Common Herbs for Natural Health, recommends strawberry leaf tea used internally for fever, improving vitality, anemia, improving your appetite, regulating menstruation and as a stomach aide. Externally the tea can be used as soothing lotion for eczema which my little guy is prone to have during the winter and spring.

My goal this year is to provide all our herbal tea needs. We drink a fair amount of it in our home;especially, in the winter. I have spearmint, lemon balm, bee balm( aka bergomot), chamomile and catnip. Some wild foods will fill out this collections of teas. Dandelion and strawberry leaf are just the start. This week I hope to collect wild raspberry leaf too!

Independence Days Challenge, Rain Rain Go Away...

We are in the middle of a wet spell here. WE have not seen the sun since last Friday and will not see it till this coming Sunday. Springs like this can make for frustrated gardeners. Fortunately, I put most of my cold crops in the ground. Our last frost date is after the full moon in May, this coming weekend, so I will consider this rainy week a respite from the dirt. At least from the outside of the house. I should get some chores done on the inside of the house.

Should. It is so easy to lose that easy rhythm of housekeeping from the winter once the garden work begins. Especially, when rainy days allow some extra time with the knitting needles:)

The work does go on though...

Plant: Most of this was done when the sun was shining. Hopefully the seeds won't float away, or rot. Calendula, dill, parsnip, carrot,lemon balm, mint, more onions, borage, Kueka gold, purple gold and Kennebec potatoes, cilantro.

Harvest: Dandelion Root, Dandelion Flowers, Dandelion leaves, sorrel, first chard leaves:)

Preserve the Food: Dandelion wine, Dandelion tincture, dried Dandelion leaf.

Eat the food: Dandelion Salads, quiche with sorrel and swiss chard.

Local Foods: yay farmer's market! My lemon balm and mint did not survive the move and the winter so my lovely local farmer was able to supply me with replacements. We have been eating spinach from her greenhouse while ours is not quite ready to eat yet.

Waste not: Rain barrel is keeping full. The compost pile is pretty big and wants to be turn, once the rain has past.

Want not: Finally got the cold room organized so all the food preservation tools are easy to reach. Jars that I use for dried foods are in a better spot. Actually they are all in a one spot instead of the various spots that the locals think they should go. Took a good inventory of the home canned food that was in there. I will not be making rhubarb chutney this year. There is an excessive amount of chutney in there. We enjoy it with pork but we have decided against growing a pig this year so do not need to make any more chutney. Mark did some shearing for some folks up north this past weekend. We have been thinking about doing something different with our big horned dorset ram. We had called some butchers but had not committed to the idea. One woman that Mark sheared for needs some fresh blood in her flock so we may barter Rama-a-lama for a late 90's VW Golf Car. It needs a little work but is definitely worth the price:) The car is a lot more fuel efficient than our dying Subaru. Mark would use this car for commuting.

Dandelion Dreams

Is there really any other flower more sublime than the dandelion? Oh, sure, there is the bold rose with its lovely fragrance. A vast array of perennial flowers bless my garden; echinacea, peony and bee balm. Their wild sisters; Daisy, Indian paint brush and Black Eyed Susans, are great for gathering into summer bouquets. Sun flowers are truly wonderful. But I have thing for dandelions.

When I was a child I have memories of concocting magic potions from dandelion heads. I used to cringe when a boy would grab the flower and say, "Momma had a baby and it's head popped off" and decapitate the flower from its milky stem. I used to weave those stems and flowers into garlands for my hair.

Now as an adult with a home of her own I am warding off the man with the mower. "No dear, you can't mow until the dandelions have passed." Each morning I walk along the orchard and collect the young greens for the dehydrator and a salad for later in the day. This past week I collect the heads for a small batch of dandelion wine. A wine we will enjoy next spring when it is fully matured. I dig dandelion roots to make a tincture of dandelion.

According to Deb Soule, in her book A Woman's Book of Herb's, Dandelion root tea or tincture is "valuable for woman going through menopause to take on a regular, long term basis for helping regulating hormone changes." Dandelion is also great liver tonic which helps with the transition from a winter diet; heavy in fats and meat, to a spring/summer diet that is lighter and filled with more fresh veggies.

Dandelions are the perfect wild food. Abundant, easy to identify, and most parts of the dandelion are edible. The greens make salads and teas, the flowers can be cooked to make a tempura, and the roots can be used as a coffee substitute. In terms of food storage it is a nice crop to start the preservation season with. This blog post has a great recipe for dandelion jelly I would like to try. Alas we are supposed to have a week of rain. I hope there will still be blossoms to pick after the rain has ended so that I can try it.

I am just a sucker for a cheerful splash of yellow on a canvas of spring green:)

Time, Time, Time.....

Our life, family life, couple life has been busy. But not in a good way. I think there is a "good busy" and a "bad busy". A "good busy" is filled with things you want to do. It is filled with time in the garden, time together as a family, time completing long dreamed of projects. A "good busy" moves your life forward, brings your family together, invests in projects or activities that make your life easier in some way.

A "bad busy" just leaves you feeling like you are on a treadmill; lots of action but not going anywhere. A "bad busy" leaves you feeling exhausted before you even begin the day. A "bad busy" makes those activities that you consider "good busy" overwhelming and not worth the time. A "bad busy" leaves you feeling stressed, impatient. A "bad busy" takes a toll on your relationships.

I think we found ourselves at this point recently. We moved to the new house this past summer without much time to settle before Mark had to start school. Tristan's life became busy too as he finishes his last year of homeschooling and prepares to embark on the next step of his life. Evan was just going along for the ride for a while but he also needed to connect with other kids in his new community. And me? I was busy just getting everyone where they needed to go and making sure they had something to eat.

This would be busy enough, but Mark's job has many more requirements of his time, outside of the regular school day. Mud Season and our road made life hard just getting in and out of the house; adding 20 minute or so to every trip we took. One car was out of commission for most of the winter; so we were a one car family. In order to make this work, I was in the car even more than I was before.

I would say we were burned out. Burned out on work, burned out on homesteading, burned out on each other. We were in a bad space. No doubt. This burn out began to really take a toll on our marriage and family life. We were all so busy that we stopped paying attention to the reasons why we decided on this lifestyle. We were so busy that we stopped being kind to each other. We were so busy that we could not see how each other were struggling with all the busy-ness. We were so busy that we weren't able to really take care of ourselves, individually; so how could we see support each other in their busy-ness.

This busy-ness is far from the simple life I hoped for. But its tough. Many of the things that made Mark's life busy were required of him for his job. Tristan has to do what he needs to do right now, so he can do what he wants to do in the future. Evan needs friends and time with kids. And Momma is the one with the flexibility in her schedule to help everyone else meet their needs.

There are no easy solutions to some of this. We had talked of getting rid of the sheep. But they are really old ewes whose fleece is not desirable, at their age, for anyone seeking a fiber flock. And we love the sheep. They provide good compost for the garden, mow the lawn for us and I do use their fiber. We could down-scale the garden but we already spent the money on the seed and it really does save a lot of money. Time=Money. So if we did not spend the time in the garden we would have to spend more time earning money to buy the food we would have grown. And besides these are the "good busy" things that we do.

Summer vacation starts soon. We have decided not to build a big barn but a smaller sheep shed and a chicken coop. We have decided to take time to things together as a family. There will be camping trips, time to visit with friends from away, bike rides and swimming. We will chop wood and grow a garden. We will take days where we will not, under any circumstance, get in a car.

For now, while the busy-ness remains a part of our lives we will try to be kind to one another.