The Birth of our Survival Orchard: Planting Pecan Trees

We began our survival orchard by planting pecan trees.Why pecans? I'm glad you asked! I think nuts are really important survival foods because of their protein and fat content. We are at the northern most part of the country where pecans can survive, which violates my principle of choosing only trees that are unfailingly hardy in our area. Walnuts (among other nut trees) would have been a better choice.

Well, Hubby Dear detests walnuts and most other nuts besides pecans. As I needed his help planting and maintaining the trees, pecans it would have to be. Besides, I spent a couple of years of my life living in the midst of a pecan grove down in Louisiana and I have been a fan ever since of the graceful, productive pecan tree. We chose the most cold-hardy varieties we could find (Starking Hardy Giant, Stark Surecrop, and Colby) and are crossing our fingers that they like our chilly hilltop homestead.

How could I resist the opportunity to have my own mini pecan grove?
Image from pawpaw.kysu.edu

The other issue with pecan trees is that they take a long time to bear fruit. It can be anywhere from 5-12 years to get a crop of pecans and 20 years for a pecan tree to reach its full size (and they do get BIG). Pecan trees grown in containers tend to transplant better than bare-root trees and grafted pecan trees tend to produce nuts earlier, so keep that in mind if you're looking to add one or more of these fruitful giants to your landscape. And don't make the mistake that we did. We procrastinated and did not place our order for special "Select" pecan trees from Stark Bros. until they had already been for sale for two weeks. By the time we placed our order, they were sold out of Select trees and we had to settle for the runts of the litter. Our procrastination cost us at least two additional years before we'll see nuts.

A view of the southwest corner of our property

Pecan trees get large, but luckily we have lots of space to fill. They need to be about 40' apart and well away from any power lines. We selected this space at the southwest corner of our 5 acres. We decided to be responsible citizens for a change and call to get our utility lines marked before we planted the trees. Hubby Dear gave a very specific description of the area we would be digging in when he filled out the online form for One Call:

"DIG AREA WILL BE ON THE SOUTHWEST PORTION OF THE PROPERTY, IN AN 80 FT X 80 FT AREA FROM A LINE CONNECTING THE ELECTRICITY POLE TO THE SOUTH FENCE, GOING EAST."

Seems straightforward to me.

I'm glad to know my backyard is OK... 

Apparently not. This is what ended up getting marked - the area between our house and the chicken moat! Oh well. At least we were able to scavenge the flags the doofus left behind to mark the spots where we wanted to plant each tree.

We crossed our fingers that we wouldn't hit anything, marked out positions for the three trees and got to work. Thankfully we had gotten 3-1/2 inches of precipitation over the previous week and it served to loosen things up slightly.

See the line of demarcation between topsoil and clay?

I have a long history of bemoaning our poor soil. I was surprised to find that this portion of our property actually has several inches of topsoil. This is MUCH better than in our backyard garden area. I was excited to find lots of earthworms as we dug.

One hole down...

The goal is to get a hole that is roughly 2' across and 2' deep. We dug down to 18" pretty easily, but past that point the clay was impenetrable to our shovels. Oh well, it would just have to do!

We took the topsoil and the best bits of the clay and mixed it in a wheelbarrow with some peat moss and compost. We used this mixture to fill in the holes. The addition of peat moss and compost  will help loosen things up a bit for the trees. The trees themselves were tiny and came in 4"x10" pots. By the time they grow enough that their root systems fill the hole we dug, they should be strong enough to contend with the unamended soil that surrounds the place they were planted. That's the theory, anyway!

Our teeny tiny Colby pecan tree. Don't be fooled by the much larger bamboo support stake!

We tamped down the soil mix tightly around the tree, eliminating air pockets that could cause the tree to dry out and die. Then we watered, watered, watered. Pecan trees really need a lot of water but unfortunately, these trees are far away from any faucet or hose. I'm comforting myself by the thought that lugging 5 gallon buckets of water around all summer is sure to build up my biceps.

We used some of the most dense pieces of clay to create small berms around the planting site. They work nicely to keep water around the trees and prevent it from running off downhill before it can soak in.

Stark Surecrop Pecan Tree with Typar weedcloth circle and mulch

The next step was to lay a circle of landscape fabric around each tree and cover it with several inches of mulch. This will help to retain soil moisture and make mowing and trimming easier.

The finished product. As you can tell, it took us all afternoon to complete the job. 

The final step was to place a tree guard around each tree. Tree guards are white plastic coils that protect trees both from rodent damage and sunscald.

That's it! Hopefully the little trees will thrive and grace us with beauty, shade, and lots of pecans.

Planning a Survival Orchard

We've made a lot of progress towards self-reliance on our little homestead this year. We converted our vegetable garden to a square foot-type garden and had our first successful growing season since we moved to this location. Good thing, because it was a lot of work building all those boxes and filling them with 1,000s of pounds of Mel's Mix! We're also set up to get chickens in the spring. The next step is to begin planting our homestead's orchard.

I know not everyone lives on acreage in the country, but that's not a reason why you can't plant something. If you live in an apartment, why not try a window box of strawberries? If you have an average-sized suburban yard, you have lots of options. Many fruit trees come in dwarf varieties. Or you could train them against a fence, put a colonnade-type fruit tree in a pot on your deck, or even fill your flowerbeds with gorgeous, edible landscaping. Have you seen The Prudent Homemaker's garden? Wow! Talk about inspiring! Also, check out the book Landscaping With Fruit by Lee Reich for lots of great ideas.

You can train fruit trees against a sunny wall
Image from allaboutfruittrees.blogspot.com

When considering what types of trees to plant in a survival orchard, you may want to keep these things in mind:

1. What can I plant that will give me the most vital nutrients? 
2. How easy will it be to care for?
3. How will I use the fruit?

Vital nutrients - fruit and nuts as survival food

Many of us today are over-fed and under-exercised, myself included. In the future, instead of counting calories for weight loss, we might be trying to scrape together enough calories to survive. A survival orchard would be very useful in such a scenario. Take pecans, for instance. One cup of pecan halves contains approximately 700 calories, 71 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber. Pecans also have a decent shelf life, particularly if you store them in the shell. Or you can shell them and then freeze or vacuum seal them. This makes the pecan - or any nut, for that matter - a great survival food. Check out this post on Survival Blog for someone else's take on the apple as the ultimate survival food. 

Ease of care

When it comes to fruit trees, there are so many choices. Take apples, for instance. My favorite nursery, Stark Bros., sells well over 30 varieties of apples. The selection is mind-boggling. 

Once you select the kind of apple you want to grow, then you have to consider how large you want your tree to be. Dwarf fruit trees generally run 8-10 feet tall, semi-dwarfs are 12-15 feet, and standard sized trees are about 18-25 feet. Dwarfs are obviously smaller and therefore easier to care for, but they also have a shorter lifespan and do yield less fruit per tree. A standard sized tree has a long life span and will yield a ton of fruit, but you have to contend with harvesting and pruning such a large tree. We have decided to go for the best of both worlds and get semi-dwarf trees when we have that option.  

Semi-dwarf apple trees
Image from mainelyapples.com

Yet another consideration is disease-resistance. We try to garden organically, so selecting disease-resistant varieties is really important for us. Even if you don't garden organically now, when TSHTF, you may be forced to. A survival orchard is best served by selecting varieties that thrive in the weather conditions of your area and that are resistant to the prevalent pests.   

Fire  blight - a major pestilence around here
Image from ipm.msu.edu

Don't forget to plant pollinators, if necessary. Some fruit and nut trees self-pollinate, others must be pollinated by another tree, and still others bear more fruit if they have a pollinator nearby.

How will you eat it?

Lastly, think about how you exactly you will be using the fruit. Have you ever noticed that some apples that taste like ambrosia when eaten out of hand sometimes taste like nothing when baked in a pie? Certain varieties of fruit are best for canning. Others are great for drying, stay fresh even after months in a root cellar, or are best appreciated fresh off the tree. Decide how you will be eating the fruit now so you will not be disappointed later.

----

With all these factors in mind, we've created a general outline for building our orchard here in USDA Hardiness Zone 5.

Our Existing Perennial Fruits:
1. Blackberries - 3 Chester and 3 Triple Crown. This is just about the right amount of blackberries for our family.
2. Raspberries - Heritage.  The raspberries we planted this spring to add to our existing patch didn't make it. We'll try again in the spring.
3. Strawberries - Earliglo (June bearing) and Tribute (everbearing). The majority of our strawberries mysteriously died, but they will be replaced next year. The strawberries that survived produced fruit that tasted amazing.
4. Sour cherry - Montmorency. This freebie has never gotten the TLC it deserved. I'm going to pamper it next year and see if I can't get it to do something.

Triple Crown Blackberries, Raspberries in the background, May 2011

Orchard Planting Plan (Type of plant, varieties, date of planting): 

1. Pecan trees - Starking Hardy Giant, Stark Surecrop, and Colby, Fall '11.
2. Apple - Goldrush, Enterprise, Jonafree, Crimsoncrisp, Honeycrisp, Spring '12/Fall '13
3. Blueberries - Bluecrop, Blueray, Earliglo, Jersey, Spring '12/ Spring '14
4. Almond - All-in-One Almond, Fall '12
5. Pear - Maxine (aka Starking Delicious), Seckel, Fall '12
6. Plum - Stanley,  2-N-1 (Shiro/Redheart) Spring '13/Spring '14
7. Peach - Intrepid, Contender, Spring '13/Fall '13
8. Cherry - Surecrop, Starkrimson Spring '13/Spring '14
9. Nectarine - Sunglo, Spring '13
10. Apricot - Harglow, Fall '13
11. Walnut - Stark Champion English, Lake English, Spring '14
9. Lemon* - Meyer Lemon, Spring '14

*The lemon tree is the one plant we've selected that is not hardy in our area. I am a true lemon lover, however, and cannot imagine a world without lemons. We plan on planting it in a container and bringing it indoors in the winter.

Fruit and nut trees do take several years before they will bear fruit. Ideally, we would get all the trees into the ground now so they would be productive ASAP. We have to balance that desire with reality. We are expanding our homestead rapidly and are likely to crash and burn if we don't pursue moderation.

We broke ground on our orchard over the weekend. I'll post all the hairy details in an upcoming post.

Do you have any fruit or nut trees? Plans to plant some? Do tell! :) 

A Possible Replacement for Bouillon Cubes in Your Food Storage

I hate bouillon cubes. First of all, I can never open the stupid foil papers they are wrapped in. When I finally get the cube out and pop it in my soup or whatever I'm cooking, I'll usually find stubborn pieces of foil floating to the top. Even worse, the ingredients in most bouillons are scary. Here's the list of ingredients in the Tone's Chicken Bouillon I have in my food storage:


Salt, sugar, partially hydrogenated palm oil, monosodium glutamate (MSG), cornstarch, and less than 2% of onion powder, chicken fat and meat, garlic powder, turmeric (color), disodium inosinate, spices, TBHQ (preservative).  MADE ON EQUIPMENT THAT ALSO PROCESSES WHEAT, MILK, EGGS, SOY, SHRIMP, AND FISH.


Does that make you hungry? No? It practically gives me an anaphylactic reaction to think about eating all that junk, and I don't even have any food allergies! Not exactly the feeling I want to have when I'm preparing food for my children.

Yet it can't be denied that bouillon is one of the cheapest, most versatile seasonings that you can have on hand. If I was living on a diet of beans and rice, I wouldn't care how much sodium or MSG was in that bouillon cube; I would be thankful for its punch of flavor.

There are other alternatives to the humble bouillon cube, of course. You could store cans of chicken broth. The problem with that is cans of broth take up much more room and are more expensive per unit. You could also buy some of the premium chicken bouillons that are out there. I have had people tell me good things about Shirley J's Chicken Bouillon. It does have only about 1/2 the sodium of standard bouillons, but it also contains hydrolyzed soy protein which is a source of MSG. What to do?

I went ahead and stocked up on cheap bouillon cubes during my Food Storage Blitz Month, but I haven't felt good about that decision. Then a friend shared this YouTube video with me. It seems there is a quick and easy alternative to canned bouillons and broths that is very food storage friendly!

Here's the recipe shared in the video: 


Veggie Chicken Broth Mix
1-1/2 c. nutritional yeast
3 T. onion powder
2-1/2 t. garlic powder
1 T. salt
1 t. celery seed
2-1/2 T. Italian Seasoning
2 T. dry parsley

Mix in ingredients in blender and then store broth mix in an air-tight container. Add 1 T. of mix per cup of water and use as chicken or veggie broth in recipes.


So what is nutritional yeast anyway? 

Nutritional yeast is the same kind kind of yeast that you use to make bread, but it has been subjected to a process that renders it inert. It adds a lot of nutrition and flavor to food. You might be able to find nutritional yeast in your local health food store, but if you are like me and live in a place where you can't dependably buy high-class food like boneless, skinless chicken breasts, you can order it on Amazon.com here. The rest of the ingredients are items I always have in my pantry. 

Nutritional yeast has a shelf life of about 2 years if you store it in an air-tight container in a cool location - approximately the same shelf life as a bouillon cube! 


And how does it taste? 


My friend reports that it is delicious! She used broth made from this mix in French onion soup and her family raved about it. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to order some nutritional yeast, whip up a batch of broth mix, and report back. 




What place does broth/bouillon have in your food storage? Are you bothered by food additives or could you not care less? 

Ask the Readers: How do you keep frozen bread tasting fresh?

Homemade bread - including my successful Sun Oven experiment

Please allow me a bit of a brag: I have stopped buying bread at the store altogether. Between my NutriMilland my Bosch mixer,making bread with wheat from my food storage couldn't be easier. I bake four loaves at a time (the Bosch can handle six, but I only have four bread pans!) and freeze them.

Here's the problem: my frozen loaves just aren't as moist and tasty as they are when fresh.I have experimented with the type of sugar I use in the bread - white sugar, honey, or brown sugar. I have experimented with the type of wrapping I give the bread before freezing it - a freezer bag, foil, or a layer of plastic wrap, then foil.

Nothing I've tried seems to make much of a difference.

So I ask you, gentle readers: what are your best tricks for freezing bread so that the taste and texture when it thawed is like freshly baked bread? 

Some Not-So-Sweet News About Honey

Honey is a major part of most food storage plans and for good reason. It is versatile, has a very long storage life, and is a compact source of a lot of calories. (It sounds funny to think of a time when the fact that something has a lot of calories would be a good thing, doesn't it?) The LDS church recommends that each family store 3 lb of honey per adult and 1 lb per child.

I came to the conclusion that we need to store much more than the recommended amount of honey for our family. The main reason is because I prefer to use honey as the sweetener when I make bread from my stored wheat. I calculated how much honey it would take to make bread for a year and that led me to the amount I have stored - around 45 pounds. (Check out my post on what types of sugar I have in my food storage if you missed it the first time around.)

With that much honey hanging around, it isn't surprising that this article posted on Facebook caught my attention:

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey

If you read through the article, you'll find that Food Safety News tested massive amounts of honey from all over the country. They bought honey at the places the average citizen is likely to frequent - grocery stores, warehouse clubs, and even the individual serving packets found at fast food restaurants. The vast majority of the samples didn't have even a trace of pollen. 

You might be wondering why the absence of pollen is a problem. There are several reasons to be concerned. First of all, to quote the Food Safety News article, "In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that's been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn't honey." Comparing natural honey with pollen to ultra-filtered honey without pollen reminds me of the differences between dark chocolate and white chocolate. Both dark and white chocolates are sweet products that contain parts of the cacao plant, but white chocolate is missing the cocoa solids of real chocolate. The cocoa solids are what provide that delicious, chocolate-y flavor I depend on to make it through my some of the traumatic moments in my harried life. White chocolate is OK, but it definitely is not the same. Following this analogy, why would I choose to buy honey that was missing all the good stuff?

Next, the pollen in honey is what provides all those wonderful health benefits to those who consume it. It also gives each type of honey (ie. clover, tupelo, etc.) a distinctive taste. It is pollen that keeps honey from being just another sugar syrup.

The last thing pollen does for honey is give scientists a way to track where the honey originated. Without the pollen, a honey distributor can mix together honeys from different regions or nations and it will all pretty much taste the same. That cheerful plastic bear hiding in your pantry might very well contain honey from China. Chinese honey is NOT something you want to have as part of your diet. It is common for Chinese honey to contain dangerous antibiotics that are banned in the USA or to be diluted with corn syrup. As the article relates, Chinese honey is making its way into the US in massive amounts and the government isn't trying to stop it.

I have been buying my honey in 5 lb bottles at Sam's Club. No more! That honey is on the list of pollen-free honeys cited in the article. I'm going to look for a local source of honey and may get into beekeeping myself someday. It may be a bit more expensive and require some effort to find local, less-processed honey, but at least I'll know it will be chock full of pollen and poison-free!


Read more about Chinese honey here. 

My Conflicted Mind

Sometimes I feel like I live between two different worlds and I can't tell which one is reality.

The first world is the one explored in books like Patriots, Survivors,and One Second After. The end of the world as we know it is discussed as fact on many of my regular Internet haunts and, increasingly, in the mainstream media. In this world, it is apparent that the old ways are passing away and something new - and quite possibly sinister - is approaching.

One Second After still haunts me

The second world is optimistic and sparkles with cheerful consumerism. According to this version of reality, there may be slight bumps in the road, but life will always be good in the US of A. Nothing really bad can ever happen here. The comfortable lifestyle that my family enjoys is secure because we have plenty of that green paper stuff that passes for wealth.

One world urges me to focus on preparedness. NOW. The other entreats me to stop being a killjoy and start planning my next vacation. Which world reflects the true reality?

My guess is that reality is somewhere between those two visions. I pray that we never have a total breakdown of society such as that depicted in the aforementioned books, but I do believe that harder times are coming. I feel led by the Holy Spirit to prepare, specifically in the area of food storage. That is reason enough for a Christian to venture into prepping, however, it's not always easy. It gets very tempting to give up when I think that I could be remodeling my kitchen instead of buying MREs!

Do any of you struggle with conflicted feelings regarding preparedness? Why do YOU prepare? 

Using Your Food Storage: Wheatberry Salad

When I saw this recipe in the American Profile insert in our local paper, I immediately knew I had to pass it on. Not only is it based around wheat berries, something most preppers have in abundance, but many of the other ingredients are also commonly found in people's food storage. I store things like Dijon mustard, pecans, and Worcestershire sauce as part of my three month supply and I grow both sage and thyme in my herb garden. I'm sure you could even use dry celery and apples in place of fresh. I can't wait to try this recipe out!

Wheatberry Salad

2 c. wheat berries (ie. wheat kernels)
4 qt. water
1 c. diced celery
1 lb roughly chopped smoked turkey or rotisserie chicken
1 tart apple, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and diced
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1 c. dried cranberries
1 c. chopped pecans
3 T. walnut or corn oil
2 T. cider vinegar
2 t. Worcestershire sauce
1 t. Dijon mustard
1 T. chopped fresh sage or 1 t. dried
2 t. fresh thyme leaves or 1/2 t. dried
1 t. salt
1/2 t. coarsely ground black pepper


Place wheat berries in a large pot; add water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer until tender, about 1 hour. Drain in a colander and cool.

Place wheat berries in a large bowl; stir in remaining ingredients. Serve cold or at room temperature. Serves 10.

In Which I Make Tasteless Pumpkin Puree

I bought The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times by Carol Deppe several months ago. Right away, I knew that I had discovered a true gem for those of us with a preparedness mindset. I just wish I had made it to the chapter on squash and pumpkins before yesterday.

This is what I found on page 199 about Cucurbita pepo, the squash species that includes the "Baby Pam" pie pumpkins we harvested in September:

 "...pepos require only seven to fourteen days of curing.... The pepos are prime right after the curing period 

and deteriorate from there, with the flesh getting stringier, and the sugar and flavor going downhill."

Ack! I should have processed our pumpkins long ago! Well, now I know, and if you grew up in the 80s you'll remember that knowing is half the battle.

Part of me wanted to just forget the whole idea of pumpkin puree and to simply enjoy the pumpkins as fall decorations. Well, that wouldn't make a very exciting blog entry, would it?

Washing the pumpkins

I picked through our pumpkins and selected the six pumpkins that felt heavy for their size. They ranged from 1lb 5 oz to over 2 lb in weight. They got a quick wash.

Oiled up and ready to bake 

I rubbed their skins with a little oil and placed them directly on the rack in my 400 degree oven. I was very glad that I remembered to put a baking sheet underneath the pumpkins because several of them definitely oozed as they baked.

Baked!

It took about 45 minutes for the smallest pumpkins to cook completely and over an hour for the largest one. I removed them from an oven when I could slide a paring knife into the pumpkin without any resistance.

Halved and ready to scoop out the seeds

It was very easy to slice the pumpkins open. I'm so glad that I chose to roast the pumpkin first rather than slice the pumpkin while it was still raw. I like having all my fingers, thank you very much!

After I scooped out the seeds and stringy business, it was a simple task to remove the pulp from the pumpkin skin. Easy peasy!

At this point, I gave the pulp a tentative taste. It certainly didn't smell like the pumpkin you get from a can. It also didn't taste like canned pumpkin. It didn't taste like much of anything, in fact.

I proceeded on and pureed the pulp in batches in my food processor. Then I froze the puree in 1 cup portions in FoodSaver baggies.

So now I have 5 cups of tasteless pumpkin puree hanging out in my freezer. I'd call this experiment a big FAILURE. The process was certainly easy, but end result was poor. But you can bet I'll never forget to process my pumpkins on time!

Please tell me I'm not alone when it comes to kitchen failures! I feel like I've had more than my fair share recently.  

October in Review and November 2011 Preps

Is it just me or did October go by in the blink of an eye? I can hardly believe it is November and that Christmas is just around the corner. 

I don't feel like I did very much to prep this month. I bought a few new books to add to our survival library and added some odds and ends to our food storage (another gallon of oil and a few canned goods) but that's it. Hmm... I'll have to do better in November! 

I did have my first successful culinary experience with a Sun Oven.It makes me feel a lot more secure to know that I can bake bread without electricity - assuming that the sun is shining!

We also harvested the last tomatoes and peppers of the year. Both of the methods we are using to ripen green tomatoes are working well. It feels luxurious to have so many delicious tomatoes on hand when it is so cold outside.

Last, but certainly not least, we completed our chicken moat. I've wanted chickens for at least five years and I'm so excited that I finally get to buy chicks this spring! 

For November:

• We still need to plant the seed garlic we bought last month. Gotta get that in the ground soon.
• Our three pecan trees are due to be shipped soon so we'll be planting them as well.  
• I plan to process my pie pumpkins and freeze the pulp. The last of our cayenne peppers should finish drying this month and I'm planning on grinding them up for ground red pepper. We shall see if I can accomplish both of those objectives without chopping off any body parts or suffering wicked chile burns. 
• I've been using a borrowed Sun Oven for my solar oven experiments. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and buy one of my own. It is definitely an investment, but I think it is worth it. Yes, I've had some less than successful experiments, but I'm finally figuring out how to make the Sun Oven work for me. 
• I plan on taking advantage of the holiday sales to stock up on food storage items. I'm going to focus on chocolate chips, brownie mixes, sugar, flour, and other baking items. 
• Speaking of baking, I have a problem that I need your help with. It's time for another "Ask the Readers" post. Stay tuned for that later this week.

How did you prepare in October? What are your plans for this month? 

Adding to My Survival Library

I've been actively preparing for well over a year now and my list of things to get and to do never seems to get shorter. It gets overwhelming when you realize just how much stuff it would take to survive a major societal collapse - or even a minor one, for that matter. I recently finished reading James Wesley Rawles' Patriotsand the protagonists in that book have an insanely tricked out survival retreat. It makes me feel more than a little inadequate!

The best I can do is set purchasing priorities and see them through. Number one on my list is food storage. We should have our year's supply by the end of 2011. Number two is information - books, resources printed off the Internet, etc. on all sorts of survival topics. The books are helping me plan my future purchases and they would be an invaluable asset in any sort of long term disaster. I think of them as a kind of Noah's Ark of information.

Part of our survival library

I prefer actual, physical books. You'll never see me breaking out a Nook or Kindle. It's not my style and in a grid down situation, you may lose access to the precious knowledge contained in an e-book. I suppose the best case scenario would be to buy both a physical copy/copies of an essential book and to also have an electronic version.

I'm collecting books in a variety of categories:

Gardening
Canning/Preserving
Food Storage Cookbooks
Animal Husbandry
Defense
"Hardcore" Survival Topics (ie. Foraging, Trapping, etc.)
Traditional Skills
Medicine

At this point, I've pretty well gotten the first three categories taken care of. Since Hubby Dear is a medical professional, I'm not too worried about the last category, either.

Here's what I added to the library this month:

1. Barnyard in Your Backyard: A Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cattle This book contains bits and pieces of all the "Storey's Guide to Raising..." books about these particular animals. I wasn't very impressed. I have and love the Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens because it is very, very thorough. Barnyard in Your Backyard? Not so much. I should have just bought the complete Storey's Guides for each of the animal species. 
2. The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It A beautiful book. Inspiring and packed with lovely illustrations. 
3. The Chicken Health Handbook If my hypothetical chickens get sick, I will be prepared. More than you ever wanted to know about chicken ailments. 
4. SurvivorsThis is John Wesley Rawles' sequel to Patriots. I liked Patriots OK. I am about 80 pages into Survivors and it is driving me crazy! Ever seen a kid with ADHD hopped up on too much sugar?This book reminds me of that; it flits between so many different people that there is no narrative "flow". Please tell me it gets better!

What are your "Must Haves" for your library? Are you buying e-books or paper copies?  

Putting Up the Last of the Summer's Harvest

We just had our first hard frost of the year. Although we were sad when it happened, we were thankful that it occurred a bit later than is typical for our region. We still had tomatoes, peppers, and other tender summer vegetables flourishing, and it was a blessing that they did not get killed any earlier. When it was clear that the weather was finally going to get cold and stay cold, we made plans for one last picking party and decided what to do with it all.

Hubby Dear picked all the peppers in various stages of ripening. It was easy for me to decide what to do with them; I have well over 4 gallons of peppers in my freezer and zero room left, so dehydration was the only option available.

My pile of peppers

This pile of peppers pretty much filled up my 9 tray Excalibur Dehydrator but when it was dried, it only measured a little over 1quart!

It never fails to surprise me how tiny everything turns when it is dehydrated 

In addition to the bell peppers, we picked another pound of jalapenos (which I'll make into jalapeno jelly) and another 100 cayenne peppers. I plan to turn the cayenne peppers into ground red pepper or red pepper flakes once they all dry.

The tomatoes were a bit trickier. I didn't feel like frying green tomatoes or canning relish, so we decided to try a couple of different methods of ripening them indoors.

Upside down Roma beside chicken moat debris

The first and easiest method simply involved ripping a tomato plant out of the ground and leaving it upside down in our garage. This would not have been a simple task with one of our giant-sized tomato plants, but this Roma plant was modest in size and easily supported by the remesh tomato cage.

The tomatoes should continue to ripen and we can enjoy tomatoes straight off the vine for another few weeks. That's the theory, anyway! We've never had tomatoes survive to this point in the year to try it before.

We used another method on the green tomatoes from our other eight plants.

Hubby Dear giving the tomatoes a dip in bleach water

We mixed a weak bleach solution (1 part bleach to 9 parts water) and briefly dipped each of the green tomatoes in it. We let the tomatoes dry and then packed them in a single layers inside a cardboard box lined with newspaper. We'll check on the boxes frequently and use up any of the tomatoes that are ripe.

Will either of the two tomato ripening methods work? Which will we prefer? I'll keep you posted.

The last bit of garden business we accomplished before the frost was to dig up and bring my rosemary plant indoors for the winter.

My rosemary plant - Cheerio box added for scale! :) 

Rosemary most definitely will NOT overwinter here, so unless I want to buy a new rosemary plant each spring, I have to bring it indoors. Rosemary isn't always a happy camper inside in the winter, but it's worth a shot! My rosemary got very large this year and I took the opportunity to clip it back quite a bit and dry the clippings.

Thyme and rosemary. I prefer to air-dry woody herbs. 

Our garden hasn't been completely put to sleep yet. We still have cauliflower, beets, and other hardy fall vegetables out there. We have a pound of garlic cloves to plant sometime in the next month as well.

Are you still gardening? What's ready to harvest at your house? 

Fresh from the Garden: Raspberry Bars

We grow the Heritage variety of red raspberries. Heritage produces two crops of berries, one in June and one in September. If you cut the canes back in late fall/winter, however, it will produce one, larger crop in the fall. That is our preferred method of management which means that we are still in the midst of our raspberry harvest.

I've used a lot of our raspberries to make the following recipe for raspberry bars. Beware! The recipe makes a large amount of these very rich, completely irresistible bars. There's something about that tang you get from the fresh raspberries that makes these bars addictive. Don't say I didn't warn you if you find your pants a little snug the day after you make these!

Raspberry bars

Raspberry Bars (slightly adapted from this recipe on allrecipes.com)

1-1/2 c. sugar
1 t. baking powder
3 c. all-purpose flour
1 pinch cinnamon
1 pinch salt
1/2 c. coconut oil (You can substitute shortening for this, if you wish.)
1/2 c. shortening
1 egg
4 c. fresh raspberries
3 t. cornstarch

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 13x9 inch pan.

Combine 1 cup of the sugar, the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Cut in the coconut oil and shortening and then blend in the egg. Pat half of the dough into the prepared pan.

Combine the remaining 1/2 cup sugar, the cornstarch and berries. Place mixture over dough in pan. Crumble the remaining dough over the tops of the berries.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 45 minutes or until the top is slightly brown.              

Sun Oven, Part IV: Baking Bread with the Sun

I gotta admit that I was feeling a bit defeated this morning as I threw together the ingredients for bread. The results of my first Sun Oven experiment? Inedible, chemical-tasting cookies. The second one? Inedible, uncooked soup. Yipee, now I had the chance to make bread inedible.

After the first rising

I prepared my usual quadruple batch of EZ Whole Wheat Bread. My word, I love this bread. It would be a travesty to ruin an otherwise perfectly good loaf. I read over the pointers that Crystal (the same Crystal from Everydayfoodstorage.Net who developed that bread recipe) posted about baking bread in a Sun Oven. It seemed like it might be a good idea to forgo the second rising since the bread would be cooking at a low temperature for an extended time. All that extra time would give the bread the chance to rise to full height.

I preheated my Sun Oven and the thermometer read 300 degrees when I put the bread in.  The remaining three loaves I baked in my electric oven for comparison (and for insurance).

Bungee set-up

My beloved readers gave me lots of great tips in the comment section after my last Sun Oven fiasco. I took Julene's advice and raised the leg to capture more of the autumn sun and also used bungee cords to stabilize the reflectors. The bungees made a huge difference and it was definitely a windy day that put them to the test.

By 20 minutes, the glass door was covered with condensation. That was a problem. Condensation = less sunlight entering the box = a temperature drop.

Look! It's actually rising! 

I tried a couple of different methods of removing the condensation. First, I simply unlatched the door and the majority of the condensation went away. It came back within a matter of minutes, however, so I ended up wiping the inside of the door with a dishtowel.

I checked to see if the bread was done at about 45 minutes. It wasn't brown, but I thunked the top. It didn't have that hollow sound that bread should have. After another 10 minutes, the bread was ever so slightly brown and it did sound done.

"One of these things is not like the other"

Here's the finished product! Guess which loaf was baked in the sun? I read a tip somewhere that if you gently mist the bread with water prior to putting it in the Sun Oven, it enhances browning. By the time I remembered that, the bread had already been baking for a while. Besides, I used all my spray bottles to apply garlic-cayenne insect repellent this summer. Garlic-cayenne bread might taste good, but it was not what I was going for!

After the bread cooled, I eagerly sliced into the loaf. The outside was crusty but the inside was very moist. It was good and didn't taste at all like industrial strength chemicals. I've finally gotten the chemical smell cleaned out of the Sun Oven! I did miss that dark, caramelized taste I get from the bread baked in my oven. It also required more "babysitting" (oven position adjustments, condensation removal, etc.) than sticking a pan in my electric oven. Overall, I prefer oven-baked bread but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to eat this bread. Anyone would be happy to eat this bread during a power outage or while camping.  Finally, I'm able to appreciate what a great preparedness tool the Sun Oven truly is. I'm feeling pretty victorious. :)