Yesterday, on my birthday, I cooked and canned 4 quart (1 liter) and two half pint (500 ml) jars of applesauce with my new canner – I still used the hot water bath method, no high pressurizing as yet, it was simply the only pot that would hold all those jars. It gave me even …
Category Archives: food (growing, cooking, preserving)
Brewing Us Some Compost Tea
A friend lent me the Toolbox for Sustainable City Living, which has a recipe for compost tea. He also dropped off all the necessary equipment for making it. 1 nylon stocking’s leg full of my best homemade compost (= the inoculant) 5 gallons of (non-chlorinated) rain water 1/4 cup of molasses (food) oxygen thanks to …
Garden Fruits
Amie knows why bees are good. – Mama, excuse me, Mama? Bees are good because if there is a flower on the plant then they go into the flower to get the nectar and make honey out of it and they also do something good to the flower. Pollinate, yes. Despite the lack of pollinator-attracting …
Canner and Stove
I can cross two more items off my “Tools/Toys” list in the sidebar. “Lookit” (*) what arrived yesterday, one after the other: My Presto 23 quart high pressure canner, present from DH for my birthday Our new wood stove, present to ourselves for our 8th wedding anniversary That’s two big pillars of self-sufficient living right …
Beginning Preparedness
If for some reason you couldn’t leave your house, how long could you and your family survive on the food and water you have at home? If your answer is three days, you can count yourself “normal”. If for some reason the grid blinked out, would you be able to cook that food, heat your …
TO DO (List) Like There’s No Tomorrow
White sheet curtain to block the sun’s heat. Today we’re in the 90s, while yesterday we barely made the 70s. Things we need to do before winter (update TO DO LIST in sidebar): attempt compost tea top dress beds with compost install last rain barrel (for toilet flushing) pull poison ivy all over restart Starbucks …
Trelisses and Potato Bins and Dinner
Last week “big hail” was predicted, so DH and I ran out and covered most of the beds with row cover. We also managed to drape some over the tomatoes in the pots, but by then it was too dark to take a picture. I don’t know what good it would have done, since no …
Soil Test Results
I know. It was a bit late that I had my soil tested, but – apart from it being too clayish – we’ve always had a good feeling about the soil of our veg garden. The catalyst for sending the soil in anyway was the loam I bought for filling up the terraces we built, …
Riot for Austerity – Months 7, 8, and 9
Months 7 – 9, that is, May to and including July. So I’ve been slacking a bit, not on the practice – I hope – but on the monitoring and recording. Then again, if your practice isn’t wholly a routine yet, monitoring and recording may well be essential (not sufficient, of course, but necessary)… Let’s …
Growing Children in the Garden
A couple of days ago Amie was helping me in the garden. She was raking away the weeds I had just hoed – though raking around is closer to the truth. There was a lot of chopping with her little rake, too close to my face. There was also yelling – “Go away, weeeeeds, go …