Mother

Ahhh, Euphrasyne, You truly have had a crazy year but from what I’ve been reading in your posts you really have been accomplishing a whole lot despite your set backs. Why not go back and read your posts here for the last year and I would bet you will be able to see just how much. Plus, don’t forget how much you have helped all of us with your knowledge, your recipes, and your encouragement. Happy birthday, Euphrasyne. Celebrate it with your head held high. You have earned it. 🌹

That looks SO good. I was going to have DD pick up ten pounds for us from our Fareway but they needed it more than we did for their freezer. She got us 10 pounds of chicken thighs for $.99 a # instead.

I’m concerned too, Jeepers. I hope everything is okay.

Joyfilled, if you get a cow, please learn to milk her for several reasons. One, there might come a time when you are faced with milking her yourself or resign her to the pain, misery, and possible mastitis if she is not milked. Two, you could be missing the chance to have a hands-on connection to your food which is vital to living a self-reliant lifestyle. And three you could be missing the experience of being loved and accepted as one of that cow’s family. The interdependent dynamics between a family milk animal and it’s human family is unique, to say the least.

Yes it is. Pickling lime, calcium hydroxide and water. I’ve had eggs store up to a year with them but they have to be fresh, unwashed eggs. Doesn’t work with commercial eggs as the coating left on the egg by the laying process has been removed and the lime permeates the egg instead of protecting it. Unwashed fresh eggs can also be stored in baskets in a cool place just as they are for several weeks without spoiling.

Joyfilled, I loved our Guernsey/ jersey cross milk cow. She was so tame we could go out to the pasture and milk her. She gave gallons of rich creamy milk daily and would milk over two years without being bred. We have three small 45 watt solar panels that give us plenty of 12 volt power but we’d have to run an inverter to even consider running our freezers, even our smallest one, as inverters use too much electricity to convert to 110. One of our solar panels is brand new in the box and we are hoping if our hooked up ones are affected the boxed one wouldn’t be. Not sure about batteries but we always keep one or two charged but not connected to anything. I’m not sure there is any definitive answer to that.

I’ve waxed my own home made hard cheese before and didn’t find it any more effective than storing the dry cheese in the rind it develops from the curing process. We had a very cold basement pantry at the time and I stored it on wire racks. I agree with Euphrasyne that if you have access to raw milk or powdered milk it is easy to make fresh cheese but if you are wanting aged , hard cheese without the wait for a survival situation be sure to do a lot of reading first (as I’m sure you do). It won’t save you anything if the cheese is unusable when you need it. You might also think about storing cheese in oil or in brine. Try small batches in different ways to see what works best. As for the predicted Midwest blackouts, that often means periodic electrical loss due to high demand. That might be temporary, random, short term outages while they transfer electricity from one area to another. Unfortunately with the predicted electrical shortages that could mean days. Short term (1-2 days) outages, even if they are often, will not effect your freezer temps greatly if the freezers are insulated with heavy quilts or packing blankets and only opened when absolutely necessary. Longer term for us here usually means using a generator a couple times a day to keep items frozen or a massive canning or dehydrating effort to save what’s in them. Thankfully, hard cheese when frozen can still be stored and used after thawing so not as much of an issue as soft cheese would be.

Roses and dandelion are all fair game for our challenge. I repotted herbs today and now have almost all seedlings out of the greenhouse. I still have to move my ginger plants out yet. Then back to planting more seeds. I am trying not to plant everything all at once. The deer flies have been nasty outside for days but still better than mosquitoes which haven’t found it yet. 🦟 🧯😡

JEEPERS!!! You have a birthday and you aren’t here to celebrate? We will just have to start without you and you’ll have to catch up when you get back! Hope you are having a super celebration with your family. 🎂🍧🍫🍨🥤🧋🍕🎶. Happy birthday!!!

Joyfilled, that’s amazing. Good job! 👍

Kappy, you are officially listed as a challenge member . Welcome aboard. ( note for everyone, you don’t have to be ‘official’ to join the challenge. It just gives us all a feeling of not being alone in our urban garden endeavors 😁) I like the wicking system. We’ve done something with double tubs with a circular hole cut into the bottom of the top tub with dirt filled ground cloth through that into the water below. They worked for a while but after a few years they sunk into our soil and didn’t drain from the wheep hole. GS is going to move them for us with his tractor and we will reset them onto gravel or cement. Then we’ll see if we can rejuvenate them. The big plastic commercial planters we bought are very similar to your system with a water reservoir with a closable drain and a water tube that has a float to tell us when there is enough water. The big deck planters we made from huge storage totes have a bit different system. Because we wanted to use them as a combination worm composting and growing system we wanted to be able to collect the worm ‘tea’ that would be generated. We thought through all sorts of draining systems that would not allow dirt to clog it and finally came up with a pretty easy one that still remains to be tested as we don’t have worms yet. We used a simple bulkhead for rain barrels that would accommodate a garden hose for directing the liquid off deck for easy collection. We thought of the perforated drain pipe but could not get the components to make the connection between them and the bulkhead. In the end it was simple. We used big six inch plastic jars. We drilled a hole through the lid and attached it to the inside of the tote along with the bulkhead. We drilled small holes in the side of the jars and covered them with ‘Drain Sock’ a mesh sleeve made especially for the drain tile like Kappy used but perfect for our jars. I used fishing line to close the mesh end and zip lock ties to secure it around the neck of the jar. Then we simply screwed the jar back on the lid. We surrounded the jar with small pieces of logs to help fill the space to use less soil (the totes are 18” deep) and to act as a sort of Hugelkulture system where the wood slowly breaks down feeding the soil. Red, or composting, worms don’t go very deep but if it gets too hot and dry they will be able to go deeper and find moist wood to work on. The rest of the container is filled with good potting mixture. The theory is that we can use an area of the top soil to bury our peelings and such to feed the worms and the rest of the top for planting. We have planted but not introduced worms because we had something digging into the planters. I had used worm castings as part of the soil mixture and we are guessing the smell of that brought a raccoon thinking there were worms. We covered the area with old grates and we live trapped and removed three raccoon so far and the digging has stopped. Hopefully that will end it but we live on the edge of timber and fields and may have to take more protective measures. We will introduce worms this coming week.

Have you considered boiling them, mashing them shell and all, and feeding them back to the hens to supplement their feed. I have done that and mixed them with a small amount of their grain but they will eat them plain. Just don’t feed them raw or whole. This is also a time when a pig is a big help.

Homey, I sure hope we find more veggie plants when we go this week. I want to pick up a few I didn’t get started in the greenhouse. There was very little variety when we went last week. They told us they just weren’t getting them in. Might just have been too early?? But we were told they didn’t expect more seeds. I’m not sure how to interpret this.

Wow Ambergris. THANK YOU. That is tremendous information. Might be a lot of work but this is great prepper info. These are things we can grow even in restricted (thinking planters and small yards) areas unlike grain. I understand the lack of gluten (all too well) but many things that might be grain substitutes would be gluten free as well. This flour might also give a sweet taste to baked goods at a time when conventional sweeteners are scarce.

Kappydell. Of course it counts. The above was the challenge and your wicking pots and trellises and more count. Should I put you down? This thread is a good place to share how we are meeting the challenge. Maybe you will share how you make your wicking pots? Annarchy. I have an aloe, or twenty, and didn’t realize there were different kinds. I’m guessing mine are yellow from your pictures and description but they grow inside year round. I like the idea of the berm and watering habit changes to salvage your produce. Would it be possible to net your tomatoes to keep the birds away?

First salad from the deck farm.

Kappydell, your mother must have known my mother! There were only a couple recipes there that DH didn’t say,,,”we do that” on. Good solid easy but interesting meals. Thanks for posting them.

Those are Gorgeous Miki. That lettuce is so nice looking. We have tubs like you big one but I really like that shallower one too. 👍

Welcome, Pauline. I have added you to our growing list. You really do have a challenge but the third time will have to be a charm! I am so glad you didn’t give up. I will be looking forward to hearing how you meet your challenges.

I have a glass to and the booklet that came with it actually said you could can on it as long as the pan was sized to the burner. None of the burners are large enough for the regular canners but I have a small water bath one (really a large heavy stock pot) that will fit. I’ve used it many times with no problems. When we remodeled the kitchen to make it handicapped friendly we put in a glass top and a heavy duty gas top both. DH is now in charge of using the big canners on the gas one.

Miki, I have dehydrated squash of all kind but never thought of grinding and using as flour. summer squash will dry into chips but once the liquid in them has gone you aren’t left with a lot of volume to grind. I buy and use sweet potato flour and I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t use winter squash in the same way. I love that idea. Let’s hope someone will chime in on the how-to’s. Like blanching and such.

Welcome SusanAnn and SnapshotMiki. I have you both signed up and am so glad to have you join in the fun. SusanAnn I am excited for you with all you have already accomplished. And Miki, it is awesome what a yard can yield. Those pictures are a super way to encourage us all. I think we’re all going to be learning a lot.

Pioneer woman. I haven’t tried squash leaves yet. I will cook them when I do eat them because the leaves are usually rough. There are lots of edible flowers. They all have different tastes but be sure to do your research to make sure you have proper ID’s and to check for any interactions you might have. I use flowers as edible decorations for cakes and in salads. I leave them whole for decorations but if I’m mixing them in something I use only the petals as the green parts can be a bit tough and sometimes bitter. Rose petals I always snip or pull of the white lower part as it is odd tasting. There is tons of info online just make sure it’s a reputable source. And make sure they haven’t been sprayed. Pea shoots, tendrils, and leaves are really tasty. If I am making sprouts I use sprouting seeds and grow them like any other sprout in a jar. But for shoots I often use regular whole dried green peas from the grocery store. They have to be whole, not split. They are not always easy to find. Those I rinse well, soak overnight, and then rinse and drain like sprouting but only until they have a tiny root showing. One to three days. Then I press them into about an inch or so of damp soil in a shallow container, thickly but not layering them. I cover them with a dark but vented container and keep them damp. When they start to show growth I set them in light and just let them grow. I can cut them all off when they are about three or four inches high and harvest tendrils, leaves and all. If I leave the lower parts of the plant with some leaves they will continue to grow to be cut again. Or I can just cut what I need. Tender tips and the tendrils are good raw in salads, bigger ones I stir fry or chop fine. They taste like fresh peas. BTW, these, if let go will flower and produce small pods but they are usually tough. I’m assuming the store kind is a hybrid and doesn’t hold true to type. Some day I’ll try it with the sprouting seed peas. Sprouts in a jar, pea shoots, Sunnies (sunflower seed shoots, sweet potato leaves, carrot tops, microgreens of all kinds, and regrowing veggie ends make up a big share of our ‘winter’ salad gardening inside but I usually have sprouts and Sunnies growing all year. When I want pea shoots I just snip them off my outside peas.

We were at Aldi’s today and though there was only a few empty shelves there was very little on each shelf. The prices were up significantly from a month ago. Complete strangers were talking to each other about the high costs and I watched as people picked up an item and then put it back. Knowing that things are only going to get higher I bought flats and boxes of most things. The total was scary but I looked at it in the same way I do putting money in a savings.

I’m sorry you caught the C-crud, Darlene, but glad you are recovering. We stopped at our farm store today and I went to buy extra garden seeds just to have on hand and for planting inside this winter. I was shocked at how few veggie seeds they had left. They had flower seeds but not even as many of those as normal. Seeds at this store are usually available until August first but they will be gone long before then I’m sure. Another indication of just what we are facing.