Well- thought I would update this thread. I had a mostly very successful harvest (talked about here- https://permies.com/t/148067/Successes-year-garden ). All areas of the garden produced very well, I was very impressed by how well the cardboard broke down, barely a trace of the springs cardboard can be found, in many areas the mulch was eaten down to bare earth. The soil is far more workable and nicer than it was in the spring, easier to dig, more moist, more visible life as fungi and worms, and darker coloured.
We ended up not needing to buy pretty much any vegetables in the summer, and have a fair bit tucked away for the winter. It did really great for a first year garden.
Through October and November, I have mulched (with a combination of wood chips, leaves, and straw- wasn't able to get manure) the beds, and have been slowly expanding the garden in preparation for next year, using the cardboard method which remains my favourite for speed and amount of effort compared to amount of weeding and final production.
Here's the garden, with all but a small square of grass I am working to cover tucked in for the winter. Looking forward to seeing how it does next year.
mother used to make some kind of meatballs with rice in them. She called them "porcupine meatballs". This thread reminded me, I need to find out how she made them. I haven't had them in 40 years or more. /quote]
Trace, my mom used to make the same thing in the 80's.
She would fry onions and parboil some rice, them fold that into a bowl of hamburger. Add salt and pepper to taste. Form into balls- or porcupines if you will.
Place in a pressure cooker.
The secret that always alluded me was the sauce that they were cooked in.
Campbell's tomato soup. Yup, the concentrate from the can stuff. Mix it a little thick and pour over the porcupines. Cook for 20 minutes and serve.
This was one of the few meat meals that I would eat as a kid (another was curried chicken), so we used to get this at least once a week. No one ever complained.
UPDATE on Hugelculture bed from 3 years ago. the mass has fallen from original height by about a third. guessing that the log has rotted and decomposed.
I have added more compost into the bed, last year.
This spring planted Cauliflower and one sweet potato slip that I had started. right now all is growing very well, and because of the cabbage loopers, I'll spray BT and then cover with garden fabric.
I've decided to build new compost bins this year, and when finished I'll post a few pics.
Last spring I built a raised bed, and filled with compost. I planted green beans and was a huge success. Last Sept. I planted a cover crop in that bed, and this spring I worked it under. (green manure)
Planted in the new bed potatoes, and tomatoes. As of this writing the potatoes have many flowers on top(I was informed that at this stage, potatoes need lots of water for tuber growth)
Tomatoes are 6' high and I had to add Lime to the soil because the first few tomatoes formed had blossom end rot. Fine looking tomatoes now, and looking forward to fresh good flavorful tomatoes soon.
Sweet corn has hit the roadside markets, and seems every year the price grows higher. $6.50 a dozen in my area.
Yarrow Willard just posted (yesterday) an excellent video about harvesting and using willow bark.
He's west of the Cascades in the milder Pacific NW so spring arrives there weeks earlier than here in Montana or other inland areas. Though I'd love to harvest some willow bark...some time in the coming weeks.
G Freden wrote:I gave up sugar and grains almost ten years ago and have found that if I cheat, it takes at least 2 weeks of cravings before I settle back down. That said, I find the holiday season just too hard and a few years ago I decided to forgive myself for giving in. It lasts from Thanksgiving to New Year, and I still eat my normal meals, but don't beat myself up for eating sugary things. I accept that sugar/grains will happen and in January I will endure 2 weeks of cravings; then it's 11 months of good food again. I'm lucky that we don't have many cookie-pushers around us, and my husband's diabetic so we don't have sweets in the house as a rule anyway.
If I'm going to cheat, I want it to be worth it: for me, that means real butter in it not vegetable oil, real cream, real eggs, etc. I don't want to have to go through those two weeks for something mediocre.
I have to totally agree with your statement about cravings. I am a sugar addict and after binging over the holidays, i then spent a week fasting on water, herbal tea, broth and vegetable juice/fruit smoothies (low on the fruit). This is not my first time and like the other times, day 1 was full of excitement for change and a fresh start. Day 2-3 was a crash (irritated, craving sweets, low energy, weakness, chills) day 4-5 was a calm, peaceful plateau, both physically and mentally. Yesterday I decided to have a piece of banana bread (conventional dairy, gmo wheat, refined sugar...) and a few cookies (same junk as the bread plus more). Within 15 minutes I was craving anything and everything, much more so than I had experienced in days. I wasn’t hungry at all but constantly wanted to eat. Plus, mentally I had a lot more “noise” as well. I just read how sugar is the preferred food of our brain, though it wreaks havoc on most of our body. Our thoughts and acting on them have dominated our lifestyles for generations now and I wonder how much of it is literally fueled by an addiction to sugar and thinking/doing. Seems like a diet overhaul and break in the sugar addiction would calm peoples bad habits, cravings and mental/emotional/spiritual demons. Maybe these are all one in the same.
Larry Koelsch wrote:...My "job" that summer was to pull the nails and straighten, putting them into a coffee can...
I suspect nails were better then? I've tried straightening newer nails that bend without much success.
Excellent point! I couldn't speak to modern nails vs older nails per se, but I have recently built my own home, and scrounged for a lot of used materials in the process. In my experience, a nail once bent is 1) very difficult to extract; 2) very difficult to straighten again; and 3) quite likely to re-bend when you attempt to reuse it. While I applaud the spirit of thrift embodied in the original post, and certainly acknowledge the value in reused materials, I would advise that reusing nails is not a cost-effective measure unless you are practically penniless.
Yes, newer nails can be straightened, but I have had no success getting them to actually drive straight when re-used. I suspect the composition of the metal used for nails has changed over the years. The new ones are just too soft to re-use. I remember re-using nails long ago without these issues.
Hi...i am a new user here. In regard to the reduction in efficiency of water, calcs I did at one point showed the difference between green wood at 50%, and air dry at 20%, is only 6%. This was working out the BTU's to boil water. Also, if you assign a greater calorific value to wood, then the percentage used to boil off the water reduces.
Biochar is probably quite good for sandy soils. Even a single 50# bag of good clay per acre every year would seriously help the low cation exchange capacity (CEC) that that sand has. Not only does organic matter burn off, but nutrients leach very fast from pure sand. Good biochar has a high CEC. Good clay has a high CEC, too. And clay can't burn off. Composting biochar or clay first should give a better final product for the garden too.... or just feed the clay or biochar to your animals and compost the manure.
I did some research into setting up a commercial scale solar site. I'm trying to find out if establishing a 200 kW site makes economic sense. On the surface, it seems like it would, but it needs more research. Here's what I've found so far:
You touch on two things that is lacking in our society. 1) Growing our own food. Starting out with Non-GMO seed, planting, growing, harvesting, then saving seed for next planting. Enjoying the wonderful flavor of a Tomato, or any other thing that has been grown in the garden, doing it yourself, one cannot help but be grateful. Not to mention how wholesome it is for anyone eating organic.
2) The schools are teaching the children how to be dependent on governments, power utilities, and of course they must go to College. Higher learning is always achieved by doing. When, and not if the electric grid goes down because someone hacked into it and shut it down, our society will be demanding that our government provide for them in time of need, and of course that will not happen. Knowing basic skills and being less dependent on others is always peace of mind, and being Grateful for the peace of mind.
