Jan White

I actually prefer covid world in a lot of ways. The only annoyance for me is not being able to try on clothes in the thrift store, which is a necessity since they don't allow returns or exchanges. Oh - and I hate all the extra plastic what with lots of places not allowing reusable shopping bags and not offering paper options, bulk bins being removed, and disposable masks becoming a major part of the litter lying around.

Going with the assumption that the last ingredient in the salve is Venice turpentine, I was trying to figure out what else bonkling might be. I don't know enough about horses, though. Anyone know some old terms for hoof ailments? Or maybe some old brand names of a salve that he was making a home made version of?

Haha - the salmon mold actually sounds pretty good to me! Like a salmon souffle.

Judith Browning wrote:This one might be something used by one of the veterinarians or doctors in my family?
William H. Browning is a great great grandpa.

3 tea spoons turpentine
six tea spoons something or other??

The last one looks like benice of turpentine. I know there's Venice turpentine...

I still think tomatoes fit, but I'm probably biased given that I eat only two or three onions a year; however, if you averaged out my tomato consumption over the whole year, it would be at least half a kilo a day 😄

If you pick green tomatoes at the end of the season and keep them cool, they can last for a few months, so I think they can squeak in as suitable for low tech storage.

I also have to mention that I grow tomatoes in truly abysmal soil - silty sand - dont water them, and get only slightly lower yields than I did in my last garden with good soil and regular watering.  But it's your calculator and your call!

Mark Reed wrote:The soy varieties I have picked out are advertised as being for edamame but I picked them mostly because they were shorter season. I don't see any reason why they can't just be allowed to fully mature and be used like any others. Although, it is another crop I have no idea how to use, maybe in soup like beans? I'll figure it out.

Darker coloured soybeans are easier to digest, and are good used like any other dry bean. I like growing soybeans cause they can tolerate drought well.

Mathew Trotter wrote:

Tom Bolls wrote:I played with my copy today.   It confirmed my fears, that's a lot of seed and crop to harvest preserve.  The crop I find missing is onion.  The big deal with onion is I eat the whole plant.  It also is available to eat year round, just pick it when you need it.  I looked it up and found it listed as 11cal / oz.  Using the number 10# for a 10 ft row posted in this thread, that is only 1/6 of potatoes (20cal/oz*30#)calories but I can eat a lot more potato if there is onion toping on the potato. :)
Tom

My initial reaction is to say that it doesn't meet the calorie requirements, and while they might also be grown, they aren't a significant enough quantity of calories to bother including. But you've made a convincing point about frequency of use. I could realistically eat an onion every day, and maybe even more (plus, they store well enough that I could.) If you had one medium onion every day at 44 calo

I think there are definitely some exceptions to the rule in the 180 calories/pound range. That's also about where winter squash flesh falls. While the squash is mostly justified because the seeds are such a power house, there are definitely things like onions that can justify their inclusion just because you can and probably do put them in almost everything.

Tomatoes might be one of these. They definitely are for me. Yields vary so wildly depending on type, though... Might be a tough one.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:From what I've read, it's not nitrates per se that are the issue. It's the combination of nitrates and red meat that raise health concerns.

This is close to my understanding as well. Nitrates convert to nitrites. Nitrites, when our body converts then to nitric oxide, are super healthy. Nitrites can also convert to nitrosamines, though. Nitrosamines are carcinogenic. What prevents nitrites from converting to nitrosamines are various phytonutrients, some of which are found in all plants. So if the nitrites are in plants, you're good, great! If the nitrites get added to meat, there are no phytonutrients to prevent the conversion to nitrosamines, so that's what happens. When you eat the meat, you're not even eating nitrites, but already converted nitrosamines.

Which OS are you running? My Mac is from 2008 and I stopped at El Capitan. I think the hardware would be too bogged down after that. I just use it for pretty basic stuff, but it browses the internet with waaaay too many tabs open and runs a VPN just fine.

I finally got around to threshing my millet this fall, as described in this thread:
https://permies.com/t/138969/Hulling-processing-homestead-bread-grains

It didn't thresh as easily as I would like and too many husks remained, but given how well it grew in such poor conditions I'm planning to keep growing it and breed for the characteristics I want.

I still hadn't cooked any until yesterday, though. Now that I have, I'm even more eager to improve this grain. Unhulled pearl millet is absolutely delicious! It's rich and nutty tasting, and smells amazing, too. I didn't detect any bitterness, but got my husband to try it since he's often more sensitive to bitter flavours than I am. He loved it too. No bitterness.

I'm going to grow another small bed of millet next year, using only clean threshing grain from the biggest, earliest, fullest heads. I'll see what kind of improvement there is over one generation. If it's promising, I've got an area of particularly poor soil that I'm slowly clearing for grain. I'm pulling out rocks the size of my torso, so it's slow going. I've only grown rye there so far, but a field of this tasty tasty millet would be fantastic!