Carol Denton

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It looks like a Padaris CPW. Canadian Production Wheel. Lucky you!

I was looking for the answer to a question and came across this old thread. There are such good recipes/techniques/information on it I wanted to give it a shout out, especially since this is the time of year to be thinking about preserving the fall garden. We've been eating the outer bigger leaves of the mustards and waiting expectantly for the kales, collards and others to grow more. I've been pondering the wasted leaves of the broccoli, brussells sprouts, etc and my hope is to utilize them better and make them edible in different ways besides dehydrated green powder. Good ideas here.

I saw these egg looking mushrooms walking to the mailbox yesterday. Bizarre and pretty!

Dan Boone wrote:I grow very few calories, but in my opinion my garden still insulates me from rising food prices to an extent.  "Just calories" are pretty cheap -- grains and legumes can most of them be found for a buck a pound or less if you shop smart, and a pound goes a long way.  If those prices multiplied by ten after several years of bad years for the industrial farms, I could still buy enough calories without much pain.  But fruits, greens, vegetables, and herbs are more expensive and likely to go up quicker under bad conditions (I saw celery at six dollars a head at my local grocery not long ago due to, apparently, bad weather in California.)  If my garden gives me a bunch of fresh herbs and vegetables, I can devote more of my food budget to the calorie crops that get harvested with million dollar combines.  Indeed, my entire growing strategy is focused on replacing the most expensive things in my shopping cart with self-grown produce, and (since I don't eat much meat or dairy or refined oil) those expensive things are almost never full of calories.

wow.  I've never read this thread until now, or actually anything in the ulcer factory. Add in 2020 and it's an ulcer in the making.
But reading what Dan wrote above makes me feel a whole lot better about my small garden and it's purpose. Now I'm viewing it as insulation from rising food prices instead of fretting over the amount of work for such little return. Rice and beans taste so much better with a sprinkle of cilantro and a homegrown sweet potato!

I planted an apple tree guild last fall with six apple saplings. This spring I planted around them a smattering of leftover things. A few strawberry plants, a couple of asparagus roots, some horseradish, different perennial herbs and pollinator plants, etc. I hadn't paid much attention to it until I recently walked past a butterfly weed and was shocked to find it covered with Monarch caterpillars. This has been a game changer for me! I'm planting a ton of it next year and more pollinator plants in general. The caterpillars seem to have all crawled away and I've only found four chrysalis but I'm sure more are hiding somewhere.

Cam Lee wrote:I love this! Fairly recently, I’ve identified community as something really important to me, and I imagine cohousing or an eco village in my future somehow. But then I thought - why wait until I have that project underway to start building community?

The logistics are the hard part. Living in an urban area, I’m wondering how to go about this kind of intentional neighborliness. Knocking on doors doesn’t seem quite the same when we’re all living I apartments and triplexes. Plus with covid-19, I’m not keen to organise an in-person block party. Still brainstorming things to start with in these times... any suggestions welcome :) how do you plan to (intentionally) make those connections?

One thing you might try is to take the 'neighborhood watch' very literally and simply watch your neighbors for a while and feel out who might be approachable. We humans seem to have lost our sense of intuition when it comes to sizing up people, but I think we can get that back. Not everyone is to be trusted of course, but neither is everyone to be feared. Listen to your gut.
When I had my first job right out of college, my roommate and I lived in a duplex. Our neighbor was a girl our age, not home much, and very quiet. My roommate and I were noisy and had lots of friends coming and going. One evening the two of us were sitting in our living room reading and heard our neighbor sneeze through the thin walls. Sneeze! We were astonished. She moved soon after and I'm very sad to say we never got to know her at all. Looking back, it's hard for me to wrap my head around that. I can't imagine what kept us from reaching out to her.
So, you are right that you can start practicing community now! Good luck!

Though I live in a rural area, my town is growing by leaps and bounds. Farms are breaking up all around me, bringing new houses and new neighbors. I haven't been exactly thrilled about that, but I know in my heart I must be more intentional about getting to know my new neighbors, some who have lived near me for longer than I care to admit.
Last week while out walking, I decided to bite the bullet, stop and knock on the door of a house that had sold at least a year before. It turned out that the young couple was like-minded, friendly, and, had just learned some devastating news about their pregnancy. They needed to talk.

I guess my point is that, especially these days, it's easy to withdraw into our own lives without feeling much of an obligation to be aware of our neighbors needs. We have an excuse to isolate. But the thing is, we need connection now more than ever. This darling young mom outwardly appeared so normal as she gushed on about her chicken coop and her little raised bed garden, but in truth, she had an invisible hole blown right through her chest.
Making connections with my neighbors has moved to a higher spot on my to-do list, but I know I'll have to make a real effort to actually reach out. Thus, the 'intentional' part!

We had a lovely lunch of all fresh vegetables from the garden and I just sat down to knit a bit of wool, even though it's blazing hot in the middle of July. There's comfort in knowing that the seasons still come and the earth continues to revolve no matter what's going on around us. I'm confident that fall will come, then winter, and the earth in all it's beauty will still give us what we need.