I have a scenario for you. Somehow, it doesn't matter how, you have found conclusive evidence that there will be a catastrophic collapse of societies, governments and economies worldwide sometime between the end of October and the end of November this year. Remember, this is a fictional scenario I am giving you. There is already evidence of disruptions in the food supply for the coming months, along with sharply rising prices.The media dishes out a plethora of reasons for these problems that amount to nothing but more wasted oxygen by never ending talking heads. You have some things growing in your garden, enough that you can preserve some of it for winter. But now you realize that you need to grow food. A lot more food. As much as you possibly can, for the rest of the growing season in your area.
My questions are these. What will you grow? How will you preserve what you grow in the shadow of an impending collapse? Do you have the space, seeds, and supplies you need to do so? If not, are you still able to procure what you need?
I would really like to hear from as many people as possible. There is much we can teach each other, and I learn a lot from the differing perspectives, locations, and experience of the people that read here. So, please share your thoughts. An example. Our friend Grace down the road a ways, can grow things in her garden that we can't grow. We can grow things that she can't. I have bug problems she doesn't and she has some that I don't. It's important to know what grows well in your garden, and how to preserve the harvest of your labor. Remember, this is a collapse scenario, so you can't put it all in the freezer unless you have a reliable source of power.
The other day when I was out in the garden, I took stock of what is there. At the end of that exercise, I felt like there wasn't much in the way of food quantities. I still have places that need to be replanted and have plans for those areas. There are crops that will soon be harvested leaving more space for additional crops that will grow into the fall. And yet, even with all of that planning, I felt like there wasn't enough of a food supply to sustain Frank and I for the winter.
When I posed this question to Frank he had a ready answer. Plant what grows here. Simple, direct and right on target. He said we know we can grow green beans. If we have enough green beans to eat everyday, great, that's what we'll eat. We also know we can grow squash, tomatoes, cowpeas, cucumbers, turnips, peppers, beets and carrots. Plant as many of all of these as you can. What we don't preserve we can give away, and many of these crops are also great for our animals.
I have written articles about the nutritional contents of some of the vegetables we grow. My purpose was to see if the things we can grow will provide the nutrition we need to remain healthy and active in a collapse situation. I have yet to go back and evaluate the information on these vegetables as a group to see if they would meet our needs or not. But in the long run, what we can grow will be what we eat.
There are many ideas and scenarios I ponder from time to time. Some realistic, some idealistic, and some just down right silly, but this one has stuck with me like it is something very important that I need to pay attention to. We have many things vying for our attention right now at our homestead and I am not spending near the time in the garden I should. It continues to beckon me with it's empty spaces. Spaces that need to be planted, for the time is near. There are many indicators that the fall of the year 2015 may be monumental in the history of our planet Earth. The world has become a much smaller place with the complexities of interwoven economies, food supplies and power struggles. The fall of the year may bring the fall of us all.
So, tell me. What would you grow and why?
Until next time - Fern
As I brought some of our salsa, jalapenos and pears into the kitchen from the pantry this afternoon, I mentioned to Frank how great and unbelievable it is that we have finally reached this point in our lives. It is very humbling and brings great peace to our hearts to have some of our dreams come true. Let me explain.
This morning (Saturday) I made our usual homemade biscuits for breakfast. Then I fed the cats, opened up the chicken house and fed the chickens. This led me to the barn where I fed Pearl, our Pyrenees, milked One Stripe and fed the rest of the does. Enjoying the beautiful sunshine, I made my way back to the house and strained the milk. This time I didn't cool the milk because we needed to make yogurt.
After the yogurt was started, it was time to make bread out of the sourdough sponge I had left out overnight to ferment.
We had set out a bag of Cushaw squash to thaw for a pie a day or two ago, so it was time to get the pie going. This would also warm up the kitchen so the bread would rise more quickly.
By now it was time for lunch, which brings me back to the beginning of this post. It has taken many, many years of dreams, planning, postponing, and planning again to make it to this point. When we were newly married, our big date was to walk around downtown and window shop. We couldn't afford to buy anything. We just spent time together, walking, holding hands, and dreaming. Dreaming that someday we would live in the country and be as self reliant as possible. Now, thirty-something years later, we still have not achieved all of our dreams and goals, but many of them seem to be coming together.
Five years ago, we had not learned how to can vegetables. At that point the only thing we had canned was salmon when we lived in Alaska.
Five years ago, we barely knew how to garden. We had a lot of book learning, but no practical experience. We grew one fairly successful garden about 20 years ago, then about five years ago we began to garden again.
Three years ago, I had never made cheese.
Two years ago, I had never tried growing herbs.
A year and a half ago, we had just started to get into ham radio.
One year ago, I had not canned any fruit on my own.
Six months ago, I had never used a dehydrator.
Two months ago, I knew little to nothing about kefir and had never tried it.
One month ago, I had never made sourdough bread. I have made a lot of bread, but now I have the self-sustaining means of continuing to do so indefinitely without yeast. As long as the wheat and flour hold out, that is.
Two weeks ago, we had never tried any herbal, medicinal teas. Today we added some celery seed/chamomile tea to our daily repertoire.
And I almost forgot to mention. 234 days ago we had never had anything to do with a blog. We had been reading a few, but never written anything like this. And, believe it or not, we used to seldom take pictures of anything. Now somedays we are doing something and one of us will say, "Hmm, we should have taken some pictures for the blog." It is interesting how things turn out while you are pursuing your dreams.
You may not live on your own little piece of dirt yet. You may not have all of the livestock or garden space you want. You may not have the money to do some of the things you really feel are important to be prepared. But you do have the opportunity to learn all you can wherever you are. Dream big. Really big. Be patient and frugal and determined and diligent and vigilant. Then dream big again. When Frank and I first got married he had a saying that has been a motto of ours ever since. "Postpone gratification for long-term gains." Think about that. There are so many things we can do without. Sometimes there are things that are nice to have or that we just want. And sometimes it is really hard to put some things off. And then sometimes things happen that cause our goals and dreams to be postponed or changed. But that is not the end of them. Keep them close to your heart, discipline yourself that you might always keep them in focus, and don't allow yourself to be distracted by the things of the world.
Know that most dreams don't come true over night, at least not in my experience. And most days, I think that if they did come true overnight, I wouldn't appreciate them near as much. So, today, my heart is full of gratitude. Gratitude that God has seen fit to bless us with this little spot of land upon which we can achieve the things of our dreams by the sweat of our brow and the touch of His hand. Since we have been here, we have learned much, and I feel we have just begun. Hold fast to your dreams. They may come true in the most unexpected ways.
Until next time - Fern
Our peppers are still producing well, so it's time to preserve some of them. We have been eating fresh peppers for some time and have used some to make salsa. We really like pickled jalapeno peppers and have enough at one time to put up a few pints. Our sweet peppers are doing well and we usually eat them fresh or add them to squash relish. We haven't preserved any to use during the winter before, but this year we are trying our hand at dehydrating them.
Peppers have some nutrients that are not found in many other foods, so they are good addition as a food storage item.
The jar contains the first batch of dehydrated peppers. It is surprising how little space they take up after they are dried.
The first year we canned jalapeno peppers I followed the recipe in my Ball canning book which called for running them through the
water bath canner for 10 minutes. They were really soft and mushy and we didn't like them well at all. I tried to alter the recipe enough that they wouldn't be so soft to no avail. Last year I didn't use the water bath at all. I boiled the vinegar and water, packed the peppers in hot jars, poured on the boiling liquid, put the lids on tightly and covered them with a towel to seal. That worked fine, but we have been rethinking the safety of using that method. With all of that said, here is the latest version of my pickled peppers.
I cut up my peppers (make sure you wear gloves!) a couple of days ago and refrigerated them. This evening after work I had enough time to can them but I didn't want them to be cold, so I had to figure that into my recipe.
Heat:
6 cups vinegar
2 cups water
3 cloves garlic crushed
(I used dried minced garlic)
Let this boil gently for 5 minutes then remove the garlic.
At this point, since my peppers were refrigerator cold, I added them to the boiling liquid and returned them to a boil.
While I was waiting for everything to boil, I decided it would be a good time to start a batch of chevre cheese. We aren't getting near as much milk right now, but we still had enough to make a batch of cheese. Our favorite way to spice up some of this cheese is with dried onions and salt. Since we are dehydrating some of the peppers I started thinking about how I might use them and this cheese recipe came to mind. We both agree that the dried peppers will be good with the onions, so we will be able to try it out in a few days after the cheese is made.
I got an idea from CQ over at Hickory Holler Farm when she shared how she cans up her dill pickles. I think it will improve the safety factor of canning peppers without making them mushy and I thought I would give it a try. While the liquid for the peppers was boiling, I put my lids and rings on to simmer and put my six jars covered in water in the water bath to heat. I let the water bath come to a boil, then turned off
the fire. Then I took out one jar at a time, filled it with peppers and boiling liquid, put the lid and ring on tight, then returned it to the water bath until all of the jars were filled. I did not turn the fire back on under the water bath, but left the jars in the almost boiling water for 10 minutes before I removed them and put them under a heavy towel to cool. I have been rewarded with the sound of pinging lids sealing.
Some days, this time of year, it would be much easier to let the garden go and enjoy a slower pace in the evening after work. But I feel the need to learn more about growing and preserving food for the winter like never before. I feel all we can learn about growing and preserving our own food is a vital skill that will soon make more of a difference in our lives than we ever dreamed. Do your part.
Until next time - Fern
The original title of this post was Dehydrating Grapes. Here is the tale of how it turned into The Grape Fiasco.
There is a grape vine here that is about 25 years old. It came with the house. We have never grown grapes before and don't know much about them besides what we have read. This is the first year it has produced any measurable harvest since we got it up on a trellis.
Since we have had much more rain this summer than we have in the past two years, I was happy to see so many grapes growing and began to think about what I could try to do with them when they became ripe.
I picked them all a few days ago. I had been watching to see when most of them were ripe.
I thought it would be good to try my hand at raisins. So I got out my book on drying foods. I knew the grapes had seeds, but I thought I could cut them in half (so I wouldn't have to blanch them) and take the seed out, put them on the dehydrator trays and be ready to make raisins. 
Wrong! It is basically impossible to get the seeds out of the meat of the grape without taking all of the meat with it. This turned out to be the wrong choice for these grapes. This would work great with seedless grapes, just not with these.
So, on to plan B.
I took all of the grapes off of the vines, picked out the bad ones and put the good ones in a pot on the stove to cook down so I could run them through the strainer (like I did the tomatoes for tomato sauce). I mashed the grapes with the potato masher and was pleased with this small amount of grape mush. Since we had finished canning tomato sauce and completed the regular chores, this was all we did yesterday. Today when I got home from work, I got the grape mush out and heated it up a little so it would be easier to scoop into the strainer. This is only the second time we have used this strainer attachment. We got everything set up, and put a small crock under the
mixing bowl so the juice wouldn't splash like the tomato sauce did.
Everything was set and we started pouring the grape mush into the
strainer. Before we had poured in all of the second cup, the strainer started kind of wiggling and making a
grinding kind of noise. We thought it wasn't put together tight
enough. Well, we don't really know what happened, but the seeds had jammed up
into the screw and mesh strainer mechanism so tightly that it shot off of the machine when Frank
finally got the ring loosened up enough.
Then it took him another 15-20
minutes with an ice pick just to get all of the impacted seeds out of
the two pieces. After he thought he might have it all, he realized the screw piece still had a bunch of stuff stuck in it. What a chore!
In the meantime, I had gone on to Plan C, which didn't work either. I thought maybe I could just squeeze it through a cheese
cloth and call it good. But I realized I would be throwing away a lot of
the pulp that I wanted to keep.
Now, onto Plan D. Hrumph! I got out a fine mesh strainer and started mashing the mush through with a large metal spoon. Now I know some of you are starting to chuckle. We felt like a quick little batch of our first grape butter from our first
harvest of grapes was turning into a major chore and dirtying up everything in the kitchen on a Friday evening after a busy week. And we were still going to do a production pizza run when we finished with this!
Well, it did get finished. After I had pressed it through the strainer, I heated it up again, tasted it, and added a little sugar to cut the tart whang.
Here is our grape harvest for the year. I don't know what I will do with next year's crop. Really, I hope the seedless grapes I planted last year are ready to start producing, because I would rather have raisins. The really funny thing about this whole project is that neither one of us like grape juice or jelly. All that work for one pint of stuff we don't really like. But then again, it is growing here, it is something to eat, it has good nutritional value and it may end up being very important that we eat whatever grows here. There may come a day that we would be happy to eat things we never thought we would. As I was finishing up this grape butter thinking 'all of that work for one jar of stuff we don't really like', I realized how grateful I should be for the chance to learn, make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes and learn some more. It is not always the end product that is most important. It is not always the process of doing something that is important. How you choose to deal with situations and learning opportunities are often more important than the outcome. Take time to enjoy your fiasco's. Sometimes they even taste good!
Until next time - Fern
