Joanne Daschel

Geoff,
A good option for parking the land whale is South Beach State Park on the south end of Newport. http://cms.oregon.gov/OPRD/PARKS/Pages/reserve.aspx

This link will allow you to make an online reservation for an RV site, for $27 you get water/electricity included, and the usual state park amenities in the campground, like showers. I just checked availability for Aug 27 and there are many still open, you could also check Beverly Beach State Park, which is north of Newport. Both have access to the beach.

You need to reserve right away since you are so close in time, they don't accept reservations once you get within a day or 2, and it's high season here. I live in Lincoln City, about 30 mins. north of Newport, glad to see you are making time to enjoy the central coast. I listen to the podcast regularly as I try to move my "urban farm" in a permaculture direction. Welcome to Oregon and the coast!

Joanne

Not knowing specifically about permaculture in past years, but leaning toward a concept of edible landscape, I have stuffed my tiny city lot with loads of edible shrubs, trees and perennials. Have had many successes, especially considering my coastal Oregon location. However there are a couple groundcover berry plants that have been in the ground 3+ years that have yet to show even a single berry: one is lingonberry, the other a spreading cranberry (variety Stevens). Both are growing well and appear healthy, with good annual shoot production and the lingonberries (2 plants) definitely flower, but no fruit. I have yet to see the cranberries (3 plants) flower or fruit.

Observing the many similar plants that flower and fruit in my landscape, I cannot figure out why these are not producing and wonder if others have experience with them. Climate should be adequate, soil acidity & fertility, exposure, supposedly self-fertile. So are they just too young? Does it take several years? I would like to know as I am a professional landscape gardener and like to "sneak in" edibles to my clients' landscapes -- edible evergreen groundcovers are especially valuable.

I have a new solar oven (the portable Global Sun Oven) which is amazing to me... in just over a week I have cooked several dishes including veggies, meat, desserts and bread. According to the mfg, the oven will work for dehydrating foods... I wonder if any permies folks have used a solar oven like this for dehydrating and have advice to offer. We will be drying lots of prune plums in Sept and they usually require a couple days in the electric dryer.

Fermenting: start with sauerkraut. Cabbage is easy to find and inexpensive, the only other ingredients you need are salt and time. Recipes are in every fermentation book out there.

Canning: whole peeled tomatoes are very nicely illustrated in the Ball Blue Book (a good starter book to understand canning process and safety). Canning whole tomatoes will teach you the basics, and it's best to start with an acid food so you are doing boiling-water bath canning instead of pressure canning. From here you can move into jams, jellies. Even easier to start is canning juice (like grape or apple) but tomatoes will likely be available sooner. Applesauce is one of my favorites for canning, no added sugar.

Welcome to the preserving fold.