Creighton Samuels wrote:
If you have the means for a traditional masonry heater, then more power to you.

It's not about "means", it's called "priorities". For example, I can choose to drive an older but reliable car to free up funds for something I need more often than a car. Right now, that "saving" is why I finally have a farm tractor, so I don't need to shovel and wheelbarrow everything up and down a sloped lot with my back injury. That enabled me to put in a significantly larger garden this year than before, which provides my family with food I don't have to buy. A masonry heater will last until my grandkids are old. A metal barrel will rust through and break if it's not maintained (even then, thin metal is under more heat stress, and does buckle, bend, and wear out over time), while a masonry heater rarely needs repairs, especially the newer construction has cleanout holes for clearing out the smoke channels, so you don't have to take the whole contraption down and reassemble it every 50-80 years as part of maintenance like with the antiques. I have made a couple of them as part of my education in structural engineering (the auditorium in one o the older buildings was still heated by them, with scrap lumber from the wood shop classes) and as a volunteer restoring old houses, so I am fairly certain I could make one completely myself, or at least shave off a lot of the labor expenses just being able to pitch in.

As far as politics goes, apathy doesn't help advance any cause. I earned my U.S. citizenship this year, and I already voted in "insignificant" rural county elections with a voter turnout of about 25%. Put in a write-in candidate in stead of an unopposed incumbent whose policies don't work. It didn't change the results at the county level, but it slows stupid politicians and self-perpetuating bureaucrats down. Locally, we got the new fire commissioner that I voted for, with a slim margin, and ours was the only district that voted down another useless new tax proposal. So 2 out of 3 issues on the ballot. I could have not voted, and the commissioner might have remained the same incumbent who has already pissed away enough tax money to need to ask for a tax increase to make up for that.

It's always easy to advise someone else without knowing their situation. I can't afford to move even if neighbors are annoying. We're within commuting range of a good city job that's helping us accrue savings that are fueling our own business, which, eventually, will be able to enable us to move wherever we want, pending it has a stable internet connection and a nearby post office. In the meantime, though, if you want to find me a comparable acreage that's less than $600k within an hour's drive of my family's income source in this area, let me know. I haven't found a livable one yet. Property prices have gone up 75% since we moved in, after developers started hounding local farmers to sell up so they can put in hundreds of "affordable lower $500's" McMansions. Wages have hardly nudged in the same time, but this area is getting filled up with tech workers who can afford those kinds of dollars. Thankfully, the "bad" neighbor is trying to sell up, so they'll go away eventually. The other one will probably age out and die in the next few years. Sometimes it's better to hunker down and just wait out the annoying neighbor who is trying to sell while the market is up rather than try to relocate yourself.

Creighton Samuels wrote:

Penny Oakenleaf wrote: but my home state is actively working towards making any kind of wood fired heating or cooking rather illegal).

A super-secret Rocket Mass Heater should be under consideration.  Keep in mind, it's still not illegal to build one in Washington State, and nearly everything can be 'grandfathered' if it's completed before the actual ban on new wood heating appliances is passed.  This should motivate you to get these things done, not discourage you from attempting them at all.  Even if the law says that you can no longer use that RMH, even though it stays in place, you can just tell them that it's for emergencies only.  They would never know if you actually used it unless your neighbors complained, which they probably won't notice either.

1. Neighbors on two sides call me if they see a weed they don't like in my pasture. I've been messaged about a tree that I hadn't even planted in the ground yet after bringing it home from the nursery, because the neighbor thought I'm bringing in toxic plants just to try to kill her horses, that have no business in my garden. They did not even ID the plant right, so they messaged me over nothing. All traffic in and out is monitored by busybodies. And we have a pretty nice, private neighborhood (cluster of a couple houses on acreages) with polite people.

2. Advocating breaking laws is iffy, even when the laws are stupid. The way to go about it is to try to find a lawmaker that'll agree to advance your cause. If you do decide to break a law, don't telegraph it on the internet, unless you're okay inviting some busybody (see 1) reporting you.

3. A barrel drum is plain ugly. And a safety hazard through the eyes of a parent with little kids. My house is old and used to have a woodstove, but it, and its foundation, was removed by a previous owner, meaning I'd have to do a massive retrofit for a foundation of any kind of thermal mass heater. You don't just sneak in a new foundation under a house, unless you're a builder. I am not, and with the upgraded insulation and south-facing windows, I can get through most of the winter without firing up my heaters, and have yet to be cold and miserable through winter storms and "Snowpocalypse" situations, so do I really need one? o.O

4. Mark Twain wrote about Masonry Heaters, which I grew up with, and thus consider the only good wood fired heat (also, EPA exempt last time I looked, so it eliminates the iffy 2nd point) You can cook and bake with the kind I've got my eye on, and they can be crammed into a fairly small footprint vertically. The initial investment is higher, but you can get through a winter with 2-3 cords of wood, not even huge logs, but "twiggy" things you prune out of your orchard or forest anyway. Explains why I thought for a very long time that American firewood piles were a 10 year supply, not a one winter supply...

"Take the German stove, for instance - where can you find it outside of German countries? I am sure I have never seen it where German was not the language of the region. Yet it is by long odds the best stove and the most convenient and economical that has yet been invented.

To the uninstructed stranger it promises nothing; but he will soon find that it is a masterly performer, for all that. It has a little bit of a door which you couldn't get your head in - a door which seems foolishly out of proportion to the rest of the edifice; yet the door is right, for it is not necessary that bulky fuel shall enter it. Small-sized fuel is used, and marvelously little of that. The door opens into a tiny cavern which would not hold more fuel than a baby could fetch in its arms. The process of firing is quick and simple. At half past seven on a cold morning the servant brings a small basketful of slender pine sticks - say a modified armful - and puts half of these in, lights them with a match, and closes the door. They burn out in ten or twelve minutes. He then puts in the rest and locks the door, and carries off the key. The work is done. He will not come again until next morning.

All day long and until past midnight all parts of the room will be delightfully warm and comfortable, and there will be no headaches and no sense of closeness or oppression. In an American room, whether heated by steam, hot water, or open fires, the neighborhood of the register or the fireplace is warmest - the heat is not equally diffused throughout the room; but in a German room one is comfortable in one part of it as in another. Nothing is gained or lost by being near the stove. Its surface is not hot; you can put your hand on it anywhere and not get burnt.

Consider these things. One firing is enough for the day; the cost is next to nothing; the heat produced is the same all day, instead of too hot and too cold by turns; one may absorb himself in his business in peace; he does not need to feel any anxieties of solicitudes about the fire; his whole day is a realized dream of bodily comfort.

America could adopt this stove, but does America do it? The American wood stove, of whatsoever breed, it is a terror. There can be no tranquility of mind where it is. It requires more attention than a baby. It has to be fed every little while, it has to be watched all the time; and for all reward you are roasted half your time and frozen the other half. It warms no part of the room but its own part; it breeds headaches and suffocation, and makes one's skin feel dry and feverish; and when your wood bill comes in you think you have been supporting a volcano.

We have in America many and many a breed of coal stoves, also - fiendish things, everyone of them. The base burners are heady and require but little attention; but none of them, of whatsoever kind, distributes its heat uniformly through the room, or keeps it at an unvarying temperature, or fails to take the life out of the atmosphere and leave it stuffy and smothery and stupefying."

5. I may disagree on rocket stoves being a necessity, and on what does or doesn't constitute a skilled cook or baker, but I hope we can agree to disagree on that point, and surely still bond over something like classic literature, or a good homebrew. ;)

My hangup, even if it makes me a Devil's Advocate, is that badges are currently wildly unbalanced between subject matters. I honestly don't know if anyone ever noticed the same. Textiles are "dumb easy", gardening and cooking are "pro athlete" hard from the gate due to specialized equipment requirements, even when most of us can probably whip up a quick meal from a rather sparsely equipped kitchen (I hope). I'm not a native English speaker, so maybe there's just a bit of a miscommunication, but the whole PEP badge system just confuses me at this point.

The major concern I have, is that most home cooks, who might want to pursue a badge, are women, who may or may not build things. I do build, but it's beehives and chicken coops. With dimensional lumber and occasional plywood. I don't work in cob, mortar, or concrete. I don't weld, and I am content never learning to on my current path. I don't know how many women out there do, but I've only met a handful who didn't feel apprehensive about building things from scratch, and I'm the only woman I know who can wrangle my tractor implements to the PTO hookup without help. ;)

Stuff like baking bread, fermenting something, and canning a batch of homemade jam or pickles would be more on par with newbie tier badges (which I assumed sand badges were supposed to be, because x amount of sand badges equaled a straw badge? That's how it'd work in most video games. :P ), since anyone with a basic home kitchen and simple, accessible supplies, even renters, can usually achieve those. Bonus that since a lot of the sand badges are geared to be "vegan inclusive", all of the things I listed are. If making cheese is not an option, maybe a vegan might want to make tofu, and so on.

I'm okay not getting a permaculture gardening badge, because although I like permaculture's guiding principles, I don't have a hugel mound in my plans in the near future, so the time conscious logic says "no use trying for the gardening badge bits either". I may use things like nitrogen fixers and mulch, and water retention swales and other cool things in my garden, but it's not a hugel, and not a food forest, (although the weeds make it look like a jungle), and I adore regimented straight lines as a foundation for a garden, so I'm content remaining a hybrid. But I live and breathe food and cooking, so it's a bit of a tougher nut to swallow. :P

The food processing sand badge just is cost prohibitive, and very time intensive, and with the amount of specialized equipment or "appliances" needed, did I say time consuming and expensive? And almost assumes you have access to regular sunlight for the sun oven, and a big enough property, or a gracious enough friend with property, to build an alternative energy kitchen. I do have a thermos bottle and some thermal pots, and use residual heat and cast iron to maximize my cooking efficiency, but the kitchen the house came with is the kitchen I have.

A pack of 16 sewing needles cost me under a dollar, and knitting needles for a small project can cost about the same. For a sand badge in textiles, if using scrap fabrics and yarns laying around an average home, you're going to be out maybe $5. If you buy all the supplies at premium rates, I'm sure you could spend more. The time commitment is a few hours. I think if I had a babysitter, I could finish the sand badge for textiles by sundown today, without leaving my property to source supplies. I guess I could ask the Amazon Fairy™ to bring me foam insulation and a wood crate, and a sun oven and some kind of solar dehydrator to be able to start on the cooking badge, but that'd leave me without a grocery budget for August, and maybe part of September, so the cost is just a lot out of the gate in specialized equipment I don't have, while going against all my principles of "work with what you've got".

If you need a rocket stove or oven and hay box (without being permitted alternatives with a similar function, such as thermal cookers) to cook with to qualify for any cooking, I'm going to take the attitude of "damned if I do, damned if I don't" and just not even bother pursuing them, because although we're all about alternate energy here (saving up for a full solar array is slow going, but we're working on it, utility company will actually subsidize it here), as I did say before, Washington is trying to make wood burning illegal. just look up any company that sells woodburning stoves and pick one you like, chances are there's a disclaimer at the bottom that says it is "illegal for sale in the State of Washington", and they're trying to ban the remaining few types, even the efficient and cheap ones.

End snarkasm: I had never seen an electric clothes dryer in person until I set foot in America in my adulthood. Old habits die hard, so I still line dry my laundry when the humidity % gets below "soggy". I mostly bake on cold winter days, because the oven helps keep the house warm so it does double duty. Don't everyone? Or is it just us Europeans? ;)

I'll let what I wrote sink in, and be discussed by the powers that be. I hope I made my point clear while steering clear of rude, because I really do not intend to come off as ornery. Of course, one could also just catch up the rest of the badges to the difficulty level of the food and gardening badges: If the textile badge required "build a floor loom and weave your own bedding" as a sand badge, it'll be "balanced", but that's sort of an ornery thing to say. Sorry.

Tereza Okava wrote:ooh, i like that Tall Tales Recipe of Yore....  toasted rye flour reminds me of toasted barley, which makes the best drink ever, so it stands to reason that would make a fabulous topping for things. Hm. Now I`m going to have to make something with rye....
thanks, i am filing away ideas for when this starter kicks the bucket. so far we`re doing okay, but it is almost inevitable....

Barley may slide a bit off topic, BUT, toasted barley reminds me of Korean sikhye (rice and barley drink). I'm absolutely addicted to the stuff. I've heard many Koreans drink it to help wean their babies, so I've convinced myself it's the only "sugary" beverage I'm allowed, because I'm trying to wean an almost 2 year old who is teething on me. Ouch.

I have a Finnish steam juicer. You can toss berries, or fruit such as grapes into it whole, stems and all, and it'll spit out pasteurized concentrated juice out of the spigot hose straight into sterilized bottles for long term storage. You don't even need to further process them after bottling, if everything touching the fresh juice has been squeaky clean and sanitized properly. No sugar needed, but I usually sweeten mine a bit, because I have kids and an American husband whose sweet tooth rivals that of most toddlers. I just need to pick enough blackberries in a day or two to justify firing up a giant stock pot like contraption. The dry pulp that is the seeds and skins and other solids can go in the chicken run, or compost pile.

My most popular blackberry preserves from last year was blackberry vanilla jam. You can use extract, you can use vanilla pods, you can use vanilla paste, just put it in last minute before putting the stuff in cans so the aromatics don't evaporate. The year before, I used homegrown apples and blackberries because I was drowning in apples. All depends on what is or isn't available. The berries I picked yesterday and survived dinner and breakfast are on the back burner of my stove, simmering into a simple quick jam with some key lime juice from limes I found at the supermarket for $1 for 2 pounds (ugly produce shelves are great), so that's what's gone in the pot. I don't think it'll even make it into canning jars before someone asks for scones, but otherwise, can with a generous 1/4 to 1/2 inch headspace and process for about 10 minutes for most "jam" sized jars. :)

You can also blend the berries, sweeten lightly with honey, and make fruit leather. My kids don't really like the seeds, so I have to strain it, at which point you need to top the trays off with more of the fruit puree a few times to make it thick enough to be worthwile, or the fruit leather will be too thin to handle without breaking. Lots of work for a nice treat, so I try to plan ahead.

I think, after sleeping on it, that my biggest hangup is that for a sand badge in textiles right now, you need to just about darn a sock, knit or crochet a potholder, sew a small pillow, and weave a basket out of things you find laying around. I think I can complete the whole project in an afternoon, if I get some uninterrupted time. The list for food processing (which upon reflection looks like a work in progress), starts with "build your own kitchen from scratch". I'm hoping if we give it several months, it'll be refined to a more achievable set of skills for the beginning cooks. :P

Tereza Okava wrote:does the apple make it vinegary? Is it just a tad or the whole thing? I`m intrigued!!

I`ve never had anyone to ask, so I'm going to take advantage- so if it makes hooch and doesn't bubble, that's okay? This is the first batch that I can actually see bubbling, otherwise they just immediately separate.

Responding a bit backwards, so don't get confused like I do... The "hooch" on top only occurs for me when I've forgotten to feed the starter for a while, and the yeasts run out of food. It can usually be resuscitated from there by feeding it in small increments and keeping at room temperature over a couple of days.

Then about the apple. It's only used the first time you make your starter, if at all. You don't even necessarily need the whole apple. In the future, you can just add rye, and water, and keep perpetuating it. The sourdough I'm used to is rich, a little tart, but not unpleasant, and the crust has an absolutely addicting nutty quality to it that results in fights over bread heels at the table. I am also one of those strange people who will treat toasted dark rye flour (dry pan, stir continuously until it's dark and aromatic) as a topping for baked turnips with butter, salt, and freshly ground pepper. It's a recipe that I learned from my dad. I've heard it's based on archaeological finds from iron or bronze age Scandinavia, but I haven't actually ever seen a source, so I'm inclined to file it under "Daddy Oakenleaf's Tall Tales™". It is awfully tasty, though!

Kate Downham wrote:That is an impressive collection!

Thank you for posting. I've been a bit slow with replies lately because I only have internet access on the phone right now. I am thinking a lot about cookbooks and working more on mine, and will come back here with more questions and thoughts soon : )

Our house internet is literally between dial up and antique. I usually use my phone as a hotspot to get a reliable connection if uploading or downloading anything. The unlimited cellular data plans really are worth it, even when the connection is usually metered during "peak hours".

My cookbook collection is small, but the library here is really good so I get lots of books from there. Right now I'm reading 'Local Breads' to further my sourdough skills, and I just finished 'The Hands On Home', which I got the library to order in for me based on Permies reviews.

My largest problem is, that I am pursuing a more minimalist lifestyle, but I absolutely adore the feeling of leafing through books for my information. (And please conveniently ignore the towering stacks of craft supplies and books off camera that I'm attempting to consolidate into a more reasonable collection). I have a great library system available to me, but I'm often not brave enough to run out with three toddlers and little kids to really peruse books, and can never finish the ones I do check out within the 3 week loan period, so I end up buying them used when I find them, or being gifted them off my wishlist for holidays and birthdays. I'm slowly leafing through them, saving the recipes I want, and then sending them on their way through used bookstores, or if I happen upon a local book swap, at the book swap.

Kate Downham wrote:

Penny Oakenleaf wrote:
P.S. Is the "proper" name for the glass flip top jars "Fido"? I'm learning something new every day. Thanks! :)

Fido is the name of one brand of them that has been tested by many fermenters, so it's known to work well for this. I'm not sure if other people are calling this style of jar made by other companies 'Fido' though. I like the name : )

I will have to go on the wayback machine soon to find all the good stuff about fido fermenting that I read years ago and link it here - one blogger did tests on all kinds of fermenting jars and methods and found that Fido jars worked just as well as the more expensive options.

I am of the opinion that what works for someone, is the best choice for someone. We are mass-consumers of homemade ferments here. For sauerkraut, I usually reach for a 2 gallon water-sealed crock, and for kimchi, I have traditional Korean clay onggi in about 3 quart (liter) and 1 gallon and 1.5 gallon sizes. I keep my kombucha in a continuous brew setup in a 1.5 gallon glass jar with a stainless steel spigot (I upgraded it from the cheap plastic one it came with). The water sealed crock works surprisingly well for the type of traditional Finnish "sima" mead I usually make, too. ;)

Let's see if the slow internet has sped up enough to upload... my current cookbook collection. I told myself "I need to cull 15-20 books before I let myself get one new one", but I caved and bought "The Dehydrator Bible" since I took the picture, because I couldn't resist getting a companion for my new dehydrator. ;)

I sell eggs from my layer hens (average of 4 dozen a week) and honey when my bees can afford to share some. Most of the customers are at my husband's office and pay him in cash and I never see a penny (we call it his lunch money), but the cashless crowd send me money via PayPal, leaving me with sufficient documentation of about $75 in 2018, and so far $10 this year, which should qualify me for both this, AND likely also the "goods" BB.

Alright, this is likely the newbie confusion talking, but I have no logical reason to get a sun oven in an area that averages 285-290 overcast days (we're averaging more at the rate our summer is going), or build a rocket stove or rocket oven (I'm a masonry heater girl, who is going to build a cob oven "eventually" = "maybe when the kids move out", but the house is mostly passive solar with propane backup with no intention to "upgrade" unless I can get a masonry heater, but my home state is actively working towards making any kind of wood fired heating or cooking rather illegal).

And I won't be getting or making a "hay box" (how'bout the pumpkin looking "wonder bag"? Those are a modern equivalent), that I have considered), although I sometimes may cook in a thermos style container, so does this automatically disqualify an otherwise proficient home cook from earning a badge? Does one need to check off every single line off the list?

People use the term BB's and ask how many you need for a badge, but it still throws me off. I can out-cook and out-bake a number of professionally trained chefs and bakers with no formal education past middle school home economics, but I don't have a lot of the listed "permie"-equipment, so the fun, "easiest" for me badge sounds suddenly unattainable*. If it's elective, is it possible to specify "complete 2 of 4 minimum" under options like "cook rice", if not every point is required?

Thanks to whomever spells it out in "Blonde" eventually. It's greatly appreciated!

* - I'm okay not earning badges, I never did scouts either, nor submitted anything to the county fair for ribbons, but it does remind me a little of recipes in most newer books, magazines, or convenience food packages, that start with "with your electric stand mixer, mix ingredients for 10 minutes..." and here I am, 35 years old, still whisking by hand, usually with a fork... XD

My internet has been infested with the slow bug today! I've failed to post twice, and it always wipes my post, just as I believe I've reached peak witty informative Penny. Oh bother, now you get the pre-bedtime version of me, between brushing kid teeth and hunting down jammies. :P

Firstly, fermentation is fun, and it's a rabbit hole many of us have dived into and never come back. Welcome!

I usually reserve a couple of cabbage leaves that match the internal diameter of my crock or jar for helping submerge the vegetables. My preferred weights are glass "pickle pebbles", because they're dishwasher safe, but you can use a rock, or a ziplock bag filled with salt brine (to prevent dilution of the ferment's salinity, if the bag springs a leak).

I like to use wide mouth mason jars with "Easy Fermenter" brand lids for smaller batches. They come with a vacuum pump, so you can re-seal your jars if you need to poke at the veggies, or taste the batch. None of this is a must, I've been able to ferment stuff perfectly fine without any weights or cabbage leaves, if the conditions have been right, and the airlock holds.

P.S. Is the "proper" name for the glass flip top jars "Fido"? I'm learning something new every day. Thanks! :)

I prefer my Finnish style rye sourdough starter. Usually grating an apple in the starter encourages the right kinds of "yeastie beasties" to take up residence.

I've never had a real problem with the "hooch" on top. I pour it off, and stir in new flour and water for a few days, and let it sit on my counter, and it seems to recover sufficiently to make a decent loaf again. Finnish style sourdough doesn't have a lot of lift, though, so my opinions may not be valid, if you're after a more light, fluffy texture.

(edit: my current sourdough starter is pushing 6 years old by now. I think if I look hard enough, I have a backup tucked away at the bottom of the deep freezer.)

Nicole Alderman wrote:How about 10:30? Sometimes it takes a while to wrangle kids into the car + transit time....

Kid-wrangling should be an Olympic event. Just sayin'.

I'll have to play it by ear on Thursday morning, I have three littles who may or may not cooperate. If I'm really on my game, something from the kitchen might fall into my trunk on the way out, but I can't guarantee anything. Right now I have a 3yo budding gardener wanting to go outside to "pee on gashhh (grass)" for the third time this hour (yes, we're 13 minutes into the hour as I type this), and the other two are squabbling over a computer, so focus is lacking on all fronts.

Deborah Farrington wrote:Have you tried Nastutium seeds? They were used in most of Europe as a pepper substitute. There are several dozen annual varieties. The whole plant is edible with peppery notes. Leaves, stems, flowers, seeds, roots. I think it would be hard to run out of uses.

I keep thinking I remember nasturtium seed pods can be pickled for "capers", too! Here's one recipe I found. https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/nasturtium-capers

I've never actually been to Lord's Hill park, that I remember. I might remember wrong when I look it up. I used to go to mommy group meetups in the area when I still used social media in the past.

Lake Tye park in Monroe is right off hwy 2 and SR 522 if it's easier to get to, and there are pavilions with seating that can be booked through the city (I think. I've never needed to do it, so have no clue how to book them). Also no guarantees I can come. I'm flexible, but have some appointments with the kids on the docket I can't miss.

Edited to add: The Lake Tye park pavilions are within line of sight from the playground, so if people have kids who can play without needing to be tethered to their parent every second, they can play while grownups talk. Negative of course is that if you get there during a busy time, the park will be loud!

(I don't know Nicole Alderman in person, but based on the familiar looking housing development I saw her post about at the Cider Press a while back, I'm probably less than a mile from her house. Hi!)

I love this subject.

Micky Ewing wrote:A Permie trying to live at base camp on their land (not Paul's base camp, but my own, more primitive one) is not the only sort of person working with limited kitchen resources. Others we can look to for inspiration are the many cooks at sea, working in tiny galleys with little or no cold storage and with no access to grocery stores for days or weeks at a time.  I came across a helpful article on no-fridge meals today that I want to share with you all: http://theboatgalley.com/refrigeration-meals/

The web site, "The Boat Galley", has lots of other useful articles too.  Check out the collection of links at the bottom of the article above for other tips on fridge-less living like making your own sour cream with shelf-stable ingredients or how to keep mayonnaise without a fridge.

I actually have a cookbook dedicated to boat galley cooking as one of my unexpected "treasures". Generally boats, until very recently, had ice chests for refrigeration, if any at all. Just the instructions for how to provision and run a tiny galley for long voyages is worth the cost. I don't remember what all my family cooked when I was a kid on a sailboat, but I do remember I was always hungry and enjoyed all of it.

Marie Beausoleil's book "A Cabin full of Food" (Amazon U.S. link If you get it, the second edition has an index, the first edition does not!) is by a cook without refrigeration or most other available appliances.

As someone else mentioned Chinese and other Asian cultures, I've started watching videos of Chinese country girls (Dianxi Xiaoge, Li Ziqi, and "Drunkard Lee" come to mind) cooking their traditional cuisine on youtube. They do things like larding pork, fermenting vegetables, and making traditional sausages (lap xuong is available at ethnic stores, and at the Costcos in our area with a significant Asian population, it's shelf stable until the package is opened, so it's a pantry staple for us, even though we can refrigerate our leftovers. We like it with rice and veggies for a quick meal).

I also love Korean home cook turned cookbook author Maangchi's channel, as a lot of their ingredients really do not require refrigeration, when you start breaking the traditional ingredients down into their core components. Some benefit from a root cellar temperature, some are perfectly fine without. If I'm not sure what to do with a glut of garden produce, I usually ferment it, or make kimchi out of it, to extend its shelf life (gingered radish tops with 3-4 parts tops, 1 part carrots and 1 part radishes is one of my new favorite condiments in early summer!). I've also been slowly testing out a variety of shelf stable "ethnic" foods. I mean, it's cool that you can buy dried anchovies, but if you don't know what to do with them, are they really that good to add to your pantry? When I strike up conversations with Korean grandmothers at the Asian supermarket, I get so many recommendations for how to cook things that I need a notebook.

Old-fashioned cooling methods still exist, we just forget about them when we get used to our modern conveniences. My grandparents used to tie a milk crate to a rope and lower it loaded with glass or metal jars of food they wanted to keep cold into their spring well when I was a kid. They used an old military bunker in their backyard as an ice house. The bigger inner chamber was always full of sawdust and the ice inside it, and the outer chamber was about root cellar temperature, and packed to the gills with produce, beverages, and canning jars. They also had a small walk-in larder, that was always noticeably colder than the rest of the house, where they kept beverages cold, and had giant vats of pickles and canned goods.

This picture is not representative of my current home library, it's taken about December 2016, but the cookbooks are mostly towards the left side, and unexpectedly, organized. My shelf is usually just piled with stuff I need to quickly get out of toddler reach, without consideration to where it will end up at... I've cycled through some of them, and purged a couple of trips' worth to the used bookstore, after I ran out of space. I'm about to embark on another purge/sorting spree, and hoping to have a better idea of what, in the words of Marie Kondo, "sparks joy" an what doesn't, and can try for a picture while they're still tidy.

Jolene Jakesy wrote:

Penny Oakenleaf wrote:Emphasis mine... Have you seen Marie Beausoleil's "A Cabin Full of Food", Jolene? She's in an off grid situation, so she cooks without refrigeration and electric appliances. https://www.amazon.com/Cabin-Full-Food-Mostly-cookbook/dp/1480058084

I have not until now !! TY imma spend hours on this!

Just remember to get the second edition if you can, it has an index. My first edition does not!

Jolene Jakesy wrote:I dont have power so I need recipes without things like a food processor.  It taught me alot also, like how to store eggs and which side up. As well as which cut of meat comes from where.

I like recipes I can easily understand what ingredients are what and how long to beat or how to cook over a fire, not many cookbooks teach you how to bake on a woodstove and the only place I've found much information is on this forum. Pictures are helpful as well, but that's just me.

Emphasis mine... Have you seen Marie Beausoleil's "A Cabin Full of Food", Jolene? She's in an off grid situation, so she cooks without refrigeration and electric appliances. https://www.amazon.com/Cabin-Full-Food-Mostly-cookbook/dp/1480058084

Viola Bluez wrote:Things I like in a cookbook (I collect these):

I want to know, How do I cook that mushroom that is poisonous unless cooked the way the Russians do it? You know, the secret info of people who know the foods most people don’t.

If you mean false morels (Gyromitra esculenta), the process is called "ryöppäys" in my native Finnish. I don't think there's an English term for it. I'm not Russian, but grew up one border west of Russia. The process is similar to blanching, but you boil them longer to remove the mostly watersoluble neurotoxin gyromitrin. 1 part mushrooms to 3 parts water, boil for 5 minutes in a well ventilated space (outdoor kitchen for the win!), discard the water, rinse mushrooms thoroughly, repeat with another round of boiling and rinse. Experts disagree on if this process renders the mushrooms completely safe, but that's the standard operating procedure. They're often available as dried mushrooms outside Scandinavia and Poland, but have to be processed the same way.

Re salt: It's good to have a chapter at the beginning of the book saying what kind of staples you use, and why (what kind of cooking oils, and why, for example). If you only use kosher salt, or mineral salt, or sea salt, here's a good place to provide a substitution ratio for say common table salt, which will wash your hands from responsibility if someone seriously doesn't know how much salt is right. My mother-in-law is one of those. She'll pour salt on my cooking before even tasting it, without second thought, because she's so used to doing it. Thankfully we share our love for my husband, and their grandchildren and my children, so I have something with the in-laws to bond over, even when I sometimes want to butt heads.

I'm cooking for 14-20 people (nobody RSVPs these days?!), so I'm trying to juggle cleaning house, entertain three kids aged 21 months to 5 years, and smoking ribs. I'll be back later again. ;)

Carla Burke wrote:I've been known to reduce page long recipes to an ingredients list, with a paragraph of instruction (plus credit, so I know where it came from), so I can have the recipe without the nonsense, then turn around and give the book away.

Yes! Too many books write novellas in stead of stick with it!!! If a recipe can not be boiled down to a standard index card, it's unlikely to survive my kitchen long term when I purge and edit my books. I have 3 kids 5 and under, a small homestead, and am trying to help my husband get a tech startup rolling, so my time to peruse books is sadly reduced to a few glimpses here and there, often while waiting for appointments with the kids (or sometimes shamelessly hiding in the bathroom when my husband is at home), so I keep a book or two in my car.

Pictures: I like pictures in cookbooks, but some of my favorite recipe books do not have any illustrations or photos in them at all. If you provide pictures, make them high resolution, and quality pictures. If there's a very involved method or process hard to explain, you can provide illustrations for how to do it to make everyone's life easier. I have about two meters (for the Metric Aussie) of bookshelves dedicated to cookbooks, and the homesteading books provide probably another half meter of books that contain some form of recipes. I even have a few books that would be easier to classify as "home economics" and "food history" than cookbooks. I peruse, and edit, and cull my library at times. I'll try to remember to list some "keepers" to give ideas for what I like when I get a chance to look through the books. You can use the "preview" function on Amazon to spy on books you don't own.

Measurements and terminology: I grew up using the Metric system, but have had to teach myself how to use the Imperial system after I moved to the U.S. If you prefer one measurement over another, go with it, but please include a glossary for the more localized terms. This helps you make your way into the international market. Also, a North American and most continental Europeans likely wouldn't know what "gas mark 3" is, so include the temperatures and conversions, too. I've run into this a bit with my new favorite Indian vegetarian recipe site. Their instructions describe the cook time as "three whistles with the pressure cooker", and I'm like "I don't actually have a pressure cooker". I enjoy learning, but it does mean I have to look this stuff up elsewhere to adapt my cooking based on available equipment.

Introductions: If you have a recipe for kangaroo, write the recipe for kangaroo, but you could include a substitution suggestion for it in an introductory paragraph sharing a little bit about the origin of the recipe, or the use of the ingredient, since us "up over" (probably not an accurate term) don't really know much about kangaroo. If an ingredient is optional, it's nice to add "(optional)" after it in the ingredient list.

The less equipment I need, the better: Just like with the pressure cooker for Indian recipes I mentioned above, don't recommend the use of specialized gadgets, unless absolutely necessary for a successful recipe. I lived for about 6 years as a housewife before I even got an electric mixer. Most recipes assume you have one, just to give an example. In stead of "using a mandolin, slice x thinly", just put in "slice x thinly" and the reader can decide what tool to use.

Notes section at the bottom of a page: Although it's a cardinal sin for me to write anything apart from the owner's name into a book, one of my favorite books on fermented foods, has space for notes at the bottom of every recipe page, so I can take notes on what did, or didn't work. This is actually rather useful for the kind of cooking I do. If I know that I can't get a hold of "hartshornsalt" (ammonium carbonate, a common leavening agent in traditional Scandinavian baking), I know I need to use double the amount of baking powder for the same leavening effect, but it's easier to write it down under the recipe.

Many self-published cookbooks have this problem, if you start reading reviews! Have people test your recipes exactly as written, and provide feedback. It's easy to modify a recipe, but for a cookbook, it's vital to get the recipes cleaned up and tested to see if they need a tweak. If half the comments you get are "needs more salt", or "not spicy enough", you know to tweak quantities before going to print. Self published books often omit how long it takes to prepare a recipe. If I need to, or if I can, prep something the night before, I need to be told.

Book Types: The kinds of books I have range from home butchery, cheese making, and bread baking - very basic but specialized skills, to in-depth looks at various ethnic cuisines, and their methods. The ones I keep often have simple everyday recipes that are ordered by season, and type of dishes or meals. I like having a feel for when something is in season. This obviously means it's winter down under when it's summer here, but I can work off of that.

I'm sorry. My line of thought breaks here, since I keep getting interrupted by kid bedtimes. I'll try to get a bit of a book list of a few of the ones I like, and a couple I can think of, that I remember getting rid of, and why. We had a small cluster of earthquakes last night/morning and my focus is on cleaning the house and securing some fragile and heavy stuff a bit better, just in case the next one is bigger than a 4.6...

I need to take my time and read through this thread with a fine-toothed comb. Skimming already has my mind racing. You friendly folks already reminded me to put in Jerusalem artichokes into my perennial garden, and give sweet potatoes another chance.

We, as a family, eat a lot of rice, so I've been trying to rack my brain on whether or not I really did see a dry land rice variety seed for sale a few years ago somewhere (Baker Creek??), or if I dreamed it and need to start terracing my hillside for dedicated rice paddies. In the meantime, we keep dabbling with corn, and have a test patch of Emmer wheat and multiple kinds of sunflowers going this year. I have had great success with winter squashes, and was eating squashes to my heart's content until mid-January, so I increased my garden space dedicated to storage squashes and planted 9 varieties this year, if I count right. Not discouraged by a previous bout of potato blight, I planted 5 varieties in a newly established garden patch. They're up to my waist and in full bloom, so I'm hopeful that this year, my cellar will be better stocked on spuds. I'm growing peas as a field crop (because nothing soothes the soul like a pot of peas and a ham hock on a cold winter day), and have penciled chickpeas into my test patch next season, because although I don't love hummus, I like chickpeas in curry types of applications, and with some vegan friends, I can always get rid of my extras.

I consider eggs to be a staple crop, as my chickens provide a substantial amount of calories to my kitchen, and selling the extras frees up some funds to buy in feed and other resources, and old or injured layer hens and mean roosters end up in the stock pot, and the mature birds usually have a lot of rich yellow chicken fat on them that I render for cooking other stuff. I'm planning on adding pigs so I don't have to buy them annually for the freezer, and establishing a small sheep herd for milk, meat, and wool, because both my son and I have trouble digesting cow's and goat's milk, and he can't have soy. If my experiments in legumes, grains, and seeds don't go quite to plan, I can always feed them to my chickens as treats, so I don't see any of my effort going to "waste".

Edited for side note: Our homestead was otherwise rather barren after previous owners mowed and herbicided a lot of it to clean it up for sale, but some judicious pruning and side dressing with manure brought back the 100 year old apple trees, so I have too many apples to use them all up most years. The first variety that ripens is good for fresh eating, the next is amazing in sauce and cider, and the last one is a tart storage type apple. I preserve a lot of them as applesauce and apple cider vinegar. I've added berry patches and peaches, grapes, and pears, so I get many, many, many gallons of "sugar" wrapped in fruit off our property in addition to the blackberries and I'm really tired today, because I completely forgot that the highest calorie "crop" per labor input I think I have, is honey! A lot of the fruit ends up canned, or juiced, but I try to freeze some for use throughout the winter, too. All my new plantings follow the example of whomever planted the apple trees, all varieties ripen at a different time of the season, so pear season starts in July, and goes all the way through October/November.

(P.S. Although I'd like to say I could live off of coffee, it will never count as a true "staple", even if I might be able to figure out the black magic to grow a few beans. Oh bother. :P)

Wow, I learn new things every time you come by here.

I haven't thought to use my horseradish leaves, and in the 4 years of the horseradish sitting in my garden, I have never seen a flower head on it, but love broccoli raab (sp?), and things that are a bit bitter and astringent when cooking fattier animal based foods. I use radish tops from conventional red radishes and daikon for lactofermenting already. But I have competition for my horseradish. The chickens adore them and swiftly wipe out my whole patch if they get into the fenced portion of my garden, so I usually just dig up roots for my kitchen, and throw the leaves in my chicken run, and try to make sure the chickens don't see where I got them.

The bigger leaves made me wonder today if I can wrap meats or fish into them for cooking in stead of banana leaves, that I don't currently grow (I think I could, I see bananas as ornamentals around here, just not with the expectation of a banana crop), and whether or not I could chop them up in stir fries (I tasted leaves as-is, and wasn't impressed by the uncooked flavor). The slugs ate my whole bok choi patch overnight and my bumper crop of radishes was another casualty of the ongoing slug war, too, so I'm low on conventional garden greens, and foraging nettles and dandelions to fill the gap. Horseradish would help stretch me over that gap further.

I think it's because I was looking for the video I use for reference for my pasta recipe, that YouTube's algorithm spat out a video that just shows you how to make 29 handmade pasta shapes. Considering I don't own a pasta roller, it's definitely useful to me and my ilk. I think I'll want to play around with these next time I'm making pasta.

Hand rolled pasta shapes!

I spotted Sichuan peppers in gallon pots available for mail order at Raintree Nursery (located in WA), that is hardy in zones 6-9. For true piperaceae, I'll have to wait until I can afford the big tropical greenhouse of my dreams... https://raintreenursery.com/sale/sichuan-pepper-gal-pot-l565

I'm planning on buying at least a couple plants when budget allows, because after watching youtube videos of a girl from Sichuan cooking with them, she goes through copious amounts of pepper fresh off the tree. I may not like spicy food quite as much, but I prefer Sichuan pepper over hot chilies.

As far as the pepper substitutes often being described as having a "citrusy" flavor, I've been told I have a pretty good palate for a home cook (I'm skeptical), and when I taste freshly ground black pepper, it has a punchy quality to it, but also a hint of citrus, and sometimes does resemble the resinous flavor of pine. It's really hard to replace, while ground pepper that's been living at the back of my cupboard really doesn't taste of much at all.

Juniper berries don't taste like "pepper" to me. I grew up eating lots of foods with Juniper berries in the recipes, and its use could be described more as that of star anise in Asian cooking, with a bit less of a "licorice" flavor, and a bit more "pine". Very astringent if you just bite into a fresh berry, but mellows out with cooking and helps bring some brightness to heartier dishes. With rich, gamey meats, it comes into its own. Looking at some recipes from back home, it's mostly paired with reindeer, moose, and rabbit. It's also not uncommon to infuse vodka with juniper berries for snaps (is the English spelling "shnapps"?), and it's used in folk medicine to make cough syrup. Juniper has its place in my spice cupboard, because it's very good in its own right.

Debi Baker wrote:But, here are the Biokleen free and clear laundry liquid ingredients:
Water
Laureth 7
Cocamidopropyl Betaine
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
Lauramine Oxide
Sodium Chloride
Sodium Carboxmethyl Inulin
Citrus Grandis Seed Extract
C10-16 Alcohols

Now I might be outing myself as a stereotypical blonde here (not unusual), but to those of us who actually didn't major in chemistry and get the sulfates and oxides mixed up, can you enlighten us on what the "bad" stuff was? Or perhaps give an idea of a reliable source to go poke around ourselves? It's pretty much word salad, and a lot of the "info" out there is scattered, and sometimes, especially on the cloth diaper laundry circuits on social media, outright wrong.

Tereza, I know some big-busted ladies who have had the reduction surgery, and they have never regretted it, in spite of the risks of major surgery. One doesn't begin to understand how heavy breasts are, until one lugs a pair around all day. I've carried my kids on my front when they were too small to strap to my back yet, and the back ache from that is tremendous, but at least I was able to get relief from that by putting the babies down.

Very good tips, Nicole. I'm going to save it all in my notes! I have over 5 acres of "pasture", so I can squirrel away quite a bit of stuff on my property before they become a bother, if I plan things right. I currently have about 20 chickens that have the run of the farm most of the day, and they prefer to be right on the nice lawn most of the time, and will hang out on my porch unless I remember to close the "chicken gate" (keeps babies in, chickens out, win-win!).

I hope if I get a "more permanent" (that is a relative term, as usual) garden area put in, to maybe use the principles of natural swimming pool design for the ducks, where they have access to a small portion of the water system in their enclosure, and the water then flows through some kind of biofilter zone and aeration waterfall into a holding pond stocked with some kind of feeder fish, and then gets pumped up hill and back into the duck pond, so they have flowing water all the time, and I can use the pond water to water some of the garden in the summers when it's dry, if I need to. One of the few times I'm happy to have a sloping lot, it's much easier to lay out. Ha! I don't know if I have the engineering chops right now, but I do have time, and like puzzles, and I like to tinker when I've studied a concept.

The "snowpocalypse" didn't bother us. We're pretty well prepared for inclement weather, even if the grid gets knocked out due to snow. I had to dust off the hot water bottles, because our heating system had trouble on the coldest of days, but everyone slept really well after full days of playing in the snow, or shoveling snow, or both. We actually opted to help dig a neighbor's driveway out before our own, because it's hard to treat patients from home if you're a doctor, but my husband can work from home if he can connect to the internet. We didn't mind being "snowed in" for a couple of days. It also made me realize that although I might not need snow chains for the tractor for 360 days of the year, I should probably have a set, so I can clear driveways and help unstuck cars if we get snow like that again. I couldn't get the tractor out of the barn because it kept sliding, so we shoveled the old fashioned way. My back still aches remembering it.

Tereza Okava wrote:
I'm quite tall and strong (very broad shoulders), and pretty active. I also am not a fan of girly or pretty, so I am all about function. I also live in a place where I need to travel to get the kind I like, so I buy once a year. For serious things (horses, motorcycles, running, jumping)...

I'm 5'10", my upper body is built like a Viking's (rowing, skiing, and chopping firewood growing up made sure my shoulders are by no means "feminine"), and my dairy cow jugs are usually D or DD. I was training canter transitions last week in a plain sports bra (so comfyyyyy!) just fine. But it's what we get accustomed to, I think, and when we find just the right bra for our own needs, it gets more bosom time than the husband. (wink)

Meg Mitchell wrote:I'm in the PNW and I was very hesitant to use mulch for the critters reason. Slugs are one of the traditional problem critters around here because it's very wet in spring/fall. Unfortunately we also get a very dry period in the summer. I tried mulching thinly last year with leaves and it helps to keep soil moisture in longer, and I haven't noticed much problem with slugs. If anything there are fewer slugs than last year (although that could be chalked up to a dry winter rather than anything I've done). There's definitely a lot of spider activity and a bit of garter snake activity in the mulched areas but I can't say that they seem to be hurting anything.

I'm also in the PNW (Snohomish County, WA), and I don't have have a lot of slug problems in the areas chickens have access to. The slugs definitely enjoy the shelter provided by "chunky" wood chips, so I try to keep the fresh chips in the pathways, and the composted chips as mulch in the garden beds. Chickens adore bugs, and will eat young slugs. Big mature ones, not as much, but I tend to hand-pick those, or if they ate my last asparagus, might brutally massacre them with sluggo. Most spiders and snakes are harmless, and again, chickens sort those out. I like chickens, as long as they don't get into my horseradish patch. Horseradish is supposed to be as good as indestructible, but my chickens have proved the "experts" wrong before.

I keep hearing good things about ducks, but my husband refuses to let me get some, his parents used to keep ducks when he was a kid, and all he remembers is that the ducks are "dirty". I have to go to the neighbor's to get my duck socializing in... They usually send me home with duck eggs. They don't like duck eggs, but they love ducks, so it's a win-win! Maybe Lewis (the most charming duck I've ever met) can convince my spouse that not all ducks are gross?

I've recently been leafing through Dale Strickler's "The Drought Resilient Farm" (Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Drought-Resilient-Farm-Moisture-Livestock-Semi-arid/dp/1635860024/ ), trying to decide what I can and can't apply in practice. Since I don't have ruminants right now, just chickens, I'm not able to put the pasture management to practice the way he lays it out, but I can utilize swales and eventually ponds, and mulch for starters. It gives a general understanding of water related concepts, whether catchment, storage, purification (a rudimentary explanation of how an artificial wetland works), and conservation, and about more drought resilient pasture management practices. I wouldn't consider myself an expert after reading the book, but I've been able to see where I want to slowly move towards, and know what types of subjects to research next. On the opposite end of my reading list are books about rain gardens, obviously for the opposite season's management practices.

Lauren - We have dubbed our equivalent to a "park strip" the "hell strip". It's an awkward, steep patch of poor soil, bordered on one side by a 4 foot tall concrete retaining wall that keeps the hill from collapsing into our driveway, and just 6 feet away in the narrowest spot, 15 feet at the wide spot, and a good 4-6 feet higher up, the road, and all the runoff from it all winter. It's a nightmare to mow (rock-paper-scissors to see who has to do it every time someone needs to mow it!), and no amount of mulch I can apply will stay put due to the steep grade, so I'm trying to figure out a groundcover that can survive the winter rains and the summer drought to plant there, while I try to decide if I can terrace it, or if I should give up and "xeriscape" it with boulders the tractor keeps turning up, and think of it in terms of rock garden "beds" rather than one big garden area. I suspect that sedges might help, I read their root mass can grow quite large, and it helps filter water. Right now the only thing that I've planted there that "took" is a volunteer spearmint, and two Japanese maples. The dwarf cypress trees didn't do as well, the resident white tail decided to have a good rub session and that severely maimed or killed them off.

Nicole Alderman wrote:What are your favorite things you use when gardening with babies and kids?

Here's mine!

For Babies:

I love my Boba Carrier. My daughter currently spends her whole time outside snuggly contained on my chest, and usually takes a good 1-2 hour nap there while I work in the garden. I also used it a LOT with my son, carrying him on my back until he was at least 2. He can actually still ride in it if he wants to, but it's usually being used by my daughter. This thing was indispensable for me. When they were newborn to 2 months, I wore them in a Baby K'tan, which is like a moby wrap but without nearly as much wrapping. But, it's not nearly as supportive as a structural carrier like the Boba, and I found it stretched out really easily. Sometimes, especially when it's cold, I'll actually wrap my daughter in the K'tan, and then wear the Boba over it for more support and coziness.

I have seen k'tans used wrong and fairly unsafely more times than I have seen them used like in the pictures on the instructions. Unlike a Moby or other stretchy wrap that's a one size fits all, a k'tan has a size chart, so you have to know your size before purchasing. I have used most kinds of baby carriers, and they really are worth their weight in gold, and unless you get into the collector's items made from unicorn hair by a custom handweaver, are worth every penny, and often available for affordable prices locally. I know a bunch of people who have woven their own baby wraps, too.

Because of my body type being tall, with a longer than average back, I prefer a Lenny Lamb brand carrier that's like made for my back. They come in two sizes, "baby", and "toddler", and I can lug any of my kids in the toddler sized one right now.

I have a plastic play set we got for free as a hand-me down, and the kids love that thing. It's lighweight enough for me to move around to where I can see it, and when the kids aren't using it, the juvenile chickens claim it as their own. I think after the kids are done with it, I just might put it in the chicken run...

One of our projects in the near future, because of the layout of the property, though, is to add some fencing around the house to keep the smallest children away from the driveway and street. People seem to think they're Marty McFly in their deLorean based on how they keep trying for 88mph (give or take) here, and they'd never spot a toddler on time, if a child managed to get into the road. I'd rather play it safe and not give them a chance to get out of my sight in the first place, but the fence is a good backup.

In the garden, I'm within a fenced in area, so giving the children their own garden bed to dig around in is a good distraction. They love picking out their own seed and planting things. (I have three under-5's right now). Come berry season, all my berry patches are a welcome distraction to everyone. Sometimes some fruit even makes it back to the house. (wink)

Did you know that the infamous They of the alternative health circuit say that underwires restrict lymphatic flow and can contribute to breast cancer? I don't know if that's the case, but due to a family history of very early incidences of breast cancer, I'm due for my first mammogram this year when I turn 35, and like to hedge my bets and skip the underwire. I do know it is usually the one triggering factor in me getting mastitis while I'm lactating, so it contributes to the single-most uncomfortable thing after childbirth I've experienced.

I already mentioned that I'm breastfeeding, so the breasts are sometimes empty, sometimes engorged, and can vary by a cup size between morning and evening, just to make life more fun!

I favor wireless nursing bras (Motherhood ones have been true to size when measuring and going by their size chart, even when mail ordered) or maternity sports bras, and like them even between kids, when I need to keep the girls in place on my way to town, but otherwise can keep my assets sufficiently contained with a shelf bra camisole, and still pull them out to nurse the baby. The shelf bra also enables me to stuff something absorbent inside my shirt if I'm leaking The little bit of bounce doesn't really hurt, counter-intuitively the tissues get some "exercise" from the movement, and the skin stays more taut and long term, that helps keep everything in place. My mother wouldn't get caught dead without a bra. When she was my age, her "girls" were already sagging. Mine, at least while they're still full of milk, have kept their shape. Fingers crossed they stay that way, since I have her body type!

Galadriel - I have been looking at that pattern, and it seems like I should give it a whirl! I enjoy sewing my own clothes, so I probably should venture into underwear somewhere along the way.

J Webb wrote:

Penny Oakenleaf wrote:Someone more ambitious than myself could try to establish an organization that helps control the flow of wood chips.

There is: https://getchipdrop.com/

If you live in a suburban area, chip drop is a wonderful resource! When I moved here, I tried to sign up on chip drop. Unfortunately, I live in a zip code that's roughly the equivalent to a white space on an old nautical chart that says "Here be monsters", as far as a lot of those cool suburban services are concerned. (Imperfect Produce is another one I tried, and failed, to sign up for. They don't deliver to my zip code). I usually find out in the evening when I check tracking numbers that the FedEx driver didn't even try to deliver, and I have to drive an hour into town to pick up my parcels if someone shipped with them, because they "couldn't find the house", but I'm drifting off course! I networked with local tree services, found one who is a homesteader type himself, and I get the "Family and Friends" pricing for tree work, and they have free access to a dump site 1/4 mile from where they park for the night.

I was thinking more along the lines of an organization that comes up with a site plan, whether for a private land owner, or a municipality or township, and then oversees the implementation of steps in the project, like planting, mulching, and for example arranges for a dump site for the local mulch drop-offs at the edge of the project site, and has volunteer crews moving said mulch into place in the re-forested areas. If one wants to get serious about that sort of activities, they need a lot more planning chops than I possess. I can keep a trio of toddlers alive, and do some homesteading, but anything beyond that isn't within my scope while the kids are small.

Here's my two cents on what appears to be an older thread... It may be convoluted, rambling, and long-winded, because I'm running around chasing kids, gardening, and cooking lunch at the same time, and can't focus very well in a non-native tongue, but I'll try.

When it comes to wood chips available to most of us, they originate with arborists, "tree surgeons", or tree trimming services, depending on what they're regionally called. A lot, but guaranteed not all of those chips are from pruning and trimming of trees in suburban and urban areas, where there isn't really a local "wilderness" to deposit those, at least not without a municipal or private plan for it, so the tree service truck is left with two realistic options, either find a gardener who wants them nearby, or pay a disposal fee at the landfill, dump, or recycling station. A lot of the time, the best solution for the human parties involved is the gardener's yard. There are so many regional problems that affect a microclimate that bringing in organic material from elsewhere won't be the silver bullet, unless some thought goes into it, too. Planning is half the work, but someone has to be there to do the planning, and oversee its implementation. Someone more ambitious than myself could try to establish an organization that helps control the flow of wood chips, bagged leaf, grass clippings, and other organic waste towards reforesting a dry area in stead of at a municipal composting facility or private composting entity, of course, perhaps they're on Permies already?

Now I ain't no scientist, and my major was structural, rather than environmental engineering, so this is middle school science tinged with the occasional recollection of economics 101 and a lot of armchair philosophy, not an "expert" opinion. If you don't have the precipitation to facilitate a forest-like decomposition of organic material, you'll just end up with a dry mat of wood chips, unless you also have the plants and irrigation in place to create that microclimate that fosters a forest. I've seen video tours of the most amazing forest gardens in suburban lots in Arizona, but even they rely on locally sourced chips. And the gardeners tend to their plants as the new forest area is established, build ponds and swales, to help catch the water and retain it. It takes a steward, so to say, to establish that forest in the desert. My question when seeing those is always, if the forest has been brought to a desert, rather than a forest re-established in an area that has become desert due to human activity, how long does it take for it to return to desert, if the stewardship ends? Dedicated re-forestation advocates almost always appear to have either their own non-profit organization, government institute, or personal passion driving them. Planning and logistics again.

The arborist who lives down the street from me, has a standing permission during the summer months when the ground can support his truck to just show up and dump a load in my pasture. Sometimes I get 5 loads in a week, sometimes go months without a drop. I try to age the piles before using if I have the time and ability, because the composted chips, especially as the chickens get some quality time in my piles, are better than gold. I can squirrel it away in the garden areas or into a better managed compost area with the help of my tractor in a matter of a couple of hours, and you couldn't even tell I've added it to my property. It's a negligible amount when you start looking at it on an acreage scale. You need several truckloads to mulch a berry patch, or around every orchard tree and make a difference, when you scale up from a small backyard garden.

Same could be said for animal manure. Why do we put it in our garden in stead of send it off to this undefined "elsewhere"? I get free manure from the horse barn I "barn sit" at times across the street. Again, if I don't take it, there's a disposal fee for them, they need to take the load to the other side of town, and I'd have to buy in my fertilizer, in stead of just occasional amendments. It's a kind of a win/win, with no money changing hands. The only thing I have to expend is time, elbow grease, and some wear and tear on my tractor. I squirrel all of the organic material I get my hands on away, mix with things like ash from the grill, cardboard from all the boxes that magically show up at the porch (the "Amazon Fairy" and neighbors and friends who know I collect boxes), newsprint, junk mail, and bedding from my chickens, and turn it into wonderfully rich compost. Which friends of mine then pick up with 5 gallon buckets to their needs, because let's face it, I have plenty to share, even when I never have "enough". Although the cycle is a lot slower than in a commercial composting operation, the organic material gets dispersed into the environment, not just in my garden, but other gardens, too, and the only cost is elbow grease (and diesel for the tractor. I have a permanent back injury, and the tractor saves me from needing weekly chiropractor visits). And what kind of a friend and neighbor would I be, if I didn't share my produce, when I have an abundance? That organic material is spreading along a different path, too. I hope to eventually be able to grow enough to sell produce at the farmers' market, at which point that initial investment of material will start traveling off the farm, too.

Although it doesn't seem like it's benefiting anyone else, have you thought what effect the mulch in an individual garden can have on the environment even in "wet" areas? I'm pairing it up with swales and plantings along the contours of my sloping property, so even though it's slow going, we're already seeing an improvement in water retention, and reduced erosion and reduced run-off. The soil is improving. I almost succeeded in burying my arm up to my elbow into the first garden bed I put in when we moved here 5 years ago. Back then, I couldn't even get a shovel through the sod. The soil is fluffy, dark, and grows amazing things, when it was mostly growing big rocks, buttercups, and crab grass before. Adding mulch to areas where the tractor leaves ruts in the ground, such as around the barn, stabilizes the ground and again, prevents erosion. Normally the winter rains in our area flow down the hill uninterrupted and flood everything below our property that is mostly pasture and McMansion lawn, because there's a thick slip of clay just under the topsoil in most of our region that doesn't permit the water to go anywhere. The organic material people like me add is starting to improve the soil locally. It may not stop the roads further down in the valley from being underwater during winter storms, but it reduces runoff from my pasture to the neighbor's pasture, and as the neighbors show more interest for what I'm doing, they'll perhaps slowly start doing something similar, if they're encouraged by my results. This also adds to the whole property's resilience during the bone dry summer months, too, because the stored water in the ground lasts longer, reducing my need to irrigate, and my water bill goes down.

I know it's not going to "save the planet" for me to try to get my mulch to the wilderness, or to the "dry" side of my state, and fretting about it will turn all of my hair gray before I make a noticeable impact, but I can save serveral truckloads of organic material from needlessly ending in a landfill or dump somewhere every year with so little effort that it's worth doing. And saves me money, and the community resources that would go to processing that waste at a municipal level. It's gotta count for something in the long term.

I do want to try to "terraform" a more arid area some day, if I can afford getting a larger acreage, but that's unlikely to happen, because our finances depend on a city job in the here and now.

A lot of squashes can be harvested at any stage. Even luffa (loofah? I spell it in my native tongue and forget the "American" version) sponge squash can be stir fried when it's still small. Male squash blossoms can be stuffed and fried for a yummy fritter. The winter storage squashes, I wait til absolutely last minute before the winter rains get really bad, and bring them into the house to cure. It's quite a sight, because there are pumpkins and winter squashes on every surface.

I like the kind of produce that I can pick at varying degrees of ripeness, or let them go to seed. It just makes life a bit easier, when I can thin out the onion bed and end up with garnish for my stir fry, or if I can dig up a couple of potatoes when they're still small and tender and I want new potatoes with my herring, and let the adjacent ones grow to full size for storage, and can pick pea sprouts, or thin new pea pods, or plump shelling peas, or let them dry for seed and dry peas, and so on. It adds flexibility that you don't really get at the store. They're all very standardized there. That's why I always start with the shelf at the supermarket that has their "blemished, under-sized, and lopsided" produce bagged for quick sale for the "exotics" that I'm not growing right now. I sometimes score a whole big bag of organic mushrooms or limes for $1, because they're "ugly".

I remember when the elderly lady nextdoor gave me some zucchini that was way too big. They were almost as big as my then one year old. Obviously, they were woody, and the seeds were all big and chewy. I peeled it, grated the flesh around the seeds, and used it in homemade bread. They might have become an okay relish, if cubed and pickled, too, but I would rather let my chickens have their way with it when it gets that big.

I sometimes make pasta with the kids. It's a bit of an operation to herd a bunch of under-5's, but so rewarding, and everyone I know likes pasta. It's a great tactile experience and training in patience for those homeschoolers who feel like they need a lesson or two for the downtime in summer. (wink!) I don't have rollers or extruders, I just roll out by hand with a pastry rolling pin and cut into strips.

I use fresh chicken eggs 95% of the time, but my neighbor lady sometimes drops off eggs from her ducks, and those usually end up in pasta. I really should take her a bundle of freshly made tagliatelle or something, but she's the pickiest eater I've ever met, and I thought I've seen them all! The ratio I usually use is 1 part semolina to 3 parts all-purpose flour by weight. (Edited to add that I forgot the amounts for the base recipe! 150g all-purpose flour, 50g semolina). Two large eggs (my Buckeyes make sort of smallish medium eggs, so I sometimes use two plus one yolk), and usually a little itty bit of olive oil.

I also tend to make gnocchi from potatoes or yams in batches, and freeze them for later, because they're easy, and quick, even out of the freezer (wonderful with pan-roasted winter squash and a little pat of butter). Gnocchi is a kind of a gateway drug into the world of homemade pasta, because although they might not be the prettiest you've ever seen on the first try, they're nearly impossible to mess up.

Nevenoe Guegan wrote:

Penny Oakenleaf wrote:
If you need to, potter's suppliers sell clay in a powdered form by the bag, even in Europe.

That's good to know. About how much clay is used for a medium sized oven, e.g. 600 to 700 mm in diameter? Seeing as I won't be able to get if from the garden, I will have to know how much to get, wether I dig it somewhere else, or buy it.

I'm by no means an expert, I've got this project on my long list of to-dos. I have found this site helpful http://pinkbird.org/w/How_to_construct_a_pizza_oven_dome_out_of_cob

And some plans on the same site to peruse for research: http://pinkbird.org/w/Wood+fired+pizza+oven+building+plans/385

What I really like about cob ovens, is that you can let your creativity shine. This is perhaps my favorite of the bunch, and Li Ziqi demonstrates using empty wine bottles for insulation in the project.

Debi Baker wrote:I love biokleen products as far as cleaning and they do not set off my allergies, etc... But, their laundry liquid is not greywater safe using strict standards, it may build up sodium in the soil if it is not diluted by other water sources.

Emphasis in the quote mine. Technically, I live in a temperate rainforest. My problem tends to be too much water everywhere, which is probably why it's not causing me any trouble. Yet. (wink)