Mary Cook

I find it incredible that a good hen will lay something as large and meaty as an egg nearly every day in spring--no wonder she needs all that calcium to replace what the shells take out of her, and lots of feed to replace the contents.

First, I think venison does taste like beef, and I don't think I've ever had any I considered gamey or tough. But one factor in any meat I think, is the age of the animal. We usually turn nearly all of it into burger, then make patties with ax paper between them, and freeze. That ay you can take a patty or two out of the freezer 20 minutes before you start dinner and it'll thaw enough to break up into the frying pan. But we've also often canned venison, which means 90 minutes at ten pounds pressure--that is tenderizing. Generally I make stew out of it, and one thing I like to do is put the leftover stew in a pie--all it needs is a little adjustment of the liquid level and venison stew makes a great pie filling.

I live in West Virginia, zone 6. I started growing peanuts because my neighbor had success with them. He had sandy soil and I have clay soil --well-modified clay soil--and I have success almost every year with peanuts. I've never planted them as soon as it;s warm enough to do so--I use them to follow onions or garlic which I harvest about July 1. Usually I plant Tennessee Red Valencia, which has shorter day-requirements than most--but i like the peanuts too. I did try Schronce's black the first year, and they did fine but I switched because I often mix roasted peanuts with raisins, a 50/50 mix, and it's easier to adjust that when the peanuts stand out from the black raisins. I get the seed from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, which has good selections of southern things like peanuts, collards, dent corn and blackeyed peas. They need some water but this has not usually been a problem for me--we typically get 40 inches of rain a year, fairly evenly distributed. There were three years I got no crop--twice it was because of rabbits, which I find go for any kind of bean (except black-eyed peas) before anything else; I now have 16": of one-inch-mesh chickenwire around the bottom of the garden fence. The other year it was because I was using my own saved seed and that year--or rather the previous one--I had jarred up the seed too soon and it fermented. I dry the plants in my attached greenhouse, and toss every tenth pod in a separate bowl for seed saving--that way I have seed from most plants but disproportionately more from the most productive ones. You can't plant seeds still in the pod, but you should not remove the papery skin before planting.
Bottom line--you don't have to have sandy soil or live in the deep south to be successful with peanuts, but if your growing season is shorter than 110 days it might be iffy.

First, I'd rather reduce nasty smells than attempt to cover them up with nice ones. This can be done by: using buckets in the outhouse and having a toilet seat that fits to whichever bucket is currently filling; dropping sawdust on each deposit; and peeing elsewhere, all of which we do (we have what I call the pisseria in the house, another toilet seat over a bucket within a wooden frame, which I empty onto a rotating series of compost piles).
But this post reminded me of the outhouse we had in the next county when I was married to my ex--it was the nasty kind utilizing none of these schemes, but it had a big window on one side--not the side facing the house. It faced a little garden with a cedar tree, under which I'd planted wildflowers and bulbs--looking at them was enjoyable, and one year there was a colony of mushrooms--watching that develop day by day was even more entertaining than the flowers.

I've been wondering about this too. I have one silicone bag I got from a plastic substitutions outfit, Our Planet Our Children or something like that. Along with waxed cloth, which I ended up giving away because I never used it--didn't trust its sealing capacity. I was told the silicone bag would last a lifetime, was not plastic but made of sand, could be frozen baked, or dropped into boiling water--the downside of that is the bag is so thick and not as flexible, so it takes up much more room in the fridge or freezer. Plastic really works best--I use square (and round) plastic containers in the freezer, and bags--I have two sets of glass containers in four sizes that I use in the fridge.

My first two peach trees were volunteers growing along the path, where they didn't get enough sun. This is West Virginia, zone 6, on the ridge. One of those small trees produced one fruit one year, a big lovely peach, ripe on the last day of June. My neighbor had several mature peach trees, but two of them produce peaches every year--one year it got down to 12 degrees F while blooming, and the tree still made peaches. But these two trees get brown rot every year, ruining the fruit a week before it's ripe. I've been campaigning to cut them down and burn the wood, so they don't affect others.
Meanwhile, I planted a PF 19-007 in my orchard and moved that little tree that made the super early peach into the orchard where it would get more sun. I consider the earliness a bulwark against brown rot, since hopefully the fruit will be gone by the time any spores arrive. I'm about to plant a third peach, a PF 8 Ball. Here I should explain that PF is for Paul Friday, the developer of this line of peaches, which he calls Flamin' Fury. I think that sounds like a wrestler's name, and PF 19-007 sounds like a robot, so I have suggested Perfect Peach or Voluptuous. Two years later I got my first load of peaches from that tree, and the transplanted one made three (this was last year). My criteria are earliness, brown rot resistance (so far I haven't seen much bug damage) and ideally a large, reddish, freestone peach.
But I also learned some lessons from a peach I transplanted in after it volunteered in my neighbor's garden. It was so vigorous I needed a wheelbarrow to bring it home the same fall--itt was already five feet tall. Within a couple years it was 12 feet tall and loaded with pink flowers. But it produces few fruits, and inferior ones. I just cut it down. It also had a big canker on the trunk, I believe as a result of southwest disease--where black fruit tree bark warms up in the winter sun, on the sunny side, then freezes hard at night, causing cracks that can be invaded by rot organisms. So this cold winter I wrapped rags around the trunks of my other two peach trees to protect from the sun. And I'm thinking I should buy some tobacco to sprinkle around the bases of my fruit trees, as I read that will repel or kill the peach tree borer. But I've also learned to keep things away from the bases of all my fruit trees, so I can see if there is evidence of borers (and to keep winter mice from finding a cozy spot to chew on bark).
It's said that peaches reproduce more true than other fruits, so planting a peach pit is more worthwhile than an apple or pear seed--which will result, years later, in probably inferior apples or pears. But I consider it worthwhile to get already grafted, named varieties likely to produce desired results.
Also note that you need to consider pollination requirements for most fruits, but you can do fine with one peach tree, if that's all you have room for. So I read. Also, they tolerate black walnuts lurking nearby, which apples won't, and pears maybe.
Couple more things--peaches (and most other tree fruits) really need thinning to produce good, full size fruit. I picked 250 little fruits off my Perfect peach last year, and still had 50. And last year I tried using fruit bags to protect my apples, pears and peaches from squirrels and bug damage. These are green nylon net bags with drawstrings which make it easy to put them around fruits. One year is not enough to tell, especially since last year was anomalous--extended drought, so that the bees, wasps and hornets let me know the pears were THEIRS in the heart of the harvest season--but if I get a good fruit set again this spring I'm gonna order another 200 bags. There are several suppliers.

I make a basic pancake, and we have these occasionally for dinner, because I too have a sugar shock type reaction if I have pancakes for breakfast--I also serve either eggs or sausage with them for some protein to balance the carbohydrates. I think the key to good pancakes is to use mostly whole wheat flour, not white. I don't measure anything. Periodically I mix up half a gallon or so of Pancake and Muffin mix--about five times as much whole wheat as white flour, then add maybe a tablespoon of baking soda and a teaspoon of baking powder and a teaspoon of salt. So I  put say two cups of this in a small mixing bowl, add a splash of oil and two egg yolks, then enough milk to get to the right consistency. I whip the egg whites and fold them in just before I start frying, using peanut oil because pancakes need high heat. I butter them after I flip them, and we have our own maple syrup to go with them. I like to add chopped pecans, and often have a little dish with some kind of sliced fruit to insert between layers--unless it's blueberries, which work well tossed into the batter.

I tried growing turnips for the first time last fall, as a cover crop and to feed my friend's goats. This is WV, zone 6, but it was the coldest winter in 30 years. Got to 7 below zero F. Come early spring, my kale was gone, nothing else made it--except the turnips, which are fine. I don't think I'd grow these in the summer, but such a hardy plant, I expect I'll grow some every winter. I haven't tried eating them myself--maybe I should.
Interesting about the Red Valencia peanuts--that's the variety IO grow, here in West Virginia. I tried another once, the first time I grew peanuts--Schronce's Black. They did fine. The Valencia need fewer days but the reason I switched is that a thing we do with roasted peanuts is mix them with raisins to eat out of hand, and a 50/50 mix is best. Hard to assess that when the peanuts are the same color as the raisins.

Amazing information, none of which I've ever seen before. Not terribly relevant to me, because I've never been very good at sewing and now have visual challenges...and I don't see much point in buying new clothes when--in the US at least--there are Goodwills and Salvation Armies and local thrift shops and yard sales offering all the clothes we could need for a couple of generations. I occasionally buy footwear new but that's it.
But it does concern me that I have several fleece shirts, extremely handy on winter mornings--I'm wearing one right now--and likely the comfortable stretch pants also are made of dubious materials. I figure the nanoplastic bits that wash out when I wash them end up migrating down the hillside, not too serious since we're on the ridge--but in the winter I currently have to use the laundromat in town. And they say that plastic more or less never breaks down.
I now can wear wool socks and like them, in winter (in summer, cotton or barefoot is better). The problem is, wool isn't durable in a sock (I have some handmade wool mittens that look just like when they were given to me ten years ago or so). I found a suggestion on a permies thread for Darn Tough socks, made in Vermont--with a lifetime guarantee which justifies the $25 cost. But these are 50% merino wool, 47% nylon (for the durability) and 3% acrylic, presumably for the elastic that holds the ankle part up. I have three pairs of pure wool socks that all have big holes in the balls and heels. I'm thinking about buying a big darning needle and some wool thread and attempting to darn them--the result would surely be too lumpy to wear in a shoe or boot but might work around the house.
Here's another, partly related question. I used to use what I call green scrubbies to watch dishes. Then I tried growing loofas, gave some away for bathing--and used some myself for washing dishes, because I'm looking for ways to eliminate plastic. It seemed to work at first but I've found that the loofas just don't have the abrasiveness of the green scrubbies. Does anyone know of something that does?