Ra Kenworth

13 years ago, I was container gardening and learning about tomato blossom end rot and a duckduckgo internet search led me to permies. It was years later that I actually registered and started participating, but then I was mostly offline.

I'm also a barometer. Not really surprising as we are mostly water, but I get a sinus headache when the air is pregnant, that sweeps away within 30 seconds to 3-5 minutes before a downpour is going to start.

I have a large flock of free range mixed pigeons, mostly 1/4-3/4 giant runt crossed with homer for intelligence and speed. Their moveable residence is a 70s running GMC motorhome that has all openings protected with 1/4" mesh to prevent weasels because they will even chew through wood framing once they've decided to break in.. Great for free range birds for overnight protection and their raising of chicks. Edit: I do empty out the pigeons when I want to move it -- I have a winter location downwind from a shipping container. (Exhaust fumes).

My staple crops in a humid 4a are typically Swiss chard, garlic, summer and winter squash, stinging nettles, lambs quarters, rhubarb, radishes, turnip, radish and carrot greens, buckwheat greens, sorrel and chicory, asparagus, tomatos and peppers, beans, and lots of peas, from field pea sprouts to podded peas, turnips and carrots, onions when I'm lucky, and a wide variety of berries. Radishes, turnips and carrots are excellent for holding up the slopes on compost hills. I experiment with other crops but those are my standbys.

I am not self sufficient but I don't buy vegetables. I do buy a lot of lentils and some rice, and arctic char and occasional red meat, preferably grass fed beef liver, tongue, and bones.

Yes Judith a summer kitchen is the answer: mine is simply an apartment sized upright freezer directly outside the door that doubles as a countertop, where single burners and crockpots can be used without heating up the house.

Acer negundo, also known as the box elder, boxelder maple, Manitoba maple or ash-leaved maple, is a species of maple native to North America from Canada to Honduras.People call them parking lot maples or just weeds, because they grow super fast.

They produce a firewood that is closer to soft wood than hardwood, but can be tapped for syrup and require about twice the sap for syrup (but if you rely on scooping the ice off the top early morning you can save a lot of energy on reducing).

They are also super for starting a tree windbreaker -- they get severely pruned or topped quite young as they have a habit of rotting out in the middle, and becoming a danger to rooftops in a storm. One plants Birch downwind from the Manitoba maple, and conifers. The Manitoba maple protects the other trees until they are established -- a common prairie technique. They are really hard to kill so tapping a young Manitoba maple is fine. And of course it's a maple so any advice about eating young leaves applies.

Oh sorry just stimulants? Black tea. It's my standby up north because coffee is so expensive! I come back completely cured of cravings. I think I have enough for a couple of years. Cheap stuff in bags. I can't grow it in zone 4b

Apart from sporadic volunteers upwind in my wild leeks patch, I started a patch of asparagus berries from my own plants by taking the whole dry stalks with berries attached, and placed them over the shaded plateau section of one of my compost hills/ windrows/ snow bank. That was the asparagus debris from fall 2024. I only covered slightly with leaf debris and a seedling commercial mix soil, so covering berries with about 1/2" of soil, days before the first snow.

That spot gets little sun, but enough, and the soil is fairly acidic, but rich in pigeon manure. Asparagus prefers 24-30" of rich soil and plenty of moisture in a cooler climate with slightly acidic soil. I'm zone 4a in Quebec at 850-1000', moraine, mountain mixed forest. It's moist enough with heavy clouds that wild orchids grow here.

I had to water all last year, and I am providing minimal watering this year -- and added a few more oak and maple leaf debris last week because the weather is unseasonably warm.

Sorry about the plastic soil bag -- when I started this patch 2024, I was on crutches so I bought soil in bags which I was able to maneuver, and that bag was the back of the compost pile of mostly kitchen scraps in various cardboard boxes, plus my pigeons helping. Those bags really helped me define the sides of the hill and most are now gone, but this one will have to stay until I can remove it without disturbing the seedlings.

I had to cover the seedlings with a wire cage that had 4"x6" holes on the bottom, so that my puppy didn't destroy them, while learning to leave the compost hills and grow beds alone. When I lifted the cages late summer, the few seedlings stuck to the cage got transplanted -- something asparagus really hate. They survived with intensive care but didn't come up this year. Lesson learned: leave them alone and don't waste time trying to save transplants.

I see some of our members here have had success with transplanting, and no doubt the roots weren't yanked out! I do hope to transplant most of this bed in fall to my son's house an hour away, preparing a spot in advance and digging down a whole foot before attempting to move these newbies in clumps. And protect them with a cage from the deer he gets visiting .

(We have agreed that when he takes over possession this September, I plant for the deer. Clover, yellow birch, a second apple tree, wild cherry, rubris, and plant buckwheat -- I digress but I do love the deer!)

Fenders on my 1979 full time 4x4 Dodge flat bed (with bolt on sides and a 88 Dakota plastic bed liner for manure and other sloppy loads)
A previous owner was a welder with a wheelchair. He also modified the hood to drop forward.

There is a saying that a good soup is inherited.

In winter, I buy food once monthly so the fresh vegetables go into a soup or stew within days. I keep it vegetarian to ensure it's safe when boiled up daily on a rapid boil.

Once I'm sick of it, I will pile it into used containers and lock it away outdoors where animals can't get at it, and it doesn't need a freezer because it's cold enough outdoors in winter. All those containers go together labeled and dated.

So I tend to have a cruciferous based soup, a root veg soups, squash based soups, and I can pick and choose from these assorted popsicles and make a stew out of the soup bases, adding lentils or peas without having to go through the soaking required with beans, or, I add cooked frozen beans. Cooked meat gets added last if any.

I really enjoy salsa based food as well, so a favorite thing I do is slow cook meat in salsa before freezing which helps prevent freezer burn.

Before springtime I start sorting out what is going in the freezers.

I have discovered frozen baked peas in bone broth and beans baked in salsa that were 18 months old and still as good as the day they were frozen.