Ulla Bisgaard

I would like to track the changes in temperatures and humidity levels throughout the food forest garden. I want to track it long term to see if it’s possible to change a desert environment into a functional subtropical environment. The plan is to pace the sensors in the different micro climates and in the general areas, to prove or disprove my theory, that it should be possible to make those environmental changes using permaculture principles and a layers food forest garden.
So, how do I do this? Are there sensors that can transfer dater into our computer system to track it over the next 5 to 10 years?
Does anyone have any ideas?

February on the homestead
February are usually a quiet month, but not so much this year. Strawberry plugs arrived late, and I struggled with exhumation.
Gawain (one of our former feral cats) has started, what looks like courting me. Once or twice a day, he will bring me a “healthy snack”, which is usually a rat, gopher or rabbit. I am not fond of the gifts, but are accepting them with grace. The reason we got his, was so he could cut down on rats, gophers and wild rabbits.
Arthur the lazy cat, brings them in live, to get my husband to kill them for him. It’s not a popular approach to more cuddles. We have had to pull out the fridge twice, and the couch in the living room, he isn’t winning any popularity with that approach.
In the raised bed garden, we are harvesting 12 pound cabbages. I have about 12 of those, so we are making kraut, and freeze drying a lot. We also blanch and freeze some.
We have harvested about 10 pounds of broccoli and 23 pounds of cauliflower.
We are also harvesting Chinese cabbages and diacon radishes for making kimchi.  Next up I have to preserve my wasabi and mustard.
I also had to do some reserve on freeze dried eggs. All of mine smelled like fish. It turns out, that this happens when the chickens get lots of omega 3. They are still fine to use, but mostly for baking, since you can’t smell or then. This year I am going to split the eggs into whiles and yolks. We already have a lot of freeze dried whole eggs. This enables us to use them for more foods.
We also got about 1/2 of our lemons canned and use the peels for zest and lemon extract.
The month has been hard on me though. I have been very tired, and it turned out I have another blood infection. I am now in the hospital, but will hopefully be send home on Friday. I can’t sleep when I am admitted, so I am, very fired.
Because of this, I am behind of my chores, but that’s okay, the works aren’t going anywhere LOL
I did manage to prune our raspberries and blackberries and pull out a lot of grass.
I will continue this, when I am, feeling better.

As my kids are moving out and I am getting older, I am trying to develop a flexible visual system for planting and harvesting. My memory isn’t very good, so I depend a lot on reminders. We are in the hottest part of California, so we grow food all year round. The goal is to produce at least 90% of the food we need, with enough left to sell at the farmers market, or trade for what we can’t produce.
Currently we have 21 large raised beds and a 3300 square foot food forest garden.
Visual reminders works best for me, due to my memory issues, since I see it constantly. To do this I am using a whiteboard, a binder with my own plant catalog and spreadsheets on my computer.
The whiteboard centers around a round calendar divided into our three growing seasons (cold, warm and hot) and surrounded by the plants. It also has my todo lists and deliveries. When my kids are here, they check the board and usually take care of some of the things on the todo list. Plant names are on magnets, that also works on the metal plant markers I use in the garden, so I don’t forget what I planted.
The binder contains:
a catalog of the plants we grow, but isn’t finished, since I am constantly using different varieties of annuals.
It has a calendar that shows our fruit and berry harvest times. My goal is to have fruit and or berries available fresh year round.  It has a plant catalog of what we grow, but only a short line on when to grow with a few notes. Last it has a list of medicinal uses and plants I want to try in the future and notes on companion planting.
My spreadsheets keeps track of our production, income/savings and expenses. The spreadsheets keep my husband from freaking out when I add more plants.
Right now I really need some input, especially on the whiteboard. What can I do to better organize it? Should I color code pr season, type, in an entirely different way or not at all?
Should I keep my plant catalog as lists of plants or make it bigger to include subspecies,  varieties, notes on use, growing instructions and experiences with it?

Well, I say no too. Anything with meat in it, needs to be pressure canned to be safe. Even my grandmother knew that, and she learned from her mother in the late 19th century. She always said, that waterbath canning broth, often made for sour broth or broth that made them sick. Since I use an electric pressure canner, I often find, that pressure canning are easier and less work than water bath canning. Also, I switched from waterbath canning to steam canning a few years ago, and it’s much better/faster and easier to use for things that doesn’t need a pressure canner.

My parents were poor for a long time. They lived in a 1 bedroom apartment with no toilet and only cold water. They lived there with two small children, until my grandfather died and we moved into their house together with my grandmother. After that their finances got better, but my mother was always very fugal about food. To feed us all my father would go fishing and hunting. The fish and meat was then preserved, some in salt, some smoked, some dried and some frozen. My mother together other women and children, would travel to the national parks where we would forage for mushrooms, chestnuts, rosehips, nuts, pine tips, pine cones, ferns, elderberries, blueberries and so many other things. Later meat was bought directly from the farmer, usually as a whole or half animal. My mother did the butchering herself.
Nothing went to waste in that household. To stretch ground meat, she would start by adding salt to the meat and mix it in. Then she would add ice cold water, which the meat sucked in because of the salt. This by itself added 50% more volume to the ground meat.
We used to get day old bread from the baker, who often didn’t charge anything for it. The best dread we would eat as is, the rest was dried and ground into breadcrumbs. The bakers leftover cakes and cookies, was mixed together with a little rum extract. Then it was shaped into balls. These were served with lunch or as a dessert. My parents also brewed their own beer and wine, which is how I learned how to do it.
They also grew a lot of vegetables and fruits, after they moved in with my grandmother.
This upbringing has definitely influenced how we live today. Despite all of this work, there was still times when we didn’t get enough to fill us up and I learned to eat food even when it made me sick. Food is not something that was wasted. For me having our homestead with food security, is the most important thing in my life. It simply makes me feel safe, not just knowing that we have enough to eat, but also that I have taught my children how to  achieve food independence.
That said, fugal living wasn’t just about food. It was also about mending instead of trashing things, sewing our own clothes, knitting and crochet, and making our own tools. It is hard work, but it’s also honest important work.

I always end up with some kind of bumper crop. Fall 2024 I grew 800 pounds of winter squash and pumpkins. If it happened now, I would probably use a large part as food for my chickens. At the time I decided to do a variety of things. I made lots of pumpkin soup, some was dried and some canned. I dried or canned a lot in cubes, I shredded a lot and made some into powder. We still have a lot of it in the freezer, so right now I am working hard on using them up. I found an amazing recipe for pumpkin custard, which I have then frozen. I also made lots of pumpkin cookies and muffins. Since I freeze dried a lot too, I probably won’t need to grow any for another year or two. The next time, I will save a lot as chicken feed. The powders I use for baking, in my coffee etc.
Lemons are also something we get a lot off. We grow Meyer lemons, which have a thinner peel making them ideal for candying, extracts and lemoncello. I also dry a lot for tea, make lemonade concentrate (both canned and dried as powder) plus zest and juice, which are frozen in ice cube trays and stored in the freezer. Extra fruit I usually cut into cubes and freeze for use in smoothies. Kale, collards and other greens are dried and ground into a powder, which I also add to juice and smoothies.
Extra vegetables are dried and made into what I call broth bags. Once it’s time to make broth, I just add carcasses, water and a broth bag. It makes making broth a breeze.
I also use extra vegetables to make bouillon cubes. I add the vegetables, aromatics and optional meat to a pot and cook it. Then I add salt and blend it all. Next I transfer it to ice cube trays and freeze them. They are good frozen, but I like freeze drying them, since I save on freezer space that way, and dried I can also send some to my college kids.

Slippery elm root and Marshmallow root (or the whole plant) might work.

I have three rock roses, which technically aren’t real roses. Their leaves make a strong antibiotic tea, that while very effective tastes extremely bitter. I add honey and licorice root to the tea, so it’s easier to get down. I have three different varieties, since they all work for different types of infections including viral infections, but also have other properties. One of them has a sap, that works fantastic for shock.
I also have 2 roses (one is Rosa regusa, don’t remember what the other one is) one isn’t doing too good, I think it’s too hot here, the other one though, gave me 2 quarts of nice sized hips. It’s also taking over the area, so I will have to prune it soon. Also, the one that doesn’t produce hips yet, has edible flowers that I dry and use for makeup or as a food color. I love using roses for cooking and color, and want more, so I can make a nice hydrosol.

Jane Mulberry wrote:Ulla's link for water-bath canned lemon curd wouldn't work for me. I think the Facebook group must require membership before showing the recipe instructions. I found this one from Ashley Adamant instead:  https://practicalselfreliance.com/canning-lemon-curd/

Good to know it can be preserved, though she does say it's only good for 3-4 months.

I thought the link worked, but since it doesn’t, I have added screenshots

Kate Downham wrote:.

How long does your lemon curd keep for? All the recipes I've seen have said to only keep it for around a month in the fridge. I'd love to find a shelf-stable recipe.

I use a recipe where it’s canned. The canning process makes it shelf stable.
Here is a link to the recipe Canned lemon curd

Since the link doesn’t work, I have added screenshots of the recipe.