Ulla Bisgaard

While I wouldn’t say that my diet is super simple, it is restricted by multiple allergies (a low histamine diet) and what’s available on our homestead. This means that while I do preserve food we produce, I mostly eat what’s in season. My proteins are limited to eggs, poultry and rabbit meat, which we produce. We can and due grow produce all year round, due to our climate. I grow sorghum as the only grain I consume. We eat whatever fruits and berries we have available during the year, tubers like sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, radishes, cassava and arrowroot’s. Our greens changes. During the cold season we eat a lot of lettuce, collards and spinach.
I think this is also how earlier humans fed themselves. Like our diet, their diet changed with the seasons. Eating what’s available also makes you appreciate your ingredients more. Right now, we don’t have any fruits available fresh, so we stick to what was preserved, until we can get citrus again after new years.
This is actually a yearly problem, but I am planting two sapote trees, that will hopefully bridge that gab. For vitamin c we use rosehips, hibiscus and black currants, which we do have available right now. We also have beans, collards and spinach available and eggs from our chickens. I just harvested sorghum, which I mainly use for porridge. We also have a lot of herbs available. In a few months, we will get broccoli, cauliflowers, lettuce and radishes.
Anyway, while restricted to low histamine and seasonal food, it’s a diet richer in nutrients, since it’s picked fresh from the garden.

I have had the same problem, and eventually gave up. Not just because of the bad eggs, but also because of space. I preserve between 600 and 800 eggs every year, and using lime takes up a lot of space, plus when you need some, you have to dig into the buckets, which adds to the risk of cracking the eggs. Instead I froze them, until we got a freeze dryer. Now I only freeze dry eggs.
That said, due to temperatures, our chickens slow down twice a year, but doesn’t stop completely. Our ducks always take a break during the hot season where they chickens also slow down, how many they lay. The chickens then also take a break during the time we have short days, like all chickens do. Anyway, this means that we use freeze dried eggs for baking and scrambled eggs, and save the few we get, for things like boiled eggs.
I have never been able to figure out why they crack either, but found that it sometimes was hard to find clean eggs to use, since they often are very dirty when we get them. Our chickens aren’t super happy with the nice nesting boxes we use, so they have a tendency to lay eggs in the strangest places.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents worth of information. I will keep looking here, hoping someone knows why this happens. Ideally I would like to store some in lime if possible, for things like boiled eggs.

Great work. I have been considering making one, but I am too busy around the homestead. My husband says, it’s a project for when he retires.

Right now, we are in the hot season, so we don’t have a ton for fresh eating. We do have collard greens, spinach, carrots, summer squash, celery and lots of herbs. We are getting a lot of all of the herbs, except for my Italian parsley, which the grasshoppers ate.
We are also getting lots of beans, and I have harvested our first batch of sorghum grains.
Inside I have started plants, so they will be ready to plant around Halloween, when the cold season begins.
This doesn’t mean we don’t have homegrow vegetables or fruit, it’s just preserved by freezing, canning or freeze drying.
This time of year, we always have a gab in our fruit production, so I have bought two sapote trees and another avocado to close that hole. The harsh avocado is done for the season, but once our new fuerte avocado starts to produce, we will get avocado all year round.
I will say though, that rats and grasshoppers are the main reason we don’t have a lot of fresh food right now. Rats ate all of our corn, while the birds and grasshoppers started in on our sorghum.

I am growing several new ones this year. Corn, which the rats ate, so that didn’t go very well. Malabar spinach, which is a success. Has anyone tried using the berries for dyes?
Hibiscus both leafy ones and the Florida cranberry type, both are doing very well. Chinese finger roots, are growing, but haven’t seen the results yet. Pigeon peas, which I am going to keep growing, since they grow extremely well, and are giving us a lot of foot for our livestock.
I have 5 new trees to plant.
A Surinam cherry (even though some say the berries taste bad).
Yerba Mate, which will join my ever growing collection of plants for tea.
Fuerte Avocado, since we only have a hash avocado, and want avocados all year round.
White and black Sapote, because they will fit a gab in our fruit production, where we don’t have any fresh fruit or berries.
Earlier this year, I also planted regular tea (carmelia senensis) and mountain tea, so far they are doing very well.
I am also trying purple basil, which has been a huge success. We love it as hot tea and as ice tea.
Black pepper and long pepper that are doing well, but are slow growing.plantain, which are doing great
Grain of paradise, which isn’t doing as well as I hoped
Arrowroot’s and shampoo ginger, which are doing well.
Btw, the two coffee trees I planted last year, are thriving. I am looking forward to the berries.

I don’t cure my garlic because of the temperatures and humidity we get here. If cured, they dry out or go bad within 3 months. Instead we process them right after harvesting.
Garlic scapes are canned like we would green beans. We love them as a side with butter and almonds.
The top of the garlic, are cut, freeze dried and made into garlic powder. As for the cloves, we do several things:
I love  fermenting them, with either salt or honey. I also add them to other fermented vegetables. Red cabbage, fermented with garlic taste amazing, and I always add it, when I ferment mixed vegetables. It fits that my cold season crops and garlic are ready for harvest at the same time as my onions and garlic.
Garlic confit are also amazing, though some says it’s only safe if it’s frozen. I especially love making pesto with it.
We also freeze some cloves whole, and the rest minced, the portioned up into tea spoon or table spoon size and also frozen.

In our desert climate, temperatures range from 2°C to 50°C (in the sun) during the hot season. Over the past 20 years, we’ve only experienced sub-zero temperatures once. Unlike the Mediterranean climate of coastal San Diego, our inland desert presents unique challenges due to extreme heat. Adapting to this climate, distinct from the milder coastal areas, requires careful planning.
Watering and Plant Selection
All trees and plants need water until they are established, especially the subtropical varieties I grow, which thrive with consistent moisture. We use a combination of drip irrigation and sprinklers to water them efficiently. Selecting appropriate plants is critical in this environment. While desert plants like prickly pear and rock roses require minimal water—cacti produce surprising amounts of food, and rock roses rely solely on cold-season rainfall—most plants need regular irrigation.
Creating Microclimates
Unlike northern gardeners who create warm microclimates, we focus on cooling strategies. My food forest emphasizes a dense canopy to reduce evaporation, increase humidity, and lower temperatures. Tall trees with broad canopies provide shade, while mid- and low-level trees add density. For example:
•  Raspberries grow in a shaded corner under avocado, palm, hedge, and prickly pear.
•  Additional raspberries, blackberries, and alpine strawberries thrive beneath plum trees.
•  Currants and gooseberries are planted under a pecan tree for shade.
Tree collards, a low-water vegetable, work well once mature, though they need irrigation during establishment. Berry plants also require regular watering, but drip irrigation keeps our household water bill between $75 and $100 monthly.
Soil and Temperature Management
To protect roots from extreme heat and occasional cold, I use compost and straw mulch, which also reduces evaporation. On rare nights when temperatures drop to 4°C, followed by 40°C days, I’ve lost trees and fruit to these swings. To mitigate this:
•  Thick mulch insulates roots.
•  Young trees are coated with white clay or wrapped in burlap to prevent sunburn or cold damage.
•  Bananas, which are cold-sensitive, have their flowers and fruit covered with burlap when temperatures dip below 5°C to prevent frost damage and ensure fruit production.
Raised Beds and Herbs
Shade cloths are essential for my raised herb beds, where I grow over 30 varieties of herbs and spices. Without shade, many would perish in the intense heat. In the food forest, the ground layer dies back during the hot season but thrives otherwise. I grow long-rooted vegetables like daikon radishes, turnips, beets, and rutabagas, as well as brassicas (kale, collards, broccoli), leafy greens (mustard, lettuce), herbs, and edible flowers. Pigeon peas, planted this year, have adapted well to our climate. Black tea, black pepper, long pepper, and coffee plants grow under shade covers until the canopy trees mature.
Chaos Gardening and Seed Starting
I practice chaos gardening by scattering a mix of expired seeds, free seeds, wildflowers, and herbs from a mason jar across the forest floor in February, when rain is forecast. A thin layer of compost protects the seeds from birds. From February to August, sprinklers supplement rainfall, and by April, a vibrant mix of flowers and vegetables emerges, supporting the ecosystem and deterring wild rabbits from eating my blueberries.
Most plants are not direct-seeded due to the heat. Instead, I start seedlings in an indoor nursery (a repurposed large shower). This allows me to:
•  Germinate cold-season crops that struggle in high temperatures.
•  Manage overlapping harvesting and seeding schedules.
•  Transplant strong, mature plants by late October, yielding lettuce and brassicas for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
This year, I started seeding two weeks late due to a cold virus, but the process remains effective.
Future Plans
In Denmark, we relied on rainwater collection, and we plan to implement it here when time allows. This will further reduce our water usage and support sustainable gardening in our desert environment.
Final Thoughts
Your climate, with its winter season, likely requires different strategies. In Denmark, we used cold frames and greenhouses to grow fresh greens year-round. Here, shade, mulch, and careful irrigation are key to thriving in the desert. I hope this insight helps you adapt to your own gardening.
Happy Gardening

Where do you live? It will influence what you can grow. I live in Southern California. Here ar the vegetables I grow on the forest floor. Tree collards are perennials and will give you collard greens year round. They can be hard to get started, but once they established, they will keep giving you greens year round. The flavor changes with the season, being sweeter in winter than summer. Radishes of all kind, especially diakon radishes grow very well there, and the critters don’t like the taste, so they leave them alone.
Walking onions, rams, wild garlic and wild leeks grow well there too. I also seed a mix of native wild flowers, herbs and medicinal plants like calendula, mountain mint, borage, comfrey and chamomile. Lastly, I gather expired seeds of all kinds in a jar, when I have some, and toss them out in early spring. This year those seeds gave us tomatoes, amaranth and broccoli.
Happy Gardening

Kay Strayer wrote:]I've cared for so many stray animals who were on their way across the rainbow bridge.   It never gets any easier.  Seeing a life extinguished is hard.

Both of our hunting cats used to be local ferals, who decided to go into our house or follow us home. It’s amazing to see their confidence grow and fear reside. I am so proud of them, every time they make progress and start to trust us more and more. Our first one, attached himself to my husband, when he visited the local shelter, our second started hauling outside our door, then came in to quickly “steal” some food. Since he was wounded, we caught him, and took him to the vet. He spend the first 2 weeks hiding under our couch, now almost a year later, he comes to me to get groomed. This weekend he carefully tried to find the courage to sit on my lab, so I was so proud of him, when he finally jumped onto my lab, places his for legs on my should and rubs himself against my face and neck. He them pulled back, but slept next to me the rest of the day. He is the most beautiful bengal, that looks like a mini tiger. We named him Gawain, since he is a fighter with a big heart. All he wants in love, food and a warm place to sleep. He cost us 2k in vet bills, but it’s well worth it.

It’s always hard to put down an animal, including livestock, but remember that your animals had a much better life than animals at factory farms. Here we raise most of our meat, and it’s hard when we get to this stage, but I learned from a farmer friend to look at it differently. Our animals have a great life. They have plenty of space, freedom, good foods and are happy. When it’s time for culling, it’s done humanely with no stress or fear for the animals. This is what makes the difference between factory farms and homesteads. We also honor the animals by using all of the animal. Nothing is just tossed into the trash. It’s still very hard to do, but better than buying from factory farms.
Lastly, the breeds we raise are all on the endangered livestock list, because consumers don’t buy them. We work with other farmers, to ensure those breeds don’t go extinct. Over the years, three of our breeds, are now off the list, thanks to the conservation work we and others do.