Larisa Walk

Oat groats (hulled, whole oat grains) are quite long cooking. So we cook them up the night before on the woodstove, along with any dried fruit (or fresh apples in season) and some whole amaranth. We serve with some nuts and it's a satisfying breakfast ready to go.  During the summer we flake the groats and "cook" them in an insulated pot by adding boiling water. Buying the whole groats lets us flake them as needed or use them whole, our choice, and they keep well in long-term storage.

We're "retired" somewhat and are no longer maintaining our website. But you can find most of its content on the Wayback Archive here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180117013247/http://www.geopathfinder.com/Solar-Food-Drying.html
You can message me through this site if you have any questions.

It's incorrect to say that ticks need to bite for several hours to transmit an infectious organism. In the case of erlichiosis or anaplasmosis the transfer happens at the instant of the bite, much like malaria is spread by mosquito bites. Some of the nasties, like Lyme, do give you a bit of time to get the tick removed. Better to keep them from biting at all to be on the safe side. I know this from experience.

No microinverters on any of our panels. And both of the lightning strikes were on systems that were well grounded. At our house, the lightning hit our neighbor's small wind turbine. It was grounded at all of the guy wire tie downs, with all of them grounded to each other also. But the lightning blew the blade from her wind turbine, went down the ground wires, traveled through the wet soil over to our TV/radio antenna (about 150' away), up that ground wire and fried the inside of the antenna booster (we could see this when we took it down and opened it up). From there it traveled down the coax cable to our house where we had unplugged it from the TV/radio as we always do when there's a storm. When it got to that unplugged cable end, hanging about a foot away from the TV, there was a loud bang/flash as the lightning jumped to the TV. From there it went into the house wiring and took out our Tri-Metric meter, then out to the shed where it took out 2 PV controllers, then out along some of the PV input wires to the furthest distant PV array, about 250' away. The 3 PV panels on that rack were the ones that were toast. The 4th panel on that rack was the one that had the freeze damage a few months earlier and had been removed already. Of course, all of this damage occured at nearly the same moment - flash/bang/ZAPPED!!! The neighbor also had current travel from the wind turbine to her house where it blew an electrical box off the wall. All of these systems were well grounded but when lightning gets into wet soil, all bets are off. Too much excitement for this homesteader! By the way, my husband took apart the TV and found the burned circuit breaker, resoldered it and it still works after many years. All of the other electronics had to be replaced.

We've actually had 3 dead PV panels that were fried by lightning and put out about zero watts now.  The dead panels look OK to the naked eye but they must be cooked in some way. This also happened to a friend of ours who was sitting on his porch when it happened. His 6 panels didn't take a direct hit (the lightning either hit the ground and traveled up the grounding wire or was ball lightning in the air nearby) but the end result is the same as ours. We've been off grid for over 40 years and both of these lightning incidents are the first we've encountered in our experience or with many friends that are also off grid. But they can still be recycled into building panels for little sheds, either roof or walls depending on the desired use.

Another PV panel of ours had its glass crack into about 1/2" pieces, but it held together like safety glass. This happened one really cold winter morning after it was about -25F. Apparently the frame and glass contracted at different rates and the frame got too "tight" for the glass, causing it to crack. That same morning a double pane glass window on a solar thermal heater also had the same damage, except that one crumbled into pieces, a big mess to clean up in the snow. We attempted to repair the PV panel with an epoxy coating that is meant to fill in cracks and hold it together, but the panel now puts out about a third of what it should. Sometimes stuff happens despite our best efforts.

After many years of being over run with summer squash, and drying slices of the zucchini Costata Romanescu, we've given up on them entirely. Instead we're growing Candystick Delicata which makes a fine summer squash when picked immature, but if you miss picking the fruits they mature into a very nice winter squash. I think most varieties of winter squash are edible in the immature, "green" stage as a "summer squash", skins and seeds included. This is what we do with any immature winter squash at the end of the season when we harvest the remnants of the patch before a killing frost. I really like dual use plantings and not feeling bad about all of the over-sized fruits anymore.

Walking onions multiply from the bottom up. When you harvest a clump in early spring, divide it into individual plants and put at least one back to keep your patch going, or more to increase production for next year. When the patch starts to send out the "flowering" stalk the onions culinary window is closing for the season as the stalk is tough and hollow. This is a good time to dig all of what's left and dehydrate the onions by slicing the white parts of the plant into 1/4" thick rounds. The top sets can be harvested later in the summer when they are mature and getting "papery", before they bend over and start walking across your garden. You can share with other gardeners (we originally got our start from a friend about 42 years ago). They can be stored for potting up over the winter and "forcing" for some fresh green onion cuttings in the kitchen (using a shallow pot fill the surface with bulbils, like you would do for hyacinth or daffy bulbs). When we had sheep, we used to harvest all the top sets and feed them out as treats over the winter (they would even keep in a bucket in our open-sided shed and still be able to sprout the next spring). You can eat the top sets if you're desparate enough to peel them.  What a terrific, reliable crop that comes back year after year, even in Minnesota. Even if the plant is mowed off, or grazed down by wildlife, it should recover enough to give you a harvest next year, as long as it doesn't get mowed again.

Creeping Charlie, AKA Creeping Jenny, Ground Ivy, Gill-Over-The-Ground, or whatever name you want to call it, is a great ground cover in the garden for several reasons. Bees love the flowers in the spring. It helps to cover bare spaces to prevent erosion. In pathways it's tough enough to walk on and smells nice. It makes a great permanent ground cover in raspberry and asparagus plantings. But.....it can be too much competition for small seedlings like onions and carrots. Fortunately it's shallow rooted and can be pulled or hoed easily enough, unlike white dutch clover which is often promoted for use as pathway ground cover (and even more aggressive at taking over beds). Plants that have been pulled can be used as mulch in beds where ground ivy is more welcome. I would never want to eliminate this wild weed from my garden as it's too helpful overall.

We use rubber tourniquets, cutting them down to size. We have also used rubber bands in the past. For wax we use candle wax. Light a large candle and let it get a pool of melted wax around the wick. Dip the top, cut end of a scion into it after bench grafting. We also wrap the grafting rubber with a light-weight, double-sided tape to make a moisture seal while the graft calluses. Never have had the "right" stuff yet have done hundreds of successful grafts over the decades.

Apples. They can be stored for fresh eating, especially with the late fall/winter varieties. We solar dry apple "chunks" or slices, about a bushel at a time (older batches from prior years get "downgraded" to chicken feed next time there is an abundant crop). Then there's cider.  A few gallons of cider are set aside each year to make vinegar. Several gallons are "canned" in half gallon jars. This past year we had 55 gallons of extra cider and we boiled that down on our sauna woodstove into 55 pints of cider syrup. Plus we sold about 20 gallons of vinegar and a few gallons of fresh cider and some fresh apples as well. We also had an over abundance of tomatoes this past year and traded 100+ pounds for 20 pounds of blueberries. Tomatoes need processing right away so we eat, dry, can and barter quickly. On kitchen staple crops like both of these we no longer put up just enough for the year, but rather do about twice as much as who knows what the next season will bring.