I don’t know about you, but here at my homestead we’ve been watching the goings-on in New York City, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas and elsewhere across the country (including our own small city 20 miles up the road) that comprise the burgeoning and growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement. As the authoritarian servants of the richest 1% of the nation’s population have moved to isolate and abuse the professional activists, the unemployed, the homeless who have gravitated to the encampments, the juxtaposition with astroturfed, billionaire-funded “Tea Party” demonstrations where denizens were allowed to openly carry guns and assault members of Congress is dramatic. I admit I feel a little guilty to be so enjoying the gorgeous fall colors while people are putting their lives on the line to demand equality and an end to taxpayer bailouts of the criminal 1%.

It is glaringly obvious that the well-funded astroturf ‘movement’ enjoys a far greater share of our supposed First Amendment freedoms than the downtrodden 99% of people who just want to make the rich share in the suffering they order our political class to impose on the rest of us as ‘austerity’. So far the demonstrations have remained entirely peaceful even when police officers start pepper-spraying demonstrators (and their fellow police officers), or when the riot squad barrels into the crowd to choke and fling demonstrators to the ground. Reminds me of 1968. I know ‘they’ say that if you can remember the 1960s you probably weren’t really there, but that was one action-packed year full of billy-clubs and fire hoses and cracked skulls… and that was just the Democratic National Convention. It was still a bit less than 3 years before the Powers that Be started killing college kids wholesale for rudely NOT volunteering for that generation’s dirty big war, but let’s not fool ourselves. The very same thing is possible in 2011, and I’m pretty sure those doing the demonstrating across the country are aware of that possibility.

Homesteaders like us long ago gave up the idiot-box hypnosis drug, get our news from other sources – internet around here, along with the region’s college newspapers and the several alternative rags produced in the nearest city. We have moved physically to take as much charge of our own sustenance as possible, and forever plan and work for more. We’re ahead of the “income inequality” game because we care much less about being filthy rich than we care about or families, friends, environment and self-sufficiency regardless of what happens on Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. We don’t watch FoxNews propaganda or MSNBC’s endless prison-porn when we could be out there prepping the beds for winter, or digging the new spring to power the ram pump, or simply sitting on a log on the ridge and quietly watching the leaves change color.

We’re a different kind of ‘elites’ in the current sociopolitical struggles. We’re not the money-hoarders or the Snidely Whiplash home-stealers or even The Donald making a big show of firing hard working people just because we get a kick out of cruelty. I think that makes us members of the 99% who are not The Donald (or Tim Geithner, or JP Morgan or MERS or the day-traders on Wall Street). So while we certainly aren’t planning to close up the ‘stead and head for the city to camp out on somebody’s public lawn, I have gotten together with a few friends to discuss things we might be willing and able to do in support of those who have put their bodies on the line to say things that desperately need saying.

I remember the tales of apple-sellers from my grandparents who struggled through Great Depression-I back in the 1930s. Mom’s parents had to leave Miami when no one could afford haircuts anymore (grandpa was a barber), moved to my great-grandparent’s farm in Georgia to wait it out in a meager sharecropper’s shack. Aside from the vegetables and two pigs a year my great-grandparents raised for their own sustenance, there were peaches. Acres and acres of peaches in a well-kept orchard my mother remembered most fondly as a young tomboy with no financial woes to trouble her childhood. Grandpa would take bushels of peaches – his ‘share’ for helping with the harvest – to Atlanta in a mule-drawn wagon, where he sold them like apples on the street for a nickel apiece. Mom and her siblings looked forward to spending their dollar gift from grandpa’s annual efforts on big stashes of penny candy and an occasional pair of shoes. Well, not Mom on the shoe thing, she preferred going barefoot and remained that way her whole life.

Dad’s family lived in Cincinnati, grandpa was a railroad man charged with [not quite] policing the many teenaged ‘hobos’ who rode the rails in those days from city to city looking for work. Sometimes he’d bring a particularly lean teen home with him, granny would feed him well, put him to work in the back-lot garden, feed him again and gift him with bagged leftovers after a night in the barn before grandpa took him back to the rail yard the next day. Dad was 7 when the Depression began. Got a job with the newspaper hawking the late editions on the sidewalks. The paper wanted a nickel, so he charged seven cents so as to make two cents a pop. Told me people would often give him a dime then refuse change. Helps to be really cute, I suppose.

At any rate, it was clear to me all my life listening to the family tales of hardship that we are not and never were among this society’s elites. As Great Depression-II sweeps the country it seems clear to me that what the visibly courageous demonstrators need most is some of that good old fashioned food that us country folk can help to supply (since we’ve no money to send).

Which brings me around again to apples. The apple harvest here in the southern Appalachians is mostly finished for this season, but there are still orchards open to gleaning, will be until they’re bare or hard freeze, whichever comes first. A few very good apples still in the trees if you’ve got a kid or two to do the climbing, lots and lots of slightly bruised fruit under the trees for picking up. These make fine cider, and at least half an apple to slice and dry now that the wood stove is working nights. A group of neighbors and friends from the city – most kids from the community college where grandsons are enrolled – gleaned an orchard outside of Hendersonville week before last. Netted three bushels of good apples, and ended up with a full dozen gallons of pressed cider.

For a change, we didn’t donate the fruit and juice to the regional food bank where gleaned and ‘extra’ produce has been going all summer. This time we loaded it into the trunk and back seat of a little car scheduled to transport a couple of the college kids to New York so they could join the demonstration during their week of fall break. They got home Monday but still haven’t uploaded their pictures. They said they gave the apples away to demonstrators, didn’t last long but it got them a preferred place in line for when the pizzas ordered by supporters all over the world showed up. The cider made them several fast friends, heated over a little sterno stove to help take the chill off during long nights.

They said they talked up the gleaning projects and promoted the great homesteading and grower’s market ‘scene’ in our beautiful region. Don’t know if they managed to convince any of the big city dwellers to consider choosing this kind of life, but they did plant some seeds. Apple seeds, to be exact. If it all falls apart people are going to have to rearrange their lives accordingly. There’s still a lot of resistance to the idea that the 1% (millionaires and billionaires) would really let that happen, but at the point when job-insecure police forces are ordered to start bashing the heads of those who champion union contracts and middle class job security it’s darned foolish to believe they won’t. There is no social conscience where there is obscene wealth and greed for more. Never will be.

And so the pendulum swings. I don’t know any billionaire homesteaders. Would bet you don’t know any either, though there’s no doubt a few billionaires that own country estates and working farms. The economic situation is obviously not scheduled to get any better any time soon for the impoverished masses and winter’s coming on fast. Even after the demonstrators break camp there will still be great need in this country. I hope that all my homesteading readers, and all wannabe homesteaders out there growing a few tomatoes and maybe some beans in their yards, will bear this in mind when planning for next spring’s production. There is opportunity here to help, we should be at the forefront of that. No one should go hungry in this country, though millions do. Every day, even as politicians are busy slashing budgets for things like food stamps, school lunch programs, and WIC.

Politicians work for the 1%, not for the 99%. They and their paramilitary forces will continue to abuse the 99% on orders from the overlords. And no, they don’t care how many of us starve or freeze or die from simple lack of health care. The real change that must happen will come bottom-up, not top-down. Solidarity.

Occupy Wall Street

Now that the autumn foliage is turing all kinds of impossible colors, many people are “hitting the trails” to enjoy some brisk outdoor exercise while viewing the autumnal crazy-quilt as it brightens day by day. Both city dwellers and rural denizens have embraced the union of the Rails to Trails projects locally, across their states, all over the nation and crossing international boundaries with the recently popular pastime known as Geocaching.

What, readers may ask, is this “geocaching” thing? According to its official website, geocaching is “a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and then share their experiences online.” Because of the unique location of my homestead within ‘spitting distance’ of the Mount Mitchell trail from Graphite, abutting the Pisgah National Forest and comprising the interior of the primary omega loop of the Round Knob loops of the Norfolk-Southern grade over the eastern continental divide, we have known about this geocaching phenomenon for years. There are at least three caches within 5 miles of us, and there are summer camps just up the road near the trail-head that ‘specialize’ in organizing geocaching expeditions for teenage campers. Thus for geocachers to join with the Rails to Trails projects is a match mae it… natural world heaven!

According to the geocaching website there are 1,540,286 active geocaches at various obscure spots worldwide, and more than 5 million active geocachers who spend time seeking them out. Some are bikers, some are hikers, all enjoy the outdoors and being able to pinpoint their position on the globe via satellite device. How these interests work with the Rails to Trails projects is to enlist dedicated geocachers to help the Conservancy produce GPS-accurate maps of various landmarks along their converted trails. Once mapped the trails then become popular destinations for geocachers, who just might set up some caches here and there for others to find. Win-win situation all around.

The Rails to Trails Conservancy offers a site called TrailLink that uses your current GPS position to return a map overlay leading to its trails in your immediate area. Or it can be searched for any area you may be planning to travel to for an autumn break and some dedicated leaf-looking. In my neighborhood a mountain biking group recently purchased a lodge nearby educated to the many mountain bikers who use our trails and bikeways and such during the ‘nice’ 9 months of the year, including the annual “Assault on Mount Mitchell” and the later descent from, which makes those days not a very good time to try hiking. They have a nice geocaching station with its own GPS and really nice heads-up displays, and regularly updates its trail and road maps with GPS data collected by bikers who stay there.

Almost every state has a Rails to Trails organization working to buy up the right-of-ways to old, no longer used railroad lines that are converted into trails. This gorgeous October weather beckons, and the trees are busy putting on their most colorful gypsy costuming for your delight. So grab a pack and some hiking boots – or your handy-dandy bicycle – and your cell phone GPS, and head out into the countryside to enjoy the season’s fine offerings. Some of you may enjoy it so much you start thinking seriously about joining us homesteaders out in the boonies where we get to enjoy all the seasons and all the ‘best-of’ our regions have to offer.

Happy trails!

Links:

Rails to Trails Conservancy
Geocaching.com
TrailLink
Good Roads, Rails & Trails

In my last post, Hunger in America, I mentioned several ways we homesteaders could participate in helping to get food into the bellies of our neighbors who are going hungry, and whose supplemental aid is being slashed wholesale by the government. The situation is not going to get better any time soon, so an expansion on the notion of gleaning fields in your rural area is timely.

On a visit to my sister who lives south of our homestead near the South Carolina border brought the situation home to us graphically last week. I’m sure most have heard about farm labor shortages in a number of states this season, which have left fields planted in the spring and early summer to rot in place. On our drive to Sis’s we go past a fairly extensive truck farm with acres of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, melons, pumpkins, sweet corn, etc. that until last year supplied area groceries with fresh local produce and a big produce stand managed by the Mexican-American family who owns the land. We noticed with some shock that the crops were literally rotting in the fields right next to the road and going back for half a mile in both directions – something we’d never seen before.

When we got home I fired off an email to our regional food bank about the situation, suggesting ways to get in touch with the owner of the crops and perhaps setting up a gleaning operation that would salvage what can be salvaged. Even volunteered myself and at least a couple of grandkids for the operation if I could have a bushel of too-ripe tomatoes out of the deal to preserve.

I heard back early the next morning from the Gleaning Coordinator regionally for the Society of St. Andrew, and the mission’s on asap (still waiting to hear). Have the grands out raiding the grocery store back alleys for boxes and crates, so we’ll be ready. Another farm a few miles south has offered its potato fields for gleaning as well, so we’re hoping for a big turnout. I’ll be bringing garden gloves, snippers, a big straw hat and lots of spring water, luckily the heat is back down into the 80s during the day now that the 95-100+ heat spell has broken. Will bring the pitchforks and spades as well for the potatoes if we get that far.

Seems that farmers who are suffering the shortage of field workers are beginning to hear about gleaning, and are offering their idle fields to those who are willing to work for free just to make sure the food gets to hungry people. Most of us live in rural regions and know our neighboring farmers well enough to keep up with what’s happening locally. I encourage my readers to start keeping track of harvests and contacting their neighbors about gleaning what the machinery leaves behind to be donated to food banks. Some areas have fraternal organizations like Ruritan and such with women’s auxiliaries who will get together and can up quite a lot of the donated fresh produce so the very ripe food can still be salvaged.

And don’t forget to allot some time out of your own busy schedule to help out in gleaning the fields. It’s time spent with neighbors and new friends on the front lines of fighting hunger, it helps establish some new working coalitions that will be important as things get worse in the political world, and it can be quite a lot of fun. The apple harvest starts early next month in the next county over, and many of the big orchard owners encourage gleaning once their main crops are in. People bring their big cider presses and keep a steady liquid supply coming from slightly bruised fall that the children gather, and sometimes bluegrass bands will set up in the shade to pick and grin and keep us singing on the job.

If you find some fields that are either not being harvested or are freshly harvested with leavings, please do contact the Society of St. Andrew or organize through your own local food bank and/or civic club to salvage the food. Don’t forget to let your local high school and community colleges know that gleaning operations are ongoing, these can be an excellent source of able volunteers. Some schools will even give the kids credit for their work as part of social service requirements!

I was somewhat surprised on one of my web surfing jaunts to see a blog dedicated to ways of saving money weigh in against the notion of doing odd jobs and building projects yourself. Because for my homestead – and very likely yours as well – if we didn’t do our own odd jobs and building projects, then no needful jobs or building projects would ever get done. So I’ll take the opportunity presented to offer a rebuttal to some of the objections logged in the Money Bucket blog.

The article is Saving Money – Or Not – With DIY Projects, and it’s worth a read if you’re genuinely unsure of whether or not you’ve got the ability to tackle a project on your own. Of course for big projects it’s very important to understand going in exactly what will be necessary – time, tools, materials and a certain degree of skill. Homesteaders already know about budgeting their time toward the “work in progress” that describes our way of life, as there are always a dozen or more projects and repairs that need doing. Most of us, if we’ve been living this way for some years, have amassed more tools than many city-folk even know exist. In fact, for most projects the primary concern is coming up with the money to purchase the materials, and making sure we’ve got every little nut, bolt, pipe, sealant and extraneous parts before we start.

Perhaps the author is speaking more to urbanites than those of us who live out in the boonies on purpose and strive continually to be ever more self-sufficient. When the faucet washers wear out and start wasting our precious water supply (and driving us crazy with drips), or the drain clogs or cracks, or the windows break or the door needs replacing, we aren’t usually inclined to call a plumber or contractor. Heck, many of us would laugh at the very idea of paying some stranger extra to drive from town to our property and repair or replace what we could repair or replace, for ten times more than we could do the job for. But even urbanites with some tools, patience and an ability to turn screws/wenches could fix a leaky sink or hang a door without breaking the budget.

DIY disasters can cost big money to fix. Before starting any home improvement project you will need to understand each step from start to finish. Research potential pitfalls and problems you may encounter along the way to determine if the project is over your head. Be honest with yourself because your enthusiasm will quickly wear thin if something goes wrong – and if you don’t know what you’re doing, things can head south quickly.

That paragraph in the Money Bucket article made me chuckle. Sure, the author is talking about ‘home improvement’ more than simple repairs, but we homesteaders are quite used to those type of projects. We remodeled our kitchen last summer, which included replacing a window and door, re-siding the exterior wall, re-plumbing so we could move the sink, re-wiring, installing new cabinets and countertops, removing a bar to make room for the dining table we inherited, drywall installation, re-framing, flooring and insulating the attic space, and even reinforcing the main load bearing beam. It cost a pretty penny for all the materials, and we did have to replace the drill twice (old chestnut and locust beams are literally hard as rock). And of course things discovered along the way once we got into the walls and attic weren’t planned for but had to be dealt with anyway. Such is life.

Hiring a reputable contractor to complete an upgrade at your home generally gives you the peace of mind that the job is done right the first time. You will pay dearly for that peace of mind, but in some situations it can be worth every penny.

Heh. That’s kind of a surprising bit of advice to give to people described in the first paragraph of the article as “…planning to sell and need to update your home to make it more attractive to potential buyers…” I mean, if you have to pay dearly to upgrade your home in order to sell it to somebody else, then your improvements aren’t likely to cover the costs in this awful real estate environment. If you’re already underwater on that mortgage, digging yourself in deeper isn’t going to help.

It’s a little different if your home is where you plan to live for the rest of your life, but not much different when money’s tight. I had no kitchen all summer (it wasn’t officially finished until Thanksgiving), had to cook on the grill out back while a big sheet of plastic served as a front wall to my house. We all worked very hard, this is not the kind of project that allows much time for other things, and it involves everyone. It even upset the dogs and cats. But if we could have found a contractor to do that much structural damage to a hundred year old chestnut cabin with a crew of a dozen, it would have cost more than we paid for our entire homestead. Literally. And no, that would NOT have been “worth every penny.”

Sure, those kind of huge projects – new roof and/or installation of solar panels/wind or hydro generators, reworking the entire water supply (my next big project), tearing out walls or floors to get to wiring or plumbing, building a barn, etc. aren’t things one undertakes lightly. Or often, if you can help it. And it certainly helps to build up your confidence in the meantime by tackling small repair and replace projects first, learning to handle all the tools, and such. And exercising your mind about how to plan clever ways of getting around serious issues that may be encountered.

It’s all good for you, and just puts that much more of yourself into the overall Being we lovingly call “Homestead.” Good planning works too, so that several projects can be tied into one – the solar panels at the same time the new roof goes up. Replacing the old water-guzzler toilet with a low-flow at the same time you replace the sink and shower. Going ahead with the better insulation when any section of wall comes out. Things like that deserve the time it takes to plan ahead.

Money Bucket is correct in their bottom line that doing things yourself doesn’t always save you money, especially if you’ve got more money than time, skills and tools. But for those of us who have dedicated ourselves to a broader, more expansive and involved way of life that highly values self-sufficiency, doing things yourself is simply another aspect of the life we’ve chosen for ourselves. And we’ve usually got way more time, skills and tools than money to spend. Plus at least one friend with enough time, skills and tools to help us out if we need it.

In an economy like this one, sometimes a friend will help just for the nightly cook-outs, fresh garden veggies and fruit, refreshing cool-down at the swimming hole after swinging a hammer and wielding a circular saw all day, and maybe some iced beer and story-telling around the fire while the fireflies rise.

Money, after all, isn’t everything.

The Last Mountain is a new documentary film detailing the gross environmental destruction of mountaintop removal [MTR] coal mining, featuring interviews with some of the activists most involved in trying to save the beautiful Appalachian mountains from King Coal.

The subject of MTR has been covered previously on this blog in a number of posts, including EPA Halts MTR Permits for Review, with information about EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s attempt to slow the destruction – a task that has been less than successful due to the power of King Coal. Old King Coal vs. Reality talks about some of the legislative actions attempted by states impacted by MTR to prevent the continued destruction of mountains and entire watersheds – which have also been less than successful. Old King Coal, a Filthy Old Soul described some of the environmental horrors being visited upon the land, water and people of the Appalachian highlands by a coal mining method that has succeeded in eliminating 40,000 jobs for those same people while burying more than 2,000 miles of once pure mountain streams and flattening 500 mountains.

The film’s fine website includes links and outlines of ways you can help end mountaintop removal mining, something people even well outside the Appalachian region should support. We must not allow these most ancient and abundant mountains on earth to be utterly destroyed to serve the bottom line of criminal enterprises like Massey Energy – which racked up more than 60,000 environmental violations between 2000 and 2006 and criminal charges for violations leading to the explosion at its Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 miners in 2008.

It’s not easy to stand against King Coal. Just in the last two years more than 200 people have been arrested in civil disobedience protests just in West Virginia and Kentucky, two states that are suffering the bulk of destruction and the loss of more than a million acres of forest and dozens of towns. This extreme form of coal extraction has turned the coal fields of eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, eastern Tennessee and southwest Virginia into a moonscape of barren, toxic wasteland. What needs to happen, and needs to happen soon, is for so many people to make a stand that the unholy alliance of King Coal, state politicians on the take and law enforcement are forced to step aside.

Please see this film. Arrange a showing (can be done through the website) and invite all your friends and neighbors, maybe your co-workers and boss. Join or support some of the alliance groups that have supported the production of The Last Mountain. Some of these are listed and linked below.

If the Appalachians are destroyed for their coal thousands of homesteads will be destroyed along with them, along with the loving work all those homesteaders did to develop their little pieces of heaven on earth for themselves, their families, and all of us who are making the same effort in our own lives, wherever we are doing it. We all must stand with the people of Appalachia against the forces of destruction-for-profit. Thanks, Homesteaders! Let’s get together and end this outrage now, not later!

Alliance Links:

Appalachian Voices
I Love Mountains
Coal River Mountain Watch
Natural Resources Defense Council
Sierra Club
Waterkeeper Alliance
CREDO Action
Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

Some of the people who live on my homestead are vegetarian, while some are meat eaters. Some love fish or shrimp, some get queasy just thinking about it. A few will eat chicken, while others seem to want everything (including dessert) wrapped in bacon. During the summer when crowds of people from cities north, south and west of us come to the mountains for a little R&R, feeding them can be a rather large challenge.

Having purchased a nice new gas/charcoal smoker grill last year when the kitchen was being remodeled, I’ve become quite good at grilling various different meats, veggie alternatives and even vegetables themselves. No matter what kind of meat or alternatives are slated for dinner, I’ve discovered that THE most important ingredients for any such operation are the sauces and marinades. These need to be prepared well ahead of time, and some of what is going on the grill – like chicken breasts, all half-dried fish, peeled shrimp, etc. – needs to soak in marinade in the fridge for hours prior to firing up the grill.

And the sauces can be quite tricky. Each rural region of the U.S. seems to have its favorite, and some people are quite picky about them. I do like to mix it up so people get a variety of taste treats. Even when grilling veggie patties or just fresh garden finger-veggies it’s nice to have good barbecue dipping sauces. Some are sweet with brown sugar, molasses or honey, some are spicy hot with peppers and sharp onions. Some are made with ketchup, some with mustard, and northern Alabama they prefer a mayonnaise based white sauce.

Here I’m including some recipes for sauces, which your family and friends’ own taste preferences will dictate the use of. For marinade just add some vinegar water to the sauce if it’s thick and let the meats sit in it for at least an hour per side in the refrigerator. If you’re grilling hamburgers and/or home made veggieburgers, add some sauce when mixing and making the patties. The mustard based South Carolina sauce is great on hot dogs (even chicken, turkey or veggie dogs). Sweet sauces are best on pork, not so great on beef. Vinegar based is also good on pork and excellent for salmon, shrimp or trout.

Play around with sauces and find your favorites! And when the garden comes in, consider cooking up some sauces your friends and family have raved over, to bottle and give as gifts. They’ll love you for it!

Basic Tomato-Based Sauce

1/3 cup cider vinegar
2 tbsp. olive oil
4 tbsp. molassas
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1 6-oz. can tomato paste
1.5 cups water
2.5 cups finely chopped onions
4 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. Louisiana hot sauce*
1/2 tsp. black pepper

* Your favorite hot sauce here

Heat oil in a heavy pot, add onions and cook over medium heat stirring regularly until soft. Reduce heat and cook over low until caramelized (~20-30 minutes). Turn the heat back to medium and add garlic and brown sugar, cook for 2 minutes. Add molasses, cider vinegar, tomato paste and spices, stir well. Add the water and bring to a gentle boil, simmer over low heat until reduced and quite thick (~30 minutes), stirring occasionally. Put it in a jar, cool to room temperature, and refrigerate. Recipe may be doubled or tripled, and if it’s too chunky it can be puree’d in a blender or food processor.

To any basic sauce a tsp. of Worchestershire and/or liquid smoke may be added for extra oomph.

Basic thinning sauce for marinade

1 cup tomato ketchup
1 tbsp. brown mustard
3 tbsp. Worchestershire sauce
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp. lemon juice
3 tbsp. light molasses
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. hot sauce

Mix all ingredients well in a bowl, it does not need to be cooked. Keep in a jar and dilute 2 to 1 with water for marinade. i.e., twice as much water as sauce.

Eastern North Carolina BBQ Mop

This is a thin sauce brushed (or “mopped”) onto the meat while it’s cooking, then dripped over the meat upon serving. Great on pulled pork and ribs.

1 cup white vinegar
1 cup cider vinegar
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 tbsp. chili powder or hot sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

Another sauce that doesn’t need to be cooked first, just mix in a bowl and pour into a bottle. Keep refrigerated and shake well before using.

Citrus barbecue sauce for fish and shrimp

1.5 cups onions, fine chopped in food processor
1 tbsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1 green chili pepper skinned, roasted, seeded and finely chopped (Ancho, Anaheim or Poblano)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup lemon or lime juice
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 tsp. salt

Heat oil and saute onion, chili pepper, red pepper flakes and chili powder, stirring frequently ~5 minutes until onions are soft and clear. Stir in remaining ingredients, heat to boiling. Lower heat and simmer uncovered ~10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

This sauce can be brushed on fish and shrimp, and can be thinned with water for marinade.

South Carolina mustard sauce

1 cup brown mustard
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup onions, processed fine
3 tbsp. sweet red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp. celery seed
1 tsp. chili powder or hot sauce
1 tsp. dried thyme leaves
1/2 tsp. powdered rosemary
2 tsp. tomato paste
1 tsp. powdered mustard
1 tsp. Worchestershire sauce
1 chicken (or vegetable) bullion cube in 1 oz. of water

Add more hot sauce or chili powder for more heat.

Heat oil and cook onions until limp and clear. Add garlic and saute for 1-2 minutes. Add dry ingredients and hot sauce, except the sugar. Cook about 3 minutes stirring frequently. Add sugar and bullion and simmer on low for about 15 minutes while stirring frequently to keep the sugar from burning.

Pink sauce for shrimp and lobster

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup tomato ketchup
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tsp. Worchestershire sauce
1 tsp. grated onion
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
black pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Thin with water to marinate, or brush generously onto shrimp or lobster tails before they go onto the grill. Brush again when they’re halfway done, do not overcook.

Mexican barbecue sauce

1/3 cup dark corn syrup
1/3 cup strong coffee
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup Worchestershire sauce
2 tbsp. chili powder
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. hot sauce

Mix well and let sit for an hour or more to blend the flavors.

Good cooks will play around with ingredients and know their family’s favorite tastes. One can always use less sugar, more lemon juice for fish sauces, substitute tomato paste and a bit of extra vinegar instead of ketchup, and ‘heat it up’ to taste with hot sauce and chili powder. Some folks like to add a bit of wine, dark beer or even whiskey, try not to sample too much of that while the feast is on the grill or you might forget it’s cooking and end up with charcoal instead!

Happy Barbecues!

I read an announcement today in our local paper about the 12th annual Blue Jean Ball, a yearly fund-raiser for our regional food bank. It’ll be happening on the river on my birthday, so yes, I am planning to attend. There will be food from 20 of our best local eateries and four of our excellent regional bands to keep things lively. Should be great fun.

We relied upon the food bank for snacks and cooking class supplies some years ago for the state funded after-school program we managed for at-risk and adjudicated teenagers. On food-run days we often encountered people we got to know who managed other charity programs, houseparents from area children’s homes, and even state workers for the various social welfare agencies in the region, gathering supplies for bags and boxes of emergency food and toiletries to give to abused women, poverty-stricken families and the recently-dispossessed. The number of people in need goes up every year, even as the U.S. government has been gouging necessary aid like food stamps and WIC so they can keep on lowering taxes on billionaires in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s.

I live in a region of the country – southern Appalachia – that is labeled “Economically Depressed” even in the best of times for the rest of the nation. Our only decent-sized city (Asheville) ranks 7th in the nation for percentage of the population going hungry. The surrounding, mostly rural counties are much worse off, and the situation has been deteriorating steeply since 2007.

The World Hunger Education Service provides an overview of statistics from 2008, including an increase in “food insecure” households in the U.S. from 15.8 million in 2007 to 17 million in 2008. They also do a good job of tying this increase directly to the increase in poverty over that year and every year since. Feeding America conducted a hunger study in 2010 showing a 46% increase in hunger in America since 2006. Its network of food banks across the country is feeding an average of 1 million MORE people a week than in 2006, and it’s not slowing down as the price of food skyrockets along with the cost of fuel.

The New York Times reported in 2009 that hunger was at a 14-year high, an increase over those years of 13 million people, putting their figure from the USDA at 49 million American citizens without consistent access to food. Given the deep cuts in state and federal support for food programs this year as Republicans strive to make good on their campaign promises to their corporate sponsors, everyone paying attention is expecting the 2011 numbers to be much higher.

We who grow, lovingly tend and harvest, then faithfully preserve as much of our family’s food supply as we possibly can tend to be more aware of some of the issues involved in rampant hunger outside the D.C. beltway, in ways politicians just can’t match. We are known to often give a lot of our own produce away, trade it with others so we’ve got more variety, and don’t mind sharing what we’ve got with friends and neighbors. I’ve been known to donate boxes of squash and peppers to the food bank, and helped to establish a “shares” food program geared for a rural county where almost everybody’s growing a garden and doesn’t mind planting a little extra for free seeds and feeding the hungry.

I urge all my readers to check in with their local and regional food banks, see how they can contribute to the good efforts, either in produce, time or money. Food banks need all the help they can get, so if your homestead is big enough to be growing some acreage in food crops, most food banks will happily organize teams of volunteers to glean your fields when you’re done harvesting. Just get them to sign a liability waver (in case somebody steps on a rusty nail or something). They will gladly take your leavings and give them to people in need. Heck, you could mention this sort of thing to your farming neighbors next time you have a get-together, see how many will join the effort. Too much is wasted in this country, too many people go hungry.

We can all be part of the answer to that pressing issue.

After months of hiding out beneath a thick quilt, all you want to do is frolic in the sunshine and smell the flowers. Spring is here, but you’re weighed down with office work that just WON’T stay in the office, your dog just got sick, and you had the worst breakup of you life.

This contribute to a depressing, sad and just BAD mood.

The good news is, summer is coming, and there are plenty of things you can do to curb that bad mood that’s slowly creeping up your side.

Did you know practically every day is a holiday? While they may not be as big as Christmas or Thanksgiving, the little “holidays” that secretly fill the calendar are fabulous excuses to have a little fun. April 17^th is Bat Appreciation day; a cave trip and bat-shaped cookies anyone?

More well known holidays take place during the soggy spring months too. You can always throw a party for whatever holiday you want. It’s already the middle of May, but that doesn’t mean you can’t don Cinco de Mayo costumes at a Mexican-themed bash.

Dressing up silly and celebrating is definitely a good way to shake the blues.

#2: Bring the Fun Inside

Sometimes being outside doesn’t necessarily help. You’d rather be curled up indoors or in your pajamas rather than out in the bright and happy outdoors. Pull out the red and white checked tablecloth, mix up some lemonade, pan-cook some burgers, and crank up the tunes for an un-outside BBQ; just move those antique lamps before you pull out the Frisbee. Is your green thumb longing to handle some dirt?

Dig out a few pots, pour a little bagged soil, and plant your seeds in the kitchen. They’ll look lovely on the windowsill, and you can transplant them when you’re feeling sunshine-y and happy like the bright spring sun.

#3: Call in Reinforcements

Sometimes the bad mood blues just can’t be beat without the aid of a few comrades. Gather your family, friends, and neighbors for an indoor jamboree. Have everyone bring a game and spend the next few hours passing snacks and maintaining your Clue Champ status. Pop some popcorn, dish out brownies, and watch a flick; make it even more fun with Bingo cards—fill each square with something guests need to spot. OR, just watch a flick with a really hot guy.

Don’t want to sit around? Have a group workout hour followed by smoothies. The end

Too practical?

There’s always Duck, Duck, Goose. Nothing like acting like a 5 year old to brighten up your mood.

#4: Flee to a Better Locale

When you can’t beat it, join it, as they say. Or in this case, embrace your bad mood and do whatever you need to, to brighten up your mood.

It may be the local art museum you’ve always wanted to visit, or it could be that fabulous indoor water park in the next city. It’s YOUR time to do what you want- embrace it.

If you’re REALLY still in a bad mood, maybe it’s time to take up some kick-boxing.

One of my granddaughters is graduating from high school next weekend, she won’t be 17 until a week later. Yes, she’s extremely smart and plans to be a surgeon, has already been accepted to an excellent school with most of her costs covered by scholarships. The two eldest grandsons will be starting their final year in college this coming fall, though of course no one knows in this economy if there will actually be jobs for them when they graduate.

As the world and national situations get continually worse and worse, the subject of education and its value in whatever kind of society we all end up with when the chaos of massive changes is finally over is a pressing consideration for a great many parents, not just dedicated homesteaders who are at the leading edge of change. As the reactionary forces embodied by right-wing Republicans in state governments and in D.C. seek constantly to destroy the system of public education, parents are often left to wonder if the kids are learning anything at all that might help them do well in life.

Public schools, private schools, charter schools, magnet schools… the choices often boil down to how much money parents have to spend, and out on the rural homesteads of America there usually isn’t a lot of money because it’s all gone into establishing and constantly improving on the choice to go back to the land and ‘ground’ the children in a way of life we consider more honest and broad-ranging than the more urban lifestyles we left behind.

Depending entirely upon the family situation, income, distance from schools and transportation, there is another choice that many parents both urban and rural are making these days – Homeschooling. This can involve parents teaching their own children, or it can involve certified tutors/teachers who manage a group of children from large families or cooperatives of families in a one-room schoolhouse situation. Or it can involve rotating parental teachers each offering their own knowledge and specialties over periods of weeks or months.

Children who are home schooled still have to take those approved achievement tests every year and demonstrate proficiency in the basic subjects required by legislation such as NCLB. There are websites that offer tools and lesson plans, shops in many towns offering books and supplies, and there are organizations for home schoolers where issues can be discussed, other people’s experience can be shared, and hints on the best approaches can be formulated. I’ve included some links below for those interested.

For whatever reasons, it is safe to say that the home schooling movement does include a good many rural homesteaders. If you are among them, and your child has reached the level where higher education comes next, many would ask how hard it is to get home schooled children into college. Do all colleges take home schooled children? Do state colleges welcome home schooled students? What about private colleges? Are scholarships and grants available to home schooled students?

It takes a good deal of dedicated research for families to find answers to all their questions. Depending on your reasons for home schooling, you may find SuperScholar’s list of The Ten Best Colleges for Homschoolers to be a valuable resource. Check with a local organization as well for state colleges and community colleges that welcome home schooled students, and with the proprietors of materials distributors in your area for information about financial aid. Many religious denominations offer scholarships through their private schools, as do some organizations.

As the summer progresses I’ll take a look at some of the educational alternatives homesteaders in my region have established, how well they’re working (or not), and what I can find out about colleges here and what they require – besides the SATs – to accept home schooled students. Along with hopefully helpful lists of resources, forums and advice for homesteaders who wish to educate their children outside the government system. The sooner parents start thinking about their options and doing their own homework, the better prepared they will be to accomplish this very important life-task while doing right by their children. So stay tuned, homesteaders!

Useful Links:

Best Colleges for Homschoolers
Homeschool.Com Community
Homeschool Central: Resources
Wiki’s Extensive History and Overview

I received a $100 coupon the other day to cover the cost for our home-based business (family entertainment) to join the Hometown Barter Network in our area. Now, we rural homesteaders and small producers in several counties here in the southern Appalachians have been practicing informal bartering since forever, negotiating our trades of goods and services for other goods and services without any formalized valuation system. Meaning that what a person who has something I need will take from me in “fair trade” is something we work out for ourselves the old-fashioned way.

This has worked well on many occasions, and we’ve even been known to make good use of the area’s Freecycle network and even Craigslist freebies when we can. But things come and go on those lists and I still haven’t been able to obtain the metal fence poles I need to properly repair bear damage to the garden fence done two years ago.

I discovered that this network offers a ‘broker’ who does the negotiating for you and takes a 10% payment – in real money – for the trouble. They operate on a system of “Barter Bucks” per a valuation on goods and services they make. But they don’t take those same “Barter Bucks” for their fee. So I went looking around at various barter networks to see how well this is working out in local economies. I was trying to get a sense of whether it could really be better than doing your own bartering or if it’s just another way for someone to cash in on local trades in goods and services in bankable U.S. cash money. In this particular case, the brokering agency is registered with the IRS as a third-party record keeper to keep track of all barter transactions and issues a 1099-B to the participants at the end of the year so you – yes, YOU – can pay taxes on your accumulated “Barter Bucks” as if they were real U.S. cash income.

Which, it seems to me, defeats the entire useful purpose of bartering for goods and services amongst struggling homesteaders and small farmers, handymen, salvagers, etc. Which is to get what you need by offering something the other person may need. Almost as if the financial Powers That Be – you remember, our Wall Street/Fed/Treasury overlords who engineered the recent downfall of the world’s economy so they could steal our homes, lands and livelihoods – have become quite concerned that if left to our own devices, we the people just might find ways to survive that don’t involve them making any money off our survival.

How Stuff Works (a Discovery informational website) has a very good multi-page article examining barter and barter networks that takes a close look at the pros and cons of paying a broker to set up your trades and how the IRS cashes in on it by considering the driveway grading job you traded a neighbor with a backhoe a child’s birthday party clown for (actual example from this homestead) to be worth much more than your usual fee for birthday parties and taxes you on it as income. I would advise all interested readers to read their information and related links carefully before joining a licensed barter network. Even if you, like me, get a break on the sign-up fee, which the IRS is also going to consider same-as-cash ($100 in this instance) when tax time rolls around.

I’ve included good links below for anyone interested in researching the idea. And I will say that any urban, semi-urban or rural homesteader gregarious enough to get to know their neighbors can probably do better by putting in the time and effort to arrange their own trades. Maybe hosting a local homesteading cooperative with occasional meetings/pot lucks and a little newsletter listing things the neighbors have to trade would expand opportunities. It’s some work, but not all that much for building a strong community of people striving to be independent and provide for their own necessities. I do not see why the IRS needs to know anything about how many fresh tomatoes I trade my downhill neighbor for a bushel of sweet corn or wheat, or tax me on the difference between what I and my trading partner think fresh vine-ripened tomatoes are worth compared to a bushel of sweet corn or wheat.

So tread carefully in this not-so underground minefield, homesteaders! There are genuine exchange networks out there that facilitate bartering or simple “pick it up and it’s yours” trade on a community level. View what are sure to be increasing marketing campaigns with a hairy eyeball and keep a goat-sized salt lick handy. Don’t sign on any dotted lines until you know the whole score, and don’t give anybody any real money for the dubious privilege of having them report all your neighborly trade-offs to the IRS. We all have stuff left over after spring cleaning and various homestead jobs that someone else may find useful, which we could give away for free or trade for something they’ve got that we might want. Such trade is valued at whatever WE value it at, and I believe should remain so. In that vein, Happy Trading!

Useful Links:

How Bartering Works
Joining a Barter Network
How the IRS Taxes Barter
Craigslist Freebies
The Freecycle Network U.S.