In this unusually mild winter where it’s looking a lot like it’s not going to freeze after February (actually, February itself is starting off in the 60s day and 40s at night), my recent attempts to clean out the beds so they can be prepped for early plantings has taken on a bit of urgency. Moon is waxing (rising) for the next 8 days, so I’ve been folding newspaper pots by the dozen while sitting here at the desk.

Waxing moon is for above-ground plantings, so I’ll be starting peas, collards, bib lettuce, spinach and kale over the next week. The little pots fit tightly into glass cake pans, which makes it easy to evenly water from the bottom, which encourages early root growth. These will go onto shelves built to the big south facing window in the library. From there the seedlings can go straight into the ground (paper pot and all) by mid-february. If it freezes after that the pea cage can be covered with plastic at night, and milk jugs with the top end cut off fit nicely over the new greens. A new rush of peas should be planted as soon as the moon turns waxing again.

Once the moon has passed full it will be time to plant seeds for root vegetables. Which for early spring are beets, bunching onions, leeks, potatoes, carrots and radishes. Now, radishes are best planted to ‘mark’ rows of direct-seeded crops beginning in April because they grow so quickly and can be harvested early as the primary seedlings get established. But I like to grow a row of radishes for the spicy little seed pods they produce after flowering, so those I’ll start in paper pots indoors and interplant in the bed with leaf lettuces around the first of March.

Now’s a pretty good time to start the summer’s tomatoes and peppers as well, so the seedlings will be sturdy, well-leafed and quite full by the time they go into the cold frame in late March to early April. I’ll wait another six weeks to start the cukes, squashes, beans and pumpkins, as they don’t go out until May. Won’t need many new seeds this year, just carrots and more beets. Going to try Johnny’s “Atlas” carrots this year because long carrots tend to come out of the ground looking like man-roots in my soil, and the Atlas carrots are short and round like beets.

As for beets, I have to say I’m impressed enough with the hybrid “Moneta” I planted last year. Nice red roots that peel and slice easily and greens that are excellent in salads or as side greens. They also keep well and are vry juicy. In these days of leftover radioactive contamination from Fukushima, beets are about the best food-derived blood tonic anywhere. And since the blood/lymph system is where radiation does its most immediate damage, that’s something to think about. High in antioxidants, vitamins A, C. B1 and B6, beets are reported to have anti-cancer properties and also contain ample amounts of iron, magnesium, potassium and calcium.

Beet juice is also a fine health drink, always with a sweetness that is very palatable. I’ve been slicing those and the leeks I finally finished harvesting last week for drying, as they’re too old to make good side dishes or salads. I’ll powder the dried slices when I powder dried leeks, celery, carrots and tomatoes to use as soup broths and veggie-based table salts. As they are sliced I’ve been popping them into a bowl of cold spring water with ascorbic acid (powdered vitamin C) until I’m ready to line them up on the trays for drying. The water turns the most gorgeous shade of deep red, and I’ve been using that water to make lemonade (from bottled lemon juice). It’s redder than cranberry juice, but pretty and the sweet allows me to use less sugar. So far nobody’s complained, and it just makes the juice healthier than it otherwise would be.

Because so much of the garden was allowed to go fallow last year due to a constant excess level of fallout from the Fukushima nuclear accident’s plumes, I’m hoping to make good use of the extra months this year. Will plant twice as many beets and peas, spring and fall. More leeks, more bunching onions, more carrots and squashes. And yes, I am going to once again attempt eggplant and artichokes, even though that never seems to work out well. You never know what the weather’s going to be like, and global warming isn’t making things any easier to predict. But a peach tree ‘volunteered’ from the compost bin last year and is already over 10 feet tall, I’m hoping it’ll bear this year. Apples, pears and grapes all suffered miserably in the heat last year, I didn’t get enough out of any of ‘em to bother harvesting. If the peach does fruit I’ll get more, along with plums and figs.

And it’s not just me. The USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] just last week released a brand new Plant Hardiness Zone map (pictured above) which reflects changes due to warming climate. I’ve gained a whole zone, so peaches and figs should do fine. If I gain another one I’m going for oranges!

Do check out the new zones for where you live [Map Link], because for many of us this represents a whole new plan for how we go about growing our food. We can start relying on the extra weeks and/or months of growing season to plan our crop rotations, and even choose different cultivars we may have always wanted to grow but couldn’t.

Since this is one of the warmer winters in many regions, get busy right now making those plans. If I waited until 6 weeks prior to last frost in my old zone (May 10), I’d lose 10 entire weeks of growing time. So Happy Paper Pots all you homesteaders out there! Let’s make 2012 a super-abundant year for our yards, gardens and croplands in the hope that this year, none of our neighbors – far and wide – go hungry.

Getting out in the (finally) sunshiny weather to do some homestead chores had me covering three full seasons today, and seeing some rather disquieting signs of a fourth. Bring in a 2-day (and night) supply of wood for the wood stove, because it’s still in the 30s at night and mornings are decidedly chilly. But days are in the high 50s to mid-60s, and absolutely glorious with the whiff of spring. Even as I finished (finally) harvesting beets and digging potatoes from last fall’s crops. Which didn’t manage to get harvested before the holidays descended upon me but weren’t in any real danger of destruction during what has been one of the mildest winters in all my 20 years here.

Basket and garden fork in hand, I wended my way to the bottom tiers from the bricked herb and rose garden below the grapes. Noticing how green the mints are, when they’re usually nothing but scraggly sticks in January. When they’re not under an accumulated couple of feet of snow. The thyme is brown, but the oregano has fresh green leaves low on the plants. The rosemary is still thick and green, thicker even than when I cut it down to nubs in November. Every single one of the sages is putting out leaves, including the potted sage I forgot to bring indoors to keep me company. The chives are still standing, and here’s new leaves on the parsley too. I’ve never seen that anywhere north of Florida.

Some of last season’s kales have put out new shoots too, and the greens on the beets (red though they are) are fresh enough for salad! Before the chickweed and purslane, even. Bunching onions planted in the fall are coming up in thick clumps, I’ll have to thin them out soon. Usually a job for mid-March. Even worse, the spring bulbs are all up several inches and threatening to bloom any minute.

So I’m thinking this might be one of those rare years when spring comes in February, when we-who-work-the-land least expect it. It’s actually happened a couple of times in those 20 years, where it never gets below freezing again even at night. Latest frost date in my zone is May 10th, so you can see how productive a 3-month start on the growing season could be. So instead of leisurely perusing my new seed catalogues by lamplight on howling and snowy winter nights, I’m now flipping through to early crops and scribbling order numbers as fast as I can. Hoping to be able to order and take delivery within the next 3 weeks.

Hmmm… have plenty of salad mix seeds from last year, since I only planted a single rush before Fukushima melted down and blew up and blanketed North America with radioactive iodine and cesium you simply cannot wash off or out of your green leafs. I left plastic and matting on more than half the terraces last spring and summer, unwilling to grow too much food I knew would be more contaminated than I’d want to feed my family. Even though my rusty Geiger-Muller was mostly back to background by mid-June except in the rain, I figured that leaving much of it fallow – either covered for delicate future crop beds or chock full of weeds to absorb deposited isotopes that didn’t get drained out – would be the best thing. With nearly a year’s worth of ample rainfall on my well-drained terraces, the ground is about as ‘decontaminated’ as it’s ever going to be again in my lifetime. Yours probably is too, but beware of drainage seeps and pathways. Contamination will tend to concentrate there, and you don’t really want to do anything about it. Which will just stir it up and spread it around. Better to go ahead and let the usual grass, weeds and other ground cover to colonize thickly (you can mow it), don’t plant anything in or nearby.

Also have plenty of peas, and those need to go in as soon as it’s not freezing at night. Actually, they could go in and simply be covered with jars and cut-off milk jugs for nights when it does get to freezing. I am definitely going to go with rushes this year – planted every 2 weeks for six weeks so there will be plenty. The grandkids love those peas raw so much that I almost never get enough into the kitchen to cook or put into salads. Grandsons end up with pockets bulging with pea pods they think I don’t notice… S’alright. Can think of much less healthy snack items they could be hoarding.

Must get some flats going in the library window asap. And start rolling up those many newspaper pots I’ve found so handy for seedlings through the years. Plant them right into the ground, they disintegrate to become ‘one with’ the tilth. Oh, and must get to raking leaves, which I also didn’t do in the fall due to contamination. If spring comes in February, the fires come right along with. Just won’t be enjoying the usual leaf compost of previous years. So much to think about, so much to plan, so much to do!

Is spring looking to come early on your homestead? If so, best get started soon on making the most of it.

Thanksgiving is just over a week away, which means one of my absolute favorite fruits are now being sold fresh in bags – often on half price sale – at grocery stores everywhere. For Thanksgiving I use just one of those 12-ounce bags to make my famous Crackberry Sauce (regular whole cranberry sauce with a bag of frozen blackberries added). But I buy as many as I can afford when they go on sale so I can dry them as “craisins.”

I’ve written quite a bit about how much I like drying food from the garden rather than canning. Which is a hot and expensive way of preserving things. But this time of year my handy-dandy home-made solar dryer is fairly useless, there’s just not enough hours of sun to make it work. So I use the oven, which can also be a relatively expensive proposition. Still, good craisins are expensive from the store in those little brand name bags, so it works out fairly. Even better, if you make your own craisins at home you can do some pretty spectacular things with them flavor-wise.

This year I’m doing the “Double-Dry” method for orange flavored craisins. It’s easy enough – just dry the craisins in single layers on flat baking sheets in a barely warm oven – I use the lowest setting, 150º – and keep the door propped open a couple of inches to allow the moisture to escape in natural convection. Takes awhile, and many of the berries retain their size and shape until they’ve cooled completely and wrinkle up into the ‘usual’ raisin-like form. I put these into a glass bowl and cover them with hot orange juice. Then cover the bowl and let the berries reconstitute. Then dry them again.

You could use any type of fruit juice to flavor your craisins, even wine or brandy if you want. Just be sure to label the containers you put them in so they don’t get mixed up. They are wonderful additions to holiday cakes, breads and cookies, or just as handy snacks. If you want your craisins to be sweeter, just thoroughly dissolve a tablespoon or two of sugar or honey in the reconstituting juice, it will get absorbed.

It’s cranberries this time of year, but drying and double-drying fresh fruit works any time of year, whenever the local harvest has big lots at the farmer’s market. I haven’t yet double-dried apples, as dried apple slices go so fast as snacks around here that it seems the hoards just stand around drooling to get them as fast as they can be produced. But if ever I did happen to have dried enough for, say, a Thanksgiving pie, I’d probably reconstitute them in spiced juice (mulled cider or even wine) just before putting them into the pie crust, using leftover juice as part of the filling. Just add sugar and corn starch to thicken.

Cranberries don’t grow in my locale, but blueberries sure do. I’m planning to dedicate several terraces on the upper yard slope to the ridge to blueberries, once I find a good source of thinned bushes I can get for free. Say, 4 100-foot rows of good producers, which works out to ~25 bushes per row spaced at 4′. Good producers will return ~5 pounds of berries per bush (some will give 10, but I’m being conservative here). Once they’re producing at that level, I’ll be getting an average crop of 500 pounds a year! That’s big enough to supply my family and friends as well as the local munchy market. Besides, blueberries come in high summer, which would let me use the sun instead of expensive electricity to do the drying.

As we quickly approach November and the portion of the year when things are mostly bare and brown instead of lush and green, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about things we homesteaders can do with all those fallen leaves that will help our general productivity over time.

We were gifted with one of those noisy, gasoline powered leaf blowers a few months ago when a friend moved from the countryside back into town and had no further use for it. Made me chuckle considering the fact that we live in the middle of the southern Appalachian forest – “thick” by anyone’s standards – and have enough fallen leaves to drive most towns crazy. Worse, living where we do we also get fairly regular fires that love nothing better than a good thickness of dead leaves to burn. I’ve learned through the years that the low-level “brush fires” that don’t burn much other than the leaf fall and a few scraggly saplings are actually good for the forest. So long as they don’t manage to get hot enough to engulf trees. Heck, most of the mature trees can (and have) survive the ground fires just fine, a bit blacker around the trunks than they used to be. And kudzu, of course, loves fire. Always comes roaring back twice as thick as before, and does way more than its share of eating forest trees, engulfing dead cars and stray cattle herds overnight.

Anyway, we feel a need to keep the approximately two acres immediately surrounding the cabin (including fruit orchard and grape vines) as clear of leaves as possible to help prevent any brush fires from getting close enough to do major damage. That means we have a hefty collection of leaf and garden rakes that go to work in November and continue on the job for as long as it takes in decent weather to accomplish that task before the winter snows come along to blanket everything until spring. There are several things to do with those leaves.

When raking them down from the ridge or across the disc golf fairways I always drag along a weathered plastic tarp that has seen better days. That way when the pile of leaves gets big enough to become difficult, I can simple spread out the tarp and rake the leaves onto it, then pick up its edges and drag it on down to the garden. In order to keep the actual leaf-clearing going, I simply dump out the tarp against the fence on the bottom tier of the garden near the compost bins and go back for more. When that tier has at least a foot of leaves on it, I start on the tier above. And of course add leaves to the compost bins themselves.

As the winter progresses the leaves are compacted and self-composted on the beds, are easily turned into the soil in the spring as organic matter to enrich the beds. When the compost bin leaves are turned in with the rest of the garden leavings and kitchen scraps (and mixed every 2nd or 3rd year with some composted chicken droppings or donkey barn leavings), it makes fine mulch to apply once the seedlings are a foot tall or so, to keep weeds down while fertilizing.

A thick mulch of leaves around the fruit trees out to the drip line is always good too, and around the grape vines. This will need to be scattered with crushed limestone in the spring so it gets well watered-in, but it’s good mulch/fertilizer by the time it’s good and black. If there’s a lot of leaf fall, I usually stack it in big piles next to the fence by the compost bins and cover with those leaky tarps to hold it in place. The garden is well away from the edge of the forest, and if there’s a fire in the spring that threatens the perimeter, my piles are close enough to be able to spray with water.

I have found that covering the beds with a foot or two of leaves has led to a filthy soil that works easily and doesn’t need tilling but once every few years. I do that the years when I’m adding animal leavings for nitrogen, and/or limestone to balance the acidity. The beds get so soft that I have to lay down planks to walk on while planting, or I’ll sink right on in. Makes planting easy too, at least for the crops that I start from seed indoors in February and plant out as seedlings in March. Just dig a little hole with a hand-spade and stick ‘em in.

My Aunt used to grow the most spectacular flower beds in her neighborhood. Her secret was to put the leaf fall into black plastic garbage bags and line those up against the back fence. She left them open until after a good rain, then twisted the tops and secured them. By spring the leaves inside the bags had turned to black mulch, and she’d empty that into her wheelbarrow and use it to thickly mulch her flower beds. She told me she never added any amendments, which I would have thought necessary because hardwood leaves tend to be somewhat acidic, but she said the flowers love it, so there was never a reason for MiracleGro™ or animal manure.

Some places out in the country still allow leaf burning, but that seems a waste to me. Sure, ashes are also good amendments to garden soil, but since we heat with wood we’ve always got plenty of those. Besides, burning causes air pollution, and sometimes ends up with the VFD showing up unexpectedly.

Some people shred their leaves before composting. And I admit a chipper-shredder would have been a more useful present than that leaf blower we’ll never use for anything but special storm effects in home movies. Shredding can speed up the process of decomposition greatly, but a big enough pile wetted down and covered with dark tarp (or put into black plastic bags) will decompose by spring into black mulch just fine without shredding. The leaves in the compost bins proper will be well-composted even quicker by greenwaste and kitchen scraps and earthworms – of which my bins are chock full. I’m only slightly concerned about a lack of direct sunlight on the bins since a peach tree decided to grow out of the bin and looks way too healthy to cut (we LIKE peaches!), but I’ll work around that.

So. The trees will be nearly bare in a couple of weeks, so don’t bother raking now when more leaves are still scheduled to fall. Once they’re done, get busy fire-proofing your acreage and transporting those leaves to where they’ll do the most good. Your garden soil will thank you for it, I promise!

The rush of big heirlooms and romas were processed in August, most dried in the solar unit out on the front (southside) deck. Weather’s back up into the ’70s during the day after a couple of nights of high-30s and frost warnings, looks like the peppers and grape tomatoes survived to finish up before Halloween – more sun-dried tomaisins! I keep making them, they keep disappearing faster than they’re coming in. I’ve found they’re not just great on crackers (with fresh basil, red bell peppers and feta cheese) and pizza, but add lots of zing to pasta and rice dishes as well. Mostly, though, the kids eat them as late-night snacks by the handful, right out of the jar.

As soon as it’s too cold to garden any longer, I’ll be using some of the dry-dried tomato that I’ve turned into powder to make tomato, basil and rosemary fettucini. Fresh pasta is fun to make and freezes very well, great to pull out and cook up quick when unexpected guests drop by. For the leathery half-dried tomatoes I had to go looking for recipes beyond “the usual” diced and tossed into/onto stuff. Discovered Valley Sun, a California company that specializes in sun-dried tomatoes. The linked page offers some general ideas about adding dried tomatoes to just about any recipe for meat, poultry, seafood and vegetables.

Dried Tomato Pesto Fettucini

• 2 cups half-dried tomato quarters
• 1/2 cup slivered or sliced almonds
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 cup Parmesan, Reggiano or Gruyere cheese
• 1 pound fresh rosemary-basil fettucini

Dice tomato quarters, toss in oil with basil and garlic. Saute slowly in a cast iron pan over medium heat until garlic is soft and basil is well wilted. Toast almonds over medium heat stirring constantly to keep them from burning. Remove from pan when slightly brown and set aside. Boil the pasta according to directions and drain. Return to pot over low heat, add tomato pesto mixture and the grated cheese, toss well. When this is all well heated, add the almonds and toss. Serve immediately, garnished with fresh basil and extra cheese.

Clams with Tihuana Pepper and Dried Tomato Broth

• 2 tins oil-packed clams (or oysters)
• 1 cup Chardonnay
• 1 cup clear vegetable broth
• 1/4 cup salted butter
• 1/2 cup diced half-dried tomatoes
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tbsp. crushed red pepper
• Lemon wedges

Bring wine and broth to a boil in a covered sauce pan, add butter, tomatoes, salt and red pepper. Reduce heat and add clams, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve in bowls over a slab of toasted home made whole wheat tarragon bread with lemon wedges on the side, to be squeezed into the soup as desired.

Sun-Dried Tomato Appetizers

• 1 cup half-dried tomato quarters
• 1/4 cup basil herbed wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 2 tbsp. finely chopped fresh basil
• 2 tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• Dash of freshly milled black pepper

In a small sauce pan heat vinegar and water together over medium low heat until barely simmering. Remove from heat, add tomatoes and cover. Allow to stand for 1 hour. Mix fresh basil and oregano together with the pepper and minced garlic. When tomatoes have soaked for an hour, remove from marinade and place cut side up on a cookie sheet and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle the garlic, pepper and herbs onto the tomatoes and bake in a 200º oven for 4-6 hours until somewhat ‘dry’ to the touch. Cut in bite-size pieces (3 per quarter of an average roma), insert toothpicks and serve on a plate with crackers and Chevre goat cheese.

Sun-Dried Tomato Dip

• 1/2 cup half-dried tomatoes
• 4 ounces softened cream cheese
• 4 ounces soft Chevre goat cheese
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 3 cloves chopped garlic
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil, or 2 tsp. dried basil
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives

Put all ingredients except fresh basil and chives into a blender and process until smooth. Mix in fresh basil and refrigerate until ready to serve. Sprinkle dried tomato powder on top, serve with dried crackers and fresh vegetables or French bread baguettes.

Hope these recipes for sun-dried tomatoes sound as delicious to you as they do to me, and I absolutely MUST remember to plant more basil next spring. Dried tomatoes are great additions to vegetable soups, chili and bean dishes, added to the cooking water for rice and just about anything else you might feed your family over the coming long winter. Dried tomatoes retain more of the original nutrients than canned tomatoes do, something to consider as cold and flu season hits. Dried tomatoes also make excellent straight from the bag or jar snacks when the family is gathered around the kitchen table to play cards or board games, though for this those little bitty grape tomato tomaisins are neater.

Now… out to the porch to see how the latest batch is coming along.

Straight from the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield, a new internet-based project to greatly expand the CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] movement into places where it hasn’t been before. It’s a project designed to connect community organizers – volunteers with a group of friends and neighbors who want to get in on farm fresh produce and other fresh foods – to buy in to local suppliers in the usual CSA manner and set up a drop-off point in their area for deliveries and for members to pick up their weekly food items. The company, farmigo, acts as the middleman to negotiate directly with growers, coordinate deliveries and scheduling, and handle the nitty gritty of the business end. It also maintains the web-based platform for people to manage their accounts, order food, and pay the fees. To support this effort, farmigo receives a 2% fee on food sold and collects this from the producers rather than from the customers.

The idea isn’t entirely new, as CSAs in some regions have already set up their local businesses through websites, and even pooled with other suppliers to make for convenient ordering of variety items and coordinate deliveries. Farmigo is pretty much the same type of thing, but on a much larger scale and including big city dwellers. The farmers, fishermen, butchers and bakers who offer products through the service still get to set their own terms and commitment periods. When you check into the website you can click on a map to receive a list of suppliers in your area with links and information on already established drop-off sites.

Farmigo also facilitates one-time ala carte purchases of things like eggs, flowers, meats, seafood, baked goods and other things that will be delivered to the drop-off point on your usual days, so the customer isn’t limited to whatever crops are being harvested at any given time on their CSA’s farm, but isn’t corralled into long-term purchase contracts with those other suppliers. This also saves the member/customer the trouble of driving around to several different drop-off points to get their food allotments. Some suppliers will even deliver to your home, depending on where you live and the nature of your orders.

Those of us who do our own organic gardening, participate in local tailgate farmer’s markets, trade with our neighbors for crops we aren’t growing ourselves, and who have turned the art of wholesome organic foods, fresh air and hard work into a regular way of [homesteading!] life, of course recognize the value of any system designed to facilitate wider participation, cheaper prices to the customer and better premiums for the growers. As CSAs and the local food movements grow, more and more people will participate, everyone will be a bit healthier, and groups of neighbors working quarter-acre or less sized organic gardens can get together and plan who grows what, pool the results together, and create their own supplier CSA group!

Because I am lucky enough to have spent the past 20 years on my little mountain homestead growing food and “fitting in” with a local culture that was here long before I was, there would be great interest in a community organizer to make the contacts with various farmers producing a single crop or two of staples like corn and wheat and oats, things many CSAs don’t produce in bulk, but which most people consume regularly as part of their normal diets. Whole and milled grains, dried beans, cornmeal (grits, hominy, whatever) in bulk would be a sure seller. Value-addeds for those non-subscription purchases, such as compotes and jam, ciders and juice made from locally grown fruit. Pickles, hot sauces, vinegars, sun-dried tomatoes and other dried foods… the possibilities are practically endless. Not to mention those free-range eggs and honey for those who keep bees – which will hopefully be me by this time next year.

The primary requirement for suppliers is that their products be grown naturally/organically. USDA organic certification is not required, but this means no GMOs, no petrochemical fertilizers or pesticides, etc. Most small farmers and backyard gardeners don’t use such things anyway, as the whole chemically-based food production system was invented for big Agribiz where the economies of scale (like 5 square miles’ worth of corn) and government subsidies disguises the true cost of the foods produced. There are farmers in my area who have rotated 40 acres in beans, corn and wheat all their lives and never managed to destroy the productivity of their land with chemical adulterants they’ve never actually needed.

I don’t know if something like farmigo would make much of a dent in my region, where local farmers and producers have been participating in CSAs since somebody first thought them up, and where local farmer’s markets are easy to find any day of the week in cities, towns and villages throughout the countryside. But this type of modern organizing and management would be a good thing even here, so there is much to learn. The more people who abandon our American Industrial Food System the better, and again with enough organized coordination those economies of scale can ultimately lower the price of good, wholesome food so that more and more people can avail themselves of it. Win-win situation, so do check around and ‘borrow’ some ideas from those who are pioneering the food wilderness.

Link:

farmigo – Locally Grown & Fresh.

The current collapse of the world financial system has revealed some structural problems in our national economy that have flourished over a period of decades as corporate interests bought politicians and lobbyists to craft legislation to remove legal roadblocks to mass theft and market manipulation. And despite some changes in the D.C. political landscape, our government remains apparently helpless to do anything about corporate malfeasance on any level. With all the bad economic news dominating the public consciousness, some issues in the food supply sector are having a difficult time being properly correlated and attended to despite the serious level of danger they present to public health.

The food supply issues didn’t begin with the market manipulations on Wall Street and from there to exchanges all over the world. Though for many people the first alarms went off as the CDS fraud crashed the economy in 2008 and the financial players went looking for other markets to wreak havoc on. They seized on commodities – staple foods from the agricultural sector increasingly dominated by multinational corporations like Monsanto, ADM and Cargill. As a traceable beginning in 2008 to what this year became the “Arab Spring” movement across North Africa and spreading to the Middle East and southern Asia, food riots broke out in Egypt and Syria and portions of India as well as elsewhere when people could no longer afford to feed themselves and their families. Things have only gotten worse in the years since, and Americans are slowly waking up.

In 2011 a full quarter of the U.S. population are dependent on food stamps. As unemployment keeps on rising, the government strangely keeps slashing the food stamp budget to appease nutty Republican radicals who insist those hardest hit by the Great Recession are just “lazy” and undeserving of aid that might require corporations and billionaires to pay taxes. Why one of the political parties in our nation believes that Americans will quietly and without complaint starve to death in the streets in order to protect billionaires from paying as much of their income in taxes as their chauffeur does has never been explained by the financial sector’s pundits at the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Major cognitive disconnect.

But serious food supply issues encompass much more than just market manipulation and governmental paralysis. Consider some of these issues while attempting to get a picture of how dire the overall situation is…

Honey Laundering: China’s at it again – Adulterating pet and human foods with melamine wasn’t bad enough – though one corporate scapegoat was executed by the Chinese government hoping to save its place as cheap ingredients supplier to the world – the latest food scam involves honey. Not just fake honey in those little bee-shaped plastic bottles, Chinese honey brokers are creating honey by mixing sugar water, malt sweeteners, corn/rice syrup, barley malt and a variety of unrefined sugars. Failure to police storage requirements has resulted in heavy metal contamination as well, primarily lead.

If you’ve been thinking about beekeeping for honey (and handy pollinators), this is the year to get busy on it. Extension services in many rural counties offer literature, evening classes, and instructions on building hives. Agents often know who in the area builds hives for sale, and aren’t shy of giving out that information. Many people who are trying hard to eat better and healthier are being taken in by the Chinese honey scam, and big food processors using that fake honey in their supposedly ‘natural’ food lines are risking their markets. Grow your own honey or buy locally from someone honest.

Time to re-engineer the meatpacking sector – Late July brought the second largest tainted meat recall so far, when Cargill’s meat packing division recalled ~36 million pounds of ground turkey products tainted with a multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella. The biggest recall was in 2008, when a slaughterhouse in California recalled 143 million pounds of beef due to allowing downer cows into the mix. The dangers to public health from e.coli, salmonella, listeria and other bacteria, and from adulterants and contaminates are high, yet our government doesn’t give the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] the power to force food recalls. Companies have to do this voluntarily, and they don’t often volunteer until people start dying and CDC tracks the source down.

If your family eats meat, now is the time to seriously consider raising your own or contracting with a neighbor who raises meat animals. A side of beef from a calf pastured for a year, dressed whole chickens raised happily free range, maybe rabbit stew meat, a slab of locally smoked bacon and/or ham… buying from known sources or doing it yourself could easily save your family’s lives. The more that control of our commercial food supply gets concentrated into the greedy hands of a few, the more danger is present overall. Avoid it like the plague it truly is.

The Nation has a good article looking at How change is going to come in the food system despite united resistance of the big corporate players to cater to public demands for better, less adulterated and far less fattening foods. There is a lot of good information in this article’s analysis to arm yourself with when next you try arguing with a friend, relative or acquaintance about the importance of healthy food and the severe shortage of it in our commercial food supply.

And finally, the good news. The New York Times informs us that vegetable gardens are booming in a fallow economy. We homesteaders have of course known this all along – and have done more than our share to get more people digging and grow the local markets – but we should always welcome mainstream coverage that helps to spread awareness. Recent movement in many states to allow the use of food stamps at farmer’s markets and bulk purchases straight from farmers are helping more people to get more and better food than they could purchase in the grocery store.

Many localities are also sponsoring seed exchanges through the Lions or Ruritan, sometimes through local Chambers of Commerce, 4-H and FFA clubs at high schools. These have committees in charge of getting open-pollinated seeds from local gardeners and farmers, packaging them, and then distributing them free in the late winter and early spring to local residents planning their season’s garden crops. Local schools and civic clubs are offering gardening classes and contacts to suppliers of tool exchanges, equipment like chicken coops and bee hives, and farmers who sell chicks, calves, kids and kits to those wishing to raise their own meat animals. Local butchers are making a comeback, and in many states the Extension Service offers classes all the way up to Master Gardening certification. So get busy, and get your neighbors busy making best use of all these developing local alternatives to Big Ag and Big Food, Inc. We will be a much happier and healthier nation for it, and probably much smarter as a people for our awareness and direct involvement in this most important aspect of everybody’s lives.

Links:

NYT: Vegetable Gardens Are Booming
How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System
Time to re-engineer the meatpacking sector
Honey Laundering: tainted and counterfeit Chinese honey
Risks of tainted food rise as inspections drop

With the Harvest Moon just a couple of days past, the last of the summer crops will be coming in over the next month to be properly stored and/or preserved. The big pears are finally falling, providing more than enough for as much pear butter as I can possibly make even as the deer and turkeys work hard to eat more than their share before I can gather. The pumpkins are good and orange now, but can stay on the vines until first freeze warnings before I have to harvest and process. Winter squash is looking to be a good harvest at the same time, and the peppers are quickly turning red in rushes. Grape tomatoes are being sun-dried to “tomaisins,” as many as I can fit into the solar dryer at a time and always many more waiting to be picked. They’ll keep right on coming until first freeze.

At the same time, as the beds are cleared from harvest they must be prepped for fall plantings. More kale and collards (which will keep going all winter into spring with plastic tenting on very cold nights), peas, lettuces and spinach, and of course garlic. Today I’m talking garlic, because it’s one of our most favorite garden goodies.

Garlic is a member of the onion [allium] family. It has powerful antibiotic properties, and is well known as a “blood purifier” and digestive stimulant. Legend has it that garlic is an effective vampire and werewolf repellant, but I haven’t heard that it will prove to be all that useful during the coming Zombie apocalypse. For that, you should follow the advice in The Zombie Survival Guide instead.

Garlic should be planted in the fall, but won’t be harvestable until the next summer. If done right, you can end up harvesting about 250 nice heads from just a 4 by 8 foot plot, so it’s a very good crop even in tightly-packed town homes and subdivisions if there’s that much yard that enjoys ample sun. Garlic is readily marketable at tailgate and farmer’s markets, but it also stores well and if your family loves it as much as mine, there won’t be many bulbs to sell.

First, double-dig your bed and break up the clumps, rake to smooth. You can purchase garlic bulbs or pre-separated cloves from your Farm & Garden supply or on line, but I usually just purchase some nice full heads of my favorite varieties in the organic produce section of my local grocery store. Carefully break the cloves off the bulb head, keeping the skin intact. Push these root-end first into the soil about 4 inches apart. I stagger-plant them, but you can do neat rows if you like. Leave the pointy clove tops sticking out, as only the roots need to be seated in the soil. The heads themselves will develop to be much bigger in compost.

Which you want to now apply on top of the planted cloves to a depth of an inch or two. Tamp this down and cover about 4 inches deep with leaves you’ve raked off the lawn. These will compact and compost themselves over the winter and those onion-like garlic leaves will come right up through it all in the spring. If you plant a hardneck variety you’ll want to cut off the stiff round flower stalks when they are a few inches tall, which will encourage bigger bulbs with more cloves. The leaf cover should help discourage weeds, but if stubborn weeds do get started next spring you’ll want to pull them.

That’s basically all there is to it. Other than cutting those flower stalks (which are quite good snipped like chives and added to stir-fry) and pulling any weeds that try to establish themselves in the leaf mulch, you need do nothing but watch it grow. Around mid-June I begin checking the bulb development, always anxious to roast some garlic for dinner or snacks. Just pull back the leaf mulch and feel around in the compost to gage how well the bulbs are coming along. If you’re like me you’ll end up eating several that didn’t get as big as they could have, but others will have plenty of time to fill out. Any garlic left by this time next fall should be harvested before planting anew for the next season.

Most cooks have their favorite ways to serve garlic. It can also be roughly chunked and dried, then ground as garlic powder, garlic salt, or as an ingredient in your favorite herb mixture for the dining table. Garlic cloves are great grilled with other veggies and/or meat chunks on a kabob skewer. But my family’s absolute favorite way to enjoy garlic is as roasted whole cloves.

Roasting is easy. I just separate the cloves from the bulb, discarding as much of the papery skin as possible while leaving the hard skins on. Put these into a roasting pan – I use a mini-bread pan – and add a tablespoon of olive oil. rub the oil and garlic together to make sure all the cloves are well coated, and roast in the oven at 350º for 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of the cloves). Allow them to cool enough to be handled, and dump them out onto a plate. The roasted garlic inside the skins is easy to squeeze or suck out from the pointy end. A nice plate of these roasted cloves (sometimes 3 or 4 bulbs’ worth) around my homestead always draws a quick crowd and never lasts more than a few minutes.

If you do end up with a few left over after the frenzy, you can squeeze out the innards into a little bowl and mix well with butter and a pinch of salt and store in the fridge for making garlic bread. You can also mix some fine parmesan/romano cheese into this garlic butter, which is great on home made bruscetta bread. Which I’ll talk about later, after the harvest, preserving and fall planting are done. Bon appetite!

In my last post I went into some detail on how easy it is to preserve peppers by pickling. And while I do pickle quite a lot of the range of hot peppers I grow every year to supply my heat-loving family and friends and allow for the several levels and types of hot pepper sauces I make for steady customers in my region, my favorite thing to do with hot peppers is to dry them.

The sauce and pot peppers, as well as sweet peppers and mild chilis like poblanos are usually frozen whole or chopped in zip lock freezer bags. It’s easy to break off a chunk and toss into any dish I’m making, and this is to my taste buds the best way to preserve sweet bells. But if you grow a lot of hot chilis like I do, there’s much more you can do through the culinary year with dried peppers than with frozen or pickled or otherwise canned.

I have found some good sources for detailed information on drying peppers and what to do with them afterwards, listed at the bottom of this post. I prefer to sun dry – in my nifty home-made solar dryer out on the front deck – but chilis can easily be dried in a commercial dryer, in the oven on its lowest setting, or in the sun directly if they’re kept whole. Flies and other insects don’t like to congregate on rip hot peppers left in the sun, as they will on tomatoes or other vegetables and fruits that are sliced and placed in the sun to dry. Thick-walled chilis like Anaheims, jalapenos, etc. take longer, of course. Fingerhots, cayennes, thai hots, etc. will dry hard and crisp in just a few hours of sun. Presuming you don’t live in a super high humidity environment, of course.

First thing to know about drying hot chilis is that you should let them turn red on the plant rather than harvest green or just beginning to turn, and waiting for them to finish on the counter. If it gets late and threatens to freeze before all your peppers are fully ripe, go ahead and freeze or pickle the green ones.

One fun – and quite decorative – way to dry ripe chilis is to string them into ristras and hang them in a sunny spot on the porch to dry. You can leave some length of stem on them when you harvest and just tie them close together with a length of string or wire, or sew through the stem end. With plenty of sun and air circulation a nice sized rostra will dry in just a few days even with big peppers like Anaheims or Serranos. If you expect rain or nights reach dew point, bring them in at night and re-hang to dry in the morning. Ristras make beautiful wreaths, and look great hanging in kitchens or dining areas. Thus they make welcome hostess gifts if you need a quick one come the holidays.

Ristras are more decorative than truly useful as a ready source of peppers to crush into flakes or powder for cooking, as they do tend to collect household dust. For culinary keeping you can store them in bags or jars, or already crushed and/or powdered in jars. Different processing serves different uses. For crushed pepper flakes like those on the table in pizza restaurants, break very dry red peppers in half, shake out as many seeds as possible, and crush them with a mortar and pestle. Sometimes this leaves big skin flakes that need to be further reduced with the back of a spoon, or you could add just a bit of sea salt to the mortar during crushing and this will tend to break up the chilis finely. Store the flakes and salt together for use in soup, chili and stew or pots of beans and such. Plain flakes are good shaken onto salads and sandwiches, onto dinner dishes in lieu of black pepper, etc., so you’ll want some on the table.

Powdered chilis are used to make chili powders, as primary ingredients in some chili, bean and/or rice dishes, and to make enchilada sauce or Louisiana style hot sauce. Again break the dry peppers and shake out as many seeds as you can, then grind to fine powder in a coffee grinder. I make my own chili powder with this dried powder mixed with half as much dried tomato powder, some garlic and onion powder and fine-ground sea salt. Straight, this powder is very potent, a half and half with tomato powder makes very good enchilada sauce that doesn’t burn tender mouths.

Dried chunks of chilis – best cut into pieces and then dried (green or red) store basically forever and can be tossed into dishes as they cook just like frozen pieces can. Just be careful, dried pieces are much smaller than frozen and can fool you into putting in too much. Once rehydrated and releasing their punch, your food may be too hot. Practice to get a feel for these.

Below are some good sources for all kinds of information about pepper preservation and usage that readers should definitely check out.

Pepper Links:

How to Harvest, Dry and Store Mature Red Chilis
Things to Do with Chile Peppers
GardenWeb: Hot Pepper Forum

As the various crops come in – for summer crops that is July through September in my zone 5 here in western NC – I’ll be writing about various methods of preservation. Two weeks ago it was tomatoes. Bushels and bushels of tomatoes. Last week it was the first pints of pear butter (the pears are by no means done falling, so there will be more). This week it’s peppers.

The main pepper crop will not be fully ripe until mid-September, but some bells, cayennes, thai hots, anaheims, poblanos, jalapenos, habaneros and hot banana peppers are making it into the house day to day. By the number of chilis on my pepper list readers may safely surmise that the family and friends of this homestead are fond of peppers with some heat to them. My menfolk subscribe to the culinary philosophy that a good pot of chili and/or beans is hardly worth eating unless it clears out your sinuses and makes you sweat. Things that chili powders, crushed dry peppers, pickled peppers and an assortment of hot sauces ranging from merely Cajun through 3-alarm and Nuclear all the way to Satanic are quite famous for providing.

Capsaicin and a range of capsaicinoid relatives produced by chili peppers are the compounds which provides the heat in peppers. These are classified as irritants to mucus membranes and increases secretion of gastric juices. The hotness (irritant level perceived as heat by nerves, even though the hottest peppers cannot really burn tissue) is measured in Scoville Heat Units [SHUs]. Bell and Cubanelle peppers rate a zero on the scale, with no appreciable hotness. Pimentos and regular banana peppers rate between 100 and 900 SHUs. Anaheims and Poblanos rate 1,000 to 2,500 SHUs, jalapenos 3,500 to 8,000, habaneros can weigh in at 100,000 to 500,000. The hottest peppers – the Peruvian ghost pepper , bhut jolokia peg the meter at a million SHUs or more. You do not want to take a bite out of one of these just to impress your friends at the bar.

Capsaicinoids are useful as well for use as garden pest control, effective against caterpillars and slugs. The active compounds are oily even when mixed with water to make spray, so will last through a couple of rains that aren’t downpours. Most of us are familiar with pepper spray as a self protection method. And capsaicinoids have also proven useful in topical ointments to relieve pain of arthritis and peripheral neuropathies like shingles.

Peppers can be dried, frozen pickled or canned (in a pressure canner) to preserve. At my homestead it’s drying and pickling. Today the subject is pickled peppers.

Some people add some sugar to pickled peppers, but my family isn’t fond of the taste. Sugar in the pickling liquid will serve to diminish the heat of the peppers more than no sugar liquids, so that’s something to think about for your own purposes. The regular vinegar and water pickling liquid also reduces heat a bit, which allows for good long term preservation and straight from the jar uses for even very hot peppers like jalapenos and habaneros.

The method is quite simple, which allows me to pickle peppers here and there as they accumulate. You can pickle whole (stick a knife into the side so the liquid can get into the pepper), halves pr slices. If you plan to slice hot peppers, wear some protective gloves and keep them away from your face (especially eyes and nose) the entire time you’re working. Your jars should be clean and well steamed, along with the lids. Some people process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes after filling, but as long as the jars are clean and tightly sealed, it isn’t absolutely necessary.

I add a young grape leaf to the bottom of my pickle jars before I start packing, to help keep the pickles crispy. On top of this I drop a couple of peeled cloves of garlic, half a bay leaf, half a teaspoon of sea salt, a pinch of alum and a few dill seeds. Half this for pints. Everyone has their favorite pickling spices, we’re just find of dill.

Then pack the peppers into the jars. You can remove the seeds and veins if you like, as these are where the capsaicinoids are most concentrated, but I just slice ~1/4″ thick rings of banana peppers to accompany salads, go on sandwiches, etc., thinner slices of jalapenos for nachos and such. If I can habaneros as pickles instead of hot sauce, I cut into the sides and pack them whole.

The liquid is half vinegar and half water. 1 cup each per quart. Bring it to a roiling boil, then pour it quickly into the jars to within half an inch of the top. Put on and tighten the lids and let cool enough to handle. Then you’ll want to shake the jars up good to mix the salt and alum well. Allow to cool completely and store in the fridge or on a shelf. Pepper pickles are among the easiest to make, and if your family likes hot pickled peppers it will save you considerable money through the year to have plenty of your own.

Hot sauces are kind of a version of pickled peppers, with more processing. For these I like to use frozen peppers so I can make it at my leisure during the winter. Besides, if you’ve thrown some hot peppers into freezer bags for later, it’s easy to just get one out and pop it into a pot of from-dry pinto beans or chili at any time to add significant heat. Just remember to get it out and into the compost before storing any leftovers in the fridge, or your chili will just get a whole lot hotter overnight.

To process for sauce, de-stem and add the frozen peppers to a heavy pot. I like to add onions and garlic at this time, thick-sliced or chunked. Some people add less hot green chilis and/or tomatillos as well. Boil these in water until they’re very soft, then blend the vegetables with about a cup of the cooking water until quite smooth. Put it back on the stove and add salt, any spices you wish to add, a cup of vinegar and some tomato sauce if you’re wishing to cut the heat to manageable. Some experimentation with the ‘extras’ should eventually result in a hot sauce that adds as much flavor as heat to whatever it’s used on or in. Bring to a boil, then put into sterile sauce jars and cap.

Your basic Louisiana style hot sauce is made with powdered dry cayenne, finger-hot, tobasco or other hot red peppers, added to a simmering pot of half water half vinegar and bottled. Hot vinegars for dripping on greens and such at the dinner table are easily made by packing the peppers whole into a jar and covering them with white vinegar. Keep in the fridge when it’s not on the table.

All these versions of pickled peppers are easy to make and welcome additions to the food supply if your family likes the heat. So enjoy, and stay tuned for information about drying peppers and how to process/store them.