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!

My daughter went a little wild this year “trimming” back the grape vines that wandered over the fence that badly needs repair (rather than simply repairing the fence), so diminishing the ripening fruit that we got basically nothing from them this season. Ah, well. Happens every so often. They should be back in bulk next year, and I’m fixing the fence over the winter so she won’t be tempted to prune out of season. What she didn’t manage to trim into oblivion this year are the wild roses (sweet briar) bushes on the up-ridge side of the driveway. They can get out of control pretty easy, and always want to drape down into the driveway to cause scratches (and sometimes blood) to people who park too close.

So I’m the one who did the pruning this year, and I was very careful to hardily discourage growth on the driveway side, while encouraging growth on the ridge side. That allowed for a pretty good haul of rose hips this past weekend by my grandson. In previous years I’ve simply put the little hips – sweet briar hips are about half the size of dogwood berries, not the fat wild persimmon sized hips of garden roses – into a jar in the freezer to add to teas made over the winter. Especially the colds/flu tea we drink a lot of to keep the viruses away. But this year we made rose hip syrup, and I’m definitely a convert as I drink my morning coffee sweetened with it.

Rose hips are sort of a concentrated multi-vitamin, with an average of 20 times the vitamin C as oranges. They don’t turn red (and soften up) until after the first frost, which occurred on the up side of the hill weekend before last. They’re difficult to harvest, as they must be pulled from the branches carefully in order to avoid battle scarring from those pesky thorns. So I must say I was very glad for grandson’s volunteering to do that job, I usually wait until November to harvest and end up looking like I’ve been handling an ill-tempered badger. Rose hips also contain appreciable amounts of vitamins A, D and E, making them a very good wintertime tonic.

You can make a jelly out of them, but it seems to me that the heat of jelly processing is probably not the best way to preserve the vitamin content. Whereas steeping them for tea doesn’t expose them to high heat for extended periods. Always keep them whole prior to processing, as once they’ve been cut or ground they begin oxidation immediately. A good rule of thumb is that it takes ~1/2 pound of hips for 1 quart of syrup, though you’ll want to use half-pint jelly jars for the final product. Be sure to sterilize them as well as the lids. They do not require actual canning, but you’ll want to seal them while still very hot.

Some people who use the big garden-rose hips cut off the tops and tails, but this would be silly with little bitty wild hips. To remove as much of the long-dead petals and hairs at the top end, I simply rub a small handful between my hands to loosen it up good, before spray-washing. Once washed, put the hips into a grinder or blender and process to a kind of sticky pulp. Put this pulp into 2 quarts of rapidly boiling water, remove from the heat, cover, and let steep for 4-5 hours or overnight.

Strain through an unbleached coffee filter or jelly bag, try to get all the liquid you can out of it. Put this into a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat while slowly stirring in 1.5 cups of packed light brown sugar. Make sure your sugar is natural brown rather than dyed, as in natural form it retains quite a bit of the good mineral content. Reduce heat to a bare simmer and keep uncovered to reduce the liquid by about half, so that it’s quite thick. Pour this into the sterilized jars and attach lids. Allow to cool on the countertop, then keep in the refrigerator to preserve the vitamins C and A.

Use this syrup like honey to sweeten coffee or herbal teas, or just take a spoonful a day as supplement. You can mix this syrup with strong elderberry tincture if you have a cold or get the flu. It makes the tincture a little easier to swallow, but sugar does affect the potency of the tincture a bit. I prefer to use the syrup by itself as a tea sweetener, it adds a little bit of tart and a lot of sweet, especially for blackberry and mint teas.

And don’t forget to throw a few dried dogwood berries into the teapot when you’re steeping, these are also excellent sources of vitamins C and A. Here’s hoping the viral season is light this year, and that we all spend as few days under the weather as possible.

Some Helpful Links:

Foraging: Making Rosehip Syrup
Katey’s Rosehip Syrup recipe
Rose Hip Jelly, Jam Recipe

As the hardwoods peak and shower our homestead with a bright blanket of multi-colored leaves, the resulting re-emergence of the surrounding mountains reminds me that cold weather’s coming fast and things here on the ‘stead have to be squared away for that inevitability. First on the list of things to do, of course, is woodstove maintenance.

Our woodstove is a custom job, came with the cabin when we bought the place. It needs to be blackened, as the surface does tend to become a bit pitted and rusty over a period of years. We could use a coat of gun blue, but we usually just get a can of good ol’ stove blacking from the hardware store and apply that. Once it’s on, it needs to be fired up to set, however. And that of course requires cleaning the stovepipe and making sure all the joints are sound (or get replaced, also something that has to happen every few years). And while we’re at that, cleaning out all the packed ashes leftover from springs last cold nights has to be removed, the lining bricks re-set, and all the grates through which the stovepipe passes have to be meticulously cleaned of accumulated cobwebs and possible flammables. A well-maintained woodstove provides reliable and welcome heat for decades whether it’s free-standing or a fireplace insert variety. Without said maintenance it’s a fire hazard for which you may find your insurance lacking.

So now that at least the start on the winter’s wood supply has been cut, split and stacked in a convenient location, here’s the basic overview of “How-To” do whatever else needs doing…

1. Checking the Pipe. The first place to look for needed replacement is at the connection of the pipe to the stove. This joint gets the hottest, and stovepipe is a thin sheet metal rather than a thick cast iron. It will degrade faster than anywhere else. You should of course also check the rest of the pipe joints for rust and thinning, and if anything looks weak go ahead and replace the entire thing. Along with the cap to discourage rain from getting in, and re-tar the flashing where it goes through the roof. Last time we replaced the pipe we got an extra galvanized sheet and wrapped it around the joint section, then fastened it securely with wire. This has allowed the pipe to last longer than it used to, which is cost-effective.

Our stove is in the basement, the pipe goes straight up through the center of the cabin’s living area and right up through the loft and out the roof. This arrangement is very energy efficient, as we get more “living” heat off the pipe than the stove. Being three stories tall, it also minimizes the carbon particulates in wood smoke that makes it all the way out, which is good even though I like the homey smell of wood smoke when coming home from an outing. The downside of the tall pipe is that soot and resin/creosote buildup tends to coat the inside of the pipe quite thickly. This presents a chimney fire hazard, so years that we don’t replace the pipe we have to ‘sweep’ it good.

First thing to do is get a stout stick or paddle and ‘rap’ the pipe starting at its highest point and working your way down to the stove itself. Don’t hit it hard enough to dent it, but do strike all the way around to loosen built-up carbon. You’ll hear it ‘raining’ down as you go, and yes you will have to get it out of the stove once you’re done. But once you’ve ‘banged the pipe’ down its entire length, go on up to the roof and do the interior job. You can purchase a ‘sweep’ (a circular stiff brush), or you can do it the old fashioned way. This involves tying a brick or good-sized stone into an old terrycloth towel and then attaching a rope so this can be lowered into the pipe as far as it will go. If it meets resistance pull it up and drop it down a few times to loosen the blockage. The old towel should be entirely trashed by the time this job is done, so toss it. Then check the sections and joints yet again to ensure that the metal is still entirely sound.

If your woodstove set-up has much shorter sections of pipe with elbows in it, you’ll have to dismantle those elbows and either clean thoroughly with wire brush or replace. These 90º turns pick up a whole lot of carbon and creosote, need extra attention.

If you’ve got one of those pretty fireplace insert stoves, you’ll need to not just clean the pipe but also the chimney. It can be worth it to go ahead and hire a chimney sweep for this purpose, who will also inspect your rock and/or brickwork to ensure the mortar is solid and your rain cap is functional without blocking air flow. A friend’s house very nearly burned down a couple of years ago when his brick chimney caught fire and sent flames and sparks out onto the roof shingles. Don’t let that happen to you, pay attention to your exhaust system!

2. Applying the Blacking. We get ours in a can from the hardware store, which is cheaper and more made-to-order than gun blue. It’s a sort of paint that you apply – just like paint – to the outside wrought iron surface of your stove. You can also apply to the interior, but we’ve never found that necessary.

Once it’s dry you want to open up every window and door throughout the house (so do this on a warm day), maybe crank up those window fans, and build a fire. The blacking doesn’t become ‘one with’ the wrought iron until it’s gotten good and hot. But the process does cause some obnoxious fumes during that setting fire, which is why the house must be open. We have birds, cats and dogs, all of them should be taken to somewhere outside for as long as the setting fire burns, and not brought in again until the fumes have been thoroughly purged by fresh air.

A good blacking job can last for 3 or 4 seasons before needing to be done again, so don’t bother with this unless the metal of your stove is looking rough.

3. Setting the Bricks. This is kind of a dirty job, but well worth the effort if you rely on your woodstove to keep things above freezing on long winter nights or for many hours while you’re away from home. The basic idea is that lining the stove with bricks adds a great deal to its thermal mass, helps it to retain heat even when its vents are shut very nearly all the way off.

We use regular old building bricks. The stove itself is rectangular, so these work very well and tend to stay in place. We set them one-thick to completely cover the bottom of the stove, then 2-high around the back and sides. This means the fire is set right on top of them. On cold nights we load it up with larger pieces of wood, let it catch well, then close down the vents all the way, then a quarter-turn back. Barely enough air to keep it smoldering, not enough for flames. The stove stays warm enough to save pipes, but the house is cold enough to need comforters and quilts on the beds. Who would want to sleep in a hot house in the middle of the winter anyway?

In the morning the vents are opened up a bit and some fresh wood is added, by the time coffee’s ready the stove is cooking away and it’s warm enough for showers and such. Don’t have to actually build any fire at all, as there are enough leftover red-hot coals from the night to fire it up automatically.

If you’re heating already with wood, you probably already know about putting metal or ceramics underneath and on any walls around your unit. These things can get red-hot, and can not only ruin any drywall, wood paneling or wallcoverings in their vicinity, they can also cause them to catch fire. We covered the wall nearest our woodstove with a sheet of that aluminum looks-like-stone skirting for mobile homes, because we happened to have a sheet from a salvage job we did years ago. But just like the brick trick, if you were instead to use stoneware floor tiling or even actual mortared brick, you’d be adding to the thermal mass of your overall heating system. More efficiency the better, and when it’s really, really cold every little bit of radiant heat is welcome.

And whether or not you have small children in the house, do put a ‘fence’ around any woodstove that is taking up room in the main living area. We don’t because ours is in the basement, but where the pipe comes up through the library we have a chickenwire ring-fence around it to keep people and animals away from it. That pipe gets plenty hot enough to burn if touched. We also have a nifty little magnetic temperature gage on the pipe that allows us to tell quickly when the fire’s too hot. Managing the temperature is easy enough to do just by closing the vents a bit, but it can get ahead of you if the stove isn’t right there to be seen and felt.

At any rate, I trust we’ll all have a safe and warm winter on our homesteads. More helpful hints for winterizing the place will be upcoming as the seasons change, so do stay tuned!

If you’re like me, having to wait until November 1st before the kids (or, in my case, the grandkids) will allow me to process the pumpkins, making simple but delicious meals out of what’s still coming in from the garden at this late date can be a challenge. There’s not much out there right now, mostly the last of the peppers, some scraggly red kale still struggling along as the fall kale is just now coming up, the herbs still being cut and slowly dried for winter, the potatoes still safely stashed underground to be dug as needed. Oh, and those pesky but delicious cherry tomato volunteers that become tolerated weeds depending on where they grow (and I’ll allow).

Nights are decidedly chilly now, though there hasn’t yet been a freeze. Days are gorgeously mid-October, the reds finally kicking in to add their richness to the yellows of the fall leaf color scheme, all but the oak leaves will be gone before Thanksgiving. The grandsons have been spending their school weeks in town since the semester started at the Community College due to a shortage of motorized gad-about(s) since the pickup died last spring. That leaves hubby and I with four actual days a week just to ourselves, something we’ve never enjoyed at any time in the 40+ years of our lives together. It can be quite a challenge to suddenly go from a lifetime of cooking for a fluctuating hoard to making dinner for just two light eaters.

Took me quite a long time to learn how to make a large spread where everything manages to get done and ready-to-serve at the same time. That’s enough trouble that I’ve never tried too hard if it’s not Thanksgiving. Usually the family can handle meals served in ‘courses’ where they eat whatever’s done now and then eat whatever gets done then. For just hubby and me having any more than two or three kinds of food at a time just seems like too much. So I’m not bothering at all with that. Tonight, for instance, I’m going to make “Comfort Food” out of what’s coming in. I’ll no doubt make more than the two of us can eat, but I’m not nearly as averse to leftovers as he is, so that’s okay.

What’s “Comfort Food?” For us it’s simple, tasty, warming and satisfyingly home-grown. The kids harvested a big bowl of ripe cherry tomatoes this past weekend which will have to be composted if I don’t eat or preserve them. And I’ve got so many ‘tomaisins’ at this point that it’s not worth the trouble to produce more. So it’ll be good ol’ tomato soup, using some of the late bells. Combine that with grilled cheese on fresh whole wheat sourdough from the bread machine, and baked red kale crisps. Should take about 30 minutes total to prepare – not counting the bread, of course – and most of that will be cooking time instead of dedicated prep.

Roasted Tomato Pepper Soup

• ~1 pound of ripe cherry or grape tomatoes
• 2 fresh leeks
• 1/4 red onion, chunked
• 1/2 cup chunked bell pepper
• 3 largish cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 tbsp freshly dried basil leaf
• 1 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 2 cups tomato or vegetable broth
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 1.5 tbsp. olive oil
• fresh chopped chives for garnish

Wash and remove calyxes from tomatoes, place into an oven roasting pan. Add garlic cloves, chunked peppers, leeks sliced 1/2″ thick and onion to the pan. Drizzle with olive oil and mix well to coat all the vegetables. Roast at 500º for 20 minutes, stirring well after 10 minutes. When soft and slightly browned, put the vegetables and basil into a blender with some broth and puree to smooth.

Put the puree into a saucepan and stir in remainder of the broth and the salt. When it begins to bubble add the milk, stirring well. Don’t let it boil. Serve hot garnished with chives or shredded parmesan cheese, season with table salt and freshly ground pepper as desired.

Baked Red Kale Chips

These are easy and very tasty. Just wash and trim the stems from the kale, spin-dry or blot with paper towels. Put into a cake or roasting pan and toss with about a little olive oil to coat lightly. When you remove the roasted tomatoes from the oven, turn the temperature down to 400º. By the time you’ve processed the vegetables for the soup the oven should be cooled to that temperature, so pop the kale into the oven as you finish the soup. Bake for 8-10 minutes until the kale is quite crisp.

I figure we all know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, so I won’t bother detailing that. The baked kale chips would work nicely as a side to baked winter squash too, or with pumpkin soup for other comfort food ideas once it gets to be November. Then there’s the old standby of potato-leek soup my family seems to live on all winter, or navy bean soup from dry. Your basic soup and sandwich with a tasty side, all hot and tasty and most welcome on chilly evenings.

What’s your favorite “Comfort Food?”

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

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.

Autumn has come to the mountain just as spring did – one ay it was perfectly clear, close to 80º and comfortably into the mid-60s at night, the next it was barely up to 60º at mid-day and into the high 30s at night. Not only are we seriously behind in the necessary wood supply for heat, I’ve been having to scramble to bring in the remaining peppers and last of the tomatoes. Poplar leaves are already yellow and dogwoods are getting a ret tint on their leave to complement their quickly ripening bright red berries, and the crisp air fills with leaves whenever the breeze blows.

Luckily autumn is my favorite of all seasons. In three weeks from now the lush greens of summer will have turned into impossible corals and day-glo oranges and deep reds and yellows bright enough to light up the night. The smell of leaf-fall is heavenly even though it means endless raking in November, a necessary task to ensure resistance to spring fires. And of course the usual foot-deep winter covering once I’ve cleaned out the garden terraces and tossed the remains of their summer bounty on the compost pile. But it’s raining right now, so I’m shivering inside not daring to use any of the scant locust we have left from last year’s wood supply before nightfall, when it’ll really be needed.

In my last post I talked about a new centralized organizational outfit for connecting CSAs [Community Supported Agriculture farms] and ass orated organic suppliers with customer bases in their area via the internet, for promoting healthy, local food and food products and changing the way we eat. In my wanderings about the web, I discovered another kind of CSA that sounds like something right up my alley.

It’s called Goldthread, and it’s a CSA they say should properly be called a “CSM” because it offers community-supported medicinal herb shares. The Goldthread farm is located in western Massachusetts, and its herbal preparations are made in small batches at the farm in Conway and an apothecary in Florence. A share basket may include a combination of carefully dried bulk herbs, small bottles of tinctures, essential oils, herbal honeys and compounds, often accompanied by fresh culinary herbs and garlic.

“Grassroots medicine” sounds like a good idea at this current point in history, as my ‘customer’ base has only been increasing over the past few years as western medicine’s allopathic treatments have become far too expensive for most people to use, joblessness has stripped what little insurance coverage people once did have, and the state slashes Medicaid to the bone so that no one new gets on the roll until someone dies. Last year my elderberry tincture (for colds and flu) saved nearly a dozen people – one of them an ER nurse – from work and time loss due to viral respiratory infections. My ginseng tincture hasn’t been made yet, but three new ‘customers’ have requested some, asap. If I had money to invest in some cute little dropper bottles and labels, I could probably make a little income on the side just with those. Then there’s the black cohosh, the Japanese honeysuckle, the goldenseal, the dogwood and spiceberry tonic, and MUST get started on the autumn end of my skin lesion salve that takes a year to produce…

Problem is, I use those little quotes around the word ‘customer’ because I’ve just never charged anybody real money for my simples and remedies. People have long said I could, but all of my herbalist ancestors believed – and taught – that doing it for money was antithetical to the effort at healing. That was so ingrained in me that it’s been difficult to even begin thinking about charging money. But now that my grandson has put so much energy and effort into learning from me, and helping me greatly in managing the medicinal crops, I see that earning a little money on those efforts isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Now that grandson is in ‘business’ with me as apprentice-in-training, making a bit of money for his college tuition is where I’m aiming my thoughts for the next year. Both in producing the concoctions and in planning for more medicinals next growing season. We’ve already transplanted what will be an entire grove of elderberry that was threatened by a road-widening project, and nettle so we’d have our own on-property supply. We’ve transferred the ginseng to new, deeper beds much better protected from deer and tromping disc golfers than where they were before.

We probably won’t be a CSA like this farm in Massachusetts is, as there are plenty of needful folks just here in our area who tend to trouts the old herb-lady more than they trust whatever allopathic doctor’s on duty today at the urgent care center for $400 a pop just to walk in the door.

So wish us luck, and I’ll be sure to report back on whether or not this change of heart on the healing plane works out. Stay tuned!

Link

Goldthread Herbal Apothecary
The Kitchn: Goldthread Article