Having battled out of control pumpkin vines all summer, I’m glad to report that the last of the pumpkin harvest is finally complete. It rained so much that several rotted on the ground, they’ve been tossed into the compost bin from which I expect next year’s greedy vines will take off. I’d planted an heirloom variety of pie-size pumpkins, not realizing that everywhere there was a leaf there would root a whole new vine. Thus the minimal planting of only 4 vines ended up literally everywhere! It grew over the mints and into the brick pathway. It grew through the roses and tried to cover the grapes. It grew out into the 3rd goal disc golf fairway and down the hill towards the bottomland drop-off. I was literally lopping off new vines daily just to keep some control (and some of my other crops)! Since the compost bin is on the fairway side of the garden, I’m going to go ahead and let the pumpkins have it next year.

Now, processing pumpkins – even pie-size pumpkins of 5 pounds or less – is an arduous task taking lots of time and energy. I spread it out over a couple of weeks, once haviing brought them inside when the temperature dropped to freezing. Once frost is upon them they go fast. Protected from frost in a dry, cool basement or root cellar, they’ll keep for months. So while it’s possible to avoid all that processing by spreadiing it out over the entire winter one pumpkin at a time, pumpkin simply doesn’t last long enough around this homestead to justify not doing it all at once well before the holiday season. I’ve got grandkids who can each eat an entire pie at a single sitting, and grown relatives who fully expect their pumpkin/hickory nut bread along with the fudge and cookies in December (my standard Christmas gifting). One thing you never want to do is find yourself processing a pumpkin at the same time you’re baking cookies/bread and making fudge. You’ll end up not sleeping for days…

Ended up with 12 full quarts of puree, ten of which were bagged and frozen with two for immediate pie-making. This involves cutting, cleaning, peeling and chunking the pumpkin – I like chunks no bigger than 1-2 inches – and saving the seeds. From each of these meaty pumpkins I got about 2/3 usable fruit and 1/3 compost waste, which is a lot better than large modern pumpkin’s yield of half and half.

First, the seeds. squeeze them loose from the stringy pulp, and set aside in a bowl, but don’t wash them. Stir occasionally while processing the rest of the pumpkin to let them dry out a bit. After you’re done using the oven, turn it back to 250º for the seeds. Ad 1 tbsp. vegetable oil per 3 cups of seeds and 1/2 to 1 tsp. of non-iodized salt. You could lessen salt and add pie spices, or chili powder for flavored snacks. Stir well, spread thinly on a baking sheet, and let roast at 250º for an hour. If not good and dry by then, separate and stir, return to the oven for another 15-20 minutes. When dry let them cool and store in zip-lock bag or airtight jar. Eat whole, they crunch easily! High in vitamins E and A, iron, magnesium and trace minerals.

I fill a large oblong cake pan with chunks in a single layer, add 1/4″ of water, cover and bake at 350º for 20 minutes. Puree the soft chunks in the blender (you’ll need to add some water, as little as possible to make it blend well) and pour into quart-size zip-lock freezer bags. These I allow to freeze solid lying flat for a day, and when that’s done they’re the size of a thin box of frozen vegetables and can be stacked or slotted as easily. Some people go ahead and box the bags, but I’m not big on excess packaging. Flat frozen they’re easy enough to find room for.

A quart of puree will make 2 large, deep pumpkin pies or 3 pre-made pie shell size pies. Rather than use the standard pumpkin pie recipe that comes on the back of those cans of pumpkin puree on sale at Thanksgiving in the grocery store, I use a much older ‘traditional’ recipe that my pumpkin pie connoisseur grandson thinks is much better than any other ready-made or home-made from canned pie he’s ever had. Best part is that you don’t have to buy those cans of evaporated milk, which aren’t good for much besides pie or fudge and are always in short supply on a moment’s notice. It’s also very easy…

For a large, deep pie:

2 cups pumpkin puree
1 cup brown sugar
3 medium eggs (2 extra large or 4 small)
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. corn starch
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. each allspice, ginger, nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

You can go ahead and use the pre-mixed Pumpkin Pie Spice from the spice aisle, or a new spice mix my grandson picked out and now insists upon – a McCormick “Gourmet Collection” blend called Chinese Five Spice. It contains (in order of appearance per the label) anise, cinnamon, star anise, cloves and ginger. The anise gives a bit of a licorice flavoring, I compensate with a quarter teaspoon of extra ginger. If you’re using a blend, 1.5 to 2 tsps. per pie.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425º, then at 350º for ~45 minutes more or until the pie is firm and a butter knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. I like not using “the usual” spice blend or recommends, as they tend to make your pie taste way too much like everyone else’s. That Chinese blend with anise and some extra ginger (which most people don’t use) is truly different, and vanilla in the mix adds a little something unusual as well. Try it!

In addition to the puree, I also dedicated a whole pumpkin to slices. Got it down to meat, then cut into 1.5 x 1.5 inch slices between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. Froze into four family-size portions without blanching or baking, as you’ll want these semi-dry to make sautees spice slices, a truly great side-dish with any meal, particularly good for holiday meals. The same dish can be made with chunks – and the half to three-quarter inch chunks tend to hold together well – but I just prefer the look and texture of the thin slices instead.

To make, first melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a heavy pan on medium-low heat, add your favorite spices or blend (total of about a tablespoon’s worth) and 1/4 cup brown sugar or maple syrup. Keep on the heat until the butter clarifies and the spices release to the fat. Pour into a bowl and add 1/4 cup lemon juice, mix well and add the pumpkin. Stir often to ensure all the pumpkin gets time in the liquid, let it marinate for a couple of hours.

Strain out the pumpkin and reserve the butter/spice/lemon mixture. Put it into a large frying pan on medium and let the lemon juice reduce out. When down to mostly butter and spice, add 2 more tbsp. of butter. When hot add the pumpkin and let it simmer until the bottom starts to brown, flip-stir with a spatula and continue sauteeing for another few minutes. When done you may wish to put the pan under the broiler long enough to evenly brown the top. Very yummy!

That sautee recipe is also good for winter squash if you get sick of the basic mushy baked stuff. Pumpkins and winter squash are jam packed with vitamins and are one of the most nutritious foods the season has to offer. It’s good to remember that pumpkin can always be substituted for winter squash in cookbook recipes, and visa versa. Try those chunks in a hearty winter soup too, always delicious on cold days.

If readers have any favorite pumpkin/winter squash recipes or preservation hints, do let us know!

Today it is officially Autumn, my personal favorite season (for the colors and smells and crisp, clear air). Unfortunately, this year it’s been so cool and wet that we basically had no summer. The tomatoes turned black and died, pumpkins are rotting in the field, weeds have taken over and it’s been weeks since we’ve seen the sun.

But now is the time to prepare for winter, beyond just putting up the harvest. We managed to get the H1N1 flu right after school started, but the immune-strengthening tea I’d previously gathered and dried worked quite well to keep it relatively mild. Was only abed for a day, which is less than with any other flu I’ve ever had. It does seem to go straight to bronchi and lungs, though, so I’m glad I was prepared. I’d encourage everyone to either gather and dry the recipe’s herbs now, or get some from a local (and organic) supplier and have it ready to brew. It tastes good enough to drink hot or cold just for fun, and certainly won’t hurt you if you do!

The winter comes with its own issues for keeping yourself healthy. There’s a dramatic lack of sunshine – thus a shortage of vitamin D – and cold weather’s general ill effects on a healthy immune system. There’s also a notable lack of fresh foods (at least, those not from some South American country you’d rather avoid), and a steady diet of grains and processed or preserved foods will often come up short on nutrients that would help keep your family going. Thus as soon as it stops raining cats and dogs here on the ‘stead, I’m planning to gather and process the ingredients for a winter tonic packed with goodies. Only four ingredients (you can always add more, of course), and some local organic apple cider vinegar.

The vinegar is a preservative and solvent that will keep the vitamins and other nutrients active and accessible to your body in easily assimilated form. There’s no cooking involved, so delicate nutrients won’t be destroyed. Even herb teas have some issues with that, in that they are brewed with boiling water which destroys some of their effectiveness. So first thing on the list is to obtain a quart or two of the very best cider vinegar you can. Don’t substitute white vinegar, as it’s mostly just chemicals in water. You want the natural goodness and medicinal/nutrative properties of the cider vinegar.

First, cider vinegar is a natural germicide. It helps to fight infection and eases inflammation. It also helps to prevent blood clots and contains vitamins C, B6, E, beta-carotene (vitamin A precursor and anti-oxidant), potassium, magnesium, calcium, riboflavin and thiamin. It also stimulates excretory organs and aids digestion. Plus it tastes good!

Second ingredient is dandelion roots. We grow some hefty dandelions in a lower terrace of the garden for greens, but also for roots in the fall. They’re easy enough to harvest with a potato-fork or hand trowel in soft ground. The roots go deep, usually straight down but sometimes they’re forked or grow at angles around rocks and such. I usually just loosen the soil around at about a foot distance and a foot deep, then pick them out by hand carefully. Dandelion root is a rich blend of vitamins A, B, D (you’ll need this one), iron, magnesium, zinc, potassium, sodium, calcium and silicon. It’s a mild diuretic, eases digestion, and promotes healthy blood circulation.

Third ingredient is chickweed, of which we’ve plenty in the yard and garden. We don’t use artificial fertilizers or weed-killers or other chemicals, but if you do you should obtain your chickweed (as well as dandelion) from someone who doesn’t. It’s high in vitamins B1, B2, B3, E and C, beta carotine, calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, iron and zinc, and contains flavinoids that aid in absorption of nutrients. It’s rich in chlorophyll, contains saponins, is a rare plant source of essential fatty acids and is useful against respiratory infections. Chickweed is renowned for reducing inflammation and speeds healing. You’ll want to keep a good growth of chickweed going all year, as it’s delicious in salads as well as excellent for your skin (along with cleavers). But this time of year, we’re talking tonic.

Fourth ingredient is rose hips, best source of vitamin C anywhere, plus A, E, K, B-complex. Generally, wild rose hips need to experience a freeze before they turn red and soften enough for harvest. First freeze in my zone should come in October, so this particular ingredient will be added later to the tonic extract.

The recipe for tonic is easy. First, wash and drain the chickweed, pat softly with paper towels. You can cut it into small pieces with kitchen scissors, go ahead and dip the blades in boiling water for a few minutes first. Put about a loose cup of chopped chickweed into a sterile quart jar. Trim and soak the dandelion roots in cold water, agitating occasionally. After the dirt is mostly off or softened, drain and scrub them carefully with a vegetable brush or old toothbrush (pre-soak brush in boiling water for 3-5 minutes). When they’re good and clean, chop them into small chunks and add to the jar(s) with the chickweed. No need to dry the roots first. You’ll want 1/2 to 1 cup of root chunks per jar. Fill the jar(s) with cider vinegar, leaving enough head space to accommodate about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of rose hips when they’re in.

Cap and store in a cool, dark place. No need to process, the vinegar will preserve and serve as solvent for the nutrients. You may wish to strain out the ingredients at some point (I don’t bother) and re-bottle. If so, wait for at least a month for the nutrients to infuse the vinegar. Take a tablespoon of the vinegar per day, however you like it. I like it on salad, but sometimes I just like to take it straight. You can use it in cooking, but that will destroy some of the nutrients you’re aiming to ingest. This tonic extract is very rich in vitamins and minerals plus anti-oxidants and flavonoids, etc. Your body will absorb more of them in this form than you’d get from a pill or capsule too.

Concerns about how the fall and winter are going to be shaping up with the “Novel H1N1″ version of swine/avian/1918 human flu is going to turn out. It’s already full-fledged pandemic, is less deadly so far outside of Mexico than originally feared, but is unstoppable and there is no effective vaccine on the horizon. It could do an instant replay of the 1918 pandemic, from which the human DNA elements of this novel strain are derived, meaning it will incubate as not-too-deadly all summer, then come back when the seasons turn to wipe out tens of millions.

That’s not guaranteed, of course. It could as easily piddle out and mutate itself into something not even infectious. Yet so far, that isn’t apparent either. I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry, so I’ve gone looking for the most effective natural ingredients for an immune-booster with likely antiviral properties that will also make a good day-drink just because it tastes good and is good for you generally. For regular cold viruses, bronchial/lung inflammations, sore throats, coughs, fevers, chills, etc. High in vitamins and minerals and antioxidants, plus some indications of anti-tumor agents.

Now, medicinal claims for natural herbs and such are strictly illegal per the FDA these days, so take it all with a grain of salt. Yet at the same time, many traditional herbal remedies have been and are being studied because they do appear to be effective. Many modern medicines are based upon traditional herbal remedies, even if they’re just the alkaloids artificially synthesized. First thing I did was go Googling for herbal “antivirals.”

There are several decent websites with ample enough disclaimers to get around the FDA, which I’ll list at the end of this article. But in addition to the immune-boosting, maybe anti-viral tea (cold or hot), there are some dietary things we should think about doing before we ever get sick. First, a good helping a white rice cooked with turmeric every day is a good idea. Turmeric contains curcumin, which imparts the bright yellow coloring. It’s an excellent anti-inflammatory (for any inflammatory condition), and may be helpful in mitigating the cytokine storm of flu as well as allergies like hay fever in general. Add an equal amount of cayenne or other pepper powder to the pot, as this pepper enhances absorption of the curcumin. Buy fresh powdered spice, store in the ‘fridge door – your new, improved spice rack! Or in a cool, dark place away from kitchen range heat.

When you’re food shopping, look in the fresh produce section for those nice bags of fresh cranberries. Buy as many as possible, freeze them. Not only can you make scrumptious whole cranberry sauce with these (do so, eat often, use raw honey if you can instead of sugar, 3/4 cup honey to 1 cup sugar), you can also make high molecular weight, high Non-Dialysable Material [NDM] with them. Just boil them about 5 minutes in good water, strain. Either drink a few ounces of this strong juice every day, or dilute it with more water and sweeten a bit with honey or maple sugar and drink as juice. If you’ve a blender and food dryer, make mush of the solid leftovers and turn it into fruit leather. Add blueberries (reconstituted dried or frozen) to increase the antioxidant value and enjoy like tart candy snacks!

If you can find good elderberry wine or brandy, get a bottle and drink 2-4 ounces every day as well. Elderberries are among the most ancient and valued of herbals, and may reduce the risk of contracting influenza. Do, but don’t overdo. If you can get a good organic basalmic vinegar (I make my own 1-year aged with native muscodines), take a tablespoonful every day – a healthy dose of basalmic and virgin olive oil dressing on a lunch salad will do. Throw some raw spinach and other actually valuable food-greens in while you’re at it. Good whole grape juice (with sediment) is also recommended, I bottle a couple of gallons of it every year. You’re going for your daily dose of supplements in the form of things you actually eat or drink, not taking a host of capsules or pills over the course of a day. If you’re like me, you get way more value from the real thing rather than somebody’s possibly questionable – and often expensive – supplements, and those generally go right through me.

The point of herbals and natural food-based remedies, in my opinion, is to get you to alter your daily consumption habits toward things that really are whole and good for you, as well as get you involved in preparing them for yourself. It’s a wholistic deal, this natural thing. Your thoughts, intents and actions all count toward the prevention/cure. Pretty soon you’ll find yourself healthy in spite of yourself, looking forward to your next meal or snack! Don’t forget alfalfa sprouts (grow your own) and nuts/seeds and hearty multigrain sprouted or seeded bread. Big on vitamin E.

Now for the great tasting tea with all the antiviral, antibiotic, anti-cancer and immune-strengthening ingredients! I start with peppermint, mostly because not only is it high on the list, it’s what grows like crazy in my garden. Have tons of it, always put it in my summer iced teas and winter hots. Lemon balm is the second ingredient, it’s got even stronger immune stimulating properties. Wild and red rose leaves, wild strawberry leaves and fruit, grape leaves, muellin, Japanese honeysuckle flowers and new leaves, pineapple mint, some ground spicebush twigs. I dry thoroughly and carefully, mix it up well and put it in a well-sealed jar, keep it in a dark place. When I brew a family-size couple of green tea bags (always good for you), I toss a handful of this dry mixture into the pot. Let it steep 5-10 minutes (10 if you’re dlluting), strain into a 2-quart pitcher. It’s still hot, so add honey now, preferably local and raw. I don’t like my tea very sweet at all, so only use half a cup or less for half a gallon. When this is mixed well, add pure water (we have mountain spring water out of our tap!) to fill the pitcher and stir. Refrigerate, drink over ice. I usually have an insulated cup with a lid that keeps it cold, sip on it all through the day.

If it’s cold, you have a cold, or you just want a hot tea, use a rounded teaspoon of the herb blend with a single-serving green tea bag, strain, sweeten with honey and drink hot.

I always fluff the dried mixture to mix it well before using, as some of the ingredients will tend to sink to the bottom of the container. That way you get all of it, and you’ll want all of it. You could add more exotic ingredients like St. Johnswort (good relaxer if you’re sick) or dyer’s woad or some other favorite, even mix with that hearty cranberry juice or whole grape juice. Any way you like it, it’ll help you fend off colds and flu as well as keep you refreshed!

The fruit crops were abundant this year due to lack of a hard late freeze as well as due to a killing late freeze last year that killed off the apple, pear and cherry crops altogether and reduced the grape harvest by at least half. The trees and vines think they’re dying after such a bad year, so will produce like crazy the next year. Yet oddly enough, there are no acorns or hickory nuts or wild walnuts on the homestead this year. Either they’re all getting eaten as fast as they fall by deer, or there just aren’t any. So again this year I’ll have to gather my acorns a bit south at my sister’s place on the lake.

Cherries are the first to ripen in early June. My family eagerly looks forward to them and I’ve never had to try and preserve – they get eaten just as fast as I can gather. Then comes the apples in August. This year the golden delicious were fat and happy, enough to turn into pie and apple butter in addition to being eaten regularly fresh off the tree. The pears fall in September and there were plenty this year to process. These are hard cinnamon pears, not great to eat straight because they’re so tough even after sitting for a few days, so I make pear butter that needs very little sugar and is great on toast or mixed into hot oatmeal or cream of wheat.

The grape harvest starts with concords in early September and then muscodines later in the month. With those, I thought the fruit harvest was done for the year when I happened to discover now in mid-October a lone American persimmon tree [Diospyros virginiana] in the back corner of the yard behind the shed that is absolutely loaded. We’ve lived here 16 years and I never saw fruit on this 40-foot tall tree, so I guess it must have reacted to last year’s late freeze just like the other fruit trees did. Hmmm… what to do with persimmons?

These persimmons are a pretty golden with patches of red, about an inch or two across. To eat fresh you should wait until they fall and are quite soft and pulpy, picked they are just a bit unripe and tart. I quartered and seeded some of those and packed them into a jar with vodka. These will make tasty tidbits during the holidays. The rest, which I’m gathering on a sheet tied around the trunk and staked up off the ground to catch the falling ripe fruit, I will dry for use in my holiday fruitcakes and fruitcake cookies.

Dried persimmons are a little softer and sweeter than dried dates, but with similar consistency. Traditionally persimmons in Asia (some big enough to weigh a pound) are halved and dried for three weeks in the sun, then finished off in low ovens. I will use the low oven method exclusively, to avoid the “no-seeum” issue (tiny gnats that manage to come right through screens and mesh). I haven’t had any real experience with persimmons – this is the first time I’ve had them readily available – so I’ll let my readers know if they turn out well enough to use in baking. They sure taste good, so the trick will probably be to keep the family from eating too many at one sitting.

That can be an issue, I’ve learned from my researches on the internet, because of their tendency to induce diarrhea if you aren’t careful. The good news is that persimmons are high in vitamin c, packed with riboflavin (vitamin B2), and contain tannins as well as anti-tumor compounds and phytonutrients. They can be as good of antioxidants as dark grapes, and in traditional Chinese medicine the fruit is used to regulate the ch’i – the vital power. Below are some links to information about persimmons for those interested or who find that they too host a tree or few on their property.

Wikipedia: Persimmon
Persimmon – Diospyros, Ebenaceae
Persimmon General Crop Information

The long summer drought finally ended last week with a full 12 inches from tropical storm Fay’s leftovers that sat stubbornly right overhead for three days. Pears are falling fast from the granny tree next to the driveway, being mashed into pulp every time a vehicle comes or goes and smelling so sweet it’s drawing flocks of turkeys and herds of deer. The fruit is hard and will dent the car if we park there, but I’ve a plastic helmet to protect my head for gathering. Which I’ve just gotta get busy doing before the bears show up.

Between the Granny pear and the house are the grapes, concords and muscadines quickly ripening but not quite sweet enough yet to justify harvest. That will come in mid-September, I’ll make jam, compote and wine (usually ends up as wine vinegar) this year, the basalmic from last year’s harvest is still aging.

Between the grapes bordering the garden and the house are the apples. The MacIntosh has a bad case of fire blight, the crop’s a total loss. Must spray it this fall, and I’ll hit its buddy the Golden Delicious at the same time even though it’s faring better. Those apples are thick and fat, very sweet and will make excellent sauce. I can’t get into the tree to pick, so must salvage off the ground. If half is unbruised it’s worth saving.

This is a very good year for fruit and nuts. We got nothing last year due to a late freeze, which nixed the mast crop completely. I had to go south to harvest acorns, walnuts and hickory nuts because there were none here. That apparently made this year’s crop push extra hard for survival, so there’s twice as much of everything!

Preservation of fruit like apples and pears is pretty easy. I core, peel and slice the fruit, then boil it with some spice (usually cinnamon), some lemon juice to preserve color and brown sugar, until they’re soft. To make butters you just blend up the cooked soft fruit, put it into pint-size sterile jars and water bath it for about 45 minutes. I’ll freeze some of the apples for pie filling. Just put the slices in a bowl with lemon juice while you’re working, then drain, put into freezer bags and put ‘em away. They’re good in smoothies straight out of the bag. It’s easier to make the filling when you make the pie than to make actual pie filling in quart-size jars and can them.

Both butters and slices (as well as chunks that break) are very good sweeteners to add to cakes and cookies during the late fall and winter. I always bake up a storm during the holidays and send out tins full to friends and relatives. I’ve still got a lot of frozen bananas from summer sales too, so this year some of that will be added to pumpkin breads and such.

A homestead is a lot of work, but it’s a satisfying life. Traditionally fruit was in short supply in the cold months, and getting enough vitamin C was a serious issue. We can always savor our mint and rose hip teas for that boost, but preserving the fruit crop is a lot better than buying expensive foreign fruit from the grocery in the winter, especially in these days of e.coli contamination the FDA can never manage to track down. Plus, even if you hate fruitcake, some nice applesauce cookies, apple turnovers, pears on the side for dinner and such are tasty ways to get your RDAs and fill your tummy with goodness at the same time.

So, happy harvest, homesteaders! If you’ve favorite recipes for your fruit preservation, please add them in the comments.

At last, we come to our current hunger project, begun some years ago and still going quite strong. It’s not something governmental or bureaucratic, it’s not something designed to guard food against anyone deigned to be “undeserving,” and it gets a lot of help here and there from community groups. All without publicity, without bragging, without self-importance, without insults to the hungry, without too much time and trouble by anyone. It’s just a project people here know about and many of them contribute to in their own quiet ways – a bit like stashing bags of food (then also clothes and toys and blankets) behind the dumpsters in a sneaky sort of way so the Dumpster People were taken care of and nobody talked about it at all. It just happened, because…

“This Is America. No One Should Go Hungry.”

We call it “Shares.” Because sharing is really what it’s all about. Our personal end of it only works in growing/harvest season, the off-season stuff is handled by actual community groups (Chamber, Ruritan and a few church-lady groups), but still quite informally. They took that over all on their own, and I’m just fine with that. Heck, I never told them not to make it formal, they figured that out on their own too. They just wanted to keep it going through the winter and spring, so did.

The way it was conceived to work was to simply enlist the aid of the people in our area who always grow a nice veggie garden in their ample yards. Here along the slow end of the Blue Ridge it seems like everybody gardens, some more than others, in or outside of town.

At first I approached my immediate neighbors, nice folks who live this far out in the woods as I do on purpose. The leave us alone, but are always on hand in emergencies (blizzards, forest fires), and not stingy on good advice about what to do for apple blight, what’s eating the grape vines, the best heirloom tomato seeds, etc., etc. After the county locked up the dumpsters I approached 4 neighbors the following spring and asked if they’d add a row to their normal garden, seed it with any extra seed they had after planting their usual rows, and donate the produce to my “shares” project.

I told them I’d collect the food, bag or box it, and get it to those I knew in town (at that little grocery store) who could get it out to poor families. I wasn’t really surprised when they enthusiastically said ‘yes!’ but I was quite encouraged that this might work. The really amazing part is that I didn’t actually have to do the organizational work at all, even in the first year! Before spring was over those neighbors had convinced more neighbors, who convinced more neighbors, who got the word out in town, which started the little old church-ladies going, which got the Chamber involved, and the extension service jumped right in with both feet and started donating seeds – just pick ‘em up, free to all. It sort of just made so much sense that it took on a life of its own.

By July there was more food than anyone had figured on, just from those extra rows in yard gardens all over the county. That little grocery store donated boxes, the church-ladies divvied it all up so every box had some of this and some of that – whatever was coming in that week – and I got to do my job. Being as we belonged to the Chamber back then and I’d been in the publishing business for twenty years, I did volunteer for the project.

I’d purchased Marian Morash’s Victory Garden Cookbook, a wonderful resource for everything veggie. They’re alphabetically listed, info on growing, storing, preservation and such is provided, then there are dozens of recipes for each thing. What do you do with a basket full of eggplant that all comes in at once? She gives many different dishes. And for artichokes and for zucchini and for every other garden veggie you’re ever likely to encounter!

So I typed out the storage, prep and preserving info and 4 or 5 basic recipes (some hers, some mine). I copied these at the copy shop (for free, the owner donated that!) on regular size paper, 2-up so they could be cut in half. If we had okra, eggplant, tomatoes, summer squash and new potatoes that week, I stapled the half-sheets together and that was loaded into the boxes by the church-ladies along with the food. Pretty soon I’d gone through the book (everything except the exotics), and the copy shop had the originals on file so they could get them printed up on their own.

The boxes and bags of food get distributed by people involved and people who know about it. Anyone who wants or needs the food (or knows someone who does) can just pick it up, no questions asked and nothing to sign. Not much hangs around long enough to be composted. No doubt many people could afford to buy their own, but who really cares? It’s all food, somebody needs to eat it, and most all people who can afford to purchase their food will still purchase food. It doesn’t dent the grocery store’s business.

The project is still informally going, it’ll probably keep going as long as people here have gardens and good hearts – forever, I figure. I grow my row, that’s pretty much all I have to do. And drop it off at the train station once a week or so. Nobody gets paid, nobody works too hard, nobody cares to “means test” the people who get the food. Whatever doesn’t get distributed gets taken to the food bank in the county seat. Given the sheer amount of food that is thrown away in this country every single day, why shouldn’t it go to people who will eat it?

I’d sure love to hear from readers about any hunger projects they’ve been involved with, maybe how their network of friends and homesteaders – urban or rural – is helping to make this world just a little bit better (and healthier). If you’ve a tale to tell, please do! You can post in the comments or just comment that you’ve a project and I’ll respond with an email contact for a guest post opportunity. Because…

“This Is America. No One Should Go Hungry.”

Posts to This Series:

Feeding the Hungry – Part 1
Feeding the Hungry – Part 2
Feeding the Hungry – Part 3

Welcome to Part 2 of this series on feeding the hungry in your neighborhood. Before I get into the current homestead project, my family has been involved in some rather innovative hunger projects over the years in a number of places, both urban and rural, local as well as international in scope. We’ve found that while it’s nice to volunteer once or twice a year at the local soup kitchen or deliver Meals on Wheels to homebound and elderly folks in your town or city, there are things you can be doing on a constant basis that don’t require a lot of paper-pushing, government approval or desperate efforts to convince the hungry to swallow their pride.

And that last issue is one that homesteaders should understand better than most. There is a certain amount of shame attached to poverty and hunger in our society, so it’s a sure bet that formal programs are not going to reach all the people who are actually going hungry during any given week of the year. We’ve found that an individual approach, and an attitude of joyful sharing will reach more people than any amount of scary bureaucracy can. It’s just crazy how hunger programs can get so bogged down in trying to make sure nobody who might be able to afford food doesn’t ever get a bite of free food. THAT seems positively designed to thwart good efforts and leave way too many people out in the cold. Our current project manages to get around this pretty well by simply NOT means-testing anybody who comes for food. They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t need the food, so who the hell cares? But more on that in Part 3.

First, our background is that we had become involved in a grant-funded hunger project out of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1983 called “The Whole World Family Supper.” We were the promo team and designed the brochures, wrote the letters, maintained the contact lists, etc. for the project. It didn’t get that far before the grant ran out (and we moved away), but my favorite aspect was that it chose a day – Thanksgiving – and enlisted missions/NGOs in many countries and depressed areas of the US to sponsor a giant pot-luck get-together on that day, the price of admission being a dish for the meal and at least two “guests” who could not afford to feast.

When we moved from Tulsa we located in northeastern Florida. There we became fast friends with a retired Air Force officer who maintained a boatyard in Saint Augustine. He loved the family supper idea so much that he became official host for the Thanksgiving pot-luck every year, setting up sawhorse and plywood tables end-to-end the entire length of the roofed dry-dock shelter (which made the spread at least 100 feet long). He also pit-roasted three huge turkeys and two ample hams every year, which were donated from two local grocery stores and the owners of the boatyard. The crowd was always colorful and culturally diverse, the smorgasbord piled with vegan dishes, every kind of vegetable dish you can imagine, more pounds of mashed potatoes and yams than should be allowed by law, veggie and turkey gravy in two-quart pitchers (constantly refilled), rolls and homemade bread loaves by the dozen, cranberry sauce and fruit dishes by the bushel, one 4×8 tabletop completely full of piled pies of every variety, and enough tea, lemonade and fruit juice to quench an army’s thirst! Again, price of admission was at least one dish of food and at least 2 people who otherwise would not eat a feast on Thanksgiving. There were often well over a hundred people present, and the feast lasted the whole weekend (lots of campers in the yard).

Thus for us, getting good food into hungry people’s mouths is sort of a “personal mission.” This is America, there’s just no excuse for chronic hunger. Thus shortly after we moved to the mountain I was appalled to discover one day while taking the trash to the county dumpsters that in this rural area where almost everybody’s got a garden going and there are always trucks full of produce in summer in parking lots or by the side of the road, there were whole families of “Dumpster People.”

Dumpster people are very poor people (this is Appalachia, we’ve got poor people) who actually live in tents and crude box-huts in the woods near the dumpsters, and whose children can be found any time of day digging through other people’s garbage for something to eat. I was horrified, immediately took to packing a garbage bag with bread and fruit and veggies and hard boiled eggs and whatever else I could find that didn’t require cooking, and taking it with me whenever I took the trash. I’d tie the food bag with a ribbon and stash it in the shade in back of the dumpster, as the child I’d tried to simply hand it to was practically feral and quite frightened of me. But he knew what the food bag looked like and kept an eye out for my car, and always quickly retrieved the food when I left it.

Over the months I started noticing that other people had begun stashing bags of food (and often clothes and toys and blankets) in the shade behind the dumpsters too. I don’t know how exactly they’d found out about my hiding place, but they decided all on their own to help out, and the Dumpster People started eating pretty well! By the first winter one of the local churches had intervened to get the families into an actual house nearer town, and the County government moved the dumpsters into a fenced-and-barbed-wire compound with a full-time on-duty guard to make sure no Dumpster People could get in. We call it the “Inconvenient Station” to this day. That of course didn’t stop people from going hungry, it just cut off their food supply.

And that brings me up to the new project that came to me one day, when someone from the other side of the highway through town showed up at our door with a big box of groceries that had been donated to a little local grocery’s hunger project. I sure don’t know how we ended up on the list, but my grandson’s best friend worked at that grocery after school and probably added our names just because he could. That got me to thinking that this county – of just 38,000 people total, all of 738 in our little town – is just chock full of people who are as appalled by the idea that anyone should go hungry as I am. At that moment I knew I could count on as much help as anyone would ever need to launch a perpetual hunger project in these environs, and it’s still going strong to this day.

“This Is America. No One Should Go Hungry.”

Posts to This Series:

Feeding the Hungry – Part 1
Feeding the Hungry – Part 2
Feeding the Hungry – Part 3

This will be a series over the next few weeks about a subject that too many of us try hard not to think about, and which too many believe does not impact their immediate neighborhood or region. People in America are going hungry, and for a number of reasons from apathy to pride to a real shortage of government funding, are not being fed. If you don’t think it affects you or your town or county, you’re sadly mistaken.

This series is about ways to tackle that problem head-on, and perhaps build a network of friends and neighbors who will help. Not a church-based group, or a government program, or something officially sponsored in ways that can end up harming the effort over time. Just people – the more the better – making sure that no one inside their sphere of influence goes hungry. The very BEST people to spearhead such projects are homesteaders, primarily due to our strong and energetic commitments to our own self-sufficiency. We’ve lots to offer, and everyone can benefit.

My family homesteads in the deep countryside, but not all successful homesteaders are rural dwellers. There is a huge urban homesteading movement that has been growing steadily over more than a decade, from the days when old inner-city neighborhoods full of boarded-up, badly neglected but once gracious homes were offered for sale for practically nothing to upwardly mobile Yuppies who would fix them up and turn the neighborhoods around. In many cities this movement has revitalized neighborhoods dramatically, and their mixed race and income status has not hampered efforts to form neighborhood solidarity and outreach.

On that level we rural homesteaders seem to be somewhat lagging behind, as we simply don’t have a lot of close neighbors and tend to be quite a bit more isolated, at least in the early years. I’ve been trying hard to promote the idea of changing that by networking with like-minded neighbors as well as old-timers, getting involved in local school and community projects, volunteering here and there, joining the County Chamber, offering extension courses, etc. Sure, we’ve more miles to travel (and with the price of gasoline lately, that can be a significant barrier to physical networking), but we’ve also got more skills and resources to offer than your average city-dweller.

Food issues are increasingly coming to the political foreground with food shortages and riots spreading across the world, increasing costs, poor farming practices, etc. Worse, many of those issues overlap energy issues – costs of fuel, transportation, chemical farming, pollution, etc. So I’m going to devote some posts here to those issues, and have added some food links to the blogroll that specialize in the broad overlapping political issues as well. I hope my readers will visit those sites regularly and get involved as much as possible in designing solutions from the homestead (urban or rural) that will help to address those issues.

For my part, I’m going to open Part 2 of this series with a description of hunger projects I’ve been involved in through the years, the better to promote my current project later in the series, one begun as one of my very first networking efforts after we moved to our mountain homestead 16 years ago.

“This Is America. No One Should Go Hungry.”

Posts to This Series:

Feeding the Hungry – Part 1
Feeding the Hungry – Part 2
Feeding the Hungry – Part 3

Here we are nearly halfway through 2008, and the 2007 farm bill is slowly but surely making its way through House and Senate disagreements on its way to the chamber floors for vote this week or next. The final compromise, USDA chair Ed Schafer bluntly informs us, will be vetoed by President Bush.

If farm legislation doesn’t directly affect many of us rural and semi-rural homesteaders, it’s a sure bet that it will affect our neighbors who do farm on a commercial scale. Thus it’s something we should be paying attention to. According to lawmakers nearly 3/4 of the spending in this bill over the next decade will be for feeding the needy. Another 16% goes toward commodities, crop insurance and disaster relief. Increasing nutrition spending (feeding the hungry) 8+% over the previous farm bill is reasonable given the worsening food crisis both in America and world wide.

This farm bill addresses biofuels diversion of food crops (like soy and corn) by providing more than a billion dollars to expand alternate use of biomass (like switchgrass and algae) and crop by-products (cornstalks, wheat straw, etc.) rather than diverting the grain itself. It also tightens payment limits, eliminating the “three-entity rule” that the previous bill contained as justification to funneling most ag payments to huge agribusiness concerns rather than smaller farm cooperatives or family farms. It limits subsidies to anyone making more than $500,000 in non-farm adjusted gross income [AGI] per year, and entirely ending direct payments to anyone with an AGI of more than $750,000 from any source. This will effectively put Big Agribusiness in the business of actually doing business instead of simply sucking up free corporate welfare as smaller family farms disappear.

New homesteaders usually aim to grow an increasing amount of their own food, as this is part of the whole homesteading impetus in the modern world. Those who have been at it for awhile – and have managed to secure ~10 or more acres for their homestead – are increasingly producing food for local markets and even joining the CSA movement by allowing individuals and families to “buy-in” to the season’s crops. The nation’s farm bill policies (the 2002 bill expires on Friday, May 16th) usually don’t affect what homesteads of 50 acres or less produce, and nobody from the government tries to tell them what they can or can’t grow. And as long as production remains tied to the local/regional market the government isn’t likely to interfere.

So why, one might reasonably ask, has President Bush promised to veto the legislation? First, he’d wanted a $200,000 AGI cap on ALL farm subsidies, essentially getting the government fairly well out of the business of subsidizing agriculture altogether. The politicians claim their $750,000 figure is more realistic as a way of weaning farmers off support payments. Which under the present soon-to-expire bill allows an AGI of $2.5 million. Surely then the higher cap is reasonable as a step-down without throwing US agriculture into total turmoil just when food is becoming a precious commodity.

And while the amount of money American taxpayers must provide to farmers in order to have a safe and ample supply of food is certainly too much in real terms under the 2002 bill, that’s not the most controversial aspect of the 2007 bill. That would be the “commodity title” – the program through which the government tries to smooth out the financial uncertainty of farming itself. Bush wants those out altogether because they’re a sticking point in global trade deals (and, presumably, because we don’t have any money left from his oil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). These payments usually go to the biggest farming concerns, so serious economic recession should be a factor in their continuance.

However – and most important to rural homesteaders producing or planning to produce within the next few years food for local/regional markets – this bill contains $5 million in annual mandatory funding for “Community Food Projects [CFP]” over the next 10 years. The bill also allows public school to favor local farms in bids for school food supplies, and this can significantly improve both local markets as well as school nutrition in general. It eliminates a major barrier for schools and will make Farm to School programs much easier to establish county-wide or even regionally. This will help producing homesteaders significantly.

While schools are still limited to spending a mere 70¢ to $1.00 per day per student for food, communities could get creative with other subsidies and program funding that would pay local farmers a decent price for their produce (including meat, dairy and chicken/eggs). The Conservation Title in this bill will tend to reward small farmers and producing homesteaders for their land and water conservation efforts too, and since we’re doing it anyway it’s nice to think that we could enjoy a small stipend to maintain the practice.

There are significant boosts in funding for organic agriculture, including a quintupling of payments to cover the heavy price of organic certification, and a seven-fold increase in funding for organic research and extension. It’s not a lot (and nowhere near the cash devoted to industrial-scale agribusiness), but it’s something. Something is always better than nothing, particularly since most of us homesteaders are growing food anyway.

I’ve been encouraging homesteaders to network with their neighbors and communities in a number of ways, and food production, distribution, nutrition programs in schools and for the needy in our communities are important aspects of local governance and planning homesteaders can contribute much to. We don’t HAVE to be paid by the government to love where we live and do what we do, but if our areas can manage to lasso some help from the big guys then we should be attempting to get all we can. Farm and rural policies are important even though we are striving for independence. So keeping up with what affects farmers in our areas is very important.

Links:
Farm Bill Heads for Congressional Passage
Farm Bill Conferees Near Goal Line
Congress (almost) passes a farm bill