Seed Catalogs

It’s the middle of winter, cold, dreary, but something I start receiving in my mailbox makes me long for the warm days of spring, the seed catalogs. Those shiny, colorful pages full of picture of ripe fruit and veggies and herbs. I have already started buying some things, a week ago, while on one of my rare trips to town (it’s a 3+ hour drive to town), I was in a Sam’s Club store, I was about to start heading for the check out lanes when I spotted something green and leafy sticking out from an odd aisle.

It was boxes of blueberry plants, grapevines and other goodies. I will always bypass the flowers and such, I refuse to grow something that isn’t edible or medicinal or in some other way useful, a pretty face just doesn’t do it for me, it has to actually DO SOMETHING, it has to taste good or be useful in some other way.

I purchased a box that had 4 blueberry bushes growing, these are not the blueberry twigs I received in the mail last year, these actually had roots, stems and leaves, and at $16 for all four plants, I couldn’t go wrong. I still haven’t planted them though, right after coming home, I promptly developed a cold, or something, I’ve been down for a week. I did purchase a soil tester, the kind with the probe, you stick it in the dirt and it tells you the PH of the soil, something that is pretty handy when planting more persnickety plants.

I would guess that my soil is on the acidic side because of all the pines and oak trees in my area, but the only way to know for sure is to test it, I’ll be doing that either tomorrow or Monday, then I’ll either amend the soil or I’ll be planting those blueberries.

I also purchased a bag that contained four different kinds of onions, shallots, garlic and one horseradish root. I’m not crazy about horseradish, but since I have it, I’ll plant it and decide what to do with it later. The bag says it has 200 bulbs, so I’ll have lots of onions, garlic and shallots. While in the store, I also grabbed a head of elephant garlic, I’ve always wanted to grow those…

Last year, my garden really flopped, it was a combination of having not enough time to properly work it, I was working way too much and had so little time or energy left over, the other problem was a lack of moisture, we essentially didn’t have a rainy season, I rely heavily on captured rain water to water my garden and we just didn’t get it, not even one good rain, that would have filled my 1000 gallon rain barrel, but it just didn’t happen, and I didn’t have the time or energy to water my garden with 5 gallon buckets.

I have high hopes for my garden this year, with all the mulch I put down last season, I expect my garden soil to be pretty easy to work, I follow the Ruth Stout method of growing, it really does work, it’s basically laying down a mega-thick layer of mulch, straw or hay or whatever you have that will be at least 6 inches thick, 12 inches is better. It keeps down the weeds, it helps keep the soil moist and you don’t get all the splashing of mud onto your plants when it does rain. It really does keep your soil light too, it keeps it from compacting so you don’t have to dig or till each year. The book I have, The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book has been out of print for a long time, but it’s still available, if you have a chance to snag one, I highly recommend it. Here are some of her other books:
Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy & the Indolent
and
How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back: A New Method of Mulch Gardening
The second one is a bit pricey, again probably worth it if you can catch a used one at a decent price… I’ll be keeping my eye out for both of those.

Oh I almost forgot, when I purchased the soil tester, I purchased a bag of water crystals, you add these to your soil before planting, when you water the crystals soak up the water and slowly release the water over time. The trick is not to add too much, otherwise when they soak up the water, they will push your plants right up out of the ground (ask me how I know this…). You just dig down a bit, add the crystals, mix them with the soil and cover with more soil, you don’t want them at the surface, you want them below the soil line. Between the water crystals and the mulch, I have high hopes for my garden this year, if nothing else, I’ll have the blueberry plants to rely on for years to come.

I’ll be writing another article soon about the need to purchase heirloom seeds, and saving these seeds, not just for us now but for the generations to come, if we don’t take action now, we risk losing our ability to grow plants on our own terms, we will essentially become slaves to companies like Monsanto.

Food prices out of control

Worldwide food shortages and higher gas prices continue to drive food prices up, up, up. And yet there are still massive savings to be had that most people aren’t even aware of.  Please send us your stories of how to cope with food inflation (mail to news@off-grid.net).

One book promises to slash your grocery bills in half.  Supermarket Survival is an expert guide to juicing supermarkets – follow its rules or THEY will JUICE YOU.

Yes, you could say “don’t even use supermarkets!”  But that is not realistic.

As food prices continue to rocket, more of us than ever before are facing hunger as a daily problem. More Americans than at any time since the Great Depression, more Europeans since the second world war, are having trouble just putting food on the table.

That is why you need a guide to Supermarket pricing tactics – so you can beat them at their own game. Think it can’t be done? If you’re like the vast majority of Americans, there’s plenty of savings to be had in your grocery budget. There are no gimmicks involved here, just time-tested strategies and habits that ensure you’ll get the absolute best value for your time and money.

In America today, only about 2% of the population actually works the land. Industrialization, electricity and mass production techniques stripped the countryside of farmers and small family farms, creating an influx into larger cities, and replacing small farmers with corporate giants which rely on chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and genetic manipulation to produce their nutrient-deficient crops, all which are beginning to result in fewer adequate crop yields.

Economists predict that retail food prices will rise 4% next year, on top of the 4% rise this year. And record heat waves and floods this past year, decimating crops across the world, could add to price rises.

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Homesteading, it’s a buzzword that means different things to different people, back in the day, it meant getting land for free as long as you lived on it and improved it for x number of years. It was a way to get people to move west (in the USA), back when travel was slow and painful, even dangerous.

Today it usually refers to someone who is living more like our ancestors did, in a more self sufficient manner, on a plot of land, often raising livestock, growing their own food, living more independently. Most of us are more than one generation removed from those who lived on a farm or homestead, so we don’t benefit from the knowledge of our family members who lived in a more self sufficient manner. I know in my family, it was my great grand parents who had lived on a farm, my grandparents and parents lived in suburban neighborhoods with small yards and animals no bigger than a dog.

Because of this, those of us who want to live closer to the land have to resort to alternative methods of obtaining  knowledge. I continually scour the internet for books about living off grid, gardening and such, I found this book The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading: An Encyclopedia of Independent Living (The Ultimate Guides), actually I didn’t find it, I was offered an opportunity to review it and I jumped at the chance, it was a book I had been looking at previously and was more than happy to review it.

I keep getting distracted from writing because I keep finding more and more interesting things in this book to read, I just read about growing cotton, then picking it, cleaning it, and spinning it. Since I crochet, this is especially appealing to me, and something I think I can do with little trouble. For now, I’m not set up to raise wool bearing animals, but I can grow cotton and process it.

This book has a lot to offer, it doesn’t go into extreme detail on any one subject, but gives you enough information so that you can decide if that particular thing is something you really want to try.  Nicole Faires (don’t you just love her name?) the author, has certainly lived the life, she is not just spouting theory, she grew up on a hobby farm raising chickens and growing her own food among other things.

While not an exhaustive list of homesteading subjects, I believe it covers the majority of them quite nicely, such as:

• land-buying, communities…
• water-getting it, purifying it and such
• food-finding it, growing it, preserving it…
• animals-livestock, domestic…
• shelter-various home styles, barns, fences…
• financial-making money from your skills…
• health-medicines, herbal medicines,
• and lots more

There is a great  dictionary in the back so you will at least sound like you know what you are talking about when chatting with the old timers at the feed store, LOL, seriously, I have had a good time reading the terminology and their meanings. Such as “butt-up”, before reading this book, I would have said that is how one lands when tripping over a rock and doing a face plant, now I know that is a type of roof ridge made in thatching which forces the straw together from both sides of the roof to form a peak. “Flying change”, I would think it’s what happens when you lose control of your change purse, but it really has to do with horses.

Near the back of the book, just before the index, the author’s bio and several blank pages (perfect for adding your own notes), there is a great bibliography with tons of resources, mostly in the form of internet links. These will send you to more detailed resources for the subjects found in this book. This alone is worth the price of the book.

The book is easy to read, well made, with lots of color photographs and diagrams, nice thick glossy pages ensure this book will last for a long time, that’s a good thing because once you have this book, you will be referring to it over and over again throughout the years.

PB (my hubby) has been trying to steal this book from me ever since I received it, his comment on it was that it is a good all over resource, not detailed on each thing, but a good book and he’s glad we have it, he has also been going on and on about how well this book is physically put together, the binding, the paper quality and the pictures. Now that I’m finished with this review, I can safely give the book to him, I’ll not see it again for a while. :)

See my other book reviews here:
http://www.off-grid.net/tag/book-review/

Honesty disclaimer:
I did receive this book free from the publisher for the expressed intent of giving a review, that in no way influenced my review, all of my reviews are honest and from the heart.

Going fridgless, to most people would be paramount to going topless, many people couldn’t imagine living their lives without having a 19+/- cubic foot energy eating, leftover storing, inefficient cold box sitting in their kitchen. Now days refrigerators do so much, in my old life, I worked for a big box electronics store, the one with the blue shirts and the little yellow price tag, they were starting to put computers in the door, not just electronics, but a real computer screen that could access the internet and help you with your shopping and let you watch TV on your fridge.

I haven’t had a refrigerator, at least not a full size one, in my house since we went off grid over 3 years ago. We do have a small dorm sized cube fridge in the house, but we so seldom use it, we mostly use it when family comes to visit during the summer months. Honestly, most foods that say they “require” refrigeration, actually do not. Things that have lots of vinegar in them, think of pickles, relish, mustard… vinegar is a preservative, also some hard cheeses, especially the ones that have a wax or plastic coating on them do just fine outside of the fridge, I buy Velveta processed cheese, it says it needs to be refrigerated after opening, but I don’t do that, I just keep it sealed up well, and keep it in the cooler part of the house, I use it up within a week of opening it and it has been just fine. Fresh eggs will keep for at least a week, especially if they are unwashed. Of course you have to be smart about things, you don’t want to make yourself sick (or worse), if your kitchen is hot, then don’t expect foods to last very long, even though many foods do not need refrigeration, they still need to be kept cool. I don’t buy Velveta in the summer unless I buy a small brick of it and I am going to use it quickly, the same thing goes for a lot of other foods, just use your brain and you should be OK.

When I did have a full sized fridge, living in town, most of what I kept in the fridge was leftovers, I kept them until I decided to toss them out. The money I spent keeping leftovers cold until I was ready to throw them away could have purchased lots more food. Now I’m more careful about how much food I prepare, we generally do not have leftovers, if there is some food left after we are full (and that would be only a tiny bit) we go ahead and throw away, that really means putting it outside for the critters to eat, it’s always gone the next morning.

I will not lie and say I don’t miss refrigerators and freezers completely, I do miss having a gallon of milk on hand, I also miss sour cream and ice cubes, though I don’t use ice as much as a lot of other people I know. In the summer, I miss having cold beverages at my fingertips.

So we are working on getting refrigeration for our foods, especially now that we have a good shelter over our heads and life has slowed down quite a bit.  Hubby and I have taken 2 different approaches toward setting up some refrigeration in the house now, I purchased an external thermostat, it will be used on a small chest freezer, you set it for refrigerator temps and once it reaches the set temp, it cuts off the power to the freezer. Chest freezers are much more efficient than refrigerators, they are better insulated, but more importantly, they open from the top, when you open a refrigerator, all of the cold air drops out of the box, right across your feet into the kitchen. With the chest design, the cold air stays inside the box. This is reported to be very good for off gridders with limited power.

Hubby is removing a propane powered fridge out of an old travel trailer, it needs to be cleaned up, and there is no guarantee that it still works, though we are pretty sure it will. We will see which one is the most efficient and least costly to us. It will also be nice to have 2 different options for refrigeration, we can use which ever one we have the most resources (power or propane) for.

But until we have one or both of those set up, we will continue to live essentially fridgless, using canned, dried and otherwise non-refrigerated foods, or when we do purchase things like fresh meat, we use it the same day.

Of course there are other ways to keep your foods cold, there is the zeer pot, ice, coolers (filled with ice), root cellars, I’m sure there are more ways too. I was inspired to write this because of another contributor here, Elnav, he started this thread in the forums here.

easy no-knead bread

I love making and baking bread, who doesn’t enjoy eating fresh, homemade bread hot from the oven? The problem is the time it takes to make, the mixing, the kneading, the rising, the kneading again, the shaping, the rising again… it just takes too much time and attention.

About a year ago, I started seeing books and recipes for no-knead breads, it looks almost too good to be true, this method makes what is often referred to as “artisan breads”, the kind that cost a small fortune in the specialty bakeries, who knew how easy these breads were to make?

no knead bread

I searched YouTube and found a few videos that look very easy to follow, the great thing is they don’t require lots of work, these can be started one day and finished the next.

So far the recipes look very simple, flour, salt and yeast. I have a bread machine, but since I’m off grid (solar powered) I don’t use it. at least not at my place, my bread machine doesn’t like my inverter (it needs a pure sine wave inverter because of the digital timer), so this method is tailor made for me since it doesn’t require refrigeration or lots of power or a more expensive inverter. Watch and enjoy!

I soooo want one of those Danish Dough Whisks he uses in that one! I’ll either buy one, or have PB make one for me.

I like rocket stoves, these are usually small, usually portable, mini-cooking-heating devices that are very efficient. You can use twigs instead of larger pieces of wood, these tend to be safer since you aren’t using a lot of fuel (twigs) and it goes out if you aren’t there to feed the wood into the stove. I have seen a lot of different methods of building a rocket stove, from simple bricks without mortar to very elaborate and expensive rigs.

I recently ran across an interesting and easy to do method of making a rocket stove from materials that most of us have laying around the house. This was designed and created by an internet friend, Kent Ivey, who is a major tinkerer, he is always coming up with interesting and useful items made with scrap or what most  would consider junk, those of us who follow him on Face Book are always eager to see what he comes up with next.

Here is a photo montage of Kent making a rocket stove, enjoy!

You’ll need a 5 gallon bucket (make it one you are willing to give up for this purpose)
2-2 liter plastic cola bottles (full of cola or water)
A marker that will mark on plastic
Dirt, straw or hay or grass, water
A sharp utility knife, duct tape, something to mix the cob in and scoop the cob into the bucket (wheelbarrow and shovel)
Something to smooth the adobe/cob (a trowel of some sort)
A piece of expanded metal lath, or something similar, that will fit in the middle of the lower hole and stick out at least 6 inches, longer would be better (make sure it can take heat)
Rocks or something to set your pan on the top, you’ll need a space between the top of the rocket stove and the pan

After you get all of your parts together, set the bucket on its side, draw a circle on your bucket toward the bottom, about 3-4 inches from the bottom, use the cola bottle as a template.

Next, using a sharp utility knife, cut out the circle, be careful.

Make sure the bottle fits, it’s OK for the hole to be a little bigger than the bottle.

Now using duct tape, tape the two bottles together in an “L” shape as shown. Tape them well, be sure to cover every part of the bottles between the bottles, make it as smooth as possible.

Now make your adobe/cob using the dirt, grass (or hay or straw) and water, if you are unfamiliar with making adobe/cob, just look it up online, there are lots of resources to teach you how to make adobe/cob.

Put some of the adobe/cob in the bottom of the bucket, just until it reaches the bottom of the bottom hole, place the taped bottles in the bucket, then continue filling the bucket with the adobe/cob mixture.

Make sure the “boss” is watching.

Be sure to fill all of the voids, do not leave any holes or voids in the bucket.

Yeah, it’s messy, you’d better do this outside. :)

Using a trowel, smooth off the top of the adobe/cob, Kent piled the cob up a couple of inches over the top, he smoothed the top and the sides.

Clean up any adobe/cob that oozes out the hole in the side.

Now allow this several days to dry, if you live in a very humid area, leave it a few days longer.

When the adobe/cob feels dry, open the bottle lids and pour out the liquid.

Using a sharp utility knife, cut the bottle tops and remove.

Carefully reach in and cut the sides of the bottles, remove the bottles and tape as best you can.

Chances are, your adobe/cob will not be completely dry inside, allow it to dry for a few more days.

Using some small twigs and paper, set a small fire inside the rocket stove to help dry it the rest of the way and start to cure the adobe/cob.

Now take a piece of expanded metal lath, or something similar that will fit in the bottom hole, this is used to hold the fuel as it’s being fed into the rocket stove. Notice the rocks on top, Kent uses this to hold up the cooking pan, you can use whatever heat proof item you have to set the pan on.

Now, stuff some paper inside the bottom hole, place some twigs or other wood on the top of the screen, light it and wait for the fire to catch.

Once the fire is going good, you can cook on your rocket stove, you can also boil water.

Notice how the pan is not sitting directly on the top of the rocket stove, there needs to be a gap between the pan and the stove. Keep pushing the twigs into the stove to keep the fire going.

Looks like Kent had a great breakfast right after this. :) I think the boss got some breakfast too.

I know someone will ask this question, will the plastic bucket melt? According to Kent, it will not melt.

Visit Kent on Face Book

A great rocket stove book.

Another rocket stove

How to grow your own food

This is roughly what I’ve saved over the past four years by growing food. When starting my allotment four years ago, one of my key objectives was to record everything I grew each year, price it from the supermarket and then add up how much I had saved.
(NB: these prices are in Euros. One Euro is roughly 1.5 Dollars
Putting in an average of four hours a week, I worked out that I grow about €2,000 worth of fresh produce each year between the allotment, my garden (which has former flower beds, planters and a greenhouse devoted to food growing), and even in the house, where colourful food plants such as chillies have usurped houseplants.
Although we grew about €2,000 worth of food last year, what we saved on our annual grocery bill was about €1,200. That’s because we grew more than we needed, some of it perished before we could use it, we gave some away, we had annual costs of about €200 for rent, compost, petrol and seeds and we wouldn’t have bought the amount of fresh produce we grew had we not taken on the allotment.
I have grown 55 types of food plants, ranging from the humdrum, such as spuds and cabbage, to the more exotic, such as jalapeno peppers, aubergines, pumpkins and salsify. While many crops, such as peas, carrots and cabbage, are cheap to buy (we grow them for the superior quality and taste), others save us far more than you might expect.I took just over 2lb of blueberries this year — earning me between €50 and €100, depending on where you buy them.
So which crops will save you most on your food bill?
Salads €100
Lettuces and in particular the more exotic mixed-leaf salads cost about €2 for a sealed bag. Salads are among the most prolific crops — they also have a long growing season and there are hundreds of seeds in each packet.
We grew lollo rossa, icebergs, mustard leaves, rocket, salad-bowl lettuce and a range of others. It meant massive salads from April to October, if you pick a few leaves from each plant rather than cutting an entire head. Growing them in relays, sowing new lines every few weeks, means that when the older plants bolt, they keep coming.
We easily gave away as much as we ate. We probably picked nearly 15 shop-sized bags of mixed leaves through the year.
Calabrese €200
Calabrese, which we call broccoli, has been an incredible saver. A single large floret of calabrese sells for about €1.50 in the shops. My crop gives me between one and two small bin-liner sacks a year from a bed measuring about 8ft by 5ft. Blanched and frozen, it lasts for more than six months in the freezer.
The crop we gather and consume throughout the year would cost us between €100 and €200 in the shops.
Berries €300 Apart from the heavy-cropping blueberries (we have six bushes now), I have four mature blackcurrant bushes, four redcurrants, six or seven gooseberries, 30 or 40 strawberry plants, a cranberry, about 20 raspberry canes and some loganberries.
Berries are perfect with cereals, desserts, for making smoothies and for cooking (added to stuffing). They also freeze well, giving us a year-round supply.
Berries are hugely expensive to buy because of the labour involved in picking them, the difficulty in storing them (they can’t be piled up or they bruise). They’re also rich sources of vitamin C. Don’t believe Ribena when the company says it uses all of Ireland’s blackcurrant crop.
Chilli peppers €120
Chillies are incredible croppers once you get them through their tricky early months, so we’ve never managed to use an entire crop.
Despite the recent snow and plunging temperatures, I’ve still got a few soldiering on the patio. On the windowsill are two cayenne chillies, cut to the shape of a sloping bonsai, and they’re still flowering and cropping.
I find the best producers in Ireland are cayennes, a long narrow chilli, and jalapenos, the fiery triangular-shaped fruits. To store them, you simply leave them to dry out. They make such eye-catching houseplants with their delicate cream flowers and fire-enginered fruits, all they need is a sunlit windowsill.
Tomatoes €360
By growing six types of tomatoes this year, mostly outdoors on the patio with the remainder in the greenhouse, we took about 66lb of tomatoes in all. Half of these were cherry tomatoes which could be frozen.
While we ate fresh tomatoes from August until December (there’s still a few hanging on in the garden), most of them were skinned, pulped and frozen in ziplock bags to keep us in pasta sauce and stews for the year. Tomatoes usually cost about €12 for 2lb.
Not only are tomatoes great croppers, but they also don’t take up much room for the amount of food they generate, because they can be trained upwards against a wall. Some of our tomato plants reached 7ft. One packet contains more than 200 tomato seeds. That’s value that is hard to beat.
Fresh herbs €150
Herbs are a no-brainer. For most of the year we are completely self-sufficient in sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, spearmint, chives, fennel, dill and, for four to six months, we have our own basil, coriander and parsley. They’re easy to grow, particularly in containers. To keep a household in fresh herbs costs about €4 per week.
Potatoes €160
We’d normally spend a fiver a week on sp me we spuds, but we have our own from summer until February, depending on how well they last.
That’s already a total of €1,390. And there are plenty more crops that don’t save quite so much, but taken together, still contribute heavily to our savings.
Celeriac €80
A celeriac head costs €2 at Dunnes. We’ve got 40 of them coming on at the allotment — that’s €80 — and we’ll eat every last one of them, sliced, honeyed, herbed up, splashed with olive oil and roasted.
Onions €52 We’d spend €2 a week on onions, but we’re self-sufficient from September to February, so that’s about €52.
Think about it. These savings are the equivalent of a year’s supply of heating oil for an average home and your family will be eating the best food you can get.
So get out your spade out this spring and dig back every penny they take off you.
And here are a few more ideas.
Kai Lan
Kai lan is an unusual vegetable –but we will soon all be used to it. With the same effort as it takes to grow Broccoli, you’ll have many more meals from your kai lan plant. Steamed or stir-fried, you don’t have the long wait to harvest as you do with asparagus or broccoli.
The green spears grow about 30in, turning leafy and developing flower heads within two months or so. Every part is edible, even the flowers. Once a root system has established you can slice off whatever parts take your fancy, leaving stumps of 3in or so to grow back. Month after month you can cut off delicious harvests, and although it will die down in the cold, kai lan survives most winters and will carry on producing for years.
Borlotti Beans
Borlotti beans clamber over anything you grow them against.
The beans are nutty and creamy and you get three chances to enjoy them: fresh from the pod in the height of summer they make a fabulous hummus, pasta sauce or the centrepiece of summer soups such as ribollita; any you don’t use can be dried and added to winter soups and stews; and any that you haven’t eaten by next spring can be sown to give you next year’s crop.
Any of the peas and beans family will be similarly productive – the more you pick, the more they’ll produce – so each seed will give you many meals.
Squash
Square metre for square metre, Courgettes are highly productive. This may be largely down to another compulsive disorder afflicting some gardeners: they open a packet of seeds and they have to sow them all. When the dozen or so seeds germinate, we plant them out and then blame the courgette when we are overloaded with produce.
Sow just five seeds for a family of four: assume one won’t germinate, one is taken by the slugs and you’ll have three plants to harvest from.
The secret to getting the best from courgettes is to pick them small and flavoursome – let the fruit grow larger than a cigar and not only does the flavour decline but your plants become less productive.
Even if you can’t eat them when they’re cigar-sized, pick them anyway and compost them – focus on keeping the plant perfectly productive rather than guiltily trying to devour each fruit it produces.
Three Sisters planting
If you fancy being more adventurous, with the prospect of even easier rewards, you can combine borlottis and courgettes with sweetcorn. In perhaps the most satisfying example of companion planting, this threesome works in harmony when sown together.
The sweetcorn provides the scaffold for the bean to clamber through in its search for light and heat, while the courgette leaves spread below, cooling the roots of the other two and helping retain soil moisture.
The bean does as all legumes do – takes nitrogen from the air and makes it available in the soil via nodules in its roots. It uses some of this nutrient to feed itself, leaving any excess for the sweetcorn and courgette, which grow stronger as a result. Placing the three together allows each to thrive.
This American Indian interplanting is known as the Three Sisters, and it works equally well with squash, melons or cucumbers instead of courgettes and any pea or bean in place of the borlottis.
A twist on this is the crafty interplanting of marigolds between rows to deter white fly, and nasturtiums placed as a sacrificial plant near your brassicas: cabbage white caterpillars much prefer them. The flowers of each look great in salads, too.
Spice things up
Chillies can be exceptionally tasty grown on a windowsill, but they are very particular, especially in the early stages.
You can sidestep a lot of grief by ordering seedlings from a specialist grower and potting them up when they are delivered in May.
‘Fairy Lights’, ‘Rooster Spur’, ‘Coffee Bean’ and ‘Turtle Claw’ are fantastic varieties for growing in this way, each throwing out many chillies through the second half of summer and beyond.
If all this still sounds tiring, you can make things even easier by ordering an instant vegetable garden delivered as seedlings. Rocket Gardens will supply a complete veg patch in a box, or try Organic Plants (see box above), where you can take a more pickand- mix approach. The salad mixes are particularly useful.
Focusing on the generous easy winners means you get plenty of reward for your time and money and leaves your evenings and weekends free for whatever else takes your fancy.
Idler’s timetable
Now
Order chilli seedlings from www.seaspringseeds.co.uk
Order seedlings from Rocket Gardens (www.rocketgardens.co.uk) and/or Organic Plants (www.organicplants.co.uk).
March
Start kai lan in modules or Jiffy 7s, or for an easier life, sow direct, from the beginning of March or until September.
Sow borlotti beans, peas and French beans (any time between now and midsummer) in root trainers or card toilet roll inners to give the roots plenty of room to stretch out as they develop. And/or sow direct.
Sow cut-and-come-again salad leaves direct and/or plant out seedlings.
April
Sow and/or plant out a second patch of cut-and-comeagain leaves so that one is always productive while the other is recovering.
Sow sweetcorn and courgettes into small pots on your windowsill.
Plant out kai lan.
Once the borlotti roots fill the trainer or toilet roll and the top growth has exceeded 6in or so, plant them in the garden.
May
Take delivery of chilli seedings and pot them up immediately to grow on your sunniest windowsill or patio.
Plant out sweetcorn when seedlings are 3in tall.
Harvest cut-and-come-again leaves and kai lan.
June
Harvest cut-and-come-again leaves, kai lan and courgette flowers.
July
Harvest cut-and-come-again leaves, kai lan, courgettes and (depending on variety) the first chillies and sweetcorn.
Sow/plant more cut-and-come- again leaves.
Reader offers
Chinese broccoli and Three Sister planting collection
This specially selected seed collection includes six varieties: one packet each of kai lan (Chinese broccoli), borlotti bean, courgette ‘Firenze’, sweetcorn ‘Swift’, lettuce leaves mixed and salad bowl (loose-leaf) mix. The collection costs just £8.95, saving you over £2.
Chillies
Grow chilli peppers the easy way with plug plants. Supplied direct from the nursery ready to pot up, this collection is made up of five varieties in a range of shapes, sizes and heats. Buy five plants for just £8.95 or save £5 when you buy 10 plants (two of each variety) for £12.90. Delivery from late April.

I have been doing research all winter long about how to conserve fuel and keep the cabin warm as the  Ol’ All Nighter woodstove really eats up the wood.

So in the name of pure laziness began my search for a way to get maximum heat for minimum work I found the rocket stove mass heater. They appear to use small amounts of wood(sticks and branches) and retain heat for long periods. These are nothing new —  the Romans used them on a very large scale to heat the floors and water in there bath houses.

On a smaller scale  they can be used to heat greenhouse benches indoor benches made from cob as the mass then radiate the heat long after the fire has gone out and best of all can be made from stuff that you can find  for free or really cheap.

Another advantage is that the combustion is so efficient that their is almost no smoke once up to temperature. I found on youtube what I think is the best way to build one of these stoves, but  if you do your own search on this subject you may find a design that will fit your needs..larry

With food prices going up and up with no end in sight, some of us have already started buying extra food to put away for hard times, and believe me, hard times can come at any time for many reasons, from weather incidents to terrorist (domestic and foreign) attacks. It can be something as simple as losing your income because of being fired, laid off, cut hours, downsizing and such. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one less worry, one less thing competing for your hard earned money? Well if you have a store of food, then you can spend your money on fuel, mortgage or rent, insurance and such instead of worrying about where your next meal will come from or having to choose between buying groceries or paying for other things. Food is expensive, buying in bulk is usually less expensive, but you have to have the money to pay upfront for your bulk purchase. I have learned of a place where you can buy foods in bulk and in #10 cans on the cheap.

I’m talking about LDS canneries. For the most part, you do not need to be a member of this church to participate in this valuable service, I have heard that some canneries will not allow non-members, but I think that is rare, most will allow non-members to participate. I understand that it helps to know a LDS member but it’s not necessary. As you may or may not know, LDS members are encouraged to have at least a year’s worth of food put up for their families, the church organizes to make that possible, their prices are fantastic, they are non-profit. They do not pressure you to join their church, everything I have heard about this has been positive with no pressure. Here are some examples of what they carry and the prices, the prices are subject to change.

Click to see full size image

You can buy in bulk, or can in #10 cans or put the food in mylar bags, if you can or bag the food, you get an oxygen absorber for each package included in the price. This isn’t junk food, it’s real food, things like wheat, beans, oats, rice, dried fruit, dry milk, powdered juice drink mix and such.

Here are some videos of the process:

You can find locations here: http://www.providentliving.org/location/map/0,12566,2026-1-4,00.html

Here is a link to the most current price lists, understand that prices are subject to change at any time: http://www.providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,8133-1-4352-1,00.html

Be sure to call first, before going, you will most likely have to set up an appointment, the more people you can get to go with you the better, from what I have seen on the videos, 4-6 people would be optimal, that way different people can be working at each station.

You can also go to this page http://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Category3_10705_10551_21158_-1_N_image_0 and order direct through mail, they only carry wheat, rice, pinto beans, oats, a starter kit with everything previously listed, the food comes in #10 cans, 6 to a case (you must order a case) but the prices are so inexpensive that it’s easy to afford a case. They also have free shipping in the USA. Prices and shipping charges are subject to change. From this site, you can also order mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, bag sealers and water filtration. If you don’t live near a cannery or the cannery you are close to doesn’t service non-members, then this is your next best deal.

I have the opportunity to talk to people about storing foods from time to time, especially since we are off grid and do not use refrigeration very often, we have a couple of small dorm sized fridges but rarely plug them up, I also have access to my neighbor’s refrigerator. I have heard more than one conversation where people confuse dehydrated food with freeze dried foods. They are in fact, two different things.

dehydrated strawberries

freeze dried strawberries

What they do have in common is the food has had most of the moisture removed, where they differ is the methods that are used to dry the food, and the texture and weight of the finished product. Wikipedia says:

“Drying is a method of food preservation that works by removing water from the food, which inhibits the growth of microorganisms and hinders quality decay. Drying food using sun and wind to prevent spoilage has been practiced since ancient times. Water is usually removed by evaporation (air drying, sun drying, smoking or wind drying) but, in the case of freeze-drying, food is first frozen and then the water is removed by sublimation.”

Typically food that is dehydrated shrinks and becomes more dense, though lighter because of the water weight being removed. Foods that are freeze dried will look more like the original food, there is less shrinkage, the main difference is the texture, the freeze dried food will be lighter (in weight), less dense, and will have a light crunch if you eat it in its dehydrated state. It also returns to a more natural/original form when rehydrated.

Dehydrated food is simply food that has had its moisture reduced, period. This is something that anyone can do. Freeze dried food requires much more high end equipment. The food is frozen in the presence of a vacuum. This process causes the moisture in the food to go from a liquid state to a gaseous state, skipping the frozen state, this is called sublimation. I am simplifying this quite a bit, needless to say that most of us, the ordinary public, will not be able to freeze dry foods at home.

Kandeh Yumkella

A biogas plant has been opened near Nairobi to turn the animal waste from the slaughterhouse into 30 kilowatts of power, enough to light up the abattoir.

United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido) Director-General Kandeh Yumkella said, while opening the biogas plant at Dagoretti recently, that Kenya needed to invest more in community off-grid power to become globally competitive.

The country depends largely on hydro-electricity from the Seven Forks power stations on River Tana and independent power producers rely on fossil fuels for generation.

Kenya’s current power demand stands at 1,070 megawatts against an installed capacity of 1,160 megawatts, with some regions of the country still lacking electricity.Dr Yumkella said the methane gas harvested from the waste can also be used in homes.

“Locals can get methane that they can use for lighting and cooking. Provided they have appropriate stoves, we shall be able to refine and supply the gas. We hope that this biogas project will demonstrate to the government that the idea is viable.”

Many Kenyans depend on charcoal and firewood for fuel. This has a negative effect on forests and water towers, leading to drying up of rivers, reduced rainfall and related effects.

According to Unido, the fight against climate change will get a boost if more biogas plants are set up to provide sustainable cheap energy.

“We aim at minimising the use of charcoal for cooking. About 1.5-2 million people die every year from indoor pollution.”

There are three biogas plants in Kenya under Unido, including the Dagoretti plant. The others are in Homa Bay and Bungoma. Unido intends to set up others.

If the projects are adopted, isolated communities that live far from the national grid can establish their own power plants that will provide an alternative source of energy.

If the sustainability of the biogas plants succeeds, local communities will no longer have to wait for the government to connect them to the national grid but they will use their own domestic wastes to generate power.

According to Dr Yumkella, one of the reasons that some investors stay away from the Kenyan market is the high cost of energy. “The high costs of energy affect the cost of production by 15 to 20 per cent and increase the cost of goods.”

As the sector embraces alternative sources of energy, including geothermal, solar and wind, Unido’s investing in biogas technology may catapult Kenya’s energy sector to compete better in the global market.

Unless a regional framework to tackle the energy demands is drawn up, Unido says that energy problems will continue stifling the growth of the country’s manufacturing industry.

“Africa remains the most energy poor continent,” Dr Yumkella said. Use of agricultural biomass like waste from animals, feed stocks which comprise industrial solid and liquid wastes, and manure, have been envisioned as a source of cheap and clean energy upon conversion.

How long before food price riots spread from Tunisia and Egypt to Louisiana and East LA?

Last week, the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation said global food price rises were running at a record high. The commodity price of corn is up 92 percent in a year, while wheat is 80 percent more expensive.

A great segment on MSNBC describes exactly how riots around the world have been caused by food price inflation.

“Shenanigans at the highest level of our government and financial institutions” led to the removal of position limits from trading on commodities such as grain, wheat and soya, says the report, allowing traders such as Goldman Sachs to hold “more grain than actually exists on the entire planet, because now you are just speculating on the price.”

So the liberation of Egypt and Tunisia from dictatorships was thanks to Goldman Sachs – kinda.

And back home in Western nations, the prices of a range of basic foods surged at the start of the year, showing the biggest monthly rise in more than five years.
Bread, pasta, and packets and tins of food increased in cost by 2.7 per cent between December and January to reach an annual rate of 6.3 per cent. Overall, the annual rate of food inflation jumped from 4 per cent to 4.6 per cent, despite claims of supermarkets to be waging a new year price war. This was the largest monthly increase in two years.

MSNBC were not the only channel to focus in on the food price riots:

Steve Miller in Georgia was fined $5000 for growing too many organic veggies on his patch.

It was a zoning violations, and I bet it was not the only one of its kind – please write a comment if you know of other examples of local bureaucrats going wild.

As another poster said, “this is where we could be headed if the Monsanto-written, Obama-approved and Congress-passed “food safety” bill is actually enforced.

People, it’s time to stock up on what you can now, things aren’t getting any better, and our money is losing value every day. The best way to maintain the value of the money you have now is to go ahead and buy the things you need now, you can just about guarantee that what you buy now will be going up in price in the near future.

A couple of things I have stocked up on is food and medicine. These are things you will be using no matter what. One that I buy in bulk (and it’s pretty good for you as well as tasty) is dehydrated refried beans, Emergency Food Supply Precooked Dehydrated Pinto Beans, of course if you are looking for a smaller quantity try this Fantastic Foods Instant Refried Beans Bulk Mix, 3.33-Pound Bags (pack of 3) or this Leonard Mountain Precooked And Freeze Dried Pinto Beans, 6-Ounce Bags (Pack of 6). What I like about the dehydrated refried beans, they are already cooked, saving alot of time and fuel, all you do is pour the amount you want to eat into a pan, add an equal amount of water, heat and eat, there are many ways you can enjoy refried beans, add some rice and you have a complete protein as well as a tasty, healthy meal.

If you want to add some meat to that, try this Canned Boneless Ground Beef, I have personally eaten this and it is very good, good taste and texture. Don’t forget about cheese, you can store these on the shelf with no worries, Bega Canned Autralian Processed Cheese 10 cans and 5 Kraft Cheese in can Cheddar Cheese.

All of these foods are shelf stable, they don’t need refrigeration, the meat and cheese of course do need refrigeration AFTER you open them if you don’t eat all of it, the nice thing about the cheese and meat is chances are you will eat the whole can and will not have any leftovers to worry about.

The other thing I mentioned is medicine, specifically antibiotics. These are a little more tricky to obtain. If you can get your doctor to prescribe some for you, then go for it. Chances are you will have to obtain your antibiotics another way. Be sure to EDUCATE yourself before taking any medicine, if you are allergic to anything listed below, then DON’T do this, know beforehand if you can safely take these. Do not abuse antibiotics, that is to say, don’t take them at the drop of a hat or the first sniffle, know if you really have a bacterial infection, don’t take it if you only have a virus, antibiotics will not have any affect on viruses. Also, if you do determine that you have a bacterial infection, be sure to take a full course of the antibiotics, don’t stop halfway through just because you feel better, this will cause more harm than good. Taking antibiotics too often, or not taking the full course when you do need them will cause the bacteria to become stronger, you are killing the weaker bacteria and allowing the stronger ones to survive and multiply, potentially creating super bugs that require stronger antibiotics to deal with it.

If you can’t get an extra prescription from your doctor, dentist or friendly vet, then you can get antibiotics for fish tanks. These are the same pills you would be getting from your pharmacy, without the doctor bill and prescription, do a Google search for this, you will find that many people use fish antibiotics with no ill effects. I have some for my own use, I hope to never use them, but like good insurance, if I ever need them, I’ll have them. Here are a few that you might consider:

Fish Mox Forte 500 (Amoxocillin)
Fish Flex Forte (Keflex Cephalexin)
Fish Pen Forte (Penicillin).
There are other antibiotics for fish that humans can take but these should cover most infections you may get.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK, this isn’t rocket science, but you do need to know the proper dosage for your body weight, and how long to take them. This is not meant to replace your doctor, if you are sick, and either have insurance or can afford to see a doctor and get prescription medicine, then by all means do that. This is meant to be a backup, or for those who can’t afford to go to the doctor, and especially if/when TSHTF and there are no doctors to be seen. For me, this is a case of I can’t afford to go to the doctor for minor things, and it’s also meant as a backup in the SHTF situation. I don’t intend on using it unless I have to, in fact I was very sick during the month of December, I was down for 3 weeks. I considered using my amoxicillin, but I knew that what I had was a virus, plain and simple, the antibiotic would have not done anything for me, I didn’t have an infection nor did I develop one, so I didn’t use it.

If you aren’t sure about using medicine that doesn’t come from your local pharmacy, then you have two choices, research it until you are comfortable with it, or don’t do it at all. For what it’s worth, my neighbors are both in the medical field (one is a registered nurse and the other is an X-ray tech), and they approved what I am doing, I showed them the links above and asked questions, the answers I received assured me that I am doing the right thing.

It goes without saying that you need to keep these and all medicines put away out of reach of children. This is not meant to replace a doctors advice, I am not a doctor or medical professional, this is not meant as or to replace medical advice, this is not meant to diagnose or treat anything,  neither I nor the owners of this site nor anyone affiliated with this site are responsible for anything that may happen as a result of you reading and/or implementing the information in this article. This is strictly for educational purposes only, any action you take as a result of reading this article and/or clicking on the links above is your responsibility.

This was an incredibly hard, yet interesting topic to research. Because milk (in it’s many forms) is so important to us, there is a LOT of info on the internet about it. History fact: the first person to use powdered milk (that we know of) was Marco Polo for his trips around the world. Amazing to think how far we have come since his first trials of a home dried paste like substance. Imagine how that must have tasted after a year at sea!

“Milk! It does a body good!” That’s what they say, but all I know is that it contains many vitamins and nutrients that your body requires to remain in good working condition. It’s important that children get at least 3-5 servings per day, and I use milk in many of my recipes for daily living.

What if I couldn’t get to the stores? How can I store milk of use at a later time?

The answer that is the easiest is: powdered milk. Most of us have tried it at one time or another and most of us didn’t care much for it. I urge you all to give it another try. The new powdered milk is almost indistinguishable from the stuff you buy in the store with all the new advances that have been made. If you want to try it, I have several suggestions: keep it cold! Keep it stirred well. When cooking with powdered milk, I can absolutely promise that there is no difference in taste or outcome of the recipe.

Powdered milk is readily available in most stores as well as from all long term food storage vendors. Tip: get non fat dried/powdered milk. NOT milk replacement products. I recommend the non fat type simply because it stores better, I like a little fat in my milk. Your powdered milk, properly packaged (NOT in the box it came in) should last up to 5 years. Of course you hear stories that people have kept it for 10 years and it’s been fine, but in general, the recommendation is to keep it from 2-5 years. I prefer to take my milk out of the box and pack it in a Mylar bag with o2 absorbers. I then pack the bags in either buckets or tubs. I also have a selection of #10 cans of powdered milk, which are supposed to be good for 10 years, but many of these are “milk replacement” products that are good, but when it comes to recipes containing milk, they aren’t supposed to be substituted (though I haven’t found out precisely WHY yet). Keep the stored product in a cool dry place.

Apparently, the vitamin A and D that milks is so valuable for have limited shelf lives and are easily destroyed by sun light. Packing the dried milk in Mylar takes care of the light issue. You CAN use it just like regular milk including using it to make soft cheese and margarine (I did not care for the margarine, but it’s worth a try and worth knowing you can do it). I am told that you can also make yogurt with the powdered milk and infant formula.

Other suggestions for milk storage are varieties of shelf stable liquid milk such as Borden sells, which is a regular container of milk that can sit on the shelf for several months (unopened). This milk has been processed using new technology that keeps micro organisms from entering it during packaging. Traditionally, canned condensed milk and sweetened condensed milk were staple in Depression Era pantries. The canned condensed milk will last 3-5 years easily, but be sure to check the cans for signs of rust every 6 months or so.

For those of you who are hoping for something that you can stash in your food preps and forget for 10 years, milk isn’t going to do that for you. Eventually, if there is a really long term disaster, you will run out of your powdered milk supply and have to find a cow or a goat. However, having a stock of powdered milk is a great thing for emergencies, home budget crisis and for general preparedness reasons.

Odd Recipes Using Powdered Milk

Infant Formula

1 can evaporated milk

18 ounces water

2 tablespoons white sugar OR 2 T karo syrup OR 2T black strap molasses

3 mil Baby Vitamins

Bring the water to a boil, remove from the heat.

Add the sugar and stir to dissolve.

Mix in the evaporated milk and stir or shake

Be sure to make a fresh batch daily!

Pancake Mix for short term storage:

Keep this in a sealed container for 6-9 months. One of our group members, camps a lot and makes up vacuum sealed or mylar bags of this to take with them.

6 cups flour (whole wheat is fine)

½ c. baking powder

5 cups powdered milk

2 T salt

2 cups shortening

Mix together ingredients, cutting the shortening in after all other ingredients have been well blended. When done, the mix should resemble corn meal.

Healthy Peanut Butter Balls

1/3 cup crunchy or creamy peanut butter

½ cup nonfat dry milk powder

2 TBSP wheat germ

1 TBSP honey

Mix together and shape into little bite size balls. Refrigerate any uneaten ones :)

Margarine from Powdered milk

1/2 cup milk powder

1 1/2 cups safflower oil (You can use other oils if you like, I prefer olive oil.)

2/3 cup water

a little yellow coloring (I don’t even bother with this)

Reconstitute the milk powder by adding it to the water. Whisk in an electric blender at a slow speed adding the oil a little at a time (important) if the mixture is still too soft add more skim milk powder a little at a time till it thickens. Some practice may be needed to get it right.

We are looking to be more self sufficient and live a more “green” life. We are preparing for whatever comes along…bad weather, bad economy, bad government.

Be sure to visit her blog to read about more hints and tips about living lighter on the earth and being prepared for whatever may happen. If you have any questions about this article, please contact Herbalpagan through her blog.