Self-Sufficiency

Getting the Most From Your Garden: Summer Salads

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Debora

I’m thinking of adding a series of simple recipes and ideas for using home-garden crops in everyday meals. Nothing fancy, just ways to stretch food budget dollars and add variety to mealtimes by eating more of what you’re already growing.

Probably my favorite summer meal (or at least the one I prepare most often) is a simple tossed salad fresh from the garden. It took me a while to realize that salads don’t have to consist of lettuce and tomatoes doused in ranch dressing; once I started experimenting with different ingredients my salads got a lot more interesting. The last one I ate was made of this stuff…

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…and tossed with a simple vinaigrette dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, unrefined sea salt and black pepper.

From left to right those are Early Girl tomatoes, a pear (technically from the orchard, not the garden, but they’re the perfect complement to leafy greens), Tendersweet carrots, Fordhook chard, a Detroit Red beet (I eat the tops too), Ruby Red chard, a bell pepper, and purslane (which is actually a weed that grows wild in my garden but it’s very tasty and nutritious so I toss it in with the rest).

I grate the beets and carrots, dice the tomatoes, pears and peppers and tear everything else into bite-size pieces, then toss them all together in a big bowl with the vinaigrette dressing. Depending on the time of year, other salads might contain Romaine lettuce, snap peas, broccoli, cabbage, burnet, sorrel, radishes and/or zucchini. There’s no “right” recipe, I just eat what’s available on any given day. The vinaigrette ties all the flavors together.

My dressing recipe is very simple: after I have all the veggies washed, shaken dry and chopped, grated or torn up, I put them all into a big bowl and add just enough organic extra-virgin olive oil to coat everything evenly. Then I shake in some salt, black pepper and a few splashes of balsamic vinegar and toss it again. It’s not an exact science, but as a general rule you should use at least twice as much olive oil as vinegar.

When I happen to have cabbage, beets and carrots all ready to harvest at the same time, I make a simple slaw by cutting the cabbage into bite-size chunks and grating the beets and carrots, then tossing them all together with the balsamic vinaigrette. (It’s also great with ranch dressing if that’s your preference.)

The trick to getting the most from your food garden is to be creative and flexible and to try different combinations until you figure out what you like best. Let go of your preconceptions about what “should” go into a tossed salad, and just have fun!

Categories: food, frugality, Gardening, Health, Life, Self-Sufficiency | 1 Comment

Life And Stuff

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Debora

We’ve been having some glorious sunsets lately. This is also the kids’ favorite time of day to play on the rope swing, when it’s not so hot outside.

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Wednesday we went to the Ingalls* homestead for a playdate. They live pretty close to us, a ten-minute drive away, so I was hoping the kids would have lots of fun and we could start doing that more often, at least until school starts. (The homeschooling idea was nipped in the bud by Steve; I think my mistake was telling him that I know the Ingalls from church.)

Luke had a blast at the playdate. He and the two boys closest to his age spent hours playing manly games with forts and such, and every time I asked him if he was ready to go home yet he responded with a definite “No!” I never get tired of watching him frolic happily with his own kind, after spending the first seven years of his life so distrustful of other people in general and males in particular.

Elizabeth was a little off that day. At our urging she hung out here and there with various Ingalls children, but she kept gravitating back to a half-grown black kitten, one of two litters there, and when it was time to go she got very adamant about bringing it home with us. I sympathized, because her own black cat disappeared last May (the attrition rate to owls and coyotes is very high around here), but we need another kitten like we need an outbreak of swine flu, and I told her so. It turned into a Whole Thing, and when we left without the kitten she was Vexed and Sulky. I suspect that we’re rolling into that adolescent phase everyone’s been warning me about, because Elizabeth’s temperament swings between “Affectionate and Agreeable,” “Distant and Secretive” and “Vexed and Sulky” like a three-way metronome these days.

*Not their real name; they’ve asked that I give them an Internet pseudonym.

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Friday I captured photographic proof that while childhood is temporary, immaturity is forever.

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(Yes, that’s the male “kitten” of Stripes’ litter.)

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Saturday there was a party at Oceanside Beach in honor of Geoff’s girlfriend’s daughter’s birthday, and most of the worship team went to that. It was a lot of fun.

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The ocean was very warm this time; nothing like the icy waters of last fall. I guess that means a warmer winter this year. I can totally live with that.

There was another near-death experience on the same jetty that Elizabeth nearly met her demise on last October, but at least it wasn’t one of my kids this time. The worst part was that I saw it coming and got there too late to avert it but just in time to see a giant wave slap down on a group of boys and actually wash one of them off the rock he was clinging to. He snagged on another rock on his way down though, so no fatalities. But the four of them had actually had to walk past a “Jetty Closed Today” sign to get out there, so while I was very glad that the kid hadn’t died, I considered the big scrape on his leg to be a useful reminder about respecting warning signs in the future.

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Since that last hearing three weeks ago Steve has been more courteous and friendly to me in our brief interactions than he has ever been before at any point in our entire relationship. I’m sure it’s some sort of ruse to lull me into a false sense of safety or somesuch, but whatever. It’s easier than dealing with Hostile Steve. Pretty much my only complaint on that front is that Elizabeth has started coughing all night after visits with him, because Steve and the woman that’s moved in with him smoke in the house. That is irksome.

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I’ve gotten a few fall crops planted in the garden. I’ve discovered that some stuff actually does better here in the fall and winter than in the heat of summer, but the trick is to plant them early enough that they really hit their growth stride before the first frost when everything slows way down. So far I’ve planted snap peas, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and radishes. I’ve also started digging up garlic bulbs and replanting the cloves in new beds, because for once I actually planted enough to have a surplus this summer. I’ll need to do the same with my shallots and bunching onions soon, but I’m running out of garden beds to transplant into. The perennial section of my garden needs to be enlarged, but alas, I’m having a hard time finding the motivation to do that since I’m just waiting for the chance to move out anyway. And there are signs of that all over: the weeds are running rampant in the orchard and my house hasn’t had a really good cleaning in weeks. I have lost my desire to tend to this place. I really want to move on, but this is apparently where I’m supposed to be for now, because events keep conspiring to keep me right here. I can accept that, and even plant a fall garden to prepare for another winter here, but I can’t CARE about this property anymore, and it shows.

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There are other things that I’d like to write about, but I can’t. Those of you who have been reading here for a while may be astonished to learn that there are people in this town who Do Not Mean Me Well (I know, hard to believe, right?) and I think some of them read this blog. There have been too many times that I’ve posted about some plan or prospect or new friendship only to have it fall apart within days after hitting the blogosphere. I think I might need to fire up a new private, password-protected blog for journaling all that stuff so I can keep my venting outlet without compromising my security.

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School starts in less than two weeks; I can hardly believe the summer’s gone already. Elizabeth will be starting middle school this year and I think she’s looking forward to being on a different campus than Luke. The events of the past few weeks have had the side effect of making him cling tightly to her as the one stable feature in an everchanging landscape, the one person who’s always with him no matter whose house he’s in or who else he’s with. I understand that and sympathize, but now it’s time for him to start developing his own inner strength to sustain him when she’s not around. And frankly, Elizabeth needs a break from the little barnacle.

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I think that’s everything bloggable. The heat wave has broken and the air feels like autumn, at least for a little while. I wish it could be just like this until November or so, except with some rain thrown in. And as long as I’m putting in requests, I wouldn’t mind meeting some nice heterosexual single guy who likes kids, has mastered basic communication and relationship skills, and lives at least a few miles away from Silkotchland.

That would be swell.

Categories: Birthdays, Christianity, Family, food, Friends, frugality, Gardening, kids, Life, Love, Self-Sufficiency, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Wordless Wednesday: Summer Sweetness

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Debora

apricots

blueberries

Categories: Edible Perennials, environment, food, frugality, Gardening, Health, Life, Nutrition, Self-Sufficiency, Wordless Wednesday | Leave a comment

Gardening, Carpet Plague, Calves and Music

Posted on May 11, 2009 by Debora

I know, I’ve abandoned my poor blog again. Life is simultaneously busy and tranquil — my favorite combination! — and I haven’t felt the need to write in a while.

This time of year gardening takes up most of my time. One of the biggest reasons I’m shifting my focus to edible perennials is so I won’t have this frenzy of replanting every spring, but of course in the short-term it makes my spring even busier as I create new permanent beds and put in asparagus, sunchokes, currants, a bay tree, various perennial herbs and some unidentified “berry” bramble suckers someone gave me that I think are blackberries. But the strawberry bed I put in last spring is producing in grand style this year, and Saturday I enjoyed the first ripe strawberry of spring, and there’s a gazillion more coming along behind it. So that’s a good reminder that the results are totally worth all the work involved, even if it takes a while to see them.

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Another thing that’s been gobbling up a ridiculous amount of my time is The Battle Of The Creeping Spot.

Dude.

So three or four weeks ago our cats suddenly decided to spurn their litter box in favor of one corner of my computer room floor. We’re talking deep plush carpeting here, not some easy-to-clean laminate or hardwood. I ungraciously disposed of the piles of poop, but it gradually became evident that the real problem was the steadily-intensifying aroma of Eau de Cat Pee. I took way longer than I should have to attend to that (see: spring planting time, above), but finally one day I attacked that corner of the carpet with everything I could think to throw at it. Rug shampoo, spot cleaner, pure baking soda, a special “pet stain” removal product, the works.

The next morning that corner of my (very orange) carpet had turned a dark purple.

Clearly something had gone very wrong here.

I went back over the corner with more spot cleaner, and when that didn’t get rid of it I tried putting laundry detergent into my rug shampooer, and then I tried diluted dishsoap and then I just went over and over it with plain water until it was mostly gone.

But the next day The Spot was back, and twice its previous size.

I won’t go into all the tedious details of this battle. Suffice it to say that for nearly two weeks I used almost every cleaning product I could think of on this spreading purple abomination, alone or in combinations, and some days I would win and other days the Spot would win. It was like something out of Dr. Seuss, but evil. At its largest it was about six feet in diameter, and I was doing a pretty convincing Lady Macbeth impersonation.

Guess what the culprit was. Go ahead, guess!

Give up? It was the baking soda. Apparently when you put baking soda on my orange carpet and then get it wet, there’s some sort of freak chemical reaction that causes a dark purple stain to appear.

Guess how I finally figured this out.

It looked like I had just about defeated The Spot, there was only the faintest shadow left and I was confident that another hour or so of going over it with clear water would finish it off. But by then the carpet was beginning to smell just a bit mildewy, and I decided that the whole room could stand a nice deodorizing.

So, I filled my rug shampooer’s receptacle with clear water and a little baking soda, went over the whole room, and then focused on the spot in the corner — shaking some more baking soda directly onto it and scrubbing it in — until it appeared to be vanquished.

The next morning my entire computer room carpet was covered with purple smudges and the original corner was a solid, hateful dark purple swath.

I was ready to burn it.

Instead I spent most of another week going over and over the carpet, sucking all the baking soda out of it. As I type this I think I have just gotten the last of it out, but I won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning.

The good news is that the cats appear to have lost interest in recontaminating the war zone.

Or possibly they’re just waiting for the carpet to finally dry out so they can start over.

BUT my computer room doesn’t smell mildewy today, it smells WONDERFUL, because yesterday Luke and Elizabeth gave me the best Mother’s Day gifts I have ever received. They made them in Sunday school. They are apples with lots and lots of cloves stuck into them and silk ribbons tied around them to hang them with, and now as I write this the air is perfumed with the heady scent of apples and cloves. I LOVE it!

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In other news, a third calf has been born at Trinity. I need to buy some livestock panels so I can set the branding pen back up and set a date for my summer roundup. I may also spring for a calf table, since none of my new friends know how to rope (and neither do I) and it seems like a useful thing to have anyway if one isn’t of the Large Strapping Male persuasion.

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Speaking of things my new friends don’t know, they are also all tragically unacquainted with the awesome thing of immortal beauty that is Star Trek. Not a single Trek fan in the entire bunch (except for Pastor Bill who can’t go see the new movie with me because he’s married and that would be a little odd). Hello, this is CULTURE, people!! I was going to have to go see the movie all by myself, but my friend Jenny took pity on me and agreed to go with. So I think that’ll be Thursday. I can’t wait!

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Being a part of my church worship group remains one of the brightest joys of my new life. It’s amazing how fundamental singing with friends apparently is to my general sense of fulfillment. I don’t imagine that I’ll let anyone take that away from me ever again.

The group is still kind of finding itself. We had a magical combination for a while — two guitars, bass, drummer, three vocalists — and it was heaven. But then we lost our best guitarist and our male vocalist within a couple weeks of each other, and we’re feeling the loss. But there’s this nice sense of fellowship among the rest of us, a sweet sort of feeling that we’re all in it for the long haul and that one way or another the people we need will find us and the group will eventually be complete again, and meanwhile we still have this wonderful core group of friends to sing and play and worship with.

Tell you what though, last time we sang in church it was a train wreck. There’s a young boy who is learning to play the bongos, and from time to time he likes to join the group onstage. It’s not been a problem before, but this last time two things went wrong. One, the bongos had just been tightened so they were louder than usual, and two, he set them up between the drummer and our remaining guitarist, so they couldn’t hear each other well enough to stay in synch. It…wasn’t pretty. We have learned our lesson. Bongo Boy is still welcome to play with us, but from now on he goes down at the other end by the vocalists.

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I wanted to talk about how the Sunday school teaching thing is going, but I think that’s going to get its own post somewhere down the road.

So I guess that’s it for now. Life in my little green corner of the world is blooming, and keeping me busy. If that Spot is still gone tomorrow morning I will have nothing much to complain about.

If it’s back I may have to rethink my decision to give up profanity, because I have nothing else left to throw at the blasted thing.

Categories: Animals, Cats, Christianity, Edible Perennials, food, Friends, Gardening, kids, Life, Self-Sufficiency, Star Trek | 6 Comments

Sharing The Wealth

Posted on April 3, 2009 by Debora

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
~Howard Thurman

I was maybe five or six years old the first time I heard the story of Johnny Appleseed. I’m sure it was a watered-down version of John Chapman’s life that had been vastly oversimplified for young children, but I remember well the way it lit up my imagination and filled my dreams with new, childishly idyllic ambitions. THAT’S what I was going to do when I grew up! Just wander across the country, communing peaceably with wildlife and planting stuff. Perfect.

(I was also going to marry Bambi when I grew up. Life’s possibilities are very flexible when you’re six.)

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In February I started getting together with the Pastor of my church once a week over lunch or breakfast at the local diner. It’s sort of a spiritual counseling session, and it’s been more helpful to me than I have words to express. I’ve been sitting here just now trying to think of a way to explain the whys and hows of the profound value these talks have had for me, but I’ve finally decided that it would take up too much space and I probably wouldn’t get it right anyway.

During our very first lunch together the Pastor said something that I quite frankly wasn’t ready to hear. He said I was a healer, or was destined to be one. At that time I was firmly in the grip of a personal upheaval, and my own spiritual (and mental and emotional) health felt as fragile as an eggshell. The last thing I wanted to think about was being around other unhealthy people on purpose.

I told Pastor Bill as much, and then pushed the whole idea to the back of my head, where it sort of dug in and put down roots and started to grow, and maybe a month later I realized that I did in fact feel a desire to help others who, like me, were seeking wholeness. But I couldn’t picture myself doing what the Pastor does: talking to spiritually needy people about their spiritual needs day after day, week after week…the mere thought makes me feel like crawling into bed and pulling the covers over my ears.

And then one morning a couple weeks ago I woke up from an intense dream with the answer filling my head and heart with absolute certainty, like the voice of God Himself. I’ve forgotten the dream (I guess I should have written it down), but the certainty is still with me.

Johnny Appleseed was onto something.

Of course, Anza already has more than enough apple trees. You can’t throw a rock in this town without hitting an apple orchard. But I look around at all the scared, struggling, unemployed or soon-to-be-unemployed people in this town, people who can barely afford to buy groceries anymore, and I think, “That would be me if I didn’t have all this food growing on my property.”

And I realized: they should have it too. All of them. There should be grapevines and strawberry patches and raspberry canes and sunchokes in every backyard.

And I can help make that happen, at least locally. I can give away cuttings and sprouts and suckers and roots and bulbs and tubers until the whole valley is supplied. It won’t cost me anything, other than a bit of time and effort. Most edible perennials are easy to propagate and simple to grow.

This isn’t something I can start doing, like, today. I’ve just started growing things like strawberries and sunchokes myself, and they need to get better established before I’ll have enough to give away. But just having the goal in my head makes me feel alive and purposeful. I can make a real, tangible difference in this town. Sure, growing conditions are less than ideal in Anza. The poor soil, the arid climate, the altitude…these are challenges that I learned to overcome by trial and error, and I can share all the things I’ve learned. I can turn my own property into a kind of test kitchen, to find out what can be grown here and what can’t, and let people come and see and taste the possibilities for themselves.

This is a purpose I can put my heart into. I’d been planning to turn my property into a self-sufficient Eden anyway, but the thought of helping everyone else who wants to do the same is what has really fired my imagination.

Next winter I’ll start handing out rooted grapevine cuttings. The first step in what I hope will be a new and productive journey.

It feels really good to have a solid long-term goal again. I can’t wait to get started.

Categories: Christianity, Edible Perennials, environment, frugality, Gardening, Life, Self-Sufficiency | 2 Comments

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