HomeSteady

Update

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 03:46:00 +0000

Obviously I haven't been doing much homesteady stuff lately! What I have been doing is:

working and saving money to go back to school and finish the science degree I started years ago;
trying to get said school to actually let me register for classes (this is MUCH harder than you'd think it would be), and
~~learning~~ refreshing my memory of math and chemistry.

Since none of this really pertains to the subject of this blog, future scholarly and science-y things will be posted at my newish other blog. (Oh, and I'll have a real update for this one soon, too. Really.)

Well, That Sucked

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:54:00 +0000

If anyone is still paying attention, y'all might be wondering about the unplanned, announced hiatus. Well:

1. I haven't been doing ~~much~~ any "homesteady" stuff this winter, and I try to keep this blog topical. (Read: I don't blog about "personal" stuff.)

2. After eight months of hateful, hateful involuntary unemployment, I finally got a job. Downside: the job is bad, low-paying and has really horrible hours. Combine that with...

3. Insomnia! Fucking insomnia!

...and I haven't had a lot of energy. Oh, also, there's been this:

They say that the Bitterroot Valley has mild winters. They lie. They LIE. Also, I am from Arizona and too much time without sun sends me to a Very Bad Place, mentally. The evil white stuff is finally starting to melt and I actually saw a patch of blue sky a minute ago, and I finally feel alive again. So this blog may live again. Or it may not. But if it does, then there's going to be some changes around here....

Extraction in Action

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 03:30:00 +0000

We've started extracting the honey from the frames harvested last weekend. Here's how you do it:

First you "uncap" the frames, using a hot knife to cut off the wax seal. This is tedious, and sticky.

Then you load the frames into the extractor*...

...and start it spinning.

The honey flies out and splatters on the inside...

...and then oozes down to the bottom...

...where there is a spigot to drain it off.

(The cheesecloth-lined colander is there to filter out bits of wax and dead bee parts.)

So now, if you go through the beekeeping posts on this blog, you have the whole story; from getting a package of bees and installing them in a hive to extracting the honey. Not bad, huh?

*If you don't have access to an extractor, I think you just set the uncapped frames in a container and wait for gravity to extract the honey for you.

Harvest

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:24:00 +0000

We had the first killing frost of the season last night; that's almost exactly one month later than the first frost last year in Pburg. That is one of the reasons I love Missoula. (Other reasons include libraries, bookstores, Mexican restaurants, colleges, movie theaters and coffee shops.) But seeing as how the garden is now all sad and wilted, it's time to finish harvesting and appraising what we've got.

(Unfortunately I started eating before I started record-keeping, so this isn't as thorough as it should be.)

TATERS: I had a 130 sqaure foot potato plot. I should have counted the number of tater plants but forgot to; but I crammed in as many as I could fit. (Too many, since I couldn't get in there to weed this summer.) We got 63 pounds of potatoes. To put that in perspective, a study in the 1970s claimed that the mythical Average Family of Four eats 500 pounds of potatoes a year; so if the two of us together eat 250 lbs a year (which I doubt) then we would need about 515 square feet. A 20 x 26 plot (or several smaller ones) would not be impossible, but is not necessarily the best use of space....

Note also that I planted these much later than I should have, so the plants did not have time to produce as many really big taters as they potentially could have.

BEANS: We ate a lot of pole beans without my couting or weighing them, so I'll just ignore them. However, I will note that the pole beans planted along the fence did very well and took up practically no space, so I must plant many many more next spring.

Late in the summer (August?) I started a small (3' x 14') patch of bush beans (34 plants) to see if they could produce before the frost came; since I spent today picking and cleaning and snapping seven pounds of green beans, I'd say they did. I'd also say that I don't want to see another green bean for a while.

ONIONS: My 24-foot row of onions produced 18 pounds of usable onions, plus several moldy ones. Moral: harvest sooner! I don't know how many onions the Average Family of Four would eat in a year, but I'm sure I can fit in a few more rows next year just in case.

TOMATOES: The Average Family of Four is said to eat 620 pounds of "tomatoes and cirus fruits" per year. Hmmm...

Our potted tomato plants (cherry & roma) did quite well, but we ate 'em all without counting or weighing, so I can't really guage how well. But those were small fries. How about the Volunteer Tomatoes?

These plants covered a combined area of about 57 sqaure feet, and holy crap those things were productive. Problem was, that frost hit before the tomatoes had ripened. I have heard that they will continue to ripen if you hang the plants up inside, so now the garage is a Hanging Garden of Dead Tomato Plants. Since I left the fruits on the plants I can't weigh them yet but there's a lot of them. I hope they do ripen, or else we'll need to learn to really like fried green tomatoes.

LETTUCE: Do you realize I'd never successfully grown letuce before this year? It was always either too hot or too cold. It turns out it's actually a very low-maintenance plant, given a decent climate. I did make the mistake of planting the entire seed packet all at once, meaning that all at once we had more lettuce that we could possibly eat. I let it bolt and set seed, so hopefully I can grow the same strain (Forellenschluss, from Baker Creek) next year... in staggered crops.

MISCELLANEOUS: I let the cauliflower go to seed and it produced... empty seed pods. Good thing I don't really like cauliflower. Despite all the horrible stories about over-prolific zucchini, mine produced a total of three puny squashes. Good thing I don't like zucchini, either. There were strawberries but they were small in size and number; you must need a lot of plants to get a decent crop.

Robbing the Bees

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 03:52:00 +0000

Yes, for the first time in my beekeeping experience, I got to see the harvest.

Hive Two (which we did first) was pretty mellow, considering; Hive One less so.

If I remember correctly Andy took out a total of 27 frames, which he will bring back home tomorrow for processing. The fullest ones (mostly in the second supers; the top supers weren't "done") were simply oozing honey.

There's Treasure Everywhere!

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:31:00 +0000

It's mushroom season here, and as much as I enjoy fungus-hunting in the deep woods, all I really have to do is look out the window. There's fungi everywhere here, and without even trying I keep stumbling across things I'd only seen before in books. Like Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes fame) said, there's treasure everywhere!

Identifying these things is sometimes easy but usually--not; and so far I don't trust my skills enough to risk eating any of my finds. There's a lot to learn. Now most things, I find that the more I learn, the less mysterious (and potentially the more mundane) they become; but with fungi, the more I learn the weirder they get....


Tremella mesenterica on a dead spruce tree

Phallus impudicus, the Stinkhorn. It lives up to both its names.

Beautiful varnished polypores (Ganoderma tsugae?) on a pine stump

Boletes!

Gomphidius

Russula xerampelina


?

It's Big, It's Heavy, It's Wood

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 03:52:00 +0000

It's better than bad, it's good!

If you happen to be a long-time reader, you may recall that one of the biggest challenges in my shiitake-growing experiment (besides the @#$&ing blue-green mold) was getting the right kind of wood. Specifically, it wants hardwood, and we're in conifer country. Well, when we were first looking at this house, we noticed a big pile of what appeared to be cottonwood logs in the corner lot. "Don't worry, we'll get rid of those," the landlord said. I crossed my fingers and waited, and lo and behold the logs were never gotten rid of after all, so I decided to go ahead and claim them.

Rather than try chopping and chipping and shredding the logs to make the usual bags of substrate, I decided to save a lot of time and effort and try the traditional method of log cultivation, as practiced in Japan for nearly a millenium.

Did I say save time and effort? Log cultivation, it turns out, is one of the most tedious and annoying tasks imaginable. First I had to dig the logs out from their pile of dirt and weeds, where, it turned out, some of them were already being colonized-- by Trametes versicolor, the "turkey tail" polypore:

Free fungi!

Trametes isn't edible (it would be like trying to chew wood) but can be made into a medicinal tea, so I harvested it. Perhaps this log will produce another flush next year as well....

Anyway, then all the logs had to be moved from the sunniest, driest part of the yard where they had been piled to the coolest, dampest part--the opposite corner. And these suckers are heavy.

Now to prepare the logs for spawn: take a 5/16" drill bit and drill a 2" deep hole. Then another. And another. And so on for the entire log. And the next log. And the next...

Then plug spawn (grooved wooden dowls innoculated with mycelium) are tapped into each hole.

I am doing half the logs with shiitake and half with Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus); the wood is dry and poor quality, and may not be good enough for the finicky shiitakes, but Pleurotus will colonize just about anything.

P. ostreatus plug spawn

And then each hole is plugged with cheese wax.

The result looks a bit like an ill-conceived attempt at modern art. If the landlords ever do decide to haul these off, they're going to wonder what the heck we're up to.

And of the course the final step... waiting. Hopefully in six months to a year I'll have some mushrooms to show for all of this!

Money Talks: "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class"

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 03:21:00 +0000

There's a lot of good economics videos out there, so I've decided to start a regular feature, um, featuring them. We're going to get the ball rolling with a bit of prognostication from Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who seems to be one of the good guys... despite the fact that Obama likes her.

(On a personal note, this is also my response to those people who give me a dirty look when I say I'm not having kids. Watch and you'll understand.)

Possum Living Gets Revived (and Reviewed)

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:29:00 +0000

A funny thing about the self-sufficientish lifestyle is that, while we're all doing pretty much the same things, we're all doing them for completely different reasons. Some are survivalists, some think they're characters in an Ayn Rand novel, some are waiting for Armageddon, some want to save the world....and some of us are just weird.

Years ago somebody recommended an odd, out-of-print book called Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and (Almost) No Money by a teenager named Dolly Freed. I reviewed it on the (now defunct) blog I had back then, and while I don't have that review any more, it boiled down to "it stinks." Well, Freed must need money after all, because someone put Possum Living back in print. And it's being enthusisatically marketed as "relevant" and "inspirational."

OK, anything about poverty is, unfortunately, relevant. But inspirational?!?

I went back and re-read parts of my (1978) copy and was surprised to that I do not hate this book as much as I remember. It might even be useful to some people who are just getting started on the self-sufficiency kick, or struggling to make ends meet. But I still have two objections:

1. If you're interested in the subject matter (frugality, gardening, small livestock raising, etc) just be aware that there are many, many other books on the same subjects... much better books. (Not to mention websites!) I'd suggest that, at the least, you save up a few more dollars and buy Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living instead. You get a hundred times more information, without any of the attitude.

2. ...That attitude. Apparently Freed was a teenager when she wrote this. It shows. Oh, she was a very intelligent and literate teenager, but still. Do you want to read a book by some know-it-all kid?

What it comes down to is that I simply don't like this book, because I don't like the author's motives. Freed is part of the "voluntary simplicty" (a.k.a. "poverty is fun!") crowd, and I think those people are full of it. If you have to be unemployed, do your best to survive with health and dignity... but don't pretend poverty is something to aspire to, or that laziness is a virtue. As somebody on Seinfeld said (in a different context), "That's like using a wheelchair for the fun of it!"

But if you really want to read Possum Living... I bet you can still find the 1978 edition online, for free. Which is, I think, much more in keeping with the spirit of the thing.

Feral Garden: Surprise!

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:01:00 +0000

Not surprisingly, out abandoned P-burg garden is over-run with weeds. (Did you know that if you never mow the grass, it can grow taller than you? [Or at least taller than me, which admittedly isn't saying much.] And the common weed Lactuca serriola basically turns into a tree if you leave it alone.) But what's interesting is that some of our weeds...ain't:

Yep, I'm pretty sure that's wheat. Of course we never planted any wheat, but we did feed it to the chickens and rabbits. Who, perversely, like to throw half of their food down on the ground and poop all over it. So when we fertilized the garden with manure, we apparently planted wheat. Which lived out its whole natural, productive lifespan without any further input from us.

So apparently the formula is ordinary grains + composted manure + benign neglect = wheat. I can do that. At least I can grow some grains and straw for the critters. And this is the time of the year when Montana farmers plant their winter wheat. So this weekend I cleared out the grass and weeds from one corner of the new yard (out by the landlord's Volkswagon collection) tossed out a bunch of hard red winter wheat, watered it and covered it with a mixture of composted crap. We'll see what happens....

Future Events Such as These Will Affect You in the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:11:00 +0000

The Doom 'n' Gloom Show (more politely known as the Financial Sense Newshour) recently interviewed The Automatic Earth's Stoneleigh about the world of tomorrow. You can download that segment of the show here or read a transcript here. Some tidbits:

And the same thing happened in the Roman Empire -- when they were experiencing the beginnings of their collapse, they squeezed people until the peasants abandoned their land because they reckoned they were better off with the barbarians, and on the whole they were, because the tax demands of the empire were so great. And I think we're very much going to see the same kind of thing again, where the centralized structures, whether it's a center at a municipal level, at a state level, or ultimately on a national level, I think all of the centers will be doing their best to compensate for falling overall revenues by increasing the pressure, turning the thumbscrews if you like, on ordinary people. It's the flipside of bailouts never being for the little guy. Bailouts are always for the insiders, whether they appear to be for the little guy or not....

....If people don't successfully negotiate the short term, they don't have a long term to worry about. We are trying to get them to take it one step at a time, to negotiate the short term, deal with finance, and still manage to retain a certain amount of purchasing power, in order to be able to address the energy crisis that comes next. If people don't do that, they're going to lose their purchasing power, and then they'll be completely at the mercy of, of whatever states have to throw at them. Because if you have no money, you have no choices....

Wordless Wednesday: Don't Look Up

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:25:00 +0000

From the Feral Garden: Garlic

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:08:00 +0000

If I had known last Autumn that we were going to have to move this spring, I would have planted the garlic in pots. As it was, I tried transplanting the "Montana Giant" from the abandoned garden to Missoula; it survived, but produced disappointingly un-giant bulbs. I suppose that's why people always say not to try transplanting garlic.

But the majority of the garlic (Okrent) was left in the old place to fend for itself, with no one to water or weed it. We went back today and dug it up.

It did pretty well, considering. The bulbs could have been bigger, but I'm just glad the plants lived long enough to en-bulb themselves at all.

Now I get to learn, courtesy of one of my new favorite sites, Gardenerd, how to braid garlic:

And now it's time to plant garlic again! This time, in containers.

We're Number One

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:03:00 +0000

So saith Businessweek:

Wyoming [is] no longer is the nation's deadliest place to work, a dubious distinction that now belongs to Montana. The number of workers killed on the job in Montana increased from 40 in 2008 to 50 in 2009, according to figures released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's up 25 percent for a rate of one death per 19,500 people of all ages, more than three-and-a-half times the U.S. average of one per 70,739.

And yet, I am relieved to (finally!) be re-entering that danger zone on Tuesday.

Don't Worry, Bee Happy*

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 05:44:00 +0000

When we moved we left the beehives on the old property; it isn't practical to bring them into town, and anyway they can largely take care of themselves. (Besides, they've been doing so well in the greenhouse.)

Unfortunately, the bees apparently decided it was time for them to move, too; and a few months ago both hives swarmed. When a hive is starting to get too big and crowded, the workers react by feeding royal jelly to one of the worker larvae, making a new queen. When she hatches, the old queen flies off... taking the swarm, most of the colony, with her. Ideally, there should be enough workers left to keep things going until the young queen has mated and made more workers. That's the iffy part....

We had such rotten luck with the 2008 hives (my first experience with bees) that I tend to be pessimistic. Our young new queens could have died, or not found drones to mate with, or, or... Ever since we became aware of the swarming, I had been about to write these hives off as another fiasco.

I shouldn't have worried. From the noise coming from the hives this afternoon, it was clear that they had replenished their populations, and I could smell the honey as soon as I entered the greenhouse.

Both colonies have filled their hives up to the top supers, so they got topped off with new supers of empty frames. I think we're going to get to harvest some honey this year....

*Sorry.

Normal People Do This Too

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:07:00 +0000

Lifehacker has a good post and discussion about the economics of backyard food production; the basic argument being "don't grow it if it would be cheaper just to buy it." Which is a sensible argument, although some things that are cheaper to buy are just plain fun to grow (i.e. potatoes). The Lifehacker piece was prompted by an article in, of all places, MSN Money, so it's not just wanna-be-homesteaders and obsessive-compulsive geeks that are paying attention to this stuff!

Wordless Wednesday: Echinacea!

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:19:00 +0000

Mountain Fruits

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 01:56:00 +0000

A Nation of Farmers includes this interesting little tidbit:

Joan Dye Gussow documents that before World War II, the state of Montana was self-sufficient for 70 percent of its food, including fruit.

It's the "including fruit" that intrigues me. Montana's well known for its wheat and beef, but it's not a place you think of when you're thinking fruit. But last weekend we were at my in-laws' old place near Flathead Lake, and I got an unexpected demonstration of Montana fruitfulness.

The region is famous for its cherry orchards; and justifiably so, as Flathead cherries are addictively good. (If there is anything better than standing under a cherry tree and stuffing your face with fresh-picked fruit, I don't want to know what it is.) I want this tree, but I suspect there's a reason I've never seen one growing in Missoula....

Andy's parents also had an apple tree; although I tend to think of apples as more of a temperate crop. And to some degree I'm right; only a few apple varieties can handle the climate here. Apparently the Big Fork region is the best part of the state for apple orchards; Missoula might be at too high an altitude.

Some of the local wineries have tried growing grapes here, with limited success. Andy identified these berries as "some kind of wild grape," and says they're edible but not very interesting. I haven't been able to identify them yet; they're just one of many many berries that grow around here.

But the main berry around here is the huckleberry, a type of small, tart, wild blueberry. We went huckelberry hunting with minimal success; fortunately plenty of folks at Missoula's farmers' markets had better luck. I'm not sure where these guys find the big bushes--and at the prices they can get for the berries, they're not telling. Apparently the bushes are very difficult to cultivate, so this remains a food for old fashioned hunting and gathering rather than farming.

Finally, Montana is a good place for growing roses. (As you may have guessed from the location listed on our weather station gadget over there on the right.) People are always saying that rose hips, even from wild roses, are a great source of vitamin C, so they're worth mentioning (even though I don't like the taste).

The Secret to Growing Tomatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 04:30:00 +0000

A lot has been written about the challenges of growing tomato plants from seed. It generally reputed to be so difficult that many people prefer to buy young plants instead. It turns out that the secret to growing tomato plants is... to not bother planting them at all:

We've had half a dozen or so pop up spontaneously, like weeds. I guess we composted some rotten heirloom tomatoes last year, and now the seeds are scattered throughout the yard. However it happened, our accidental tomato plants are even starting to bear fruit:

The downside of this method is that feral tomato plants are very pushy and will try to take over your whole garden:

Wordless Wednesday: That's My Spot

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:33:00 +0000

Random Cool Thing: Virtual Mustang

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:20:00 +0000

No, not one of these, one of these:

See the whole thing here.

First

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:38:00 +0000

In theory, my plan is to fix my economic woes by taking web design classes at the local vocational college. In practice, there are some bureaucratic and financial complications. (It's been awhile since I've been in school, and I'd forgotten the joys of navigating a university bureaucracy.) Anyway, in the meantime I'm working through a book on web design, and done wrote my very first website. (Actually I wrote it twice; once in HTML, then after a few more chapters, I re-wrote it in CSS.)

OK, it's nothing fancy, but it's my first effort, right? I was surprised at how much I enjoyed doing this; I can really see doing it for a living. But I still need to get into that college so I can get something official-sounding to put on my resume, rather than just saying I haz web skillz!

Am I Cool Yet?

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 05:10:00 +0000

I was in Barnes & Noble trying to find gardening books when it hit me.

The agriculture section wasn't about agriculture. It was about... hobby farming. Urban farming. Self-sufficiency.

It's about what we're doing. They've got a whole damn section devoted to our thing.

Now, that's quite a nice little luxury. But the weird part is, these books are... cool. Hip. They have witty titles and attractive young authors on their covers. Sure, they'e got the obligatory pitchforks-and-overalls aesthetic going on too, but in an ironic way. So it's cool.

For the first time in my life, I, the penultimate nerd, am involved in the current 'in' thing.

Should I be worried? Does that mean that self-sufficiency is just the latest ephemeral fad, to be replaced next month by God-knows-what? Do I need to start dressing better? I am having disturbing mental images of stylish twenty-somethings holding cocktail parties in each others' gardens, chatting about the latest trends in compost.

Crap.

Isn't there any place left in the world for a total nerd?

Someone Get This Man a Beer and a Dog, Stat

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0000

I don't normally read snooty leftist magazines, but the current issue of Harper's has a cover story called "What's the Matter with Arizona?" Being a native Arizonan, I simply had to enjoy the liberal hand-wringing over those horrible, horrible people. (Best bon mot: "Today's Arizona legislature...is composed almost entirely of dimwits, racists and cranks." Now there's some objective journalism for ya!)

But that's not what this is about. What's amusing me right now was the following line, which appears, apropros of nothing, in a letter to the editor by one Ken Beck:

...I believe this earth is all the heaven we will get, and so I am mindfull of the plight of the bees when I allow my harnessed kitten to have a taste of predation and kill one in the clover blossoms.

So somewhere in America, there is a man who puts a little harness on a kitten, takes it out into some flowers, allows it to have a controlled and supervised "taste of predation" by eating insects... and then frets about the insects. I know that America is getting wussified, but damn, Ken. If you want to be a little girl that's your business, but at least let your cat be a cat.

Chickens in da house

noreply@blogger.com (Brenda) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:16:00 +0000

After a long hiatus, we have chickens again:

Since we moved the chickens were being taken care of by a friend in Pburg, who will probably miss the fresh eggs. The delay was due to the fact that we had to finish their new home before they could move in. Oh sure, you can buy chicken houses, but you need to have a few hundred extra dollars lying around. And anyway, that wouldn't be self-sufficientish!

So Andy built one, pretty much single-handed (my sole contribution being the painting) and without a plan--he just made it up as he went along. That's usually not a good idea but this came out great; if we ever give up on chickens I bet we can sell it.

They did NOT like being captured and stuck in a rabbit hutch for the trip, they did NOT like the car ride, and they did NOT like being put in the new coop. And they are still dubious about their new digs. I hope the stress does not cause them to go into a moult and stop laying.