I have a beet.

A single, solitary beet.

I didn’t grow this beet. (Garden apocalypse this year, remember?)

I got it in a produce box from Azure Standard. Because that’s what you do when your ground is poisoned and barren.

(Okay, okay. I’ll stop being so dramatic about it.)

Anyway.

There was a time when August meant vegetables on every flat surface of my house.

Tomatoes spilling out of bowls. Monster zucchini. Peppers and green beans and onions. Cucumbers multiplying when I wasn’t looking.

A hot kitchen, sticky counters, and entire afternoons spent managing the harvest.

But not this year.

This year, it’s just me and my beet.

And said beet has plunged me into all sorts of ruminations.

For a period of my life, my homestead grew like an out-of-control August garden.

Abundant. Expanding. Always more, more, more.

But as I’ve stripped things down—both in my life and in my garden—I’m realizing there’s something very useful about having less, even if just for a season.

When there’s less noise and excess, you get a much clearer look at what you actually like. What you actually want. And what matters enough to keep.

And what I’ve realized after the biggest shake-up of my life is that I am still the woman who cultivates and grows and preserves—regardless of who is or isn’t in my life.

It is woven into the fabric of who I am. (More thoughts on this soon…)

And I’ve also made peace with another notion:

Little things still count.

Somewhere along the way, food preservation became synonymous with volume.

Boxes of peaches. Bushels of tomatoes. Five-gallon buckets of cucumbers. Hundreds of filled jars over the course of a season.

Friend, trust me— I have done that version. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I loved it. (Well, most of the time…) And I’ll probably do it again.

But I think all that abundance perhaps accidentally convinced me that preserving food was only worth it when I had monster quantities.

But the little amounts count just as much. Maybe even more.

Not everything needs to be an epic project in order to have value.

A handful of onions can become pickled onions. Two cucumbers can become refrigerator pickles. Four tomatoes can become salsa for dinner. A fistful of herbs can become herb salt. And one beet can become one very tiny jar of pickled beets.

And that’s okay. In fact, it’s more than okay.

So here’s what I did with my one beet.

Quick pickling has been one of my favorite kitchen tricks for years for exactly this reason: it scales up or down beautifully.

I’ve shared my master formula before, and there’s a version in my upcoming cookbook as well, so I won’t turn this into another dissertation on pickling.

But here’s the basic formula I’ve used for years:

My Basic Quick-Pickle Brine

• 1 cup vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar, optional

That amount is enough for roughly two pint jars, so I scaled it down a little for my lone beet.

The sugar isn’t required, but it softens the bite of the vinegar.

How to do it:

I cooked Mr. Beet until tender, peeled and sliced him, then tucked the slices into a clean pint jar.

I mixed together the brine ingredients in a small saucepan and brought them to a boil so the salt and sugar dissolved. Then I poured the brine over the beet, let it cool, and put the jar in the refrigerator.

I let it sit for about 48 hours before eating so the flavors have a chance to settle in.

That’s it.

You can also do this with cucumbers, carrots, green beans, radishes, or garlic. If you want all the variations, vinegar options, flavor combinations, and troubleshooting, I have a full quick-pickling guide here.

My preservation philosophy for this season:

Preserve what you have—big or small. Don’t wait until there’s enough to make it feel impressive.

Use the handful. Fill the tiny jar. Make the salsa for one dinner.

The point isn’t how much we can put away. The point is knowing how to take whatever is in front of us and make something useful from it.

I’ve spent a lot of years believing the biggest things were the most worthwhile. But this season is teaching me to pay more attention to the small stuff.

The one beet.
The one jar.
The humble rooms in my house.
My handful of chickens.
The three garden beds instead of twenty.
The twenty acres instead of sixty.
The things that don’t look like much, but still matter— deeply.

Perhaps abundance isn’t always measured in quantity. Sometimes it’s simply recognizing the value in what’s already there.

—Jill

P.S. If you like flexible formulas and frameworks like this one, you’d probably like Meal Craft too. It’s built around learning simple kitchen patterns you can adapt to whatever you have on hand—so dinner doesn’t require the perfect recipe or the perfect ingredients.

The post I’m Pickling One Beet appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

What are we sacrificing in our race towards progress?

It is a horribly helpless feeling to own land and realize you may not be able to grow food on it.

As I’ve been sorting through my recent garden woes, my brain, doing what brains do, has jumped to the worst-case scenario several times:

What if I can never grow a garden here?

I usually spiral over that for a while before my rational side takes over and reminds me that I’m still at the beginning. That I always, always figure things out. That I’ll figure this out too.

But still.

There is something so unsettling about realizing that owning land doesn’t necessarily mean you can feed yourself from it.

And I believe we’re only at the beginning of this problem.

For a very long time, we’ve romanticized the idea that you could buy five or ten or twenty acres, learn a few skills, plant a garden, raise some chickens, and therefore possess a meaningful degree of food independence.

Or perhaps it wasn’t even a point of romance. It was simply the way things were.

The challenge used to be:

Learn how to work with nature.

Now it is shifting to:

Figure out how to overcome what humans have done to it.

Contaminated manure. Herbicide carryover. Depleted soils. Chemical drift. Water problems. Unfettered development. Poisoned resources. And whatever comes next…

Once again, I’m over here in my little prairie office asking the same question I’ve ruminated on repeatedly in my books and writings:

At what cost?

The circle of life.
The water cycle.
The carbon cycle.
Seed to plant to seed again.

Plants grow. Animals eat the plants. Waste and decay return nutrients to the soil. The soil feeds the next generation of plants.

Round and round it goes.

But our progress-at-all-costs obsession seems determined to turn these circles into straight lines.

We extract.

We consume.

Then we extract some more.

Someday, the bill will come due.

Yet anyone who questions when that bill is coming is painted as anti-technology, anti-growth, or nostalgic for a past that never really existed.

We’re told, in no uncertain terms:

This is progress.

This is what it takes to feed the world.

This is just how things are.

In essence?

Get over it.

Dare to question the resources these sorts of projects consume and someone will inevitably say, “Well then, stop using Amazon. Stop using Facebook. Stop using the cloud.”

As if shutting down my laptop would somehow slow the freight train of development barreling toward us.

But okay, sure. I’ll admit my hypocrisy.

I am typing this on a computer connected to Wi-Fi. My businesses exist on the internet. My livelihood depends on technologies and systems I sometimes criticize.

I am not standing outside the machine pointing my finger at everyone inside it. I am inside it too.

But surely participation does not require permanent silence.

Surely we are still allowed to look around and say:

This is hurting us.

At what point does the price of progress become too high?

At what point do we admit that we cannot extract and consume forever on a finite piece of ground?

At what point do we stop dismissing the people asking questions as crackpots, alarmists, Luddites, or obstacles standing in the way of progress?

The consequences of our current choices may not fully arrive in my lifetime, or even my children’s, but that doesn’t make asking hard questions foolish.

And someday, we may wish we had started asking them much sooner.

To be clear, I am not arguing that we abandon technology, modern agriculture, electricity, computers, or every convenience industrialization has given us.

I don’t have all the answers or some easy peasy 1-2-3 solution.

But I am increasingly suspicious of the assumption that forward is always better simply because it is forward, especially when there is so much money to be made from convincing us it is.

Progress is not inherently good. It is a trade.

Sometimes a worthy trade, but a trade nonetheless.

And perhaps we should spend less time asking whether we can build the next thing, scale the next thing, extract the next thing, or make the next thing more convenient— and spend a little more time asking what are we giving up in exchange.

Our soil?

Our water?

Our ability to grow food?

Our landscapes?

Our independence?

Because a machine that requires us to sacrifice the things that sustain us is not progress. And at some point, we have to stop calling it that.

-Jill

P.S. A few years ago, I wrote a whole book on this very topic. You can find it here.

The post When the Ground Can No Longer Feed Us appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

I’ve had some pretty epic garden failures over the years, but nothing quite like this.

For those who missed it, I moved to a new property this spring. It’s not far from my old place, so I assumed the growing conditions would be somewhat similar: Same high plains. Same brutal wind. Same short growing season.

How different could it possibly be?

Well…. very, VERY different, apparently.

Before I show you the full extent of my current horticultural humiliation, let me preface this by saying:

I know how to garden.

At least, I thought I did.

I have grown gardens that ended up in magazines.

I have grown gardens that were screenshotted, reshared, and labeled with hashtags like #goals.

I have grown thousands of pounds of food over the years. I’ve preserved it, canned it, fermented it, cooked it, photographed it, and taught other people how to grow it.

This isn’t my first rodeo.

I didn’t intend to plant a monster garden this year. Not in the middle of moving and starting over.

But as I so poetically declared back in May, I was determined to plant my two flats of heirloom tomato starts and grow a small, humble garden for my mental health.

Ha.

HA.

What followed that innocent little photo was an absolute horticultural disaster.

Everything either died, stayed exactly the same, or disappeared overnight.

I know I’m not the only person whose garden has failed this year. So instead of pretending I have this figured out, I’m going to show you what I’m finding as I go in hopes it will help someone else who may also be wallowing in gardening woes.

Right now, it appears three separate problems have joined forces to create the worst garden of my entire life:

Problem No. 1: Herbicide Contamination

This one is keeping me up at night.

I have dealt with herbicide contamination before, thanks to contaminated hay mulch and manure. I’ve written about it extensively on my blog, and it is a growing problem for gardeners and small farmers.

Some broadleaf herbicides can pass through an animal’s digestive system and remain active in manure for a looong time. They can also stay in hay, compost, or potting soil for YEARS before they dissipate.

Tomatoes are usually the canary in the coal mine because they are so sensitive. Their leaves will curl, cup, and gnarl. They don’t always die, but instead persist in a strange state of deformity.

The problem is that I don’t know where the contamination came from.

I spoke with the previous owner of this property, and he said he never sprayed the garden area. He had only added bagged potting soil to the raised beds.

Now, can bagged soil or compost contain herbicide residue? Yes, but not always. It doesn’t seem to be the most likely explanation, but I can’t rule it out yet.

However, there’s another possibility that scares me more.

There is commercial farmland directly across the road from my house.

Herbicide drift (aka the movement of chemical droplets or particles away from the area where they were intended to be applied) can wipe out entire gardens or landscapes and it’s happening more and more.

However, the farmer across the road told me they didn’t spray this year, so I don’t think fresh drift from that field is the culprit.

But I do suspect a different kind of drift….

Southeastern Wyoming is experiencing Dust Bowl conditions this year. Thanks to our historic drought and continued tilling, massive clouds of dirt have been rolling across the road and onto my property.

And I don’t mean a light coating of dust. I’m talking about a thick layer of soil covering EVERYTHING.

There were days this summer when I’d be only a quarter-mile from my house and couldn’t even see it because it was enveloped in a cloud of brown.

My fear is herbicide residue could be traveling in that windblown soil. However, right now, that is only a theory. I’m still gathering information instead of jumping to conclusions.

Before I can make any real plan, I need to figure out two things:

Where is this contamination coming from?

And what chemical am I dealing with?

I’ve talked to the Wyoming Department of Ag and am looking into several testing options.

More to come on this soon…

Problem No. 2: Terrible Soil Fertility

At first, I blamed everything on herbicide damage, but then I noticed something else:

Even the plants that are less susceptible to broadleaf herbicides were not growing.

They weren’t twisted or distorted, but they weren’t changing or putting on new leaves.

I also noticed that the weeds were different here. At my old place, lamb’s quarters and pigweed (aka amaranth) grew in droves. Both of those are usually associated with fertile, nitrogen-rich soil.

Here, there were no lamb’s quarters. Or pigweed. Or purslane. Or mallow.

What I have instead is kochia.

ONLY kochia.

Kochia isn’t a perfect soil diagnostic, but it thrives in dry, disturbed ground and can live in conditions where other plants struggle. It was a clue that some major nutrients were lacking here. I suspected low nitrogen, so I grabbed one of my trusty Redmond’s home soil test kits to confirm.

The results were eye-opening, but not surprising:

Hardly any nitrogen. Nada. Which totally tracks with the lack of growth I’m seeing in my plants.

So yes, I need to add nitrogen, but I have to be careful as my phosphorus and potassium are also WAY too high…. and just dumping a typical fertilizer or even manure on the garden will further this imbalance. Plus, it’s harder and harder to find manure that’s not contaminated with herbicides.

This will NOT be a one-week fix. Rebuilding soil is a multi-year process.

I know this.

I have taught this.

I believe it.

And now, like it or not, I get to put everything I’ve learned into practice here.

Problem No. 3: Every Animal in the County

THERE ARE SO MANY RABBITS HERE.

Anything I plant outside the fenced garden is mowed down almost immediately.

I planted a young lilac bush, and it was gone overnight. Gone.

They’ve eaten my newly transplanted elderberries. They’ve eaten perennials. They’ve eaten EVERYTHING.

(I also realized my lovely dog has been systematically eating all the blossoms off my potted flowers. When I finally caught him doing it, I was actually relieved because I had been trying to figure out how the rabbits were climbing into my tall pots, haha.)

I’ve never dealt with this much rabbit pressure before. I don’t care to massacre them all, and I won’t use poison, BUT I would also like to have a few flowers and shrubs around my house…

There has to be a middle ground between “rabbit buffet” and “concertina-wire landscaping,” but I’m still trying to find it.

If anyone has ideas, please send them my way.

So What Now?

I wish this essay ended with a triumphant reveal, but there isn’t one yet.

This is not a before-and-after story. It’s just the before.

That’s why I wanted to share it now.

So much of the internet is built around completed transformations, but sometimes you’re still standing in the problem with more questions than answers.

I will NOT be harvesting bushels of tomatoes this year.

There will be ZERO magazine-worthy garden tours or even one respectable zucchini.

But I am collecting information.

The curled leaves are information. The missing weeds are information.

The dust, the rabbits, and the wind are all information.

And eventually, information becomes understanding, which will become a plan .

And a plan with enough time, compost, fencing, and stubbornness, just might become a garden.

Just not this year.

This year, I am growing something else.

Humility, apparently.

And kochia.

An absolutely exceptional crop of kochia.

—Jill

P.S. If you want to try the home soil test kit I used, you can shop it here. Use code HOMESTEAD for 15% off. I’ve found them to be extremely useful over the years when I’m troubleshooting garden stuff. Just keep in mind they won’t test for herbicides or pesticides— just soil nutrients.

More Fails in the Past:

• I Think I Poisoned My Garden
• The 5 Biggest Seed-Starting Mistakes Homesteaders Make
• How to Reset Your Homestead After a Disappointing Year
• The BIGGEST Homestead Mistakes We’ve Made (so far)

The post The Worst Garden of My Entire Life appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

Letting the season get a vote…

Last week I wrote about my hot little house.

I’ve been leaning into the rhythm of opening windows at dusk, pulling the blinds before the sun heats my dining room, and embracing the way a lack of central air is making me pay attention to the seasons in ways I haven’t in years.

It’s absolutely changed the way I cook, too.

Because when it’s 95 degrees outside and I’m covered in sweat just sitting at my dining room table, the idea of turning on the oven, even for ten minutes, is nauseating.

At first blush, that might sound like a hardship. But the more I lean into it, the more I’m realizing it’s not all bad… at least not in the Old-Fashioned on Purpose sort of way.

One thing I’ve noticed about modern life is how hard we work to make every season feel exactly the same. I’ve certainly been guilty of it.

We want to cook the same meals in July that we make in January.

We want our houses the exact same temperature year-round.

We buy strawberries in December and tomatoes in February.

And somewhere along the way, we started expecting ourselves to stay the same through every season, too.

Before industrialization, the seasons were non-negotiable because life demanded it.

Today, of course, we have the luxury of ignoring them. And while I’m grateful for many of those conveniences, I also think we lose something when we never let natural rhythms influence us at all.

So this summer, I’ve been letting the weather call the shots a little more than usual.

Here’s what’s been on our menu lately:

• BLTs and whatever sandwich ingredients we have lying around.
• Chicken breasts wrapped in tortillas with cheese, lettuce, dressing, and whatever vegetables are hanging out in the crisper drawer.
• Big salads loaded with bacon, hard-boiled eggs, grilled chicken, avocado, tomatoes, and ranch (homemade or store-bought… I don’t even care right now…)
• Tacos. So many tacos.
• Cooking as much as I can in the Instant Pot since it doesn’t heat up the kitchen.
• One pan skillet meals with random meat and pasta and maybe tomato sauce or cheese or whatever I can find in the fridge.
• Stovetop mac and cheese with leftover meat stirred in for protein.
• Watermelon for supper. Period.
• Snack-board dinners with cheese, fruit, sliced meat, pickles, hard-boiled eggs, home-canned hummus, crackers, and random vegetables when it’s just too hot to care.

As I was writing this list, I realized it’s basically my MealCraft system in action.

I created it because I got tired of staring into the fridge wondering, “What on earth are we eating tonight?” Especially when it’s hot, I’m overwhelmed, or I don’t feel like making another grocery store run.

Many of us learned how to follow recipes, but very few of us were ever taught how to make dinner from what we already have.

How to look at a fridge full of somewhat random ingredients and think, “What could these become?”

One of the biggest shifts I’ve made in my own kitchen is realizing that supper doesn’t have to start with a recipe.

It starts with paying attention. (Which, once again, appears to be the theme of my current life.)

Paying attention to what’s in season. What’s already thawed. What’s in the fridge. How hot it is outside. How much energy I actually have tonight.

Then I let real life have a vote. And somehow… Dinner still gets made.

So if your house is hot like mine, your garden is overflowing (or, in my case… dead—but that’s a story for another day), and the thought of turning on the oven makes you want to die….

Let your life shape your cooking—not the other way around.

The older I get, the more I realize that’s true of almost everything.

Some seasons call for pot roast…. others call for watermelon.

The trick isn’t making every season look the same.

It’s learning to cook—and live—with the one you’re in.

—Jill

P.S. If you’ve been stuck in a “what’s for dinner?” rut, my newly revamped MealCraft Method is 15% off right now with the code PODCAST. My hope is that it helps you think differently about supper—not just this summer, but all year long.

The post What We Eat When It’s Too Hot to Cook appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.