Bustin' Sod

More than a year after making my front garden plans, we've finally broken ground. Below is my sketch, which is not drawn remotely to scale. It's more of a vision than an actual plan, and I've already made several changes, but hopefully this will give you a sense of what I'm going for with the herbs and edibles. Our front yard is fairly shallow, sloped, and close to the street, making it relatively useless as yard space. My goal is to eliminate as much of the turf as possible, but I'll be leaving all the paths in grass.



Jim brought the tiller around to break up the bigger areas, but the spiral paths require quite a bit of hand work. We tilled several bales of peat moss into the bed closest to the porch to lower the ph for the blueberries and cranberries. I planted five blueberry bushes there this weekend that I purchased locally—Sunshine blue and Bluehaven, varieties that will stay more compact than most, topping out at around 4 feet. We already have six bushes that I planted along our property line when we moved, so hopefully we'll have plenty of blueberries! I've also started to transplant strawberries for ground cover, and I have four hop vines on order for training up the patio pillars. Up towards the house in between the Hollywood juniper and mugo pine, I planted two ground cherries, pretty flowering shrubs that produce a profusion of sour cherries.

In the bed toward the street, I divided and transplanted several lavender plants, and I ordered some rosa rugosas to fill the area between them. I miss my roses from the old house, and I'm so excited to have some again. I ordered one "new dawn" climber for against the house; two gallicas—"apothecary's rose" and "rosa mundi"; and three "jens munk" rugosas.

We transplanted three of our grapevines that weren't performing well in the kitchen garden out to the front and set in some oregano for ground cover. We'll also be transplanting lots of raspberries and blackberries to create a hedge along the property line. The center of the spirals will feature a sage bush, and I have several starts from last year that I can transplant once I get the soil conditioned. I'll also be spending most of today and tomorrow seeding flats for out front. Tree-wise, I planted a witch hazel this weekend, and I have a weeping mulberry and a dwarf patio peach on order, as well as three varieties of filbert to anchor the front left corner of the yard.

Should keep me busy this year, huh?

Too Late!

Madeline wrote: "I get an apron?! I had forgotten that beautiful offer. :) Listen, as someone who hates her sewing machine more than you, you are off the hook (or tension:) if you want. Play with all those animals instead."

Well, my dear, it's too late. They're already done, or nearly so. I still need to get ribbon or some such to make the tie.

For those outside the loop, Madeline had this beautiful skirt that she picked up somewhere but was not happy with, so she wanted to pass it along to me. I also thought the skirt was lovely but knew from many fitting room experiences that these style skirts always look much better on the hanger than they do on me. But I took it anyway because I thought it would make a beautiful apron, and I liked the idea of sister-aprons on two unschoolin' farmin' mamas.

When I got home, I picked out the stitches along the side seams of the skirt to create two apron bottoms. I chose some vintage chenille fabric that I salvaged from an old bedspread. We don't know where it originally came from, but we found the spread in Jim's grandfather's old boarding house at the beach just before he sold it. I worked parts of it into Julia's baby quilt and the quilt square we made for Hannah Jenner's quilt.

The lace was hand-tattedcrocheted by my great-grandmother, who would be tickled, I think, at the idea that her lace now graces two farm-house aprons made from scraps of an old chenille bedspread from a boarding house and a re-purposed skirt. And Madeline, if you give me any grief about using the lace, I shall assign you to read the short story "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker if you haven't already, in which case, there you go.

On Lambs and Lawnmowers

Early spring rains and everything is finally greening up around here. While the neighbors were firing up their gas guzzlers this holiday weekend, we had a little help from our furry friends. Yes, that's Daisy in the background, and little ram lambs kept trying to run her off, feeling all big and bold until she turned and looked at them. Then they'd bounce back to mama with silly little jumps that put Pepe le Pew to shame.

My New Cookstove

I let slip in the last post that I am indeed getting a new cook stove this season. Yay! It's my anniversary/ mother's day/ birthday gift for 2009, and I promised to lay off the quest for solar until at least 2010. Basically, I called in a lot of favors for this one, and it's the most expensive "appliance" I've ever owned. It's not in the house yet, but it is on order.

I went back and forth on what exactly I wanted to get. I had considered a refurbished cook stove and was scouring nearby Craigslists for one when I ran across a like-new, 2 year old Waterford Stanley up in PA. While it was half the price of a new one, Jim didn't like the green or the Victorian design.



It did, however, get me thinking that if I could find one at a reasonable price, a new stove made more sense than an old one from the standpoint of efficiency as well as longevity. Jim was moving in the direction of a wood stove, so it wasn't too hard to convince him to go with a stove that offered more than just heat.

So I found this stove: the Baker's Oven, which seemed an ideal solution. It would fit in the space nicely, offered more than just heat, yet wasn't too much of a stretch beyond just a typical wood stove. Nothing froo-froo or out of time. I also loved the idea of being able to see the fire. Plus, it was a much better price than any of the true cook stoves, and so a better sell to my other half.



Out of Australia and out of stock. I continued my search, which soon brought me to the stove I ended up ordering and the company that so far has been a joy to deal with. AntiqueStoves.com offered a great price, so I decided to explore a little further. The owner of the company spent quite a bit of time on the phone with me, helping to assess my needs against the stoves that might best fulfill those needs. After asking several questions and listening carefully to my answers, he strongly recommended against the Baker's Oven on the grounds that it would likely disappoint and frustrate me in the long run.

Its strengths—size and hybrid nature—were also its weaknesses, he argued, in terms of serving as a true cook stove. If all I really wanted was a wood stove for ambiance and space heating with the ability to cook in the event of a power outage, then the Baker's Oven was just the ticket. But if I really wanted a cook stove to do the majority of my cool-season cooking, then he recommended I check out the Gem Pac, which was a lot more stove for the same money.


I absolutely love it, and it promises to be a real workhorse. While the next model up would have been lovely for a number of reasons, Ed didn't think it would suit the layout of our house, which is not set up at all for cross ventilation or circulation. (*sigh* It was built on the electric heating/ cooling plan for the duration.) He believed we'd quickly heat ourselves out of the space without being able to benefit from the Flame View's increased heating capabilities. While it had a couple of nice features, specifically the view of the flame as well as the larger, side-load firebox, it was also significantly more expensive.

Ultimately, I opted for the Gem Pac from Margin Stoves, a small Amish company out of Canada that uses Antique Stoves as a distributor. I was also able to get a rear mount 20 gallon hot water reservoir, which Jim plans to plumb directly into our hot water heater. Very cool. Of course, I could have done this with the Flame View as well, but this feature wasn't offered at other stove companies I investigated. Both stoves have an optional integrated side water reservoir that's made out of copper, but only holds 5 gallons and runs about $100 more, but that didn't seem nearly as appealing.

The stove should be delivered some time in March or April, giving us the whole summer to get the stove set up and plumbed. It will go in the corner of my kitchen directly opposite my electric ovens, displacing the coat tree and a small side table. Here's its spot: in the corner just behind and to the left of Em; we'll just slide the table and sideboard to the right a bit. It'll feel like such a real farmhouse kitchen! I'll be sure to post pictures once it arrives.

New Era of Responsibility

Yesterday on the National Mall, President Obama reminded us all of the "price and promise of citizenship" and called for a "new era of responsibility."

Amen.

While I could quibble with some of his choices and some of his ideas (most notably harnessing the "soil" to run our cars and factories), overwhelmingly I breathe a sigh of relief to have a leader willing at least to address climate change in serious and substantial ways, willing to admonish us all for our "collective failure to make hard choices," and willing to call on us all to reconsider the "ways we use energy."

Now, what the future brings depends upon each of us to take up Obama's call in ways we see fit, adding our individual preferences and opinions to a collective surge toward energy independence. Up to each of us is the task of making our individual opinions heard and seen by providing a model to move forward in ecologically responsible ways.

With each step we take, so too do our nations move forward. With each willing step, we show others a way forward. Do not look to Obama to do this hard work; we must look deep within ourselves, for there the responsibility lies. This is the gift he offers: the motivation to find within ourselves a higher purpose and a noble sacrifice, the opportunity to "choose our better history" as men and women "obscure in [our] labor."

If "everywhere we look, there is work to be done," what work will you choose? How will you answer this call to service and sacrifice and usher in a new era of responsibility?

I hope folks will commit to making at least one change in the comments section, and we'll work together to hold ourselves responsible for these changes. In that spirit, I'll close with my own pledge for energy reduction and learning to live with less because this is how I choose to define "progress" and "growth." This is the legacy I want to leave my children's children: a way of living in harmony with technology and sustainability.

• We will eliminate our second refrigerator, which at first blush seems like a major luxury, but with our dairy cow plus egg and meat sales, we've felt we really needed that second refrigerator. We're in the process of figuring out how to maximize our inside refrigeration space and change our habits with regard to refrigerated food. My goal is to have the garage fridge unplugged and decommissioned by February.

• We will be getting a cookstove this year (yay!), which should be up and running by the fall burning season. It will enable us to cook, warm the upstairs, and heat water simultaneously without coal-generated electricity. Jim plans to plumb it into our electric hot water heater to reduce the amount of electricity we draw to heat our household water.

• We will install our outdoor shower with solar hot water this spring, and I'll even dig the post holes myself rather than waiting on Jim to do it. (Yes, you all heard that, and Woody, I'm sure you'll take his side and hold me to it. *grin* ) Between this and the cookstove, we ought to achieve a roughly comparable seasonal reduction of electric-heated water as we would if we installed an expensive solar hot water system. That's our hope anyway.

C'mon, what are your ideas? What will you pledge?

Food Security, Part IV

Time to get into the nitty-gritty of food security: seed saving. I'm still working on a steep learning curve with this one, but each year I'm able to take another step in the right direction. I've come to believe that seed saving is the very foundation of food security. Even for those who grow their own food, myself included, dependence upon seed companies could quickly create a large hole in our food security should seed sources dry up for whatever reason. Demand outstripping supply, crop failure, bankruptcy, and worse, all could play havoc with our ability to grow food for our families. Making time now to learn seed saving techniques while the supplies and time are still available is valuable insurance against an uncertain future.

By saving seeds, you'll also be helping to preserve biodiversity, a worthy goal all its own. Seed saving is something our ancestors practiced not only because it was frugal but also because it was practical and the only real way to guarantee that they'd have the seed they needed for next year's growing season. Without these seed savers so many of our heirloom varieties would have been lost, yet this threatens to become a lost art. If younger generations do not step up, learn these techniques, and preserve the knowledge along with the seeds, we may literally find ourselves relying on single hybrids susceptible to mass die-out, not unlike the great potato famine.

How could this be, you may ask? As Monsanto and GMOs march (and drift!) on, small seed savers become more and more crucial to maintaining species diversity because many are lucky enough to live in pockets isolated from larger growers and the cross pollination that can result. More and more heirloom varieties are being lost because commercial hybrid seeds dominate growing fields, resulting in both cross pollination and decreased demand for heirlooms. While there's nothing wrong with non-gmo hybrids, most will not reproduce true—some can be stabilized over a few generations—or are completely sterile, rendering a gardener dependent upon the seed supplier. Large market growers and agribusiness turn toward hybrids that will work for their conditions of production—pest and disease resistance, travel, storage, uniformity, machine harvest, etc.—and as long as consumer demand supports these conditions, heirloom seeds will continue to be under threat. Often, too, taste and nutrient density are sacrificed for market qualities because so many heirlooms can't stand up to the demands of shipping and storage.

Besides protecting heritage and diversity, seed saving also builds a seed store adapted to a particular climate, meaning that saved seed likely has a better chance of thriving in its environment than shipped seed. This kind of adaptation takes generations of seed, but perhaps in the face of climate change such efforts will prove invaluable. Grand seed saving projects like the Seed Vault in Iceland are terrific efforts for governments to undertake, but I don't think they should be the only efforts, nor should they absolve each of us from doing what we can to help as well. At the very least, they fall prey to political whims, at worst, they could fail entirely, so they shouldn't replace individual seed savers by any means.

Seed purity can be tricky business, however, and I strongly suggest getting a good book like Suzanne Ashworth's Seed to Seed as a reference guide. If you're anything like me, this book will become a go-to guide, as I'm inevitably forgetting things and having to look them up all over again just to be sure: which plants require pollinators, which can be left under row covers, that kind of thing. Maybe some day all this will become second nature, but for now, this is my seed saving bible. There are also several good organizations like Seed Savers Exchange that offer information and support. In my blog sidebar, I list several sources for heirloom seeds from different regions of the US. I personally order the majority of my seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a small, mid-Atlantic company based in Virginia, and I've been very pleased with them; however, I've heard lots of wonderful things about the other companies listed as well.

The many different available resources cover ways to ensure seed purity from insect and wind pollination, including isolation distances, maturation time, and day-caging, but they can make it all seem pretty daunting at first with all the information and conditions. Getting started seed saving, however, really is as simple as ordering a variety of open pollinated seeds from an heirloom seed source. (Open pollinated simply means that plants will reliably reproduce the same variety from seed, and this is essential for saving your own seed.) I try to grow at least one open pollinated variety of every vegetable I grow even if I'm growing hybrids for other reasons. I'm not saving seed from all of them each year, but ordering the seed at least ensures that demand for o. p. seeds remains steady. This way, too, I'm able to try out different varieties to see how they perform in my garden conditions. I also try to hold back a few seeds from each of the o.p. varieties, so I will have them for the following year if I can't get them.

For the first year of actually saving seeds, I'd recommend starting with something easy like beans and then branching out from there. The more you do it, the easier it will seem to take the next step. Beans are good first plants because they're perfect and self-pollinating with relatively low isolation distances, meaning that they don't need to be miles away from the nearest planting of beans to ensure purity. Choosing a distinct-looking bean, too, can be an easy visual cue. When planning to save seed, it can make good sense to plant only that variety for the season just to minimize any chances of cross pollinating. Row covers can also help reduce the chances of cross-pollination by insects with bush varieties. Because beans are self-pollinating, the row cover can be left on except to harvest, and this has the added benefit of protecting plants from bean beetles.

Moving further into my own seed saving journey, I've found that learning the different plant families for seed saving is just an extension of knowing them for good garden rotation to minimize pests and diseases. It's all part of the same whole. Because plants within the same family can often cross with others in the same family, knowing which plants are related starts to become really important, and it's not always obvious. I'm not going to go into very much detail about the hows here—it would take up too much space, and I'm no where near as knowledgeable as a good book on the subject, but there are some simple tricks that I've found helpful.

One easy way around cross pollination in the home garden is to simply save seeds from one variety one year, and another the next, being sure not to let the off year plants go to flower. This year, for instance, I was able to save seeds from over-wintered chard in the spring, pull those, and save the seed; next year, I'll save the beet seeds. It's also possible to stagger plantings chronologically within the same season, but this requires a bit more planning ahead. These methods require a close eye, and they're certainly more demanding than just throwing a few seeds into the ground willy-nilly, but they can integrate really well with an intensive planting rotation. Simply pull the plants as they start to bolt, and plant something else in their place that won't cross pollinate.

So far, I've been able to save my own beans, tomatoes, chard, endive, gourdseed corn, popcorn, spinach, sorrel, dill, cilantro, sunflowers, okra (thanks to Pam G. for the original seed), lettuce, chives, leeks, and green onions. I've also saved potatoes and garlic, but not from seed. I'm hoping to get some turnip and beet seed from over wintered plants next spring, but the turnips can be tricky, as they'll cross with any bolting Chinese cabbages and broccoli raab, meaning I'll need to be on top of things to make it work. I'm considering venturing into day-caging, depending upon how much energy I have at the time. Still, it's possible to get a decent seed store going without all the hoopla. I've had some failures along the way, too—carrots, michihli, and quinoa, for instance—because I wasn't careful enough. In the case of the carrots and quinoa, I had wild species growing too close that were impossible to eradicate, so those may be something I'll have too much trouble saving to make it worthwhile.

As you can see, used egg cartons hold a lot of my seeds. Not necessarily the most sanitary method, but it's what I often have on hand while collecting or sorting the dried seed. Other recycled containers work well, too, for large quantities of seed. For small amounts of seed, envelopes are good, and they can be easily labeled and traded. The key is to keep seed cool and dry to avoid any mold formation. Silica gel works well in sparing amounts because the seeds need a small amount (around 3-5%) of moisture for proper germination. For long-term storage the freezer works best, but be sure to allow the storage container to come to room temperature before opening so the seeds don't collect condensation. I keep back up seeds vacuum packed in my freezer as a minor insurance policy. They take up very little space and may prove quite useful down the road. Then again, maybe my kids will be cleaning out my freezers one day wondering why the heck I have all these vacuum packed seeds. Ahhh, better to be safe than sorry, especially if it's easy enough.

I'm by no means self-sustaining in terms of seed saving, but I hope to keep improving on that front. Right now, I'm too much of a variety-addict to limit myself to my own saved seeds, but if something were to happen, I'd have a pretty decent garden all on my own, and I hope to keep improving. Seed ordering the way I do is a luxury, but at $2 or $3 a packet, it's a luxury I'll continue to indulge. I've already placed my '09 seed order, not wanting to put it off too long. Even ordering before the holidays, I encountered several back orders, my onion seed among them unfortunately. Neither onion nor corn do well saving beyond a year, so they need to be ordered or saved fresh every year. Luckily, many other seeds will save for years under the right conditions.

My 2009 Seed Order: modest compared to previous years, but that's due as much to leftover seed as to my own seed saving efforts. At this point my goals are still to try different varieties as well as to have a wide variety, though not a great quantity, of seed in cold storage. The asterisk indicates hybrids.

bean, louisiana purple pole

Beet:
bull's blood
chioggia

Buckwheat (cover crop for high tunnel)

Carrot:
purple dragon

corn, super sweet*

Cucumber:
straight eights
edmonson pickling

edamame, asmara

Eggplant:
listada di gandia
ping tung long

Greens:
bok choi
purple mizuna
red giant mustard

Kale:
lacinato
red russian

Lettuce:
Thai oakleaf
red salad bowl
salad bowl
rouge d'hiver
drunken woman
winter density

Melons:
moon and stars watermelon
strawberry watermelon
hale's best muskmelon
edisto muskmelon

Onions:
copra*
ruby ring*

Peppers:
Serrano*
Sahuaro anaheim*
Gourmet*
Red Knight*

Potatoes:
Yukon gold
red nordland

cherry belle radish

Squash, summer:
yellow crookneck
early white scallop
costata romanesca
golden bush scallop

Squash, winter:
table queen acorn
Cornell's bush delicata
waltham butternut
marinia di chioggia
blue ballet
confection*
Galeux d'Eysines
Cinderella pumpkin

Tomatoes:
sungold*
gold nugget
striped German
green zebra
sweet olive*
brandywine

Food Security, Part III

What's in your yard?

Think of it as a new commercial: replace the tired image of a barbarian asking what's in your wallet with a perky—even sprightly—elf asking what's in your yard.

Could you eat off your land? What if you couldn't get to the grocery store... what if the trucks couldn't get to the grocery? Would you and your family have fresh food?

We all know there are no guarantees in life. Jobs are lost, freak storms happen, and much worse. Nita, the matron of husbandry from Throwback at Trapper Creek, demonstrates the hard way that not even the best laid plans can thwart mother nature. The trick is to cover several fronts at a time. In diversity there is security. Or, don't put all your eggs in one basket. (Going back to the land, so many cliches come clear.)

One of the reasons I wanted to break this topic into a series, besides just keeping it manageable, was to demonstrate the different facets of food security and the ways each complements the other. If all your food is coming from one place, then that should be a major red flag. And by "one place" I don't mean the Piggly Wiggly versus Super Wal-Mart. Sure, that's obvious to most of us, but maybe not so to others. Look around for a minute and assess how many others will be turning toward the same food sources in an emergency. Population density as well as the severity of the emergency will dictate how secure your food sources are. That's the advantage of the pantry: you're likely to be the only one shopping there. But the pantry is by no means your only resource.

Insulation from emergencies or hard times rests upon reducing dependence on outside systems. Not eliminating it, necessarily, which I riffed on in the self-reliance series, but reducing it as much as possible. But insulation also comes through having multiple resources that back each other up, the whole being stronger than the part. The freezer backs up the pantry which backs up the yard. Fall back and redundancy are key.

The yard provides valuable fresh food and can do so year round in many, many places in countless ways, but you'll need to how to take advantage of them. For instance, did you know that fir and pine needles contain loads of vitamin C and that the bark has medicinal properties? Can you identify which evergreens are nourishing and which are poisonous? Do you know what a yew looks like and why to avoid it? Don't just take my word for it; do the research. The point is that yards can nourish us in more ways than one, and while gardens are an obvious resource, landscaping can be just as important, as can weeds. Dandelion leaves are often available long into winter for a nourishing salad where I live. Common purslane and chickweed appear in the spring and provide whopping nutrition for their size, rich in vitamins, minerals, and even protein!

So, what's in your yard?

Beginning with just that simple question opens up so many possibilities for food security before ever even planting a garden. Assess what's already growing and stop applying herbicides if you haven't already—they're bad for the earth, bad for the bugs, and they're ridding your yard of valuable food both for you and the bees, among other creatures. Look at all tiers of your yard from trees to shrubs to weeds and try to envision an integrated and holistic system working at multiple levels, with the vegetable garden as just one part. Look into edible landscaping and forest gardening for starters. Then consider wildcrafting and herbal medicine thrown in for good measure.

A large yard isn't a necessity. Once you begin thinking of outside space as an extension of food security rather than strictly ornamental curb appeal, play space, or just wasted space, the number of options available even in the tiniest of yards multiply. Even apartment dwellers with access to the outside or renters can create container gardens that offer at least some food sources, and even a large sunny window presents the opportunity for an indoor herb garden. Of course, larger properties offer nearly infinite possibilities, and it may be helpful to separate bigger parcels into zones to make projects more manageable. That's one of the beauties of the forest garden: it can take quite a bit of work to set up an ecosystem, but the goal is a self-sustaining copy of nature's methods, allowing that system to do most of the work.

The Usserys of Boxwood, a 2.5 acre homestead in Virginia, offer one of the best examples online of forest gardening with limited space. If you haven't already encountered Harvey Ussery's articles in one of several publications, you'll be delighted to get to know him through his website, which is incredibly informative. Another excellent example of how much can be done in a really small space is the Dervaes family, homesteading on 1/5th of an acre in urban California. I've recommended both these sites before and have links to each in my sidebar resources in case you're looking for them later. They're the two best sites I know of for homesteading in small spaces, but please feel free to share other resources in the comments section.

Here at Touch the Earth farm, we have less than an acre in actual garden production, and I'm working to transform our 5.25 acres into a more integrated whole, an ongoing project that will take years. When we bought the property it was a horse farm, with a lovely 3-stall barn and several acres of pasture in dire need of renovation and shade. The first thing I did when we moved in was to plant some fruit trees close to the house because they take so long to get established. I planted 3 dwarf varieties of apple, 2 dwarf pear, 1 plum, 1 cherry, 1 fig, 1 peach, and 6 blueberries, making sure that the single varieties were self-fruiting. I got the majority of my stock from Edible Landscaping in Afton, Virginia, an excellent little company whose catalog is worth getting for the info and ideas alone. Last year I planted 50 saplings to provide shade for the pastures, food for the bees, and potentially, firewood for us.

Planning 10 or 20 years down the road can be difficult, especially in our nomadic culture, but true food security depends upon it. On the one hand, a person with large financial resources could certainly plant trees on a grand scale by simply purchasing them all at once. I, on the other hand, have opted to buy seed stock and gradually expand our plantings myself, requiring an even longer term point of view. I've been dividing and expanding my berries for the past two years, hoping to let them naturalize in different parts of the homestead. The first year I lost most of the plants to a severe summer drought, but I think last year's transplants took pretty well—about 350 strawberry plants and 50 raspberries. This year, I'm hoping to focus on grafting some of our fruit trees to begin creating a small orchard in one of the upper pastures, and we'll continue to divide our berries, planting on different parts of the property. (Matron of husbandry has an excellent post on grafting that's well worth checking out.)


Luckily, not all projects are so long term, and there are many gratifying ones that offer short-term returns. The most obvious is the summer vegetable garden. Lots of folks are already comfortable with growing a summer garden, so a great way to expand upon that is to consider adding an herb garden, a spring/ fall garden, and even a winter garden. Finding ways to grow fresh produce year round will make a huge difference both for the wallet and the environment, not to mention health since the fresher the produce, the more nutrients it has. While fresh, raw produce is nearly always preferable from a nutritional standpoint over preserved, growing your own also has the added security of knowing exactly what goes into the soil and onto the produce—no added chemicals, colors, waxes, etc. I've gotten so spoiled by fresh produce year round that I don't bother preserving certain things like green beans that never taste so great anyway. I spend my time preserving other things that offer both nutrition and taste satisfaction.

We built our first high tunnel for winter gardening in 2007 and just added a second in fall of 2008. After making the plunge, I won't be without some form of winter garden as long as I'm able. I'm still fine-tuning my winter growing, but having a dedicated space has helped tremendously because I'm not stuck waiting for summer plantings to give up the ghost before I can get winter crops started, many of which need to be in as early as July to really get growing before the days shorten. Some, like leeks and parsnips have such a long growing season that they need to be started even earlier to be ready by fall and winter. Starting plants in seed trays helps get a jump on the season if there are still things in the ground, and I've also found even with the crops I direct sow that having a back up seed tray allows me to fill in any gaps that may occur for whatever reason. The two photos above show our high tunnels after having endured temps in the teens this month. The bare looking areas have small lettuces that will do little growing over the winter, but will have a real jump on the spring season as the days get longer.

Growing cold-tolerant crops is key, and in our zone 6 climate I find I don't really need a double layer of protection for most of the crops I grow. Currently, I'm growing tatsoi, kale, chard, bok choi, spinach, several varieties of endive and lettuce, arugula, green onions, turnip greens, beet greens, thyme, citrus thyme, rosemary, cilantro, flat leaf and curly parsley, oregano, sorrel, chervil, carrots, and radishes. Outside the tunnel, I have broccoli, more kale, and several cabbages, and I just harvested the last rows of turnips, carrots, and leeks to bring into the garage. Winter produce often won't be quite as pristine as that grown in milder weather, but most blemishes can be cut out or worked around.

Gardening itself can be a steep learning curve, but so can learning to eat seasonally, which is truly the only way to eat locally. I've found food tastes so much better fresh that limiting myself to seasonal eating isn't very difficult at all. The hardest part for me was broadening my cooking repertoire, and a few choice cookbooks really helped on that front. Pretty much anything by Alice Waters will be invaluable because of her focus on vegetarian dishes; same goes for the Moosewood cookbooks. There are also several farmer's market cookbooks out now, which focus on seasonally available produce and the meals that can be built around it. Committing to trying a new dish at least once a week can quickly offer experience and familiarity with new vegetables. I've found that doing this during the summer when life naturally slows a bit makes it more manageable and less stressful.

I'm including some of my favorite books below. Please offer your own recommendations in the comments section—the more the merrier!



Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman, the winter gardening bible, this is a definite must have if you're considering growing year round. He has loads of useful info, tables, varieties, etc.










Fresh From the Farmer's Market by Jane Fletcher.












Local Flavors by Deborah Madison.











The Farmer's Market Cookbook by Richard Ruben.

Food Security, Part II

In my last post I talked primarily about dry storage, but now I'd like to turn to the importance of freezer storage and the role it plays in my family's food security. I'd be remiss for not pointing out here what an incredible luxury freezers represent for food storage; they are by no means necessary. People stored meat on the hoof, smoked, cured, dehydrated, and devised ways to keep foods cool before the advent of electricity, including ice houses, spring houses, and even ice pits, which many grand mansions in Europe relied upon for hundreds of years. Familiarizing ourselves with alternative storage methods makes sense on many levels—economic, ecological, preparedness—and there are many wonderful resources available. Preserving Foods Without Freezing or Canning makes an excellent reference addition to any bookshelf.

Freezing is also a huge energy draw, so considering carefully how to preserve different kinds of foods is crucial. Valuable freezer space should be reserved for the most perishable items in order to maximize the investment. Freezing produce often seems so much easier than learning to can, but by doing this, you're giving up space for meats, fats, and whole grains that go rancid quickly when stored at room temperature. Freezers offer the luxury of longer term storage for these kinds of items. While meats can be dried, smoked, canned, and cured, this kind of preservation changes the quality and the consistency as well as the nutritional aspects of the meats. Dry cured meats, for instance, should be eaten far more sparingly than frozen meat because of their high salt content.

This would, in addition, be the moment to point out that avoiding animal products altogether can drastically reduce or eliminate the need for freezers completely, though as I said, even a small chest freezer can be useful for storing whole grains, nuts, and oils long term, ensuring that essential fatty acids are part of food stores and the family diet.

A full freezer is more efficient than an empty one, so keeping the freezer at least 3/4 full at all times will increase efficiency. Chest freezers are more efficient than uprights, taking advantage of cold's natural tendency to sink: opening a chest freezer releases less of the refrigerated air than opening an upright, which allows that air to quickly spill out. If I had my druthers, I'd have chest freezers and do away entirely with electric refrigeration by rotating frozen water jugs from my freezers into a large upright box fridge for cooling, much like the old fashioned ice boxes, but that's another post.

Freezing is convenience, certainly, but it also allows us to preserve safely many things that do not store well dry, like butter, milk, or colostrum for instance, and even very low acid foods like pumpkin, as well as to preserve more of the nutrients in the foods as they've not been subjected to the heat processing of canning. Freezing, however, does not stop microbial action, so careful maintenance and organization of freezer stores is essential, particularly with chest freezers that have the ability to bury older items at the bottom or in corners. Those that come with compartments will make the job easier, though homemade compartments can easily be fashioned. Vacuum sealing can extend the freezer life of any food because it excludes oxygen, which supports bacteria growth, and seals in moisture. Vacuum sealed meats can easily last a whole year in a deep freezer that goes down at least to 0° F.

Freezers also enable people to purchase pastured meats from local farmers by buying in bulk. Many farmers sell beef or pork by the whole, half, and even quarter at a much better price than each individual cut would cost. Some sell by the share, but most sell by "hanging weight"—a per pound price based on the weight of the cleaned carcass. For example, buying a half beef at $3/ lb would mean expensive ground meat, but very cheap tenderloin. So if you like the more expensive cuts, buying by the half will definitely save money. More than that, however, many small, sustainable farmers don't have the capacity to sell individual cuts, so buying a half or a quarter is the only option. If that amount seems overwhelming, finding a friend or family member to split the share with you can be very helpful.

There's a learning curve to buying meat this way if you haven't grown up with it, and having an adventurous spirit—and a few reliable cookbooks—can help. Those of us who grew up in the supermarket generation have missed out on the incredible variety of butcher cuts. An old fashioned butcher will offer dozens of cuts never seen by cellophaned grocery aisles. Learning what to do with and how to cook all the different parts of an animal takes a bit of time and experimentation. Mostly, you'll come to realize how much gets wasted in conventional food systems! Well, not wasted necessarily, but funneled into different food chains, obscuring the relationship of factory processed meat to a living, breathing animal. I'd like to see an artist's rendition of the supermarket animal along the lines of Kingsolver's "vegetannual." Now that would be a scary sight indeed!

Here on the farm we use freezers for storing most of the meats we produce, allowing us to focus on seasonal production, giving the pastures (and farmers!) a much-needed rest. We can raise a batch of meat birds when the weather's warm and put them up in our freezer for the rest of the year until the cycle begins again. Meats take on a seasonal quality in much the same way as produce: chicken in mid-summer, turkey in November, pork in December. Everything but our breeding stock is off the farm by the time cold weather sets in. Of course butchering traditionally took place in the fall, taking advantage of the natural cold weather and the animal's well-fed state heading into winter. Butchering in one large batch can also save both time and resources over one-at-a-timing it, offering another potential advantage of freezers over storing meat on the hoof. As with most things, however, the energy equation certainly isn't cut and dry; there are savings and expenses on both sides. Finding a food storage system that works for your family and maximizes energy savings will take some tinkering.

Arguably the most important aspect of food security that a freezer offers is the ability to store humanely, sustainably raised meats from farmers you know and trust. A freezer can mean the ability to disconnect entirely from factory farmed meats and the many hazards they represent to animals, the earth, the workers, and the consumers. Knowing where your meat comes from can be the biggest step towards food security you can take short of cutting animal products out of your diet entirely. There are loads of resources out there that detail the dangers of factory farming, including both Eric Schlosser's and Michael Pollan's excellent work, but the Meatrix videos offer a clever overview if you haven't already seen them. The sustainable family farm is not just a fantasy, but it does take some effort from the consumer to find one.

For those interested in some really good resources for cooking, curing, and butchering different kinds of meats, I highly recommend Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. (Love the guy, have to look up his name every damn time.) His River Cottage website has some wonderful recipes and info, but his books are simply outstanding. Though I haven't read them all, I can't imagine you could go wrong with any, but I've listed my favorites below along with some other useful books.




The River Cottage Meat Book, now available in paperback, is worth every penny for its information; Hugh's outstanding commitment to organic, sustainable meat production; as well as its amazing photos. A truly stunning book.









The River Cottage Cookbook, also available in paperback, is another must have. Its seasonal recipes are delicious, and it has lots of valuable information about curing meats.










Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn is another excellent addition to your collection, especially if you have any inclination towards making sausage and salamis.









And of course, for anyone interested in raising and butchering their own meats, I'd recommend Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game by John Mettler.







Our basic freezer stores are listed below. At the moment, we're out of beef and goat, both of which we often have in the freezer; next year, we'll also add lamb. After Bella calves in February, I'll also be sure to freeze some colostrum to have on hand; same when our goats kid. This can mean the difference between life and death for an animal.

Pork:
chops
roasts
ground
ribs
bacons
breakfast sausage
sweet Italian sausage

Chicken:
whole
wings
breasts
legs/ thighs
soup backs

Whole Turkey

Other:
butter
chevre cheese
pine nuts
cashews
pumpkin puree
shredded zucchini
basil leaves
pesto
roasted red peppers
cherry tomatoes
whole wheat flour
yeast and cultures

Food Security, Part I

I've been wanting to do a series on food security for a while now, and a question just came through one of my email lists about food storage. So now seems like a good time to begin talking about what food security means, especially during these uncertain economic times.

Back in the spring, the conservative paper The Wall Street Journal ran an article about the pantry being the best return for one's money based on rising food costs. It was an interesting and telling piece because the ideas many of us have been talking about and thinking about for some time had begun to go mainstream. The idea that one could have home food stores instead of relying on capricious prices at the grocery stores is such a basic idea but so foreign to so many people that I used that article in many a conversation and correspondence to begin convincing skeptics that basic food security might be a good thing to have on their radar. The fact that at least half these people still gave me that, "Riiiiiight" kind of reaction didn't deter me from prattling on like a freak, citing Katrina, 9/11, and winter storms as evidence for my own increasingly debatable rationality... from their perspective, of course.

But now, we've gone past the writing on the wall (street) stage and have gone straight into the bashing over the head stage. To put it bluntly, folks who don't have some basic food and emergency supplies in place are downright irresponsible. Everyone, and I mean every one, with an income to manage it needs to have at least two weeks of food storage and basic survival supplies for power outages and water supply compromises, no matter how meager. Even if it's just a big ol' bag of rice and beans.

Folks need to take responsibility for themselves instead of relying on and then blaming FEMA's incompetence. C'mon folks, this is the federal government we're talking about—of course they're going to be incompetent! Of course they're going to drop the ball and leave people floundering and falling through the cracks. Don't let it be your family.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone has to go all Mormon or survivalist (and there's a lot to learn from both groups) as I've been gently teased of doing, but I am saying that as a culture we have become dangerously complacent. It's time to take a page out of our grandparents' Depression book and learn to take care of our own instead of depending on the system to take care of us. Considering most of us have been schooled in the system at every turn from an early age, this is a pretty tall order. I get that, and I've been there. I remember when Jim and I were on our honeymoon in a small New England town and couldn't figure out how people got money without any ATMs in town. Well, we got that people went to the bank and all, but how inconvenient that seemed! Why not just do everything electronically? Why not just run to the 24 hour convenience store if you run out of something?

This thought pattern is pervasive, and it's what the system itself depends upon. What we're now seeing unravel in the financial markets and beyond is the idea that the system is self-sustaining and doesn't need to rely on real goods or real money or real responsibility. But the minute people pull up and say "whoa!" the illusion of sustainability collapses, revealing the very tentative structure of the system itself. We're seeing the house of cards this illusion was built upon collapsing all around us, and it's not going to stop any time soon, certainly not until it reaches a supply chain near you.

I'm not talking about panic or hoarding. I'm talking about taking the time now while it's still a luxury to do the slow, steady food storage thing: a little bit extra here and a little bit extra there leaves plenty to go around for the time being. The more of us who prepare in this way ahead of time, the more supply will be available when it's really needed for those who didn't prepare in advance. If you still need a reason to act now, consider the fact that the US has lost more than 1 million jobs in the past three months alone. How comforting would it be to at least have paid for food to feed your family in the face of unemployment?

Enough ranting and convincing and on to the nitty, gritty practical details; I'll start with our pantry.

For my family, I store what we eat, so there's a constant rotation, with some things obviously going more quickly than others, especially based upon the season. I can't really give amounts off the top of my head, but I would say that at this point we easily have a year's supply of food. We don't have a year's worth of everything we like, but we have a year's worth of healthy meals.

It's taken me the past year to make that a reality, just buying a few things extra every month. I belong to a bulk co-op, which has made that kind of buying really easy—a bag of rice and case of coconut oil this month, a bag of rolled oats and a case of tuna the next, that kind of thing. Also, picking up extra jars of peanut butter or boxes of pasta from the grocery when it goes on sale helps tremendously. Spreading out this kind of purchasing not only leaves enough on the shelves for others, but it also ensures that your own food stores have different expiration dates. Once you have your food storage in place, then it's just a matter of basic maintenance purchasing to keep your rotation going.

Because we live on a small farm we have a steady supply of eggs, meats and dairy. I'll expand on our freezer storage more in the next installment, and I'll also do an installment on growing fresh food year round, as well as one on the practicalities of preserving. But for now, I'd like to focus on just a basic list of what's available in our pantry to give folks some sense of what a well-stocked pantry might look like.

Below is a general list of what's in my food stores, though I may be leaving something out—I didn't go in and do a detailed list, and no, I don't have an elaborate tracking system. My food storage system is based on the kinds of things I need on a regular basis. If I run out of something, then I know there's a gap in my storage plan.

My stores say a lot about how we cook and the kinds of food we eat. Pantries should reflect the regionality, personal preferences, cultural traditions, and diverse needs of the families they serve. I make most things from scratch, but not all, as you'll see, so I have lots of basic baking ingredients. I also have lots of home canned goods, in large part a result of growing my own food and cooking from scratch, but this kind of thing can also be done with bulk purchasing from co-ops, farmer's markets, and even grocers.

Most of my bulk grains are stored in the colored 5 gallon buckets on the left side of the photo just above. I finally splurged and bought the buckets and gamma lids, which make them much easier to open, from Pleasant Hill Grain, who offers free shipping on orders over $99. My buckets are somewhat color coded, but they're also labeled. The large wooden bins at the back hold potatoes, and I have wire baskets on my shelves for other stored produce like onions, garlic, and sweet potatoes. If you look at the first photo above, you'll see the baskets and the reused orange juice containers behind them that store water, not much but enough for an emergency.

You'll notice my list below loosely broken down into related categories that reflect different nutritional needs: be sure to have stored whole grains, fats, protein, and sugars. You'll also notice a lot of redundancy because I use different varieties for different purposes in my cooking; this is a definite luxury, and it's certainly possible to make do with less.

Grains:
jasmine rice
brown basmati rice
arborio rice

grits
popcorn

rolled oats

couscous
quinoa

wheat berries for long term storage
all purpose flour
bread flour
whole wheat pastry flour
whole wheat flour
dry pasta

Fats and Proteins:
red and green lentils
black beans
garbanzo beans

olive oil
coconut oil
peanut oil
hard cheese

peanut butter
tahini
tuna
refried beans
cashews (freezer)
pine nuts (freezer)

evaporated milk
dry milk

Sugars, spices, baking needs:
cane sugar
brown sugar
powdered sugar
turbinado sugar

raisins
maple syrup
chocolate chips
baking powder
baking soda
shortening

canning salt
real salt
sea salt
cheese salt

bay leaves
vanilla beans
sesame seeds
bouillion
bottled lemon juice

Home Preserves:
dried apples
dried tomatoes
jams
peaches
soups
tomato paste
whole tomatoes
chutneys
salsas
chicken and beef stock
dry cured ham
dried chilis

yellow onions
red onions
shallots
garlic
red potatoes
gold potatoes
fingerling potatoes
sweet potatoes

Other:
coffee beans
basic condiments
snack foods my kids like
cereals my family likes

Please feel free to ask any questions about why, how, what, etc. of anything I have in there, and I'd be happy to elaborate in the comments section.

The $250 Tool

No, not Jim.

There's a phenomenon I'm noticing as I move more deeply into our homesteading adventure that I call the $250 tool. It seems like each new hobby or activity requires a tool that costs somewhere around the neighborhood of $250.

There's the cheese press: $279.95.

There's the grain mill, which is a two parter:

the electric version at $269.99, or the non-electric version, which comes in at $395.95, considerably outclassing the $250 tool phenomenon.

There's the honey extractor: $245.00.

There's the water filter, also a two parter:

the Big Berkey, which comes in at waddya know... $250, or the Aquarain at $239.99.

There's the broadfork, a bargain at only $166.00.

There's the six row seeder I want that about doubles the tool phenomenon at $505.50, making up for any savings on the broadfork.

Don't forget the scythe, which will run at least $180 and must be tailored to the individual. Since there's about a foot difference in height between Jim and I, we'd each need our own.

Then, there are the really big ticket items like a cook stove, or solar, or a fancy high tunnel, and this doesn't even count the $250 tools I've already purchased like the milk machine, dehyrator, vitamix, stand mixer, and pressure canner.

This phenomenon verges on the uncomfortable brink of a new, green consumerism that's fast becoming fashionable in our society—because, dahling, green is the new black. I try to be cognizant of falling unaware into the yawning consumer abyss... well, not really yawning, but looming, or... lurking maybe, rising behind me like one of those giant venus fly traps in the new movie Journey to the Center of the Earth. (Which, by the way, look disturbingly like giant vaginas, but I'll refrain from doing the whole gendered reading of consumerism and venus fly traps.)

No worries now, though, as I've just provided Jim—my priceless tool—an accurate accounting of all the things on my wish list, so he'll be sure to nix them all as too expensive. Brendan Fraser's got nothin' on him.

Library

A while back on one of the (too) many email lists I'm on, there was a thread about what kinds of reference books we had on our shelves. Bookhound that I am, mine were too numerous to even consider listing off the top of my head, but I promised to pull together a blog post with a comprehensive list. I think this pretty much covers it, but considering that I have books stashed in multiple corners of my home, there may be some left out. I'll add them as I find them.

Animal Husbandry:

Raising Chickens
Raising Dairy Goats
Raising Pigs
Raising Sheep
Raising Turkeys
Your Goats
Pastured Poultry Profits
Raising Poultry Successfully
Raising Milk Goats Successfully
Keeping a Family Cow
The Family Cow
Small Scale Livestock Farming
All Flesh is Grass
The Backyard Beekeeper
Natural Beekeeping


Gardening:

The Four Season Garden
The New Organic Grower
Seed to Seed
The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control
Gardening with Heirloom Seeds
Great Garden Companions
How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits


General:

The Encyclopedia of Country Living
Country Wisdom and Know-How
Handy Devices and How to Make Them
You Can Farm
Making Your Small Farm Profitable


Herbal:

A Handbook of Native American Herbs
Making Plant Medicine
Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook
Herbal Remedies
The Backyard Medicine Chest
Holistic Herbal
Peterson's Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs
The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable
Homeopathic Care for Cats and Dogs


Kitchen:

Basic Butchering
Putting Food By
Ball Blue Book of Preserving
Preserving the Harvest
Preserving Summer's Bounty
Root Cellaring
The River Cottage Meat Book
Charcuterie
Nourishing Traditions
Wild Fermentation
Home Cheese Making


Skills:

Spinning in the Old Way
Foxfire v.1-3
Home Brewing
Modern Reloading

Independence Days Week 4

This has been a slow week between allergies, out of town guests and rain. I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked. Oh, and getting the cow this weekend kinda blew lots of other projects as well, especially since Jim spent yesterday morning restretching a fence he hadn't planned on doing. But it's all good and everything will get done in its own time.

Plant:
Helped Julia plant her garden. Jim planted pumpkin patch.

Harvest:
Harvested romaine, cilantro, radishes, spinach, thyme, chives, sorrel, green onions, red salad bowl lettuce, strawberries, endive, beet leaves, chard, black seeded simpson lettuce, tarragon.

Also harvested another piglet and milk. I figure those things count, too.

Preserve:
I really slacked on this front. We didn't preserve anything really, nor did I clean stuff out of the freezer. But I have been getting stuff together to preserve some of the milk we're getting.

Store:
Added 14# peanut butter and 4 gallons white vinegar to the larder.

Prep:
Got a milk cow on Saturday, who will feed not only my family but also our pigs and chickens, so she's a huge help around the farm. Figuring out how to work with her and integrate her into our homestead has been paramount this week and will probably continue to be for a while.

We also picked up 20 Narragansett turkey poults since our hens did not set successfully. *sigh* Hopefully next year. And ordered 25 buck-eye chicks to round out our breeding program.

Manage:
Organized and cleaned out larder since Jim got my new shelves in last week. Also took inventory.

Installed second honeybee nuc on Sunday and inspected hives on Saturday. Both look good and seem to be drawing out the small cell foundation nicely, which will hopefully aid in organic control of varroa mites. Pulled the IPM board for mite monitoring to try to get a baseline for both hives, but I'm not good enough yet at recognizing mites—need to work on that. Observed a definite head start in the first hive, as they already had honey stores going. I saw pollen in both hives and found both queens, who had both moved off the original nuc frames and onto new foundation, which is hopefully another good sign.

Unfortunately, the eggs in the incubator did not develop. Not sure whether they were infertile to begin with (note to self: candle before incubating) or if the temps were too low on the outer edges.

Jim tilled between potatoes and hilled them.

Cook:
I didn't cook anything new this week, but Jim made some lovely Caesar salads. Mmmmm. Not new, but first of the season.

Add:
CSA delivery to three families: mixed baby greens, black seeded simpson lettuce, red salad bowl lettuce, swiss chard, cilantro, thyme, tarragon, sorrel, chives, strawberries.

Reduce:
Reduced packaging and travel of dairy products by getting our own cow. Reduced the amount of feed I'll need to buy for other animals.

Learn:
Well, I learned all about milking machines and routines this weekend, trying to figure out how best to make our situation work. Spent time figuring out how best to store and preserve the milk. This whole cow thing is going to be a pretty big learning curve, no doubt, but I feel like it's going relatively smoothly. The machine, while frustrating in its own right, is far less frustrating than trying to train her to hand-milking since she stands still for the machine.

The Larder

At a very basic level, food storage translates into independence, but being able to ride out emergencies, shortages, and disasters is an important skill that many in our culture have lost. Most of us have come to expect the immediate and constant availability of aisles and aisles of groceries, convenient serving sizes, and loads of flashy packaging. Except in small pockets of our culture, the well-stocked larder is a thing of the past because, after all, one unspoken promise of the American Dream is the luxury of a well-stocked grocery open 24 hours a day, or at the very least a local quickie convenience store: "we want our Little Debbie snack cakes and we want them now!" (Though perhaps we shouldn't be too quick to denigrate the shelf life of twinkies, which may in fact survive both nuclear holocaust and the apocalypse. I can see the sci-fi feature now: Twinkie vs. Roach: the End of Days.)

This doesn't even delve into weather extremes, market whims or predatory speculators or even political unrest. Whether folks believe there will be outright shortages reaching into the complacent coziness of the American kitchen, the signs of rising prices and wildly fluxuating availability are quite clear around the world. And the emphasis on throwing energy and resources at biofuels means that the relative insulation Americans have enjoyed is likely over. Climbing food prices are making headlines from NPR to the Washington Post to the Boston Globe all the way to the Wall Street Journal, where pundits are talking about food storage as a better investment than banks these days. Americans are no longer as untouchable as we've been lead to believe.

So all this leads to the questions of what food storage might look like and how we can take responsibility for insulating ourselves, our families, and our community. There's loads of information out there about food storage and emergency preparedness from a range of perspectives, and I encourage folks to read through several of the sites for ideas. Different approaches will resonate for different people, but the insurance of a well-stocked larder is worth the investment. Do it right, and there's nothing to lose because it will all get eaten, and as the Wall Street fella points out, buying now will make your rapidly deflating dollar stretch its food value.

Here are some sites to get you started:

• Red Cross
• 7 Mistakes of Food Storage
• Food Storage FAQs
• Sharon Astyk's Food Storage Course
  

Our larder before and after organizing this weekend:













I've been working on trying to fill our larder for the past year, basically. It's been a long time coming together, but it's finally taking shape. We're to the point where we have back up stores of most everything we use on a regular basis, much of which is store bought obviously, but there's home made there as well. There are 3 Virginia-style hams hanging that aren't visible from this angle, and there are several jars of jam, salsa, and chutney still on the shelves. There are also several wire baskets just waiting to be filled with onions and squash, among other goodies.

My plan is to learn to pressure can this year and fill up even more of the shelves with home-canned food, particularly my tomato sauce, paste, and stewed tomatoes, which I admit that I've been freezing because it's easier and less intimidating. I have a pressure canner on semi-permanent loan from a neighbor, though I'd like to pick up my own in the next year or so. I've been doing some research only to find out that I can't pressure can on my glass-top stove, so I'll be purchasing a propane burner that will enable me to do much of it outside. That should be welcome come August!

What the picture doesn't show are the numerous bags sitting down in the potato bin under the shelves. I'm still searching for some good air tight containers for storing my grains and flours. Those will likely go along the open wall to the left of the photo. Ikea has some nice scoopable bins, but they're neither food grade nor air tight, so I'm still looking. Someone online mentioned Panera Bread as a good source for 3 gallon pickle buckets, so I may try giving them a call this week, though I'd rather something larger that didn't smell like pickles.

Obviously, not all that you see in the photo is necessary food storage. Much of it just comes through bulk purchasing the kids' favorites from our local buying co-op, like the Fruity Munch cereal and Annie's cheddar bunnies, for instance. Also, you'll see plenty of white stuff alongside the whole grains because that's what my family prefers. I've tried and tried to get them to switch to whole wheat pasta and bread, to no avail, so I do what I can. What it comes down to, though, is that I store what we eat rather than what I wish we'd eat, and even this kind of stuff is important for keeping up morale and appetite during emergency situations, especially for kids.

Behind the wire baskets are several gallon juice containers that I've been saving, which hold potable water for emergencies. Recommendations run about a gallon per person per day, so it's not much water storage, but it'll get us through a pinch. We also have a pretty good water purifier in our camping gear that offers some back up. We have an electric well pump, so our water supply is sadly dependent on electricity, a problem of which we are keenly aware and working to remedy.

There are, of course, loads of other foods available in our yard and in our freezer that aren't accounted for in the following inventory. I think of it kind of like a checks and balances integrated system with the larder, the freezer, the gardens, and the pastures each working to support the other so that we will always have food and options. Of course there are no guarantees in life, but the more diverse and local the food systems, the more flexibility and possibility are built in, and being able to roll with what's available is part of being prepared.

What's below is by no means an exhaustive list; it's just an inventory of what we have now, giving me insight into where we still need to go and attesting to how far we've come. I'll also admit to being a bit of a history geek, so I'm always mindful of how useful such lists can be for those who seek to learn about our culture and times down the road. Hopefully, too, this list may offer some useful information for folks out there just beginning to think about how their food storage might take shape. Sometimes seeing someone else's details helps us figure out our own. I'd love to hear about others' ideas and systems, so please feel free to leave those in the comments section.

On a practical note, this room is our well-pump room; it's below ground and keeps a fairly constant cool temperature. We're considering further insulating the inside wall this winter against the heat from our wood stove. This room, however, isn't ideal for storing some vegetables, so we'll continue to investigate root cellar possibilities, but the more I learn to grow during the winter, the more I'm convinced that fresh is the way to go whenever possible. The winter garden will never do away with food storage, nor should it, but more of my energy will go towards fresh eating year round and storing produce practically—prepping only the stuff we'll eat and not just because I can. Those green beans never seem to taste very good, to be honest, and I'd rather just eat my fill while they're fresh and bid them a fond farewell until next year.

Larder Inventory:
3 hams

50# wheat berries--hard red spring
20# all purpose flour
50# bread flour
35# whole wheat pastry flour
10# whole wheat flour (in freezer)
50# yellow popcorn
~10# white popcorn
~5# quinoa
25# realsalt
~35# non-iodized curing salt
25# black beans
~20# white jasmine rice
20# rolled oats
~45# yellow grits
~20# dried pasta

35# peanut oil
12 jars coconut oil
2.5 liters olive oil

1# roasted coffee beans
20# chocolate chips
48# baking soda
12# epsom salts
3qts hydrogen peroxide
3qts isopropyl alcohol
4qts apple cider vinegar

22 12oz cans evaporated milk
3 pints green tomato chutney
13 pints pickled green tomatoes
12 pints green tomato salsa
11 half pints strawberry jam
6 half pints grape jam
4 half pints black raspberry jam
8 15oz cans peaches
5 8oz jars chicken bouillon
5 8oz jars beef bouillon
3 27oz cans green chili
2 16oz jars salsa
1 16oz jar green chili
9 4oz cans green chili

1 bulk toilet paper
various and sundry cereals and snacks
~6 gallons Clorox bleach
2 gallons distilled white vinegar

On order:

50# wheat berries--hard winter red
25# arborio rice
25# brown basmati rice