Essential Bookshelf for the Self-Sufficient Life

I am just getting started with my Essential Bookshelf for the Self-Sufficient Life, but the few books that I have are really good ones (IMHO).  These books represent the basics for all of the things that I am interested in learning: gardening, baking bread, canning and cheese making.  I am always on the lookout for new books to add to my tiny collection.  If you have the time, please let me know what books you consider "essential".  Or better still, post a picture of your essential bookshelf (with readable titles, if possible) on your blog. 

Here are some pictures of what's happening on our little piece of land.  Finally, a little less chores and a little more "smelling the roses".

 Day Lilies going crazy.

New Hydrangea "Cityline - Venice"

 Front flower bed filling out.

This week's farmer's market purchase #1

Farmer's market purchase #2

Hope your weather has cooled off as much as ours.  Those 90 degree days came on a little too quickly for my taste.  Next time: Independence Day Challenge update.

Garden Status- Early June 2010

The deck container garden is coming along nicely with tomatoes, green peppers and herbs.

The garden is fully planted now and we are looking forward to eating some squash and onions later this week.

We have had a fair amount of rain over the last month, so my only concern now is staying ahead of the critters and bugs.  Last year, I lost the squash and cantaloupe to squash vine borers.  This year, I am spraying the soil and stem around each plant with insecticidal soap and I have put a small tinfoil shield on the soil around each plant.  The insecticidal soap is supposed to kill any eggs that may have been laid by the adult moth and the tin foil is supposed to confuse the moth so that it won't lay eggs in the first place.  Not sure if either idea will work, but I am giving them a shot.  I try my best to stay organic, but if pushed hard enough, I have been known to run for the nearest chemical.  If you have any additional ideas for prevention, I'd love to hear them.  Please leave a comment.

NYC and IDC

No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own.  However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep: and that is a very handsome property. 

-Charles Dudley Warner 

 
I spent the last few days on a business trip to NYC.  Of course, while I was there, I was anxious to see any evidence of personal gardening in the big city.   I wasn't disappointed.  Wherever I looked up I saw small rooftop gardens hanging over the edges of many buildings. On the street level, there were pots filled with flower mixtures and there were small 2 ft square plots around trees filled with pansies and impatiens.   But, the most interesting thing I saw was a small 4 x 8 area of soil that was surrounded on all four sides by sidewalk.  It had a variety of flowers and veggies snuggled up together inside of it with supports in place where appropriate.  The amazing thing is that it was also surrounded by a six foot chain link fence.  That tiny piece of land with homegrown vegetables and flowers was evidently very near and dear to the gardener's heart.  I completely understood the value of that little bit of land.  It made me realize how very fortunate I am to have my three-quarters of an acre (which I ignored and planted with grass for a dozen years).  On that note, here is how I used my land since the last IDC post:

1. Plant Something: pole beans, dill, marigolds, purple cone flower, May Night Salvia
2. Harvest Something: lettuces, spinach, beet greens, radishes, garlic (fall planted), rosemary
3. Preserve Something: no
4. Waste Not: regular composting, etc.
5. Want Not: scored a free gardening book and cookbook for my budding library. Purchased a dying perennial for $3 and nursed it back to health.
6. Build Community Food Systems: attended local farmer's market and spent targeted $10+ dollars. Purchased goat's milk soap and cheese and a packet of dried herbs.
7. Eat The Food: lots of delicious salads!

That's it for this week.  Happy Memorial Day to everyone and happy birthday to my brother!

Farmer's Market Treasures

On Saturday, Dh and I spent a nice morning strolling around the local farmer's market.  Our mission: to spend at least $10 on locally produced goods.  The movie, Fresh, introduced us to the idea that if everyone would spend at least $10 a week on locally produced goods, we could sustain local farming.  So, we got out there and spent our $10.  First, I chose a small Borage plant to tuck into the last spot in one of my garden boxes with Better Boy tomatoes, mild peppers and Spicy Globe Basil.  Then, it was Dh's turn.  He chose a jar of locally produced Honey Jelly.  We weren't sure what Honey Jelly was, but it sure sounded good.  Turns out it is a delicious treat that tastes like honey, but spreads more like jelly - Honey Jelly (Duh!).

We were delighted to find that the farmer's market had grown since the last time we visited.  We enjoyed checking out all of the new and returning vendors, but we particularly enjoyed sampling the spreadable goat's milk cheeses, sniffing the goat's milk soaps and chatting in the Master Gardener's tent about the many uses of Borage. We are already looking forward to next week's treasures.

After the morning spent at the farmer's market, I was inspired to get my deck container garden planted.  This year, the deck is host to 2 Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants, 2 Yellow Pear cherry tomato plants, 4 Bonnie's Green Bell peppers, Oregano, Thyme, Parsley, Bee Balm and one lone Petunia.  We had very good luck with the plants on the deck last year, so we have high expectations for this year. What have you had the best luck with in containers?

Apple Cake

This cake is a terrific way to use dehydrated apple rings.  All I had to do was remove the rings from the freezer and soak them for about an hour in water with a little lemon juice before preparing the recipe.  The resulting cake is not too sweet which makes it just right for breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert!  My favorite recipe is the Fresh Apple Cake recipe found in the Very Virginia Cookbook, by The Junior League of Hampton Roads. 

I still have a few more packets of dehydrated apple rings in the freezer- any ideas for other good ways to use them?

Independence Day - First Post

I have been inspired by all of the wonderful bloggers who participate in the Independence Day Challenge.  So here goes my initial post:

1. Plant Something – Continued adding plants to the garden. It is about 80% planted.


2. Harvest Something – Picked 3 gallons of strawberries from a local farm.

3. Preserve Something – Gave one gallon of the strawberries to my parents. Hulled and froze 1.5 gallons in a single layer on cookie sheets. Then put them in 3 one gallon bags in our new, old freezer. Will plan to make jam out of them in the fall when apples are ready for picking.

4. Waste Not – Composted kitchen scraps. Continued to collect leftover coffee grounds from pots at work.

5. Want Not – I have been borrowing my favorite books from the library, but I have renewed them the maximum number of times. So, I purchased Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (new), Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (new) and The Victory Garden: The Essential Companion (used) from Amazon with a gift card from my awesome family (Dh, Dd15, Ds21 and Dd24) for Mother’s Day.

6. Eat the Food – Enjoyed .5 gallon fresh strawberries. Used apple rings that we picked, dehydrated and froze last fall to make a Fresh Apple Cake. 

That wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  Now, I'd better get moving on week#2!

Garden Status - Early May 2010

Here is a picture of our garden.  At this stage we have:
Tomatoes - Better Boy, Early Girl and Roma
Peppers- mild for salsa
Sweet Basil
Shallots & Garlic - planted last fall
Rosemary - overwintered (even with all the snow!)
Cantaloupe
Cucumbers - slicing
yellow squash
radishes
beets

lettuce - Green Leaf & Gourmet Mix

Zucchini - planted in a separate flower bed

An Evening with Joel Salatin

Yesterday, we enjoyed "An Evening with Joel Salatin" of Polyface Farm, courtesy of InJoy Foods.  It was a very interesting event and the first time Dh, Dd15 and I had seen Joel Salatin in person.  We first saw him when we watched the movie, Food, Inc., earlier this year.  Since then, his name keeps popping up and we feel very lucky to have someone pushing on this front right here in our own state. 

The flyer for the event says that Mr. Salatin is a "biodynamic farmer" who won the Heinz Award in 2009 for  “creating alternative, environmentally-friendly farming techniques, spawning a movement towards local, sustainable agriculture.” He has “developed a new paradigm for agriculture by successfully challenging the commercial production of chicken and beef by food industry giants." 

The evening started with a viewing of the movie, Fresh, which is sort of a continuation of Food, Inc.  It kept Dd15 on the edge of her seat with footage of tiny chicks being manhandled in a dark, cavernous industrial chicken house and the day to day existence of other sad, diseased animals.  In contrast, it showed scenes of happy animals busily munching away in the sunshine in a large field filled with a variety of grasses, herbs and flowers. 

After the movie, Mr. Salatin gave a short, but very entertaining talk about his philosophy and warned us that companies that experiment with animals to squeeze every last drop out of them and treat them as inhumanly as the large corporate operations in our industrialized food system do, might not hesitate to treat people that way as well.  Food for thought.

Mr. Salatin has published several books, which I have not read yet, but plan to add to my reading list.  He is expected to have a new book available this fall.

New, Old Freezer

New to us that is.  We had been looking for a used freezer to augment our pantry area when a friend offered us an old freezer that had been standing open and unused on her back porch for the better part of a year.  With a $70 replacement gasket and a load of TLC from Dh, we now have a frost free upright freezer that seems almost new.  We don't have much in it yet, but I have visions of filling it with veggies from our garden boxes, food items purchase at deep discount prices and a quarter of a grass fed cow. 

I have been doing my research on the grass fed beef and I think we have narrowed our search down to Autumn Grove Farm.  They are located within our state and will sell one-quarter cow for about $4.97 a pound which includes processing.  We should receive about 100 to 120 pounds of beef from this quarter.  If anyone has any advice or comments to share regarding this, I'd love to hear them

Garden Update

We have been hard at work doubling the size of our container garden.  We now have 12 3'x6' boxes to work with.  So far, we have garlic, shallots & rosemary that were planted last fall.  We just added beets, lettuce, radishes & spinach.  The seedlings that we started from seed are ready to spend a few hours each day outdoors: 4 types of tomatoes, mild peppers and several herbs.  I also purchased seedlings: yellow squash and cucumber.  Our goal is to get everything into the ground by May 15th, the last frost date in our area.  We are doing much better than last year (our first year gardening), but still feel that we are behind.  Is that how every gardener feels this time of year?

Ahhhhh Spring!

Dd15 is on spring break, so dh and I decided to take a vacation week and enjoy our own backyard.  On Easter Sunday, we had a fabulous time visiting our friends, J and L and their 5 children.  We had an Easter egg hunt, ate good food, checked out their chickens, horses and dog, watched the sun set over the water and generally enjoyed a very memorable day.

Yesterday, Monday, the first official day of spring break, we had topsoil delivered and purchased supplies to install 6 more boxes in our raised bed garden.  This is our second year of gardening and we are hoping to build on last year's success.  After purchasing our supplies, I worked on a second recipe in the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book.  A photo of the Soft American-Style White Bread that I made is above.  It was as delicious as it was beautiful!  I have found what I have been searching for to replace the regular sandwich bread that we buy from the store.  And it was truly very easy and fast.

On to today's agenda: building boxes, shoveling dirt and planting things.

A Very Good Place to Start

Needed a place to put my thoughts and this seemed as good a place as any to start. So, I'm just gonna jump right in there. So much to learn: baking bread, veggie gardening, flower gardening, composting, cheese making and preserving. And hopefully one day: backyard poultry, beekeeping and suburban homesteading . This blog is about my family's adventures in self reliance.