Cornucopia
Life Goal: Collect beautiful baskets made out of natural fibers like the ones my friend Anore has. Anore is 80 years old, widowed 5 years ago, homesteading alone off-grid on 5 acres on Waldron in the San Juan Islands. She goes barefoot outdoors even in September when it’s cold enough to need heavy wool sweaters, even when she is driving her pickup truck. I hope to be as cool as Anore when I grow up.
These shallow, lightweight baskets are for drying herbs, nuts, and seeds, suspended on the ceiling around her wood cooking stove for the even dry heat and to protect their contents from direct sunlight and most of the dust. She has a number of more heavy-duty ones, some with handles, for collecting fruit, veggies, and nuts.
Next Level Life Goal: Learn how to make baskets, and grow the fiber myself. (I may need a subsequent life for this goal. My present life is filling up rather fast. I have my work cut out for me just growing the edible things to put in the baskets right now.)
Life Goal in Progress: Grow my own food.
Several day’s worth of harvest from September. Photo taken afternoon of the 11th. From upper left in a somewhat wiggly order: Butternut squash, ‘Chocolate Cherry’ tomatoes, ‘Cherokee Trail’ black beans, shallots, blackberries, ‘Sungold’ tomatoes, cucumber, ‘Patty Pan’ squash, ‘Cherokee Purple’ tomatoes, ‘California Wonder’ bell pepper, ‘Tequila Sunrise’ pepper. Not pictured: Whatever I was eating right away.
Harvest displayed with a minimum of ceremony in the hodgepodge of thrift store and repurposed containers I happen to have around, for the most part the containers the produce was already in. I could have spent another half hour or more gussying it up but I had no end of other things to do and I wanted to get that photo taken before I either put the food in storage or ate it.
An important part of an abundance mindset is using what you’ve got instead of waiting until things are ideal to do anything. Remember the scene in The Princess Bride where they’re on the bridge and Westley, who has been mostly dead all day, gets put on the spot to plan an invasion? He asks, “What are our assets?” Homesteading is like that a lot of the time.
Just re-watched the scene. Let me sum up: Westley asks, “What are our liabilities?” (other characters answer), followed by, “And our assets?” Eventually, a wheelbarrow gets mentioned, not originally included in the list of assets, and becomes a key element in an unlikely victory. The Permaculture imagination calls for assessing liabilities regularly but not dwelling on them, seeing how many problems you can solve with one asset or how many different problems one asset can solve, seeing to how many different and sometimes unconventional purposes one humble object or material or creature or force can be turned.
A food-grade 4-gallon bucket with a lid is a winery, a cabinet, an end table, and a plant stand. A machete is a grill spatula. A mesh utility trailer is a planter pot drain rack, a chicken wire dispenser, and a field-mouse-proof nursery for seeding flats of cool season crops that need to live in the shade until they go in the ground in September. 200′ of black garden hose left in the sun for a couple hours is a hot shower on a pleasant autumn afternoon.
It’s December 21st now as I’m writing this. The three spaghetti squash are in my pump house (insulated with an electric heater, 40-60 degrees most of the time), still in perfect condition. The cabin with its wood stove would be too warm and dry for them to hold til spring. I plan to eat the first of them on January 1 for Homegrown Food Day.
As I write this, it’s snowing. I got my garlic mulched this afternoon. Last chance before the grass gets buried and temps drop in to the teens. Strawy grass, as tall as I am on average, thick enough that it takes a hedge trimmers or a scythe to cut it, makes for great mulch, especially once the birds have picked the seed heads clean. I collected and hauled the grass in the wheelbarrow. Earlier today, the wheelbarrow carried bricks from my salvage material collection along my north fence to the big vegetable garden where I was putting down some 1.2 oz floating row cover to protect my winter vegetables from the coming sustained freeze.
This year’s harvest was quite comfortable for fresh eating with occasional surplus for barter. I went at least 6 weeks and possibly closer to 8 without buying produce except for mushrooms and avocados. The squash did pretty well but I could eat more in a winter than what I grew. I froze some jars of tomato sauce and a few other odds and ends. Storage crops (things that keep without heroics) and preserving perishable foods without freezing are things I need to work on.
Crops harvested in September in order of first appearance on my harvest record for the month: spinach, arugula, watermelon, bush beans, cucumber, tomato (‘Opalka’), strawberry, aronia berry, ground cherry, tomato (‘Cherokee Purple’, ‘San Marzano’, ‘Sungold’, ‘Chocolate Cherry’), black beans, blueberry, blackberry, squash (‘Spaghetti’, ‘Patty Pan’), parsley, sweet pepper (‘Tequila Sunrise’, ‘California Wonder’) from greenhouse, cantaloupe, squash (‘Delicata’), sunflower (for seed), leek, squash (‘Tromboncino’, ‘Butternut’). Most of those on a repeat basis somewhere between alternate days and once a week. Abundance indeed!
Foodshed Challenge Rundown: All food grown/raised/foraged/hunted in stated geographical area excepting imports allowed on Homegrown days (coffee, olive oil, salt, and yeast) + County and State days (chocolate, butter, maple syrup, and spices that do not grow in WA).
Homegrown Foodshed Day – September 1
Breakfast: Cantaloupe, Coffee
‘Minnesota Midget’ cantaloupe are true to their name. At 4-6 oz apiece, they are perfect personal size. Vine-ripened cantaloupe is a whole different food from the kind you buy at the store.
Snack #1: Apple Blackberry Leather, Cleavers and Rose Hip Tea
Lunch: Salad!
Arugula, cucumber, red bell pepper (‘California Wonder’), ‘Chocolate Cherry’ and ‘Sungold’ tomatoes, basil, a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprinkle of salt. That is a full dinner plate. No rationing necessary this time of year!
Snack #2: Watermelon
This is the dream watermelon I raved about in the previous post. 4 lbs 9 oz of vine-ripened perfection, harvested minutes before eating. Half of it I ate over several snacks. The other half I brought to a picnic to share.
Dinner: Sauteed Veggies with Dried Herbs
Yellow summer squash, ‘San Marzano’ tomatoes, red bell pepper, and shallot sauteed in olive oil with a sprinkle of winter savory and oregano on top. Also a full dinner plate. Winter savory is new to me as of last year. It tastes like a mixture of rosemary, thyme, mint, and spruce.
County Foodshed Day – September 15
Breakfast: Sweet Pepper and Cheese Omelet, Salad
Eggs from Cryptid Creek (100 yds), homemade fresh cheese curds (Thelma the Cow, Glenoma). Arugula, ‘Sungold’ tomatoes, and ‘Tequila Sunrise’ pointy orange sweet pepper, all homegrown.
Snack #1: Blackberries+, Milk
Fresh homegrown blackberries with a drizzle of maple syrup and some Theo Sea Salt Dark Chocolate on the side. Glass of cold fresh Thelma milk (Glenoma).
Lunch: Salad with Sweet Corn
Homegrown spinach and tomato–looks like a ‘Cherokee Purple’–I didn’t write it down. Hardboiled eggs from Cryptid Creek (Mossyrock), corn from Jesse and Teresa in Centralia. A buddy of mine is a property manager there. He hired me for the day to help paint their house. I was treated to a generous box full of take-home pay from their garden as well as the promised wage.
Snack #2: Vanilla Ice Cream with Aronia Berry Syrup
Ice cream homemade from the raw milk from Glenoma. For the story on that, see the county food post from July.
Aronia berries are a new thing for me this year. I had heard the name but not thought much about them until my cousin ended up with a few bushes (well, rooted twigs) as an accidental inclusion in a nursery mail order last summer and gave three to me. They bore a token handful of fruit this year, just enough for a few tablespoons of syrup. The bushes can reach 3-4′ tall, in clumps that gradually spread. Once they need thinning, cuttings can be used to propagate more.
Eaten fresh, the berries are tart and astringent, not to most people’s palate (including mine–one was enough) and can cause an adverse reaction if one eats too many. The common name ‘chokeberry’ has fallen out of favor in promotion of this rediscovered gem of winter nutrition known to the Native Americans, but it is not unwarranted. Aronia are best boiled and sweetened, or dried and used in baking or in trail mix or tea, blended with other things. I boiled mine with some water and honey (Four Cedars, Glenoma). The flavor was excellent that way. The berries are powerful enough to stand up to the honey. I don’t have a good analogy for what they taste like. They are distinctive. Quite their own selves.
Dinner: Ratatouille
My first ratatouille! Vegetable stew featuring eggplant. Eggplant, tomato, and pepper from Jesse and Teresa’s garden in Centralia. Leeks, garlic, yellow summer squash, and winter savory homegrown. Sautee in butter and olive oil, simmer a long time. Topped with homemade fresh cheese curds. Yum! A perfect, rich but not-too-heavy comfort food for fall.
State Foodshed Day – September 29
Breakfast: Limpa, Cheese, Apple, and Coffee
‘Limpa’ is Swedish for loaf. Our family uses the word to mean ‘sweet rye bread’, a recipe that my mom got from her mother’s side of the family and used to make sometimes when I was a kid. It’s heavenly fresh, or toasted with a bit of butter. It doesn’t need help to be yummy, but since living in Sweden I often eat mine as open-faced sandwiches with a thin slice of cheese and then cucumber or raspberry jam on top like I learned to do over there.
Made with Bluebird Grain Farms flour (Winthrop), half rye and half wheat. It turned out a little dense for my liking. Next time I will use the Einkorn for the non-rye half instead of whichever coarser flour I did use. I cheated a little and used a quarter cup of molasses (out of state!), which is more of an ingredient quantity that a seasoning, but I wanted the limpa to taste like limpa and I was afraid that honey just would not be the same. Honey and maple syrup in place of the sugar in the recipe. Butter of course (it’s Swedish!) and yeast and water and flour.
Apple from Jesse and Teresa’s in Centralia. In September I had just a few windfall from my tree, none really ripe. Homemade dry mozzarella cheese (Glenoma, WA). What a cozy farm breakfast it is! Jade Council presiding. I’ve decided that ‘council’ is the appropriate collective noun for jade.
Snack #1: Plums, Hazelnuts, Chocolate, and Chai
Hazelnuts! Above is Anore’s haul from her one 30-year-old hazelnut cluster with 20-30% of the harvest yet to go. (Left unpruned, hazelnuts form lots of trunks out of one stump.) I had never had fresh hazelnuts before. Dry roasted in cast iron when they’ve been drying just a couple weeks and were shelled a few minutes ago, eaten still warm . . . !!! She was kind enough to send me home with a couple pounds.
I don’t have a sturdy enough mortar and pestle to crack them the way that she showed me (bap-bap-bap-bap-bap), with just the right amount of oomph that the shell shatters and the nut stays whole. It’s a subtle kind of joy to watch someone work when her motions, so specialized to the task, are practiced to the point of nonchalance in affect but done swiftly and with such precise results. It wasn’t pretty, but for me the flat side of a meat tenderizer on one side of the hazelnut and a piece of cardboard to protect my porch on the other side did the trick.
I ordered my hazelnut trees this fall and will pick them up at the nursery in February, three different varieties that are mutually pollinating. Can’t wait til I have even a cookie sheet full of my own hazelnuts to dry. Could be as soon as 2025! I will have a mortar and pestle by then. By the time they are collectively producing as much as Anore’s does, I will need a bigger house.
Lunch: Toasted Bread and Cheese, Salad
Limpa with butter and homemade mozzarella in the toaster oven. Homegrown spinach, arugula, and tomatoes with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Snack #2: Zucchini Cake
Kept in the freezer from August State Food Day.
Dinner: Kraut, Meatballs, and Potatoes
Homemade kraut from cabbage from Anore’s neighbor Winnie on Waldron Island. Winnie is a retired professor with a huge garden and an adventuresome past like the two other women whose company I spent the weekend in. We made several gallons of kraut between us, chopping and measuring and getting the salt solution that encourages natural fermentation just so. It was not practical to travel with more than a quart of it. Apple and fennel (well in this case, wild anise) from Anore’s garden for seasoning. So much better than any I’ve had from the store. Kraut parties appear to be a regular thing on Waldron in the fall.
Meatballs left from spring (April?) state food day. Boiled potatoes from Root Cellar in Onalaska. The end.
