Its Snowing Outside: Perfect Time to Work on the Garden

As I write this post I am looking out my window onto my backyard which is covered in 6inches of snow and I'm thinking "perfect time of year to work on the garden."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to go trudging through the snow to plant seeds or anything but late Autumn and early Winter are crucial times to work on your garden; although, its not what most people think.

The first lesson when it comes to gardening is that making an effective garden is a year-round activity, at least if you want it to be healthy and fruitful. Sadly the majority of hobbyist/backyard gardeners only think of their garden when they walk by the potted plants at Lowes in early Spring. But if you haven't done anything with your garden by then, its too late.

You may recall from some of my dumpstering exploits that I procured a reasonable amount of lumber by which I was able to make two nice new garden beds. Because last year I spent way more money buying dirt and manure trying to fill the bed than I could have ever imagined (let alone the fact that nothing makes you feel more like a fool than buying dirt) I vowed to utilize only free sources to fill these new beds.

An added benefit to using this approach instead of buying commercial top soils and fertilizer is that you can have a healthy organic garden which can produce as well, if not better. To achieve this free, organic, biodiverse soil for your garden bed you first have to understand few things. Well... really only one thing actually: decomposition.

For decomposition of organic materials (the crucial ingredient in any good soil) you need: life (worms, insects, bacteria etc.), water (to encourage the life and to expand the cellular structure of the organic material) and time (often much less than you'd think if you have enough of the other two).

Soil is simply a combination of minerals, decomposing organic matter, water and filler material. If you look at your average commercial bag of topsoil and you'll often see manure, humus, peat moss and vermiculite. Translation of all of those things? Rotting stuff and filler. Just because it is simple though does not mean that it isn't vital in fact Colorado State University is currently engaged in a global campaign to revitalize soil. Plus, as President Roosevelt once said during the Dust Bowl crisis in America, "A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself."

When starting a new garden bed there are several schools of thought in regard to preparing the site, many people will recommend things like tilling, either by hand or with a powered tiller. This is a good idea, as it loosens the soil and introduces air into the soil (something that many people neglect to realize plants need too). However, I'm a bit of a pragmatist when it comes to work, in as far as I don't care to do more of it than necessary. That being said, I prefer the "lazy man's" approach to preparing the site: laying down cardboard.

Charlotte helping flatten out the cardboard scraps.

Cardboard is easily sourced from.. just about everywhere, dumpsters, your own packaging refuse, or any grocery/department/liquor store will gladly give you more than you can take.

(photo credit)

The cardboard that I laid down in our new beds serves a few important functions. First of all, it creates a barrier for preexisting weeds so that they do not spring up from below when it comes time to plant your edibles. While this dense cardboard barrier is enough to keep weeds from popping up it is also permeable, organic matter. Once it has had sufficient water and time to decompose it will provide additional nutrients to the soil as well as be soft enough for the roots of your jack-o-lantern pumpkins to reach down through.

Charlotte's jack-o-lantern "Nice Guy" (ps. thats not a real knife she has)

However, the most important function which this wet layer of cardboard provides is an ideal habitat for worms. Worms are the hard workers that do the tilling and aeration for you, if you just give them the right environment, food and time to do the work. Not only is allowing worms to till your garden for you a less work intensive approach, but it is in fact more effective than hand tilling because it gives the added benefit of worm castings (aka. poo). I'm not enough of a scientist to know precisely how or why, but decomposed material which has been consumed, digested and expelled by worms has a significantly higher amount of certain important garden nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen than if the organic material were left to decompose by itself.

This is part of the reason this snowy, cold, wet, time of year is ideal to do these kinds of garden preparations, because enough moisture (by means of snow), time (by means of passing through the non-growing season) and encouraged decomposition (thanks to expansion and contraction of water logged celluar structures) takes place that by the time next spring rolls around you'll have a lovely dark, rich, worm ridden soil to plant your delicious lovies in.

Enjoying the fruits of last year's soil preparations.

The next step, after laying down your cardboard is to lay alternating layers of "greens" and "browns". Greens are things like: grass clippings, kitchen scraps, rotten jack-o-lanterns etc. Browns are things like: dead leaves, corn husks and mulch.

This time of year is often a great time to layer your kitchen scrap sourced "green" heavy compost because it has already had several months of hot weather, insects (flies, pill-bugs etc.) and moisture to allow for the scraps to compost nicely. Its a perfect time of year to empty out your compost bin into your aspiring garden beds.

Raking in a year's worth of kitchen compost

As for this time of year being a good time for "browns", I think you can look out at your leaf covered lawn and only guess. There are lots of good ways to get "browns" but frankly I can't think of a more universally beneficial strategy than to use the leaves from the trees around you, which so graciously have decided to fall down for easy pickings. You get to clean up your lawn, you get to add nutrients to your garden, you get to provide a insulation to the decomposing "greens" between each layer, and you don't contribute to our already over extended landfills. If you're nice I bet your neighbors will even let you have their leaves too!

(photo credit)

Once you have laid alternating 2inch layers of "greens" and "browns" until your garden bed is full, the last step is: wait. Simply let the worms do their job underneath, the organic materials throughout decompose and the snow, rain, and sun encourage the whole process.

Thanks to a little proactive work in the late Autumn and early Winter you can enjoy soil that retains water, but allows it to drain and is full of rich organic nutrients but resists the growth of unwanted weeds by next Spring when you're ready to plant.

Sustainable Patriotism

I recently heard a story on NPR regarding the first televised presidential address, despite economic woes and post-war needs for revitilization President Truman's address was about food, well... more about eating.

Photo Credit

During his address he recommended (well...recommended like the guilt inducing recomendation of a stern grandmother) to the American people that they should adopt a few simple eating rules so that those in Europe (and America for that matter) would have enough to eat as nations rebuilt after the war.
The food rules he suggested were:

1- No meat on Tuesdays.
2. No poultry or eggs on Thursdays
3. Save a slice of bread every day.
4. Public eating places will serve bread and butter only on request.

I was intrigued by these rules as soon as I heard them. Partially because I already ascribe to a modified version of them (fasting on Fridays etc.) Also, having grown up in Colorado during a decade of drought I am familiar with a similar "by request" imposition at restaurants in an attempt to conserve water.

As a patriot (not a nationalist, mind you, a patriot) I am deeply interested in the notion of growing toward not self-sufficiency but community sufficiency. While doing some more research on President Truman's food rules I stumbled across an article which expanded on the fruits of reducing the national consumption of meat by means of reducing the household's consumption of meat.:

"If every family will reduce voluntarily its consumption of meat, whether it now has meat on the table three, four, five, or six days a week, the nation will achieve a maximum saving of meat and reduce the demand for grain to feed cattle and hogs. This will also produce a downward pressure on meat prices, and help curb living costs."

I know that the news is rife with the pros and cons of the dreaded "austerity measures" that certain countries (including our own) are seeking to adopt but frankly as the old cliche' goes "all politics is local". If every family utilized less resources and also shared the surplus resources with those in their community there would be ample food(/shelter/housing etc.) to go around, regardless of the unemployment rate, the threat of double dip recession or whatever politician jargon is currently a "threat to the nation's future."

photo credit

That being said, we have come up with our own, amended and expanded, food rules list so that we can reduce our own consumption and allow for less fortunate members of our community to have enough when we have more than enough. I'm not a big bumper sticker slogan guy but "live simply so that others may simply live" is just too poetically true to be ignored.

Anyway here they are, the Catholic, Patriotic, Sustainable Family Food Rules:
1- No meat on Fridays.
2- No poultry or eggs on Wednesday.
3- Use "cheap cuts" of meat for at least 1 meat meal each week.
4- Monday is soup/stew day.
5- Make only enough food to feed the family at each meal.
6- Treats only on feast days or important family holidays.

The break down of our motivation for these food rules is relatively simple.

First of all, we already ascribe to a meatless fast on Fridays as our form of Friday penance. While our diocese does not require meatless fasting it is a nice way to nod to tradition as well as share in sacrifices of our brethren around the world who are obliged to the meatless fast.

Fasting on Wednesday is also something traditionally Catholic in honor of St. Joseph. Rather than extending an additional meatless day outright Britt and I have been discussing options for other small sacrifices we can make. This one may actually be more difficult than the meatless Fridays because a substantial amount of our protein comes from chicken, turkey and eggs. With that in mind though, it should make the fast more efficacious both spiritually and secularly.

Rule 3's adoption on the other hand was strongly influenced by my (albeit brief) research into the Truman food rules. From the article I mentioned earlier: "...suggested also that housewives buy the cheaper cuts and grades of meat, rather than choice steaks and chops, to bring down prices and reduce waste...75 per cent of the cheaper meats were not being used on the average American dinner table. If the housewife will make greater use of the cheaper cuts we will have about 25 per cent more use of the entire animal. This will help feed starving Europe and cut our meat bills at home. All that is needed is for the housewife to learn how to cook the cheaper cuts. They are fully as nutritious as the choice cuts if properly prepared. Unskillful cooking will, of course, produce unpalatable dishes. It is time the American housewife learned how to cook the cheaper cuts." Beyond the sustainability and economy of using the whole animal, our self-education regarding Whole Food diets has shown that some of the "less desirable" cuts of meats are in fact more nutrient dense than others. Boneless, skinless chicken breast for example is actually pretty weak when it comes to chicken options. My housewife has already begun some of this by making wonderful, nutrient dense bone broths from our "left over" bones. I'm sure she is also eager to investigate other ways to incorporate "mystery meats" into our regular diet.

Which brings us to soup/stew Mondays. Part of the reason is that if we are making these splendid broths from bones, fat, celery trimmings, carrot tops etc. we might as well take advantage of them and get a fully gamut of meals out of our food (stay tuned for a future post about how to make an entire week's worth of dinners from one roast chicken!). The other thing is that soups and stews are notorious ways to make a little bit of food go a long way. If you start with a nutrient dense bone broth, you needn't add any meat, or if so, very little and the rest (beans, carrots, potatoes etc) end up acting as texture and filler more than needed mineral and nutrient contributors.

Rule 5 has a loose association with the Truman food rules in that rather than "saving a piece of bread" each day, we only make enough food to feed us each day, thereby saving bread (or meat or veggies or whatever) because its not even set on the table. This has an added benefit of healthful portion control and digestive health. We should eat until we are no longer hungry, NOT until we are full.

The final rule is probably the most sensible, but strangely the most difficult. Americans love treats, snacks, novelty foods, easy foods, appetizers etc. But frankly a lesson I know from our Catholic fasting practices is that feast days are always more delicious and celebratory when they are special...go figure. The interesting thing is that our Faith is all about feasting, in fact a big feast is one thing we're all looking forward to for eternity. So this rule boils down to no special treats (beer, ice cream, cake, going out to eat etc.) unless it is Sunday, a feast day or a very important family holiday. By abstaining from those special treats day to day we allow them to remain special when the time for celebration comes.

Finally, beyond consuming no more than our share of resources, saving money, reducing the strain on our farm/graze lands, there is a wonderful side effect that our family is looking forward to: aid in planning. Britt mentioned that she is undertaking the Plan-It-Don't-Panic meal planned challenge. How much easier is it to know that Friday will be meatless, Wednesday won't use eggs or chicken and that we're having soup on Monday? It just becomes a game of fill in the blank after that.

Linking up with GNOWFGLINS

Make It!- Making booze the ol' fashioned way.

*disclaimer, or something* Every state/city/locale has different laws concerning making alcohol as a private citizen. Usually because the governmental body in question has a vested interest in tax revenue that they are afraid they'll miss out on. I'm no expert on the law, so before trying this at home, do whatever research necessary to cover your hiney.

Anyway, today I made wine, or at least began the process of its making. Join me in my messy and enlightening journey:

Step one: procure many many grapes.

As luck would have it my younger sister (whom we obtained grapes from at the beginning of our last experiment as well) has grape vines in her backyard that are very well established, as they are older than me, and possibly my mother (they're gramma's old vines). This time around we harvested something like...65lbs. I confess that I didn't weigh them, but it was two big ol' boxes that seemed heavier than a 50lb box of clay. You can use any grape really, each will give a different flavour and each will have a different sugar content which effects alcohol content etc. I really don't recommend just going to the grocery and buying bulk grapes when they go on sale though because most of the "food grapes" we eat aren't really sweet enough to make a decent wine (let alone any pesticides/waxes/irradiation they've been subject to, but thats another rant altogether). The best bet is actually growing your own grapes, which I hear are remarkably easy to do, but need a few years before you're getting dozens of pounds of fruit. I dunno though, try it, prove me wrong.

Step two: smash said grapes.

There are many ways to smash grapes. Fancy wine presses, which are like $175 bucks, so nuts to that. Juicers, which for legit ones aren't cheap either, plus you have to take all of the grapes off of the stems and seed them,  something I just couldn't justify spending my time on. Food processors which work for some fruits like crabapples (look for our upcoming guest post on DynoMom about our crabapple cider and vinegar adventures) but beat up grapes too much and thereby release too much grape skin flavor/bitterness. Or getting a big open vessel, dumping your grapes into it and squishing them under foot. With those options how could we do anything but make a big fun mess, right? Honestly, it was a ball, if you've never stomped grapes, I highly recommend it. Next year I will try my hardest to get a couple hundred pounds of grapes by asking neighbors, friends etc. and having a big grape stompin' party. (stay tuned...)

My feet.

Charlotte does her part.

Even Bea joins in!

Step three: procure yeast.

There are lots of cool yeasts, for this project I'd recommend either an ale yeast or if you want the final product to be a little more dry, a champagne yeast. Either option is like... 75cents or something, so its not exactly going to break the bank to go with a "fancy" yeast. Maybe its because I already went to the trouble of pressing the grapes by hand (well...foot) and may as well go all out with old school techniques, maybe its a profound self-sufficiency statement to fight "big yeast business", or maybe its because I love unique local phenomena (ie.making pots from local clay) whatever the case I decided to go the route of wild yeasts.Oh, also maybe because its easy too, since the yeasts already existed on the grapes when I smashed 'em. The only thing to keep in mind is that wild yeasts are unpredictable. They could be awesome, they could be terrible. Either way you'll get alcohol, but yeasts strongly affect the flavour of your wine. In our case if it turns out badly, we'll just make the wine into vinegar and call it a victory, but of course we didn't have to buy our grapes...

Step four: ferment.

How long it takes to ferment your wine has everything to do with heat and the amount of sugars in your juice. If you want to be savvy you can use a hydrometer to test the specific gravity of the juice at the outset to know precisely how much sugar there is, and subsequently how much alcohol there will be. I didn't. Instead I went with the tride and true "ferment it till it stops bubbling" approach. How alcoholic will it be? No idea, frankly I don't have any reason to care since I'm not bottling it for sale nor am I intending to use to to sterilize wounds on the battlefield. The small bit of technology that I did decide to use is a water airlock to allow the wine to offgas while neither causing the jug to explode nor allowing unwanted mold spores, bacteria or foreign yeasts (like from Britt's kombucha) in. These valves are something like 75cents maybe a couple of bucks if you get the elite version. The rubber stopper that it goes into is maybe another dollar if that much.

All good winemakers need someone to test the juice.

Step five: bottle.
We'll talk about this later after the fermentation is done, but in our case rather than transfering several gallons into individual wine bottles for aging we're just going to cap the jugs we are using for the fermentation. If I get really industrious I might tap the wine into some swing top bottles, but I'm not even going to attempt corking or any such fancy contrivances as that.

The local brewery store that we patronize sells a home wine making kit for $165.00, and juice concentrate for wine making for around $100. Admittedly if you popped for all of that you'd be able to make 6 gallons of wine, rather than my measly 2 so we'll say that an equivalent price for the wine we are making would be...*crunches some numbers* something like $83.00. Honestly, if you got the kit and the concentrate you'd likely make some very nice wine. But I'm too frugal, too well connected with resources, and too non-wine snobby to bother.

Now for our cost breakdown since my brain is still on "urban survivalist"mode from last month.

Grapes: free. (this would have been by far the largest cost, thanks gramma and lil sis.)
Smashin' apparati: free (between borrowing our friend's father's 10gal crock and 15 minutes of exercise)
Yeast: free (and with literally no effort on my part to boot)
Carboy/jug(s): free (we used re purposed cider jugs, which will work for both fermentation and storage)
Airlock: I dunno, say 75 cents (though I actually already owned this, so I didn't go out and buy it anyway)
Rubber stopper: um. a dollar (again, already owned it)

Hopefully by Christmas I'll have 2 gallons of delicious delicious wine thanks to old timey techniques, friends, family and a couple hours of work, oh and $1.75.


                                                                Linking back to

  

 Simple Lives Thursday

and

Real Food Wednesday

Great Jello Jigglers! It's alive!

This is a video of the most recent batch of homemade chicken stock after it set up over night in the fridge.  As I was about to dip the measuring cup in to pour it into jars for freezing, I realized it wasn't going anywhere!  I was able to dig it out eventually-it was exactly the consistency of jello- but only after I took a fun video for you to watch!

Chicken stock is easy to make.  Simply save all the bones and bits from your leftover chicken dinner, and maybe some raw bits too (I had a few backbones in there from when I split a few whole chickens to grill and chicken necks).  If you have access, which I do not currently, add some chicken feet for added jello-ocity!  I keep all my bits, along with some onion skins, carrot peelings and celery hearts in a freezer bag in the freezer, and after the bag gets full, into the crock pot it goes!  Add water (pure if you can) just to cover the bones, and maybe a dash of salt, set it on high for a bit, then low over night and through the next day (making sure it never dries out) and there you go!

(you can add apple cider vinegar and let it sit for a few hours before starting the crock if you'd like, but I haven't found this to make much difference)

To "clarify" it I line a plastic colander with cheese cloth (actually, I use some old fashioned diapers, you know pre-prefolds, that I inherited from my mother's stash.  Works just as well) and place that over a large mixing bowl to catch the deliciousness.  Let everything drain through the cheese cloth, and then let the stock sit overnight if you'd like, or use it right then if you can't wait!

So now you have a delicious, and extremely nutritious addition to all your soups, to cook rice beans or other grains in, to saute veggies in- the possibilities are endless!  My husband raves that my stock is so good, you don't even notice if the soup doesn't have any meat in it!  In fact, in this recipe I only used maybe half a cup of chicken (even though I call for a cup, I just didn't have that much) but we couldn't tell the difference.

This is a great money saver- why buy canned stock at the store that doesn't have half the nutrients when you can make your own!  I want to step up to vegetable, fish and beef stock, but haven't gotten that far in my journey yet.  Maybe soon!  But for now, enjoy the jiggle.

Plan it- Don't Panic

One thing I've been trying hard to do is keep a weekly meal plan, or at very least a day to day plan.  As our summer garden harvest has subsided, I've relied more and more on the farmer's market for our fresh fruits and veggies.  And that will be coming to an end here pretty soon itself.  And that means things are going to get a little more difficult!  So I'm going to team  up with a few other bloggers and moms and try to keep a successful weekly meal plan in Keeper of the Home's "Plan it- Don't Panic" 6 week meal planning challenge!  It starts on Monday (although she jumped the gun and started yesterday herself) and I will be posting here my weekly plan and how I did for the previous week on Monday nights.  So come see what we're having for dinner- and what we didn't- and maybe... JUST MAYBE... I'll actually get a recipe in?  One that doesn't turn into dog treats, that is.

If you have to pay, pay less.

Despite the recent upset to our plans to not spend money thanks to troubling brakes on our car the whole ordeal has become a triumph and a testament to the goal of our little experiment.

After some pulling to the left, some funny sounds and an initial estimate from a repair shop our family was looking at a bill upwards of $500 to keep our family car safe and sound.

We rely on working brakes to help promote a healthy nap routine.

I would love to say that this all has become an impetus for me to learn car maintenance and to become a journeyman mechanic overnight. Sadly this is not the case, in fact I still basically have no idea how to fix cars other than changing a tire and replacing a battery.

What I do know, from my past as a full-time researcher, is how to find information and compare facts. The first step was to check whether the parts prices were reasonable or not. On a very quick inspection of napa and autozone's websites I realized that no, in fact the parts prices which I was initially quoted were reasonably inflated. I'm not saying that it was a scam, but in the very least the rotors which I was told needed to be replaced were much fancier than I needed for tooling around the suburbs in our little family car.

Armed with this information I was prepared to confront the repair shop and point out that I wasn't entirely ignorant (at least not about parts prices if nothing else) and demand some reduction in the repair cost based on the significantly lower priced rotors I found.

Before I walked in to make these demands I also decided to check the labor costs which I was quoted. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in allowing businesses to charge whatever they please for their services, but I'm also a firm believer in not paying it unless I feel that it is justified.

The first other shop I called for a quote was a nice, small, local chain of maybe...3 shops. The guy who answered was very helpful and polite. However, the quote which I received was just a few dollars less than the chain repair shop which gave me the initial quote. The difference was that the parts prices were cheaper at the local chain while the labor costs were more. But Britt and I agreed that this is a case where I do feel it to be justified to pay more, in a small, local shop you tend to get better customer service and more reliable work (because their business relies heavily on customer referral). In the case of a large national chain, they work on volume first and foremost.

I then called another chain in town and asked for quote on the same work just to double check. This shop however quoted me nearly $150 LESS than the intial $500 Britt and I were expecting to have to shell out. But thats not all...

When we actually arrived at the shop and the mechanic looked our car over for 10 or 15 minutes he told me the typical "yea, you need new brakes, see here? this is worn, that is worn etc." but then he informed me that not only did he think I didn't need to replace my rotors, but they weren't even close to needing replaced. There was something about him needing 16,000...something to retool them and that mine had 50,000. Like I said, I don't know jack about cars, but I do know that 50 is way bigger than 16 and that was good enough for me.

All said and done (I just need to pick up our car in the morning) the cost for fixing our brakes on the car ended up being just over $225. Funny how not paying for the cost and labor to replace parts that don't need to be replaced can drop the price.

In retrospect I should have called the small local guys back with the new information and see what kind of deal they could have given me. But you have to forgive me for being a bit impetuous once I found out that I was saving $275.

All things considered, I don't feel too bad spending money today, since after all I saved more than I spent thanks to a few minutes of research and shopping around.

Inspired Wisdom

Britt and I were talking about the upcoming couple of weeks, and what we've learned from the last few and in the midst of our conversation this bit of inspired wisdom came forth:

"investment of time mitigates investment of money"

Sure, its not news, but it was eloquent enough to someday become a cliche.

And after all, cliche's are true, you know.