flour

so the local store ran out of chickpea flour and has been out of it for a month,
I finally just made my own,

once you have a grain mill, you can make almost anything into flour,
here is the one I have
http://countrylivinggrainmills.com/
many of the lesser ones don't work quite so well.

so don't think you need others to make your flour 

keyboard and thanksgiving

so I doubt anyone will read this blog on a day like this,
but if you do,
my sister and her husband got me a new keyboard for my laptop !
it is a wonderful present, 
so it will be easy to post pictures again, and easier to use my computer all the time,
with that said, I am likely not going to have pictures with all the visiting this holiday, but starting monday I should have daily pictures again.

thanksgiving  is after the harvest, and is a much needed celebration,
it is a critical time where things shift,
it should be time to go work in the shop and fix things and build things you want (if I had one),
time to fix all your clothes (or knit or weave new ones), 
time to plan for next year,
time to hide from the cold for you and your seeds

cooking lentils

lentils are fun,
here is how I cook them,
I take an onion or 2 and cut them up and put them in a pan with a bit of oil (like a teaspoon) and water (you will have to keep adding as it boils out), and put it on low heat for a few hours, you don't want to get it hot enough to caramelize the onions

 near the end of cooking (like 1/2 hour to go) add turmeric, cinnamon, cumin, cloves, cardamom or what ever spices you like (most people seem to like salt as well), it gets dark if you have added enough,

that first part is the sauce, 
then cook you cook the lentils, start them about 1/2 hour before the sauce finishes to get everything to end at the same time. I have to rinse them in boiling water 3 times while I cook, and at that point they are done.

then mix teh 2 together and serve.

have you all been thinking about seeds ?

seeds

so here are some places to get seeds from
all are good seeds, they would never sell you a GMO seed or want to grow them, 
so nothing to worry about here
I hope to one day have a seed company that will be listed along with ones like these

http://rareseeds.com/
huge selection, large company, run by a plant breeder that knows how to pick new and good things, they also have a gardening web forum.

http://www.adaptiveseeds.com/
very small company (I think it is just the 2 people doing it part time), amazing seeds that have a large DNA variation, so saved seeds will give you a good local variety fast, also run by a plant breeder, if they carry something then there is a good reason they have it.

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/
great people and great seeds, just read the intro page, if they carry something then there is a good reason they have it.

 http://sandmountainherbs.com/
he has things that you can't get anywhere else, always sends more than he says he will, and he is a nice guy.

http://www.seedstrust.com
run by plant breeders, they have some good things, especially for cool weather short season places

http://www.newworldcrops.com/zen/
some of the best potato seeds you are ever going to find, he also likes tomatoes
here is his web forum http://tatermater.proboards.com/
and his blog http://tater-mater.blogspot.com/

I like these, but not as much, still will be GMO free,

http://www.southernexposure.com/index.php
they specialize in long season heat loving plants for the south

http://www.seedsavers.org/
they encourage seed saving and trading, they also have a gardening web forum.





http://www.seedsofchange.com/
big company, nothing spectacular

http://www.bountifulgardens.org/
they list more grains that most places


http://www.nativeseeds.org/
native seeds of the southwest, shipping rates are high, and some of the plants need some breeding work to do as well as they should, but they have some solid plants that will live well where others fail.


these 2 are large commercial places worth ordering from especially if you need things in bulk,
but look into what you are getting for each type although they should be fine
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/ 

so go start looking and see what you find that looks fun,
and if you own one of the seed companies I listed and want a better review, tell me, it is nearly 1am and I am tired, so they are not as detailed as they can be.

survival garden

so I planned fora  survival garden,
and I will not starve doing that, but I failed to grow something to sell,
in any state of civilization you will need something to trade or sell in order to get things you can't grow or make on your own,
so I need to shift what I am doing,
the lack of some sort of cash is getting to me,
I( was planning on long term goals, but they will take more years to get to.
so I am going to plan for more of a cash income and still make sure that I have enough to feed myself

I had been convinced to do quite a bit of plant breeding along with my survival garden over the summer,
and I will need it's results to get enough attention for a seed company to do really well,
but without any income till I get there will cause me not to get there...

I am going to pick homesteading seeds,
all someone will need to start growing food to live on,
going to focus on easy to grow and easy to harvest and store.
if I like the seeds like that and others don't have to many of them, then likely that I will have others wanting the same, 
so I am going to try to help others start a survival garden and feed myself while doing it
or at least I will try.

soon I will list all the neat seed companies for anyone that wants to follow along,
it is soon time to order any seeds you want for spring,
you have to wait for the seeds to be processed, dried, packaged, and ready for shipping,
but you also don't want till others buy all the seeds and that has been happening to the really good types by late spring the last few years, and this year will be no exception.
good thing I have my own personal seed bank, but all of you should get to choosing and ordering.

start with thinking about what you want to be eating, what you will be buying from others, and what you will do yourself,
even if you grow yourself snacks you will learn lots and likely have fun.

planning

so it is planning stage of the garden,

number one is to decide what your goals with your garden are,
do you want to save money ?
do you want better quality food ?
are you trying to make money by selling food ?
do you just want it pretty ?
are you growing for seeds ?

there are lots of goals,
and you have to grow for your goal,

also keep in mind your limits (like area, water, and sun)

think about that for a bit,
more on planning later

storing the harvest

so once you get a harvest, then you have to store it.

one of the reasons that I picked squash to grow is that you just put it on a shelf inside and keep it from freezing, it is super easy to store and takes no energy (like canning or freezing), or much time to do it.

storing grain is pretty straight forward,
just make sure it is dry enough (less than 10% water by weight) and put it where nothing other than you can eat it.
mice love to eat grain and they can't chew through metal or glass, but can chew through plastic and wood.

insects also can finish off a gran storage area fast,

one way to deal with this is to freeze your grain (2 days in the freezer), then let it warm up for 2 weeks (so all the eggs hatch but don't have time to lay new eggs), then re freeze (2 days)

another way is to use diatomaceous earth, just toss a hand full of it in with about every 25 to 50 pounds of grain, this kills all the insects that try to walk through the grain, but then you have to put it on a screen and shake it to let all diatomaceous earth fall out of the grain before you use it, so it is a bit more annoying...

the fancy way is to use nitrogen,
it is pretty simple, just fill all the gaps in the grain with nitrogen and keep it in an airtight place so the nitrogen stays there, bugs and bacteria need oxygen to live.

so give some serious thought to how to store things before you harvest it or you could end up with lots going bad.

the how and why of growing grain

so grain is most of the calories that people eat
and it is mainly that it is a mostly untended crop,
once you plant it, it comes up fast, way faster than the weeds (because the seeds have more energy in them than the weeds), and the grains block enough of the sun out that the weeds just don't grow that much.

so to get the grains to do what you want,
you have to plant them close enough to blot out the sun off the ground, but not so close as to take to much water and other things out of the ground and get a failure,
there is fairly wide range where grains will give you the same yield for a given area,
sets say for a specific kind of oat you can plant it anywhere from 3 inch centers to 6 inch centers with the same harvest numbers, any closer or further and you start to get less harvest.

as far as planting, most people just scatter the seeds mostly even and rake it in,
there are people that start grains in seed trays and replant out in the field when they get bigger, but that is mostly done if you have very few seeds to start with.
there is automated hardware that will plant it all at the correct depth and spacing, and I am not sure if you get a huge advantage from it...

after you plant it,
usually (at least historically) it is let be till harvest time,
it gets no weed removal or irrigation,
and that is why people can grow huge areas of it with relative ease

growing food trees only required harvest time...
growing wheat is likely the second best, it should take a somewhat healthy person about 6 weeks of work to feed a family of 5 for the year. you do need the land area to do this in, so that is why it was usually a rich persons food and not a slaves food.
growing potatoes gets you the most food for the area (at least for annuals), but takes way more effort to grow than the wheat.

as far as types of grain,
there are a few kinds that are popular,
oats, wheat, barley, corn, sorghum, millet, teff,

each one grows with it's own advantages for growing and for eating.
and if you are trying a survival garden, grains grown in the wet season is likely going to be second only to nut trees.

free

so I am free now,
it rained 1.5 inches in the last 2 days,
I don't have to water anymore,
I can go do what ever I want !
at least for a while,
I still have the onions to plant for seeds,
but that might be it...

next is the planning section of winter (and that is a critical thing in a garden),
and the starting seeds inside,
peppers are started anytime from now to sometime in december,
so start getting ready for any pepper plants you want to grow.


and think about a house,
many places are designed to need electricity,
there are rooms that are dark in the middle of the day without electric light,
but the real thing is to look at your kitchen (you can sleep in the perpetual dark),
will it be useful at all if the power is out ?
the window should be over the sink and in the center of the wall in the kitchen.
if you don't have that, then be ready to move your kitchen somewhere else,

for now I am going to start enjoying one of the few days free I have had in a long time.
(and try to figure out how to move to a brighter room)

planting grain

so it is pretty easy to plant grains,
it is most of what I planted for cover crops,
pretty much you just till the land, spread the seeds, and rake the seeds in to the ground.

here are the shoes I made to keep my feet clean and safe while tilling,

they worked better than I thought, at least after I learned to walk in shoes with a non flexible base
the tilling was annoying,
I was trying to till in the organic matter from all of what I grew over the summer,
and that clogged my tiller bad
so I got the bright idea to cut all the vines into 6 inch sections, and my hands hurt from it a day later, and
they just got spun them into a sort of cord that then wrapped its self around the tiller and jammed it just as fast...
I had help to do cut the other vines at the other plot, but they could not do it and they just cleared the vines, and that was a way better solution (thank you for the help, I would have never got it all done before the rain without the help)

here are the plots after planting

I just tilled things to break up the soil, it does not need to be deep at all, raked it flat and spread the seeds and raked it in,
I spread the seeds with one of these
http://www.scotts.com/smg/goprod/handygreen-2-hand-held-spreader/prod70438/
I tried 2 rakes, and it did not seem to matter what kind it was.
the point is just to get the seeds under the surface, seeds usually will not germinate on top of the ground,
and it is because they dry out over the ground, so raking them in does it pretty well.

and then it rained to water it all,

and it is raining again tonight

and this cat kept curling up to the silverline melon I left on the porch, no idea why

season finished.

ok,
I finished tilling and planting all 3 plots today with the cover crops,
and it started raining a few hours later, perfect timing !
I am very tired, sorry for the short post,
more updates on things tomorrow.

tilling

so it is time to plant the cover crops,
here is what I have to start with, I harvested all but a few things, and I took all the hoses out, and all the wood and metal mesh that kept out the birds from things

and after tilling just over half of it,

but I found out that squash vines are very good at clogging my tiller,
and if I keep tilling, it is not self cleaning

I did get quite a bit done, but this is sure goign to take longer than I had hoped, to bad I am only on the first plot of land.

it is suppose to rain tomorrow, and I wanted to use that rain to water in the cover crop seeds, but I guess that I will likely not get it all done in time.

lessons for the season

is it to early to post what I have learned this year ?
likely not, but I am tired of waiting for the frost, so I will go ahead and just plant the cover crops right before the likely rain on wed.


there is just not enough space to start the garden seed company here, not inside space to package the seeds, or the garden space to grow them. I just need another location to do it.


I should have planted the white mohave flour corn (a tested known good version here) and mixed a few kernels of some other corn to fix the narrow DNA and to get higher harvest out of it,
but I tried an entire new kind of corn and it failed this year.
the corn breeding project seemed to have worked just fine so far, but I will know in 2 to 3 years.
next year I will be growing sorghum and not corn much as it needs less nitrogen and is better at bad weather.

I now know how to get way more squash in this location for the same water use (like 5 to 10 times)


don't plant potatoes in wood chips (knew it was a bad idea going into it, but thought I could get away with it)

it takes about 4 months to catch enough gophers to get most of them gone, don't give up early.

I have to get the soil ready in fall and have a cover crop to add nitrogen (but that was not possible here last fall, so it is not like I could have changed it)

and I have linked to this before,
so if you had not read it and ever plan on dealing with farming at all...

I should have read this book first
"THE FARM THAT WON'T WEAR OUT"
it is only 37 pages and worth printing.
read it for free here
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglib...010134toc.html
down load it for free here
http://archive.org/details/cu31924003695636
get it on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Farm-That-Wont.../dp/1406568430

the foods that grow well in horrible soil are yams, sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions, sorghum, radishes, turmeric, and some weeds.

and last, if I tell others my plans here, they seem to actively block the plans,
so just like in a real survival garden, I need to be quiet about any plans.

cucumber seed saving

so when you save seeds for squash it helps to leave the squash for a few months to let the seeds keep ripening,

this is not the case with cucumbers !
the seeds will sprout on you inside the cucumber while you are waiting.
so let it mature on the vine and then process the seeds, don't wait.

potato harvest !

about a month before I moved I found some very very tasty potatoes for sale at berkeley bowl 
I wanted to eat all of them,
they tasted like butter,
the claim was when I got them that they were dry farmed, and that is why they were so good.
at 5$ a pound I did have some high expectations, and the potatoes sure met them.
so I did not eat 10 of them,
I saved them to grow,
and grow them I did.
being nervously paranoid about planting them in the potato patch (at rightfully so as they all failed), I planted them in the regular fenced plot in good dirt.

I harvested quite a bit from my 5 foot long row, and they were crispy like apples (I cut through a few when harvesting, so I had to eat them right then)

and after eating some, there might be something to that dry farmed thing, they were good, but not spectacular like they were from the store when I first got them.

I still have more potatoes growing, but these had died off already,
they have a lifespan, they grow and die (usually 45 or 90 days for potatoes), and it does not matter if it is still good weather.

sorghum harvesting

so it is harvest time, and the sorghum has some ripe grain heads,
and they are easy enough to cut off the plant,
but then you have to thresh them, (if you are feeding it to chickens, just give them the entire grain head and they will pick out the seeds)
combine grain harvesters use the method of hitting the grain to separate the seeds from the plant,
but that takes big hardware and you have to set it to the proper speed and clearance, 
I sure can't set that up easy,

but luckily there is a friction method to get the seeds free
here is how you do it
get a bucket and some thick hardware cloth and an old shoe

 add seed head to top of wire cloth

 rub with shoe (or better yet a section of tire mounted to a wood block)

 watch gran fall into bucket and repeat as needed,

 you still have to winnow it, but that is easy
 and
 enjoy another sunset

fixing the root cellar

so it is time to put away the harvest,
and I did have an almost total potato harvest failure, but I do have a few to replant next year,
and I need a root cellar to put them in for the winter,
so I opened it up today,

 let me light it up with a flashlight, if that helps

as you may or may not be able to see depending on your screen,
it is filled with dirt to the point that it would be hard to use,
some small ground animal is using it as a dirt storage facility,
I have no idea where it got all that dirt, but it sure came from somewhere,
and the annoying thing is that this is the second time it has done this.
I likely need a better solution than just shoveling it out,
but that is what I will do again, and if I can trap where it enters, then I will do it,
and until then, the setting sun needs watched

cooking

so cooking everything from scratch takes quite a bit of time,
likely why people usually have a division of labor at a farm, it would really help things if I could do that, but it does not work with only one person.

back to the cooking...
here is the seed listing for this squash if you are intrested
http://www.rareseeds.com/musquee-de-provence/

 this one was big, and took a while to cut up and clean (I have another that is bigger from the same plant)

this is only half in the pot,
the other half I covered with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for 2 days till I cooked the rest,
you can usually get away with plastic wrap on most winter squash for a week or so

if you boil squash it makes it more bland,
if you bake squash it brings out the flavor,
I should have baked this one, it is a wet squash and was very mild in flavor, but I can do that with the next one. (the texture was great by the way)
but I boiled it, and put the extra cooked bits in the refrigerator because it is way to much to eat all at once, now I usually fry the cooked bits after taking them out of the cold, but this morning I had them cold, and they were a bit frozen, and amazingly squash popsicles are pretty good

craft day

so it was craft day here
I made the ones with the hearts for wings
it was a very fun day,
tha tis all

raccoon cats

so the cats here seem to think they are racoons now,
they are eating raw squash from the compost pile

it is kind of odd
they are eating the stringy bits that are out of the seed cavity,

hashed browned potatoes

hashed browned potatoes are great,
lets start with a potato plant, this one is a bit wilted from the frost a few days ago, but still doing ok,
this is a plant I put in regular dirt after the other potatoes failed in the wood chips.

 and it does have a big potato right near the surface, should not hurt the plant at all to harvest it

 ok, I made some eggs to go with the potatoes

and I ate it as I cooked the potatoes...

ok, take your potato and put it through a cheese grader into the oiled pan (yes, wash the dirt off the potato before you do that, but don't peal it, the outside makes it more crispy), I have been using grape seed oil lately, and yes, you have to use cast iron for this to run out well for this cooking method.
now is time to add chopped up onions if you are going to do it.

now put about 2oz of water with the potato and cover on low heat to steam the potato

 now lets go watch the cats play while we wait

 ok, now that the potato bits are soft enough for the spatula to go right through them, uncover and add more oil, mix in the oil and start frying them and turning until they get brown on each side

very good food can come from the garden, but growing is only half the battle, you have to cook it as well !

here is my computer set up on an actual table using enough space to use it without pain,

I still miss the built in keyboard the computer use to have,
but will borrow the space to get pictures on the blog as often as I can.

fall garden

so it is already past time to put in a winter or fall garden if you are going to have one
but I have a problem this year, the soil badly needs fixed,
here is the spinach that I planted about a month ago in native soil,

and it is only about 2 inches tall now,
I know that it does fantastic this time of year in potting soil, same with the turnips and beets,

so I think I need to fix all the soil this fall and not even try for a fall garden this year...
it is kind of sad, but if I don't fix the soil now, it is not going to get better on its own.
so I am readying the cover crop seeds, likely get to plant them in about a week.

end of summer

it is pretty much the end of summer,
I still have the sorghum and rice to harvest (and I will go into great detail of harvesting and cooking them) , but everything else is done,
the weather is shifting cooler day by day,
it is almost time to start planning the next year's garden,

mostly it time to think about how well I did over the summer,

I planted enough squash plants that should have made several tons of food,
the squash harvest was mainly low harvest from lack of nitrogen and organic matter in the soil (I will fix that before next spring)

I planted lots of dent corn
the main corn crop failed for the same reason the squash did poorly from...

I planted potatoes as well, should have been enough food for the year, but they failed from gophers eating them all due to them being planted in non trappable wood chips...
I did plant a few potatoes in regular dirt here and they did great, so I know what to do next year.

of the 3 things I planted that should have been enough of to live off of for the year for each one, I ended up getting about 1/3 the year of food for one person out of it total,

the lesson here is figure out the soil first and fix it before summer
I know that I did not get the garden plots till late spring, and it was just not enough time, but I still could have done better and know how to in limited time if I need to in the future.

the squash breeding project did not even get a start due to some seeds just not coming up...
but I do have some great crossed squash seeds to continue with another squash project next year,
and they are super tasty  
the things that went well are one of the corn breeding projects,
I am trying to get a frost tolerant corn that will grow in this area during the long spring and not need any irrigation at all, it should grow and finish growing before it gets hot and dries out for the summer if I do it correct, and it looks like the project is very possible and all is good so far (but it will take a few more years to finish) (I already know how to do this with barley and oats, I have the seeds and have tested it in previous years)


breeding a local onion type is seemingly going well,
but I am also growing multiplier onions that should also solve the issue of a type of onion that works well here.

it looks like I am going to get lots of rice and sorghum seeds for next year as well.
it can take a few years of growing from only a seed packet before you can get enough to grow to live on, and I am on my way to getting enough seeds.

so overall I am very happy I tried this experiment in gardening and in life, even if I did not get any extra food or seeds to sell, and am mostly out of money now, but I know how to get a huge surplus next year form the same soil start point.
I might have to go get a normal job over the winter so I can try again next year.
this sort of thing takes a bit of time to start, but once running should work out quite well.

finally, my laptop keyboard is still broken (and appears as if it will just need replaced), and I can't bring myself to post pictures with it tonight in this space limited shack of a room I live in.
I will try to have good pictures tomorrow for all of you, and I will do it in the day when I have access to a table to set it up on.

tractor

I drove a tractor today,
used it to get wood chips and move them to the garden area.
they don't seem to hard to use.

going to use the wood chips to keep the runner bean roots from freezing over the winter.
they are perennial if they don't freeze

also helped with drilling holes in the ground with the tractor,
I will try to get pictures if I can

also harvested almost all the squash as over half the plants died already,

grinding herbs and frost

so the quality of herbs that you buy can change lots,
especially with low price ones,
lets take "saw palmetto" it is about 33 $ a pound just raw in bulk,
and if you get it pre ground, it is easy for them to just add something else into it to save money,
I am super gluten intolerant, and something was bothering me, and it seems like it was "low quality" products, they were likely adding wheat into them, or any grass in them would hurt me just as much,
so I bought some that were not ground up yet (harder to hide what it is that way if it is not pure),
and just to let you know, some are very very hard to grind in a mortar and pestle
but I eventually figured out that a grain flaker works great for grinding up things like that
I think I got mine here
http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/grain_flaker_oat_flaker_oat_roller.aspx
but remember it being about 60 $
so if you take anything that you can grind yourself, but have not done it due to how hard it is,
now you know the trick to doing it.
and the cheep mills like that do not make flour out of grains very well, even if they say they do, but they crush small amounts of things great. and also will make flakes from your oats you grow.

so a light frost hit last night,
and it appears as if it just killed off the squash some, almost all the leaves are wilted,

I expect them to die over the next few days, but we will see,
and everything else seems fine.
the new prediction for the next frost is on monday


and it is very hard to deal with my broken laptop keyboard...

getting ready for frost

ok, so I got ready for the frost that got rescheduled

one of the hardest things to do is to clear out the water lines that will break everything
my washer needs set up for frost frost often as it lives outside,
so here is my air tank filled with air

and I remember wrapping plastic bags on the end of an air nozzle and having my hands coated in almost freezing water and compressed air when clearing out water lines (not fun)
so here is a very neat toy, it connects the air compressor to the hose ends

so I can clear out all the pipes and hoses without the pain of my hands not working and in total pain from the cold (more pain than that and it shows up in waves, so it turns out to be less painful)

being that they keep changing the forecast,
here is the rice covered for the night

 

and the only cute kitty I could find this late, it was playing, but not super visible in this picture,
and I do have video if anyone wants it.

and I had archival corn pasta today,
it expired in 2012, and I had a few of them, so I picked the one that expired 2 hours before the other one...
and it was really good,
so I am wondering why the corn years ago was so much better than what they are growing now...
I would have taken more pictures of the Mrs Leeper's pasta, but my camera battery died

thank you to my 10 or so daily readers, I never expected that many to read this blog, ^_^