Category: traditional culture

Homestead Happenings

Some brief updates this post and not as many happy snaps as I’d like. But, it’s been so busy and carting my tablet around everywhere is not usually an option, especially where it’s wet and dirty, which is a lot of places at the moment.

Kidding season is over and it’s been a bit stressful, no surprise there. I’ve been wanting to try something new—which is the greatest lost homestead technique I could think of—making our own rennet.

We’ve only had goats a few years now, all of this still feels very new, but, we do want to keep moving forward on the path to self-reliance, so this one is pretty essential on that list. It was as challenging as I expected it to be!

I am squeamish, so that’s the first of the issues. Hubby does all the slaughtering and butchering and for a while I did help plucking chickens, but then we got a machine, so I don’t even do that anymore. I’m not accustomed to seeing the interiors of the animals, let alone having to identify all the parts.

So, trigger warning for this section for anyone reading more squeamish than me! Move to the next section, if you please.

For the briefest of intro lessons, rennet is made from the 4th stomach of the ruminant animal, the abomasum.

This photo is from a calf, so for us we were dealing with far smaller features. Obviously, this is a precious commodity. The abomasum must come from a nursing animal, as it still has the enzymes required for cheesemaking. It can also come from a stillborn, an unfortunate event turned into a beneficial one with proper immediate attention.

In our case, we’ve had 2 stillborn, one this year and one last year. This year we also had a very small doe, a first freshener, who had fairly large twins. We decided to cull one of her kids as part of our efforts. Of course this is never an easy decision to make, and I lose sleep over stuff like this. I was never meant to be a goat farmer, I just want to make cheese!

Anyway, I am glad for the tough choice and going through the trouble to acquire this precious skill. Hubby and I sat down before the guts together, at the kitchen table. One of the great many sentences I could never have imagined I’d be writing!

It’s not easy to find information on the how-to’s of this process, and I certainly had no one to call or visit for advice. It was not enough information to substantially build my confidence, that’s for sure. Sometimes that just takes doing it.

Luckily, I did find one YouTube video, and one blog, both again working with a calf, for which I’m exceptionally grateful.

Rennet, Home Made, Illustrated

Another brief aside about rennet, if I may bore many readers a bit further! As I’ve written before, most cheese made today, at least in the U.S., is not made from real rennet, it’s made from a lab-grown rennet substitute, made by Pfizer.

While it’s not that expensive for home cheese makers to buy animal rennet online, relatively speaking, considering only a tiny amount is required, I don’t want to have to entirely rely on far-away sources for such an essential item.

Another thing I’ve been experimenting with to overcome this issue is vegetable rennet, again, from a natural, local source, not a GMO lab-purchased source. We have figs, so that’s what I’m using, but nettles are another source.

It’s not possible to set a large hard cheese with this method, but it works for soft cheeses and very small, what I’d call semi-hard cheeses (because they don’t need a press) like the one I just tried after discovery this channel’s excellent demonstration.

This cheese is so easy! I’ve only just made it, so I can’t yet vouch for the taste, but he makes it look delicious. For this cheese you don’t need any special equipment—no molds or cultures, no aging fridge, and no rennet. Instead of the cute baskets he uses I just poked some holes in an old sour cream container. (And can I just add how much I adore his heavy accent and classic Italian hand gestures!)

We did eventually figure it all out, and here is our final product, now drying for 3 months or so, according to processing directions. It will then be sealed and last for many years and make many dozens of cheeses.

A great big thanks to the multi-layered efforts of man and nature for this magical gift!

In weather news, we’ve had a lot of rain. While I mentioned last update how much I love the rain, it is causing problems. We lost most of our onion harvest, for starters. This is a big disappointment because we were so close to harvest, just a couple more weeks. Not anymore, they were rotting in the ground, we had to pull them, lost a great many, and the others are mostly very small still.

So between the pitiful potatoes and the sad state of the onions, we are not starting off too well. The peas are already done as well, because of the heat, but that’s pretty normal here.

What’s not normal is my usual complaint—the manufactured weather. We can’t drive to half our property until Hubby upgrades our culvert, a huge undertaking. But we are very lucky this time around! No hail, or tornadoes, or other immediate disasters to deal with, like a great many.

Yes, more manmade clouds above our head. We’ll learn what NASA calls them next post.

But, I have a future Geoengineering Update in the works, so I’ll save further lecturing and complaining for now!

Instead we’ll end with a snap of one of our favorite dinners, just how we like it, burned to perfection! Not our pepperoni or cheese this time, but some just foraged chanterelles, homemade sourdough crust, and homegrown pork sausage. 😋

Thanks for stopping by!

When Push Comes To Shove

I don’t know when the breaking point will be, how it will come about, who will throw the first punch or the last. But, I’ve got some good quotes to share this post, of the variety that make me wonder if the public has finally had enough of the lies.

Or, was Bezmenov right? It’s hopeless at this point?

More false claims about raw milk, inspiring a good article from a wise woman, Sally Fallon of Weston A. Price. A few quotes:

“In a press release dated March 25, 2024,3 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as state veterinary and public health officials, announced investigation of “an illness among primarily older dairy cows in Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico that is causing decreased lactation, low appetite, and other symptoms.”

“The agencies claim that samples of unpasteurized milk from sick cattle in Kansas and Texas have tested positive for “highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).” Officials blame the outbreak on contact with “wild migratory birds” and possibly from transmission between cattle. The press release specifically warns against consumption of raw milk, a warning repeated in numerous publications and Internet postings.”

“The truth is that “viruses” serve as the whipping boy for environmental toxins, and in the confinement animal system, there are lots of them — hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia from excrement, for example.  Then there are toxins in the feed, such as arsenic added to chicken feed, and mycotoxins, tropane and β-carboline alkaloids in soybean meal.  By blaming nonexistent viruses, agriculture officials can avoid stepping on any big industry toes nor add to the increasing public disgust with the confinement animal system.”

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/05/16/lies-against-raw-milk.aspx

******

RFID chips for cattle are back in the news as well. ‘The Lunatic Farmer’ Joel Salatin has just posted some choice words on the topic.

They Don’t Quit

“Nearly a decade ago we won the mandatory national Radio Frequency Animal Identification (RFID) regulation.  It was pushed on the heels of the mad cow paranoia as a way to track and find diseases quickly.”

For you youngsters, it was a draconian measure that was incredibly prejudiced against small outfits.  For example, a Tyson factory could register one RFID tag for a whole house of 20,000 chickens—one per flock.  But an outfit like ours would have to RFID every single chicken.  Costs ranged from $2 to $5 per tag.

                  Every time you moved animals from one addressed premise to another, you had to notify authorities.  Thousands of farmers around the country attended the hearings and voiced their opposition.  The backlash was severe and eventually the USDA pulled the plan.  It’s been dormant for a long time and we thought it was dead.”

********

Moving on to an essay that hits close to the mark, I think.

“In an election year that follows more than a decade of rising populist dissatisfaction, high-skill but low-status rejects are coming to look like a formidable social class.

Increasingly, it’s not just obscure farmers or overtaxed truckers who feel cheated out of the respect they’ve earned: it’s also debt-ridden college kids, heterodox tech magnates and blacklisted intellectuals. It’s manual laborers whose wages get depressed by inflation and illegal immigration, but it’s also artists whose projects get passed over to make room for yet another adaptation of The Color Purple. This helps explain why Trump has mobilized young people, blue-collar workers, white evangelicals, law-abiding Hispanics and black business owners, all in unexpected numbers: those are people who feel, in one way or another, despised without cause.

But the bitter irony is that in trying to outdo the founders’ virtue, we have created an unnatural aristocracy far more hide-bound and unworthy than the old-world royalty they fled. Our self-styled betters have neither raised us up toward a more perfect meritocracy nor led us triumphantly into a classless paradise. They have simply replaced an imperfect class system with a grotesque and nonsensical one. They promised to cater to throngs of frustrated pariahs; instead, they created more of them, adding to their number daily from the exiles of the natural aristocracy. Whether or not it is desirable that the resulting coalition should once again find itself represented by Donald Trump — a profoundly suboptimal champion — it was inevitable. This presidential contest is shaping up into a face-off between the incompetent elect and the excellent outcasts. It may not be the most exhilarating choice to have to face. But it’s not a particularly difficult one, either.”

https://archive.ph/2024.04.24-141033/https://thespectator.com/topic/how-woke-hierarchy-created-upper-class-underclass/

*******

And closing with an appropriate poem that was posted in the comment’s section of the post by Salatin quoted above. An author I’m very familiar with, but the poem is new to me.

THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
by Rudyard Kipling

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

Homestead Happenings

It’s raining caterpillars!

And other news this post, including Hubby’s big mistake, lots of garden snaps, critter updates and the new normal weather chaos.

Big ones, small ones, skinny ones, fat ones . . .

Black ones, white ones, green ones, yellow ones . . .

Let’s see, perhaps a bit of 80s pre-conditioning before our current day “You vill eat ze bugs!”?

We’ve never seen so many, and such a variety. They do not look the least bit appetizing and clearly the birds agree, or there couldn’t possibly be so many.

I’m not exaggerating when I say you cannot take a step without seeing one. I’m hoping they turn into gorgeous butterflies and soon we’ll have a garden full of them. But I haven’t looked them up yet and they could easily become some voracious relative of horn worms for all I know, about to attack the tomatoes.

They’ve destroyed my spring cabbages and are working on the fava beans and snap peas now.

Fall cabbages in the back compared to spring cabbages up front

At least the goats appreciated all those Swiss cheese-like leaves.

Snap peas don’t last long here anyway and while those creepy crawlers get the leaves of them, and those of the radishes, at least they leave us the fruits.

I’ve already made a large crock of sauerkraut and a quart of fermented radishes. Plus we’ve been getting loads of mulberries thanks to Hubby who has been destroying the tent worms that have been appearing all spring. Those little buggers love the wild cherries too and can easily destroy all leaves and fruits in a matter of days.

So, big kudos to Hubby for coming to the rescue, and spending a fair amount of tedious time harvesting these little beauties as well.

But, Hubby is also responsible for the misdemeanor crime of killing our potatoes! I should’ve caught it. I know, he was just trying to help. So, he filled our potato buckets with too much compost too fast and now we have potato disaster.

Lesson learned, you can only add a couple inches at a time, even if the greens are much taller than that.

I’ve got lots of herbs companion planted with the tomatoes that are all looking great.

Thyme, cilantro and dill growing between tomatoes

One of the best garden decisions I’ve made is far more flowers in the garden. Not only to attract pollinators, but to attract us too. It’s a far more inviting space than just rows of crops and makes me want to go in and play. 😊

The Peggy Martin rose just one year after planting a cutting from a friend.

And the Burr rose, many years old, huge and seemingly indestructible, even from constant nibbling by the sheep and goats.

And one of my garden favorites, which my photo doesn’t do justice at all: Nigella, a delicious seed and lovely tiny blooms in blue and white.

Their seeds have a grape-like flavor and are delicious in bread and kombucha.

A larger garden view

Another fruit that so far seems successful are the persimmons. We have both Virginia and Asian planted and the flowers on them are so unique, just like their fruits.

I’ve also got the citrus planted at last and I’m so excited! I cannot fail! (Says no one but me and I’ve gotten quite a few discouraging words from others on this venture.)

Meyers lemon, Satsuma orange and Key limes, don’t fail me, please!

Planted along with the new ‘kiss me under the garden gate’ flower which is doing quite well, and the still unfinished wattle fence.

In the best news we have our first kids just born this morning. Milking season approaches too quickly!

The weather madness continues, unfortunately. Big surprise.

Some still think these are contrails! Good grief!

This weekend’s forecast looks like a drop-down menu: 1/16th inch rain possible, or severe storms, or flooding, or hail, or tornadoes. Try planning for those options, peasants! 😩

Hope life is a little more predictable in your neck of the woods!

Thanks for stopping by. 🤗

Homestead Happenings

Almost entirely happy snaps and almost no complaining at all, really! The garden is mostly great, the weather mostly fine, summer in full swing already, ready or not.

It’s been busy around here, as usual. But, busy in the country way, which is very different. Our preservation season has already begun, and it’s fixing to get very busy very soon. I have mixed feelings about that, but here it is anyway.

I’ve been saving the rose petals for drying and kombucha after admiring their scent and beauty in many lights and angles.

The poppies continue to pop up in random places, among the roses and in cracks and crevices, like dandelions.

And the bees love them as much as I do.

Another rose variety, the thornless Peggy Martin, I just planted last year, is now getting its first blooms.

I’m so very pleased with the transition from cool-season coral honeysuckle blooms to the Dortmond rose takeover, lovely! I especially like the short spell they co-habitat.

The wattle fence I began with the best intentions is languishing due to too many other priorities. It has been a sheep deterrent at least, since the mamas and lambs have taken over the front yard. And even Shadow doesn’t dare stand in their way!

This is where the citrus will go, my new big project. I’m even considering throwing an avocado in there too. I know, very ambitious! But, I want to give some of the new methods a try and it seems like a good time. This side of the house is ideal, the house breaking the north wind and the heavy late afternoon sun. Plus, there’s the extra warmth accumulated in the walls of the house to help in cold snaps, along with the extra heating and draping methods that seem to be working for others.

Ooohhh, anticipation!

Just like the tomatoes and cucumbers coming so soon, right around the corner, and I can hardly wait. The last fermented cucumbers we used up a week ago, amazingly, and they were still crispy and flavorful. I plan to continue and expand my fermenting efforts this summer and fall. More herb pastes, more tea blends, more spice mixes.

The lambs are still doing fine, my how fast they grow.

Spring lambs on springs! 😆

My garden mascots, two white rabbits.

And my single complaint—the spray continues to ruin our beautiful days.

Is this why we can so clearly see these colors, because we have an atmosphere saturated with reflective particulate matter?

Cool pic, or chem-filled haze?

“I’m no prophet Lord, I don’t know nature’s ways.”
‘Anticipation’ by Carly Simon

ALL For Sale

When I lived in Europe in the 90s it was not too uncommon to see an amazing castle for sale for a pittance. I do mean a real castle, or a vast country estate that included a structure that once was a castle.

And I do mean a pittance, as in, they were not able to give these places away.

Vauburg, France (not my image), bit of a multi-generational hodge-podge.

Sometimes that was because they came with strings attached, so I can understand. Or it was designated for a specific purpose or with strict regulations. You had to restore it, for example, which was something that cost so much that the just wealthy could not afford it.

I had a French boyfriend for a while, who boasted some aristocratic lineage and took me to the castle where his aunt still lived. I marveled at the exquisite property and at the lingering formality of his kin who addressed each other, that is as husband and wife, in the formal, using ‘vous’.

Maybe the uber-wealthy could afford it, if they cared to, but they just didn’t have the interest?

Or, which I’m actually more inclined to think these days, even with their fortunes, they would not be able to restore it. Because the skills to accomplish such an extraordinary endeavor have been lost to time.

A single example of the dozens of architectural marvels which have been destroyed in our little city, with more on the chopping block all the time.

In those days I dreamed of becoming a travel writer, or a writer of historical fiction. So, it’s not a huge stretch for me now to covet an interest in such parallel stories here, today, locally.

This is the closest real city to us, Palestine. What I’d call a small city today, though growing steadily. It was never more than a small city, as far as population goes. Just how it amassed such an amazing amount of great architecture is a real mystery to me. Though there are official stories.

I knew there was some interesting history there, and all around here, but it’s not like I’ve had a lot of time for exploring such idle pastimes, with all the work trying to build up a homestead.

But lately I’ve been squeezing in some time and loving it!

And of course, you’ve got to blossom where you’re planted. I used to tour every castle or abbey or old walls or ruins I could find, whether in the Old Town of any European city or hamlet, or a day hike away from the nearest bus stop.

This Old World has entered center stage for me again thanks to the Cyber World, which is really kinda crazy. But, true.

I’ve seen this old church for sale the last few times while driving through the downtown streets marveling at the old buildings.

I stop for lunch, and at a favorite antique shop, where I see tourists, which I find delightful. Though they only have much interest in the antique shops and the cafes and the provided entertainment. Still, it’s fun hearing German in the tourist office and hearing ladies from places all around the region, even in a rainstorm, there to peruse what our little city has to offer.

I was a novice travel writer, until I met the love of my life, who I managed to lure from the beaches of Thailand to a trailer park in Mena, Arkansas.

Hubby and I at ‘Roman ruins’ in Spain 2003—note our cute matching outfits—that was not planned.

And look who returned the favor by luring me into the deep woods of East Texas to spend an exceptional amount of time doing menial labor. 😏

I was also a beginner tour guide, Mayflower Tours. I lasted about two weeks, until I realized how unsuited I was to a job hosting a bus full of retirees for four-day trips to and around Branson, Missouri three times a month.

I think they weeded out a lot of us that way. There must be a trick to how many bossy seniors and cowboy theaters can be stomached for minimum wage, but I couldn’t figure that out quite fast enough. Another potential career option in the toilet.

And yet . . .

When I see precious gems like this my imagination sparks just like those days in Spain, France, Germany, UK, Czech Republic, Poland . . . Ok, everywhere, just about everywhere. I was very much a Europhile. Still am.

And yet . . .

I’m so struck by the lack of general interest. And knowledge. And, frankly, care.

I see the collapsing remnants of a structure worth saving. I see a history worth understanding and passing forward.

That’s the shot to inspire a buyer’s creative juices? Yikes. What about its real history, does anyone care? And, where’s the roof?

But the Realtors, who are there to sell this precious gem, see little of that world, neither the past nor the true potential. It’s such a shame. Such a very common, and so very confusing, big fat shame.

Will it become an ‘event venue’ as they suggest? It’s hard to imagine the kind of events that would make such a renovation effort worthwhile, or particularly palatable. Is there even such skilled workmanship available today?

Dare I question, true philanthropy, if it ever existed at all, is it dead?

There are many such gems in our little city, which suggest but mere clues to the true treasures in our midst, in plain sight—all teetering in a world of nearly forgotten but, dare I hope, at least a cyber-revival?

A taste of the hidden history in plain site, he’s getting to all the states eventually, and beyond, one of a great many channels sparking my renewed interests . . . 😁

Homestead Happenings

The exciting season continues! Mostly plant talk this post. And, we’ve got our first lambs, I’m workin’ my first wattle fence, there’s some flower photos and fancy garden plans.

A first-time mama is the first to drop a perfect set of twins!
Dogwoods blooming beneath oaks

Trumpet, or coral, honeysuckle on our front porch usually attracts hummingbirds by now. It’s looking gorgeous and I’m quite proud of it because it’s one I propagated from the wild. But, where are our feathered friends?

Seed saving has definitely upped our game in the garden. Buying seeds is certainly far easier than saving them. Where we once just had to plan one large garden space, now there are three. It feels like juggling! You’ve got to keep all the spaces perfectly coordinated. I had to make a chart. I am not a chart sort of person. I’m the kind of person who instantly glazes over at the mere inclusion of a chart in any piece of literature.

So really my chart was more like a list of do’s and don’ts in a useless graph format. Don’t plant the pumpkins with the zucchini. Don’t plant the luffa with the Trombetta. Do plant different varieties of cucumbers, peppers, melons and watermelons at least 1/2 mile apart. (Is that even possible?) Musk melons and watermelons are safe to plant together, but French cantaloupe most certainly cannot be planted with American varieties or with green melons.

And that’s just the summer season’s produce, there’s a whole different set of charts for the winter veggies.

Luckily, I’ve got some good guidance in a great book and, even better, some bigger minds to follow in the form of Gavin’s Newsletter. He’s just started a book club and his first book up for April just happens to be the one I’m reading.

https://open.substack.com/pub/gavinmounsey/p/the-results-from-the-first-book-club?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios

Why save seed?
From the book we learn a few good reasons:
*selecting for specific traits,
*preserving diversity,
*saving money,
*creating superb plants,
*And, going on an adventure.
“The art of saving seeds may so intrigue you that you’ll branch out to your own plant-breeding adventures with such long-term seed-saving projects as growing oaks from acorns.”

Perhaps that could be me! Or perhaps I should’ve started this about 30 years ago.

But, those do all sound like good reasons to me, plus I’ll add one more. It’s a good way to exercise your body and your brain at the same time.

But, propagating something so slow-growing from seed at this stage of life, I think I’ll need more bang for the buck than an oak. Like, this magnificent magnolia!

(Photos sent by a friend in UK, wow, what a specimen!)

Of course, not all seed saving is complicated. After all, it used to be something every farmer would do, and their children, too. If I’d grown up doing it I’d probably think I’m making much ado about nothing.

In particular, most of the common herbs we love—dill, cilantro, basil, parsley couldn’t be easier—let them go to seed, collect the seed once dry, keep in a paper bag over winter, and sprinkle back out in spring.

Easy-peasy, leaving more time for flowers!

More flowers, herbs and medicinals has been the big goal besides seed saving. I’ve always liked hollyhocks and other traditional ‘cottage garden’ favorites. How fortunate for me to find one I’ve never heard of before, with a really cute name.

Inspiration photo only, real or photoshop, no clue

Flower name: “Kiss me over the garden gate”
Latin name: Persicaria orientalis (formerly Polygonum orientale) is an annual member of the buckwheat family. The tall plants produce pretty pink pendulous blooms.

I’ve just planted it under the bedroom window inside my work-in-progress wattle fence.

What’s a wattle fence?

I had no idea what that was until I read about another blogger, Re-Farmer, building one. It looked like a fun and do-able project perfect for a precision-challenged person like myself.

And it is! There are lots of YouTube videos on the process, but I think this one was the best—a much taller and longer wattle fence than I’ve tried to produce, but who knows, as my skills develop I could step it up a notch. 🤔

The other big garden plan this year are a few citrus trees. We’ve been wanting them for a long time, but all fruit trees are a challenge here with our crazy weather. (And it’s not just us! All kinds of complaints about it from YouTubers and neighbors alike. It didn’t used to be like this.)

Anyway, this guy’s got some great suggestions and solutions and we so love our citrus, so we’re going to make an investment toward our citrus-filled future with Myer’s lemon, Mexican lime and Satsuma orange.

Another small plan is more peppers, specifically seasoning peppers, also called spice peppers (though they aren’t always spicy as in hot), like pimiento’s and such.

As much fermenting as I’ve been doing I see they are an excellent addition to all kinds of dishes. Plus, peppers do pretty well here usually, and they harvest in fall when there’s little else happening, and they are lovely little plants some folks grow just as ornamentals. Four excellent reasons to squeeze them into the rotation. Here’s one variety I’m trying:


Aji Dulce spice pepper from Southern Exposure

Aji Dulce Spice Pepper

“(C. chinense) 99 days. (green > orange-red > red) [Venezuelan heirloom. Seed source from Donna Hudson in TN.] Has the same shape, size, color and aroma as Habanero, but is sweet, spicy, and delicious, with only a trace of heat. Highly aromatic fruits; their flavor is unusual and complex, with overtones of black pepper and coriander, and undertones of other spicy flavors. An excellent choice for sautéed vegetables, rice and bean dishes, paprika, or herbal vinegars. The thin-walled pendant fruits are 1 x 2 in., tapering at both the stem and blossom end. Plants have good foliage cover and bear at 18 in. high. Seedlings grow slowly at first, but grow rapidly later in the season to 48 in. or more.”

Like I said, it’s the exciting season on the wee homestead!

Bubba says “Bye and thanks for stopping by!”

Homestead Happenings

This post we’ve got some happy snaps, the usual weather bitching, a bit of pre-planning and some good news on two healing fronts.

(From bottom left: mini-mustard greens and new lettuce germinated inside about to be transplanted to replace all we’ve eaten; several types of onions and elephant garlic (which does best here, by far); and turnips for us and the pigs. 😋)

The cauliflower is long gone, the broccoli nearly so, but a new crop is already in the works inside on a heat mat. Succession planting has its limitations in our East Texas Yo-Yo Season (formally known as ‘winter’). Sometimes you get lucky with a warm stretch and get a nice surprise (yay, third times a charm, the carrot seeds finally germinated!) other times you get premature bolting (that dumb broccoli didn’t even produce a good head yet!).

Premature bolting 😖
But some nice butter lettuce still doing well by covering during cold swings

I do not appreciate it, and I think it stresses us all at some level, not just me, not just the more sensitive 4-legged and 2-legged, but all of life. Five warm days go by, in the 70s (but feeling hotter), with an unseasonal and hot stinking wind coming from the south, then suddenly, the very next day, it’s 40, lows in the 20s, and the dogs are shedding, also unseasonably.

Our ‘Arctic chicks’ — confused broody hens confusing weather whiplash for spring

Yes, we get the surprise arctic chicks on occasion. It’s nice to see a bee or two about. We get early daffodils. But we also get another lost fruit crop because it is sure to frost and now, again, everything is blooming far too early.

And it seems to me, the more folks are catching on, the more the establishment pushes back, with the gaslighting and the misdirection and the normalizing.

Going back to the 1800s! And how’s that working out for us?

Despite the man-made manipulation, or maybe because of it, I’ve come to appreciate the old adage ‘Let nature take its course’ on a whole new level. We’ve had two overlapping critter health issues these last months, both with their unique challenges.

Shadow’s blood-spurting ear was by far worse, but still, in every case, I don’t like not knowing what to do, stressing about my lack of knowledge, feeling useless, and that’s how I felt during Chestnut’s ordeal as well.

Please allow my whine for just another moment, it’s been illuminating for me, in a way.

Self-reliance is a cornerstone goal for us. Relying on vet care is not an option for a number of reasons, beginning with the cost, ending with the lack of trust we have for the medical establishment, and with a very long and convoluted journey in between where we try to figure out how to bridge this enormous gap, with no training.

We are lucky for the internet, but you know how that goes. One problem, a dozen conflicting pieces of advice. We ask around as well, we are certainly grateful the many suggestions offered, but still it’s nerve-racking making ill-informed decisions, and no matter what anyone might pretend, health is not an exact, one-size fits all kind of science.

Chestnut was acting strangely, very suddenly. She went from just fine to a few hours later she was lethargic and not eating much and separated herself from the herd.

My goat friend suggested Ivermectin and it seemed to work fine. Then she quickly developed an abscess on her side. Related? No clue. It looked terrible, but it was not bothering her at all. I read lots of advice, but decided to let nature take its course after reading one description that sounded most similar to what I was seeing. Though they recommended lancing it at the end stage to avoid ‘infection’. (In the above photo you can see the ‘before and after’, the photo on right taken yesterday, sorry for the blurriness.). It got very large and it was not easy to do nothing!

It’s been over a month now, and it is healing nicely. Patience was the correct remedy, not lancing. I think we have an addiction to unnecessary interference in our culture.

The ordeal with Shadow was a serious challenge. You might recall the middle of the story from our last Happenings post. It started all the way back in November with a little nick on the tip of his ear. The cat?

Who knows, but it was shockingly difficult to get the blood flow under control.

We had much advice, some of it new and excellent (thanks again Kath and Zoe!), but wow, did that take some patience and perseverance, which mostly landed on Hubby, as per usual. (Male privilege! 😂)

Three months later and it is completely healed and all’s well that ends well, thank heavens!

What exuberance, no one around here can keep up with him! He runs circles around us all, then sits patiently by Hubby’s side until the next round.

We LOVE potatoes, but they aren’t the easiest to grow here. This ‘barrel-layering’ technique has proven to be more successful.

We love potatoes so much we also buy them in bulk when they’re on sale and Hubby cans them up and they fry up in tallow so quick it’s like a delicious fast food that’s a cheaper and healthier alternative to the industrially processed varieties.

It is a long and labor-intensive project, that’s 45 pounds of potatoes there, it took him the best part of a day to do, but we’ll be appreciating the effort for 28 delicious meals. 😊

Looking ahead we’re doing a bit of planning—I’ll be giving another beginner’s fermentation course next month and Hubby’s got some good livestock trades in the works, we’re committed to foraging more for mushrooms and cultivating our own.

Patty, our mama-to-be, eating up the last acorns. Already many of her piglets claimed for bartering deals. 😁

Here’s a current little visit with our herd, including, hopefully many healthy, expectant mamas with kids growing fine.

Not that little guy, he’s our first buck, we call him Teaky.

5 expectant mamas among our St. Croix-Dorper flock

Incorporating more permaculture design in the garden and orchard is an on-going big goal. We have a couple spaces empty and I’d love to try something really unique like this:

Permaculture-Inspired image I’m dreaming about!

Where I’d be including my fun garden-art projects, like these:

Lots of grand plans in the works, always, but it’s the simple things that make the hard stuff worth while.

Thanks for stopping by!

PseudoCaring

Soon the mainstream disease care system will be employing robots and AI-generated advice dispensers as nurses and surgeons. It’s happening already.

Meet Grace, the robot nurse that COVID created

Some are shocked and appalled by this, as they should be, according to me. Others think it will be a fantastic improvement to human life, or a great way to make more fiat, or a solution to the burden on the caring professionals, or they love tech for tech’s sake, or whatever.

Those of us who love history and dwell constantly on the question ‘how has it come to this’ were well aware of this potential because we study the trajectory of modern life. I could begin with the first critics centuries ago, but for brevity sake, I’ll start instead with my own life, the only history available to me to know thoroughly enough.

Working mother, divorced parents, step parents, then step siblings, professional daycares, neighborhood babysitters, after school programs, junk food, convenience food, lots of TV. Family history of: diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, vision problems, depression, eczema, alcoholism, Parkinson’s, and, you get the picture.

And I would not say my family life was bad. It was the typical American suburban life of a great many growing up in the 70s and 80s. Neither particularly good, nor bad, just normal. Normal, as in well-normalized.

Like most families my parents would joke about voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’. They probably learned that from their parents. My mom went to community college and got her degree once we were gone, in sociology. She worked full-time all her adult life and didn’t regret it. My dad remained ‘upwardly mobile’ as his Protestant father taught him to be.

In fact, we have retired before him, and he has just had his first heart attack.

They are both still with us, but they do not read this blog, so I could say whatever I wanted. 😏. But, that’s not the point of this particular post.

Let’s leave it at this—in hindsight, my unique perception of growing up this way is, in a nutshell—there was not a lot of parenting happening. The results of this having widespread and devastating effects.

It is from these original seeds of pseudocare that have been not only consistently irrigated in our own territories, but have been dispersed throughout the world these last five-plus decades which has ensured the trajectory to the ridiculous place where we now find ourselves: Drowning in pseudocare so deeply we can scarcely recognize what real care looks like anymore.

Another quick peak at the fruits those seeds have produced.

Yet even facing all of this, I’m still optimistic, as I have been all my life. Even at the worst of times, even during a few prolonged worst of times, I must’ve still learned something vital from my half-assed upbringing and collapsing culture.

So, here it is, in another nutshell:

Believe in yourself, believe it can change, but don’t practice in sidestepping the hard stuff. And the hardest of the hard stuff is care, real care—for yourself, for others, for the future—that is why we are here. How you go about that is your personal journey and your only real duty to discover and live. That is all there is to do in a life well-lived.

Which is why I want to once again quote an obvious example of someone doing exactly that, Gavin Mounsey, who is rocking the real care like a hurricane these days! Wait . . . What?? Ok, terrible simile aside . . .

I believe he knows what needs to happen next and is becoming the living manifestation of that in his own life first, and passing it around. Leading by example, it’s the only way. It’s the same cardinal rule as storytelling—Show, don’t tell.

From Gavin’s book, Recipes for Recipocity

Here are few select quotes from his recent interview with the witty Russian correspondent and potential future Russian-American homesteader, Edward Slavsquat: The Revolution Will Involve Fermented Cabbage

“I want to give my energy to improving and increasing the resilience of my local community, not your hyper centralized one size fits all infrastructure. 

“Freedom is not a consolatory prize that can be given to us to reward our obedience and capitulation to a system of violent coercion. It is not something that can be granted or provided to you by some government that wrote some thing on a piece of paper. Freedom is your birthright, and you either live it and embody it, or you allow yourself to be put in a mental cage by statists and other abusive institutions or individuals. My ancestors bloodlines are traced back to a people described in today’s terms as The Gaels. “Saoirse” is Irish Gaelic word for “Freedom”. Saoirse is an ancient concept that comes from the original Brehon laws of the Druidic (and eventually Celtic) world before the time of Christ. In the times when that word was created, my ancient ancestors lived without a centralized state, without prisons and without police.

“Saoirse means many things to different people. For some it means freedom to think, express and freedom to learn, for others it’s the freedom of imagination and the freedom of the spirit. And for some it also means freedom to set up parallel societies.

“This is one of the reasons that I included glimpses into two historical cultural cross sections of ancient cultures that existed without a centralized state and police/prison system in my essay as I feel that we can glean wisdom from stateless societies that existed for centuries to millennia in how to design more ethical, equitable, honest, Regenerative and practical ways to organize community, encourage amicable/respectful behaviour in humans and collaborate to leave this world a little bit more free and beautiful than it was when we got here after we are gone.

“With all that being said, I want to emphasize that I think that placing any culture, group of people or individual on some pedestal as pure is unhealthy. I feel we should be vigilant to make sure we are not romanticizing their past nor romanticizing the potential of their worldviews to provide solutions to the present challenges we face.

“The path to become connected to place with a reciprocal relationship, reverence and humility is the path to embrace indigeneity ourselves.

“It is a great starting point to create pockets of decentralized resistance to oligarchic / statist tyranny as growing your own medicine and veggies may appear harmless, but in a parasitic global plutocracy it represents a decisive action that severs the tentacles of tyranny in a critically important aspect of our lives (how we access food and medicine). Thus,  it is a radical and revolutionary act that appears benign to the hubristic philanthropaths and demociders, serving as a sort of covert sedition in a world governed by parasites that want us dependent, gardening to grow or own food and medicine is like a hammer wrapped in velvet that knee caps big pharma’s plans to poison us slowly through dependence on their system for health care and also strikes the spine of the digital gulag system, breaking its back so it can no longer have any strength to influence our lives through controlling our access to food/medicine.

A better essay about the importance of self-reliance and health as the ideal antidote to modern societal tyranny I could not have written! And he has a YT channel. 😁

He was also kind enough to try to address our biggest garden nuisance within the scope of his permaculture lens. He offered many potential solutions, and bless his heart for the effort. 

But I’ll just repeat my personal favorite: hot and spicy gopher wings. 🤪

What an example of authentic care—growing in the real and cyber worlds simultaneously—where even sassy meat-eaters and smart-asses and AI are welcome to stuff up their comments sections. Now that’s grace under fire!

Thanks to guys like these, in the coming decades I predict courageous fellowship will become the new sexy.

Coping with Gophers

Rhythm of Life

Our seasons change. I don’t just mean from north to south, east to west. There are the calendar seasons, and the four seasons, though some unfortunate folks only get two.

Then there are the seasons of life—childhood, adulthood, old age.

Here on the wee homestead we have our own seasons now, too. These, of course, are the most special of all seasons, to us.

Here we have just ended the killing season. Hallelujah! A very unique sort of season to most—vegetarians certainly—but also to most of the western world, who no longer process their own meat.

This is an extremely challenging season.

For Hubby!

He has full and sole responsibility for the slaughtering, the gutting, the skinning, the scalding, the hanging, the butchering, the grinding, the rendering, the canning, the smoking, the curing, the broth-making.

WOW!

 

For my part, I do the packaging. Plus a bit of pâté, a smattering of curing. 
Not exactly an equitable deal.

Mostly it’s Delicious Season for me! Our small space is full of meats of many flavors—bacon, ham, pâtés, sausage, lamb pastrami and various other cures, beautiful chops and ribs and roasts, the aroma of broths and meats that he pressure cans, filling up every corner of our little cottage and wafting out to season the surrounding vicinity.

Roderick and half of his harem. Notice the PVC pipe on Walnut? That was a temporary fix to keep her horns out of the fences, and it worked like a charm.

Cheese season has also just ended. Now my divas should be comfortably pregnant, their season also having shifted thanks to the services of our friendly neighborhood Billy (aka Roderick). That means our herd shall be greatly increased by early summer, gods willing. Roderick has since moved on to more fertile pastures in the next county.

While the Gouda-style and the Camembert-style are more difficult to make, the Mason Jar Marcelin and the herbed cheese balls aged in olive oil couldn’t be easier. A 3rd grader could do it!
Don’t let the moldy surfaces fool you, beneath their scary exterior these cheeses are quite mild and very tasty.

That means it’s also a season for some difficult decisions. We are at our ideal capacity right now. We don’t want to grow. We don’t want to get ‘into business’. Such an odd thing to reject, considering where we’ve grown up. It gets in the blood—this mindset/worldview—now what, what’s next, what’s new. Get big or get out! Where’s the market? Don’t you want to open up shop? Sell to the public? Get all licensed up and grow, grow, grow?

Oh, hell, no!

What if, we don’t care about all that? What if we are in a season of life where we care about quality over quantity? Others can, and will, ‘get big’ and in some cases (a precious few) more power to ‘em.

But, I’m in my Delicious Season. I have an extra roll around my middle to prove it. (So do Hubby and all the dogs and pigs and even the sheep!)

Nope, my main concern at the moment is, how delicious can I get delicious to be? It sounds decadent, I know. But, maybe further refinement, compared to mass production, could be a really good thing?

Quantity over quality—whether in words, or food, or strip malls, or entertainment—has not worked out too well for this world seems to me.

There was a time, in my peak ambition years, I did strive for more instead of better—more travels, more experiences, more friends, more leisure, even more work. My season has shifted. I definitely strive for better over more these days. What if I could make the most delicious cheese ever made in all the world, and only 3 people ever tasted it?

Fine by me!

Of course, then how would I know if it’s the most delicious? Maybe that’s not so important either. Maybe it’s sufficient that what we produce and process and serve is delicious enough to make all the hard work worthwhile.

We’ll be spending some cold days relishing in our Delicious Season, because right around the corner another season is waiting.

Bubba and Buttercup LOVE when it gets really cold! When it’s under 20 degrees F they get to camp inside under the kitchen table. 🤗
“But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time.”

Leap of Faith

Empire is blind. It is deaf. It is dumb.

Some say It’s on Its last legs. The ‘coming collapse’ crowd is growing, that’s for sure. I’m pretty sure we can confirm we’re no longer fringe.

“There are mighty forces arrayed against us. They threaten our liberty, our livelihoods, our families, and even, possibly, our sanity. We may find ourselves, if we are awake at all, resentful or even angry at the situation we find ourselves in. We may want to ‘resist them’. But how? Our governments, except possibly at a local level, seem to largely be against us. The corporations, as they always have been, are against us. The media…ditto. The institutions of civil society? Largely captured. Our faith communities? Well, maybe some hope there, but all too often, the same deal. So, what are we to do?”

Deep Resistance: Philosophical Practices of Sanity (Part 1) | winter oak

I don’t believe that, exactly. Our beloved Institutions have always been in service to Empire and I believe Empire is now in the process of refining itself, shedding its skin in order to reinvent itself. Empire is like the Ouroborus, eternal and regenerative.

These opinions may look opposing at first glance, but in fact they are complimentary.

I believe Empire is the rolling stone on which the Individual’s sword is sharpened. We will never be without It, we have never been without It.

That does not mean resistance to Empire is futile. But it is painful. From happy slave to disgruntled dissident is a long and lonely journey. It has to be.

Empire’s tactics evolve, forcing the Individuals’ along with It. Not in a David vs Goliath manner, but more like in a perpetuating Gordian Knot. We need each other too much, we are not who we are, one without the other.

For as long as Empire has existed, the Individual has fought to escape it.

He has fought so hard against It, that he has become It. The fight, or dance, however you choose to feel it, has become excruciatingly intimate over time.

At some moments in the cycle, perhaps all it takes are whips and chains to keep the system of Empire churning. In current times It is far more sophisticated. It wants willing and happy slaves, that’s what helps the Master slaves sleep better at night. Mental slavery, debt slavery, touchless torture.

We each must choose. The Individual must have free will.

It’s not that one is alone on the path away from Empire. There are a great many unhappy slaves. You will find them everywhere along your course, which has existed for as long as Empire.

“The classic example of ideological motivation is the ‘work ethic’; the idea, which has driven the workers of the West for the past few centuries, that we are morally obliged to work for the system for our entire lives so that, perhaps, one day, we will no longer have to work. A subtler modern example of ideological discipline might be ‘team spirit’ — the means by which loss of purpose, dignity, joy and freedom at work is compensated with group-bonding. “I didn’t agree with the purpose of the war; I was just looking out for my buddies—applies equally to the army platoon, the office department and the school class.” 33 Myths of the System by Darren Allen

We learn in the Empire’s schooling that the opposite of pleasure is pain. Furthermore, they teach us, that as a species we inherently seek to experience pleasure and to avoid pain.

And yet, sado-masochism is visible everywhere in our cultures. There are those who actively seek pain, and a great many who experience pain, and still go back to do it again, and again, willingly. Mothers and soldiers come to mind. Giving birth is rarely described as pleasurable. Soldiers rarely relish in their battle fatigue. Are we to believe they are all masochistic?

What’s missing here? Perhaps the opposite of pleasure is not pain exactly, but a specific kind of pain, the kind inherent in seeking virtue. Why do we not avoid this kind of pain as well, as a general rule?

The Individual’s path is painful because virtue is the opposite of pleasure, as Empire is opposite of the Individual.

That may sound like a notion of the Stoics, yet I’m definitely Dionysian by nature. It is not for the backache or the sweat or the frustration that I garden. It is for the fruits of my labor. It is for the care I’m able to show to the soul and soil and the hope that my efforts grow beyond my finite existence and wisdom. It is the pain of true ‘virtue seeking’.

I want them all, all my fruits, not out of selfishness, but to distribute at my preference and at my leisure and not according to the dictates or conveniences of Empire.

And yet, Empire is not my enemy. We may fight, or dance, but I do not wish Its collapse. Specifically, I wish It to continue to increase the virtue of the Individual. Even though I know that requires significant pain.

I have been amazed by the incredible virtue of some of those I’ve found along my Individual course.

The following comes from the latest post of one of these Virtuosos, Gavin Mounsey. I like Gavin not only for his beautiful photos and keen mind and wholesome work, there are many others who fit that bill. What I find most unique about him is, he doesn’t bypass the dirty work. That is rare in my experience. He stays focused on the good, on the light, on the solutions, but not at the expense of the hard truth. It’s a tough balance I know.

24 Reasons You Should Start a Garden in 2024

The magic of the bumblebee, amazing!

“Taking steps to embrace food sovereignty and a path that consciously nurtures symbiotic relationships are ways of living that are synonymous with a more happy, passionate and creative life. As our basic survival needs become fulfilled through our own “hands-on work” and skills, it frees up a lot more time to pursue the things we are truly passionate about in life. Embracing that self-sufficient lifestyle is so much more fulfilling than working ‘for the man” getting a pay check of digital fiat currency, trading it with 5 different middle men to get our food, water, energy and fulfill our transportation needs. It really does improve not only the quality of life, but the perception of what is meaningful in one’s life. It effects our very psychological foundations as we rediscover the simple joys in life. It helps us move away from the hyper-distracted, over-stimulated, digital chemical culture that has built up around us and allows us to let go of greed and materialism by truly coming to know the beauty of planting a seed in the soil, nurturing it to grow, and reaping what we sow.”

“Now is the time to reaffirm our alliances with the living Earth, to nurture new symbiotic relationships with the soil, people, plants and fungi in our local communities. Human empires rise and fall, and history teaches us that when they fall, it is those that know how to grow/forage for their own food, medicine and preserve it, that survived.”

“We can create oasises of health, resilience, and abundance in each of our communities… we can become the solution, break from dependence on centralized systems and help others to do the same. It begins with the soil and the seeds and it evolves into nurturing symbiotic connections with those whom we share our communities with. Each of us can embody the medicine that the land and our communities need too survive and thrive though the tough times ahead.

“Thus, each and everyone one of us should now be focusing our efforts on honing our skills related to food/medicine cultivation, preservation and developing a reciprocal relationship with the land where we live.”

“Saving up money for a ‘rainy day’ is not a solid way to prepare for emergencies because money has no innate value. Seeds, good soil, gardening skills, increased health/immunity, preserving experience and the symbiotic relationships and friendships we forge with neighbors and the broader community we are a part of (through sharing our abundant harvests and seeds and helping others to grow regenerative gardens) are however things that have innate value.”

There’s so much inspiration in his excellent article, many great reasons to start a garden, but also much information about all the rewards gardening reaps.

Cheers to a year full of leaps of faith!