traditional foods – Page 5 – Kensho Homestead

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.”

Homestead Happenings

Wow, I’ve posted no update since the end of August (aka Late Swelter Season). Now here we are already well into Weather Whiplash Season, my how time flies!

This post we’ve got lots of happy snaps, the usual weather bitching, some cheese boasting, and long laments about our dear Shadow’s woes.

Notice the band-aid on his ear? Useless.
But, apparently we needed to learn that the hard way.

Sometimes time flies, but when things get really bad, it crawls. Especially when it goes instantly from nothing much to Holy Shit!

And as bad as it is, in the big picture the weather whiplash is still way worse. So, best get that report out of the way first. No rain, in our rainy season. No real season at all, just a rainless rollercoaster, and not nearly as fun as that sounds.

Not natural clouds, folks! And soon the kids won’t be able to see any difference, though the atmosphere has significantly changed in the last two decades, as the weather has changed, as they lie about their climate scam, and charge ‘carbon taxes’ to ordinary folks to pay for their madness. Makes me SO FURIOUS!

I could be taking such photos on a regular basis, but it gets old. And then someone could comment on the ‘pretty’ sunset. 🤯. Argghhh, Noooo! Can’t someone please make it stop?!

No? Ok, moving on.

More bad news. We’ve had the most prolific acorn year since we’ve been here, that’s about 15 years. Sounds like good news, I know. It is good news, in many ways. The pigs are getting fat, the sheep and goats are gorging. Literally. And that’s the problem. One of the young twins gorged himself to death. It was terribly sad. His little stomach ballooned up as if his body couldn’t contain it anymore and he was suffering for hours.

I’d read baking soda could help, but it did not in this case. Perhaps it was too severe. I also read there’s a surgical procedure which would alleviate the pressure in his gut, but I don’t have the confidence to perform that myself and the vets around here don’t treat goats. I held the little guy for a long time, trying to keep him warm and help him feel better, but we lost him. Oh the perils of animal husbandry!

Another problem of the acorn bumper crop is much less severe. We live under a large oak tree and have a metal roof. It’s been rather windy lately and once those nuts start shaking loose, it’s kinda like the sky is falling. If our veteran neighbor with PTSD comes by I expect he’ll be darting for cover quick, because it sounds eerily like machine gunfire when they get popping off the roof.

The acorn perks include some plump pigs and happy goats, two of which I’m still milking, which is making for some very tasty cheeses.

Under the oaks: happy pigs, sheep and goats.

Can you spot the perfectly camouflaged foraging pig?

I’ve gotten so successful I’m confident enough to get very daring!

Chèvre wrapped in sassafras and fig leaves for aging.

More aged chèvre—the top log is covered in dried goldenrod leaves and flowers, the bottom one is wrapped in honeybee comb.

Our first pecan harvest—less than impressive, but still delish

Our fruits were nearly non-existent this summer, but we did just get our first ‘crop’ of persimmons, a whopping 5 of them! A couple of years ago I harvested lots of them from a neighbor’s tree and they were delicious; that was the first time we’d ever tried them.

We planted both varieties, but the American variety takes much longer to start producing fruit and the fruits are generally smaller. These pictured above are Fuji, quite different, harder, larger, less sweet, not at all astringent, and also very tasty. The closest in taste I’d say would be a very ripe mango, the American varieties are especially super sweet, like jam.

If you’d like to learn more about this fancy fruit, here’s an enthusiastic lesson from James Prigione.

We’ve been getting a few mushrooms, but the lack of rain is certainly hindering our foraging experience. A friend brought us a huge chicken of the woods, our first time trying it and it was excellent.

The lactarius paradoxus are hard to spot and deceptively unattractive. In fact, they are exceptionally tasty and have a longer shelf-life, and of course a different season, than our favorite chanterelles.

Even while foraging mushrooms it seems the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. 🤔

In the garden we do have two nice full boxes of varied cool-season produce we protect from the frosts with row cover cloth. In addition to lettuces there’s some broccoli and cauliflower, spring onions, cilantro and parsley, radishes and Chinese cabbage. We’ve also got our garlic already shooting up and a couple rows of turnips started for the pigs come spring. Our neighbors are now buying eggs from us, so we throw in the surplus veggies when we can.

3 of 6 colonies survived our terrible summer. The hives are a bit hodge-podge at the moment while we do maintenance on them.

The honeybees are occasionally making an appearance, though since the frost there is little for them to forage. One of their last favorites is another one considered a ‘nuisance plant’ by the ‘experts’—it’s called tree groundsel and it’s pictured after the frost in the right photo above, in the background behind the boxes. Quite a lovely late-season plant, if you ask me.

And approaching it before the first frost sounded like the buzzing metropolis that it was! A last hoorah for the bees.

So we come back to the current day and our crazy Shadow drama. It all started with a tiny Band-Aid.

He’s got the ear-span of a small plane and we have the living room space of its cockpit. When he shakes his head he invariably hits some piece of wall or corner of furniture with his Dumbo ears and it’s actually pretty amazing it didn’t happen already: a tiny gash on the tip of one ear that he doubtlessly cannot even feel.

We were racking our brains for several days, trying everything we could think of and just digging ourselves deeper. One tiny failed Band-aid led to bigger Band-aids led to bigger wraps led to taping menstrual pads to the poor creature!

Nothing was working. We also tried several over-the-counter products, like liquid Band-aid, blood-clotting powder, and some spray-on crap. Not only was nothing working, they all seemed to be making the problem worse.

We even tried to craft our own ‘No flap ear wrap’ made out of my doo-rags, which also didn’t work. So, we purchased a pricey one online which should be arriving any day now. Obviously, this is a universally common dog issue. A result of over-domestication no doubt, but that’s fodder for another post.

Then I start racking my pea brain in frantic desperation. How to stop the blood flow pronto?! Crimp his ears with clothes pins? Tie his ears up on top of his head with a scrunchy? Stitches? Soldering? How about just cut the whole ear off? Yes, we did briefly consider the vet. But we’ve been spending the many months since we got him trying to detox him from all the vet potions and it feels we are finally making some headway there. I kept imagining the new meds that would be required for this new issue and their invariable side-effects, which would start us off at square one with his detox.

Clearly I don’t think very well in high-stress situations. I was really trying hard and the bad ideas were piling on. The blood, which had gone from a tiny occasional drop, to a full-on drip, to a steady stream, and from then within a few hours a sprayer-hose in every direction with every shake of his head. And that boy loves to shake his head.

Between the blood splatter and the acorn fire it feels we could be living in a battlefield training zone.

Yup, the crazy, bloody mess had arrived and is still visible all over our living room, deck, porch, siding. We covered all the furniture and even the walls with old towels and sheets. Hubby started following him around everywhere, with a giant towel extended between his outstretched arms each time he sensed a head shake was about to turn into a sprayer-hose of the sticky, red, splatter paint across the windows, the screens, the ceilings even. (Where are those magical elves when you need a deep house cleaning?)

We needed a miracle, and fast!

And thank the heavens, I got that miracle in one brief email. Thank you UK herbalists, Kath and Zoe, miracle workers! It should’ve occurred to me sooner. Me, especially, considering I did start the Herbal Explorations pages earlier this year and have been getting educated on herbal remedies. It honestly did not occur to me that herbs could solve this acute issue. I didn’t think anything would be fast or effective enough, especially when every other thing we were trying had failed and even worsened the problem.

Zoe suggested powdered myrrh as her preferred method in order to stop the blood flow, but we didn’t have that on hand. I ordered some online, but in the meantime chose among her other options, yarrow, and we have plenty on hand because I like it in Kombucha. I made a strong tea with it, as well as grounding some up into a powder and that whole concoction I held on his ear a few times with a cloth, some of that powder getting into the wound and sticking there, and the blood flow finally stopped. Holy Heavens! As of this writing we are still in good form and have our reserve remedies soon arriving in the mail.

What I clearly need now is an official Herbal First-Aid course. Herbs are not just for gentle healing and routine health, I see, they can be used in emergencies, too.

Why did I not think about it sooner?! It seems like such a no-brained to me now, that I’ve started to consider other potentials that didn’t occur to me at the time—like the old Russian folk remedy bees podmore—which I just happen to have been saving for a rainy day for 3 years now.

Quite an expensive lesson, but a welcome one nonetheless. 😊

Thank you from Hubby’s ‘White Elephant’! 😆

A huge thanks and deep bow to Kath and Zoe, from all of us on the wee homestead! 🙏 🤗

Rockefeller Medicine vs Traditional Foods

Following is a partial repost of an excellent article that deserves a full read by Gavin Mounsey on Substack: Exploring the True Nature of Big Pharma

The material being taught to the professionals that most people consider to be experts in healing and human health has been corrupted by corporate propaganda.

The medical education curriculum being taught in universities has been hijacked by big pharma. This is not a new phenomenon, the coup d’état which replaced natural medicine (that sought to address root causes of illness) with synthetic petroleum based medicine (that seeks to use petroleum derived patentable synthetic drugs to cover symptoms and create ‘return customers’) began over a century ago.

Here is a brief history that provides a summarized overview of how the hostile take over happened.

Founded in 1847, the American Medical Association is the largest association of physicians and medical students in the United States. Its stated mission includes “…lobbying for legislation favorable to physicians and patients, and to raise money for medical education.”

The AMA spends big money on lobbying. One of the AMA’s top lobbying firms, the McManus Group, also lobbies for PhRMA, Eli Lilly & Co, Merck and Pfizer. According to OpenSecrets.org, the American Medical Association comes in second in overall money spent on lobbying in the last 10 years with over $264 million. The health industry as a whole trumps all other industries including energy and finance in lobbying expenditure.

The AMA looks to legitimize its agenda through its Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, which is the most widely circulated medical journal in the world. JAMA receives major funding through its advertisers, many of which are pharmaceuticals. In addition, the American Medical Association has been accepting money from the Rockefeller (America’s first billionaire that made his fortune in Oil) and Carnegie Foundations from as early as 1910. In World Without Cancer, G. Edward Griffin makes the argument that the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations began to support the AMA in an effort to control the medical schooling establishment and to gain power over this “large and vital sphere of American life.”

The editor of JAMA is very influential, and has historically played a significant role in suppressing alternative health treatments. Morris Fishbein, editor of JAMA from 1924–1950, was directly engaged in suppressing Royal Rife’s cancer cure. In 1849, homeopathy was nearly as popular as allopathic medical practices. The AMA was able to use its position to squash what it referred to as “quackery” — stating that the public did not know what was good for it and that the medical establishment must have total control. At that point it called for control over all medical regulations and licenses. These regulations eventually lead to closing down of schools and almost complete suppression of the practice. Even today in parts of Canada and America some homeopathic practices are “underground.”

It was around the turn of the century that the AMA, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation forged their partnership. They put their money into drug-based research (oil derived pharmaceuticals) and made that the main focus of “healthcare”—a move that turned “healthcare” into “sickness management.” The Rockefellers and other prominent banking elite (and the shareholders of their subsidiary pharmaceutical corporations) have been able to control and profit enormously from the drug industry.

Now, all medical doctors in the USA are trained in medical schools that are run and/or accredited/sanctioned by the AMA. Of 129 medical schools in America, only 22 require even what amounts to basic rudimentary courses in nutrition. Medical students are not trained to see the connections between many degenerative diseases and malnutrition. Instead they are taught only how to treat with surgical or pharmaceutical methods but do not cure or alleviate the root problem or ailment. Similar numbers are reflected in medical education here in Canada. In this way, they are assured of life-long customers. Surveys conclude that over 66% of all Americans regularly take prescription drugs (with only slightly lower numbers being reflected here in Canada as well).

Massive transnational pharmaceutical corporations (like Bayer) were not satisfied in only dominating what we are taught about medicine and what forms of ‘medicine’ we will have access to, they soon moved to take over the food production systems as well.

Just 50 years ago, some 1,000 small and family-owned seed companies were producing and distributing seeds in the United States; by 2009, there were fewer than 100.

Thanks to a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last few years, four multinational agrochemical/pharmaceutical firms — Corteva, ChemChina, Bayer and BASF — now control over 60 percent of global seed sales.

The slow march of seed consolidation suddenly turned into a sprint. Chemical and pharmaceutical companies with no historical interest in seed bought small regional and family-owned seed companies. Targeting cash crops like corn and soy, these companies saw seeds as part of a profitable package: They made herbicides and pesticides, and then engineered the seeds to produce crops that could survive that drench of chemicals. They make the petroleum based pharmaceutical drugs that your doctor will prescribe you when the toxic ‘food’ you eat results in degenerative diseases. At every turn, they make a profit (at the expense of the integrity of the biosphere and human health). The same seed companies that now control more than 60 percent of seed sales also sell more than 60 percent of the pesticides.

GMO byproducts degrade and deplete soils of vital minerals and beneficial bacteria, both of which protect crops from pests, viruses, and other threatening elements. Glyphosate which is used in conjunction with GMO seeds does not biodegrade, which means it is continually accumulating in the environment without restraint, perpetually altering soil composition and contaminating natural resources.

A handful of companies have spread these toxins across our planet diverting US$ 400 Billion of public money to subsidize their high cost chemical commodities to make them artificially “cheap”. The costs of this cheap “food” are astronomical in terms of the health of people, the ecological damage it causes and it’s exploitation of farmers. If the true costs of chemical food were taken into account it would be unaffordable.

If what we put into the soil is toxic, what we get out is toxic.
Mission successful. Incidents of degenerative disease and cancer have skyrocketed since the above described ‘food’ and ‘medicine’ products became the norm. Life long return customers for the pharmaceutical industry are now plentiful.

The article continues with more compelling evidence and ends with good intentions and creations—Gavin’s ferments and info about his book: Recipes for Reciprocity

For the full article:

https://open.substack.com/pub/gavinmounsey/p/exploring-the-true-nature-of-big?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Looks like a fabulous book I must add to my collection!

Homestead Happenings

I know it must be autumn somewhere! Here that reality is still mostly in my dreams. We’re still in the 90s and still mostly dry. There are a few tiny signs of change though, that I’m magnifying in my mind, because I can hardly wait! It’s been a terrible summer.

See, right there, 3 red leaves on my favorite Sassafras tree!
(Very soon to be featured in an ‘Herbal Explorations’ post)

But, I’m not going to complain about that now. Instead we’ve got lots of happy snaps, and even a few scary ones.

We’re gearing up for the fall/winter garden, getting the beds ready for the transplants that have been growing under lights for a month and are very ready for their new outdoor home, just as soon as the temperature drops a bit.

Hang in there brassicas, it’s almost time!

We just started harvesting sweet potatoes from the boxes waiting for replanting.

Those vines helped keep the goats happy and healthy during the extra long heat wave.

Summer keeping a sharp eye on Shadow even though there’s a fence between them.
None of the goats have warmed up to him, despite all his best efforts!

The peppers have come back with gusto after another dose of compost dressing and removing their shade cloth.

Jalapeños and banana peppers and the now monstrous cranberry hibiscus on right that is finally just starting to bloom.

Cucumbers again, yippie! Plus hurricane lilies, turmeric, zinnia and basil keeping the bees happy. And lots of bindweed (morning glory)—scourge to the industrial farmer—a hardy, lovely and welcome cover for the rest of us.

I’m getting about 1/2 gallon of milk a day from 2 goats and making cheese often—mozzarella and soft chèvre every week and a hard cheese whenever I can accumulate at least 3 gallons (preferably 6) in the freezer. The larger the hard cheese the easier it is to age properly and goat milk works just fine for cheese after freezing.

The easiest cheese to make and so delish!

But I’m really looking forward to making Camembert and Munster again. Just like all things natural, cheeses also have seasons. I was very disappointed by a so-called Brie I just splurged on from the grocery store. They should call it a processed Brie-like imitation and market it in the aisle with Velveeta. Quel scandale!

A few more friendly faces . . .

As I mentioned last update, we had a sausage-fest this summer, that is, a super-high percentage of males born, of all species—cats, pigs, sheep, chickens, goats. So odd.

Now we have 3 young male cats, a new thing for us. But one of them is a real scaredy cat, we’re never able to get close to him and he’s rarely around except for meal time.

Always crouching in the shadows and darting off even from the camera.

Also odd but true—our black cat, Mittens, hangs out with our black Shadow and our blond Tony hangs out with our blond Bubba and Buttercup—go figure!

*“Hey in there! Where’s our breakfast?!”*

I love spiders, especially these beauties, but some folks find them scary, apparently.

Now here’s a real foe . . . .

Gross! Looks like right out of a horror movie.
And he has a lot of friends haunting our compost heap. 🤢

But who loves ‘em but our very scary Halloween rooster . . .

Poor guy, we’ve no idea what happened to him, but he is one scary-looking dude!

Soon we will be making the tough but necessary fall homestead decision—who will get bred and who will shuffle off to freezer camp?

But not a care in the world for these contented creatures!

Hope you’re having a fine Sunday and thanks for stopping by!

Herbal Explorations: Pokeweed

Phytolacca americana

The latest addition to our Herbal Explorations pages.

Pokeweed is one of the most controversial yet fully legal weeds you’ll hear about, I’m sure!

A young plant on left surrounded by poison ivy. On right a mature plant with ripe and unripe berries surrounded by fireweed

Elderberry-Pokeberry syrup for flavoring cocktails and Pokeberry kombucha—such lovely colors!

There is a hefty amount of misinformation on this ubiquitous plant, but in recent years there’s been a significant pushback, especially among Southerners, where for some it’s been a staple crop for generations.

Though its reputation is still highly contested! The YT video below tells a good chunk of poke’s dramatic story. 😁

It is used as an ornamental in some areas, while others consider it invasive. Ranchers consider it a nuisance and try to eradicate it, though it loves nitrogen-rich soil, so tends to pop back up wherever animals have been penned up or have heavily grazed, therefore fertilizing the land.

We do use it as an ornamental and a food crop, and I’ve written short posts about it here and here. I make wine and syrup from the berries and use the greens in many dishes. The popular belief that the greens must be boiled 3 times is mistaken and overkill.

However, care must be taken in its preparation and it’s not to be eaten raw. The above video explains a lot for those wanting to give poke a fair shake!

Rinsing well before submerging in boiling water.

Boiled in batches until limp, rinsed in cold water, then used in a dish that will be cooked, like a casserole or stir-fry, or frozen for future use.

The common advice to boil it three times disintegrates the leaves into slime, but you’ll hear that all over the internet and probably from your neighbors too.

That is, if they aren’t already convinced it’s poisonous.

This false belief most likely comes from four places: 1) The farmers and ranchers who would like to see it eradicated because it so successfully competes with the grasses. 2) The high-end wine-makers of our predecessors, because the ripe berry juice was used to color inferior quality wine to make it sell better. 3) Rockefeller medicine which demonizes traditional healing herbs and practices. 4) Chemical dye manufacturers who wanted to dominate the market as it was (and still is) used as a natural fabric dye.

The economic importance of pokeweed to our ancestors was sure to be unpopular with manufacturers and industrialists wanting to create dependency on their products.

A few benefits taken from the sources linked below, not the best translations, unfortunately, but some interesting info. (They do also repeat the plant leaves cannot be used after the stalk turns crimson, but in my experience and in the video above, this is not the case.)

“The young shoots of Ph. americana are eaten cooked as a substitute for asparagus in spring, and its tender leaves were eaten as a substitute for spinach even by the North American (Delaware and Virginian) Indians.
We can found this kind of utilization nowadays too: at markets in the southern states of the USA it is sold as „sprouts” even these days, and they sell its young, tender leaves tinned (Poke Salet Greens). At some places it is still cultivated, though only in small-scale. The tender, bright inner part of the stem is crumbed in cornstarch and fried. They use the young plants before crimson coloration, but the cooking water needs to be discarded. Its ripe berries are added to cake pastries. The roots and the leafy stems are traditionally used for purple-brown dyeing. This colour is not much permanent, after body painting it can be removed easily. The root contains much saponin so it can be used for making soaps. The leaf ’s powder or the leaves were used for external treatment of cancerous wounds. After it got into Europe it was not only planted as an ornamental plant, but its dark purple dye was used for food coloration. The liquor of the berries were pressed, fermented and cleaned up by straining and afterwards it was evaporated down to about honey density in Chinas. The product was used at one for the coloration of foods, preserved fruits, sweets, liqueurs and wines; and for example alias Succus Phytolaccae inspissatus it was sold in German pharmacies. The berries were used to colour the wines of poorer quality with such a success that the plant was widely grown in Portugal, Spain, France and Italy. An ethnobotanical fact about the plant in the Carpathian Basin is that the Transylvanian (Kalotaszeg, Kiskapus) people put the fruit in the barrel cabbage to give it a red colour. Thanks to it betacyanin content it can be used as an industrial dye, but its colour is not as persistent as the colour of the scarlet oak (Quercus coccifera) is. Rarely it was used for wool and silk coloration too. The crimson coloured sap of the berries was used as ink (for example by the soldiers in the World War), that is where English name, inkberry derives from. A limner from Missouri, Bingham used it as paint. Its therapeutical utilization has traditions too. The Delaware Indians considered it to which has cardiac restorative effect, and the Virginian tribes used it for its strong psychotic effect. They presumed it is useful against rheumatism, tumours and in smaller doses against syphilis too. Its therapeutical utilization is comprehensive. Earlier the European therapeutics used it too as an emetic: Radix, Herba et Baccae Phytolaccae. Its root, leaves and fruits are used in the homeopathy too. The plant is a pharmaceutical base material even nowadays. Its drug is used as an antirheumaticum, purgaticum and emeticum (alias “poke root” or „Phytolacca”) in the USA, besides the lush root may can be used against breast cancer, too. The berries are utilized there for food coloration too, and with its leaves they adulterate, or rather substitute the „Folia Belladonnae”. The modern medicine started to show interest in it, thanks to the antiviral protein (pokeweed antiviral protein, PAP) that blocks the infection and reproduction of the HIV virus. The external use of PAP has an inhibi- tory effect on the plant RNS viruses too. The transgenic plants that contain the gene of this protein became resistent to a wide range of viruses. They impute that the root of the Ph. americana has blood cleanser, anti- inflammatory, expectorant, sedative, stupefying and purgative effects too. There are experiments for its uti- lization to cure the autoimmun diseases, especially the rheumatic arthritis. The plant contains toxic compounds against micro-fungi and molluscs too. The lectins extracted from it have toxic effect on the juvenile larvae of the southern corn rootworm (Diabrotica undecimpunctata howardi).”

Web references
Armstrong, W. P.: Pokeweed: an interesting American vegetable. In: Economic Plant Families. Wayne’s World, Escondido, California. http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ecoph24.htm
Hedrick, U. P. (ed.) & Moore, M. (upd.) (1972): Sturtevant’s edible plants of the world. Dover Publications, New York. E-version: The Southwest School of Botanical Medicine. http://www.swsbm.com
NIAES (2005): Japanese Fungi on Plants. National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences Natural Resources Inventory Center, Microbial Systematics Laboratory, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. http://www.niaes.affrc.go.jp/inventry/microorg/eng/kingaku-rs.htm
Plants For a Future. http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/
RBGE (2001): Flora Europaea database. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. http://193.62.154.38/FE/fe.html

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lajos-Balogh-4/publication/296812711_American_and_Chinese_pokeweed_Phytolacca_americana_Phytolacca_esculenta/links/56dabbad08aee73df6d267cf/American-and-Chinese-pokeweed-Phytolacca-americana-Phytolacca-esculenta.pdf

Medicinal properties and anti-inflammatory components of Phytolacca (Shanglu) – ScienceDirect

Compare that to what our US institutions repeat:
All parts poisonous, lots of toxicity fear-mongering, and usually including advice not to plant it in your garden.

Phytolacca americana (American Pokeweed, Common Pokeweed, Garnet, Pidgeon Berry, Poke, Pokeberry, Pokeweed, Scoke) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox

Native Plant of the Week: American Pokeweed | Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum

Buttercup’s been napping in the Pokeberry again!

Homestead Happenings

Sometimes I look at Handy Hubby and whine, “Please, make it stop!”

Then I think of the shrimp scene in the film Forest Gump—you got your boiled shrimp, your fried shrimp, your grilled shrimp, shrimp creole, your gumbo . . . .

Only with me it’s tomatoes.

In my defense I planted so many tomatoes because last year was not good for tomatoes, so we didn’t can up nearly as much as we wanted and were way short on salsa. The crop burned up so fast, it was pathetic, even though I planted just as many, we got far less.

So this year I was really determined. Decidedly, way too determined.

And, while we do (still!) have a bumper crop, it’s not exactly ideal, because once again, it’s so hot so fast that they are burning and exploding on the vine if I try to let them ripen properly. So, I have to bring them in to ripen, which means I’m really, really sick of looking at them everywhere.

Due to excessive heat we have uneven ripening, sun scald and plants dying while still full of unripened fruit.

But they are good, so, so good! My very favorite way to enjoy them is so simple—sliced and liberally doused with salt and pepper and served with— Everything!

We can chow through a good many this way, and it lasts for just a month or two, which makes our enjoyment all the sweeter.

Then you got your salsas, your chutneys, your marinaras, your tomato soup, your creamed tomato soup, your plain canned, your Rotella style, spicy juice for cocktails, ketchup, barbecue sauce . . .. 😆. Did I miss anything?

And the cucumbers. Oh please, don’t get me started on the cucumbers! How I long for them all winter, and within two months can hardly stand to harvest them any longer.

I purposely planted fewer this spring, planning to stagger them more, for a longer season. In fact, there should not be so many cucumbers at all based on my inputs, and the sad fact that there are NO bees on them. By that I mean our own honey bees are not visiting our garden, though there are two colonies within 75 feet of it.

Speaking of bees, half of my colonies, that’s 3 out of 6, have perished this summer. I’m not surprised when I lose a colony over the winter or early spring, but 3 that were going strong into the summer, this is unheard for me, and super depressing.

I also notice far fewer native bees, and the ones I am seeing are much smaller. The wasps seem to be doing very well, so maybe that’s who is keeping us in bushels of cucumbers at the moment?

And of course we’re offering the surplus to anyone! We give it to neighbors, bring it to gatherings, get the word around that it is available, for free. What we can’t eat or give away goes to the goats and pigs and they need to eat too!

So, when I get the occasional comment that we should sell it at the farmer’s market or somewhere equivalent, I understand the well-meaning at heart. But, what I’m actually self-censoring myself from saying does stray a bit from the habitual and expected smile and nod.

Because what I sometimes hear, though I’m sure was not at all the intentioned meaning is:
It’s really not enough that you work your fucking ass off to produce all this fine produce, you should now go out and spend money on gas hauling it to town and suffer through the rules and regulations and pay for a booth and market it to a public who mostly doesn’t give a shit what they eat, and let’s face it, mostly just wants it cheap and convenient. So, don’t just plant it, nurture it, harvest it, sort it, wash it, package it, but now haul it to a market 20+miles away and stand there in the blazing heat all day so you can clear about $30.30 a truckload.

Sounds so awesome! Sign us up! 😳

On a brighter note, here’s something you’ll really like, because the world really does need one more cute kitten video!

Oh and Happy Independence Day y’all, thanks for stopping by!

Homestead Happenings

A few updates from our very busy and already very hot summer. We’ve got bad news about the blackberry issue mentioned last month; a brief report on what Handy Hubby has deemed our ‘ Summer Sausage-fest’; some harvest and critter happy snaps; and a really funny question. Ending, like the beginning, with my favorite flower.

Novice seed-saving mistake on my part—don’t plant Kakai pumpkins next to zucchini. Even though one is a winter squash and the other a summer squash, they are both part of the same family: Curcurbita pepo.

According to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange “Curcurbita pepo: Most zucchini and summer squash are of this species. Winter squash varieties do not store well and are best eaten within a few months of harvest, but also need less time curing to sweeten up. Best planted in monthly successions throughout the summer due to vine borer susceptibility. If you have trouble growing these squash, try luffa gourds or Tromboncino summer squash as a substitute for zucchini.”

Squash, Pumpkin, & Zucchini Growing Guide

I planted these pumpkins for the first time because a friend gifted me the seeds. The seeds are so delicious I decided to try them even though I’ve not had success growing pumpkins in years past.

Well, these are a big success! Except, now those seeds have surely been cross-pollinated with the neighboring zucchini, which according to this farmer, means the seeds will no longer be hull-less, defeating the whole purpose of planting this variety of pumpkin.

Don’t I feel dumb!

And dumber still! We are no closer to solving the blackberry issue. Hubby did some scientific-like sleuthing to eliminate potential variables. One commenter on a forum said what we were seeing was totally normal blackberry development and we just had to wait a bit longer for our huge harvest.

So, Hubby took some before and after photos, about two weeks apart. As hopeful as we were that he was right, we were skeptical, and he has now been proven to be wrong. Unfortunately for us, the mystery remains and the blackberry harvest is puny.

But, we have been blessed with a few weeks of prolific chanterelles, which we love, though their tiny size requires some patience while picking. I’ve tried them preserved in oil for the first time and we’ve been enjoying them in crepes, omelettes, soup and sauces.

Chanterelles and while foraging for them we find
Not-Bert ducking and covering! 😆

We’re also getting a bumper crop of tomatoes and peppers, with Hubby continuing to pressure can while I remain fixated on fermenting.

On left Pressure canning carrots, green beans, banana peppers and jalapeños;
fermenting the same on right.

We rarely eat an entirely vegetarian meal, but with so much produce I thought I’d challenge myself to use every vegetable in one meal. As it’s so rare I thought I also better commemorate it with a photo!

Tomatoes topped with my own aged chèvre; cucumber and corn salad with salsa verde; veggie casserole au gratin; kombucha cocktails

More garden happy snaps.

Because obviously we have a lot more seeds than sense or cents, Hubby decided we didn’t have nearly enough to do with a huge garden, an orchard and squash plot, and a menagerie of critters, so he planted a separate melon maze as well! It’s actually pretty impressive and already producing, but we’ll see with this heat and drought how well it does. We were hoping the ‘El Nino’ predictions would be correct and we’d be wetter and cooler this year—so far, not panning out!

Hubby’s ingenious companion planting—esthetically pleasing and practical— sunflowers helping to shade the melon mounds.

Patty’s first litter: 9 males and only 2 females!

And still dumber still!! We’ve been gifted an unwelcome ‘Sausage-fest’ this year as far as livestock goes. A whopping 80% male birth rate among pigs, goats and sheep.

Of course, all the critters are cute little blessings, but no one really wants a Sausagefest.

However, Hubby did take the next big leap in livestock rearing and learned to castrate the piglets. He’s been avoiding that like the plague for YEARS! The lambs and kids are pretty easy and he’s been doing that since the beginning. But piglets are a different story.

I’m too squimish for all of it, so he never got any pressure from me to buck up, I’m not that big of a hypocrite. The nudge actually came inadvertently from a timely email from a friend who didn’t even realize at the time our current Sausagefest challenge.

I think it was seeing a girl do it, alone, that put the final bee in his bonnet! Or, is that spur in his boot, since this gal was demonstrating the ‘Boot method’.(We’re not on FB, so couldn’t see the entire post, but here’s the link, if you dare.) https://www.facebook.com/100064629581910/posts/in-the-past-ive-struggled-to-castrate-piglets-for-a-few-factors-i-took-an-old-ti/632005412297106/

He did the deed and it was a full success, bravo brave man! A real homesteading hero! 🤗

Scrappy, our first bottle-fed lamb is turning into quite the glutton

Now for the funny question, which sprouted from a favorite blogger’s recent post.

Plans for the Weekend? – Dispatches from the Asylum

In it we are presented with the ‘13 Do’s and Don’ts’ from the CDC about survival after a nuclear attack. It’s even funnier than the original!

From the life-saving list:
Do take a shower, but don’t use conditioner on your hair.
That’s even better than Duck & Cover!
Yes, you read that right! There’s our tax dollars hard at work to keep us safe.

I laughed so hard I wanted to include it somehow in our ‘Funny Friday’ post, but decided it really needed a whole section devoted to it.

So, before you click the link to look it up in order to verify (or afterward, if you promise to come back and reply!) here’s my question.

Can you guess why hair conditioner should not be used in the aftermath of a nuclear attack according to the experts?

Finally, the gorgeous, sublimely-scented Datura to leave us with some beauty and grace to cleanse the palette from the bad hair days certain to haunt us for decades after nuclear destruction. 😂

Datura blossom about to open for the evening

Thanks for stopping by!

Homestead Happenings

Lots to report since the last HH post. We’ve got slithering scares, miracle kids and lots of garden goodies.

My oh my, we’ve been busy! We haven’t had much time to do leisurely things, like take the dogs for a long walk in the back forty, which you might remember last post when Bubba saved us from a giant water moccasin with his ferocious warning barks.

It’s not that unusual to see snakes near the pond, where we were at that time, or along the creek. But I’m sure you can imagine my surprise finding them in the garden!

One copperhead under the squash, which I was lucky not to grab by mistake. It’s very typical of me to reach down without thinking as soon as I see something that shouldn’t be there, like twigs or weeds or dead leaves. Or, to pick a mature fruit, obviously.

Sometimes I don’t even wear my glasses to garden, or gloves, or shoes. Guess I’ll be re-thinking those habits now. Just as I reached my hand in, it registered, and I froze, and then laughed.

Hubby finds it humorous that I scream like crazy whenever I see a roach, I absolutely LOATHE them. But a snake, (beyond the startled OH!) even a poisonous one, not at all. I find them pretty amazing, and they’ve never bothered me (and I’ve had plenty of close encounters) or been aggressive, or been in the house. So I feel safe to just laugh and take pictures.

And then call over Hubby to take care of it for me. 😂

The other copperhead was just a baby, snoozing away on a swamp lily frond under the elderberry tree, kinda adorable-like. Here’s some perspective.

The elderberry from a distance, dead center. It’s quite a lovely specimen I think, but a bit too happy there, it’s getting invasive. The swamp lily is just underneath it.

Elderberry in the back. Up front, Zucchini and pumpkin—just learned today not only the fruit and blossoms are edible—but also the leaves. Can’t wait to try them!

We’ve finally got all the onions harvested, now just the garlic is left. That will be coming out very soon.

That’s about 2/3 of them pictured here. All the rest were quite small and so we’ll use them up first.

The tomatoes are looking awesome, but I don’t want to get too excited, because that could change any day with little warning. I planted loads of tomatoes because last year was not a good year for them, so I’m extra anxious for a decent crop.

We’ve also harvested all the new potatoes and while not terribly impressive, it was a better effort than past years for sure. The secret did not seem to be growing them in containers, which I tried for the first time, but rather lots and lots of poop. I tried them three different ways this year, none of them particularly better producing.

We’re also getting loads of green beans, after a couple of bad years. And some delicious peppers.

So many green beans that Hubby’s just canned 13 pounds of them! Such a joy for me that he’s taken over all the canning, which I’ve always dreaded. I never even tried the pressure canner and I’m not wanting to even a little. He is quite methodical about the process and can accomplish a lot in a short time and without breakage, far better than any of my past canning efforts.

Efficient, industrial, high yield, detail and process-oriented. Thank heavens for Hubby

But I do really love the fermenting and am experimenting with it very successfully. I made a celery-mint paste that is surprisingly delicious and a gallon of radishes that will last us easily through the summer. Next on the to-try list is green beans.

Customizable, small-batch, creative and so pretty in pink! Much more my style

A friend gave us half a dozen roosters, which Hubby quickly processed into freezer camp to save us from listening to the crowing wars for any longer than necessary. A handyman and a gentleman.

Hubby at the processing station. Not exactly government-approved. Bubba and Buttercup’s favorite days, all the heads and feet they can eat!

A couple of the roos were these little Bantums which became Sunday’s dinner—stuffed with rice and home-cured bacon, herbs and last year’s dried cherry tomatoes—and basted with ginger-melon marinade. Don’t be too off-put by their black skin and bones, they were delicious!

Dinner for two plus the much needed, time-saving leftovers.

Also served with foraged chanterelles in cream sauce and just harvested blackberries over pound cake for dessert. Mmmm.

And the best saved for last this post, the miracle! In the last post it was Bubba who was the savior, this time it was Buttercup.

We’ve got two pregnant does, due the first week of June. Because of that I’ve been a bit weary putting the herd too far from the corral, but I did it anyway. They are such homebodies normally and always come right back to the gate after disappearing into the woods for a while. Sometimes it’s harder to get them to go out and forage instead of sticking their head through every fence.

Double-protection required for the grape vines along the fence

Go forth and forage lazy goats! There’s acres of woods to eat, not my landscaping!

Except, only Phoebe disappeared into the forest that day. Alone, and so unlike her. She is the most herd-oriented of them all. She’ll start screaming if the entire group isn’t together at all times. If she was separated from her sister the first year, or her twins the year after that, you’d think from her incessant screaming that all hell’s broken loose. I’m sure the entire county can hear her sometimes.

But, silence. It happened about 3 or 4 pm, I suspect, that was the last time I saw her with the rest of the herd at the fence. We didn’t notice until it was time to put them up for the night in the corral. She was no where in sight, and we immediately went searching. We knew something must be very wrong. We searched until dark with no luck.

I went again the first thing the next morning. All the places I figured she might be holding out, having prematurely dropped her brood, waiting for them to get their legs, so she could bring them up to the usual gate. I walked all along the areas they frequent. It’s very easy to tell where the scrub gets thick again, compared to where they’ve eaten everything up to shoulder-height. I called out for her, listened for any responses or rustle of leaves, nothing.

After coffee and milking Hubby and I went back out together, along with Bubba and Buttercup. Shadow had to get left behind because the goats are still very weary of him. Bubba and I searched and called for an hour or so, nothing. I started to think the worst.

We went back and I was making some toast and cheese before heading back out again, so hungry. It was already hot and muggy and I was sick of slogging through the poison ivy and mosquitoes. I was stuffing a bite into my mouth when a very sweaty Hubby comes up to the window yelling.

“I’ve been yelling for you!”

What?!

He found her! He went far beyond where I’d stopped when he noticed Buttercup started weaving back and acting determined. He followed her and she stopped at a bewildered Phoebe and newly born triplets.

It took us another couple of hours to lure her back while carrying the triplets in a laundry basket across pretty challenging terrain.

But it was a happy ending and mama and babies are all doing well!

Preemies still under observation, but doing fine.

Ahh, the simple life!

Thanks for stopping by!

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