I don’t follow this very popular homesteading channel, Off-Grid with Doug & Stacy, too chatty and hyperbolic for me, but that’s what gets the clicks, so more power to ’em. Yet somehow, the Algos knew to put this particular new episode prominently on my feed.
Natural beekeeping in horizontal hives!
It’s excellent! I first heard this beekeeper many years ago and am so glad to see he continues to promote natural beekeeping and adding to his informational website. He’s also added equipment, books and events, and if I still lived in Missouri, you can bet I’d have befriended him ages ago.
It really is a thrill for me to watch the growth of treatment-free beekeeping over the last decade. It used to be not only terribly difficult to find good information, but also it was treacherous. I’m not joking either. Natural beekeepers are the anti-vaxxers of the beekeeping world, with all the bullying, ridicule, and obnoxious bloviating to prove it, which I experienced for years with this simple preference.
I do not want Big Pharma livestock. It’s really not a crime, though you will be treated like a criminal to suggest it or admit that it’s your practice to most mainstream and commercial professionals. According to many of them, the fact that treatment-free beekeepers exist at all explains why their colonies are filled with diseases. It’s blind faith in The Science. And The Science is not rational.
Folks might be surprised to learn that the lifespans of pets and livestock has decreased sharply over the decades. Bees, like all the animals, are basically treated as a disposible commodity. One disgusted veterinarian who turned his practice to homeophathy complained about this in milk cows, but actually it can be observed in ALL livestock:
“While my cow patients in Wisconsin often lived well into their teens, some to over 20 years, the average California operator culled cows at 2 years old. They’d been pushed with so much grain and ever higher production goals that their health suffered and they were literally dispensed with when they couldn’t keep up.” (3) When “organic” dairy ain’t – by Will Falconer, DVMhttps://vitalanimal.substack.com/p/when-organic-dairy-aint
But that is clearly changing! It could be that more are recognizing the false science of Pig Pharma, finally. Or, that there is so much success now in the treatment-free circles, and so many more are starting to practice it, that the bullies in the business are starting to become outnumbered. That’s my hope anyway.
One commercial beekeeper replied to Leo’s inquiry with a common fact:
14:45 “If I stopped treating my bees, I’d lose 85% in a year . . .”
I would LOVE to try a skep hive!
That’s right! And plenty of beekeepers, commercial and hobby, have experienced that, unfortunately. I also had a very hard time in the beginning. It took a lot of failure and a lot of research.
Mostly it took conviction. Good health is not found in medications. It is achieved through wholesome practices, which are the same for bees as all of life: Clean living and being left to pursue the most natural ways as possible.
From the interview we learn Doug & Stacy had similar issues as I had when beginning in beekeeping, and it was through Leo’s work and presentations they understood why and began to change their practices with continued success. Leo insists, you don’t need to invest much money, contrary to popular opinion. You don’t need to keep buying bees to grow your apiary.
Treatment-free practices rely on the natural intelligence of the bees to care for themselves. We do not requeen when we make a colony split, requiring the bees to raise their own queen. This keeps all beekeeping local, as it should be.
One of our horizontal hives with an observation window.
Instinct of the local area grows in the colony from one generation to the next. Also contrary to popular opinion, the bees get more resilient with each generation when left to their own decision-making, ie. when to swarm, how much honey to store for the winter, when to build up brood in the local conditions, which queen to keep, and when to get rid of her.
Leo’s entire apiary was grown through trapping swarms and making splits. I’ve not had much success with swarms and will try to start following more of his advice for attracting them. You’ll actually have more success attracting swarms in less rural areas, as counter-intuitive as that might sound. But bees are a bit like deer in that regard, they are attracted to the closest and most abundant and varied food sources, which often means near where humans are residing.
While he uses horizontal hives, like I do, he also has some good advice for beekeepers in cold climates and hive designs which help keep colonies alive during long winters.
LOVE SWARMS: The Complete Guide to Attracting Honeybees
I once drove all the way to Arkansas on my search for treatment-free bees. This is what the car looked like when I arrived home! 😆
Unfortunately, after all that trouble, these bees also did not survive a full year. BTW, I was not stung once.
When I finally understood the importance of getting bees locally and allowing the weak colonies to die off, I finally had some success. But, it’s still a work in progress and I’m so happy for all the advice and expertise from those with more experience and success.
Such a busy time of year already, made busier with our remodeling projects, but we always make time to stop and smell the roses.
And bow to the weather gods, or geoengineers, who have spared us this time, and after so much barking, we are grateful there was no bite. Before I sing our praises, let me acknowledge those further north who are biting the bullet this time around. Our picture perfect skies are so very rare, I don’t like to think about all that means.
We did prepare all we could for the worst, annoying as that was. Out came the row cover fabric again and the wheelbarrows full of logs to hold it down, after just having cleaned all that up and took it to storage the week before.
We expected a frost for sure.
All the pots had to be gathered to cover all the peppers and tomatoes. And considering it was so hot and humid and over 8o degrees when we were doing all of this, it felt more incongruent than snow along the coast of the Gulf of America. 😂
But, I can’t complain, because as I just said, we got very lucky. No hail, tornados, landocaines, flooding and we just barely scratched by the frost threshold.
Just look at that sky! I can’t tell you how long it’s been since seeing such a sight!
There is so much beauty and bounty, in nature, and in cyberspace too!
Just yesterday I was scrolling through my Youtube feed and about every 100 suggestions up pops a true gem, like this old Mexican lady cooking her heart out and sharing it with the world. This is the very best of the power that’s right at our fingertips, I truly believe that: The world’s people sharing about their cultures. The cuisines, the histories and myths, the music, the dance, the landscapes, the languages, the gardens, the architecture–and the ordinary folks sharing them. Unfortunately, as the AI gods have demonstrated, for every such miracle there are about 100 curses.
Make food not war!
There are the tiniest gems not to be missed through all the noise and all the neon glare.
And it seems like they are beckoning me to slow down and notice them.
What would you rather do . . . follow me around the garden, or do more of that thing you call work?
A plot of volunteer poke weed and garlic, as if they’re just screaming, we are here for your good health, so happy to be here, we keep returning for you!
Sometimes, when I least expect it, we learn how to grow together better. Like I was thinking of the old Southern trick to set out red-painted pebbles to fool the birds into keeping off the strawberries. I thought, I bet some well-placed breakfast radishes would have the same effect, and sure enough, it’s working. The birds have moved off that bed ever since those radishes started showing their little red tops, and bonus, we adore radishes, maybe even as much as strawberries.
We have been eating giant salads every day, with enough surplus for our neighbors.
Along the country roads all is flourishing. The bluebonnets are brilliant and I even caught a roadrunner, just barely.
Beep, beep!
Such gifts of beauty and bounty! What a precious, ephemeral time to infuse their bursting energy into our year ahead. What we put into it is what we’ll get out of it, just like life.
I hope your spring is being beautiful to y’all, too! Thanks for stopping by!
Still, no time. I’ve lost a month, maybe two, in projects and to-do. Now I risk missing the whole spring to more of the same. And yet, in spring, it’s never all that bad.
There will always be time for baking delicious bread, and making fabulous cheese. Even in the midst of kitchen face-lift chaos, the healthy food must go on.
Quinoa-rosemary sourdough made with potato water Fantastic!
Still, no time, but still want to share some quick happy snaps and briefest of updates, because I’d hate to be totally forgotten before even gone! 😊
It was a beautiful day, so I decided to take the scenic route to the herdshare where I pick up one gallon of raw milk at the cost of $15, that’s about a 1 hour round-trip. On this day, it took more like 3, with multiple occasions for nearly getting stuck in the mud. But it was very scenic and an adventure to boot!
Excuse me, sir, might I pass?
Apparently they get much more rain than we do and the scenic route proved impassable.
But the cows didn’t seem to mind.
Meanwhile back on the wee homestead, Patty has had a big brood!
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And the wild cherry has never looked so good! I wish I could get a better pic.
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We’re spending so much on our interior face-lift the roosters are taking over, no time to reduce their numbers, the benefit being, no sleeping in.
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The garden is growing so fast, and the citrus and magnolias I planted last year are just now sprouting. But all that for another post, too much to do!
Hope all’s springing with y’all, thanks for stopping by!
Another fixer-upper on the route to my herdshare. Looks a bit over our pay grade.
How about this one, also on the route?
Destined to become a Black Heritage museum, so they say! 😆
What is the difference between Hope, and Hopium? There’s a fuzzy line and it’s very easy to misjudge, but it’s located somewhere between: “Yay, Trump will save us all from $11/dozen eggs!” And “We should start a chicken mega-ranch.”
If those two meet in the middle of the road, might creative minds find that they’ve absent-mindedly crossed with logic and conclude a few laying hens might be just the ticket? A bit of self-sufficiency, why not? After all, it’s not rocket science . . .
Joel Salatin exposes the WEF agenda! “Josh Sigurdson talks with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, an entrepreneur and farmer who for years has fought against Monsanto, factory farming and dependence pushing for people to homestead and/or farm and not be dependent on the system. We previously interviewed Joel in 2017 regarding Monsanto. Now, 8 years later, we delve into the massively expanded technocratic grid as more than ever, people are dependent on grocery stores, the grid and AI, weakened by design. The World Economic Forum agenda is to destroy self sustainability and make people weak slaves to technocracy. Eventually they want food rations and carbon credit scores. They’re already being rolled out to some degree and with the 2024 United Nations Pact For The Future, this problem is encroaching quicker than ever. The climate lobby attempting to bring down farms is more alive than ever. There are solutions however which Joel Salatin has spent decades teaching people. There is also a rumor circulating that Joel Salatin was picked to head the USDA. He explains this and more in this interview.”
Though it is the gateway livestock, and that’s official, I’ve even heard it repeated by the official fact-checkers at NASA.
Don’t worry, more government will save us! They will VAXX this FLU away, similar to the way they spray on the weather!
Respiratory diseases? I can’t imagine how that might be happening! So baffling!
But as James Corbett points out, chickens are the simple solution, but not necessarily the Easy one.
Most folks will take the easy way out, drink the Kool-aid, puff the Hopium, and exclaim RFKJ is here to save the day. Cheap eggs and healthy injections on the way!
It’s been quite a long time since an update on the wee homestead projects and activities; it’s hard to know where to start! How about, for consistency sake, I bitch about the weather for a bit, and then move along to better tidings.
Of course the geoengineered chem-filled skies continue, as does our Yo-Yo season (formerly known as winter). We are using the air conditioning now, it’s been 80 degrees for days.
Buttercup is especially sensitive to the YoYo, to the point of regular getting seizures at such times, also lethargic and losing her appetite.
Buttercup hiding in her box all day.
There was of course the lows not long ago in the 20s and I was very concerned for the newly planted citrus. We employed quite the set up of lights and covers and they faired very well, I’m happy to report.
Invasion of Asian beetles on the citrus cover
But there has been a bad invasion of these awful beetles, which we’re vacuuming off the ceiling multiple times a day. Not to be confused with the garden-friend, the lovely little lady bugs, NO, these little beasts are really nasty. They infest, as obvious from the photos, and they bite, and as if that’s not enough, they stink.
I don’t like when folks call them lady bugs, they are not at all ladylike, so I try to correct them anytime I hear complaints, which is more often than you might think. The reaction I get is much more open and accepting than when I inform them about the manufactured weather.
Old lettuce bolting, replacing with new lettuce started under lights indoors, along with broccoli and cauliflower.
It does keep us on our toes, dealing with the Yo-Yo. Lettuce and herbs bolt prematurely quite often, seedlings come up then freeze or wither. We never know from week to week what to expect or how to plan.
I don’t normally have such a fancy setup, but these trays were gifted to me and they’re working quite well germinating some lobelia and snap dragons.
My indoor lights and heating mats make things easier, as does the row cover in the garden, but it is constant juggling. And if I miss a beat, death. Like happened with the Mexican oregano I was so proud of. I forgot about it outside one night when it frosted. Very disappointing considering our long journey of discovery, and how long I babied those few little sprouts, trying to anticipate their every need, carting them inside for warmth, then outside for sun and wind, and just when they were getting their legs, gone. All my fault.
Well, except for the geoengineers, because I wouldn’t be doing this constant refrain if our weather was consistent or predictable or seasonal.
I’ve tried twice since then to sprout the herb again with no luck. I will succeed eventually, of course, we’ve come too far in our quest to fail. The Mexican oregano has a long tale in these parts. Failure is not an option. More on that in the last HH post, if you like. https://kenshohomestead.org/2024/11/14/homestead-happenings-43/
I’d like to say it was the same with the milk quest. Unfortunately, I’m not nearly as confident; I feel failure is probably inevitable and maybe even imminent. For the time being I’m counting my blessings I’ve found another (perhaps temporary) source. Last time I was complaining about the cost, this one is even more expensive at $15/gallon. At that price I’m not going to be experimenting with any new cheeses, that’s for sure. To make cheese at all is not really feasible, except for the most delicious of selections—Camembert. Otherwise the precious commodity goes toward morning coffee, ice cream, and buttermilk for recipes and the extended expiration date.
Camembert to be draining before salting
I’ve been doing continued research on the topic of raw milk and what’s available and in general, where’s the market vibe. I found one young entrepreneur with a private herdshare selling cheese for $25 a pound. (A Herdshare Agreement or a Grade A license from the state are the only ways to sell raw milk in Texas legally.).
With my new herdshare deal I can buy more milk for cheesemaking, if I’m willing to pay $15/gallon. Considering the hard cheeses I typically made were 5 gallons ideally (better for aging in less than optimal conditions), that’s a really expensive cheese.
Certainly what can be made on-site are far better cheeses than can be bought at the store; that’s why I started making cheese in the first place. But still, it’s really hard to justify all that work, and expense, when we can still buy organic cheese for about $8/pound.
I will splurge one time in late spring, if possible, when the grass is thick and so the milk most rich. And we do still have two goats, hopefully pregnant, so there’s a small hope of cheesemaking in my future, if all goes well.
Moving on to the garden, the garlic is going strong and I’ve just got the onions in, 3 big rows of each. The garlic we plant is elephant garlic which does so much better here than any other variety I’ve tried, and I’ve tried lots. These are local for over a decade now and their productivity has yet to disappoint.
The onions are from purchased sets and they normally do well, though some years are a bust, like last year. I also started some from seed under lights, to compare if they are more consistent and adaptable, because the sets have gotten pricey in recent years and it’s irritating to pay good money for possible failure. Onions do not like Yo-Yo weather, but then again, who or what really does?
At least some seem to tolerate it better than others. We’ve got a couple of ‘oyster trees’ that are bringing us regular tasty gifts.
I’ve also tried a couple new things that have been long on my list. There’s the soap that’s just now cured, a bit earlier than I’d read is typical. I’m really pleased with it! It lathers very well and the scent is rather sensuous. My intention was something earthy and erotic, and I think I succeeded.
I got the sensual part down, now I need to up the aesthetic! Trust me, looks are deceiving here, I just need better molds! Never underestimate the power of packaging, eh?
After finishing up slaughter season and chopping up downed trees for a month, Hubby has moved on to a far more desirable and needed project, according to me, our kitchen! Yippie!
We’ve needed new countertops badly for many years, ours have been well-worn in 40 years, especially since we’ve gotten here and the space went from softly used a few times a year, to a daily year-round assault. It’s actually pretty impressive the counters aren’t near dust by now, considering how quickly more modern materials fall apart.
New island done, now for the hard part.
Old, ugly, not square or plumb . . . Good times coming in Hubby’s near future!
New countertops got us on a roll and now we’re planning new light fixtures and maybe even a new paint job. Big ideas, perhaps not backed up by time or commitment.
Those big ideas, I’m full of ‘em! In my mind the kitchen’s already painted and my next project is to paint the table, which I’ve wanted (and once tried) to do for as long as we’ve had it. I can imagine I might have a table with a surface that looked something like this . . .
But I’d be perfectly willing to settle for this . . .
Or this . . .
So, after I repaint the kitchen in the few spare moments between juggling plants in YoYo season, I acquire the skills of an artist, and paint something I can really be proud of . . .
Whenever I’m finally able to manage that, y’all will be the first to know!
In the meantime, here’s where we were at in the last update . . .
Back to this unpleasant subject again. It’s been a very long loop; I haven’t considered it much since first attempting to barter goods from the wee homestead.
It’s something we really do take for granted in our modern economy, whether one takes that as an inherent good or evil.
The good part is that it’s comfortable and I prefer it, on the surface. I hate bartering. I SO suck at it. I suck at it for reasons that are so deeply-seated (seeded?) that no logic can ever possibly be applied.
On travels to some countries barter was the norm and I was told to keep practicing as I’d get better at it. Some seem to enjoy it. These sorts always baffled me. They say, “Treat it like a game!” But that is really stupid, isn’t it, because I did not go out shopping in order to play a game. I already don’t like shopping much, to think I’d like it more by making it game-like is to make it ever closer to hellish.
So while it may not sound like it, this is the good side of money. It took me a long time to learn that. Not until I had to consider such exchanges as, which was of better or equal value, the handcrafted Top bar beehive, or the wormy, bossy, but still a good milker, Summer, a 7-year old goat?
Money, in partnership with “the Market”, make such exchanges far more simple. Since none of us has a crystal ball, and I have no idea how long Summer will live and there are no guarantees, and my friend has no idea if she’ll enjoy beekeeping, or be able to keep bees alive in our chemskies and YoYo climate, our exchange is made more simple by imagining what would be the ‘market value’ of each of our offerings.
The dark side of money it seems to me relates quite easily to the dark side of most things—like religion, or science, or even education—it provides, by its very nature, an endless potential for ‘middlemen’. It becomes a profession, then a vast sea of professions, then an institution, then an institution ‘too big to fail’.
It’s convenient and comfortable, no doubt about it. It’s easy enough for a child to use, but complex enough to build empires upon. Try to imagine living without it.
Do we really consider how we, as individuals, would place value upon goods and services anymore?
What about once money is replaced with tokens. It’s pretty much the same thing already, right? Tokens as a medium of value exchange—your massage is worth 2 dozen yard eggs. Right?
Well, the market value of your massage today is 20 tokens, but the value of my eggs is 10 tokens, today, and 15 tokens last week, and is projected to be 25 tokens tomorrow. That’s the real problem with the market, right? For you and I, as individuals deciding value between us, the eggs and massage exchange didn’t fluctuate vastly over a matter of days, or even weeks. It’s pretty steady, really. You use 2 dozen eggs per week, I like 1 massage per week, stable value exchange.
But I’ll bet you 5 economists in the room with us would tell us 50 ways it’s not really a stable value exchange. And, why be stable at all if there might be a profit to make? Then a dozen lawyers will tell us why those economists are right. And a nation full of universities will continue to produce a fat muffin top of middlemen to stuff between every simple interpersonal transaction in every tiny hamlet around the world.
I’m bothering to restate the obvious at this moment because I’m trying to re-assess the value of technology in my life. It started with the recurring headaches of social media many years ago, then moved to Smart phones, and lately it’s WordPress.
Then a cyber-friend shared a dream, which caused this spark of inquiry.
“Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”
Can we make a more agrarian life through technology? Which I understand as, can technology help us to get back to basics? And by basics we mean an understanding of nature, an appreciation of its organic processes, a “re-enchantment” as I’ve heard it lovingly expressed, with the natural world. Working with our hands again, I presume, creating items of value to exchange with one another. A slower life perhaps, where we have the great luxury of time to enjoy our lives and our nature world to a greater degree than afforded to most in the modern world.
A ‘re-enchantment’ with nature, I like the sound of that.
An ‘agora’ that’s not corrupted by fiat, usury, taxes, violence and coercion, perhaps?
Technology in our private life here on the wee homestead has benefitted us in a few crucial ways—helping us to learn new skills has been the most significant. But keeping us from feeling terribly remote and unconnected and uninformed has also been very important. I’ve made a few good friends thanks to the internet and I’m very grateful for that. Feelings of isolation and loneliness can be significant spiritual hurdles for some of us living rural for the first time.
And I have seen promising shifts over the years. Homesteading is clearly a bonafide cultural movement at this time, I think primarily thanks to technology, as oxymoronic as that sounds. Herbalism has become more appealing as Pig Pharma breathes heavier down our necks. Pockets of interest and learning are all over the cyber world, every craft, trade or skill imaginable is available somewhere with a few clicks, I’m sure.
But I have seen and heard some really concerning trends lately, which makes me realize that the time to be re-assessing the value of the tech in our lives is reaching a crescendo.
For example, the young entrepreneurial types who are coming in to fill the needs of the rural communities with essentials like raw milk, homegrown veggies at the farmer’s market, small service businesses and the like, well they aren’t like us in some really fundamental ways.
They trust The Science, for the most part, evident in their willingness to vaccinate, medicate, use the latest supplements and vitamins, and not question any of it. They also love the tech and fully embrace the insane trifecta of the Global Grid: Surveillance cameras, Smart phones and digital payment systems.
How is that value assessed? Who is benefitting more?
My guess would be, more often than not, the middlemen. Like any pyramid scheme a few must be making good for anyone else to follow. For a while.
Seems to me these young entrepreneurs are setting themselves up for certain failure. I met one of these ambitious young women last week on my quest for raw milk, now that my goats are mostly gone. I really miss making cheese. The price of raw milk, not even organic, has gone through the roof as demand has perked up—$11/gallon around here. It’s too much for us to afford.
What did I learn from this experience? Her surveillance cameras everywhere tell me she doesn’t trust her customers or neighbors. Her vaccination schedule tells me she does not do her due diligence in caring for her animals. Her price and her preferred payment by QR code tells me she prefers dealing with middlemen over direct transactions and getting to know her clientele.
I will not be doing any business with her, that’s for sure.
So, while I still have a lot to learn about assessing value, there is a point to this rather rambling post: The goat is dead, no bees have yet to make that hive a home—but no one else profited or lost from that private exchange—and our relationship stayed in tact to trade another day despite these apparent failures. I think nations have gone to war for less.
And that’s something so far social media, Smart phones, WordPress, and indeed money, all fail to assess a proper value.
I’d love to hear any thoughts or ramblings about my cyber-friend’s dream, what do y’all think, is it possible? Would you want such a world?
“Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”
How long before this field gets paved over for yet another Vape Shop, or Dollar Store, or Walgreens?
Is it considered an improvement if it’s a Smart Farm run from Brussels by robots?
It’s time-consuming, but it’s so worthwhile. The Nourishing Hearthfire has posted a useful and instructive article.
I’m lucky, Hubby takes care of the rendering here. In addition to tallow making the best French fries, I also made my first soap with it. I use it for creams, salves and balms. I use lard in baking and it also makes for a good soap and lotion ingredient, and leaf lard is also great for pastries.
After my little lecture at the end of the last post about teaching the younger generations real life skills I was listening to an interview that gave a bit more perspective to that personal plea.
It’s with a 60 year old grandma trying to do exactly that on YouTube, and she’s got over a million subscribers, a huge website and a new cookbook. She is bursting with passion and purpose, but it’s well-tempered by her realization that in America, for most folks, we still have a very long way to go.
Folks are intimidated, she insists. And for those of us who have been doing it for the last decade already, we have a tendency to forget where we came from.
She is of the rare breeds who grew up cooking and eating this way, whereas her first students were her friends, who couldn’t even imagine making homemade bread at the time, let alone mastering sourdough. They never bought a whole chicken before, let alone broke the carcass down for a nutritious bone broth. They were not accustomed to shopping on a budget, or to filling their pantries with essentials for emergencies.
She really is the ‘Starting From Scratch’ guru, with the patience, positivity and personality it takes to succeed in such a position.
In a recent Wise Traditions interview, “Why Cooking Traditional Foods From Scratch Is Worth It”:
“Do you get overwhelmed thinking about making sourdough bread from scratch? Or homemade broths and soups? Mary Bryant Shrader of Mary’s Nest is a YouTuber and educator who has a knack for demonstrating how simple (and tasty and economical) traditional cooking can be! Today, she shares some of her own story (including successes and failures along the way) of how she got into becoming a “modern kitchen pioneer”. She goes over the biggest hurdles we face (like feeling too busy or too intimidated to get started), how to overcome them, and even what inspires her to keep going with traditional food cooking.” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wise-traditions/id1072618042?i=1000681385872
Her YT channel has loads of content, not all for beginners either. Here’s an intriguing one I plan to watch: The 10 Best Survival Foods for your prepper pantry
If you’re one of those who believe the commercial hype, and think that all food is the same, and what nutrition you aren’t getting from your junk food diet is no big deal, because you take vitamins and supplements, here’s the really bad news from someone who once thought along similar lines, and paid dearly for those mistakes through his poor health at a relatively young age. Something we are witnessing far too often in this country.
Unlike our above super upbeat, positive Granny, Agent is snarky and sometimes downright intolerant—so, much more my style—except he doesn’t like to cook, poor fella.😆
“I get a lot of emails and questions about if a specific product is good to take – in my opinion it is all poison because nutrients come from clean foods, not bottles, but I don’t want you to take my word for it, I want you to know how to find out for yourself so nobody can ever dupe you again. With that being said, today I am going to show you how you can easily learn about any chemical in any product and its health effects, real safety data and more. You can then use the information you found to make an informed decision and never have to rely on a podcaster, famous doctor or Substack author again.”
Become your own master of health! YES, that’s the ticket!
“A Manufacturers Safety Data Sheet (MSDS or SDS) is the easiest way to get real information because, while Google can selectively show you search results to fit an agenda, and while doctors-turned-online-show hosts can recommend a product they are making a kickback off of, the MSDS can’t lie. The reason is because the manufacturer of the chemical must present honest information to avoid being sued out of existence by those who purchase their product and use it to manufacture supplements to sell to the plebs.”
He has a series of articles breaking down the reality of America’s most commonly used vitamins and supplements. You probably already know that some of the chemicals Americans consume routinely are banned in other countries. And A LOT of it comes from China and other far off places where we have little to no oversight.
Not that government oversight is on our side, at all! They pretend to be on our side, only to make more absurd and expensive regulations to ‘solve’ the problems they previously created.
This is a home kitchen, seriously? 🤪
As an example here’s a ‘solution’ of several states that is a complete non-solution for those who don’t like to cook and can’t afford to out every meal, yet are tired of the grocery store ready-meal options.
Micro enterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MEHKO), a way for the government to further interfere in your kitchen and your health.
Frequently Asked Questions — The COOK Alliance
How do you get a MEHKO permit? 1. Pass a Food Protection Manager Certification exam. 2. Submit your application, including your menu and a Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) form. 3. Pay the permit fee. 4. Schedule and pass a home inspection.
And once you do all that, you still cannot serve the most nutritious meals, because they are on the ‘dangerous’ list (with oysters!) including all raw milk products, smoked or cured products, any food that has been vacuum-sealed, and even homemade ice cream. So. Not. A. Solution.
But let’s at least try to end on a positive note today!
If you have plenty of money, live in a popular urban environment, frequent the very best grocery stores, but don’t like cooking, you have plenty of options available for healthy choices these days, because the ‘free market’ has answered the call and made available all kinds of healthy and natural pre-made meals.
If you live anywhere else in America, or are feeling the economic pinch as we are here, well . . .
May this Season’s Greetings lead to new paths of traditional healthy eating for you and your family!
Our Christmas watermelon—not exactly seasonal, but still pretty tasty!
A celebration of fresh food in photo! Because it is a true pleasure for both of us to produce our own food as much as possible; it is the main appeal of this labor-intensive lifestyle.
To think, it all started with a hurricane, and then a garden. We didn’t even have a dream or a plan.
Or a clue!
Left: Hot peppers and turmeric, dried luffa for sponges Right: fresh from the garden—lots of lettuce, radishes, cilantro, dill, thyme, celery and roasted garlic.
The peppers are becoming a couple of sauces, one made by Hubby, chili garlic sauce, and was pressure canned for long term storage. It’s a copycat recipe of Huy Fong Brand and is fantastic.
Another will be made by me, inspired by Gavin Mounsey’s kitchen.
Photos by Gavin Mounsey
The peppers, garlic, elderberry, onion and other herbs will first be fermented and later made into a Sriracha-type sauce that will store about 6 months in the refrigerator. For amazing food photos and recipes, Gavin’s are spectacular, along with so much other refreshing content.
Previous year’s garden goodies.
From the pasture to the plate. It’s a very rewarding feeling!
Above: Hubby processing chickens with machine plucker. Below left: smoking bacon Right: Pork roll just off the smoker
Left: Christmas pudding, a British classic and my first attempt. (Thanks Kath for the recipe!) We will see in a month or so if I succeeded. Also liver sausage, made from lamb liver and topped with roasted almonds. It’s not everyone’s thing, I know, but you might be surprised, I was never a fan of liver either. Right: Cured lamb and Mason jar Marcelin cheese, aging. Yes, you can put them in the same small space, I cover the cheese with a bamboo mat, in a closet with my seed storage, for about a week before moving to cold storage.
The cured lamb can be done from many different types or cuts of meats. This one is taken from the easy-to-follow recipe for Cured Venison Loin at wildharvesttable.com
The cured lamb thinly sliced with soft cheese and sourdough bread is better than anything store-bought in these parts.
We have learned so much about growing and cooking and preserving and the learning never ends.
But all the hard work has excellent rewards!
I’ve learned a lot about homemade wines and cured meats from this Italian YT channel. It’s amazing what you can do with just a little bit of space and minimal equipment and good ingredients. I’ll be trying this simple salami next.
Roasted sweet potatoes become Sweet Potato
Roasted sweet potatoes from this year’s harvest become a favorite dessert: Sweet Potato Praline served with fresh whipped cream and homemade chocolate liqueur.
Cooking is a wonderful way to spend the day, even when it’s just for the dogs!
A big pot of dog food, fit for a Great Dane
Hope you’re enjoying your cooking time, too! Thanks for stopping by!
It’s been a while since any update, but not because nothing is happening on the wee homestead. It’s still the same story—the biggest news-worthy thing is the one I’ve been avoiding writing about.
As usual, there are the latest piglets and chicks and harvests and garden woes and ‘unseasonable’ weather. Rest assured, we’ve had all that again this summer.
I did imagine if I ever run out of blogging content to share I could start a new quiz show . . . Here we are in East Texas folks, so let’s play Guess The Season!
Come on down, step right up, where your chances to win are a remarkable 1 in 4, WOW!
But it might be more challenging to win than you think. How about it, ready to give it a try?
The roses and geraniums and wildflowers are blooming, volunteer tomato plants are coming up, the lettuce is bolting and the dogs are shedding, what season is it?
Well, if you guessed springtime, tough luck loser!
Let me give you another clue, Rambo, Teaky and Papa Chop are horny, but the girls are all already knocked up. Poor fellas!
Rambo, still chasing the girls! If you look closely in the distance, past the downed tree, you’ll see Hubby’s recently finished ‘bridge to nowhere’.
What else is new, or not? We have entered slaughter season, my fall transplants are dying in the heat, the moles and voles and gophers have taken over the garden, and I have only two bee colonies which survived the summer, again.
An entire bed of baby broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages lost to rodents! Argh! 😖
It’s well past time to plant garlic, Hubby prepared the rows a month ago, but I don’t dare do the deed. It’s still far too warm. They will start growing too soon, putting all their energy into a fine green shoot that will then die when the inevitable frost comes again, and the remnants of the bulb will then likely rot in the ground.
Lots of elephant garlic (harvested in May) left for re-planting and enjoying through the YoYo season. Behind it is about 1/3 of our sweet potato harvest. Both did very well, though the Irish potatoes and the onions did terrible.
As far as general garden results for the year, a mixed bag, as is typical. The peppers did not do well and I had such high hopes. Last year we had amazing peppers all summer and fall, so I really have no idea why this year was so poor. It was my hope to experiment with spicy ferments and pimientos. No such luck. We have dismally few jalapeños and green peppers coming in, plus one prolific plant that magically survived, producing these beauties, which will hopefully ripen quickly. I had to pull off one entire branch, which is where these green ones originated, because it was overtopping its cage and becoming unruly.
The squashes also did not do well and I attribute this to the wet spring followed quickly by excessive heat and drought. I’ve heard from several nearby gardeners who had the same problem.
Very few squashes this year, not even luffa did well, and that’s usually easy and prolific. In the center are persimmons, we got about a dozen off the young tree. And, a surprise . . . Watermelon!
The cucumbers were another disappointment, but that was my own fault. My goal was to prolong the season by succession planting, so I planted fewer cucumbers than usual at peak time, thinking we’d have them fresh and fermented for the entire summer and fall, so no need for canning surplus.
Unfortunately, even the young plants could not thrive in our summer temps, so old ones which were past their main production, along with new but not yet producing, all died. Then I got lucky and some volunteers showed up in late August, so I nurtured them along, and right after they started producing, we got a super early frost, one night only. It killed them off.
Six ‘winter’ watermelons!
Surprisingly, the quick frost did not kill off the few remaining peppers, or the watermelons, which I planted late after starting them indoors, on a whim, because the best part of the summer garden this year was definitely the watermelons.
And now, we’ve got more!
Thanksgiving watermelons, that’s a first. There’s also a few volunteer tomatoes I’ll be digging up soon to move inside under lights.
Between the bolted Romaine, one of several tomato volunteers.
The baby citrus trees have all survived their first summer, I’m so hoping that’s a sign of continued success. They aren’t looking so good, but they’re hanging in there. I’ll take that as a win, as temporary as it may be.
The young citrus planted in early spring, not looking great, but still hanging in there!
I’ve also been babying a few graveyard treasures. Perhaps as a distraction from my misery, I’ve been visiting all the cemeteries in the area and have found in them a few spectacular specimens I want to grow.
There was the healthiest, largest Turk’s cap aka Mexican apple (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii) I’ve ever seen, and in the middle of drought still bright and beautiful. I’ve been wanting one not only because they are drought-tolerant and attractive, but also because they are a popular medicinal and a perennial edible. (I’ll definitely be covering it in a future Herbal Explorations post.)
I did manage to get one cutting, out of 6, to take root. There’s also a wild pink rambling rose that I got rooted, and some gorgeous Magnolia trees, which I hope I can get started after stratification and scarification of their seeds.
A baby Turk’s Cap and a Mexican oregano (I hope!)
Plus, I’m excited that 1 of the 3 Mimosa trees I dug up from the gutter in early spring, and have been doting on all summer, is doing beautifully; I think she’s going to make it! Last year’s attempt failed by this time of year, I think because the spot I chose was too shady.
A young Mimosa tree recently transplanted after growing in a pot in part-sun all summer. Again in the distance, behind the sheep, Hubby’s ‘bridge to nowhere’.
Another noteworthy piece is we’ve had a mystery fruit invade the garden.
Mouse melons gone wild? I did plant store-bought mouse melon seed, also called cucamelon, for a couple of summers. I called it my ‘crop of the year’ in 2018.
They were a novelty item I thought I’d try, and while they are so cute and a fun addition to the summer produce, they are super tiny and tedious to harvest, so not a lot of bang for the buck.
Online stock photo: Mouse melons, about the size of my thumb nail.
Mouse melon from Wiki: Melothria scabra is native to Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela,where it grows in forests and thickets.
That is the closest fruit I can match to our mystery fruit, which does come with a more interesting backstory.
Two years ago I found five of these fruits on the road near the creek with no plant attached to them. I figured they were part of a squirrel’s stash that had flooded out, or had dropped from an unknown tree, a wild variety of something I’d never heard of before. I was so intrigued!
I looked all around for the potential tree and couldn’t find any. But, somehow I got it stuck in my head that I’d just found wild kumquats. When my local gardening friends laughed and told me that was impossible, I said, well, we will see.
The following spring I gave some of the seeds to a friend and planted some in our garden. Within two months I’d regretted it; it was no tree. The vines had very quickly begun to take over a large section of space with the most tenacious tendrils and prolific foliage I’d ever seen.
I told my friend to pull them out, immediately, as they were very invasive and she has very limited garden space. She laughed and said, “I told you they weren’t kumquats!” 😆
The vines are so tough they’re like pulling thick rope. They readily re-root from the vines as well, and I came to discover this year, re-seed with great abandon.
While I pulled them up that first year before seeing any fruits on them, there must’ve been some hidden, because this year another plant formed, rather late in the season, and in a spot where we could afford to leave it to its natural inclinations.
Wow, what a giant beast it grew into! In the dead of summer, in severe heat and drought, without any supplementary water, it grew, and grew, and has produced so many golf ball sized fruits I could’ve easily filled a wheelbarrow with them more than once.
Except the fruit is quite sour, exceptionally seedy and with tough skin. It was a labor intensive process, but after peeling and deseeding, I made a few ferments and I was impressed with the results.
Ferment with mouse melons and varied veggies and herbs.
But, the vines were taking over, moving into our pathways, climbing up fences, choking out everything in its path. So we started pulling it, mowing over it, and generally abusing it on a daily basis.
It lived on! All through the late summer and into our faux fall. It actually started regrowing under the brush pile of leaves and grass we piled on top of its last remaining vines.
While most of the fruit became pig fodder, I’m still impressed with its determination and tenacity and will be finding some wasted space to keep the mystery fruit in our summer rotation. Maybe with the okra, which we aren’t crazy about either, but keep growing as a ‘just in case’ survival crop.
There’s been another ancient garden mystery, which we may have finally solved. I mean ancient in the modern sense, that being over five years in the making. It concerns the herb popularly named ‘Mexican oregano’.
Many years ago I started looking to plant this herb, one of my all-time favorites in the kitchen, and that’s when the quest began.
Now, one would certainly think this herb to be readily available in these parts, considering every year I can find in the garden stores many different varieties of oregano—Greek, Italian, Cuban, Golden, variegated, ornamental, Syrian. Really, Syrian?
No Mexican. And yet, that’s right over our border, certainly a lot closer than Syria. Why can we not find seeds or plants of Mexican oregano?
Years ago this put a bee in my bonnet loud enough to get Hubby on the hunt. Between the two of us we’ve spent many hours calling around, searching online, trying to sift through the mounds of misinformation and redirection.
Yes, it would seem that’s happening not only in politics and history, but even in culinary herbs!
Once we were able to identify the basics of the problem, we honed in on the solution. There are actually two different types of (commercially unavailable) plants called Mexican oregano. We’ve been buying the herb in bulk for years without any problem, but we really want to be growing it ourselves.
~Mexican Bush Oregano (Poliomintha longiflora) Mint family
~Mexican Oregano (lippia graveolens) Verbena family
Of the 2 types, we want to grow the latter, lippia graveolens. It’s a marvelous oregano and not just in Mexican cuisine. The flavor is much less intense than Greek, more like marjoram, but with notes of citrus and thyme. It’s quite unique as far as oregano’s go, which makes sense, since it’s in the verbena family and not the mint family, as most are.
After discovering we cannot find plants or seeds anywhere around here or online, we were really wondering why this is. It’s a very popular herb after all, used in lots of Mexican dishes. We did come across a few sites that claimed to sell the seedlings and small plants, but they were always out of stock.
Finally, Hubby stumbled on a potential answer in an online forum. It was suggested that they don’t sell the seeds because they are too small. We had never thought of this! It was suggested to simply sprinkle some of the herb purchased from the store onto some soil! Wait, what . . . ?
So, I’ve been trying that a couple of times now, and I may have just gotten some positive results.
Baby Mexican Oregano? I’m hoping! Also rooting some lemon-scented geranium, which has done pretty well all summer.
Back to the bad news. We continue to lose trees, old and young, at a dismal rate. This one flashed out dead within one week in July. It’s one of four equally large ones that have come down just this summer. I honestly can’t imagine how that happens so quickly outside of being poisoned. The dead leaves continue to hang there, almost 3 months later, while branches full of dead leaves come down in the slightest wind.
Branches come down, but not the dead leaves.
The spring floods that forced Hubby to rebuild our culvert then turned into the two-month plus drought that made his efforts futile. Still, it had to be done, as the washout was really significant.
Big job for one old man and his old tractor!
The previous culvert was our first job when we bought this property. That time I was a big helper, right alongside Hubby, digging dirt and dragging debris. It was necessary in order to get the car to our camping spot, where we spent many months building the cabin. Hauling in water, no electricity, sleeping in a tent. Ah, the good ole days!
This time I didn’t lift a finger, not even to take photos. He was able to successfully replace the culvert with a structure which we call our ‘bridge to nowhere’.
But, it was still necessary even though we aren’t camping over there anymore, in order to get the tractor to the back half of the property for other reasons—fence repair, any necessary tree felling, or getting to the cabin that’s become an unusually attractive storage room. 😏
Hopefully this one will do the trick for another 15 years or so.
Slaughter season may not sound so appealing, but if you could smell our kitchen when Hubby is cooking up the meats and broths for canning, or making his marvelous split pea soup or sampling sausage mixes before freezing, I think you’d change your tune.
Which reminds me of a bit more news worth sharing. Canning potatoes has been a surprisingly good choice I’d not have expected. Fried potatoes are such a popular food and we eat them weekly. But it’s a pretty labor-intensive process to make good fried potatoes, because you’ve got to cook them twice to get them crisp. This is probably why so many folks rely on the wide variety of frozen French fries and other convenience potato products on the market.
A couple jars of Hubby’s pressure canned potatoes.
While we never get large potato harvests here (besides sweet potatoes that is) Hubby is an excellent sale shopper. When he spots them for really cheap, like they are now at just 19 cents a pound, he’ll buy a big load of them and get prepping.
By getting the first part of the potato prep done in bulk, these canned potatoes are so quick and versatile and delish. It does take a lot of initial time and effort—peeling, chopping, pressure canning, but it’s well worth it.
All you have to do then for perfectly crisp ‘fries’ is drain and rinse and dry a bit, then toss them in your hot oil or fat of choice and in minutes you’ve got a cheaper, healthier, quicker version than most convenience products.
And would you look at that! Such a long and newsy post which I managed without ever mentioning the elephant in my head.
That is the goats. My great summer sorrow. I lost 9 of them; there are just 4 left. And I still can’t face up to it without tearing up.
So, it seems I can be as avoidant, bypassing, stalling, redirecting, minimizing and gaslighting as the best of them, when it suits me. 🥲
Just protecting myself from facing reality, right? How very common.
I failed. I miss them. That dream became a nightmare.
But I can’t end on that sad note, not now. The summer has been hard on the sheep and the dogs, too. We lost several lambs and Hubby was once again nursing Shadow issues for weeks. That’s quite another story, for another time.
Suffice it to say, he’s doing fine now, hurrah!
Better watch out, Shadow’s in loop position, he’s about to pounce!
What an athlete!
And right back to lounge position.
There’s always Bubba, giving free hourly lessons in lounge.
Thanks for stopping by!
Do you have any idea what our mystery plant could be?
