I baked an excellent butternut from storage today — good sized, and excellent flavor and sweetness. I dug in the compost bucket and pulled the (uncooked) seeds out of there afterwards to save for next year. It’s a Waltham, which as far as I can tell is a non-hybrid. Seed-saving is such a no-brainer, I’m surprised I haven’t been doing it all along.
UPDATE: The Butternut seeds did not look good after drying for several days. They just weren’t plump, and several of them were quite flattish. I threw out the really bad ones, but will try the better ones. Not much loss if they don’t come up — I’ve got more. I think another two weeks of summer would have helped them fill out — or a better start in the Spring, unhandicapped by me making them grow roots through a layer of corrugated cardboard before they could get into the earth.
M attended a beginner’s bee-keeping class today. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but it’s also as I remember from previously reading about it: a daunting amount of work and equipment and knowledge is required.
Why do we want to do it? To have a post-collapse skill and a product to sell. To teach the kids how to take care of animals. To help the bees. Those are all still good reasons, but do we need more to do, especially in the Spring and Fall? On the other hand, I’m not getting younger and if I want to do stuff in my life I need to do it.
Ending and Beginning 