Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

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Cooking Hubbard Squash

29 March 2015

When I cook a Hubbard squash, I generally cut it in half with an ax, put it on a baking sheet, and pop it in the oven. The problem with that is that my ax skills are not what they should be, and while one half usually makes a good seal with the baking sheet, the other half does not. The one with the seal cooks much faster than the other one because of the trapped steam.

So today I decided to eliminate the whole cutting-in-half hassle and just put it in the oven whole. That’s a squash a little bit smaller than a basketball. I made a couple of holes in it with a Phillips screwdriver so it wouldn’t explode. (That’s why I love cooking in the same way that I love gardening — it’s all one big experiment.)

Cooked at 350 for 90 minutes, and it was great.

And by the way, that squash has been in the basement for at least six months, and still tasted good. Hubbards are amazing.

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Rain

30 June 2012

Not much to say except we need it badly. Rain barrels are almost empty, so watering with well water. Being a prepper, that makes me think: "What would we be doing if there weren’t any electricity?"

The answer, of course, is that we’d be getting water from the river. That would be very hard work, but if it’s a difference between doing that and starving next winter, I think we’d get it done.

Yesterday, two different sets of storms passed just to our south. We got a very few drops from the second set. Nature can be such a tease.

I’m collecting water in a bucket in the shower again, getting a gallon or two from each shower. Not much, but it’s otherwise completely wasted.

Posted in Climate Change, Gardening, Weather | 1 Comment »

According to the Forecast, Winter’s Here

4 December 2011

Looks like we’ll have our first days of the season with the high temp below freezing this week.

M and I got half of the garage cleaned out so we could get one of our cars in there. That’s a sure sign that winter weather is here.

I put a ring of straw bales around the kale and collards this afternoon, then draped a sheet of clear plastic over the whole thing. I weighed it down with some big, heavy logs on the west side, and more logs on the other sides. I think it’s almost impossible to fight off that wind when it’s whipping out of the west northwest, but we’ll do our best. I hope to get a few more weeks out of it.

I cut quite a bit of kale, cooked some of it, and put the rest in a bag in the fridge. I don’t pick or cook ahead in the summer, but seems like the right way to deal with it this time of year.

Also, the compost was at 137°F this afternoon.

Posted in Food, Gardening, Weather | Leave a Comment »

It’s That Time of Year Again

2 December 2011

I drained the 3 outside rainbarrels yesterday. They weren’t frozen, but they probably will freeze soon. I left one outside and in position with the valve open last winter, and it seemed to come through just fine, so I’m going to do that with all of them this winter. It would be good to get a few more of those 55-gallon plastic barrels just to have on hand.

Dealing with the coffee grounds for composting becomes more complicated without them, but doing it inside the greenhouse is still a very good alternative.

I have to say that those rain barrels haven’t been terribly useful, mostly because we’ve had few prolonged stretches of dry weather. But they’re still good to have on hand, because those dry spells (along with sudden collapse of the electrical grid) aren’t predictable.

I ordered a 6-gallon bucket of buckwheat groats from Pleasant Hill Grain in Nebraska yesterday (Honeyville didn’t have any bw in stock and hasn’t for some time). I feel a little crazy still stocking up on staples…but the world situation is more dire than most people realize.

On the one hand, as Sharon Astyk used to say, you can’t buy your way into preparedness…but it’s not going to hurt, either.

I covered my kale a few days ago, and haven’t had it uncovered since, because it hasn’t been above freezing very much since then. That’s not ideal, but it does get a bit of dim light through the tarp, and it will be okay for a few days like that. I’ll get it some sun this weekend, and also hope to get a transparent cover made. I might as well keep it going as long as possible.

Posted in Food, Gardening, TEOTWAWKI, Water | Leave a Comment »

Cold Night

30 November 2011

I checked the temperature of the active compost pile around sunset yesterday, and it was 136°F!

I also covered the Kale last night, as it was predicted to get cold. It did, and was about 18°F this morning. That was after two nights of predicted temps in the low 20s and actual lows around 30.

Which was lucky, since I had done some exterior concrete work 3 days ago, and it would not have been good for it to freeze.

I’m pretty disgusted with our wood stove. I don’t think the cat converter is working at all — when you try to force the smoke through it, nothing happens except you can smell smoke in the house.

That may be my fault — I did not open the damper before I swept the chimney last time around, so all that gunk fell down onto the cat converter. I did try to vacuum it out of there afterwards, but I don’t know how successful I was. I need to take it out of there and clean it.

I was looking at a Vogelzang Durango woodstove as a possible replacement. It’s EPA-certified, will take 26" long logs, is non-catalytic, and Menards has them on sale for $600. But then I read that the steel plate they use is only 3/16" thick, not the more common 1/4", and that’s probably why it’s inexpensive. I don’t know if I should be concerned about that or not — they do line it with firebrick.

Posted in Burning wood, Composting, Gardening | Leave a Comment »

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