Thursday Open Thread 2-1-2018
Interesting map by the USDA that allows drill down into county specific data on food availability and affordability issues. For example, 14% It took me a few tries to finally figure out if I clicked on my county all the data would appear on the screen. Another option is to change the map (upper left corner) to look at national info.
Major agriculture products in a state. Fun fact Oregon grown 31% of the commercial pear crop in the US and 100% of hazelnuts.
A nice article on the World most Nutritious Foods. If you prefer the research article use this link.
Time to think about what to grow in the 2018 season for fresh food, animal feed and stock up the pantry. The lowest cost is to dry items, freezing is most convenient and a few items taste best canned.
Usually try and put up enough canned products for 3 years to space out the workload, accommodate poor harvests and costs of buying products.
A water bath was all that was needed to preserve the jars in the picture.
Top row: strawberry/rhubarb jam, spiced tomato relish, green tomato relish, spiced pickle, peaches, apple butter, berry jelly. Bottom row: cherries, pears, apple sauce and dill pickle.
Most of us can get by without a pressure cooker. However once you have had home canned tuna it is hard to eat commercial cans or pouches.
My favorite seafood restaurant closed, so now cooking at home.
Beer Batter Fish
mix
3/4 C flour (wheat or barley) not tried rice yet
2/3 C beer (not flat)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 lb fresh or thawed fish fillets (cod, haddock, salmon, halibut)
(also good on shrimp & onion rings)
2x3 inch pieces pat dry, dip in batter and fry (375 F) 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on each side. If your preference is slightly raw cook a little less.
Serve with lemon wedges, malt vinegar or tarter sauce.
Farm Report
During winter is time for craft projects. Hearth rug got finished.
Surprise peak showing up between the trees.
A spot of sunshine had created a glow on smith rocks for a few minutes.
Forgot to close the gate and the ewes were quick to take advantage.
Comments
Thank you for this open thread and, as always, lovely pics.
Congratulations on finishing the hearth rug. Valentine's Day is only two weeks away. Can Spring be far behind?
Speaking of home grown food, I have none--and produce items from the supermarket are become more and more suspect. Some years back, I began eating "cleaner." I look online carefully at ingredients, googling any with which I am unfamiliar.Not everything I buy is organic, but I steer clear of chemicals added for preservation, color, etc. In fact, I even steer clear of many "natural" additives, like annato, guar gum and carageenan. Recently, however I've noticed scary stuff from the produce department, of all places.
I will check something, like fennel or brussel sprouts, that I think may have languished, forgotten, in the fridge for too long. I expect to find it browning and softening. Instead, it is firm and has retained its original color(s).
Suspicious, I will not eat it but I will leave it in the fridge longer, just to see what happens to it. Weeks later, I will finally discard it, still firm and retaining its original color(s), but likely as nutritious as cardboard, perhaps harmful. I think it's Frankenfood, but not labeled as such.
I can't wait for Valentine's Day
It marks the end of the New Year's rush @ the gym.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
California grows most of our fresh vegtables and
can use fracking waste water. I started reducing California grown fresh produce in 2015. Hopefully this year will be able to grow my own supply or use self preserved.
Chinese agricultural calendar (has spring starting February 4th this year). Can start to see signs of some plants are starting to wake-up. A change in color, a little swelling, green just at soil level indicating the deep dormancy is done. Waiting for the right moment (weather) to get a head start on the competition. If they start growing too soon the frost will damage or kill. If too late they may be crowded out by the competition. Plus each plant has to match the cycle of its pollinator.
Don't
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
good morning
Nice looking canned produce. This week we cleaned off the old lettuce beds (last year it overwintered but several nights of single digits spelled its demise even under row covers).
After raking, those beds were manured and mulched. They will be ready to plant in a month or so. Some of the collards and kale survived, and we have many perennial herbs still growing.
I saw an piece awhile back that I can't find now that added screen frames to the inside their cold frames. (They first placed a piece of metal roofing in the cold frame for thermal exchange)) Then in the summer they laid out cut produce on the screens and put them in the cold frames to dry. Very clever. We have a plastic fan driven model that we don't often use. I hope to build a cold frame/compost bin this summer and will try the drying trick in it when I do.
Speaking of screens, that seems to be the material of choice for simple solar heaters these days. Here's one example http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/AirColTesting/ScreenCollector/B... and there are many more on youtube.
This group tested several types of collectors and concluded:
Screen Collector:
I would also like to build a solar oven. http://solarcooking.org/plans/ My buddy has one they purchased. It is limited to summer use, but would be handy in the garden for a variety of tasks from heating water to sterilizing soil. Have any of you built or use a solar oven?
Thanks for the OT SoE. I always enjoy the farm report on Thursdays! Hope you all have good one.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Years ago I built a basic box cooker like the one
solarcooking.org calls "the minimum". I built it as a test and proof of concept for a potential camping oven/slow cooker, without plans, in a hurry and using scrounged materials. It worked but wasn't a good fit for us. It was big and clunky and a bit what limited n what I could cook in it. There also wasn't a good place to set it up (nor one in which to store it).
We were still both working which also limited its utility, pretty much a weekend only thing. Our locale has a ton of partly cloudy days so cooking times were relatively long and indeterminate. I would have to plan meals around it and hope the weather obliged, set it up and tend it (it wasn't that stable and also needed periodic re-alignment. One never knew when anything would be done or ready.
I did cook some meals or parts of meals on it but it wasn't at all conducive to our lifestyle and was only a proof of concept anyway, so I scrapped/recycled it. We could've, in retrospect, got a lot more out of it by using it for things that need cooking and can be cooked ahead and conventionally reheated or cooked ahead and incorporated in other things or cooked ahead and eaten cold.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Not too complicated to build and low cost solar heater
Thanks for sharing the information.
Thanks for the garden update. It is often a cycle of activity and then wait for the right conditions for the next step.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Morning SoE
Ewe!! Ewes all over! Whatever will we do?
Thanks for the pics. My monthly issue of 'Bucolic Living' didn't arrive and I've been jonesing.
Thanks and have a great day all.
I want a Pony!
Good morning, Arrow. How ya doing?
So you want a pony, 7.75 US gallons, but of what? I'd go with Negra Modelo, but everybody has their own thing.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I want the pony...
the corpodems say I can't have. I want a pony!!! Please..please..please!!!
I want a Pony!
Thanks SOE
I tilled kelp, feather meal, lignite, biochar and insect frass into the garden, this week. The rhizosphere is busy, the ground is warm. I'll give the bacteria and fungus February to sort out the soil and plant in early March. I have some cayenne, pequin and serrano, plus some Romas, San Marzanos and cilantro started on the window sill. I'll get some Vidalia onions, in a bag, later this spring.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
Hola, Tim. Good on ya. Because of the way our
"garden" is set up and used, blanket soil amendment is not really possible, but maybe one end of a bed at a time or something might be possible. Yesterday we started a batch of worm tea, however, which we use on all of our plants. We have a ton more worm crap, so maybe we'll have to start doing this more often and more regularly.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Doing test plots or all the soil amendments in one bed?
A couple of these items are new to me - very interesting. Order on-line or a local nursery?Kelp - sea weed as a fertilizer
feather meal, - Sterilized ground-up feathers as fertilizer.
lignite - a type of soft coal to perhaps provide humic acid
biochar generally wood burned in low oxygen conditions.
insect frass - leftover plant matter fed to bugs and their exoskeletons.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Order Online
I troll ebay for kelp, insect frass, worm castings, biochar, humic/fulvic sources, rock dust, green sand, alfalfa, crabshell meal, bone meal, K-mag, dolomite lime, bokashi, ... and amend with whatever I get cheap. Feather meal and alfalfa are much easir/better nitrogen sources than manures. The insect frash has tons or micros, silica and chitin. The insect frass is usually from meal worms and wildly variable pricing. I am trying to feed the soil, and let the soil ecosystem feed the plant.
PS - Neem for nitrogen and pest management.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
Thanks for the link
to the research article on the World's most nutritious foods. I just scanned it quickly and will come back to it later but this jumped out at me
This a subject that I'm interested in; nutritional content of food, how to get the best nutrients that we need for the least amount of money, how we can do this ourselves, etc..
Anyway, thanks for the post, its beautiful as always. Love your hearth rug, it looks as if you wove it. I'm curious about your loom, and the yarn you used. Its lovely. I can't seem to finish any projects like that lately but am inspired by yours.
Good morning, SOE, thanks for the OT and included info.
Decades ago I used to make a "classic" beer batter and do beer batter fish, but using masa instead of flour. It was pretty good, especially with a squeeze of lemon, but lately I've been using other cooking techniques and, frequently, "deviling" the fish, covering it with a mix of part inglehoffer or other coarse ground mustard, part dijon mustard, a little pickapeppah, salt, pepper, and thyme.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --