Root cellaring without a root cellar: Simple off-grid food storage

July 1, 2024July 5, 2024Leave a comment

You may be wondering why I have three buckets of leaves in my laundry…

This is how I store root cellar vegetables through the winter:

1. Gather dry leaves in autumn

It can be a bit tricky here some years finding the right time when the leaves have fallen but have not become a sodden mess from autumn rains. I’ve used both maple leaves and blackwood leaves, and both work well, as long as they are dry. Any kind of fallen dry leaves will probably work. Leaves can be stored in old feedsacks in a dry place until needed.

2. Select the right vegetables in perfect condition.

Don’t store any that have cracks or bruises, or any that are missing their crowns. Suitable vegetables include beetroot, carrot, parsnip, turnip, swede/rutabaga, and other roots.

3. Pack a layer of leaves at least 1” thick in the bottom of a bucket or 55 gallon drum.

Top with a layer of roots, making sure they don’t touch. Cover with enough leaves so that you can no longer see the roots, then top with another layer of roots, repeat until you get to the top of the bucket. It’s best not to put the lid on the bucket, as this can cause condensation to drip down, but if you need to store your roots somewhere where mice might get to them then you may have to use the lid – just make sure you have an extra thick layer of leaves on the top and on the bottom if this is the case.

4. Store in a cool place.

I use an unheated room in my house that is easily closed off from the rest of the house and does not get sunlight during the winter. The ideal temperature for root cellaring is between 0ºC and 10ºC (32ºF to 50ºF), but up to 15ºC (60ºF) and even a little higher will still work – it just won’t store for quite as long as it would at lower temperatures.

The benefits of root cellaring, even if you don’t grow all your own vegetables:

Food security

By storing vegetables for weeks or months, it means we have more food in the house, for longer, so we are not affected by supply disruptions and other issues that seem to be happening frequently these days. It also means we don’t have to go food shopping as often.

Saving money

When we don’t grow enough vegetables of our own, I buy vegetables in bulk directly from the farm and it works out less than half the price of buying in the shops.

Extending the season of local vegetables

There is a “hungry gap” in many places when the local farms run out of many storage vegetables before the new season vegetables are ready. For growing our own vegetables, root cellaring means I can get the vegetables out of the ground and use the space for a green manure crop or other crop earlier than I could otherwise, or I can pull them out before they bolt to seed in the springtime and still have root vegetables on the table for a few more weeks. By root cellaring, I can keep storage vegetables around for just that little bit longer. Beetroots seem to keep the best out of everything I have tried, but all root vegetables will keep in this way for some time.

Other vegetables, and how to store them without electricity

• Potatoes don’t need to be packed in leaves – just store them in hessian bags, paper sacks, or cardboard boxes and keep them in a very dark, fairly cool place. In climates with mild winters, potatoes can be stored outdoors in a “clamp” – just put straw or hay on the ground, heap with dry, undamaged potatoes, cover with a thick layer of straw or hay, and then cover with dirt.

• Onions and garlic also don’t need leaves – just keep them loose in an airy, dry, fairly cool place. They like to be hung up high if possible. For our homegrown garlic, I plait it and hang it up when I can, or store it loose in a single layer in a box. For the onions that I buy, I keep them in netted bags, hung up from the edges of shelves.

• Fermenting is an excellent way to store vegetables while increasing the nutritional value – either grate or shred vegetables such as cabbage and turnip and mix with salt for them to make their own brine, these vegetables, along with most other vegetables can be preserved whole or in slices in a salty brine. Make sure you use enough salt to ensure that they keep well – between 2% and 3% of the vegetable weight is usually a good amount. Keep in a cool place. Many fermented vegetables will keep for a year or more. See my instructions for fermenting vegetables here: https://thenourishinghearthfire.com/2016/04/18/7-secrets-to-making-successful-sauerkraut-every-time/

• As well as being fermented, cabbages will keep for a month or two loose on a slatted shelf (the outside layer of leaves might start to go bad, but the insides will be fine), for longer storage, the stems can be planted in soil or damp sand.

• Pumpkin/winter squash likes to be kept fairly dry and a little bit warmer than root cellar vegetables, at around 10ºC to 13ºC (50ºF to 55ºF). I am still learning and experimenting with how to best grow and store this tasty vegetable, so feel free to comment with any tips that you have for storing it well, or growing and storing any vegetables well for that matter.

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Simple baked cheesecake

March 17, 2024July 5, 2024Leave a comment

To celebrate the launch of my new book Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking, I’m sharing an easy recipe for cheesecake.

Cheesecake is one of my favourite foods, but not something I used to make very often until I created this recipe. The recipe I’m sharing today is from A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen, and could not be simpler. It features the easiest cheese to make at home – a simple whole milk ricotta. Or you can use whatever soft cheese you have around the house, as long as it is drained well and is not too salty.

I usually make this without a crust so that it comes together in minimal time, but if you prefer, you can bake this in your favourite cheesecake crust.

This recipe scales up or down well – just weigh your ricotta and then adjust the amount of eggs and honey to suit – use 1 large egg and 60g (3 tablespoons) honey for every 200g (7oz) ricotta.

Ingredients

170g (1/2 cup) honey

650g (23oz) well-drained salted ricotta

3 large eggs, whisked

(Optional) zest of 1 medium lemon, or a dash of vanilla

Method

Preheat the oven to around 180ºC (350ºF).

If your honey has crystallised, gently melt it until it’s runny.

Thoroughly mix the honey with all the remaining ingredients using a fork or whisk until evenly blended. Place in a greased 9” (23cm) pie pan or cake tin.

Bake for around an hour, until golden and set. The middle will puff up while it bakes, and then sink down once it’s removed from the oven.

Serve on its own, or topped with jam, bottled fruits, or fresh berries.

My new book Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking is now available from several places online, and can also be ordered into any local shop.

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Creating a cheese book for the rest of us: Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking

August 14, 20232 Comments

When I first started making cheese I thought I was failing at it. The recipes said to stir constantly for a full 45 minutes or so, and in my busy kitchen I just could not do that.

The more I perfected my own style of making cheese, the more I began to think back about how things were done in the past: was the busy peasant really stirring for that whole time? Or did she, like me, also have many responsibilities in the kitchen and on the homestead.

Early on I also began to question the use of all these tiny expensive packets of ingredients. Why did the mozzarella recipe tell me to dilute citric acid with water? Couldn’t vinegar be used in the same way? I experimented, and it worked, and paved the way to more experimentation, and learning how things used to be done.

I think a lot of books are written from a specialist perspective: someone that has focused on just one thing, written about it in isolation, without providing any guidance for those who do not have the same perfect conditions. I like to think of my book as being written by a generalist: Yes, I am making all my family’s cheese, it’s an important part of my homestead and I love it, but I am also fermenting, baking, canning, preserving, gardening, butchering, caring for animals, building infrastructure, and all the other tasks that make for a diverse homestead.

I don’t ask you to stand there stirring for 45 minutes, because I know that it’s not possible for many people. I don’t ask for weird little packets of stuff grown in labs, because I know it’s possible to create great cheese without these. I’ve read between the lines of many cheese traditions and figured out a way to do this that’s perfect for the busy homesteader, and also suitable for the complete beginner. I’ve created a book that anyone can pick up and learn from, and once you’ve learned the basics, you’ll still be referring to it again and again as I’ve provided a lot of depth, and presented it in a way that isn’t overwhelming.

You can learn to make cheese even if you don’t have your own dairy animals, and my small batch recipes are perfect for learning – there’s less time to wait before you get to taste them, and they’re naturally made from smaller amounts of milk. Most cheese books are using between eight and twenty litres (two to five gallons) of milk and this can be a very expensive experiment for anyone that is learning. Most of my recipes can be made from four litres of milk or less. These recipes are perfect for anyone, whether you have a small herd of goats or a single house cow, or if you’re buying your milk.

If you’re interested in learning more, please feel free visit the Kickstarter page about my book and click “notify me on launch”: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/706848724/make-your-own-cheese-natural-small-batch-cheesemaking-book?ref=7ho2mj.

The Kickstarter launches on the 15th August at 5pm USA mountain time (16th, 9am Australian eastern time), I’ll send out another quick post once it is live.

I’ve priced the book really affordably and provided a lot of bonuses that are only available while the Kickstarter is live. Also, if you back it in the first couple of days you’ll also get access to this extra earlybird bundle of ebooks and magazines.

For more details about the earlybird bundle, see here: https://permies.com/t/223565/Earlybird-bundle-cheese-book-kickstarter

Yoghurt without fail

August 9, 2023August 9, 2023Leave a comment

*Keeping yoghurt warm in a pot at the edge of the woodstove, one of the tricks I’ll discuss in this post.*

Yoghurt with a taste similar to what we might find in a grocery shop was something I gave up on for a long time. I made only room temperature viili for years, thinking that a good Greek or Bulgarian style of yoghurt was beyond me. At some point I decided I preferred the taste of this style of yoghurt enough to find ways to make it work, and now I make yoghurts far tastier and healthier than anything I can find for sale. In this article you’ll find my recipe, along with extra tips to make really good yoghurt every time.

How to make yoghurt

Heat milk in a saucepan until it reaches 82ºC (180ºF) or higher, hold it at or above that temperature for half an hour, if possible, and then let it cool to around 40ºC (104ºF).

Pour into jars, then stir through around 5 tablespoons (75ml) of yoghurt for every quart (litre) of milk.

Keep your culturing yoghurt at 40ºC (104ºF) for the next 6 hours or more (I find that 12 to 18 hours is best).

How to keep yoghurt warm during culturing

A couple of ways to keep yoghurt warm are:

• fermenting it in an insulated food jar such as a thermos.

• surrounding a normal jar with hot water in an esky (cooler) or on the edge of a woodstove dying down for the night.

I use the latter method, as it means I don’t have to mess around with transferring yoghurt from one jar to another once it’s ready – I culture it in the same jar that I use for storage.

There are special non-electric insulated yoghurt fermenters available, where you fill it with hot water, place your jar of yoghurt inside, seal, and leave to culture, but I find the size of these limiting, as they will only hold a specific size of jar, and from my experience they aren’t that great at keeping the heat in.

There are also electrical gadgets, such as Instant pot and specialty yoghurt makers, but I avoid relying on electricity as much as possible so these are not things I have tried.

• In real life, the temperature does tend to drop over time, so it’s sometimes easier to start culturing it at a slightly higher temperature (up to 46ºC or 115ºF), and leave it culturing for twelve hours or more rather than six. Some of the helpful yoghurt bacteria will still be active in the lower temperatures, and the heat-loving bacteria will still have some time to grow during the earlier, warmer stages of culturing.

In winter I leave my yoghurt jar overnight in a pot of warm water on the edge of the woodstove as it cools down, and then refill the pot with hot tap water in the morning to give it more time to culture at high temperatures. I find that yoghurt tastes the best after around 18 hours of culturing in this way during winter.

Tips for making thick yoghurt

• Experiment with using milk from different animals or different sources. One of the goats here gives very creamy milk that makes excellent thick yoghurt, my other goats give milk that makes a thinner yoghurt. If I were mixing all the milk together I would not have noticed this. Full fat cows milk generally makes lovely thick yoghurt, and milk from a Jersey cow or other cow that gives extra creamy milk will make even thicker, lovelier yoghurt.

• Winter milk makes thicker yoghurt than summer milk. Sometimes it helps to just accept that winter is the time for thick yoghurt and in summer you might want to stain it through cheesecloth if you want it to be thicker.

• Yoghurt will be thicker if it is first heated above 82ºC (180ºF), and then left to cool to the culturing temperature. If you can heat it up slowly, or hold it at the goal temperature for half an hour, this will help to create thicker yoghurt. The high temperature changes the protein structures in the milk, to help create a thicker yoghurt.

• Allowing the milk to cool down and then reheating to 82ºC also can help make for thicker yoghurt.

• You can evaporate some of the liquid out of the milk, by leaving the pot on the heat with the lid off once it’s reached temperature – just observe the level of the milk you start off with, and then remove and allow the pot to cool once it’s reduced by ¼ to ½.

• For thick Greek yoghurt, allow your yoghurt to continue culturing at warm room temperature until the whey begins to separate. Pour it into cheesecloth and allow the curds to continue dripping whey until it’s as thick as you’d like it to be, anywhere between two and twelve hours.

Tips for reliable yoghurt culturing

• Yoghurt is best made at least once per week, to keep the culture fresh. It is worth keeping a small amount of yoghurt tucked away in the freezer, just in case your yoghurt gets contaminated or abandoned.

• Cultures that contain acidophilus seem to be more reliable home kitchen conditions

• If in doubt, add more yoghurt to start it off, rather than less. Some recipes advise using only two tablespoons for a litre (quart) of milk, but I always use 5 tablespoons and it doesn’t hurt it, it just makes the milk get colonised more quickly while the temperature is warm.

• To keep your yoghurt culture as active and pure as possible and avoid having to buy new culture, it’s a good idea to keep everything as sterile as possible: Heat and cool your milk in a pot with the lid on, heat-sterilise your jars, don’t leave them open to the air any longer than you have to, and be very careful with any jar of yoghurt that you’ll be using as a starter for your next batch – pour the yoghurt out rather than reaching in with a spoon (unless the spoon is heat sterilised). For even better results, make an extra smaller jar of yoghurt that you can use as your culture, and then it doesn’t matter what happens to your jar of eating yoghurt.

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How Homemade Dairy can Transform your Homestead

August 7, 2023August 9, 2023Leave a comment

Self reliance

I sometimes get asked “how do you live without a fridge”, or “how do you get by without having to go grocery shopping all the time” and my answer every time is the same thing: We raise dairy animals and make the most of the milk they produce. When we have dairy, we have the key to self reliance.

When you have milk coming into the kitchen fresh every day, there is no need for refrigeration. Milk is often the most common item people will regularly rush out to the grocery store for, and home-produced dairy, especially when combined with cooking from scratch, gardening, chickens, and bulk good storage gives us much more resilience in the face of any crazy stuff that might happen.

Frugality

Keeping to a budget and noting down everything we spend, I can clearly see that the months with fewer shopping trips are the months when it’s been easiest to stay within budget. Going out frequently for milk, yoghurt, cheese, and other dairy products not only means we’re exposed to a bunch of tempting foods on the shelves at the same time, but also means more fuel costs for the car, more of a sense of our food coming from the grocery store rather than our own land, and more time away from our home, when we could have been working in the garden or doing something else productive.

If you have a taste for high quality cheeses, these can drain the food budget very quickly. When you make your own cheese, even if its not from your own dairy animals, you can create fantastic cheeses that will make you ignore the expensive gourmet cheeses on store shelves.

Homemade yoghurt and other cultured milks are even more affordable to make at home – yoghurt is often around four times more expensive than milk, but can be made very easily at home with nothing more than milk and some leftover yoghurt to use as culture.

Focus

Dairy animals need care every day, and once you’re outside caring for them, it’s easy to fit in other homestead chores, feel more like “real” homesteading, and have a more productive homestead overall. There is nothing like the feeling of bringing in fresh milk every day, and I like the rhythm and stability that dairy animals give to our lives: No matter what is happening around us, I know that every morning begins with milking.

Food and health

Dairy foods are simply delicious. The cheeses I make are tastier and healthier than any cheeses that I can buy, and we can eat as much of them as we like. There is not much that gives a feeling of abundance than having shelves full of many varieties of delicious homemade cheeses at varying stages of aging – some are food for now, others are food for later, all are absolutely delicious and truly make a meal. Cheese is a staple food in my house and can easily become a staple food in your home too.

Next on the blog I’ll be sharing some helpful information about making great yoghurt every time: this is something that I had trouble with for many years and I’m excited to be sharing my tips with you all soon.

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Growing our homestead this past year… Achievements, failures, and goals for the year ahead

July 11, 2023July 17, 2023Leave a comment

This has ended up being quite a long post, as there has been a lot happening on our homestead in the past year. I’d like to try and share updates more frequently for this coming year if I am not too busy. We are in really exciting times on our homestead and I’d like to share a little about what we’ve learned and achieved.

Growing our homestead

Maremma livestock guardian dogs

This has been a long story with some sad moments, too long to share in this post (but maybe in a future post).

Some of the things we’ve struggled with on our homestead have been wildlife getting into our gardens and eating everything, and predators eating our poultry. These dogs want to protect us, our animals, and our garden from the wildlife, and we have been so happy to have them here.

Ducks

Ducks have always been one of my favourite two animals (along with goats). As I mentioned above, we have tried to keep them a couple of times, but the wildlife has always eaten them. Once we had our first Maremma dog, I asked my friends nearby who have an incubator if they would be willing to hatch some eggs for me, I found some fertile silver appleyard duck eggs and pilgrim geese eggs online – the goose eggs were damaged in the post and would not hatch sadly, but most of the duck eggs hatched and we were greeted by beautiful little peeping ducklings.

We raised these ducklings in a makeshift electric-free brooder next to the woodstove, putting them outside when they were old enough, and they are just lovely. It’s so nice to hear their duck noises, look forward to hopefully some naturally-hatched ducklings, duck eggs, and duck meat in future. The excess drakes that we ate were really tasty.

I read a lot about duck breeds, and narrowed down my choice for backyard ducks to Saxony, Ancona, or Silver Appleyard – all three are fairly large breeds that lay plenty of eggs, forage well, and are good mothers. The Silver Appleyards are easier to find here, so that is what I went with. For ducks further afield (perhaps on an island in a future pond, to protect them from quolls), I might try Muscovy ducks again.

Garlic

Winter is the most desperate time for the wildlife, and in past years the fence has had holes or other problems with it, and wallabies have gotten in and eaten anything we’ve had growing through the winter, including the garlic. This past year, even before we got the dogs, my husband had repaired the fence around our house garden, and wallabies could not get in. We grew enough garlic for ourselves, some to sell, and plenty to replant, so it has been a huge success that I am so happy about after all these difficult years.

More garden space

A couple of years ago we started clearing and fencing around 600m2 (1/8 acre) more garden space. This new space is sunnier than the garden around our house, and reasonably flat. The fencing was not ideal at first, as we did not cover the ‘foot’ of it properly, and there was a hole in one place that we took a while to discover, so wallabies were getting in. Possums were also a problem until we solved this with dogs. For most of the growing season this past year, most of the things I planted all got eaten, but once we solved these problems I managed to grow some food late in the season, as well as plenty of potatoes from earlier, which were mostly left alone, giving me confidence that we can grow a lot of food in this new area during the next year.

Lots of cheese

I’ve been more organised about cheesemaking this year. Rather than harvesting the milk, leaving it until late in the day, and finding I don’t quite have enough for cheese, I’ve been setting aside milk early in the day for cheese, using it very fresh, and making cheese in small batches. I’ve been making really lovely cheese, and plenty of it, as the cheese yields are higher if the milk is very fresh and by making cheese a priority and being organised to make it on time, I am just making more of it in general.

I’ve been writing about cheese for an upcoming book, which I’ll share more details about on here later, I am planning a Kickstarter for it and have a thread over on Permies to help plan it here: https://permies.com/wiki/219046/Cheese-book-kickstarter-planning-thread

Here’s the cover of it, as it looks right now

Market stall

I wanted to diversify our homestead income by trying out selling homemade food at local farmers markets. I sell organic sourdough bread, ferments, sauces, and jams. Having a regular stall also means that if we end up growing extra vegetables or fruit later on, I can sell them at the stall.

Home brewing

We had a celebration coming up, and my husband asked if I wanted any alcohol from the bottle shop. It was really lovely to say “no, I’ve brewed enough”. Home brewing is an aspect of self reliance that can be done anywhere, whether you have a homestead or not. I’ve really been enjoying making mead, and recently have tried my hand at making an ale without hops, starting from raw organic barley, malting it myself, and then going through a standard all-grain brewing process. I’ll share details of this process on the blog later on.

Goals for the year ahead

House cow

We don’t have enough pasture to keep a cow at the moment, but with all the strange stuff going on in the world these days, and butter being an important part of our diet, it would make sense to keep a cow. I am finding that even buying in hay it would be worthwhile, as we get the benefit of the cow manure for the garden as well as all the lovely dairy.

Maybe some pigs

Making lots of butter, we will have skim milk, which can combine this with root vegetables and/or grain for a simple and healthy way to feed pigs.

More perennials and homegrown animal food

We got some terraces dug last year on around 1/4 of an acre, but did not fence them off in time to plant them properly. Looking at Sepp Holzer’s permaculture book for inspiration, these can become productive polycultures of fruit trees, animal feed, and perpetual fertility. My husband is currently working on the fence so I will be planting fruit trees, grain, and perennials such as sunroot and comfrey there.

Meat rabbits

We need to build something for them to live in first, but hopefully this is not too far off.

Better crop rotation and being more organised in the garden

The chook dome garden has been going here for many years now, and some of the beds I had potatoes on early on have now rested long enough for more potatoes. I’m coming up with a rotation system for these beds that works for this climate, producing food, fertility, and chook fodder.

For the top garden, we have 7 or 8 sections (the 7th and 8th not being cleared yet) of beds roughly 75cm (2.5’) by 4m (13’), with 8 or so beds in each section. We chose the width because I can reach the whole bed from one side and easily step over it, so jobs like planting and weeding a whole bed are more manageable, this is the standard width for many market garden tools, if we want to use these later on, and less cross-paths are needed. The length of the beds was decided based on the terrain – we have them roughly on contour, slightly raised above the paths

Our crop rotation is based on these beds being used in pairs, so we have 4 different crops or guilds growing in each section. There are two different rotations, so that we get a bit of everything, but in both sections are potatoes and the brassica family, which are on different beds each year, giving a four year rest. In both rotations there are plenty of grains and green manures to grow our own fertility.

Something I’ve learned over this past year is to be more organised and seize the moment – sometimes there are very short windows for getting certain crops planted, and other times, if I harvest some crops early enough, there can be a window to plant a second quick-growing crop or a green manure.

More blueberries

The blueberries we have here are thriving and the local possums aren’t interested in them. They are so tasty and healthy and can’t eat enough of them, and they also would make a good crop to take to the market, so I am considering making a larger planting of them this spring.

Lots more food in general

This past year we had hopes of vegetable self sufficiency and didn’t make it, mainly because of the wildlife issues. This year, we’ve solved those problems and are coming up with crop rotations and planting calendars to make sure we get things planted on time. The more I live this life, the more I see self sufficiency as a journey in itself rather than a destination, it is a beautiful life and I try to take the time to appreciate things and be filled with a sense of gratitude. I don’t want to end up like Andersen’s fir tree, thinking that the best in life is just around the corner and not appreciating the present – I want to appreciate what we do have now.

What I would like to do is to focus on things that grow very well here, and grow enough of these to feed ourselves even if the more experimental crops don’t go well: turnips and daikon to meet our fermented vegetable needs, leeks, multiplier onions, and garlic to meet our onion needs, and lots of potatoes and leafy greens for calories and nutrition. I am getting better at growing carrots each these so these are becoming more of a staple food now, and each year as we increase the fertility of our soil and experiment with different seeds and growing techniques, perhaps we’ll find that more and more foods can be reliable staple crops for us.

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Simple Flapjacks

April 20, 2023Leave a comment

Flapjacks is a bit of a confusing name for this delicious slice. Some people use that word for pancakes, and other people know all about this delicious crunchy oaty buttery treat.

oat flapjacks on wooden chopping board — Flapjacks

This has been a favourite recipe for many years. At picnics it disappears very quickly, at my market stall I get complaints if I do not bring it along. When I want to make something really quick and simple for a treat, this is often what I turn to. Just three ingredients and some very easy steps.

Ingredients

450g (16oz) oats (either rolled oats, quick oats, or oats milled on the medium setting of a grain mill)

350g (12oz) salted butter

250g (9oz) coconut sugar or rapadura

Method

Melt butter. Thoroughly mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.

Press mixture into a lined pan around 10”x15” (26x40cm) in size.

Bake for around half an hour at around 180ºC, until bubbling and caramelised.

Allow to fully cool, then cut into slices. Can be stored in a tin for a couple of weeks if needed.

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How to Start a Homestead in 2023: priorities, staple crops, and survival

January 2, 2023April 20, 20231 Comment

The best time to have started a homestead was ten years ago, the next best time is now. This is what I would do if I were starting out homesteading now.

Animals for food and fertility

toggenburg goats — *Goats can be an excellent choice of dairy animal on forested land and in small spaces.*

Look at what resources are around you and find the right animal to make the most of what is growing where you live. If you’re starting with lots of pasture, cows and sheep are good choices. If you’re in a small backyard, meat rabbits are a good option. If you have access to trees and scrub, goats make sense. Chickens and ducks are great for eating wasted food and scavenging for insects and seeds around the garden and can fit in anywhere. Even if you have to buy in food for your animals at first, in my experience it is always worth it, because not only do they give you better meat, dairy, and eggs than anything from a shop (and a reliable supply of it in these times), they also give manure to fertilise the garden.

Perennial food

blueberries in hands — *Blueberries are a tasty and nutritious perennial crop that grows well on acid soils*

I wish I had put more effort into this earlier. Even if you intend to have a big berry patch or orchard one day but it’s not a priority for now, it’s worth having some plants, as you can propagate new plants from these later on and get experience with growing them. In these uncertain times it’s hard to say whether fruit trees and berry plants will be easy to find in the future so it’s worth having some to begin with. Some of these plants can take several years to start bearing (although berries are very fast), so if you plant these early on your homestead, you will be harvesting them earlier and will thank yourself later on.

Grow and eat what grows well for you

Find an online gardening calendar for your local area and plant your crops at the right times. Experiment with growing a bit of everything, and then observe what grows best at different times of the year. I am pretty hopeless at growing cabbages (but every year I still try), but turnips and daikon radish grow easily here, so I plant lots of those and use these as I would use cabbages in cooking and fermenting.

Focus on staple foods

pink fir apple potatoes and purple top white globe turnips — *Potatoes and turnips, excellent staple crops for many cold climate homesteads*

Find a combination of calorie-dense and nutrient dense foods that grow well for you. Calorie dense foods are those that contain lots of energy for their weight – potatoes, pumpkin/winter squash, swede/rutabaga, carrots, parsnips, beetroots, and other root vegetables.

Nutrient-dense foods are those that contain lots of vitamins and minerals for their weight, animal fats and leafy greens are good examples of this. These nutrient dense foods complement the calorie dense foods to form a complete diet – many meals are combinations of these two foods – baked potatoes with sour cream, root vegetables roasted in tallow, bread with butter, rice with bacon, and many more examples.

On my homestead, our staple calorie dense staple crops are potatoes, swede/rutabaga, turnip, parsnips, and carrots. Our nutrient dense staple crops are goats milk, goats cheese, eggs, and kale. I grow many more foods than these, but no matter what happens, we can survive on these foods alone, so I grow them in abundance.

Meeting water and energy needs

Ideally, a homestead should be able to meet its own needs for water, electricity, and cooking fuel. Finding a homestead with established firewood trees, or planting your own can be a big priority in cold climates. If you need to irrigate in summer, set up systems to catch water when there is rain, such as ponds and rainwater tanks. For electricity, it can first make sense to reduce the need for it as much as possible, and then to design a system to meet those reduced needs.

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Pickled garlic scapes

December 14, 2022December 15, 2022Leave a comment

When growing garlic, the flower stalks (also called garlic scapes) are removed soon after they appear, to direct the plant’s energy towards growing a bigger bulb. These garlic scrapes are really tasty, and I use them in any recipe that normally calls for garlic. They can also be pickled or fermented to preserve them for later.

This recipe uses the ‘hot jar, hot lid, upside down’ method that is used in many parts of Europe and Australia. If you live at a high elevation or strictly follow USDA methods, then you would water bath can or pressure can this instead.

Ingredients:

2 parts vinegar***

1 part water***

salt, to taste

garlic scapes, as many as you want

Method:

Carefully sterilise some jars with boiling water or in a low oven. Keep them hot in the oven while you do everything else. Sterilise lids in boiling water.

Heat the vinegar, water and salt until boiling. Mix through the garlic scrapes and allow to boil for another minute or two.

Quickly transfer the hot garlic scapes and hot pickling liquid to the hot jars. Seal in the usual way, then turn your jars upside down for two minutes before putting the right way up again. Alternatively, water bath can your jars for 10 minutes.

These will store for a year or more at room temperature.

***the amount to use is all relative to how much garlic you are preserving – if you’re preserving just one pint jar of them, then 300ml vinegar (1 1/4 cups) to 150ml (2/3 cup) water would be the right amount to use, if you’re preserving a lot of garlic at once, just scale this up or down, and feel free to use this pickling liquid for other vegetables too.

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My favourite tools for self sufficient gardening on rough land

October 12, 2022Leave a comment

Here are my favourite tools for serious self reliant food gardening, with some notes about what I use them for and what to look for. These garden tools are suited to tall people and people with bad backs, and are tough enough to work on compacted soil and clearing scrubland.

My four favourite tools

Metal broadfork

A broadfork gently aerates soil without inverting it, giving some oxygen (but not too much) to the soil life to help it thrive. A broadfork can be used without bending your back – just place it on the soil, put your full weight on it and jump or stomp on it, wiggle it around, and then lift it up with your arms. Broadforks can be quite heavy, so having some arm strength is recommended. If you use animal tractor systems on your garden or if your soil is compacted from anything else I’d consider a broadfork to be a high priority for self sufficient gardening, it lets the right amount of air into the soil and provides channels for roots to go deeper. I use my broadfork for new plantings of annuals and perennials, and it can also be used to aerate pastureland for optimum soil health and grass growth.

I use the 5 tine broad fork from F D Ryan in Australia, in the USA it looks like the Meadow Creature is similar. Some broadforks have wooden handles, and on compacted soil I can imagine a lot of stress being placed on where the wood joins the metal, so they may not last long, so I’d recommend choosing an all-metal fork that is built to last.

Australian link: https://www.fdryan.com/store/p69/broadfork.html

US link: https://meadowcreature.com

Long handled peasant hoe

This is used for chopping up weeds and green manures before and during the growing season and roughly preparing garden beds for planting.

The peasant hoe looks like the picture below. Mine is 10cm (4”) wide.

For anyone with a bad back, or who is taller than average, it is definitely worth seeking out a hoe with a long handle, at least 150cm (5 feet) long. I’d recommend getting one that is strong, but lightweight enough to handle long gardening sessions without fatigue. If possible, have a look at your hoe at the garden centre to see how the weight feels to you – if it feels awkwardly balanced in your arms, it’s not worth getting, if you can’t hold it with a straight back, look for one with a longer handle.

This is the one that I use: https://www.fdryan.com/store/p80/Chipping_Hoe_Heavy_Duty.html

Rake

I use a generic rake that the previous owners left on our property, it has a wooden handle and metal head and does the job. This is used for preparing bed surfaces, making small trenches in rough ground and mulch for adding compost and direct seeding, making and covering small furrows for direct seeding, and for giving slight compaction to bed surfaces when needed by tapping the surface of the bed. For people growing on standard 75cm market garden beds, a 75cm bed preparation rake would save some time.

Long-handled pointy-ended spade

A long handled spade allows you to work without bending your back. I use one for creating trenches for potatoes, planting trees and shrubs, shaping garden beds, shovelling compost, and basically anything you’d normally use a spade or shovel for.

The one I use is called the “plumbers shovel” from Cyclone. The handle is around 150cm (5 feet) long. Similar shovels can be found from other tool places. If you are tall, have a bad back, or want to do a lot of gardening without aches and pains, look for one with a long handle.

The one that I use: https://www.cyclone.com.au/product/gardening-tools/digging-tools/shovels/plumbers-shovel/

Other garden tools I use

Cart or wheelbarrow

We use both of these on our homestead for moving compost, mulch, and other bits and pieces around. The wheelbarrow is easier to manoeuvre around thin, winding pathways and bringing stuff downhill. The cart is easier to use on wide pathways, and for bringing stuff uphill.

I went without one of these for the first few years gardening here, using large flexible tubs to drag stuff around instead, so this is not an essential gardening tool, it just makes moving stuff around slightly easier.

Precision seeder

I do a lot of direct seeding and not much transplanting, and using a precision seeder has helped me to plant things evenly and get better germination rates and less thinning. In rough ground and in mulch, I make a small trench in the soil and fill the trench with a small amount of compost to help the seeder get through – I used to do this for getting small seeds to come up before I had the seeder. I use the Earthway, which allows me to seed many different types of seeds, one row at a time. For sowing lots of carrots and salad greens, market gardeners often use a 6 row seeder, which is more expensive than the single row seeder, but saves time. The single row seeder is still a lot faster than seeding by hand – I can just quickly walk over a row in a matter of seconds, and it’s all buried at the right depth, spaced somewhat evenly, and covered over with just the right amount of compaction by the seeder.

A precision seeder is one of those tools I wouldn’t recommend getting right away. I gardened for many years without one, and have tried gardening with mostly transplants, gardening with mostly direct seedling, broadcast-seeding, carefully sprinkling seed in rows, and many variations. Many people garden with mostly transplants/plant starts and would not get much use out of this tool, but if you have been gardening for many years, grow a lot of annual food crops, prefer not to grow from transplants, and have trouble getting seeds to come up evenly, this might be a tool to look into.

Precision seeders like the ground to be flat and even, so some preparation is needed. On rough ground and in chicken tractored mulch, I make small trenches, and then fill the trenches in with a couple of spadefuls of compost, using the rake or hoe to flatten out the compost and compact it slightly. I used to do this for direct seeding small seeds without the seeder, instead making furrows with the rake, sprinkling the seed in, and using the rake to cover it.

Strong hand trowel

For transplanting vegetable seedlings, small perennials, harvesting roots, and working with pot plants, it’s worth having a strong hand trowel – weak and flimsy ones can bend or break on anything but the softest soil.

Rice knife

A rice knife or Japanese rice sickle is a serrated blade that can be useful for ‘chop and drop’ of non-woody plants, and for harvesting grain.

Going beyond organic gardening

If you’d like to learn more about growing all your food garden fertility on your own land with no inputs, and lots more information to help you become a better organic gardener, I’d recommend checking out this 30 hour master gardener video course with an organic permaculture focus, currently on Kickstarter here.