Without Food, You Are Dead

Everyone needs to read the opening dialogue from Ol' Remus at the Woodpile Report this week. He's right. Food is a Weapon that can, has been and will be used against you. There is a reason Bison Prepper is always writing about food first, wheat, calories, wheat, wheat, wheat. Without food, you are dead. End of story. Not to mention the disease and debilitation that comes from malnutrition and starvation. 

I've been thinking about sharing our fall/winter growing plans for a while and the thoughts from Ol' Remus decided for me that today, I had better get with it. We are working on putting most of the garden to bed for the winter. We're in the process of taking down the tomato/pepper/green bean trellises. After they are out of the way Frank will brush hog all of

the plants, including the okra forest, into a type of organic mulch.

Then we'll clean out the chicken house and barn and add that to the garden and till everything in for the winter. If the weather isn't too cold by that time, it usually isn't in our latitude, we will broadcast some winter peas for an edible cover crop. It's good for man and beast.

 
This is the plan for most of the garden anyway. The two ends, east and west are planted with a few more food crops. Not to mention these volunteer squash plants that came up in the yard close to the compost pile. We're enjoying a few last meals of squash. The first frost we had, we covered these plants with a frost cloth which prevented death, but did not keep the plants damage free. We'll be covering them again this weekend to see if we can get a few more meals before winter takes it's toll.

We have a small patch of turnips planted for greens. These are seeds we saved this spring from the turnips we planted last fall. It seems to be a good cycle to get into. We were also able eat fresh greens well into winter, again in the spring and even canned a few jars in June. Our permanent turnip bed idea didn't work out, so maybe this cycle is a better alternative.

On the other end of the garden we have planted some beets for canning, if they make it that far. 

Some carrots for winter eating.  
 

And some cabbage. We still have some frozen, shredded cabbage we grew in the spring of 2018 that we are using in soup. It's a great addition. If these cabbages make, I'm hoping we won't have insect problems this time of year, we'll eat some fresh and freeze the rest to continue our soup making routine.

 

This small bed on the east side of the house is the only place I have successfully grown spinach. We have had our first salad with miniature spinach and lettuce leaves. I was too impatient to let them grow any bigger before we had our first taste.

In the greenhouse we have started our winter salad collection.

We have two kinds of lettuce. Romaine

Black Seeded Simpson

Russian Kale

Pak Choy from seeds we saved this spring.

Cress









I have also planted a tub of amaranth since it is supposed to be good in salads and we know it's packed with nutrition.

Even though I don't expect success, I planted some of the tomato seeds we saved this summer. I wanted to make sure they were viable and wanted to try one more time for winter greenhouse tomatoes.

On a whim back in the spring I bought a six pack of sweet potato plants, put them in some rather rocky ground under a trellis, and pretty much ignored them. They made a few potatoes, more than I expected. We'll try one for supper tonight with some of those turnip greens we canned in June.

I tried keeping the vines when we dug the potatoes and planted them in a pot in the greenhouse to see if we can use this for our plants in the spring. I don't know if they will make it when the weather gets cold. We'll find out.

This is the first year we have had anything close to an apple harvest from the two trees we planted about eight years ago. The apples are good, not too sweet, but homegrown which means a lot to us. We have one with lunch almost everyday. 

 

So, food. What do you have? Is it enough for everyone you need to feed? For a while? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Can you replenish the supply on your own without any outside assistance? 


Food has always been used to control people. Always. Think of Joseph in Egypt. His father and brothers had to come and beg for food. They had the money to pay for it, but that didn't mean they would receive any. It's no different today. Look around the world. Look at how interdependent everyone is. Some countries have oil. Some have water. Some have the type of land and soil that will grow food, some don't. If any one thing goes wrong, one spoke of the wheel breaks, all systems fail. No water, no food. No oil, no fertilizer, no commercial farming apparatus, no food. No transportation, food rots in the field. No workers, no food. 

Food can and will be used against you as a means of enforcing your compliance to any and all demands. Moral, immoral, just and unjust. Be ready. Provide for yourself and those you love. Otherwise....... 

Without food, you, and everyone you love, are dead.

Until next time - Fern
 

Winter Greenhouse Salad

The greenhouse has turned out to be bountiful, and a good learning experience. I have tried to grow a number of things that were failures, but in the process we learned a lot. We have also been able to eat fresh greens for the past few winters that weren't available to us before.

Since we have changed our diet to healthy low carbohydrates and quality proteins, our meals have become more simple, with less ingredients, and contain as much homegrown food as possible. Actually, we have gotten to the point that we have to be very careful what we eat from the store, because most of it makes us sick. But that's another article for another day.

We are far enough into the winter growing season that the spinach and lettuce in the outdoor, back porch bed is slowing down and buried in oak leaves, while the greenhouse vegetables now provide a good plate of salad fixings.

Small garden bed by the back porch. We have wanted to use this area for a long time.

For these salads I picked.....

Romaine, Buttercrunch and Black Seeded Simpson lettuces

Simpson lettuce

Bloomsdale spinach

Pak Choy cabbage

Cress

The cress is still pretty small. I transplanted it from the back porch bed about a month ago since it had really slowed down it's growth from the weather.

Kale

We have finally found a way to eat kale. All of the other ways we have tried, we don't like because of the strong flavor. Here I pick the leaves when they are about the size of a quarter to half dollar. They are starting to get that kale type of flavor, but mixed in with the other greens, they aren't noticeable.

Parsley

The parsley wasn't growing well back in the herb bed this year, and neither did some of the other herbs. I'm not sure why, but I ended up transplanting them into pots and growing them on the porch instead. Now all of those herbs have moved into the greenhouse to see how they do over the winter. We had a bit of parsley in some of the salads, but it didn't set well in Frank's stomach, so it's just growing in here for now.

When the forecast is in the teens at night, like it is tonight, we cover everything with some frost cloth and turn on a small electric space heater. Tonight is the second time we have used the frost cloth and space heater this winter. I don't worry about 22*F and above. The water barrels seem to keep everything warm enough and most of the things growing in here are cold hardy plants. The space heater and frost cloth seems to help and we haven't lost anything yet. Not even the yellow squash, believe it or not, or the flowers.

I never thought this would grow. We haven't done anything special for it.

It's nice to be able to tell Frank I'm going to go pick some lunch, even in the winter. I feel like I am providing some good nutrition and at the same time, get to enjoy the process of growing things, something I have always enjoyed.

Until next time, Fern

Foraging in the Garden for Vegetable Soup

Back in late December I had some left over ham and broth that needed to be used up in some kind of meal. Surprisingly to me, we still have a few things growing in the garden and herb bed, so I went foraging to see what I could come up with.

Our fall/winter garden has surprised me with the bounty it still yields. It's not a lot, mind you, but it is a bit of a harvest on these cold, cloudy, winter days. And it's a first for us. So here is my foraging tour.

First, I stopped off at the turnip bed. I didn't think it would continue providing any greens let alone turnips through the winter, but it has. I even covered some of the them up with frost cloth for the last week or so of temperatures down to 13* and they are still producing.

November 23rd

December 21st

January 2nd

January 12th without frost cloth

I was really surprised at the difference the frost cloth made.

The carrots aren't growing much, but I sure get a kick out of going out a picking a few for a meal here and there. I decided to sneak some greens into this meal and tell Frank afterwards. So I picked a few leaves from the turnips, kale and mustard.

Kale, December 21st

Mustard, December 21st

After I gathered up this garden produce, and dug around in the refrigerator, I decided this would make a good vegetable soup. Sounded yummy for a cold winter day.

Ham broth & ham with veges from the store.

The results of my foraging trip.

Some of the squash we canned.

Yum!

The funny thing about sneaking greens into the soup was this. As we sat down to eat Frank told me this would be a good meal to add some greens to. I laughed and told him he was right, and that I already did. It was a really good soup.

We didn't really plan on having a winter garden. It's the first time we've ever tried one and it's worked surprisingly well. We're not only enjoying the greens, so are the chickens, and we like the turnips, too. The carrots are just a great bonus. Frank has always liked turnip greens, but he used to only get them at the church potlucks. Now, I've learned to cook them as well. Do you have anything you are harvesting from your garden? Now is a good time to start planning for your spring garden. The seed catalogs are here and more arrive every week.

I'm grateful to have some slow, peaceful days of winter. The pace is slower, there is more time to read, and ponder, and plan for spring when the pace will be faster with more things to get done for the coming growing/preserving season. It seems rightly so. A season of work and harvest followed by a season of rest and rejuvenation. But, you know what? I'm starting to itch for spring already. I'm ready for baby goats, milking, cheese making, planting seedlings and digging in the dirt. Ah, spring. It's just around the corner. Can you smell it in the air? Soon new life will be bursting forth across the earth with it's promise of good things to come. Even in the midst of the trials and darkness across our globe in these dreary days of winter, there is always hope.

Until next time - Fern