Weekly Roundup - Living On Nothing Edition [Survival Today

Hey food-storage mentors - I have a question for you. I was thinking about how to store dry cat food. My furkids are like family and I want them to be prepared also. I have been stockpiling cat food when it’s on sale, but all the bags seem to expire about a year out from the purchase date.

I was going to put a bunch in a mylar bag in a bucket, throw in some oxygen absorbers, and seal it. But.. the moisture content of the food is fairly high. Will I get into trouble trying to store it for longer than a year this way?

http://thespicedlife.blogspot.com/2009/11/cha-dum-vietnamese-meat-loaf.html

Thursday, November 19, 2009
Cha Dum (Vietnamese Meat Loaf)

I am sharing this as yet un-perfected recipe with you (not to mention the unperfect meat loaf slicing technique!), because it was very good as is and more importantly very easy. Terrific weeknight food. But you might see it it in another incarnation in the future.

My main complaint is that as is the meat does not brown nicely. I am thinking that subbing out some of the fish sauce with a dark soy sauce might help. And later of course I wished I had gone outside and picked some mint to put in it. But John would say why I am complaining because everyone ate it very enthusiastically. And I am happy to report that while both of my kids have always been amenable to nuoc cham, Alex shows signs of becoming as obsessed with it as I am. She insisted it be drizzled over all of her rice in addition to the meat loaf—and she is a kid who normally prefers plain rice.

My instructions for the recipe are for 1 loaf, made with 1 lb of meat. I made 2 because all of my ground meat comes in 1 lb packages and I wanted a mix of the tastier beef with the healthier turkey. I do this a lot because when you buy ground beef from a local, free range farm, you frequently have no choice of how fatty it is. So where some people would use a low fat ground beef made from, say, sirloin, I use a mix of ground beef (more like chuck) and turkey.

Cha Dum (Vietnamese Meat Loaf)
Adapted from Quick & Easy Vietnamese, Nancie McDemott

1 lb ground sirloin or 1/2 lb ground chuck and 1/2 lb ground turkey
1 1/2 oz dried bean thread vermicelli (mung bean threads)
2 T finely chopped shallots or red onions
1 T minced garlic
1/4 cup shredded carrots
2 T fish sauce (try subbing in some superior dark soy sauce, as discussed above)
salt and pepper to taste
1 beaten egg

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Set aside an 8X4 loaf pan.

Place the mung bean threads in a bowl and pour hot water over them. Leave them to soak until pliable, 10-20 minutes. When they are pliable, drain them and then place them on a cutting board and roughly chop them. Set aside in a large bowl. Add to that the carrots, onions and garlic. Add the meat and mix with your hands until the ingredients are roughly but evenly distributed (i.e., do not over mix). Add the egg, fish sauce and salt and pepper and mix again with your hands until the ingredients are evenly distributed. Do not over mix.

Place the meat mixture in the loaf pan and pat it evenly into the pan. Bake until it is firm, fragrant and cooked through, 30-40 minutes. Let the meat loaf cool for 10 minutes in its pan, and then transfer to a serving platter. Serve with fresh veggies, such as romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots, and nuoc cham and jasmine rice.

My suggestion would be to rotate...

That way you could have a years worth stored - use the oldest and replace with new...

Hmm, maybe could raise a few mice for future feed.....

OK, my bad...

http://patternliteracy.com/beyondwilderness.html

Seeing the Garden in the Jungle

Beyond Wilderness

(Published in Permaculture Activist No. 51)

Lately I’ve been lucky enough to teach permaculture courses on the Big Island of Hawai’i at La’akea Gardens. And at each course an odd thing happens. First, let me point out that La’akea generates all its own solar electricity, collects its water from rooftop catchment, uses composting toilets, recycles greywater, sheet mulches copiously, and has a mature food forest (intercropped with nitrogen-fixing trees, of course) hung so heavily with fruit that in five minutes I can fill a five-gallon bucket, in season, with avocados, citrus, abiu, papayas, or spike-skinned rolinias. And don’t get me started on all the different varieties of bananas and timber bamboo.

But regularly I hear new students or visitors say, “I’m disappointed that La’akea isn’t doing much permaculture.” The first few times that happened, I just stood there with my jaw hanging open, wondering how someone could miss something so obvious. However, I’ve finally figured out why people feel that way. It’s because La’akea doesn’t have many garden beds full of vegetables. And food is at the center of most people’s concept of permaculture. An obvious garden bursting with tomatoes, lettuce, and other favorite veggies screams “food production!” in a recognizable, comforting way. To the untrained eye, even one in the middle of an off-the-grid, food-forest paradise, no vegetables equals no permaculture. It’s a preconception so firmly ingrained that it takes the first few days of a tropical design course to shake it loose. But vegetables—especially familiar temperate ones like broccoli, lettuce, and peas—can be difficult to raise in the tropics. Other foods, such as tubers and tree crops, are much easier and more appropriate to grow.

Novice permaculturists aren’t the first to visit the tropics and mistake a lack of garden beds for a lack of food production. Until the late 20th century, western anthropologists studying both ancient and current tropical cultures viewed equatorial agriculture as primitive and inefficient. Archeologists thought the methods were incapable of supporting many people, and so believed Central and South America before Columbus—outside of the major civilizations like the Aztec, Maya, and Inca—held only small, scattered villages. Modern anthropologists scouted tropical settlements for crop fields—the supposed hallmark of a sophisticated culture—and, noting them largely absent, pronounced the societies “hunter gatherer, with primitive agriculture.” How ironic that these scientists were making their disdainful judgements while shaded by brilliantly complex food forests crammed with several hundred carefully tended species of multifunctional plants, a system perfectly adapted to permanent settlement in the tropics. It just looks like jungle to the naive eye.

Even those westerners who recognized the fantastic productivity of these tropical homegardens still had nothing good to say about the underlying rotational pattern that maintained fertility in tropical soils, the much maligned slash-and-burn system. I remember, as a grade-schooler, being taught this concept in words that soured my mouth: Ignorant villagers burn a patch of beautiful tropical forest, plant some annual crops, ruin the soil in just a few years of brutish scratching, and then are forced by their own stupidity to move to another section of virgin rain forest and burn it down in turn. The image combined the worst aspects of nomadic rootlessness, plundering of nature, and subhuman consciousness. Oh, the stupid savages!

As is often the case, the truth is far different. Slash-and-burn, technically referred to as swidden-fallow, has undergone a rehabilitation comparable to that of Stalin’s discredited dissidents when perestroika swept Russia. For swidden-fallow agriculture turns out to be a model for sustainable living in both tropical and temperate lands. Far from being a system of burning, depleting the soil, and walking away, it is a careful and complex form of high-yield permanent husbandry that yields diverse resources from a single patch for decades. Few anthropologists had the mindset, the patience, or a grant cycle lengthy enough to notice that the supposedly abandoned plots were anything but.

The word fallow—to rest a piece of land from cultivation—is familiar to most of us. Swidden, a less-encountered word, means a plot temporarily cleared of cover by burning. The details of the system vary across the tropics, so let’s look at a few examples.

Beyond the Three Sisters

The Lacandon, Ketchi, Huastec, and other Maya of Central American practice an intricate sequential agroforestry on plots called milpas that includes the famed trio of corn, beans, and squash. Since the process is a cycle, I must pick an arbitrary beginning point. We’ll start with the clearing of a fallowed plot. The farmers cut down most of the trees on a site, but spare many nitrogen fixers, timber trees, and good firewood species. Then they fire the remaining brush. The burning coats the soil with nutrient-rich ash, and cures the firewood trees, which are cut and later carried home on the return leg of planting visits.

Corn, beans, and squash fill much of the milpa the first two years or more, but after the first harvest, the farmers dig in seedlings of bananas, papayas, guavas, and other fruit trees, and interplant them with manioc, tomatoes, chiles, herbs, spices, other favorite food and fiber plants, and some native forest seedlings. Nitrogen-fixing and firewood tree seedlings (such as Gliricidia, which is both) weave a border around the plot. The three sisters and other annuals cover the remaining ground for a few more seasons, but over the next five to eight years, the fruit-tree canopy closes in, and the farmers stop planting annuals. That activity shifts to a new plot, but meanwhile, back at the milpa . . . new cycles begin. By now most anthropologists have gone home and are missing the rest of the picture.

In some spots, farmers pull out a few non-flowering trees and bring in beehives. They also coppice trees known to stump-sprout (often leguminous) and begin growing firewood or craftwood. The tree fruits attract game animals, which supply meat, skins, and feathers. Cattle, tied to large trees, forage amid the greenery. Some of the other originally spared trees become trellises for vanilla beans and other vines, which yield for 10 to 12 years. Fruit rains down.

About this time, when the canopy is furiously spreading to complete closure, the farmers begin directing the milpa toward its final stage in the cycle, the managed forest. Sometimes they’ll choose a particular set of tree species to spare: palms, or timber trees, or certain fruits, and develop a plantation or orchard. But more often they’ll nudge the milpa toward a heterogeneous and seemingly haphazard assortment of lightly cultivated trees enriched with useful understory species. This is what is usually called “fallow,” although these managed forests are yielding plenty.

The managed forests of the Huastec Maya in northeastern Mexico are packed with up to 300 plant species, including 81 species for food, 33 for construction materials, 200 with medicinal value, and 65 with other uses (the numbers add up to more than 300 since these are multifunctional plants). In these forests, Maya farmers often create different subpatches that concentrate specific guilds of domestic species (such as coffee guilds) amid a background of natives. And all the while, they are tucking small gardens of bananas, chiles, manioc, and other edibles into any clearings. The managed-forest stage may last for 10 to 30 years. Then the cycle begins anew. Since the whole process is rotational, any given area will hold swiddens and fallows at all different phases. This complexity would understandably delude a cornfield-programmed anthropologist into thinking he was looking at raw jungle.

Food Forests of the Bora

This sort of farming is widespread throughout the tropics. I’ll briefly give another example from the Bora Indians of eastern Peru in the Amazon Basin. The Bora clear small plots of forest, one-half to two acres in size, with axes and machetes. Again, they spare valuable timber and other useful trees such as palm and cedar. After drying for a couple of weeks, the fallen plants are burned. Next, the crops go in. The staple is manioc—the Bora cultivate 22 varieties of sweet and bitter manioc. Among the manioc they plant pineapple, corn, rice, peppers, cowpeas, bananas, peanuts, coca, and medicinal herbs. Clustered on higher ground are guava, avocados, cashews, peach palm, breadfruit, and many other fruit trees less familiar to us. Manioc and other annuals are replanted for several years, but by three years, the canopy cover reaches 30% and the annuals slow down. The fruit trees are beginning to yield.

By the time the swidden is six years old, the trees are crowded, so some are thinned out for timber or firewood. Others are coppiced. A few patches of coca and peanuts remain in deliberate small clearings, but elsewhere the canopy is completely closed. Over the next few years, the swidden is tweaked toward the orchard-fallow phase by selective cutting. For the next decade or two, food comes mostly from large breadfruit, palm, and macambo trees, while other species are used for thatch and timber. The Bora also take game and edible grubs from the maturing forest. Twenty to 40 years after the first clearing, the Bora begin the cycle again.

Both of these systems, and other similar techniques in Indonesia, the Philippines, Africa, and other tropic locales, show an intelligent blending of human stewardship with natural succession. After all, clearing a forest is hard work—why replant annuals every year when you can plant trees and be rewarded over twenty years instead of one? Combined with intensely cultivated dooryard gardens and occasional permanent cropland, the swidden-fallow system offers renewable resources over the long term. It’s not time-consuming work, either: People using these practices spend no more than two hours a day tending their plants. With food taken care of, only a couple more hours a day need be spent obtaining life’s other necessities, leaving plenty of time for leisure and art. Not a bad life.

Discovery of these immensely productive food forests has forced anthropologists to revise upward their guesses of how densely populated the Americas were before Columbus. And with their eyes now opened, they overturned another myth. We’ve all been told how terrible the Amazonian soil is: cut down the trees and you’re left with nothing. But at least 10%—possibly much more—of the Amazon Basin (an area the size of France) is covered with a rich black earth called terra preta. Terra preta soils hold their nutrients even in tropical downpours, and are rich with soil life. They seem to regenerate themselves, and were used by Amazonian Indians to inoculate less fertile soils, kick-starting nutrient cycles. They also last for many centuries. And terra preta, scientists have finally agreed, is human-made. Using nitrogen-fixing trees, permanent crop cover, deep mulching, manure, and other techniques so familiar to permaculture, the Amazonians built feet-thick soil over much of the basin.

Earth as a Garden

As researchers examine the Amazon more carefully, it appears that huge areas contain not only wild plants, but have been stocked with people-friendly cultivars of useful species. More and more, it looks as if the Amazon, like much of the Americas, was a carefully cultivated garden before the Europeans showed up and abused it into a thicketed wilderness. It appears that our idea of wilderness—black forest so dense you can barely walk, where people “take only photographs and leave only footprints”—is a notion burned into our psyches during an anomalous blip: the first two centuries following the Mayflower, in which the gardeners who had tended the Americas for millennia were exterminated, leaving the hemisphere to descend into an neglected tangle of “primeval forest.” It’s likely that this so-called intact forest had never existed before, since humans arrived here as soon as the glaciers receded and began tending the entire landmass with fire and digging stick. The first white explorers describe North America’s forests as open enough to drive wagons through. Two centuries later these agroforests had deteriorated to the black tangles immortalized by Whitman and Thoreau.

Wilderness may be merely a European concept imposed on a depopulated and abandoned landscape. The indigenous people of the Americas were master terraformers, using a hard-learned understanding of ecological processes to preserve the fundamental integrity of natural systems while utterly transforming the land into a place where humans belonged and could thrive. They were truly a part of nature, and likely did not make a distinction, as environmentalists do, between land where people belong and land where we do not. I’ll certainly agree that people carrying chainsaws and riding bulldozers don’t belong everywhere. But I’m beginning to think that gardeners, with gentle tools and sensitive spirits, have been and might again be the best planetary land managers the Earth can have.

Bibliography

Alcorn, JB, 1990. Indigenous Agroforestry Systems in the Latin American Tropics, in Agroecology and Small Farm Development, Altieri M, and Hecht, SB eds.

Denevan, WM et al, 1984. Indigenous Agroforestry in the Peruvian Amazon. Interciencia 9:346-355.

Mann, CC, 2002. 1491. Atlantic Monthly, March 2002:41-54.

www.patternliteracy.com

By no means an authority on cats. Our feral cat which came here 2 years ago has produced 15 kittens before we successfully trapped her and closed the factory by neutering. I was going to make the same suggestion as DelaWhere. We have quite a stash on hand as the Friends of Feral Felines are very helpful (except for providing homes.)They have furnished food and paid most of the fees for neutering ( which has been considerable). How I managed to live nearly 80 years without a cat and now find myself with 16 is beyond me. I guess for the same reason that I have been married 61 years and never owned chickens until this spring. However we have 13 chickens and many days get 13 eggs.Lots of custards and quiches. Never was fond of chickens or cats, but hubby has a soft spot for all creatures.

http://patternliteracy.com/beaver.html

Learning from the Ecological Engineers

Watershed Wisdom of the Beaver

Toby Hemenway

(Published in Permaculture Activist #47)

You know what a stream looks like. It has a pair of steep banks that have been scoured by shifting currents, exposing streaks and lenses of rock and old sediment. At the bottom of this gully—ten to fifty feet down—the water rushes past, and you can hear the click of tumbling rocks as they are jostled downstream. The swift waters etch soil from first one bank, then the other as the stream twists restlessly in its bed. In flood season, the water runs fast and brown with a burden of soil carried ceaselessly from headwaters to the sea. At flood, instead of the soft click of rocks, you can hear the crack and thump of great boulders being hauled oceanward. In the dryness of late summer, however, a stream is an algae-choked trickle, skirted by a few tepid puddles among the exposed cobbles and sand of its bed. These are the sights and sounds of a contemporary stream.

You don’t know what a stream looks like. A natural North American stream is not a single, deeply eroded gully, but a series of broad pools, as many as fifteen per mile, stitched together by short stretches of shallow, braided channels. The banks drop no more than a foot or two to water, and often there are no true banks, only a soft gradation from lush meadow to marsh to slow open water. If soil washes down from the steep headwaters in flood season, it is stopped and gathered in the chain of ponds, where it spreads a fertile layer over the earth. In spring the marshes edging the ponds enlarge to hold floodwaters. In late summer they shrink slightly, leaving at their margins a meadow that offers tender browse to wildlife. An untouched river valley usually holds more water than land, spanned by a series of large ponds that step downhill in a shimmering chain. The ponds are ringed by broad expanses of wetland and meadow that swarm with wildlife.

Until the arrival of Europeans in North America, this second vision was, almost without exception, what streams looked like. They were transformed into the gullied channels we mistake for the natural state of streams soon after the killing of millions of beaver. Most European settlers never saw the original condition of our watersheds, because the trappers came before them, a deadly colonial avant-garde that swept relentlessly from Atlantic to Pacific coast and hunted the beaver to near extinction. Deeply gullied ravines had been the norm in an anciently beaver-cleared Europe, and they quickly became the norm here too. Removing the beaver drastically altered and simplified the landscape.

Before Europeans arrived, there were an estimated 100 to 400 million beaver in North America. Today there are roughly 9 million, with their numbers having rebounded from an even lower nadir at about 1900. Early records show that beaver lived in nearly every body of water in New England.

The first white settlement in New England began with the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620, and in the decade following, 100,000 beaver were skinned in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Having quickly depleted the coastal stocks, trappers moved west into New York and killed another 800,000 beaver from 1630 to 1640. In 1638 England’s Charles II declared beaver fur to be mandatory in the manufacture of hats, to the animal’s further misfortune.

As the slaughter spread westward, the numbers increased: The French port of Rochelle received 127,080 beaver pelts in 1743 alone (beaver were not the sole target—1267 wolves and a staggering 16,512 bears were also shipped to Rochelle that year). By 1850, beaver were nearly extinct from the Atlantic to the Oregon Territory. Entire deciduous riparian forests disappeared from the west coast. Without the beaver’s omnipresent influence, streams in every watershed eroded into the deep channels we know today, and soil washed to the sea.

Keystone of the Watershed

As Bill Mollison has observed, everything gardens. The beaver, however, goes far beyond simple gardening to feats of complex ecosystem transformation. Beaver don’t merely build dams that create ponds. They control the flow of vast amounts of energy and material. With tough incisors and instinct, beavers create a shifting mosaic of moist and dry meadows, wet forests, marshes, bogs, streams, and open water that change the climate, nutrient flow, vegetation, wildlife, hydrology, and even geology of entire watersheds.

One of permaculture’s core principles advises that we intervene at the point of maximum effectiveness—achieve the greatest result with the least effort—and beaver epitomize that axiom. The beaver understood how to hold water and soil on the land long before Keyline originator P.A. Yeomans, and the stunning increases in diversity and sheer biomass achieved by the beaver serves to confirm the wisdom of Yeomans’s vision. We can learn much that is useful to permaculturists from a closer look at how the beaver works, and how their actions reach deep into the heart of ecosystem health and function.

When a beaver fells an aspen—their favorite food and building stock—the tree sends up suckers. The new shoots respond to the cutting of their parent tree by producing bitter alkaloids that beaver don’t like. This promotes a dynamic balance between aspen growth and beaver felling. However, the young suckers are just right for moose and elk, and these large mammals prosper in the tasty browse where inedible treetrunks once grew.

Tree-cutting by beaver changes the course of ecological succession by opening the canopy and removing certain plant species. Light-loving plants, such as alders, hazels, and spruces, thrive and multiply. The chips and abandoned brush from the felled trees offer shelter and food to insects, small mammals, and birds. Most of the tree, though, is used by the beaver for dams and lodges.

Beaver choose the gently sloping lower reaches of valleys for their work. A small dam on flat land impounds more water behind it than one on a steep slope, doing the least work to create a large pond. The water that backs up behind the dam saturates the soil beneath it, creating a blend of anaerobic and aerobic pockets, varying with water depth, vegetation, soil type, and distance from the pond edge. Decomposition at the anaerobic sites is slow, preserving organic matter. Dead trees and snags left by the beaver or killed by flooding become home to a wide array of animals and microbes. The structural, biological, and chemical complexity of the region increases.

Vegetation drowned by the pond rots, releasing vast flows of nutrients into the water. The pond bubbles methane into the atmosphere. Erosion caused by the lapping of the expanding upstream shoreline pulls more nutrients into the water. In the pond and downstream from the dam, biomass now surges because of the water’s increased fertility. The growing plants and animals trap these nutrients and begin to cycle them.

Ecosystems that retain nutrients recover more easily from disturbance than nutrient-losing ones. This means the pond communities and those around it are likely to persist for a long time.

Because the pond has slowed the once-rushing water, it can’t carry as much sediment. The released burden settles onto the pond bottom. The small dam’s ability to collect sediment is enormous: An average beaver dam, containing four to eighteen cubic meters of wood, will eventually retain 2000 to 6500 cubic meters of sediment behind it. That’s tremendous leverage, and very effective use of resources! Paleoecological evidence shows that entire valley floors have been raised many meters by beaver pond sediments.

These sediments contain carbon, potassium, phosphate, and other nutrients, which are slowly released into the pond, or provide food for burrowers and other burgeoning denizens of the soft bottom. The burrowing worms and other creatures alter nutrient flows as well. They stir up the sediment, releasing soluble chemicals into the water, but they also trap and retain nutrients, storing them as bodies and food, and coating their burrows with organic matter.

Huge numbers of tubeworms and clams are nurtured by the slow water-speeds and the sediments that result, as well as abundant dragonflies and other predatory insects. Because of these predators, fewer blackflies and mosquitoes infest beaver ponds than man-made ponds.

Sediments in beaver ponds and wet meadows at their margins are warmer than those in dry meadows and forests, which means faster growth of plants and soil organisms. In many cases, beaver ponds also raise the water table, making moisture more available to roots and soil life. Shrews, voles, and other small mammals thrive in the warm, verdant growth.

More fish species are found in and near beaver ponds than in open streams. Overall, the diversity and biomass of plants and animals in beaver ponds is two to five times that of riffling streams.

The ponds themselves can vary hugely, creating many different habitats. Some ponds are squeezed into deep, narrow uplands, and others spread across broad, low valleys. Downstream ponds are closer to permanent aquatic habitats at river mouths, and thus trade species with them. Dams regularly collapse, and some are not repaired, so ponds are often in various stages of conversion to dryer habitats.

But just as significant are the varied habitats that ring beaver ponds. Upstream and down are open stretches of flowing water, home to stream species. At the pond edges the beaver have created bogs, marshes, wet meadows, and riparian forests. The new wetlands and meadows contain more nutrients than the older uplands, and so support more types and numbers of living beings. Edging the wetlands are dry meadows and woodlands. And beaver meadows are very persistent, because their previous flooding has acidified the soil, helping them resist invasion by shrubs and trees.

All these habitats are flooded in a very complex pattern that varies with both the flow of water over the seasons and the beaver’s activity. This means the conditions in all these communities vary widely over time, allowing yet more biodiversity.

Beaver create a stunningly diverse mosaic of habitats that shift over both space and time. Scientists in Minnesota found that returning beaver transformed a section of uniform deciduous forest into 32 different aquatic, emergent, shrub, and forested wetland communities at various successional stages.

On the left is a stream before beaver damming; the right side shows the same stream after beavers built 3 dams. Edge area of stream and water table margin was significantly increased, and habitat types (shown by numbers) rose from one to four. Redrawn from R.J. Naiman et al. (1988), BioScience 38: 753-762.]

A beaverless watershed will most likely contain a deeply gullied stream with a dry edge. A watershed with beaver will have open, shallow streams, many ponds both active and abandoned, wet and dry meadows, drowned, riparian, and dry forests, and different wetlands of all sizes, types, and successional phases. This whole network and the many species living there will shift and repattern as beaver move out of ponds or return to abandoned dams. These animals and the work they do are the key to biodiversity in the watershed.

Busy Little Engineers

The importance of the beaver hasn’t gone unnoticed by ecologists, and these creatures also offer both conceptual tools and affirmation to permaculturists as well. Recently, ecologists have coined a phrase to describe animals like the beaver: Ecosystem engineers. These are organisms that directly affect and regulate the availability of resources to other species, by causing physical changes in biotic and abiotic materials. In doing this they create and/or modify habitats.

I’m not wild about calling animals “engineers,” as my personal view of engineering is that it is not as creative, inspiring, or appropriate as what nature does—I’d rather call engineers “retarded beavers”—but the term is well established and will have to do here.

Ecosystem engineers fall into two camps. In the first are creatures like the beaver and earthworm, which work their magic by manipulating living and non-living materials (they are called allogenic engineers, for those who like fancy terms).

The second group are those which alter the environment by changes in their own bodies (autogenic engineers). Trees are the consummate example of autogenic engineers, and Mollison has written brilliantly of the way trees interact with and affect their environment. However, he focuses mainly on the effects of trees on the non-living world: how they affect rainfall, hydrology, soil, clouds, and wind. One could deepen his essays by describing how trees regulate the other species around them. They create habitat for many species amidst their trunks, branches, water-filled crotches, leaves, and roots. The roots provide cavities and aeration, and change soil texture and infiltration rates, which affect both underground and surface dwellers. Leaf litter changes the drainage, moisture level, and gas and moisture exchange rates in soil habitats, and creates barriers to or protection for microbes, seeds, seedlings, and animals. Trunks, branches, and leaves drop into streams, altering flow and otherwise providing new habitat. This list could go on: The ways that trees “engineer” habitat are multifold.

The principal point to grasp about ecological engineers is that they act at points of maximum leverage to change the flow, availability, and pattern of energy, nutrients, and other resources that are used by other species. They often are not part of these flows themselves, thus their interactions are on a very different level from the predator/prey relations (trophic level) upon which so many of ecology’s precepts are based.

Ecosystem engineers “design” their own habitats and those of others, and exert a great deal of control over them. This means they create stable, predictable conditions for themselves and for the ever-increasing numbers of creatures who become dependent on them, and for ecosystem processes. They damp the wild flows passing through their homes. They usually enhance biodiversity and make environments more complex.

Sound familiar? The whole idea of ecosystem engineers drops neatly into the permaculture toolbox. These species, like good designers, create and improve habitat for many species as a by-product of enhancing their own environment. They cooperate with ecosystem processes and energy and matter flows, directing them with minimal, efficient intervention, and they benefit themselves and others by doing so.

By understanding ecosystem engineers like the beaver, we can shine a bright, critical light on many of the practices and principles of permaculture. The effects of beaver on a watershed sound to me like nature’s application of P.A. Yeomans’ Keyline concepts, and support permaculture’s belief that earthworks and ponds are critical for restoring ecosystem health. In sites where beaver have returned after a century or more of absence, we have natural models that demonstrate the hugely beneficial effect of holding water on the land.

Trees, as Mollison understood, are another ecosystem engineer to learn from. Others that could be integrated into the permaculture corpus of knowledge are:

• Reef-building corals

• Earthworms and other burrowers (the whole class are called bioturbators for their churning of sediments)

• Certain key fungi and other microbes, which mobilize nutrients

• Algae, which change how light and nutrients are distributed in water

• Elephants, which uproot, trample, and eat whole forests and then deposit huge manure loads elsewhere, stimulating new growth

• Woodpeckers, which alter insect abundance and create nest sites and shelter in trees for many species

• Alligators, which dig wallows that create new habitats

The final and most drastic ecosystem engineer is, of course, Homo sapiens. We’re not very good at it. Usually the effect of our ecosystem engineering is to reduce the possibilities for every other species, rather than to enhance them. But by looking more carefully at the many ways in which nature’s ecosystem engineers improve their own homesites while boosting the productivity and diversity of the larger environment, we can become wiser in our own manipulations.

Bibliography

Jones, CG, JH Lawton, M Shachak (1997). Positive and Negative Effects of Organisms as Ecosystem Engineers. Ecology 78:1946-1957.

Matthiessen, P (1959) Wildlife in America. Viking Press, New York.

Naiman, RJ (1988). Animal Influences on Ecosystem Dynamics. BioScience 38:750-752

Naiman, RJ, CA Johnston, JC Kelley (1988). Alteration of North American Streams by Beaver. BioScience 38:753-762.

http://patternliteracy.com/principles.html

ETHICS AND PRINCIPLES OF PERMACULTURE

Ethics:

• Care for the Earth • Care for People
• Return the Surplus

Primary Principles for Functional Design:

1. Observe. Use protracted and thoughtful observation rather than prolonged and thoughtless action. Observe the site and its elements in all seasons. Design for specific sites, clients, and climates.

2. Connect. Use relative location: Place elements in ways that create useful relationships and time-saving connections among all parts. The number of connections among elements creates a healthy, diverse ecosystem, not the number of elements.

3. Catch and store energy and materials. Identify, collect, and hold the useful flows moving through the site. By saving and re-investing resources, we maintain the system and capture still more resources.

4. Each element performs multiple functions. Choose and place each element in a system to perform as many functions as possible. Increasing beneficial connections between diverse components creates a stable whole. Stack elements in both space and time.

5. Each function is supported by multiple elements. Use multiple methods to achieve important functions and to create synergies. Redundancy protects when one or more elements fail.

6. Make the least change for the greatest effect. Find the “leverage points” in the system and intervene there, where the least work accomplishes the most change.

7. Use small scale, intensive systems. Start at your doorstep with the smallest systems that will do the job, and build on your successes, with variations. Grow by chunking.

Principles for Living and Energy Systems

8. Use the edge effect. The edge—the intersection of two environments—is the most diverse place in a system, and is where energies and materials accumulate. Optimize the amount of edge.

9. Collaborate with succession. Systems will evolve over time, often toward greater diversity and productivity. Work with this tendency, and use design to jump-start succession when needed.

10. Use biological and renewable resources. Renewable resources (usually plants and animals) reproduce and build up over time, store energy, assist yield, and interact with other elements.

11. Recycle energy. Supply local and on-site needs with energy from the system, and reuse this energy as many times as possible. Every cycle is an opportunity for yield.

Attitudes

12. Turn problems into solutions. Constraints can inspire creative design. “We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities.”— Bill Mollison

13. Get a yield. Design for both immediate and long-term returns from your efforts: “You can’t work on an empty stomach.” Set up positive feedback loops to build the system and repay your investment.

14. The biggest limit to abundance is creativity. The designer’s imagination and skill limit productivity and diversity more than any physical limit.

15. Mistakes are tools for learning. Evaluate your trials. Making mistakes is a sign you’re trying to do things better.

Rules for resource use: Ranked from regenerative to degenerative, different resources can: 1) increase with use; 2) be lost when not used; 3) be unaffected by use; 4) be lost by use; 5) pollute or degrade systems with use.
item6

Just out! The revised, expanded, all-color Second Edition!
Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to
Home-Scale Permaculture

by Toby Hemenway

Chelsea Green, 2009.

“The world didn’t come with an operating manual, so it’s a good thing that some wise people have from time to time written them. Gaia’s Garden is one of the more important, a book that will be absolutely necessary in the world ahead.”

—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and Hope, Human and Wild

http://patternliteracy.com/reading.html

Do you plan on reading a few good garden books this winter?

This page is a list of garden related books, all subjects and would take one a lifetime to read them all.

Choose a few and then go to the library and borrow them, it will be very frugal and educational.

LOL,
granny

I don’t make jam other times but this is really yummy. Don’t remember
why I picked this recipe last year. I think I was looking for a way to
use cranberries. It has a beautiful deep red color and is delicious.
So easy to let the machine do all the cooking and stirring.

Christmas Jam
1 cup fresh cranberries
16 oz. frozen strawberries, thawed
2 cups sugar

Chop cranberries in a blender or food processor. Slice strawberries,
if desired. Throw it in the Zo and use Jam cycle/instructions.

Lisa of Mouse Manor (in Colorado)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Save the Earth, it’s the only planet with chocolate

[Other posts say that you do not need pectin with this, or you can add a little if you feel you must.
granny]

To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bread-machine/

[Caught my eye...granny]

“We put together two adult 72-Hour Kits, one child’s 72-Hour kit, a pet 72-Hour kit and we had several small first-aid kits for door prizes.”

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FoodStorageTheBasicsandBeyond/

http://www.simplyprepared.com/beef_stuffed_chilies.htm

BEEF STUFFED CHILIES

1/2 cup raisins
Hot water
1 can (12 ounces) roast beef, rinsed, drained and shredded
2 tablespoons dried onion
1/4 cup chopped pecans
4 ounces Velveeta, shredded and divided
3 cans (4 ounces each) whole green chilies or
1 can (27 ounces) poblano peppers
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Soak raisins in hot water. Mix together shredded beef, dried onion, pecans and half of the cheese. Drain raisins. Stir into beef mixture.

Drain chilies. Slice open one side of each chilie and lay them open. Fill chilies with the beef mixture. Lay stuffed chilies with opening on the side and arrange chilies in a greased 8 x 12-inch baking dish (or a 2-quart flat baking dish).

Mix together tomato sauce and cumin. Pour over the chilies. Bake 20 minutes at 350o; top stuffed chilies with remaining cheese and bake an additional 10 minutes. Serves 3 to 5.

http://www.simplyprepared.com/wheathash.htm

WHEAT HAMBURGER HASH

2 cups cooked whole wheat, ground
2 tablespoons dried onion
2 teaspoons beef bouillon granules
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons oil, divided
2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
2 cans (14-1/2 ounces each) whole new potatoes, drained, shredded

Combine wheat, onion, bouillon, and garlic powder. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a medium to large skillet. Brown wheat mixture in oil on medium high heat breaking it into small pieces while it cooks.

When browned and lightly crisp stir in soy sauce. Add 1 tablespoon of oil and shredded potatoes. Cook and stir until potatoes brown.

http://www.simplyprepared.com/preparedness.htm

A List of Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How much should I store in long term storage?
A. See the article “Basic Food Storage.”

Q. What is included in the 300-400 lbs of grains recommended?
A. Any whole grain or refined grain product. Whole grains provide fiber, vitamins, and trace minerals, including iron, which are not always found in processed or refined grains. When grains are a major part of the diet, eating whole instead of refined grains will make a difference nutritionally. Whole grains can also be sprouted. Therefore, at least sixty-five percent of the grains should be whole grains. The remaining thirty-five percent can be processed or refined grains and grain products, if desired, but any whole grain that is altered has a shorter shelf life.

Q. What are the different kinds of wheat? What kind should I store?
A. There are 3 kinds of wheat - hard, soft, and durum wheat. The hard and soft wheat are either winter or spring wheat. That indicates when they are planted. You can also get either white or red wheat. The red has a stronger flavor and a darker color. The white is milder and lighter which gives a product more similar to white bread. Hard wheat is best for bread making because of the protein content. Soft wheat is for baked goods that don’t require the gluten formation that bread does. It can be used for cookies, pancakes, cakes, etc. Durum wheat is very hard and is used to make pasta. And just so you’ll know, all purpose flour is a combination of hard and soft wheats so that it can be “all purpose.” Bread flour is primarily hard wheat and pastry or cake flour will be primarily soft wheat.

Q. How do I know my wheat is still good?
A. There are 2 ways: Sprout 100 kernels of wheat. If 50 or more sprout, the wheat is still good. Or grind the wheat into flour and make bread. If the bread rises and bakes well, the wheat is still good.
If neither test works, do not throw the wheat away. It can still be cooked whole and used in soups, casseroles, salads, bread and desserts. Or use it to feed someone’s chickens!

Q. Can brown rice be stored long term?
A. No, but its shelf life can be extended by refrigeration, freezing or dry heat processing. Fill clean, dry canning jars with food. Place open jars in a 200o F oven. Leave the oven door ajar to allow moisture to escape. Leave quarts 20 minutes; pints 10 minutes. Remove hot jars from the oven. Put clean canning lids and rings on the jars while they are still hot. Allow to cool. The lid will seal, but a vacuum may not form in the jars so the lid may push in when it is pressed. As long as the lids are sealed, the jars will be airtight

Q. What can I do with hard beans?
A. Crack them as you would crack corn or grain. This can be done in a hand grinder or by placing the beans in a heavy paper sack and pounding them with the side of a hammer. After cracking, soak and cook them. Hard beans can also be ground into flour and used as a thickener, cooked to make refried beans or put in creamed soups. Home pressure canning will also soften hard beans.

Q. Is it better to store sugar or honey?
A. Neither is better than the other. If you use both, store both.

Q. Is it better to store shortening or oil?
A. Shortening only because it has a longer shelf life. Oil can be stored if it is rotated within a few years and stored in a relatively cool, dark storage area.

Q. What kind of salt should I store?
A. At least half of the salt stored should be iodized. If you home can, also store canning or pickling salt.

Q. What is the difference between instant and non-instant powdered milk?
A. There are actually 3 kinds of non fat dry milk (NDM) – regular or non-instant, crystallized instant, and instant. They are all the same nutritionally but the processing method for each is different.
Regular and crystallized instant look very much alike. Regular NDM is sold at the LDS Church canneries, at dairy co-ops and at some health food stores. It is the least expensive of the three kinds and has the least volume per dry weight. It is the most difficult to mix by hand but can be mixed easily with a blender. It requires 2/3 cup to make 1 quart.
Crystallized instant NDM is sold through food storage companies and some powdered milk suppliers such as Maple Island. It has 10% more volume than regular NDM. It requires 3/4 cup to make 1 quart.
Instant NDM is sold in grocery stores. It has very large granules and has twice the volume of regular NDM. It requires 1-1/3 cups to make a quart. Instant NDM is the least esthetically appealing of the three.

Q. How can I determine a 3-month supply?
A. By using a menu system (see “Using a Rotating Menu Plan”) or by following a general recommended list of foods (see “One Month Grocery Store Supply”)

Q. What is the difference between dehydrated and freeze dried foods?
A. Dehydrated foods are foods that have had water removed from them. They shrink in the process. Freeze dried foods have been flash frozen before the water is removed. They retain most of their original volume. As a result, there are many foods that are preferred in a freeze dried form such as berries and citrus fruits. They are also considerably lighter weight compared to the same volume of dehydrated food. Generally, dehydrated foods are also less expensive than freeze dried. However, freeze dried foods, when hydrated, will look and may taste more like the fresh food. (See “Dehydrated and Freeze Dried Foods”)

Q. How much water should I store and how should it be stored?
A. A minimum of 14 gallons per person, a 2-week supply.
Store water in thoroughly washed, clean containers, preferably of heavy plastic (not lightweight plastic that milk comes in) with tight fitting caps. They should be stored away from sunlight. Large containers should not be set directly on cement but should be raised slightly to allow air circulation underneath. (See “Water Storage”)

Q. What is dry-pack canning?
A. Dry-pack canning is an effective method for storing dry foods. Bulk storage foods such as wheat or beans are placed in large metal #10 cans or mylar pouches, along with an oxygen absorbing packet, then sealed without further processing.

Q. What can be dry packed?
A. White rice, wheat and other whole grains, oatmeal, dry beans, powdered milk, white flour, pasta without egg, freeze dried foods, dehydrated foods that are crisp enough to snap, potato flakes, TVP, cheese powder, gelatin, unsweetened ready-to-eat cereals, and low fat or fat free pretzels.

Q. What shouldn’t be dry packed?
A. Foods that are oily, have high moisture content or contain leavening agents such as whole wheat flour, brown rice, brown sugar, pancake mix, granola, nuts, and biscuit mixes.

Q. Can I dry pack in something other than #10 cans and mylar pouches?
A. Yes. Glass canning jars or mylar lined plastic buckets.
Glass canning jars are filled with dry food, an oxygen absorbing packet is added, the jar edge is wiped clean and a new, clean, warm and dry canning lid and ring are screwed on tightly.
Because food grade HDPE (high density polyethylene) plastic buckets are oxygen and nitrogen permeable, they must be lined with mylar bags before oxygen absorbers can be used. A thin mylar bag is placed inside a clean bucket, the bag is filled with food and oxygen absorbers are put in (one 300 cc absorber for each gallon of food). The bag is sealed by placing a wood board on one edge of the bucket, folding the top of the mylar bag over the board and ironing the bag until it is sealed. The top of the bag is then folded into the bucket. The bucket lid is secured by hammering around the outside edge with a hammer or mallet. The commercially prepared version of this is sometimes called a “super pail.” (See “Long-Term Storage Methods”)

Q. How many oxygen absorbers should I use in a plastic bucket?
A. One 300 cc absorber for each gallon of food in a mylar lined bucket.

Q. Should I use oxygen absorbers in sugar?
A. No.

Q. If I can’t get oxygen absorbers, how else can I store food for long term storage?
A. In properly prepared food grade HDPE plastic buckets. A 2 to 3-inch layer of food is placed in the bottom of a clean bucket and dry ice is added (2 to 3 ounces for 5 gallons). The bucket is filled with food to within 1-inch of the top and the lid loosely attached. The dry ice is allowed to sublimate (change to gas) for about 1 hour or until the bottom of the bucket is no longer very cold. The lid is secured and the bucket watched for bulging for a short time. If the lid or sides bulge, the lid should be lifted slightly to allow gas to escape and then resealed. When the bucket no longer bulges, it is safe to store. (See “Long-Term Storage Methods”)

PREPAREDNESS ARCHIVES

http://www.simplyprepared.com/supplies_and_medications.htm

Supplies and Medications for
Isolation or Quarantine due to
Respiratory or Gastrointestinal Diseases

Supplies and Equipment

Over the Counter Pharmaceuticals
Soap
Dish soap
Hand sanitizers*
Disinfectant wipes (1-2 year shelf life)
Disinfectant cleaners*
Chlorine bleach (6 month shelf life)
Facial tissues
Antiviral facial tissues (1+ year shelf life)
Toilet paper
Disposable diapers
Garbage bags
Surgical face masks
Disposable gloves
Paper towels
Paper plates
Paper cups
Plastic silverware
Drinking straws
Sippy cups or sports bottles
Bed tray
Medical thermometer Acetaminophen*
Ibuprofen*
Anti-diarrheal medication*
Decongestant*
Cough medicines*
Vitamins*
Rehydration drinks

Non-pharmaceutical medications+
Echinacea* (immune strengthening)
Licorice spice tea (cough, congestion)
Chamomile tea (nausea, headache, stress)
Peppermint tea (nausea, cough)
Blackberry tea (diarrhea)
Cinnamon tea (diarrhea, vomiting)
Ginger (nausea, vomiting)
Buckwheat honey (cough)
Colloidal silver solution* (anti-microbial)
Ingredients for homemade
rehydration drinks

Foods to aid in recovery from diarrhea
Salt
Sugar
Lite salt (NaCl + KCl)
Salt substitute (KCl)
Baking soda
Powdered drink mix
Rice baby cereal
Sugar free flavored gelatin
Clean water
Rice - cooked or the cooking water#
Rice cereal
Carrots - cooked or as soup
Applesauce
Banana
Potato
Bread
Saltine crackers

• *These items have a recommended shelf life and should be used and rotated by the shelf life date on the packaging.
• #Cook regular rice with double the amount of water. After 20 minutes, drain off the water and use as a drink. Continue to cook rice until dry as desired.
• +These non-pharmaceuticals do not work for everyone and should be used according to documented references. Learn how and when to use these.

http://www.simplyprepared.com/rehydration%20drinks.htm

REHYDRATION DRINKS

If commercial rehydration drinks are unavailable the following drinks may be used:

FOR FLUID REPLACEMENT DURING AND AFTER DIARRHEA AND/OR VOMITING –
• Infants – breast milk
• Infants and children under 12 years – rice cereal formula
• Children over 12 and adults – homemade oral rehydration therapy (ORT) or oral rehydration solution (ORS)

Rice Cereal Formula
1 quart water
1 cup baby rice cereal
1/2 level teaspoon salt

Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) (substitute for Pedialyte, Lytren or Resol)
1 quart water
1 scant teaspoon lite salt
10 teaspoons sugar (3-1/3 tablespoons)
1/3 teaspoon baking soda
Small amount of flavored sugar free gelatin for flavor (optional)

Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS)
1 quart water
1 level teaspoon salt
8 level teaspoons sugar (or molasses or raw sugar)
Small amount of flavored sugar free gelatin for flavor (optional)

FOR FLUID REPLACEMENT DURING AND AFTER HEAVY SWEATING – homemade sports drink

Homemade Sports Drink
1 envelope unsweetened powdered drink mix
5/8 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon lite salt (or 1/2 teaspoon salt + 1/2 teaspoon lite salt for less potassium)
2 quarts water

REFERENCES:
American Family Physician journal; Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine http://www.oism.org; Rehydration Project http://rehydrate.org; Cycling Performance Tips http://www.cptips.com/index.htm; Kaiser Permanente http://www.permanente.net

http://www.idareyoutoeatit.com/

SALSA WHEAT BERRY SOUP
November 5th, 2009

Dear Cozette shared this recipe for a yummy soup that uses the mango and peach salsa sold at Costco.

salsa-soup-salsa

Besides the fact that I’m always looking for simple and delicious ways to serve more wheat berries to my family, I especially wanted to prepare and share this soup with my nephew. You see, Steve was diagnosed with Leukemia about four months ago. My sister, Carolyn, is doing everything she can to help him eat healthy food and WHEAT has been suggested by his doctors.

Without a doubt, Steve is our favorite Chemo Sabe. Your prayers in his behalf are greatly appreciated. (www.stevenrevans.blogspot.com)

Fresh Ingredients

2 lbs. cooked diced chicken breasts (or) four cans (12.5 oz. each) canned chicken breast

Storage Ingredients

Combine in a large soup pot and simmer 10 minutes:

1 (48 oz.) Mango Salsa with Peach

1 (14.4 oz.) can diced tomatoes

3 Tablespoons olive oil

Add:

2 lbs. cooked diced chicken breasts (or) four cans (12.5 oz.) canned chicken breast

2 (14 oz.) cans chicken broth

1 quart chicken stock or water with chicken bouillon or chicken base

1 1/4 teaspoons cumin

2 (11 oz.) cans of drained corn or equivalent frozen corn

2 cups cooked whole wheat berries

Simmer for 15 minutes. Pour into soup bowls over broken tortilla chips. Garnish with sour cream, grated cheese, avocado pieces, fresh lime juice, cilantro leaves, olives. Go wild!

DUTCH APPLE PIE
October 27th, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, my dear friend Kris shared this wonderful recipe for Dutch Apple Pie, made entirely from food storage ingredients. With a ten year old can of dehydrated apples already sitting on my kitchen counter

dehydrated-apples-in-the-ca

and my twelve year old hungry for an after-school treat, I thought this was a perfect recipe for Lizzie to try. Now, you may notice that the apples look a bit odd, after 10 years of storage, but don’t be scared. These babies are supposed to last 30 years…even if their appearance and texture has changed a bit. TMI?

dehydrated-apples

Storage Ingredients

Filling:

4 cups dehydrated apples, firmly packed

4 cups water

2/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Bring water to a boil in a 3 quart pan. Add apples, stir and let stand for 5 minutes. Add sugar, flour and cinnamon to apples. Cook, stirring constantly until thick and bubbly. Pour into an oiled or sprayed 7 x 11 inch pan. (We buttered our pan, because we could.) The main difference I noticed about this recipe was that in preparing the apples this way created a very VERY luscious, almost caramel-like, filling.

dehydrated-appled-cooked

Topping:

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup butter

Cut butter into flour and sugar until crumbly.

dehydrated-appled-crumbs-gi

Sprinkle crumb topping over the apple filling.

dehydrated-appled-partial-c

Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 55 minutes.

dutch-apple-crisp-ready-to-

Serve hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or half and half.

dutch-apple-crisp-final

WE LOVED THIS DUTCH APPLE PIE!!! If you have dehydrated apples in your storage you should definitely try this recipe. If you don’t have dehydrated apples in your storage,

Tin Angel Cafe
[Salt Lake City, Utah]

I had ordered the fresh grilled Ono on a bed of Mediterranean Bulgar Wheat Pilaf, and it was fabulous. The wheat was the best I’ve ever tasted at a restaurant. So good that I thought about it for days and then collected the courage to write one of the owners/Chef, Jerry Liedtke, and asked if he would be willing to share the recipe. What follows is his gracious response to my email and the requested recipe. It’s probably a bit too advanced for my limited cooking skills but for those of you that really know what you’re doing in the kitchen, this bud’s for you.

Mediterranean Bulgar Wheat Pilaf:

Put Bulgar wheat in a large mixing bowl and cover with boiling water. Put to the side and make the spice blend. Spice Blend: toast whole coriander, cumin and fennel in a dry frying pan until just brown (don’t burn). Grind in a spice blender. Put off to the side and make the Pilaf.
Pilaf: Fine dice shallots and yellow, green and red peppers (spicy or not to taste) and saute’ until just caramelized (light brown). Add chopped garlic. Add spice blend. De-glaze with white wine. Pour the pilaf over the Bulgar wheat in the bowl and stir/ fluff with a fork. Don’t mash with a spoon. Salt and pepper to taste. Top with fresh diced parsley. Serve hot. Can also be used the next day cold with a salad (delicious) or reheated by sauteing over medium heat with a little oil. This gives it a crunchy texture and a nutty flavor which is sometimes better than the first cooking. Nuts like pine nuts (toast like the spice blend and add to the pilaf) and fruits like dried currants (add to saute’ pan with shallots and peppers) are also nice additions. I am glad to see you enjoyed the use of this grain. I hope your readers will like it too!
Thank you so much, Jerry. Your food is wonderful and we’ll certainly be back for more.

In an email I receive from survivalacres, there was a link to a google map that some others might be interested in.

It allows you to map the waterline with different levels of sea level increases...

:-) I appear good to go up to just over 13 M rise (about 40’) then I will have sea frontage just about a hundred yards from my front door... Yay... Lots of little barrier islands to explore and fish. By 15 meters I need my waterwings...

You can check your status out at:

http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=43.3251,-101.6015&z=13&m=7

>>> It allows you to map the waterline with different levels of sea level increases.. <<<

Finally... Something I do not have to be concerned about !

Rockslides... yes..

Hmm, maybe could raise a few mice for future feed..... OK, my bad...

Yes, you are. But that's why we love you!

I've been doing the yearly rotation thing and can probably stretch it to 2 years if the food became too expensive or unavailable. Oh, well...I've already warned them they will become Silver Persian mousers as soon as we get a barn and chickens. In fact, Cashmere was the first to catch a mouse about 2 months ago! She was so proud and came over prancing to me, that she dropped it. So cute!

How I managed to live nearly 80 years without a cat and now find myself with 16 is beyond me. I guess for the same reason that I have been married 61 years and never owned chickens until this spring. However we have 13 chickens and many days get 13 eggs.Lots of custards and quiches. Never was fond of chickens or cats, but hubby has a soft spot for all creatures.

16! You've got me beat by a bunch. I'm just the opposite though - I've always wanted chickens as well. I can't wait until we move somewhere where I can live survival-style for real. That's great that your hubby is so kind to the critters. And wonderful that you let him ;)

>>>However we have 13 chickens and many days get 13 eggs.Lots of custards and quiches. Never was fond of chickens or cats, but hubby has a soft spot for all creatures.<<<

Isn’t it neat having all those eggs... With our 32 hens, my wife has been taking some with her to work and is not charging a fixed price for them - Tells them to just pay what they are worth to them or what they can afford... Amazing that people love the fresh large eggs so much that they usually chip in more than I would feel comfortable asking for. We have to hold some back for ourselves and delay selling to some.

Wife puts all that money away - for her rainy day stash. Periodically we will get the jars out and Christi gets a big kick out of learning to count money by counting it for her. Plus we have all the eggs we can eat! By the way, since eating more eggs (about 3-4 a day each of us) cholesterol levels of LDL have decreased by about 35 points and the good HDL has gone up by almost as much.I have stopped taking the Zetia and continue to improve.

Oh, on the butternut squash - made another ‘pumpkin’ pie with it today for practice - 1 good size butternut, half cup sugar, 2 eggs, some vanilla and salt, cinnamon and ground ginger - about 1/4 cup of powdered whole milk and whirred it in the blender - poured into crust and 45 minutes at 350 degrees - YUM Whipped up some topping with the powdered milk and a bit of vanilla and sugar. (since this was a practice, I used a hand whisk) Well, the three of us finished off the whole pie....... Who needs pumpkin? I’m saving the seeds from the best ones and will have enough to plant the whole place in butternut squash next year..... LOL Next I want to try some in soup as I have seen those recipes around here - but so far, replace pumpkin, sweet potatoes, use it in breads, all with superb results! In 2 months we have eaten about 25 of them and have enough at that rate to go till May or June. They are extremely good keepers! Plus they grew and produced very well when none of the other squashes did that much this year. I had a plot about 10’ X 25’ with them and got about 120 nice ones. Definitely planting more next year. Maybe even try some of them in a three sisters planting.