The process for sauerkraut is basically the same, although the spices and ingredients can be played with. Remove the tougher outer leaves, checking carefully for worms and remnants of soil as you go. Shred. Pack tightly into jars or a crock, sprinkling 2-3 TBSP of salt over the cabbage as you go. Press or pound the cabbage until it starts to release its juices, and top up the brine if need be with unchlorinated water. It is imperative that the cabbage be submerged below brine at all times. If using a crock you’ll need either a lid or a plate weighed down with something; I use a quart jar filled with water.

Sauerkraut takes anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to develop, depending on the temperature. I’m aiming for a longer fermentation so I can keep lots in storage for the winter, so it’s currently down in the chilly, unfinished basement. Check on it every couple of days to make sure the cabbage is submerged and skim any foam that develops.

Batch number one: crock, cabbage + toasted caraway seeds.

Batch number two: jars + cabbage.

Batch number three: jars, cabbage + spices. A few cloves, bay, peppercorns, cumin seeds, dill seeds and  juniper berries, crushed with a pestle.

I admire so much, and aspire towards, the craftsmanship evident in simple, nuanced ingredients such as this.

Crème Fraiche

1 quart cream, preferably raw farm cream

1 tbsp crème fraiche from a previous batch, or buttermilk

Just stir the second ingredient into the first and leave the jar somewhere warm overnight.

I do, of course, have reason to be impatient, if such reason exists. Gardening is so much more than merely my passion; alongside foraging and hunting, the gardens will eventually be our primary source of food here. We’re aiming for a measure of sufficiency. My goal is to create such abundance here that we have enough for ourselves, enough for sharing with anyone in need, enough to sell or trade surplus.

The gardens are also integral places to learn from, teach from, to build fertility in and to come to know this place through. They take up our waste, provide habitat and contribute to an ever expanding diversity here; this last point is of paramount importance to the whole project of our living well here. I can’t imagine any riches more valuable to me than my gardens. Cicero said “If you have a garden and books you have everything you need.” Hear, hear.

So, firstly, an introduction to the east garden.

The east garden was formerly home to Nanking cherries, raspberries and strawberries, all of which were dead by the time we arrived, choked out with at least two years worth of mammoth weeds. I had them tilled under to add organic matter to the soil. I had no idea when the soil had last been amended, if ever, nor what it might be deficient in. Since we got here so late I felt rushed to get planting, figuring I would have time later for soil tests and amendments.

I knew it would be a fall garden. I couldn’t start planting until late June, when the spinach and peas were already producing here. The fall garden has the benefits of fewer pests (usually…) and cooler temperatures during harvest to recommend it. Typically I succession plant for two harvests out of many garden spaces anyway, so I was familiar with the timing of a June start.

Despite consciously knowing that I would have to wait until late in the season for most of the harvest, I nevertheless longed anxiously for the bounty of produce that I saw in the gardens of those around me and at the market. I coveted their shelling peas, their early potatoes, their salads adorned with nasturtiums. I worried that I would be the only gardener for whom nothing would grow. I worried that the locals here were right, that I was simply too late to get a decent harvest this year. I fretted that I would fail in my role here of Steward of Garden Magnificence, Provider of Prodigious Harvest.

So, over the last few days of rain G and I stayed inside and chatted about projects we are excited about and how great next year would be, now that some of the infrastructure work here has come together. I accepted that this first garden would of course not be my most productive nor beautiful. I resolved to gratefully bring in what harvest there would be.

Then during a brief sunny spell yesterday I took a walk through the garden and (re)discovered again the value of trust and of patience. It is producing!

Lacinato kale, Broad Windsor fava beans, marigolds and lemon catnip.

Northern Pickling cucumbers climbing a bed frame we salvaged from the dump.

Triumph d’Farcy filet beans.

Petit Gris des Rennes melon. I am exceedingly happy to see these, as it is a rarer variety of seed I had planned to steward.

Druzba tomato, a Ukrainian heirloom.

The permanent beds I laboriously dug by hand will get better every year that compost is heaped on them and new mulch added. The perennials will show off their special vigor once they have a full season with developed root systems. The calendula, borage, nasturtiums, lupins, dill and fennel will self seed with abandon. Despite knowing the riches to come I am completely satisfied with the good work of this first year.

Groves of them are scattered all over the property… what of it we’ve managed to explore, anyway. I’ve heard conflicting reports about when they’re ready for harvest, although each came with a warning of the competition we would have from various rodents, squirrels, birds and even a boring insect.

In light of this we opted to pick a sack a little early, to ensure we got enough to do a test roast. We plan to do a number of pickings and roastings to determine when our residential plants are ready and how they are best stored. Despite being anywhere from two to four weeks early a like-minded creature was similarly ensuring it got its share.

The hazelnuts also provides us with some helpful indicators about the surrounding landscape. This understory shrub is a close associate of some of the other fruiting shrubs we’d like to harvest from, including Low Bush Honeysuckle, Chokecherry and Late Low Blueberry. Hazelnuts are also accumulators of calcium and manganese, their leaf litter serving to fertilize the forest around them.

2 TBSP salt per quart of boiled water. I used 2 quarts of water for 3 quarts of beans. Pack the beans well and ensure that they remain below the mouth of the jar so the brine will cover them. Pour in the brine and wait a few weeks.

I’ve been anxious to start fermenting dairy for a variety of reasons; this experiment with cultured butter is my first. Of course I used the raw local cream I’ve raved about before, which is endlessly inspiring me. However, as it isn’t pasteurized it doesn’t tend to stay fresh very long, even refrigerated.

Butter has always been crafted as a method of preserving the fat of milk for use during the leaner winter months. It’s use has a long history across nearly every culture and culinary tradition. Dairy was traditionally preserved and consumed fermented, with cheese and yogurt being the most familiar to our palates. Fresh dairy actually has a far shorter history of use, which I’ll bet corresponds with refrigeration technology.

Butter typically falls into two categories: sweet butter, made with fresh cream and typically no salt and lactic or sour butter made with cream which has been “cultured”, or lacto-fermented.

There are seemingly innumerable reasons to lacto-ferment dairy. Much like with fermenting vegetables, which I’ve posted a bit about before, cultured dairy is created by beneficial Lactobacilli bacteria which produce lactic acid. Lactic acid breaks down milk proteins (casein) and milk sugars (lactose) making cultured dairy imminently more digestible. Culturing dairy also increases enzymes such as lactase, available vitamins such as B and C, minerals such as calcium and increases beneficial flora in the digestive tract.

Perhaps the aspect of lacto-fermentation which captivates me the most, though, is the process’s ability to increase resistance to infectious diseases. By increasing the beneficial flora in our systems more pathogens can be resisted and more antibodies created, which contributes to long term immunities. In a future where high-technology medical services may not be readily available fermented foods may be a home based first line of defense.

I’ll admit, though, that my fascination with cultured dairy is in large part culinary. I made the simple cultured butter used extensively in France and Germany. First, the cream was left on the counter overnight to ferment. Then it was chilled and *scooped* into the churner. I love this farm cream.

After a few minutes working the cream the butter fat started to separate from the buttermilk.

After a bit more agitation the cream is suddenly transformed into butter!

After the butter forms it simply needs to be pressed through a colander to remove the last of the buttermilk. I rinsed the butter a couple of times, patted it dry and combined it with a bit of my favorite flaky grey sea salt.

The taste of this butter set my heart racing. It has a clean, creamy flavor from the high quality raw cream and an incredibly rich and complex taste which I hesitate to call sour.

I was giddy when I had it confirmed by a long time resident that the apple trees we inherited aren’t crab apples, they’re eating apples! Don’t get me wrong, crab apples are great, but there is already an abundance of them in the area. They won’t be hard to glean, although we’ll plant some ourselves as well. It is definitely rarer to find mature apple trees of the larger variety. They’re likely Parkland or Norland(!).

It will be a bigger challenge sourcing fruit in our new area; we’ll be relying more on our own orchard, and on wild fruit. Until our fruit trees and bushes are bigger we’ll have to accept some charity from our neighbors. It seems many have more fruit than they can pick, and some know of mature fruit trees on abandoned farm sites. A kind local is letting us pick her raspberries while she’s away next week. I’ve always had good luck obtaining huge amount of fruit, especially apples, just by asking around.

I’m looking forward to trying the new apples! Especially fermented…

As I’ve mentioned, my husband and I recently relocated to the rural prairies. I think the circumstances of our move warrant some discussion here, as it wouldn’t have been possible without some inspiration and open-mindedness about alternative paradigms for sheltering ourselves. Basically, we’re squatting on an old farm site.

The owner is, of course, perfectly aware we’re here. We’re living here in exchange for the maintenance of the homestead, which had been empty for two years prior to our arrival. The farmhouse is old but charming. The yard site is a few acres and has on it an old barn, chicken coop, greenhouse, two gardens and three large ponds. The arrangement allows us to have a functioning farm with low expenses and the owner gets the old family farm kept up. Our time here is indefinite. No money has changed hands.

I have been counseled by a number of people to get things in writing. In fact, we have no formal arrangement here. Our family member living nearby who helped facilitate the arrangement has called it “a gentleman’s deal”, which I believe means they spat and shook on it. The man who owns the house is really very relaxed and nice. He enjoys a reputation for being honest and fair. One’s reputation out here is the rural equivalent of a feedback form.

I consider our arrangement to be a salient example of creating a life in concert with permaculture principles; of viewing these ideas outside of the garden. It was largely our desire to move as fully as possible into the informal economy that led us here.  We, like so many, are striving for the security of a life more connected to its land base, food and energy; more rooted in a place and community. The informal economy generally keeps energy cycling within the community and builds local history, good and bad. Trade is common out here.

Ultimately, the situation was borne of a “needs and yields” analysis. We needed access to land with a decent home on it and the owner needed someone to mow the grass and keep the rodents from moving in. We asked ourselves how this might be achieved outside of current structures. I feel confidant that since the arrangement meets both of our needs so well it is something we can trust. I’m also idealistic (naïve?) enough to give this a try, trusting in right intentions.

I feel that it would be helpful to note that as this culture starts to shift because of any combination of the imminent collapse scenarios our concept of what a home can or should be will likewise shift. Many families may find themselves already having to scale back their expectations in terms of cleanliness or space; more will certainly find themselves in this position. Likely we will also see many more multi-family and/or multi-generational living arrangements. These not only make financial sense, but they make sense from a work-share perspective when times are harder. It also makes sense to me, especially in times of scarcity, to rethink current means of land access. There is land being wasted which could certainly be repopulated in a way that builds capacity, community and fertility.

I think the great shift in how we consider housing and what a family *actually* needs will be evident once all those obscene motor homes get hydraulically expanded for the last time to become multi-family dwellings.

Achillea millefolium

How do I begin to describe the myriad uses of this modest, lovely flower? Or my feelings about its wildness? It doesn’t grow in large colonies (not in my area, anyway), nor try to muscle its way above the vetches and clovers by the roadside; if you weren’t looking for it, you might miss it.

Yarrow has a rich and diverse folkloric history, from I-Ching divinations to witch hunts to the battle of Troy. It has a long and continual history of use which makes it especially reliable as a herbal medicine. It also has a long history as a fodder plant, companion plant, compost plant and formerly enjoyed popularity as a vegetable.

The flower heads are dried and can be used in a range of preparations. Typically, I use them in a tea that I boil, rather than let steep (the difference between a decoction and an infusion). The fresh leaves and flowers may be used as a poultice to stop bleeding and promote healing. Yarrow is typically used as a diaphoretic, especially for colds, flus and fevers. It increases circulation, aids digestion, regulates the function of the liver and is considered a general tonic and stimulant. It has antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and pain relief indications, among many others. Lots more info may be found here (pdf).

Yarrow makes a perfect companion plant in the garden, having almost as many uses here as in medicine. It is often referred to as a nurse plant for its beneficial influence on neighboring plants, generally stimulating growth as well as the essential oil production in herbs grown near it. It is used extensively as a compost activator much like stinging nettle and in biodynamic preparations. Yarrow has deep taproots which makes it drought tolerant, good for erosion control and a rich source of minerals for livestock and soil. As a companion plant yarrow also attracts beneficial insects such as ladybugs and predatory wasps.

I am continually awestruck by how much abundance is right beneath our feet, or quietly existing within tall grass, or in marshy places. Perhaps what amazes me most about wild plants like yarrow is that they don’t require my cultivation. They don’t require my presence at all. I’ve been spending so much time bent over tools and soil here; hewing out space for the foods I’m used to, when all around me is a riot of rambunctious growth. Learning wild foods makes sense to me. These plants propagate themselves, are generally resistant to pest outbreaks, droughts etc and don’t require any effort on my part, other than the responsible gathering of them.