Living only a few minutes from the Mississippi (way up hill in our case) is most likely going to provide some wonderful fishing for my husband and maybe even me.
You can see Iowa from here!
Yet this will also mean something I didn’t count on…..rattle snakes. I was told by a neighbor that they occassionally make their way up to our area and to look for them basking in the sun in one of our flat fields-the one that I hoped to grow food on and have to cross to get to my crab apple trees.
All clear? You never know.
We visited Black Hawk Island which is a part of the river just after that comment (in which the same man told us to not wander too far into the brush because there are predators just waiting to eat us there). I stuck to the shore. Sometimes, I wish I had a talent for nature writing so that I could describe things like this in an engaging way.
On some level, while I believed him about the predators in the state park, I thought he was pulling my leg about rattlers so when one of the childrens friends was over visiting my daughter- I asked him. This boy was raised as a hunter and as a hunter has a huge amount of knowledge regarding Midwestern wildlife and hazards. He confirmed that we could possibly have rattlers and advised me to find out about water moccasins too, but didn’t think it was likely that the most deadly of rattlers, like Diamond Back were that far north, yet said, “you never can tell, just keep your eyes wide open”. He proceeded to give me a first aid lesson should anybody get bit. I always ignored “how to treat snake bites” in survival and first aid and even herbal manuals. Just didn’t think I would ever run into a poisonous one or a person who got bit (Plus I am very silly about snakes. Don’t like to talk about them much. Getting over it). I am adding the knowledge to my repertoire now though.
Our neighbor with the chickens told us how something was attacking her chickens, leaving her to cleanup headless carcasses. They set a trap with a dead fish and finally caught the culprit. They expected a fox but got a mink instead.We found one headless hen on our land so I get it.
We smell fox on our land. They smell like skunk but not as rank. We have not seen sight nor heard sound of the critter as of yet. We smell it mostly near our barn- and yet the neighbors ducks chase her cats into that area every morning and come back alive. Hysterical site! I might not have to do anything about it as the neighbors are all after it. Poor thing. But I do understand the need to “be after it”. So much for being all kind to animals.
Garry went golfing with our real estate agent yesterday and got some tips about how to socially handle that oil spill. We are getting somewhere. I made him promise to call the local head honcho (I am not sure of the actual title) but he may not go that route after speaking to the agent. We have to pow wow when he gets back tomorrow.
I have warned him-Do not come back without Amish Kohlrabi!
The first time I had heard of eating dandelions, it was from my ex sister in law whose mother was Korean. My ex SIL told of a painful childhood memory in which her mother would come out and eat dandelions in front of the neighborhood kids who would then make fun of the woman. I probably had eaten dandelions at home, but the store bought kind because when I first consciously tried them they seemed familiar to me.
For about a year or so now, I have been dreaming of my farm and what I want to plant there. I didn’t realize that how I was planning things was perhaps different from how other people see things. At a blog I frequent, Simple Frugal Green Co-op, the article of the day was about sunflowers (good information, go read it) and the question was, paraphrase-”what non edible plants are you growing?”
From my perspective, at the garden plot and on the farm, most things in my control are or will be edible in some way-for me, the bees or the soil when turned under. I do concentrate on food for me first though and that is the focus of this article.
Many of the plants that are at the farm, yet out of my control are also edible. Even peony (roots used in medicine) which I found growing wild and day lily, also wild and a small patch of common poppy (where do you think poppy seeds come from?) have edible parts. My neighbor is collecting seeds for me to plant more poppys in the fall. This is where you get the edible seeds from. Sure there are things there that are not edible but I didn’t put them there myself.
At the plot, I have one non edible, Victorian Straw Flower.This was given to me and I took it because I was curious about it and as far as I know, it isn’t edible at all but I haven’t checked. I also have one carnation in a pot on the porch. I have heard contradictory points of view on whether its edible or not, but it is a good one for sachets. My rose scented geranium is edible as well. Both are quite lovely.
The head botanist of the Chicago park district gave me chrysanthemum left overs. Some species are edible as mine are, both leaves and flowers, not sure about the roots as of yet. I have them in my plot and a couple up at the farm too. I plan on roses, also edible (both petals and rosehips) and on marigold which I saw a character eating in the movie Monsoon Wedding but don’t know how to use as of yet and also, calendula is of the same family but I don’t drink it, just use it for skin care products, yet some do add it to infusions intended for beverages. Lavender too. In a pot on the porch and one up at the farm.
I was also given a Mexican sunflower by the head botanist but I am not sure if its edible or not. It doesn’t matter as I am growing five edible sunflowers at my plot. Edible and heirloom no less.The Mexican ones can feed the bees.
I plan on actually landscaping the farm. I know that there are gorgeous flowers that could work well, for example tansy. Viola. Johnny Jump Ups (sort of a viola). I plan on doing a lot of edibles and I think I am drawn to them in general but I also believe that I must have been so intent on finding out what constitutes food that I can’t bring myself to be frivolous with non edibles. You can find so much beauty in nature, some of it is just ornamental and that isn’t a bad thing at all in itself, but the next time you see an ornamental, find out if you can eat it and if you can, consider if you actually will. Make sure you have the correct species first though.
Personally, I don’t differntiate between medicinal and “edible” as being two seperate areas as I ascribe to the following:
“Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food” Hippocrates
I may not actually chose to eat any of these things, but I really like having the option. Am I alone in this?
I had a nearly perfect day yesterday. It was relaxing, I sold some eggs for a neighbor at the farm (another story), met more beekeepers (actually knew them but didn’t know they were beekeepers), met a garden expert who taught me a thing or two, baked a loaf of sage bread of my own invention and was in the middle of baking a cake when I got a phone call from my son.
“Mom, I think you should come and pick up J. She fell off the bike and can’t walk home.” He was cool and suave about it. I asked where they were. Another boy took the phone, a good friend, adopted son # 5. He gave me directions, too precise in my opinion. I started thinking that if he thought that I didn’t know where he lived when in fact he knows that I do, the fall could be pretty bad. I asked to talk to J and they got confused. I asked “Is she conscious?!!!!” She was, but bleeding a lot according to them. “From where?!!” Her head, but she is okay they insisted! No need for an ambulance. Luckily I was less than five minutes away.
When I got to the boys house, I found my daughter on a bed complete with a towel to keep the bedspread clean, bandaged up like a mummy and the smell of rubbing alcohol permeating the air, two boy doctors (adopted son #2 and #5) at her side, one boy (#1) was in tears because she was riding on his pegs when they hit a crack in the sidewalk, my son trying to calm him down and my daughter laughing like a frigging idiot. Covered in blood? Hardly but she had hit her head. Scrapes are pretty bloody but the one on her head was what was freaking everybody out. The boy doctors insisted that until the lump the size of a golf ball formed, there was a deep hole in her head. They had put their fingers in it!
I made them go scald their hands and placed all the bloody cotton in a sandwich bag. Hugged #1 and assured him that it wasn’t his fault, that I wasn’t mad and helped my woozy J to the car. I got her home, removed the mummy wrap and washed everything and determined that the head wound was not so bad but the knee needed stitches for sure. Then I called adopted son #3 to talk to his mother, a nurse, who told me to get back in the car right now and take the girl to the emergency room for a neurological exam, even if she was alert. So I did.
The Adopted sons got on their bikes, went to Walgreens and out of their feelings of extreme guilt, they bought her a gift bag of goodies then came along to the emergency room to wait with my boy. Sweet. Three stitches later and a list of warning signs for me to watch (for at least 48 hours folks), in case of a slow brain bleed, I drove everybody safely home, bikes in trunk,well after midnight, then spent the rest of the evening setting my alarm as instructed in order to wake poor J up to see if she was alert.
I had one name in mind the entire time: Natasha Richardson. But all is well so far.
Today, there is an open house at the community garden which is why I came home with the kids (that and a dire need for a warm soothing shower). I woke up to find that it is storming here and hope that it will stop by the time the party is on. This is a great way to get more connected to others. I know my permaculture and beekeepers Yahoo Meetup crews are invited and look forward to meeting others, outside the groups, who share interests.
On Thursday, a fellow gardener and I were hoping that some day, we could over winter our plots. We want to experiment. I had been meaning to ask Kirsten, the director about that and so had he. He left before I did and I forgot all about it. As I left, I ran into Kirsten who was weeding the apple orchard. She mentioned to me that yes, in fact she would love it if we tried to over winter and would join us herself in the experiment. I’m trying to decide if I want to build a cold frame or go for a polytunnel but I haven’t run this by Garry, my husband yet because he is up at the farm up to his neck with work. I don’t think he want’s to hear about one more project at the moment.
Today was the day we were supposed to go on that forage but that is on hold. We also have an event next week-building rustic fences out of logs, twigs, etc. The woman we were supposed to go forage with is teaching that one and I hope we can be here for it. This woman, Nance Klehm, has evaded me forever which so often happens when you really want to meet and learn from somebody. They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I may not be ready then, but almost!
So he called me last night after taking his nightly walk through the property. This is how he thinks. He happened by the property line that butts up against the township centers property line. The last time we walked it together, we noticed that while somebody was mowing that parcel the day before, they came across our line and chopped down two pine trees that were alive and well. These trees were somebodies live Christmas trees, rather small, but still-ours. Accident?
Then last night, he saw something odd. He saw an oil spill on our land. From what he said, it looked like somebody was discarding oil purposely rather than disposing of it properly and he said there was lots of it. I went to bed so pissed off I could of throttled the responsible party (which I will not do, as tempting as it is at the moment)
The township center has a shed where we notice farmers depositing grain. The shed is some sort of collection area but we did confirm that ownership was the township. We need more details but I will tell you this: I didn’t want to have to make enemies up there but that doesn’t mean I am unwilling to go right ahead and kick some ass if I have too. Figuratively of course. I am not one to bow down and let things like this go. Justice! I demand it!
Its disgusting at best and illegal on top of that. I also won’t accept a simple “I didn’t know” excuse. Everybody knows that its illegal and everybody knows it not their land but ours. Some neighbors. Can’t wait to meet them.
So dear readers, I need advise on two things:one is the best way to approach this without getting a lawyer (I know to keep my head and mind my manners) and two, how does one go about cleaning up an oil spill? By cleanup, I mean removing toxins from the land it has contaminated. Mushrooms?
…… far superior to any others I have found so far. We visited the farmers market near the farm last Saturday. I found that prices were just this side of cheaper in general at the market whereas the supermarket is expensive up there (and the other option was Walmart which my family dragged me into and I found to be just as expensive as city supermarkets as well, so where is that price war thing they do?).
We bought kohlrabi, something that never appealed to me until then. The kohlrabi in question was huge, nearly the size of a grapefruit, with firm shiny skin. I couldn’t resist. I asked how its prepared. The man told me, “We peel it and cut it into strips and eat it raw”.
I also got some sugar snap beans (I think that’s the name) but in the process, apparantly mixed up my batch with shelling peas. The man stopped me. The price was the same so that wasn’t it. He asked me if I wanted to shell or eat the skin? Eat it of course. He then went into my basket and picked out identical looking shelling peas from my batch. I was astounded and asked him how he could tell. He said simply, “We’re used to it”. I felt idiotic but on closer inspection, the shelling peas are flatter. I am sure that he thought I had fallen to earth from Mars the night before.
I will say that the taste of both vegetables were amazing. Clearly picked fresh. How do they do it? I am going to find out. There must be “farm like the Amish” books out there.
The Amish intimidated me at first. Not because of them but because of me. I just don’t know if there is any special etiquette I should follow in their presence. Plain ignorance on my part, but I decided to just be nice. Not so hard. They are a good deal more friendly on their part.
We are known to be strangers in general so most of the population tries to meet our eyes to give a welcome. We are still going on “eyes forward, look for prey” city siting.People are curious. Amish included. Some are shy, but nobody is rude.
The sherif drove by with his sirens on one day and despite being enroute to an emergency (turned out to be a bad motorcycle accident down the road and not a break in as we supposed), he waved. People wave all the time as they drive past us, tractor, cart or passenger, doesn’t matter. Garry, my husband, waves back just right, on time. I haven’t gotten the hang of the timing yet.When we drive along, farmers in their fields stop to wave to us as well. I can’t believe I am saying this, but its actually fun.
Back to the vegetables, we stopped at a large farm vegetable stand on the way home and they had kohlrabi the size of lemons and with dull wimpy skin for a higher price. No wonder I was never intrigued by this root vegetable. At the grocery store yesterday, here in the city, I found more and it looked even worse.No wonder we are such creatures of habit when it comes to food. If it doesn’t look good, nobody will try it. My children are vegetable racists. They will eat those they are familiar with but don’t venture willingly into color or class, especially not dirty root veggies that we find here. They devoured the kohlrabi up at the farm.
We worked away until a neighbor felt sorry enough for us to bring over a tractor with a mower.
Several neighbors wanted to hogbrush the land for us but we were finding all sorts of dangerous obstacles abandoned in the tall grass so we did a walk ahead of the tractor. We had so much out there. Junk. Metal. Pieces of rotten wood. Rocks. Tons and tons of rocks.
We only have this much more to deal with……….
and then some.
My personal projects? I took care of the ancient apple tree. It was being strangled out by all kinds of wild things.
I also sprayed it with a solution of soap and water. I had bought pesticides but lost my nerve at the last minute. Just couldn’t do it. I don’t know if the soap will work or not. Some of the apples already have worms but many don’t. The tree will be pruned in January.
Another one that I worked on deligently was the raspberry patch. It looked like this when I stumbled upon it.
This isn’t all of it either. It turns to the right and continues for several feet. The problem here, besides the tangled mess it is, was that its a thorny black cap berry. We harvested as we went along and got about a gallon full of the berries in over the course of several hours. It now looks like this.
I notice grape leaves growing along with the berry on some trellises to the right. I also notice tons more scattered around here and there in other areas of the land but not black caps, bigger, maybe true raspberry and of course-all thorny.
I froze some up at the farm and I made a brandy infusion while there. Recipe will be up at my personal cookbook site along with photo.
When I came home, I made jam.
Our well is being drilled as we speak. Will be writing about water rations some time soon, maybe tomorrow. It wasn’t hard but it was not a pleasure exactly either.
We had virtually no communication devices on this last trip so when we were driving back and we heard about that memorial celebrating the life of a drug addict and also how Palin chose that same day to leave office, we were like…..”Who gives a crap?”(Okay, other than some seriously snide remarks, we would of asked the same question regardless.)
We didn’t bother to go online to find out more juicy tidbits about either story once home either. Trying to get the weather reports proved to be invasive (with the same story over and over again), so we tuned that out too.
Its good to be away like that, so completely isolated from technology. And honestly, up there, at the farm, the world could of ended and we wouldn’t have known.
I am still a bit tired, just got back late last night. will be back to normal tomorrow. Take care everybody.
Off to the farm again. I wanted to share this really cool experience with you from our last visit. We stopped by an antique/junk shop to look at bikes. From the parking lot, the bike my daughter wanted to check out looked like this.
As we got closer, we found this.
Can you see the baby? We will wait for the nest to vacate and check in again on the bike.
Also, for those of you who really, really care….here is the compost toilet husband made in a couple of hours. I somehow managed to get rid of the rest of the photos showing how he did it.
We will seal the wood when we get up to the farm and then I can take more photos. We made it a few inches taller than the bucket so that squatting doesn’t harm our old bones, but we will prop it up on a bed of bricks. Easy to clean with a hose.
You need a five gallon bucket, plywood, a toilet seat, screws, hinges and a drill or a screw driver and of course, a saw. I have heard rumors that hardware stores will cut wood to specs if you buy from them so if you don’t trust your ability to square things off, try that.
This is our first time staying at the farm. We have been renting motels. What stopped us was the toilet. Problem solved. Now if we can actually compost the product, we will be on our way to being tried and true bushmen and women:)
Also we will be gone till Wednesday or Thursday of next week and we do not have internet connection at the house so I will be MIA as far as this blog goes as well as missing reading your wonderful thoughts. Famous last words….”I’ll be back”.
Lets suppose for a minute that the Shit Does NOT Hit the Fan after all. I don’t really believe that it hasn’t already on a rather small scale, but lets suppose that the economy, environmental issues and swine flu plus other bugs (including insane world leaders), simply stop being threats. What then?
We (being husband and me) will be living on the farm within two years if all goes well, in less time if the world collapses around us. . The kids? It will be up to them (in a couple of years they will be off to college they say) but I suspect that I will have to always include the possibility that they will live with us again at some point in time.
Being prepared for the worst is a great thing and if you start, you suddenly find that along the way, you have adopted a way of life. I read somewhere (forgot where exactly) recently that many believe that the current frugality is just a phase and that once the world rights itself (the thought is not mine but the author of this “somewhere”), many may go back to the old destructive habits. That is most likely true, but it won’t be for me. I don’t see a lot of people doing this frugal prepared thing anyway so its a moot point in my opinion. I am looking at the possibility from a personal perspective. Reality is, what we have been doing to survive crosses over nicely to other aspects of life.
We have been living an alternative lifestyle as a couple for most of our time together (19 years of marriage in addition to living together first). We intensified it when our children were born. Very little of the neo- frugal movement is a surprise to us. The secrets revealed are not genius or innovative or secret for that matter. Homesteading is what we moved into as the result of the worries we all carry nowadays, but homesteading to SURVIVE, not for any other reason (for example, not pleasure or as a sideline hobby or a sideline business or for the retirement years).
It isn’t likely that we will go back to what others long for nostalgically because we both recognized years ago that this life style had an expiration date. So what are we going to do about our futures now that we have a sanctuary, a stash and a small (but shrinking) nest egg? Do we continue on as if earth was going to plummet into the sun or do we actually start seeing ourselves as a part of a more viable future and start using our resources to make retirement years more comfortable for us? If the latter, how?
The advantage of owning is that we have options. We can go off grid completely. My husband wasn’t into that a short time ago, but his injury and subsequent unemployment was the necessary shift he needed. He sees now that the shit doesn’t need to hit the fan on a worldwide scale in order to learn to do things without the system. By going off grid as much as possible, we are going to have more money. He is ever logical.
Growing our own food? I have spoken of this and it isn’t completely feasible to be totally independent in that way but we could come close enough for comfort. One thing I have been exploring is buying shares in an animal rather than raising our own. I still don’t think I could slaughter a creature I raised myself, but you never know. By buying shares we save a good deal of money. Its something to do now. If we bought half a cattle, the cost amounts to 1.50 a pound! No matter the cut. A big upfront investment but it is doable if it is made into a goal.
Canning is another way-any kind of preserving. Next year, I am going to plant a monster garden up North. I plan on finding a caretaker if need be. I should of done it this year but I just didn’t think of that option and even so, we just didn’t have water.
We will have a well. We will have a masonry heater or solar or both. We would like to cut the ties to electricity but at the moment we haven’t fully thought it through.
What remains to be seen really is making a living. That stumps me. We need to go beyond egg money.
I have been so focused on surviving collapse that I didn’t pay much mind to an actual retirement. It seems at the moment that we are already retired. We had our own personal collapse. Neither of us can find work. Husband can go back to work for light duty but his company is at a standstill because real estate developers are not paying up. I have said before, we were prepared. We are weathering it all in a decent enough way. This gave us the picture of the future, when we both will survive on limited income and with our children away to college. We have some lean years ahead. Yet this doesn’t feel like a threat to me. I know how to cope. I have all the skills. I just have to think more clearly about our personal reality and come up with a more specific plan.
The Illinois Senate has passed a bill that would legalize medical marijuana. The next step is to pass the bill in the House. I had heard rumors about this for years now so it may be a few more years before the legalization is complete.
I think this is good news on the one hand. I don’t feel that marijuana is a dangerous “drug”. Instead, I see it as a potent herb. The brain rot that is associated with this herb is also proving to be false. Not long ago, the results of a study were announced. Red Wine and THC (rats didn’t roll joints and toke away, so I assume they were fed a liquid version in food) were both proven to grow brain cells. Yes, grow them. The excitement of this study had a great deal to do with the potential of helping Alzheimers patients.The Red wine study went on to gain more press coverage while the THC study seems to have gone underground. The researchers on the red wine study were confident while the THC people were cautious in their statements.
On the other hand, if you keep tabs at all on the states that have already legalized medical use of marijuana, you know that a battle rages with the Feds. Drug raids on dispensaries, patients who grow their own for medical use are also raided, plants confiscated and patients arrested.
The opponents argue old school style, that is they bring up notions that are reminiscent of the first war on the herb, fueled by personal agendas and societal fears that belong in a bygone century. I leave it up to the reader to research the history in the United States.
Like all herbs, not everyone will need it. And like say……codeine, some may become habitual users. That is just human nature in the first place and then there is biological and genetic reasons that one may become a habitual user of any drug. I personally can’t see doctors around here prescribing marijuana. Its like pulling teeth to get them to give any kind of pain killers (as I found out recently). They prefer to send you off to specialists like physical therapists in order to keep the medical profession thriving and the patient as uncomfortable as possible thereby dependent on the parts of the system that insurance pays a lot for.
I grew up in a hippie area. I knew lots of pot heads. They didn’t progress to heroin as the commercials will have you think. The brain rot? Maybe its the ZigZag papers or the glue on those papers and not the drug? Maybe its pesticides? Have you ever heard somebody tell a story of smoking pot and getting high only to find out later they were ripped off and had bought a bag of parsely? And yet they got high anyway? Maybe brain rot works the same way. Smoke this and you will be a vegetable and so we have stereotypical pot users convinced that they are vegetables.
I don’t claim any of the above to fact. Merely speculation.
As a mother, I don’t fear drugs in general. I am the responsible party when it comes to raising my kids and I have been pretty open about drugs in that we talk about them, not as taboo things but as a reality. I talked to the kids about medical marijuana and asked them one simple question. “If I used it when it became legal, how would you feel?” They thought it was joke and kept on joking but I don’t think that they found it odd in anyway. They just thought the idea of their mom being a pot head was too funny in the same way they laugh on the rare occassion that I get a little too tipsy!
At 16, they are not invovled in drugs. They have friends who do smoke pot and they are not tempted as of yet. We keep that line of communication open. If they want to do it, they will tell us. I know many parents think their kids will lie about it but mine wouldn’t. Besides its not like I couldn’t tell.
So what are the potential problems that you all see if marijuana were legalized for medical use? Do you fear it would be legalized across the board and then all hell will break loose? Just how would the legalization make children more vulnerable to using drugs? I can’t see it myself. So tell me if I’m missing something.
