They're BAccckkkk!

Another sunny day! Today I was planting seeds (in the garden beds and tree stumps)... which is always fun- but while i was putting new food into the ground i found a bunch of herbs I planted last year coming back up! This is when it feels like all the work paid off... not that it was ever work. Quite some hardy organic herbs here, because they had to withstand cold down to -20 degrees F, no sunshine at all, and feet of snow and ice piling & melting and piling again. **************************************************************** ......... Introducing the Luck Cabin's herb gardens :::: * catnip! (above) oregano! (below)

chivessss....

winter savory even lived!

some kind of fancy purple sage...

and comfrey (can not live without it, it is instant bee sting relief!)

lavender... for washing my hair in!

parsley!

Thyme!!!! mmmm

Bee balm (the red and the magenta kind)...

all my mints, including chocolate!

sage :)))

and Yarrow (i use in my homemade bug repellent oil!)

YAY!!!!!! There is lemon balm and hyssop and goji berries that came back too... the dwarf fruits trees i planted last summer are making leaves and flower blooms. This is when i feel like i am in heaven.

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XoxooxoxxoX

Organic Gardening = Making Groceries At Home

Even though it snowed last night, the sun came back out today - finally in a position to shine on the organic garden area! I decided it was time to get started on my spring/summer preparations... first, finish raking in the donkey poop I had been dumping over the fence all winter... and churning up the top soil & donkey poop I had layered into the garden beds last summer.

DONKEY POOP + TOP SOIL (removed from around the barn) = amazing black composted dirt !!!

I made a new garden bed too today! As ya'll can see, I dont go for the high class look in my garden... i use whatever i have around to build with (meaning no $$$ is needed, no store has to be driven to). Sticks, old lumber left over from building, and rocks are how I put it together --- and its filled with 100% donkey doo doo.

I had some hay that got moisture in it, and was no good to feed to the animals... so i started using that for my paths I walk on, in between garden beds.

In the pic below... are some of the semi-raised beds I have slowly been filling up. If you are not impressed with how it looks, take a look at the work I had to do to get it to this point...

click here ::: Flashback to A YEAR AGO!

Some of the donkey poop had grass seeds in it, that have begun to grow.

I weed it out, then give it back to JuJu and the chickens!! The hens looooove to run off with the whole clump of grass .... :))))

THINGS THAT CAME BACK! :::::

so my fall winter garden didn't work out at all, because i had the big depressing surprise of having no sun during that time of the year (due to the placement of the mountain ridges). But many of the things i planted during that time stayed alive under the snow, they didn't die when wind & temperatures hit -20 f ...

My dwarf fruit tree have survived! The pear, peach and cherry!

and in my gardens beds...

the kale! the spinach!

the carrots! the rutabaga!

and many herbs are poking their first leaves through the leaves and soil - oregano, parsley, thyme, mint, bee balm, comfrey, chives, lavender and sage!

Xoxoxo

Watercress, from grocery to pond

When it comes to food and saving money I can be one of the most oportunistic shoppers ya eva' met. Not that I am the lady who pulls out all the coupons and holds up the line cause the half of them are expired- I am the lady who is secretly looking for produce that will keep on giving. Produce with seeds in it that I can plant (winter squash, apples, pears, avacodoe), root veggies (like turnips, rutabaga, radishes, beets) I can put the tops back in the ground to later eat their greens and get seeds from them after they flower, I even plant the bottoms of my onions and eat the green stems that grow back out.
My latest grocery find though has me majorly stoked! Watercress... organic watercress being sold not at the health food store but at the regular ole' grocery... watercress that still had it's ROOTS.
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I bought the watercress straight up to plant in my pond, mushy spring water spots...
I searched around my pond for a good soggy place to plant those roots in the ground, in hopes to have watercress growing in bunches over the next few years.
I dug a hole easily with a stick, you can see the water seeping into the hole...
Looking bee-U-Tee-ful... now i can pick a few greens off to eat and let the rest make a home here.
I love LoVe LOVE grocery items that keep on giving. :)
Do any of ya'll do this too, with grocery foods?
UPDATE:::
Thanks to oko box reader Jason for pointing out that this is a different kind of Cress then watercress, it's called * upland cress * and does not grow in the water like watercress. It grows on land.
Go to Jason's Blog, he has cool as hec pictures of animals he caught on one of those special motion cameras!

xoxox

Mystery Squash!

It totally looks like a watermelon, but since I had collected the seeds to this winter squash last year myself and watched it grow on a distinctly winter squash vine I knew what it had to be. I just didn't know what kind of squash it would be on the inside. It appeared that a buttercup & a spagetti squash mixed genetics...
but ya can't judge a squash by the color of it's skin.
I finally opened one up this morning to find that the inside looked just like a spagetti squash, but smelled a bit sweeter. (If ya think I look proud in the picture, it's cause I am super proud of my mixed up squash! Should I call it buttergetti or spagetticup?)

I get really into saving seeds from just about any food that holds them, winter squash are not only delicious but they are also way too expensive in the store (sometimes costing $16 for one organic butternut!)...and if you buy the seeds in packets to plant they are even a bit pricey considering how many actually come in one squash.

The real test though was to cook it and see if the taste of the mystery squash was altered...

it has the shape, texture (forking out the spagetti shaped strands) and inside color of a spagetti squash, but the outside green stripes and the taste are sweet like a buttercup! How rad is that!?!

This is something I am gonna dork out over for a while. :)

Xoxoxo

Grocery Dependence & The Apocalypse

This picture above is me in my garden area, where I just planted seeds for a fall/winter crop of cold weather veggies. Right now it looks desolate and it is. There is really nothing to eat in there yet and during spring time it didn't do well since I had just cleared out the area, and only now was able to build up the soil with donkey poop & top soil from around the barn (the soil was really acidic from the mountain laurel all around.)
A garden takes time to grow.
Which brings me to my annoyance with being dependent still on groceries to provide me with the food I need, like I am stuck in the cycle of the system and don't really have anyone to teach me how to get out. What makes it worse is I have problems with food due to mal-absorption disease Celiac Sprue and when I am not eating exactly what I need to be I become really freaking sick- seriously my body is kinda a mess! Because of my lifestyle, because I make everything from scratch, I am setting my cabin up to be partly off grid, I live in the forest, know many native plants... i do things like gravity fed water and gray water system, etc - people tend to think I am going to survive some kind of apocalypse. Or peak oil, end of times, civilization switch. But I am here to say I am pretty sure I will die out due to my dietary complications & grocery dependence, and that learning these homesteading & rewilding skills are more for reasons of poverty & disease then surviving some kind of worldwide breakdown.
To be honest, I like being the girl scout who's prepared for everything - thinking I'd die out in some kind of Rapture-lyptic Peak Oil 2012 freak show kinda sucks and makes me feel like a failure. Even though it's not related to anything I have done, just a failure of my body to ever have come to a fully functioning level after almost dieing from Celiac Sprue back in 2001. I actually have never cared about any kind of 'end of times', because my personal 'end of times' came when the economy bottomed out and I didn't have enough money for rent & food & basic bills anymore. My apocalypse has been happening for a few years now - and even though no zombies are coming after me, and my neighbors aren't coming into my house stealing my food at gun point, it can hardly be said that being poor isn't equal to being threatened by zombies, in this modern state of time/habits.
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I am a product of my upbringing. So yeah I can identify some plants in the forest, yeah I can talk back and forth with a screech owl, and even if the grid fell apart I'd still have running water..... but I STILL will cry when I run out of olive oil & lara bars. Not cause I am addicted but because my stomach will hurt so bad from the dietary switches I will most likely die or kill myself.
So I guess, ya'll can come take over my Luck Cabin in the event of Peak Oil-alypse 2012.... just wait though till I am dead, I swear it'll only take a few weeks.

Xoxoxo
PS- Watch this segment on CNN where the reporter talks to my friend from highschool (Jenga Mwendo) about how hard it is to get food in the 9th ward of New Orleans (the city I grew up in), all these years after the hurricane. That hurricane was their 'apocolypse'.

Organic Fall Garden Frenzy

RECIPE:

• donkey poop
• trampled top soil
• hay
• sawdust/wood chips

I know. It's not that exciting looking, it's just dirt and some garden beds that are so naturalized that they hardly look like garden beds. I made them to blend in with the surrounding forest on purpose. :)
But the thing is, it's not just dirt, it's not just garden beds for me- it's the food producing project I have been working my ass off (mine for realz, not the donkey) on for months now and the last few weeks have been a non stop, steady race to get a some beds ready for a fall garden.

I started building raised bed gardens along the donkey & chicken fence - since JuJu the donkee has taken no interest in the leaves or fruit of squash plants, she doesnt even like kale all that much, I figured this was a great place to expand. I started by shoveling off rich black top soil trampled and churned in front the barn, mixing that with unwanted hay, and piles of donkey dookie to make a SUPER fertile place to throw & grow some seeds.

To keep the dirt from falling backwards out the fence holes, I lined up pieces of scrap wood left over from building the mini barn (see pic below at bottom of fence.)

I am not all about making this look eco chic & fancy, I AM all about making this free, simple, eco friendly - by using left over materials and things already available, by not driving out and guzzling gas to buy products that guzzled gas to get to the store.

In fact the whole point of my garden is to feed me, in all seasons, in all financial states - I want to be free as possible from the albatross of vehicles, groceries, and money $$$$$$!!!

This here is how I am trying to be free...........

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SEEDS I PLANTED:

• spinach
• radishes (red and white)
• rutabaga
• 3 types of kale (dinosaur, red russian, siberian)
• lettuce
• carrots (red, yellow and orange)
• beets
• broccoli raab
• peas

Xoxoxo

Diggin' Blue Taters!

YAY! My organic garden made me a lil' pile of blue potatoes! Pretty neat-o!

Xoxox

CSA Saturday! (Community Supported Agriculture)

Every saturday I go out, down the road to an organic farm that's in my 'hood - a farm that has a box of freshly picked organic veggies, herbs and fruit waiting for me! This year I was not able to get my own organic garden prepared fast enough to grow most of my own food, and I was lucky enough to remember that a few years ago at the Waynesville NC Farmers Market there was this awesome lady named Julie who was bringing boxes of food all the way from Hot Springs for her CSA members......
I totally called Mountain Harvest Organics up on da' phone and joined!

So here is how it works for me - since I am local instead of picking up my organic box of goodies at a market I go to the farm every saturday. I look forward to it all week long! I pull up to a barn, which has a second story that was converted into a house for the farm interns. (Neato, right? Right on...) Underneath that barn house are the freezers where my box is kept --- but before I show you that, check out their awesome greenhouses ... There are several greenhouses where food is being grown, to extend the seasons for their CSA members and their own kitchen table. This is in addition to the 4 acres of farmland they recently fenced in high enough to keep out the deer. There are also pigs and goats - which I hope to get to pics of another time for ya'll!

Inside this greenhouse is tomatoes - which I totally can not eat... the cool thing about a small organic CSA is that the owners Julie and Carl are kind enough to replace/substitute some other veggies for the shit I am allergic too...YAY!

I usually pick up some potted herbs and flowers too, for discounted prices - they said late in the season people don't buy them much at the market so I have been building an herb empire at the Luck Cabin for a very small fee --- herbs i use in cooking every single day.

After getting some live herbs, I go down under the barn house to the big industrial looking fridge to grab my box!

I buy the big box - there are two sizes and the big one is really for a family but since I cook every single meal from scratch every single day and rely heavily on vegetables as the part of my diet I CAN have - I pay $25 for the week of cornucopia. Pretty sweet deal when you realize how much you pay for all this in the store - I get things like bok choy, chinese cabbage, broccoli, onions, kale, lettuce, kohlrabi, radishes, turnips, squash, cucumbers..... and even had two weeks of the most DELICIOUS strawberries of my LIFE!!!

I stick my money in an envelope - for this farm, I pay either per week, per month, and I bet they wouldn't mind if you paid for the year too! ;)

BTW- my last name is kinda mis-spelled here .... it's pronounced REE_SHARD.

Thanks to Julie and Carl for making my life 100x's easier, better, and tastier!!!!!!!!!!

XOXO