primalmommy on thu 16 aug 07
John, greetings from another canner whose kitchen is full of steam and
various smells: sticky sweet jam, tomatoes in the dehydrator, vinegar
and dill, clovey pickled beets, and the intoxicating perfume of red
haven peaches.
My 92 year old grandma just moved into a senior apartment, and I am
proud to have been given her old canner, along with one of my great
grandma Parker's. I learned to garden on my grandpa's farm and learned
to can in my grandma's farm kitchen -- usually peeling sinks-full of
blanched peaches or tomatoes, the way my kids do now.
Great Grandma's old enameled canner is coated with minerals on the
inside from decades of well water.. any chance your chemistry skills
extend to knowing how I might dissolve it?
My grandma's Ball Blue Book from 1941 came with the lot, and has a
stirring essay about canning for the war effort -- that I reprinted and
then translated to modern terms on my current blog. Since the average
American meal travels 1500 miles to our tables. the kind of petroleum
and resources required mean that the way we eat is (and always was) a
political choice, tied as always to oil, the environment, economy and
waste, corporate politics, peace and war.
Why I garden, and haunt farmer's markets:
1.) Once food is canned, shipped, processed and distributed, only a tiny
slice of the profit goes to the farmer/grower. It's not an accident that
small family farms are going the way of the buffalo. The government
policies of "get big or get out" for agriculture have led to a lot of
farm foreclosures in my part of the world.
2.) Local money stays local. Pick-your-own orchards, roadside produce
stands, and farmers markets mean local people have money to spend on
things like clay classes and pottery, among other things. Almost every
business and restaurant in my town now is a national chain, sucking
money out of town.
3.) We want a say in what chemicals we feed our kids. We can pay $8 a
pound at the health food store for grass fed meat (see Pollan's
"Omnivore's Dilemma" for why that matters) or we can eat grass fed,
DNR-checked venison for the cost of a CT hunting license. We can pay big
money for corporate organics flown here from California, or we can grow
our own, eat local and in season (see Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable,
Miracle" for why that matters) and can our summer wealth to eat all
winter.
I can buy "free range, organic" eggs from a huge corporate operation,
where free range means shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of birds in a
warehouse -- or I can stop whenever I see a rickety "EGGS" sign at some
roadside farm where hens scratch in the hedgerows and eat grass, bugs
and dinner scraps. Give me a round, bright orange, grass fed farm yolk
any day.
4.) Diabetes and heart disease run in my family, and I read labels.
Excessive sugar, salt, msg, fats and additives are in everything. I
prefer my back yard honey, good olive oil and ingredients that are
better for my kids' growing pre-teen bodies.
5.) Have you read the news lately? Recalls, tainted or poisonous
imports, BSE, yikes. I'll feed my own family, whenever I can.
John, I love that your kids are part of the cycle of earth + labor +
mother nature = food. We live in a scrappy little neighborhood behind
the walmart, right in the middle of an ugly sprawl of mini malls and car
dealers.. but our long narrow back yard has produced cherry trees, fresh
eggs, plums, elderberries, currants, gooseberries, ground cherries, and
honey -- plus an endless array of veggies in the years before this MFA
when my garden was enormous. This year it's mostly tomatoes, eggplants
and chard.
I'm planting cold weather crops now for my cold frames and hoop
greenhouse. I built one a few years back from pvc and plastic that had
me serving back yard salad during a blizzard on New Year's Day. After
two winters of service, though, it lifted itself up in a March
windstorm, wrapped itself around my windmill and beat itself to death.
So I got a bargain on a kit with steel poles and ground anchors this
year.
I really have no interest in the granolier-than-thou competition. I
could serve hand-picked, home made organic gooseberry jam with a bread
made from home-milled flour and baked in a wood fired backyard oven,
served on a hand thrown platter with a glass of homemade kefir... and
somebody would say, "What? You didn't churn the butter? " (lol) You
can't win, so I don't play. I'm all out of smug, anyway.
But I hope that by the time our sense of consumer entitlement fades, or
our monoculture crops fail or the house of cards comes tumbling down,
that somebody will have saved the heirloom seeds and breeds, along with
the skills of growing and preserving our own "slow food".
Hey, how did I get up here on this soapbox?
Yours
Kelly in Ohio
http://www.primalpotter.com
http://www.primalmommy.com/blog.html
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Dannon Rhudy on thu 16 aug 07
Kelly said:
> But I hope that by the time our sense of consumer entitlement fades, or
> our monoculture crops fail or the house of cards comes tumbling down,
> that somebody will have saved the heirloom seeds and breeds, along with
> the skills of growing and preserving our own "slow food".......
I have a fair-sized collection of true-seeds for crops. Some
of the old varieties do well, some are very prone to various
illnesses, as it were. Each year I winnow out some of the
less-successful, and each year I keep seed for the coming
year. I have some true-seed sweet corn, and potatoes kept
over winter are ready to make new ones by spring. Many
more. Lots of crops are available both for farm and garden
that are true-seed. There are, by the way, several true-seed
groups that can be found on the
internet. Seed will keep a long time, though germination rates
decline with age.
I have several old canning books, from mother and grandmothers.
And, at a local book sale, found one I didn't have - the 1941 Farm
Journal book of home canning. I don't much like to can, but
I do it for some things. Don't like frozen green beans, so those
get canned, and jams and such, pickles. The Farm Journal book
is fun to read. It is particularly interesting in it's point of view:
people can actually do things, and are not expected to be either
stupid or helpless. Mainly.
regards
Dannon Rhudy
Lee Love on thu 16 aug 07
On 8/16/07, primalmommy wrote:
> But I hope that by the time our sense of consumer entitlement fades, or
> our monoculture crops fail or the house of cards comes tumbling down,
> that somebody will have saved the heirloom seeds and breeds, along with
> the skills of growing and preserving our own "slow food".
Back around 1982 after a bout with divorce and I loosing my full
time job at UPS, I had a little severance pay coming. I was torn
between getting a computer, which were expensive & pretty limited at
the time, and getting a TiPi including everything I needed for 4
seasons living out doors. I decided to go with the package that
would make me more independent and I would get a computer when it was
possible to use living in the woods without electricity. I moved
into the woods adjacent to a friends abandon pig farm. Moved out in
a tent at first in the middle of February, but found a Nomadics Souix
style TiPi within the month. Folks that owned it before me lived in
it summers, when they went up to Traverse City to pick cherries.
Traded the color T.V. for a chainsaw. Did have a health club
membership, that allowed for daily showers.
Ended up getting a computer and modem around '84, after moving
to Minneapolis.
Growing up poor and having a father who was a mechanic before
his Korean War injuries kept him from working, had me learn early on
to do jury rigged fixes. I depend on them too much. A little more
time and care usually creates a better fix, even though I enjoy using
coat hangers and duct tape.
--
Lee in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
"For a democracy of excellence, the goal is not to reduce things to a
common denominator but to raise things to a shared worth."
--Paolo Soleri
Richard Aerni on thu 16 aug 07
>Kelly said:
>> But I hope that by the time our sense of consumer entitlement fades, or
>> our monoculture crops fail or the house of cards comes tumbling down,
>> that somebody will have saved the heirloom seeds and breeds, along with
>> the skills of growing and preserving our own "slow food".......
Kelly,
I know you're listening to Barbara Kingsolver's book, "Animal, Vegetable,
Miracle," so perhaps her husband's sidebars aren't included in the reading.
She/they discuss the heirloom seed/monoculture crisis in detail, and list
places around the world where heirloom seeds/genes are saved, as well as
living exchange programs to keep them planted each year. One factoid that I
recall is that in human history, we've used over 80,000 species of plants to
nourish us, but that now, 90% of our nourishment comes from seven species
only, with three corn, soybeans and rapeseed (canola) rapidly pushing the
other four out. Kind of scary, but also makes one think that it's possible
to give more meaning to living by doing something other than making pots!
Happy canning!
Richard Aerni
Rochester, NY
>
John Hesselberth on thu 16 aug 07
On Aug 16, 2007, at 2:24 PM, primalmommy wrote:
> Hey, how did I get up here on this soapbox?
Hi Kelly,
Wow, I guess my post really set you off. That was fun--I'll have to
see if I can do it again sometime. But you didn't mention one of the
biggest pleasures of growing and preserving your own food. FLAVOR!!
While the commercial growers are finally recognizing that flavor is
important, they have yet to come even close to matching the flavor of
a home grown tomato. We have some neighbors--raised in the city of
Boston-- who had never eaten a home grown tomato until we gave them
some a few years ago. Now, they won't even buy or eat a pasty store
bought one.
John
P.S. Oh, the lime deposits on your heritage canner? Well, they aren't
really hurting anything so I would be tempted to leave them as a
reminder of your grandmother and her wonderful talents. But if you
are determined to rejuvenate it, a little of that leftover vinegar
water from your pickling should take it out with heat and time. Or
you could scrape it off and put it in a glaze--it is mostly whiting
with a little iron oxide and a few other trace minerals mixed in. It
will add a little life to any glaze. See I knew I could make this
pottery-related.
P.P.S. And one of our daughters did churn butter with her daughter
just this summer. Judy and I cheat. We buy ours from an Amish farmer,
but the taste of that is also an order of magnitude better than
commercial butter. It actually is made from real cream.
P.P.P.S. And best wishes on your second year of art grad school. I'm
sure you will do well--you are lucky to have such a great teacher and
mentor.
www.frogpondpottery.com
"Man is a tool-using animal....without tools he is nothing, with
tools he is all" .... Thomas Carlyle
June Perry on fri 17 aug 07
I'm an old seed saver from way back. Tomato seeds can last a long time. I
wound up with a couple of hundred plants last year because I didn't think my
7-8 year old seeds would sprout. I soaked them for a week or two just to see if
a prolonged soak would wake them up and it did! I spent the spring looking
for homes for all those plants. Fortunately a gal who owned her own restaurant
took over 100 off my hands.
Squash seeds last a long time too and you actually get more fruit from the
older seeds.
My lettuce is all now going to seed and I'll save some and the rest I'll
sprinkle around the plants and next spring I'll get a lot of volunteers that
I'll dig up and plant where I want.
For those wanting to do things the old timey way, there's a wonderful book
by Carla Emery called "The Encyclopedia of Country Living". It has everything
in there from butchering to making your own soda crackers, canning, etc.- a
fun read.
There are seed swaps on the Internet and a simple google search should bring
some up.
Many of the main stream seed catalogues now sell a lot of the heirloom
vegetable seeds as well.
Time to get my hand watering done. It's going to be over 90 today! Maybe
I'll make a small batch of pickles later.
Regards,
June
http://shambhalapottery.blogspot.com/
http://www.angelfire.com/art2/shambhalapottery
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pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on thu 23 aug 07
Hi Dannon, Kelly, all...
I am definitely not at the front-of-the-class on this stuff...having just a
laymans osmosis-gather from ambient snippets which drift bye or which I
drifted bye...so...
Just thinking out loud a little...and I am sure many here already know this
stuff,
but just fun to ramble a little - so...
As you and others may know, since retreat of the last Glaciations, which had
lain
down the abundant and varied and rich mineral laden Geologic silts in their
wakes...the mineral contents of Soils worldwide, or rather, the quality of
mineral content upon which Plants depend, has been diminishing, however it
may be that the various Plants abide or accommodate or succeed oneanother in
the compromise or
transitions all the while.
Depleting things further and faster, are any occasions of the same Ground
being asked to grow things heavily, year after year, decade after decade,
with no true replenishments occurring...even if Crops are rotated or things
allowed to lay fallow in-between plantings.
Few to no Agricultural products ( whether 'Organic' or not, ) now possess
the Nutritive values they did fourty years ago...and those possessed far
less than they did fifty years ago, and those posessed far less than their
counterparts from before World War II...and none of these even can come
close to what they had been in Centuries passed...and even those will be
understood to fall short of their forebears however many thousands of years
ago...and on back...
Glaciations are a sort of cycle which renews the nourishes and successions,
of the Plant Worlds.
Healthy, disease resistant Plants for satisfaction in topical Agricultural
occupations, let alone, for these Plants or their Fruits or edible portions
to realize their potential for nourishment of others, are ( along with
other respects of course, ) a function of the quality of Soils, and of the
Mineral contents and balances of those Soils as they will be to whatever
Species of Plant is to grow in them and as will be sustained by them.
Any Arcane or Heirloom or other Noble Seeds ( so long as they are planted in
their
appropriate Zone and finding the Sunshine and Hydraitons and other
particulars they need, ) which
are not producing Healthy,
disease resistant Plants, are indicating an unsuitable or depleted Soil, or,
a Soil which does not offer for them, the balance of Mineral and other
content they require and wish for...or, a Soil for which they are not
suited at any rate, however 'good' it may be otherwise or generally.
Few Soils will be truly optimal for very many kinds of Plants, whose actual
needs will differ.
For all the high 'Science' and genetic interferences of 'monsanto' and
others, there remains a basic lack of sincere understanding, and reason, or
regard, for
the address of pratical and sustainable Agriculture and the necessary cares
and deferences for it to be optimal for the Plants, and hence, for those who
shall comsume them.
This has been a very neglected area through out the entire practices of
Plants as intentionally grown for food...even if much show has been made for
a long time about improving Soils and useing artificial fertalizers, the
actual practices and insights have
not been adequate to the subject in it's own terms...and have been geared to
large scale cynicisms and paper-games with uncle scam.
Proper Soils of right mineral balances for the limited range or kinds of
Plant Species they can best or deferentially support...will produce
abundant, disease and pestilance resistant Plants....needing no pesticides
or chemicals and very little composted fertilizers...and making for
multifold more bounty of Harvests.
This has been known and demonstrated more than enough for the last hundred
years certainly.
BUT only for so long, unless correct replenishments of the specific balance
of Minerals and differential balances otherwise are made to occur...and
merely ploughing under chaff or stalk or arbitrary compost of course does
not effect the quality of result which is actually needed.
Orientation of spacing schedules also aid Plants in health and fecundity,
and or diminishes or aleviates stress and compromise for their Systems...as
too, the sort
of whom they obliged to be near.
Electromagnetic influences also can play important roles, for better or
worse...whether Natural or arising from man made incidentals or accidentals,
to help Plants abide compromised Soil or other conditions...or to
flourish happily in otherwise ostensibly correct and fairly optimal
conditions.
Many 19th and early 20th Century experiments showed triple, quadruple yields
of common Grains or Vegetables or Fruits, as well as increased growth and
stamina and health and Insect resistance of the Plants themselves, when the
Plants were spaced
correctly for
their own needs, and for the spacing and or rows to be oriented
deferentially for their likeing, and, or additionally, when Electricity or
weak Electromagnetic Field's of deferential kind and orientation were caused
to
surround or
interpermiate them in what for them are optimal ways...even in what were
merely just tolerable or depleted Soils .
Results like 'Findhorn' were hardly unknown in 19th and latter 19th
Century America...if not for size of produce, then for other co-effecients
of yeild and health and vitality.
It seems conceivable, if not already demonstrated well enough, that if
Plants were treated deferentially, with
regards to the Soil and other conditions they wish to have for Health and
Vitality and fecundity, and for being
disease
resistant and Insect interference resistant...and, if they are planted with
deference to their comfort in spacing and orientation of rows, and if the
practices of providing adjustments or avoidances of electromagnetic fields
for them in optimal ways...we
could have many times the nutrition, and easily five or more times the
Yields, on the same amount of Land.
Lastly, I have never understood why Wholesome Grains, delicious and highly
Nutritious when raw, became historically 'cooked',. boiled or used to make
'Bread'.
Cooking ruins most of their Nutrition, and when Bread,
nutritionally, has possibly at best 1/4th the actual value nutritionally,
as the
plain raw Grains did.
Of course Bread IS handy for making Sandwiches, or to go along with Soup,
and everyone ( me included ) likes Bread...yet, Bread is an irony,
really...as far as Nutrition and effeciency is concerned...as well as the
energy it takes
to grind the Grains, ferment and knead and fuss with the dough, and Bake the
Bread, and
how Bread will stale or dessicate or moulder soon if not refrigerated, where
the Grains, if merely kept dry
and cool and safe, will last a very very long time with no loss or at most
some very
slight loss in Nutritive value.
Rambley,
Yours,
Phi
l v
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dannon Rhudy"
> Kelly said:
>> But I hope that by the time our sense of consumer entitlement fades, or
>> our monoculture crops fail or the house of cards comes tumbling down,
>> that somebody will have saved the heirloom seeds and breeds, along with
>> the skills of growing and preserving our own "slow food".......
>
>
> I have a fair-sized collection of true-seeds for crops. Some
> of the old varieties do well, some are very prone to various
> illnesses, as it were. Each year I winnow out some of the
> less-successful, and each year I keep seed for the coming
> year. I have some true-seed sweet corn, and potatoes kept
> over winter are ready to make new ones by spring. Many
> more. Lots of crops are available both for farm and garden
> that are true-seed. There are, by the way, several true-seed
> groups that can be found on the
> internet. Seed will keep a long time, though germination rates
> decline with age.
>
> I have several old canning books, from mother and grandmothers.
> And, at a local book sale, found one I didn't have - the 1941 Farm
> Journal book of home canning. I don't much like to can, but
> I do it for some things. Don't like frozen green beans, so those
> get canned, and jams and such, pickles. The Farm Journal book
> is fun to read. It is particularly interesting in it's point of view:
> people can actually do things, and are not expected to be either
> stupid or helpless. Mainly.
>
> regards
>
> Dannon Rhudy
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