Category: Self-Sufficiency

Considering the Inefficiency of a Global Economy

A lot of people have said a lot about the global economy—how it exists and is pretty much unstoppable. However, a recent article in ComputerWorld, amongst others, have highlighted problems with the global economy. In this case, flooding in Thailand has impacted the availability of hard drives—driving up the price that everyone pays. If manufacturing were decentralized, flooding in a single country wouldn’t have much of an effect. In short, the emphasis on cost of individual products instead of emphasizing the reliability of multiple sources of hard drives at an increased cost has proven a shortsighted strategy that inevitably hurt the world supply.

Some countries are using the global economy as a source of blackmail. According to the New York Times, China has consolidated its grip on rare earth metals used for everything from compact fluorescent lights to displays used in smartphones. The blackmail started after a disagreement with Japan. As a consequence, the price of any item that requires rare earths has gone up and will continue to increase. It’s another instance where price advantages offered by a global economy have come back to haunt us. In fact, this problem is so significant that the United States government is doing everything it can to create alternative sources, no matter the cost. Unfortunately, it will require nearly 15 years to fully develop those alternatives.

These two stories, and many more, only hint at the potential problems of a global economy. The problems are actually far more severe than you might initially think. When someone ships a hard drive all the way from Thailand to your home, the carbon footprint of that drive is quite large. It takes a lot of gas to move that hard drive. What the global economy does is it trades fossil fuel for price. The cost of the oil, plus the cost of the object (whatever it might be), is less than the cost of producing the object locally. The short term monetary gain takes priority over the cost to the environment and its eventual cleanup. In the long term, that hard drive will cost everyone a great deal more than if it had been purchased locally.

This blog has contained more than a few self-sufficiency posts (60 as of this post). You’ve seen discussions of how to grow your own food and reasonably recycle products instead of dumping them in a landfill. I even told you how to obtain CFLs for free (see CFLs for Free). All of these posts are practical—I’ve worked hard to write posts that demonstrate techniques that improve the condition of your wallet, decrease your health problems, and still help everyone around you by producing a greener environment. Even with these measures, I’m well aware that my carbon footprint is huge because a global economy forces me to buy articles from overseas. These items aren’t available locally and I can’t make them myself.

In the long run, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to sustain a global economy unless the equation changes dramatically. Fossil fuels aren’t unlimited—we’ll eventually run out, so from a practical perspective, transportation of items from overseas must change or we won’t be able to transport them. However, long before that happens, the damage to our environment will take a dramatic toll on everyone. The question is why anyone would wait around to see it all happen? Is the world determined to wait until everyone is so sick and so without resources that we have no choice but to toe the line? Does no one think about the effect they’re having until it’s too late?

I ask these questions because the global economy is simply a bad idea. Producing goods locally is far more efficient, even when the initial price for the good is higher. Eating and using what you can produce locally is far better for everyone. You do have a choice. Even with the global economy in full swing, you can buy local goods—in fact, insist on them. Tell local stores that you’re willing to pay more for local goods that are good for the environment. Your money matters. When stores find that they can’t sell those overseas items at any price, they’ll buy locally. “Give the customer what they want” is a cliche, but it’s also a fact. Vote with your cash to bring down a global economy that is ill conceived and killing us all. Let me know your thoughts about the global economy at [email protected].

 

Working the Fall Schedule

There is a misconception that anyone who works in a farm-like environment simply takes a vacation once the crops are in (no matter what those crops might be). It’s true that I’m slightly less frantic now than during the summer months when I need to be doing three things (or more) at once. However, the work continues throughout the fall and winter. The fall period begins after the garden is cleaned up, tilled, and planted with winter rye. Our winter rye is just showing above the ground at this point. It’ll stay that way until spring, when it’ll take a growth spurt. The winter rye roots will keep our precious soil in place and also provide “green manure” in the spring when we till it under.

A lot of people are surprised to see the two buckets of what appear to be shriveled bean pods in our basement, alongside the potatoes and squash. They actually are dried green beans, which might seem like a less than helpful use for them. However, the beans you buy for soup in the store come from this source. When we’re done canning green beans for winter, we let the remaining beans dry on the vines. We then pick them off, shell them, and use them in soups or for baked beans. In fact, anywhere you’d normally use dried beans you can use the dried green beans from your garden. Our dried beans are a beautiful shade of brown this year. We’ve had speckled beans, solid black beans, and a number of other colors, all of which contribute to a colorful soup, even if they taste mostly the same. You simply remove the pod by shelling the dried green bean and you end up with handfuls of beans you can store without much fuss at all. In short, green beans are an extremely efficient way to produce food—you can eat them green or dried and they require no special storage when dried (an airtight container is helpful).

Of course, this is also the time of year that I start getting into the woods to cut wood for winter. I’m actually bringing down wood that I cut and stacked last year (or two years ago in some cases). It won’t be quite enough for the entire winter, but it’s a good start. I’ll look for dead, dry trees to cut up to complete our wood supply for the winter, and then begin on next year’s wood. Rebecca helps by carrying wood from the cart, wood pile, or from the edge of the woods and throwing it into the basement—saving me a ton of time. Some of the wood has to be split, a good job for my maul on days when it’s too windy to cut wood.

Self-sufficiency relies on a lot of equipment as well. During the summer months there is little time to maintain it. Yes, if something breaks, you have to take time out to fix it, but that’s not the same as maintaining it. During the fall and winter months, I’ll sharpen shovels and spades, repair equipment, change the oil, and tune everything up. These maintenance actions are essential if you want to have a good summer. Nothing is worse than trying to dig with a dull spade. Anything I can do to make our hand, electric-powered, and gas-powered equipment work better is money in my pocket and time to do something else. So these winter months are an essential time for me.

This is also the time I’ll be working on new projects. For one thing, Rebecca needs a bit more storage and better lighting in the larder. I’ve been wanting some shelving for my equipment for quite some time now and I may get to it this winter. The chicks need something better than a refrigerator box—I’m planning to build a box that we can use as a combination of brooder (to keep young chicks warm) and rabbit house (during the summer months after the chicks are put outside).

Still, nothing beats sitting by the wood stove after a day of cutting wood and feeling it’s warmth hit tired muscles. I’ll break out my Knifty Knitter to make some hats, scarves, blankets, and socks (you can see some of the things I’ve made in my Knitting for the Gentleman Farmer post). I may even engage in some latch hook this winter to make a rug or wall hanging. Winter is a time of crafting too! So, how do you enjoy the fall and winter? Let me know at [email protected].

 

More on CFL Usage

Readers came back with a few questions about CFLs after reading my CFLs for Free post. The one thing I want to get across clearly is that the article is emphasizing that you can buy new CFLs using the savings from previous purchases. You need to make the investment in the first CFL to get started and then use the savings from that investment to buy future CFLs. No one is going to mysteriously pay you to buy CFLs, but if you buy smart, you can indeed get future CFLs for free after making the initial purchase. Eventually, you’ll pay off the initial purchase using the savings as well.


A number of people asked about the startup surge (also known as inrush current). The startup surge is something that occurs when you first apply power to the light. This surge is extra electricity that’s required to get the bulb started. The amount of power the bulb requires decreases as it gets to operating temperature, which isn’t very long in most cases. Of course, some people are worried about this electricity surge as some people often think they are experiencing a power surge. Luckily, these two things are quite different. If a homeowner did experience a power surge, it would be worth them contacting a company like Safe and Sound Electric to install some surge protection to prevent this happening again. However, this bulb requires that extra surge, so don’t be concerned if you notice a quick surge. I’ve read a number of conflicting opinions about the startup surge of CFLs. My take on everything I’ve read is that the startup surge will vary by bulb vendor and type of light. A tube light has a smaller startup surge for a significantly smaller time than the twisted bulbs. Vendors who meet Energy Star requirements tend to produce bulbs that have a smaller startup surge than the less expensive bulbs.

A few readers also asked about long term efficiency of CFLs. From personal experience Rebecca and I have found that CFLs do provide an efficiency advantage if you use them for one long interval, rather than several short intervals. In other words, if you burn the light for four hours solid instead of two, two hour intervals, you’ll gain an efficiency advantage. In addition, turning the light on and off reduces its life expectancy.

Efficient energy use is why Rebecca and I tune our work schedule to follow the sun. We get up at 5:30 am (sometimes a bit earlier) during the summer months to make maximum use of the daylight hours, but we get up at 7:00 am during the winter months to ensure we won’t have to turn the lights on in the morning. The actual difference between summer and winter work times is 2½ hours due to the effect of daylight saving time. We do work later into the evening during the winter months to make up for the later start time, so everything evens out. Using this approach has had both health and monetary benefits, but we also understand that it’s not a solution that most people can use.

There are a lot of myths, misconceptions, and outright controversies about CFLs online. In addition, I’m finding that people have individual experiences based on how they use lighting in their home. However, after researching this topic intensively, I’m finding that the following tips about CFLs seem to be true for just about everyone:

  • Buying CFLs with the Energy Star label tends to pay dividends in reduced operating costs and longer life, but you must weigh these benefits against the increased initial cost. In general, buying Energy Star products save you money.
  • If you must use a CFL in a socket controlled by a dimmer, buy a CFL designed for that purpose. Using a standard CFL in a dimmer-controlled socket greatly reduces bulb life and could damage the dimmer.
  • CFLs require more air to work properly. They’re more heat sensitive, so putting one in a can or recessed fixture will result in a reduced life expectancy. The exception is that there are CFLs specially designed to work in recessed fixtures, but you’ll also pay a premium price for them.
  • CFLs also don’t like
    damp or wet conditions. If you need to use a CFL in a damp or wet
    condition, make sure you get one rated for that purpose.

  • Standard CFLs don’t work well in fixtures that vibrate, such as the lighting kits for fans. If you want to use a CFL with a fan or other fixture that will vibrate, you need to get a CFL designed for the purpose. (I finally gave up using a CFL in my garage door opener light socket because even the CFLs designed for use in vibration don’t last long in that particular application.)
  • Excessive on and off cycles in a given day will most definitely reduce the life expectancy of your CFL. I researched this one a lot and didn’t get a definitive answer for you. The most common guidelines say that you should strive to keep on/off cycles below 20 for any given CFL during one day. It’s commonly said that CFLs have a life expectancy of 7,000 on/off cycles if you observe the 20 on/off cycle per day limit. The source of problems in this case is the electronic ballast that CFLs use, which aren’t designed for heavy on/off cycles.
  • Faulty wiring affects CFLs considerably more than incandescent bulbs. If your wiring is such that it causes flickers or flashing with an incandescent bulb, it might be a cause for concern and you should probably look to get more info from an emergency electrician. Your CFL also won’t last very long in this instance. Even if you can’t see the flickering, small dips in power can cause early CFL failure. If you find that your bulbs aren’t lasting very long, have the power checked and bring in an electrical repair company similar to https://electricalsynergies.com/ to fix it. Faulty wiring also affects the cost savings from a CFL in a big way because the bulb never quite gets to its operating range.
  • Line noise will also affect CFLs. For example, if you have a heavy duty motor (such as a refrigerator) on the same line as a CFL, the drop in line current when the motor starts can affect the life expectancy of the CFL. Line noise will also affect the cost savings you see from a CFL because the bulb isn’t operating properly.

Some readers have pointed out that CFLs are overrated. I’m not quite sure how to respond to this question other than to say that there isn’t any free lunch. Just about every solution we now have for fixing the planet’s carbon problem is flawed. Even if we were to all go back to burning candles, there would be problems. However, I did spend some time online looking for something a bit less hysterical and a little more scientific than something that says CFLs and other modern technologies are bad. You should embrace CFLs and other good for the planet technologies with open eyes. The best post I found on these issues is one entitled, “Directory:Compact Fluorescent Lighting (CFL) Downsides.” If someone else has a non-hysterical source of additional information, I’d be happy to address it in another post.

I’d welcome verifiable tips from other people. I verified each of these tips against three sources (including government sites when available). That doesn’t mean that every tip will work for you personally, but most people find that these tips work for them. Let me know about any additional thoughts you have about CFLs at [email protected]

Cutting Up a Chicken

When you raise your own chickens, you eventually end up with a lot of whole chickens in your freezer and will need to cut at least a few of them up for use. Most people are used to seeing chickens already cut up for use in the store. If you do get a whole chicken, it’s usually with the idea that you’re going to roast it whole. In many cases, people don’t know where to begin cutting a chicken up for use because the butcher has done it for them for so many years. Following the chickens you find in the store as an example won’t work very well either because they’re cut up using a meat saw (think of a band saw specifically designed for cutting meat). Unless you also have a meat saw, you probably won’t be able to follow the butcher’s example. This post describes how to cut up a chicken using nothing more than a standard utility knife.

I recommend using a 6-inch knife with a fairly stiff blade. A boning knife will be too flexible and something small, such as a pairing knife, won’t give you enough leverage. Don’t use a knife with a serrated edge—the serrations will make for a poor cut and you won’t be able to split the breastbone with such a knife. The knife you use should be sharp—the sharper the better. A dull knife is dangerous to use.

Start with the wings. Your cut should begin behind the joint area. When you lift the wing up, you’ll actually see a bit of the flesh come up with it. Start your cut immediately behind this fleshy area and angle toward the joint as shown here.

CuttingChicken01

Cutting the wings in this way has the advantage of making them a bit meatier. After you cut off both wings, it’s time to cut off the combination of the leg and thigh. Start by lifting the thigh and cutting toward the joint from the front of the chicken as shown here.

CuttingChicken02

Once you get to the joint from the front, you’ll need to cut to the joint from the back as well. When this cut is finished, you’ll be able to rotate the leg/thigh combination downward and see the joint pop from the socket as shown here.

CuttingChicken03

You can finish the cut at this point. Remove both leg/thigh combinations using the same approach. Now you can separate the leg from the thigh. There is a natural division between the leg and the thigh. If you look carefully, you can actually see where the two separate because the meat goes in two directions. Look carefully at the following picture and you’ll see that the line shows this separation.

CuttingChicken04

Cut straight down through this point and you’ll find, with practice, that the knife will neatly separate the meat at the joint. At this point, you’ve cut off the wings, legs, and thighs. It’s time to remove the lower back (the part with the tail).

Look inside your chicken. You’ll see that there is a fleshy part between the rib cage and the lower back. The fleshy part extends on both sides of the chicken. You’ll cut through this fleshy part to separate the lower back starting midway at the opening as shown here.

CuttingChicken05

Cut through the fleshy part. You should then be able to flex the lower back and see the backbone separate from the rib cage as shown here.

CuttingChicken06

You can then cut through the spinal cord to separate the lower back from the rib cage. Cut straight down.

The hardest cut to make is to separate the two breast halves. However, like many things in life, there is a trick to it. Look at the center of the breastbone and you’ll see a line runs through it. Now, look at the first complete rib and trace it around to where it meets with the breastbone. You’ll see a second line of a sort that forms a cross as shown here.

CuttingChicken071

Put the tip of the knife through this point and you’ll find that the breastbone cracks easily. Now, draw the knife down much as you would with a paper cutter. You’ll find that the knife easily slices through the majority of the breastbone and the cartridge as shown here.

CuttingChicken08

After you make this cut, move your knife higher up. Don’t put it through the hole where the neck is, but do place it higher into the cavity. Use the point to finish breaking the breastbone apart. At this point, you should also be able to break the wishbone in half. Now you can separate the two halves of the breast like this because there is cartilage separating the breast from the upper back.

CuttingChicken09

Cut the cartilage holding the upper back to the breast halves. You’ll reach another joint after you cut the ribs. Separate the joint and the cut through it as shown here.

CuttingChicken10

You should now have ten pieces of chicken as shown here:

CuttingChicken11

These pieces are: left and right wing, left and right leg, left and right thigh, lower back, upper back, and left and right breast. Although this combination doesn’t look quite like the chicken you get in the store, it’s the most effective means of cutting a chicken up using just a utility knife. In addition, using this approach makes more of the pieces a usable size. Let me know if you have any questions at [email protected].

 

Creating Raw Juice for Wine Making

Earlier this year I created a series of posts about making wine using the cubicontainer technique that relies on a single container, rather than using two containers for primary and secondary fermentation. This approach requires that you use juice, and not raw fruit/vegetables, as the source for the wine. Most people think that you can make juice only from a raw source, such as crushing grapes. However, wine makers know that you can use both raw and cooked juice. This post shows how to work with raw juice—pears in this case. If you haven’t read the wine making series of posts, you can find them at:

 


When working with any fruit for raw juice, you need to pick the fruit at the peak of ripeness. In the case of pears, this means smelling the fruit for the distinctive pear odor. The fruit should still be firm, but crush easily in the hand. Taste the fruit and you should smell a strong pear odor, along with a high sugar content. Check the inside for an off white appearance. If the fruit seems starchy, the inside has yellowed or browned a bit, or seems mushy to the touch, it’s overripe and won’t make good wine. Likewise, if the fruit is still greenish in color, seems a bit too firm, or lacks the strong pear odor, it  isn’t ripe enough. Every fruit has its peak time for picking that typically last one or two days. That’s right—you must check the fruit absolutely every day or you’ll miss the perfect time to pick it.

In order to create the juice, you begin by running the raw pears through a Victorio Strainer. You need to be absolutely certain that the pears are ready for use in wine. Pears that aren’t ripe could damage your strainer. Normally, the juice turns a bit brown as you strain it due to oxidation and the presence of bacteria. In this case, you’ll prevent that from occurring by adding a campden tablet to the output of the Victorio Strainer and stirring the juice from time-to-time as you strain the juice. The result should be a slightly greenish yellow juice as shown here.

RawJuice01

However, this juice isn’t ready for wine making yet. It still contains a substantial amount of pulp. You need to make at least 2 quarts of strained pear juice to obtain 1 quart of juice ready for wine making. The next step is to place a jelly bag over a 1 quart measuring cup like this:

RawJuice02

Pour as much of the strained juice into the jelly bag as possible. Now you’ll squeeze the bag to separate the pulp from the juice like this:

RawJuice03

Once you have a quart of juice, you can use it immediately to make wine or freeze it for later use. A quart of pear juice will make one gallon of wine using the wine making techniques I discussed earlier. If you decide to freeze the juice, make absolutely certain that you mark it for wine use only because the juice already has the campden tablet in it.

This same technique works fine for any fruit that gets soft enough when ripe to put through the Victorio Strainer. For example, it works great with berries. However, I haven’t ever gotten this technique to work properly with apples—most apples are still too crisp when picked to get through the Victorio Strainer successfully. Apple wine requires the use of a cider press or the cooked juice method. Other fruits, such as rhubarb, require the cooked juice method. You can use this technique for some vegetables as well. This is the technique I use to make tomato wine. If you want to work with a harder vegetable, such as beets, then you need to use the cooked juice method. (I’ll describe the cooked juice method in a future post.) Let me know if you have any questions about this technique at [email protected].

 

Exercising Personal Privacy

In my post, “Is Privacy a Right?,” I tell developers that they really need to consider the right of the user to a certain amount of privacy. Books such as C# Design and Development will need to include sections on privacy as part of any update. In fact, privacy is a topic not covered to any extent in any development book on my shelf. The few mentions of privacy appear in older books I’ve written, along with a few moldy references to old books by other authors. If you really want to get a modern treatment of privacy as a question of what the individual requires, you need to look at a non-development book such as “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.” Unfortunately, this book discusses social ramifications—not the techniques a developer uses to ensure privacy. Of course, no matter what the developer does, the user can always thwart any effort to provide privacy, which is the topic of this post.

I find it amazing that people willingly give up their privacy for apparently little or no reason. I read John Dvorak’s post, “I’m Not Home Right Now. Please Come In.” with great interest this morning (after having read the news report that he discusses). The idea that a husband would be able to check up on his cheating wife through an iPhone application is amazing to me. The private detective industry should take note that they’ve been replaced by a phone. It won’t be long before someone comes up with an application to surreptitiously take pictures of the dupe who loads one or more of these applications on their cellphone.

After thinking about this issue for a long time, I’ve come to the conclusion that some people have watched one too many episodes of CSI (and shows of that ilk). There is a sense that someone is going to reach out and grab each of us, and that our cellphones are the only way anyone will find us again. It’s also human nature not to be left out. If people don’t know where we are, we might miss out on something that we think is important at the time, but turns out not to be much of an issue at all in hindsight. I’m sure that little Jerry can find his sock just fine without dad’s intervention over the telephone (a little self-sufficiency does everyone good). The announcement that Maggie has a new tooth can easily wait until mom gets home from the store.

There should be alarm bells going off in the minds of every person who currently owns a cellphone, OnStar, or any other tracking technology. Do you really want someone to follow absolutely every move you make in the interest of providing some uncertain sense of security? Privacy, once lost, is incredibly hard to regain. People should learn how to disconnect in comfort, keep their privacy intact, and discover the wonderful world of being alone every once in a while. I think you’ll find that you’re a lot less stressed once you get used to it. Consider Remembering to Rest as not just beneficial to yourself, but those around you.

Most of all, it’s time that people learn to demand privacy from their technology. Whoever created the new tracking application in the iPhone wasn’t thinking and people should disable it sooner than later. It’s not necessary for vendors to track your every move online. No one gains anything by knowing you’ve gone to the store to buy this week’s groceries. All of the applications that are tracking you are stealing your privacy and making you a target for all of the things you fear most. Don’t give criminals (or marketers) an edge. What is your privacy worth to you? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Celebrating with Birthday Butter

Rebecca grows quite a few herbs. In fact, the majority of herbs used in our house come from Rebecca’s garden and not from the store. People have asked us in the past how to use these herbs. Of course, there are the mundane uses of savory herbs (such as sage) in meat dishes and sweet herbs (such as mint) in cakes and cookies. However, if you’re really interested in shaking things up, you mix the herbs in new and interesting combinations. That’s what I decided to do in making birthday butter.

Birthday butter was actually created for Rebecca’s birthday. I used it for her breakfast. I spread the birthday butter on a bagel, but it tastes just fine on toast, crumpets, English muffins, or any other sort of bread. In this case, I filled the holes in the center of the bagel halves with cherry tomatoes to dress it up a bit. The result is an interesting mix of savory and sweet that is a delight to the palette. Here’s the birthday butter recipe:

1/2 cup Butter, Smart Balance, or Margarine
2 tsp Sugar or Splenda
2 tsp Rubbed Sage
1 tsp Mint Leaves
1 tsp Lemon Juice

Cream the butter in a bowl. Place the remaining ingredients in the bowl. Mix together until blended. The lemon juice will have a tendency to separate from the rest of the mixture, so remixing is needed if you store the unused portion.

I found that butter works far better for this recipe than margarine does. We’ve actually tried something new, Smart Balance Buttery Sticks with Omega 3 Fatty Acids. This product is half butter and half margarine. It cooks extremely well and tastes much like butter does. However, it significantly reduces the amount of cholesterol you receive and the Omega 3 fatty acids are actually good for you.  I’m not sure how this recipe would work using other alternative sweeteners, but the results with Splenda are quite good.

The kind of mint you use has a big impact on the taste of birthday butter. Try various mint varieties out to see for yourself. The original version uses spearmint, but peppermint or even wintergreen would probably work just fine. For something unusual, try orange or lime mint.

The best way to get the ingredients to mix properly is to use a mixer. However, I’ve been able to get them to mix just fine using a fork. The point is, this butter blend has a wonderful taste and is a great way to start the day. How do you use your herbs? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Dealing with Green Tomatoes

One of the advantages of growing your own tomatoes is that you can pick them when they’re ripe—when the taste and nutritional value is at its peak. During the summer months you avoid “strip mined” tomatoes by picking selectively from the vine. However, the end of the season arrives all too soon and you’re faced with a wealth of green tomatoes. You have to do something with these tomatoes before a major frost or risk losing them. Tomato plants can keep producing new tomatoes right up to harvest.

It’s possible to use green tomatoes directly. For example, fried green tomatoes is a favorite of mine (albeit, not particularly nutritious depending on which recipe you use). Pickled tomatoes also look very interesting; although, I must admit not fixing them personally. The pickled tomatoes that I’ve tried have been delicious. In fact, there are many more ways to fix green tomatoes than you might initially think. However, even with all of these recipes, green tomatoes aren’t the epicurean delight that some people want.

Fortunately, you can ripen the tomatoes even after they’ve left the vine. I’ve tried a number of methods and found most of them lacking. For example, some books recommend pulling the entire plant out of the ground and hanging it in your garage. This method assumes that your garage won’t get to the freezing point before the tomatoes are ripe. Using this method can also result in a lot of spoilage from mold. It does have the advantage of producing tomatoes that taste almost as good as if they were vine ripened outside.

There are also methods that rely on placing the tomatoes in a jar with a banana peel (a technique I haven’t tried) and placing them in a paper bag. My parents would often ripen a few remaining tomatoes by placing them in the window sill. Unfortunately, most modern homes lack window sills and the method does have problems in that the tomatoes can ripen unevenly. The best method I’ve found for ripening a lot of green tomatoes is to place them on newspaper as shown here.

GreenTomatoes

I use the regular newspaper pages—not the shiny advertisement pages. The shiny pages have ink that could contain heavy metals. Regular newspaper pages tend to use soy ink today (although, you should check with your newspaper to be certain). Because the tomatoes sit on the newspaper for up to two weeks, you don’t want them to absorb any toxic chemicals. The newspaper emits ethylene gas, which is what ripens the tomatoes. The plant uses the same gas to ripen the tomatoes on the vine.

Make sure your tomatoes are out of the sunlight. Placing them in sunlight can cause uneven ripening and rot in some cases.

The tomatoes shouldn’t touch each other. Any place one tomato touches another is apt to start rotting before the tomato is ripe.

Check your tomatoes each morning. Tomatoes ripen mainly at night. If you wait until the end of the day, you could miss that peak of tomato ripeness that you desire. (There is strong evidence to suggest that night temperatures affect how a tomato reacts. For example, plants mainly set fruit when the nighttime temperature is in the 59° to 68°F range.)

When you ripen your tomatoes using this technique, they tend to ripen evenly and you’ll lose fewer of them to rot. The tomatoes don’t quite have that fresh picked taste (they still taste better than the strip mined tomatoes from the store), but they’ll work great for canning purposes where the taste difference isn’t quite as noticeable.

So, how do you prefer your tomatoes—red or green? Do you have other tricks you use to get a good result from ripening your tomatoes? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Remembering to Rest

It’s easy to become so involved in self-sufficiency issues that you forget to rest. Rebecca and I just finished Harvest Festival (see my Fun is Where You Find It! (Part 3) post for details), so we’ve made our big push in getting the larder filled. Of course, there is still plenty of work to do. We even have some extra pears to process this year thanks to the prolific output of our Luscious pears. With everything there is to do, self-sufficiency can quickly become more work than anticipated and definitely become work of the worst sort. Rest is necessary. You have to take time to smell the flowers and get a bit of fresh air. That’s precisely what we did this weekend when we went to Wildcat Mountain, a local state park.

Everything at the park is quite beautiful. One of my favorites there are the wildflowers. A number of them bloom in the fall:

WildcatMountain1

The tree colors haven’t peaked yet, but there are some incredibly beautiful trees. I particularly liked this pair.

WildcatMountain2

We took a picnic lunch and enjoyed a few games of Acey-Ducey (a kind of backgammon). After lunch, we went to observation point, which has an amazing vista of the farms and forest in the surrounding area. Here’s just one of many views we saw.

WildcatMountain3

You can easily suffer vertigo looking down from this height. Here’s a picture of the two of us that gives you a little better idea  of just how high we are.

WildcatMountain4

We also decided to take a bit of a hike. Wildcat Mountain has a lot of trails, some of which are more than a little difficult to traverse. Just about all of the trails require that you climb lots of stairs. Even so, the scenery is gorgeous. We decided to take the Old Settler’s Trail.

WildcatMountain5

The point is that we spent some time doing something other than preparing food for winter, even if we didn’t get to rest the entire day. Part of your self-sufficiency planning has to go into rest. Without proper rest, you’ll make mistakes and your self-sufficiency plans will quickly become grueling work. Keep things fun! Let me know how you rest after a hard work session at [email protected].

 

Considering the Unexpected Harvest

A number of my posts deal with the unexpected or a way of viewing the garden in a way that puts things in perspective. For example, a recent post, Every Year is a Good and a Bad Year, discusses how each year can produce unexpected results in the garden. Planting a wide range of vegetables is your only way to deal with the potential yield differences from year-to-year. Of course, diversity is good for your health and the soil as well. This post looks at the same issue from the perspective of the orchard.

The orchard is different from the garden in that you plant an orchard for a long term yield. Our first pear trees were planted 11 years ago. When you make such a long term investment, you need to place an even stronger emphasis on biodiversity. For example, this year started extremely wet. A frost occurred while the trees were in bloom—killing many of the blossoms. To make things worse, we had golf ball-sized hail after the fruit had set. The hail actually knocked some of the fruit off of the trees. After spring, however, things got incredibly dry, making it even less likely that the fruit trees would do well. So, I had expected a very small harvest this year (and I wasn’t disappointed). The largest pear harvest we’ve had was 975 pounds. This year the trees produced 300 pounds of standard sized fruit, or so I thought.

Our Luscious pears are generally quite small. However, they’re so incredibly sweet and juicy that they’ve become a favorite of ours. Normally, we leave these pears on the trees for later use. In order to can a pear, you must pick it just a tiny bit green, when the pear is still hard enough to survive the canning process. Pears used for juice, as our Luscious pears are, generally need to wait until they’re almost overripe—at the absolute peak of sugar and taste. Consequently, I didn’t pay as much attention to the Luscious pears as I should have. The interesting outcome is that we now have standard sized pears on a tree that isn’t supposed to have them. The pears are between two and four times larger than normal.

PearSizeDifference

The upper pear is representative of what the Luscious pear as produced this year. The lower pear is what we get on most years. Not only is the top pear larger, it weighs three times as much as the lower pear. The difference is enough that we’ll be able to can the Luscious pears that are still green enough. In addition, the Luscious pear trees normally produce around 80 pounds of fruit. This year they produced 120 pounds of fruit, so we have a lot more fruit than I had originally thought—a total of 420 pounds.

In addition to the Luscious pear anomaly, the Parker pears produced well this year. Normally, we have fire blight problems with the Parker pears, but there was almost no fire blight at all this year because it was so dry. Trees that normally produce well, such as the Moonglow and Clapps, didn’t do well this year because of the dryness. The point is that you need a variety of trees if you want a good harvest every year. The trees also have to be compatible. If you check the links I’ve provided in this article, you’ll see that all of these trees require a pollinator tree other than itself. The Luscious pear is a male tree, while the other pears in the orchard are all female. All of them produce fruit, but to get an optimal yield, you need to have pollinators of the right type.

The lesson I keep relearning is that it’s essential to check everything before making a judgement. If I had picked the Luscious pears earlier this year, we would have had more fruit for use in pear chunks (minted, plain, or spiced). As things stand now, we’ll probably end up with juice for wine and drinking, some pear jam, and some additional pear sauce because the fruit is too ripe to use for pear chunks (something that our larder was lacking). Let me know if you have any questions at [email protected].