Post Apocalyptic Gardening
Lentil salad is a favorite of mine. Great protein and on a salad like this is is filling and you get your fresh vegetables in too. 
These are dandelion petals. Pulling them from the flowers is labor intensive but as with many homesteading projects I find it soothing and satisfying to do this kind of busy work with my hands. Unfortunately it's been storming ever since and I am short a cup of petals to make the wine. I froze the six cups I already have. My cousin Carrie who just bought a farm in Wisconsin and is madly excited about homesteading has actually tasted dandelion wine and liked it. Now I'm more excited than ever. It's difficult to pull the petals off of wet flowers so I need to wait for a dry day to harvest more.
Stitch and Boots is still not ready to go. I have fixing to do. I'm getting very itchy to resume posting there so I just need to convince myself to sit down and do the tedious work involved in fixing all the text.
I have artichokes on my mind. I want a big stand of them. I want enough to enjoy eating them leaf by leaf and I want enough to marinate and can.
Somehow this brought me around to thinking about nuts again. About sources of protein* for the kitchen gardener on a city lot who doesn't have a nut tree and can't fit one. I said a while ago that I had room for a walnut tree. This is technically true. But there is a concern about cross pollination. I can't fit two of them and at the rate that stupid people cut down nut trees in cities, there's no way to be sure that in the hundred years* it takes them to start producing nuts there will still be any cross pollinators close enough to us. That would mean a huge unproductive tree.
What good is that to a person in a post apocalyptic environment where protein sources may be horribly expensive and hard to come by?
I realize I get eggs from my hens and eggs are one of those perfect complete proteins. However, we only have a city lot and we eat a lot of eggs. Three hens doesn't keep us in enough eggs. We still buy quite a lot of them. As soon as I get my shit together I will place an order with this amazing couple:
They live in the hills of McMinnville so they're local to me. This is the same couple who gave me 60 eggs for free. I didn't realize back then that they sell their eggs too. If you live locally their eggs are of amazing quality and only about $4 a dozen which is a great price for truly free ranged hens. I have been meaning to place an order since I last spoke with them. Message to John and Jin: love your chicken pictures! Not going to try the egg shooters.
We are adding 6 new chicks to our flock and my hope is that this will provide us with enough eggs that we don't have to buy them at all. But I'm a little superstitious and if I was going to be prepared for food shortages, not that I anticipate any, I can't help but feel that one should have more than one source of protein on hand in one's own tiny personal universe. Nuts seem obvious. Hazelnuts are the absolute most obvious choice. They are much smaller than walnuts and I've read they can actually be kept as a hedge.
Problem is, I don't like hazelnuts. I'm wondering if I need to acquire a taste for them?
Those are the only two nuts that grow here reliably. Walnuts and hazelnuts.
This led me to wonder about seeds. Are sunflower seeds as rich in protein and omega fatty acids as walnuts are? I must look it up. They are easy to grow. Easy to store. Obviously I can grow beans and this is where my thoughts have been lingering. I grew dried beans on my little row in the community garden and got ten pounds of them without a lot of effort or space. That's promising.
However, beans (legumes) need grains to make a complete high quality protein. How can one grow enough grains on a city lot? I think the answer is that you can't. But surely the one thing that could work to advantage is to grow some rows of corn with shelling beans planted at their bases just as legend has it the Native Americans did for thousands of years. Has anyone actually done this successfully? Corn is a large grain. While most people couldn't grow enough wheat to last them a month on a city lot, it's conceivable that with good planning and soil stewardship one could grow enough corn to at least get them through a month or two of winter.
What I keep coming back to is that as resources for food and water shrink for the population and prices of what exists become too high, we'll all be depending on each other a lot more. This idea of being independent and needing NO ONE is so lame anyway. It occurs to me that I should stop alienating people because one day I might need to beg to share-crop with people I know who have acreage. There are people who will be needing some of the things I sew, because as many crafters as there are out there, you can't wash your face with rustic cloth angel dolls.
I also find myself thinking about early spring food. How to plan my garden so that I have food when nothing is growing. Preserving is obviously one key. Root cellaring is another. But having things in the ground that overwinters is not without its own merit. Even mid spring can be a bitch for fresh local produce. I want asparagus, overwintered dark leafy greens, and peas that are ready before the summer crops are bearing.
I like thinking about these things. My garden is a puzzle I like to play with. It makes me happy and calm and the potential for such a small plot of earth (it's really quite a generous lot) keeps my brain whirring pleasantly about vegetables and fruits. I want to establish edible mushrooms in my yard too. (I'm imagining creating little shady dead log piled environments underneath my dwarf fruit trees that I will innoculate with various spores.)
It seems oxymoronic to find it comforting to plan a garden against an imagined post apocalyptic environment but it really isn't. I don't actually believe there will be an apocalyps but the thought of being prepared is one of those things that anchors my brain and gives me a sense of well being.
Today the weather is so strange. It is storming and shining by turns. I want to go wrestle with the quack-grass in four of my empty raised beds to prepare them all for planting which is really only a few weeks away.
I also want to catch up with all of you and see what's going on in your little private universes. I'll see you at your place soon!
*Sources of protein for people who don't eat flesh, I should specify.
**Not reflective of the truth.
Stitch and Boots is still not ready to go. I have fixing to do. I'm getting very itchy to resume posting there so I just need to convince myself to sit down and do the tedious work involved in fixing all the text.
I have artichokes on my mind. I want a big stand of them. I want enough to enjoy eating them leaf by leaf and I want enough to marinate and can.
Somehow this brought me around to thinking about nuts again. About sources of protein* for the kitchen gardener on a city lot who doesn't have a nut tree and can't fit one. I said a while ago that I had room for a walnut tree. This is technically true. But there is a concern about cross pollination. I can't fit two of them and at the rate that stupid people cut down nut trees in cities, there's no way to be sure that in the hundred years* it takes them to start producing nuts there will still be any cross pollinators close enough to us. That would mean a huge unproductive tree.
What good is that to a person in a post apocalyptic environment where protein sources may be horribly expensive and hard to come by?
I realize I get eggs from my hens and eggs are one of those perfect complete proteins. However, we only have a city lot and we eat a lot of eggs. Three hens doesn't keep us in enough eggs. We still buy quite a lot of them. As soon as I get my shit together I will place an order with this amazing couple:
They live in the hills of McMinnville so they're local to me. This is the same couple who gave me 60 eggs for free. I didn't realize back then that they sell their eggs too. If you live locally their eggs are of amazing quality and only about $4 a dozen which is a great price for truly free ranged hens. I have been meaning to place an order since I last spoke with them. Message to John and Jin: love your chicken pictures! Not going to try the egg shooters.
We are adding 6 new chicks to our flock and my hope is that this will provide us with enough eggs that we don't have to buy them at all. But I'm a little superstitious and if I was going to be prepared for food shortages, not that I anticipate any, I can't help but feel that one should have more than one source of protein on hand in one's own tiny personal universe. Nuts seem obvious. Hazelnuts are the absolute most obvious choice. They are much smaller than walnuts and I've read they can actually be kept as a hedge.
Problem is, I don't like hazelnuts. I'm wondering if I need to acquire a taste for them?
Those are the only two nuts that grow here reliably. Walnuts and hazelnuts.
This led me to wonder about seeds. Are sunflower seeds as rich in protein and omega fatty acids as walnuts are? I must look it up. They are easy to grow. Easy to store. Obviously I can grow beans and this is where my thoughts have been lingering. I grew dried beans on my little row in the community garden and got ten pounds of them without a lot of effort or space. That's promising.
However, beans (legumes) need grains to make a complete high quality protein. How can one grow enough grains on a city lot? I think the answer is that you can't. But surely the one thing that could work to advantage is to grow some rows of corn with shelling beans planted at their bases just as legend has it the Native Americans did for thousands of years. Has anyone actually done this successfully? Corn is a large grain. While most people couldn't grow enough wheat to last them a month on a city lot, it's conceivable that with good planning and soil stewardship one could grow enough corn to at least get them through a month or two of winter.
What I keep coming back to is that as resources for food and water shrink for the population and prices of what exists become too high, we'll all be depending on each other a lot more. This idea of being independent and needing NO ONE is so lame anyway. It occurs to me that I should stop alienating people because one day I might need to beg to share-crop with people I know who have acreage. There are people who will be needing some of the things I sew, because as many crafters as there are out there, you can't wash your face with rustic cloth angel dolls.
I also find myself thinking about early spring food. How to plan my garden so that I have food when nothing is growing. Preserving is obviously one key. Root cellaring is another. But having things in the ground that overwinters is not without its own merit. Even mid spring can be a bitch for fresh local produce. I want asparagus, overwintered dark leafy greens, and peas that are ready before the summer crops are bearing.
I like thinking about these things. My garden is a puzzle I like to play with. It makes me happy and calm and the potential for such a small plot of earth (it's really quite a generous lot) keeps my brain whirring pleasantly about vegetables and fruits. I want to establish edible mushrooms in my yard too. (I'm imagining creating little shady dead log piled environments underneath my dwarf fruit trees that I will innoculate with various spores.)
It seems oxymoronic to find it comforting to plan a garden against an imagined post apocalyptic environment but it really isn't. I don't actually believe there will be an apocalyps but the thought of being prepared is one of those things that anchors my brain and gives me a sense of well being.
Today the weather is so strange. It is storming and shining by turns. I want to go wrestle with the quack-grass in four of my empty raised beds to prepare them all for planting which is really only a few weeks away.
I also want to catch up with all of you and see what's going on in your little private universes. I'll see you at your place soon!
*Sources of protein for people who don't eat flesh, I should specify.
**Not reflective of the truth.
Comments (1)
Angelina, We all have our vices, recently our Egg Shooter Consumption has been on the rise. (We have been the browsing raw food sites.)
We decided to eat more of our eggs in their liquid state, first because heating the white tangles up all the protein strands, Second heating the yolk cooks off the Co-enzyme Q, and third, We like to mess with the squeamish.
We are now up to Three raw eggs a day*, we hope to match your beer consumption (Which you report is in decline, Which is fortunate for us, because, we too have our limits.)
Egg shooters are an acquired taste, but there is really nothing like waking up on a cool spring morning, putting your feet up, and cracking yourself a warm one.
* The third one is for bed time, we are experimenting to see if adding a little choline to our brains while sleeping enhances lucid dreaming. . . If we both dream of chickens, we'll have to cut back though. (See enough of them when we're awake!)
Posted by Fuji | April 10, 2010 11:29 PM
Posted on April 10, 2010 23:29