Time for the weekly-ish round-up of randomness! This is my way of shoe-horning in and discussing things that don’t necessarily belong on an urban homesteading blog, just because I’ve been thinking about them the past week.
This week: my new favorite TV show tackles baking like a Victorian, I probably love my napkins way too much, and how to achieve world peace with corn…or maybe not.
1. What I’ve Been Reading
Funny story: it took months and a ton of back and forth with the publisher before my book had a name. My publisher really liked the title Making Home, but I responded firmly (and with some colorful language, as I recall) that the doyenne of home-based sustainability had just released a book with that title and we would not step on her literary toes.
The author of Making Home, of course, is Sharon Astyk. Astyk is massively respected in the world of domestic preparedness, and peak-oil and climate change adaptability. I’ve read four of Astyk’s books and own three. In slightly different ways, and from slightly different perspectives, they all make the case for – or show the way to – a more sustainable home life.
(I’m also Facebook friends with Astyk and the woman is pretty much a superhero in real life. I have no idea how she does so much.)
So as part of my effort to get back to the basics and simplify 2016, I’ve returned to some of those things that originally inspired me in my own efforts towards greener living. I’m currently re-reading Making Home, but I’m looking forward to re-reading Depletion and Abundance. Published in 2008 and more directly tied to Peak Oil concerns than her other books, I’m curious how it’s held up in an era of record low oil prices.
2. What I’ve Been Eating
Can we talk about a huge failing when it comes to the whole “grow it, cook it, preserve it” genre of blogs (mine included)? Not emphasis on using up the food you’ve preserved or stored!
This is really the time of year when eating down the larder is important. It’s important to enjoy the food we’ve put by while it’s still in good quality, and it’s important to make room for the bounty that will come again to be preserved in just a few months.
So: this corn.
Dump a quart-bag of frozen corn kernels into a pan. Add 1/2 cup of heavy cream, 1/2 cup of water and a tsp of dried thyme. Simmer everything until the corn is hot and the creamy sauce stuff is mostly reduced and sticks to the corn kernels. Put some salt and pepper in there so it tastes good.
Now you can eat the corn just like this and it’s great, or dump it in a small baking dish and top it with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs and as much parmesan cheese as you feel like grating. Pop the baking dish into a hot oven (350, 450 – whatever) and bake until the cheesey part is all brown and crusty.
My husband had a bite of this side dish yesterday and said, “More people deserve to eat this corn. It could help spread peace throughout the world, this corn.” But then he threatened to stab the kids in the hand with a fork if they took his corn, so….take it as you will.
3. What I’ve Been Watching
There’s this series I watched years ago called Victorian Farm. I loooovve it. Love it like it’s made of good chocolate, covered with seed packets, and handed to me with a side of Scotch by adorable baby duckings.
Well it appears Victorian Farm has a new child – Victorian Bakers. Four modern day professional bakers “go back in time” to a working Victorian era bakehouse in rural England and attempt to bake using old school tools, techniques and recipes.
Here’s the first episode of Victorian Baker on YouTube. It’s an hour long, so maybe check it out when you have time:
Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, the full Victorian Farm series is available on YouTube. If you are really into this stuff like me, you can meet all the members of the Victorian Farm family of TV series here.
4. What Tool I’m Loving
I adore flour sack towels. Those of you who’ve been kind enough to read my book know that I refer to “clean, lint-free towels” about 97 times in there. For me, that means flour sack.
I use my flour sack towels for so many things – straining ricotta and yogurt, polishing glass, storing pre-washed greens, and occasionally even as a bandana to hold my hair out of my face while I’m cooking. They are also our table napkins. When you have kids, having huge, full-body-coverage napkins is awesome (see photo of how big these things are, with Sharpie for scale.)
Unfortunately my nice, white “table napkin” flour sack towels have been slowly atrophying into the threadbare, slightly gray, “absentmindedly wipe up bacon fat” flour sack towels. Meh, it happens.
As the worse of them break down into threads they are composted. The hopelessly stained get sent to the rag bag. And periodically, like this week, I get to buy new, crisp flour sack towels for the table.
Yay me! Yay my new towels! (Wanna bet how long I’ll manage to keep these pristine? I give it a week.)
5. What Quote I’ve Been Holding In My Head
Oh, Maria Montessori. I’ve quoted you before. Montessori education for our son has been an absolute Godsend for our family. I’ve become a better, more understanding mom to my spirited boy by observing how well he does in the Montessori setting.
Basically, it helps to think of my son as a human Border Collie. If he has engaging work and plenty of opportunities to move at great speed, he is the best little person in the world. If he’s bored, he bites ankles, chews the furniture, and pees everywhere. Ok, not really those things. But he becomes challenging, emotional, prone to overwhelm and breakdown. The human equivalent of chewing up couches, basically.
What does any of this have to do with Montessori and this quote?
Well, we’ve made the family decision to homeschool our kids starting next fall. So naturally I’m trying to be thoughtful in our philosophy to education and how that’s going to shape what homeschooling will look like for us. (At least in theory. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, as they say.)
The goal is to take the aspects of Montessori that have worked so well for our son, and incorporate them into our homeschooling when the time comes.
That’s my Five Things Friday – but what’s been on your mind this past week? Leave a comment and let me know.
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For the record Erica, I like your “Five Things Friday.” It was almost like sitting down and having a cup of coffee with you this morning….but I didn’t have to take a shower or get dressed first.
Have a great weekend!
Oh, and why do I have such weirdos living with me? I am totally dying to make your corn and know that I will absolutely love it, but know that once again, I’ll be the only one at the table eating it. Everyone else will be giving me the wounded “how can you expect us to eat THAT” look. On the bright side, we won’t have to visit the urgent care due to any fork stabbings at the table.
Barb
Thank you Barb! Who doesn’t like corn and cream? 😀
Awesome! Glad to hear you will be homeschooling. I homeschool three kids while homesteading in the wilderness (WA), so you already have a slight advantage in the homeschooling games since you will be close to libraries, fun, educational activities, and, of course, bakeries and places that sell fancy chocolates.
My word of advice (not that you asked for it): Make sure you are really hooked up with other homeschooling families. Get a support network going so you don’t feel lonely, which can happen even in the city with all its shiny, fancy opportunities.
That’s the one thing I don’t like about living in the boonies – it does get lonely as a homeschooling mom, but heck, that’s what the internet is for, right?
We are really lucky to have a big support network for homeschool families in our area – in fact our awesome neighbors with their 3 wonderful kids homeschool. We homeschooled our daughter way back in Kindergarten, and the one sticking point was that old cliche – the social side of it. Lot’s changed in our fam (2 kids now, and I think I’m way less perfectionistic and controlling than I was back then) and in homeschooling (WAY more families are opting towards homeschooling these days) so I feel pretty positive about our ability to slide into the existing homeschool community. It was a major consideration though, for sure. Fingers crossed!
This week for me:
Creating a flexible ‘to do list’ (it has already alleviated a lot of stress, thank you Erica!)
Looking daily and weekly at the larder and reminding myself to keep using what I have. Found a recipe for braised chicken that uses canned tomato’s, it’s become a new favorite.
Currently our heating ducts are all being redone which has meant a few nights at 55-60. I am practicing some gratitude for the basics that we take for granted and a wonderful husband and father-in-law who have the skill to take on such a project.
Looking forward to a cup of tea and an Isacc Asimov book this weekend (borrowed from our wonderful library).
I will absolutely be picking up a couple of Sharon Astyk books too, they sound great.
I love the 5 things Friday posts 🙂
Which Asimov?
I read the first book of the Foundation Series – I loved it! Onto number two next. Although ‘The Caves of Steel’ and ‘The Naked Sun’ are my favorites so far. Any others you would recommend?
Yay! Glad you like the flexible to do list concept – it really helped me be less tightly wound. I have a feeling you and my husband could swap sci fi recommendations for days. 😉 Sympathies on the heating situation – we are currently replacing a section of heating duct, too – and of course it’s the bit that takes the heat to our master bedroom, making nights a touch chilly. Thank goodness for warm socks and heating blankets!
My view from the cheap seats as a non-parent is that city schools are hard on children with energy, particularly boys. Kids NEED to move and be boisterous throughout the day. Yes, there are times in the day for learning focus and discipline, but how are they supposed to do that if the pot is boiling over? And what teachers are supposed to do with classrooms packed with young boisterous people with very little outlets available on the school grounds anymore.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how things take time. After watching the video you posted about the Krameterhof, I went and learned more about it. Ok, he worked it for 40 years, his family worked it before him, his son has now taken over. So, even with the help of brilliant ideas and obvious decades of hard work, there is still just so much TIME put into that place. Which then gets me thinking about whether I want to put 40 years into this place…probably not…so how much work SHOULD I put in before I eventually move to a place of real permanence? Good question.
Your point about taking time is so good, and I think maybe US culture makes it difficult to appreciate the long approach – I know I get irritated if it takes longer that 2 minutes to microwave leftovers. How totally stupid is that? But I think we are surrounded by this idea of instant gratification, and instant fulfillment of needs. Another reason why camping/gardening/etc. can be therapeutic – by reminding us that the rest of the natural world works at the speed it works at, and you can’t do anything about it.
Re: kids – absolutely. There are some schools that have tried upping recess and making recess a rule-free type thing, and all I’ve read is that giving kids way more time and freedom to run around makes learning and behavior better by every metric.
I love all the Farm series, so thank you for mentioning Victorian Bakers! I think that will be an excellent background to today’s baking 🙂
Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
As a Mom who had a border collie and has 3 big brothers AND a very active son, BEST description of a Boy, EVER!!! – “Basically, it helps to think of my son as a human Border Collie. If he has engaging work and plenty of opportunities to move at great speed, he is the best little person in the world. If he’s bored, he bites ankles, chews the furniture, and pees everywhere. Ok, not really those things. But he becomes challenging, emotional, prone to overwhelm and breakdown. The human equivalent of chewing up couches, basically.” Boys are about making things happen. They aren’t wired to sit still and observe. Nope. Not possible. Boys make things happen and learn from the ‘wreckage’. Ask a man about the first thing they ever blew up and they will have a story. Ask them about the Best thing they blew up and they’ll have an even better story. Erica, you are a Blessing!!! I LOVE the way you see the world.
Thanks Marie! Raising my son has been such an education. I have one sister (no brothers), and of course our older child is a girl with a very calm disposition. So this little whirlwind that dropped into our lives has required some adaptation! I’ll admit – his energy can sometimes suck me dry, but he’s so flipping determined and cute and well-meaning with his “wreckage” – it’s hard not to secretly kinda cheer for him. 🙂
Ok, first of all, I absolutely love Sharon Astyk. I have all her books and got to meet her when she spoke at a thing at Monticello several years ago.
I’m also in the stages of dealing with the stuff I’ve grown. I just made a batch of pickled garlic with Thai chiles from the enormous harvest I had this summer. Sadly, it didn’t use nearly as much garlic as I had hoped. Sigh, on to find more ways to deal with it before it goes bad.
If memory serves, you homeschooled your daughter for a bit didn’t you? I homeschooled mine for years, but they are now in school and happy as clams. I am so very glad that I had my son home for all those years. School is just not a good place for active, bright, normal little boys.
Thanks for your thoughts this week!
Thanks Heather – yup, Sharon Astyk is amazing. She’s that rare person who really seems to completely live her values, or at least – she sure seems to be consistent about practicing what she preaches. I admire her a lot.
Did you see this post about freezing garlic? I’m telling you, minced garlic in olive oil is SO convenient. Imagine it’s August and your tomatoes are coming in. You grab a block of olive oil garlic from the freezer, pop it in a pan on medium, and when everything melts and the garlic starts to get toasty, you toss in a couple of chunked-up ripe tomatoes and a bit of salt. Cook a few minutes, throw in some basil if you want and voila! Nearly instant fresh tomato sauce.
Good memory! We homeschooled my daughter in Kindergarten, way back in the day. Looking forward to getting back to it!
I LOVE all the Farm series! I even want to get a region-free DVD player so I can own them all and not have to rely on the unreliability of YouTube. We’re currently watching Tudor Monastery Farm as part of our homeschool Renaissance and Reformation unit. And as I am just getting into baking bread (albeit the super-easy-feels-like-I’m-cheating Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method), Victorian Bakers sounds right up my alley!
I’m also right there with you on the difficulty of using up what I preserve. I love the sight of all that food security on my shelves! This is one of my major goals for 2016, to make a real, deliberate effort to use my preserved food every day, in at least one if not all, our meals.
I’m currently reading the latest edition of Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, which I finally bought for myself. I tried to read it a few years ago as a beginning garden and it was a bit too much for me to absorb. Now, with a few years of growing under my belt, it’s making a lot more sense! Next up after that is High-Yield Gardening by the guys from The Seattle Urban Farm Company!
Enjoy Victorian Bakers! It’s awesome – if you’re already on board with TMF you’ll love it I think.
I sometimes hang out in my pantry just to check out all the pretty jars. Some girls have well organized dedicated shoe closets….I have a full and soothing pantry. It’s true – it can be hard to convince oneself to actually USE the stuff we preserve! But as I do this longer and longer pragmatism wins out…putting food by is just too much work to be only decoration.
Steve Solomon (author of Growing Veg West of the Cascades) has got to be the crankiest garden writer ever, but all his books are fantastic. Sometimes they are hard to get your head around – I’m still working on fully understanding his latest book on nutrient dense crops. I haven’t read Colin and Brad’s latest book, but I have met them both and referred friends to SUFC – they are really nice guys.
I really like Sharon Astyk’s stuff. I checked out Making Home at one point and then never got to it. Think I’ll request it again. Our library system refuses to buy Depletion and Abundance, so if it does hold up, let me know – I’ll gladly buy a copy to check it out for myself.
Definitely going to check out the Victorian stuff. Sounds neat.
Your “flour sack” towels. They look an awful lot like what my mom calls “pastry cloths”. They are pretty damn useful though I have never gotten around to buying a set for myself. Might just do that.
I would start with Making Home for sure. I would also suggest her book on food preservation, Independence Days, for you. If you like those enough to want to fill out your Astyk collection, then I’d look to the other two. I don’t know if it’s my own ignorance of these things, or just that a lot has happened since 2008 with global energy trends, or if our own situation has just become far less brittle WRT energy prices, but it’s hard for me to get worked up about peak oil right now as an imminent threat. It seems to me like corporatocracy, refugee/migrant issues, Jihad vs. McWorld type clashes and rising nationalism are the big issues on the world plate at the moment. ::Sigh:: Hold on, let me go re-read Low Information Diet.
Pastry cloths are typically a heavier weight cloth than flour sack, but I could see someone using flour sack in the same way pastry cloth is typically used. I love them, fo’real. But – if you wanted to be super freaking frugal about it, the back portions of men’s 100% cotton dress shirts are an excellent substitute. My husband has elbows like a microplane cheese grater, so every few months he blows out the elbows in a dress shirt. The fabric from those shirts is very useful!
Yeah I went ahead and requested Making Home. I’ve read ANOF and liked it. I love Independence Days. Read it twice so far and I think it’s a book I actually own.
I literally have dozens of actual flour sacks since I buy my flours and oats in bulk from a local producer, Greenwillow Grains. I reuse them for gift bags and produce bags, and for keeping things organized in our luggage when we travel. I can’t believe I never thought to actually use them as flour bag towels…
That’s so cool! If you sew, you could hem up a bunch and use them for nearly everything. 🙂
Here’s a link to Greenwillow Grains for anyone else who might read this and want to check them out. Looks like they are between Salem and Eugene in Oregon.
Ditto the chance to get a bit more of your fascinating mind 😉 Also, re: Montessori, the ‘Summerhill’ experiment, way back, worked pretty well 😉
Thanks for the link Nancy that school – Summerhill – is so cool! If there were a similar thing that was affordable locally we would look at it strongly for our own kids.
You didn’t as for advice, but I just started homeschooling my son using the Bookshark curriculum and can’t recommend it enough. It’s secular, organized really well and easy to use. Best to you on that adventure!
Thanks Sara, appreciate the point to Bookshark! Secular and book-based fits very well with us.
Wow. It seems more and more common for parents with our shared interests to look to homeschooling. We brought our daughter home from private school for this current school year and really believe it has been for the best. Sure there have been bumps in the road and we are still working out the kinks, but I have seen positive movement on all sides. That being said, it isn’t for everyone. I wish you the best of luck as you embark on your journey 🙂
Thanks Ravenna. I expect lots of bumps for us too, but I think this really is the right direction for us. (I guess we all reserve the right to change our minds, though!)
I think there is a general skepticism within the homesteader community about increasingly test-based, high-stress, institutionalized education. I think it’s positively obscene what we tell high schoolers is required of them – perfect grades, loads of extracurriculars, volunteering, music, sports – all fueled by 4 years of sleep deprivation so, what? they can get into a good college and go $200K into debt for a shot at “success”? It just doesn’t make sense to me. I could go on a big rant about skills here, too, but I will leave that to Mike Rowe.
Oh my goodness, Erica, I am so stinkin’ excited you’ll be homeschooling. I beg of you to blog about it. We’re planning on homeschooling, but as Spiritual but not at all religious jews, the curriculum choices that are also not 100% computer based are slim pickin’s. Thankfully, we have a solid 4-5 years before baby Ethan enters the school realm, but I can’t imagine many more non-tech based curricula will come on to the scene.
Thanks so much Kat! I think I have to see how the readership feels about homeschool posts, but I’m sure as we plunge forward that it will leak through.
I am no expert, but it seems to me there is a very long history of (secular) scholarship within the Jewish community – do you feel like it’s important that your faith is included within the core curriculum itself? Or would it be sufficient to do a secular core curriculum (3R type stuff) and then make the spiritual component something that is explored in field trips, discussions, family celebrations and of course with religious traditions?
One thing I do recall from homeschooling my daughter in Kindergarten that there are a lot of good resources about the ancient history of the Levant. Some (most?) of them come probably do from Christian sources, but these tend to be very positive about the development and history of the Jewish people and faith. We read Story of the World 1 (which is kinda maybe Christian, but not really) with my daughter and that led to us doing a whole segment on Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors (she made a patchwork coat – it was cool), so I think from an (ancient) history perspective at least there are some resources. Good luck!
Well, I would LOVE to see posts about your experience homeschooling. I don’t understand how you have homesteaded, raised your kids, blogged and wrote a book. And lots of other things too I’m sure. So how will homeschooling fit in? How can I do it too? My little one is 4 and won’t go to school until she’s 5.5 and I still don’t know what I will do. We have charter Montessori schools, a rigorous elementary school, and a very good private Montessori. My husband and I are both high income earners, does one of us quit our job to homeschool and pursue our urban homestead dream or do we use the school options and pursue our early retirement dream? Your experience will be so helpful, you research things like I do and have a lot of the same perspective so you would help blaze the trail for me. Nuff said.
Do you mind if I borrow (ok, steal) your Five Things Friday idea for my blog?
I’m a rural homesteader, doing much of what you are doing except on 12 acres with goats. I used to have a personal blog and then when I started farming in earnest I started a farm blog but I never write there because I constantly tell myself “this isn’t farm related. It’s too personal.” In reality, I am the farm and the farm is me….I am so intertwined with it that I can’t separate myself from it, but I’m not sure that I can gain readership on a farm blog that way. Allowing myself Five random things on Fridays might just get me writing again…
BTW, I always take notes when I read your posts…today: Sharon Astyk and Victorian Farm. Thanks!
“I am the farm and the farm is me….I am so intertwined with it that I can’t separate myself from it, but I’m not sure that I can gain readership on a farm blog that way.”
Oh, boy, do I understand that. 🙂
The concept of a 5 Things Friday or whatever is totally open source. I’m not the first to do it, and in fact, it was Tim Ferriss and his 5-Bullet Friday that made me think I should start up something similar. So go for it! Absolutely!
I think, having been blogging for awhile, that there has to be a balance between the useful/helpful and the personal. Like, there are already 10 zillion How To posts on everything. It’s already been covered. There is nothing new under the sun. That doesn’t mean another How To is bad – but it has to include your unique spin on it. That’s my take – there has to be enough “real” in whatever you are writing to let readers connect to you as a person. If a 5 Things Friday type format lets you get your own voice and perspective into your writing, I think you should totally go for it!
If you like the “Victorian bakers”, I love it as well onto episode two now, then I think you would love the “big allotment challenge” which was on BBC2 for a couple of seasons.
Can’t find any full episodes but heres a long trailer for it
Unfortunately they didn’t renew it after the second series. Basically was a garden version of the baking show
I will watch it ASAP! Maybe I can find it for paid download on Amazon or iTunes! Thanks for the great tip.
Love this! I’ve seen a little Victorian Farm and know I need to see it all and most especially the Baking show for sure….thank you for the rec!
Also, we are homeschoolers too and I do hope you’ll show a little of how you are doing with that and how you incorporate that into your homesteading type work. I can a lot (about 450ish jars this year) and I freeze a lot (2 huge freezers) and I homeschool our 7,5 and 4 year old. I am learning how to juggle it better every year. And honestly it helps that they are more independent and more able to amuse each other too. But it can be a real challenge in the fall with trying to tackle the produce glut from the garden, make the 50-100 jars of applesauce, butcher the chickens and still not feel like I’m forgetting to actually kick off the school year. And while we do learn all year and even do some ‘school’ stuff in the summer I do still stick to basically the school year calendar. Basically I love our lifestyle, hope you find joy in homeschooling and hope we’ll see some of how you make it work!
Last in my novel here, I am on a mission to eat the food in those jars and freezers. In Jan (with no extra stock up or real forethought) I decided to try and pretty much avoid the grocery store. I kept up with our raw milk and some eggs from another farm to supplement my little pullets, but so far totally I’ve only spent $70 in groceries total for our family of 5. About half of that is milk and eggs for the month. We’ve eat so well from our jars and freezers and really could keep going for a long while. I’ve always felt secure because of our food preservation efforts and this just helps reaffirm it. It is hard to watch the jars dwindle, but really, if we don’t eat like this I won’t have empty jars/freezers to fill in the summer! Enjoying the fruits (and veg and meat) of our labor!
Honestly, I’m worried about the balance aspect of it. It’s my biggest concern – how to “do it all” when I know for a fact that entire concept is bullshit. So, you give me hope that it might not be some pretty picture of bliss all the time, but it IS doable!
I also really agree with you about the eating down the larder. Our normal month for that is February. It’s a good habit to make room in the jars and the freezer, and then with all the money we save on groceries, I can buy seeds. 😉
We put together a “deep” food storage (5 gallon buckets, rice and beans, prepper-style) and that made it easier for me to watch my larder dwindle to nothing. Probably just some weird insecurity of mine, but there was always a part of me that thought “what if the big earthquake/zombie apocalypse happens just as we eat our last jar of tomatoes! We’ll be as helpless as folks who never built a food storage at all!” (I know that’s ridiculous) – so having a dry goods rotation that’s longer than the garden and freezer rotation has been nice.
I feel the same way on cleaning out jars….what if the tomatoes fail and I have none!…what if the world collapses and we are almost empty? Hahaha! We do some dry goods and are gearing up to do a larger, longer term set of buckets just for peace of mind.
“Eduquer, ce n’est pas remplir des vases, c’est allumer des feux.” Michel de Montaigne
Je suis d’accord! 🙂
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