foraging: March 2009 Archives

I moved into this house in November, with my sweetie, excited to be in a new community and excited about having a yard. Somehow, as the economy continued to crash--and crash--and I started to read more blogs about sustainability, I become interested in doing more urban homesteading, following a diet closer to Nurturing Traditions and Weston Price's theories, growing vegetables and making more of our food, or trading for it.

At the same time, I became fascinated with permaculture, the study of environmental and agriculture systems. There are some great Yahoo groups around permaculture that I have been reading and I've tried to put some of what I learned into practice.

Here's what my goals are for this spring and summer:

• Recycle/compost food scraps
• Cut down on using bags and plastic of alll types
• WALK MORE, DRIVE LESS (this is a pleasure)
• Establish and maintain an herb garden we can cook with
• Develop a worm bin and keep it going to we can use the compost
• Build a series of container beds w/ fresh potting soil, manure, and gravel/stone(the bottom layer)
• Plant vegetables: sow carrots, radishes; plant tomatoes, squashes, peas and beans
• Keep the lettuce, chard and aragula happy; plant more of it
• Plant vines along the fence: japonica, jasmine
• Establish the lemon tree and keep it alive so it fruits
• Establish a pattern in trading for eggs--offer marmalade(it is coming out great), cake, soup, cornbread, all of which I make really well)
• Get involved  more with fruit foraging and with Forage Oakland-I love what they are doing.
• Start going to the East Bay Permaculture Guild meetings and learning more by doing with others
  
• Have fun with the above, this is a marathon, not a sprint, as we say in start up land.

Meanwhile, there is so much to read, and to learn; I have to remember this is change for the long haul, and it can't all happen at once.

Sunday Cheg BJ came over and we made marmalade. This was my second go round with 3 fruit citrus and I was excited. However, BJ and I didn't synch on how to cut the fruit; she peeled the ring VERY thin, like the chef with great knife skills she is, and we ended up with a very loose jam that hasn't reall jelled (I like it when a fork will stand up for a few seconds, but not for forever.)

So now I have 12 jars of runny marmalade, all neatly canned. UGH.
What am I going to do?  Cheat.

Yep, I am going to throw these suckers back in the big pot, pull out the candy thermometer and shoot a load of pectin into the mix. Then re bottle and can again.

PS The oranges in this batch are foraged from a friend's neighbor in Mountain View, and the lemons are local. The grapefruit....bought.