Food Security

I live in a place that is incredibly susceptible to the crash of transportation. There are no actual, profitable family farms here--vegetable, meat, dairy, grain, or otherwise. People often talk about food security and our dependance on the barge bringing loads of food and goods to town. "Plant a garden," they say, "Raise chickens," they say. But are either of those things actually making you independent of the transportation system?

Let's take a look at the garden: 

How do you make your garden beds? Do you buy lumber from the store? Did you fill them with bagged potting soil, peat moss, and perlite? Yes, one-time investments, but still dependent. Plastic sheeting for hoop houses is almost unavoidable in Juneau....

Where did your seeds come from? Some far-away farm. Instead of buying kale all summer long, you buy a packet of seeds. That's a great start, but it's still dependent. What happens if no seeds come? You have gardening skills but no way to garden.....

How do you fertilize your garden? Bone meal, blood meal, steer manure? Well, where did those things come from? Some far-away processing facility dependent on the large-scale cattle industry. Scary in itself, and dependent.....

A look at chickens:

Where do you purchase your chicks? If you buy them locally at Swampy Acres, guess what? She orders them from the same California hatchery you could if you wanted 15 or more birds.

How do you feed your chickens? Do you grow the corn and soybeans they need to eat? Do you gather an alchemy of trace minerals for them? Buying chicken feed from Outside isn't any more "secure" then buying eggs.


It's doom and gloom, I know. It's very drastic, yes. But that's the reality of it. So, are we supposed to just eat fish that we catch with a bone barbed wooden hook? No. It's just a reality check. From that point, you can step back and try to gradually find ways out of the system. These are all things that I am trying to work on for myself. Trying to make and procure things second hand or from nature are great starts.

Here are a few ways I do or am trying to get out of the barge loop in terms of food security:


Pasturing Chickens
My chickens have lots of space to roam and forrage plants and bugs for themselves. I also feed them kitchen and garden scraps. Occasionally they get brewers grain. In the summer they eat about half as much pelleted feed as in the winter. I also keep a small bin of beach sand and ground shells in the barn. Calcium and gizzard grit in one. Why buy ground oyster shells?

Other feed ideas up my sleeve are alder catkins and plantain seeds, which both pack the protein.

Barn bedding
I buy straw and sawdust pellets, and I hate that I do that. I bought a paper shredder but it's slow and meticulous. There has to be an office somewhere full of shredded paper...Maybe dried alder leaves could work. In a dryer fall I'd like to head out in the boat and cut some beach grass into hay/straw. I could also try contacting the lumber mill in Hoonah for their sawdust. Local sand (Agpro extracts it from Juneau rivers) would work for people who only have a few chickens...it'd be like a kitty box you'd have to scoop. The down side would be that you'd be missing the browns to compost the poo with.

Saving Seed
This fall I am going to give this a try for the first time. I plan on keeping nasturium, kale, and lettuce seeds. I've let lettuce reseed itself before, which worked great. Violas are out of control in that respect--I love it!


Fertilizer
Compost, compost, compost! It's really a shame more people don't do it. It makes the best fertilizer and straight-out growing medium. Plants love growing in a compost and sand mixture. The best thing is that all the inputs are free!

Seaweed - Ever see kelp meal at the store? Oyster shell? Visit a beach and haul your own. Great for the garden and chickens!

Alder leaves - If you don't have any, someone does. Their leaves are great mixed in the garden for nitrogen and organic matter. When matted down as a winter mulch, they'll lure tons of worms to your bed in the spring. Leave the worms there or feed them to the chickens!

Spagnum moss - I don't quite understand why people here put this in their gardens. It retains moisture, which we certainly don't need. It's acidic and almost devoid of nutrients, so why add it? It provides organic matter for macro- and microorganisms to feed on, creating humus, and it improves soil texture. Why not use compost and get some fertility into your bed to boot? Anyway, if you're a believer in the spag, harvest some locally!

Bone meal - I recently read an article in Countryside Magazine about making homemade bonemeal. It was written by someone in Petersburg, Ak who steams deer bones to oblivion in a pressure canner then runs them through a grinder like grain. When we start bringing home some game this fall I'll give it a try and report back on it.


One of the books I just read is Indian Fishing, Early Methods on the Northwest Coast, by Hilary Stewart. It's an amazing compilation of photos and sketches of old fishing methods and gear. The craftiness blows me away with every page. I think I'm going to try my hand at that wood and bone fishing hook. First you put a stick inside a piece of bull whip kelp, then bury it in the ashes of a dying fire. The wood gets steamed, then you bend it into shape using a handmade mold. Rub deer tallow on it, file some bone down and wrap your parts together using spruce root......it sounds like quite the elaborate craft project that could land me some trout this winter.

Keep your gears turning and find more ways to edge yourself into true self-sufficiency!

Sucession Planting

If you plant everything at the end of May you'll be eating in August and not much outside of that. To really get the most out of local food you need to start early, end late, and stagger your plantings. I start planting in covered beds in March/April and plant continually through the spring and summer. Seed packets say to plant a new crop every three weeks, but sometimes that's a little bogus in Juneau.  Here are some sucessions that have worked for me:




Peas:  You can never have too many peas!
March 15 (or whenever hoop house soil is workable),
April 15,
May 15.
My June 25 Cascadia peas started flowering Sept 1st--we'll see if there's time for a crop!
My July 15 Early Frosty and Dwarf Grey Snap peas are about 2 feet tall and have just started flowering. Maybe chicken fodder, but hopefully peas for me. 

Lettuce: It's very easy to over-plant lettuce. If you pick only the outside leaves of each plant you probably don't need more than a dozen (or two) plants for two people. I find that the more you harvest the lettuce, the better it gets, so fewer plants is better. 
April 11
May 11
June 11 (probably not needed)

Spinach:
March 15
April 1,
bolts in May plantings and beyond.
Fall?? Forgot to plant in late July...Sept plants sprouted quickly but are still in cotyledons.

Kale:
April 15 (earlier if you start transplants inside)
June 1 - for your over-wintering crop

Carrots: They take forever here, so I plant them all in April.

Endive

escarole, dwarf grey snap peas

red-veined sorrel

At the end of July I started oregano, red veined sorrel, escarole, endive, Italian dandelion, and radicchio in my greenhouse.  I transplanted them outside August 8, and all are doing well. All are in hoop houses and some sorrel is also out in the weather. They are ready to harvest, but I am eating modestly to hold out and just see how long they can go into the winter weather. They are all recommended crops for season extension.


The key to having food to eat in fall and winter is not in the weather--it's in your summer numbers. If you plant kale in September you probably won't be eating kale in November, as it won't have time to mature. But if you plant lots of extra kale in May or June and throw some hoop houses over them in September, you'll still be munching on your mature kale until April, or whenever it runs out. The weather won't get it if it's healthy and protected by a sheet of plastic. The plants won't actually grow, but they will survive the dark and cold. The key is to plan ahead in the spring and have enough space. I have beds set aside for wintering things over, but things don't necessarily start off there. I transplant stuff from various spots in the garden into their over-wintering grounds. This way I can just worry about keeping a few hoops up year-round and close the other beds down for the winter.

Eating something fresh from the garden every single month of the year is possible, EVEN IN JUNEAU!

Get some seeds, make a map, and get to work!

Fall in Maine

I got my first moose! 

It was a wild, dark, and starry morning of coyotes howling and bats darting. It gave way to the dawn of loons calling, crows cawing, and moose grunting. A friend was cow calling and raking brush for about five minutes at first light when a bull started grunting at us. My father saw it walk out of the trees about half a mile down a logging road while I sat in a growing clear cut. I first saw it at 50 yards but because of the angle, I had no shot. I waited patiently, sure it was going to bust us and take off, but he kept walking while he stared right at me, blazing orange and wide-eyed. He was getting closer and finally I knew I had to take my shot before the bull tripped on my father. I got him steady in my scope as he took three more steps, and as soon as he stopped, BOOM!. He jumped off the road, into the trees breathing heavily. He was silent, and I could see my hunting partners wondering if I had missed, but I knew. Then we heard two heavy breaths, then what sounded like a giant tree falling, pops, cracks, boom and all. He gave his loud last breath, and then our loud excitement began. From the time I pulled to the trigger to the dying breath seemed to last forever in the moment, but it was probably 45 seconds. They say the work starts once you get a moose down, but in Maine they have things like logging roads, trucks, power winches, and skinning hoists, so it really wasn't very hard. Since it took my father 30 years to get drawn for the tag, I look forward to another moose hunt when I'm 60 and he's 90!

The weigh station where you register your moose. 668 lbs.

Home to show Huck and family.

Skinning it at the butcher's house.

 It was also a great harvest time while we were there. My aunt gave us loads of tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden and some of her homemade garden pickles and green tomato relish. We got to pick pumpkins from a pumpkin patch, buy fresh corn at a farm stand, pick buckets of potatoes behind the commercial harvesters, and pick wild apples to our heart's content.

We also were lucky enough to go on a horse-drawn wagon ride to see the leaves in their peak of oranges, reds, and yellows.

  Fall in Maine is great! 

Preserving the Harvest

It's always nice to eat fresh, but sometimes you've just had your fill. Or you know you'll want a fill later. I always preserve berries, either in jams or by freezing. I used to can blueberries for a ready-made sauce, but it's way easier to freeze them whole and whip up a 5 minute sauce when you need it.

The Berry Deal

I'm a firm believer in using two hands, and I'm not a fan of blueberry rakes. I wear a 2 quart jug fastened to my front by a belt. One hand holds the branches, the other picks--it's easy and fast. No spilled berries unless you fall!

I let blueberries soak in water for a few hours to purge any worms. I clean them then spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet. I freeze them on the sheet then transfer them to gallon-sized plastic bags. (This can work for any berry). After the summer gorge of crisps, muffins, pancakes, and waffles, three gallons of blueberries does the trick for my family. Red huckleberries are frozen if I can keep from eating them all. I store salmonberries, in the form of jam, and it's our most coveted flavor. I always go crazy on jam since I want to try so many combinations of fruit and spice. Luckily, they make great gifts!

We also make fruit leather, as my son is a huge fan. Huck and I made bunch berry/blueberry leather this week that is almost gone already! Bunch berries are bland alone, but they mix in with other things wonderfully. They are easy to find, easy to pick, and are ready when most other berries are done.We used about half blues and half bunches and an old mushy banana. The trick is to not over-dry it and to roll it off the drying rack while it is still warm. Let the rolls cool then store them in an air-tight container in the fridge.

 Chicken of the Woods

I know nothing about mushroom identification. That said, you can't really misidentify chicken of the woods. It's bright orange, grows on the dead or living trunks of trees, and appears out of nowhere. When it blooms, it's all over town. It's meaty and delicious!




 I usually saute mine in oil and eat it like I do any other mushroom. I put it on pizza, in stir fries, and in burritos. I recently had some boiled, breaded, and fried by the Wabi Sabi crew at the JAHC market. SPECTACULAR! This year, I decided to try preserving it. After searching a bit on the internet I decided to try four different methods. Freezing raw, freezing after sauteing, drying raw, and drying after sauteing. The taste test will come in a month!

It's out right now, so go on a hike and find your own stash! Remember not to take all you find, and leave the bases attached to the tree trunk so they can continue to grow. 

Herbs

I can't come close to using all the herbs I have. Last year I dried oregano and rosemary. Both were great. This year, I gave flavored vinegars a try. I was inspired by a friend who gave me some apple cider nasturtium flower vinegar last year, which was phenomenal on rice. I did a trial run of 12 quarter-pint jars. I tried using white, apple cider, rice, red wine, and white wine vinegars. For the herbs I used sage, thyme, oregano, rosemary, and even nasturtium leaves. It'll be interesting to see what combinations are best.  They are all steeping in the dark for a few more weeks.

Garlic

I wash off my garlic and let it dry on a wire rack. I put a sheet of newspaper over it to keep it dark while it dries, and I have it in the living room so there's some heat from the woodstove. I usually store mine in fridge, but I've recently read that just cool and dark is best, so I'm going to try storing some in a mesh bag in the shed and some under my kitchen sink. I only have about 20 bulbs to keep, so I don't need to worry about saving them too long. At the JAHC market last week I bought 4 different types of garlic from Orsi Organic Produce to use as my planting stock. Their website has Juneau directions for planting, caring, harvesting, and drying. They recommend planting garlic 1-2 inches deep. When I dug the last of mine up yesterday they were 5-6 inches underground--opps! I guess garlic ain't tulips!

Next week I leave for a moose hunting trip, so hopefully I'll be busy wrapping, canning, and drying! What are you going to save this fall?

Eating is Wonderful

Sometimes there's just so much fresh food to eat my belly never has time to growl. Here's what a plate sees on a typical day at our house:

Breakfast (6 local ingredients)

Burritos:
     Local: Eggs, kale, onions, chives, chicken of the woods mushrooms
     Purchased: butter, tortilla, hot sauce

Lunch (10 local ingredients)

Salad:
     Local: 3 or so varieties of lettuce, kale, nasturtiums, onions, peas, carrots, garlic tops, chives
     Purchased: olive oil, vinegar + flour, yeast, salt, and butter for homemade croutons

Supper ( 7 local ingredients)

Stir Fry

     Local: Moose steaks, onion, kale, garlic, garlic tops, chicken of the woods mushrooms, parsley

     Purchased: Rice and hot sauce

When I opened up the rice lid--after having prepared the colorful stir fry--I was utterly disappointed. What a bland and distant pot compared to the skillet! The only reason I made it is because Huck would have eaten moose and nothing else otherwise

Dessert (2 local ingredients)

Tea and berries

   Local: mint, nagoon berries, thimble berries, or red huckleberries, oh my!
   Purchased: optional butter, oatmeal, flour, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds if we want a crisp

25 local ingredients in one day. 

We are so lucky to eat so well! 

(and you could be this lucky too!)

Can you believe my son won't try a vegetable even when I prepare them like this?! 

At least I get a kick out of it!

 .....Now if I can only grow my own chilies to make my own hot sauce!

Despite the weather.....

...the garden has gone bazurk and is the horn of green plenty!

I'm up to my eyeballs in salad, and I think the slugs are enjoying it as much as I am! It's my first year having slugs, and what a bummer. A few weeks ago I finally resorted to putting cups of beer in my covered beds and they disgustingly filled quite quickly. I also did rounds of the garden the in the evenings to squish any munchers. Their numbers plummeted with about 2 weeks of mild diligence. And I can't help but wonder if the chickens get a little tuned up when they eat those dozens and dozens of Rainier-bloated slugs. It's great protein for them nonetheless! 

Now that summer has come and gone I thought I'd give a little report on some successes for the season:

Everything wild! Having natural landscaping really fills things in when it's a wet year!

Sorrel - cut and come again like you wouldn't believe! great for salad, soup, and even ice cream!

 All types of lettuce (I love red oakleaf!)

 Mesclun mix - I got lots of arugula early on then great greens of various colors and textures later. Planted April 11 in hoop house and still going strong.

Cascadia snap peas - sturdy, short-vined variety that  loved being out in the rain! Prolific, great tasting, eat-the-pod-and-all peas for salad. The sugar snap peas did well also, and they even out climbed their 8 foot tall trellis!

Nantes half-long carrots - Planted April 11 under hoops and they're ~3 inches long, thick, and DELICIOUS now.

Borrage - what a beautiful plant! Huge stems and leaves and lots of dainty blue flowers.  Next year I'll try pinching some so they grow bushier.

Comfrey leaves

Comfrey - I got a little bag of root pieces in the spring, and now I have a patch 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, and 4 feet high! AND it's growing where nothing else would grow! I plan on using it for chicken feed next year.

Herbs - everything except basil and cilantro (both of which I seeded) is outstanding and overgrown. I can't say enough about Don Abel's herb starts! From them I got rosemary, Vietnamese coriander, golden oregano, silver posie thyme,  golden thyme, Berggarten sage, golden delicious pineapple sage, and tangerine sage. My oregano patch that overwintered from last year has spread quite a bit, and I've seeded it elsewhere in the garden simply for ground cover. It's done the best in beds/pots with over a foot of soil.

 Kale - I couldn't live without it! I planted three varieties this year and will plant them all again.

 

•  Red Russian is the most tender and is best for salads. The patch outside has done slightly better than the one in a hoop house.
• Tuscano  is great for cooking (stir-frys and burritos) It sprouted the earliest of all the kales and is still around, though some are going to seed. I planted it in a covered bed April 15. Slugs don't touch it. 
• Dwarf curled leaf is great for cooking and kale chips.  

I've eaten so well this summer that I can hardly complain about the weather. If you pick the right crops, you can have plenty of food--even in a record wet and cold summer in a temperate rainforest!

Fishing and Shrimping

A hump of a humpy!

Tossing it in the tote

 Gillnetting is done and now I get to stay home for more than a couple of days at a time--what a relief! It was a great season of family gillnetting, but I'm looking forward to living without the constant blare of a diesel engine and being able to actually walk around.


Our life is completely surrounded and supported by food. The thousands of pounds of salmon that we catch to make our $$ is just a start. We have a good time getting delicacies for ourselves in the downtime of fishing. Huck, the self-proclaimed man in charge of the shrimp pot, scored us plenty of prawns last week with a little depth-finder know-how from Dad .

Shrimping

 

 Huck starts with a shirmpy voodoo dance.....

...then hauls it in until he feels the pot.....

  ....Mom or Dad takes over......

 

....then Huck puts them in the bucket! 

 Mom pops the heads off, 

Huck throws the heads overboard for the halibut to eat, 

mom sautes the shrimp in butter, 

and we all stuff our faces, 

Sriracha sauce optional.

We also scored this tanner crab who happened to be standing on top of the pot when we hauled it in! 

We are so lucky to have this life!