[Garden] What Next?

[thefourthvine]

The status of the garden in three conversations:

1.

Me: Hi, guys.
Tomatoes: HI!
Me: Look, um. It's, you know, the middle of September.
Tomatoes: Fascinating!
Me: So. Well. What that means is, fall is coming.
Tomatoes: Yay!
Me: Yay?
Tomatoes: Spring was great. Summer was EVEN BETTER. Obviously, fall will be the best yet.
Me: Um. Gosh, this is awkward. See - you're supposed to die in the fall.
Tomatoes: No way! Get out!
Me: Yeah. I'm sorry, but it's true. So, I was thinking - maybe you should dedicate a little more energy to finishing off the tomatoes you've already got going, and maybe a little less energy to making new branches and flowers?
Tomatoes: No.
Me: No?
Tomatoes: No. Good chat, though.

2.

Me: It's the middle of October now.
Tomatoes: Isn't it wonderful?
Me: I notice you're still doing the branch and flower thing.
Tomatoes: We're not just making tomatoes, we're making tomato infrastructure! We're planning for the long haul! We're going to synergistically leverage our incentives as soon as we figure out how!
Me: You know, I was going to plant a winter salad garden where you are. But I can't, because you won't stop growing. Even though you're clearly supposed to.
Tomatoes: According to who?
Me: A lot of books. I'd be willing to read the relevant bits out loud.
Tomatoes: Hah. Books.
Me: Tomato plants cannot live forever.
Tomatoes: We plan to try.
Me: So that's a no on the graceful decline thing?
Tomatoes: Sure is!

3.

Me: GUYS. IT'S NOVEMBER.
Tomatoes: I believe I can fly! I believe I can touch the sky!


So, yes. It's November, and my tomato plants are, in total defiance of everything my gardening books say, producing not only tomatoes but also flowers and new shoots and everything. Still, I'm prepared to call this the end of the season, and trust that sooner or later the tomatoes will also figure that out.

The question becomes: what next? I actually started gardening because of an urban homesteading book I read. I figured that if I can do it, we don't need to worry about the end of oil or the zombie attacks or the apocalypse or whatever, because anyone can do it. I'm the Most Hapless Homesteader. But obviously my homesteading journey has only just begun.

So I made a list of potential homesteading tasks I could learn to do next (or relearn to do, in the case of the one I've already done), and I'm going to ask you guys to vote on them. You should get some say, since I will almost certainly post about the inevitable disaster here. (Also, if it goes anything like gardening, the results could actually trigger the apocalypse, and in that case, I would like some company in the blame department.)

Poll #5001 Homesteading

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 415

View Respondents

Which scary homesteading task should I probably fail to learn next?

View Answers

Baking bread
292 (70.4%)

Composting
167 (40.2%)

Keeping livestock
33 (8.0%)

Making cheese
85 (20.5%)

Making preserves/preserving food
169 (40.7%)

Making soap or detergent or whatever
37 (8.9%)

Making wine or beer
62 (14.9%)

Making yogurt, sour cream, or butter
96 (23.1%)

Sewing, patching, darning
117 (28.2%)

Woodworking
38 (9.2%)

Please stop now, while you still have your limbs and we still have a planet
38 (9.2%)

Comments

[misspamela]

Baking bread is WAY easier than I ever thought it would be, but it's still not quite easy enough that I make all of our bread. I go in and out of phases of it.

[thefourthvine]

I used to bake all our bread back when we were in college and could not afford $4 loaves of bread. But I haven't done it in a loooooong time. Or at this altitude.

[trouble]

Baking bread is fun because you get to punch things.

[thefourthvine]

Ooo. Good point.

[lilmoka]

What about knitting? With your attitude to make everything come to life there would probably be a yarn invasion. That would be so cool! XD

Baking bread is a wonderful idea! I'm willing to be your lab rat, if you need one ;)

[thefourthvine]

Ooo. I forgot about knitting and crocheting. Both of these were things I used to do long ago, when I had more time (and, in fact, when we moved, I got rid of a lot of ancient half-finished projects). Hmmmm. *considers*

[macey]

(also I am amused by how (it seems) everyone on this poll voted either 'yay bread!' or 'omg NO MORE')

[thefourthvine]

There are also some people who voted solely for SCARY things, like making beer or wine. I assume these are people who plan to laugh heartily at my panicky posts.

[musesfool]

Baking bread is awesome! And it makes everything smell lovely.

[thefourthvine]

It's the one thing on the list I've done before! A long time ago! At a different altitude! So, you know, I would have to learn again, at least with yeast breads, but I am PREPARED TO TRY. (And your posts of delicious baked goods are not helping me resist this concept, to say the least.)

[thingswithwings]

making preserves is dead easy! it's like, make something you would eat anyway, then put it in a can. the canning process seems daunting but really is quite simple. ditto baking bread: it's fun and delicious and I bet the Earthling would be ALL OVER fresh homemade bread. I'd maybe hold out on the livestock and the butter churn until you've leveled up a couple of times, though.

[thefourthvine]

*eyes you* So am I to understand that you are volunteering to walk me through the preserving process? Because in my experience, things that people swear are easy are PRECISELY the things that end in disaster. Three of the scariest words in the English language are "Can't go wrong!" I can ALWAYS go wrong.

The earthling is already all about the homemade quick breads (muffins! popovers!). I am thinking he'd probably like yeast bread, too. Of course, knowing him, the end of it might be a refusal to eat any OTHER bread, but, well. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.

[feanna]

Have you ever looked at advice for making your own soap? Shit is dangerous! Advice includes: Do it outside! Be really careful! DON'T SPLASH! And so on... You're working with concentrated lye there.
This is not to say that you couldn't do it, but it does sound like something that should be considered carefully and kept far far away from children.

[amberfox]

And it takes a long time before you can use it, or at least it did when my sister made some. I recommend cheese if you want to play the waiting game. Not toxic, so you don't have to buy separate pots, and with the price of milk down, now is a really good time to do some experimenting.

[taselby]

CHICKENS!!

[thefourthvine]

Two minor problems:

1. My city only lets you keep ONE chicken. Chickens are reputed to need company. But this would not be so bad, except for:

2. I would end up DIVORCED. Best Beloved has a consuming belief in the Evil of Chickens, and she would not thank me for bringing evil into our home.

[snacky]

I am so jealous of your fresh tomatoes, I might cry.

[thefourthvine]

If it makes you feel better, the earthling ate nearly all the ones I picked yesterday. We did not get a look in.

[melusina]

Urban chickens! (Because I wants them so, but I'm pretty sure our convenants forbid them, and this way I can live vicariously through you.)

I'm very interested in urban homesteading - what book inspired you?

At our house we bake bread and brew beer (yeast: in the kitchen, it's your friend!) and I knit like a crazy person. I'd really like to start gardening and canning. . .

[thefourthvine]

Our city won't let us have more than one chicken, and chickens need company. (Also, BB is a firm believer in the Evil of Chickens. For serious.) So that's a no on chickens. Sorry!

I read a couple of urban homesteading books - one was The Urban Homestead, which I liked a lot (local couple writing it, and they wrote well and with humor, and I liked that they noted their areas of disagreement), and another was The Backyard Homestead, which was not of enormous help to me because she assumes you live somewhere with normal seasons. (Her tips about when to plant things always include the phrase "last frost date." Our last frost date was in the 1950s. Not really helpful.) One thing I've noticed is that homesteading books are very location-specific; I am guessing a lot of the things I liked about Urban Homestead would be useless to you. Although it's still one of the more entertaining and readable ones I've found.

But actually the book that most inspired me to do this was not really a homesteading book at all (by the time I bought the books, I was already interested, after all); it was No Impact Man, which pissed me off so much I decided it was either write a scathing review or start homesteading projects. I went with the latter. But I have an option open on the former.

Gardening is - scary, but fun. Your kids are a little old for the magic of it; the earthling is the right age to be totally, totally fascinated by the garden - things growing! Food! To eat! Oh my god! But on the other hand, your kids are totally the right age to provide you with free garden labor. Seize the day, that's my advice. Except I think you actually do have frost dates where you live, so you'll probably have to wait until spring.

And I will learn to can if you will. Although I think you're cheating; brewing beer is far, far scarier than canning, and you already do it. You have nothing left to fear!

[bedlamsbard]

Baking bread is really easy! I do it the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day way, although it's really more like four hours a day, although most of that is waiting -- I live in an on-campus apartment, so the low pressure of doing it the easier way is fine for me.

My mother makes yogurt, but I haven't gotten around to doing it at school yet, even though we do it the really really easy way. (Mix whole milk with yogurt/starter. Cover with tea towel and let sit for twenty-four hours. Put lid on and stick in fridge. Eat at will.)

[indeliblesasha]

I'm just spamming all over TFV's comments today, I would feel bad about it, but I'm all about the bread baking. :D

King Arthur Flour has taken ABFMAD recipes and modified them just a bit to make them even less effort. I had a major bread-making break through with one of them so I've been sharing my glee with EVERYBODY.

http://theawesomemommy.blogspot.com/2010/10/proper-use-of-yeast-post.html It's got links to their blog posts. :D

[msilverstar]

Your gardening books are obviously not about Southern California, because the weather there is such that tomatoes often produce into November and maybe December. After that they tend to turn black and wither, but sometimes still bear a last few tomatoes. I recommend pinching back the new growth, especially flowers, so the late energy goes into the fruit. Also keep watering them if you want more fruit.

[yasaman]

Baking bread is so intensely satisfying. It doesn't even have to be that hard, especially if you use something like that no-knead bread recipe. It seems like actual magic when you get water, yeast, salt, and flour to turn into something you usually buy from the store.

[jumpuphigh]

I make all of my own bread these days and since finding the no-knead recipe, I rarely make anything else. Yum!

[semielliptical]

Composting! I've only been composting about year and I wish I had done it sooner, it's easy and keeps so much waste out of the landfill. Though if your city has a good municipal composting program you could do that instead and save a little space in your yard.

[sapote]

Composting is mostly painless if you aren't picky about the outcome. If you're picky about getting only beautiful usable compost that won't fill your garden with feral squash, it's kind of hard. If you just want to throw your vegetarian scraps into a big pile and wander off, it's the easiest thing in the world. Special bonus: if you don't eat very many things that aren't compostable, your garbage almost never smells because it's got no food scraps in it. The compost smells to high heavens, but the garbage can sit in the can for two weeks because it's just plastic packets etc.

[bell]

I voted for making wine or beer because I totally want to hear about that process through your words. And I'll take part of the blame for world destruction, I promise! :D

[jmtorres]

I admit that I voted for all the ones involving complex chemical reactions that could potentially explode. On the whole it seemed safer than suggesting you use sharps for any reason.

[roga]

LIVESTOCK THO. YOU COULD BUY A SHEEP.

[dexwebster]

Ahaha. My answer is a very unhelpful "half of them", because one of the big secrets of this stuff is that they're generally not that hard (if they were they wouldn't have been homesteading staples--lowest common denominator and all). I'd say hold off on the alcohol and the livestock, and making soap can get a little hairy. The woodworking depends on exactly what kind of woodworking you want to do.

Bread is super easy (there are even no-knead recipes where you literally throw a few things into a bowl and stick it in the fridge, come back the next day and it's ready to bake), and butter is even easier. You can throw a pint of heavy cream into a jar, shake it for a while, and you'll wind up with butter and buttermilk. Other dairy products get more complicated, but this is a good place to start.

Preserves, drying and canning are simple (especially hot-water bath canning: you don't even need a pressure cooker). Smoking requires more specialized equipment. And as far as composting, vermiculture (using worms) is easy and doesn't take much space.

This comment brought to you by Dex's overachieving Foodie-ness.

[thingswithwings]

oh yes, seconding vermiculture! It's awesome, small-scale composting that doubles as an entertaining science project.

[beachlass]

I don't know what it is with the tomatoes this year. Mine were really prolific but the topper was a plant grown by an elder man I know - he grew it at his living room window and it covered the ENTIRE picture window, growing up and bending at the ceiling, tied to the curtain rod.

[rheanna]

Keep hens! My mother still fondly tells the story of how her mother kept hens, and when my mother was a small girl, she used to put the chickens in her doll's pram and take them for rides. Posterity does not record how the hens felt about that. But, my point here is, hens! Fun for all the family, and eggs as well! (And you could get an eglu for them to live in.)

[auburn]

I vote for cheese!

This is because I'm a little scared of you and breadmaking. Yeast is pretty amendable, but what if you decided to try sourdough. I don't want to die in the sourdoughpocalypse!

[jumpuphigh]

If you decide to make yogurt, ask around for a culture. I had an Indian friend who made her own yogurt and the culture had been smuggled into the country from India by her aunt and shared amongst the family. Yogurt is serious business!

I voted for bread cause using some nice organic flour with the no-knead recipe from the NYT makes really awesome bread. It's fairly error-proof. Even my bad loafs have been edible. It does take a few loaves to tweak the recipe to work for the time of the year and your location. Once I try baking bagels and find a good naan recipe, I'll never have to make bread again.

I voted for composting cause if you are going to continue with this vegetable garden takes over the world thing, you should be making your own fuel for it. :D

[nextian]

Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day is defs the easiest, and lasts forever. KAF's Hearth Bread is a totally respectable easy loaf with kneading, and their Daily Bread is the best loaf I've tried so far! They're all really straightforward and the Artisan Bread in particular is literally impossible to ruin -- I have tried extensively.

[anitac588]

Reading your experiences with composting - now that would be a treat, I'm sure of it! *G*

[norah]

I can help on the bread baking front if you want advices.