Harvest Time

I love the summer so much because I enjoy growing things in the garden and being outside in nature as much as I can. This was our first full year with our expanded garden space as well as the additional garden beds added all around our house and using our greenhouse in warm weather. And chickens! Who lay eggs! It’s been an amazingly fun summer for me because of all of this! I don’t know if others would think it’s so fun, it does require quite a bit of work to upkeep a large organic garden and some livestock even if they are a small backyard flock. But this type of lifestyle resonates with me and I work hard for its success.

Now we are officially in autumn with the bulk of the harvest coming in and preparing & planting the garden beds for fall/winter gardening under the hoop house and inside the greenhouse. It’s a joint effort, both my husband and I have a shared vision for all of this, we secretly want to be full time farmers because we enjoy it so much. Real farming is such hard work, though! I feel part of the homesteader lifestyle even living here in the ‘burbs once again since my mindset is always about self-sustainability.  I have learned so many skills to enable me to be self-reliant these past 15 years living this way.

I’ve been doing all methods of food preservation throughout the season and especially my most favorite method of all – canning. Some people find canning tedious but I still totally love it – both water bath and pressure canning. Looking at my various shelves filled with jars of produce picked at the peak of freshness ready to be eaten especially on a cold winter evening fills me with a sense of security, really. I know what’s in my food, who prepared it and the fact that it’s there means we won’t starve if ever there was a catastrophe of some kind. Most importantly, it reminds me that I’m self-reliant – one of the most important traits of a true homesteader.

I’ve been freezing and dehydrating lots of produce and prepared dishes, too so I have both a packed upright freezer as well as jars of dried herbs, fruit leather, dried fruit and powdered dried veggies (to add to soup or other dishes for flavor and nutrition) in jars on my shelves or vacuum sealed and stored in closed bins in my basement “root cellar” – a cold, concrete closet in my basement.

I try to process the produce as the season progresses, making lactofermented pickles & sauerkraut as we harvest it (or get some great deals on organic produce from local farmers), making a vinegar dill pickle and dilly beans (that requires no canning), bread & butter pickles, harvesting root crops to store in the “root cellar”, dehydrating some of the many greens we grow to powder them, drying herbs (always dry everything at low temps to preserve the most nutrients), freezing chopped fresh herbs with water in ice cube trays (and store cubes in freezer bags), freezing fruit,  juicing veggies and fruits and freezing in ice cube trays for use in smoothies. By mid-October, we  make cinnamon applesauce which is great to use in vegan baked goods. We also make pear sauce (but not for baking).

I especially love to make and can tons of tomato sauce – so much so that for our 10 year anniversary this past summer solstice, we got ourselves a ginormous pressure canner that can fit 14 quart jars at one time! Now that’s a lot of sauce done in one shot! A huge improvement over our little pressure cooker/canner that could only hold 3 quart jars at a time! Besides canning tomatoes either as sauce or as whole, peeled ones, we make & can jam throughout the season as the fruit comes in (I made lots of very low sugar plum, blueberry & peach jams since PB&J is my son’s favorite sandwich now), we can tomato salsa, tomatillo salsa, fruit salsa (just made some great peach salsa!), canned veggies like beets (some are pickled, too), carrots, hot peppers, etc. I can go on, there are so many ways we preserve the bounty and I look forward to doing it every single year!

Living this way is not only very inexpensive over a 12 month period but it puts me so in touch with the lifecycle of the plants, the Earth, the seasons, the feeling that everything is connected from the stars to the bugs. I’m part of the cycle, too and I can feel it in the high vibration of the food I eat whether it’s fresh and raw or preserved at the peak of freshness for future eating. It does require a lot of planning and effort during the growing season but I wouldn’t have it any other way!

The Cancer Project

After hearing about the recent passing of actor Patrick Swayze from pancreatic cancer, I wanted to pass along this link to a great website called The Cancer Project. It has lots of clinical research info on the disease but it mainly focuses on the details about how a correct diet can help you to prevent cancer in the first place. There is also really great info for all the survivors to follow to never have it re-occur in your life again.

I know first hand about the insidiousness of pancreatic cancer since I watched helplessly as my father suffered and died from it within 4 months of being diagnosed. I was 22 at the time and it really rocked my world. When he first got sick, I was living on the other side of the planet on a kibbutz in Israel having a great time. I came home to be with him and researched as much as I could about cancer and the nutrition connection since I had just graduated from college with a degree in nutrition. This was before the convenience of the internet so I relied on textbooks, alternative health magazines, the library and talking with various doctors like I was a reporter.  No one really had the answers I was looking for.

The only book in print on the subject of cancer at the time was a recent book by Dr. Bernie Siegel called “Love, Medicine and Miracles.” It explained the mind/body connection and visualizing cancer cells being destroyed as well as the concept that “Love Heals.” Such a wise doctor he is!

I think the power of the mind over the body is second to none but when people are in a deep state of fear and wondering if they will live, it is difficult to keep the focus needed to apply these techniques. My father and I both read the book and he applied the techniques only to have various doctors at the time shoot down the idea when he mentioned that he was visualizing his cancer cells being eaten by Pac Man (remember that video game?).  I can’t tell you what choice words I had for the docs (and others) who made him doubt what he was doing! So frustrating!

I would have LOVED a site like the Cancer Project (or a publication since this was pre-internet) so he could have looked at cold, hard facts and real techniques to apply to help himself heal along with using visualization. Sadly, there is no real recovery from this particular glandular cancer still to this day.

The key here, then, is PREVENTION.  For pancreatic cancer in particular, the major studies that have come out on this disease show that smoking cigarettes, alcohol consumption, having diabetes, eating red meat – especially cooked well done (the way my Dad liked it), eating cow dairy products, obesity and even some genetic factors all greatly enhance your chances of developing this disease. Cruciferous veggies such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts as well as other fruits and veggies consumed daily help to greatly decrease your chances of developing pancreatic cancer.

Daily consumption of fruits and vegetables has been shown to lower risks of developing all types of cancer. It really boils down to simple facts when you read the studies: diet, exercise, your stress level, your daily thoughts, words and actions all add up to how likely you will be to develop a disease like this.

I for one am grateful for the info. Now I know what to avoid and what to expand in my daily life to stay happy and healthy and never suffer the same terrible fate my father, Patrick Swayze and many others did.

9/9/9

Hello Readers! I’ve been away from blogging for a few months now, very busy with the goings on of my little suburban homestead, work & being a mama. Now that school started a couple of weeks ago for us, I have plans to post at least weekly again. Today, 9/9/09, is my birthday and the last time in my lifetime that it will be all 9’s for me. (Can you guess my favorite number?). I’ve been a bit bothered over the aging thing – where has the time gone? I have so much more to accomplish and time is speeding away! So in honor of this being a special day for me, I’m starting off blogging again on a positive note with a little gratitude list!

I Give Thanks And Gratitude For:

• Unconditional Love
• My life & good health
• My sweet, loving & very talented husband & amazing son
• My loving & very old but very healthy pets
• My cute, funny chickens who give us eggs everyday
• My almost entirely renovated home
• My beautiful, productive garden & greenhouse that gives us so much food
• My loving, caring & supportive friends & family both near & far
• The beauty of the natural world I get to see everyday
• Great Spirit, Mother Earth and the Devic realm
• The infinite wisdom of the Universe as it guides me along my path in life
• The wisdom in listening to my Spirit Guides & Angels everyday
• Being able to use my healing gifts & abilities to help others along their path in life
• Being able to work doing what I love and was put here to do
• For us all being constantly provided for by the Universe whether we realize it at the time or not

And now, it’s time for me to take myself and my dog out into nature and do my yearly birthday meditation. I will be back soon with an update and photos of the goings on of our little homestead!

As the Lakota say, Aho Mitakuye Oyasin!