Innholdsfortegnelse for October - November 2017 i MOTHER EARTH NEWS

I just returned from the Seed Savers Exchange Conference & Campout at Heritage Farm, located on the outskirts of Decorah, Iowa. Seed Savers Exchange is a wonderful collective of seed-saving aficionados formally organized as a long-running nonprofit organization (www.SeedSavers.org ). This was my first time visiting Heritage Farm, and I had the privilege of delivering a keynote presentation on my great-grandfather’s seed business that dates back to 1882 in Bismarck, North Dakota. What makes this event one of the best I’ve attended over my career is that it’s a purely joyful celebration of our seed heritage — both Native American and otherwise. From the staff members to the leadership to the board of trustees to the participants to, most especially, Diane Ott Whealy, one of the organization’s founders, I felt…

Since January 2017, the United States has reversed several policies supporting renewable energy, controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and investing in cleaner technology. These changes have led many states to fill the gaps with diverse legislative objectives that include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting natural resources, and creating new jobs. Clean Energy Momentum States have the authority to individually support environmentally friendly policies, and many are turning to the power of lawmaking to do just that. In recent months, state congresses have proposed hundreds of bills that relate to clean energy production, greenhouse gas reduction, and state-enforced regulations and incentives for environmental protection. Many are also looking at ways to tax carbon production, encourage solar energy installations, and mandate advances in renewable energy technology. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) recently…

Do the plants in your garden have a story to tell? Seed Savers Exchange wants to find out. As a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and protecting heirloom plants for future generations, Seed Savers Exchange values the stories contained in every garden and understands how tragic it is to lose them. Unfortunately, out of the 20,000 plant varieties in their collection, Seed Savers Exchange has backstories for just 4,000. To fill this gap, they’ve joined forces with the popular story-sharing service StoryCorps to record the histories behind heirloom plants around the world. Anyone with a smartphone can download StoryCorps’ app to record interviews about the plants they grow. Each story should include a description of the plant, background information about the person talking and their connection to the plant, and all…

Your heart is the capital city at the center of your body, with an intricate network of blood vessels branching out in the form of superhighways (arteries), routes (arterioles), and winding, narrow backroads (capillaries), with your veins serving as the return route. Together, these elements are your primary transport system, delivering life-giving oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and other compounds throughout your body while picking up waste for elimination. An intricate balance of muscle strength and nervous impulse moves an astonishing 2,000 gallons of blood every day with approximately 100,000 heartbeats. No matter your age, herbs can help keep this important organ and body system functioning optimally. Hawthorn Berries, Leaves, Flowers, and Twigs (Crataegus spp.) The thorny, shrubby hawthorn tree provides profound heart medicine with a long history of safe use as…

Ingredients • 11⁄2 to 2 pounds of venison steak or boneless backstrap • Salt • 2 cups chopped fresh morels, about 12 ounces (1 ounce if using dried morels) • 1 cup minced onion • 2 tbsp canola oil, grapeseed oil, or lard • 3 tbsp butter, lard, or duck fat • 1 tbsp flour • 1⁄2 cup port or red wine • 1 cup glace de viande, or 2 cups venison or beef stock boiled down by half • Black pepper to taste I don’t know what percentage of deer hunters also hunt morel mushrooms, but it has to be more than half, so venison with morels is a natural pairing. The only hitch is that you’ll need to tuck away some backstrap or tenderloin from fall until spring.…

Ingredients • 2 pounds, 5 ounces American 2-row pale malt • 7 ounces crystal malt 40L • 4 ounces crystal malt 60L • 4 pounds, 2 ounces light dried malt extract • 1 ounce ‘Centennial’ hops at 10 percent alpha acids • 1 tsp Irish moss • 1⁄4 tsp yeast nutrients • 2 ounces Cascade hops at 5 percent alpha acids, divided • 1 ounce Cascade dry hops • 11-gram package Fermentis US-05 dry ale yeast • 5 ounces corn sugar This recipe produces an American pale ale that’s 5.1 percent ABV (alcohol by volume), with 44 IBUs (International Bitterness Units). Yield: 5 gallons. Directions: In your brew pot, heat 1 gallon of water to 161 degrees Fahrenheit. Place first three ingredients (that is, the crushed grains) in steeping bag,…

I ’ve amassed quite a few statistics about food trends in the United States over my years of reading. One that sticks out is that almost a fifth of all food consumption in the United States occurs in automobiles. Imagine how that percentage could increase in a future of self-driving cars, when you won’t have to hold your sandwich in one hand and turn the steering wheel with the other. Another one: the average American spends about 37 minutes per day on meal preparation — or less than 15 minutes per meal. Even for those who have the time, today’s hottest food trend is convenience. Around our farm, we joke that everyone wants “Polyface Hot Pockets.” And here’s another: At 4 p.m. each day, at least 70 percent of Americans…

A WEEKEND WITH MOTHER! Plan your visit to an upcoming event at www.MotherEarthNewsFair.com. You can also learn about chickens, bees, herbs, and more by listening to some of our FAIR presenters via podcast at www.MotherEarthNews.com/Podcast.…

SHOW US! Share your unique perspective with our community by submitting photos of inviting gardens, nutritious foods, wild animals, and more to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Photo Group on Flickr (www.Flickr.com/Groups/MotherEarthNewsPhotos/Pool ). We’ll feature our favorites here and online!…

People Like Pearl I’m subscribed to MOTHER EARTH NEWS and Mother Earth Living and enjoy each issue. I keep them and reread them often; they’re filled with good, practical information for sustainable living. Thank you for all the hard work you do to produce such important magazines. I very much enjoyed Pearl O’Neill’s letter, “Pearls of Wisdom,” in the Country Lore department of the last issue (August/ September 2017). I’d like to see MOTHER EARTH NEWS find more people like Pearl to interview for tips and information about how to keep gardening as they age. We have a large population of the baby-boom generation who are now in their 60s and older, and I think this would be inspirational and give the support we long to see. There’s so much…

Around the world, millions of plants produce food that spoils because no one knows to collect it. Now, a Colorado-based nonprofit named Falling Fruit is striving to connect would-be foragers with this untapped resource. With a world map that uses a geographic information system (GIS), Falling Fruit enables users to explore, edit, and record the location of wild food anywhere in the world for others to find and enjoy. New foraging locations are added daily, making it easier to find anything from berry bushes and fruit trees to edible fungi and even food-filled urban dumpsters. In this way, Falling Fruit is making it easier than ever to take advantage of the underappreciated food that grows in urban spaces. By streamlining the process of recording and finding foraging sites on the…

I magine, if you can, living 100 miles deep in the wilderness and not seeing another human being for six months at a time. No mail, no driving off to a 9-to-5 job, no supermarkets or shopping centers, and none of civilization’s noise. Nothing but the silence of the forest surrounds you. My wife, Johanna, and I lived on a remote northern Saskatchewan lake for 17 years. We were alone, accessible only by floatplane. Prior to this, we homesteaded in northern Maine for 20 years — a total of 37 wonderful years living an offgrid, self-sufficient lifestyle. Now, we’re in the process of settling in Nova Scotia to start a homestead from scratch for our third and final time. A fortuitous series of events brought us to Saskatchewan, far out…

Ingredients for Caramelized Onions (Optional) • 3 tbsp butter or lard • 1 large onion, sliced thin from root to tip • A pinch of salt • 1 tsp dried thyme • 1 tbsp honey Ingredients for Venison • 4 venison medallions • Salt • 2 cups seasoned flour (add salt, black pepper, cayenne, and garlic powder to the flour, all to taste, or use a commercial “fish fry”) • 3 eggs, lightly beaten • 1⁄2 cup heavy cream • Tabasco sauce • 3 cups panko breadcrumbs (regular breadcrumbs are fine too) • Peanut oil or lard Ingredients for Gravy • 1⁄4 cup flour • 1 cup dark broth (beef or venison) • 1⁄4 cup cream I learned about this version of country-fried steak from a Mississippi chef, John Currence…

Upcycling Old Fence Boards Recently, we’ve been doing some beautification projects on our half-acre urban homestead, which also serves as the location for the Be the Change Project, in Reno, Nevada. Many of these projects have utilized salvaged fence slats. The results have been so lovely that I wanted to share them so others could make use of a great urban resource. In our neck of the woods, old wood is hip and prominent in bars, breweries, cafes, and houses in Reno’s up-and-coming Midtown District. And why shouldn’t it be? With its weathered colors, lustrous grain patterns, and soft texture, it’s a material that helps give a place a stronger sense of belonging. A lot of that wood is old barn board, but there’s another, less appreciated source of weathered…

A Way to Listen to MOTHER I’m the director of the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service, and we just saw the letter to the editor in the June/July 2017 issue about MOTHER EARTH NEWS not being available for blind readers of the Library of Congress program. I’m writing to let you know that MOTHER is indeed available, and recorded here in specialized audio format for blind readers. Letterwriter Brian Bethel would be able to obtain our specialized recording from his talking book library in Virginia, which I’m going to contact. But the magazine is available to blind readers already in a more general sense. You can call 888-NLS-READ (888- 657-7323) to get connected with the library serving your area. You can also search for your local talking…

Garden Cloches $35.97 for three buckets at www.GreenhouseBuckets.com A mobile way to protect seedlings and sensitive plants, Greenhouse Buckets are clear, 5-gallon containers that shield individual vegetables from late frosts, low temperatures, wind, and insects. Easy to stack and store, the buckets, made with a UV-stabilized translucent material, have a 14-inch-diameter base and are 14 inches tall. On sunny days, the internal temperature of the bucket is 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit higher than its surroundings. A vent ring on the top of the bucket can be adjusted to help regulate the temperature and humidity. Editor Rebecca Martin appreciates the convenience and mobility of these U.S.-made cloches. Because she gardens in a windy climate, Martin uses the optional heavy-duty ground pegs (sold separately at $1.99 for three) to keep the…

Turning deer and other animal skins into leather, as I described in the October/November 2016 issue (www.MotherEarthNews.com/Tan-A-Deer-Hide), can lead to the creation of warm and durable clothing, including coonskin caps. The following instructions will help you craft a cap from hair-on raccoon leather. Such caps have been made and worn by generations of explorers and homesteaders, and you, too, will value the cozy feel of a quality, long-lasting cap. This cap has a tapered liner and straight sides. Without the tapered liner, the cap would fit like a bucket. The liner can be removed for washing and will thus get you more years of service from the cap. Before you get started, keep these tips in mind: • When cutting hair-on leather, turn the hide hair-side down, extend the utility…

Ingredients • A 2- to 4-pound venison roast • Salt • 1⁄4 cup squash seed oil or other flavorful oil • 2 tbsp minced sage, rosemary, or thyme, or a combination of these • 2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper • About 1 cup red wine, stock, or water • 3 or 4 celery stalks This is my master roast recipe. It’s the venison equivalent of roast beef. The older your animal was, the more important it will be to use single-muscle cuts. This recipe will not melt any of the connective tissue that separates muscle groups, and the finished roast should have tough veins of still-hard connective tissue running through it. Many single-muscle roasts benefit from trussing with kitchen twine. Doing this will help keep the roast compact, which…

W hile it’s not unusual for farmers and ranchers to let their animals drink from a creek, pond, or other surface water source, many are switching to alternative methods of supplying drinking water to their livestock. Solar-powered water pumps are easy to install and are a very reliable way to pump water from a well to a ground-level stock tank, or from a surface source of water up to a higher elevation. Some government agencies will even provide cash grants to farmers and ranchers if they agree to fence off grazing lands from nearby creeks and streams and install an alternative means of water provision, such as a well that uses solarpowered pumping methods. System Components The most basic form of solar pumping consists of a small direct-current (DC) solar…

Build the Perfect Woodstove Fire After 15 years of living with a woodstove, I’ve lit many, many fires, and I believe I’ve nailed down the optimal way to start one. I’ve often cringed while watching others try to light their woodstoves, so I know this is a skill that doesn’t come easily to many people. I’m sure lots of other strategies would work; I just know mine works well. 1 The first step is to gather lots of newspaper — not the little advertising flyers that come in your mailbox, not magazines or catalogs, not your old high school history notes or old mutual fund statements. Use newspaper. If you don’t get a daily paper, ask your neighbors for theirs, or start raiding recycling bins on recycling night. If you…

Maintain Razor-Sharp Chainsaws I have trouble keeping my chainsaw sharp. Do you have any tips for helping my saws stay good as new? I’ve relied on a chainsaw to keep warm since 1988. I used to sharpen by hand with a file and guide. The process worked, and all that practice made me good at it. But my definition of “good” changed after I tried an electric sharpener about 10 years ago. Besides being at least three times faster than a file, a machine grinder can make a chain cut better. In my days of sharpening by hand, I could get an old chain to cut as well as a new one, but my electric sharpener makes chainsaws cut better than new. The only kind of electric chainsaw sharpeners I…