Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2024 i MOTHER EARTH NEWS

While the autumn season may not evoke the feeling of new beginnings like spring does—unless you’re heading off to school—sometimes, it yields new things anyway. Here at MOTHER EARTH NEWS, each season brings fresh lessons to share with our readers. Maybe we’re learning new techniques for preservation, trying new methods for growing foods and flowers, or attempting new ways to save energy before heading into the colder months. This September, our team will be embarking on a new-to-us collaboration at the Ohio Pawpaw Festival in Albany, Ohio. We invite you to come visit with some of our contributors, including Erin Hamilton, Janice Cox, Bevin Cohen, and Matt Wilkinson, and join a workshop or two on preserving a heritage pantry or growing your own mushrooms. Maybe you’ll be inspired to start…

At the end of 2020, I saw a photo online of a family holding a jar full of a year’s worth of their trash. Like a true nerd, I slanted an eyebrow, did some research, and then copied them. I filled a spreadsheet with 60 lines of various plastics and laminated materials, along with outlets for upcycling, downcycling, and recycling. An oatmeal container became our family’s trash can. Now, for the first time in two years, our brown metro trash bin has returned to the alley full of 90 pounds of broken toys, plates, spent gum, and ripped flip-flops to be hauled to middle Tennessee’s full landfill, out of sight. According to J.R. Lind’s February 2020 article in Nashville Scene, Nashville residents average more than 2 pounds of trash per…

Ingredients • 2 pounds green tomatoes (preferably medium-sized)• 2 tablespoons unrefined salt• 1 bunch parsley, roughly chopped• 4 stalks celery, roughly chopped• 1 to 3 jalapeños, as desired, roughly chopped• 4 tablespoons dried dill weed or 1 cup fresh dill weed• 6 to 8 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped• Large grape leaves or parchment paper, to top the ferment• 1 to 2 cups Basic Brine (1½ teaspoons unrefined salt per 1 cup unchlorinated water) We absolutely love these fermented tomatoes. They’re not only delicious but also quick to make and look gorgeous on a charcuterie board. The recipe derives from a traditional Georgian one — that is, the Republic of Georgia, not the U.S. state. A long time ago, Kirsten was at a class where the instructor said, “I always…

Tomato-based sauces are immensely satisfying projects that can be homegrown and homemade from start to finish. The beginnings of my first batch of pizza sauce started with 18 tomato plants we’d planted. Paste tomatoes are the best option for creating sauces, since they have more “meat” and less liquid. That said, you can use any tomatoes if you have the patience to cook the puréed tomatoes down to sufficient thickness. I ended up using non-paste tomatoes, and here’s what happened. Ripening Tomatoes Most tomatoes won’t fully ripen before the first frost in our short-season northern climate. Each fall, right before the first frost kills the garden, we harvest every green tomato we can pluck off the plants. We take them indoors, lay them in an enclosed box, drop in a…

Clay paints are an Earth-friendly, natural, and nontoxic substitute for petroleum-based paints, and are easy to source, make, and use. We’ve covered the interior walls of our home with clay paints, right over latex-paint-covered drywall. In addition to looking great, clay paints make dead walls feel alive. They attract attention and draw you to run your hand over them in a way oil-based coatings never could. Nowadays, you can even buy ready-to-use clay paints from stores online, but we make our own using a mix of locally harvested and store-bought materials. It’s fun to use clay-rich soils that you’ve dug up from the ground or gathered near a road cut, but they can be tricky to work with, as they vary in so many ways: Some are powdery and fine…

Years ago, my husband and I had a hankering to build a straw bale home to live in. So, we did a lot of research, and along the way, we encountered many hurdles, meaning we’re well-versed in what you’ll experience when you try to insure an alternative home. Start by researching the type of construction you’re considering, whether that’s straw bale, shipping container, rammed earth, or an underground home. Read up on whether it’s suitable for your climate and how much it’ll cost, and whether your property is zoned for this type of dwelling. For the latter, talk to your county planners. Finally, decide whether you’re going to build it yourself or have someone else build it, which will influence your insurance decisions. Unfortunately, most major carriers don’t write policies…

“Children want to learn, and appreciate lessons … without pressures of fear and guilt.” EDITORS’ PICK Oshibana for Everyone Thank you for the wonderful article about oshibana compositions in the April/May 2024 issue. My 4-year-old daughter and I got hours of enjoyment from picking, pressing, and arranging flowers for our own oshibana creations. What excellent father-daughter fun! My daughter crafted a “still life with flowers in vases” and I created a nature scene. All the material came from our upland Hawai‘i home forest. We can’t wait to do it again! Drew Foster Ka‘u, Hawai‘i Nature Lovers Thank you for the article “Nurture a Nature Lover” by Wren Everett in the April/May 2024 issue. As a West Virginia Read Aloud volunteer and a West Virginia Master Gardener, I love volunteering at…

Organic vegetable gardening has been a passion of mine for most of my life. As much joy as it gives me, I’ll be the first to admit that a few aspects can be particularly challenging: insects, animal pests, plant diseases, and the frustrating things that happen because of the weather. On top of these common issues, other challenges and oddball gardening problems have troubled me over the years: Why did the leaves on my seedlings turn white? How do I protect my vegetable crops during heat waves? Why did the little squash on my zucchini plant fall off? I knew I wasn’t the only gardener wondering about these things, so I decided to write about them in The Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook (see Page 19 to order your…

Natural building techniques bring us into closer connection with the raw materials on our lands and at our feet. The project I most often recommend to beginner earth builders is a cob pizza oven. Building one isn’t so big a feat as to feel overwhelming, nor so small you’re tempted to hurry through mindlessly — and working with cob employs several common skills that you can transfer to other projects. This pizza oven design is the one I teach in workshops. It results in a large, well-insulated, versatile, and high-performance oven that’ll last for years and can easily meet the needs of a pizza party or a day of serious baking. After you have the materials on hand, you can build the oven in a couple of weekends with the…

I have a 10-acre farm east of Noblesville, Indiana. I rent out 6 acres to a farmer who grows corn and soybeans. Of the remaining land, 2 acres are fenced-in pasture that was originally used for horses, but I made use of it to raise a couple of French Alpine milk goats. The goats loved the field grasses mixed with a variety of weeds. I quickly saw the need to store up some hay for winter. Since I only had two goats, I knew I wouldn’t need much hay for the winter months, and I figured I could make my own hay from the pasture. For the amount of hay I needed, I knew I could scythe the hay and dry it with no problem. However, the challenge would be…

I’ve been there: It began with a horrible thud on our large sunroom window. The death of a male robin during breeding season 2009 was my wake-up call. I became determined to learn how to protect birds from window collisions. So, I turned to bird conservationists and makers of bird-safe products to figure out what could be done. Nearly one billion birds die annually in the United States because of window collisions, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Birds fly into windows because they simply don’t see the glass. They see reflections of habitat and sky, or corridors to fly through. Homeowners may not see dead birds near windows because the birds often fly away and die or are scavenged. After window strikes, our feathered friends can suffer…

Yes, sweet potatoes must be cured after they’re harvested to live up to their name. They come out of the ground starchy and bland. Curing will turn their starches into sugar. First, set up a warm, humid curing site. The goal is 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit with 80% to 90% humidity for four days to two weeks. The closer you come to these ideal conditions, the less time it’ll take to do the job. Experiment to find the right site. A covered porch or a little garden greenhouse could work, if you’re able to keep heat and humidity levels in the right ranges and keep potatoes out of direct sunlight. Or, set up a pantry or empty closet with a small heater, a fan, a humidifier or a bucket…

Oceanspray’s four 1,275-square-foot units each feature two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an attic loft. While the lot wasn’t touched by the 2020 fires, the townhomes replace an outdated duplex built with hazardous materials (work crews had to remove asbestos in half the building before taking it down). By then increasing the number of units on the lot using sustainable methods, the townhomes project was able to model the potential for dense, climate-resilient housing in communities that border forests and wilderness areas and experience higher risks of fire, what’s often called the “wildland-urban interface.” “I wanted to throw this open as a demonstration for all builders so that people have food resilience, climate resilience, and don’t have to rely on big utility companies,” says Radhika Thekkath, the owner and driving force…

Welcome to our series answering reader questions and concerns about how to cut the utility-company cord. Hoss Boyd is founder, president, and CEO of TeraVolt Energy and a recognized solar and energy-storage expert. Learn more about TeraVolt Energy at http://TVNRG.com. I’d like to prepare myself for a prolonged power outage. What emergency 12-volt system do you recommend that would have enough output to power three LED lights and a radio while charging two cellphones? (I’d like a system compact enough to store in an EMP-proof container.) Paul I don’t often work with 12-volt systems, but I can appreciate that everything you’d need to build one could be procured at your local auto-parts store. A much better and safer solution is purchasing one of the portable, battery-powered generators on the market.…

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!…