Innholdsfortegnelse for #257 i The New Pioneer

Spring and summer gardens are exciting. Awakening from winter, seeds sprout to reveal the new season. There are plenty of peas, radishes, spinach and lettuce to fill our spring salads. Then, summer brings a new vegetable selection: tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans for fresh eating, canning and freezing. By September, though, gardening enthusiasm tends to fall with the temperatures. This may be especially true for those who planted their first gardens during the spring of 2020’s pandemic disruption that kept many at home with time on their hands. Planting what has been dubbed a “virus victory garden” also helped many to focus on a positive pursuit. But there’s no reason that fall should be a stopping point in the garden. Rather, consider it the beginning for harvesting new crops of…

SPURRED ON BY SPIDERS Pam Freeman is a regular contributor to TNP and its social media director. She is also a new pioneer and our chicken guru, the author of the well-received Backyard Chickens: Beyond the Basics. She lives about 25 miles east of Cincinnati with her husband and two daughters in a rural setting where the family raises chickens. We were curious how she became so interested in them. Here’s her surprising answer. “Black widow spiders led me to chicken keeping. I stumbled upon chickens, quite literally, out of necessity. My girls were young. Kelsey wasn’t walking a whole lot then. I took them out to the sandbox one afternoon. I set Kelsey in the box and was helping Lauren climb in when I noticed an all-black spider on…

Above, L. to R. Useful tools for burn pile managment in foreground include: U.S. FOREST SERVICE-STYLE WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER’S SHOVEL. This tool has a more pointed head than a standard round-point shovel, and it’s traditionally sharpened well up the sides. It also has a steeper lift (i.e., the angle between the blade and the handle) and a shorter handle. Those features allow it to be wielded more nimbly when scraping, digging and tossing dirt to douse a fire. Some models have a flat area in the middle of the blade to improve performance when beating out burning embers. HEAVY-DUTY STEEL RAKE. While a common garden bow rake will do, a heavy road rake—flat headed with longer, thicker tines and a longer handle—will do better. Better still is an asphalt rake that…

The farm-to-fork philosophy is thriving in Chef Stephanie White’s Teaching Kitchen at Turner Farm. The kitchen, built in a renovated century-old barn on the property, is a place where the holistic and the organic meld seamlessly with state-of-the-art technology. Chef Stephanie, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, also has a master’s degree in food studies from New York University. Recently, she shared her fascinating culinary education journey with me. Her whole staff, including talented and creative sous chef Tom Hensarino, is “home grown” in the sense that they all apprenticed through her kitchen’s culinary program. The kitchen was built in collaboration with the Culinary Institute of America. The curriculum includes hosting the University of Cincinnati Center for Integrative Health and Wellness so that the kitchen staff can teach medical students…

Unless you have considerable experience with installing systems of this nature, I would strongly urge you to hire a certified solar contractor. Working with lethal voltages is bad enough, but that’s not even the half of it. The minutiae of these systems can turn a novice’s hair gray, as they require a lot of programming in a dizzying array of menus to get everything to work together as designed. Anyone not intimately acquainted with the computer interfaces may well install a glitch-prone system. But that’s not to say that you can’t save money on the backside. There’s a lot of grunt work involved in any installation of this type, and most homeowners are qualified to perform it. The gas and electrical lines, for instance, will need to run in trenches…

If you’re an experienced brewer and already have equipment and ingredients or can obtain them easily enough, read on for some tips on fully maximizing your inventory during shortages (of both supplies and money). THE ALL-GRAIN ADVANTAGE: The nice thing about all-grain brewing is that you have a lot of versatility for extending the use of your ingredients. If you’re tight on funds and supplies, hold off on making high-gravity beers and use less grain to make a few batches of low-alcohol beers to sip on while waiting for things to improve. Or you can make a few batches from a single brewing session by making a high-gravity beer and running more hot water over the grains to make what was historically called a “small beer” or “table beer.” If…

If you live where burning rubbish or brush piles is a regular chore, there are two tools you must have on hand. Both fire protection codes and common sense mandate them. One is a hose connected to a water source for dampening and dousing the fire. (Alternatively, fire extinguishers or buckets of water can suffice.) The second is a round-point shovel for digging a trench around the burn pile, throwing dirt on the fire to dampen or douse it and for beating the fire out if necessary. There are other tools available to make the building and burning of outdoor rubbish piles safer and easier, including hoes rakes, mattocks, leaf blowers and wind gauges. There are not many tools, however, good for manipulating the fire. There are commercially available outdoor…

As the sun wanes at the end of summer, it’s time to preserve the garden’s bounty and prepare for a productive autumn. Take advantage of all the fresh produce available by fermenting kimchi, making fire cider and creating your own tinctures to stay healthy throughout the season. This is also the start of baking season for many, so developing your own sourdough is a terrific way to celebrate this time of year. FREEZE THOSE GRAPES WHEN THE GRAPE HARVEST IS BOUNTIFUL and you don’t have time to process them, grapes are easy to freeze. Rinse them off and remove any leaves. Some people remove them from the stems to save a step later, but for those who are cooking down the grapes for jelly or cooked juice, the stems can…

At last, a perfect day to burn—just before burning was to be forbidden for the summer. I started early, grabbed my tools, cleared the ground around my rubbish heap down to dirt, hooked up my water hose, checked in with the fire department and set about starting the fire. It wouldn’t light; it was too wet throughout. Damn! I tried fetching dry wood from my woodshed and shaving it into a nest of kindling. The kindling burned; the soggy pile didn’t. I tried again at the top of the pile where it was a bit drier. No luck. I tried sprinkling kerosene on kindling stuffed into the higher, drier part of the pile. Only the kindling and the kerosene burned. I tried again, using my leaf blower and a pipe…

Falling down, rambling, easy for critters to sneak through—this was the old wood fence that once graced our property. If that description made you avert your eyes ashamedly, then you’re facing the same problem. So, let me share a short story that might just give you some inspiration. When we closed our retail shop a few years ago, everything went up for sale: desks, signs, mirrors, shelving—all of it. One potential buyer browsed the rapidly emptying business and asked the price of the display racks. “What are you going to use them for?” I inquired. “Fence!” he said. And that set my mind churning at the possibilities. Yes, indeed: Placed horizontally, the racks were strong, (metal with squared-off black strips on the outside edges), rustproof, decay-proof and dog-proof. The sizes…

Let’s face it: We all strive to maximize our productivity, especially around the homestead, as we’re trying now more than ever to increase our self-reliance. Garden chores like planting can take a lot of time and effort and can lead to sore muscles and joints. What if we could reduce that time, effort and pain? I recently had the good fortune to try out Power Planter augers. The concept behind this tool is simple: It’s a bit for your drill that digs holes. If you’ve already got a power drill, then you’re set. Secure the bit and dig. Drill to the depth of the auger and lift it back out of the ground to remove the dirt. Voila! You’ve got a hole that’s planting-ready. It’s as simple as that. My…

Building furniture from free pallets is not without its challenges. Pallets are usually damaged, and you’ll have a lot of sorting and cutting to do before you have the parts you need. Your desired furniture piece should be buildable with basic tools—power tools speed things up, but there is nothing that couldn’t be done with old-fashioned muscle and sweat. The finished piece needs to be comfortable, lightweight, strong, durable and easy to store when you’re not using it. Plus, it should keep the appearance of having been built from a pallet, as though it was something you just threw together. All of that takes a bit of planning or, in my case, trial and error. Learn to tell the difference between softwoods (usually pine or fir) and hardwoods (usually oak).…

“IF IT SURPRISED YOU HOW EASY IT WAS TO REMOVE THE FRONT QUARTERS, YOU’LL BE EVEN MORE SURPRISED TO LEARN HOW HARD IT IS TO REMOVE THE HINDQUARTERS.” Most homesteaders and small farmers are quite self-sufficient. Many raise their own chickens for eggs and meat, plant large gardens to grow their vegetables and have sheep or goats around to keep the grass down in the pasture and provide delicious, protein-rich meals. For some reason, however, many are uncomfortable with the thought of butchering any livestock over the size of a chicken or rabbit. The task just seems daunting to them. “Where would I even start?” is a common thought. Most are also concerned about the gear needed to turn a deer, lamb or goat into freezer-ready meat. Is an expensive…

I’ve been struggling with my shotgun shooting for the past few years. Not so much with 3-Gun or wing shooting, but oh, those orange clays. I think I tried just about every shotgun brand available, in side-by-side, over/under and semi-auto. I just couldn’t accept that I wasn’t able to pick up any shotgun and hit the targets like I can with a pistol and a rifle. To help up my game, I finally decided to bite the bullet and get fitted for a custom shotgun. I’ll admit, I wasn’t convinced that a custom-fit shotgun would affect my clay-target shooting game (it really was that bad). As a pistol and rifle shooter, I often found myself aiming while shooting clays—a huge no-no in the shotgun world. I reached out to Dave…

Stoney Mountain Farm in the rolling hills of the Piedmont region of central North Carolina in Alamance County is the site of a sustainable business that produces some of the finest wool and meat from vintage breeds of sheep. There you will find 56 acres of pastureland dotted with ponds and old hardwoods—oak, walnut and popular. A barn here and there, a house—nothing big, but cozy—but most of all, it is home to some intriguing farm animals, including sheep, chickens and two llamas. Olga Elder, the owner of Stoney Mountain Farm, left her corporate career at the age of 46. She had a comfortable life but admitted that it was a bit empty. “I never married or had children; I needed something that fulfilled me.” She left her home and…

Take care of your tools, and your tools will take care of you. This old saying has withstood the test of time because it has a lot of truth. Good tools can make chores, projects and life go more easily. On the other hand, bad or worn out tools really don’t have much value at all. Nearly all tools need at least a little bit of maintenance to keep them operating at peak performance. One homestead tool that really benefits from routine maintenance is the chainsaw. Almost anyone who lives on a farm, ranch or homestead can benefit from having a good chainsaw. Nowadays, chainsaws are safer and more powerful than ever and really can be a lifesaver. From cutting limbs or clearing roads to cutting firewood for the winter,…

There is perhaps no food on earth simpler than pasta. In its most basic form, it can be made with just flour and water. To that, one can substitute eggs for the water and add olive oil and salt, but none of those ingredients are necessary to qualify as pasta—though they do make it better. Popular belief has it that Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy in the 13th century, but there is ample evidence that Italians had been scarfing the glistening strands since around 500 B.C., and that the Chinese were doing it 2,500 years before that. Here in America, Thomas Jefferson is credited with introducing pasta in 1789 after visiting Naples. On his return home, he brought with him cases of “macceroni” and a pasta machine. And, surely,…

Conservationist and bird-dog lover—these are just a few titles that describe Anna Van Nostrand. Known to all as “Anna V,” she is a rising star in the outdoor industry, specifically in the upland hunting arena where she excels with her passion for German short-haired pointers. Together, she and her dog Merci travel the country chasing birds every chance they get. But Anna V isn’t just hunting and competing—she’s giving back. Educating people on the importance of being good stewards of the earth, she promotes and is actively involved in groups such as Quail Forever and Pheasants Forever. Respect for animals and the outdoors is deeply rooted within her, and she shares that every chance she gets. Finding Her Passion Looking at Anna V, one would have the impression that she…

When considering homestead security, most think of livestock first. Pesky predators pervade the property, thus securing the stock is a priority. Meanwhile, the overall security of a home may be neglected or completely overlooked, particularly in remote areas with lower crime rates. Many assume the country-living experience to be completely devoid of “big city crime” conditions. Yet, rural America is not crime free nor exempt from emergencies. With rural response times for emergency services being significantly longer (at times) than their city counterparts, it becomes the responsibility of homesteaders to protect and provide for themselves. Crime In The Country In recent times, home invasions, robberies and burglaries have seen a marked increase in the rural community. According to several officers I consulted across the nation, inner-city crime is branching out…