chromedome

Yeah. I considered it a happy bit of serendipity, and filed it under "really cool stuff I find while legitimately working." This is, sadly, a much smaller file than the one called "really cool stuff I find while I'm allegedly working but really procrastinating for all I'm worth."

It turns out that Purdue University maintains a database of "famine foods," things that weren't/aren't ordinarily harvested or cultivated but could serve as survival foods in time of need. https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/famine-foods/

Just a thought, but you could probably find a local potter/artisan to make a custom one for you (to fit a knife of your choosing). That's how I eventually got the salt pig I'd wanted.

Similarly I had a customer laugh over the label on a bucket of meat-free mincemeat filling. She assumed it was because uninformed people thought that "just because mincemeat had "meat" in the name, people worried that their holiday mince tarts/pies would, in fact, contain meat!" She was very entertained over this...until I gently explained to her that mincemeat ordinarily does (or at least, traditionally did) contain meat, and showed her a few recipes. She was appalled. Here in New Brunswick, fwiw, old-timers generally use the neck from their season's deer (or a neighbour's) to make their mincemeat.

Straw and autumn leaves are two common choices for the mulch component. For the rest, you'd want soil or compost from a reputable supplier (nobody wants a reputation for selling you weed seeds). You can sometimes get a good price on the bagged, sterilized topsoil from hardware/department stores at the tail end of the season (ie, now) which is okay if you're working with a small plot.

As an aside, if you have a few nice big dandelion crowns growing in your lawn or garden, cover them with a bit of cardboard and weigh it down with rocks or what have you. In the spring, once everything has been growing for a few weeks, lift the cardboard and harvest the blanched dandelions. They'll be very mild and juicy, with a lettuce-like crunch. Totally different from the ones you harvest conventionally.

That's actually what I plan to do with my plot when I put it to bed this autumn (obviously, I'll need to work around my garlic which will overwinter in one of the beds). It's a technique that's been around for a long time; Ruth Stout was promoting it back when I was still in diapers. It has been rediscovered and remarketed as "lasagna gardening," as you doubtless know. It works well, and buys you a year of next to no weeds (after the first year, seeds will blow in and be dropped by birds, etc). If you're aggressive in mulching around your "intentional" plants, you can keep 'em down pretty well even after they start. I'll be using straw and couple of trailer-loads of (purchased) compost and topsoil, since I don't have a place to compost for myself. I have access to horse manure from a nearby harness-racing track, but that'll need a bit of time to mature before I can use it. It's a "next year" project for out at the country place, where they *do* have space, but once I've established two working piles I'll have one each year that's aged and ready to use. You can start in spring if that's the way things work out, but autumn is better because your mulch/compost and the cardboard will have a bit of time to soften up. Depending how much soil/compost you've added on top, you might not even need to cut openings. Deeply-rooted plants will just grow right through. If you put it down in spring, then yeah, definitely cut an opening for each plant.

I'm on the other tack...after a long summer's drudgery (trying to catch up from a poor first quarter), I'm just now beginning to restock against the resurgence we'll likely see when autumn and winter roll around.

My ex's family on both sides were Mennonites who'd been in Russia for the previous couple of centuries. Catherine had brought in the Mennonites, mostly from Germany, as a sneaky way to speed the pace of agricultural reform. She had tried and failed to get the peasants to adopt more modern farming techniques, but trying to coerce them was not working well. So instead she brought in foreign farmers who already used the latest techniques. It was a win-win...she got an immediate boost in productivity from the new arrivals, and the stubborn mouzhiks got to see first-hand what an impact updated methods could bring. I don't care how stubborn you are, no farmer worth his salt can watch a neighbour take a bigger crop off the same land for more than a few years without following suit. Of course they mostly remained in their own German-speaking enclaves, and their German-speaking churches, which made them an easy target after both World Wars (and especially the Revolution). Like the Jews who shared many of the same stretches of countryside (mostly in modern-day Ukraine and Belarus) a large percentage were slaughtered or driven out in the course of that turbulent 30 years beginning with the Revolution. A few hardy souls, including one branch of my ex's family, persisted. She has distant cousins in Siberia to this day, though most of the survivors emigrated to Germany when that became an option in the 90s.

Oh, I know. My ex's (maternal) family were farmers, and I've known many over the years. My father also homesteaded during my teen years, so I have an admittedly modest first-hand taste of it. I'm sure you've heard the popular joke about the farmer who won millions in the lottery: TV Reporter: What do you plan to do with all that money? Farmer: (scratches head) I dunno....keep farming till it's gone, I guess...

This was my first year on this particular plot. My bit is right up against the fence so there's slug habitat there and immediately outside, which I'll find ways to deal with by next year. I'm confirmed for the same plot (actually three contiguous plots) for next year, so I can do some prep this fall to improve the soil, minimize pests and weeds, etc. This year was brutal at what's normally my main garden out in the country, where my stepdaughter and her family live. It was a perfect storm, garden-wise...a heavy rainstorm that lasted a whole weekend and washed away/drowned most of my first planting, a late frost that killed most of the survivors, and then the coronavirus lockdown that prevented me from replanting at the optimal time. Add in a shortage of gas money through the summer that minimized my ability to weed and re-plant, a persistent drought that prevented them from watering the plot (their well went dry, and there's not as yet a rain-catchment system in place)...you get the picture. Not a good year out there. So pretty much everything I've harvested this year came from my community garden plot, which has better soil and a catchment system for watering. We'll see what next year brings.

I simply haven't had the time; I've been working long hours to keep the wheels on. My GF starts her new job on Tuesday (what would formerly have been a call center position, now it's work-from-home) which will ease things somewhat. I do manage to get up to my community plot most days for at least an hour, and do slug patrol whenever it has rained (not often, this summer) but when the plants are still just seedlings the slugs can demolish an entire row in one night.

Although my garden was late getting started this year, I have over 12 lbs of greens blanched and frozen for winter as of tonight's batch. That's fair-to-middling for a relatively small plot (we've been eating them too, of course), and I still have chard, kale, turnip tops and beet tops going flat-out. With a bit of luck, I'll be able to nearly double that before I put my garden to bed for the winter. Getting lots of pattypans now, and I might see a few ripe tomatoes over the next week or two. Getting some kind of clear cover over them to act as a bit of a cold frame will be a priority at some point in the next couple of weeks. Yellow beans are doing okay now that they're established, but they were also late getting in and slugs ate pretty much the entire first planting. My late planting of peas is shaping up nicely, and I should get 4-5 weeks' harvest from them before the cold kills 'em.

If at all possible, try to hear one in operation. I've lived in rentals where I flat-out wouldn't use the hood for anything short of dire necessity because of the resultant noise level.

Well, there has been a push to get more women into STEM...

I didn't mind it, as such, but I regarded summer as an opportunity to maximize my reading time and camp definitely interfered with that noble pursuit.

Yeah, really not my idea of a good time as desserts go.

I'm a tail-end Boomer, and to the best of my recollection I'd never seen nor heard of them until sometime this century.

Opera browser even includes one for free, which is very easy to use.

My parents grew both, as my dad was fond of them. I just used the last of theirs from my freezer (three years old, but well wrapped and still good) over the past winter.

Usually, if you struggle to separate the sheets, it's because of a "cold-chain" issue. Either they've gotten partially thawed and then re-frozen at some point, or you thawed them too quickly (on the counter, typically) and condensation has formed and stuck them together. Your best bet is to stick the box in your fridge the day before you want them, and let them thaw slowly at refrigerator temperature.

Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan: listeria in Brandt brand mini (spicy) cheese sausages. https://www.inspection.gc.ca/food-recall-warnings-and-allergy-alerts/2020-08-24/eng/1598291961021/1598291967015?utm_source=r_listserv

...but by the same token, if you buy/use zucchini or other summer squashes, you can use pattypans in the same ways. Just bear in mind that anything from the size of a tennis ball on up is the pattypan equivalent of a leg-sized zucchini. You *can* seed them, shred them and use them for baking or whatnot if you're seriously averse to waste, but they're better just composted.

Well, if you're harvesting them at the right size (no more than 2 inches' diameter, max) you don't need to worry about the seeds. Just treat them like any other summer squash, and prepare them accordingly. I often cut off the top, scoop a hollow, and then stuff them with either a meat, grain or cheese filling (roast or braise them once you're done). I've just harvested my very first (it was a mid-summer planting) and will be inundated shortly.