Category: Latest From High Reaches

Stopping Future Weeds

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date September 2, 2022

Gardens attract seeds of all kinds. The objective is to grow the ones the gardener plants, not the ones that blow in from wherever. Part of my fall garden work is aimed at stopping future weeds.

Those weeds aren’t growing yet. I’m hard at work removing the rest of this year’s weeds. Why don’t I forget about these hypothetical weeds and concentrate on today’s growth?

Because I’m tired of doing so much weeding.

Last year I had very few weeds in my garden. I had taken the time to prevent those seeds from germinating and growing.

Over last fall and winter life threw me a few curve balls. Stopping future weeds was shunted aside. And I am paying the price this year.

Not next year. At least, I hope not. And that takes preparation this year.

One Idea

My method of stopping future weeds is not new. Ruth Stout had a similar method in her book “The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book” back in 1971. It was called mulch.

I like using mulch. It helps with retaining water during dry spells. Mulch keeps the ground cooler during hot spells. And it discourages weeds.

Note the word discourages. My weeds are discouraged, not prevented by mulch alone. Morning glories for one will grow through six inches of straw. I need more than mulch.

Tomatoes are crowding this garden pathway now covered with doubled cardboard. The plants in bloom at the end are garlic chives, good eating and great for attracting pollinators.

Enter the Cardboard

I wanted a way to keep those seedlings from getting up through the mulch. Gardening catalogues sell plastic to put down. This blocks planting the seeds I want and puts plastic in my garden.

Now, I’m not fully organic. I use wormer and medicines for my goats. However, my garden is as close to organic as I can manage. Plastic is not organic.

The idea is good. Cardboard is a more natural alternative. My feed store is a good source of cardboard. Furniture stores and neighbors who order lots of stuff online are other sources.

Cardboard Results

If I put down cardboard over my pathways in the fall, I’m definitely stopping future weeds from germinating this fall into winter. However, the cardboard must be weighted down to prevent removal by wind. And it must be replaced in the spring.

On garden beds mulch over the cardboard keeps it in place. It breaks down over the winter for easy spring planting.

And cardboard is a success in my garden.

Tags fall gardening chore

Latest From High Reaches

Fall Gardening

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date August 26, 2022

Hot, dry days are a memory now. Summer crops are bountiful. Still, it’s time for fall gardening to begin.

Timing is everything when planning for fall crops. Killing frost (dreadful thought) is not that far away. These plants need to be nearing maturity before it arrives.

Ozark weather has become increasingly erratic over the past five years or so. The average frost date may be the beginning of October, but cold snaps start in September.

Fall Crops

Good fall crops for me include spinach, winter radishes, lettuces, bok choi, Chinese cabbage, turnips, beets, rutabaga (I like these, but rarely grow them successfully.) and cabbage. There are other good crops available like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, Swiss chard and kale. The first three take up lots of space for low return. The last two are not on my menu.

Some of these crops need little protection before the temperatures get down around twenty. Some of the others need protection by the mid-twenties. Grouping them accordingly makes things much easier.

Cabbage and other cole varieties are good fall gardening prospects as they laugh at light frosts. Cold weather does slow them down, so planting them at least a month before frost date is a good idea. Mulch helps cool the soil in warm weather and keeps it warmer in cool weather promoting plant growth. Fall weather starts in August in the Ozarks.

Winter Protection

My main raised bed is set up for a plastic tent. In low temperatures, old blankets are added protection. I plant spinach, winter radishes, mizuna and bok choi in it. These crops will provide fresh food into January or even into next spring.

After killing frost, I pull off the tomato vines and cover the shade house with plastic. This turns it into an unheated greenhouse. Since it gets full sun, I often have to open the door to keep it from overheating during the day.

Larger drops like cabbage, beets, Chinese celery and Chinese cabbage grow inside. The Chinese celery is frost sensitive, but I grow it inside a wire ring and cover it with old towels on frosty nights.

My new raised bed is an unknown quantity this winter, it’s first winter to be planted. I will try various lettuces and a few cabbages in it. It too is set up to be covered with plastic.

Turnips and rutabaga are planted in an open bed. These too can be covered with plastic and old blankets on really cold nights.

Winter Supplies

By now it should be obvious my fall gardening plans include a supply of old blankets, old towels and so-called clear plastic from the hardware/lumber yard. A water supply completes my supplies.

Fall gardening lets me enjoy fresh, home grown produce well into December and beyond. All it takes is planning, work and care.

Tags all year gardening, Ozark gardening

Latest From High Reaches

Mushroom Time

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date August 19, 2022

With the recent rain, all the plants are starting to come alive again. That includes others that depend on the plants. It’s mushroom time.

Mushrooms do taste good. They add something special to lots of dishes like quiche and spaghetti. Going out and picking some of those appearing in the woods now might be a deadly mistake.

I do have several mushroom guide books. That does not make me an expert. Gilled mushrooms especially are difficult for an amateur to identify positively.

These little red orange mushrooms like it a little moist as they edge a hole where a large tree fell over and mingle with the moss.

That doesn’t mean I can’t go out and admire the various mushrooms in the woods. They come in so many shapes, colors and sizes.

These things don’t just appear. Underground is a wide network of filaments, the real organism. Some of these attach to tree roots, not as parasites, but as collaborators. The filaments gather water and minerals for the tree. The tree shares sugars with the filaments.

I came across two special ones. One was a little colony of orange red mushrooms only a couple of inches tall.

The other was a dead tree trunk decorated with white shelf mushrooms. Usually, I find these when they are a day or two old and dull. These were fresh with a delicate pinkish cast when light lit them from behind.

Shelf mushrooms grow on dead or dying trees. They come in a variety of colors. Some are edible. Some aren’t. All are interesting to see when they first appear. they turn dull and woody quickly.

The chanterelles I was watching for were no where to be seen. Well, there were a couple barely the size of a quarter. These orange vase shaped mushrooms are easy to identify and very edible.

These and others are written about in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“.

That is the best part of mushroom time: eating wild mushrooms. They are so much better than the button types sold in the market.

I only searched one hill. I have a few more to check out. Perhaps I will get lucky and find a patch of chanterelles.

If I’m really lucky, I’ll have a successful mushroom time and not find another nest of seed ticks.

Tags Fungi, Using mushrooms

Latest From High Reaches

Balancing Wants and Needs

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date August 12, 2022

As I grow older, I do seem to sneak more wants into my life. Balancing wants and needs is not just denying purchases, it’s an ever-changing way of looking at your life.

Going to bed hungry makes going to sleep difficult. Eating an evening snack like a handful of potato chips helps. When I’m running too late or too tired to cook, having frozen dinners works.

Could I do without these? Yes. But denying all wants isn’t good. A small piece of any budget should be what was called mad money, money to be spent on whims. Note the word small.

Driving

Gas prices are coming down a little. That will ease my budget a little. There are other ways to help too.

Separating wants from needs includes separating necessary and unnecessary trips to town. My drive to town is nearly half an hour. When added to time to dress for town and change back to farm clothes plus time to get whatever, that’s an afternoon. What else could that time have been spent on?

Homestead ‘To Do’ lists are endless. Repairs, chores, gardening and more never get done completely.

Trips to town are done with lists of things to get done. It makes for hectic trips, but only one day covers a lot of territory. I make three trips to town every week, but one is on the wants list much of the time.

Oops. Wants? The idea is to reduce the wants, isn’t it? But it goes back to balancing wants and needs. Working seven days a week wears a person down. I now take one day to sell at Farmers Market, if the garden is producing and the woodchucks are not around (four this year, so far), followed by an afternoon hiking away from thoughts of chores and work needing done.

Homesteading is work. Chores, repairs and more constantly vie for attention. It’s easy to fall into a routine of working all day, every day until you hate to get up in the morning. Maybe that moves taking some personal time away from the wants to the needs column. My get away is hiking at ShawneeMac Lakes Conservation Area ond afternoon a week. I do plead guilty to taking plant pictures, but that is as much fun as work. The work part comes later downloading, sorting and using the pictures.

And it’s important to have a little slack in your life and budget.

Budget

Everything seems to be rooted in money. Making it. Spending it.

For the homesteader with limited funds, separating wants and needs on a budget is very important. And having that budget is essential.

Over my life I’ve had jobs paying daily, weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. It is so tempting to skip making and keeping to a budget, just pay as you go. Until the bills mount up to more than your income.

A budget doesn’t lock you up financially. It frees you up, out from the pressure of owing, paying late fees, the spiral of debt that’s so hard to climb out of.

Making a budget isn’t hard. Start with two lists. One is headed income. The other is headed expenses.

If income exceeds expenses, you are in good shape. It expenses exceed income, you are in trouble. Either the income must increase or the expenses must shrink.

And that’s where we started: balancing wants and needs.

This is the third in this series of posts on homestead finances. The first was Telling Wants From Needs. The second was on Separating Wants and Needs.

Latest From High Reaches

Separating Wants From Needs

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date August 6, 2022

I’ve lived a simple, what most people call a simple, life for close to fifty years now. I have become an anachronism. Separating wants from needs has become so ingrained, I cringe looking at shopping carts in the stores.

This is the second post on this topic. The first is on Telling Wants From Needs from last week.

Food

I am addicted to eating as are all the people I know. The smart homesteader will plan a garden to supply food all year. This isn’t as simple as it sounds for lots of reasons.

There are some foods easy to grow that I just don’t like. Green beans come to mind. The only reason for me to grow green beans is to sell them. What do I do with the ones that don’t sell?

I grow crops we will and do eat. Yard long beans can be used like green beans and I like the flavor. And I put up the extra peppers, squash (Frozen summer squash is a great soup base.) and tomatoes to use next winter.

These Zephyr summer squash are useful to the homesteader several ways. One is food. Second is a product to sell. Third is soup or stew stock for next winter. Successful squash plants need frequent squash bug checks and a shovelful of compost under the hill.

One of the things not done here is eating out. I cook. That doesn’t mean I never use frozen meals, but they are rare. Take out buffet can have vegetables added and make meals for more than one day.

Skipping most snack foods and sodas has side benefits. One is saving money. The other is better health.

For me caffeine, most white flour and sugar are not options. Weaning away from these food drugs, and they are drugs, does have withdrawal challenges. For around two weeks not even you will want to know you. You will feel terrible and grouch at everything. If you stick it out, things do get better.

I used to read book about pioneers and wonder how they could get by on five pounds of sugar for a year. I opened a bag last November. Half of it is still in the canister. Cakes, cookies and other desserts are not on the menu except for special occasions.

Side benefits of this are having less tarter on the teeth, fewer calories to burn off and finding food actually tastes good. Mentioning those fewer calories matters as a person gets older. Your metabolism slows down meaning you need less food. And those extra pounds get a lot harder to shed.

I grow three varieties of okra, Burgundy, Jing and a green variety (Burmese is preferred). Each one has a different flavor and degree of slime. Many people don’t like okra as it tends to be slimy. That slime thickens soups. It can sell well as it is an unusual crop at Farmers Market.

Clothes

When I was teaching, students were so concerned with their clothes. Sometimes they seemed more concerned with their clothes than with their education. They were more focused on rating what other people were wearing than on what they were putting into their minds.

And ten years down the road, those clothes mean nothing. The education is what opens doors to your life.

My goats are not worried about my clothes. They don’t care if I show up in jeans or shorts or fancy slacks as long as they get to eat. My chickens are the same.

Jeans last me about three months before I’ve worn holes in the knees. Those holes may be the fashion in some places, not here. Thrift store, here I come. Out come the scissors and cut the legs to length.

These won’t do for town, so I do have a town wardrobe. But this is simple. Most of the clothes have lasted for years. Forget the latest fashions. They are only a way to get you to spend more money.

I guess it’s time to close for this week. Separating wants from needs seems to cover more territory than I anticipated. Which is strange as it is so normal for me. Continued next week.

Tags homestead living, homesteading problems

Latest From High Reaches

Telling Wants From Needs

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 29, 2022

I seem to be an old school homesteader, what was called a back-to-the-land person. These people had a few things in common: live a simple, basic life; and little to no money. That last made telling wants from needs essential.

Needs

Needs are things a person must have to survive. Shelter, food, water are the ones most people think of. In our society clothes should be added.

One most people don’t think of is trash. Much of our trash now consists of plastics and other things that don’t rot away. Dumped into a back corner, they can contaminate the water table or hurt wildlife or domestic stock.

Another need not often considered is recreation. Working all day, seven days a week wears a person down. Everyone needs a break of some kind, even if it’s only sitting quietly in the woods or reading a book.

Water

Surface water (creeks, ponds and shallow wells) isn’t a safe source. Even springs need special filters as I found when researching a story for “The City Water Project”.

Hauling water in bottles from town gets cumbersome fast. Roof gutter drain pipe showers aren’t popular in the winter. Drilled wells are expensive. City water isn’t always available.

Shelter

Tents are great shelter in the summertime. They get cold and are difficult to heat in the winter. Many people opt for mobile homes which aren’t safe in tornado and strong wind areas. Building a small, simple house isn’t that much more expensive, if you do a lot of the work yourself.

Electricity

Is electricity a need?

I’ve lived without electricity. Propane lights were adequate. This was far enough north refrigeration wasn’t a big problem.

However, I like having electricity. It runs the water pump so the house has running water. It runs the computer, the lights, appliances, so many things.

Electricity is easy to abuse. How many freezers, refrigerators, TVs and other things does a person need to have? More than one is probably in the want category.

When telling wants from needs in this, be ruthless. Exactly why and how are you using this? Can you achieve the same end in a simpler way? That smaller electric bill or generation need will repay you.

Homestead Financial Battles

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 15, 2022

In these times of high inflation (I remember the 1970s and 17% interest.), homestead financial battles start taking shape. Money and time are the two sides.

Everything about homesteading takes time. When I stopped teaching, I put my wristwatch aside and thought I was free of its tyranny. Naivety.

My goats are milked twice a day. Ideally this is at the same times twelve hours apart.

Plants take a certain amount of time to grow to become productive. They must be planted at the right times or your work has no results. The same is true for mulching and watering.

These may not require a wristwatch, but they do lock you into time budgeting.

Goats like to eat. Dairy goats need good feed and hay to give lots of milk. Both are expensive. Obviously my High Reaches Nubian herd is well fed and spoiled.

On the other side is money. Money for taxes, feed, vet bills, supplies, groceries and personal items.

The homestead financial battles pit the need for time against the need for money. If you get a job, you lose the time. If you stay home to work, you need an income from something.

A budget has two sides to it as well. One is income. One is expenses. To stay solvent, the two sides must balance.

Stop and take a look at expenses. Which ones are for needs? Which are for wants? In homesteading, knowing the difference is vital.

On my homestead the needs are gardening supplies, chickens and goat feed. Some groceries such as flour are needs as well.

There are wants such as internet, haircuts, clothes (These straddle the two. Used clothing and repairing lost buttons, torn seams reduce clothing costs.), the latest book or movie. Many of these have alternate, much more inexpensive alternatives like the library for books, magazines and movies. (I except haircuts as I am a lousy barber.)

A homestead can bring in money. Selling eggs is one way. Milk and cheese are iffy as health regulations can get you into trouble. Produce requires a bigger harvest with more time and expense and a desire to eat or preserve the extra. Selling livestock.

The one sure thing is that the homestead financial battles must be considered and won by anyone wanting to homestead.

Why am I thinking about these now? One is inflation and the increase in expenses it has brought. The other is my novel still untitled and unfinished.

Tags homesteading problems

Latest From High Reaches

Growing Potatoes

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 8, 2022

I know potatoes are cheap in the market. I just enjoy growing potatoes.

With all the weather pattern changes, potatoes have become a difficult crop. Spring is often too cool and wet with late frosts. Potatoes are very frost tender. Late spring is often an early summer with hot, dry weather.

This year I debated, but succumbed to temptation and planted a bed of Yukon Gold potatoes. The goats were supplying plenty of mulch.

People laugh when I say I am lazy. It’s not that really. I just don’t want to do unnecessary work and hilling potatoes comes under that category. I lay out my rows of seed potatoes and pile on six inches and more of mulch leaving it thinner, or with a channel, over the seed potatoes for easy emergence of sprouts.

Only a couple of weeks ago these dry vines were robust green plants with flowers on them. Their potatoes are formed, hiding under the mulch, waiting for rain so they can again grow into potato plants. I would rather put the potatoes in the pantry to cook up for dinner.

With potatoes mulch serves several purposes. The usual ones of weed control and moisture retention are two. Cold, wet springs make that last a problem some years.

Another purpose for potatoes is frost control. The surface of the mulch may have frost on it, but the potatoes are safe. Any sprouts above the mulch will be nipped.

The last purpose of the mulch is easy harvest. No digging. Move the mulch aside and pick up the potatoes.

This year there is a complication. Last year I lost my potatoes to a raccoon. The raccoon wasn’t interested in the potatoes. Instead, she dug up the mulch along with the potatoes in search of worms and grubs.

The raccoon was back this spring. I’m assuming only one raccoon, but that may be wrong, probably is, and I’m not fond of shooting them for hunting for food to feed their babies.

I wasn’t going to grow potatoes this year after the last two disaterous years. So I manured this bed. I enjoy growing potatoes. Potatoes do not like freshly manured soil and form the little spots or scabs. They are cut off when the potatoes are eaten.

I laid a piece of chicken wire down over my potato bed. The potatoes didn’t mind and grew up through the holes. The raccoon did mind and left them alone.

It’s now harvest time. I will pull up the wire along with the potatoes, separate them, check under the mulch for the rest of the potatoes. And plant my butternut squash.

Tags gardening under mulch

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Lots of Water News

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date July 1, 2022

Gardens need water, lots of water. Did you know tomatoes are 95% water? That’s more than a watermelon’s 92%.

I have a big, thirsty garden and no hose. I do have rain barrels, but they empty fast. It takes a whole barrel to water my garden now and much of it is still in the seedling stage.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper with lots of water facts — Find trivia, puzzles, stories, investigations and activities about water in this science activity book.

Rain is not a reliable option. Ozark summer weather does have rain, if you are under the right cloud at the right time.

My solution is to use creek water. Presently I run a pump once a week, soak everything down and fill the barrels. I use watering cans in between. Seedlings get everyday service. Bigger plants get water every other day.

When the plants get bigger, if the raccoon doesn’t get them first, I’ll run the pump a couple of times a week. Lots of produce takes lots of water.

Most people have hoses. I did growing up. There is just no way to hook one up presently.

Rural Missouri is different about water. Towns have water departments, water meters and bills. Rural people have wells, water tanks or springs. I found out lots about this as I wrote “The City Water Project”.

Young people in this country don’t concern themselves with water. Turn on a tap and water flows out.

Where dies the water come from? Where does the extra go? Do you know? Perhaps you should.

Right now this Ozark creek looks shallow and tame. It has deeper pools here and there. Numerous creatures like fish, crayfish, snails and insect larvae call it home. During and after a six-inch rain, this lazy creek is a muddy torrent filling this space to several feet deep. At one time people used creeks like this for water in the house. This is no longer considered safe to do. The water is appreciated in my garden.

Storms here in the Ozarks are different now. They dump lots of water fast, cause the creeks to flood, wash out their banks.

Other places get unimaginable amounts of rain as the monsoons in Southeast Asia. Others have droughts as the Southwest and Australia.

Lots of people need lots of water. It isn’t distributed equally. Too often water is wasted or polluted. And my garden isn’t the only place that needs lots of water.

Tags science activity book about water, watering the garden

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Going to Farmers Market

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date June 24, 2022

Going to Farmers Market is interesting. I’m always late and never seem to have much to sell, but I like meeting with the other vendors and watching the people.

This week my garlic is ready to pull.

Every fall I shove garlic cloves into the ground, add mulch and wait. The leaves push their way out through the straw and stay green all winter.

Spring brings fast growth. Then the scapes or flower heads appear. Gardening books say to clip these off. They are good sliced and added to stir fry.

One of the vendors clued me in on the next step. I used to wait until the tops died down to pull the bulbs and had many of them split into cloves. He told me to pull the bulbs when the bottom couple of leaf sets turned yellow. This works great.

One of my difficulties taking produce like garlic and going to Farmers Market is pricing it. That is even more complicated now as prices soar in the store.

Another complication is dealing with people who believe vendors should charge much less than the store for their produce. Raising produce as a small gardener or farmer takes more work than large commercial operations.

Many people plant tomato transplants early. As long as the weather stays cold, even without frost, the plants sit there. Warm weather arrives. The plants thrive and the first tomatoes start forming. They seem to stay green forever. Once they start ripening, the tomato glut begins.

There is one exception: tomatoes. Nothing tastes like a vine ripened tomato.

Store tomatoes are picked green so they will ship with minimum damage. Ethylene gas is a natural ripening agent, but it only makes a tomato appear red. The tomato is still green with little real flavor.

Our cool, wet April has made tomatoes late for Farmers Market. I am watching my green tomatoes get bigger with no touch of red on any of them.

Will my tomatoes join me going to Farmers Market? Probably not many will.

Tomatoes are one crop we will eat lots of. Extras will be frozen. The day before frost, the green ones will go into the pantry where many will turn red.

The same routine as the store uses? On the surface. My tomatoes will still taste a lot better.

The store doesn’t carry Speckled Roman, Pineapple, Bonnie’s Best or Boxcar Willie. These are tomatoes bred for flavor, not marketability.

In “Mistaken Promises” Hazel Whitmore raises pullets to show at the county fair. Her mother and grandfather compete with their tomatoes.

Tags growing garlic, growing tomatoes