A Chilly Classroom

I'm off this afternoon to take a hands-on class on pruning fruit and nut trees, courtesy of the county Agricultural Extension Office. The cost? Eight dollars. This is great since the guy who said he was willing to barter some of my bread for the pruning of our old apple tree has never followed up. For $8 I can learn how to maintain the tree myself.

It's an outdoor class of course, and our temperature should peak just below freezing today. Add to that a stiff 20 mph wind, and this will be a test of my fortitude. And my long underwear. Good thing my sweetie got me some lovely fleece-lined leather work gloves for Christmas last year. (Yes, they've already seen some service.) What a great present!

If you live in the US and have any interest in gardening related topics, you should get to know your county's Agricultural Extension Office. There are a lot of resources (such as the Master Gardeners) for your immediate area under that roof, and your tax dollars are supporting it. In many areas they offer classes such as the one I'll be attending today. My county offered a free class on composting last year, with a free compost bin given away to each attendee. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend. Maybe they'll offer it again this year; I wouldn't mind a free extra compost bin. Our county's Extension Office also offers bare root tree and fruit seedling sales each spring. This year I'm getting four blueberry bushes (two each of two different varieties) for $32, with no delivery charge since I'm picking them up myself. Hard to beat that.

Check your local Extension Office out. You might be delighted at the resources and values you find!

Tiny Tip: Repurpose Your Credit Card

I thought it would be appropriate to mention this tiny tip this month, since February's Alternative Action Item is to bake bread. And many people out there are getting rid of credit cards or having the accounts close on them. That little piece of plastic may have been the bane of your existence, a temptation as potent as a drug, that has gotten you into a financial mess. It's a good thing to retire a credit card or two. But that doesn't mean the card itself is worthless to you. It need not end up in a landfill.

Instead, you can repurpose that stiff little piece of plastic into a baking tool. Bakers often need something to scrape dough off a wooden work surface, or off the inside of a container. The tool is called, appropriately enough, a dough scraper. Baker's supply catalogs will sell you specially made ones with extra features for $10. But really, all that's needed is a stiff, but somewhat flexible piece of plastic, curved on one side and straight on the other. The ones you can buy are bigger than a credit card, but there's no reason you can't work with a smaller version that fits neatly in your hand. And because you can make as many as you want from old membership cards and credit cards, it's possible to have a very large supply of them for baking day. An ordinary but sharp pair of scissors is all that's needed to make these hacked scrapers.

Using a homemade dough scraper made from retired spending enablers to bake your own bread is a great way to triple up your savings while increasing your self-sufficiency. It's a nice feeling to know that I can be a proficient baker without needing to spend money on specialized equipment. And it's feels good to keep another piece of plastic out of the landfill too.

Got any other tool hacks or repurposing stories you'd like to share?

More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Parboil Your Pasta, Make the Most of Old Man Winter, Broccoli Stalk, Scallions

Free Gardening Supplies + Beer

Over the weekend we jumped into our beater pickup truck to run a bunch of gardening-related errands. I'd been waiting for an opportunity to knock out several tasks in one run, and it was finally the right time. There's a mushroom farm not too far from Kennett Square that gives away free organic mushroom compost most Saturday mornings. We had to get on the road pretty early to get there in time, but man, what a deal. We didn't even have to load it. They had a conveyor belt contraption that just dumped the compost right into the bed of our truck. We had to get in line between much larger farm machines pulling much larger trailers to haul the compost around in. Clearly these farmers know a good thing when they find it. We were thrilled.

Then off we went to another town in the area to drop off some seeds to a woman who had participated in the group ordering we did last month. She had mentioned that she had a large stand of bamboo, and that we were welcome to come and help ourselves to as much of it as we wanted. We did. I cut down twenty shafts, which, after trimming, we were able to cut into 11-foot sections with remainders 6 to 8 feet long . I want them to create six bean teepees for my garden this year. I'll use the longer sections for the teepees, and the shorter pieces for whatever else suggests itself. We stuffed the bamboo poles into the compost in the bed of the truck and recovered it all with a tarp.

Then it was off to a lunch break and a meetup with Meg & Kelly of Future House Farm at the Victory Brewing brewpub in Downington. We thought it very fitting, parking our beater truck in the brewery's parking lot with this bumper sticker on it. It was good to meet the "Pirate Farm" folks, as my husband calls them, and to chat about sustainability, books by Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, and food and beer of course. They're gardening-cooking-hen keeping folks themselves, and they're the ones that got me thinking in the first place about using bamboo in the garden. My husband was keen to hear about the rain barrel system they set up for their watering needs. He also indulged in a growler purchase, filled with a Victory brew.

After a lunch of satisfying food and conversation, we were off to our last freebie stop. I collected a few more composting worms from the third person to respond to my pleas for them. Two other women had kindly given me a few worms, but the total amount was pretty small compared to the size of the bin I'm using for them. So another addition wasn't amiss.

On the way home we had a funny encounter with a hugely enthused Asian man pulling up alongside us in a minivan while cruising along at 55 mph on the highway. He beckoned for me to roll down my window while his wife looked eagerly on. We were mystified, but I rolled down my window. "Where'd you get the bamboo?" he yelled excitedly. I shouted out the name of the town where we had cut it that morning, and he asked, "Is there somewhere to buy it?!?" I smiled ruefully, shook my head and watched his face fall. But he said thanks and drove off. We wondered whether we could've made some ready cash if we'd pulled over and offered to sell our poles on the spot.

The bamboo poles will be used to grow some Cherokee Trail of Tears beans and Hutterite Soup beans this year. Most of the mushroom compost will go into the raised beds we've yet to make for the asparagus crowns that will arrive in a few months.

We were pretty smug about getting so much free gardening stuff and meeting some interesting people for lunch. I think I won't have too much trouble rousting my husband early from bed again if I want to make a similar run again for more of the same. But I'm a little sore from cutting all that bamboo and then off-loading the compost. I'm out of shape from lack of gardening activity over the winter.

Harvest Meal: Colcannon

A lot of our harvest meals are simply the product of using up what we've got, and trying to be a little creative with them. But we also find ourselves falling back on very old, simple recipes that hail from various traditional cuisines. Our dinner last night was one such occasion.

Colcannon is a mixture of mashed potatoes and usually cabbage, or sometimes kale. You see that? Colcannon, and kale. Does that remind you of anything? Kohlrabi? Cole slaw? Cauliflower? Collard greens? It's an old root word for cabbage. Kale is a member of the cabbage family, along with all the rest. Kohl is a surname in Germany. Mr. and Mrs. Cabbage over there. Colcannon comes from the Irish Gaelic, and there's a very similar dish in Wales with a very similar name (cawl cennin) in Welsh. Okay, I'm done playing with the words now. Here endeth the etymology lesson. On to the recipe.

You don't really need a recipe though. You know how to make mashed potatoes, right? Well you make those and you add butter, salt and pepper, some sauteed members of the onion family, and a hefty amount of either cabbage or kale. If you're feeling a little indulgent, add some parsley or chives, and maybe a little bacon. Typically a cheap but nourishing vegetarian, peasant-type dish, colcannon could even be made vegan if you so desired.

Almost everything I put into our dinner was stuff that needed to go. So I ended up with something that I would call a variation on colcannon, rather than a canonical colcannon. (Maybe not completely done playing.) We've been avoiding the last of the potatoes because they're so small that cleaning them was a bit of a pain. I got one leek out of the garden, and combined it with half an onion that had been sitting in the refrigerator. I still have bags and bags of chopped kale in the freezer, the product of our summer garden. There was also some cream, a little bit of schmaltz, and half a bunch of flat-leaf parsley hanging around in the fridge that needed using up. Oh, and some cheese that didn't do too much for us, so we weren't using it up in a raw form. This all was going in, one way or another.

After my husband had nobly scrubbed each and every tiny potato, I made the mashed spuds. While the potatoes boiled, I sauteed the chopped leek and onion in the schmaltz, seasoning generously with salt and pepper. Then I added the frozen chopped kale and let that thaw and warm up. When that was done, I added the cream that needed using up, a little over a cup, I'd say. I also grated the cheese, which was a simple farmer's cheese, probably about 6 ounces or so. When the potatoes were cooked, I added most of the cheese and a hunk of butter while mashing them up. Then I folded in the leek-kale-cream mixture. All that I put into a casserole dish, topping it with the remaining shredded cheese. I cooked it at 375 F for about half an hour, until the cheese was melted, bubbly and just beginning to darken. After letting it cool, I topped the dish with minced parsley.

I make no claims that this is an authentic version of colcannon. Traditional colcannon certainly would not have included schmaltz or cheese. Irish peasants probably wouldn't have used either of these, nor the typical quantities of dairy fat in modern versions of colcannon. However, they might have used some buttermilk. My dish is clearly in the colcannon neighborhood though. And my method of cooking - using up what we've got that needs using up - fits perfectly with traditional cooking the world over.

When all was said and done, it was delicious. The intense potato aroma coming out of the oven was incredible; a homey, comforting scent on a dark and chilly winter night. It was hard to let the dish cool enough so that we wouldn't burn our mouths. It was especially nice to see that even this long after our harvest, we can still make something so tasty and healthy out of three crops we grew ourselves (leeks, potatoes, kale). It would be a pretty cheap meal, even if we had to buy those ingredients. Best of all, there are plenty of leftovers.

Three guesses what's for breakfast. Yeah, I'm weird that way.

Tiny Tip: Make the Most of Old Man Winter

Winter is a tough time for frugalites. We're cooped up inside a lot. We pay to warm our houses and there's not much opportunity for most of us to garden or take advantage of other outdoor money-saving activities. Still, there are a few ways we can take advantage of winter's chill.

My first suggestion has to do with your freezer, particularly if you have a chest freezer. I've already posted about winter being a good time to defrost your freezer, since your frozen food is less likely to thaw while you tackle the defrosting. But here's another suggestion. If you're like us, your freezer stores are probably dwindling about now, as you eat through food produced during the warm months. That means extra room in your freezer. If you leave those empty spaces, your freezer will end up working a little harder to cool itself after every time you open it. Why not fill the space with free ice?

Containers of ice can take up the extra space in your freezer to act as cold storage. And while the temperatures are below freezing, you can produce ice essentially for free. Just fill some empty plastic bottles or jugs with water, leaving a decent gap at the top for the water to expand as it freezes. Put the bottles outside in freezing weather, with the caps off or only on loosely. When the water freezes, put the bottles in your chest freezer or kitchen freezer.

Over the summer, as you need the space in your freezer for storing more food, just remove the bottles to make room. If you move them into your refrigerator, that appliance will need less electricity to keep the food in there cool for a few days. Set the bottles of ice on the top shelf for most effective cooling of the entire compartment. The frozen bottles can also be used in coolers to keep food chilled for a picnic. Set the bottles aside to be refrozen and re-used come winter.

My second suggestion runs along very similar lines. When you make a nice hearty, warming dinner for yourself, use the cold outdoors to chill the leftovers before you put them in the fridge. Since the outdoors is frequently colder than a refrigerator in winter, this will cool your food faster, ensuring better food safety. It will also prevent your refrigerator from heating up and having to work harder, and the food in the fridge from warming up and spoiling more quickly. Be sure you cover your food well before chilling it outside. And exercise caution if your leftover food will tempt wild animals into undesirable behaviors.

These tiny tips will save you small amounts of electricity. Every little bit helps, especially in this economy!

More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Parboil Your Pasta, Repurpose Your Credit Card, Broccoli Stalk, Scallions

Unexpected: $342.28

I spent much of yesterday at the veterinarian's office, dealing with my suddenly sick and very frail cat. She'd been delighted to see us over the weekend on our return from a four-day trip. She was her usual perky, social, affectionate, and vocal self. Tuesday morning she was walking shakily with her head held low, had watery eyes, and wasn't eating.

At the vet she was found to be dehydrated, and to have an elevated temperature. And she gave an unsolicited stool sample on the exam table. What can I say? Shit literally happens at a vet's office. The doctor was game enough to declare the offering useful for diagnostic tests. The good news is that most of the potential problems have been ruled out (feline leukemia, feline AIDS, kidney and liver failure), one problem has been diagnosed (roundworms), her dehydration was treated with subcutaneous fluids, and the remaining likely condition (thyroid) is treatable. She also ate some food overnight, used the litter box, and looks much better this morning, though she's still slower and more subdued than usual. She's now complaining about not being allowed outdoors.

The bad news is that the examination, treatment, blood work, and other tests cost me almost $350. My cat is going to be fourteen years old this summer, and while she's had her share of injuries from tussling with other animals, she's never before needed treatment for any kind of illness. In other words, we've been very lucky with her, given that she's an indoor-outdoor cat. But still, $350 is a lot of money. I can't say I'm thrilled about carving that extra amount out of our budget this month. Yes, we have a $25 line item for pet expenses each month that we have been routinely underspending. But we're not so disciplined as to keep that unspent money in a sub-account in some bank account. Fortunately, paying off the credit card isn't going to be a big problem for us, but it still more than doubles our average yearly expense for having a beloved feline companion in our lives.

I don't begrudge the cost. Having a pet is a serious commitment and responsibility, no less than having a child. Before I get jumped for that statement, I recognize that the responsibility for raising a child is much, much larger, more complicated, and legally enforceable. Nonetheless, both are cases of taking responsibility for the care and well being of another living creature. Getting a pet - or a farm animal - medical treatment when they need it is a moral imperative, in my opinion.

So I'm just going to wind up the post with a plea to potential pet owners, or pet owners who haven't yet experienced any costs beyond shots, spaying, and feed. Please remember that sooner or later your pet is likely to need treatment that will cost a significant chunk of change. Budget for it now, before it's needed. It's a terrible feeling to see your pet in pain or weak with illness. It was bad enough worrying about my cat's health. At least I didn't have the additional worry about where the money for her treatment would come from. Please, please, please don't let poor planning put you in the position of being unable to care for an animal that you have chosen to make dependent upon you. Over a pet's lifetime, you're likely to need upwards of $1500 for their food and medical costs. Plan for unexpected expenses. They'll happen sooner or later.