Hello all, and welcome to the first edition of our weekly “Note From the Urban Homestead.” This section of the blog is to acquaint and connect all of you passionate fans with the local culture Hoots and Hellmouth enjoy as they tour our country.

What’s in the ground this week:

After a summer of rain, the window has finally opened over the past few weeks for our night shades. The recent heat has ripened our peppers, blushed our tomatoes and exploded our eggplants. Enjoy the harvests and start thinking about planting your fall legumes (beans, peas) to get that nitrogen back in the soil.

What’s going on in the neighborhood:

If while enjoying those beautiful fresh vegetables, you suddenly get a fit of anxiety as you notice fall just around the corner, fear not. This weekend at the Clark Park Farmer’s market in Philadelphia, the good folks from Canvelution will be giving a demonstration on the safe and proper way to can and preserve veggies and fruit. Don’t give your Aunt Phyllis botchulism with the tomato sauce you canned yourself. Come down to the market on Sat. from ten to two and find out how to be a hit this Christmas with all of your hand made preserves, while avoiding putting one of your loved ones in the hospital.

If you are not living in the Philadelphia area, but are planning on canning and preserving some of that great summer and fall harvest, please visit these websites or check out these books.

www.canning-food-recipes.com/canning

www.mountain-breeze.com/kitchen/canning

www.pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning

Canning and Preserving Without Sugar by Norma McCrae

The Farmer’s Wife Canning and Preserving Cookbook by Lela Nargi (Hope to not assign gender roles, but this is just kitsch from the thirties. Men should can and preserve too.)

These books and sites are just a few that I found, and there are plenty more resources out there. The important point is that the local culture movement will never gain full force if it’s only left to the farmer’s markets and back yard gardening of the summer, leaving us with only the grocery store and inefficient and wasteful food systems we have in place now for the off season. As you’ll hopefully read in these books, canning and preserving are a lost art that was at one time the single most important survival technique that got our ancestors through the winter. And even though most of us are not in danger of starving for the winter and the grocery store is just another of life’s conveniences, there is nothing more fun than getting together in the kitchen on a nice fall day, and cooking down some peaches, pickling some water melon rinds, or canning some squash mix.

Enjoy the rest of the plenty the rains have provided, have fun getting ready for the winter, and we’ll keep on working here at The Urban Homestead.

-Nic