What’s in the ground:

I couldn’t believe that my first idea for this week was to start talking about shutting the season down. But don’t despair, I’ll hold off the talk of cover cropping for another month or so, there’s still so much much more food to grow. So, if you’ve reached that point where you’ve taken that last eggplant, or your tomatoes are just too burnt from the heat, try planting some beans or peas or any other legume in their place. It will fix the nitrogen like a cover crop will, but you’ll also be able to eat them. It’s important to put nitrogen producing plants back in the ground, especially after any night shade like tomato, eggplant or pepper, which take so much out.

What’s going on in sustainability:

I hope you all enjoyed the last few entries by Mr. Hoots. I loved everything he came back with and was really inspired by how much he learned and the whole mission of the trip in general. What’s so great about the earthship model is that it’s based purely on experimentation, the hands on kind, not the kind that’s done in some laboratory and then shipped to you in a box. It’s the whole point of this blog and homesteading and sustainability in general. If there’s ever a message I want to give people, it’s that making a mistake is the first step towards getting in right when it comes to this way of life. So hopefully the earthship and Sean Hoots has given you the motivation to keep on trying with those little homesteading projects. If it didn’t, well here’s a story to get you along.

Yesterday was the first day I noticed that my elderberry plant had produced. So I went to the side of my house, stripped off the ripe ones, stained my hands pink and walked into the house with sites on a few jars of jam. So I followed the instructions as I read them (don’t ever be ashamed to look up directions on the internet, not all of us have grandmother’s who can), put the berries in sugar and vinegar and roll to a boil, constantly stirring for a half hour. Easy enough. Well, the bane of having an electric stove is that you can’t get those perfect temperatures.  So as I stirred, and smelled the sugar burning, I pressed on, creating goops of gel that was drying faster than crazy glue to my sink. Being stubborn, I kept on, sterilizing jars, scalding my hand as I got the syrup in the jars, and even pressurized them.

What I was left with was a jar full of elderberry candy, so hard, all I could do was throw the jars away. Sure, I was pissed that I spent a perfectly good afternoon failing so miserably, not to mention losing those beautiful, medicinal berries. But as I said before, I had to fail that miserably so that the next time I’ll know better.

Until then, this is the note from the urban homestead.