"The Resilient Gardener" Review

"The Resilient Gardner - Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times. Carol Deppe.

Wow, finally got a chance to set down and finish off my review copy with todays strong storm front moving through and theres a ton I could say about this book.

From the absolute novice gardener right down to the hardcore Survivalist/Restitutionalis/Get Ready For Shit To Hit The Fan true believers like me, this book hits many of the high points for need to know type gardening.

Within the pages of this beautiful book your going to find a little bit of everything from the why's we should garden to the hows of doing so without the convinience of running to the garden store down the road if things should get bad, along with a slew of easy to understand seed saving, breeding, and genetics information (even for those with no background) and an amazing amount of cullinary knowledge from a wonderfully exploratory home cook. All the while you will get an amazing glimpse at Carol's wonderful personality and her penchant for being prepared for anything, with good reason given her geographic location.

The information is concise as well as precise and immediately understandable as well as practical. Inside she gives us 33 Golden Gardening rules to get us started on the rough path to sustainability and from there moves into the deeper reasons that we not only should be in touch with our own food production but indeed may one day have to be. A hard truth for many to swallow that's for sure, our blog and others have proven that. This said, she doesn't tend to stick to controversial subjects, instead giving us clearly highlightable historical incidents which are immediately relatable to the crisis' that could be at hand at any moment as well as extremely powerful and plausable "what if's".

The true glimmer of her knowledge come through in the form of her cullinary understanding of her crops and their uses as well as her uniqe experience with Celiac disease and other dietary issues which might otherwise thwart our ability to be truly prepared should things ever get "that bad."

All along she peppers her wording with her strong belief (mine as well) that our communities will have to play a role as providers and merchants within themselves. Strengthening our ties as a community via trade and special skills developed individually but traded amongst the community at large in good and bad times. It's nice to see someone actually viewing the world much in the same way I myself do.

She spends a wonderful amount of time regarding poultry, potatoes, corn, beans, and squash and their ability to sustain us soley in the event of crisis or in the strugle to find sustainability, all the while making sure she highlights the hows and why's of what she is growing as well as the variety while also making a point to let us know that what works for her in her bio-region may not work for you and listing some alternatives. As well she updates us on her plant breeding projects, their virtures, and why she made the selections that she has as well as alternative selections which could have been made. The same is true of the poultry, she never once dismisses chickens or other poultry for her flock of laying ducks and instead gives advice which can inform our decision as well as the statistics regarding the behavior and laying ability of her flock and notes regarding her experiences.

The potato section mentions many of Tom Wagners varieties and Carol and her partner have spent many a day experimenting with many potatoes in many different uses.

I feel like having spoken to Carol in the past and after having read this book that some of us (I am guilty!) spend far to little time focusing on the taste and uses of our crops, this book has most certainly reinforced my gut feeling that the persual of cullinary delights and their mastery in the kitchen are aspects that I have too easily overlooked. At the end of each chapter regarding poultry, corn, squash, beans, and potatoes, Carol graciously shares with us a few dishes and ideas which should give us plenty of fodder for persuing our own homegrown dishes with as much zest as she has for cooking as well as gardening, seed saving, plant breeding, food storage, animal husbandry, survivalism and life in general.

Ther are wonderful reccomendations for garden tools which are easy on the back, watering, soil fertility and composting, spacing, seeding, raised bed gardening and so much more.

If self sustainability is something you hope to approach with any real rational approach, trust me there is no need to reinvent the wheel when someone like Carol can provide you at least with a rough roadmap which will lead you in the right general direction, trust me I know. You will learn more here than from any extension office in the United States in terms of value, persistance, beauty, hope, and realism and the words never come off the page as contrived or lacking in a concrete foundation.

This is the primer for the gardener and farmers of the 21'st century. Those who will likely live to see the day when supermarket shelves are empty or non existent.

Even if your set in your ways and tend to avoid gardening books this is one which should be sought out, if for no other reason that to know that out there on that beautiful west coast there is someone sharing your pain and successes, a likemind with which many of us can relate; preparing and grooming herself, her seeds, her community, for what could/likely will happen. More than that though, she is sharing, secrets that most of us lost more than a 100 years previous, that my friends is sacred knowledge (gnosis) of the highest order, the type which is truly life giving.

We hope to interview Carol in the near future, until then, check the book out as soon as you get a chance. You can order it here:

http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/the_resilient_gardener/

Also be sure to keep your eyes open for Carols new seed resource Fertile Valley Seeds coming soon!

Seed CSA: Seed List coming soon!

Howdy guys,

For those who have joined the seed CSA I planned on having the seeds all packaged and the seed list done by now, but haven't quite finished up. Regardless the list will probably be up sometime in the next couple weeks with seed available once published. For those who didn't join the CSA we will also include a seperate price list for those varieties available to the general public for ordering.

Just wanted to give you a quick update and let you know. We should have quite a bit available for this season though and I'm pretty excited to get some of this seed out there and into the public domain.

Thanks to those who have joined! It's definitely appreciated!

Infrastructure: The Peasant Barn

Ok, ok, I admit it, it's actually a broke down tobacco curing barn. But it's my broke down, termite infested tobacco barn!

I had been toying with the idea of a peasant barn since we first added turkeys to the repetoir of the farm a couple of years back. What do I mean by a peasant barn? Well, say you were a young guys, stugling with starting a business and maintining focus on those things which bring an at leas somewhat steady payday, and you didn't have much money in your pocket, if you wanted a barn you might be willing to forgo the common trend of having a new Pole barn built with their prohibitive costs and instead focus on building something out of commonly available and free or cheap materials scavenged locally, right? Well, if your me, that's how the train of thought works anyhow.

Sure, I had a family tobacco curing barn on sight, but it was full of junk, and to be honest, I just didn't want to sacrifice the time to clean it up, to be honest, I kept hoping a storm would blow it down, that way I could salvage some lumber and metal from it and start over and just toss or burn the rest of the mess (four generations of the same family storing utter crap in the same building), so it never occured to me "hey jackass, why not try to salvage and sure up what you have until you have the money and or the skills to actually build something worth having." That is until my father said "Well, the barn is yours anyhow." That's how my dad works, he absolves his responsibility (and subsequent guilt caused by years of neglecting on farm projects) by manipulating my gullibility until I get the job done. And so it was that I convinced myself "you can do this."

lol, my carpentry skills are crap, and I'll be honest with you, I hate construction work of any kind. I know it is a necessary skill to have on a farm, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't enjoy doing that type of work, at least I don't think I do until I actually accomplish something and think to myself; "hey, you did pretty good for someone who doesn't know a thing about what your doing." The goal in the end is to basically allow the barn to stand and serve our purposes for 10 or so years, or until a suitable replacement can be built. As I told Kim: "It's not perfect, but this will work, it only has to be a barn."

Technically I guess you could call it a pole barn, given the proliferation of round posts I used to replace the existing posts which were rotten.

Regardless, theres a lot of work that had to be done and a ton yet to do. So far I have replaced 30 or more old posts (with cedar cut from our woods and put in the ground or with poplar cut from our woods and placed on concrete blocks) and placed another 20 where before none existed. This is not mentioning all the scabing of pieces of lumber that needed to be done to "shore" things up a bit. Lots of water and termite damage, but I'm getting closer. What remains essentially are a few more posts, some metal to replace, and some metal to cover the end walls as well as some inside walls and building out the interior of the barn.

The lower shed will be the new turkey abode, complete with two vents on each end and several roosts, the front shed is basically a garage, and the main part of the barn (120 years plus old) will hold turkey breeding pens (for indidvidual color and variety crosses and brooding of eggs) as well as a blacksmithing shop for my inherited blacksmithing tools, storage for fishing equipment, animal equipment and feed, a composting toilet, rabbits and more. A partial second story will also be built to accomidate the expanding quail flock.

Anyhow, this is part of the reason I haven't blogged much lately, that and adding all of the animals, packing seeds, and making the seed list ext. Expect more soon.

Expanding our animal husbandry skills: Coturnix Quail

We recently had the pleasure of making a new friend in the local area who runs an amazing farm rearing goats, rabbits, ducks, chickens, sheep, and guard dogs, by the name of Blanche Perkins. Blanche contacted us on Facebook and was kind enough to pass a flock of 20 Bourban Red turkeys our way a couple weeks ago (as they were making their way accross the poultry fencing and into the dog enclosures where they were easy targets and made for expensive dog food) in exchange for some Homegrown nursery stock next season.

Kim, myself, and Corie, made our way down the road to Blanches amazingly beautiful farm and had a great time chatting with Blanche and checking out the animals as well as catching turkeys and discussing the red legal tape that binds us in many ways from exploring our true potential as farmers. On the trip home Kim and I discussed our newfound friendship and we definitely agreed that Blanche was "our type" and what we hope to become a long time friendship was forged.

Last week Blanche sent me a message about some Coturnix quail she was anxious to get rid of, about fifty or so, and obligingly we took them in exchange for nursery stock again. I had been sort of half heartedly exploring the idea of raising a few quail both for meat as well as a sideline income for about a year or so but had yet made the commitment, sometimes that little push is all it takes, and I can't thank Blanche enough for the little birds which I have already gained immense enjoyment from. Their care is so incredibly easy that it adds little to the list of daily chores and the experience of keeping such calm little "game" birds adds a lot to the allure of life on this farm.

As though that weren't enough Blanche also passed onto us (again in trade for nursery stock) another 24 Coturnix quail as of last evening.

Once our "peasant barn" is sufficiently rebuildt the quail will be given plenty of space in the second floor portion of the barn including a flight training room, a meat hutch, and several breeding cages.

There are two types of Coturnix quail in the photos below. The browns are Pharoh (I think) and the whites are Texas A&M. Apparently the white birds are also white meat all the way through contrary to the other breeds of Coturnix being dark meat.

This previous summer we got calls left any right from folks wanting quail eggs, meat, and birds for dog training, so hopefully this can turn into a lucrative little piece of our overall business scheme. In time I'll probably breed out the majority of the whites as I prefer a darker feathered and a darker meated bird.

You can also check out a few pics of the turkeys roaming around today after the huge rainstorm that ripped through the area (finally, this is the driest I've ever seen Indiana with little to no foragable subsistance available to the turkeys through the late summer and early-mid fall burning a hole in our pocket via feed bills).

As we have emphasised many times here on the blog and elsewhere making local contacts and facilitating trades within the local community are time honored and reliable methods to grow friendships and the local economy all the while creating a stronger locally sustainable community and saving a few dollars in the long run.

An amazing lecture by Alan Kapuler!

We posted the home interview associated with this lecture last week, I lucked into finding the actual lecture on youtube today! Check it out. This man has so much beautiful and amazing information to share with the world and always inspires me and makes me rethink my positions on many things.

More proof of control of the worlds food supply via seed! Seed Savers Exchange involved.

First, read this speech Kent Whealey gave to the Land Institute:

http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/svalbard-doomsday-vault-biopiracy-by-u-n-treaty/

My Commentary on the subject:

Three years ago I made essentially this exact pronouncement and prediction about SSE and by many I was called a “conspiracy theorist” amongst many other things. I was also simotaniously banned from both the SSE (not just from the messageboard, but from ever being a member as well) and also from tomatoville.

This speaks to a much deeper issue. It isn’t just about the SSE it’s about control of people, peasants, and not just those in the third world, us peasants in the developed world as well.

The very same people who sit on the boards of transnational corporations are generally the very same people who set in prominent government positions, are tied to international banking, and in general want YOU, all of YOU, in a position of both gratitude and groveling. No more Freedmen, only “men” in constant need of some fix from those in power. Food is one of the main tenents that these folks need to control in order to truly control society and bring forth a “New World Order.” To control food they need to tax the farmers to death and place so much red tape on every last little thing that we no longer have the will to fight them.

They don’t like people like us. The salt of the earth. The Meek. The ones who will inherit this place when their plans don’t work. We put a serious hitch in their giddy up by being self sufficient, so they have to control us at the basist level of food production. Via the very seed our ancestors domesticated and tended and passed down to us. We are the ones being domesticated now.

Anyone with any doubts about Amy Goldmans intentions in this world need only look at just who her family was as well as how manipulative they were, even to each other to see the truth for what it is and why it is.

Trying to get those seeds back legally will be a bitch, an thing to be honored for sure, more importantly, perhaps someone with money should persue the idea I proposed three long years ago about a copyleft for seeds which would allow trading between farmers and gardeners as well as sale by family owned companies but would exclude commercial use or manipulation by large corporations.

I am preparing for what is coming in this world people, and if your not you need to ask yourself why you aren’t. The cards are on the table, you are seing the enemies hand as we speak, you got something to play you better play it even if it might be “up your sleeve”.


Just remember this, he wo controlls the seed controls the feed, and he who controls the feed controls you!

Look at the rising price of commodities this fall. A massive wheat shortage in Russia (the third largest producer of wheat in the world behind Canada and the U.S.)who will not export wheat until the end of next harvest season (maybe) paired with corn crop failures in the corn belt causing (last week alone) a 6% increase in the price of corn commodities. Pair that with the inflation of the dollar and the Federal Reserves plan to monetize debt by printing more dollars. We are approaching a perfect storm. Trust me when I say this, one day when all things come to a head, those in power will wait until winter or a time of disaster so we are all passified and too weak to fight back.

Be prepared my friends.

Awesome interviews!

Here is a wonderful new interview from PNAC with a man I'm extremely proud to call a friend, mentor, and brother; Dr. Alan Kapuler.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14191759&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_por

And here is a really fantastic interview with Carol Deppe about her new book I will be reviewing shortly; The Resilient Gardener. I too will be interviewing Deppe in the near future so those of you interested in self sufficiency, cullinary delights, and plant breeding, please be sure to e-mail me questions you might have for her.

http://www.grist.org/article/how-to-be-a-resilient-gardener/