NEWSLETTERS

Modern Homesteading Movement

Newsletter 8-16-05

Members of the Modern Homesteading Movement strive to base their life choices on these five principles: 1. Frugality; 2. Health; 3. Sustainability; 4. Self-reliance; and 5. Neighboring.

"It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in 30 years."
The Economist

1) Coming Hunger?
2) Earn Money by Collecting and Selling Wild Plants, "Wildcrafting"
3) Homesteaders Looking for Folks to Join Them on Land
4) News and Links
a) Want to Build Your Home in a Round, Metal, Affordable...Grain Bin?
b) Children with TV in Their Bedrooms Do Worse at School
c) GM Selling $5,000 Minivans that Get 43 mpg in Urban Driving...in China
d) Sausage, Rabbit Pie & a Great Antique Cookbook!
e) Moslems Don't Charge or Pay Interest
f) Monsanto Seeks Patent on Pig

5) Letters from Readers
a) Remembering Frugal Parents -- and Doing without TV
b) Reader Needs Help Making Shampoo, etc.
c) What Makes a Cucumber "Burpless"?
d) Why Know Your Credit Score If You Don't Do Debt?
e) Living History Farm Uses Roundup?!
f) Cook Which Greens?

1) Coming Hunger?

Food... We've had so much, often too much, for so long. We can't imagine that changing in America, land of the "corn belt." But change is coming, and faster than anticipated because the present agribusiness food growing system is not sustainable. There is growing understanding of fossil fuel depletion, but most folks still don't understand why, how, and when fossil fuel depletion is going to impact our food supply. Here's the nitty-gritty on the fuel scene.
"...persistently high gasoline prices, unprecedented warnings from the Secretary of Energy and the major oil companies, China's brief pursuit of the American Unocal Corporation’Äîsuggest that we are just about to enter the Twilight Era of Petroleum, a time of chronic energy shortages and economic stagnation as well as recurring crisis and conflict." http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050808/the_twilight_era_of_petroleum.php

But what about the impact of fossil fuel depletion on food supply? Well, it will hit corn production hard because most U.S. corn growing is totally an agribusiness process. It starts with genetically engineered seed from Monsanto, tradenamed "Pioneer." The farmer tills his field with huge fossil-fueled machines. The price of fuel just keeps climbing. That farmer MUST fertilize the soil with artificial fertilizer made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that is expected to be in even tighter supply in coming years in the U.S. than petroleum. In 1998, the price of a ton of artificial fertilizer was about $100. In the year 2005, the farmer is paying about $500 for the same ton of artificial fertilizer--when he can get it. Because of the enormous inflation in the price of that fertilizer, many farmers are now skimping on the amount they use, but that reduces the final crop size. Why can't they just do without the artificial fertilizer and farm organically?

It takes about five years for chemically treated soil to recover from that abuse and become able to support soil life again, and the natural life functions of soil life are what support any natural (non agri-business crop growing process). So no quick transition is possible. But it's more complicated than that. I interviewed an Indiana corn farmer. He said, "I grow 1,000 acres of corn. I plant Monsanto's Pioneer seed every year. I have to use herbicide and pesticide. Those are both made from fossil fuel and they're getting more expensive every year, just like the artificial fertilizer. Using the Pioneer seed, the artificial fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide, I can harvest 260 bushels of corn per acre."

"Okay," I said. "That's great. But we both know that the price of the artificial fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide is all going up, and -- eventually, its availability will be going down. What will you do when you can't get artificial fertilizer at all?"

There was a long silence. Then he said, "I'm already skimping on using it, but without artificial fertilizer, I couldn't grow corn at all."

"That isn't true," I argued. "The Indians, for Pete's sake, grew corn."

"Yes." Another long silence. "But you need to understand that Monsanto's Pioneer seed MUST have the artificial fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide to be grown. If I can't get that stuff, I can't get a crop from it. If I couldn't grow corn that agribusiness way, my only other choice is to grow corn the oldfashioned way, using heirloom seed. Corn is a heavy feeder. If I could get enough chicken manure to cover 1,000 acres, say, 8 inches deep, I could produce maybe 100 bushels per acre. And I can't imagine how I could get that much chicken manure."

What would we do without corn? Corn plays a big role in feeding the chickens and pigs and beef in our agribusiness factory farming system. Corn is also the foundation of the average American eater's diet. In a keynote speech to a conference of alternative farmers, Michael Pollen pointed out the following important facts:

"’ĶIf you are what you eat, and especially but not exclusively if you eat industrial food, like as we understand 99 percent of Americans do, what you are is corn. That carbon in your body, is corn upon corn upon corn. All these products, as different as they appear, consist of carbon that was fixed in a cornfield. The sweetener in the soda, the meat in the Big Mac, but also the corn syrup in the bread in the Big Mac and the secret sauce which also has high fructose corn syrup, that Slim Jim if you read the ingredients, is full of high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, corn starch, a great many additives, and the Lunchables meal, for all of its four different fuels, all four of them are essentially corn based. Even the French fries are made from potatoes, it’Äôs true, but odds are they’Äôre fried in corn oil, and that’Äôs where 50 percent of the calories in a McDonald’Äôs box of French fries come from, is the oil. So even there you’Äôre getting corn. Even in the salads at McDonald’Äôs, you’Äôre getting corn’ĶThey’Äôre full of high fructose corn syrup and various thickeners that are made from corn. This is not just an assertion, or it’Äôs an assertion that’Äôs susceptible to scientific proof’Ķ." http://www.newfarm.org/features/2005/0805/pollen/index.shtml

Midwestern corn farmers, who just planted their "most expensive corn crop ever" (because of fossil fuel depletion), are now also dealing with drought. The fortunate ones have an irrigation system in place. But the "dry land" corn growers are in trouble: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0817/p01s03-usec.html?s=hns

This means that the availability of meat, dairy products, and ingredients of many of America's other favorite foods is going down, and the price will be going up. This is a great time for you to practice growing a garden, growing some small stock for meat, and keeping a dairy animal.

2) Earn Money by Collecting and Selling Wild Plants, "Wildcrafting"

Hi, Carla. I read your book all the time. I enjoy having a place to start anytime I need to look something up. I am a farmer and I raise most of my own food. I collect medicinal herbs for income most of the year. I always put wild game on the table, and have two large spring-fed ponds to water my greenhouses and garden from, and to raise fish to put on the table. We also raise chickens, rabbits, worms, a couple pigs, dogs, turkeys, geese, three goats, and two cats. I haven't worked for anyone in years except myself. We do sell a few eggs, vegetables, flowers, and hides off the farm. We use more than two hundred herbs for both food, income, and medicine. We no longer look for real cash income from any other source. There is green gold in them hills for the taking.

I believe most farmers can make a good second income if they are willing to wait a few years on the wild plants already on their farm or homestead. When I was 12 years old, I decided I wanted to be a trapper. Hunting, fishing, camping out, and being outdoors was all I wanted to do. Back then, trapping season started Nov. 15th and closed Feb. 20th. By the time I was 14, I had became a good trapper. I had bought every book I could find on trapping. The spring of that year, Dad and I were in the garden harvesting vegetables for supper. He said, "Son, even if you can make a living in the winter trapping, what are you going to do to earn money the rest of the year?"

I had seen several references to WILDCRAFTING in my books about trapping. I learned that wildcrafting meant collecting herbs to sell to botanical companies that make medicine from them. Dad knew a lot of plants, but had no idea of their value. For example, blackberry roots are in demand, some years for as much as 90 cents per dry pound. We take a shovel tooth and go down the middle of large patches, cleaning out a swath 8 foot wide. The roots are then pulled out, removed from the plant tops, washed, and dried for two weeks.

Make sure you are collecting the right plant. There are lots of good plant guides, but the best thing is to talk with your county ag agent; he can point you to the person who can help you identify the plants.

The price of a plant changes from year to year. Here's a list of some of the plants that they buy:

Barberry Root
Bayberry Tree Bark
Bayberry Root Bark
Beth Root
Blackberry Root
Black Cohosh
Black haw Bark
Blood Root
Blue Cohosh
Blue Flag Root
Blue Scullcap (True)
Bugleweed
Burdock Root
Butterfly-Pleurisy Root
Butternut Bark
Cleavers Herb
Cramp Bark
Cranesbill-Wild Geranium
Culvers (Black Root)
Dandelion Root
Deer Tongue Leaf
Mayapple Root
Maypop-Passion Flower
Mullein (Leaf)
Oregon Grape Herb
Oregon Grape Root Bark
Oregon Grape Root
Osha Root
Poke Root
Prickly Ash Bark (Southern)
Prickly Ash Bark (Northern)
Queen of the Meadow Herb
Red Root / N.J. Tea Root
New Jersey Tea leaf
Sassafras Root Bark (Natural)
Sassafras Root Bark
Sassafras Leaves (Green Color)
Skunk Cabbage Root
Slippery Elm Bark
Solomon's Seal Root
Squaw Vine
Star Grass
Star Grub / False Unicorn
Stillingia Root
Stone Root
Sumac Root Bark
Sweet Flag Root
Virginia Snake Root
Wild Cherry Bark

Please contact the company for further collecting details, including scientific names of each herb and preparation guidelines. Check your state's laws before you take any plant or plant part from its native territory. Hillbillybob.

3) Homesteaders Looking for Folks to Join Them on the Land

Dear Carla,
Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing such an awesome book. I feel it will play a vital role in the survival of a lot of people in the future. It sits next to the Bible on my shelf (the few times it's on the shelf and not being used). You have helped me change my life in a big way and I'd like to tell you how.

About four years ago, I stumbled upon your book in a large bookstore in the city. I was there trying to find a different way to live. I had a successful small business by worldly standards, but I could see that the fancy things of the world were hollow. So I studied your book intensely from cover to cover and decided to sell my house and make the move. My house sold about a year later, right after I met my wife, Wendy. We decided to move onto her parent's 160 acres near Stockton, Missouri. The two of us built a beautiful 1200 square foot cob house almost entirely by ourselves. We live without electricity, do all our cooking on a wood cook stove, and do summertime baking in an outdoor cob oven (it works great). We do some work with draft horses, have a good milk goat, and 20 chickens. We have a 100 x 100, all organic, all open-pollinated garden. We are living the life -- debt-free and almost self-sufficient. It is wonderful. I've never been happier.

Our goal is to establish a community of like-minded people and become totally self-sufficient. We are not able to do this where we are now, so, sadly, we must leave our beautiful home in search of either people like us, or a place to start the community. The place we want to go is British Columbia, but we also like NW Montana and NE Idaho.

Thank you again, Carla -- you are an awesome woman.
Kindred Spirits, Joe & Wendy Moore;
P.O. Box 35, Stockton, MO 65785;
913-424-8370.

Answer: Thanks, Joe and Wendy, for all the nice things you said. Newsletter readers, anybody want to look into the possibility of joining with them to make a self-sufficient community? They don't do e-mail, so you'll have to write or call them.

Hi Carla,
I got the property in Tennessee: 60 acres very nice, near Knoxville. The plan is to start a community there based on self-sufficiency and tree-crops. The website is http://icdb.org/show.php?r=obedriverhomestead . If you know anyone who may be interested, please have them contact me. Also, I am looking to collaborate with researchers who need me to try sustainable ideas. Keep up the good work Carla, and you are always welcome in East TN. Erik; erikandelman@gmail.com ; 423-319-6626


4) News and Links

a) Want to Build Your Home in a Round, Metal, Affordable...Grain Bin? http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0817/p16s01-lihc.html?s=hns

b) Children with TV in Their Bedrooms Do Worse at School
A new study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, finds that children who have TV sets in their bedrooms score lower on school tests than those who don't. Children with no TV set in their bedroom, but who had access to a home computer, did better than other children. Children with TV sets in their bedrooms and no access to a home computer scored the lowest. About 71 percent of the school children in this California survey did have private TV sets in their bedrooms!!!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20050706-15403700-bc-us-kidstv.xml

c) GM Selling $5,000 Minivans, 43 mpg / Urban Driving...in China
"LIUZHOU, China - In this obscure corner of southern China, General Motors seems to have hit on a hot new formula: $5,000 minivans that get 43 miles to the gallon in city driving. That combination of advantages has captivated Chinese buyers, propelling G.M. into the leading spot in this nascent car market." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/automobiles/09mini.html?th&emc=th

d) Sausage, Rabbit Pie, and a Great Antique Cookbook!
SAUSAGE: 9 lbs. meat, 3 tablespoons sage, 3 tablespoons salt, 2 tablespoons pepper. Weigh and mix before grinding. --Myrtle M. Clark, Kahoka

RABBIT PIE: Cut the rabbit into pieces and soak in salt water for several hours. Grease a baking pan. Place the rabbit in it. Salt to taste. Sprinkle flour over the rabbit and pour hot water over it. Place in oven and let cook several hours, or until the meat is very tender. Keep covered with water. Thicken the gravy. Cover across the top of the pan with biscuit dough and bake quickly. A few pieces of pork cooked with the rabbit is fine. --Mrs. Wm. L. Steiner, New Haven

http://missourifolkloresociety.truman.edu/MFA%20cookbook/MFA%20Cook%20Book.htm

e) Moslems Don't Charge or Pay Interest
Moslems are forbidden by their religion from charging or paying interest. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/realestate/07nati.html

f) Monsanto Seeks Patent on Pig
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto-pig-patent-111

3) Letters from Readers

a) Remembering Frugal Parents -- and Doing without TV

Dear Carla,
Enjoyed the newsletter, especially the frugality advice. It reminded me of my parents. When my parents married, in 1950 or so, my mother had a twenty-dollar bill. My dad had zip. Living in a tiny masonite trailer house, located near several wrecking yards and scrap metal buyers, they started a business with 20-dollars-worth of used tires and batteries. As they sold tires and batteries, they always used some of the money to buy more used car parts and later non-working junk cars to ’Äúpart out’Äù for more parts to sell. At first, they supplemented this small income by selling scrap metal they salvaged from the city dump. They refused to buy anything on credit, but by the end of the first three years, even with two babies, they had saved enough to buy a small half-finished new house, which they had moved onto their property. They finished the house themselves. I learned to walk in that house. At first, my parents saved money in a glass jar. They bought another adjacent lot each time they had accumulated the money for one. Once a real estate lady came to the trailer to make the transaction for a lot. She was amazed to see the money to pay for the property being counted out from a canning jar. Many of the bills coming out of the jar were ones. Since it was getting dark when the transaction was finished, the lady preferred not to carry a large roll of cash and asked if she could come back the next morning and get the money.

After living in the three-room house for 6 years, my dad hired an elderly carpenter with a drinking problem to build a living room onto the house. My dad was kindly but had a bass voice and big black eyebrows. People did as he told them. The carpenter built carefully and never came to work drinking. My parents had accumulated a pile of used hardwood flooring and lots of huge windows salvaged from military barracks. My dad had that poor protesting carpenter construct that room out glass windows on three sides, and figure out how to make it strong and stand up with that much glass. My mother liked lots of light in the house and those floor-to ceiling windows were cheap. In fact they were free. My dad had charge of selling a chunk of hundreds of those salvaged windows (standing on end) on the two lots he most wanted to buy. A contractor down the street beat him to the lots, so my dad offered to do the selling of the windows and he was allowed to use as many as he could incorporate into the new room for free. My dad’Äôs success and savings grew quickly till that massive wall of barracks windows sprang up next to the ’Äúthrough street’Äù to block his little auto salvage business from view. Anyway, that’Äôs the end of the success part. After that ’Äúthe stars in their courses fought against’Äù him. By the 14th year, Daddy was selling off his cars and car parts as scrap metal in order to buy groceries and pay the utilities, which it tantamount to a farmer eating his seed corn. He paid tithes on every dollar. I think he was able to last 7 more years after the windows because he kept all his old customers, but he couldn’Äôt gain many new ones. My sister and I always rode the city bus the 1 ¬‡ miles to elementary school. As we entered junior high, the distance stretched to about 2 ¬‡ mi. We walked a few times to save money, but it was a good distance and it was through not-perfectly-safe neighborhoods. I once told my parents that kids could get free lunches at school if they were poor. I learned quickly my parents did not consider any kind of assistance an option. Each morning we would scrounge in the ’Äúlock box’Äù or mother’Äôs purse for lunch money. It is a bad feeling to know you are cleaning out about all your parents’Äô cash for your lunch and bus fare. My dad had a lot of the self-respect kind of pride but only a 4th-grade education. He finally asked his sons from his previous marriage to give him a janitor’Äôs job at their equipment company. My parents immediately started saving money again. That job sufficed till Daddy could collect social security and we two girls married. My parents gave a great deal of money for evangelism, considering their circumstances.

Anyway, this doesn’Äôt sound like a very good testimonial to self-sufficiency and not going into debt, but really it is. We would have been in worse trouble if we had bought on credit. It says something about owning land, too. If my dad could have gone on buying land, his business wouldn’Äôt have failed. He wasn’Äôt really against other people going into some manageable debt. He once said, of the scripture, ’ÄúOwe no man anything,’Äù ’ÄúYou don’Äôt owe your creditor anything till the payment comes due.’Äù

I agree wholly with you, Carla, about television. People waste their lives sitting there dazed. Also, the entertainment people choose shapes their characters and actions. People become what they watch. Mature people are affected less than children are. People with a strong base in the word are affected less than those without it, but everyone is affected, sometimes without being at all aware of it. There is a cycle about it, too. People who are easily bored ’Äúneed’Äù a lot of entertainment. Then having a lot of entertainment makes them even more easily bored. Really, the more people try to avoid all boredom, the more boredom they will experience. When I was growing up, our television would occasionally quit. My dad always took weeks or even years to fix it. I thought he just didn’Äôt have or didn’Äôt want to spend the money. Now I think he did that to limit our TV viewing. I’Äôm grateful for that, now. Most of my good childhood memories are of the things we did to entertain ourselves when the television was ’Äúdescompuesto.’Äù

Becca Asbury

b) Reader Needs Help Making Shampoo, etc.

Dear Carla,
I make my own soap (and some to sell, and some for a friend with allergies) but have been amazingly unsuccessful trying to make shampoo. I use a pure castille soap of my own making (olive oil, lye and water) as the base, and the recipes I have tried use extra water, and some combination of more oils, extra glycerine, acids like lemon juice or cider vinegar. I have tried every recipe I can find and every variation I can come up with of a combination of the above ingredients. In the end, the shampoo always either separates and is unusable for that reason (won't even temporarily mix back together), or when I wash my hair with it, I end up feeling dirtier that when I started - it makes my hair feel coated with ????? oil or something...it feels heavy and "clumpy" and the "shampoo" doesn't really lather. I love my soaps, they rinse very clean, and I mill it with borax and bleach for a laundry soap, and with water, vinegar and tea tree oil for a dish soap, all of which work just great - better than the "miracle products" being hawked in every supermarket, but shampoo.....

Do you have a recipe that you use, or do you see the flaw in what I'm doing, or do you have a suggestion of someone to contact regarding this vexation? I haven't found anyone around me who makes their own shampoo that I could ask, and most of the web sites I have found either contain recipes I have tried and failed at, or sell a premade shampoo base that you add stuff to (what's the point?) It must be something I'm doing, but I'm at a total loss. The only thought I've had is that I use a cold process soap, leaving the glycerine in it. Is there a way to get the glycerine separated out? Could this be my fatal flaw?
Thank you for any suggestions or shoves in the right direction
-Lesley McClelland, Apalachin, NY lmcclelland@stny.rr.com

Answer: I'm not expert at making soap, but I bet some of our newsletter readers will help you out!

c) What Makes a Cucumber "Burpless"?

Carla, Will you explain what makes a cucumber "burpless?"
Renee McGrouty mcgrouty@cox.net

Answer: I never could understand that one, either. Readers?

d) Why Know Your Credit Score If You Don't Do Debt?

Dear Carla,
What's the purpose of knowing our credit score, which you insert in the middle of your excellent writing on Frugality? I agree with every word, love your vehemence and no-pulling-punches regarding the corporations' intentions, but don't see the purpose in knowing one's credit score. Just curious~
Jean

Answer: Well, Jean, in these days of identity theft, it would be useful to know what's going on under your name. Most of us have some debt, if only for our land, so it's useful to know what potential lenders are seeing when they look us up. Best of all, of course, would be to be able to say, I've never done credit, so there's no way there can be anything under my name. (Then you could check to make sure that's true!)

e) Living History Farm Uses Round-up!?

Dear Carla,
I just finished reading part of your newsletter that spoke of chemical usage and I have a question for you. I always tend to shy away from most chemical usage and try to do things naturally, but now I have a problem. My children and I work at a historical village once a week and one of the jobs we were given is to pick grass and weeds from the yard. Lawn care would would have commonly been something that children would have had on their chore list. The problem is that another woman has been telling me not to bother, because the landscaper will spray the ground with Round Up. I have no idea where she sprays and I feel compelled to keep the weeds pulled because the yard looks terrible for the visitors (in my opinion). I'm not comfortable at all with the health risks, especially for my children. Any advice?
Concerned, Angela

Hi, Angela. Thanks for writing. I am astonished and grieved that a so-called "historical village" is so phony as to use a landscaper who uses Roundup on its grounds. Sounds like they're trying to have it both ways: the women and children "pick grass and weeds from the yard" and the landscaper sprays Roundup. Actually, back in the 1850's, the women and children might have gathered armfuls of tall grass and weeds to feed confined animals, a practice called "soiling." And / or there would likely have been poultry or grazing animals feeding on those greens. Definitely no chemicals. I would confront the leadership and tell them that the use of herbicide for groundskeeping is neither historically authentic nor is it healthy for volunteers who are expected to work on those grounds. Genuine oldtime yards did not have the careful grooming that we take for granted in these artificial times. By the way, here's the latest on the toxicity of Roundup:
Roundup Fatal to Frogs http://www.newfarm.org/news/2005/0805/081205/roundup.shtml

f) Cook Which Greens?

Hi Carla,
Are there any green leafy's that might better be avoided eating raw?
As an example--What about turnip greens? Cindy

Answer: Never eat rhubarb greens, cooked or raw. They're POISONOUS. Spinach, Swiss chard, turnip greens, and beet greens are tastiest when eaten cooked and that makes them lower in oxalic acid, a substances that encourages kidney stones. All the lettuces do not contain oxalic acid and are nicest eaten raw, but they can also be tossed into a soup or stew and eaten cooked.