Save Seeds to Plant Seeds

Seeds drying on newspaper

This is the first time that I'm collecting seeds from my own produce. It will be exciting to saw them next year! So far I collected peas, beans, nasturtium, calendula, tagetes, carrots, sunflower, pumpkin, tomato and spinach. Soon to collect seeds from chard, onions, squash, radishes, mizuna cabbage and swedish soybeans.

I also collected seeds from various wild growing bee lowing flowers. The nature is so generous indeed. 

As a self-sufficient householder it is of utmost importance to learn how to and when to collect seeds as well as how to store them. I make sure to write on each seed bag the year the seed is from since some seeds cant live forever. Old seeds often don't germinate.

Save seeds to plant seeds!

How are the Chicks doing?

Im glad you are asking :) they are doing fine I must say. Theytransformed from "nipping at each other" psychopaths to very gentle hens which are now grooming one another and walking freely around our neighbourhood. Our neighbours don't mind them actually they think its cute to see them around their houses. They truly are free-range hens now.
Lets see how they looked when I first got them from the egg farmer;

Damaged feathers and skin, and biting one another constantly

Now they look like this;

Foraging freely around the entire neighbourhood like a natural flock

Lets not forget that 60% of all eggs produced in the world come from caged hens;

Poor caged creatures. Why are humans so heartless?
We must stop this madness!

Next time you buy eggs make sure to look if they are from caged hens or free-range organic hens. You can make the difference right there in the shop. What do you support?

Year's last Squash and Pumpkins

Thats it folks! The Jötnar (frost giants) of the Norse mythology are approaching our shores bringing in frost with them. Its time to harvest the last bits of Squash and Pumpkin before they arrive and ruin them.

The Squash was very productive the whole season and we ate a lot of it and we gave a lot to our good neighbours. The Spaghetti Pumpkin was less productive. The above is about it. I gave 2 to my neighbour. As you can see in the photo the pumpkins aren't that big at all. I think they would give more fruits if we harvested the first fruits early. I've heard that for each early harvested pumpkin and squash two new flowers form. Lesson learned for the next year.

I will make sure to take seeds from both for next year. I'm trying to create my own seed bank and will do so every year.

Harvesting Carrots, Beets and Parsnip

harvesting carrots

lots of carrots and parsnip

Kristine was taking up the Beetroots

fine organic Beets

We took up one plant of Sarpo Potatoes just to see how it
developed and this is what it gave us

Kristine is very good at braiding Onions

Strange bug in the Carrots

I have never seen this beautifully colored insect before. Google search told me it is called Striped Shield Bug.

Striped Shield Bug on Carrot seeds

Carrots are starting to be big and soon to be harvested. Im not sure how to harvest them ... apparently one needs sand to do it properly ... must research a bit more.

They taste lovely. We mostly use them in juices.

Preserving green tomatoes and catching fish

I've got some green tomatoes and thought to preserve them. There are many recipes on the net depending on your taste of course so Im not going to write about the details.

After 3 hours of fishing ...

I've caught this fine 4,5 kg Pike

Visiting Holma Forest Garden

My wife and I visited Holma Forest Garden yesterday. They have contacted me a few days ago to help them with building a Top Bar Hive so I thought to pay them a visit and see this place I've heard about so many times.

Swarm trap but no swarms this year

Preserving veggies with Lactic Acid fermentation

We decided to preserve some of the Turnips and Carrots using the Lactic Acid Fermentation method. We only used water, salt without Iodine and some whole black pepper.

Peeling and cleaning the root veggies

Clay pots for fermentation but any food grade bucket will do

It is important to keep the veggies under the water otherwise
they might go bad. So we used a freezer bag filled with
water as a weight

We used 1,5% of the vegetable weight of salt so for 3,5 kg of veggies 50 g of salt (without Iodine). Water used was boiled and let down to cool before topping up the pots. We will keep the pots in room temperature (18-20'C) for 10 days and after that we will place them into the earth cellar for 4-6 weeks on 4-8'C. After that the veggies will be preserved and can be put into permanent jars placed in the frig´dge or earth cellar.
Lets see how this turns out.

Harvest carries on

 I have harvested all the Turnips. 2 wheelbarrows in total.

 Lots of Onions

... drying Onions 

I have placed the Turnips into our earth cellar.

Seed harvest has also begun. Sugar Peas

We will have lots of apples this year from which we will make Apple Cider Vinegar

Harvest begins, fishing Monsters and slow Internet Connection

First of all I apologise for not blogging lately. The reason behind it is my extremely slow internet connection which takes ages to upload photos.

That said, we have started harvesting Beetroots. We preserved them using vinegar and sugar;

I will start harvesting Carrots, Turnip and Swede Turnip and will preserve them using Lactic Fermentation. This is the healthiest and most sustainable preserving method. Lactic bacteria is very beneficial for our health and the amount of salt (without Iodine) used is very low. I will blog about it soon.

 I am fishing almost every evening. I don't always catch a fish but every now and then something ends up on the hook. A few days ago I caught this 1,5 kg Pike with my favorite lure.

Some people say that Pike taste strange, earth-like ... my wife and I don't think so. It is almost as eating chicken breast with slight fishy taste. As you can see only the skeleton is left after the dinner :) It sure is tasty.

Yesterday was a very special day indeed. I went fishing on our local river which isn't that big. I caught so far only up to 2 kg Pike there and some smaller Perch. This time something much bigger got hooked! It was a 5,5 kg Pike! It took me 5 minutes to get it out of the river! I was in a canoe and the Pike kept swimming under it pulling the rod under ... I was sweating like a horse by the end of our battle. What a Monster, what a predator! If you click on the photo you will be able to zoom in and check on those sharp teeth ;)
Such large Pike can eat to 30 fish per day and there sure are many Pike in this river. I feel its of benefit to the river biodiversity to thin out some of the top predators like this one.
Since our freezer is full I decided to cut this one in half and give it to my good neighbours. They were very happy to receive such a treat :)

One thing I would love to share with you is that each time I am to kill an animal I say "thank you" to it. This might sound hippy and new age-ish but for some reason it feels right, not sure why, but it does bring peace of mind when taking life for food.
At the end of the day we humans were Hunters and Gatherers for most of our evolutionary existence. Its in our biology to hunt and gather just enough we can consume. I feel this lifestyle is highly sustainable and I wish we had never developed further than that. I also feel its healthy to hunt because of all the Adrenaline filled action and huge satisfaction after the hunt which induce Serotonin.
The fact that SO MANY people/kids play war games on their play stations and computers shows this very biological hunter aspect of our human nature. I just find it natural and beneficial to actually hunt for food than to sit in front of the computer screen and fight with illusions.

Today it would be a catastrophe if we all would go out there and hunt simply because we have destroyed so much of the natural biodiversity. For this reason I have huge respect for those who are vegans and vegetarians. This creates much less pressure to the environment.