Old Books and Iffy Wisdom

 

Books can take a lot of the hit and miss out of Homesteading and save a lot of time. In my search for a recipe to create my own chick-starter feed, I found a fantastic online resource which has cataloged and digitized old farming books, including this great old book on chickens and eggs. Although it is in a writing style that is a tad bit outdated, I found it very informative and fun to read.

I am supplying a link to this Journey To Forever website with one caveat, read these old books with some modern discretion.

I have personally experienced the fallacy of a few of my Grandpa's kernels of wisdom.

Most recently debunked is his recipe for a can of "snuff" (chewing tobacco) soaked in a bucket of soapy water to make a "pesticide", which turns out to kill bugs but is also extremely TOXIC TO EVERYONE!

I will be double checking on the nutritional information given in this book. New science trumps all, in my mind.

I think it's very important to verify any old knowledge before implementing it. Just remember that in the "old days" they also thought Opium was an excellent medicine for everything from intestinal gas to a babies cough.

I was once allowed to peruse the personal effects of a Doctor who practiced in one of the local settlements circa 1900. Among them was a book of recipes for medicines. I was doing research at the time for herbal remedies and was thrilled to glimpse back into time and see what the pioneers were using for their ailments. I was astounded to find that over 90 percent of the concoctions in the notebook contained "Tincture of Poppy".

Don't buy the healing effects of Snake Oil just because it's written in a book.

Your local extension office is an excellent resource for science based information to help you with Homesteading activities and dilemmas and, just to get you started, here are a few of the Extension web sites I use often for everything from managing livestock and erosion to identifying a disease in my beans:

Oregon State University Extension
Oklahoma Cooperative Extension
University of Minnesota Extension 
Washington State University Extension

Foraging For Fungi

I have been crawling around in the underbrush, following deer and rabbit trails since I was a little girl in search of, among other things, the elusive Chanterelle mushroom.

Chanterelles are among the easiest mushroom for beginners to ID and that is why my family trusted me, as a small child, to bring them home for dinner every Fall.

Since everyone has heard horror stories about eating the "wrong" mushrooms,  I don't really think I need to stress how careful you need to be when gathering mushrooms. We all know that you need to be very careful when identifying mushrooms in the wild.

With that said, I spend a lot of time convincing people to eat wild mushrooms. I have found that friends and family tend to be a little nervous about the mushrooms on the table, and they must be assured beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were wild crafted by someone who knew what they were doing.

It's a shame that wild mushrooms are so hard for people to enjoy. Their taste is beyond compare! No farmed mushroom can even come close to the flavor of a wild mushroom. So, it is really worth learning to ID a few kinds of mushrooms if you like to hike or ramble in the woods and eat good food.

These are Common Puffballs which are delicious and just as their name indicates - common. They are everywhere this Fall.

Just because I have been picking a few types of mushroom since I was little, it does not make me an expert. I have been slowly learning to identify more and more kinds of fungi over the years from books and other more senior mushroom hunters.

My favorite book on the subject is one that June got me for Christmas a few years ago. It is the simplest reference book for wild mushrooms I have ever found. And it is because of this book that I have happily discovered the Red Cracked Bolete.

 

When I was little, I was convinced this mushroom was poisonous and no adult told me otherwise. It is a crazy looking mushroom with "tubes" instead of gills and if that isn't weird enough it "bruises" blue!

It is delicious and it turns out to be one of the few edible mushrooms that is safer for a beginner to ID. No look-a-likes (except other edible mushrooms in the Bolete family, some don't taste good and a few will make you sick, but none of them will kill you) and it seems to grow everywhere. It is not elusive like other wild mushrooms. It is literally growing in our front yard here on the homestead.

What  am doing for this mushroom season, other than eating and eating mushrooms, is drying them to use in stews, sauces and soups for the rest of the year. The flavor is indescribable, it's effect is almost like MSG, the soup tastes delicious but you can't really tell what makes it so amazing. The secret? Just a couple of diced up, dried wild mushrooms.

Chanterelles do not dry well, so I sauté them in lots of olive oil and put them in the freezer to spoon into my scrambled eggs this winter. YUM!

Two Christmas Books

The first Christmas book is one our daughter June gave me. It was 3 years ago, and I was just learning how to bake bread. As I have said before, work was very, very slow, and I needed something to do. Phoebe reminded me I like to bake bread, so I did. 

With help from a great website (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/) I started learning how to make artisan bread. In an inspired moment, my daughter got me a blank sketchbook to use for bread recipes.

And use it I have. Every time I bake I write in the book. I will transcribe recipes into it, note different approaches, and their results. 

I also add other recipes I want to be able to find easily. With information available on the web, in books I own or read, and things others tell me, having one place to store all the info has been really handy. 

I don't bake much in the summer, so when fall rolls around, I can read the last few entries to catch up to what I learned earlier in the year. This may sound fairly elemental, but I am terrible about retaining information. So having a place to put it, and find it, has really been a great thing.

The second book also involves June. When she was 3, and her brother 10, we bought a Christmas book. It is called The Christmas Secret, by David Delamare. He is an illustrator who lives in Portland, and we saw a signed copy of his book in a shop.

We have read the book every Christmas for the 20 years since then. We read it in two parts, starting on Christmas Eve Eve, then finishing the next night.

This year, as you may know, June is in Russia. She is staying there for Christmas, so we are having our first holiday without either our children home. (Her brother Jake has made it home every year until this one.)

But we were not going to let a little thing like a 12 hour time difference and half the globe stand in the way of our tradition. So yesterday morning, her Christmas Eve, we read the first half of the story to her over Skype. I would hold up the photos so she could see them. She knows them so well she would say "Lift it a little higher so I can see the mouse."

This morning we read her the second half. It was very sweet, and makes my Christmas feel a little more Christmasy.

Yesterday after we were done I found an email address for the author. I wrote him a quick note telling him how much the book meant to us and what we were doing this year.

To my surprise he got right back to me. He said he usually gets a note about that book every year. Mine was the first this season. They were very touched and grateful for the story. That, in turn, gave me another high point for my Christmas Eve.

If you have a holiday tradition in your family, tell us about it in the comments. We love hearing about other homestead lives.

I am very grateful for what this year has brought. I humbly hope next year will be as kind to us, and just what you want. Thank you all for sharing it with us.

From all of us at the homestead, Phoebe, myself, the kids and critters, please have a yummy, warm, loving and laughing holiday. 

Old Books and Hats

Fall is upon us and of course that makes it an iffy thing to plan outdoor work around here.

Like this week when we were planning to rent a tractor and get some serious diggin' done, then witnessed a two day long deluge of rain. Happy news for the firefighters around the state, but sad news for our plans. In the meanwhile I am going around winterizing and repairing what I can.

 

This brings me to my subject at hand. Lost knowledge and old books.
I have a few old books that I have picked up at estate sales and thrift stores that I enjoy for the sheer wonderfulness of their contents of lost knowledge and also, as an artist, for the endearing illustrations.

It's always nice when you can have the Alien next door model for your drawing.

 Getting the books out today got started by the fact that I am trying to glaze some ancient and neglected french windows. I have never actually glazed a window, nor has Buck and my father has never done it either.

Where does one turn in these moments of despair? No, Not to Google, come on, there are other ways of finding these things out!

It is the ancient art, nearly lost in time, of looking it up in a book. Silly.

 

In my books of lost knowledge I can learn what all those odd things in a moldy tool box are.

Or how to build a Fire Proof Floor.

I could even make it fancy with just a miter box and hand saw at my disposal.

 

Or how to set fire to my table.

 

I have been desperately trying to strip an old door which has one coat of paint after another, in colors that seem to commemorate every Volkswagen Bug ever produced. This technique is something I am definitely going to try when it is not so dry out. Those poor firefighters have enough to do than to put out a door that I will only be slightly sad to see turn to embers.

 

One thing my sharp eye has noticed is the prevalence of the Fedora on these handy guys. I got Buck one right away.

According these books I deduce that if I dress Buck in a fancy Fedora he will look great doing all the things that need to be done.

 But I am beginning to think he pictures his fedora wearing resulting more in this outcome.

 

 
I am of course looking better than I ever have in my perky hairdo and my Betty Crocker apron.

 

But I, unlike Buck, am getting things done. For instance I am a whiz on my calculator that is the size of a Studebaker. And I look quite good using it to calculate how to feed all those Fedora wearing men my husband keeps bringing home, while I cleverly avoid glazing french windows by reading old books. There are, after all, only just so many hours in a day.