1 large or 2 med chicken use yard chickens or at least chickens fed a natural diet and not hormone laden corn (approximately 4-5 cups diced)
1 10 oz pkg spaghetti broken in half
3/4 c celery, finely chopped
1 med onion, chopped
2 med carrots, diced
1 C sliced fresh mushrooms
1 C english peas, canned (drained) or frozen (partially thawed) (optional)
1/2 C green bell pepper, diced (optional)
1/2 C roasted red pepper or pimento in oil, drained and diced (optional)
2 cans cream of mushroom soup (10 3/4 oz)
1 can cream of chicken soup (10 3/4 oz)
1 1/2 C whole milk
1 1/2 C shredded Velveta cheese (I use a good cheddar 1/2 medium and 1/2 sharp)
canola oil
butter
salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven 300 degrees

Cook chicken in plenty of water in a large soup pot until tender. Drain, cool and take off skin, debone then dice to equal 4-5 cups reserving the rest for another use. Save the broth in the pan*. Cook spaghetti in the broth until done. Drain and set aside. Cook celery, onion, carrots, mushrooms and other veggies (not pimento or roasted red pepper) in the same pot in a little canola oil and butter a few minutes until tender. Add both cans of the mushroom soup and milk then stir and heat through. Add diced chicken, spaghetti, pimento/red peppers, pepper to taste (I usually do not add any salt) and 1 C of the cheese. Mix all together well. Turn out into a 9″X13″ pyrex dish. Meanwhile, warm the cream of chicken soup and add 1/2 C cheese and stir until melted. Top the casserole with the soup/cheese mixture and bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour. Let cool a bit before serving.

*NOTE: I usually cool the chicken broth, strain it and reserve 5-6 cups for cooking the spaghetti and freeze the rest for use another day. You can also save the broth after cooking the spaghetti, but it will be starchy.

  Follw me below the fold, and let me tell you more about the second season.

   Tomatoes that produce well through early summer may produce some blooms in late summer, but it is harder for them to set fruit when the night time temperatures start to hover around the eighties.  Some varieties (such as the ones I got this year) curl their leaves in disgust and just stop growing, sulking until the temperatures suit their needs.  So when the temperatures start to  fall to the mid-nineties during the day, and get down to the low to mid seventies at night, I start side-dressing with the compost that has been cooking all summer long.  So far, so good – my slicing tomatoes are putting out blooms again like crazy!

  The bell pepper plant has likewise been sulking. I should have known better than to get a variety with “California” in the name – this diva of a pepper plant refuses to act like its low-class scary brown chili Mexican cousins, the jalapenos and serranos that have been merrily soaking up the heat and making hot little babies all summer long!

  In a leap of faith, I have planted several different kinds of lettuces in the shade of the pepper plants.  I used a trick I learned from Organic Gardening magazine about planting teeny little seeds.  I get single-ply, unbleached toilet paper and pull off a section as long as the bed or row, lay the seeds in the middle of the toilet paper strip, and then fold the edges over the seeds.  I then roll up the strip of toilet paper, take it out to the garden, unroll the strip in the row I have dug for it, cover it with dirt, water well, and wait.  I have used this toilet paper method with great success with other small-seeded plants like carrots and mustard.  It makes it easier for me to space out the seeds – I prepare the toilet paper roll on the kitchen counter and it saves my stiff old back.

  Speaking of mustard, the second season brings out the best of my mustard plants that have been self-seeding in my east bed for literally the last decade!  They get a wimpy crop in the summertime, but these wimpy plants produce enough seed for a bountiful crop of beautiful mustard plants, with their piquant, purple-green leaves that will produce yummy greens all winter long – and then bolt beautifully come Spring,  just in time to re-seed for the wimpy summer season…which will re-seed for fall…and on and on.

  Ain’t the seasons great?  Do you have a second season where you live?  What do you grow then?

Even better, the leaves are starting to turn and fall from the trees. Not the oaks (although I sure do detect a touch of turning), but the hickories and pecans and elms. Fall is definitely on the way.

To celebrate, I’m going to plagiarize myself and post a newspaper article I wrote last year. Be warned: the gardens described are at my old place and not here …

One of my earliest memories is of hiding in the jungle of poppies and tiger lilies and berry bushes that was my grandmother’s garden. Being the youngest, I never did see the family farm because, by then, everyone had moved into the city – well, the city such as it was, given that today, that tiny town in the Ozarks is hardly more than a stop sign on the way to nowhere.

The town may be gone, but my grandmother’s tiger lilies remain, having naturalized and spread, thereby marking the place where memory was formed and grew stronger than the glossy ads posing as gardening shows and magazines that assailed me in the years that followed. I never did get with the program.

I remembered that garden the other day while surveying my own. And is it ever a mess this year. Between rocks flinging themselves beneath the mower and gypsy moths and a month of prime gardening time lost and me stupidly fertilizing the flowers, I’ve ended up with a mess – a blowsy, chaotic jungle listing like a pirate Armada after a raid gone very, very wrong.

But despite catastrophic neglect, there have been bright spots. The scarlet runner beans proved to be champs, producing enough beans to feed a small army. And their flowers attracted every manner of bee, butterfly and hummingbird. They’re a shoo-in for next year.

Then there’s the bronze fennel, lovely plants with an intoxicating scent. The problem is that swallowtail butterflies discovered them immediately, meaning that, for most of the summer, every plant has been covered with plump swallowtail caterpillars. Maybe by the end of this month, the caterpillars will be gone and I can dig the bulbs up for late summer feasting.

It was a good year for tomatoes, too, although it would have been better had I tied the plants up like I usually do and not used cages. Those danged things fell over before July even got here. I tried everything to hoist them up, but to no avail.

Still, I got enough to satisfy my cravings, with the Italian Beefsteaks proving the tastiest. The Dr. Carolyn Pinks weren’t the best eating, but they were pretty little tomatoes, and very healthy and productive plants. As for the Giallos, I never could adjust to their yellow color and kept leaving them on the vine too long. But when I did nab them before they turned to mush, they were a pleasure. A very nice, mellow tasting tomato.

Some other varieties haven’t yet ripened because they went in the ground later than the others. [name deleted to protect the innocent!], well known local Trash Dude and Gardener Extraordinaire, brought me a Purple Brandywine, a Mortgage Lifter and a Cherokee Purple, all of which ended up in the middle of the watermelon patch. Unfortunately, the watermelon patch is completely out of control, thanks to rocks flinging themselves beneath the mower, thereby upending my plan of mowing paths into the patch before the fruit set. So I can’t get to them, for fear I’ll step on a watermelon – or a snake. But I see green tomatoes, so I’m sure I’ll venture in there once I get my courage up.

It was a stellar year for blue potatoes and Romanesco zucchini, as well, although most of the zucchini ended up in the compost. I mean, really – enough is enough. And I had more butterflies and hummingbirds than ever before. In fact, there were so many hummingbirds that venturing outside became hazardous, thanks to their continual bickering.

The eggplant, however – well, not so much. I don’t know if it didn’t get hot enough for them or if it was too cool and rainy for too long too early in the season, but they never did anything. Same for the hops. And the cilantro bolted right off the bat, the anise was a no-show, the nigella sativa (AKA Blessed Herb) turned out to be heat intolerant and I didn’t plant enough basil – again.

Even worse was my decision to fertilize the flowers because of all the rain. I don’t know what got into me, but the result was gigantic nasturtiums and Echinacea, and everything flowering at once then going to pot, instead of leisurely finding their own pace and offering a nice show all summer. That’s a mistake I won’t repeat although, on the plus side, they did provide much needed shade for some young perennials that aren’t yet established.

But worst of all was an invasion of gypsy moths. They showed up on my grapes and coneflowers, and I found evidence of them on some young trees and bushes. It took some detective work to figure out what they were because I thought they only ate trees. So I ended up going through a lengthy process of elimination for beneficial critters at the University of Georgia’s website. Once I felt certain I was dealing with gypsy moths, I studied the little monsters at the U S Forest Service’s site.

Then, I began my attack. First, I hunted down the caterpillars and knocked them into an evil brew of Murphy’s Soap, ammonia and cayenne. Then, I did targeted spraying of bacillus thuringiensis, shooting it onto the leaves of affected plants. Finally, I cut some plants down, putting their remains in black trash bags, into which I shot some more bacillus thuringiensis (for good measure) before placing into a black trashcan in the sun. And so far, so good, knock on wood.

There will be no fall garden for me, because I will be planting a catalpa and three pecans that have been waiting to go in the ground for a year now. I will also get a couple more crab apples and maybe some redbuds from [name edited to protect the innocent!!!!]. And I’m on the lookout for Suncrest peach trees and tiger lily bulbs, and will report back on what I find.

And, fool that I am, I will be building more gardens that will certainly end up just as chaotic as this year’s.

Anyway, back to the cynicism of which I have in abundance. I am not one to believe capitalism is a cure to all that ails us: that we can, say, buy our way out of global warming by purchasing a solar panel or two, a hybrid car, a few canvas shopping bags. As you may know by now, I think we’re all quickly approaching the shores of an entirely different world [...] Currently, I do seed-save some of the threatened and endangered vegetables, and I intend to breed a few crucial animals over the next few years. My cynicism comes in (and again, it’s hard to keep up!) when everyone just HAS TO HAVE x cool endangered item. Is creating a market for them a good thing? I suppose if it brings something back from the brink of extinction, it is.

Either way, it’s nice that some people give a damn.

Ah, a farmer after my own heart. The links and pics alone are worth a read.

This is not someone who is doing it because it’s the latest thing, like a new pair of shoes or stylish car. This is not someone who’s doing it because they think it will bring them fame and fortune.

This is someone who’s doing it out of love and commitment.

All is good in the Bean Bed. As you can see, I’ve got all the twine trellises tied up (32 of them), and the Pole Beans are having a great time growing up them. All I need to do now, is keep them on their own strings, while the lines tighten up.

The Bush Beans are growing fine. We see the First Planting is up and running, while the Second Planting is popping up well. I plugged in some more seeds where I didn’t see germination. Now, it is time to sow Planting 3. I should be getting Beans from Planting #1 in about two weeks, and from the Pole Beans in about 3 weeks. I am still harvesting Bush Beans from the Tomatoes/Peppers bed, and just as they are done, these will be coming in.

Behold: the world’s tiniest bear is still living under my old place.

There are just not enough of them of scale (Centennial Farm sized) right now, and all the media push toward them is going to hurt the whole excellent idea by overwhelming it.

This will be corporatized soon, I fear. I see “Whole Foods Own Exclusive CSA Produce Bundles– Variety Priced Right!” CSA.com bubble here we come, so it is good to bring the CSA radius closest to home. I hate to sound like the Concern Troll, but, the push is pretty severe, especially right now.

PSSSSST!!! I’ve got a hot little secret for you– CSA is short for “Community Supported Agriculture,” and dig this– you can do it on a neighborhood level.Someone on the block has the full sun to grow great tomatoes, one of you have a tree sorta shading the yard, but can grow lots of lettuces and radishes and carrots, One of you like growing Cucurbits or peppers or herbs… or raising chickens… rabbits… pigeons… bees… help each other expand the gardens, recycle poop and leaves and grass into compost, let the neighbor’s chickens tractor through your backyard garden for a few weeks post frost, etc., this way, you can buy/sell/trade amongst each other. This would be especially cool to get going in apartments with balconies, porches and urban courtyard neighborhoods. Heck– five to ten families in a Brooklyn neighborhood could nearly sustain themselves this way, save for grains and sugar and specialty spices. Someone with a big ol’ oak tree could easily inoculate the drip line and root areas with a host of excellent edible culinary mushrooms, and sell/barter them as they sprout up. Inoculate a stack of hardwood logs with shitakke mushroom spores. You get the picture. Every yard and space can grow SOMETHING. Get to know your neighbors. I bet they have some garden surplus or skill that they are dying to share.

It’s easier and localer*.

I think that we can all agree that those Covenants are pretty-well over now. It’s time to help each other live.

*–yep, localer.

The Urban Homestead: your guide to self-sufficient living in the heart of the city
by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
$11.53 from Amazon

I can’t recall where I first saw mention of this book, but the subtitle convinced me to check it out. Then I saw that they included a chapter on stealth backyard chickens, so how could I not buy it?

I hadn’t had a chance to read it until yesterday, which was spent chauffeuring to yet more doctor appointments and the associated waiting in various rooms for medical personnel to do their thing. I also carried a C J Sansom novel in case this one was too dry or uninteresting, but I needn’t have bothered.

This book, while not an in-depth “how to” guide to everything, is lively and very funny in places. Skimming through the three-page section on composting toilets, I came across this little sidebar:

If you have the space, stash away an old five-gallon bucket with a lid, filled with sawdust or peat moss, just for this sort of event [failure of the sewage disposal system]. It might be difficult to find a sawdust source while simultaneously fighting off zombie hordes.

To paraphrase some movie or other: You had me at “zombie hordes.”

Then I read the chapter on backyard chickens. I live in a small municipality that prohibits most kinds of livestock except dogs, cats, pet birds, fish — the usual suburban family pets. I would love to have four or five chickens in my backyard to lay eggs and to eat the ticks that are thick as blackberries back there. But not only am I fighting City Hall, I have a very anti-animal husband to contend with. The dogs are okay because he is attached to them, but NO ANIMALS, he says. How to overcome this prejudice?

The chapter was fun to read and gave good information on the most important step to keeping chickens (or ducks) in your urban back yard — win over the neighbors. Don’t keep a rooster. Hens make little cooing noises and only a few breeds cackle when they lay, so they tend to be relatively quiet and unobtrusive. If you tell the neighbors and allay their fears of noise, smells, filth, and negative impact to their property values, you are very likely to be able to glide under the official animal control radar. Bribing the neighbors with fresh eggs doesn’t hurt, either.

Unfortunately, it didn’t address the problem of the uncooperative spouse, and it specifically warned against keeping chickens in the same space as dogs, which tend to look upon them as play toys and/or prey. For the time being, then, chickens on my urban homestead are a no-go.

There’s a lovely bit on very small houses that would appeal to biscuit and to Anne, I think. Chapters on food preserving and cheesemaking are also good introductions to those subjects.

In general, the book is full of terrific ideas but does not always go into great detail on how to accomplish a particular goal. You’ll need more in-depth guides to gardening and energy conservation; they touch on these topics but there is much that was omitted. Some topics, such as water conservation and graywater harvesting, are covered in more depth, but even here there’s a sort of magical Jedi hand-wave that tells you to hook up a pipe to divert the washing machine water to your garden without telling you how to do it.

Pros: Excellent list of sources in the back of the book. Upbeat, optimistic tone while at the same time acknowledging the imminence of peak oil and the realities of the current unsustainability of American consumer culture. Solid suggestions on What We Can Do to help the situation and how to prepare for the future.

Cons: There is no index. The extensive table of contents is helpful, but an index would have been more so.

Many of the boxed sidebars and additional information pages are reverse printed using white text on a particularly vivid acid green background and are quite difficult to read. Black on light gray would have set off the text as well and been much easier on old-hippie eyes.

All in all, this is a fun introduction to the topic of urban homesteading, and a useful addition to your TEOTWAWKI library.

—-

I had one last garden box left to prepare, and I figured that it would make a great tutorial. This method of gardening is foolproof, and hugely productive. Here’s a quick step-by-step.

Make a four-sided bottomless box frame, fill it with your favorite dirt mixture, and make a 1-foot x 1-foot grid. I use jute twine because it is cheap, and compostable. Two months ago, I laid down some weed-blocker material to kill the damnable Bermuda Grass that plagues me, so I know that I have a weed-free area to plant into.

I’m planting Pole Beans and Bush Beans on this very windy day. I checked the back of the seed packet, and it gave me two sets of spacing information: A “Sow At” spacing, and the “Thin To” spacing. It really doesn’t matter how you garden, Row Gardening or Square-Foot Gardening just always ignore the “Sow At” spacing entirely– you’re just wasting seed. So, the packet tells me to “Thin To” 3-inches, and THAT is what we will plant our seeds to. So, I poked four holes per foot, 1″ deep.

I put one seed in each hole, covered them up, and watered thoroughly. Later, when the plants pop up, I will make an 8-foot string frame for the Pole Beans to grow up,

This bed is going to be entirely sown in Beans. I wanted Pole Beans for a constant harvest, but I am also going to plant in Bush Beans every week until this 4′ x 8′ bed is full. Bush Beans require 4-inches per plant.

In the squares that I have planted the Pole Beans, I still have space to plant six plants, and then nine plants in each of the remaining squares in each foot-row. I’m going to plant two 1 x 3 square-foot rows.

I’ve put in all the bean seeds. As you can see, they are in a very specific geometric pattern. If a seed doesn’t germinate, I’ll simply plant a new seed in it’s place. anything that pops up that is not like the others, and not in the pattern is a weed, and I can pull it out.

Cover, tamp, and water thoroughly. Done.

I now have 32 Pole Beans for constant harvest until First Frost around November 15th, and 66 Bush Beans for a one-time harvest. That’s a lot of Beans for eating and the freezer.

BTW: As you might be able to tell, it is a VERY windy day, and my string-trained vine plants are doing just fine.

I have cabbage plants starting in the house, and as the Bush Beans exhaust, I will plant in the cabbages for a fall/winter harvest. The nitrogen that the Beans have fixed in the soil will nourish the cabbages.

8-foot frame in place.