Warfare in the Garden - Moving Comfrey

In which our heroine attempts to eradicate well established comfrey plants which are tragically misplaced in the garden.

Everyone makes mistakes when they start gardening.  Putting comfrey plants at what I thought were going to be the corners of the garden was one of mine.  The garden has expanded twice since those plantings, and two comfrey plants are now positioned where I've decided there should be pathways.  Comfrey is legendarily difficult of removal, and these plants seem to find their current locations quite agreeable. 

I have a method to my madness, or so it pleases me to think.  I've had a few years to observe the way comfrey grows, and how other plants behave around it.  I've noticed that:

• comfrey leafs out early in the spring
• comfrey dies back late in the fall
• one comfrey plant generally gets to about 3.5' (~1.1m) in diameter
• nothing - I mean no plant - grows under the full shade of an established comfrey plant

As a homesteader, and a frugal person, I've gotten into the habit of asking myself, about most anything, "What's it good for?  What can I do with it?  How could it be repurposed to serve my needs?"  Naturally I ask, what's comfrey good for - in a structural, functional sense within the garden?  (Because I'm already up to speed on all the other fabulous stuff it's good for.)  It seems to me that comfrey could well form a low hedge plant, to hold back the crab grass from the borders of the garden.  Since comfrey is around both early and late, the grass shouldn't be able to get a leg up.  Another tool in comfrey's campaign for supremacy is its habit of plastering the ground with all the foliage of the year when it dies back in the fall.  Nothing comes up through those layers of leaves before the new comfrey shoots of spring are well on their way.

So the first step in eradicating the comfrey was to take divisions of the roots and transplant them to the northern end of the garden.  This area was heavily lasagna mulched in fall of 2009.  The mulch did a decent job of holding the weeds in check all through last year.  But as you can see, it would need renewal this year to keep the weeds back.  I'd much rather create a self-maintaining border composed of a plant so profoundly useful, and not ever have to give that area another lick of work. With the help of our first WWOOF volunteers of the year, I took some dormant root pieces and stuck them in small holes in the unimproved soil at the garden's edge back in late February, spaced roughly 3.5' apart.  I did absolutely nothing to help these roots along, and after watching for about a month I only needed to put in second root divisions at two of the transplant locations.  I now have obviously viable comfrey plants at each of the ten orange flags in the picture above.  I may expand the comfrey hedge along the western edge of the garden at some point.

Aside from getting rid of comfrey plants where I no longer want them, relocating comfrey seems to make good sense from a fertility perspective.  I think of comfrey as a miner plant.  It grows a formidable taproot and pulls up nutrients from deep underground, making them available to more shallowly rooted plants.  But every mine plays out eventually.  These comfrey plants have been in place for four years.  Putting new plants in a new area should grant access to untapped resources.  Comfrey is also a plant with an extraordinarily large surface area for its size.  The leaves are very broad and long, while the stems are minimal.  I don't know this for a certainty, but that would seem to suggest that comfrey transpires a lot of water vapor, well supplied by its tap root even when the soil surface is relatively dry.  In times of drought that moisture would be helpful to other plants nearby.  At the same time, by covering so much soil, comfrey regulates temperature and slows water loss from the soil through evaporation.  Even if I'm wrong about comfrey's utility to nearby plants, establishing an entire row of these plants where nothing but grass was growing before seems like a good idea.  It will store carbon in the soil, provide more food for bumblebees, and serve as convenient a trap crop for Japanese beetles, making them easy to handpick for the hens.

So much for all the benefits of moving the plants.  But how do I imagine I'll eradicate the comfrey from its current location?  Well, I plan to take a multi-pronged and long term approach.  And to be philosophical about it, rather than allowing my personal feelings to come into it.  Now that I know the root divisions have taken, I'll basically just keep cutting back the growth of the parent plants.  I expect to take at least six cuttings this year, and I don't expect to win the war in one year.  The first spring cuttings from the comfrey will, as usual, be used to provide some extra fertility to the potatoes when I plant them.  This year I may also use comfrey cuttings to give the corn a boost as well.  After that, I'll take several cuttings to dry for the chickens' winter feed, and also feed it to them fresh.  I will even let them have direct access to the comfrey occasionally so that they can do some damage on their own; although I know they'll be far more interested in eating all the critters living below the mulch that the comfrey creates from its own leaves.  The damage to the comfrey itself will be purely collateral.  Other than that, I'll just keep cutting back the top growth of the plants, so that the roots gradually deplete themselves.  Without leaves to photosynthesize, the roots will eventually starve and die.

Depending on how it goes, I may experiment with solarizing the root mass at some point.  This would entail covering it with clear plastic and weighting down the edges so that the roots are both deprived of water and baked by the sun.  It sounds torturous, I know.  The only thing that salves my conscience is knowing that I've already provided for the continuation of the plant's genetic line.

Tune in later this year to see how fares the war.  And wish me luck.

My Thrivalist Binder

This is a topic I've been meaning to post about for some time.  As is the way of things, events have conspired to reveal the good advice I've been meaning to share with all of you as something I should have heeded better myself.  I've been having serious computer trouble lately, and there's the possibility that I may permanently lose a great deal of information and photos saved on my hard drive.  Physician heal thyself.  I've never been too diligent about regular backups.  The last backup performed on my computer was months ago, if not a year ago.  It's a hard lesson to learn, but it brings home what I had intended to write about.  What follows is the post I've been working on incrementally for a few months...

Plenty of peak oil doomers, preppers, and thrivalist types have blogged about their shelf full of reference books for Camp Teotwawki, including me.  But there are an awful lot of loose, unbound, but important bits of information floating around my life that aren't in books.  A great deal of it is on my computer hard drive, here on my own blog, or resides at websites that are as familiar to me as old friends.  From a prepping perspective, this is a bit problematic.  If something suddenly takes out my electrical supply, or the network of datafarms that stores the content of the internet, that information is gone.  And that's probably when I'd most need this information.

This has been nagging me for a while and I finally started printing out important bits of information as they came to my attention.  I put these pages together in a three-ring binder similar to one I keep for recipes I use over and over again.  Each page is placed in a plastic sleeve and then in the binder.  This has always been really handy for the recipes, since the sleeve protects the page from batter, splattering oil, wet hands, etc.  It has saved me having to reprint a given recipe many times over.

So what sorts of things have made it into my thrivalist binder so far?  Here's a sampling:

• Our yearly harvest records and notes from the garden
• A planting schedule specific to my hardiness zone, our local first and last frost dates, and the dates when we lose and gain ten hours of daylight
• Some guidelines on biodynamic beekeeping
• General principles of curing meat
• Worksheets for each of my curing batches and a supply of blank curing worksheets 
• Instructions on making soap the old-fashioned way
• Where There Is No Doctor - available as a free download
• Instructions for caring for fig trees grown in containers in my zone
• Guidelines for disinfecting water through exposure to sunlight
• Homemade rooting hormone recipe, and a few guidelines on growing plants from cuttings
• Sharon Astyk's recommendations for 25 plants we should all consider growing
• Detailed information on growing a few specific medicinal herbs and their various uses
• Planting instructions for garlic
• Basic information on seed saving
• A few working notes on meals cooked in the solar oven
• A printout of Rocket Mass Heaters
• All of our soil test results from year to year and bed to bed
• Guidelines for processing raw wool
• Guidelines for preparing natural dyes from plants, and a list of which plants produce various shades

Mostly this is information that's either self-generated and therefore not available in any book, or specific pieces of information taken from books that I don't feel the need to own as a whole.  Some of it I may not ever need, but much of it is information I'm already using regularly, if infrequently.  None of it is information I want to trust to memory alone.  There are plenty of things I haven't yet remembered to print out and add to the binder.  But at least having started it there's now a ready repository of information that fits the bill.  I'm more likely to bother to print out the pages since the binder is there and stocked with a supply of empty plastic sleeves. And even if disaster never occurs, having the hard copy means I don't need to use any energy to access the information.

Incidentally, Kathy Harrison not long ago posted about an emergency binder of a different sort.  She has assembled various pieces of critical information and legal documents for her family in case one of the adults is incapacitated, or in case of the need to evacuate her home on very short notice.   This is a binder of a very different sort, but well worth putting in place, in my opinion.  You don't have to be a doomer to benefit from the sorts of preparations Kathy writes about.  After all, we can pretty much count on being incapacitated or dying at some point.  The information she advises assembling would benefit any family trying to deal with the serious illness or death of an adult member of the family.  You don't even have to live in an area prone to natural disaster to use her advice; house fires can happen to anyone at any time. 

So what about you?  Have you printed out information you think is valuable and put it in an easily accessible place?  Care to share what bits of knowledge have made the cut?

Tomato Canning Begins

A friend is coming over in a few hours to can roasted tomato sauce with me.  I don't bother with canning whole or chopped tomatoes.  The roasted sauce serves equally well for pizza or pasta; we don't seem to miss store-bought canned tomatoes, so I don't see the need.  If you'd like to see how the roasted tomato sauce is made, check out my post on it from last year.  For the record, I pressure can this sauce at ten pounds of pressure for 25 minutes in quart jars.  But please consult a reliable canning guide rather than taking any anecdotal canning recommendations you find in the blogosphere.

My canning goal for this year with regards to tomatoes is to get enough sauce into jars to see us through two years.  I'm still traumatized by last year's late blight which left us with hardly any tomato crop to speak of.  I canned only three quarts of sauce, which we soon ran through.  I resolved to make a big effort this year if we had a good crop.  If blight rears its ugly head again next year, I'll be able to coast through with what I put up now.  If next year is a good tomato year, I can put up just one year's supply and still have a year's supply in reserve.  So far it looks like June and July's blistering heat and little rain have protected us from blight and set us up for a good tomato harvest.  My estimate for a two-year supply of tomato sauce is somewhere between 30 and 40 quarts.  I'm going to try my best to put that much up in the next three to four weeks as the tomatoes come in.  Extra quarts are always good to have for gifting.  If our own supply of tomatoes is insufficient, I may resort to buying locally grown.  But first I'm going to see how we fare on our own production.

Much of our cherry tomato crop is going to be smoked in our homemade trash can smoker.  We're still slowly working our way through the apple wood chips we made ourselves from the first pruning of our apple tree after we move in three years ago.  These are excellent material for smoking, and homegrown too.  After smoking, I dehydrate the cherry tomatoes until they are shelf-stable.  We then keep them on hand for adding to winter stews, pasta dishes, and polenta.  Super-sweet cherry tomatoes smoked over our own apple wood give a marvelous flavor boost to winter meals. 

Speaking of growing tomatoes, I have to gush a bit about the Speckled Roman tomato.  My last few posts have included pictures of this beauty if you want to see what it looks like.  I'm more and more impressed with it as time goes on.  This variety is a stabilized hybrid of Banana Legs and Antique Roman tomatoes.  "Stabilized hybrid" means that someone worked on the cross of the two parent varieties until they had a genetic line that breeds true.  In other words, it's now open pollinated.  In other other words, it's possible to save seeds from Speckled Roman tomatoes and reliably get Speckled Roman tomatoes from those seeds.  I like the fact that it's open pollinated.  I love their unusual and beautiful appearance.  I like both the texture and flavor - meaty and solid enough to make a good slicing tomato, but full of well balanced tang and sweetness.  I love the fact that they very rarely split; this characteristic redeems the only moderate production from each plant, since I can count on harvesting just about every fruit that forms.  And I really appreciate the Speckled Roman's ability to resist late blight, which I saw first hand last year.  This is only my second year growing this variety, but I'm definitely sold on it over other paste tomato varieties.  In fact, I'm strongly considering making it my primary tomato in future years and planting only a couple of beefsteaks and cherries. 

The $64,000 Question

It's funny how life takes shape, how we end up on paths that we never intended, but which come to feel deeply right to us nevertheless. When I began this blog, it was mostly about figuring out how to pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible, with a vaguely defined notion of financial independence at the end of that road. Any technique that saved money, which could then be put towards an extra principle payment, was worth considering. We started changing our habits, and kept changing them, and bit by bit those changes added up to a pretty radical lifestyle overhaul.

Along the way though, other things began to motivate me. I'd always considered myself an "environmentalist," even when my behaviors weren't particularly worthy of the name. "Green" and frugal go together quite often, so it was easy for that to become more of a priority in my life. And then the whole issue of social justice came in - using our fair share of the world's remaining resources and doing as little damage as possible. Self-sufficient lifestyles have also always had my admiration. My frugal journey became heavily flavored with homesteading elements, such that I now feel justified (albeit a little shy) in calling our suburban residential lot a homestead, or at least a budding homestead.

Then there's the elephant in the living room. I believe that we are headed into a future of increasingly expensive and scarce energy. I believe that more people in my country will have to do more for themselves than we have recently been accustomed to, that many things we now take for granted will become luxuries few can afford. There are plenty of people who discuss these things with more knowledge and eloquence than I can. Read them. But there's a little piece of the puzzle that I might - just might - have a corner on. Not that I've figured it all out, but I think I have a chance of helping to answer an important question.

Our property technically exists in a suburb, even though it doesn't look like what you think of as a typical suburb. For one thing, our house is 130 years old, and in a tiny little neighborhood of similarly aged homes surrounded by much newer development. Our lot is 2/3 of an acre. By comparison, those newer developments consist of larger parcels. Like I said, not a typical suburb. In this part of Pennsylvania, recent zoning codes were written with low-density development in mind. So new construction happened on lots of at least an acre, and often more than that. Our own parcel was established decades ago, and left with less land. The average suburbanite across the US would think our property large, but in our area it's significantly smaller than average.

So here's the question in my mind: I want to know how much food this 2/3 acre residential parcel can produce. We harvested 600 pounds of fruit and vegetables, plus 458 chicken eggs in 2009. Not only has it been a bad year for crops, but we had a backyard flock for only 8 months out of 12. We also had no yields at all from half a dozen perennial species that are planted but not yet in production. I wasn't particularly diligent about succession planting, season extension, or efficient use of the garden space we already have cleared. Nor have we yet used all the available space on our property that could be turned to food production. How much will we harvest in two, five, or ten years as our fruit trees, berries, and grapes begin to produce, as our experience grows, and we make more efficient use of the available space? I'll take a wild guess and say I think 1200 pounds sounds completely achievable to me. As a more ambitious goal, I would aim for a 2000 pound tally or even more. That would be in addition to eggs and, I hope soon, honey. Admittedly, those yields take for granted the good precipitation and high quality soils of our area, as well as the fact that one able-bodied adult makes this food production a very high priority, with occasional help from a second healthy able adult. But I anticipate that my experience is going to be of most interest to those in my area anyway, so these pre-conditions aren't much of an issue.

This question of how much food can be produced from a suburban backyard isn't just a personal lark for me. I'll admit, I'm curious and I will derive great satisfaction each year that we show an increase in our harvest tally. But I believe that the answers I collect over the next few years are going to be very important sooner or later. Those of us looking to a future beyond peak oil know that food production and perhaps more importantly, food distribution, are going to be a huge crisis. We need to begin feeding ourselves more locally, and not just as a trendy lifestyle choice. Locavorism is going to become a given, not an option. If my community doesn't know what's possible on our residential lots, then we will be poorly equipped to make plans for our own needs.

There are small scale farmers doing what they can with parcels of 5, 10, or 20 acres. There are urban farmers maxing out production in tiny spaces. And there are many hobby gardeners with modest vegetable plots. There are some consciously working towards sustainable food security, and others gaining gardening skills without any such goal in mind. But very little of the prime farmland that was converted into suburban sprawl is being used as well as it will one day need to be used. There's also an important difference between urban spaces occupied largely by renters, and the suburbs largely occupied by homeowners - however heavily mortgaged those properties may be. It's not the size of their properties. Homeowners, broadly speaking, are more fixed in their residences than renters, and likely to become only more so. That means there's a better return on investment for the expense and effort of planting perennial food plants such as asparagus, fruit trees, nut trees, and berries, among many others. These plants give yields for years and even decades, but not immediately. If you don't think you'll be in the same place two years from now, only a Johnny Appleseed altruism will motivate you to plant these crops. And those perennial crops are going to be important to us one day.

I've already got one year of data showing harvest quantities on my property. I'm in a position to continue documenting how much food can be produced on a small piece of residential land in zone 6a by able-bodied adults with no background in farming. And that's exactly what I'm going to do as our perennials come "on-line." I'm going to push hard to make those numbers as high as possible while still maintaining good soil fertility in a sustainable system. I believe the answers I come up with will be extremely important for my area.

But my findings won't necessarily be relevant to a property in Mississippi, or the Pacific northwest, or New Zealand. They won't say much about what might be achievable for an elderly person living alone, nor for a family with four children of an age to pitch in. Your area is going to need answers just as much as any other. So why not join me in documenting what is possible in your area, with your abilities, on your property?

The Planting Schedule

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field." - Dwight Eisenhower

There's great pleasure, for me, in planning a garden; always has been. I like to work with graph paper to give myself a spatial representation of what the garden will look like. But I also work better with a progressive list of planting dates, so I can keep track of what I need to plant when. I've already begun sprouting some seeds. Among these are crops that need the longest season to mature (onion, leeks, and celery root), as well as fast growing plants that tolerate cold temperatures very well (lettuce and kale). In my ambition to produce as much of our own food as possible, I will sow seeds and transplant seedlings from February through August this year, saving the garlic bulbs to plant last of all in mid-October. If this year is anything like last year, we'll harvest apples in November, and continue harvesting leeks throughout the winter. But I also hope to have more root crops and more cold-tolerant greens under cold frames and row covers for fall and winter harvest.

The timing aspect of sowing and planting comes down to local conditions as well as individual knowledge of the gardener. I could tell you when I plant, transplant, and direct sow my seeds in zone 6, but it wouldn't be very helpful for those of you in other hardiness zones. Fortunately, there are plenty of useful guidelines out there. Indeed, Ali at Henbogle recently linked to Kathy's Personalized Seed Planting Calendar which you can customize with the dates of the first and last frost dates in your area. Once I plugged in the relevant dates for my own area, I found it to be an excellent starting point for my scheduling. But the schedule includes some plants I won't be growing and omits others that I plan to include. Also, my own experience will guide me to diverge slightly from the suggestions of the automated schedule.


For instance, while the conventional wisdom is to plant tomato seedlings two weeks after the last frost, I prefer to plant even later than that. In my experience, exposure to temperatures lower than 50 F will prevent even the smallest, greenest fruit on the plant from ever developing into a tomato with good flavor. So I transplant when I can be reasonably certain that the nighttime temperature will not fall below 50 degrees. In my area, that means the tomatoes don't go in the ground until June 1st. It's worked well for me. I don't get the earliest tomatoes, but my first tomatoes are worthy of the name.

Also, I'll plant my pumpkins and winter squash on the late side, because I want to harvest them when outdoor temperatures are as low as possible. Warm temperatures shorten the shelf life of pumpkins, and a mid-May planting will mean a September harvest. I'd rather see them finish off in early October, so I'll wait for June to plant them. That will let me store them well into the late winter months.

Another excellent timing reference that I rely on is Eliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest, which contains an index of planting guidelines for late season crops, based on the first frost date in the fall. The indices alone are worth the price of the book, in my opinion. Also, don't forget that if you live in the US, you have a great resource for local gardening knowledge in the Master Gardeners. You can reach these volunteers through your state's local Agricultural Extension Office. There should be one in every county in the US. These trained and experienced gardeners will have some of the most specific recommendations for your location.

While various authorities can give you general guidelines for planting dates, it's important to remember that these sources will be giving you averages. But different varieties of a given crop also vary in the number of days they need to reach maturity. Tomatoes may take as few as 55 or as many as 80 days to produce fruits from the time they are transplanted. That's a big range; more than three weeks. Lettuces range from 50 to 70 in days to maturity. Check the seed packets of the specific varieties you've ordered to find this information, in order to plan accordingly.

If you're an experienced gardener, you may well want to decide your planting dates for yourself. Here's a nice online tool I use to help me count backwards from two different dates: the average date of the first fall frost, and the date when we'll see less than 10 hours of daylight at my latitude. It will also help you count forward from a given date, based on the days to maturity for your seeds.

It's hard to compare your location to another one for several reasons. Hardiness zones reflect the average low winter temperature in an area. But within a given zone, there's a wide range in the first and last frost dates. Your last frost date might easily match that of a distant location in a warmer or cooler hardiness zone. And latitude determines day length, which also has no direct correlation to either frost dates or hardiness zones. To see evidence of this, just follow any east-west running line across that hardiness map to see how many different zones exist at a given latitude. There's a lot to learn about how the weather behaves in any given area - and we haven't even mentioned precipitation!

I know that when you're inexperienced with gardening the details can be sufficiently overwhelming to induce paralysis. Don't let that discourage you. Plants want to live and grow. They will do most of the work if you give them a decent chance. Try a wide range of plants, and something is bound to do well for you. Just don't get overeager and plant seeds so early that the seedlings get rootbound in their containers. Few plants can rebound and produce well if their roots are constrained early in their growth. Keep some notes on how things do in your garden each year, including planting dates, harvest dates, and a few weather notes, so that next year you can make better decisions. Most of all, just try it! Gardening is definitely something you learn by doing.

Green blessings for your garden this year!

Related post:
Late Frost and Tender Seedlings

Recession and Revised Plans

Last year I posted about an extremely ambitious personal finance plan that my husband and I took on in July. We wanted to pay down the principle on our mortgage by an additional $50,000 - above and beyond the paydown we'd see with just our normal monthly payments - over the following 12 months.

Well, that was before it was generally known that the US had entered a recession in December of 2007. Despite the downturn in the economy, we did very well with our goal up until the beginning of 2009. We have not reached it, and as of January, we decided to change tactics and put that goal on hold. You see, right now it looks as though my husband will be out of a job at the end of June.

By any middle-class measure, he's very well compensated for what he does. But he works on a contract basis, and right now it looks somewhat unlikely that his contract will be renewed after June 30th. He had a job offer late last year that appealed to him, and which he intended to accept after June. But that offer evaporated along with the rest of the economy several weeks ago.

Having no debt other than our mortgage, and having built a cash emergency savings to cover six months of expenses, we're situated as well as can be expected to weather a period of unemployment for the main breadwinner in our household. I've been more diligent about doing the various things I do to earn money. And we can be fairly sure we won't go hungry any time soon, given the garden I have all planned out for this year. Still, it's a scary thing to contemplate: losing our income.

Right now we still have almost four months of continued income to count on, and that much time for him to look for other job opportunities, hustle for an extension of his contract, and hope that the economy recovers somewhat. In February I canceled the additional principle payments that we were making automatically each month along with our normal monthly payment. That money will buffer our cash savings for the next four months. If my husband finds another job by June, we'll be able to take that money and apply it to our mortgage as a lump sum payment. If not, well, we'll be using it for necessities.

My plan right now is to either refinance or recast our mortgage in early May if my husband has not secured another job. That will lower our required mortgage payment and let us live longer on our emergency fund. If our finances pick up again, nothing would prevent us from resuming automatic additional principle payments each month, though less of our required monthly payment would be applied to the principle. Still, if we lose our main income, that's a price worth paying.

On the other hand, we are also considering a major expenditure that's not, strictly speaking, a requirement. We've asked for estimates for a solar PV and solar thermal installation that would cut our heating bills down to almost nothing. I have no idea what those estimates are going to look like. Before we would pay out money for that, we'd also have our home evaluated for additional insulation needs.

This may sound paradoxical: that we're contemplating a significant discretionary expense when we anticipate the need to live on our savings. We see it this way though; if the economy remains so weak that my husband cannot find a decent job, we want to be able to heat our house next winter without spending much money. Heating is a major expense in our annual budget, and since we heat with oil, that expense is perilously tied to shrinking supplies of fossil fuel. I'm also concerned about the possibility of hyper-inflation. If that occurred, not only would the value of our cash savings be less, but the cost of oil and electricity might easily become prohibitively expensive. Finally, we reckon that a home with solar electricity generation and low heating costs will hold its value better than many other homes. In other words, it looks like a smart investment to us right now.

We've yet to see the estimates for such an installation, so we don't know whether we'll take that plunge. But it's on the table. And if the price is right we may be able to pay for it with a bonus we're expecting based on last year's performance by the company my husband works for. (For the record, that company is not in the financial/banking sector, nor anywhere near it.)

The smaller amounts of money from my earnings that were occasionally applied to our principle are also accumulating rather than being paid out. But part of these funds are being set aside in my mind for spending as well. Mind you, I'm not planning on any frivolous purchases, but I would like to invest in some items that will be of long-term value to us, no matter what happens with the economy. I figure some responsible spending won't be amiss in these tough times either. On my list of things to buy are some extra sets of long underwear for both of us during the coming spring sales, a solar oven, some solar lanterns, and some materials to build housing for some meat rabbits, and to modify our mobile chicken coop this spring. If there's money left after that, I'll buy another 50-pound bag of bread flour, though I'm almost afraid to know what the price has risen to. Basically, I'm looking to put about $500 into things that will hold their value and pay dividends for our budget year after year.

If we are somehow able to squeak through this year without a loss of income - and that's a big if - I would like to start another savings fund for an electric assist bicycle. I understand that these are quite expensive. But I know that sooner or later we are going to have to confront the end of affordable gasoline. A bicycle was my transportation for many years out of necessity, and therefore I've never regarded cycling as recreation, as my husband does. We live in a quite hilly area, and it's more than three miles to reach the nearest spot where we could grocery shop or fill a prescription. The bulk food store is 17 miles away along the flattest route. There is very, very little public transportation in our area, and none right now that would get us to the places we shop. It would be faster for me to walk to the nearest grocery store than to take a bus, and I'd still have to walk most of the route anyway. So far, an electric assist bike is the best transportation solution I've been able to think of to the end of cheap petroleum, and it wouldn't be much fun, or even manageable, on many winter days.

Well, that's where we're at in this recession. I'm not feeling sorry for us; I know we're better situated than many. Still, like everyone else, we are feeling the anxiety. My heart really goes out to those who are already dealing with job losses and financial disaster. If you're not yet in crisis, please think about spending wisely where you are able to do so. Remember that food banks and other charities are stretched incredibly thin right now. If you can afford it, check that box to add a few dollars to your utility bill payment to keep someone else's electricity from being shut off. Plant your garden this year, and share what you can. We're in for more tough times ahead.

Unexpected: $342.28

I spent much of yesterday at the veterinarian's office, dealing with my suddenly sick and very frail cat. She'd been delighted to see us over the weekend on our return from a four-day trip. She was her usual perky, social, affectionate, and vocal self. Tuesday morning she was walking shakily with her head held low, had watery eyes, and wasn't eating.

At the vet she was found to be dehydrated, and to have an elevated temperature. And she gave an unsolicited stool sample on the exam table. What can I say? Shit literally happens at a vet's office. The doctor was game enough to declare the offering useful for diagnostic tests. The good news is that most of the potential problems have been ruled out (feline leukemia, feline AIDS, kidney and liver failure), one problem has been diagnosed (roundworms), her dehydration was treated with subcutaneous fluids, and the remaining likely condition (thyroid) is treatable. She also ate some food overnight, used the litter box, and looks much better this morning, though she's still slower and more subdued than usual. She's now complaining about not being allowed outdoors.

The bad news is that the examination, treatment, blood work, and other tests cost me almost $350. My cat is going to be fourteen years old this summer, and while she's had her share of injuries from tussling with other animals, she's never before needed treatment for any kind of illness. In other words, we've been very lucky with her, given that she's an indoor-outdoor cat. But still, $350 is a lot of money. I can't say I'm thrilled about carving that extra amount out of our budget this month. Yes, we have a $25 line item for pet expenses each month that we have been routinely underspending. But we're not so disciplined as to keep that unspent money in a sub-account in some bank account. Fortunately, paying off the credit card isn't going to be a big problem for us, but it still more than doubles our average yearly expense for having a beloved feline companion in our lives.

I don't begrudge the cost. Having a pet is a serious commitment and responsibility, no less than having a child. Before I get jumped for that statement, I recognize that the responsibility for raising a child is much, much larger, more complicated, and legally enforceable. Nonetheless, both are cases of taking responsibility for the care and well being of another living creature. Getting a pet - or a farm animal - medical treatment when they need it is a moral imperative, in my opinion.

So I'm just going to wind up the post with a plea to potential pet owners, or pet owners who haven't yet experienced any costs beyond shots, spaying, and feed. Please remember that sooner or later your pet is likely to need treatment that will cost a significant chunk of change. Budget for it now, before it's needed. It's a terrible feeling to see your pet in pain or weak with illness. It was bad enough worrying about my cat's health. At least I didn't have the additional worry about where the money for her treatment would come from. Please, please, please don't let poor planning put you in the position of being unable to care for an animal that you have chosen to make dependent upon you. Over a pet's lifetime, you're likely to need upwards of $1500 for their food and medical costs. Plan for unexpected expenses. They'll happen sooner or later.

The 2009 Seed & Rootstock Order

Okay, it's done. I've placed orders with seven (!) different catalogs for seeds, fruit trees, seed potatoes, asparagus roots, berry canes, and some milky spore to try to fight off the annual plague of Japanese beetles. This year we ordered from two divisions of Fedco, Seed Savers Exchange, Seeds of Change, The Maine Potato Lady, Miller Nurseries, and Arbico. I handled group orders for all of these catalogs, so that we share shipping costs and qualify for certain bulk purchasing discounts. In a few cases we are also splitting seed packets between two families. Honestly, what home gardener really needs 250 lettuce seeds of a single variety?

Wherever possible I chose organic, heirloom varieties. I also ordered several things this year with a view towards season extension using a minimum of construction. We're not going to have a greenhouse this year, nor probably next. If we're diligent we'll have a few proper coldframes built by the fall. But there are plants I can work with which can naturally provide a longer season of fresh eating straight from our garden. So here's the rundown of what I ordered, followed by a few things that I will be planting from older seeds.

N=new variety this year, N!=entirely new vegetable crop this year, i.e. I've never successfully grown any plant of this type before, L=grown last year or in previous years

Trees & Rootstock
2 Dana Hovey pears N!
1 Mesabi cherry N!
1 Stella cherry N!
2 All-American Paw Paws N!
3 Allen black raspberry N
1 Adams elderberry N!
1 Johns elderberry N!

Potatoes
2.5# German Butterball N
2.5# La Ratte L
2.5# Kennebec L
2.5# Sangre L

Asparagus
25 Jersey Supreme plants N!

Seeds
Dried bean, Cherokee Trail of Tears L
Dried bean, Hutterite Soup N
Beets, Cylindra N
Beets, Detroit Red L
Brussels sprouts, Roodnerf N!
Carrots, Red-Cored Chantenay N!
Swiss chard, Five Color Silverbeet N
Chili pepper, Poblano/Ancho L
Eggplant, Pingtung Long N!
Eggplant, Listada de Gandia N!
Leeks, Blue Solaize L
Lettuce, Red Velvet N
Lettuce, Bronze Arrowhead N
Lettuce, Slobolt L
Lettuce, Rouge d'Hiver L
Melon, Charantais N
Okra, Red Burgundy N!
Onion, Clear Dawn N
Parsnips, Turga N
Shallots, Prisma N
Spinach, Space N!
Stinging nettles N!
Tomato, Brandywine (beefsteak) L
Tomato, Cherokee Purple (beefsteak) L
Tomato, Peacevine (cherry) L
Tomato, Speckled Roman (paste) N
Winter squash, Hokkaido Stella Blue N


Seed from last year

Arugula Sylvetta
Basil, Purple Ruffles
Garlic, 6 different varieties
Kale Lacinato, aka Dinosaur or Tuscan
Pumpkin, Sugar
Sunflower, Evening Sun & Mammoth Grey Stripe
Watermelon, Moon & Stars

The garden also includes the perennial culinary herbs sage, thyme, oregano, and chives.


A few things of note about this year's garden plan. We are including three plants that we have never eaten on a regular basis before, and which we're not even entirely sure we're going to like. Brussels sprouts, stinging nettle, and okra are all new to our garden and relative strangers to our palates. We've enjoyed a European cheese with nettles in it before. These perennial nettles also come up very early in the spring, so I'm counting them among our earliest crops for the spring season for next year. They're incredibly nutritious and are also widely used to treat allergies in homeopathic medicine. I plan to make some pasta or gnocchi with them if we get a decent crop.

Brussels sprouts and okra fall into the category of things we're willing to try out, both in terms of how well we like to eat them, and how well they grow for us in our garden. I'm counting on the advantage of eating these foods in a state of absolute freshness. I've heard that both foods suffer significantly from sitting around too long after picking. Brussels sprouts will fall at the other end of my season extension plan. I'm going to try timing them so that I don't pick any until they've been through a good frost or two.

Well, when it was all toted up, we've spent a whopping $250 to mail order fruit trees, berry canes, asparagus starts, seed potatoes, and garden seeds. And that's with some bulk prices and discounts on shipping because of the group order! This (to me) is a lot of money. The trees, berry canes, and asparagus starts account for almost half the total cost. All of these are of course long term investments that I'm sure will repay the cost many times over in the coming years. I'm going to make an effort to save seed potatoes this fall as I did with the garlic. Seed potatoes are surprisingly expensive (~$30 for 10 lbs). It would make me feel much better if I could simply set aside some of this year's harvest as planting stock for next year. In our climate zone that may be difficult, but I'm going to try. For the rest, I'm going to be better about storing my seeds to preserve their viability, so that I will need to order very little for next year's garden.

If nature smiles and gives me good harvests, we should buy very little in the way of fruits or vegetables this year. We'll eat what we grow and be well satisfied with it, but for my husband's addiction to bananas. We're still eating produce we harvested over the summer out of our chest freezer. Let's hope it's a good gardening year for everyone in 2009!

What's in your garden lineup for this year?

What Would You Do If You Lost Your Job Today?

The economy is a scary thing right now. Many people are losing their jobs. Most of the rest of us are nervous about job security. I've been giving some thought to what would happen if my husband lost his job, which is the largest and most stable income stream we have right now. There are a number of things we could do, if we had to, that we're not doing right now. I've run through them a number of times in my mind, just to make sure I'm considering all possibilities.

What would you do if you, or the breadwinner of your family, lost their job? What immediate steps could you take to cut your costs or replace some of that income in other ways? Here's a list of actions I consider to be "emergency response."

1. Recast our mortgage. We've been paying ahead on our mortgage, which means we've built in the possibility of reducing the amount we're obligated to pay each month. Recasting costs much less than a refinancing, and leaves both the original term of your loan and the interest rate unchanged. This is something I would do immediately upon learning our financial situation had changed. Better to do this as early as possible, rather than wait until a few months' worth of savings has been eaten up. As of right now, our early repayment would let us reduce our monthly mortgage payment by a little over $250.

2. Sell a car. Right now we own two cars we paid cash for, and we don't really need both of them. Selling one car would give us cash in hand, and also reduce our auto insurance rates. I actually wouldn't mind doing it now, but my husband has half convinced me it's the worst time to sell.

3. Get a roommate. We love our privacy, but if our main income stream were cut off, we'd find a way to live with someone else in our own home. We've got a nice place to live and we've got the room. An extra $400+ per month would mean our savings would stretch considerably farther.

4. Look for a straight job. If my husband lost his job, I would look for steady work. It would likely be for low pay, and given the economy, any job at all would likely be hard to come by. So I would make sure I'd settled the first three items on this list first, since those would be fairly easy to accomplish. He would make his own job search a 9-5 chore every day.

5. Increase the hustle. There are a number of things that I do that bring in a small income, such as some paid writing, and teaching cooking classes. I'd do a lot more of them, and also work on bartering even more than I already planned to this year.

6. Expand the garden and work it more intensively. Last year was the first year I gardened seriously enough to supply a lot of our own food. If things got bad for us this year, I would ratchet it up even more by clearing as much new ground as I could find, though there really isn't a whole lot left to clear that would produce a good crop. But spending more time out there tending it would give us better yields. Building cold frames to extend our growing season would become a bigger priority.

Surprisingly, when I considered what small economies I could make in our day-to-day routine, there really wasn't all that much we would change. We already live very frugally in terms of how we spend and conserve money. I suppose we'd not buy any more alcohol when we ran through the beer and cheap wine we have in the basement, and we might eat a little less meat. Other than that, there aren't many places to trim our monthly budget.

It's also a little surprising to me that bartering and cold frames showed up on my list of goals for 2009, as well as on this emergency list. So it looks like I'll be slightly better prepared for any financial emergency by the end of this year if I achieve my goals.

If you assemble your own list of crisis management steps you'd take in a financial pinch, it's worth asking yourself why you haven't taken those steps already. I admit that all of the things on my list (other than recasting the mortgage) are things that I "should" be doing already, if I were really serious about frugality. Mostly it boils down to issues of our quality of life. We could and would do things differently if we had to, but not without sacrificing something significant. The truth is, none of the hundreds of little things we currently do to save money feel like real sacrifices. That's the real beauty of a frugal and self-sufficient mindset.

When I run through a what-if scenario such as this one, I can't begin to express how much difference it makes to know that we carry no debt other than our mortgage, and that we have cash saved for a full six months of expenses. Of course the prospect of our main income stream being cut off makes me nervous. But it doesn't make me panic; it's not unthinkable. Living the frugal life affords me the confidence to say we'd get through it, and know that we really would. I feel there are plenty of rewards for living the way we do, but peace of mind ranks really, really high on that list of rewards.

So what steps would you take if you lost your job? Any reason you haven't taken those steps already?

New Year's Resolutions & the 2009 Wishlist

I never made New Year's resolutions when I was younger. It always seemed like a set up for backsliding, guilt, and disappointment. But a few years ago, I started looking at New Year's resolutions differently. Instead of promising to lose 15 pounds, exercise more often, or start flossing my teeth, I decided that I would begin to learn new skills, or add something to my homesteading ways.

Two years ago for New Year's I decided to learn how to bake bread. Now we eat nothing but homemade bread, and bread baking is part of my monthly routine that I take for granted. Last year I resolved that I would keep laying hens. Having four hens this past year was a great learning experience, and I never want to have a garden again without also having hens. I also learned to can this past summer, though that wasn't a formal New Year's resolution.

This coming year there are several skills or features I would like to add to my repertoire and mini-homestead. All of them have something to do with moving us towards greater self-sufficiency and will ultimately allow us to live a more frugal life. Anything fairly specific that I can do which will insulate us from the vagaries of the economic turmoil seems like a great idea these days.

I've already talked about adding another species to our budding homestead. I think what I've settled on is to add a worm bin, because it's a no-brainer, and also to work on adding rabbits for meat. That will involve building a tractor to keep them on our "pasture," and doing enough reading up over the next few months to prepare myself for the new additions. I'll also need to prepare myself for slaughtering them and processing them. I would like for us to have bees, too. But that will either have to wait another year, or my husband will have to make that his own project. I can only take on so many new critters at a time. Perhaps an item for 2010's resolution list.

It's also, finally, the year to put in an asparagus bed. I've waited years and years to do this. I had a cat for 17 years who loved, simply loved, asparagus. Had I started an asparagus bed, he would have found a way to kill it in the first tender year when nothing should be harvested. Dear creature that he was, we had to put him down this past April. He is missed, but we'll look forward to asparagus in his absence. We have a small but ideal space to put two or three raised asparagus beds, just behind our shed. Several other vegetables are to be given trial runs in my 2009 garden as well, including okra, Jerusalem artichokes, two types of eggplant, Brussels sprouts and some berries under and around our white pine tree.

So far these two tasks that I've set for myself are things I am eager to do. They will take effort, but not much self-discipline to put into practice. But there is one thing I've set myself to learn that I don't particularly relish. Sewing. I recognize that this skill is a useful one, but it's just not something I'm eager to learn or naturally inclined toward. But I'm taking up Sharon's competence project challenge, and I'm resolved to give it a go. Probably it will be best to get started on this very soon, while the weather is cold and I don't have outdoor tasks as ready made distractions. I even found a worthy frugal sewing project to get me started. I would really like to find a sewing mentor who can help me learn to use the sewing machine I have on semi-permanent loan.

We'll also be putting in a few fruit trees this spring in the locations where we chopped down nonproductive ornamentals this fall. We plan on two cherry trees and a dwarf apple tree, but we may yet cut down a spruce tree that is getting rather large and replace it with either a nut tree or a self-polinating pear tree. We still need to have the stumps of the old trees ground out before we plant. If we get around to it, we may also dynamite the forsythia out and replace it with some black raspberries. (I'm kidding about the dynamite, but that stuff will be damn difficult to remove.)

In general, I would like to try to do more bartering this coming year. So far I've done very little true bartering. More often I've given thank-you gifts to neighbors who have done us a good turn. My bread is good enough that I wouldn't be ashamed to sell it. I have an agreement in principle to barter some homemade bread for the pruning of our apple tree in the new year. I know enough about cooking to teach classes regularly. So maybe there's an exchange possible there somehow. And we'll have eggs from our laying hens again in the spring. Surely I could find ways to barter for some other services we will need.

One thing I would like to do but am unsure about is to participate in the Master Gardener's program in my region this coming year. I'm unsure about it because I don't even know if it's happening next year. There was no program in 2008 due to a glut of Master Gardeners. Even if there is a program, I don't know that I would be selected. There is a screening process, evidently. And it would be an ongoing time commitment, even after the classes are over and done with. The student Master Gardeners "pay" for their instruction with a agreement to volunteer for the counties that run the program. I think the number of volunteer hours is pretty reasonable, but I would need to double check what I'm committing myself to before I sign on the dotted line. My main reason for wanting to become a Master Gardener is to learn about pruning fruit trees, and to tap knowledge that is highly specific to gardening in my immediate area.

Ever participated in your county's Master Gardener program? I'd love to hear from you if you have!

So much for the at least somewhat realistic goals. On the wishlist is a greenhouse of some sort. It's unlikely to happen in 2009. We'll have a lot of other things on our plate, and there isn't much space to devote to a greenhouse on our modest lot. One of these years though, I would love to try a mobile greenhouse a la Eliot Coleman. I'll probably be thrilled if we manage to build a few modestly sized coldframes for winter salad greens.

So to sum up the resolutions list:

Vermiculture
Meat rabbits on pasture
Asparagus beds
New vegetable trials in main garden, berries under white pine tree
Sewing (ugh!)
Fruit/nut trees
Do more bartering
Coldframes for winter greens
Master Gardener program?

-Wow. That turned out to be a much longer list than I thought it would be. Fortunately, several of these items are mostly once-and-done efforts. I'll use this blog to hold myself to these goals in the coming year.


What are your goals, hopes, dreams, plans for the coming year? What's the long-term vision that you want to serve with your goals?

The Next Species

In a rare fit of prior planning, my husband and I are weighing options for adding one more animal species to our budding suburban homestead next year. This year we added a tiny backyard flock of laying hens, and it's been a great success. We have almost wholly positive feelings and experiences from the girls. The eggs have been absolutely fantastic, and have helped us trim our food budget significantly. There are four candidate species for next year, each with pros and cons to consider. I would love to get some feedback from readers who have experiences either positive or negative with any of these animals.

Here's an exploration of the issues as I currently understand them. Since we do not have real experience with any of these species, please don't take what I have to say here as a reliable guide to your own decision making.


Bees
Work load: none daily, occasionally significant

Positives: Pollinators! A good food source without killing anything. Husband can make mead. Potential for some honey sales. Probably won't be considered a violation of local ordinance limiting us to four "outdoor pets." Maintenance will not be a daily activity. We know people nearby with expertise in beekeeping. Support for a species having trouble lately. Honey has a long shelf life. No noise/smell issues.

Negatives: Financial outlay for equipment may be significant. We don't eat all that much honey, so I'm concerned about using up the product. Potential for stings and freaked out neighbors. Maintenance and harvest will need to be done in a timely manner which may fall at particularly busy times of year.


Worms (vermiculture)
Work load: minimal daily to semi-weekly

Positives: Easy to prepare for and care for. Equipment will cost very little. Incredible soil amendment value. Probably won't become an issue with the four "outdoor pets" ordinance. Potential for sale as fishing bait. Potential for use as feed supplement to chickens. No noise/smell issues.

Negatives: Boring. So boring I might slip into neglecting them, which I hope would be benign neglect. Would have to split compost and kitchen scraps between hens and worms. Don't know anyone who practices vermiculture. Doesn't produce anything we can eat directly.


Dwarf dairy goats
Work load: significant daily

Positives: Interesting, intelligent species. Will provide a steady supply of a food that is difficult for us to source locally. We know a local dairy goat farmer to turn to for advice. No need to kill the milk goat for several years. Male offspring may be sold or eaten. Potential for cheesemaking, yogurt, etc. Grazing will help keep our lawn maintained.

Negatives: Significant effort will be required to arrange/build housing, especially for the winter months. Housing and feed costs may be significant. Will add a significant daily chore that cannot be skipped under any circumstance. A minimum of two animals will be needed for the social well being of this species. Would definitely violate the outdoor pet ordinance limitations, unless we reduced our laying flock to two hens. Arranging for breeding may be a hassle. Arranging for their care if we go away will be a major hassle if the doe is lactating. Manure issues are unknown to us. Noise issues unknown.


Meat rabbits or hares
Work load: moderate daily, occasionally significant

Positives: Housing will be cheap to build from materials we have on hand. Steady supply of meat. Feed may be very cheap if they can partly or wholly subsist on our untreated lawn and damaged produce from our own garden/trees. Can be integrated into our rotational grazing system for the hens. Rabbit manure is an excellent soil amendment that requires no aging/composting. Daily labor will be minimal and can be done at the same time as for the hens. Possible secondary product of the pelt or fur? No noise/smell issues if properly maintained. Their grazing will slightly reduce our need to cut the lawn.

Negatives: Would definitely violate the outdoor pet ordinance limitations, unless we reduced our laying flock to two hens. We have to slaughter the animals to derive the primary benefit from them. We don't know anyone who raises rabbits for meat. I'm not accustomed to cooking with rabbit. Slaughtering and butchery will add to the work load and may need to happen on a fairly strict timetable. May have to go to some trouble to source the breed we want. Animals will be vulnerable to same predators as hens.


- So there are the arguments for and against each candidate species, so far as we understand them at this point. It's a lot to consider, no?

I became interested in the dwarf dairy goat idea after reading about two tiny, urban farms in California that include Nigerian dwarf dairy goats. Our lot is small, but bigger than either of these properties. We've already had a tour of the local dairy goat farm, which has a herd of normal sized dairy goats. It was enlightening and encouraging.

I'm pretty willing to flout the local ordinance limiting us to four outdoor "pets," because I don't think anyone would report us. We're considerate neighbors, and there are only two occupied properties close enough to ours from which someone might see enough to realize that we're over the limit of the ordinance, if they actually knew about the limit. No one has complained about the hens. I'm not wild about reducing our flock size below four hens. Even if we were reported, I'm pretty certain we could find good homes for the goats if need be. The rabbits could be slaughtered.

I am concerned about the increased work load that another species would add. I think the biggest daily increase in labor would be with the dairy goats. Vermiculture would offer the lowest return but also the lowest investment in labor and money. My husband will be away from home much less in the next year, so he may be able to help with the new additions to the homestead. But that's something we'll need to work out so that we understand the responsibilities we'll each be signing up for.

So what say you? If you've had any experience keeping any of these animals, I would love to hear your comments.

Planning for an Edible Landscape

My husband and I have been debating what to do about a few trees on our property. With only 2/3 of an acre, you'd think we wouldn't have much to consider in that department, but we do. We have more than a dozen mature hardwood trees on our property, and three smaller evergreen trees.

The problem child is a black cherry tree, about 40 feet tall, that's causing concern while also shading both the garden and the old apple tree. Despite its name, the black cherry is not a productive fruit tree. It's an ornamental, with tiny, not-very-tasty fruits, so there's no crop to put on the positive side of this tree's register. It has split itself into three main trunks very low to the ground, and two of them are not in good shape. Any of them could come down on our garage in a bad storm. In other words, this tree is a prime candidate for being cut. I feel somewhat badly about this. I don't relish the idea of cutting an older tree. Nor do I look forward to paying an experienced professional to take this tree down. But given its height and its situation close to our garage and structures on the neighbor's property, there's no question we need someone who knows what they're about.

While we have the professionals out, we're also going to have them take down a sickly mulberry, which looms over our back fence. It's also in bad shape, and it also shades the garden early in the morning during the summer. If it came down it would destroy a large section of our fence, which works very well at keeping the deer out of our garden.

Since cutting has been much on our minds, we've also decided to take out two overgrown shrubby plants by ourselves. The first is an old white lilac, which occupies a prime sunny space in the backyard. The second is a snowball bush, which neither of us has ever appreciated. It's currently next to the black cherry tree. With the black cherry gone, the address of the snowball bush would become another prime sunny location. After having these stumps pulled or possibly just ground down, we'll be putting in two cherry trees in the spring.

Edible landscaping is something we're moving more and more strongly towards. It's the experience of eating what we produce ourselves that motivates this impulse. The forsythia is probably the next candidate for replacement with berry canes. I have mixed feelings about stocking our property with edible plants. It makes perfect sense to me, if we're going to be living here for another ten years or so. But that's a mighty big if. Even if we pay more to plant trees that are already 5 or 6 feet tall, they probably will not bear much of a crop for at least two to three years. There's some appeal in the Johnny Appleseed role, sowing fruit trees for others to harvest from. But if I'm honest, I have to admit to self-interest being a much bigger motivator for me. This dilemma takes me back, unpleasantly, to my decades of being a highly mobile tenant with no land to invest in for my own benefit.

We own farmland, and we harbor dreams of building a home and moving there. We've already begun planting fruit and nut trees on that property. Planting cherry trees where we're living now seems like the right thing to do, and yet it also seems likely that we'll never see the benefit of it ourselves. I would prefer to know for certain where we'll be living, so that we could narrowly focus our time, efforts and money on that property.

So I'm trying to justify the expense of $400 to have the fully licensed and insured tree trimmer come out and cut down two trees. We'll be keeping the wood for firewood, even though we don't have a wood burning stove - yet. And cutting the trees will increase the amount of sunlight hitting my garden and the apple tree. So we should see a marginal increase in production quantity, and perhaps slightly better tomatoes next year. The roots of the cherry tree would also eventually, probably, undermine part of our paved driveway, so that's a likely savings. The financial benefit of replacing these non-productive trees with cherry trees just seems rather far away and uncertain at this point. I'm very doubtful that two additional fruit trees would increase the value of our home when it's time to sell. Unless of course we have a total meltdown of our economy involving the breakdown of our current food distribution system, in which case we probably wouldn't be selling at all.

I suppose we'll take these steps as a hedge against uncertainty and rising food costs. If we end up unable to move onto our land, we'll have two cherry trees that provide fruit to eat out of hand as well as fruit to can or make shrub out of. My husband would also probably find a way to make kriek beer out of some of the fruit. I just wish the big picture were clearer.

Refinancing vs. Recasting Your Mortgage

I've tried a few times over the last year to refinance our mortgage at a better interest rate than the one we've got. A few times it seemed like it was going to happen, but for a variety of reasons it hasn't, even though our credit rating is excellent and we've proved ourselves good risks on this mortgage.

My most recent conversation was with our wonderful bank, USAA. (If you're eligible for their services but not using them, you really need to look into doing so. You'd be nuts to pass up this much value and genuine customer service.) During the course of the conversation I had with the loan officer, he mentioned recasting a mortgage, which was something I'd never even heard of. It turns out that recasting a mortgage is a pretty standard practice, if not so well known or widely available as refinancing.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor or professional in any way. Speak to a qualified expert for more infomation rather than relying on what I'm about to say here.

Recasting can mean a few different things, but here's how it would most commonly work. Say you've had a mortgage for a few years, and during that time you've been a good little frugalite and have made extra principle payments each month. Or, you've taken a sizeable windfall in the form of a bonus, inheritance, or whatever, and applied it to your principle. In other words, you're ahead of schedule in repaying your loan. At some later point, either because of unemployment or some other financial difficulty, your budget changes and you want to reduce your required monthly mortgage payments. By recasting your mortgage with your current lender, the term of your mortgage and your interest rate will stay the same, but the loan is re-amortized to give you smaller monthly payments so that you will pay off the loan exactly according to the original term of the loan.

Got that? Let's say it again so that we're clear on the concept. You're five years into a 30-year mortgage, but you've been paying ahead. If you keep up the extra payments, you'll retire the mortgage 12 years ahead of schedule. But suddenly you can't make the regular payments very easily anymore, let alone pay extra. If you are able to recast your mortgage, your monthly payments go down. If you stick to that lower monthly payment, you'll pay off the mortgage exactly on the original 30-year schedule.

Why do lenders sometimes offer this? Because it works for both the lender and the borrower. Because you've paid off part of the mortgage ahead of schedule, either with those extra monthly principle payments or with one lump-sum paydown, you've shown yourself to be a pretty good risk, but a low return. Look at it a little more deeply from the lender's perspective. By lowering the monthly payment and keeping the original term of the loan, the lender stands to gain more over time, as opposed to having the borrower pay off the loan quickly and paying less interest in the bargain. More concerning to the lender is the issue that if you, as a borrower, are asking for a recast of the mortgage, you may now be in the market for a refinance from another lender. Worse yet, if the borrower's financial circumstances have changed, he or she may now be at risk of defaulting. Financial institutions don't like defaults on loans. As a lender, it makes sense to work something out that keeps the borrower paying, accepting smaller monthly payments, but making more money over the long run. It's a win-win situation if the borrower is in dire straits.

This is interesting to me as a mortgage holder who has been making substantial extra principle payments. The traditional argument against early repayment of a mortgage is that it's better to invest the money and earn a higher rate of return. (Well, I think we all know just how far out the window that idea has been tossed lately.) But the recasting of a mortgage looks to me like a sort of unofficial safety net for people who have their financial house in order and want to aggressively attack their debt. If you throw every extra dollar at your mortgage and make a significant dent in it, you're essentially putting yourself on a good footing to ask for a recast if your finances take a turn for the worse.

My understanding is that not all lenders offer recasting of mortgages. From what I've heard, if it is available to you, it should cost significantly less in fees than a refinance. Something in the hundreds of dollars range, rather than the thousands of dollars range.

I wouldn't recommend paying down mortgage principle instead of building up a cash savings emergency fund. But it's nice to know that our early repayment efforts give us a good chance at that latitude if need be. I'm not sure why I never heard of this before, but I'm glad I know about it now.

The Upside of Down, & Longterm Plan Musings

Well, things do not look at all encouraging in the markets or the economy as a whole. The one silver lining that I can find right now is that the price of oil has dropped to around $96 a barrel as I write this. How quickly we rejigger our ideas about "good" oil prices! Like many people in the northeastern US, we heat our home with oil. So right now feels like a "good" time to top off our fuel supply for the winter.

We're equipped with only one smallish oil tank, giving us just a 275 gallon capacity. Right now our one tank is at 3/8 full. Our delivery service hits us with an extra delivery charge if we don't have at least 175 gallons delivered. In other words, we have to get down to about 1/4 of a tank before we can dodge that extra fee, which of course we want to do. They never completely top off the tank when they deliver. I guess they don't want to risk overfilling and causing a spill. Even if we start the winter with a full tank, we'll almost certainly need another delivery to get us through 'til spring. Of course, I pull out the stops as far as frugal tricks go to save money on heating expenses (on which, more to come soon). All the same, at today's prices we're looking at a cost of at least $1200 to make it through the winter. Ouch.

Our backup heating system is a propane fireplace insert in the new addition of our home. It would do for us in a power loss of short duration, say five days at the outside. Our stovetop runs on propane from the same tank, so we can cook and heat part of our house at least for a little while without electricity. We're very close to a major hospital, and I'm pretty sure we're on the same electrical grid, because we've never lost power for more than a few seconds, when others not all that far away have gone without for several hours. So chances are that things would have to be very bad before we would go without electricity for any significant length of time. Still, our propane supply is in small tanks we have to refill ourselves, and propane is a fossil fuel, which means it too will be problematic in the years ahead.

Even if we get a "deal" on our heating fuel oil this month, I look ahead and know with certainty that we need to find some other way to keep ourselves warm through the many winters to come. Our home is not well situated for an outdoor wood furnace; the neighbor's houses are too close in most directions to easily meet code with one of these. We could put in an indoor wood stove, but we have no significant supply of our own wood. So that would mean buying wood, which I expect to go up in price through the years. And then we'd have the mess of an indoor fire. Regionally, we're in a marginal area for solar power, especially in winter, and our micro-region isn't all that great for wind either.


Given all these imperfect solutions, I'm thinking about the outdoor furnace for the long term. I've seen one of these at work in the home of an acquaintance, and they seem quite manageable for our current lifestyle of two healthy, reasonably active, youngish adults, with at least one person home most of the day. Getting one would involve some retrofitting of the house, which I know would not be cheap. In fact, I'm sure it would be downright expensive. And it would lock us in to buying our fuel no less than we need to buy oil. Perhaps most worrisome is that the furnace still needs some electricity to pump heated water to and from the house. In the very long view, I can imagine a world where that's a problem. But at least it offers the prospect of clean heat (both in terms of pollution and indoor mess) and a renewable fuel source. We could work on generating a little electricity with solar power, and sourcing cheap or free firewood too, though I imagine through the years that market will become much tighter. Another downside is that I'll never be able to cook on an outdoor furnace.

There just aren't any perfect options for us. Long term we'd like to build a home on our land. The plan is to build a masonry heater into the core of our home, as the house goes up. The advantages are several. Masonry heaters are incredibly clean and efficient, they can be built to include a cookstove, they don't need any electricity to run, and our land is very well situated to take advantage of plentiful hardwood to burn. Alas, we aren't in that house yet. And truthfully, with the way things are going, I'm not confident we ever will be in that house. But we can hope and plan.

What are your plans for your longterm energy needs?

A Timely Reminder

For all of you who have been reading about gardening as a means of saving money, but who might not have much experience in gardening, I've got a hot tip for you. You can still plant something this year: Garlic! Just as with flower bulbs, fall is the time for garlic planting.

If you live in the northern hemisphere, now is a good time to get some garlic seed stock. There are plenty of seed vendors online which offer suggestions on the best varieties for your area, depending on climate. If the seed stock seems expensive, it is. But remember that with very little effort, this can be a once in a lifetime purchase. Simply save a portion of your crop from year to year as your seed stock. So this can still be a frugal purchase if you think long-term. Buy from a reputable vendor; you don't want to start out with diseased bulbs.

Garlic has been a remarkably trouble-free crop for me. I wish I'd started growing it sooner. It seems to appreciate a heavy mulch layer immediately after it's planted, as it can't compete with weeds very well. In the spring time some varieties will produce edible scapes, or seed head stalks. When still small, these curly, tender, green shoots are most welcome as one of the earliest of spring harvests. They're wonderful in pasta dishes and stir-fries. And they're a treat because they're very rarely available in markets. Garlic keeps very well, which means you can eat it for months after you harvest it, provided you don't gobble it all in a few weeks. Overall, garlic requires very little effort or space to grow and is a good candidate for beginner gardeners. Exactly when you should sow your garlic will depend on your climate zone and what general type of garlic you want to grow. But the sowing dates are coming up fast.

So if you haven't already lined up your garlic planting needs, get on it now!