Strawberries at Home

Here are the strawberries, all tucked into their new bed. There were more like three dozen plants, not two, and there are more where they came from. We're thinking about building another planter box in a different location so we can get the rest of the strawberries--maybe something that can hang on the fence and keep the plants away from the slugs.

Homeless Strawberries

For those not into New Age thinking or who may not understand how the principle of manifestation works, here is a practical example of the process and how it sometimes happens.

It's strawberry season in Idaho. But I have no money for strawberries. I might be able to justify buying a few, but not in the numbers I'd prefer if I had a choice. We've been on a very tight-to-nonexistent budget for almost two years now, and strawberries are not the main staple of our diet, and are therefore hard to justify purchasing. Strawberries are also things that you really need to buy organic, because they can be laden with pesticides if produced commercially. Some fruits and veggies tend to soak up more pesticide than others, and strawberries are on the bad list. Anyway, I wanted strawberries, and had been thinking about how I'd like to go pick some organic ones at the Berry Ranch, but was going to have a hard time paying for them. I hadn't really thought much about it beyond the fact that I wanted some and that I was going to have to limit how many I picked and purchased.

That was when the Universe manifested the strawberries. I have a friend who had planted a whole bed of strawberry plants in her backyard, but her husband had grown tired of them being there. They were in a yard with large mature willow trees, and the strawberries were constantly falling prey to squirrels, slugs, and other pests. There was nothing wrong with the plants and they were prolific, but they just weren't working out for my friend. A couple of weeks ago she announced that she was going to dig up all of her strawberry plants, and asked if I wanted any of them. I hastened to assure her that I would be happy to take them.

Today my friend called me and said that she was digging them up, and could I come get them? So this evening, after my day doing readings at a psychic/healing fair downtown, I stopped by her home to pick up the strawberries. Two whole flats and a round plastic planter full of them. I estimate more than two dozen plants, and most of them laden with little strawberries already forming on the vines. If they transplant well, we'll not only have them for this year, but for years to come, and at no cost. (Well, other than the bag of sand we need to buy to amend the soil in the part of my flowerbed where they need to take up residence.)

This, then, is manifestation. Beautiful, seamless manifestation, hand in hand with synchronicity. And the beauty of it is that everyone benefits. My friend gets rid of her unwanted strawberry plants. I get my strawberries--plants and all. And the homeless strawberries get a new home so they can keep on living and doing what strawberries do.

Imagine what the world would be like if we all functioned like this--sharing, giving, being provided for, all without the stress of money, scarcity, or worry about both.

Garden Time

The garden is going in late this year. I should have gotten started weeks ago, but the weather was just so cold and rainy most of the time, so I kept putting it off. The surprise has been that some chamomile I planted in one of the large raised boxes along the north fence has taken off and reproduced itself, so there's chamomile in the box. There's also curly-leaved spearmint, which should make a wonderful mint tea. Last year when I kept having to replant my snow peas because the mice kept digging up the seed, I went to a nursery and got peppermint and spearmint in small plastic containers and then just set the containers in the planter boxes near the peas. Apparently, mice don't like mint, but peas are just fine with it.

I never actually planted the mint, and it sat out all winter, still in its little plastic containers. The peppermint plants died but the spearmint was more tenacious. The spearmint somehow escaped the plastic containers and dove into the fertile soil of the planter boxes. This spring, I have curly spearmint in every one of the three planter boxes. It's persistent, but it pulls up just fine, and so I have ample spearmint to help deter mice from the peas, and also spearmint for tea as well. I probably should have just planted it in the large planters in the first place, and let it share space with the veggies, as it's going to do from now on. Because of its persistence, it survived, thrived, and now has a place of its own. There's a lesson in that.

I had a great time clearing out the planters and making them ready for the seeds, so tomorrow I'll be able to plant some of the things, and do more weeding in the larger garden spot. The Huz says he has enough materials left to build one more large planter box, so I'm really looking forward to that. I love those planter boxes. They're easy to reach, easy to weed, out of the way of the yard, and grow wonderful peas and carrots (and mint, apparently.) We've had the other three for about two years now, and I'm excited at the prospect of finally having another box to play with. Plus, it'll get rid of a lot of the big pile of topsoil that's been sitting on my back patio for the last couple of years, waiting for a box to hold it.

Asparagus Time Again

I won't even say I lucked out, because this is just how manifestation works, and I've managed to learn how to manifest produce for little to no money. I just spent an hour and a half with one of my daughters, blanching and freezing asparagus for next winter. I had about fifteen pounds of bulk asparagus, and paid just $1.39 per pound for it. In addition to the tips that we froze, we also still have a goodly portion of the harder stalks, which we'll remove just the white part from, cook the green part down, and then puree into cream of asparagus soup. Very little is wasted, and that's a decent amount of food for a small amount of money. You'd think people would catch on to the fact that organic, local produce is worth the effort. Better yet was the kindness of the people who owned the small produce market, who agreed to sell me the random-cut bulk asparagus for such a great price, even though the farmer from whom they are getting their asparagus has disced most of his patches and had only minimal amounts of asparagus to offer this year. They only got the one box of random-cuts, but took it because, as they said, they knew someone would be able to use it.

Carrots

I still have edible carrots in one of my outdoor garden boxes, after leaving them there the whole winter. It was like having a little root cellar, and yesterday I went out and dug up several of the carrots that were still in the ground. Tonight I'm making them into soup.

Fresh carrots, available right out of the ground after a winter of being left outside, with new, growing green tops and everything. I'm not sure they'd be fantastic for just gnawing on as they are, but grated and made into carrot-and-dill soup, they'll be perfect.

The ability to pull carrots out of the ground after a winter's outdoor storage...amazing. The ability to feed my family a nutritious dinner without having to run to the grocery store...priceless.

Green Tomatoes

I just finished canning two batches of green tomato relish. The first batch was the standard recipe found in the older edition of the Ball Blue Book. The second batch was almost the same except for the chilies added just for the Huz, who likes things a bit spicier than I do. I now have 8 1/2 pints of the regular GTR, and 15 1/2 half-pints of the "hot" GTR. Despite the fact that all I had to do was add the salted vegetables to the special brine, boil it and hot pack it, the processing still took me several hours to complete. The good news: every jar sealed. That's a 100% success rate.

If you haven't heard of or tried green tomato relish, you should definitely try it. It's amazingly good; I made some last year just to try it and see what would happen, and the whole family liked it so much that they all wanted me to make it again this year. Not only is it a wonderful way to use those end-of-season green tomatoes, but I find that if I use this relish, I don't need to use ketchup (especially the modern kind of ketchup with all the high fructose corn syrup in it!) The green tomato relish has just enough of a tomato taste that it satisfies the palate that would otherwise want ketchup on burgers or hot dogs, etc. And then because it's also relish, it just seems to take care of the ketchup and relish taste both at once. And because the relish has mustard seed in it, it pretty much takes care of a mustard taste also. This kind of makes it the perfect condiment, because if you have it, you don't really need any others. All that from a few green tomatoes and a little investment of time. Keep in mind also that this is a relish not easily found in your typical big box grocery store.

Gadgets with Gaskets

We inherited a wonderful gift from the Huz's folks--his mom's 22-quart pressure canner. From what we remember our folks doing and the directions we got from the Ball Blue Book, we know how to can our own veggies. We have the equipment and the knowledge to do it safely, and with the availability of free produce from the community garden and gifts of fruit, etc. from friends and acquaintances, we've been able to put by a fair amount of food for the winter. I can safely say that we don't need any more jam! I would like to have the wherewithal to can peaches and applesauce next. Thanks to the community garden, we've nearly got enough beans, and were even able to put away a few pints of peas. With any luck, we'll get a decent number of tomatoes this year from our own garden, but we'll see how that goes. I need a certain number to be ripe all at once in order to actually process them as canned tomato sauce or juice.

The other challenges we've had other than coming in between bean harvests has been time to do the canning, and problems with our canner's gasket/seal. Our canner was made by the Mirro company prior to 1983, and requires a very specific gasket. We have model M-0622. All the info online says that the correct gasket for this canner was the S-9882 model. However, after so many of these gaskets failed and became rippled or limp, we got frustrated and contacted the company directly. They responded to the Huz's email and told us that the correct gasket for our model of canner was in fact the S-3440, not the other one. I tried to get this gasket through Ace, the only local place where they actually sell canner parts, and the only one they had in their inventory was the other one--the wrong one we'd been using and hating for so many years. So I went online and found the correct gasket and ordered it in. $14.00 and a few days later, we had a new gasket, which looks similar to the others but ever so slightly different. It's a little thicker, for one thing, and the rubber curves outward just a touch. We tried it today to see how it would do, and lo and behold, a perfect seal. No dripping water from under the sides of the canner lid, no hissing, no trouble getting the canner up to pressure. Perfect.

Now, why the original misinformation as to which seal was the correct one for this model of canner? It seems to be a relatively uncommon model of canner, but still.... Just in case anyone else has been experiencing this frustration, the correct gasket for the model M-0622 Mirro-Matic 22 quart pressure canner is the gasket formerly known as the S-3440, now known as just the 3440. It is available from a company called Red Mill, as well as a couple others. Google "pressure canner gasket 3440," and you should readily find a place to buy one online. Good luck, and I sympathize! This gasket actually works; trust me.