By Hannah Curcio The flow of traffic and goods at our cellar door has switched directions. The constant shuffle of goods to stock the shelves has been replaced by our family’s new hobby: cellar shopping. For Christmas, after reviewing the shelves, Cole decided he would like to make breakfast for our family, using canned cherries
By Hannah Curcio “You can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by meeting unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but
By Abbey Smith How to make dock seed flour Mother’s Day a few years ago Spencer and Maezy helped me haul literally truck loads of dock out of my new garden plot. I had covered the soil with manure the year before (which likely contained dock seeds), and the conditions in the soil apparently were
By Leah Larsen The reality of local food year is setting in. We are not eating 100% local food and it is not because of availability. Our cool room is filled with winter squash, pumpkins, potatoes, onions, leeks, and apples. We have goat milk from our mama goat Melina and we are regularly making cheese.
By Hannah Curcio As we race the frost to pick the last tomatoes for canning and fill our cellar with any excess food we can find a way to preserve, it seems there is never enough time to process as much as we hope to store for winter. Our family room now has a queue
By Abbey Smith If any month in Surprise Valley is easy during our year of local food (Local Food Experience), it is October. The wave of summer abundance still ripples through our kitchens and pantries, and the fall harvest is at its peak. Each evening in September and October we are canning or dehydrating food
By Hannah Curcio The local food year is going really well! We have already harvested potatoes, and we are starting to harvest our pumpkins too. With this week’s snow, we harvested the watermelon and cantaloupe. We have also been busy drying and canning fruits and vegetables. My mom’s fruit leather is my favorite by far.
By Abbey Smith My 85-year-old grandfather’s hobby is to hatch chickens and quail. An active logger, rancher and farmer all his life, he now keeps himself busy with three different egg incubators in his house. Each spring, I get about two dozen eggs from my mother’s flock, or my cousin Grace’s flock, in Indian Valley.
By Owen Segerstrom The poplar leaves are starting to yellow, and while the mornings are getting a bit nippy, the afternoons are still blazing. Must be September in Modoc, our family’s favorite time of year. With the first frost still (knock on wood) weeks away and the gardens and fruit trees at peak explosiveness, we
