Prickly Pear Fruit Chips

...r fruit has a leather-like consistency, enjoy. You swallow the hard seeds, making prickly pear fruit somewhat an acquired taste for some. Chumacero also mentioned that the young pads, “nopalitos” in Spanish, can also be dried for later use. A note to the permaculturalists out there. It’s worth emphasizing that the prickly pear cactus, Opuntia ficus-indica, in my personal experience, is the single most productive plant in our small lot. It’s also t...

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Fallen Fruit

...encourage you to find it, tend and harvest it. If you own property, plant food on your perimeter. Share with the world and the world will share with you. Barter, don’t buy! Give things away! You have nothing to lose but your hunger They also have a set of handy maps of publicly accessible fruit in a couple of neighborhoods and a video for those who missed the fun last night. Rumor has it they will be doing a jam making session sometime this summe...

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Yucca!

...ntal irrigation and have multiple uses and the yucca plant, in addition to making rope, can also be used for basket weaving, as a detergent, a white wool dye, a quiver for your arrows, and it also produces edible flowers, seeds, and fruit. Some important distinctions here. First of all we are not talking about “yuca” which is another name for the cassava plant, a tropical shrub of the spurge family. There are also many species in the yucca family,...

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Salted Spruce Tips and Pine Infused Garlic Salt

...and see how it goes, because you can always add more. Feline assistance in making the pine garlic salt. A Tale of Two Salts To give you some concrete examples, I made two small batches of salt today. I often make herbed salt in tiny batches that get used up quickly, because I like to experiment. The first one I made was with spruce tips. These are the fresh spring growth of a fir tree, the tender chartreuse tips which stand out in such brilliant c...

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005 Amy and Vince of Tenth Acre Farm

...ive brake bleeder. This is a cool and low cost alternative to the electric Food Saver vacuum sealer. And Amy discussed her provocative post on why they don’t keep chickens. According to Amy, homesteading is “more of a marathon than a sprint.” They are in it for the long hall. We conclude by having Vince and Amy answer a Listener question about living a sustainable life in a cold climate (something we know nothing about!). Amy mentions growing frui...

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