August 10th-In the Midst of Massive Education

As a teacher, I sometimes wonder what I am doing in a classroom. Over the past 5 months I have taught more and engaged to a deeper level my two 11 year-old neighbors. Each evening when they see me in the backyard they ask permission to help. After scampering over, we usually pull some weeds and feed them to the rabbits and chickens or eat some ourselves. Tonight we munched on some lemon-tasting clover and ate toothache plant flowers which makes your entire mouth like it has pins and needles (like when your leg falls asleep). We then checked the gourds for powdery mildew and mold, the tomatoes for blossom end rot and pulled up this Frankenstein carrot. As we posed for pictures with our monster, a discussion looking into why the carrot didn't look like the ones from the super market ensued. The reasons for this, we decided, was that rocks and clay didn't let it grow straight and caused it to shoot out in all directions. We decided that next year we could make a mixture of sand and compost to put in 2 liter soda bottles with their tops cut off for the carrots, solving the problem of rocks, clay and space. It is seldom that learning, as seen in the picture above, is experienced in a traditional classroom. Possible homesteading classes or farm camp in the future?

For myself, I am trying to educate myself on fall and winter gardens while at the same time keeping my plants producing. My peppers are beautiful but have no idea when to harvest them. The cayenne peppers are 6 inches but still green. The jalapenos are swelling but not cracking. I might resort to taste-testing them but my heartburn from starting school tells me it would be a terrible idea. After losing one gourd to powdery mildew, I placed the others up on wood blocks. Luckily the gourd vines are in my deceased neighbors lawn so I don't look like a complete maniac. Radishes are blasting up in the former potato patch. Having never grown them before, I have little idea of what a healthy radish looks like and will aim to pull them around the 20th of this month, about 30 days after they were planted. They will hopefully become a gallon of Sauruben, fermented diced radish, similar to sauerkraut.

On the sauerkraut note, I processed my first gallon on traditional sauerkraut. It was a simple recipe of brine, caraway seeds and cabbage. The mixture fermented for 10 weeks in my cellar undisturbed in its gallon glass jar sealed with a plastic bag filled with more brine. Pulling the bag out, the sharp odor was amazing although the strings of mold that formed around the edges of the sealing bag were not as appetizing. I sterilized the rim and interior of the jar with a vinegar solution and packaged the kraut for distribution to friends and freezing. Following the traditional kraut, I processed my second gallon of Turkish kraut which is a mixture of fresh ginger, crushed red pepper, fresh garlic, cabbage and a brine. This is only aged for 10 days, making it relatively quick to make with few of the mold worries. I took a pint of this in to school for lunch yesterday with unforeseen benefits that no one wanted to talk to me on account of the potent breath and it also woke me up through the intense and warming consumption experience. The Rio Verde cabbages I planted over the weekend should grow to 5-7 pounds and should put my fermented cabbage production into orbit. I am glad a I grew up in a Pennsylvania Dutch area because it sounds like I have my Christmas gifts taken care of.

I know not many people are reading this right now, but it would be appreciated if we could brainstorm on how to incorporate this homesteading into the classroom to knock down some of figurative walls in modern education.