Figuring out first-hand food
The miracle of composting is that it turns garbage and poop into fertilizer, but there’s just no getting around the fact that, before it’s fertilizer, it’s garbage and poop. Forget that at your peril. Yesterday, Kevin and I forgot it. Because we’re thisclose to getting pigs this spring, we went to visit a local pig [...]
I’ve often wished Kevin and I could trade brains. Not forever, of course. I want to give his back as soon as I understand why he likes everything to be big and/or dangerous, and why he’s not afraid of things that scare the bejeezus out of me. And I’m sure he’d want to unload mine [...]
It sometimes feels like Starving is an exercise in which Kevin thinks of things and I write them down. Those of you who follow this space know that he is the mastermind behind the chicken coop and the sabiki rod, the turkey pen and the chicken plucker. Also, the stump pulling, the less said about [...]
It’s time to play my favorite springtime game: Annual or Perennial? Since we started growing food, the distinction has been a continual irritant. Why is it that the things you want to eat, like tomatoes and peppers, grow on persnickety plants that have to be handled just so and then die in October, while plants [...]
I come from a long line of furriers. Okay, that’s not strictly true. I come from a long line of Austro-Hungarian cattle rustlers and one furrier, my grandfather, who apparently became a furrier only because Minneapolis got too hot to hold him, apparently because the mob was pissed at him, apparently because he was an [...]
Charles Murray’s new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 is about the vast and growing difference between the top and bottom echelons of our society. The highly educated elite live in a kind of a bubble, sharing less and less in the way of values and experience with those on the lower [...]
It was back in December that we were trying to trap the raccoons that were gnawing at the boards of our chicken coop. After much discussion about the best method to kill a raccoon, we decided on a high-powered air rifle, so we bought one. It’s a Benjamin 22-caliber break-barrel version, and it’s said to [...]
Since we moved to Cape Cod, I’ve learned a lot about clams. They were my first, and remain my most dependable, source of self-procured animal protein, and I figure Kevin and I have harvested at least fifty pecks since we got here. A peck is ten quarts, so that’s enough for even the slowest of [...]
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More …]
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