Tom's Wit and Wisdom DIY Help - Natural Homesteading

Tom's Wit and Wisdom

Please do not hesitate to E-mail us your most pressing questions on How-To, Do-It-Yourself, Home Projects. We will try to answer as many questions as possible, and from time to time we will be posting the most relevant and frequently brought up subjects here. Tom has been a carpenter and gardener for many years and has no lack of knowledge when it comes to fixing things so go ahead and ask away!

If you would like to view some of my past entries go to my archive.

Carrots

"Just caught your blog. Love it as usual! I have been thinking about my carrots. I never really grew them, so I never needed to know what to do with them. We have quite a few and I thought about canning them, but then you said you are leaving yours in the ground and covering them. Tell me about that and what you will do with them til the crop is gone and all are in your tummies.

Answer:

Carrots seem to get sweeter after a few frosts so we do like leaving some in the ground and enjoying them in the fall. If we've planted enough we have some in the winter months, too. Some time in late November or late December we'll cover them with 10-12in of clean straw. Something new we will probably try is using hay because we just recently heard that hay puts nutrients back in the ground when it breaks down and straw draws the nutrients out of the ground during decomposition. Once, I used dry maple leaves, they seemed to work also. Avoid leaves with an acid PH such as oak leaves.

As the snow comes and covers the garden, your hay or leaf mulch will insulate the ground and keep it from freezing. When you're ready for some carrots, make your way out to the garden, brush the snow back from the mulch and carrots where you plan to dig. Pull back the mulch and pull up your desired amount of carrots and replace the mulch. I like putting the snow back, too as it further insulates the ground.

This is a great storage method that allows for fresh eating well into the winter months and doesn't use any freezer or pantry space!! We love it!

Be Blessed!

Tom

On a fall drive through the fruit hills I came across this huge Black Walnut tree, Juglans nigra. The road and surrounding area was full of walnut fruits, so I decided I would gather some and check out what it takes to remove the hulls and extract the walnut meats. I had a couple of 5 gallon pails in the back of my truck an it didn't take me long to fill them to overflowing. It's amazing how many nuts can come off of one tree and this tree is massive. I dumped them out at home on a corner of the limestone drive. I left them there for a week as we drove over them the hulls separated from the hard shell. Some people wash the shells off but I didn't. I simply put on some rubber gloves and cracked them one at time in an arbor press. I was careful to put the pointed end of the shell up as cracking them in the middle smashes them and gets all the hard shell into the nut meat. You still have to do a bit of cutting of the inner shell with some wire snippers as these nuts aren't as easy to clean as English Walnuts. The Black's are a very different flavor than the English but I like them better. I plan on drying them (they're wet so it's important to dry them), freezing them and eating them on my 7 Grain Cereal in the morning with the Maple Syrup that I bought from a family this same afternoon. MMMMM!

What you see here are some of the walnuts laying beside the road. Around here if you're gathering walnuts in the fall, September through October, you can get all you want along the county roads.

This is an Historical Grain Mill just a few miles from the huge Walnut tree. The mill is still in operation where you can buy wheat, cornmeal, and other grains on certain days of the week.

If you're like me, you will enjoy getting outdoors and seeing what treasures can be found.

If you missed the link to the archive here it is again.

Tom's Wit and Wisdom Archive