Early November 2024| Practical Self Reliance
Cooler Weather Harvests and Heartier Fare
Early November is when things start to calm down for the growing season, and there’s a reason that voting is always this time of year in the US. Most of the crops are in, and the first frosts have hit, so you can spare an afternoon for a trip to vote.
This year’s been warmer than most, and we’ve only just had our first frosts, making this one of our longest growing seasons on record. I planted my tomatoes a full month earlier than usual this spring, and the gamble payed off, as frosts stopped early in the spring. They came a month late in the autumn too.
We normally have a 100 to 120-ish day frost-free growing season here, so an extra 50-60 days is kind of a big deal.
The cold, hardy crops like Brussels sprouts, cilantro, beets, and carrots are still going strong in the garden, but I’m spending more and more time in the woods harvesting cool-season mushrooms.
This year, the winter chanterelles didn’t disappoint!
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Well, at least the winter chanterelles didn’t disappoint me. This pup is seriously confused and pouty, wondering why we’re stopping to investigate little patches here and there instead of bounding over logs and chasing squirrels.
Turnabout’s fair play, little guy, and if I can pause for you to sniff in seemingly random places, you can wait for me, too. Patience, my friend.
It does have me wondering about those Italian Truffle Hunting Dogs, I bet they’re great in the woods this time of year.
Apparently, they can be trained to just about any mushroom; who knew?
These beauties were harvested for a dinner of chanterelle risotto for my love and me and then a small batch of chanterelle ice cream for the littles.
Ask my littles what they’re favorite ice cream is, and one will say “Mushroom” and the other will say “Acorn,” and then there’s alot of confusion from anyone listening. But chanterelle ice cream tastes like apricots, but better, and roasted acorn ice cream has rich coffee notes, but it’s more complex, and doesn’t have caffeine.
Exotic ice creams aside, I was just talking to y’all last time about exotic fruits.
At the end of October, I offered to send out seeds from the Latvian Flowering Quince variety that I got from my friend Maria. I wasn’t expecting over a hundred replies! ….I guess these little beauties are popular.
Anyhow, I spent a day addressing envelopes and if you sent me an address (Emails, comment replies, direct messages, whatever), then I’ve got an envelope in here for you going out shortly. If I didn’t get an address from you, but you expressed interest, I’d planned on contacting you each individually to follow up…but I’ve run out of seeds.
If I do a seed share again, I’ll have to come up with a more organized way to do this. Sorry about that, y’all; I’m just one person doing my best. (Maybe a google form, that’d proably keep things neat, we’ll see.)
But anyhow, I thought you might like to see how the flowering quince jelly came out. They have so much pectin that I had to keep adding water because the pot was setting into jelly without sugar and before they were even fully cooked. Strained and sugared, it make a lovely clear jelly that set without anything other than juice and sugar.
Beyond quince seeds, there’s so much seedy action going on over here these days.
First off, pumpkin seeds, of course.
We roasted gallons of pumpkin seeds last year and enjoyed them all winter long, which is fun for everyone since the littles love pumpkin cleaning parties in the yard this time of year.
This year, I also tried out a canning recipe for “pumpkin guts stock” from the University of California Extension. It’s basically just a veggie stock made with the inside of pumpkins and other winter squash, and it came out really flavorful.
It’s a great way get one more use out of those innards before they go to the chickens, and it’s a lot easier than cleaning and roasting seeds (though you can do both, of course, and sort the seeds out first and just make the stock with the rest).
Autumn is also the perfect time for planting seeds that need to be cold stratified to break dormancy. That’s a lot of types, including common things like apple seeds, but also perennials like echinacea, and even a few exotic things like ramps (wild leeks).
We’re planting A LOT of ramps seeds this year, sent to us by in bulk by Earthbeat Seeds.
Ramp seeds want to be planted in autumn under sugar maples, ideally before the leaves fall, so they can be covered with a blanket of leaves before winter. We didn’t quite make it there, too much on our plates, but with the warm weather this autumn it doesn’t much matter.
You can just rake back the leaves, sprinkle them on the moist, fertile leaf duff on the forest floor, and then cover them again with fallen leaves.
Ramps can be incredibly prolific, and the main threat to them, believe it or not, is not overharvesting in the wild…but getting choked out in a single patch. Their seeds are heavy, and though often transported by rodents, they tend to fall right on top of the parent plant.
That creates a lot of competition, and without harvesting, the populations stagnate and decline over time. Responsible harvesting, combined with harvesting seeds and establishing new patches, is key to maintaining (and enjoying) these tasty wild edibles for generations.
The same goes for other threatened wild plants, like echinacea. They’re prolific seeders, both the wild and cultivated varieties, and a little help spreading the seeds can go a long way.
(Plus, you can make your own echinacea tincture and echinacea tea with homegrown plants).
With cooler temps, our kitchen’s cooking up heartier fare, so I thought it’d be a great time to test out some new types of cooking fat. We already cook with animal fat year round, and other than a bit of olive oil, you won’t find any seed oils in my kitchen.
Home rendered tallow and leaf lard are my go to favorites, along with duck fat for special things (like fried brussels sprouts and duck fat fried hash browns, even special batches of duck fat popcorn, all of which are amazing).
Anyhow, with the new house construction this year, we’ve been raising less of our own meat, and I’ve been testing out animal fat providers. Thus far, Fatworks is my favorite, and they have by far the best tallow.
I ordered a flight of their more exotic cooking fats as a birthday present to myself, and we’ve been putting them to good use. Lamb tallow is great in the Mongolian dumplings that my kids love, and it’s perfect for Turkish food too.
The chicken fat (schmaltz) is getting used up in Eastern European food, and OMG goose fat is like duck fat, but even better, and that’s great with everything.
I’m still trying to figure out how to use the Bison, Elk, and Wild Boar tallow…let me know if y’all have any ideas.
What are you working on, harvesting, or just plain excited about right before the chaos of the holidays begins?
Until Next Time,
Ashley at Practical Self Reliance
PS. Here’s where you can read a bit more about some of the things I talk about in this newsletter:
Yellowfoot Chanterelles (also known as winter chanterelles)
How to Roast Pumpkin Seeds (12+ Flavors)
How to Stratify Seeds Before Planting
New subscriber! I love that you're interested in historical food preservation. I wrote about 1940s food rationing. There is so much amazing information tucked into those old cookbooks!
Love your posts, and am always impressed and intrigued by all the fun things you're doing! Also thanks for the link to fatworks, looking forward to trying some of their products.