The homesteading backslide

Through a series of unfortunate events, upon which I don’t care to expound, we have come to a point of urban homesteading that I have feared reaching – the backslide. As renters, I have always known we were at the mercy of our landlord when it came to our homesteading exploits. When our permission to keep backyard chickens was recently revoked in order for our landlords to address a property issue, I felt a bit deflated. Ok, more than a bit.

Fortunately, we have a close community of like-minded folks, so our options were numerous when considering a new home (or a swift end of life) for our trusty hens, procured just seven months ago from one of our favorite places – City Folk’s. Betty, Batgirl, Austra, Beyoncé and Pippin are now efficiently tilling the earth for our friends over at Harmonious Homestead, helping them prepare for expanded planting in 2014.

This experience has focused me even acutely on saving money to buy a modest homestead of our own as soon as possible. I would love to have our girls back in our own yard, doing work for us, turning scraps to nutrient-rich fertilizer and healthy eggs and entertaining us with their chicken ways. It was a moment of homesteading bliss cut too short.

(These photos and links seem glitchy, so I’ll likely be back to fix them tomorrow.)

Plantain and a canning accident.

Today I had a canning adventure with a friend. You can read Rachel’s account of the situation over at Harmonious Homestead.

Preserving is fun to do with friends: the workload is shared, more can be accomplished in less time, and it is a great bonding experience. Matching canning burns aren’t usually part of the equation for most, but that’s certainly the part of today that will be most memorable for Rachel and I, and likely for our kids and husbands that witnessed the immediate aftermath.

In short, as I was tightening* the Tattler lid on a quart of tomato purée after pulling it from its 85-minute hot water bath processing, the lid exploded forcefully off of the jar instead of fastening down tighter as I turned the canning jar ring with one towel-laden hand and held the searing-hot jar with the other. Boiling tomato purée shot out, clinging to everything in its path – my hand and arm, Rachel’s arm and clothing, the fridge, the cupboards and up to 8 feet away all over the floor. Rachel claims it looked like a stabbing scene.

She and I immediately ran to sinks to cool our skin. My next stop was out Rachel’s back door for plaintain, (the plant, not the banana-like fruit) to apply a quick poultice of the chewed leaves. I pressed the juicy leaves onto my skin, covering as much of the burn as I could without the oozy pulp falling off of my arm, and stayed outside for quite a few minutes. Upon returning to my home a short while later, I repeated the treatment, holding the poultice to the worst spots with bandaids and larger dressings.

I must admit, when I took the bandages off to check on the progress just minutes ago, I was quite impressed. I’ve used this plant before to dress burns, but they’ve only been very small injuries. In fact, I’ve never experienced a burn like this before. Some spots that earlier appeared as though they would be a larger area of blistering have settled right down, and I’ve ended up with only two very slightly raised blisters, each much smaller than the eraser of a pencil.

I obviously don’t have a control for this crude experiment, but I call it an early success. The pain of the fairly serious burn was gone in about 4 hours, and the swelling is remarkably nearly absent already. I’m glad to know plantain.

After a 20-minute application of plantain (note the swelling):

After a 5-hour application of plantain (swelling nearly gone, the green splotch is from the plantain juice):

*The tightening step is one that is particular to the reusable Tattler lids, which have given me delight over multiple canning seasons. I will not hesitate to use these lids in the future, as I believe this was mostly operator error on my part. In the future, though, I will use one-use Ball canning lids for tomato purée.