Homegrown Puppy Chow

One of the things that we have been striving to be more self-reliant in is the ability to feed our pet's food that we can obtain or produce ourselves. After consulting with a fellow blogger whom I trust goes to great lengths to care for her own dogs and doing a lot of reading on the subject of canine nutrition we have come up with our first homemade dog food recipe. Having realized that a dogs natural diet could consist of a wide variety of different foods we started offering small samples to our puppy, Rowdy, early on so that he would develop a taste for them, and boy did he ever. He loves to eat everything we have given him...fruits, veggies, nuts, chicken poop (his idea not ours), etc...

In the wild, a wolf, coyote, or dingo's diet consists of more than just meat. Being opportunistic in nature their diet, while based on various types of meat, can also include some fruits, berries, grass, vegetables, and other plants. I've read that coyotes are even known to raid farmers melon patches upon occasion. So we came up with a cooked puppy food that is approximately 50% meat and eggs and 50% plant based. This is of course subject to change depending upon how well the dog does on this diet and any new information I might obtain.

Here is a fascinating video of wolves supposedly eating raspberries. Although they look more like rose hips to me.

Our first batch consisted of a couple pounds of good quality lean ground beef, eggs, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, peas, plain tomato sauce, berries, apples, chicory root, parsley, celery, and steel cut oats to bind it all together. All of these vegetables, and the steel cut oats, are supposed to be easily digestible for dogs unlike some of the cheap corn and soy based "filler" ingredients, full of chemical additives, that make up the bulk of some pet foods...or so I've been reading in Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide To Natural Health For Dogs & Cats and various other sources. For the record, while a very interesting book, I don't necessarily agree with everything in Dr. Pitcairn's book.

Anyway, this mix will last him about 25 days (keeping in mind that this is a small puppy...for a while) and is served as an addition to his constant supply of dry dog food and the occasional serving of kefir or milk, extra eggs, raw fresh veggies, fruit, berries, and any voles or mice he might catch. We measured out the daily portions and froze them for ease of use.

Grandfather tested and puppy approved homemade dog food right out of the garden.:)

He absolutely loves his new food, it was so good I even had a bite. If I have to start eating dog food in my old age this will be my brand of choice, not very tasty but pretty darn healthy.:) We will probably add a little more protein in the form of beef, fish, broth, legumes, and eggs as he continues to grow. Other possibilities include the addition of spinach (?), garlic, eggshell powder, broccoli, squash, rice, flax, and kale to the mix. He goes nuts over our kale for some reason, he was with me while I was picking it one day, probably thought I was grazing on it, and has been stealing it from under the row covers ever since. Now if I could just figure out how to make a high protein healthful dry dog food, and then there's those hopelessly lazy and finicky cats to deal with.

So far Rowdy is a very healthy, happy, and energetic puppy who loves to take walks in the wetlands. Beside harassing our cats his favorite pastimes include catching goose feathers that are floating down stream, hunting for voles, and quality time with the chickens...more on that later.

Some Unusual Frugal Potting Soil

With no snow to speak of and the ground even starting to thaw a bit I have been out and about hunting for the right soil medium in which to start my onion, leek, celery, and celeriac seedlings. Normally we try to make our own "homemade" potting soil that does differ slightly each year depending upon what type of materials we can come up with. For the most part I just try to produce a semi-fine soil that is able to retain moisture and remain pliable without hardening up. Our house is heated with a wood stove and the one drawback of this is the lack of humidity in the air, this lack of moisture tends to cause the soil in our seedling trays to harden very quickly making it difficult for the plants to germinate and grow. So when it comes to potting soil my focus is on keeping the dirt soft and arable.

This season I am using a rather interesting mixture. I am lucky in the sense that I have a massive pile of decomposed sod which will make up the bulk of my potting mix. This combination of topsoil, dead grass, and fine little roots should work well.


Also added is my own version of peat moss, in this case a common green moss that grows in great abundance around here. After I fill a tote it is dried by the fireplace before being added to the mixture in order to help with water retention.


Lastly, strange as it may seem, I incorporated a couple of vacant red ant nests to help keep the soil from hardening. I scoped these potential amendments out last summer. Every once in a while for reasons unbeknowst to me the nests are abandoned never to host ants again. Red ants in these parts build large mounds using materials gathered from their surroundings, in my case these materials are largely made up of very small twigs, pieces of dead grass, and other debris that should provide excellent soil aeration. I hold these particular ants in high regard as they are very omnivorous, thus helping to keep many of the so called "bad" insects in check as nature intended.

A wheelbarrow full of ant nest, we have lots of these nests around but only a couple that were abandoned.

Here is a closeup of the materials ants use to build their mounds.


Yes Silke, he does tend to be quite the little helper. Rowdy's job was to break up all of the clumps.:)

Knee Deep In Roots

In my opinion, one of the most important tasks involved in the long term storage of fruit and vegetables in ones root cellar is in maintenance. Almost every day I make a trip into the basement for some sort of veggie and always take the time to check and see how everything is doing. I might toss a rotten apple or pull a few shoots off an early sprouting Purple Majesty potato, perhaps the turnips are in need of a trim. Just last week I rid myself of the last of my Burpee Long Keeper tomatoes and sorted through our tomatillos. Why I bother to store either of these I do not know as we have tomatillos and tomatoes coming out of our ears in the form of salsa and sauce, both canned and frozen.

While everyone else seems to be covered under a chilly blanket of snow our winter has been abnormally warm and that is not conducive to good root cellar conditions. Normally I need to trim the sprouting shoots off carrots, parsnips, and beets by the time March rolls around in order to stave off the inevitable urge to grow that the warmer temperatures bring to these cellared foods. This will buy me a couple more months of storage time and after that point I will sometimes bury the remaining produce a couple feet down in the ground outside giving me yet another month or so of cold storage.

This year I found myself facing this task much earlier due to the the warmer weather. Yesterday my trusty assistants and I trimmed the parsnips and carrots. I still have to do the beets. It is an all day job to trim and repack thousands of roots and as it was so sunny and nice outside we got a late start.

It was so very nice out yesterday that boy and dog found some ice water to play in, against the advice of boy's grandparents of course. Boy slipped and fell in. Boy's boots filled with ice water. Grandma gave boy her socks. Boy walked the quarter mile home in grandma's donated socks while she carried his sopping boots. Grandfather and dog took another route home as he was afraid of what people might think if they saw boy wandering around without any shoes in the middle of winter. Boy learned that ice water is cold.

Rowdy, diligently guarding some of our soon to be trimmed parsnips.

Trimming and packing parsnips, the tops of these and the carrots were fed to the chickens

Grandson's job was to carefully trim carrots, he managed his assigned duties for almost 5 whole minutes.

Abandoned, as usual, Grandfather (I'm way too young for this title) found himself knee deep in carrots with four totes to go.):

Breakfast and a Run

We normally only make two types of meals for breakfast. The first is our old standby salad, usually with and egg or occasionally some fried spuds on top...and a very berry smoothie. The other meal, depicted above, is always fun because it is a mishmashed combination of whatever was left over from the previous night's dinner. This morning I had blue jade corn bread, gold nugget squash with ginger pear sauce and young dandelions, a thick kale and potato soup, one egg sitting atop sauerkraut, and of course, a small slaw salad. It sounds like a lot but that is all I will eat until dinner.

My wife and I will be going on an 8 mile run later this afternoon as she is working towards a goal of 13 miles since she will possibly be running in a half marathon in the near future. My job, per her request, is to make sure she can do it. That mostly involves making her a nourishing breakfast and running along side her, sometimes even backwards in front of her, humming inspirational tunes from the movie "Rocky" and giving her annoying words of encouragement. This usually helps as she invariably picks up speed in order to escape me.:) Normally we eat much lighter on the days we will be running, I hope this meal does not slow us down too much

I wrote this post yesterday and we did have a pretty good run. It was very exciting for Mrs. H as she has never ran 8 miles before (8.1 to be exact). Last year she talked herself into running a 12km (7.46 mile) race and now she will be doing that same 12k plus a half marathon this year. I'm just glad that we are having such a great snow free winter and do not have to train on slippery snow covered roads like last year...so far anyway.

Discovering Mallow

This winter I have been experimenting with a homemade shampoo based on the soapwort we grow in our garden, now our only source of laundry detergent. My focus has been on finding a way to thicken the soap enough so that it would have the consistency of a commercial shampoo. For this endeavour I have used thickeners such as flax, dried mallow, powdered beans, and various combinations of each with limited success...so far. I am fairly confident that some or all of these ingredients combined with my soapwort will make an excellent hair wash once I am able to determine the proper solution. Unfortunately, the supply of dried soapwort set aside for these experiments is all but used up so self-reliance on the shampoo front is on hold until later this year when a new supply of roots can be obtained from the gardens.

This is the last of our dried soapwort, some of which has been powdered.


As so often seems to happen with these funky little projects one thing leads to another and I often find myself discovering or in this case uncovering something altogether different. I was aware that a member of the mallow plant genus was at one time used to make the original confectionery "marshmallow," via its roots. Similar varieties, Common Mallow, Hollyhocks, and (I think) Musk Mallow, that we once introduced as flowers and have now naturalized on the fringes of our garden have the same mucilaginous properties. Hence the reason I am attempting to use them in my shampoo making ventures.

Shampoo making venture #3 produced plenty of suds but not enough consistency...


Anyway, having not thoroughly researched mallow until recently, I was unaware and quite surprised at all the other benefits associated with these plants. Apparently the mallow that was once used as a binding agent (binding sugar and egg whites) in the making of marshmallows has an unbelievably immense medicinal profile as well.

Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris) The root and leaves contain a slimy mucilage that can be used to sooth irritated tissue and relieve various forms of inflammation. They can be made into a tea or combined with sugar to make a syrup, both tea and syrup can be used as an effective cough remedy. Because it contains fair amounts of salicylic acid, an ingredient used in the preparation of aspirin, it has also been used throughout history to help relieve sore throats, reduce fever, and even headaches. I find it somewhat fascinating that, unbeknownst to me, I have had a potentially effective cold and flu relief/remedy growing right under my nose all along and have not until recently been aware of this plant's full potential.

Pulling a mallow root. I have yet to positively identify these as Musk Mallow.


Another once common use for mallow was as an emollient for dry irritated skin. I've read that the mucilages contained in the plant can not only be used internally but externally as well helping to heal skin issues that range anywhere from from diaper rashes and sunburns to psoriasis and eczema. Also, the plants salicylic acid content makes it a viable treatment for acne, helping to clean out the skins pores thus reducing the number of breakouts.

Besides using the plant as a cough suppressant, it is the eczema treatment that we are most excited about. Our grandson, like his father, has issues with dry itchy skin. So much so that it often keeps him awake at night tossing and turning. We are looking forward to exploring this as a possible solution to his dilemma. The poor kid, he is still trying to get the bean particles out of his hair from our last experiment. Hey, someone needs to be the guinea pig and he was paid in chocolate for his efforts. Besides, just think of all the stories he will someday be able to tell his own children about his crazed grandparents and all of their strange and unusual ways.

In addition, the flowers and young leaves can be eaten raw in salads and along with the rest of the plant are reportedly a good source of beta-carotene, amino acids, many minerals and vitamins including B1, B2, and B3. Everything I have read states that there are no known side effects to using this plant in it's various forms...in moderation. Evidently, mallow is so safe that mothers used to give the peeled root to their babies to help with teething discomfort. I must question this action as it would seem to pose as a possible choking hazard?

Common Mallow roots for teething infants? Perhaps they should be tested on our teething puppy first...


We will be making a tea this week by allowing a small amount of the powdered root to steep in warm water for awhile and adding honey upon serving. While it is rare for either of us to come down with a cough or sore throat we can still try it just for grins. What I really need is to find a sick subject to experiment on. The grandson is back in school this week and believe me it is only a matter of time before he comes to us with some sort of ailment that involves coughing. As long as he is unaware that there is anything but honey in his tea we shall soon see if it really works.:)

The Salad...

Lately I have been contemplating a question we are often asked. How can we possibly consume all of the food that we grow? The answer is really quite simple...a salad. Take away the grocery store and the fact that the majority (not all) of our diet is vegetarian in nature, we prefer the term healthy opportunists, and you will find us making each and every meal out of those things that we have spent the warm months growing and the cold months maintaining.

Most evenings find us creating a salad that varies in nature depending upon what is available to us from the garden and root cellar, this is normally our main course often served with side dishes such as bread, eggs, soup, etc. How can a salad be the main course of any meal one might ask? Well, our salads are not just salads but full meals comprised of numerous ingredients such as squash, potatoes, greens, cabbage, beans, seeds, fruits, berries, and anything else we care to throw at them.

For example, last night's salad consisted of:

Grated root veggies
1 1/2 beets
5 small carrots
1 turnip
2 sunchokes
1 celeriac root
3 parsnips
1/2 cup squash
1/2 cup kohlrabi

Greens
parsley
kale (various)
spinach
endive
Swiss chard
turnip greens

Toppings
flax seeds
diced onions
diced leek greens
dried tomatoes (so good)
diced apples
dried peppers


This was served with grilled cheese & onion sandwiches and tomato soup. The only ingredients not from our garden were cheese and some components of the salad dressing...and a dab of butter. We always make enough salad so that we can also have it for breakfast, usually with a few eggs or fried potatoes on top. We like to mix it up a lot by adding things like salmon, sauerkraut, various fruits, berries, nuts and surprisingly find that this meal not only suites us nutritionally but, with continuously differing combinations, still enthralls us with its menagerie of flavors. In the summer, when more fresh produce is available from our garden, we might have over 40 different ingredients in each salad, that's when it really becomes fun, and things like fresh berries can make any salad delicious.


In thinking about the fact that we eat a similar type of salad every night and most mornings (we normally don't eat lunch) close to 365 days a year that is one whole heck of a lot of vegetables and greens that we need to not only grow but also store and preserve. All of these same foods comprise a good percentage of our chickens diet as well, especially in the winter. Simple food for simple people.

The puppy? Yesterday, after visiting with Mrs. H's parents we stopped on our way back home to take Rowdy for a walk along a trail next to the river and were soon beset upon by a troop of Catholic school girls led by a friendly young nun who upon seeing our little angel-eyed puppy could not resist but to ask if her girls could pet him. Rowdy was in heaven as each girl patted his head and told him what precious little puppy he was. Were he a more vocal dog I'm sure he would have squealed in delight.:)

Here Comes Rowdy...

After literally years of debate and procrastination on my part I finally gave in to the demands of the majority and agreed to welcome a new member into our family...enter Rowdy. It's not that I don't like dogs but my previous two were so special and the last one lived so very long, 17 years, that I was not quite ready...commitment issues. But now, as they say, in for a penny in for a pound.

Meet Rowdy, a very quiet yet rambunctious 10 week old Kelpie/Border Collie mix who is sure to keep us on our toes and, if trained properly, will be a faithful companion and protector for us and especially the grandson.

His very first night was spent sleeping with the grandson on the living room floor...not a peep or a boo out of either of them that night. No more nights outdoors for this little guy.


Rowdy has quite the appetite, he eats, and eats, and eats some more.

The boy and him are inseparable...literally.

I'm not exactly sure what his living conditions were but Rowdy was a real stinker when we got him...he enjoyed his bath. We are still working on getting the smell out.

A Basement Full of Garden

This time of year our basement resembles a strange nocturnal garden full of potted plants whose foliage we rely on to help sustain us through the winter months. Just before the ground started to freeze this fall we potted up Belgian & Batavian endive, parsley, Swiss chard, celery, red sorrel, and other greens. We are even experimenting with rhubarb, arugula, and various lettuces this year. Some of these (not the Belgian endive) we leave outside, after potting, for as long as possible so they can more easily adjust, via new root growth, to their enclosures and receive the last few rays of sunlight before entering the gloom of our root cellar/basement for the winter.

Most of these plants are brought upstairs into the light a few at a time starting in January to help supplement our daily salads. This is especially helpful on days that the weather or time prevents us from gathering greens from under our row covers. This week finds the plastic on all of our covered rows firmly secured to the ground by a thick layer of ice making it difficult to remove the covers without tearing them and was a good reminder that I needed to start encouraging growth from our potted plants. Within a week of sitting next to a somewhat sunny windowsill the plants begin to quickly green up and grow. Many of them can be cut numerous times before needing to be replaced.

While our Belgian endive roots were much smaller this year due to the fact that I did not thin them properly (again) we have simply stuffed more into each container enjoying the leaves all the same. The endive does not produce a very good second crop after the first cutting but the roots can then be used for coffee, tea, or roasted chicory chips.

Belgian endive beginning to put out new shoots, they will become very bitter once subjected to sunlight but possibly more nutritious.

This Batavian endive's blanched color will transform to dark green after being exposed to light for a few days.

Parsley is an excellent cut and come again crop that not only thrives in the basement but outside under our row covers as well. It seems to maintain it's greenness long after the other plants have begun to pale in the darkness. I will be growing Hamburg, a root parsley, this year and think/hope it might also perform well in this unnatural environment.

They don't look like much now but I just brought these plants upstairs and trimmed all the bad leaves off, they should start growing soon.

While all but the smallest leaves of the Swiss chard outside in our covered rows have finally succumbed to the weather and turned to mush after numerous freeze and thaw cycles those in our cellar live on. The potting up of Swiss chard is a little new to us in that we have only been experimenting with the forcing of this plant for a couple years. I have noticed that the more mature chard with a bigger root system hold out much better than the younger plants and will provide us with at least a few good cut and re-grow cycles before they are spent and begin to focus on bolting to seed.

I left a few of the smaller leaves on the chard but cut most of them back to compensate for any root damage caused during the potting process. After two months in the dark they are still maintaining their color pretty well.

Our hybrid Utah celery performs much better in the basement garden than its open pollinated kin Giant Red whose stalks tend to be more hollow and can get a little tough as the months progress. We find the new smaller shoots are best off this variety whereas the Utah's bigger shoots are better able to maintain a firm crunchy texture. This year I will be growing three new types of open pollinated celery in the garden in hopes of finding more varieties for winter forcing. I would like to try Safir, Par-Cel, and Ventura. That said, I still love my wild and temperamental Giant Red celery because of its cold hardiness and unusually strong flavor and will probably always save a spot for it in the garden.

We do not normally bring our celery upstairs due to the size of the containers and simply harvest shoots as we need them directly from the root cellar where they continue to put out new, albeit pale, growth.


Occasionally we separate a few of our more gnarly less palatable kohlrabi to bring upstairs and after being subjected to sunlight will harvest the greens. New shoots will then form at various places on this bulbous vegetable's "stem" allowing for numerous harvests. When you use a beet or kohlrabi in this manner the vegetable itself will become tough but can still be used as a food source for animals. Although I did experiment with beets and found that they were still pretty edible if used directly after the first forced growth had been harvested. The bigger the root or bulb vegetable the bigger the greens.

To control this leafy growth on my "good" kohlrabi, the ones whose thick stems I wish to eat, I will either keep them in a cooler part of the basement or am simply diligent in pinching back any growth before it takes hold, much the same as with my potatoes and carrots in the early spring when the cellar begins to warm a bit.

Arugula and the "frilly lettuces" as I like to call them seem to be holding up pretty well, time will tell the outcome of these and decide whether they are worthy of the indoor garden. Although, so far, I have been surprised at how long these lettuces have retained their green color in the gloom of our root cellar. I only potted up thirty 8" pots of the lettuce and arugula for this experiment, but could do many more next fall if we are pleased with the results. My fear is that they will immediately bolt once introduced to a warmer environment...I shall soon find out.


Lest I forget to mention them we also force, to some degree, turnips (the ugly ones), onions, dandelions, and my favorite forced veggie...beets. Tending hundreds of potted plants in ones basement may seem like quite the ridiculous chore but if it keeps me out of the grocery store I am more than game for the task. With any luck, this basement garden alone will provide us with a couple large salads every week during our most challenging months. Gardening never really ends around here it just takes on different, sometimes unusual, forms.

For more of my scribblings on forcing check out last January's post Forced To Provide.