Utilizing Food Waste on the Homestead

      The kids have been driving me crazy lately with what they will eat and what they won't eat. Literally worsened by the idea that their other family just gives them whatever they want, even going so far as to leave the house to drive to get takeout for them. Obviously I am not a fan of this kind of thing, nor am I a fan of encouraging picky eating. So I decided in my frustration to just start cooking whatever I want for myself, and if they don't like it then they can make themselves sandwiches. Mmm... sandwiches.

     The high prices of foods have also changed my life. I used to shop at the good grocery store that had everything, now I shop at two stores to save money, Walmart and Sav a Lot. I particularly enjoy how Sav a Lot has a huge Latin section with dried peppers, tortillas, and many other staples being really inexpensive. One day at Sav a Lot the freezer section had a big bag of frozen whole tilapia, very cheap. Of course, I knew that I wasn't going to get much usable meat from those little fishes, but it was kind of an experiment too, as I wanted to see if the cats would dig in. 

     I got the fish home and defrosted them, the my oldest saw them in the fridge. She, of course, hates me and everything about my life as she is a teeny ager right now. She looked at me like I was absolutely crazy when she found the fish. But then she offered to do the gutting and skinning which she wasn't too bad at. It turns out you have to have a really good knife for skinning, which I have since picked up from Walmart for a few dollars. 

     So the skin and heads and tails and fins all went into a bowl for the cats. Another thing I learned from this experiment is that my male cat who loves ham, sliced turkey, and cat treats will not eat fresh fish; my female cat who loves ham and bits of chicken, will eat fresh fish. She will only eat three small bites before she is full though. I should retry this picky eating with two hungry cats who have had an empty food dish for a few hours.  🤔

     I put the rest of the fish pieces outside for the ducks to eat, which they quite enjoyed. And I learned that the ducks love fish but they prefer it to be cut into bite sized pieces. The heads, which I had not cut up, stayed in the dish for a while before they disappeared into the compost. I don't think they ever did get eaten. But the fins and tail and spine all got eaten.

      So now I deliberately buy foods that have waste so I can feed it to the ducks or rabbits. For example, did you know ducks like to eat shrimp peels and tails? Who knew. And the rabbits absolutely love banana peels, orange rinds, and apple cores. These guys turn waste foods into compost.

Rabbit Forage in Florida

      I get quite a few questions from people asking me what I feed my rabbits, especially after they find out that I feed them almost completely out of my yard. 

     Keep in mind that I live in the deep deep south on the west side of Florida. Most of the year I have some kind of green stuff to give them, even if it is just grass. 

     I don't knowingly give them plants that I know to be toxic, like pokeweed, poinsettia, amaryllis, ferns, cherry laurel, 4 o'clock, croton, and crinum, though I do have those in my yard.

Grasses

     When I feed grass, I always try to offer a higher protein feed with it, like my go-to water hyacinth, which I like to refer to as the alfalfa of the South. 

     - Bahia grass

     - Papyrus

     - Elephant grass, also called Napier grass

     - Sedge

     - Crabgrass

Herbs

     Rabbits can eat everything we can eat and more. These plants are seasonal, and they may have a whole bunch of one plant on one day and then a whole bunch of another plant the next day. They have no digestive issues, despite what you might read online when it comes to varying up diets.

     - Mulberry

     - Pear

     - Hibiscus including Chinese and Turks Cap

     - Roses including thorns

     - Grape leaves

     - American Beautyberry

     - Loquat

     - Gingers, including False Cardamom, Shell, and Shampooo

     - Cannas

     - Perennial Peanut

     - Daisies, especially Spanish Needle

     - Tradescantia species, including Spiderwort, Purple Heart, and Small Leaved Tradescantia

     - Sages, including Tropical Sage and Swamp Sage

     - Hoja Santa

     - Copperleaf

     - Spanish Bayonet

     - Citrus anything including Lemon with thorns, Tangerines

     - Sprouted Dent Corn

Other stuff 

     There are a few plants that they can eat, but maybe they don't like so much. These are what they eat last or not at all.

     - Sago Palm

     - African Honeysuckle

     - Agave

     - Sycamore leaves in the fall

     They get some human food too. My family once asked me why I dont have a compost bin. The reason is because the rabbits eat most human foods, but I don't feed them meat or oily things, not that I have a lot of that around to throw away. 

     - Apple cores 

     - Pear cores

     - Banana peels

     - Orange and Lemon peels

     - Limp fennel

     - Basil,  Cilantro, and herbs that have been forgotten 

     - Pepper tops with seeds

     - Uneaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

     - Dry or weird bread

     - Leftover plain popcorn

There's Something Going On With The Economy

      The other day I was at a big box store on the west side of the adjacent county, which is where I work now. And I was looking to see if they had jalapeño or red pepper jelly, which is wayyy better than normal jelly for your great American traditional sandwich, the peanut butter and jelly. Or as my kiddo said when she was little, the belly jelly sandwich.

     The store did have pepper jelly, but it was oddly sold out of normal flavors of jelly, like your standard grape and strawberry. Even gone was my other favorite, blackberry. Apple butter was gone. Oddly apricot and mint were there. And hot pepper.

     Most of the peanut butter was also sold out, but the more expensive brands were there, plus the few jars of store brand. Not a jif in sight.

     Then I noticed that all the store brand cheap bread was bought out, but there was plenty of Nature's Own, now $4 a bag. And plenty of that disgusting Sara Lee bread.

     I'm not sure if it's a reflection of our economy or the high homelessness on that side of the county. Or both. 

Grapple Part 1

 

     Having noticed that the organic apple juice that I have been occasionally buying is nonexistant in the grocery stores right now, I decided to try the Welch's grape juice concentrate method of making homemade wine. I remember years ago when I first started learning about homebrewing that you could make a subpar wine this way, but I also remember reading from a homebrewing book that you couldn't ferment any juice with ascorbic acid in it because that preservative inhibits yeast formation. So, I never did try it until now.

     There is a homebrewing store near my house but I have never been in it. One time I wanted to pop in and see what they offered but the woman running the store made me stand out in the heat with the kids for what seemed like minutes while she secured her yappy dog. So I turned around and left. After I tied everyone into their car seats she came to my window and apologized for having to secure her therapy dog. 

     This blend of grapple is seven juice concentrates of grape and one gallon of organic apple. I figure even if the grape doesn't ferment it will still taste pretty good.

     It's the most active ferment I have ever made, with bubbles rising and the airlock pinging on day one. I even took a video. The glass of the carboy is not very clear so forgive the quality.

Imitation Starbucks Egg Bites

• 3 cups egg whites or 8 large eggs
• 1 cup cottage cheese
• 1/2 cup roasted red peppers, diced
• 1 cup spinach, finely chopped
• 1 cup monterey jack or cheddar cheese, shredded

Blend the eggs and cottage cheese together, then add this and the rest of the ingredients to the greased silicone molds. Bake at 325 for one hour or until egg whites are set.

     While I was making this recipe I realized that I no longer had any muffin tins for some reason. So I had to use the use the silicone molds, and cook and eat the rest of the mix immediately, which wasn't bad at all. I didn't have any spinach or peppers, so mine were just duck eggs, cottage cheese, and shredded cheese. And it was surprisingly good.

Would the pet cats eat baby rabbits if they were hungry?

     With the current inflation rate being predicted to be at 15%, I can't help but question my spending habits. I'm trying not to have a mentality of scarcity, as I am happily employed, but I have been rethinking all of my spending in light of my long term goals, which are to hopefully retire early, preferably away from the city, and sell plants. And grow my own food of course.

     I used to have pet parrots, and they were wonderful, but expensive and hard to keep up the maintenance with. Now I have pet ducks, which surprisingly, are providing quite a bit of eggs, which I have been enjoying. They are paying for themselves. But they require quite a bit of maintenance as they need their water to be clean.

     And I started breeding the rabbits again, I need to use their manure creating abilities to help me with the garden. I also thought that they could be eaten at some point, but now that they are small, I wonder if they could be cat food. Or if I could make baby rabbits to create cat food.

     What would you do if you couldn't buy cat or dog food anymore? Or if you had to choose between nutritious food for you and good pet food for the animals? I suspect that a lot more people would stop buying cat and dog food and start giving them people food. Or perhaps baby rabbits and duck eggs?

Farming While Female

     Have been having a problem with Isabellas rabbit kits escaping the big cages, which I had thought were secured with hardware cloth and chicken wire. Luckily for me, lawnmower 1 and 2 came back several times to their moms cage, no doubt because they realized they needed her milk.

     Stopped into a big box hardware store not near my house, and wandered around for a while trying to find hand shears, which I never did find, and also vinyl covered hardware cloth, which I absolutely need to fight the baby rabbit escaping problem. I had just previously bought a new dog crate to use as a rabbit tractor from rural king, where everything is easy to find. Except buckets.

     Wandered around. Checked the Fencing section. Checked the wood section. Checked out every section.  Then finally decided to ask employee, who happened to be male. 

     "I'm looking for hardware cloth, preferably 1 cm by 1 cm, it's like a mesh, preferably vinyl coated, where is that on this store?"

     Him, "Hmm. Not really sure, Trish do you know?" He asked as he stopped another employee. 

     So I described it again, and she said that the only cloth they carried was painter's drop cloth on the painting.

     When I realizes how north this conversation was going, finally I (probably) literally rolled my eyes and said, "It's for the chicken coop."      (I don't even have chickens.)

     He pointed directly at one of the walls and said, "The chicken coop wire is right there."

     When I made it over there, the hardware cloth was there, and I did find the vinyl coated stuff behind the other stuff. And it was called hardware cloth, I wasn't speaking a foreign language or using butter knife house repair tool language.

Pond plant question

 

Hi. I’m in Riverview. I have a small pond 4’x4’, with waterfall. Looking to get some plants for it. Can’t find anywhere. Lily, hyacinth, etc. Havecsny suggestions? Thanks, Matt iy, hyacinth, etc. , Matt

Welcome to the world of pond plantings! I have several large and small ponds here at my house in spring hill, the taro in the picture I originally purchased from a vendor at one of the USF botanical gardens spring or fall events. It was tucked in behind stuff and very overlooked. My whole garden theme is permaculture and edible, and of course it is hard to find and grow most of those plants well. We can feed Florida with water plants if people were just open minded.

I have this black Taro and the regular large elephant ears, and papyrus. I also have water hyacinth, which I eat, the rabbits eat, and the ducks I got this spring love to eat. I bought them originally online, possibly because you aren't allowed to sell it here due to it invading local waterways (it is a problem at some state parks south of here.) I sell it on Etsy here and can ship it to you.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1206813854/water-hyacinth-edible-floating-plant?ref=listings_manager_grid

And grow it in all of my ponds, none of which have waterfalls or circulation.

One of my other favorite pond plants is cannas, of which the native variety has yellow flowers. The leaves and corms are edible.

I have experimented with azolla and water cress, neither of which worked out for my big pond, possibly due to frog predation or heat stress. I use goldfish as my mosquito control in the two larger ponds and nothing or bt dunks in the smaller ones like in the picture.

But you asked where to get these things. Hmm.. there was a pond place I liked very much in Dunedin, it is small but has a lot of different (expensive) lilies, which I am not as interested in. You're in Riverview so you're not far from Tampa Pinellas and Sarasota, maybe you could find the local pond shops and let me know! As far as edible plants, there is a very nice nursery in Howie in the hills I quite enjoy called A Natural Farm. And I'm always scoping the sales at any botanical gardens I stop at, like nature coast botanical gardens by me and boo tower gardens near Orlando.

Huh. Riverview. You can grow avocado and sugarcane there. The cannas might not even freeze in the winter there. I'm jealous.

Muscadine Grapes

      One grapevine planted several years ago now yields more grapes than I can ever harvest. This year I was able to reach four quarts of grapes for eating. They are sweet and crunchy. You know they are ready to harvest when the grapes are soft and springy, if they feel hard then they need more time on the vine. They seem to last quite a while in the refrigerator. Yes Muscadine grapes have seeds in them unless you are able to get a variety without seeds. 

Pretentious Flower

      It must think it's hot stuff being the biggest only flower blooming in the entire neighborhood. Also pretty much every plant in this picture I would be willing to part with.