Sensible Preppers

December was cold and snowy - seems like all we did was plow, shovel and stay home. January and most of February were mild, light jacket weather, and most of that snow disappeared into the ground leaving behind a treacherous coating of ice. And now (Feb. 18), here we are, once again buried in snow. Nevertheless, the warm weather days, along with the imminent arrival of March and ever lengthening daylight hours, made my mind wander toward gardening. This year I plan to have a much smaller garden, mostly for fresh eating and root crops that store without processing. Why? Reason one, I’m slowing down, an effect of living on the planet for 8 decades. Reason two, I’ve taken stock of the canned goods in my cellar. It’s full! Additions of most not required. There’s not much point in doing all that work just to throw it in the compost later.

How old is too old for home canned foods? I found a good on-line article that answers that question, and consequently reaffirms my beliefs on the subject.

(Canning 101: How Long do Home Canned Foods Really Last? January 28, 2015, updated on July 23, 2025, by Marisa McClellan.) Home canned foods are best tasting in the first year, but continue to be good to eat many years more. Those of you who have bought into the idea of tossing foods on their “best before date” will likely cringe when they read this, but I’m still here and I’ve been eating my own home canned foods for 50 years with this motto - if it’s sealed, not moldy or discolored and smells good, well it’s good! Having said that I still draw the line at about 5 or 6 years and tend to go through my stock of canned goods every year to root out any ancient jars hiding in dark corners. One thing I read in the above article that makes good sense, bringing to mind some of my less than tasty or soggy pickles - “sometimes people try new recipes and then determine later on that they just don’t like them (not every recipe is for every person). If you made something and you just don’t like it, either give those jars away to someone who will appreciate it or dump the jars. There’s no reason to torture yourself with something you just don’t like.”

Then there’s the frozen veggies. According to Google University, frozen vegetables are safe to eat indefinitely if kept frozen, but quality begins to decline after about one year (freezer burn, tougher texture, flavor loss). Having limited freezer space I only freeze peas (better flavor) so, for me, no culling required.

Gardeners who preserve their vegetables are a bit like small time preppers. They may not be as extreme as those who fear imminent war or worldwide economic collapse, build bunkers and store massive amounts of dried beans, grains, ammunition etc., but still, we tend to put up enough vegetables to last several years. If you live a fair distance from a reasonable sized town being prepared only makes sense. You have to stock up, after all there’s no store just around the corner to provide you with that missing recipe ingredient. I usually keep a second one of nearly everything that won’t spoil. You never know what may lie ahead. Today’s cockeyed weather is affecting all kinds of crops. Our economy is being manipulated by tariffs. We may find ourselves paying astronomical prices for some things, others we may not be able to obtain at all. So I’ll keep on being prepared. This year though I’m going to grow less of many and none of some. I’m thinking a full row of flowers would be beautiful down the center of my garden. The bees would love it!

North of 54

mltipton.blogspot.com, 

https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, 

February 18, 2026

Out Beyond the Corn

Out Beyond the Corn

We get information in many different ways - through reading, formal schooling, lectures, mentorship, parents and friends, digital media, observation, practice, internships, apprenticeships, trying and failing and trying again.

When we were kids in school we occasionally got to go on field trips - to see for ourselves some place our teachers hoped would educate us in a more direct manner than books or films. These excursions were not easy to arrange. Parental permission, transportation, guides, instructors, chaperones and financing were all required. But field trips were a great break from the same old classroom routine and helped to broaden our horizons.

Mass media tells us that much of our world is in turmoil - disastrous weather, disastrous politics, failing economies, racial and religious tensions, genocides, drug wars - the list goes on. We all seem to have an opinion on the what’s, where’s and why’s of world happenings and we hold these opinions dearly, not budging when we run into someone who doesn’t see things our way. Most of us form our opinions while sitting comfortably at home in our bubble, watching TV or scrolling through the net. We passively observe life and assume we’re fairly well informed. Are we? Television portrays the American Dream as being everyone’s normal. Our social media feed provides us with sites and ads that fuel our desires and beliefs. Online games, TV shows and movies desensitize us to violence. News programs fill us with sensational broadcasts strewn with prejudicial words that colour our feelings - totalitarian regime instead of government, terrorist instead of protestor, illegal immigrant, left wing extremist, merciless crackdown, state controlled media, etc… Unbiased investigative journalism has taken a hit in the 21st century. 

An old friend of mine once told me that she loves it out here in our neck of the woods and really hopes that one day her children will choose to stay here. But, she said, I want them to go out beyond the corn, to have the opportunity to see what’s out there, to make their choice from a place of knowledge. Though not often practical, it would be nice if we could all go on field trips, beyond our normal, beyond our biases and beliefs, and discover our world from direct experience. 

They say history repeats itself. It does seem like powerful and greedy people keep rising out of the muck to forcefully take control over those who exercise empathy and good will. Our leaders would do well to study history, an awareness of past grievances can be useful when trying to negotiate solutions to current conflicts. 

I am discombobulated trying to wade in the mire of half truths. Makes me want to disengage at a time when it’s probably important to engage. For now I plan to remain in my bubble awhile and bury my head in a novel. It states quite clearly in the first few pages - “This book is a work of fiction.” It’s not a real book though. It has no pages.

North of 54

mltipton.blogspot.com, 

https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, 

January 19, 2026

‘Tis the Season

‘Tis the Season

Winter more or less starts in November but bounces back into Autumn some days. Today (November 12) there’s a warm breeze melting the remaining bit of snow and it feels more like Spring. There’s no getting around it though, daylight is shrinking and longer nights are slowly dominating the skies. In no time the winter solstice will arrive and soon Christmas will be upon us with 2026 arriving almost by surprise.

I don’t often go out after dark so I miss seeing many of nature’s night sky paintings, but last night the northern lights domed the entire sky in colours so beautiful I stood out in our yard in awe. Another plus for living in the north. Before long the snow will come and stay, dropping a blanket of quietness and turning the landscape black, white, and grey - soft yet harsh. Winter can be lovely if you don’t have to go to battle with it, but it seems like things are bound to break down no matter how well prepared you think you are.

Winding down from the gardening season I find myself some days with no project to complete. It’s kind of nice after a busy summer and autumn to relax with not much to do before Christmas baking, shopping and ornament making begins to fill the days. Unable to sit and do nothing day after day though, I started thinking about soup, a winter comfort I like to have available when it’s chilly outside. I really like the idea of having a perpetual soup pot on the hearth but have a feeling modern cooking guides would frown on the practice. Canning soup is the next best thing. I usually make a giant pot on the kitchen wood stove (its continuous even heat works like a non-electric slow cooker) then I pressure can what’s left so we don’t have to eat it for 5 days straight. Today I made hamburger minestrone.

Wishing you a wonderful Yuletide filled with family's and friends, hearty soups, eggnog and Christmas cake, turkey and dressing, 

hot chocolate and cookies, and many gifts of love.

Leave It to Beavers

 Leaves It to Beavers

Beavers are semi-aquatic animals that have the reputation of being busy little critters (some would say a darn nuisance). Their big teeth never stop growing and would become quite a problem if not continually worn down by chipping away at trees. They build dams along waterways to create ponds, give them better access to their food sources, erect their homes safely away from predators, and store their winter food supply. 

Humans, however, don’t always appreciate their work. A beaver pond, especially one that hasn’t been long established, can look like a chaotic mess of giant pick-up sticks. It seems there’s no rhyme or reason for the direction of tree fall and the dammed up water sometimes floods roadways or gobbles up land a farmer would prefer to use for pasture or crops. But a beaver pond has an important place in nature. It provides habitat for numerous plant and animal species and plays a valuable role in wetland preservation. 

When we moved to Lone Pine our quarter section was heavily treed. There were a few acres in hay that had been maintained by the previous owner’s relatives, but pretty well all other remnants of human habitation were swallowed by the forest. We built our home on a small open piece of fairly level land where we dug up a few rotten boards indicating that it had once been occupied by a building of some sort. 

At that time you could barely see the beaver pond through the trees. We were very glad it existed though. For ten years it was our only source of water.

Eventually we jumped into the 20th century, dug a well and brought water and solar electricity into the house. We cleared a barn yard, made a lawn and garden, planted some apple trees and berries. Through the years the beaver pond went through many changes but has always been an asset, providing us with water for our livestock, our garden and our bees. In the past two years we’ve gotten all our firewood thanks to beaver activity. They not only fell trees for us, they removed all the branches and bark (while also destroying a few fence panels)!

Did we ever become overwhelmed by beaver activity? We did a time or two get someone to “thin the herd” (we may be at that point again after two beautiful trees dropped into our yard last week) and my husband tried his hand at stretching beaver skins. We tried some beaver meat but didn’t become fond of it. We have attempted to curb their zealousness by wrapping chicken wire around the trees we want to remain standing. I’m quite sure there wouldn’t be a single one left had we not done that. 

We have lived beside this beaver pond for over 50 years and enjoyed watching the progress of nature. We feel it is a privilege to live alongside this developing ecosystem with all it’s flora and fauna (beaver, muskrats, ducks, loons, geese, moose, an occasional swan, red winged blackbirds, water lilies, cattails, floating islands…). We consider our watershed and beaver pond to be a precious resource. As for management, we’ve mainly left it to the beavers.

North of 54

mltipton.blogspot.com, 

https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, 

October 19, 2025

Summer’s End

Summer’s End

A light frost on the first day of Autumn - it’s as if nature has been told to follow the calendar! The garden has been put to bed. In the case of tomatoes that is literally true since the green ones lie covered and ripening under a blanket on the bed in our spare room. Just a few more projects and we can switch to keeping the wood fire burning and slowly consuming the fruits of our labour. I love autumn, still warm, awesomely beautiful, and for me, much more relaxing - the calm before the winter storms. I wouldn’t like to live in a place where the seasons run together with little change in weather. Here each season has its specialty, its own feel, its own joys, its own tasks. I welcome each one’s arrival and departure with equal pleasure.

The world continues to spin somewhat out of alignment. Opinions are so polarized these days, held so strongly that most folks seem unable to consider the possibility that their own beliefs could ever have a faulty base - inaccurate observation, lack of knowledge, insufficient or faulty information, propaganda. The global information highway ensures that we can always find print media, a newscast, a podcast, an official or a spokesperson that will support with true conviction any view anyone holds dear. But we are all susceptible to whatever our “trusted source” tells us, and all sources are biased. Even your own observations are biased because you see the world through your own upbringing, your culture, your education, your belief system. We end up hating whole groups of people, even nations, because someone says we should. All conflicts cannot be eliminated, some are even necessary. We are mere pawns in the larger ones but smaller differences can sometimes be settled, and others can be ignored. We are not all the same. Diversity is not a dirty word. And, though we may think so, we are not always right (even me).

Happy equinox! 

Summer

 Summer

Heading down the driveway on my morning dog walk, the sky grey with a misty drizzle of rain so light it almost wasn’t there, the air fresh and cool, my mind wandered to the time many years ago when my friend and her Mom came over to help pick mushrooms. I had no clue which mushrooms were edible so I definitely needed and appreciated a guide. We tromped all over the bush picking the small ones, the larger ones tended to be wormy they said. Since we picked way more than needed in one sitting I decided to dry them, strung them up like popcorn on a Christmas tree and hung them up in our south kitchen window. Slowly they shrunk, giving their moisture up to the sky, filling the kitchen with a musky odour while dropping a surprise by-product on the windowsill below - crunchy desiccated worm carcasses! So I got out my whisk broom, scooped the bodies up and deposited them in the trash, put the now worm free mushrooms into jars to use in soups, and never really got around to picking mushrooms again. 

In the “the good old days”, when our farm was mainly bush, when I was young and had no garden yet, and before we had goats and sheep, I spent hours harvesting berries and tea leaves from the bush. I carried my wee son on my tummy or on my back in his green Snuglie pack. It was like a turtle shell, you could barely see him. I would lay my little turtle on a blanket for a nap and pick blueberries. Highbush cranberries drew me to their bounty by releasing their unique scent. I picked raspberries, wild strawberries, some gooseberries and hazelnuts. There was peppermint below the beaver dam and Labrador tea in the muskeg to the south. Gathering this wild bounty was a mixed pleasure. In those days there were so many more bugs than there are now. I remember being literally chased out of the bush by masses of tiny flies and mosquitoes. Then for me, with my totally undeveloped sense of direction, there was always the possibility of getting lost. Since it was just baby and me I used to mark my trail with bits of brilliant orange tape to ease my fear. I never really thought about bears much except for making sure I was noisy by singing and “conversing with my companion.

But times change, priorities change, and after 50 years of occupancy our little plot of land has evolved to become fairly “civilized “. Now we garden and cut grass, lots of grass since we no longer have sheep to keep it under control. I rarely harvest wild berries. The tame raspberries this year were incredibly abundant, filling my freezer until I had to juice and can many pounds of them to make room for half a pig. The peas grew well; the tomatoes, to date, have produced nothing but leaves. The cucumbers planted in the corn row may produce, their leaves are huge and they’ve got lots of flowers and some cukes forming. They are climbing the corn stalks but it’s crowded in there, hard to see what’s going on. I think next year I’ll plant them in sunflowers instead - fewer low leaves. The corn is tall, tasseled with cobs forming. All in all it’s been another good summer with plenty of rain. It’s been an action packed season with many social gatherings and winter preparations. Now I look forward to autumn when all the summer work is done and I can walk my dogs down our yellow “brick” (fallen leaves) road.

The Promise of Spring

The Promise of Spring

I’ve never ever planted my garden before the May long weekend! But this year I was lured by the good weather to plant early - between the 11th and the 13th. Also, because I’ve had a three year problem with peas dying before producing, I decided to listen to the grapevine which told me to plant peas early. Apparently they don’t like the heat and even enjoy a little chilly weather. Once the peas and onion sets were in the ground I just kept on going and going and before I knew it the whole garden was planted, even corn, something I’ve not tried for probably 20 years. Good grief, all those muscles I didn’t use all winter sure kicked up a fuss! I planted myself on my recliner for hours after that marathon.

I’ve always heard that some folks plant by the moon. Remembering the moon was large and bright in the sky during my planting spree I decided to find out what that was all about and asked my usual source. The Net said that the full moon in May 2025 was on the 12th and that May’s full moon is called the Flower Moon. According to some, this is exactly the perfect time for planting seeds. Who knows, I may have the best garden ever!

Gardening advice can be confusing. Plant hardiness zones, soil types, soil temperature, expected date of last (and first) frost, actual frost dates, sun and shade, companion plants…What is best? Always learning, always experimenting. This year I discovered a back saving seed planting method. You use a long pipe, place the end where you want the seed to go and drop the seed down it, wiggle it a bit to make sure the seed is covered and just like - done. No bending over. Of course the wee tiny seeds like carrots are another matter altogether. In past years I have always attempted to spread my carrot seeds thinner by mixing them with dried used coffee grounds and broadcasting them in wide rows. Still they came up like hair on a dog’s back. This year I purchased pink coated carrot seed that has size and visibility in its favour in hopes of avoiding that backbreaking carrot thinning process.

It’s now the 19th. Our crab apple tree is almost fully bloomed so hopefully potential apples will have a chance. Last year it bloomed early and there were no bees around to pollinate before a pounding rainstorm beat the blossoms to the ground. Our apple crop barely filled an ice cream pail. If we get lots of apples this year I plan to jar them whole in quarts with honey syrup. They are yummy and it’s an easy way to deal with lots of apples. Then there’s apple butter, apple crisp, apple sauce, apple juice…. Yum. 

Our honeyberries (Haskap) are early bloomers and have been humming for quite awhile with mostly bumblebees. Before long flocks of birds will devour the easy to pick berries leaving us humans to crawl around scavenging the ones near the ground. But they’re heavy producers, enough for everyone. The raspberries, after three back breaking days, are now free of last year’s canes and the rhubarb has grown about 10 inches since I started writing this blog!

Speaking of bees, neither of our hives survived the winter. We don’t know why. There was lots of honey still in the hives so they didn’t starve. Keeping bees over our harsh winters requires good insulation, ventilation, plenty of honey left in the hive and certain amount of luck. Most indigenous bees winter underground and are better equipped to withstand those extended periods of -40 Alberta blesses us with. We put our name on a waiting list and were able to purchase two packs of bees from the Alberta Honey Cooperative (Bee Maid). Our new New Zealand bees have settled in and are happily buzzing around and gathering pollen. Here’s hoping they do well. Bee keeping is a great, and often expensive, hobby. Sometimes we wonder if we should continue on, but we love honey, and we make a fine mead from it. 

Despite successes and failures there’s just something addictive and rewarding about growing and preserving your own food. Spring makes us a promise - put in the work and you will be blessed with healthful food to enjoy at your table year round. Other factors sometimes enter the picture attempting to make a liar out of Spring, but she, and we, try to do our best.