A month later in a class on bread making the teacher said, "Whatever you do... Don't buy THEIR wheat. Buy OURS instead. Ours has a lower moisture content (fewer chances of bug infestations) and a higher protein content (higher loaves). So, since America's heartland is now growing corn for fuel instead of wheat, I panicked and ordered their 'golden wheat'.

When this wheat arrived I was disappointed because it came in paper bags instead of white buckets. Deciding my three young married families living nearby would be so grateful to have me drive up with a carload of wheat for each of them I divided it among the three. Two of them have mouse proof food storage areas in their basements. The third, however, is living in the new homes in western Springville where they do not have basements because of the high water table. All the new building going on in western Springville has rudely displaced the fieldmouse population and now all these darling little mice have found refuge in our son's garage where they happily gnaw through the paper bags and feast gratefully on his wheat.

I then realized that if a person calls Walton Feed in Idaho at 208-847-0465 and give your credit card number a truck will soon appear at your very door delivering all the wheat of ANY COLOR anyone could ever possibly wish and ALREADY PACKED IN WHITE BUCKETS. They drive a truck down to Utah County about twice a week anyway because they supply most of the stores around here selling wheat to the public and it is easy for them to swing by a private home if you order enough. I DID order enough because I have ten children and seven spouses and twenty grandchildren and well... one just never knows...

My new wheat is of the Golden Prairie variety and is FANTASTIC !

And yet cheaper than anywhere else !!!

Last month's Church News reported that BYU Scientists appealed to LDS folks everywhere to send in samples of all their stored foods for scientific analysis. The BYU scientists were surprised to learn that stored foods almost no matter what they were... or when they were purchased... were still good... !!!!!

It is now realized that stored foods are good and last longer than anyone previously thought. Wheat, as you know, is one of those foods with a VERY long shelf life. It is even said and proven that wheat found in the Egyptian pyramids will still sprout.

Being born and raised in California I have never been able to bake a decent loaf of bread. Once we were each asked to bake bread and take loaves to our neighbors. I did this. (It was 1974). One neighbor lady came over about six months later and said she had finally been able to get my loaf removed from the pan. She was returning the pan. That was the last time she ever spoke to me.

After moving to Utah, the land of "all-ladies-baking-beautiful-bread-every-week" and learning from all the wonderful free classes offered here and there and especially at the Bosch Kitchen Center I can now make ABSOLUTELY MAGNIFICENT HIGH AND LIGHT 100% WHOLE WHEAT BREAD !!!! I am including the recipe.

This year's Canadian Wheat Crop is in trouble. China's wheat crops were ruined by the worst mega-snow-storm they have had in 50 years. The sky could be falling.. Or not.

But, if you lay in your wheat now... at least you will be ready.

When Prophet Kimball died, this stopped! Today in the national surveys by gardening businesses. Utah is actually CLOSE TO THE BOTTOM of all states in the entire country for families having producing gardens. YIKES !!!

You must occasionally wonder if one day we may all need to return to growing this or that. Not all of us in this ward have yards. That's OK. Try your basement or your garage. You can grow plenty right there.

At Cook's Gardens they sell a 5 inch wide cardboard box about 3' by 3' which says 'greenhouse enclosed'. When you open the box, be careful! Out will explode an expanding greenhouse and it will set itself up perfectly while you just get out of the way. This is sort of like the kids' play tunnels which also pop out of a box suddenly filling your family room. My pop-up greenhouse is in our garage. It is 6 feet wide and 6 feet deep and 6 feet high. It is made of translucent heavy duty plastic and has a heavy duty zippered door. I bought plastic storage shelving from Home Depot. Duane then attached two 4' long shop lights under each shelf. Plants need 2 shop lights per shelf. Each 4' long shop light needs 2 long bulbs for a total of 4 long bulbs per shelf. Plug these lights into one of those computer strips of plugs and put the whole on a timer. You then have enough heat from the lights to keep the garage greenhouse warm enough even on bitterly cold days. Watering twice a week is plenty.

As you prepare your seed containers. In peat pellets or flats or whatever, put the little containers in cheap cookie sheets from Target: $3.17 per cookie sheet. This is so that when you water your seed containers. if the water should spill. The water won't go down onto the shop light below the shelf you are watering. (Even though the top of the shop lights do seem to shed water. I know this because I ALWAYS spill water and it is fine.) Place Styrofoam blocks under each cookie sheet so that the seeds are raised up to only 1" from the lights. As the seeds sprout you can lower the heights of the Styrofoam blocks. But, remember the tops of the plants always need to be within 1" of the lights. They need all that much light to produce fruit. I haven't yet put mine on a timer leaving the lights on all day and all night, adding warmth on freezing nights, telling my plants they are living in Alaska where the sun shines all the time throughout the summer.

I have a gardening friend in SLC named Golden Reeves. He is known as "The Tomato King". Golden already has his entire basement filled with tomatoes of many varieties all producing tomatoes NOW and growing solely under lights. His favorite tomato for growing in the cold is called 'Glacier'. He grows 100s of tomatoes each winter and throughout the year giving the beautifully growing small tomato plants to the poor. Last year I was enamored of a new kind of tomato offered only through Burpee named "Brandy Boy". This tomato has the extremely delicious taste of the heirloom "Brandy" and is now hybridized to be disease resistance and very prolific. (Most heirlooms are NOT prolific at all and are prone to many diseases.) I gave one packet of this variety to each person in my class. Golden Reeves took his package of seeds and planted them in his basement. Later he returned to me 15 beautifully grown fledgling tomato plants. Almost everyone I know in Utah who is really into gardening has a row of tomatoes which they point to and then say with a measure of tenderness. "These new varieties were a gift to me from Goldlen Reeves. Golden grew them in his basement and then gave them to me to try." Golden Reeves is very beloved in SLC gardening circles. We need someone to assume this role in the Utah Valley. Perhaps YOU could be this person.

It is just so much fun to plant seeds.

Because I graduated from the Master Gardener program offered by Utah State (and you can do this too--more on this later), my name is apparently on the list of so many gardening companies. My mailbox is never lonely. Seed catalogs of all kinds from everywhere come to me as do catalogs of garden ornaments, fertilizers, etc. Enclosed is information on a few amazing seed catalogs YOU can order over the phone which can be sent to you absolutely FREE!

Don't feel like you must plant a garden. Just start reading about all the newest and best varieties of everything being invented out there by dedicated plantsmen all over the world and it will really surprise you. Personally, since 1968 when Duane and I married, seed catalogs have been my first choice in relaxing reading material: more fascinating than anything else.

I wish YOU would order a few for yourself. Some are veritable encyclopedias of gardening knowledge. Gardening begins with small steps and is actually an acquired skill. If hard times came tomorrow you couldn't just suddenly produce a full blown garden producing bounties for the entire ward. Just start with one or two items and try those in your little greenhouse and see if your interest grows. If your interest grows, it could bless the lives of so many... Your families would love to see you with this new facet in your diamond like personalities . And if this seed of interest sprouts in your heart, like the mustard seed of Alma 32, you WILL find ways to grow more fresh and delicious things one way or another.

1. Buying onions at the store takes time.
2. Peeling onions makes your eyes sting and weepy. Your make up will run.
3. Using the 2 TB. Minced onion recipes call for creates left over onion.
4. If you wrap these leftovers in saran (also an expense) you might forget about it in your frige. It could become moldy and smelly.
5. You will probably waste quite a lot.

1. When a recipe calls for 2 TB. Just take your can of dehydrated onions and lift the tightly sealed lid and measure out 2 TB. Reseal the can and return to the drawer.
2. Add water. Notice there has been no peeling, no chopping, no teary eyes, no mess and no storing of smelly onions in the frige.
3. Rehydrate them and they are just like fresh onions and NO WASTE at all.

Since moving to Utah I have actually checked them out and have even purchased from each of them.

Answer: Provident Living Center is where I would go to purchase the onions.

Question: Why?

Answer: Because they have the best prices.

Question: Why?

Answer: Because they are a family with a small wee showroom in their small wee living room selling emergency cans for less than the larger establishments with big overhead.

Question: Where are they?

Answer: Lucky us ! They are almost our neighbors right in Orem: 7290 W. 350 S. 801-226-635 www.providentlivingcenter.com

Question: Is this were the attached baggie of sample dehydrated onions were obtained?

Answer: Yes. I just drove over and knocked on the door, was invited in, and a few moments later I left, now included on their mailing list for even greater 'deals' and carrying a box filled with cans of wonderful dehydrated onions.

OH HAPPY DAY !!

Order a Johnny's Catalog.

This one has the most information and can be stored with your seeds. It doesn't get fancy but, generic is fine for most people.

This catalog will tell you exactly how many seeds you need for how many feet of row you might hypothetically need to plant one day.

Order the seeds you need for this imaginary garden you might possibly like to plant one day. if you had to.

When the seeds come, seal them up in a bottle with a tight fitting lid and store this bottle in a cool and dark place. Most seeds will last around five years. In five years test the seeds to see if they are still good.

Or don't test them and just throw these old ones out and re-order fresh new seeds to store for another five years.

To test older seeds:

Put a few of the seeds on a wet paper towel.

Put another layer of wet paper towel on top of this making a seed sandwich. Fold this seed sandwich up in fourths and put it in a zip-loc bag.

Put the bag on top of your fridge for warmth.

In a few days open the bag and see if you have something sprouting.

If nothing is up restore everything back to the top of the fridge and wait two weeks and open it again.

If 80% of your seeds are sprouting, this is as good as seed companies.

In fact, seed companies can sell seeds as old as they wish with this year's packing date on the back of the package as long as they have an 80% germination rate.

Now you have had the fun of thinking about a possible future garden, selecting and ordering the seeds of your choice and you have them squirreled away, just in case.

What a great feeling !

(This letter had another page in it with colorful titles and logos of many seed catalogs with their websites like Johnny's, Burpee's, HeirloomRoses.com, Park's etc. etc. etc.)

If you have it is possible you wandered into the fruits, vegetables and flowers building.

I have been volunteering there the past few years answering questions and guarding people's entries from sabotage and theft.

Every year Utah's gardeners bring their very best and are rewarded with beautiful ribbons in many categories.

Utah's largest pumpkin for the year is always on display with a home video going continuously showing the family in Sugarhouse which grows this "Jack and the Beanstalk" sized vine every year totally consuming their tiny backyard. This video also unselfishly shares their secrets in producing the mammouth pumpkin on display. They begin by growing the chosen tiny fruit on a pallet where a tractor can get to it by a side gate to be able to lift it up right onto a big rig when fair week comes. Have you ever thought of growing a little pumpkin on a pallet from the beginning? Believing that you have the skills to create a monster unbelievably big pumpkin in just a few months?

That takes faith in your skills.

One of my new Utah friends is Val Chatwin. Val lives in a tract home in western Salt Lake (but, with an end of cul-de-sac sized back yard). This yard is divided by a grid of pathways creating at least 150 different one square yard garden plots. Val obtains the list of fair desired garden categories early in the year, strategically orders specific seeds for the categories and PLANTS TO WIN in EACH and EVERY category.

It is an impressive sight to see, sitting on her kitchen counter, a three ring binder about 3 ½ inches thick filled with pages and pages of her blue and red ribbons just from everything she entered at the fair in 2007 alone. She also enters and wins with her jams and jellies. Did you know you MUST use the recipes in the Blue Ball Canning book or other official recipes from Utah. Or your entry will not be accepted.

Why do I mention this? Because Val is not meeting with the competition she once had. People just aren't out there gardening like they used to. If you wanted your child to have a fun experience, and maybe win a fist full of ribbons. Perhaps you could interest your family in preparing to enter in this year's county and then state fair.

Another fascinating seeds person we have had to honor to meet is E. Gordon Wells, Jr. living in Salem. He received his masters degree from Davis in California specializing in cantaloupe. Later he became an attorney. He is now retired and still passionate about every new variety of fruit or vegetable producing seed. Especially cantaloupes. Two years ago he taught a six week class in the south of Utah County on exactly which varieties of every fruit and vegetable do the best in that very exact location. I intend to gather all my notes from his superior classes and give you the list in a later letter. But first, you must show a little faith and gather some wonderful seed catalogs.

E. Gordon Wells Jr. plants his REAL vegetable garden July the lst. Why so late? Well, let's take carrots for example. If you plant them earlier they will mature by August and then if you are still in the Hamptons and don't get around to pulling them up the carrots will go woody and become undesirable. If, however, you plant them July lst they are just maturing by September when the weather cools and if you have then gone to Cancun after the Hamptons and don't get to them the weather here cools and they stop maturing and then the snow comes and keeps them in perfect storage and you can just pull them up all winter and they will be PERFECT. New varieties have so much sugar in them and beta carotene they are nothing like the old or store varieties. Mr. Wells was pulling his carrots out of the ground right before our classes in March having left them in the ground and under the snow all winter and bringing them to our class to have us taste them and they were DELICIOUS !!!

More on the virtues of a July lst garden later.

Emergency Food in a Nutshell has a page on the great value of milk. It concludes: if you HAD to live on your stored foods, figure about 3 cups of milk a day per person. Or from 50 to 100 lbs of dried milk per person per year depending on the kinds of dried milk you choose and the age and size of each person in your family.

So don't plant an apple tree in Provo because we all enjoy those apple stands every fall.

The above is the reason why if you live in most areas of Florida you are not allowed to have a citrus tree in your yard. It is forbidden and prosecutable by law. The citrus industry in Florida is just too important to the state's economy and just one casual family with a non-cared for citrus tree can ruin the orange & lemon industry for the whole state.

Don't plant an English Walnut Tree either. Utah used to have so many English Walnuts planted by our earliest pioneers. You may see some volunteer English Walnuts growing along irrigation ditch banks because a nut was carried along by the water, lodged somewhere along the bank and then was nourished by the regular irrigation water and is doing fine. Some people enjoy gorgeous English Walnut trees which give them fabulous crops of nuts every year. Unfortunately, many of these trees have been dying.

At first Utah's tree experts figured they were dying because people couldn't water them during the water rationing days of drought years. The trees became stressed. When trees become stressed they succumb to problems which would never have bothered them in regular years. But, now.. Ryan Dayton of the Northern Cache Valley Foundation for Hardy Nut Trees (someone actually established a foundation to try to figure out the best nut trees for Utahns).. Told me yesterday that an English Walnut twig beetle is working its way through our neighboring states and it's only a matter of time before all the English Walnuts in our Utah are attacked also.

Inscription as follows:

If you live in the Riverwoods Ward we know why you are not growing tomatoes. It is because you are the kind of person who will refuse to do anything unless it is the BEST. Before this letter you didn't really know HOW to grow the BIGGEST and the BEST tomato in the world.

Now you do! AND you now have the most amazing seeds ever. They are sort of like "Jack and the Beanstalk" seeds. Of course there is a book: "Giant Tomatoes" by Marvin Meisner, cardiologist, who has accumulated precise methods in detail from Giant Tomato Winners of the past twenty years. If you buy his book, (at Borders), you will have 150 more pages of priceless instruction than are here.

Once your tomato begins to look like it is over six pounds, Duane and I will personally fly you and your family to Toronto, Canada for the great tomato weigh-off Labor Day Week-End of 2008. If you don't achieve it this year, get a grip !!! Prepare your soil better this fall and try again next year because we always learn through doing.

All the entrants transport their candidate tomatoes in baskets they have chosen for this day and which they have lovingly decorated with little ribbons and flowers. I've heard it is tricky getting through airport security with these tomatoes in their darling baskets. We won't let them force you to remove your tomato from the basket for any reason, because if it springs a LEAK.

Take courage! We will be with you to explain to the guards. & get your tomato through somehow.

(Then you open the card up completely and it is an 11" by 17 " piece of paper called TOMATOES 101) This "Tomatoes 101" tells everything about starting the seeds..... growing.... and even tomato seed saving.

AND it has a tiny package of tomato seeds with four seeds in it per family. And these four tomato seeds are the very same kind which Gordon Graham used to grow his world record setting 8 pound tomato

But, first attached to the card on light pink paper is the story "Once There was a Male Ballerina" OR "A TRUE Story About Tomatoes"

and this actually IS a true story. And then there is another colored sheet with photos of about 20 different arrangements of heirloom tomatoes which is frankly stunning !

Then on the back of the card as you fold it up again and look at the back is the poem "The Tryst".

THE TRYST
by John B. Tabb, (19^th Century)
reprinted in the Tomato Club newsletter July 1994

Potato was deep in the dark underground,
Tomato above in the light.
The little Tomato was ruddy and round
The little potato was white

And redder and redder she rounded above
And paler and paler he grew
And neither suspected a mutual love
Till they met in a Brunswick stew

Once there was a male ballerina who danced in New York City and was acclaimed glowingly by every critic and adored by all. Inevitably, however, his career began to fade and he thought that while he was still agile and strong he might teach. Applying to Ballet West in Salt Lake City. he was welcomed warmly and esteemed greatly! One day while instructing the young ladies on gracefully bowing while bouquet retrieving his eyes fell upon a young, ethereal ballerina whose talents did portend an inspiring and shining destiny. She was astonished that of all the exquisite ballerinas at Ballet West he was noticing HER! She truly loved him also. and not at all because he still maintained endless powerful connections in the Paris and New York City ballet world. NOT AT ALL: But, because of his inner qualities. Their wedding was like a beautiful fairytale and all seemed heavenly. Except one day while executing a graceful leap. hoping to alight on one toe only she fell horribly. dashing to bits the possibly of a future luminous career. So she took a job in an accounting firm.

They then left Ballet West because how could he continue on in the esoteric and lilting world of waif sized ballerinas when his own gorgeous wife was gaining a few ounces while crunching numbers? The male ballerina began brainstorming: How could he earn a living now??? I think you are aware that when one is forever working out at the bar and pirouetting diagonally across exercise studios... and going to rehearsals for one's pas de deux... one does not take A.P. Calculus and Statistics thus closing many doors.

His creative and inventive mind couldn't help lapsing back to his nights of former dancing triumphs on the stages of New York City. He remembered how celebrities from all walks of life would wait backstage honored to take him to dine and to toast his successes. He recalled how he usually relished salads of \u201can exciting variety of heirloom tomatoes dusted with finely chopped organically grown herbs\u201d. The descriptions of these gorgeous $35.00 tomato salads were engraved on exquisite gilt edged menus and they lived on in his memory still.

Then the brainchild came! Realizing that his mother had TWO extra acres behind her home in Bountiful he decided to ask her if it would be all right if he began raising \u201corganically grown herbs and an exciting variety of heirloom tomatoes\u201d on her property!

When his mother acquiesced he raced down to the John Deere dealership and purchased, on credit, a glowingly green, totally magnificent tractor with enclosed cab, CD player and air conditioning. It did not matter to him in the least that he had never even touched a tractor before. Why should it? Life is for those who are daring enough to actuate their dream! Trying to attach the needed plowing gear his entire hand was almost severed and if a salesman hadn't noticed that he was \u2018trying to do it all by himself' and hadn't run over to assist in the VERY NICK OF TIME. we would not be able to tell this story today. When the plowing mechanism was finally secured, he began to drive it all home to his mom's. Jubilantly waving to everyone and ignoring stop signs, (because he was not sure that if he were to stop that he would be able to get it all to go again), and feeling a sudden gush of oneness with the universe, he gunned it and in so doing accidentally flattened a neighbor's white picket fence. Backing up and most embarrassed, he pushed over a fire hydrant. One soon heard sirens. Then summoning inner determination and ever undaunted, he forged on so resolutely he accidentally drove through his own mother's backyard fence: A formerly beautiful partition which his father had personally built for her just before his death.

What I am trying to convey is that the world of growing heirloom tomatoes and organic herbs may not be the immediate road to riches you may have formerly imagined it to be. Other disastrous yet hysterical bumps on his road becoming \u2018farmer' arose which he had the grace to share during a dinner party in the Avenues of Salt Lake City: a benefit raising money for a Teaching Garden near Liberty Park.

The good news is that he IS now successful. as YOU, (with my enclosed handy tomato hints and treasures of knowledge) can be also. He has a stall at the Farmers' Market every summer in Pioneer Park. Every Saturday morning gourmet cooks form an enviably long line in front of his booth. He will not make even one single sale until the precise second that the farmers are ALLOWED to begin. So many gourmet cooks are waiting before him that he is entirely sold out within the hour. Then he can go home.

If that is not success then I do not know what is.

The very same fine ladies then return to their homes and serve their evening dinner guests \u201can exciting variety of heirloom tomatoes dusted with organically grown herbs\u201d and everyone feels extremely fortunate and blessed to partake of such lovely fare prepared by such sophisticated hostesses. And though his own lovely wife must still work each day at the accounting firm while paying off the tractor don't worry about her for even one moment because she enjoys \u201can exciting variety of heirloom tomatoes dusted with organically grown herbs\u201d every morning for breakfast, also in her lunchbox at noon and finally. as many nights of the week as she could ever possibly wish.

Don't you wish this for your families also?

Aside: After I wrote this letter I was racked with 2^nd thoughts because it was hastily done and kind of silly but, then at the store I saw the new Martha Steward magazine. It had a honey-glazed cake on the front in the shape of a bee hive. It had marzipan bees on the cake. Inside the issue she had dishes from many eras all celebrating 'the bee'. She had a collection of honey recipes. She had an essay urging everyone in all parts of the country to set up beehives so that perhaps diversity of location could prolong hives before they ALL vanish.

AND since writing this letter we have also set up four beehives in Mapleton.

Now on to the Newsletter

As you know from your reading Leslie Probert's excellent book, "Emergency Food in a Nutshell", the following foods are compact to store, less expensive than other foods, and have a long shelf life. Nutritionally balanced. these foods can keep you alive for years.

1. Wheat: (This was very smart of you to have laid this in because this week's Time Magazine tells us all why wheat prices will continue to rise ominously and possibly forever.)
2. Powdered Milk: ditto
3. Iodized Salt: easy to buy...... (15 lbs per person a year is more than plenty)
4. Beans: Beans are so so important because when you combine them with whole wheat (or rice) you have a complete protein. But.. don't store DRIED beans. Dried beans harden beyond repair after only a few years. Then they are useless. If you store DRIED beans you must also store WATER to rehydrate them and FUEL to cook them. Store instead CANNED beans. The American Can Association now says if cans are not rusty or dented the contents are good for decades and possibly longer than we will live. Canned beans are ALREADY hydrated, ALREADY cooked and ALREADY seasoned. If a random disaster were to come upon us you could just open a can of pork and beans or a can of chili or a can of southwestern beans with corn and eat them cold. Leslie Probert's book gives lots of recipes using canned beans, whole grains and powdered milk to create wonderful (wartime) menus.
5. Water: No need to store water. Isn't this why we all purposefully decided to live in this ward? Because a river runs through it? I know what you were shrewdly thinking when you moved here: Make friends now with those families in the ward whose homes back up to the Provo River so that in the future when we are in their backyards bathing our kids, ourselves and our dogs and washing our clothing and laying it out to dry on their banks... they can be watching us, their very dearest friends, right out their family room windows. They will be waving and saying we are just so happy to have ALL OF YOU.
   Be sure, however, to store LARGE BUCKETS also and perhaps a POLE comfortable to your shoulders. Place one bucket at each end of the pole, as they do in foreign countries, thereby transporting your culinary water back home to your kitchen with ease.
   I did hear on the news this morning that Myanmar in addition to lacking aid (did you hear about the boat bringing aid which SANK???) Anyway... this morning's news said they are wishing for and asking for BUCKETS. They are desperate for containers or pails to bring clean water to the settlements. Take heed and buy your own buckets today. Then take a plate of cookies over to those families I referred to earlier who are living right along the banks of our very beloved and our very own Provo River.
   
6. Oil: (to be discussed at a later date) and
7. Sugar: (to be discussed now).

Honey?

I have not bought honey for decades! It is messy. It's trace extras from nature can be obtained easier in other fruits and vegetables. It darkens after a few years and even though it is still good you have to melt it to restore it. What bother! Now, however, that we know one third of all the beehives in the country are deserted and empty from "Collapsing Hive Syndrome". now I realize that if one projects this trend out a few years it may be ALL the hives in the country could be GONE and there will be NO HONEY AT ALL..... NOW I AM VIOLENTLY CRAVING HONEY !

Aren't you too?

Don't you want your grandchildren to know how honey once tasted?

How can we be the 'state of deseret' without honey?

Driving directly to the large Macey's grocery store on N. State in Orem yesterday, I took a clerk by the collar with a note of panic in my voice and I asked him if there seems to be a shortage of honey on the shelves... or if the prices of honey are rising and that I needed FIVE PALLETS OF HONEY IMMEDIATELY !!! He said to be calm that there was no need for worry. There does NOT seem to be a shortage of honey at this time and the prices do NOT seem to be rising. But, after going to the back he found they only could sell me a bit of extra honey because even though the store shelves seem stocked... they had only a tiny bit of extra honey in the back. It was only a little.

All I can say is, "WHAT IS HE THINKING?????" A person has to be foresighted, like myself! So I came home at once and stored my precious honey... wanting to eat honey more and more even though I haven't chosen to eat honey for the past half of my life and frothing at the mouth thinking of all the members of the Riverwoods Ward who might soon be honeyless. Then the thought came... when people realize that all the hives are continuing to collapse there may be a RUN ON HONEY at the grocery stores!!!! I REFUSE to be in that stampede at the store: too undignified. A marvelous solution then presented itself:

ORDER actual beehives and bee colonies and give them to Duane for Father's

Day !!!! Then we will NEVER be without honey again! Oh Yes!

Won't it be fun and fantastic on Father's Day Morning to see Duane open a box and there find a fabulous bee keeper's outfit inside !!!!!

Oh! He is going to be so surprised!

And YOU can do this for your family too.

The problem is it seems impossible to order any BEES. I called Karl G. at the SLC extension office this morning and he told me that of ALL the bee keepers in Utah..... ONLY ONE is still in business. The state of Utah has been particularly hard hit by Collapsing Hive Syndrome and he is sure that the one remaining beekeeper in Utah who is still in business will NOT sell any of his bees. I then began googling up all the bee sources I could find in the entire country. All of them will sell bee keeper's suits and bee keeper's equipment. NONE will sell bees. I am still seeking.

My advice today: BUY SOME HONEY. It may soon be extinct.

This letter was accompanied by another sheet on Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening photos and tips. (Although personally I feel we should do his soil recipe but below soil level rather than above.... thus saving the price of wood..... and needing MUCH less watering.)

You have now learned to successfully grow Swiss Chard during the winter on a sunny window sill thereby having salad greens for your table even if there is a blizzard raging outside. (I have more mini-packets of these seeds for you to try again this fall.)

Many of you have achieved 100% germination of your 3 or 4 tomato seeds and some of you are even growing tomato plants right in a bag of enriched soil in odd corners of your lots.

NOW YOU ARE READY FOR THE NEXT STEP: THE SQUARE FOOT GARDEN !

Mel Bartholomew, a Utahn, has written, "All New Square Foot Gardening", Grow More in Less Space. This book has now sold millions of copies ALL OVER THE WORLD.

Basically he teaches buy four pieces of 6" wide lumber each four feet long and join them together to make a bottomless box. Six inches high is enough because worms soon come attracted to the enriched soil and loosen soil below the box. Fill this box with enriched soil and you can grow an immense amount of things if you follow his timelines and his graphs. The soil will be so light that no heavy digging is EVER needed. You will be stagger planting so one package of seeds can last for years. If it gets cold you can cover it with a plastic cover extending the harvests by months. If it gets hot you can cover it with shade cloth. If there are birds or raccoons you can cover it with a chickenwire cage. Really EVERYONE should purchase this book just in case one day we might truly need to grow things reaping the greatest possible quantity of food in the smallest spaces.

Included in this envelope are just two of his several excellent charts illustrating how stagger planting and stagger reaping can be done from now through fall.

In the spring everyone seems to be in a hurry to get tomatoes and other crops in the ground but, why?

Utah's weather is so up and down in the spring. It becomes a series of hot days then freezing days causing many setbacks.

Many spring crops are listed as "early" or "determinate" or "bush". These varieties of everything were invented for California. California can start them in February or March and they are genetically designed to ripen all at once in the same week. The harvesters then go through and take out the whole planting in one day and have a great time making ketchup or whatever and then the fields are ready for the REAL crops: Pole Beans (so extremely prolific), vining 'indeterminate' tomatoes (producing ever greater crops of tomatoes till they freeze), etc. These 'real' varieties can be ten times more prolific and much more tasty than the 'early' varieties. In Utah many experienced gardeners wait till June or July to plant skipping the spring 'early' crops because of Utah's fickle weather. The cole crops especially should not be planted in the spring because they will just bolt to seed in the heat of our summers. Plant starts of Cole Crops July lst instead. Larry Sagers says one of the best crops of corn he ever harvested he planted on Pioneer Day: July 24^th ! There was still time to grow all his corn to perfection. Look on the seed package to see how many days each vegetable takes for maturity. Our last 'official' frost is usually May 26^th. Our first 'official' frost in the fall is usually September 24^th. Most of the crops planted July lst can take a little frost by then and still go on and on.

THE NEXT STEP AFTER THE SQUARE FOOT GARDEN IS
THE COMMUNITY GARDEN.

As you travel through Europe you have seen many areas divided off into community gardens. After World War II these were so extremely popular. Tiny houses were set into each one just big enough to store tools and a garden chair. Then for two decades they went out of style... just as gardening in Utah is out of style today. Many of these gardens were lying empty and fallow. In today's somewhat frightening economy everything has changed. Now ALL designated community gardens throughout the continent are being gardened and there are very long waiting lists of people wanting a turn to have a chance with one. This resurgence of insistent demand by families to have access to grow what they want in community gardens exists today in every country across Europe.

We have a lot of unused land around our ward's boundaries by the office buildings etc. Would we ever be so desperate that we might divide RiverWoods Park up into community gardens? Surely no. All I know is that if times should become scarier you will want Mel Bartholomew's book, "All New Square Foot Gardening", already on your bookshelf.

You might also like to already have purchased your pieces of 4' long wood (or whatever size fits your area) and two of the three components which go into the soil: vermiculite and peat moss. Once you have purchased those two admittedly expensive items, vermiculite and peat moss, they last forever and never need to be purchased again.

It is the last third of his soil mix which needs to be replenished after each harvest and that last third is COMPOST (which we shall discuss later).

If anyone sets up their square foot garden this month or next... you will really like my June letter which lists all the very best varieties of garden seeds for our valley with descriptions. You will read it in time to order those seeds and to plant your July lst garden right during the 4^th of July week thereby having a wonderful harvest as the weather cools off in the fall. Or if you want to order seeds now just go to the Utah State's website where they list what they consider to be the best seeds for Utah: www.extension.usu.edu Click around till you find their listings.

There is another website which is amazing as people write in from all over the country giving their experience with various varieties of seeds for 1,000s of kinds of vegetables. They have people's comments on 100s of kinds of beans alone.

They also have quite the section on saving seeds as well. www.victoryseeds.com

Square Foot Gardening photos of other's backyards are at www.squarefootgardening.com

And I would always love your comments at ErlynMadsen at AOL dot COM

Enclosed in this envelope are a few more seeds. the non-hybridized, non-genetically altered varieties which are favorites of seed saving experts and especially suited to our very own valley ! It could be possible that another vegetable could fall under suspicion.. Just as the tomato has fallen under unexpected nationwide suspicion during the past week. YOU will be totally calm and serene because you will have squirreled away in your refrigerator in a zip loc bag this envelope. Then in time of emergency just read the instructions and a garden will always be possible for you not only for ONE year. but, if you follow these secret seed saving techniques and seed storing methods. you will be able to have gardens FOREVER !!!

EARLY-BIRD GARDEN

If you want to plant an early-bird garden in April, these cold weather vegetables stand some frost (a light freeze) and will thrive in the cool, wet early spring weather: radishes, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, turnips, carrots, peas, onions & beets.

SUNNIEST GARDEN

As the soil warms up (early June), plant outside tomatoes, winter squash, pumpkins and melons all of which need every bit of heat during our long summer days. Utahns traditionally jump the gun and use Mother's Day as their guide day to plant these things. Many then often suffer from cold as the official last day of frost for Provo is not till May 26th.

JULY FIRST GARDEN

The first week of July is when your most productive garden of all may be planted. Our first frost date in the fall is September 24^th. Look at your seed catalog to determine the number of days that it takes a particular vegetable to mature. The vegetable seeds included here will all have plenty of time to mature even if they are not planted till July. They will LOVE the warmed up soil and long days to sprout and begin their lives and won't mind if the weather cools off as they become more mature: Carrots, beets, turnips, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, beans and corn.

If you are not ready to plant a garden this year, just put this envelope into a Ziploc bag, store in the fridge and save it for a decade or so. Then in case of hard times YOU WILL BE READY.

Each package of seeds had a different color picture of which vegetable it was and a scoop of each variety inside. (The kinds which grow well here AND from which you COULD grow your own seeds this year or next if you tried.) These envelopes took me one entire week to assemble. It was the surgically precise licking of each envelope which was the killer. Because if you lick the seeds by accident they would be compromised. And if you didn't lick the tiny envelopes completely the seeds would fall out and go just everywhere.)

OK. Here is the "How to Save Seeds" Portion of creating your own survival kit

SAVE CARROT SEED

Carrots produce seed the second year, so if you're saving seed, roots must be stored over winter and replanted in spring. Dig up roots before the first hard frost in fall and cut off the leafy tops to 1 inch. Bury carrots in a container of damp sand and store around 32^oF for the winter.

When the soil can be worked in the spring, throw out any withered carrots and replant sound ones outdoors in moist soil 1 to 2 feet apart. Set the crown of the carrot at or just below the soil surface. Allow the tops to grow and produce a tall, branched flower stalk. Billowing flowers will develop, and seeds will ripen from top branches to bottom.

As the first seeds begin to separate take the entire top into your garage to allow it to continue drying.

If you leave them outside to dry in the garden and they become randomly wet even one time the seeds will be compromised.

When the seeds are truly dry and brittle, rub seeds & flowers between your gloved hands to separate one from the other. Then put the seeds in a bowl and let the wind winnow the chaff away. Your carrot seeds will now be amazing because you were right there to harvest them at the perfect moment. Each seed will have a little beard. This is normal for homegrown carrot seed. If it bothers you force the seed through a window screen to remove the beards and then they will resemble the carrot seeds you are accustomed to seeing.

SAVE RED BEET SEED

Select your best beets at maturity. This may be difficult to ascertain as unlike carrots which begin to harden after they are full size. Beets in great soil can keep right on growing bigger and bigger. Some people then wrap them in tin foil and bake them like potatoes serving them with salt and butter. One farmer I know lest his beets keep right on growing (with plenty of space) and one year they each became as big as a soccer ball yet were each still sweet and tender.

Decide by "days to maturity" on the seed information when the beet is 'mature' and pull them out before the first hard frost in the fall. Cut the leafy tops to one inch. Bury the beets in damp sand and store at 32^oF through the winter.

Replant them in the spring about 2 feet apart. The plant will soon produce a tall, branched stalk loaded with tiny flowers.

To harvest the seed cut plants to the ground and hang them upside down in a well-ventilated area to dry. Winnow out chaff by pouring seeds from one container to another in a stiff breeze. Saving seeds from root crops yields an immense amount of seeds. You can supply your neighborhood for a long time.

SAVE SQUASH SEED

Squash is a 'wet' seed like melons or tomatoes. Tomatoes need to be fermented in their own juice to produce their seeds as discussed last month. Melons and squash need only to be overly ripe. The key to getting vigorous seed is to let the fruit become squishy ripe on the plant before harvesting it. Allow these dead-ripe fruits to continue ripening nearly to the point of rotting on the vine before you extract the seeds. If it is tomato seed, take your seeds from overripe fruit that hid unnoticed on the vine or let a bowl of soft ripe fruit sit on the counter for a few more days before extracting the seed. If it is a melon, make sure the fruit chosen for seed making honestly slips the vine. If it's squash, the seeds will gain vigor if you allow the fully ripe fruit to cure in the house for a month or so before extracting the seed.

To prepare for storage, cut the fruit open, scoop out the seeds, and rinse off the pulp.

Spread out the seeds to dry for a couple of weeks, cull out any flat ones (plump seeds are viable; flat are not,) and store them.

SAVE BEAN SEEDS

Most seed companies must wait till they think the crop is mostly ready to harvest. Then the entire field is cut down. They then dry the beans in any random stage of growth because they must do it 'all at once for efficiency. so that what you receive are bean seeds of every size from tiny to large. If you are hand picking the pods in your own garden at the perfect stage of growth your seeds will be so much more fabulous than what the large seed companies produce. Watch where the pod joins to the stem. You want it right when it is turning brown right at the joint. This indicates that the pod is no longer receiving moisture or nutrients from the vine. Put this perfectly chosen pod in your pocket and take it into the house and let it dry in a bowl out of the sun (heat is not good when drying bean seeds).

When the beans are hard and dry, remove them from the pods by hand or by threshing. To thresh beans, put the pods in a bag and whack them against the sides of a large trash can. Don't be too rough or you may damage the bean embryo and cause it to lose viability.

When the beans are out of the pods, winnow out the plant debris by pouring the beans from one container to another in a strong breeze; the chaff should blow away and leave the beans clean for storage.

SAVE PEA SEEDS

Peas must be completely ripe in order to germinate well. Some people let the pea pods remain on the plants until the peas are barely 75% dry. Then bring them into the house to completely dry out. Others leave a few strings of peas on the vine for seed purposes waiting for them to be so dry that they are rattling around in the pod. As you are picking peas throughout the season always watch for the 'forgotten pod' hidden in the leaves of the vine and thoroughly dry: this is perfect for your seed storage.

If the forecast calls for wet weather before the peas are dry, pull up the plants whole and stack them loosely in a well-ventilated area. After a couple of weeks remove the peas from the pods by hand or by threshing.

To thresh, hold plants upside down inside a large trash can and whack them against the sides of the can.

SAVE LETTUCE SEEDS

Lettuce is an early crop for eating, but, a long storage crop for seed saving. A single lettuce plant may yield as many as 30,000 seeds. Lettuce will bolt to seed when the weather is hot and days are long; if you have yard lights shining on the plants at night they may be tricked into bolting even earlier.

Lettuce is self-pollinating, it will nearly always "come true" from seed, making it a good choice for seed saving. You can feel comfortable planting different varieties side by side, although to be absolutely sure no crossing occurs, it's best to plant another crop between the rows of lettuce where you are trying to save various kinds.

Success at making lettuce seed includes a long growing season before the lettuce bolts so sow it as early as possible in Provo or even sow it inside and transplant it outside later. Either way, the heads must be fully developed and mature before the summer heat arrives if the seed load is to be great. Most varieties reach a critical point about 6 to 8 weeks after the summer solstice when, prompted by shortening days, plants forming seed will switch over from ripening that seed load to growing vegetatively again. If your seed load hasn't matured completely by then it never will.

The seeds ripen irregularly and tend to shatter, so as soon as you can see mature seeds on a particular branch, cut off that branch and place it on a tarp where it will be dry. When you have picked all the seed stalks and they are pretty much dried, drag the tarp into the sun and let the stalks dry to a crisp. Then rub each stalk between gloved hands, breaking up the dry flower capsules. Discard twigs and straw. Put the dusty remainder into a large bucket and (wearing gloves) rub it between your hands until all flower parts have been fully powdered. Then winnow out the seed on a day with a gentle and steady breeze. There is not much difference in weight between dust and lettuce seed.

Yet, it is good to learn the skill because the crops of seed from various lettuces can be so great.

I was so astonished at the verse which was in front of my eyes that I used it on the last page of my creation #11 and felt very validated indeed and that it was JUST FINE to move on to the production of seed for Kale, Chinese Turnips etc.

So here it is (1 Nephi 8:1):

"And it came to pass that we had gathered together all manner of seeds of every kind both of grain of every kind and also of the seeds of fruit of every kind."

And besides Allen Christensen of the former Benson Institute just sent me an e-mail (we keep in touch about Hazelnuts) and he said once when President Kimball was speaking about growing gardens. some people had complained to him about the fact they could buy food at the store more cheaply than they could grow it. He had answered, "You do not understand. What are you going to do when there are no stores?"

So I'm having fun with these projects.

I've given other things out when I've taught classes etc. but this is probably more than any of you had bargained for today.

THE END !!!
(of Your Complete Survival Kit)

If you are interested in extending your nut knowledge to many kinds of nut trees you might want to go to:

Other counties have their own times and places.

When we first moved to Provo I was looking through the newspaper (which I usually never have a moment for) and there was a small 1" mention that this was the final day to apply for the Master Gardener Program in SLC County. I raced to Kinkos and faxed in my application and a few months later was sitting in the classes TOTALLY THRILLED. In SLC the classes are presided over by Maggie Shao, an amazing woman of Mongolian descent, who spent years in Africa teaching communities to survive by sharing her vast agricultural knowledge.

Maggie is a special expert on trees, particularly loving autumn leaves and using them as a 'signature item' on many of the things she does. If you register for the Master Gardener Classes in SLC they are taught in the spring. Maggie invites many PhD types from USU in Logan to teach the various classes. I have enjoyed those times so very much. Maggie Shao is one of those people you marvel at and are so grateful you had the chance to meet during one's lifetime. To live in Utah and never meet Maggie Shao would be a tragedy because she is such an original, truly believing in helping the world, and we don't know how long she will stay. She has opportunities everywhere. Really, sitting at the feet of an expert on ANYTHING is an unusual treat of the highest order. They are so knowledgable and so passionate about their particular field.

I have taken the Master Gardener Series in SLC and two of the four years of the Advanced Master Gardener Series and this opportunity has vastly enriched my life as well as the lives of our ten children and many grandchildren. They are always calling me for advice and I am always sending them mail order plants or seeds and we exchange photos: it is great! My daughters say the granddaughters go out to the plantings every day with their own little watering cans. We are sharing these plants as a family even though we are thousands of miles away in many directions.

There is a catch. If one takes these M. G. classes......... One needs to "give back". At least 40 hours of service per year to continue. This service, however, may be the most rewarding part of all. There are many community gardens which need tending like Wheeler Farms, "The Purple Tomato", the aviary at Liberty Park, etc. And Maggie is especially passionate about the many acres at the Utah County Jail which she is turning into quite the amazing farm. Wood for long boxes in the prison yard has been donated, special soils have been donated, drip irrigation materials have been donated. Plant materials have also been donated (although they are always seeking more). What they need now are Master Gardeners to go and help educate the prisoners about how to raise things. THE PRISONERS LOVE TO RAISE THINGS. The prisoners love to rototill. They have time on their hands. They love to get out and DO something where they see results. They have a little graduation ceremony at the prison when the inmates complete their own set of gardening requirements and it is said to not leave one dry eye anywhere.

You may also complete your hours of service by speaking at libraries on gardening, helping kids plant up little projects at summer camps for the less fortunate of our state, by speaking at retirements homes etc. I have done this in the past and it is always rewarding.

My problem is that TIME has become more of a vanishing commodity as our circles of activities in Utah have multiplied. So I am going to see if I can transfer to the Utah County program to finish up the last two years because of the commuting distances from here to SLC for everything.

Larry Sagers teaches these classes in Utah County and I am sure you hear him on the radio Saturday Mornings: KLS's Graden Show where he answers the questions of listeners.

The thing about Larry Sagers, in addition to his being employed by the state as THE horticulturalist for the state of Utah is that his family has gardened here since the beginnings of the state. He knows SO MUCH. I mean does anyone actually know more than he does about gardening this state?

I was in one class he taught at Thanksgiving Point and he went around the room asking people where they lived. So many were transplants from other states (like me). He wanted to know almost the very street where you lived in which ever Utah town you were now in. Then he knew almost exactly and precisely what kind of soils you were working with because he KNOWS the soil composition of every part of every city in the state.

One lady told where she lived and he sort of said, "Just give up". She said she knew her soil was pretty salty but, she was bringing in new soil. He said, "It doesn't matter how much soil you bring into your yard......... You will NEVER be able to bring in enough because all the salt your house was built on will just keep on leaching up into whatever you do." I will never forget the pain in that room for that lady as we all heard this horrible truth. I still feel it now remembering this incident. The point is: The man knows EVERYTHING.

(She is now planting in boxes with sealed bottoms.)

The point also is...... here is an opportunity!!! AVAILABLE TO ALL OF US, which is just fantastic. I hope to plunge in with this again this year and hope to see many of you at the farm tours where they invite ALL the Master Gardeners from ALL the various counties in the state.

Farming-minded folks are just such wonderful and interesting people.

I forgot to mention that there are monthly meetings for all Master Gardeners of all years which are just so informative. One time we all sat around and sharpened our gardening tools. I will never forget the kindess of Golden Reeves as he helped me figure out how to do the process with my five pair of rose pruners which were all rusted and despicable. (Because I had never sharpened ANYTHING in my entire life before.)

PEOPLE ARE REALLY NICE WHO GARDEN.

It is always good to ASTOUND one's in-laws.

It is from the Bosch Kitchen Store on Center Street in Orem where they also give FREE classes on breads, pastas, pizzas, salads with grains etc. I have attended them all and have LOVED them.

I hope I won't be sued for giving out their awesome recipe.

Recipe Ingredients for 100% Whole Wheat Bread.

I use the canister style wheat grinder they sell and the Bosch Bread maker (makes 6 loaves+) of course!

Ingredients: Warm Water   -   6 cups Salt   -   2 TBS. Applesauce   -   1/4 cup (I use those individual little ones they sell for kids) Oil   -   1/4 cup (I use the little applesauce container to measure the oil and then toss it.) Liquid Lecithin   -   2 TB. (If you use powdered it is 4 TB) Honey   -   2/3 cups Dough Enhancer   -   2 1/2 TBS Vital Wheat Gluten   -   2 TBS. Prairie Gold Wheat   -   Start with 8 1/4 cups (eventually you will use 12 to 15 cups) Saf Instant Yeast   -   2 1/2 TBS Combine 6 C. warm water & 8-9 cups fresh wheat flour. Using the dough hook on the Bosch Universal Mixer mix these to paste consistency. Mix in 2 1/2 TBS yeast then add salt, honey, oil, lecithin & gluten. Turn machine to speed 1 and as the motor bears down increase to speed 2. Add additional flour until dough pulls away from sides of bowl. Be careful not to add too much flour. Let the machine knead this for 7 to 8 minutes then add the dough enhancer and knead 2 more minutes. This would make a total of 10 minutes. Use shortening on your hands to form loaves. I spray the loaf pans with Pam. Take dough immediately from bowl and pinch off enough dough to fill the non-stick loaf pans 1/2 full. (The Bosch Kitchen Center sells a new kind of loaf pan with dimpled sides so that bread NEVER sticks in the pan after it is baked.) Press dough evenly into the six pans. Cover to keep it moist (I cover with saran wrap). Let raise in a draft free place till the dough has risen about 1 " above the rims of the loaf pans (it happens more quickly than you might think.) Place in a cold oven. (Sometimes I even let it raise right in the cold oven because then no one can disturb it and there aren't any drafts.) Turn oven on to 350 degrees and bake 34 to 40 minutes.

The Bosch kitchen store sells bread thermometers so that if you are not sure if the middle is done you can insert one and know immediately.

After the bread is baked you can rub the tops with butter for a shinny finish. (My loaves are so high and gorgeous I have never seen anyone's come close!) (PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL !!! )

Where to buy the dough enhancer and the wheat gluten? They are sold at Target also on Center Street in Orem or at the Bosch Kitchen store. The lecithin can be purchased there also. (Or you can order these things from www.Bosch.com (or maybe it is www.boschkitchencenter.com on line.)

In case you are suddenly asked to teach a one hour class on preparedness feel free to use this one-page handout. It is aimed at the busy executive who just wants to outline it, order it, store it, and forget it.

Go to Emergency Essentials
216 East University Parkway
Orem Utah 801
801-222-9667

Several people have asked about the Tomatoes 101 page which is not e-mailable because it is a scrapbook type page of drawings etc. So here is an attempt to tell you about it.

First know that other people know much more about it than I do. "The Tomato Handbook: Tips and Tricks for growing the best tomatoes" by Jennifer Bennett is a reasonable book. It is 92 pages. "Giant Tomatoes: giant yields- giant weights" by Marvin H. Meisner, M.D. is more fun. It is 148 pages. Dr. Meisner goes for the giant vegetable approach of gardening. He went around the east coast and found winners of past national giant tomato growing competitions and interviewed them on about everything: seed sprouting, seed varieties, fertilizers, watering........ no stone was left unturned. He put all these interviews and varying views with lots of colored photos into his book and a person just has to love it. It's just so crazy to think of coming up with a 8 lb. tomato and some of the true stories are just very fun. But, look! EVERY gardening book has a tomato section and I have found there is something new to be learned from every one of them. To continue..................

In Utah...... we suffer from longer winter days than the giant tomato winners have. We must get at least a 50 day head start growing our tomatoes indoors before we would dare put them outside. (even for the non giant tomatoes) Whereas these other folks have milder winters and they can set their prize tomato plants out in February sometimes or even March.

Well... last winter I was going to do this. I ordered about 100 packages of one of the biggest varieties of tomato (mentioned in the book) ever grown from a certain seed company. It was time to send out the tomato letter to my ward and I wanted to give each person a tiny envelope with four of these amazing seeds for each family to try. All the packages of seeds were opened by my kids and we dumped them all out on my black kitchen countertop. WHAT A SURPRISE !!!!!. Even though these were all from a famous company...... the diversity was ENORMOUS !!!

Some seeds were as tiny as dust. Some were big and plump. Some were almost a dark brown. Some were pure white. I was just stunned. This surely speaks to being able to save your own seeds and to select the most gorgeous.

Once I had a book about a man in the Guiness Book of World Records who grew the TALLEST tomato in the world down in the south. It was like 30 feet high. Every day he did this and that to it from a tall ladder. The whole was supported every two feet by enormous metal supports etc. etc. He used a cherry tomato seed but, would open lots of cherry tomatoes and only pick the very biggest and plumpest seeds to then start. He made his own strain after the years by always hand selecting the most robust seeds. There was an entire chapter on being very picky about the seeds you spend your time growing.

So, being a somewhat selfish person....... I decided to keep the 50 biggest and best seeds on my counter for myself and divide the other 1,458 seeds out among my ward members. (The smallest ones I did not save because they were thin or deformed or cracked or all wrinkly looking.) Some people did sprout their seeds but, because I am always at the MTC I have not heard about their successful progress except I have heard a few sad cases where terrible accidents happened to their paper cups of sprouted seeds or whatever. But, the season is still young.

My 50 seeds were then put into my garage greenhouse.

Now if you want to sprout seeds in your garage or basement let me tell you I HAD THE MOST AMAZING SUCCESS I HAVE EVER HEARD OF.

Open-Pollinated, or non-hybrid, tomatoes are the best type to grow if you want to save your own seed. These seeds will probably grow into a plant much like the parent, especially if there was not another variety growing withing 10 feet. Currant tomatoes are especially likely to cross with other types, so they should be grown in a separate part of the garden, at least 25 feet away from other tomato types.

Save seed only from the healthiest tomato plants that exhibit qualities you want. If possible, allow the fruit to become overripe before you pick it for seed. To save the seeds, simply cut open an unwashed, fully mature tomato and squeeze the pulp and seeds into a jar. Discard the empty tomato shell. If you are using greenhouse, hydroponic or indoor fruit, add a pinch of garden soil to the jar to supply the needed microorganisms that are naturally present on the skin of outdoor fruits. the liquid needs to ferment. Allow the jar of pulp and seeds to stand at room temperature for a couple of days. Then pour the mixture into a sieve, run tap water over it till the seeds are clean, spread the cleaned seeds on a paper towel, and allow them to dry thoroughly. Wet seeds will germinate. Store the seeds in labeled envelopes kept in closed jars or tins in a cool, dark place.

HOW TO SAVE TOMATO SEEDS FROM HYBRID TOMATOES

Do you remember Steve Solomon? He was the original founder of Territorial Seeds. He says you can also save seeds from hybridized tomatoes. F1 tomatoes.

I am always so joyful when schools begin again.

Once I saw a cartoon where the school bus was pulling up to a corner and a little line of school children was waiting to board the bus for the first day of school. All the moms were bidding their children good-bye except one mom: She was jumping up and down on the lawn and her ups and downs became higher and higher until it seemed she would launch herself right into space. That would be me. It is such a challenge to keep a large number of children happily busy all summer.

One device I have always used is to have a hobby in my mind where I can escape to when driving endless carpools becomes boring. (It wasn't boring to me until the 10th of my children was going to the very same school and then it suddenly did become boring.)

Roses work as a mental escape. One summer I fixated on all the imaginative ways I could wrap future gifts using mini-roses. My favorite was to use brown paper bags turned inside out (for the plain color). Then tie the brown paper wrapped gift with brown twine. And then in the simple bow of the twine to put a tiny bouquet of mini white roses.

Rayford Clayton Reddell had a column on roses in the San Francisco Tribune for years. He has written many fabulous books on roses. One of my favorites is just a little book he wrote on his favorite miniature roses. It's only 100 pages but, half of the pages are in full color. He names his very favorite mini-roses and shows them as wrist bracelets, individual table bouquets...... one for each place setting...., in a window box, in the garden, in a small perfume bottle, etc. When you see these photos you fall in love with mini-roses and you begin to see them in your imagination being used in so many clever ways.

Method 1:

1. Mix 1 to 1 & 1/3 cups powdered milk with 3 cups of hot water
2. Cool to lukewarm, or correct temperature, by adding 3/4 cup water.
3. When milk is 110 to 112 degrees (warm, not hot on your wrist), add starter and mix well. You may use a blender, immersion blender, wisk, or stir WELL.
4. Place in yogurt maker for about 4 to 5 hours, until set. Or use another incubation method. Do not disturb yogurt during incubation.
5. Chill for 4 or more hours before using except when draining. (thickened yogurt, yogurt sour cream, yogurt cheese)
6. Save some starter for your next batch.

Method 2:

1. Mix powdered milk and water.
2. Heat to 180 degrees in a heavy pan or in the microwave.
3. Cool to lukewarm (110-112 degrees).
4. Add starter.
5. Incubate. Do not disturb yogurt during incubatio n.
6. Chill for 4 or more hours before using except when draining.
7. Save some starter for your next batch.

Yogurt from Fluid Milk (Skim, 1%, 2%, Whole, Soy)

1. Heat milk to 180 degrees. Hold for 2 minutes.
2. Cool to lukewarm- 110-112 degrees. (Powdered milk solids may be added)
3. Add Starter, mix well.
4. Incubate. Do not disturb yogurt during incubation.
5. Chill for 4 or more hours before using except when draining.
6. Save some starter for your next batch.

Starter:

1. Purchased fresh plain yogurt with Active Cultures (At least 2 heaping Tablespoons, up to 1/2 cup.)
2. Freeze-dried yogurt starter mixed with small amount of cooled milk- Yogourmet brand at the health food store.
3. Yogurt saved from a previous batch of yogurt, at least 2 Tablespoons up to 1/2 cup.
4. Acidophilus Powder- may be used to increase the active cultures.
5. You may freeze any of these cultures, then thaw in the fridge and use to make additional baches of yogurt.
6. When your starter quits working well, you will need to replace it

Ways to Incubate Yogurt:

• Yogurt Maker
• Picnic cooler
• Vacuum cooker
• Heating pad
• Dehydrator
• Oven
• Stove top, warmer unit
• Thermos
• Hot Box
• Blanket
• Crock pot
• Electric frying pan

Some of these methods may take up to 8 hours.

Sour Cream:

Drain until desired thickness- about 4 hours. Add at the end of cooking time. Do NOT boil. To stabilize for cooking add Ultra Gel or cornstarch. (about 1 to 2 tablespoons per cup) Wisk into yogurt and wait 5 minutes before adding to other ingredients. Fold or stir yogurt gently into other ingredients.

Cream Cheese:

Drain until desired thickness- 12 to 24 hours.

Draining Methods:

• Donvier Yogurt Cheese Maker
• Mike's Yogurt Cheese Funnel
• Nylon jelly straining bag
• Mesh strainer with paper towels or coffee filters.

(I like to drain in the fridge.)

If you have yogurt with added gelatin, gums or stabilizers, it won't drain to make yogurt cheese. You can drain for 6 to 8 hours (at room temperature, if desired) and finish draining in the fridge in a container lined with paper towels. The towels may need to be changed until the cheese is as firm as desired. Yogurt cheese freezes well. If it is slightly grainy when thawed, it will be ok when mixed with other ingredients. Wrap cheese well, or keep airtight when storing as it absorbs flavors easily.

Tips

Flavoring Yogurt

• Beverage powders (try Crystal Light lemonade or strawberry powder)
• Flavoring extracts or powders
• Fruit
• Jam,
• Frozen fruit concentrate
• Flavoring syrups,Jello
• Fruit topping

• Serve with granola
• Make Smoothies
• Make frozen desserts
• Serve over fruit
• Yogurt popscicles

You can use yogurt in place of buttermilk in baking and cooking. Thin yogurt with water to desired consistency. (or not)

When using yogurt or buttermilk in baking, add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda for each cup of buttermilk or yogurt, if it wasn't in the original recipe.

Whey drained from yogurt can be used in cooking and20baking. (or not)

To reduce the lactose content of yogurt use regular strength reconstituted powdered milk or fluid milk without any added milk solids and incubate for 24 hours.

Yogurt Recipes

*Yogurt vegetable dip*

• 16 ounces plain yogurt
• 1/4 cup grated carrot
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onion
• 1/4 cup (or less) green (or colored) pepper
• 6 radishes, thinly sliced
• Dash pepper
• 1 teaspoon (or less) dry dill weed (or fresh to taste)
• 1 teaspoon salt

Combine and chill. Serve with vegetable dippers. This may also be made with yogurt cheese and served with crackers.

*Orange yogurt pops*

• 1 pint yogurt
• 1 (6 oz) can frozen orange juice (or other flavor frozen juice)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla (or flavoring that goes with your choice of juice)
• Ultra Gel may be added to make the popsicles less drippy.

Mix and freeze. (Small paper cups work well)

*Fruit popsicles*

• 1 cup yogurt
• 1 can orange juice, optional
• 1 cup bottled or fresh fruit, pureed. (Use more if omitting orange juice)
• Ultra Gel, optional

Mix and freeze.

*Low Fat Pudding Pop*

• 1/2 cup non-instant milk
• 1 package fat free instant pudding mix (banana cream and chocolate work well)
• 2 cups water

Mix the milk powder with the pudding mix. Add water and whip with wire whisk until smooth. Pour into popsicle trays or small paper cups with a plastic spoon inserted after the pudding sets.

Recipes using non-fat powdered milk

*Dry Milk Topping*

• 1/2 cup regular powdered milk
• 1/2 cup ice-cold water

Beat with electric beater until it holds its shape and peaks. Add: 2 Tablespoons lemon juice

Gradually add:

• 1/3 cup sugar mixed with
• 2 teaspoons ultra gel OR 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

*Whipped Topping*

• 6 tablespoons nonfat dry milk
• 1 cup water
• 2 teaspoons gelatin
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cold water
• 1/4 cup sugar ( + 1 teaspoon Ultra Gel, optional)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Dissolve the milk in the cup of water and scald. Soak the gelatin in cold water. Combine the scalded milk, dissolved gelatin and sugar. Stir and chill in the refrigerator until it jells. Now beat the mixture until it acquires the consistency of whipped cream. Add the vanilla and whip again.

*Cool Whip*

Chill a small mixing bowl. Soften 1 tsp gelatin in cold water. Then add 3 tablespoons boiling water, stirring until gelatin is completely dissolved. Place 1/2 cup ice water and 1/2 cup dry milk powder in chilled bowl. Beat on high until stiff peaks form. Add 3 tablespoons sugar, still beating. Then add 3 tablespoons oil gelatin. Place in freezer 15 minutes. Then transfer to fridge until ready to use. Stir before using to retain creamy texture.

*Sweetened Condensed Milk*

• 3/4 cup non-instant dry milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup HOT tap water
• 2 tablespoons margarine or butter

Melt margarine in hot water, place hot water in blender. With blender going, add sugar and dry milk. Blend until smooth. (makes about 14 ounces)

*Buttermilk*

• 1 cup non-instant dry milk
• 3 cups slightly warm water
• 1/2 cup commercially cultured or previously ma de buttermilk

Combine ingredients. (I use a wide mouth quart jar) Shake, whisk, beat or blend until well blended. Add water to fill jar. Cover and allow to stand at room temperature until cultured. (6 to 12 hours) Save 1/4 cup of the buttermilk for the next time you make buttermilk. I use a small jar. Refrigerate cultured buttermilk. Makes 1 quart.

Buttermilk will keep 2-3 weeks. It may be frozen. It will be necessary to use a fresh start of buttermilk occasionally

*Buttermilk for baking*

A variation is to mix 1 to 2 tablespoons instant clear jel or Ultra Gel with 2/3 cup non instant powdered milk in a dry quart jar and add 3 cups water and 1/4 cup buttermilk culture. Mix or blend until smooth. Add water to fill jar and shake or mix to blend. Let set at room temperature for 10 to 12 hours. Once cultured, store in the refrigerator where it will thicken even more. Remove about 1/3 cup to save for your next batch. Thin the buttermilk just until pourable when you are ready to use it in your recipe. It is best to use the buttermilk and make more within 30 days. You need at least 1/4 cup to make a new quart of buttermilk, but don't use any more than 1/2 cup.

With both of these buttermilk recipes, add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda for each cup of buttermilk used. It is important to purchase really fresh buttermilk for you r first culture, and use it within 7 days. If your buttermilk gets not so good after using your saved culture for a long time, just purchase a fresh little carton.

*Expanded Butter*

• 1 pound butter
• 1 cup cold water
• 3 cups hot water
• 2 Packages unflavored gelatin
• 1 1/3 cups powdered milk
• Salt to taste
• 2 or 3 drops yellow food coloring (optional)

(This recipe may be quartered)

Melt butter in a pan placed over hot water (double boiler). Sprinkle gelatin in the 1 cup cold water. Add powdered milk to the 3 cups hot water. When butter is melted, add softened gelatin, salt, and hot water /milk mixture to the hot butter. Heat this mixture over the hot water until the gelatin is dissolved. Add Natural food coloring if available. Beat the warm mixture vigorously in a blender for about 1 minute. (The blender beating prevents the butter from separating from the milk when it is chilled). Pour the beaten mixture into containers and chill until very firm. It is ready to eat. This cuts butter calories and cholesterol by 2/3. One pat of butter is 95 calories; one pat of expanded butter is 33 calories. (Not good for frying, but good as a spread and on veggies, etc.

*Pineapple "Cream" Cheese spread*

• 1 cup yogurt cheese
• 1 can (15 ounces) crushed pineapple, drained
• 2 tablespoons honey (or to taste, I used creamy honey)
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon coconut flavoring, optional

(to taste, depending on brand)

Stir honey and flavoring (if used) into cheese or pineapple. combine cheese and pineapple and chill. Great as a spread for crackers, celery, fruit breads, bagels.

*Lemon Yogurt*

• 1 quart plain yogurt
• 1 tub crystal light lemonade crystals sweetener to taste (optional Whey low works well)

Stir together, Great over strawberries or other fruit, or just plain. Other flavors of drink mix (little tub that makes 2 quarts) work well.

Carol Allred makes a great strawberry flavored yogurt using Great Value (Wal-mart store brand) strawberry drink mix and a little lemon flavoring, sweetened to taste with Whey Low sugar substitute. Yummy over strawberries or other fruit or alone.

When we lived in CA., we would drive to specialty nurseries as our birthday or anniversary tradition.

It's always fun to come home with a new plant to commemorate a special occasion. It is possible that a specially selected plant, vine or tree can give back to you and to your family and friends forever.

There were two especially nice Iris nurseries within driving distance and in the spring they would open their fields to visitors.

You take your notebook and walk up and down the rows and when you see an Iris you love you write the name down from the labeled stake in the ground.

When you see fields of Iris in this way you can judge height, number of blooms per plant, vibrancy of color, possible fragrance, etc. for yourself.

The problem is................ it is hard to just pick one.

You turn your order in with a check and later in the summer when the nursery divides their clumps they send you a little box and presto! You have the potential for decades of Iris.

When we moved away from CA., I told the Relief Society they could come and dig up any iris they wished and they did. We have missed our iris.

Last Christmas we received a Christmas Card from the new owners of our home in CA. They sent a family letter with a Kinko copied color collage of their children as many of us do. Interspersed with the photos of their children were large color photos of our Iris.

(Don't obtain ordinary Iris from any ordinary place......... go right to the very source of the newest and best in the world.)

As World War II began Owe Radtke was only seven years old. After he watched his father march away, his mother looked her only child in the eyes and told him she did not know what would happen to them in the future. But, that if he could find a way to raise a few chickens in his bedroom, that this would be a great blessing to them. She asked him if he could commit to that responsibility.

In his bedroom?

Yes. In Europe most people live in apartments and not in their very own detached homes with their very own fenced in yards as we totally blessed and spoiled Utahns do.

Now the challenge became keeping the two chickens alive. If he were to let them roam outside for even one day, they would surely be stolen by some other hungry and deprived family wishing for just one night of a beautiful chicken stew.

Every day Owe became a scavenger with a bag collecting weeds or leaves to give his chickens. This was not enough. He learned how to have a fruit fly operation, also in his bedroom, and as the fruit flies multiplied near the hen setup... his hens would peck the insects and when they had consumed enough protein.... an egg would appear. He told me that when he would come out of his room bearing an egg.... the joy in the faces of his mother and grandmother was so great that he could never forget it.

There are just so many more things a mother can do with flour AND WITH an egg than she can do with flour WITHOUT an egg.

Owe Radtke had many more totally shocking first hand accounts of suffering during World War II which he told me when I was a high school exchange student there long ago. Probably the vividness of hearing things I'd never before imagined from someone who was still angry about them caused me to be imprinted with a love of chickens, gardens, and tucking supplies away ever since.

In the North West it is VERY TRENDY to have three chickens.

It is so very politically correct, so 'green', and so ecologically aware. Oregon housewives are just way ahead of us. Ordinances have been passed so that each city lot may have THREE chickens should one wish it [Editor: We have such an ordinance in Lehi, Utah, but we can keep 6 hens as 'pets']. I read a darling book about this about 13 years ago. Ladies go down to their local hardware store when the baby chicks come in. They pull up a chair and sit for a few hours just studying all the peckings and energy levels and finally pick the three chicks they feel are perfect for them. In the case of the author of the book I am remembering..... she chose one large black hen for large white eggs, one Rhode Island Red for large brown eggs and one Ameraucana for the blue or green eggs.

Constructing the housing for each person's hen operation has become a cottage industry in itself. Books of designs are available and they feature the high rise model, the Victorian, the Western Rancher, the Oriental etc. Most architectural designs employ the easy patio access lids for clean egg retrieval directly from the nest box, a weather proof area for a lidded can of feed, a cozy roosting loft (with perch), a watering system on an automatic timer, and finally...... another easy lift lid in the 'run' for the gifting to the chickens your kitchen scraps, weeds or what have you. (I think we all know how prized these peckings become in one's garden later.)

It is possible the now defunct doll house industry of years gone by has been replaced by these chicken house masterpieces because after the construction is beautifully, and sturdily completed...... the decorating and painting can begin. Color schemes for these domiciles are labored over and after the roofing shingles are on and the window trim is perfect then the various hues of the rainbow are applied on sides, porch, posts, sills and lids.

Finally, planting of the exterior sides or vantage point corners with just the perfect flowers or vines in colors to complement the whole commences. Some position an antique garden bench with tea table nearby for daily bonding with one's mini-flock. Then.......... voila ! CALL THE MAGAZINES !

One lady featured in this volume loved her chickens so much that she had a closed circuit TV camera mounted permanently facing the 'run'. She didn't want to miss out on even one of their darling antics as she worked in her kitchen so the TV screen was always turned on and it always featured the THE LIVES AND TIMES OF HARRIET, GOLDY, AND CLUCK.

When we lived in CA. we hosted the Stake Pioneer Day Party every July 24^th on our six acres. Eternal thanks to Sister Carolee Brobee who brought in a dozen horses each year for the little ones to ride around and around in a circle. Thank you to the Stake for carrying out the Pioneer Games, providing the pool life guards, and the eight barbeques going with buffalo, venison, wild boar etc. There was hatchett throwing (a VERY big hit) and maze running and endless potluck dishes. In the barn one stall was available for children to sit on straw and hold rabbits and in another stall they could sit and hold baby chicks. These two stalls were always filled to over flowing with little ones wanting to hold the baby chicks and missionaries were permanently stationed sitting in the four corners of each stall to prevent 'overloving' of the animals. Anyone could take home a baby chick with a bag of starter if their parent said OK.

One time a non-lds hi school science teacher took a baby chick home. To this day he comes home from work and sits down to watch the news in his special chair while reaching over to open the back door. His chicken has been waiting for him and she hops up on his chest and nestles there while he pets it for the next hour or so. He and his chicken still adore each other after many years.

Anyway......... The problem is there are reasons why lots of people came to this party and sometimes the count was over 2,000. Cars were parked in the adjacent mowed fields of our neighbors and people just came and went and who knew anyone anyway because everyone brought friends and non members and do YOU know EVERYONE in YOUR stake? I don't think so. So after one party when a family was almost hysterical because their child could not be found we all went into a paralyzing panic.

He could have been walked out of there by any clump of people and who would have noticed? As everyone ran all over calling his name and basically going nuts....... TERROR began to grip all of us like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

Finally, someone found him but, said we all had to come. We ran to the barn and there behind a tall stack of bales of hay.... way back in a dark corner was the child all curled up in a tight ball. His hands were under his chin and in his hands was a baby chick held carefully against his neck.

The boys eyes looked at all of us even more terrified than we were and he whispered, "Please don't take my chick. Please don't take my chick."

The memory of that little boy holding the chick in such a state was worth all the effort of doing all those parties.

(We did move away that fall.)

1. Chickens can really be valuable for survival. There simply is neither time nor space to count the ways.
2. If you think you might do chickens one day; DO IT RIGHT AND DO IT ADORABLE like they do in Oregon so they will be a great asset to your little mini-estate of great and fore-sightful points of interest in your yard.
3. Let all the little children you know come and hold your chicks and your beautiful hens because most little children now days NEVER get to hold a baby chick and this is one of life's greatest joys.
4. Realize that Heavenly Father has gifted these beautiful Masterpieces to each and everyone of us who wish it.

[Editor: We held our chicks, and they come to us when we call now. They come running, actually. But, be sure to learn enough so when they get sick, or "egg-bound" you know what to do.]

just buy dried eggs.

One #10 can dried whole eggs contains around 100 eggs.
1 egg = 1 T. dried whole egg + 2 T. water
Once opened, they will last a year if cool and dry.
The heat of the drying process kills Salmonella bacteria.
They have important nutritional value in any food storage diet.

Just a few of the advantages.........

You won't need to build, paint or service a chicken mansion.
You won't need to buy feed.
There will never be a worry about rodents being attracted to the coop.
You won't need to give up valuable space in your yard for a chicken operation.

My husband reads the financial times every day. Recently there was an article about countries in the middle east who have mostly sand for soil and little water. It told how they are looking around at other countries in the world seeking large areas of great soil, water rights, and a legal system which would allow them to fence this off from the host country and take all the produce back to their own lands.

Then he brought me the newest National Geographic: "Where Food Comes From". On the cover is a sprout with roots going down into the most awesome soil. Read this article if you want to become very afraid. (Our planet's soils are vanishing.)

Once I saw a photo of a little house on a prairie. The man had farmed it for many years each year harvesting crops and trucking them away...... but, never putting anything back into the soil. The house was now 8' higher than the ground level because the ground had given and given and every time it gave it went a few inches lower and now it was very low indeed compared to the house.

In E. Gordon Wells, Jr's first class he will talk about soils and how the 'topsoil' in Utah is so pathetic. He will advise attaching a liquid fertilizer dispenser to your water faucet and tell all about how to feed your crops this way because we don't have time to make a fantastic soil this year. My husband certainly follows this recipe for our raspberry operation and he describes our first year Carolines as veritable Christmas Trees of blossoms covered by Richard's bees. (Of course they are not all that tall: about 3 1/2 ' or 4' but, they ARE beautiful and covered with blossoms. So growing in clay then fertilizing through the water option IS genius.

But......... for the longer term....... the best gift we could give ourselves this fall would be to select a sunny site and then mark out a new garden bed and define it with boards or bales of hay or stones or SOMETHING so that no one will step in it. And then to build a soil which will give us the most productivity and health for our gardens for next year. YOUR OWN personal country is YOUR OWN backyard and you want to have FANTASTIC soils for the future.

Now how will you do this?

Monday, 25 August 2008
In Lehi, food, love and diamonds are harvested on church land
Caleb Warnock - DAILY HERALD

In Lehi, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are beating rising food prices with fresh vegetables grown on borrowed land, and even finding forgiveness, and diamonds, in the dirt.

For the past four or five years, the Lehi South Stake has been allowing members to grow gardens on blank land next to two churches. The Church provides water and fertilizer at no charge and members provide the labor and reap the bounty.

The land is divided by ward and then by family, and some wards have community patches of corn and some vegetables that may be harvested by anyone who has volunteered to water and weed during the summer.

On Friday, Brett Scoresby brought his two sons, Porter, 5, and Nick, 3, to the garden to take home a plastic grocery sack bulging with tomatoes, and another with corn and squash. The family is a member of the Lehi 16^th Ward, which has a community salsa plot and corn plot, and the Scoresbys also have their own individual garden area.

"We like melons and try to plant as many as we have room for," he said. "We like producing our own food. It tastes better and we don't have to buy it."

The family also has space for a small garden plot at home, and grows vine plants like squash and melons at the church site because they require more space, he said. The family has grown food at the church site for the past three years.

"I don't think I've killed anything yet this year," he said.

For Mary and Ron Smalley, the garden represents freedom from rising grocery prices, and a visual reminder of their love. She is divorced and he is divorced and widowed.

Three years ago, they began dating by working together on Mary's garden plot on the church land. One day, Ron brought her a handful of dirt.

"Isn't this beautiful?" Mary recalled Ron saying. She agreed, but he asked her to look closer, and then asked her to stir the dirt with her finger. Inside was a diamond ring.

"I was so shocked I couldn't speak," she said.

In the excitement, Ron didn't realize he had actually forgotten to pop the question. After a few moments he asked her for her answer and she said with a laugh that he hadn't asked her anything.

Mary has been gardening here since the church opened the garden site four or five years ago.

"I love fresh produce," she said. "It's better than store-bought and I don't have to spend all that money. We live off the garden most of the summer."

She and Ron don't have the space for a garden at their home, she said, and the church land has been an opportunity to take care of their family.

"I hope they never stop" providing it, she said. "It's wonderful. Most people today don't have big yards."

"We eat better than we would if we went to the store," Ron Smalley said.

To make the garden even more economical, Mary even saves her own open-pollinated corn, squash, and bean seeds to use to grow the next year's crop. While the garden is pastoral, especially in August, it is not always idyllic. A couple of years ago Mary had planted an enormous and successful patch of watermelons, and between 30 and 50 melons were just ripening when one of the wards that shares the garden apparently announced that members could help themselves to the community garden.

Problem was, most did not know which sections were community and which were private. When Mary returned a couple of days later, "they had picked all but two," she said. "I was sick. That is where forgiveness comes in."

Karl and Betty Pearson also grow a large plot. Happy to have extra space and produce, they have actually spread out into areas abandoned by other families.

The garden has been especially important to the family's bottom line this year because Karl is unemployed.

"We need the food," he said. "We are not really wealthy. We are able to have at least one meal a day from the garden with the squash and the corn."

The family has grown a garden on the church land for the past four years, and this year they tried some new things. Since the couple have a handful of chickens at home, they grew huge sunflowers so they would have food to feed the chickens this winter -- something especially important this year because of the rising price of chicken feed.

They also planted dent corn to grind and use to make their own cornbread and tortillas, and grew beets for the first time this year.

"I canned two quarts of pickled beets," Betty Pearson said. "I was so proud of myself."

Their beet patch is still thriving and the couple will pickle more, looking forward to eating a jar at Thanksgiving, a jar at Christmas, and a jar on her birthday, she said.

The couple has had a garden every year of their 31 years of marriage, they said.

"I love fresh garden food," Betty Pearson said. Then, in reference to this summer's national salmonella scare, she added, "I can eat it and not worry about a tomato poisoning me."

Last March my husband and I were flying over Ekaterinburg, Russia. As our faces were pressed against the plane's windows we saw that EVERY single odd shaped yard of every single little hut on every single curving lane was all rowed out border to border waiting for enough warmth to plant vegetables. There weren't any fences, dog runs, pools, hot tubs, hedges, or lawns:

ONLY ROWS WAITING FOR SEEDS.

One day we had a free day so my husband arranged a car for us and my first request was, "Take me to a nursery!" We found one and what a surprise ! Every wall was a display of seed packets. There was not one inch of bare wall anywhere. In Russia you cannot dial up www.JohnnySeeds.com, or www.Territorialseed.com, or Burpee or Seeds of Change or Parks and request a free catalog and then have a gorgeous color publication delivered to your very door. In Russia you must go to a nursery and stand there looking at the walls straining to see what is on the very highest rows and on the very lowest rows and then decide which of the many flowers or vegetables or OVER SIXTY KINDS of cabbages for example you will select. (In our catalogs they only offer 1/6^th as many kinds of cabbage.)

I did ask for ten cabbages varieties I had never seen before and after the clerk and gone to the back where all seed packages are kept safe and secure from desperate hands........ she brought them out and rang them up and all ten packages came to a total of $2.00 US. At least Putin is keeping the prices of seeds low enough for the peasants.

Sure enough..... this nursery was filled with very dear Russian Grandmothers whom you can all picture in your minds wearing coats and scarves and staring longingly up at the beautiful seed packages displayed on the walls. How I longed to slip a $20.00 bill into each of their pockets so they could order some seeds they otherwise might never dare grow.... even in their entire lifetimes.

WE ARE ALL SUCH SPOILED PEOPLE HERE BECAUSE WE CAN GROW WHATEVER IN THE WORLD WE WANT !!!

BAH ! HUMBUG ! WHY DO NOT MORE OF US GROW THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS AVAILABLE TO US ???

The others on our trip wanted to see where Nicholas and Alexandria and their children were killed (and we did see these things eventually) but, I wanted to drive out into the remote and tiny villages and see the real Russians by their very small wooden huts with the beautifully carved wooden shutters and stare at their preparations for spring gardens.

In didn't matter how tiny the hut, or how tiny the yard around it......... the ground was rowed up. And near every single hut was something created by the owner to extend the season. Some kind of "greenhouse" except many "greenhouses" were the size of dog houses. Boughs had been scrounged from the forest to make frames and plastic sheeting (sometimes looking years old) was attached. Others had actual lumber framing with the plastic sheeting. BUT EVERYONE HAD SOMETHING. EVERYONE !!!

Because they MUST start their seeds early to get a jump on their growing seasons. If they don't grow many things themselves...... they don't have them. They go without.

I am still determined to start a fall/winter growing garden this year. But because of a way too busy life.... I have not yet started my radish, spinach, winter cabbage, raddichio, Chinese vegetable & etc. seeds. But, I will. And I will give you a report. On-line greenhouses are just so expensive. The set up in my garage I have told you about before is so totally awesome. Remember it uses the 8' x 8' pop up greenhouse I purchased at Cook's Garden for $150.00 on 16^th north in Orem. The same greenhouse is offered on line through www.flowerhouses.com for $380.00 and that does not include the shipping fees.

This little greenhouse is probably about as cheap as you could do it unless you build your own wooden frame and cover it with clear plastic yourself.

In the book "Four Seasons of Harvest" the author, Eliot Coleman, who lives in Maine, has edible crops growing all twelve months of the year. Eliot Coleman realized that even though Maine was quite far north and has short day lengths in the winter..... other people on the planet must also have short day lengths and survive on what they grow. So he took a pilgrimage to Europe to trace what was growing on that latitude in the winter and he found that LOTS of things were doing just fabulously. These greens might be totally frozen every morning, but, unlike iceberg lettuce which then melts into brown mush.... these other greens he found appear totally "fresh as a daisy" every afternoon. They could be frozen EVERY morning and still recover EVERY afternoon all through the seasons. He brought seeds for those things back to Maine and then thought..... well in Europe, even though they have the same shorter day lengths that I do in Maine, they are a little warmer than I am because of the ocean bringing warm currents. I will create the same warmth by putting up a non-heated "hoop house" to protect my plants from the drying effects and the chill factor of our Maine winds.

Do you recall how much hotter your car is when it has been sitting in the sun than the outside air is? It can actually be TWENTY DEGREES hotter ! This is great news for we living in cold-wintered Utah. He put up his hoop house using PVC pipe and plastic sheeting and sure enough the temperatures inside were so much warmer than his bitter Maine winters. His whole book (such a great one) is an account of his success raising crops all fall and winter in cold Maine. The thought is also presented that if you can have a 2^nd layer of plastic creating an air layer in between the two plastics that your inner environment will be even so much MORE protected, wind free, warm and cozy.

He didn't need any heaters or electricity of any kind.

We can do this.

USU had a "high tunnel" workshop last April. I missed this but called the creator yesterday: Gary Anderson at 435-283-7595. There is now a website through him and through USU on how to build your own really big "hoop house" using PVC pipe and plastic sheeting. It is www.extension.usu.edu/htm/publications. Go to the Horticulture section and then to the High Tunnels category.

But, for sure........ go and buy yourself a little 8' by 8' greenhouse at Cook's. These are just the best for so many reasons. Think about the Russian peasants searching for boughs in the forest to create their greenhouse frames and then using recycled plastic sheeting so they could extend their seasons......

Love to Everyone,
Erlyn Madsen

Wasn't it great to take a bit of a break from gardening during the holidays?

We had a 'shock and awe' surprise when our tenth child decided to take the GED exam and leave high school and begin college early. So after being in a state of emotional loss for a bit and realizing now, after FORTY years we are actually empty nesters......... we are regaining our equilibrium and it is time to think GARDENS.......... survival in hard times.............. and things like that. But, we are missing him.

Thanksgiving Point had a GREAT class on vegetable gardening last fall which I attended; taught by Clarence Whetten of Utah County. He will probably be teaching another class on vegetable gardening during the Thanksgiving Point "backyard gardening seminars" this coming spring.

He gardens on his own lot plus on two empty lots across the street from his home so he really has lots to say and fun experiences to share.

One of his personal favorite vegetables is called "Sunshine Squash". It is about the size of a soccer ball and he says it is the perfect size for one family for one meal. If you grow this squash all summer watch the stem where it joins the squash. When that area right immediately by the fruit turns brown....... then you KNOW it is time to cut the stem because nutrients are no longer going into the fruit.

Now just place that squash on a backyard picnic table in the shade somewhere in your yard for two weeks. This allows the squash to "CURE" or it allows the pores to toughen up and the skin to harden a bit. Then you store it.

NO CANNING IT ! NO DRYING IT ! NO PICKELING IT ! NO JELLY-ING IT ! No time at all involved in saving it.

AND what is amazing is that he says it does not need really cool temperatures to be preserved. 70 degrees is good enough. That is about the temperature of an average room in your home in the winter. Therefore, you can reserve your colder storage areas for the powdered milk and the powdered butter etc. At the class I attended he had a Sunshine Squash to show us (as well as other things) and he had grown it the year before. They were still enjoying squashes he had stored about A WHOLE YEAR OLD and they were FINE and delicious !!

Next letter I will tell you the vegetable recommendations he gave us as well as those of E. Gordon Wells, Jr. and where to order these seeds. I would like to mention here that E. Gordon Wells, Jr. can teach about three sets of six week long classes on vegetables and fruits each semester. If your stake has not yet invited him you really want to do this.

Vegetable Catalogs should be pouring into your mailboxes about now. At a class taught by Larry Sagers two Mondays ago he told us that THREE things cause seeds to deteriorate: moisture, temperature, and oxygen. Even though I have lots of seeds in plastic containers with silica gel in the bottom to let me know if moisture enters...... all in a refrigerator in my basement......... I am now thinking of taking packages of my favorite seed varieties for 2009 and actually canning them to eliminate as much oxygen and moisture as I can and then freezing them. Mr. Sagers said seeds in a freezer (if not moist) will last just a very long time. He also said a home freezer will not have the capacity to freeze them at too low a temperature to damage them. Colorado State University is freezing seeds and so is the ARK project in Norway. Maybe we each should be doing this as well.

Sincerely,
Erlyn Madsen

If you had an estate and could choose the best place for your garden what would you look for?

In Europe in former centuries when everyone was going about pillaging and burning and plundering........ some gardens were left untouched. Those gardens were walled in with high stone walls. Many of them were also associated with a monastery or a church and had that extra protection of being someplace marauders were afraid to go.

These gardens are where the "Oldest Grapevine" and the "Oldest" this and that are still found in Europe today. These gardens are where so many varieties were saved and then shared anew with others as peace returned between terrors.

High stone walls just have so many virtues to the gardener of today.

1. They keep the damaging and drying winds out.
2. They keep raccoons, deer, and elk out.
3. They absorb the rays of the sun allowing earlier ripening of all fruits and vegetables.
4. They give the gardener so much privacy and also so much personal control.

Let's imagine you do NOT have high stone walls around any part of your property. The next best thing would be the high walls of your home or garage.......... if they have a southern exposure. The northern side of your house will be in shade a lot if not ALL of the time thereby limiting the fruit producing plants you can grow there. The eastern side of your house will give half day sun and is great for leafy salad crops and some strawberries. Gooseberries and black raspberries actually like protection and afternoon shade also (says the catalog).

The southern side of your house will receive full day sun from morning till evening. Wonderful !!! Most vegetables need at least six hours of sun a day to ripen properly. The rays of the sun will be absorbed by this southern wall and will allow you to have more more heat and earlier heat than any other place in your yard. Tomatoes will thrive there earlier than any other place in your yard also. It is not just the heat.... The sun LIGHT is needed to develop the sugars necessary for sweet tasting produce. I remember Golden Reeves (The Tomato King of SLC) speaking longingly of someone in Salt Lake City who had a metal shed with a southern wall and a protected yard right in front of this ideally situated heat-capturing wall who grew and ripened tomatoes a whole month earlier than anyone else in Salt Lake County.

This area could even be enhanced with a solar greenhouse. There is a man in my new gardening class who has built his own solar greenhouse. January 5^th, 2009... he brought in enormous Gerbera Daisies which he had just picked that morning..... as the rest of us were all driving cautiously through the snowstorm to Thanksgiving Point for Larry Sagers' class. I am hoping Mr Petersen will teach us all how to do this during the coming semester because his greenhouse does not use any electricity at all yet stays toasty warm all the bitter winter long.

Clarence Whetten, in his class last year was praising his unheated greenhouse as well. He was picking salad greens almost the entire winter long and his was heated only by the sun entering through the glass and then being trapped there. His did not even have a solar panel. Remember that a closed up car in the summer reaches interior temperatures at least 20 degrees hotter than the outside air. Ditto that as the greenhouse effect for your own future greenhouse in the winter and you can see the advantages.

Or if this does not work for you....... I know of a day lilly hybridizer in California who does not have a yard of his own. He rents the secluded and large backyard of another family and pays them a percentage of his profits. Maybe someone who is not using their large and sunny backyard at all would allow you to garden there for some of your future produce.

Good News!

President Wells will teach his six week gardening classes (these are FREE) in four stakes again this spring. The four stakes will be in Lehi, Orem, Mapleton and Payson. They will begin the first week in February. One series will be taught on Wednesday nights, one on Thursday nights, one series Saturday morning and one series Saturday afternoons. He will send me the exact times and addresses next week and I will send them on to you. I have spoken to several people who attended his classes in a Provo Stake last fall and they want to attend a whole additional series this spring.... they learned that much.

The manuals he gives out: 120 pages and binder size are ALSO FREE !!! You will also receive a discount at Sprinkler World type stores for drip irrigation supplies.

AND he will tell you which nurseries will carry his 4" to 6" pots of particular varieties of vegetables (special tomatoes and squash etc.). You must ask at their counters for these vegetable starts and tell them you are one of his students.

But, the most valuable thing you will receive is an immense amount of knowledge. He uses a blackboard and talks as fast as we can listen and people are taking notes furiously and even then the line after each class with people having specific questions is long. These classes are just so valuable.

Meanwhile, as you plan your garden for this year think of the PERMANENT things first. Things like asparagus, rhubarb, horseradish, berries etc. These are all things you plant ONCE and they last for decades with the added bonus of being dividable so that you can share with others.

ASPARAGUS: There is a "Pick Your Own Farm" north of Salt Lake in Layton called "Day's". This farm is about 1/2 mile further west on Gentile St. after you have visited the excellent J. & J. nursery. My husband and I visited this farm a few years ago and their asparagus was wonderful. The ground was dry as a bone, even resembling HARD. Yet, the asparagus crops were great. I was astonished at the hard clay-like ground. They told me now that the asparagus plants were mature they didn't need to irrigate much. The roots went way down she thought and the water table must not be very far away because they only would flood irrigate this particular field about three times a summer. I asked where they ordered so many crowns of asparagus. I was told they had grown all of these plants from seeds in their greenhouse.

So I ordered seeds of many kinds of asparagus from many sources and planted them in my little pop-up garage greenhouse and sure enough they all came up. 100s of them. Darling little tiny spears and we planted them outside when they were about 6" tall. The next week when I checked they had all been eaten by something and were destroyed.

The second year I planted tiny seeds yet again and they all came up again and we transplanted 100s of tiny plants out again and they were all eaten AGAIN. And the third year also. This is the fourth year: 2009. I am going to take courage and persevere because now theories have changed about planting asparagus. Now they are saying forget digging the 20' trench. Just basically plant them in good ground and if you care for them they will still give spears for AT LEAST 20 years as well as gorgeous red ferny foilage every fall. So this year I will just buy the crowns.......... read the directions for planting in the books yet again....... and then maybe protect the whole row with row cover till they are really up and growing stronger.

Other things can be purchased this year and then never purchased again. Berries are purchased only once. Rhubarb is another one of these things as is Horseradish. Plenty of herbs can be bought this year and then either protected during the winter by placing a white bucket over the planting for cold protection.... or by bringing in starts and over-wintering them inside and planting anew each spring.

As you plan the permanent parts of your garden be sure the tallest things are to the north: trees or tall trellises of grapes at the northern most rows............. then the blackberries then the raspberries (shorter than blackberries) then moving south the currants then the gooseberries (gooseberries grow lower than currants) with the lowest permanent things like the strawberries to the most southern rows of all. This will allow all our plants to have as much sun as possible.

Berry purists say don't plant the different kinds of berries too near each other or they will share pests.... space them far from each other...... but, for those with small yards...... just be vigilant on watching for pests.

I would like to mention that I have visited President Wells' farm. He preaches "IF YOU CAN CHOOSE have your garden on a hillside sloping to the SOUTH for the most benefit from the sun. But, in reality his garden slopes to the NORTH. He preaches "IF YOU ARE ABLE TO CHOOSE......... keep your crops OUT of the wind". But, in reality his garden is plagued by horrific winds coming from nearby canyons. HE STILL GETS SO MUCH YIELD he is calling all his neighbors to please come and share his bounty. Last year he was also plagued by an overwhelming infestation of grasshoppers. He said, "Even after all the grasshoppers there was still so much good fruit left they had more than they could ever use and they were still calling all their friends to come to share." And in reality his garden is not even all that big. I was surprised. He is just so efficient and he knows how to maximize the yield from every crop. When each tomato plant gives to their max because of perfect fertilizations etc...... you don't need so so many plants.

This is why you need to come to his classes.

Here's the schedule:

Spring Gardening Courses 2009 Schedule
DAY	DATES	TIMES	LOCATIONS
Wednesday	Feb. 4 - Mar. 11	7-9 pm	Payson West Stake Center Chapel 780 West 500 South, Payson
Thursday	Feb. 5, 12, 26 Mar. 5, 12, 19	7-9 pm	Sunset Heights Stake Center Chapel 1260 South 400 West, Orem
Saturday	Feb 7 - Mar 14	9-11 am	Heritage Building 1600 North Main, Mapleton
Saturday	Feb 7-Mar 14	1-3 pm	Jordan River Stake Center Chapel 2161 West 300 South, Lehi

You are missing a very special experience if you do not sign up for Larry Sagers' Master Gardener program in Utah Valley. He is from three or four generations of Utah gardening families, the official State Horticulturalist for Utah and he is the one every Saturday morning on KSL radio answering your gardening questions. The truth is he knows everything and he knows about every inch of this state and what does or does not grow and it is just eye-opening to listen to him.

In today's class we learned so many things. (It was all about soils.) But, as 'asides' here and there other fascinating facts came out which I thought some of you might be interested in.

First, the perfect soil has 50% air pockets for drainage and for a nice sponge like water retaining soil.

How do you think the soil rates on THE MALL in Washington D. C.? ............especially after 2,000,000 people stood on it all day for the inauguration? Even BEFORE the inauguration....... so many people enjoy that lawn!!!! It has been evaluated and the soil density is described as exactly as dense as cinder blocks. Not good. They must continuously replace it section by section and $36,000,000.00 has now been set aside to do this yet again.

Why not astro turf you ask?

Did you know BYU-Idaho has a regulation NFL football field (built BEFORE they decided not to continue with their football team... but, now used by high schools etc.) and it does have astro-turf rather than lawn. . One of Mr. Sager's friends runs this facility and has electrodes placed here and there in various parts of the astro turf. He can see the readings on gauges right in his office. On a normal spring or summer day at 10:00 am in the morning that astro turf registers a temperature of 140 degrees.

When professional football teams play on this very hot astro turf it melts their shoes and they have to throw every pair away after just one game and buy the team all new shoes for the next game.

So do not hate yourself if you made a mistake today.

Professional people with the highest level training and the best of intentions also make mistakes. (yes it was fixed, in case you were wonderfing)

We had such a fun class today. ANYONE can sign up for these classes.

Here are some miscellaneous resources to help us be more self-sufficient.

The attachment at the bottom of this email, if clicked upon, will give you the tomato wisdom of four tomato gardeners in Utah, plus some thoughts from others.

It is time to be starting your favorite tomato varieties indoors NOW ! Read about how this is done (link below).

Or come to Thanksgiving Point this Saturday (February 28) where I will be giving this out as a handout (with other things) while team-teaching 'seed starting' in the Greenhouse from 9 till 11.

And please bring your own tomato growing secrets and hints to share.

Love to all Tomato Enthusiasts,
Erlyn

HERBS

Only Nine

Beautiful books on herbs are so tempting to purchase. But, so many of the plants featured are not what the normal busy mom would ever normally use.

WHICH PLANTS ARE REALLY WORTH THE BOTHER?

"For those who wish to grow as much of their own food as they can in a garden, this family is surely the most useful of them all. It provides more protein than any other. Fabaceae also are remarkable for their nitrogen-fixing ability. Organic gardeners who don't like spending their money on expensive nitrogenous fertilizers (which make the soil lazy about fixing its own nitrogen) find that peas, beans and clovers are the answer, for the Fabaceae are plants which, par excellence, fix nitrogen in the nodules on their roots. Pull out any healthy leguminous plant and examine its roots. You should find small pimples or nodules. If you were to cut these open and examine them with a powerful microscope, you would see bacteria. These live symbiotically with the plant. The plant feeds them with everything they need except nitrogen: they fix nitrogen from the air (combining it with oxygen to form nitrates), and this they use themselves and also feed to the host plant.

"If you grow any leguminous plant, and dig it into the soil when it is lush and green (flowering stage), it will rot down very quickly providing its own nitrogen to enrich your garden soil. It is worth growing peas, beans or clover for this very purpose. If you put leguminous plants on the compost pile, they will have the same beneficial effect.

"Leguminous plants should account for at least a quarter of your garden each year and there is nothing wrong with having far more than that. They are not acid-loving plants (hooray because in Utah we are not acidic at all)."

I am really gathering lots of interesting information on saving vegetable seeds. And I am also going a bit crazy making cute little mini-packs of seeds suitable for growing 'perptual vegetable gardens'.

And when I say 'mini' I mean 3 beans of one variety in one tiny pack, etc. Three beans are enough so that if your life depended on these three bean seeds for this year you actually COULD nurture just three plants......... grow them, guard the developing bean pods till really dry,....... save all this harvest for seeds....... and then have PLENTY of seeds for yourself and your family to plant in a much more giant garden in 2010.

If you were to do this carefully....... your bean seed harvest will be much superior in quality to the beans from most seed catalogs. Because YOU will watch each plant and not bring in the pods to dry further till the time is truly perfect. Seed companies have to just harvest their whole crop at once and some will be under ready, some pods may have already shattered etc......... so you'll get a variety of bean seed perfection. But, if you do it YOURSELF....... then ALL your seeds will be the highest in quality.

Steve Solomon grows parsnip seeds each year. Parsnip seeds are some of the most short lived seeds of all. He harvests such a bumber crop of parsnip seeds every year that he is able to package them up and trade them to his local nursery for everything else he wants to buy in the way of nursery stock for the entire next year.

So for those dear souls who have requested my crazy agricultural emails and endured them.... I will be dispensing these little kits of various gardening seeds for your coming vegetable garden this Saturday at the Thanksgiving Point Backyard Gardening Seminar in my class on "How to Save Your Own Vegetable Gardening Seeds."

Next week I will send out an e-mail on "everything we (my husband and I) have learned about Hazelnuts for Utah".

And the week after that I will be teaching "Berries" also at a Thanksgiving Point Gardening Saturday again. Some of the berry companies we have ordered from over the past few years have been kind enough to send me batches of 30 catalogs so that each person in my class will receive some great information in those to take home as well as great information from the USU Extension Service.

After my 'seed saving' handouts are done I will be sending them to you also in case you want to compare notes with what you are doing or have done. I would love to hear about your experiences in this area of gardening also.

Sincerely,
      Erlyn Madsen

This e-mail contains three attachments.

The attachment is about what can be done in your garden this month.

As you look at your garden, remember that this is also the time nurseries are stocking their bare root fruit trees. Spring is the very best time to plant a fruit tree or a nut tree. If you are not ready to decide exactly which fruit trees you might like........ consider this: the Apricot is one of the most beautiful of the fruit trees while the Pear is one of the most ugly. Apricots give beautiful blossoms in the spring and usually form a lovely and uniformly shaped tree which is an enhancement to any yard. Plums are also a very gorgeous and beautiful fruit tree. Peaches, however, are the reason most people buy any tree at all. If Larry Sagers could only plant one fruit tree in his yard it would be a Peach. (Any Elberta) I keep preaching Hardy Hazels. But, he says if your Hazel gives you a bushes of nuts and you shell them........ you will have a quart or two of nutmeats. A peach tree, on the other hand, will give you bushels and bushels of the most heavenly fruit.......... which you can NEVER have from the store. He says all the peaches in stores go "CRUNCH". Whereas, peaches from your own tree can never be duplicated anywhere else.

Did you know: Peach trees only live and give fruit for about 18 years. Whereas..... Apples might outlive us. There is a pear tree in Springville planted by the pioneers which is still living.

In the fall, if you go on line to the Bay Laurel Nursery in California....... they list an enormous variety of every kind of fruit tree. You must place your order with them in the fall and then they arrive bareroot in the spring in large boxes. Ours were planted yesterday. We ordered plums which ripen in June, in July, in August, in Spetember and even in October for a long harvest. Plums come in many beautiful colors. When you go to buy your fruit trees look for a spread in ripening dates so everything won't come at once. Espalier them all over your fences and plant them closely and you can buy lots.

Berries are also available (letter to come on this later......... but, please read what I wrote about the "Albion" Strawberry at the end of today's attachment.) Don't purchase any kind of strawberry before doing your homework.

Grapes are also available. In the classes I have attended about grapes since moving to Utah the consensus is ALWAYS that the original NON-imporved, still with seeds, "CONCORD" grape remains the tops for juice, jellies etc.

The very best grape vine for making raisins is "Interlachen". One of the reasons it is so great for raisins is that it ripens early leaving plenty of time to dry laying the grapes out on sheets in the sun. We are all going to want raisins enhancing our whole wheat bread products in case of coming hard times.

The grape which covers arbors or patios the very most quickly is "Himrod": Lots of foilage, pale green grapes.

And the nicest grape if you wish a red one is Canadice. Canadice has pretty clusters with only little vestigial seeds.

There are always new kinds to try. Some with promise are said to be Venus, Mars and Einset Seedless. People in class just tell it straight: "Alden" has a horrible flavor. Don't buy that one. And "Relliance" gets powerdy mildew. The new improved "Concord" varieties are NOT as flavorful as the good old original Concord. (Even though that one has seeds people still seem to like it the very best.)

Remember that if your yard backs up to county property and if the county comes by to spray for any reason...... your grapes will wither. Grapes hate any weed killing sprays. Also, if you plant your grapes near a chain link fence the clusters will grow intertwined and you will have an awful time getting any grapes out in one piece.

Also remember....... if you save up to purchase just one vine........ it is so easy to later on take cuttings from this one and so, so, simple-dimple to make so many more vines from this one for expanding your grape production in future years.

My husband fondly remembers the "Concord" grape vine his mother grew on near 4^th East in SLC. He would sit in the summers and just enjoy those grapes day after day. The vine is still there and must have lived for decades. Our friends, Brad and Jan Gordon bottle delicious Concord Grape juice every year and have give it as gifts to friends: Such a Treat !!!

I know you will want to put a few of these wonderful things in your yard this month.

Erlyn

Below is a wonderful collection of thoughts from E. Gordon Wells, Jr. about growing strawberries.

Don't hesitate to obtain the best compost you can at the various land fills to enrich your soils before beginning.

California grows 60% of our country's strawberry crop.

Every year they pull out all of last year's plants, fumigate the soil, make new high rows, lay down their drip system, plant fresh new strawberry plants and cover the ground with black plastic. They do leave ditches on each side of such a prepared raised bed. But, the ditches are not to carry water to the plants. The ditches are for the workers to walk along so that the beds are never stepped on again. You don't want to compact the soil in your strawberry beds.

Because of California's advanced planting methods and amazing strawberry varieties they can pick twice a day (as we will also) and harvest 50 tons from one acre every year. 50 tons equals 60,000 lbs per acre. Strawberries will give you more lbs. of fruit from one acre than any other fruit.

There are three crops which benefit from black plastic. They are strawberries, tomatoes, and melons. Black plastic mulch is great for strawberries because it prevents weeds..... it helps the soil retain moisture......... and it keeps the berries clean.

Because of spectacular genetic improvements each year the plants are superior to the strawberry plants of last year or superior to any strawberries available in most nurseries. This year, because E. Gordon Wells, Jr. "has connections" he is sharing those opportunities with us!!! We can ALL grow the newest kind of amazing strawberry should we wish. This variety is called 'Albion' and is sold at "The Garden Plot" in Springville, at Cook's in Orem and at Linden Nursery on State St. in Linden.

The roots of these plants can go down 40" or more so you want to give them the best soil you can.

If you are using your own Utah alkaline garden soil........ you would enrich a row 3' by 60' or a row of 180 sq. ft. by adding the following: 3 cups of 16-16-8 and 1 cup of ironite. This is the recipe for a great vegetable garden row. BUT,...................... we are now growing strawberries and plants from which you hope to be picking twice a day from March till October. So you must double the amounts above plus add 4 quarts of sulphur. The sulphur helps to make the soil more acidic which berries love and helps them absorb iron.

Therefore, if you hope to grow the largest most flavorful strawberries in your town............ you must enrich your berry row with 6 cups of 16-16-8 and 2 cups of ironite and 4 quarts of sulphur. Mix the first two together and then put them in a fertilizer dispenser and just walk down the row "salting" as you go and you can almost see whether you have done it evenly or not. The sulphur can be purchased at Steve Regan's in SLC (and I have heard now at Walmart as well), and goes on next. Then water it in with a hose nozzle which has a soft flow.

After this has been watered in (some are depending on this week's rain storms to water it in for them).......... You are ready to lay down your drip system. If your row is 3' to 4' wide then you will want one drip line (or soaker hose) going down each side.

Test your soaker hose or your drip system to be sure all the emitters are working properly. If one of your emitters is clogged just leave it there and push in a new emitter next to the clogged one. If your soaker hose is clogged you might want to try the drip alternative.

(Right before you lay down the black plastic don't forget to sprinkle the powdered earwig bait around the plants.)

Now you are ready to plant the strawberry plants. They are very sensitive to planting depth. The roots should be spread out in a circle. But, the plant should remain high so that no dirt covers the crown. Let the soil level be perfectly covering the roots......... but, not one particle of dirt where the leaves will begin to grow. It would be better to have the center of the plant higher than the soil line than lower.

Now lay black plastic down over the whole. The Albion Strawberry variety grows very large: sometimes 2' high per plant so don't plant them closer than 1 foot apart each way. 14" would be a good distance between plants if you have plenty of room. As you lay the plastic down the row you will make an "X" in the black plastic and pull the planted crowns of the plants carefully through.

Now secure the edges of the black plastic with bricks so the wind won't whip it off.

Do not let these plants make daughter plants. Cut off all runners because we are after enormous strawberries day after day from March through October. If the plant must put all its strength into making daughter plants all around it you will never see the prize winning strawberries.

Keep these plants for three years in this manner refertilizing every year. In fact, you will want to add some Miracle Gro Azalea water soluble food to your hose now and then as the summer months pass. All berries love the added acidity in the Azalea foods throughout the summer to keep production high.

After three years of picking from this one planting of Albion Strawberries......... it will be time for we home gardeners to throw them out and move our patch (crop rotation) to another place in our yard and to begin again with the new miracle strawberry which will be invented for that year. (Forget about daughter plants.)

Last mid-October, after we had already experienced a few frosts, E. Gordon Wells, Jr. brought an enormous bowl of strawberries in to show our class. The strawberries were very large indeed. He had picked them that afternoon from the bottoms of the plants where the leaves had protected them from the frosts. His Albions are the first to ripen here in June and they keep on giving enormous berries never stopping all summer till a hard frost hits in the fall.

When the plant is growing in May it is still a little young juvenile. Therefore, give it a chance to mature and pick off the blossoms till the leaves are husky and can provide plenty of food to make berries. "Albion Strawberries are 'THE BEST OF THE BEST'" says President Wells, "with enormous berries beginning in June and there are about 100 berries on the plant at various stages of ripening at all times till frost."

His 2^nd choice this year is Heeker and his third choice is Eversweet.

Good Luck to everyone having the best strawberries ever!

Sincerely,
   Erlyn Madsen

Utah used to be so famous for raspberries. There were raspberry festivals in the northern part of the state. (I am told.) But, as people moved to Utah from all over...... each family brought starts of their own favorite raspberry roots and with these starts came various raspberry diseases from all over also. Now when these same Utah Raspberry Festivals are held.......... most of the raspberries they serve are brought in from Oregon and Washington.

These diseases spread when you share diseased starts with others. How many older homes have gardens which still have these diseases in their raspberry plants or in their soils? One way to know if your raspberry patch has diseases is that your yield will be very low instead of abundant. This is why it is so important to bring in virus free stock from a certified nursery when you are planting your own garden.

In one class I was attending a man was sitting by me who was bragging about his raspberry patch. He said it gave so many starts that every spring he would pot them up and take them to a certain nursery where his starts would be sold at $9.95 each. I looked at him with misgivings because how was he SURE he was not passing on possible raspberry viruses to unsuspecting customers?

Some of the talk show radio hosts are saying "buy gold coins" to prepare for the uncertain future. What if we can't all go around buying gold coins?

Don't you think buying a few fruit trees might be as valuable in the future?

I remember hearing a story about the Saints in Utah being asked to send blankets and food to Europeans after one of the world wars. One lady was poor and all she had to send were sacks of blackened dried fruit which she had over-dried on her rooftop. The others thought this was a pretty miserly offering. But, when the thank you letters came back........... the recipients in Europe were so grateful for the taste of fruit. Their own fruit trees had been cut down for fire-wood for cooking and for warmth. The blackened dried fruit was something they mentioned with great gratitude as if it was the treasure of the relief packages.

Van Well Nursery in Eastern Washington still has a GREAT offering of fruit trees which they will deliver right to your door through the mail. If you go to their website you will be amazed at the variety they offer.

[See the bottom of this entry for their site, plus others.]

Dee answered the phone when I called yesterday and we went through all her very favorite varieties of each fruit and why. She adores two varieties of nectarine because they have a really strong nectarine flavor. One is white and one is gold: Arctic Glo and Fantasia. She makes fabulous jam using 1/4^th the amount of sugar requested in regular recipes because her husband is diabetic. She cooks down the chunks of both colors of nectarine and then uses 1 cup of cooked fruit to only 1/4 cup of sugar. When both are at a slow thick boil for 2 minutes she adds one pckage of pectin and bottles it up in sterile jars and then puts it through a hot water bath. You all know about this but, I am new to the jam world and hearing her describe how gorgeous these jars are with the two colors of nectarine showing through was very fun.

She has a favorite prune: Elephant Heart PRUNE. She dries these slices in a home dehydrator (they are freestone) for 6 to 8 hours then cools the slices for 6 hours till they are truly cool so they won't mold in the zip loc bags and then all the zip loc bags are stored in big plastic labeled bins in her basement. They LOVE dried fruit all winter.

We went through each variety of fruit one by one and she really knows which are best for drying and for jams. I am planning on really learning how to master this so if times get really hard just feel free to bring all your gold coins over and I will trade you for bags of dried fruit and gorgeous jars of two toned jam.

Sincerely,
   Erlyn

PS You know I am hoping you will learn to do this too. Maybe you will even send us all YOUR OWN great recipes. And we can all get rich together.

Seven of our ten children are married and living all over the country. I DO worry about them as random disasters seem to continually surprise us. You must have similar thoughts for your own dearest ones.

A few years ago we had moved to Utah from California where we had six acres which were a family work opportunity where kids learned how to 'put their shoulders to the wheel'.

Utah is so unpredictable having snow one day and 70 degree weather the next. Daffodils and forsythia are blooming everywhere yet snow is expected tomorrow! Just crazy.

The 'chitted peas' I wrote about were put into our garden the first week of March. Then they were snowed upon unrelentingly week after week. Yet, yesterday, the whole row was up and looking so beautiful and happy to be sprouting. I've planted another row today. You can keep on planting peas through May.

The Albion Strawberries haven't minded the snowy days a bit and this week all my garage-greenhouse raised tomatoes will go out into the garden rows with king sized hotcaps over them. (Available at Cook's.)

If you are planting bare root fruit trees don't be tempted to prune them into walking sticks. Utah nurseries love to prune them severely saying, "Well, look how tiny the roots are.... how much they have been cut! Therefore we must cut the top to match the massacred roots." The cut off roots are the very reason you should leave plenty of branches on the top..... at least for this first year. At UCDavis in California they did field trials of bare root fruit trees grown severely pruned and those with the branches left on (for the first season).

The bare root fruit trees with plenty of branches left on top grew much faster and leafed out better because the leaves are what collects the light from the sun to send down sugars to grow the roots. When the rootballs were examined....... those fruit trees with plenty of branches left on had a much more developed root system than those trees which had severely pruned branches.

Then next year, prune the tree into whichever form you are hoping for.

Which shears are best? Being from California where FELCOs are sold in nurseries behind locked glass cabinets....... I like those. FELCO has so many versions of hand pruners. They have pruners for people who are left-handed. They have smaller versions of pruners for ladies with tiny hands. They have one clipper meant for roses which clips long stemmed roses and keeps the stem attached to the clipper as you draw your hand through the bush to claim it, etc. etc. Many, many choices with FELCO.

I haven't found FELCOs sold in Utah. At Home Depot the most expensive FISKARS model is working well for me now.

For larger branches there are "ratchet" long handled pruners making large cuts possible even for great grandmother's weaker hands.

Did you know that of the four edges of the two blades on pruners only ONE edge needs to be sharpened? Have a diamond file or a fine whet stone to keep that one edge really sharp and clean.

Many people walk around pruning with a canister of Clorox wipes so that after each cut you can wipe the blade thereby keeping viruses or diseases from spreading from one tree to another.

It is possible you will want to gather all your gardening tools and put the metal end into a large tub of oiled sand to keep the blades free of debris. Some people put a stripe of colored electrical tape around the handle of their own favorite tools with their name in permanent pen so that it is harder for these expensive tools to walk away when people visit.

There are small hand hoes and other tools one can order from seed catalogs with edges as sharp as any kitchen knife. If you keep those razor sharp....... woe to garden weeds. They come with a protective casing for the dangerous blades also. I keep lots of my small garden tools in a box in my car because they just sometimes vanish otherwise.

You know what people say.......... the difference between an amateur and a professional is that the professional knows about and has all the right tools while the amateur does not. One GREAT pair of hand pruners can last you all your life if you buy the best and then take care of it.

Now............ what are you going to prune? Make sure your grapevines are pruned to form one trunk to the height you want the branches to form. Don't let a grapevine be a multi-trunked plant. (Take your grapevine prunings and root them to make more to give your friends and relatives.)

Every plant which blooms before June 1st should be pruned right after it blooms. This means forsythia (blooming now) should be pruned after the bloom fades. Ditto flowering almond, flowering quince, lilacs etc. Prune your lilacs well after they bloom. Try to open the center of the mature lilac plants and remove all the spent blossoms so that it won't just get higher and higher and higher as the years pass. I'm going to try using this year's lilac prunings for pea supports and see how that goes.

Happy Spring !     Erlyn

If your gardening ambitions have been frustrated by real life imperatives do not worry.

Recognize what's ideally possible in the spring.... but, look forward to a possible small garden beginning around the time we no longer need to endure the threat of frosts or of snow: "The Heat Loving Garden".

My spring garden so far is basically:

1. The peas, (all of which are green and sprouting even though lying dormant during the weeks of snows).

2. The garage-greenhouse raised tomatoes which I planted into the garden under giant hotcaps right before the big snowstorm last week. Not too smart. But, I wanted to experiment. They all survived and we will plant out the next round of tomatoes also under giant hotcaps today.

3. The Albion Strawberries....... all growing well after planting out a month ago.... even through the crazy cycles of snow then warmth, snow then warmth.

4. Odds and ends like chives, cilantro, onions, and parsleys. All newly sprouted from seed indoors and now surviving the snows anyway.

5. And....... today we are also planting asparagus. A new variety to be discussed later.

If you are a busy mom with no time at all to order seed catalogs, ponder varieties, risk sending your credit card number through the internet to order, etc........ if it's all just too much. I totally get it. Having had ten children..... I don't know how any mother with little ones can do ANYTHING else because your arms are always full. Therefore, if you would like me to send you an envelope with seven wee seed packages in it for your small beginners June lst: Heat Loving Garden just email your address and I will mail such to you with instructions absolutely free as a "Happy Brithday to Me" Celebration !!! Nothing could make me happier than to be able to help you.

Contained in this envelope will be:

1. Only three summer squash seeds. (That's all a family needs.) To be started in paper cups May 12^th. Plant out May 26^th.

2. Three pole bean seeds. To be planted directly in the ground after the last spring frost. (Our average last spring frost date in Utah County is May 26^th.)

3. Three corn seeds. Ditto pole beans.

4. Three seeds for an eggplant variety of the most gorgeous purple color. Start indoors 7 weeks before last spring frost (so that calculates out to be April 8^th). Plant in garden 2 weeks after last spring frost: June 10^th.

5. Three seeds of a most stunning red pepper. Ditto eggplant timing.

6. Three watermelon seeds. Start indoors in tall paper cups May 26^th. Plant out 2 weeks later: June 10^th.

7. Three winter squash seeds. Plant directly in the ground June 10^th.

Happy Garden Planning and Planting to You ! and guess what? One of my sons has come home for the summer and is a true computer expert. This morning he has put me on facebook. Just don't look for lots of responses from me because I am going to be so busy licking tiny envelopes.

Love to you,
  Erlyn Madsen

Oh No!

Did you hear the news? Not only do we have Swine Flu worries but, poisonous alfalfa sprouts as well!

Are you not so pleased to be planning your very own safe little garden?

But....... let me write about lovely rabbits.

When our children were young, we moved to Danville, California which in 1974 was very 'countryside'. Unfortunately, each year thereafter, fancier and fancier homes were built in Danville, until we with the ten children trying to raise them with farm chores were surrounded by the fashionable, the rich, the sophisticated and the famous.

Undaunted, each of our children had an "Animal Kingdom Stewardship". Carrie had the Apine Milking Goats project. We read "Heidi" incessantly and toasted cheese for lunch just like Heidi and Clara and the Alm Uncle. (A very rewarding and delightful animal for another letter.)

One child had bee hives. (Another letter will be coming on bees soon as another son as a grown man, now has 17 bee hives in Utah as a hobby and is enjoying this very much.)

One child, dreaming of a great wool project, had a lamb..... (until we figured out how truly untrainable and stampeding a grown sheep is.)

One had rabbits. One had kittens. One a dog. Etc.

These animals added a great deal to the childhoods of these kids and Carrie even decorated her goats up every year in red, white and blue and proudly led her syblings and her goats the length of Danville's main street marching in the annual Fourth of July Parade with her entry: "The Goat Express". When Carrie went to college, Marie took over the goats and then later Karl etc.

Paul had an enormous pig for a while which he'd raised from a baby. When the hi school football team came over for a bar-be-cue and saw Paul's pig, Shirley,....... they started laughing and laughing till we thought they would all fall down. I don't think any of these young men had ever seen a pig up close and personal in their entire lives. They were fascinated by Paul's pig!

Anyway, in those days we'd have families with lots of kids over to dinner every week (because no one ever invites families with lots of kids over to dinner.) When they learned they were drinking our own fresh goat's milk, eating rolls made with our own fresh eggs, topped with Madsen Honey, and that the meat they were eating was our own rabbit.......... Well, sometimes they lost their appetites for a moment. But, they always returned when we invited them again.

Today let us discuss the great fun of having rabbits. We chose "REX Rabbits". Rex rabbits are a dual breed: pelts and also meat. Not only that, they are a big calm rabbit very fun to hold AND they come in every color. None of this boring white stuff. Every time a mother has a litter it is possible to have babies of a multitude of colors. Very, very fun indeed!

Their pelts are the real attraction having a glossy sheen and being particularly thick because this breed has a double coat: an under coat and a thicker longer coat which distinguishes them from all other rabbits. REX Rabbit fur was the rage at the time and lots of farm folk were doing REX in hopes of eating the meat as well as then selling the pelts. The legends of people becoming rich from these pelts would rival any Ponzi Scheme.

REX come in many colors, even spotted. The "IN" color at the time was a fur resembling a toasted marshmallow. It was white at the base, baize in the middle and frosted with brown at the tips. We enjoyed fun Saturdays driving the kids all over northern California to various farms to obtain our animal 'breeding stock'. The REX rabbits with this "IN" fur color were $60.00 each even then in the 1970s and 1980s. But, to a child's mind....... just consider the math: every litter gives from 8 to 14 babies. Rabbits have a very fast feed to harvest time: about six weeks. You can arrange for the mother rabbit to have like 6 litters a year and PRESTO ! YOU ARE A VERY WEALTHY KID!!!

There was one little problem. When the fur buyer came to examine the pelts........ each baby although healthy and glossy was slightly differently colored from its litter mates- even when both parents were both the toasted marshmallow color. He would agree to buy the pelts. But only at a great discount (from what he had originally promised) unless you had 100s of pelts ready for him all at once and all of the exact same size, shade, hue, texture etc. (No one ever had all of that.)

So if you are now thinking of becoming wealthy through the production of rabbit pelts, re-evaluate this thought immediately. Wearing fur coats is now out of fashion anyway.

Putting the pelt factor aside, rabbits are a wonderful way to create your own inexpensive, healthy, chemical free and hormone free protein. The meat is very delicious resembling white chicken meat or even better. Unfortunately, our society is not accustomed to thinking about eating rabbit. So sad.

Let us say YOU are one of the open minded ones. First, you need to purchase the TRUE rabbit cages with the tight smooth mesh on the bottom which won't hurt their feet..... but, which will let the garden-valuable rabbit dew drop through. (Rabbit dew is the only animal dropping which can go directly on your plants without burning them.) Rabbits must be protected from wind and from bright sunlight. They like shade. Low temperatures are OK. It is so simple dimple to suspend the cages and just walk by twice a day putting a tuna can size helping of rabbit pellets (scooped from a metal trashcan with tight fitting lid) into their feeders. Automatic watering systems giving fresh water every time they put their mouths to the spigot are now available. You never need to fuss with filling water bottles anymore. So easy.

When you want to create a litter, you just add the buck into the doe's cage. Within 60 seconds the deed is done. The rabbit buck is ALWAYS ready. You then remove him to his own cage again. In just a few weeks you add a nest box to the doe's cage and place some straw on the wire mesh. It is so fun to watch the doe make a cozy nest with the straw in the metal nest box. When the babies are born it is really very thrilling. NOTHING in this world is as adorable as baby rabbits. Rabbit does are VERY good mothers. The babies stay in the cage with her (tight as it may seem) for several weeks. Then when they are only about six weeks old it is time to 'harvest' them.

My husband, a spohisticated banker at the time, taught himself to become very adept at slitting their necks and then pulling the pelt cleanly off the body in a matter of minutes or even seconds. Because we, as a family, had hammered up a large 'rabbitry' ourselves and because we were continuously putting the buck with any one of 13 females we ALWAYS had a whole freezer full of rabbit meat. Finally, one Saturday when my husband came in from 'harvesting' over 200 rabbits at one time, he said, "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH". Thereafter we just retained token rabbits and didn't breed them anymore because life got busy with other things and we moved on. What a fun chapter that was.

It might just be a good time to have rabbits again. At least let the thought pass through your mind.

If times ever become really weird just know some people have had a GREAT time raising rabbits for meat and these rabbits might become a real blessing once again.

Sincerely,
   Erlyn Madsen

When we lived in California, we would often drive out to the central valley to drive along gazing at the beautiful orchards. It was such a wonderful experience to be surrounded by tall, lush orange trees, avocado trees, or almond trees in turn. We'd talk about how they spaced the trees, how they were irrigating the trees, what was used as a ground cover between the trees etc. Various farms would have unattended tables along the road where, on the honor system, you could leave money in return for a basket of Kiwis or Plums. It was heaven.

Last night on the news a segment came on totally shocking my husband and I. Because a 2" fish, SMELT, has recently been placed on the endangered list, and because it might get caught in the canal water pumps, all water to these farms is being cut off. The water is being pumped into the sea rather than go to the farms in California's central valley (our country's fruit and vegetable basket) because we can't have a SMELT caught in the canal water pumps now can we?

Footage was shown of dying almond orchards, or the empty water canal, of lines of the unemployed: some cities there now at 40% unemployment because of no work on the dying farms. Third generation farmers were interviewed almost in tears seeing the work of generations being totally destroyed.

This is as outrageous as the new bills trying to be passed forbidding people to save their own vegetable seeds, and another bill insisting that every single person's animals or birds be individually microchipped and paper work done on every single one of them. (rabbits come and go)

Some people are figuring things out and PLANTING in their own yards. I know this because Indiana Berry has been totally sold out of all their berries for a month or so as also Nourse Farms in Maine. Spooner Farms in Oregon which also supplies nursery stock to the whole country is sold out of all their Caroline Raspberries and has backorders for the next two years.

I think my husband and I will meander over to the nurseries here this afternoon and see if we can't purchase and then squeeze in just a few more different varieties of fruit trees.

If ALL of our fruits and nuts are to be imported from foreign places as the Central California Valley becomes a dust bowl............ this will HIKE PRICES TERRIBLY and increase worries about possible diseases. Yet, the sources will be so hard to track.

Lots of my friends still living in California laugh off their current woes, (legalizing marijuana being discussed, Prop 8 woes, wildfires, bankrupt cities, possibility of more earthquakes, drought, and now dying orchards....... they say they are not worried because if things get tougher...... they will just come and live with me. If all your friends and family are planning to just come and live with you too..... maybe I will see you at the nursery this afternoon also......... and we will buy a few more fruit trees together.

Sincerely,
    Erlyn Madsen

This past week the Advanced Master Gardener Classes enjoyed a "tree walk" around downtown Provo with Larry Sagers giving us the history of the large mature trees around the County Buildings. This was really fascinating. Then last Thursday night we all joined him again at BYU for a "tree walk" learning about the beautiful trees which are planted there. BYU actually publishes a pamphlet with small photos of their landmark trees each numbered for easy identification. Both of these tree walks were awesome. The enormous trees we usually pass by without thinking were planted in the early days of Provo and now if we just take the time to behold them properly are truly magnificent and inspiring.

In two weeks we will have a combined Utah counties Master Gardeners Two Day Seminar. During these two days we tour farms, hear lectures about home water features, weeds, roses, preserving food etc. Wonderful meals are served. People share what is working and what is not. It is just plain lots of fun.

In return for receiving all the free instruction from the experts of the state and the nation, we give back service in the form of teaching others. It is an accident that my e-mailing letters happened. But, it has been so fun. Now I'm preparing another seed kit of seeds to be planted for a July First Garden. This willl be my "Master Gardener Project". If I'm helping you then if you email me a letter back saying I am sharing the wealth of information I am gaining it has helped YOU...... and then if I put this in a binder with copies of my e-mailed letters and turn it in to Larry Sagers and then I'm given "hours of service" and am allowed to take the classes for next year. I'm sorry that I have not saved many of your kind letters in the past but, I didn't know they would count this effort as helping. And they WILL!

Maybe next year you will join the classes also. They are one of the greatest things happening in Utah at this time!

Also, if you would like a little kit of six of the best Open Pollinated seeds (just a pinch of each) which you can plant in July for a fall harvest....... email me your address yet again and I will mail you one. See the attached letter for what that kit will contain.

Meanwhile....... aren't these beautiful spring days just a joy and a delight? A report on our own garden will come next week.

Love to you and your families,
    Erlyn Madsen

Our oldest daughter, Mrs. Carrie Crockett, was one of the first six missionaries to serve in Russia: August 1990, Lenningrad, USSR Mission. This experience has enriched and blessed all of our lives so very much. Of the many tales she told upon her return.... none was more amazing and fanciful to me than her descriptions of Russian flowers. She said they had a kind of flower there which she had never seen in our country.

The Russian grandmothers would sit along the roads with a vase or a few blooms and sell them to travellors passing by. These flowers were enormous with blazingly vibrant colors. Their petals could be twisted and spiraled. They could have many thin curving lines like an exploding galaxy.. or they could be full and rich and as big as a soccer ball. I showed her my seed catalogs but, nothing seemed to be what she had seen.

Then a few years ago she saw an astonishing bouquet of "Dinnerplate Dahlias" and that was it! Dahlias!

In these times of saving money, the Dahlia is once again one of those investments which WILL pay you back forever.

The tubers are small, like a sweet potatoe reduced by 3/4^ths. They have an eye at one end and a root at the other. But, it dosen't matter, you plant them horizontally anyway about six inches down in rich soil. Then within only one summer up springs a lush bush FIVE FEET HIGH or even more............. and mid-summer to fall out come the most astonishing blossoms one could imagine. When frost arrives you lift the tubers from the soil and voila! instead of only the one tuber you began with you now have several. If the plant receives enough enrichment it triples or more in tubers under the ground so that next year you may enjoy even more of this plant if you choose.

The Swan Island Dahlia Catalog is 67 pages. It is binder sized yet all the pictures are glossy color photos of their most amazing Dahlias. It is worth the $5.00 just to gaze at it during times of depression. These blossoms will lift your spirits.

About fifteen years ago my husband gave me a gift of plane tickets to their Annual Dahlia Festival. This year it will be held two week-ends: Aug 29^th-31^st and September 5^th-7^th. They invite floral arrangers from all over Oregon to come for one marathon night of arranging Dahlias till dawn and the next day when their doors open the warehouses are filled with the most overwhelming dispalys of brilliant flowers ever. You are also allowed to wander through the fields to see how the plants look in the garden. Since many of the plants are over 5' high this is quite an experience.

If you ordered Iris from Shreiner's last year yours are probably blooming now. Mine are. I want to make a case for ordering the very best Iris from their website because as I drive through Utah county everyone's Iris are giving a gorgeous display now. But, because I ordered the newest and strongest mine look so much more dramatic and vibrant. (I'm not trying to be proud here it is just that recent breeding breakthroughs have made the older Iris saved from great-grandmother's Iris not as awe-inspiring and amazing.)

None of us has unlimited space. What is your favorite color for a bouquet? Mine is purple. So I ordered purple combinations of Iris and now have ordered purple and pink combinations of Dahlias. When it comes time for bouquets those I bring to you will always be in those colors because I can't grow EVERY color. But, at least I can take SOMETHING. If you go to www.dahlias.com the Swan Island online catalog will come up. They don't like to mail after May because Dahlias take time to grow bushy enough to produce their amazing blooms. Only some of them begin blooming right away and bloom all summer. So this week-end is important if you wish to order a few.

I've sent their thrifty "our favorites" collection to a few of my children Swan Island Dahlias included a catalog free in those orders and my children are astonished. None more so than my wonderful daughter, Carrie. She now lives in Nebraska in the corn fields and the sight of these enormous Dahlia blossoms is transporting her back and back to the fairtale like days of her mission. She is remembering the people she loved and how they prized the Dahlias.

Pick your favorites. Grow them this summer with astonishment. Lift the tubers this fall and save them for next year. Then you can offer unusual beauty to your friends this fall as well as zuchinni.

Love,
    Erlyn Madsen

Today our group toured the gardens through the building of the headquarters for NONI, the exotic health drink. This building is one block west of the Riverwoods Shopping Mall. They are open to the public. Go through the lobby and truly beautiful gardens come to view. The head gardener can give you a rose list for the rose garden. Trout live in the waterfalled stream and ponds. Sequoia trees thrive and are gorgeous !

Happy June,
  Erlyn

PEAS:
I planted 8 varieties and today picked four casserole sized boxes of them. One variety was not ready at all... taller plants filled with white blossoms. One variety was done! Small plants with pods all filled out and finished. Other varieties were somewhere inbetween. All were delicious !

PEAS have LOVED this crazy weather because peas love cool !

TOMATOES:
Are yours looking sickly and anemic? Last Saturday at the Master Gardener Conference everyone was moaning about the cool weather delaying the growth on tomato plants. Last year was somewhat similar..... with hot and cool then hot and cool. Because of these weather conditions people did not have the gorgeous tomatoes they usually have for the State Fair. It was bleak.

If only the weather will turn hot now our tomatoes can buck up and have a chance to give us a great crop.

PEPPERS:
Like tomatoes, peppers have not enjoyed the cool weather or the thunderstorms at all. They love days as hot as possible.

SQUASHES:
Although they like heat mind are growing very well indeed. This fall you will all need to come over and have a squash-tasting party because we have so so many varieties growing and it will be fun to compare them.

ALBION STRAWBERRIES:
Mine are looking straggly because I didn't clip off all the blossoms allowing the plants to gain strength before bearing berries. So I have lots of little berries on immature plants and tomorrow I will repent and cut off all the berries and blossoms so the plants can have a chance to gain more leaves before being expected to give me bowls and bowls of fruit.

My daughter in Virginia, however, followed the directions perfectly and her plants each have 30 leaves and are 15" tall already. (Their weather warmed up way before ours.) She is letting them make berries now and their five little children go out to monitor the progress every day.

My daughter in California is trying to grow Albion Strawberries in pots and deer come as soon as the plants become 10" high and eat them down to soil level. They do re-grow and hope begins again.

My son in Colorado planted his Albion strawberries at the same time as the rest of us. But, because Colorado had so many extra blizzards......…. His are all dead.

Another daughter here already had a strawberry patch going from last year and yesterday she and her children picked three enormous bowls of that variety and sent e-mail photos to all the rest of us.

RASPBERRIES:
Our Carolines are just looking fabulous. We were really suffering from pride until we saw the raspberries at a pick your own farm in Mapleton. This farm is called "The Briar Patch". Their raspberries were about twice as big as ours a few weeks ago. HOWEVER, we have learned that theirs have been in the ground for many years and ours have only been in the ground one year. This makes an enormous difference. Ours are already showing blossoms and we think we will have a big crop even though they will only be two years old.

BLACK RASPBERRIES:
These are said to give 30% more fruit than red raspberries. Their canes are so much longer and they need support so they are treated very differently from the upright raspberry varieties we grow which we mow down every fall. This year our black raspberries are our best success story. Their long canes all survived the winter on wire supports and they came to life very early and were covered with blossoms almost immediately. Now they have many berries which should ripen as soon as it warms up a bit.

BLACKBERRIES:
Our Triple Crowns terrified us because after all the praise we have heard about them, our long canes did not make it through the winter. Then a kind person told me that first year Triple Crown canes NEVER make it through the winter. The plants need to emerge from the soil bushy and strong it is true. But, the canes you saved and tied up on wires will just be too skinny to make it through the winter their first year.

So everything is OK again.

If you have been to Spencer Mortensen's fabulous blackberry patch in Sandy (as we all went last Saturday....)...…. You will see his blackberries are at least 4' tall already and bushy as can be.

The difference is....... His are 15 years old. He likes Chesters and Triple Crowns equally well. His have no trouble going through the winter with their enriched soil, and protection on all four sides: 50 foot tall trees on two sides, a horse stable on one side and a chain link fence covered with Virginia Creeper on the last side.

The important thing is that the Triple Crowns and Chesters come up from the ground bushy and strong in their 2^nd year and each year after that they will be stronger and bigger till withstanding Utah winters is easy for them.

PRIME JAN BLACKBERRIES:
These are the new blackberries which one mows down every fall. Ours are now beginning their second year and some of them are 4' high already. This has been a robust row of plants so now we will see how they taste.

GREENS AND LETTUCES:
Everyone's greens should be fabulous because the hot days have not yet come. A neighbor told me of a man with two sons in Passadena on a 1/4^th acre lot. They earn a healthy income intensively farming this small area with exotic Asian greens. They supply high end restaurants with unusual greens of many kinds all through the year. This person is going to try the same thing here. He has fenced in a very much smaller area than 1/4^th acre and has almost slave labor (which is what one needs for all this seeding, clipping, rotating, transporting and marketing). We shall see.

My husband and I have just returned from three days of the World Rose Convention. If you are interested in roses and would like to see my hasty notes keep reading.

But a short note:
All the packets of July First Garden Seeds are gone now and the last will be mailed out in the morning.

Every person attending these lectures was in charge of a municipal rose garden somewhere in the world, or was a rose hybridizer, or a rose distributor, or a garden show TV personality, or an author about roses. Only a few were lesser beings like my husband and myself.... Just ordinary folks who wanted to learn more.

There were opportunities to purchase rose petal scone mix, rose petal soaps, silver rose topped appetizer picks, rose honey, rose champagne jelly, rose art of all kinds as well as first edition books about roses from past decades for rose devotees and antiquarians.

If a person is willing to follow their dictates: plant at a certain depth etc. and after that NEVER prune, dead head, fertilize or anything.... just make monthly evaluations of the plants and report the data when regularly checking in..... then the major rose companies of USA will GIVE you ALL the rose bushes you could ever have the room to test ABSOLUTELY FREE. (It is great advertising for them when people come to see your test garden and see THEIR named varieties being trialed. If one of their roses passes the rigors of this neglectful way of growing and is added to the list of EARTH-KIND... then it means great profits for that company in the future.

The representatives of many of USA's major rose distributors were on hand to volunteer their roses and OK I did sign up to have a test garden. Suddenly I had LOTS of new friends !!!!! Then I was given starter kits, CDs to watch, contact sheets, rose evaluation forms and fat folders totally full of important rose information. Unfortunately, now that we are home, I don't know if my husband is on board with this because he isn't keen on lots of people continuously coming to see the test garden and check on how the various rosebushes are doing.

Therefore.... If any of YOU would like to have an EARTH KIND test garden I will happily give you the information, folders, CDs etc. which I now have here. You will immediately have 100s of friends all over the country to compare rose notes with and the major rose companies will send very friendly people to your garden bearing beautiful gift rose bushes for you to choose from to trial.

When spring comes, the blankets are removed, the canes survive beautifully and up they go again alive and thriving. draping over gigantic arbors and majestic arches once again.

A hidden treasure of knowledge!

Question:
What does Claire order to be planted under the TEN THOUSAND rose bushes to crowd out weeds, keep the moisture in, and yet give great beauty?

Answer:
FOUR things: 1. lavenders. 2. Hyssop 3. Garlics (the blue ones) and 4 creeping mint. Which mint you ask? A low growing and spreading mint called Banana Mint. Banana mint spreads and crowds out weeds yet does not become high like the other mints. These four varieties of plants go under all their roses except the hybrid teas. These four perform many valuable functions as well as offering a stunning and spectacular cool colored background for all their other TEN THOUSAND roses.

When he got home what was he to do with this? He couldn't go back to ask who owned the plant so he was forced to make a cutting and propagate it for his own garden.

The audience laughed so hard at this story. I suppose it is because they have all been tempted to do the same thing in their own lives. It was as if this was the funniest story in the entire world.

"Hot Cocoa" was in every new garden. This one is a dusky red which not everyone likes. In these gardens it absolutely GLOWED. The plants were bigger and more robust than many of the other varieties for the same amount of time in the ground.

"Livin' Easy", the very healthy bright orange and "Easy Does It", it's sport in shocking bright yellow were in every garden also. They are just so totally disease resistant and their foliage is so abundant and glossy green.

"Outta the Blue", a purple, was amazing in most gardens and sometimes was combined with "Blueberry Hill" and other times with "We Salute You".

"Crocus Rose", a smaller bush from the English varieties was a white rose selected for several gardens and planted ten to a bed.

If anyone wants the complete list of all the roses planted in every garden as a guide for your own I can provide it. However, they are zone 7 and we are 6.

Personally, I think "Golden Celebration" is a better choice. The two roses are so very similar. David Austin, himself, (inventor of these roses) has claimed "Golden Celebration" as his very favorite of all he hybridized so I don't know why "Graham Thomas" was preferred by all those voting. There was a bit of grumbling from others about this also showing that rose people are human also. But, for the most part these people, devoting their entire lives to roses, were so gracious, so lovely and so delightful that my husband and I were totally enchanted by them and charmed with every encounter.

I even received beautiful wood carved rose combs from rose lovers from China (the land of my mission) and Hungarian handiwork and embroidery from a lovely Hungarian lecturer who was overcome that our oldest son speaks fluent Hungarian (having served a mission there in 1991-1992) and having taught us the names of all the Hungarian heroes from the country's past.

Surely, people who spend their lives among roses are some of the loveliest and most gracious souls on the planet.

Photos to follow next week!

Love to All,
    Erlyn Madsen

The first of these was concerning the importance of pulling weeds EARLY.

"Weeds steal water and nutrients from your vegetables, so pull them when you see them. This is especially important EARLY ON. A 2006 study of weeds and vegetable growth showed there was a significant benefit to keeping areas weed-free for the first four to six weeks, according to Jeff Gillman, associate professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Minnesota. To prevent weeds from returning put down three to six inches of coarse mulch. Or go to your recycling pile: An Ohio State University study showed that shredded newspapers suppressed weeds and raised the yield of tomato plants."

With hotter temperatures arriving it is best to get up with the dawn to weed. It is cool then and if you listen to Conference Talks on a portable tape player while you go down the rows you won't resent the time weeding takes and you will go through the rest of the day offering uplifting thoughts to others. If you then listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck you will find yourself mentally designing your future bomb shelter. Be sure to buy and always wear a straw hat with a really large brim, (IFA has some), and work with your back to the sun......... we don't need new wrinkles at summer's end.

Some buy a big package of disposable plastic surgical gloves and wear a new pair each time they go to the garden to keep hands safe. Others dig their nails into a bar of soft soap before weeding to prevent dirt from lodging there.

Because all of our squash, melon, cucumber plants are now blooming and producing it is time to consider saving seed.

I have heard so many contradictory statements from gardeners in various classes about whether this is possible to save these seeds without cross-pollination woes that it was a great joy to find the following explanations from Marc Rogers in his book on "Saving Seeds". I have attached the entire chapter. It is really valuable information I have never heard any place else. Once you read it, you may have courage to try saving seeds from all of the above plants for the future........ even this year.

Sincerely,
   Erlyn

The past week the "Berry Growers of Utah" met to examine berry ranches and to see the 47 varieties being tested by USU at their berry test gardens in Kaysville.

One of the photos is of our own gooseberry pickings. You will see many varieties represented in a red bread-pan. The green ones bigger than a quarter are the "Invicta". Merv Weeks of the legendary berry ranch:Eden, Utah has several acres now planted in "Invicta" and says for his 2^nd year many of them are bigger than plums.

Two photos are of the professional berry growers examining and evaluating the testings. Everyone liked Triple Crown Blackberries. Chester was a little more cold hardy and very prolific but, with smaller berries. (I can give those interested a run down on each of the 47 varieties if you would like.) Arapaho is the earliest blackberry of every variety in Utah.

Of the raspberries, everyone still loves Heritage. Carolines were fabulous as well as many others. The yellow raspberry, ANNE, is not a sport of any other variety. It is its very own variety and everyone had extremely high praise for it.

Purple raspberries only Royalty was being tested and with mixed reviews. None of the black raspberries were being tested. Therefore, I am including photos of my grandchildren and my husband in our own black raspberry patch. "Jewel" is the variety and it is fruiting now and is absolutely spectacular as I hope you can see from these photos.

My husband is so impressed with "Jewel" black raspberry that he came home and googled black raspberries and found two articles on them. Both claim this is the only food which has ever been absolutely proved to cure cancer.

I am really thinking we need to have great gardens for the future. Every great garden needs just lots of compost so I found this helpful paragraph perhaps you can use.

Your average 1,000 pound horse produces approximately 50 pounds of manure per day, or a little more than 9 tons per year.

In addition........ a horse produces 6 to 10 gallons of urine per day, which, when soaked up by bedding, can constitute another 50 pounds daily.

If you have five average-sized horses living in pens, therefore, they will produce more than 45 tons of manure per year.

If you keep them in bedded stalls, you will have 90 tons of manure and used bedding to manage yearly.

August is such a conflicted month for mothers.

It's amazing when August comes........ having such a great harvest of everything you have labored over for so long. But, it's also the very hardest month for mothers because they are about exhausted doing everything.

It's great when the grandparents can plan reunions then and offering some parental relief. This time we found events most of you already know about.......... but, did you know the L.L. Bean Museum at BYU will do a 'live reptile show' free and just for your own family if you arrange it in advance? Did you know the planetarium show there is only 50 cents per person? Have you tried a cookout at Santaquin Canyon? It is little known in Utah on purpose. Utahns don't go there much or advertise this canyon because they are trying to protect the herd of Big Foot who live among the trees. If you do a cousins' dutch oven dinner and overnight there it is possible that you will see them.

This week our grandchildren are taking home pumpkins, squash, onions, peppers, tomatoes, raspberries and blackberries. I'm mailing dill heads to my daughter in Nebraska for her pickles and she is so thrilled with her square foot gardens (photos coming) that she has rushed out and purchased lumber for two more 4' by 16' beds.

Yet, August is also a month in which young mothers are about ready to commit themselves to the asylum having provided interesting activities for their ever active children all summer IN THE HEAT and with ever increasing layers of proof in the family car. I just helped my daughter drive her four children back to Nebraska and the ride was enriched by the cage of new baby chicks which McMurray Hatchery had mailed right to my door. Everyone wanted to sit by the chicks every single mile. They all have names and personalities.

With every garden there are things you will do differently next year. Practice makes perfect.

"If at first you don't succeed........ try, try again." Just be sure to write everything down so you will have a record to refer to next year. The record we have made each year includes phone numbers, sources, receipts, garden plot layouts, crayoned drawings of the garden by our grandchildren, photos of them picking, lists of vegetable varieties we tried, crop successes and crop failures.

We refer to this often and are so grateful we have the accountings for everything.

This scrapbook surely came in handy when one large chain here called us up to say we hadn't paid for over $1,100.00 of cover crop seed.

We went to the scrapbook and there was the receipt taped to a page and preserved in a plastic protector. They were so surprised we had preserved the receipt and could quote them the receipt number.

The one show I could not appreciate fully was on how to give a relaxing deep muscle massage to a mule.

At the Salt Lake County Fair this year there were petitions to sign asking for signatures so that the fair won't be discontinued in coming years.

If you attend the Utah State Fair in a few weeks be sure to look for these petitions and sign them.

It is very, very fun and informative and all your families everywhere will benefit from the knowledge you learn at the lectures so you can help them and others.

Unemployment is causing some desperate families to steal in order to feed themselves.

I am so proud of everyone of you for wanting to be ready for your own preparedness and then to grow enough to share with others. Some of my happiest memories were of home-making meetings: I had NEVER made a pie and Wanda Wright taught how to make blackberry pies. (Heaven!) (It was in 1974- I will always be grateful to her for this fun lesson.)

I had never made bread and Ida May Bell took an afternoon off, got out an enormous wash pan and we made 12 loaves of the most heavenly bread ever tried on this planet. I had NEVER canned tomatoes and LaRae Hoggan taught how to bottle stewed tomatoes. (1975) I was on a tight budget and Sharon Bangeter taught us how to make meals of complete proteins from rice and beans or complete proteins from whole wheat bread and peanutbutter etc. I had NEVER made candy and Norma Thomas taught Christmas Candies including toffees which were divine. Please everyone share all your wonderful skills with others because not many know how to do these things in these times. The memories of these sharing moments don't ever fade.

It is the small and little kindnesses which every garden gives opportunity for...... which create the lasting moments of sharing and gratitude which make life worth living.

It has been so fun for me to write to you this past year. Possibly there will be more to say. But, I am turning my attention to another project this year, since thanks to my husband the garden is now up and going and all on a drip system with automatic timer etc. I'm now going to research out everything possible about family reunions, grandmothers strengthing grandchildren's testimonies, how to create a family logo and how to make my own machine embroidered patches of this logo for hats, shirts aprons which might come on sale for a future reunion etc. This is because we are expecting such a bumper crop of grandchildren in 2010 that I feel I will use this next year to prepare great family home evening ideas, great scrapbook cousin pages, round robin surprise boxes, a family recipe blog etc.

So I wish each of you great gardening and great preparing, and great strengthening families and great love,

Sincerely,
   Erlyn

Jim Phillips, an engineer by education, formerly of the Air Force, formerly working with the Pentagon on being prepared............ is living in Utah now and is teaching an extremely in depth set of classes on being prepared.

For example, he teaches 6 hours worth on water alone. Last Saturday at Parley's Hardware in Orem, just south of Trafalga.

We attended the first two hours on water last Saturday at 2pm. He has tried EVERY filter on the market (from individual to counter top) and tells why he prefers certain ones.

He teaches how to purify water for bacteria, or virusus or other debris. He has slides on the best ways to store water (clear hard plastic juice or pop bottles in apple boxes stacked floor to ceiling).

But, he teaches many other ways to store water. Four more hours on water will be coming later.

I have attended many "be prepared" classes. But, he takes the concept to such a higher level. There are so many more classes to come. One thing he is most disgusted with is the current "72 hour kits). He has totally other items in mind if you truly want to survive. You must not miss out.

The other class we attended before this one was on a Wednesday night. It was on sanitation. Oh my ! What you need to know about your own toilets ! What you really need to know about your own waste disposal. How to dispose of dead bodies etc. Things people really don't want to think about now. (Just having a case of canned beans and a can opener is not going to protect you and your family.)

Some of his classes are on DVD. You can buy some of those there.

Sincerely,
   Erlyn Madsen

Anyone can attend - the classes are $5.00 each - he changes the days and times of the week-night classes to accommodate people but they are also on Saturdays.

As soon as I receive another email about the next class I will send it out. He is creating a website.

Truly this man is the ultimate answer in surviving things.

Parley's Hardware is making their upstairs available to him to sell his stuff like the books he recommends: "Deep Survival", "One Second Later" (about an EMP attack), etc. and other things you won't find anywhere else.

You would LOVE these classes because he teaches REAL survival techniques.