Halloween! Ghosts and goblins and glowing jack-o’-lanterns! But all that mess and fuss and expense! Finding the perfect pumpkin, cleaning out the inner goop and deciding on the perfect design … or you can create a cornucopia of jack-o’-lantern designs on this virtual pumpkin carving site. And if you make a mistake, hit the reset button to start all over. Just use the virtual knife to draw your best design, click done and your Halloween face glows with a virtual candle. You have an instant “carved” pumpkin without the mess but with all of your ghoulish inspiration.

If you prefer the old-fashioned method of turning pumpkins into works of art, here are some ways to be successful:
• Preschoolers can use fat black markers to draw a face onto the ribbed surface of a child-sized pumpkin.
• Find articles on how to carve a pumpkin with a lid that doesn’t fall into the center, and tricks for making wonderfully original faces.
• For inspiration, check out these marvelous and malevolent 3-D pumpkin sculptures.

If you have an inspiring pumpkin carving experience, share it in the comments below.

“North Americans now devote 40,000 square miles to lawns, more than we use for wheat, corn or even tobacco.” —The Lawn: North America’s magnificent obsession by Robert Fulford

If you are planning on replacing your lawn with something that requires a lot less water and maintenance, but you also want to plant something in its place that is more than ornamental, you have a few more choices than you think. If you can’t or don’t want to plant a full-on vegetable garden, consider planting edible ground cover instead.

Following some of the basics of xeriscaping, ground cover plants are good alternatives to turf grasses since they can be more drought tolerant and, if you have covenants or other restrictions requiring you keep your yard landscaped, they are a good way to sneak in food crops without being noticed. Even just replacing a few feet of lawn around the borders will provide food and add variety to your yard.

For fruiting ground cover, try planting a mix of lingonberries, strawberries, American cranberry, Creeping Oregon grape (tart but edible) and wintergreen. With the wintergreen you can use both the leaves and the berries that appear during the winter.

If you want to stick with herbs your best bets are sage, mint, oregano, chamomile and thyme. All of these grow low to the ground and are good spreaders.

You can interweave a number of these different edible cover crops into attractive patterns or around walkways, stones and pavers to achieve a well-manicured yard that is also edible. And the neighbors won’t even notice.  

Photo by  Deanna Duke   

The next president of the United States will have a lot on his plate. Energy, the economy, foreign relations, healthcare … these may be the main dishes on the current political agenda menu, but it would be a very bad idea to overlook another that seems to be simmering on the back burner: food policy. 

Many thanks to Michael Pollan, who pointed this out in an excellent letter published in The New York Times Magazine. In it he urges the president-elect to consider a food garden on the White House Lawn and rethink the subsidies that are shaping the current landscape of industrial agriculture. He urges our future “farmer in chief” to decentralize our food system, thus increasing the security and safety of our food. Most importantly, he identifies the connection between a sound food policy and high-profile issues such as healthcare, energy independence and climate change. 

Take a look! This is a comprehensive plan from someone who really knows their stuff.

Photo by ISTOCKPHOTO/Melih Kesmen

A couple of weeks ago, I reported on some homemade and commercial fire starters for home and camp use. I also could have mentioned using a magnifying glass to start a fire. You might have seen a similar technique, using an eyeglass lens, to start the first campfire, if you are a fan of the reality-TV show Survivor. And I am sure many of us started similar small (hopefully) grass fires in the fields we roamed as budding naturalists and explorers.

A more modern use of concentrating the sun’s energy to start a fire has been developed by Sundance Solar. The Solar Spark Lighter is a pocket-sized parabolic mirror that ignites the fire starting material in seconds. Of course, just as with a magnifying glass, the sun must be shining for this to work. But the great thing about it is it will never run out. Just clip on a bit of paper or very dry inner tree bark and in a few seconds – whush – it ignites!

At just $14.95, this would make a good addition to your camping, backpacking or emergency survival kit or a gift for the budding scientists in your life.

While a lot of us homesteaders take pride in making our own food and energy, I take the most pride in making something far more important — my own music. It’s something I taught myself to do, and I'm certain you can too. Playing a musical instrument doesn't require a degree from Juilliard or amazing talent. It just takes some patience, a sense of humor, and good home instructional aids. It's also not a bad way to add some extra income into your homestead. When you invest the time and energy into learning an acoustic instrument you can reclaim that investment over time through teaching others. Something I just started this year at Cold Antler, and it's been one of the most rewarding aspects of my simpler life to date.

After long weekends of working sheep, baking bread, sawing firewood, and mucking coops I put down the pitchforks and buckets and pick up my fiddle. The fiddle is my saving grace, best friend and instant therapist. I am fairly certain that if you were able to see my insides, my heart and mind would be connected by a set of steel strings and coated in rosin. Old time music (specifically southern mountain music) has its claws tight on my heart. The older I get the less likely I am to trust strangers if I find out they can't sing the first verse of  “Tennessee Stud” or don't know the chorus “Angel Band.” Somehow, over time this music has changed me, and it's changed me for the better. After a few years of making those old songs mine I found they instantly relaxed me, calmed me down, and made me a solid contribution to any campfire jam. I have more good memories playing those old songs with friends and strangers than I can count.

A few years back, when I lived in Southern Appalachia, my weekends were spent splashing through Smoky Mountain streams on old hiking trails and lapping up that culture like a thirsty sheepdog. I fell in love with its music and I fell hard. I started playing the dulcimer when I lived down in east Tennessee (go Vols), and a few years later in Idaho I could saw out some solid tunes on the fiddle and banjo. Not bad for a gal from the suburbs.

Music is what fills the idle hours here at Cold Antler Farm. Sunday nights the Vermont woods are lit with the songs and squawks of beginner fiddlers. These are people learning hundred year old tunes for the first time. The very same tunes probably plucked and sang by people farming on those same hills a few centuries ago when Vermont was the epicenter of the Merino wool industry. Even though those old shepherds are long gone, I like to think there are a few sheep and fiddle tunes left in one Yankee hollow.  

You don't have to be a savant to teach lessons, ’specially beginner lessons. If you can help people pick out an instrument, play a few tunes, and teach them to teach themselves I think you're more than in a good position to offer someone advice and help. I'm not saying you should open a music business on just a few years of experience, but a few beginner banjo lessons in exchange for a bunch of home-canned tomatoes sounds like a harmless trade to me.

If you are interested in getting started along similar lines, I strongly suggest the materials created by Native Ground Music, an Asheville-based publisher that makes the easiest bluegrass and old time lessons you can buy (and cheap at the price — around $20 a book and CD). If you've been putting off playing that fiddle by the fireside or plucking a mountain dulcimer under a canopy of stars, don't wait any longer. Good beginner books like those will hold your hand and get you playing “Old Joe Clark” in no time flat.

Jenna Woginrich is the author of the forthcoming book, Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, from Storey Publishing. Visit her Web site at coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com.

Photo by Tricia Weill

In the ongoing war between neighboring organic and conventional farms over the issue of pesticide drift, one organic herb operation has won a key battle. 

Jacobs Farm in Santa Cruz, Calif. was failing to meet the guidelines for organic certification of their edible herbs, thanks to the organophosphate pesticides that had drifted over from neighboring vegetable farms. The presence of the chemicals prevented them from selling parts of their harvest. 

What makes this case notable is that not only was Jacobs Farm granted $1 million in damages, but a new precedent was set. The neighboring farms weren’t egregiously careless with the application of the pesticides — the chemicals were evaporating into the air and then drifting over to Jacobs Farm. Currently, there is no formal regulation of evaporative drift, as there is for contamination arising from aerial spraying. 

On September 29, a Santa Cruz County jury ruled that the pesticides’ supplier was negligent, and had deprived Jacobs Farm of the right to use and enjoy the land (which they were leasing from a state park). 

An appeal has been filed by the pesticides’ supplier. Read the full news release from Environment News Service here.

Last evening, I trooped out to my now-mostly-defunct vegetable garden to pick a handful of basil to add to the tomato sauce pot, bubbling on the stove.

I stepped into the garden and was startled when a voice came from the sidewalk, behind the tomato cages, "Are those green tomatoes?" the voice asked. Two middle-school-aged boys were hovering at the fence. I asked if they liked to eat fried green tomatoes. They assured me they did. So I picked a handful of the small green fruits and threw in a couple of ripe ones for good measure. They grinned all over.

I told them I was making spaghetti sauce and all of the ingredients - tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil and oregano - had been grown in this garden. They were amazed that I could do that - especially grow my own garlic. I showed them where some little garlic sprouts were peaking out of the soil and said they would be ready to dig next summmer.

One of the boys, looking at the ground, said, "My mother used to like to grow a garden." His expression warned me against following up with a question about his mother and her gardening habits. I offered them a basil leaf to taste - they seemed to really like the flavor.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to get kids in my neighborhood involved with gardening. At this point, there is no community gardening space within walking distance of my house. But I firmly believe that if we want to have healthy people and a healthier planet, then we need to involve children in the process. I asked the boys if they would like to plant a garden next spring. Their eyebrows flew upwards and they simultaneously said, "Yes!" So, next spring I will find a place for them to garden, close to their home, and we will plant tomatoes. It is a beginning.

Photo by iStockphoto/Thomas Shortell

It’s fall and the smell of dried leaves and wood smoke fill the air. Whether you have a woodstove to heat your home or just occasionally use a fireplace, this is the time of year when we think about splitting kindling and laying in a supply of firewood. To get a fire going well, you also need some kind of a fire starter – usually shredded or wadded up paper. But if you are starting a fire outdoors or are concerned that the kindling is not as dry as it could be then paper might not be the best starting material.

For decades, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have been making fire starters as a part of their camping readiness kits. Here are a few ways to make your own.

• Cut a strip of cardboard two inches by six inches. Roll the strip as tightly as you can and tie it with a piece of cotton string with a string tail about six inches long. Dip the cardboard into melted candle wax. After it has cooled, you can cut the tail to an inch. When using, light the wax coated string.
  
• Fill cardboard egg cartons with sawdust, or cotton or wool dryer lint (do not use synthetic lint as it will melt but not burn). Gently pour melted candle wax onto the sawdust or lint. After these have cooled, cut the individual egg cups apart. To make these easier to light, you can put a birthday candle in the middle of each egg holder.
  
• Let a few of your corn cobs from corn-on-the-cob dry completely. Cut or break the cob into two-inch chunks. Tie a string around the cob piece and dip the cob into melted candle wax. 

Store the cooled fire starters in a plastic closable bag to keep moisture out. When building your fire, nestle a fire starter under your kindling and light it. The fire starter will burn long enough to get the most stubborn pile to start and is fairly immune to gentle breezes.

If you like the idea of these sturdy fire starters, but would prefer to buy rather than make them, these might be just what you are looking for. Cob Lites and Cowboy Cob Brand All Natural Fire Starters are made with paraffin and dried corn cobs. And Nerman-Lockhart uses recycled wood and the ends of church candles for their Holy Smokes Firestarters.