{"id":6291,"date":"2017-09-26T15:18:01","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T19:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=6291"},"modified":"2017-09-26T15:18:31","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T19:18:31","slug":"im-back-from-the-denver-self-reliance-expo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2017\/09\/26\/im-back-from-the-denver-self-reliance-expo\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m back from the Denver Self Reliance Expo"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a nice show and I not only got to meet many fans and old friends, but was able to meet Eve and Eivin Kilcher of the Discovery Channel’s series, Alaska; the Last Frontier<\/em>. Very nice folks! I also met Eric Boettcher, a young man who teaches primitive survival both at his home in Utah and across the country. We enjoyed visiting back and forth about various survival skills. Such fun!<\/p>\n

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I got to meet lots of fans at the Denver Self-Reliance Expo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I was tickled to meet Eve and Eivin Kilcher of Alaska; the Last Frontier fame.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then it was a long flight and, to tell the truth, I couldn’t wait to get home. Big cities kind of scare the pants off me, even though I was born in Detroit. So many <\/em>people! I felt like kissing the ground when I arrived in northern Minnesota. It was raining but all around it was dark. And quiet! I love it.<\/p>\n

Monday I couldn’t wait to get up and doing. So much had changed in the four days since I left. The poplar trees are turning yellow and the golden birch leaves are falling. The tomatoes are finally <\/em>ripening. Will picked fifteen varieties while I wrote down evaluations on all of our new tomatoes. Some didn’t make the cut and we will grow them again next year but won’t offer them in our seed catalog. It was <\/em>a bad gardening year and we always try new varieties two years running to see if a poor crop or taste was just a fluke or if that’s the way that tomato performs. Twice poor and they’re tomato sauce and out! One great new variety is Black Russian, a heart\/plum-shaped medium-sized tomato with tasty, dark flesh and a wonderful flavor. It’s a definite keeper!<\/p>\n

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Black Russian tomatoes are a definite addition to our homestead!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I pulled many more Iroquois and Gold Marie Vining dry beans and shelled them out. We shell by hand so we can toss any misshapen or immature beans. And I love my front porch so I can shell beans under cover (it started raining) and watch nature around me. I draw deep breaths and smell all the scents around me: fall leaves, pine, grass, and rain. Can’t beat it!<\/p>\n

In between beans, I worked at tying up our great crop of ancient Bear Island Chippewa Flour corn. It’s a wonderful grinding corn, giving us nice, softer cornmeal due to the large kernels. They have big ears full of colorful kernels.<\/p>\n

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Our Bear Island Chippewa flour corn is wonderful this year, despite a terrible growing year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last night, we ran five different batches of tomatoes through our Victorio tomato strainer, one at a time. This extracts seed, which we save, and also gives me nice tomato puree. I filled a turkey roasting pan and it spent all night in the oven on low heat. But the tomatoes were real juicy so I’ll have to let the sauce cook in the oven part of today so it cooks down enough for spaghetti sauce. While it cooks I’m making Cowboy and Cowgirl Candy, candied jalape\u00f1os, and jalape\u00f1o-flavored, milder Cowgirl Candy. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a nice show and I not only got to meet many fans and old friends, but was able to meet Eve and Eivin Kilcher of the Discovery Channel’s series, Alaska; the Last Frontier. Very nice folks! I also met Eric Boettcher, a young man who teaches primitive survival both at his home in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,12,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6291"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6298,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6291\/revisions\/6298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}