Pest Control—Homestead Garden Class Takeaways!

Just about everyone who food gardens discovers the truth early on: it’s fairly easy to grow home-grown goodies, but the real challenge is protecting your crops from pests!

Teaching “Grow a Homestead-Style Food Garden” every fall and spring, I invariably learn all kinds of new tips about food gardening! My recent class was no different: the students brought all kinds of interesting questions and insights…this time, mostly about pests and pest control. 

And specifically, non-chemical gardening strategies. 

Beer works for slugs! 

Slugs:

Since we reside on the mossy side of the Pacific Northwest, slugs are probably our most pernicious pest. As usual in my classes, the topic of slugs came up right away. One student had a garden full of strawberries, but said every year, the slugs eat every last berry! 

Now, there’s all kinds of poisons available—but who wants their berry bed full toxic substances! Another student raised her hand.

“Beer,” she said. Lots of other students chimed in, in agreement. I had actually heard long ago that setting out shallow dishes of any kind of beer is a fail-safe, non-toxic slug killer! The slugs come crawling…then will drown themselves in no time flat. 

Or maybe they just get pickled in the alcohol. Either way, it works!

Another student looked rueful. “Just make sure you empty the dish frequently,” she said. She confessed she’d gone a couple of weeks without dumping out the dead critters…and it was unspeakably gross!

Since my husband and I don’t keep beer around, and we’ll never remember to buy any, I use “Sluggo,” safe for organic gardens. This product is iron phosphate, which is somehow tasty to slugs, but doesn’t really poison them. Instead, it gives them a stomachache, and they’ll just crawl off somewhere to kick the bucket. 

Pest Control Products: Neem Oil, Diatomaceous Earth and Beneficial Nematodes

Several students were interested in manufactured products for food crop pests, and mentioned neem oil and diatomaceous earth, two manufactured products that are generally considered safe to use. My research indicated that yes, both are considered no-toxic.

Neem oil is from a neem tree, and apparently you can mix it with water and spray it on both soil and plants to kill pests. Diatomaceous earth is a powdery formula of some kind of silica compounds, which are abrasive to insects’ exteriors. I understand some people use it inside their home.

It doesn’t sound terribly toxic, right? However, neem oil can cause stomach upsets in  humans, while diatomaceous earth can irritate the lungs. 

Beneficial nematodes are basically tiny critters that live in the soil and eat the pests’ eggs and larvae. They come in a powder, a refrigerated package, and you mix the powder with water.

I mentioned these in earlier posts—for 3 or 4 years in a row, John and I faithfully deployed beneficial nematodes to address the apple maggot infestations in our orchards. Sadly, the nematodes seemed to have no effect.

The one method that has worked for us is thinning the apple tree thoroughly, then stapling a Ziploc baggie around each remaining apple while it’s about the size of a quarter. The apple maggot moths, nor their larvae can penetrate the plastic! 

My own position is to use natural methods of pest control. We use sprigs of mint to repel ants and mice, and have several small patches of peppermint around the yard—one, we’ve planted next to the house foundation, a spot where ants like to enter our house!

Also for ants, you can set out a mixture of cornmeal and cayenne. The ants love the corn, but the grain will swell in their digestive tracts. Plus cayenne pepper won’t go down easily either!

You can used soapy water on aphids, and hand-pick larger pests off your veggies.

I learned another insight earlier this spring: healthy plants repel pests best! If you build healthy soil, with lots of organic matter and natural fertilizers like compost, you’ll have healthy plants.

That made perfect sense to me. We don’t use any pesticides, herbicides or fungicides in our garden, and have very few pests…

You can do any easy search on this blog for more in-depth articles using beneficial nematodes, and the Ziploc technique!

Free Irish Romance!

 

If you’re looking for a tender, romantic read that’s not too sweet…

I need to start my blueberry pruning, but I wanted to share this before it’s too late.

The Hopeful Romantic, my 3rd Irish novel, was selected for a Kobo Books Free ebook promotion!

Also free at lots of your favorite ebook stores, the story has a special place in my heart.

Years ago, a kind, creative friend—we’d bonded over our mutual love of Ireland—gave me a card. I loved it so much I taped it to my journaling notebook.

The card pictured an Irish farm, a cow grazing peacefully near a lovely ancient barn built of golden stone. 

I decided, I’m going to write about that farm someday…

In The Hopeful Romantic, a Dublin wife and mother risks her already shaky marriage when she rekindles her friendship with her husband’s old mate. Kerry feels trapped in her cubicle-bound job, and longs to have a farm.

Well…I’ve been there! The losses and relationship conflicts Kerry experiences weren’t mine, but her story poured out of me. And ss it turns out, she might not be the only “hopeful romantic” in her marriage! 

Quick heads up: The Hopeful Romantic will be free for only a limited time…

For the rest of this week—til Easter—The Hopeful Romantic ebook will be free at Kobo—just scroll down to the “Free Women’s Fiction” carousel.   

The ebook is also free at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and just about every other ebook retailer you can think of, until early next week. (But not Amazon—due to technical issues. Sorry.)

I hope you’ll take a look!

You’ll find more novel and non-fiction book recs in my April Little Farm newsletter—next time, I’ll have insights from my Spring 2025 Homestead Gardening class!

Irish Entertainment for St. Patrick’s Day!

If you’re looking for some cozy Irish films and novels for your St. Paddy’s celebrations, have I got some recs for you!

Wild Mountain Thyme is a perfect way to escape to a gentler, fuzzier Ireland… 

Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan star as the would-be lovers, a sweet romance and family story with “all the feels,” set in the lush green countryside of County Mayo.

You’ll find my deep dive into this gorgeous movie over at my new March Little Farm newsletter!

For a very authentic Irish experience, I hope you’ll try The Quiet Girl. It’s an unforgettable, life-affirming story of family and healing. 

I shared lots more about the film in my St. Paddy’s countdown last March!

If you like fun Irish reads with comic family relationships and a bit of romance, Marian Keyes knocks it out of the park with My Favorite Mistake. The Walsh sisters descend upon a seaside village in Connemara, and lots of shenanigans ensue as heroine Anna Walsh creates a new life and community for herself in picturesque County Galway.

“The Great Tours of Ireland and Northern Ireland” aren’t a book…but a great terrific way to “visit” Ireland without leaving the comfort of your home! It’s a DVD series that takes you all around the Emerald Isle, to the natural wonders, intriguing historical sites, and gorgeous castles and cathedrals.

My husband John gave it to us for Christmas, and I’ve been loving all the history and culture I’ve been learning—plus getting a look at many of the places we saw during our trip to Ireland a few years back! 

Back to Irish stories…my own novel Becoming Emma, a tender workplace romance and sisters’ love story, is now 30% off at Kobo Books! 

This cozy, warmhearted novel is part of Kobo’s “Get lost in a good book” promotion. Like Anna in Marian Keyes book, heroine Emma is embarking on a fresh start too…but Fate and love leads her in some surprising new directions… The sale lasts through March 17–just use the promo code MARCH30!

You’ll find lots more Irish entertainment over at www.susancolleenbrowne.com! 

Can You Freeze Apples?

Sliced Florina apples straight from the deep-freeze

This past fall, my husband John and I had another insane apple harvest. 

Choosing apples for the crisp we planned, to use up some fruit, I gazed at our piles of Honeycrisp apples in consternation.

Our shop fridge was already stuffed with hundreds of apples, and every nook and cranny of the house fridge was filled too: William’s Pride, Akane, Tsugaru, and Red Gravenstein. 

Then came the Honeycrisp harvest: I’d picked about 150, many of them huge, bigger than John’s fist.

By October 1, we still had a tree full of Florina apples to go!

We did try to give some away. But our neighbors had plenty of their own apples. We’d already set aside two ginormous bags for my sister’s two horses.

Now, John and I had been to this rodeo before. Big, BIG harvests! But this year’s apple harvest seemed more overwhelming than ever.

Yet making that crisp led to a revelation. That sunny afternoon, as John methodically sliced up apples, I asked, “Honey, what are we going to do with them all?”

Not that I expected a solution. There wasn’t one.

“Well,” he said, not pausing in his task, “Cut ‘em up and freeze ‘em?”

Cubing butter for the crisp topping, I said, “I don’t think that’ll work. Won’t the apples just turn into mush?”

Still, I set my bowl aside to do a search—and had to eat my words (pun intended)!

My first click took me to a farm wife turned professional home cook, and her website had—ta-da—a perfectly doable recipe for freezing cut-up apples! “Actually, you’re right!” I said to John in amazement.

Suddenly our hundreds of apples didn’t freak me out quite as much as a few minutes before. 

The farm wife-cook’s recipe was simple: 1) wash the apples, 2) cut them up, and 3) swish them in a bowl of water that has a little lemon juice in it. (To reduce discoloration.)

I always assumed the frozen apples wouldn’t be good for fresh-eating, but my hopes were that they’d be fine for cooked apples, whether for sauce, pies, or crisps. 

John jumped in right away, and promptly cut up over a couple of dozen apples, mostly his favorite Queen Cox variety. I admit, I was skeptical, so I just did a couple of Florinas, my own favorite late-season apple. 

(As you see, we don’t peel our apples…whether for sauce or crisps, the peels add an extra level of flavor.)

Since we didn’t have any lemons in the house, we skipped that part. We simply packed our cut-up apples into plastic containers and stuck them in the deep freeze.

And there they’ve been sitting all winter. Until last week.

I was actually kinda reluctant to try out these frozen apples. What if I went to all the trouble of making the cooked apple-blueberry sauce I liked, and it was inedible?

But last week, the Foothills area was in the middle of a long freeze. Since John and I hadn’t been to town for a grocery shop for a while, we ran out of apples. So out I trooped to the deep freezer in our shop, and brought out the quart container of my frozen Florina apples.

They had maintained their color well—just a bit of discoloration—so that was a good sign. But as I simmered the slices in a pan for sauce, they definitely had a somewhat rubbery texture. 

I proceeded to make sauce anyway: I added about 1 1/2 cups of blueberries, let them simmer as well…

You can see the apple skin has sort of a weird shiny look

After the blueberries had softened, I sweetened up the fully cooked fruit with a handful of dried cranberries.

I dished up a small bowl for breakfast, and with trepidation, took a bite…

Apple-blueberry sauce: a success!

The apple-blueberry sauce was delicious! The texture of the cooked apples was as it should be, no hint of rubbery-ness. Even better: the flavor was great! 

In other years, with other harvests, we would store the apples in the fridge, using as needed. It not like commercial growers’ apple storage, where they can make apples stay crispy and blemish-free for many months. 

But for home orchardists like us, after two months or so in the fridge, the quality of the apples diminishes considerably. Even before the fruit start to decompose. 

Now, instituting a new program of freezing a good amount of apples right after they’re harvested, we’ll be able to eat yummy cooked apples winter into spring! 

By summer, it’s berry harvest time around here, so no need for apples…until fall rolls around again! 

You can find lots more homesteady recipes—mostly with fruit—right here on my Little Farm blog. All ad-free…just type in the search bar in the upper left corner!

Think Like a Raindrop…Or, The Roof Dilemma

Rotted roof materials!

One wet day last May, I woke up to find a puddle on top of the stove.

There was a gentle drip, drip, drip coming from what could only be the range fan vent. 

My husband John was away visiting his daughter. As I cleaned up the water and put a pan under the line of drips, I recalled the winter we were getting our city house ready to sell. 

Examining our failing exterior siding, Jake, the home inspector we’d hired, said the siding was pretty much a lost cause. 

“Couldn’t we just repair it?” I asked. 

“Think like a raindrop,” said Jake.

Oh, so Zen! A nice way of saying: any tiny drop of water, given any opening, will work its way into your walls or ceiling. And those small, damp spots you can’t see will only get larger, until you have a Really. Big. Problem: 

Dry rot.

Back to last May and the puddle: I waited until John came home before I told him about the leak. He didn’t look any happier than Jake the inspector. Especially when I showed him the damp shelf above the stove, and the water stains around the vent pipe.

We felt kind of helpless, though. We didn’t have the money for a new roof!

We had always planned to replace it down the road, hopefully in a couple of years, after we’d paid off our mortgage and could save the funds. Now, however, there was just no way.

So, John and I being sort of wait and see kind of people, we waited and “see’d.” 

Summertime, and our dry season came along, and we didn’t think about the leak. Or tried not to. 

Then came October, with a whole lot of rain. I mean, record precipitation. I couldn’t remember a rainier fall. And the leak was back. In spades.

The cupboard above the range was wet all the time. We piled towels around the stove vent pipe, which, after every rainstorm were soaked. So we’d have to swap in dry towels, and they’d get soaked too, before the wet ones could dry. 

After a couple of weeks of towel-swapping, I said to John, “We can’t keep doing this.” 

He looked bleak. We both knew winter would only bring more rain. More and more and more. 

We had to bite the bullet: get the roof repaired. And find the money somehow.

I did some research, and discovered our shingle roof only had a life of about 15-20 years, and we were in year 19. The cost new roof—we had our hearts set on a metal roof—would probably be at least $20,000.

I called my brother Ty, the Wood Guy, who’d just replaced the roof on his lakeside cabin. He advised that it was hard to get roof repairs, but if you ask for an estimate for a new roof, you might have better luck.

Replacing the roof underlayment

We found a reputable roofing company, and followed Ty’s advice. The company was up for a repair, and they sent their sales guy out that day for a new roof estimate. He took one look at our damp spot above the stove and shook his head. “That’s pretty bad.”

Okay, he was a salesman; of course he would say our leak was bad, but still. John and I could see the writing on the wall. We knew about this leak…what if there were more, that just hadn’t yet shown up as damp spots on the ceiling.

Did we want to find out the hard way, and have the ceiling fall in?

Long story short: we signed a contract for a roof replacement—the metal roof we’d dreamed about. The cost had to come out of the funds we’d saved for our old age. Meaning, our really, really old age. 

But what else could we do?

The repair was a gigantic tarp covering the leaking vent, attached to our existing, marginal shingles with special roofing tacks, and it extended all the way up to the roofline. The cost: $850. 

On the positive side, the tarp took care of the problem. 

But of course the company couldn’t guarantee this repair: a tarp was only a short-term fix, and even shorter, if a bad Northeaster came along, and blew the whole thing off!

The materials came in the first week of December. Four sturdy roofing guys showed up right away, who worked from early morning to the very last photon in the afternoon. They were a really great bunch of young guys, very polite and conscientious. 

The crew had to replace no less than 21 panels of rotting OMC (that’s the plywood-ish kind of wood product under your shingles or metal panels). Those 21 replacement panels, John and I estimate, added up to about 1/4 of our roof.

All those rotten spots in the existing OMC told the real story: that had we not sprung for a new roof, our old shingle roof would have surely sprung more leaks all over the place.

It was an interesting process—which came with some surprises. Like when John and I were making breakfast in the kitchen one morning. All of a sudden, there was a suction sound overhead, and the guys lifted out our skylight! Nothing but blue sky above us, like the song says. 

It was close to Christmas, but this isn’t Santa!

The next day, the guys took off the bathroom fan vents. It was very interesting, to be using the bathroom with a hole in the roof right over your head, listening to the rapid patter of Spanish coming from a few feet away!

Despite the huge hole in our savings, John and I are delighted with the new roof. No more leaks, wet towels, or worry. The cost was considerably higher than the $20,000 I was hoping for. 

Still, you can’t get away from the math: 20 k is a lot less than you’d spend having to rebuild the whole shebang.

Finished metal roof, with the cool new woodstove pipe flashing!

The alternative means John and I would have been singing another song: “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”! 

All the activity with the roofing crew pretty much scared the local wildlife away from our yard. But shortly before they arrived, I had an unforgettable encounter with a barred owl. 

“An owl glided low across the lane, right in front of me, to a huge old Douglas fir next to the road. With a sweep of its majestic wings, the owl settled on a limb about 12 feet off the ground…” 

You can read “Of Owls and Empaths” in my December 2024 newsletter! 

Christmas Book Flood & O Christmas Tree

Here are the novels I lined up for last year’s Book Flood

Icelandic holiday traditions are my new Christmas jam. 

I love Iceland’s Yule Lad myths, and I wrote a series of posts about those troll rascals, starting here! 

Tonight, being December 20, prepare for the visit of the Sausage-Swiper—so watch any meat you’re cooking because this Yule Lad is on the prowl!

But even better than Iceland’s troll legends, is their tradition of the Christmas Book Flood. 

Sausage-Swiper and some of Iceland’s infamous 13 Trolls: the Yule Lads (Photo credit: Iceland’s Official Website)

Calling All Book Lovers

Celebrating the Book Flood is easy: line up a good book for Christmas Eve, snuggle in a warm blanket with a cup of cocoa at the ready, and prepare for a cozy reading binge! 

I am very lucky to have a book fairy—local librarian Megan keeps an eye out for novels I might like, and she recommended the one I’ve got for the Christmas Book Flood: history, mystery, and a touch of mysticism. It certainly ticks all my boxes for the holidays.

I can’t wait to start this one

O Tannenbaum

If you’re a regular reader here, you know my holiday secret: I love Christmas. The lights and sparkle, the celebratory pause before winter’s long, cold slog, and the spiritual aspects of the best Christmas stories.

And while my husband John and I focus on simple holiday traditions, I do have one requirement, no ifs, ands or buts:

A Christmas tree. A real one.

For the first decade of our married life, every December, around mid-month, we bought a seven foot fir. To me, Christmas wasn’t Christmas unless I had an oversized, fully decorated real tree in my living room, exuding that lovely scent of fresh fir.

We would set it up the week before Christmas—and there it would stay until Epiphany, January 6—at least! Happily, John was totally on board about keeping our tree around too, until the needle-drop became extreme.

We moved from a “they-cut” to a “U-cut” Douglas fir, but it was still purchased. Once every few years we would reallygo all out, and spend the big bucks for a noble or grand fir.

Then as the years rolled on, I managed to let go of the huge tree, and dialed it down… To a six-foot fir.

But three years ago this month, my usual holiday plans—including my precious tree tradition— were turned upside down. We were needed for an out of town family emergency.

Without a spare second to bake a few cookies or buy some gifts—and of course Christmas cards were completely off the table—I was forced to make do.

Just before we had to leave home, I managed to create a Christmas tree…of sorts.

I found a stand of baby cedar trees on our property growing too close together to thrive. I cut down three of the saplings, lashed them together, and stuck their spindly little trunks in a sturdy vase filled with water.

It was new, to have to pare down the lights and tchotchkes to decorate my little semi-tree. Yet in a way, this experience turned out to be quite rewarding—to use only the ornaments with personal meaning, including the ones my daughters made when they were little, and our prettiest angel ornaments.

Three little cedars almost = one Christmas tree

Curiously enough, while I was wringing my hands over missing out on a Christmas tree, a funny thing happened around our garden. Volunteer firs! 

If you’re at all familiar with the Foothills of the North Cascades in the Pacific Northwest, you know that firs and cedars grow like weeds.

So it should have come to zero surprise to me, that they’d turn up in our garden!

The last two Christmases turned out to be a bit topsy-turvy as well. Still, it was a perfect opportunity for my dialed-down Christmas tree. So decorating a little Charlie Brown fir I find in the garden but is now our new tradition. 

At the store the other day, I saw 5 1/2 foot Douglas fir Christmas trees for $45! I had no idea even smallish trees had gotten so expensive. A baby Christmas tree, for us, means having more resources to share with others at holiday time.

Refreshing Your Holiday Entertainment

For years, I’ve been watching the same old Christmas movies. I LOVE them, I mean, who doesn’t adore “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Santa Clause,” and “A Christmas Carol”? But really, I’ve been due for a refresh. 

As I don’t have cable TV, I don’t have access to all the wonders of the Hallmark holiday movies. However, I recently discovered “Last Christmas”—a feature film starring Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding. I actually didn’t much like the movie at first. Yet by the end, I was a tearful puddle, so touched by this tender, mystical story. 

Last night, my husband John and I had a special, unexpected treat: Ted Lasso’s “Carol of the Bells,” Episode 4 of Season 2. If you watch any Christmas TV this season (and don’t mind all the profanity!) I hope you’ll make room for this episode! Like “Last Christmas,” the story is a celebration of love and community, and the true spirit of the season. 

For any of you who don’t do streaming (our internet too slow), I borrowed both the film and TV series in DVD through my local library. You’ll find my latest news in my December newsletter, “Of Owls and Empaths”…I hope you’ll take a look!

St. Nicholas Day & a Simpler Holiday

One Christmas corner in our house

Has Christmas turned into a 3-month event?

Holiday advertising seems to be everywhere by mid-October, and the New Year sales don’t end until the middle of January. Each year, it seems that the holiday season gets longer and longer. The celebrations get more and more elaborate.

How can you create a simpler holiday when the commercial pressures are all around you?

I was amazed to recently learn that Advent calendars have become a big business. I mean, huge. 

Now, my old paper Advent calendar feels perfect to me. There’s lovely Nativity scene, a bit of glitter, and a Bible verse behind every door. When Advent calendars with chocolate behind every door came along, I, as a chocolate lover, was all for it. Still, while they seemed quite festive to me, I was always happy with my faded paper one.

But chocolate was just the beginning. Now you can get calendars with a whole world of stuff. Merch.

One item every day of Advent. Make-up. Skin care. Jam. Beef jerky. Toys. Coffee. Even wine. 

A young Danish homesteader wrote this week that she was so turned off by the commercialization of Christmas, she had pretty much given up on celebrating the holidays. No lights. No carols. No shopping. 

But somehow, her little girl, hardly more than a toddler, asked her about Father Christmas. How could she deny her child the pleasures of Christmas?

How can all of us experience more Christmas joy?

The Danish woman’s solution turned out to be exactly like mine: to focus on the basics. To enjoy the lights and music and rituals without a lot of shopping or fancy celebrations. As I do, she’s baking goodies to give as gifts and stringing lights around the house. And like me, she sings Christmas carols while she cooks and does her chores. 

Unlike her, I don’t have a little one to sing to, but I can enjoy the carols all the same. 

Today, December 6th, is the Feast Day of St. Nicholas—the patron saint of children, and the real-life inspiration for holiday gift-giving and Santa Claus. This year, I have promised myself to do something Christmasy each day of Advent. (That is, besides opening the little door on my Advent calendar.)

It doesn’t need to be much. Watching a gentle Christmas movie, reading about others’ simple celebrations, starting my Christmas letter, planning some festive—though simple!—meals during the season. Learning more about the religious aspects. Tonight, I’m putting out the first decorations, and baking some cookies. 

You may find, if you give up all the rush and bustle and present-buying and fancy celebrations, a much more meaningful holiday. 

I also celebrated St. Nicholas Day by harvesting the last of our fall carrot crop! Carrots are at their absolute sweetest if you wait to pick them until after first frost of fall. We had an extremely late first frost, 6 weeks after the average one. December 1st! 

We’ll have festive dinners all through the holiday season with these sweet carrots!

Sweetness in the meals to come!