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!

 

New Christmas Book—Little Farm for the Holidays!

New Christmas book!

My new book is out this week!

Little Farm for the Holidays is a cozy, inspiring little read to bring more light and cheer to your Christmas. In these warmhearted true stories, you’ll find easy, down-to-earth ways to enhance your holiday gifting and celebrations—all with a homestead, country flavor. 

You’ll also find thoughtful, gentle guidance for making the most of the season. 

*Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter, “Cozy Season”…

As Christmas draws nearer, and the winter’s chill sets in, life seems to take on a whole new tenor. If you live in the Northern hemisphere, in the dark days leading to the winter solstice it seems natural to live more attuned to the slower rhythms of the season. 

At our little homestead, choosing calming, comfy—and simple—pastimes is how my husband John and I like to get into holiday mode: baking goodies, taking easy walks down our quiet little lane, and of course, reading books. 

If you’re a big reader like me, I think choosing something uplifting is both comforting and relaxing, and the reason I created this mini-ebook! 

This simpler mindset has served us well, given our ever-shifting home and extended family landscape. Like John and me, I’m sure you’ve experienced the many ups and downs of elderly parents, grown children and grandkids, and job and financial worries. Then there’s the vagaries of winter weather and power outages. 

All in all, those unexpected twists and turns have taught us that the best-laid plans often go awry.

So if I’ve learned anything about our holiday celebrations, it’s to stay flexible…and not get too invested in any single activity. Reflecting my own background and John’s, this little book will pretty much focus on the rituals of European and Western festive traditions. Yet there are so many joy-producing activities anyone can bring to the holidays…

*One activity I especially love is in this second little excerpt, adapted from the chapter, “A Season of Thanks”…

What if everyone decided to rebel against the Thanksgiving weekend shop-a-thon? 

Ignore all the Black Friday deals and come-ons, the opportunities to save big, and stop shopping altogether, from Thanksgiving into the next week? Turn our November holiday into something very different from the current shopping spree? 

As a book lover, I’m lobbying for something that you can do at home, is easy and it’s inexpensive or even free: a book celebration! How about swapping out shopping for reading…and you can spend your Thanksgiving weekend curled up with a book. (Or books!) Surely it’s the best time to be thankful for the gift of reading… 

Little Farm for the Holidays is available in ebook at all online bookstores, and in paperback at Barnes & Noble: Amazon, Kobo, Apple and Barnes & Noble. You can also read it for free, by requesting the ebook or paperback at your neighborhood library.

And on the subject of reading…The first box set of my Irish novels has been selected for Barnes & Noble’s Bestsellers Under $10 Promotion!

On sale for a great price!

This eBook Box Set of 4 novels includes The Hopeful Romantic, a tender holiday novel about reconciliation and following your dreams. 

It’s true, I talked about downplaying shopping over Thanksgiving, but I make an exception for books!

The Ballydara box set is available at your favorite online retailer at the sale price, now until December 3, 2024: Amazon, Kobo, the Apple bookstore and Barnes & Noble.

And like all my books, the box set also available by request at your neighborhood library.

So you’re game to make your Thanksgiving a weekend of reading…whether you like novels, non-fiction, kids’ books, or comic books, all you have to do is line up something to read before next Thursday…

Besides books…With Thanksgiving just around the corner, cooking and good food is also on my mind. If you feel the same, you’ll find “How Did You Learn to Cook? & Book Love” over at my Little Farm November newsletter! 

Book Event: Book Lover’s Dream Day this Sunday, Nov. 3!

Here’s my own “Little Farm Free Library” I’m bringing to the event!

If you live or are vacationing in the far northwest of the Pacific Northwest, USA, I hope you’ll check out “Open Book: A Festival for Readers” Sunday, November 3… 

It’s a “book-lover’s dream day,” sponsored by our local Library Foundation and stellar bookshop Village Books!

A Festival for Readers, Sunday Nov. 3, 2024!

Come to scenic Ferndale, Washington, from noon - 5 pm!

“Our second annual event celebrates readers, writers and bookish enthusiasm with presentations from bestselling historical fiction author Janie Chang and local writers and storytellers, a makerspace, and weird and wonderful hands-on book-related experiences at more than 20 booths and stages.” 

At this fun, free event, I’ll be signing all my paperback titles—my 3 adventure stories for tweens,              4 homestead books, and 4 Irish novels—alongside a dozen other authors writing historical fiction, thrillers, and picture books. 

Two of my books for kiddos

In keeping with a “book lover’s dream day,” I’m also offering special pricing for all my titles! 

Then there’s the most special pricing of all…free! 

At my table, you’ll find free books in my tiny “Little Farm Free Library”! To honor all the wonderful books I get to read for free through our library, I’m giving away two new print copies each of The Curse of the Corpse Bride, Little Farm in the Foothills, and my Irish novel It Only Takes Once. 

Three of my homesteading books

Plus some extra goodies for writers…Find more at the Open Book webpage!

Sunday, Nov. 3, I’ll be at Open Book all afternoon—I hope you’ll stop by to say hi! 

Free Halloween/Day of the Dead Book + a Romance for Girls Who Love Navy Guys

Are you or your kids looking for something spooky to read for Halloween? But nothing too ghoulish?

Well, you’ve come to the right place… And there’s no trick, only the “treat” of a free read!

Perfect for tweens, and fun for kids of all ages, Morgan Carey and The Curse of the Corpse Bride is a free ebook! Here’s more about the story:

Halloween and the Day of the Dead is just around the corner, and 5^th grader Morgan chooses the coolest costume ever—a dead bride. 

Prepared for a fun night of trick-or-treating with her best friend Claire, she definitely does not expect a trip to the costume store to be so…well, weird—setting off a series of strange and spooky encounters… 

Like the snarky, mysterious clerk at the store, a very curious bridal veil, and an even curiouser fortune-telling machine that actually works...when it's not plugged in!

But Halloween quickly takes a scary turn: a Day of the Dead curse, an old book of magical spells, and a dark and deserted cemetery force Morgan, with Claire’s help, to call upon all her courage—and face the powerful magic of this extraordinary Dia de los Muertos! 

This family-friendly magical-adventure, Book 1 of the Morgan Carey Adventure series, is suitable for all ages— and The Curse of the Corpse Bride is free at Kobo, Apple and Nook! 

Amazon.com has for some unknown reason, changed The Curse of the Corpse Bride ebook to its original price, a mystery which seems to frequently happen around Halloween. 

However, you can request the ebook at your local library. Also, the book is now available on Amazon as a budget-friendly audiobook with virtual voice!

As for the News…

I’ve just made a few tweaks to my Little Farm Writer newsletter—it’s now called “This Little Farm Life”! My monthly newsletter is still full of stories about gardening, nature, and wildlife (and gardening despite the wildlife!). But I’m really embracing my love of novels these days, so you'll also find a few more reading recs! 

My latest recommendation is Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell—it’s an unforgettable love story, and perfect for every woman who’s ever fallen for a Navy guy! 

As always, you’ll find more free reads at www.susancolleenbrowne.com !

Homestead Gardening Class Takeaways

“Starter homesteaders,” newly arrived in our county, made my recent community college workshop, “Grow a Homestead-Style Food Garden,” one of my most interesting classes yet! 

One woman, recently moved from California, was now living on 2 acres close to the city—and learning to care for the 100 blueberry shrubs that came with the property! 

A couple who also hailed from California had just purchased 14 acres of woods and brushy areas. Despite having to break ground to cultivate a workable garden, both were motivated to start growing food asap. 

Another husband and wife, who’d had a small but thriving garden in Maryland, were looking for a 5-10 acre parcel to start a small farm. Land is quite expensive in our area of the Pacific Northwest, but they were excited about their search for property.

My class centers around working with nature…and we discussed how incorporating native plants into your garden will encourage native wildlife species that will enhance your food-growing. 

“Good garden friends” as my husband John calls them: wild bees and butterflies, and other pollinators, insect eaters like spiders and toads (and wasps), and plenty of birds, just to start—all of which create a balanced habitat right in your food garden.

And help you raise food without pesticides! When I mentioned the natural balance the farmers had created in the film, “The Biggest Little Farm,” the Maryland couple broke into grins, and the wife shot her hand into the air. “I’ve seen it twice!” 

The farmers in the movie were plagued with a LOT of pests of all kinds, ruining their crops. Literally, plagues of them: starlings, gophers, snails, caterpillars, and aphids. 

But they were really smart about using nature to deal with nature! So, they added animals or created habitats that brought in all kinds of wildlife. 

This way, the bigger wild creatures could eat the smaller ones, right down the line: 

1) Hawks eat the starlings spearing the fruit, 2) Owls and snakes eat gophers, 3) Ducks eat snails, 4) Spiders and wasps eat caterpillars, and Ladybugs eat aphids! 

As for voles—which have been very destructive in our food garden—the tried and true remedy is having a dog!

A balanced little ecosystem can help with lots of insect pests. Planting marigolds and aromatic herbs around your food garden can discourage a lot of destructive insects. I understand marigolds will scare off tomato cutworms. 

And though we have far too many paper wasps in our yard (see my previous post!), they do feed on a lot of destructive insects. However, we do not live in a pest-free nirvana!

Earwigs go after our no-spray apples, and it seems there’s more every year. But you can easily brush them off the fruit, and then, it’s very satisfying to stomp on them! 

Keep in mind that in your sustainably grown food garden, you’ll have some pests. Nature can be messy, but if you don’t interfere too much, things balance out in the end!

We also talked about using raised beds—I only wished John and I had started with them when we first created our food garden, instead of having to re-do most of our beds. This year, we installed our first galvanized steel tub, and filled it with our own on-site soil. 

The potatoes we planted there have appeared to thrive—I’ll let you know if they actually did when I harvest them!

 

Important: if you need to import garden soil/compost for your crops (as opposed to having spare piles of it for your raised beds!), make sure it’s good quality. Ask your gardening friends and neighbors for recommendations; ask the retailer/source where the soil comes from, and what’s in it! 

Using Mulch in your Food Garden

Now that it’s officially fall…it’s prime mulch time!

Ferns and leaves on the potato bed

Harvesting your summer crops, you may be looking bare, unprotected soil in your garden beds. And come springtime, those food-growing areas you cultivated all summer will quickly fill with weeds! 

That’s where mulch—organic material that you lay on top of your garden beds—comes in.

Mulch is one of the cornerstones of sustainable, chemical-free food gardening. 

In the growing season, mulching with leaves and other material from your garden will help suppress weeds, regulate soil temperatures, and keep more consistent moisture in your soil. 

Over the winter, mulch will protect your soil by reducing soil heaving from frost/thaw cycles…plus as the mulch breaks down, it builds your soil! 

Yesterday, I read a terrific article in the January ‘24 issue of Mother Earth News, “The Original World Wide Web”! It discussed the complex web of microbial life in the soil, and how organic material, applied to your soil, improves its fertility and in turn, crop production. 

The article was fairly technical, so a bit tricky to sum up. But long story short, as organic material breaks down, it feeds the microbes in your soil, which helps fertility in myriad ways.

One particularly fascinating aspect to this process was that these microbes aid in the “communication” plants do through a web of their root structures—which in turn helps your soil increase the nutrients for your crops! 

So…what to use for mulch?

Leaves: Hopefully you have a few deciduous trees around your yard, and in the fall, they’re on the ground for the taking! We have a beautiful small-leaved maple in our yard, which provides a large portion of leaves for mulch.

Other Foliage and Twigs: I also use a lot of brackenfern from the woods, which breaks down quickly. You can also use any foliage that doesn’t contain weed seeds. But…do not use fruit tree leaves or prunings, as they carry funguses. 

Crop Foliage: I’ve been using more of my harvested material as mulch, and it works great! Instead of doing the high maintenance chore of chopping up the material, I lay it on top of my beds. 

Besides leaves and ferns, here’s the crop material I’m using in the garden right now.

*Carrot tops

*Harvested pea pods

*Pea vines

*I’ve also saived my pea seeds, and just this week, planted as a sort of cover crop. The pea plants won’t grow much before the frost kills them, but they will provide some soil cover…plus their nitrogen-fixing roots will help the soil!

Empty pea pods to spread on top of the beds I just harvested

I utilize wood chips (not beauty bark) for mulching my blueberry shrubs. Wood chips from deciduous trees and firs look great on paths too. However, I don’t use cedar chips around my food crops. Cedar wood contains oils that have a slight herbicidal effect.

As for mulching after the first frost:

*Squash foliage. After I harvest the squash, when the frost hits,  I let all those abundant squash and cucumber leaves melt into the soil.

Parsnip foliage. I wait until the first killing frost to harvest parsnips, after the cold sweetens them up. Then I lay the cut tops on top of the bed!

I also top dress my tomato, squash and asparagus beds with well-composted chicken manure (originally mixed with wood chips). I’ve been rewarded with lush, healthy plants!

**Caution: like fruit leaves, do not use your spent tomato plants or potato plants as mulch—the foliage carries blights and funguses. On a similar note, do not discard spoiled tomatoes or potatoes in your compost pile. 

If you’d like more details about mulch, here’s another post… And for lots of wildlife stories around our homestead, stop in at my newsletter, This Little Farm Life!

Wasps in Charge—AKA, Never Have I Ever

Look closely at the bottom of the middle grape cluster

Last fall, we had a bad paper wasp infestation. As you see in the photo, they hit our grapes hard. 

What wasps do: they pierce the grape skins, then suck out the insides. The decomposing fruit attracts even more wasps, and fruit flies too, and the aroma soon spreads throughout the area!

Insects weren’t the only critter to sample the fruit…

Along came our neighborhood bear! It not only wiped out what was left of the grapes, but in the process, destroyed our grape arbor! 

John’s sturdy hand-built arbor was no match for the bear!

Well. This summer, our paper wasp population was very reduced. We had our usual wasp’s nests under the eaves of the shop, but nothing too scary. Not like last year, when the wasps even built nests inside our heat pump!

I’ve noticed garden pests often go in cycles, where you’ll have a whole lot of certain bugs one season, and far fewer the next. Still, this summer, my husband John and I decided to nip this issue in the bud. 

Our grapes often don’t ripen before the first frost, so we figured we could just let go of the crop this year—and I clipped off every last grape cluster. Problem solved, right?

I wish. 

A couple of weeks ago, smack in the middle of blueberry season, our area had three days of chilly, heavy rain. Very unusual for this time of year. While the Foothills climate is rainy Fall, Winter and Spring, our summers are warm and sunny, and a two-month drought is not unusual, especially in August and September.

Now the rain and chill would turn ripe strawberries to mush; you might see some mold on tougher caneberry varieties like marionberries. But blueberries are resilient, and will be okay even if you have temps in the 40s one day, and 90s a few days later.

Checking the blueberry patch the last cold, rainy day, I did notice the ripe berries seemed a little swollen, like they’d absorbed some of the rain, and the skins seemed a bit soft. I couldn’t wait for the sun to return and I could get back to picking!

Which leads to my late summer Never Have I Ever:

*Never Have I Ever: Worn long johns to bed in late August

*Never Have I Ever: Dressed in heavy winter cycling gear for a summer bikeride

*Never Have I Ever: Picked blueberries by camp lantern.

Are you seeing where this is going? That first warm day, out came the wasps!

At night, wasps don’t feed, as they do in the cold, they retreat to their nests. But the sun brought them out in droves…and into our blueberry patch, full of ripe berries!

Like they do with the grapes, wasps pierce blueberry skins, then chomp a hole in the berry and suck out the insides until just a husk is left.

They were hitting one shrub so hard I knew in a few hours there wouldn’t be one decent berry left to harvest

I picked for 15 minutes or so, but it was way too stressful, having all those wasps flying around me. I decided, new strategy. It was 80 degrees, but I pulled on a hoodie and long pants, and tried to pick that way.

Still too stressful! I could get stung on my face and hands. So I waited until dark, went inside, and grabbed our rechargeable lantern we keep for power outages. 

I felt sort of foolish, or maybe, how compulsive can you get, doing garden chores at night?

But at least I was able to pick berries in peace. 

I only picked by lantern-light that one night. It’s funny, that over the next few days, picking berries as usual in the daylight, I got more comfortable around the wasps. I would just be v-e-r-y careful to not grab a berry cluster with a wasps attached to it!

Besides, the wasps were kind of slow, and dare I say, a bit inebriated, feeding on decomposing fruit.

But as life often goes, I ran out of luck. Last night, some impatient wasp, annoyed by the human hand messing with its food, stung me on the knuckle.

It was sort of a light sting, not the full-on needle in your skin sensation. But it reminded me that I get crazy itching with stings. And after one Benedryl pill and some topical anesthetic especially for stings, I did wise up. I officially let go of the rest of the blueberries.

Every other summer, the blueberry harvest has been over when I say it’s over. This year, the wasps were in charge!

My September newsletter, “An Irish Border Collie & a Small But Mighty Frenemy” includes a bit more about the wasps, plus some fun dog stories…I hope you’ll take a look!