Category Archives: Advice

Trail advice and tips

Storing and Saving Seeds

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When you already have a garden, one of the best ways to benefit from it long-term is to save and store the seeds that your garden produces.  Instead of buying seeds every year to plant, why not just save a few from each plant and use them again next year?

Of course, some plant seeds stay and store better than others.  Also, letting certain plants get to the point where they are producing seeds can mean that they are not all that useful for consumption.  But you can always plant an extra one or two and allow them to go to seed.  Most plants produce more than enough seeds for you to have a viable garden the following year.

Aquatic plants and large-seeded plants (such as oak, avocado, etc) are very hard to store.  Larger seeds tend to need a fair amount of moisture to remain viable, and the amount of moisture required will lead to fungal growth and rot in a short period of time.  If you have oaks around, harvest the acorns and make nut butter right away.  Let the squirrels bury the seeds for you, and you’ll have some new trees in a few years.

These seeds, unfortunately, really need to be planted right away in order for them to germinate.  However, there are a wide variety of seeds that you can save all winter long, and maybe even for more than just a single winter.

Small seeded plants, like most garden vegetables, are relatively easy to save.  These seeds are what’s called desiccant-tolerant.   This means that they are able to survive and remain viable even when dried out.

Peas, carrots, beans, and herb seeds are all very hardy seeds that can handle being dried and stored for long periods of time before they lose their viability.  However, you do have to be careful how you handle, dry, and store the seeds.  You can’t just grab the seeds off of the plant, throw them in a baggie and then plant them next spring.  Well, you could, but there are ways to improve the chance that those seeds produce healthy plants for your garden.

Seeds, like any other organic matter, are subject to rot if not handled properly.  The reason an individual plant produces so many more seeds than is necessary is due to evolution.  This adaption takes into account that a large portion of any seeds produced will either be eaten, rot, or not survive until adulthood.

By properly drying and storing those same seeds, however, you can greatly increase the amount of usable seeds you have.  One individual plant will produce more seeds than you could possible use before the seeds are no longer any good.

The first and most important step in preserving seeds is drying them.  In nature, most seeds spend the winter months frozen in the ground, where the ice crystals actually make the ground very dry.  The seeds should be spread out in a shady, cool, dry place.  Also, don’t make a pile of seeds, spread them out thinly on paper towels or something similar.

Properly dried seeds will show basically no flexibility.  Beans and peas will be rock hard, and larger seeds will not bend.  Obviously, larger seeds need more time to dry than smaller seeds.

If you live in an area with high humidity, then you will probably want to use a desiccant.  Those little packages of silica gel that you get for free with a new pair of shoes are there for a reason:  They make it so that your new shoes are not all moldy.  They do the same thing for seeds, though you probably want to buy some silica gel instead of using the packages from your shoes.

Once the seeds are dry, place them in an air-tight container like a glass jar or baggie.  Store them slightly below freezing, and they should be good for a very long time.  Just try to think what a seed goes through before it germinates, and you can have an idea of what needs to be done to save them.

Saving and storing seeds is a long-running activity for those of us who garden and want to be self-sufficient.  By properly drying and storing seeds from your garden, you can almost guarantee that you will never have to buy seeds again.

Be sure to like Middle of the Trail on Facebook for more pictures and daily updates and follow @JustinALevine for whatever it is I do on Twitter.

Homemade Oatmeal Goat’s Milk Soap

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When I started out, I had no idea that making soap would be so easy, or so fun.  Plus, it’s been almost six months and I still have about fifteen bars of my home-made, goat’s milk oatmeal soap to use or give away.  There’s still a shopping bag half-full in my cabinet, and whenever someone comes over, I pawn a few bars off on them.

Making soap is a lot of fun, but it can also be dangerous.  The reason Melting all the oils and fatsoap is soap is that it has lye in it.  Lye is a poisonous chemical that can burn your eyes, irritate skin, and even kill if it’s ingested.  If you have pets or young children, I would recommend that you make your soap outside.  Also, don’t use your favorite spoon or kitchen scale for the lye, as the tools used to handle the lye should not be used for food.

The total cost for ingredients was less than $40.00 and for that I got fifty-one bars of soap.  Not too bad, as this is far more soap than I could use in a year!  Everyone I’ve given it to enjoys that nutty oatmeal aroma and scrubbiness of the whole oats.  With the goats milk and ground oats it creates a medium lather but doesn’t leave my skin dry.  Its’ nice color, texture and aroma make it a pleasure to use for showers or for hand soap at the kitchen sink.

I first started out by picking up supplies and ingredients.  I bought a little coffee grinder, some cheap trays to use as forms, buckets, gloves, a thermometer and a kitchen scale.  I also bought lye, goat’s milk, lard, olive oil, and coconut oil.  I had oats and vinegar at the house already.  I put the goat’s milk in the freezer to let it get a little slushy, but that will be explained later.

The first step is to warm all the oils together so that they mix and pour easily.  The lard and coconut oil melted quickly and I left them on the stove on low with the olive oil mixed in so that the whole mixture would stay liquefied.  I then threw a cup of whole oats into the mix and also a cup of finely ground oats as well.

Step number two is to mix the goat’s milk and lye.  When lye is mixed with liquids of any sort, there is a chemical reaction that occurs that makes the mixture very hot.  If the lye is added too quickly, it can react so fast that there may be a small explosion of lye and milk.  It is definitely best to err on the side of caution when mixing these ingredients.  This is the reason that the goat’s milk should be slushy.  It will tamper down the veracity of the chemical reaction, while also helping to get the mixture back down to a working temperature more quickly.

Pour the slushy goat’s milk into a pail.  Slowly add the lye to the goat’s milk, stirring as you go.  Only add small amounts of lye at a time.  This is best done outside.  However, if it’s a really windy day, you should probably seek the shelter of a garage or shed.  When all of the lye is added to the milk, it will be turning into a bright yellow puddle in the pail.  Adding the milk and lye to the oilThis is the heat from the reaction caramelizing the sugars in the milk.  Don’t worry, this will not be the color of the final product.

Then let the mixture cool down to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  I made my batch in March in Upstate New York, so the cooling process did not take very long.  I did everything inside except measuring and mixing the lye.  The pail of goat’s milk and lye cooled down in about a little under an hour, but if it had been summer or in a heated basement or garage, it would have taken much longer.

Next, take another pail and add the liquefied oil and oats mixture, then start slowly adding the milk and lye mix.  Then sit back, relax, and start stirring.  Now what you’ll be waiting for is the “tracing” to occur.  This is when the mixture has hardened to the point where when you drag you spoon through it, the line left behind by the spoon lingers for a few seconds.  It is still a pourable liquid, but on its way to becoming almost pudding-like in consistency.  This could take some time, but my batch started to trace within forty-five minutes.  At this point, the liquid soap was far less yellow than it had been and was starting to look more oatmeal-like in its appearance.

When the trace started to occur, I really reached down into the depths of the pail with my large spoon just to make sure I had a good mixture.  Then I took out the cheap pans and recycled yogurt containers and started to spoon the soap into them.  I had two six-by-six baking pans that I added the soap to along with some small plastic containers.  The soap could be poured directly into the larger pans, but needed to be spooned into the smaller containers to avoid spillage.

I let the whole magellah sit overnight to harden a little bit and the next afternoon I popped the mostly dried soap onto an old pizza box and started to cut it all into bars.  With the yogurt and plastic containers I was able to just pop out the preformed bars, and even get a nice little design from the yogurt containers, kind of a Union Jack pattern.  The baking pans needed to be cut into bars though, and I found that a wet knife made the cutting a lot easier.  It also made the edges smoother and caused far fewer chips to break off.  Although, I kind of like the home-made rustic appearance of the bars of soap with rough edges.

The last step is the hardest of all.  Sitting there and letting your new batch of soap cure for a month or more.  I left mine for five weeks just to make sure it was good and done.  The chemical reaction we started by adding the lye to the milk doesn’t finish right away, and because of this it is important to let the soap cure properly.  Keep it in well ventilated area at room temperature.  I kept mine in a pizza box lined with wax paper to protect the soap and to keep my cats form licking or eating it.  This method also conveniently kept the finished product pet hair free.

All in all, I have had a great time making soap, and several of my friends The soap in formsand family are now set up with a few months supply of soap.  In hindsight, I cut some of the bars a little small, but for less than a dollar per bar, I have no qualms about burning through the little bars.  Plus it’s nice to know for quite some time, I won’t have soap on my shopping list.

Be sure to like Middle of the Trail on Facebook for more pictures and daily updates and follow @JustinALevine for whatever it is I do on Twitter.

Itineraries

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There I was, miles from the car with an injured dog and no water or food.  How could I be so stupid and not pack a sandwich or grab the extra bottle of water that was now sitting on the passenger seat of the car?  As I berated myself, Pico sat down and started licking his unmentionable areas.  Alright, so maybe the situation wasn’t all that dire.

In fact, I was less than 2 miles from the car, and Pico just had a slight limp from a torn paw pad.  We were going to be just fine.  But what if something serious did go wrong?  What if I twisted an ankle and had to spend the night out there?

I am one of those people that bring a backpack with me on every hike.  Whether it’s a mile or 15, I carry a first-aid kit (and I know how to use it), an emergency bag with essential equipment, extra food and water, as well as a guide book and map, and extra clothes.  I take pride in the fact that I am prepared to spend the night in the woods, regardless of the situation.

But here I was, coming down from hiking two of New York’s highest mountains, and I had already eaten my food and drank my water.  Pico still had a small bag of food in his backpack, and there is rarely a shortage of water sources in the Adirondacks, but still, I was not happy with myself.

Being prepared is the one thing that you have absolute control over.  There are a few basic rules that a person should follow if they intend on heading into the woods, and those who don’t risk suffering the consequences.

The first and most important thing to do when you plan on going hiking is to put together an itinerary and give it to someone who cares about you.  Not the bartender you met last night who gave you a six-digit phone number, but a relative or responsible friend.  And it doesn’t have to be complicated.  I usually text my itineraries to my uncle, who only lives a few minutes away.  They say something like:  “Hiking Whiteface and Esther from Reservoir Lane trailhead.  I’ll call by 7pm.”

By sending this, someone trust worthy now knows where I’ll be, and when to expect me to get back.  And I know that if I don’t call by 7:00, Uncle Brad will be calling the Forest Rangers at 7:01, letting them know where I am and what trail I am on.  This is the closest you can get to having backcountry insurance, and the best part is, it’s free (minus the 10 cents for the text)!

The second, but equally important step is to stick to your itinerary.  What’s the point of leaving an itinerary if you don’t follow it?

The best known itinerary breaker is probably Aron Ralston, who came to fame when he was forced to amputate his own arm.  Ralston had left an itinerary with a friend, but then decided to take a different route.  When he failed to show up, the authorities were notified, but started searching the area where he was supposed to be.  Meanwhile, Ralston was sawing through his own arm with a pocket knife to free himself from underneath a large boulder.  I, for one, will learn this lesson the easy way…  Because learning it the hard way had to really suck.