It's been a tough week for the White Leghorn hen.

Today she came out of the coop scratching around like her old self.

When I saw her up and about the first thing I thought she could use is some warm scrambled eggs and Anna agreed. With any luck she'll be able to re-join the flock in a few more days.

As I mentioned in my last post, Gene Logsdon's philosophy on dealing with pests and diseases is much less hard-core than Michael Phillips' since the former is only growing food for his own table.  In general, Logsdon believes that as long as you can keep your fruit trees alive, all other problems are cosmetic and can be treated or not as you choose.

So how does Logsdon deal with pests and diseases?  He begins his trouble-shooting by choosing resistant varieties (which I listed previously), then moves on to low-key preventatives.  For fire-blight prevention, he recommends keeping nitrogen levels low, perhaps feeding your trees only with a mulch of leaves, cardboard, old hay, straw, manure, tobacco stems, grass clippings, or clover.  Meanwhile, he minds phosphorus levels as well since too much of this nutrient will suppress mycorrhizal fungi, which are particularly essential for healthy peaches.  Finally, Logsdon strives to keep problematic fungi in check by ventilating with summer breezes.

One of our readers sent me an email (with the photo above) a couple of weeks ago mentioning how a woodpecker came by to deal with the borers that moved into his apple burr knots, and that turns out to be Logsdon's solution for codling moth larvae as well.  One study showed that if you allow natural woodland to grow up adjacent to your orchard, woodpeckers can eat up to 52% of overwintering codling moth larvae.  Meanwhile, brush piles attract other beneficial birds, wild places attract predatory insects, and even the lightning bug larvae living in unsprayed lawns will eat slugs and snails.  Maybe that's why Mark and I have fewer non-fungal issues than I would expect --- because our core homestead is surrounded by acres of natural forest?

It seems to be the trend this year for every blogger to post a holiday gift guide, so I guess we'd better follow suit!  I'll include some specials on our own top products, plus a few gifts I heartily recommend from the outside world.

But first, don't forget home-made crafts!  My mother's fire-starter tin is still my favorite gift of the last year, and there are other good ideas in the comments section of that post.  Mark and I tend to give gifts when the mood strikes rather than around any particular holiday, and gifts that have been well-received this year include honey, home-made jams, sweet potatoes, rooted fruit plants, and garlic.  Why not dig around the edges of your gooseberry bush and see if you've got any baby plants to share with friends?  Raspberries, blackberries, comfrey, and perennial herbs are also likely to have propagated themselves.

Okay, I know, some loved ones expect gifts with no dirt on them --- crazy people.  We just put our homesteading calendar up on Amazon, and we recommend this as a low-key way to trick non-homesteaders into liking dirt.  (Then you can give them one of the dirty gifts above in 2014!)  At the moment, our calendar is on sale for $5.99 + $3.99 S&H.

Or why not contact a local farmer and buy some pastured meat for a loved one?  The taste alone will go a long way toward winning them over to the idea of non-factory-farmed protein, and it will definitely boost their health.  If you live kinda close to us, my brother got some pastured pork from these folks and it was delectable.  You can also contact our pastured lamb supplier, but I'm not sure if they have anything available at this time of year.  No matter where you find the pastured meat, it might be a good idea to cook it up and invite your friends over for a holiday meal and then send them home with the leftovers --- that way you can be sure the meat will be cooked just right and will startle their taste buds.

What about people who have been won over to homesteading, but who are just getting started?  A great option is a high-quality hand tool that will last them the rest of their lives.  The Trake is a cast-metal trowel that I use daily during the growing season, $22.65 on Amazon with free shipping on orders over $35.  The Felco F-600 Hand Saw is so sharp it makes hand-cutting a breeze ($29.97 with free shipping available) and Mark's new RUKO knife looks like it's going to be our new favorite tool for butchering chickens and deer ($23.52 with free shipping available).

Vegetable seeds are another good choice to give beginners.  For people who have never gardened before, I recommend leaf lettuce (mixtures are always fun), Swiss chard (Fordhook giant is most winter hardy, but the ones with colored stalks are striking), okra (Clemson spineless is our favorite), summer squash (yellow crookneck avoids stem borers), and green beans (we love Masai).  This post will give you an idea of where to buy the seeds.

Of course, if your loved ones have chickens, you know what I think you should get them --- chicken waterers.  We have a hidden sale going on right now just for our most loyal readers --- 10% off our top products.  Do order these ASAP, though, since we can't guarantee they'll reach you by Christmas unless you order this week!  (Barring floods, waterers you order early next week should arrive in time too.)

Which brings me to books.  The up-to-date homesteader could benefit from this year's top reads: Paradise Lot and The Resilient Farm and Homestead.  If they're dreaming about livestock, it's hard to go wrong with the Storey Guides.  And, if they've got a kindle you can browse all of my ebooks here.  (As a side note, my publisher let me know that my paperback is out of stock on Amazon because they're currently changing distributors and shipping all of their books from one warehouse to the other, but hopefully it'll be back up there soon.)

I hope that's enough brainstorming to get you thinking on a homesteading track this holiday season.  And if you didn't see your favorite gift here, leave a comment below.

Our sky pond is filled to the top with a healthy layer of ice on the top.

The trailer shades what little sun would have hit this spot, which means it might take another day or two before our recent duck visitor can fly south for the winter.

One of my favorite parts of Organic Orcharding was comparing Logsdon's take on disease-resistant fruit varieties to the selections chosen by more-modern authors like Lee Reich and Michael Phillips.  In case you're a new reader, you might want to start out by browsing over these posts:

• Disease-resistant apple varieties
• Disease-resistant pear varieties
• No-spray stone fruits
  

What's fascinating when comparing Logsdon's list to those of other authors is how few varieties appear on both --- apparently trees go out of style over time, so Reich and Phillips might not have even experimented with the fruits Logsdon swore by in the 1970s (and vice versa).  For example, although Logsdon's list of pears matches up with the ones mentioned in the post linked above, most of his resistant stone fruits aren't on the above lists.  Here's Logdon's selection of stone fruits resistant to brown rot in case you want to give them a shot:

• Alberta, Belle of Georgia, and Redhaven peaches
• Hagan Sweet and Morton nectarine
• Greengage, Ozark Premier, Redheart, and Stanley plums

However, Logsdon does agree with the other authors that sweet cherries and nectarines are trouble in humid climates (unless you're willing to grow the cherry rootstock Mazzard for its small but disease-resistant fruits).

Which brings us to apples.  Phillips' extensive (although organic) spray regimen makes modern readers believe apples are impossible to grow in a chemical-free fashion, but Logsdon instead considers apples the most reliable of high-quality fruit species.  He makes the argument that if you choose resistant varieties (see below), use the worst apples for livestock, the okay ones for cider or cooking, and only expect a third of your fruits to be dessert quality, you can grow apple trees without any sprays at all.  That sounds like a regiment a homesteader can get behind!

I hope that gives an idea of where to get started if you want to plant a completely spray-free orchard.  If I run across more lists of resistant varieties in other books, I'll be sure to update with another post.

I realized Monday that I'd never explored all the way up the holler behind our farm.  When we first moved here, I didn't want to trespass on someone else's property, but a year or so ago, the owner of that property mentioned that he didn't mind if I walked there since we let his son hunt down onto the adjacent parts of our property.  So I set off with the camera to explore.

Long-time readers will know that our farm seems to completely lack rocks --- not so up the holler!  Before long, I came across mossy boulder fields, rock-loving ferns and liverworts, and even a pretty waterfall.  Granted, our main creek was at flood stage, so this waterfall on the little spur creek might not exist in dry weather.

After about half a mile climbing straight up, an old tire in the creek suggested I was approaching civilization, so I looped back toward home, this time walking on contour along the side of the hill.  Along the way, I discovered another perfect stump-dirt tree, but I had nothing to collect the prime potting soil in (and doubt I'll climb that high with a bucket).  This tree is an ancient beech just like my favorite stump-dirt tree, suggesting that something about that species makes the best potting soil --- I've rooted around in the rotten center of many other trees without finding such black gold.  Maybe rotting beech wood hosts a particularly good species of fungus or beetle?

I'm afraid that after the halfway point, though, I stopped taking photos and started writing the sequel to Watermelon Summer in my head.  Oops.  I really meant to write a non-fiction ebook or two before scratching that itch, but it'll probably be good for me to at least start another fiction piece while all of the lessons of the first are fresh in my mind.  And if people like the fiction, the sequel will be ready to go that much sooner.

I hope you're taking advantage of the winter lull to explore the wider world!

Another wet and cold day inspired me to move some furniture around.

There's a reason I loved flipping through Organic Orcharding before we got our farm --- it's a great book to dream by.  Or, if you want to pretend you're being scientific, you can use the excellent charts for variety selection.  For example, Logsdon recommends starting your orchard planning by learning which species do well in your climate.  The map above hits the highlights, making it clear that you really want to live in zone 6 or 7 if you plan to grow all sorts of temperate fruits.  Zone 8 is pretty good too, although you'll need to choose low-chill apples and peaches, and colder zones start restricting your choices pretty quickly.

Your next stop should be Logsdon's excellent ripening-order charts, which I won't recreate here, but which you can find on pages 28 and 50.  While you're thinking about seasonality, you'll also want to consider adding some winter storers so you can enjoy homegrown fruit after the snows fly.  Logsdon doesn't list storage times for pears (the other good storage fruit), but he does include a handy chart of apple storage periods:

Finally, you should take into account how much fruit your family can really eat.  Logsdon includes the yield figures below, which seem to be on the low side according to some sources (which I've added parenthetically).  However, his figures might be the most realistic for a chemical-free backyard orchardist.

I hope these charts help you out if you're still in the planning stages.  You may also get some handy information out of my 99 cent ebook, Weekend Homesteader: December.  Meanwhile, if you're ready to choose varieties and put trees in the ground, stay tuned for tips in later posts.

"Why should only the outside world get time off for bad weather?" Mark asked Sunday.  Before I knew it, I'd agreed to a one-hour delay on Monday morning.

And it was a good day to sleep in.  A full weekend of rain had filled my wheelbarrow rain gauge and set the creek into moderate-flood mode.  (Moderate flood means we can't get out with hip waders, but I could walk nearly all the way to the ford without being impacted by high water.)  Don't worry, rust-phobes, I flipped the wheelbarrow on its side after taking this picture.

The flood reminds me that winter is a season of tough choices for homesteaders.  Do you relax and soak up the peace and quiet in preparation for next year's growing season?  Or do you take advantage of days without pressing plants and animals to get some big-picture projects done?  Mark leans toward the first option and I lean toward the second, so we meet in the middle --- we slow down some, but also slip in projects non-essential enough that they never make the cut during the growing season.  (And I get extra time to write.)

Winter is also a good time to catch up on blog posts that didn't make it into the summer queue.  For example, I seem to have never mentioned how I experimented with tempting our seven-year-old-but-not-yet-fruited dwarf Yellow Transparent to make fruit buds.  The problem tree was slated for removal this spring since it sent up scads of watersprouts in 2012 after I pruned to remove extensive cicada damage.  But I decided to tie each long, vertical twig into a loop instead, and the trickery does seem to have promoted the formation of fruiting spurs!  I'll keep you posted next year about whether actual flowers are forthcoming.

What big-picture projects are you slipping in between snow storms?

We took part of the morning off due to the rain soaked ground and cloudy skies.

It might take another day or two for the creek to go down, but the chickens seem to be making up for lost time after being cooped up most of the weekend.