How To Build Food Security For Your Family In Less Than 30 Days - Week 3

Welcome back to Week 3 on how to build food security for your family in less than 30 days. In Week 3 of our Food Security Plan, I am going to teach you (click to jump!):

• What seeds you can plant right now in your first garden
• How to design and build your chicken coop
• How to brew your first batch of Kombucha
• How to identify five of the most common local edible weeds

If you just found this series, be sure to head back to Week 1 so you can learn how this Food Security series works and get started on the right foot!

I want you to remember that you are completely capable of starting something new (like chicken keeping). Sure, you're probably going to make some mistakes in the process as you learn but the payoff is worth it.  Doing these things with a loved one or your kids will bring you some fun and purpose during this uncertain time. Let’s dive into Week 3!

Please note: The links below are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you end up clicking and purchasing an item. I worked hard to find my trusted favorites and I want to share them with you so you don't have to deal with all the crappy junk I had to go through. Nuff said

Gardening

Action Item #1. Check your seedlings.

In Week 1 we gathered gardening supplies and seeds. In Week 2 I walked you through where to put your garden, how to build raised beds, and lastly how to plant your veggie seeds or store-bought seedlings. In Week 3, we are going to simply check on our seedlings!

The seeds you planted indoors should be just about ready to poke through the dirt. Remember to keep the soil nice and moist until you see seedlings. Seeds need moisture in order to germinate so you shouldn’t let them dry out. Some seeds take a while to germinate - like tomatoes and peppers - while others are super quick - like kale, cabbage, lettuce, radish, and arugula. 

Don’t be worried about your seeds until 14 days have passed. If nothing has sprouted by then, then it’s time to replant or purchase store-bought seedlings so you can stay on track for your growing season.

I’ve had a few years where god only knows why my tomato seeds didn’t sprout, so I ended up transplanting store bought seedlings (or as I like to call them… cheaters) in my garden and everything worked out just fine. Have some grace with yourself and don’t get too upset if your indoor seedlings aren’t working out.

Once your seeds have sprouted indoors, water them by filling up the bottom of the seed tray with ½” of water every 4 days. It’s important not to water from above and let the stream beat down on your young fragile seedlings’ stems or they might break. You can remove a seedling or two from the tray temporarily to fill up the bottom of the tray with water. This will also encourage root growth in your young seedlings. 

During this third week of April in growing zones 4, 5, 6, and 7 you can safely plant the following vegetable seeds right outdoors in your garden:

• Kale
• Lettuce
• Arugula
• Radish
• Pea
• Collard
• Mustard
• Asian Greens
• Cabbage
• Carrots

Go ahead and start planting if you haven’t started - you aren’t too late. I plant a few rounds of these veggies all the way to the end of May. 

Keep your eye on the weather. You want at least 1” of rain per week, otherwise you’ll need to water your garden by hand. Keep track of precipitation in your garden journal or by referencing the Weather Underground Weekly Map or iWeathernet and use their 72 hour feature.

Next week, I’ll teach you how I protect and provide for my veggie garden as it grows. No unwanted garden pests here!

Chicken Keeping

Action Item #2 Decide on a chicken coop plan for your hens.

Head back to Week 1 if you are searching for the right supplies to have on hand to raise your own chickens from chicks. Keep feeding, watering, and snuggling your chicks. Remember to keep your eyes peeled for pasty butt issues, discussed in Week 2.

What kind of chicken coop should you build?

While it seems early to think about chicken coops, believe me you want to start now. You'll blink and suddenly your chicks are no longer chicks! You have three months at the most to decide and build a coop for your future hens so I highly recommend you start planning now.

There are tons of ideas out there for chicken coops, but there are only four crucial things you need to keep in mind when considering a coop to keep your chickens safe and healthy:

• Predator protection
• Manure management plan
• Spot to lay eggs
• Spot to roost

Predator Protection: Chickens can be a good sized snack for many different kinds of predators. You need to ask local chicken owners what predators are the most prevalent in your area to understand what your hens will be up against. Predators are a concern both day and night for chickens. Daytime predators include neighbors' dogs, hawks, eagles, and falcons. Nighttime predators include foxes, coyotes, bears, weasels, mink, opossums, and raccoons.

By no means am I trying to scare you - but I want you to understand how important a well-thought out coop design is for the safety of your hens. A predator can kill your entire flock in one evening if you aren't careful. Your coop should be a safe and secure place for your hens to roost at night so your coop design should reflect the necessary precautions based on your local predators.

When we moved to our farm, we asked our neighbors what to look out for. Coyotes and hawks were at the top of the list for predators in our area. That's why we started with converting an old shed into a stationary coop for our first flock, then we moved to an A-Frame Mobile Chicken Tractor when we decided to expand our flock.

So ask around and gather the necessary info on what precautions you should consider. Next, you need to decide on your...

Manure Management Plan: Chickens poop. A lot. That poop can either be seen as a nuisance OR it can be seen as a never ending supply of perfect compost for your vegetable garden. What a manure management plan comes down to is the type of bedding you decide to go with and how you maintain it.

When chickens roost at night they poop a lot. The space under the roosting area will have the most poop of any  spot in your coop. 

If you go with a stationary coop, you’ll need to consider what kind of bedding you’d like on the floor. Sand and deep litter are the main options for chicken coop bedding. Sand creates a giant litter box and is too much work to keep clean in my book. You legitimately have to scoop up the poop every morning with a kitty litter scoop. If you like a pristinely clean chicken coop though, be my guest!

Deep litter, on the other hand, is a great way to keep maintenance low and create nutritious compost for your garden. To implement the deep litter method, you’ll need lots of carbon-based material, like straw, pine shavings, or dried leaves. We opt for straw with our hens. Here's our deep litter protocol:

1. Lay out a layer of carbon material at least 4” deep.
2. As the chickens roost and poop at night, their droppings will accumulate.
3. Each morning you'll sprinkle DIY Coop Refresher over their manure.
4. Once a week add another 4” of carbon on top the heavily manured area. The rule of thumb is if it smells, add more carbon.
5. Once a month, clean out the roost area completely and pile the manured straw somewhere it can fully decompose. In about 10 weeks you will have perfect compost for your yard or garden.

The DIY Coop Refresher we sprinkle under the roost and all over the coop floor has a few wonderful ingredients. One of the best ingredients is diatomaceous earth (DE). DE is a dusty natural substance, basically pulverized fossils, that has a severe drying effect on the exoskeleton of bugs, ultimately killing them. You can read more here about how we incorporate DE all over our farm and even use it for our own health and wellbeing.

A spot to lay eggs: Nesting boxes are another chicken coop feature that is necessary, yet there are so many ways to go about them. Some chicken keepers use old refrigerator drawers, milk crates, and even empty kitty litter tubs. 

The nesting box rule of thumb is it should be at least 12x12" for your hen's fluffy butt to fit. Hens also like to feel safe and secure while they lay so I recommend having a nesting box with shelter on three sides as well as above. Nesting boxes should be secured about 24" off the floor as well.

We figured out how to build a three-seater nesting box out of one piece of plywood and you can download the free cut plans below!

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A spot to roost: Chickens feel safest when they can roost up off the floor. Chickens will notoriously try to find the highest spot in their coop to roost, so be sure there aren't any other roosting opportunities aside from your planned roosting spot (think rafters or beams).

Roosts can be as simple as a sanded and painted 2x4 turned with the 2" side facing upwards. Sanding and painting keeps dreaded scaly leg mites (an annoying external parasite) from burrowing into the roost wood and calling it home.

A nice chicken coop design hack is to have easily removable roosts so you can clean out the bedding underneath the roosts without throwing your back out.

What chicken coop design is the best?

I'm going to be partial and say our A-Frame Mobile Chicken Tractors are pretty awesome. We've never lost a hen inside these moveable tractors, we don't have to worry about cleaning out bedding since they move around our lawn or pasture each day, and the chickens get all the benefits of free-range with none of the risks. We built three different sizes too depending on the size of our flock. We ended up getting asked how we built them so often that we decided to put together the build plans so other chicken owners can build them too. You can learn more about the A-Frame Chicken Tractors at this link!

Homemaking

Am I the only one who is spending way more time in the kitchen than before Covid-19? And I considered myself a passionate cook! There are so many wonderful adventures to be had in your kitchen simply by learning new skills. For this 30-day Food Security Plan we are going to focus on learning how to make kombucha, kefir, and super simple ice cream (no ice cream maker needed). Today, we start with Kombucha!

Action Item #3. Get started brewing your first batch of Kombucha

I am proud to say we fully phased out soda in our home and now exclusively drink kombucha and even flavor it and use it as a mixer in our cocktails! Kombucha is an effervescent drink that is filled with wonderful probiotics to help heal and maintain a healthy gut. Seriously it’s best and I can’t sing its praises enough.

While fermenting for the first time can feel scary, I promise you can totally do this. Yes, you may make a few mistakes and have to throw out a batch or two, but don’t let these small setbacks stand in the way of you being able to provide something healthy and yummy for your family. Remember the learning process is a journey - enjoy it!

For this 30-day Food Security plan, I am going to teach you the continuous brew method, meaning you make a new batch of Kombucha every week. What I love about Kombucha is you can press pause at any time by setting your SCOBY in the fridge. 

What’s a SCOBY?

It’s an acronym for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast. The SCOBY is the gelatinous disc that you set in a brew of tea, sugar, and water. The bacteria and yeast present eat up nearly all the sugar in your brew and create carbonation. This process is called lacto-fermentation. 

For the sake of food security, we are going to sub out sugar for local honey (which I taught you how to source locally in Week 2). While many claim you cannot use honey for Kombucha, because it is technically an anti-microbial, the evidence proves otherwise. When honey is diluted in water it becomes a perfect place for lacto-fermentation to thrive. 

Kombucha Supplies:

• SCOBY + 12oz of Starter Tea
• Continuous brew 1 gallon glass jar with a stainless steel spigot
• Wooden stir spoon
• Organic jasmine green tea (in tea bags is best)
• Four 32oz Flip-top bottles (to bottle your finished Kombucha in)
• Stainless steel funnel
• A steady supply of local honey

How To Brew Kombucha

Ingredients:

• 6 tea bags
• ¾ cup local honey
• ~1 gallon of water
• SCOBY
• 12 oz (1.5 cups) of Kombucha

1. Bring ½ gallon of water to a boil and add 6 tea bags.
2. Allow tea bags to steep for 10 minutes.

3. Remove tea bags and add ¾ cup of honey to brewed tea. Mix thoroughly.

4. Add ⅓ gallon of cold water to bring the temperature down, temperature should be 80 - 90° F or comfortable to the touch.

​5. Add SCOBY and 12oz (1.5 cups) of Kombucha to your 1+ gallon jar.

6. Slowly pour tea+honey mixture into your continuous brew 1+ gallon jar. 

7. Make sure the SCOBY’s lighter side is face up. The SCOBY will eventually float to the top of the jar.
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8. Place a clean dish towel over the open mouth of the jar to prevent bugs and dust from getting into your Kombucha.

9. Set the gallon jar out of direct sunlight and in a warm place, on top a fridge usually works nicely. Do not disturb it!
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10. In six days, check your Kombucha. The SCOBY’s health is a great way to understand how things are going. 

•  Your SCOBY should have floated to the top of the jar and grown in size to fit the width of the jar.
• The SCOBY should be a nice light white color.
• There should not be any fuzzy dark mold on the SCOBY.
• Are there little bubbles along the sides of the jar, indicating carbonation? This is a good thing!

If all this checks out … it’s time to taste your Kombucha! It should have a slightly sweet taste with just a touch of sour.

• Too sour? Then your Kombucha brewed for too long. Brewing times can be shifted to a day earlier the next time around. Everyone’s home has a different ambient temperature as well as microbial life. All these factors affect your brew!
• Still sweet with no sour? Then your Kombucha needs more time to brew and it may not be warm enough. Try a warmer spot in your home and check your Kombucha daily with a taste test.​

11. If your Kombucha’s taste is to your liking, it’s time to bottle it up. Funnel your finished Kombucha using your stainless steel funnel into two 32 oz flip-top bottles and set in the fridge - enjoy! REMEMBER leave 12 oz (1.5 cups) of finished Kombucha tea with the SCOBY for your next batch of Kombucha brewing.
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12. Feel free to repeat this process over again each week for a continuous brew of Kombucha OR you can let your submerged SCOBY sit out for up to three days before you start again. If you want to take a longer break from making Kombucha, set your submerged SCOBY in the fridge in a sealed jar.

Foraging

​Action Item #4. Identify at least three edible weeds in your backyard or local park.

I am always amazed at how much we will pay for fresh salad greens at the grocery store when the freshest and most nutrient dense salad greens exist right in our own backyards.

​I’ve been foraging for spring greens for five years now, and each spring I look forward to my first bite of salad, pesto, or green smoothie (yup! You can make green smoothies outta weeds instead of paying a bazillion dollars for green powder my friend!). 

The most important thing with foraging is proper plant identification. By no means am I trying to scare you away from foraging, but sometimes improper identification can be fatal. Poisonous plants exist from Australia to Wisconsin and knowing the difference between safe and not safe is of the utmost importance. 

So for Week 3 of our Food Security Plan I’m going to teach you how to properly identify and harvest four of the most common edible weeds right in your own backyard. I’m also going to share some simple recipes with you so you can turn those weeds into delicious dishes. 

Disclaimer: As with trying any new food, proceed cautiously. Some great ways to check how you react is to rub the leaf of the plant in question on the underside of your forearm and wait for 30 minutes to see if you react. Also try just a small nibble, like the size of a pencil eraser, and wait for 30 minutes to see how you feel. Never harvest in an area where you don't know if they spray or not, like city parks. Lastly, never harvest within 10 feet of the road. The road salts, pollutants, and other not-so-delicious things that go hand in hand with cars are not what you want to be putting in your body.

Dandelions are single-handedly the most misunderstood plant of modern lawn-keeping. People abhor them when in reality they are just another flower with a ton of perks. When we bought our property, the previous owner told us, with a twitch in his eye, how he sprayed them with Roundup every single year, yet they kept coming back. You know what the definition of madness is right? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. 

There are so many reasons to welcome this fantastic plant with open arms. Dandelions are one of the first sources of pollen for local pollinators in the spring. The leaves of this powerhouse plant pack almost as many vitamins and minerals as kale, and it's growing for free in your front yard. It's exceptionally high in Vitamin K, calcium, potassium, and Vitamin A. Drinking dandelion root tea has shown to decrease your risk of cancer. 

Listen, eating healthy and holistically can get expensive. Here is a weed that is found in every corner of the earth growing in abundance for us to harvest and eat without charge or cultivation.

How to identify dandelion: The deeply toothed/serrated leaves are basal, meaning they don't grow up on stems, instead they grow from the crown of the plant at ground level in a tight rosette pattern. 

How to eat dandelions: Dandelion greens are best earliest in the season before the flowers turn into white puffs. Give them a cold water bath like you would any lettuce to prolong its fridge life, which is about five days.

• I like to saute them with garlic, salt, and butter. Yum!
• Throw dandelion greens into green smoothes instead of kale
• Make dandelion pesto with Grow Forage Cook Ferment's amazing recipe(simply sub out basil for dandelion greens)

Lambsquarters, also known as fat hen, white goosefoot, goosefoot, and dirt weed (yup), is right up there with dandelions on nutritional and medicinal value. This green is full of iron, phosphorus, calcium, vitamin B1, and vitamin C, even more than spinach and cabbage. Lambsquarters is actually in the same plant family as spinach, and it tastes like it too. 

Ecologically speaking, these plants have seeds that can stay viable in the soil for up to 1600 years. Talk about longevity! As soon as the soil is disturbed and left bare, like during prolonged construction jobs, lambsquarters are often the first plant you will see popping up. Nature despises bare soil. Aside from sandy beaches and deserts, where does nature choose to leave soil bare? Nowhere! For microbial soil life to stay vibrant and healthy, it needs overhead protection from the drying sun and eroding rains. Whether that comes in the form of fallen leaves, decaying tree trunks, ferns, wildflowers, etc. - depends entirely on the local ecosystem. As soon as the soil is left bare (usually by our own hand), lambsquarters shows up and screams, “I volunteer as tribute!” 

How to identify lambsquarters: Leaves have a dull, pale gray green, and almost powdery look to them. The leaves have a triangular shape and are slightly serrated along the edges. The plant can grow up to five feet tall.

How to eat lambsquarters: The leaves of the plant are best picked early in the spring before it goes to seed.

• Toss the greens in with a salad
• Saute the greens with butter, garlic, and salt
• The stems taste best early in the season too when the plant is under 1 foot tall and can be cooked just like asparagus. 

As for medicinal benefits, if you grab a handful of young leaves and chew them up, they make an amazing poultice for scrapes and sunburns. The saponins present in lambsquarters help soothe inflamed or broken skin. 

Pigweed, otherwise known as amaranth, is the bane of many a vegetable gardener's existence. It shows up uninvited to many a garden bed, and it reseeds itself readily.

There are 60 different species of amaranth, and all of them offer the same health benefits. For all my gluten-free friends out there, I'm sure you've heard of some of the health benefits of amaranth seeds. They are incredibly high in protein, riboflavin, copper, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus. You can pay $11/lb for these seeds, yet they are right outside in your backyard for free!

The leaves are also a superfood, full of Vitamin A, calcium, manganese, potassium, folate, and zinc. A study done in 2003 showed that cooked amaranth grain helped decrease LDL cholesterol by 50%.

How to identify pigweed: tall, erect-to-bushy plants with simple, oval- to diamond-shaped leaves that are wider at their base and are smooth edged. The flowers form in dense clusters comprised of many small, greenish flowers. 

How to eat pigweed: The leaves of the plant are best picked early in the spring before it goes to seed.

• Toss the greens in with a salad
• Saute the greens with butter, garlic, and salt

How to harvest pigweed (amaranth) seeds: Keep in mind you won't see seeds on pigweed until the fall.

1. Let the plants come to maturity, place a brown paper lunch sack over the developing seed heads, and secure it with a clothespin or twist tie. To get a good sized harvest you'll want to bag at least ten plants.
2. In late fall, cut the stem off just below the seed head. Gather up your bundle of bagged seed heads, turn them upside down, and give them a good shake.
3. Open up your bagged seed heads and rub the remaining seeds out of the flowering heads into their bag.
4. ​Compost your bare seed heads and cook your amaranth seeds like you would steel cut oats. 

Thistle has a few different variations that you may see in your yard. Big extra-sharp Bull thistle has those crazy looking Dr. Seuss purple flowers. Canadian thistle (pictured above), or creeping thistle, is a bit smaller and spreads by its root system. Milk thistle is the variety used in supplements that everyone in the health world loses their minds over (and with good reason). 

Thistles are in the same plant family as artichokes. Milk thistle is such an incredible medicinal, used mainly for liver detoxification, even in severe cases like alcoholic liver disease and viral hepatitis. Milk thistle contains silymarin, which is a cancer-fighting antioxidant.

A study out of the University of Minnesota in 2007 concluded there was substantial evidence that silymarin is crucial in inhibiting cancer cell growth in human prostate, skin, cervical, and breast cells. All of the thistles provide an excellent level of liver detoxification, so feel free to harvest them if you have them!

How to identify thistle: The deeply toothed/serrated leaves are spiked at the edges. At first they grow in a basal pattern, meaning they don't grow up on stems, and instead they grow from the crown of the plant at ground level in a tight rosette pattern.  At the one month growth point the stem of the plant starts to form and the leaves grow around the stem in an alternate pattern.

How to eat thistle: The best way to collect thistle is with thick leather gloves!!

• I like juicing 1 cup of thistle leaves with an apple and a lemon then pouring it over ice, like a healthier version of sugar-laden lemonade. 
• Make a soup stock with a bundle of leaves and stems. My rule of thumb is to fill your pot halfway with fresh thistle, then add water until 3/4 full, and lastly add a  big pinch of salt. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2 hours. From there, add whatever meat and veggies you like to your soup!

Psst! If this foraging stuff has you all curious and excited then I highly recommend Katrina Blair's book The Wild Wisdom of Weeds. There are tons of recipes and even more wild edibles listed in this amazing book.

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WEEK 4 SNEAK PEEK

• How to fertilize your garden organically
• How to deter pests from your garden organically
• What to keep in your chicken vet bag
• How to locally source herbs, liquor, and baked goods
• How to make yogurt
• How to make ice cream without an ice cream maker

READ WEEK 4

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