One Woman, One Year Of Food: FULL TOUR Homestead Root Cellar & Garden

Enter at your own risk. These are beets that I didn't eat last year's beets and you could still eat these. In times of starvation, these root crops, these long-storing root crops were huge. This is Susan. She is one woman feeding herself for the entire year from this garden here in Montana. Let's see how big a garden she really needs to survive, the root cellar that's critical to her food operation, and how even in the dead of winter, sweet as candy, she cooks some of the most unusual old variety crops for amazing recipes. Only put in just a sprinkling at a time. If you fill this hopper you'd need a muscle. Many of which we have cooked out here over the wood-burning stove in all the seasons. This is going to be a good one. So this garden is not a magazine cover garden. If you don't like weeds, you better shut your eyes. It's a real garden and it's a prairie garden. This was, this is a prairie bench a mile from the mountains and I do it all entirely myself by hand. I don't own a rototiller. I use a broad fork and a hoe. It's very thin topsoil if any, or it was buffeted by wind and it has been over a century since it got plowed up. Practical numbers here. The size of this garden is about 30 feet by 50 feet. Like Susan said, no rototilling. All dug and planted by hand. And Susan plants only what she wants to eat. A huge amount of those crops are what we'd call survival crops. Dent corn, dry beans, potatoes, winter squash, onions, beets, rutabagas. Not wheat. Wheat is actually really hard to grow, but a lot of vegetables for sure. This has uh, not looking too good in the center. It's homegrown. Cold and frosty here. Well some of my onions bolted. Now you guys know we explore how the real homesteaders lived. Those first homesteaders. It's juicy. Back in the 1800s, early 1900s. Well Susan is as close to those real homesteaders as you can get today. Look at it. Perfect. So wheat is actually pretty tricky to grow in a home garden. I know out here I've tried growing the absolute bare bones basics and it is brutally hard on our old homestead's ground. Not because the soil's bad, but because everything is out to get you. Here are some wild facts to know if you ever try to live off the land. 2.5 square yards of good wheat makes one loaf of bread. 250 square yards makes 100 loaves. Now you'd need two loaves a week for a year to survive per person. One man needs 120 pounds of wheat, 200 pounds of beans, 45 pounds of fats or oils, and 660 pounds of vegetables to survive for 365 days. If you want meat and milk, it's going to take more land than you or most people probably had in history. But corn, corn's a lot more practical. You can walk in here if you want. The corn I grow, I don't grow sweet corn. Sweet corn you eat it for about a week or two. Yeah. And you put it in your freezer and in my case it kind of sifts its way to the bottom of the freezer. So this corn is Indian corn. It's a black corn. It was developed in Montana, Montana, Morado. It's actually deep, deep purple. So I grow it and I should get from this, if all goes well, maybe half a bushel of cobs. And I'm a little worried. These are a little yellow. I don't know what's going on here, but just barely starting to tassel. You can see the color. I do masa and cornbread and purple pancakes. Look like purple bubblegum until you cook them and then they turn gray. But this is a one woman effort to feed myself as as long as I can. I start in April digging parsnips, parsnips and spinach very early. And then I eat all the way through till November, maybe even December. The last things in the garden are brussel sprouts and leeks. We're going to go deep down into the root cellar that makes the storage of all this food possible. But there are a few more varieties to see first, including a whole group of plants that a lot of farmers would consider a waste to grow, especially when you're hand digging a garden. But they are vital helpers to the other crops. Susan probably wouldn't get near the amount of food she gets without these plants and insects. In my garden, I welcome anything that blooms, even weeds. This is lacy phacelia. The bees absolutely adore it in the warm part of the day. This thing will just be absolutely full of bees. I bet you've never seen this. Cow parsnip. No. Oh, look at this bindweed. Oh, this is a carrot. It's a second year carrot. They're biennial. So this is a second year carrot and I think they're absolutely beautiful. I'm trying to welcome all kinds of beneficial insects. And then over here. So this is all cilantro gone to seed. I can smell it. The bees, they absolutely love this. Here's some. I didn't know we could grow it. Oh yeah. This, it grows like a weed. And I kind of let it grow within reason and I let it bloom because it can be absolutely full of bees and little wasps. Since I started doing this, I don't have any pests. Maybe these bees, the bees themselves feed on flower pollen, but their larvae may feed on grasshopper eggs or I don't know. But there's some ecosystem going on. There's something going on. And basically it's just by attracting beneficials. He's very friendly. Oh yeah. He's a lover. His name is Also. Also? He's also my cat. He was Marianne's cat, but he's also my cat. I think since Also moved in here, he's lost about five pounds on the long hauler diet. He was a lunker. This is, this is another one you won't recognize because beets. And it's not done. This is a second year beet and it's, it's in bud. It's not in bloom, but when these bloom, they are masses of little tiny flies and bees, masses of them. And they come in and since, since I've been doing this, I haven't seen a potato bug or a, I just don't have bugs. You can walk in here if you want. Soon to be in full bloom right here. Spinach. Yeah. Don't get that broccoli, whatever you do. That's a terrible specimen. I'm going to eat these. I'll eat these. I already picked the head. I just eat these. But in the past, I would never have done, you know, wait, I mean, I've been gardening, gardening over 50 years. In the past, I wouldn't have eaten these because they were full of worms. Oh, but now I have no worms. I mean, seriously, last year I froze, I don't know, 12 heads of broccoli. One or two worms in the whole thing. There just weren't any. Look at this. You guys look in here. Isn't this beautiful? Look at that. So these are called They're not like grocery store zucchinis. I don't even grow grocery store zucchinis. I don't like green mush, but these, when you cook them, the firmness, I would cut that, cut that the long way, like boards, spread them with garlic butter on the grill. These are really, well, you can see they're super productive, which is why I can't eat them all. Honey bear, bonbon, delicata, trying reba, which is a different one, and see if they'll mature by the end of summer. And they all go in the root cellar? Yeah. Really? Tomatillos? Tomatillos, yeah. I try not to have bare soil. Actually, this was mulched. What you got? Seeds. The crops being grown in this handmade garden are actually pretty generous. Susan grows more often than she can eat. Hello. Or she grows beautiful plants just for the pollinators. But that's not impractical. That's good sense. As one woman attempting to feed herself for the entire year, this is not a game. This is real life. In fact, the land she's on here was first homesteaded by a woman, a woman who needed this ground to produce. And besides, it's the most beautiful color on the planet. True blue. Isn't it? So my place was a homesteader filed on it in 1905. And she proved up, she signed the proving of papers February 6th, 1906. And her name originally was Laura Hebert. But when she signed the papers, she was Laura Wadsworth. Laura Wadsworth. So this was homesteaded by a woman. By a woman. And what they did is they'd prove up and then they'd immediately sell. So they had cash. Buy what they really wanted. But so it was homesteaded in 1906. The well was drilled in 1910. Never ever freezes. Never freezes. Wow. The barn was built in 1914. And I honestly think since then it's kind of had 110 years of abuse. I've experimented for years. These aren't green beans. These are dry beans. So I'm zone three. Which is cold. I'm zone three. So I have experimented for years with every kind of short season dry bean that's out there. And this year I'm doing these. They're called king of the early. They cook up kind of like a big kidney bean. As far as beans goes, would I rate them? Fabulously flavorful. Maybe not. But really good. And they cook in an hour. And they grow. Look at them. They grow. That's number one. They grow. In zone three. So are they like a dark red? They're kind of mottled. Red and purple mottled. Not like a kidney bean. But red and purple mottled. But they froze. So a lot of this is a second planting. When the same night the baby birds froze. That breaks my heart. I know. Yeah I talked to my friend who's a bluebird expert. And she told me 90% froze that night. Well the nestlings were just that age where they were really vulnerable. Okay look at this lettuce. Isn't it gorgeous? It's absolutely beautiful. All right. I kind of picked these last night. So I don't know. Let's see here. I'll find. He loves me too. He does. We're not particular are we kids? Are these sweet peas? These are sweet peas. So you know how to do it? Let me show you. I'll show you on this. Watch. Take this and pull it back and you pull the string off. And then I put my fingernail in there. Look at that. These are big. So I asked Susan if you had to make a list of classic survival crops for a homesteader. What would you put on it? There's some classics on here. But also some very humble foods we consider ourselves a little too good for today. Those are good carrots. Those are good. Not like grocery store carrots. Corn, dry beans, potatoes in the root cellar, carrots in the root cellar, squash, dried onions in my basement, garlic in my pantry, parsnips in the spring, I dry herbs, I freeze herbs, berries. Yeah. But I can't grow fruit. It's impossible. These are all, these are zone three trees that freeze. Well you know what? In about 30 years you're gonna have a nice crop. I know. Susan also keeps a classic smallholding workforce. I have a mentor, Matthew Jacobson. This is pretty cool. Keeping bees is one of the harder skills to take on today. But the ability to get not just honey but beeswax for all sorts of uses, yeah, this is right up my alley. And this comb just recently fell off but you can see they're building new comb. This type of hive lets them build whatever size comb they want. That comb fell off one of those days when it was a hundred. So how much honey do you get? I give it to them. So kind of cool. I'd rather, I'd much rather they have it than me. On our way to the root cellar, which is a lonely place here in the blazing midsummer sun, we pass a couple more old-school homesteading spots. Susan no longer uses this first one. You ready? Yeah. I do cartoons. Look at the cartoons. We came in because of the mosquitoes. Wait, weren't there four of you? If you ever get a good one let me know. It's a bathroom. Oh wow, look at this. The second stop though is a massive part of the year's work but also the winter survival. Antelope, help me. Cut it. He cut it. Susan actually goes out into the forest and cuts the trees down, bucks them up, and hauls this firewood every year because you've got to be able to cook all that produce and to heat the house in winter. This is not an excessive amount of firewood. This is truly the amount of wood it takes. Just stew on that for a minute. Enter at your own risk. I insulated these walls which help this cellar immensely. It has helped a lot. So right now it's at 60, which is going to feel pretty cool. And this is pretty interesting. Actually, Jesse, this is really interesting. These are beets that I didn't eat. Last year's beets. And you could still eat these. In times of starvation, these root crops, these long-storing root crops were huge. Beets, rutabagas, turnips. It has been in here, well, not quite a year. This is totally, totally edible. You're not guaranteed every year to get every crop. So stuff that held up, I mean you could have had a horrible storm and there was no food this time of year. You could eat that. But the potatoes that I didn't eat. Oh my goodness. They look like a space alien. They're going in that, they're going in that compost. That's the plan. I'll just haul them out. I layer it. Well, I chop burdock and I layer it with wood chips and whatever else, household garbage. But this is such dry country. Yeah, it takes a lot. It takes a lot of water and I never really get successful compost. I attempt to get by with my makeshift root cellar, but it's really not enough. You would need a root cellar like Susan's, maybe not quite as good, just to get by. It's a working root cellar. It's not for show. Look at these. So they don't have nearly the growth. These are very long-storing potatoes. Very long-storing. These would also keep you from starving. The longest keeping potato I ever grew. I know these are strawberry paw. Grocery store potatoes, they just peel this off and wash it up and sell them to you. But this variety is earlier. They'll mature earlier in the garden. They also, they're ready for compost. Most of these, I mean that one's edible. This is a hole in the ground with plywood over it and a door. And it gets you through winter. It gets me through. Now you guys know Susan. She's an incredible woman. The reason Susan's root cellar is so superior to mine is that it's deep underground. It has ventilation. It's mouse proof or at least pretty darn mouse resistant. I read a memoir once of a little girl who recalled how scary her grandmother's root cellar was because rattlesnakes would go down into it to hunt the mice. So yeah, there really are good root cellars and there are far more primitive ones. I've watched grass snakes skedaddle through the stone foundation down into mine. So I thought it was worth showing what a proper root cellar looks like. Not fancy, not enough ventilation, but it serves me well. It's kind of like a secret passage. It kind of is. Nobody would know that that's actually your root cellar. So that holds at 40, 45 degrees all winter. The hardest part is getting it cool enough in October. We've seen the 30 by 50 foot garden, the bees, the water, the old barn, and caught a glimpse of the chickens. What does winter look like? What does it look like when all this food re-emerges from the root cellar in those dark icy days of January? Well, it looks like cornmeal scones, vegetable beef stew, apple crumble, and a hot cup of coffee beside the cook stove. These that are browner were in that back corner next to the firebox. I kind of want this one. Okay. I think it's the most beautiful. It's really pretty. An egg from happy chickens. Susan jokes she can't grow the apples, her trees always freeze, but she knows of an old abandoned homestead with a long surviving apple tree, and the generation's lost owner doesn't mind if we borrow the apples to fall from it. I've made a playlist at the end of this episode where you can watch all the fun, all the episodes my dear friend Susan and I have made cooking, sewing, and gardening together out in the 1889 homestead shack. Click into it to feel what every season's like out here. I don't know. What do you think? Cheers. I hope to see you in the next one. I think it's not there yet. I don't think it's there, but I don't think hurrying it is a good idea. I think it's going to take a little longer. You want to put it on here? I think it's