St. Johns 'library' is also a preservation society in North Portland
08.10.11
There's an unreserved library that fits neatly into a lone closet in St. Johns.
Backing bowels, instead of books, four shelves hold food preservation appurtenances and a hundred place settings. During the canning season it often looks desolate, with most of the equipment checked out to users preserving food.
North Portland Confiture and Serve Library is a community resource dedicated to ration people become more sustainable through food preservation, waste reduction and reuse. Perpetuate and Serve lends out canning equipment and dishes to North Portland residents for a suggested offer of $5 to $30. Items are lent on a first-come, first-served footing.
The library is run out of St. Johns Swap n Play , a cooperative community sharing lapse for families in the basement of the Red Sea Church .
Andrea Davey, down of Swap n Play, got the idea to start the library after accumulating obligation settings from Goodwill to cut down on waste when she hosted her annual barbecue at her serene.
Source: OregonLive.com
Sometimes squash grows way past expectations
09.10.11
Petty gets your mind whirling like a squash that's big as a kid.
That's what Janice Beahler looks at every at intervals she steps into her yard. Her yard is a garden, and in her garden there stands a cushaw squash 3 foot towering and growing.
"I planted a golden cushaw," she said. "I don't be familiar with what's growing."
Cushaws are a large-squash variety, but the humongous is consider 10 to 12 pounds. They are bulb shaped with a to a certain sweet, yellow flesh tends to be fibrous. They're documentation for baking and for making pies.
Beahler hasn't absolute what's to become of her squash. She know it weighs way over 10 to 12 pounds, because she can only just pull it away from the base of her raised garden bed. And while the squash itself is enormous, so is the vine.
She planted her heirloom seed in the center bed of three raised beds, each 4-feet-by-8-feet, sitting side by side. Once the squash started growing, it overgrew almost everything else in the three beds, continual back and forth on the ground, then climbing onto the fence and running back and forth along the enclose. The leaves could hide a small dog.
Source: Fort Dodge Messenger