December 7th, 2009 by admin

The Backyard Harvest Project received a major donation of fruit from people with small to medium fruit trees as well as an exceedingly generous donation from a major cherry farmer.  It occured to us that some people might want to know a little more about how to winterize their smaller trees and keep them healthy through the winter.

You will need the following:

• Tree wrap
• Some Mulch
• Window screen or 1/4″ mesh hardware cloth

Young trees are susceptible to sun scald during winter months, a problem caused by fluctuations in temperature. During the day if the sun is shining, bark temperatures will rise higher than air temperatures. Yet when the sun sets or is blocked by clouds, the bark temperature drops rapidly, damaging plant tissue. We want to prevent this from happening by wrapping the trunks of trees with ‘tree wrap’. Wrap the trunk from its base upward to just below where the canopy starts. Make sure you remove the wrap in spring so it does not impede the tree’s growth.

We also want to protect your tree’s bark from hungry rodents during winter food shortages by constructing a cylinder out of window screen or ¼” mesh hardware cloth. The cylinder should penetrate the soil to a depth of 2-3″ if possible and should be about 3″ larger in diameter than the trunk of your tree.

Another important factor in keeping your trees healthy during the winter months is maintaining the moisture content of the soil. Avoid fertilizing your trees in late summer to early fall so they have a chance to harden off. After deciduous trees lose their leaves but before the ground freezes, give them a good dose of water. Next, mulch around your trees. Start from the outside of the wire cylinder and mulch the entire area under the tree’s drip line to a depth of about 3″.

This should give your tree a dynamic chance at not only surviving the winter months, but thrive them.  Just make sure when spring rolls around you give The ByHP a call and donate the unused portions of your orchard to those in need.  Together, we can Care for the Children…

cherry, food shortages, fruit, mulch, tbyhp, the backyard harvest project, tree wrap, winterize

December 1st, 2009 by Lee Bradshaw

This last week was very busy and heartbreaking.  My family has been helping a older couple clean out their food storage room.  It is huge, 21′X 16′, with cement floor, walls and ceiling.  It is amazing the time and effort these folks have gone through to be prepared in a time of emergency. It was wall to wall food.

Now here is the heartbreaking part:  As we started cleaning out this room we found that over 75% of it had to be thrown away.  There was food that was bottled in 1960.  There were 5 gallon metal buckets of honey that had rusted through the bottoms and leaked all over the floor.  Can goods that were bulging and ready to burst.

As an organization that prides our selves as saving food and not letting it go to waste, it was a sad week.  But as I told my wife, this stuff in these bottles ceased being food long ago.  Yes, they have found food stored by the Egyptians that is still edible, but this wasn’t.  Bottled food is best if used within three years.  Fpur years should be the max.  I don’t see this as a problem because we should be eating the food that we are storing. Many experts have said that storing whole wheat for the future is a grave mistake unless we start using whole wheat today to make our bread.

Now why does that make sense?  I’ll tell you why: we need to change our diet slowly starting today so that when we have to rely solely on our food storage, our bodies are used to processing it.  Otherwise, we are going to bloat up and have serious health issues when we try to force our bodies to process only whole grains.  We have conditioned ourselves to use processed garbage foods for fuel.  It’s foolishness to think we will be able to instantly convert to a higher food source without serious injury, when our systems are not acclimatized!  These whole grains are great for our bodies but it will shock our systems if we don’t change over time.

It would be my suggestion that people store what they eat and then rotate what they have stored.  And of course learn to eat good whole foods.

Egyptians, food, food storage, processing, storage, whole grains