The Wondrous Prickly Pear Cactus

If you were to have me name the ultimate desert homestead plant it would have to be none other than the prickly pear cactus.

When things are dying in the heat, the garden is roasting to death, we're struggling to keep chickens and goats cool and keep citrus trees watered enough I can't even describe the wonderful feeling I get looking at our cactus garden and seeing all the blushing pink juicy fruits. It's just such a relief to know that if everything baked to death tomorrow, odds are my prickly pear garden would still be here happy as can be in 120 degree weather and still producing fruit.

So before we get into the more fluffy stuff like how darn good the fruits or as they are usually called; tunas(I know weird name! Just roll with it;)) taste, lets learn a little more about these prickly delights!



An Introduction to the Prickly Pear
If you've spent any period of time in the southwest most likely you've seen a prickly pear cactus. They're hard to miss with their big, fleshy, flat, pads and in the spring they usually have striking flowers that can be anywhere from pink to fiery orange and red.

found on www.delange.org/PricklyPear/PricklyPear.htm

In the early spring, the pads will put out little small dark green buds on the edges of their already established pads, these are the beginnings on oval shaped fruits that will ripen to a pink, purple or yellow in the summer or fall. Not only can you eat the fruit, you can also eat the pads, but they can be fairly cumbersome to prepare and aren't quite as tasty as the fruits. They taste sort of like green beans with the texture of okra. So for the sake of brevity and my lack of experience with the pads, from here on out we'll be focusing on the fruits! 

Amazingly, there are more varieties of prickly pear cactus than you can shake a stick at. There are tall ones, small ones, and anywhere in between with green or purple pads. Some have crazy long thorns some have almost no thorns at all. It's amazing how different some of them can be and how interesting looking. They are native to the America's but they have been introduced to Australia and Africa.

A huge Rabbit Ear Prickly Pear cactus pad. 

In Arizona and the southwest, there are several different varieties of prickly pears The five varieties we have are the Barbary Fig, the Engelmann, Violet, Rabbit Ear, and the Brittle Prickly Pear. We chose the varieties we have mostly on fruit bearing capacity, although Violet was more chosen for appearances sake. They do bear fruit but Violet Prickly Pear is no match for Engelmann or Rabbit Ear.

Violet Prickly Pear

Besides the ones we have though there are tons of other interesting prickly pear varieties such as Pancake, Beavertail, Purple, Plains, Mojave, and Santa Rita Prickly Pear.

Pancake Prickly Pear. found on www.delange.org/PricklyPear/PricklyPear.htm

If you're looking for the highest yielding varieties, the best ones we've seen so far are Engelmann, and Rabbit Ear, we've also heard good things about Brittle but we just planted some this year so no review on them yet.


The Benefits
Prickly pear cactus are amazing, the only con I can think of for growing and harvesting the tunas is that they have thorns. But when compared to all the benefits it is a small price to pay to eat these tasty and nutritious fruits.
Does the Prickly Pear Cactus have any health benefits? Yes indeed! Prickly Pear Cactus are a wonderfully nutritional food high in Vitamin C, fiber and in our experience they are great for raising your metabolism and lowering your blood sugar.
And do you need to be a experienced gardener to grow such marvelous plants? Ha! These guys could literally grow ANYWHERE and do a fabulous job all on their own. All you have to do is cut off a pad from an established plant, stick it in the ground, maybe water it a little to get it established and there you go! Give it a couple years and you should be able to have a nice little harvest of prickly pear tunas! Honestly you don't even have to stick it in the ground, we have a small little cactus garden kinda out of the way on the back part of our property, want to know how it got there? That was our dumping ground for any pads that had fallen or had been trimmed off in our purposely established cactus garden. No watering, no outside help at all, all we did was dump a ton of them on the ground and off they went and now were harvesting fruit from this cast off garden. But if you do want to get them off to the best start possible I would suggest planting a pad or two upright in the ground. Prickly pears are probably the easiest plant to to plant or care for so don't go worrying about having a green thumb, just start thinking of all the ways you're going to use those wonderful pink and purple fruits and let the cactus do all the work! ;)

Our "cast off" cactus garden.

Harvesting and Using: The How To
But how does one go about harvesting those lovely red fruits? Unlike a grapefruit or pomegranate the tunas can have some serious armor. Well hold on, read on, I'm here to tell you how to handle those little stickers!
There are lots of things you can do with the fruits we make everything from jelly, syrup, lemonade, a friend of ours even made fruit roll ups out of them! All of these things involve juicing the fruits which thankfully is very easy. You can eat the fruits whole but then there's more risk for getting small stickers called glochids in your hands and the inside of the fruits they are filled with tons of hard little seeds so honestly I don't think it's worth the effort trying to keep the fruits whole. That is just my opinion though, if you want to try it, go for it! Grab some gloves and start peeling, good luck!
Since I don't have a ton of experience processing the fruits to keep them whole I won't go into detail with that, I will however give you guide on how to juice them. In the future, keep an eye out on this blog for possibly some of my favorite prickly pear recipes!
Step 1:
The first thing you need to do before you start picking and juicing the fruits is realize now matter how hard you try, you are almost definitely going to get a sticker in your hands SOME HOW. Look closely at your fruit, most likely you'll see what looks like some fuzzy stuff, that my friend is a wonderful thing called glochids. That fuzzy stuff is possibly hundreds of tiny little stickers that are INCREDIBLY hard to see and remove with tweezers. See them, have some duct tape on hand, and be ready for the possible frustration of trying to remove something you can't see, only feel.
Step 2:
Now that that's out of the way, lets get to the fun stuff! First things first, you'll need to pick the fruit obviously, I would suggest a long pair of kitchen tongs and a five gallon bucket.
Step 3:
Once you have collected yourself a nice bunch of fruits you'll need to knock off as much of the stickers as possible. I'm going to tell your how we do it but feel free to get creative or to try another method. Some people burn them off, and I'm sure there's some of methods out here but here's how we do it:
First find yourself a nice patch of gravel, some place you don't see yourself walking barefoot in for a long time. Dump out all your fruit on this nice patch of gravel and using a leaf rake rake the fruits back and forth, this motion knocks off a majority of the little glochids and almost all of the big thorns. Don't worry about getting them ALL off. The wonderful thing about prickly pear cactus juice is that it is acidic, after you juice the fruits let the fruit sit for 12-24 hours and any little glochids you missed should be dissolved in the juice!
Step 3:
Next you'll want to dust off your fruit and take them inside, you can rinse them individually or stick a bunch in a water bath like we do and take them from there and stick them in a juicer! Be careful juicing them though, they can be hard on a juicer and can clog up ours fairly quickly especially when processing a lot so be sure to check the inside of your juicer to make sure it won't clog.

See that stuff on top of the water? those are all little glochids!

After you juice them, as mentioned before I would suggest letting the juice sit in the fridge for at least 12 hours for any stickers to dissolve, after that have fun! There are tons of ways to use the juice! And again, I'm sure I'll be sharing some of my family's favorite prickly pear recipes on this blog in the near future. The prickly pear cactus is an amazing creation and I hope you consider growing some.

Until next time, Happy Homesteading!
~Ruby~

Fermenting Chicken Feed

After some crazy couple of weeks, finally here's my first official post! Enjoy!

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When it comes to homesteading, a lot of things seem to go along the lines of stretching and getting as much out of something as you can.

Whether, its feeding kitchen scraps to the chickens or making chicken stock out of whats left out of a chicken carcass after dinner, things tend to be used for a second and sometimes third purpose around here before finally being thrown in the trash

When it comes to our organic chicken feed, you can't necessarily use it for a second purpose, unless you mean composting the chicken manure, but there are ways to stretch it and get the absolute most you can get out of it, and when a 40 pound bag is about 25-30 dollars, you definitely want to make the most of it!

One of the things that we've found that helps make the most out of our feed is fermentation.

The Science

Fermentation has been around for centuries as a way to preserve or enhance food. Sourdough, wine, cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut, these are all foods that have been fermented in some way. These are all great for us, so why not have our chickens benefit also?

There are two basic types of fermentation:

Yeast fermentation,

and Bacteria fermentation. 

Yeast consume sugars or carbohydrates and produce alcohol. 

Bacteria consume sugars also but they produce acids instead of alcohol, this is the kind of fermentation that is used on chicken feed. 

It's also called lacto-fermentation because lacto acid bacteria are the ones that are do the brunt work of consuming the sugars. The lacto acid bacteria produce lactic acid as they feast of the sugars which is the cause of the sour, tangy smell that greets me every morning when I enter the feed room.

This lactic acid not only helps make nutrients in the feed more readily available, the lactic acid it's self is also incredibly beneficial for the health of the chickens digestive system.

Anyone who's ever eaten yogurt has probably heard of the term "probiotics," or "beneficial bacteria" those same bacteria that are present in yogurt and are essential to a healthy gut are the same ones present in your chickens feed and benefit them the same way they help you!

The Benefits

I seriously cannot conceive any downside to fermenting, unless you're incredibly lazy, you'd be crazy not to give fermenting a try!

Not only are the probiotics and the new vitamins and enzymes created through the whole fermentation process great for your flock but the soaking also helps make the nutrients already in the feed easier to digest.

All those wonderful vitamins and probiotics are incredibly good for the gut health of your birds, which I'm convinced is the reason we've never had a big problem with worms. Fermentation also helps with immune system functions which help your birds resist disease and bacterial infections.

Fermented feed also seems to satisfy their appetite more readily than dry feed too. Some people also claim that because of this their chickens seem to poop less also. I however cannot attest to this, when you have as many chickens as I have a lot of poop is a lot of poop, so honestly I can't tell the difference!  

And here's where we get to the stretching part, when I fill a bucket full of our pelleted layer free and then cover it with water an amazing thing happens,

it expands.

What once was a quarter bucket full of feed becomes a half bucket filled with feed once fermentation is over. That 40 pound bag of feed becomes almost 80 pounds of feed for my flock at the end of the day. Our pocket book rejoices and probably somewhere up in the sky angels are singing. This whole process is a wonderful way to have a healthy flock and pinch a few pennies along the way.

Here's the How to

After reading all those wonderful benefits you might be thinking this is too good to be true and probably a fairly complicated matter,

not so.

Fermenting feed is really very simple to make.(Seriously, I mean it when I can't think of any downside.)

Here's how we do it.

Step 1: Find yourself 2 to 3 buckets or containers of your choosing that come with lids. Some people ferment for 4 or 5 days but we usually do it for 2 or 3.

Step 2: Fill up a bucket with about half of the food your flock eats every day.(NOTE: In our experience, crumble feed does not have as dramatic of a increase in volume, it does expand but not quite to the extent that pellets do. if using crumbles put about 2/3rds or 3/4 of the food you use per day in the bucket.)

Step 3: Now fill the bucket with water until the feed is covered by at least 2-3 inches of water and place the lid on, just(Less if you are working with crumbles.)

Step 4: Repeat previous steps for your second bucket the next evening and your 3rd and even your 4th if you wish to ferment that many days!(Also double check buckets you filled to make sure they are to dry, you want a moist mash at least, but some people like almost a soup consistency to it so just check and make sure it's a consistency you want.)

Step 5: Feed it!

 

You'll know it fermented properly if it's got a slight sour smell to it, but even if it doesn't soaked feed is still very beneficial for your flock. Your chickens may take a little bit to figure out that it is food but once they realize it they should devour it with gusto! 

Make sure to leave a little bit of the food in the bottom, this feed has some of the lacto acid bacteria in it and will help jump start the next fermentation.

Feel absolutely free to tweak your fermentation system, I feed morning and evening fermented feed but some people only do once a day or just do it as a treat once a week. Do whatever you feel is right for your flock but I do highly recommend fermenting feed, both for its health benefits and for the happiness of your pocket book. 

Happy homesteading!

~Ruby~

A Teen with a Sustainable Dream

Hello there and welcome to my blog!

I'm a 16 year old homesteader trying to live a more simple and sustainable life. My hope is that I can provide educational and entertaining materiel on everything from raising livestock to gardening via this blog as well as my facebook page!(https://www.facebook.com/theteenagehomesteader/)

I've been homesteading and trying to help my family live more self sustainable for about 2 years now.  But I've been raising chickens and turkeys for many, it is only the last couple years that I've truly considered myself a "homesteader" and have actively strived for the ability to no longer be dependent on the grocery store for every last thing. I follow tons of homesteading blogs but all of them seem to be about homesteading in places with green stuff called grass and this thing called rain.(which I'm a little jealous of grrr.)

I have yet to find a homestead blog that writes about their experience and tips and tricks for homesteading in a desert.

Homesteading in places with 4 seasons and tons of rain has its challenges but living in a desert has its very own set of unique obstacles that I have yet to find or have seen addressed and written about in the homesteading blogging community.

And I just happen to live and homestead in the heart of the Sonoran Desert.

So here I am! I hope I can share my experience of homesteading in a desert to the benefits of others and also show that ANYONE can make a step toward a healthier and sustainable life, if I, the high school struggling, crazy teenager can do it you can too! ;)