Bear Witness

Realms of Fantasy re-opened and ready for your submissions

October 16, 2009October 16, 2009jstueart2 Comments

It’s official: Realms of Fantasy is back, and expecting a ton of submissions. I don’t think we should disappoint them.

Note, Canadian authors: though you still have to submit hardcopy, if you supply your email, they will answer you via email. They don’t want to work with IRCs and who does? So, this saves us time too.

Editorial guidelines from their link:

Editorial Guidelines

Realms of Fantasy, a bimonthly magazine, is a professional market for the best in fantastic short fiction. Stories should be no longer than 10,000 words, and can address any area in the realms of fantasy: heroic, contemporary, traditional, feminist, dark, light, and the ever-popular “unclassifiable.” What we do not want to see is standard SF (this means no alien worlds, no hard-edged technology, no FTL drives, etc.) Additionally, ROF is not a market for poetry. What we do want to see is the very best in the field–Realms of Fantasy is a highly competitive market.

For stories under 7,500 words, rates begin at 6 cents per word for new writers and move upward as a writer gains recognition. For stories over 7,500 words, the rates break at 7,500 to 4 cents a word. Thus, a 10,000-word story by a newcomer would pay $550. Again, for established writers, the rates will be proportionally higher.

All submissions must be typed in a 12 pt. serif font such as Courier or Times Roman, double-spaced, and accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope large enough to hold your manuscript. Manuscripts not typed and double-spaced will not be considered. Manuscripts without return postage will not be returned. If you wish us to discard the ms. and reply only by letter, you need only enclose a letter-size (#10) envelope and mark your ms. DISPOSABLE. Your name, address, email address and phone number should appear on the first page of the text, not on a cover sheet, as cover sheets can easily get separated from the rest of the ms.

International authors must still submit hardcopies of their stories but we will respond via email rather than regular mail, assuming that you do not require your ms. to be returned to you. We do not accept multiple or simultaneous submissions. Response time is ordinarily 8 to 12 weeks. We regret that the majority of our responses must be in the form of pretyped letters. This in no way reflects on your work, only on our time and work load.

Thank you for your interest in Realms of Fantasy, and we look forward to seeing your work in our pages.

Shawna McCarthy  Editorial Address: Realms of Fantasy P.O. Box 527 Rumson, NJ 07760

Now, go give them what they want! Good Yukon Stories, or stories from Yukon authors.

The Resonance of Flashforward for People of Faith

October 14, 2009October 14, 2009jstueart1 Comment

The ABC series, Flashforward, arguably one of the best written series in a long time, and the best using a science fiction concept, wrestles with a very old idea: what if you knew the future? The show expands it to ask: what if everyone knew the future? And by Episode 3: What if everyone THOUGHT they knew the future? This is not a new concept when you are dealing with people of faith. Christians, specifically, have a vision of the future they hold on to. Actually, they have two.

The first one is a concept of Heaven/Hell–that after they die, they will forever be installed in one of two polar extremes: a place of happiness vs. a place of sorrow–both eternal (also known as With God and Without God). After that moment, there will only be a seamless future–one that never changes.

This vision of the future does guide their/our actions to certain degree. Some believe, still, that you have to hedge your bets. Do a lot of good things to move your path towards Heaven, or ask forgiveness–quickly–and move yourself away from Hell. This can also guide people’s actions towards you as they try to drag you to one path or the other–most often to Heaven by use of guilt, judgment or restriction. Ah well, the path to Heaven, I guess is paved with good intentions too.

But really it’s the other vision of the future that is more worrisome for people of faith.

Revelation was a book written based on John’s Flashforward. In that vision he saw lots of stuff–lots of destruction, lots of wrath…it gets ugly. And believers think they may have an escape route–the Rapture. That miraculously they get to escape the major drama of the Earth’s end because they believed. This is not unsubstantiated by the Bible, but it is questionable when it will happen. Trust me, I don’t want to argue pre-post-or mid-millenial tribulation/rapture. And please–don’t discuss it in the comments!

What I’d rather discuss is the idea that Christians may be creating the Tribulation themselves–or creating parts of it.

In Flashforward we are slowly beginning to believe that the main character, Agent Benford, is actually creating the bulletin-board he saw in his vision not because it has answers but because it was there. In some ways, he may be creating his future, not actually solving the mystery of why everyone blacked out for two minutes. We’ve already seen, in Episode 3, a man get hired to the position of airport security, not based on good qualifications, but because he saw himself in that future, and so did someone else.

Many times I’ve watched Christians start to cringe if current events start to resemble events predicted in the Bible: the Anti-christ being a big icon to watch out for, as well as the Mark of the Beast, etc. Credit cards, health cards, any kind of number that identifies you will no doubt bring a lot of fear–and have that implanted in a chip inside your hand or your forehead, and Christians will freak out. (Hopefully lawmakers would NEVER pass an idea like that unless they want great opposition from Christians).

I’ve lived through three people who were thought to be the Anti-Christ: Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and now, Barack Obama, for various reasons. Often each one of them had a mystical kabbalistic criteria (their names added up to three sixes as Reagan’s does, or Obama’s “name” was spoken about in the Bible as paired with Lucifer–a complete stretch of the imagination) and a few of them have been “assassinated” and come back to life (Reagan and the Pope). Each time I hear that someone new is the anti-christ, I cringe, thinking that people are gonna start believing all us Christians are loony. And some of them, those that seem to be magnets for the news, deserve that label, not the airtime.

But then I wonder how often I too look at events with Revelation in the back of my mind. At what point will events start coinciding so well that there’s a tipping point in even the most casual reader of the Bible–where people start to say–Hey, I’ve seen that before? How often do we reject good things based on a false premise that THIS moment is part of Revelation, when obviously time just keeps rolling on?

In Christian circles, we often thank God we don’t know the future–because if we did, it might take away from “who holds the future” and make it Fate, not choice. But maybe that fits more squarely in Christian mythos–that our fates, our destinies, are already written. I don’t think so, myself. Everyone has choices. But if you see a glimpse of your future, you won’t know if it is meant to be, or if you are being given a warning. We ask all the time for God to guide our lives, for us to make good choices, but we fear getting on the road to the wrong destiny. As if the roads are already there and once on them, we’ll go 90 miles an hour.

From Cassandra’s ignored warnings to Oedipus fighting against his fate to modern day futurists who tell us what will happen based on world economic events…one of our eyes is always on the future. But will we let our concepts of the future influence today’s actions? Will we allow small evidence to convince us that we are living in “the end times” and then make irrational decisions? Or will we make good decisions based on evidence in front of us and walk knowingly into the future, brave, but watchful, not reacting to everyone who says—the anti-christ is here, the anti-christ is there, etc.

What’s probably most disturbing is the Christian concept that they will be persecuted in the End Times. And certainly every time someone critiques a Christian we hear echoes of this “end times” fear resurface. That the critique means that the critic must be an enemy, and that Christians are being targeted. This most resembles “making the future happen.” By letting ourselves be irrational, afraid of debate, sensitive to criticism, and dogmatically judgmental–I think we will create the discrimination and persecution that will probably come. But it happens because we’re being a$holes. I mean, spread negativity long enough, represent bigotry, discrimination and narrow-mindedness long enough and folks will be distrustful. Eventually, yes, being a Christian will be bad publicity. But NOT because the enemy is bad, but because Christians are unloving, paranoid judges. We will create the future we don’t want to happen. Just like Benford is creating in Flashforward.

Flashforward is a great show, allowing us to be thankful we DON’T know the future. What a burden. Hopefully it will teach us to treasure the moments we have, without being afraid of what’s coming–and make us watch out not to create the fates we want to avoid. Let’s be good to each other out there. We’re in this world together.

Bondsmen, my story, up at Metazen: James Bond meets himselves

October 12, 2009jstueartLeave a comment

My story, “Bondsmen”, is up at Metazen. The story–meant to be a comedy– is a bit surreal, having the latest James Bond (an actor beyond Daniel Craig) really stifled by all the things he has to do as James Bond—he just wants to be himself, dang-it, but he finds himself trapped in the character roles that have been played in the past by other actors…. This is a story of a man who wants to be an individual, not controlled by things he can and cannot do. James Bond ends up quarreling with all the other actors who’ve ever played Bond–or rather, all the other versions of Bond. It is meant to be parody, but also a way to think about living life suppressed, even when you’re a dangerous secret agent. Does James Bond really get a choice to be anything else?

Metazen, ” is an online fiction zine that publishes short fiction and poetry by various authors. Metazen is a fly trap for metafiction, existentialism and absurdism. It harbors all kinds of filth such as neurotic characters, obscure philosophies, love for inanimate objects and quests toward enlightenment. Metazen occasionally follows the real life, meta-fictional exploits of Frank. Metazen is edited by Frank Hinton, Jessica Alchesse and Dylan Cohen.”

Enjoy the story!

2012: The Last Movie Explosions and the End of an Era

October 3, 2009October 3, 2009jstueart2 Comments

Well, just saw a clip from the movie 2012, out in theatres in November. After this movie, there will be no bigger explosions. Hurray!

I remember when Independence Day blew up the White House, and much of New York. It was a cool special effect. I remember when the Titanic split in two. Wowzers! But now, there’s not gonna be a special effect left to do using real places after 2012. We’ll have seen the Eiffel Tower destroyed so many times, seen a realistic crumbling of the Rio Jesus, seen California being pushed into the sea, or dribbling into it as is the case here.

I mean, after that, the real end, when and if it does come, will seem like a rerun. I bet when an earthquake hits California, one day, God forbid, but if it does, people will say “It looked just like 2012.”

Now, imagine filmmakers discussing options after 2012 comes out:

“Well, there goes my next volcano film. Can’t get more realistic than that!”

“And they just sunk Iowa into the ground.”

“We can’t redo the crumbling of the Statue of Liberty–we’ll be copying!”

“Exactly, boys.” They’ll sigh. Nod their heads. “You know what this means?”

They’ll look around nervously.

“We go back to plots and characters. People won’t expect it.”

“What you mean is–they’ll yawn through another White House implosion. No,” someone will shake his head, “we’ll go back to those all right—there’s nothing left to blow up, or blow up more realistically. There’s nothing left but characters. Damn.”

And this will be the END OF SPECIAL EFFECTS DRIVEN MOVIES. Relief.

It’s like the last ten years–post Jurassic Park–that directors have been like little boys with a new Chem Set and a set of bottles—what can we blow up? Or Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy in Wargames, playing “Global Thermonuclear War.” “What will we nuke first?” Broderick asks Sheedy. “Las Vegas! Seattle!”

So many films destroying highways and bridges and houses and monuments…like Godzillas of the Green Screen. Well, we’re all done with that! Who can follow 2012? The special effects people will be looking around for things to do and they’ll have to morph bodies on screen or something else….cause we’ve seen every conceivable iteration now. Reality won’t be half as good!

Either we move on now to plot/character driven movies whose special effects serve the moment, or this really is the end of the world….

God: “Well, they’ve blown up everything they can on screen. If I don’t cash in my chips, and call my peeps home, they’ll get bored…”

Flashforward: the Excellence that “Knowing” could have been

September 26, 2009September 26, 2009jstueartLeave a comment

Watch Flashforward, Episode One

Robert Sawyer’s Flashforward has been made into an ABC miniseries. It is a masterpiece. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how faithful the series is to the original book, but the book won an Aurora Award.

The premise is that everyone blacks out at the same moment for 2 min and 17 seconds. In that time, they glimpse their futures. When they return to the present, mass chaos has already happened. Planes fell from the sky, cars crashed, trains derailed. People died, lots of people died. Everyone had blacked out, so no one was in control of all those vehicles.

The main characters, and there are several, include two FBI agents, a surgeon, a man who lost a daughter in Afghanistan, a doctor about to commit suicide, and several others. The series will be about them either trying to avoid their futures, or trying to get to them, depending on what they saw.

Oddly enough, the date they jump to, April 29, 2010, will be the season finale of the show–and at that moment you get to see if they reenact their futures or not.

Obviously, I don’t know how they can carry this through after that episode…BUT, I’m thoroughly pleased with watching till they get there. After this first episode I know that we have a great team of writers involved.

Now, this is what “Knowing” should have been. In my original review of “Knowing” I talked about how the movie, though predicting disasters, left very few for the main characters to experience, and I was troubled by the fact that it seemed the directors had determined that no one could change anything, so why bother. That movie dripped with errant theology and left no doubt that everything was predetermined. I don’t mind that fate or God may be a part of my life, but free-will is a human trait,and makes movies much more palatable. To see someone struggle against their fate, to see them try. It is what makes those who are given two weeks to live all the more heroic for skydiving or organizing a political rally. How we react to what seems to be inevitable–THAT is interesting.

Already, I can tell that the show has set up five or six different beliefs about pre-determinism. Some believe God gave them a gift, others that He gave them a punishment. Some want to avoid the future, some to run to it. For some it predicted a horrible mistake they will make.

“Knowing” passed up all opportunities for real drama with real people, skidded ahead with bad dialogue and coincidence, to an ending which tried to justify the movie.

Flashforward is like Mozart taking hold of the Salieri “Knowing” and actually making a great movie out of it. Yes, I know, Knowing only had two hours…but still, this series is good solid writing.

1. The characters are individuals, who walk onto the scene with their own problems, their own pasts. They are well drawn and WHAT they do will determine the plot, not what others do. Now that the big blackout is done, the characters guide the series. They will push things forward accidentally or on purpose to meet up to April 29th. They will determine their plots!

2. Great dialogue, great stuff that isn’t about “the plot”— that Dimitri has to dance at his wedding to “Islands in the Stream.” That the chief of the FBI has to lie about his vision because he’s embarrassed.

3. The plot starts with the action. I can imagine this series beginning without the crash first. But who would have waited the whole episode to have the blackout? Nope, have the crash first, back up, and then take it slow. Maybe this is just the difference between TV and reading….but I think starting as fast as you can into the action gets people involved with you. I noticed in Robert’s book, first chapter, that he has a description of each character first…but within a page, he gets to the blackout. He knows the blackout is a great hook, and that everything of importance happens afterwards.

4. I like the music in this series, already, the building, the back and forth between plots so quickly so that you know they are happening simultaneously–the music and this choice to flash around gives you a sense that everything is tied together. In some sense it is like a trailer—when the trailer starts shuffling between images so fast that you get excited: all trailers seem to end this way these days. The director took the music and that shuffling sequence to build suspense.

I hope Robert Sawyer makes a huge amount of cash from this. This is brilliant stuff. And I’m glad to see a Canadian Science Fiction Writer land such an opportunity. I hope they do more interviews with Robert Sawyer in the States.

Well, I will keep watching the series. I’ve already become a HUGE fan.

How to fix the Rural Brain Drain: link to article

September 21, 2009September 21, 2009jstueart2 Comments

Authors and Husband-and-wife sociologists Patrick J. Carr (Rutgers University at New Brunswick) and Maria J. Kefalas (Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia) have written a new book on the Hollowing Out of the Middle: the Rural Brain Drain and What It Means For America, due out next month. They’ve written an article in the Chronicle Review summarizing their results and providing tips for how to stop this from happening.

While this article is about the States, it applies to any North American small town, many that are at risk to rolling away.

First of all, I hadn’t realized how important it was NOT to push people to go far away from their homes to succeed. We’re always telling kids who have the knack for college to move far away and go to college and fly—become more than their small town roots. It seems so logical to get the talented, creative, smart ones out of the “rut” and the “lack of opportunity” of a small town. But the unintended message that those who stay receive is that their lives are smaller, more secondary, second-class. In fact, however, if small towns are to survive, Carr and Kefalas suggest we boost our opportunities to those who will stay. Rather than settling with the idea that the small town has no opportunity, Carr and Kefalas suggest we provide local links to opportunity and think ahead for the town. In some ways, they seem to be thinking about the town first, and the individual second— but definitely using the creative energy produced by the town to create a better town. It’s not unlike exporting Americans to foreign countries. If we constantly say our country is declining—Johnny, you go over to France where you’ll do better, then we’re creating an immigration that will doom small town America.

I like their ideas. I love small towns–I grew up in them: Braymer, Caruthersville, Bledsoe, Plainview, Edmonson, and all their surrounding towns. And I want to save small towns. I think Carr and Kefalas have a lot to offer. Here’s a bit of that article, and afterwards, a place for you to read the whole thing. This is the end section though, so if you want how they came to these tips, you need to read the beginning:

What can be done to plug the brain drain?

Though the problem is daunting, we believe that it is not intractable, but that any set of solutions must combine changes at micro and macro levels.

Small towns need to equalize their investments across different groups of young people. While it would be impractical, and downright wrong, to abort students’ ambitions, there must be a radical rethinking of the goals of high-school education. The single-minded focus on pushing the most motivated students into four-year colleges must be balanced by efforts to match young people not headed for bachelor’s degrees with training, vocational, and assorted associate-degree programs. Those programs fill the needs of a postindustrial economy but acknowledge that not every student wants to, or will, pursue a more traditional college path.

Also, school officials, parents, educators, and students must resist the temptation to think the noncollege bound will just get a job if a degree is not in the cards. Gone are the days of plentiful, well-paying blue-collar factory jobs that provided a 19-year-old with a living wage. Thinking that working the line at John Deere or Winnebago will vault you into the middle class makes about as much sense as buying eight-track tapes in the iPod age. All the planning and investments have been geared to collegebound students, while the reality is that students not earning a college degree need as much, if not more, intensive preparation for today’s labor market.

The next step is to build better links between high-school and postsecondary education, and map existing opportunities onto regional economic goals. Most of the job growth within Iowa is expected to come from computer, biotech, wind energy, and health care. Matching high-school students not headed for university with vocational or community-college programs, nurturing their interests while in high school through internships and training, will prepare them for the new economic growth areas. Such partnerships require close collaborations among business and civic leaders, elected officials, and secondary and community-college administrators who are accustomed to working in their own bureaucracies. Moreover, the growing distance-learning technology should not cater only to older, returning students. If students are interested in wind technology or nursing, rather than making them take social studies senior year, how about connecting them with a distance-learning class at Iowa Lakes Community College in Introduction to Computers?

Third, small towns should seek to embrace immigration whenever possible. The phenomenon of Hispanic boomtowns, a common occurrence in the Midwest, has the potential to transform moribund local economies. Such transformations will be possible only if there is careful planning to ensure that immigrants are integrated into the community in such as way as to increase contact between natives and immigrants and with attendant labor-law reform that curbs abuses and ensures sufficient wages and benefits for workers in agribusiness and manufacturing. Ph.D.’s from India or China and less-skilled immigrants from Mexico or Central America should all be recruited and supported in an effort to make the heartland an immigrant enterprise zone. The region is in critical need of professional-class workers, and bringing in Hispanic workers for the food industry will not be enough to rejuvenate the region.

And the article keeps going here, The Rural Brain Drain, in the Chronicle Review.

Seeing Things: a Captain Bly cartoon story of polar bears uploaded

September 19, 2009September 19, 2009jstueart4 Comments

I used to be a cartoonist. I had a comic strip for 4 years in the local student paper, The Maneater, at the University of Missouri. I found that a visitor to Whitehorse had kindly uploaded some of my strips from a book called Captain Bly, 1994, as a way to show off my nifty book. Thanks, Aniko! So I decided to upload a short 6 page story not included in the book. (The pic on the left is actually a pastel of the same bears–these bears are reciting Shakespeare’s The Tempest)

I’m still working on those bears. They appeared a little in my short story “Lemmings in the Third Year” and I’m trying to work on a novel about them.

Below is a short story I did for a Comic Strip 101 class I had with Frank Stack, an artist and cartoonist teaching there. He is credited with the first underground comic book, The Adventures of Jesus. He was a great teacher. Had us draw comic strips and pin them to the wall for critique and then he would go about busting us! He thought we were a great class though. Full of potential. I’ve been playing with my cartooning roots, and working around in some other mediums. But here is that short story.

Seeing Things, Page 1, Jerome Stueart, 1995

Seeing Things, Page 2, Jerome Stueart, 1995

Seeing Things, Page 3, Jerome Stueart, 1995

Seeing Things, Page 4, Jerome Stueart, 1995

Seeing Things, Page 5, Jerome Stueart, 1995

Seeing Things, Page 6, Jerome Stueart, 1995

Fantasy Magazine Interviews Me: Writing the Other

September 18, 2009September 18, 2009jstueart2 Comments

Fantasy Magazine, which published my short story, “The Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall,” did a companion interview, which I thought was incredibly thoughtful. When you write a story, you always hope for questions like this–that someone will ask what you meant when a character said this or that, or ask how you go about writing the story.

And secretly too, you hope you don’t sound like a dork.

I appreciate the interviewer, TJ McIntyre, and the work he put into the questions. Thank you.

An excerpt

There have been many controversies over the years relating to writing the “Other” or writing with a voice outside of one’s own natural experience. “The Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall” is written from the point of view of a modern Asian-American female. Did this create a challenge for you? What steps, if any, did you take to verify the authenticity of your voice in this piece? What tips do you have for other writers out there working on pieces where they are writing from the perspective of the “Other?”

Hmmm . . . This is a hard question for me because I think every character you write about is an “Other.” I do understand the argument, that writing something completely different from you is more challenging. But unless you are writing memoir, the characters have completely different childhoods, desires, relationships — all the characters, not just the POV one. So they all take a lot of work to understand and “get right,” so to speak.

But if someone wants to write a character which is “other” I wouldn’t stop them. Instead, I would encourage them to stretch themselves. I certainly don’t immediately identify with, or always find accurate to my experiences, the white, rural, college-educated, religious gay male characters I find. And I don’t always want to write that character. I would hate to stop someone else from writing them though.

So I think that’s my first tip: Feel free to be whoever you need to be for the story, without holding yourself hostage to criteria. Criteria can turn into stereotype. I remember once writing a poem about Theodore Roosevelt surviving the Amazon River. A fellow writer said that I had no albino catfish in the poem and that it was a weakness. If I didn’t mention them, I would be called on the authenticity of place. Even worse may be the authenticity of race or gender or sexual orientation — since we are multi-faceted people. I go back to my first statement: Everyone in your story that isn’t yourself is an “Other” . . . and you are required to be careful with all of them.

Saying that, though, I think writing a nasty, mean, selfish gay character might be an accurate representation of one particular person, and might make a funny character, but I would trust that character more in the hands of a gay man who knows the consequences of pushing a bad stereotype in a culture that seems to want to believe the stereotype, than in someone else’s hands. I tried hard to be sympathetic to both Matsui and Yumi equally — showing their flaws, their desires, and hopefully helping a reader side with both at different times.

So, not that you have to always treat your Other characters with kid gloves, but that you make everyone understandable and as authentic as a human being as you possibly can through research, and through infusing them with your own flaws/desires. I infused Yumi with some of my own doubts about my relevancy/impact on the world, my own relationship experiences, the sometimes clash of cultures I find with people older than me. The story doesn’t have my exact experiences, but the shades of feelings are right, the tone is right, the need to be loved and validated is right, I think.

Run the draft through a close set of writerly friends to check for bias. I did run this through Clarion 2007 in San Diego, past a rigorous group of fellow writers, half of them women, who had some questions about the way I wrote Yumi, and I followed their advice. Not that a character can’t make bad decisions, or have perceptible flaws, only that they should be unique, individually motivated and free from OBVIOUS bias.

Be open to learning what it’s like to be someone other than you. It’s really difficult to shed Jerome in order to take on Yumi or Matsui, but I try. Like an actor taking a role.

I think if we only wrote within our experience we’d really limit our stories, and ourselves. I remember once writing from the perspective of my brother, and I learned a lot about what it felt like to have to make some of his decisions. The story moved radically away from my brother’s actual deeds, but the writing process allowed me to feel empathy and understanding for him in a way I had never felt before writing about him.

The process allows a writer to “put themselves in someone else’s shoes” and that’s good, both for the writer — who learns something outside him/herself — and the reader — who doesn’t have to put up with a bunch of main characters who are sci-fi movie buffs. Viva l’Other!

______________________________________________

Read the whole interview on the Fantasy Magazine Website here.

How to Keep Garden Veggies Fresh All Winter: The Pedersen Method

September 13, 2009March 7, 2014jstueart85 Comments

If you’re like me, you harvested a lot of vegetables this Fall. Gardening in the Yukon is amazing! With long hours of sunlight, a crop of vegetables can be yours in 10 weeks. But then you have a huge harvest. You can’t possibly eat them all in a few weeks. Outside of freezing, how do you store vegetables? Can someone store vegetables all winter and keep them as fresh as if they were still in the ground? Well, I know a way. Bruce Pedersen, local chiropractor, has been using a method that keeps tons of vegetables from his garden fresh all winter long. Try his method and see if it works for you.

1. For carrots, beets, turnips: get a large paint bucket and place an ordinary kitchen trash bag inside the bucket as a liner. Don’t use the drawstring, get the ones with those flaps you have to tie with.

2. Pull up your vegetables from the ground. Don’t wash them. Just shake the dirt off. Don’t wipe or try to clean them. “When people scrub a vegetable clean, they damage the skin and then they have to eat it right away or it will rot faster,” Dr. Pedersen says. So, don’t clean these.

3. Right at the truck, he had a cutting board and a knife. Take the knife and cut off the greens, slicing just at the top of the carrot, or beet. For carrots and beets, you only make one cut–to take off the greens. With beets, you leave on the long root if it has one. For turnips, you’re going to make two cuts: one to clear off the greens, and the second to cut off the roots, so it’s a round ball.

4. These headless carrots all go in the trash-bag lined bucket, all on top of each other. Don’t worry if you get dirt in there. Be careful putting them in the bucket. If they’re long and break off on impact, then you have to dispose of them (eat them right there!) They’ll rot if they go in the bucket broken.

This bucket actually needs more carrots in it first.

5. Fill the bucket till it’s 3/4 full or 4/5. Then shake the bucket a bit to settle the carrots. Then take ordinary peat moss and fill the bucket with peat moss till it is full.

6. Then take the trashbag flaps and nearly cover the peat moss, leaving a hole showing the peat that’s about the size of a tennis ball. “This is to help the peat moss breathe. You don’t want it all completely covered–but you don’t want more than a small hole either.” You’ll tape down the bag in place.

7. Store the buckets of vegetables in your garage over the winter, or a cool, dry place. Not a freezing place. And not in your house where it will be too warm. Maybe an entryway, or a back porch.

8. Over the winter, just dig out your carrots, beets, turnips, etc. from the buckets when you need them.

9. For potatoes, put the bunch of potatoes in a large styrofoam cooler, the kind you get at Canadian Tire. Fill that with peat moss too. Cover with a trashbag, stretched out over the top, taped down in places, but with enough space in other places to let the peat moss breathe. And just dig up a potato when you need it.

Why peat moss? Peat is a moisture regulator. It seems to draw in the extra moisture from the newly harvested vegetables and then gives it back to the vegetables when they get dry. It seems also to slow the decay of the vegetables, almost holding them in a stasis for a longer period of time. Sand doesn’t regulate moisture and is a lot messier to work with. Also you need more sand to cover the vegetables because it will sink down to the bottom. The peat mostly rests on top as a barrier to the cold dry air.

Bruce Pedersen has done this for several years and has had fresh vegetables all winter long. Hopefully, the method will work for you too.

If you found this information helpful, please consider donating just .99 cents. It keeps us writers fed.

One of our regular-size carrots! — One of his regular-size carrots!

Why I Love the Yukon in the Fall: Kluane Lake

September 10, 2009September 18, 2009jstueart4 Comments

I had the chance of a lifetime this summer to work out at Kluane Lake. The drive from Haines Junction to Kluane Lake has to be one of the most beautiful drives ever, but it really glows in the fall. Holy Cow. I took 92 pictures and movies. This was my drive to work every week. Today it looked like everything had turned to gold in the Yukon.