Getting out in the (finally) sunshiny weather to do some homestead chores had me covering three full seasons today, and seeing some rather disquieting signs of a fourth. Bring in a 2-day (and night) supply of wood for the wood stove, because it’s still in the 30s at night and mornings are decidedly chilly. But days are in the high 50s to mid-60s, and absolutely glorious with the whiff of spring. Even as I finished (finally) harvesting beets and digging potatoes from last fall’s crops. Which didn’t manage to get harvested before the holidays descended upon me but weren’t in any real danger of destruction during what has been one of the mildest winters in all my 20 years here.

Basket and garden fork in hand, I wended my way to the bottom tiers from the bricked herb and rose garden below the grapes. Noticing how green the mints are, when they’re usually nothing but scraggly sticks in January. When they’re not under an accumulated couple of feet of snow. The thyme is brown, but the oregano has fresh green leaves low on the plants. The rosemary is still thick and green, thicker even than when I cut it down to nubs in November. Every single one of the sages is putting out leaves, including the potted sage I forgot to bring indoors to keep me company. The chives are still standing, and here’s new leaves on the parsley too. I’ve never seen that anywhere north of Florida.

Some of last season’s kales have put out new shoots too, and the greens on the beets (red though they are) are fresh enough for salad! Before the chickweed and purslane, even. Bunching onions planted in the fall are coming up in thick clumps, I’ll have to thin them out soon. Usually a job for mid-March. Even worse, the spring bulbs are all up several inches and threatening to bloom any minute.

So I’m thinking this might be one of those rare years when spring comes in February, when we-who-work-the-land least expect it. It’s actually happened a couple of times in those 20 years, where it never gets below freezing again even at night. Latest frost date in my zone is May 10th, so you can see how productive a 3-month start on the growing season could be. So instead of leisurely perusing my new seed catalogues by lamplight on howling and snowy winter nights, I’m now flipping through to early crops and scribbling order numbers as fast as I can. Hoping to be able to order and take delivery within the next 3 weeks.

Hmmm… have plenty of salad mix seeds from last year, since I only planted a single rush before Fukushima melted down and blew up and blanketed North America with radioactive iodine and cesium you simply cannot wash off or out of your green leafs. I left plastic and matting on more than half the terraces last spring and summer, unwilling to grow too much food I knew would be more contaminated than I’d want to feed my family. Even though my rusty Geiger-Muller was mostly back to background by mid-June except in the rain, I figured that leaving much of it fallow – either covered for delicate future crop beds or chock full of weeds to absorb deposited isotopes that didn’t get drained out – would be the best thing. With nearly a year’s worth of ample rainfall on my well-drained terraces, the ground is about as ‘decontaminated’ as it’s ever going to be again in my lifetime. Yours probably is too, but beware of drainage seeps and pathways. Contamination will tend to concentrate there, and you don’t really want to do anything about it. Which will just stir it up and spread it around. Better to go ahead and let the usual grass, weeds and other ground cover to colonize thickly (you can mow it), don’t plant anything in or nearby.

Also have plenty of peas, and those need to go in as soon as it’s not freezing at night. Actually, they could go in and simply be covered with jars and cut-off milk jugs for nights when it does get to freezing. I am definitely going to go with rushes this year – planted every 2 weeks for six weeks so there will be plenty. The grandkids love those peas raw so much that I almost never get enough into the kitchen to cook or put into salads. Grandsons end up with pockets bulging with pea pods they think I don’t notice… S’alright. Can think of much less healthy snack items they could be hoarding.

Must get some flats going in the library window asap. And start rolling up those many newspaper pots I’ve found so handy for seedlings through the years. Plant them right into the ground, they disintegrate to become ‘one with’ the tilth. Oh, and must get to raking leaves, which I also didn’t do in the fall due to contamination. If spring comes in February, the fires come right along with. Just won’t be enjoying the usual leaf compost of previous years. So much to think about, so much to plan, so much to do!

Is spring looking to come early on your homestead? If so, best get started soon on making the most of it.

My daughter went a little wild this year “trimming” back the grape vines that wandered over the fence that badly needs repair (rather than simply repairing the fence), so diminishing the ripening fruit that we got basically nothing from them this season. Ah, well. Happens every so often. They should be back in bulk next year, and I’m fixing the fence over the winter so she won’t be tempted to prune out of season. What she didn’t manage to trim into oblivion this year are the wild roses (sweet briar) bushes on the up-ridge side of the driveway. They can get out of control pretty easy, and always want to drape down into the driveway to cause scratches (and sometimes blood) to people who park too close.

So I’m the one who did the pruning this year, and I was very careful to hardily discourage growth on the driveway side, while encouraging growth on the ridge side. That allowed for a pretty good haul of rose hips this past weekend by my grandson. In previous years I’ve simply put the little hips – sweet briar hips are about half the size of dogwood berries, not the fat wild persimmon sized hips of garden roses – into a jar in the freezer to add to teas made over the winter. Especially the colds/flu tea we drink a lot of to keep the viruses away. But this year we made rose hip syrup, and I’m definitely a convert as I drink my morning coffee sweetened with it.

Rose hips are sort of a concentrated multi-vitamin, with an average of 20 times the vitamin C as oranges. They don’t turn red (and soften up) until after the first frost, which occurred on the up side of the hill weekend before last. They’re difficult to harvest, as they must be pulled from the branches carefully in order to avoid battle scarring from those pesky thorns. So I must say I was very glad for grandson’s volunteering to do that job, I usually wait until November to harvest and end up looking like I’ve been handling an ill-tempered badger. Rose hips also contain appreciable amounts of vitamins A, D and E, making them a very good wintertime tonic.

You can make a jelly out of them, but it seems to me that the heat of jelly processing is probably not the best way to preserve the vitamin content. Whereas steeping them for tea doesn’t expose them to high heat for extended periods. Always keep them whole prior to processing, as once they’ve been cut or ground they begin oxidation immediately. A good rule of thumb is that it takes ~1/2 pound of hips for 1 quart of syrup, though you’ll want to use half-pint jelly jars for the final product. Be sure to sterilize them as well as the lids. They do not require actual canning, but you’ll want to seal them while still very hot.

Some people who use the big garden-rose hips cut off the tops and tails, but this would be silly with little bitty wild hips. To remove as much of the long-dead petals and hairs at the top end, I simply rub a small handful between my hands to loosen it up good, before spray-washing. Once washed, put the hips into a grinder or blender and process to a kind of sticky pulp. Put this pulp into 2 quarts of rapidly boiling water, remove from the heat, cover, and let steep for 4-5 hours or overnight.

Strain through an unbleached coffee filter or jelly bag, try to get all the liquid you can out of it. Put this into a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat while slowly stirring in 1.5 cups of packed light brown sugar. Make sure your sugar is natural brown rather than dyed, as in natural form it retains quite a bit of the good mineral content. Reduce heat to a bare simmer and keep uncovered to reduce the liquid by about half, so that it’s quite thick. Pour this into the sterilized jars and attach lids. Allow to cool on the countertop, then keep in the refrigerator to preserve the vitamins C and A.

Use this syrup like honey to sweeten coffee or herbal teas, or just take a spoonful a day as supplement. You can mix this syrup with strong elderberry tincture if you have a cold or get the flu. It makes the tincture a little easier to swallow, but sugar does affect the potency of the tincture a bit. I prefer to use the syrup by itself as a tea sweetener, it adds a little bit of tart and a lot of sweet, especially for blackberry and mint teas.

And don’t forget to throw a few dried dogwood berries into the teapot when you’re steeping, these are also excellent sources of vitamins C and A. Here’s hoping the viral season is light this year, and that we all spend as few days under the weather as possible.

Some Helpful Links:

Foraging: Making Rosehip Syrup
Katey’s Rosehip Syrup recipe
Rose Hip Jelly, Jam Recipe

The rush of big heirlooms and romas were processed in August, most dried in the solar unit out on the front (southside) deck. Weather’s back up into the ’70s during the day after a couple of nights of high-30s and frost warnings, looks like the peppers and grape tomatoes survived to finish up before Halloween – more sun-dried tomaisins! I keep making them, they keep disappearing faster than they’re coming in. I’ve found they’re not just great on crackers (with fresh basil, red bell peppers and feta cheese) and pizza, but add lots of zing to pasta and rice dishes as well. Mostly, though, the kids eat them as late-night snacks by the handful, right out of the jar.

As soon as it’s too cold to garden any longer, I’ll be using some of the dry-dried tomato that I’ve turned into powder to make tomato, basil and rosemary fettucini. Fresh pasta is fun to make and freezes very well, great to pull out and cook up quick when unexpected guests drop by. For the leathery half-dried tomatoes I had to go looking for recipes beyond “the usual” diced and tossed into/onto stuff. Discovered Valley Sun, a California company that specializes in sun-dried tomatoes. The linked page offers some general ideas about adding dried tomatoes to just about any recipe for meat, poultry, seafood and vegetables.

Dried Tomato Pesto Fettucini

• 2 cups half-dried tomato quarters
• 1/2 cup slivered or sliced almonds
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 cup Parmesan, Reggiano or Gruyere cheese
• 1 pound fresh rosemary-basil fettucini

Dice tomato quarters, toss in oil with basil and garlic. Saute slowly in a cast iron pan over medium heat until garlic is soft and basil is well wilted. Toast almonds over medium heat stirring constantly to keep them from burning. Remove from pan when slightly brown and set aside. Boil the pasta according to directions and drain. Return to pot over low heat, add tomato pesto mixture and the grated cheese, toss well. When this is all well heated, add the almonds and toss. Serve immediately, garnished with fresh basil and extra cheese.

Clams with Tihuana Pepper and Dried Tomato Broth

• 2 tins oil-packed clams (or oysters)
• 1 cup Chardonnay
• 1 cup clear vegetable broth
• 1/4 cup salted butter
• 1/2 cup diced half-dried tomatoes
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tbsp. crushed red pepper
• Lemon wedges

Bring wine and broth to a boil in a covered sauce pan, add butter, tomatoes, salt and red pepper. Reduce heat and add clams, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve in bowls over a slab of toasted home made whole wheat tarragon bread with lemon wedges on the side, to be squeezed into the soup as desired.

Sun-Dried Tomato Appetizers

• 1 cup half-dried tomato quarters
• 1/4 cup basil herbed wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 2 tbsp. finely chopped fresh basil
• 2 tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• Dash of freshly milled black pepper

In a small sauce pan heat vinegar and water together over medium low heat until barely simmering. Remove from heat, add tomatoes and cover. Allow to stand for 1 hour. Mix fresh basil and oregano together with the pepper and minced garlic. When tomatoes have soaked for an hour, remove from marinade and place cut side up on a cookie sheet and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle the garlic, pepper and herbs onto the tomatoes and bake in a 200º oven for 4-6 hours until somewhat ‘dry’ to the touch. Cut in bite-size pieces (3 per quarter of an average roma), insert toothpicks and serve on a plate with crackers and Chevre goat cheese.

Sun-Dried Tomato Dip

• 1/2 cup half-dried tomatoes
• 4 ounces softened cream cheese
• 4 ounces soft Chevre goat cheese
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 3 cloves chopped garlic
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil, or 2 tsp. dried basil
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives

Put all ingredients except fresh basil and chives into a blender and process until smooth. Mix in fresh basil and refrigerate until ready to serve. Sprinkle dried tomato powder on top, serve with dried crackers and fresh vegetables or French bread baguettes.

Hope these recipes for sun-dried tomatoes sound as delicious to you as they do to me, and I absolutely MUST remember to plant more basil next spring. Dried tomatoes are great additions to vegetable soups, chili and bean dishes, added to the cooking water for rice and just about anything else you might feed your family over the coming long winter. Dried tomatoes retain more of the original nutrients than canned tomatoes do, something to consider as cold and flu season hits. Dried tomatoes also make excellent straight from the bag or jar snacks when the family is gathered around the kitchen table to play cards or board games, though for this those little bitty grape tomato tomaisins are neater.

Now… out to the porch to see how the latest batch is coming along.

Autumn has come to the mountain just as spring did – one ay it was perfectly clear, close to 80º and comfortably into the mid-60s at night, the next it was barely up to 60º at mid-day and into the high 30s at night. Not only are we seriously behind in the necessary wood supply for heat, I’ve been having to scramble to bring in the remaining peppers and last of the tomatoes. Poplar leaves are already yellow and dogwoods are getting a ret tint on their leave to complement their quickly ripening bright red berries, and the crisp air fills with leaves whenever the breeze blows.

Luckily autumn is my favorite of all seasons. In three weeks from now the lush greens of summer will have turned into impossible corals and day-glo oranges and deep reds and yellows bright enough to light up the night. The smell of leaf-fall is heavenly even though it means endless raking in November, a necessary task to ensure resistance to spring fires. And of course the usual foot-deep winter covering once I’ve cleaned out the garden terraces and tossed the remains of their summer bounty on the compost pile. But it’s raining right now, so I’m shivering inside not daring to use any of the scant locust we have left from last year’s wood supply before nightfall, when it’ll really be needed.

In my last post I talked about a new centralized organizational outfit for connecting CSAs [Community Supported Agriculture farms] and ass orated organic suppliers with customer bases in their area via the internet, for promoting healthy, local food and food products and changing the way we eat. In my wanderings about the web, I discovered another kind of CSA that sounds like something right up my alley.

It’s called Goldthread, and it’s a CSA they say should properly be called a “CSM” because it offers community-supported medicinal herb shares. The Goldthread farm is located in western Massachusetts, and its herbal preparations are made in small batches at the farm in Conway and an apothecary in Florence. A share basket may include a combination of carefully dried bulk herbs, small bottles of tinctures, essential oils, herbal honeys and compounds, often accompanied by fresh culinary herbs and garlic.

“Grassroots medicine” sounds like a good idea at this current point in history, as my ‘customer’ base has only been increasing over the past few years as western medicine’s allopathic treatments have become far too expensive for most people to use, joblessness has stripped what little insurance coverage people once did have, and the state slashes Medicaid to the bone so that no one new gets on the roll until someone dies. Last year my elderberry tincture (for colds and flu) saved nearly a dozen people – one of them an ER nurse – from work and time loss due to viral respiratory infections. My ginseng tincture hasn’t been made yet, but three new ‘customers’ have requested some, asap. If I had money to invest in some cute little dropper bottles and labels, I could probably make a little income on the side just with those. Then there’s the black cohosh, the Japanese honeysuckle, the goldenseal, the dogwood and spiceberry tonic, and MUST get started on the autumn end of my skin lesion salve that takes a year to produce…

Problem is, I use those little quotes around the word ‘customer’ because I’ve just never charged anybody real money for my simples and remedies. People have long said I could, but all of my herbalist ancestors believed – and taught – that doing it for money was antithetical to the effort at healing. That was so ingrained in me that it’s been difficult to even begin thinking about charging money. But now that my grandson has put so much energy and effort into learning from me, and helping me greatly in managing the medicinal crops, I see that earning a little money on those efforts isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Now that grandson is in ‘business’ with me as apprentice-in-training, making a bit of money for his college tuition is where I’m aiming my thoughts for the next year. Both in producing the concoctions and in planning for more medicinals next growing season. We’ve already transplanted what will be an entire grove of elderberry that was threatened by a road-widening project, and nettle so we’d have our own on-property supply. We’ve transferred the ginseng to new, deeper beds much better protected from deer and tromping disc golfers than where they were before.

We probably won’t be a CSA like this farm in Massachusetts is, as there are plenty of needful folks just here in our area who tend to trouts the old herb-lady more than they trust whatever allopathic doctor’s on duty today at the urgent care center for $400 a pop just to walk in the door.

So wish us luck, and I’ll be sure to report back on whether or not this change of heart on the healing plane works out. Stay tuned!

Link

Goldthread Herbal Apothecary
The Kitchn: Goldthread Article

With the Harvest Moon just a couple of days past, the last of the summer crops will be coming in over the next month to be properly stored and/or preserved. The big pears are finally falling, providing more than enough for as much pear butter as I can possibly make even as the deer and turkeys work hard to eat more than their share before I can gather. The pumpkins are good and orange now, but can stay on the vines until first freeze warnings before I have to harvest and process. Winter squash is looking to be a good harvest at the same time, and the peppers are quickly turning red in rushes. Grape tomatoes are being sun-dried to “tomaisins,” as many as I can fit into the solar dryer at a time and always many more waiting to be picked. They’ll keep right on coming until first freeze.

At the same time, as the beds are cleared from harvest they must be prepped for fall plantings. More kale and collards (which will keep going all winter into spring with plastic tenting on very cold nights), peas, lettuces and spinach, and of course garlic. Today I’m talking garlic, because it’s one of our most favorite garden goodies.

Garlic is a member of the onion [allium] family. It has powerful antibiotic properties, and is well known as a “blood purifier” and digestive stimulant. Legend has it that garlic is an effective vampire and werewolf repellant, but I haven’t heard that it will prove to be all that useful during the coming Zombie apocalypse. For that, you should follow the advice in The Zombie Survival Guide instead.

Garlic should be planted in the fall, but won’t be harvestable until the next summer. If done right, you can end up harvesting about 250 nice heads from just a 4 by 8 foot plot, so it’s a very good crop even in tightly-packed town homes and subdivisions if there’s that much yard that enjoys ample sun. Garlic is readily marketable at tailgate and farmer’s markets, but it also stores well and if your family loves it as much as mine, there won’t be many bulbs to sell.

First, double-dig your bed and break up the clumps, rake to smooth. You can purchase garlic bulbs or pre-separated cloves from your Farm & Garden supply or on line, but I usually just purchase some nice full heads of my favorite varieties in the organic produce section of my local grocery store. Carefully break the cloves off the bulb head, keeping the skin intact. Push these root-end first into the soil about 4 inches apart. I stagger-plant them, but you can do neat rows if you like. Leave the pointy clove tops sticking out, as only the roots need to be seated in the soil. The heads themselves will develop to be much bigger in compost.

Which you want to now apply on top of the planted cloves to a depth of an inch or two. Tamp this down and cover about 4 inches deep with leaves you’ve raked off the lawn. These will compact and compost themselves over the winter and those onion-like garlic leaves will come right up through it all in the spring. If you plant a hardneck variety you’ll want to cut off the stiff round flower stalks when they are a few inches tall, which will encourage bigger bulbs with more cloves. The leaf cover should help discourage weeds, but if stubborn weeds do get started next spring you’ll want to pull them.

That’s basically all there is to it. Other than cutting those flower stalks (which are quite good snipped like chives and added to stir-fry) and pulling any weeds that try to establish themselves in the leaf mulch, you need do nothing but watch it grow. Around mid-June I begin checking the bulb development, always anxious to roast some garlic for dinner or snacks. Just pull back the leaf mulch and feel around in the compost to gage how well the bulbs are coming along. If you’re like me you’ll end up eating several that didn’t get as big as they could have, but others will have plenty of time to fill out. Any garlic left by this time next fall should be harvested before planting anew for the next season.

Most cooks have their favorite ways to serve garlic. It can also be roughly chunked and dried, then ground as garlic powder, garlic salt, or as an ingredient in your favorite herb mixture for the dining table. Garlic cloves are great grilled with other veggies and/or meat chunks on a kabob skewer. But my family’s absolute favorite way to enjoy garlic is as roasted whole cloves.

Roasting is easy. I just separate the cloves from the bulb, discarding as much of the papery skin as possible while leaving the hard skins on. Put these into a roasting pan – I use a mini-bread pan – and add a tablespoon of olive oil. rub the oil and garlic together to make sure all the cloves are well coated, and roast in the oven at 350º for 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of the cloves). Allow them to cool enough to be handled, and dump them out onto a plate. The roasted garlic inside the skins is easy to squeeze or suck out from the pointy end. A nice plate of these roasted cloves (sometimes 3 or 4 bulbs’ worth) around my homestead always draws a quick crowd and never lasts more than a few minutes.

If you do end up with a few left over after the frenzy, you can squeeze out the innards into a little bowl and mix well with butter and a pinch of salt and store in the fridge for making garlic bread. You can also mix some fine parmesan/romano cheese into this garlic butter, which is great on home made bruscetta bread. Which I’ll talk about later, after the harvest, preserving and fall planting are done. Bon appetite!

Following a useful group series called Living Simply: Zero Waste has me thinking about what goodies from the kitchen gets tossed into the compost pile and how much of it might be useful for some other purpose. The series deals with all kinds of waste, of course, the things that go into our trash cans versus what goes into recycling, etc. And readership includes mostly people who live in urban environments. Things like food packaging and general trash items, getting those down as far as possible by recycling things like used batteries, those ‘planned obsolescence’ disposable electronics, plastics, glass, etc.

We homesteaders who have to haul our own trash and recyclables to the “Inconvenient Center” whenever we’ve got time while the darned dumpster station is actually open are pretty good at doing the separating. Especially for things like metals that can not only be recycled, but which we get paid for by the pound. But the question of food waste is quite pertinent this time of year, as crops start coming in and spring beds are cleaned out for fall crop planting. Which I definitely need to do, and would have already done by now if it weren’t so blasted HOT. At any rate, let’s look at the various compostables for what they might be put to best use for, considering how valuable compost actually is for purposes of growing things.

Right now the peas from spring are done and the fall crop hasn’t yet been planted. But beans are coming in fast in large rushes. If you are growing pole beans like I am (take up less room, are way more abundant than bush beans), you may be growing varieties best purposed for shelled beans than your basic green bean. I have for many years tossed the pods from shelled peas and beans into the compost bucket, but it turns out you can fry them up into a nice finger food once you’ve removed the seeds.

Another good idea is to maintain a good tight-lidded container in the fridge to hold scraps from various vegetables – carrot, leek and onion tops and ends, broccoli and cauliflower stems, those pea/bean pods, tomato cores and skins, the tough stems of kale, collards and chard, potato and/or eggplant skins, fresh corn cobs, pretty much any actual food-food waste generated when processing for canning, freezing or drying. When the container nears full, put it all into a stock pot and boil it up with the addition of some fresh but less-than-presentable herbs (like older parsley, spotted sage, holey basil, etc.) for veggie soup stock. This can be strained and canned to keep all through the winter and used instead of water for meat-based soup stocks, gravies, etc., or just by itself as veggie stock for soups or for cooking dry beans and such.

You can salt it before canning so it’s ready-to-use, or omit the salt and add it later when you’re making something with it. Once the good flavor and valuable nutrients have been boiled out into stock, the leavings of course go right back into the regular compost. It’s like getting twofers from your hard gardening work, and well worth the effort. If you do the hot processing outside on the grill so it doesn’t heat the house, it saves energy and money as well.

If your homestead boasts some dogs – as mine does – you also know that dogs love vegetables as much as we do, and love leftovers even more. There are vegetables dogs shouldn’t eat, but about a quarter of their regular diet should be vegetable (and is in most dry dog foods). Vegetables for dogs should be cooked or steamed, though some like ‘em raw. Remove tomato and onion parts from your unsalted soup stock leavings and your dog will scarf it down no problem. Here’s a good source for pet nutrition, and another with info for home made pet foods.

When all is said and done, kitchen scraps can go into the compost as-is, along with the rest of the yard and garden trimmings, weeds and leaves in the fall. It all makes very good mulch and additions to our gardens, allowing us to grow more food. But the idea of us or our pets getting every bit of nutrition from our food crops is very good, and makes the entire system a whole lot more efficient.

As the economic situation gets steadily worse – the second recessive ‘dip’ is already upon us and once the economic indicators are recalculated we may already be in negative GDP territory. Now that the Congress has passed their very ill-conceived austerity program and put a “Gang of 12″ in charge of slashing and burning, we should be all the way into major depression by Christmas, with real unemployment pushing 20%. We need to be even more attentive than usual to getting the most out of our gardens and livestock, go ahead and plan for those winter crops we could grow in cold frames, preserve every last bit of food however we can, and hang on tight. It’s going to be a rough ride.

Toward that project, I’ll be blogging about grains this month. Grain is getting more and more expensive to buy, but few homesteaders without lots of flatland acreage and a tractor grow any of their own beyond sweet corn or field corn for the livestock. Grains being an important part of our (and our pets’) diet, I’ll be looking at the best and most productive grains to grow in the garden or along the edges of our yards and fallow fields, and how to process and use them. I’ll also be looking at wild grains that we may have access to, as well as local grains you may be able to barter for from a neighbor who grows wheat or barley. It will be important for us to have some poundage of whole grains carefully stored away to make it through until next summer. We are lucky, as many people will be going hungry before things get better. We have to be realistic, plan for this future, and get all our ducks in a row. So please stay tuned!

Useful Links:

Living Simply: Zero Waste
Foods Scrap Cuisine
Home Made Pet Diets
How to Compost Food Scraps
CalRecycle: Food Scraps Management
Frugal dilemmas: food scraps, or more food?

Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The sun will rise over the Heel Stone at Stonehenge on June 21st to mark the Day The Sun Stands Still. Here at my homestead, looking directly east from the back porch (the cabin is cardinally oriented), it will rise above the peak of the springhouse roof before beginning its six-month journey toward the railroad’s gigantic wall, the precise middle of which marks the Winter Solstice’s sunrise.

In the Pagan world Midsummer is sometimes called Litha by moderns, taken from Bede’s De temporum ration, or The Reckoning of Time. Because the Solstice may come any time between the 20th and the 24th of June, it also coincides with the Christian’s feast day for the nativity of John the Baptist, also called the Feast of Saint John.

Despite Shakespeare’s most memorable fantasy play about fairy queens and woodland glamours, Midsummer is somewhat of a misnomer in that the Solstice actually marks the end of spring and the beginning of summer, not the middle. But there are certain things my household will be busy doing that will continue well into the rising of fireflies from the bottomland through the ferns after dark to mark this day the sun stands still, the longest day of the year.

The moment of Solstice is at 1:16 p.m., at which point my grandsons and I will be standing in the very middle of the high field to feel the sun on our faces. We will also be armed with axes, baskets and bags as well as not just one but two wheelbarrows and a Radio Flyer wagon. I’ll have the boys start chopping up dead pine limbs and filling the wheeled conveyances while I strip the earliest ripe blackberries from the thicket. The main crop doesn’t get fully ripe for another 10 days, around the 1st of July, but I have to get to the high field’s berries well before the bears or I’ll get none at all from those canes. Then I’ll be harvesting some of the rue in bloom at the edge of the field, along with my ample wilding crop of blooming St. Johnswort.

St. Johnswort [Hypericum perforatum] makes a pretty good herbal treatment for depression, and is also useful (along with milk thistle seed and kudzu root) in the treatment of alcoholism. Some say it’s good as a light ingredient in minty teas for treatment of hypertension, nervous tics, PMS and ADHD, and it does have antibacterial properties against gram-negative bacteria when the oil is used externally to treat wounds. I have encouraged the spread of this bushy perennial herb around the south side of the field for years to get a reliable supply, which is readily marketable dried to dealers or in preparations (tincture, oil, salves). But only because we haven’t yet managed to build a barn or obtained the bear-proof fencing necessary to the various livestock we’ve wanted (a mule, some goats, maybe a llama or donkey). If we ever do get around to that, the St. Johnswort as well as the rue will have to go, as they are poisonous to grazing livestock.

Rue [Ruta graveolens], a.k.a. Herb of Grace sports lively yellow flowers, on an even bushier evergreen perennial. It can be powdered with fleabane to make an effective flea powder for dogs and cats, and can be spread around barn stalls and chicken coops to ward off various insect pests. I haven’t tried it as a pest repellant in the garden, as that would seem a waste as it would wash off immediately at the first shower, and very hot pepper spray works better and lasts longer on garden greenery.

Then we’ll bring our goodies on home to the cabin. The boys will stack the wood, perhaps go for second loads, while I tie the herbs and hang them from the center beam of the shed to dry. Then we’ll visit a neighbor’s lovely acreage and trout ponds to pick raspberries and hopefully find a few ‘gifts’ from the elder grove left after the nasty windstorm of last weekend. Green twigs or branches can be started like willow at the bottom of my garden just by putting into wet ground, and I have just the wet ground perfect for an elder grove between the shed and the forest.

I’m planning a fat blackberry/raspberry cobbler topped with ice cream for Midsummer Eve dessert, after which we’ll build a nice fire in the firepit to enjoy. We won’t be doing any fire-jumping or fire walking, but will enjoy the first fire to welcome this summer season, and maybe we’ll break out some instruments and sing some songs. By the time the fireflies are high up to the tops of the poplars our celebration of Summer Solstice will be complete and I for one am planning to sleep in the nice new hammock I got for my birthday and strung diagonally to the back porch railing along with my husband’s, both of us Junie babies (who aren’t very baby-like these days).

Goodbye, spring and welcome summer!

Today I managed to get out into the garden before noon for a little clean-up and prep. Took out the last of the early peas and radish pods from their nifty PVC tent with twine, the peas being well past done and the pods perfect for harvest. I’ll need to clean out the bed thoroughly to replant with pole beans, and I will replant radishes down below in a bare well-composted spot next to the potatoes (which are blooming great guns!).

I also donned leather gloves and de-headed the milk thistle [Silybum marianum]. They were as tall as me by this time, falling over from heavy heads to make it difficult to get past them to the rest of the garden. Those dry pods are spiny like you wouldn’t believe, as if the leaves weren’t bad enough, but all spring the leaves make great additions to salads and pot greens, very pretty variegated thick foliage you have to trim the spines off of before adding to anything. The flower heads – the usual pretty purple thistle flowers about the size of a golf ball – produce seeds that are readily marketable to herb dealers in our region, but we end up using most of them ourselves for skin treatments, general systemwide cleansing, etc.

This stately and strikingly pretty plant has been in use for more than 2,000 years as a remedy for all sorts of ailments, most notably liver and gall bladder problems. There have even been medical studies of milk thistle as a remedy for liver damage caused by pain medications such as acetaminophen. Its flavonoid Silymarin is antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, and its action on the liver appears to be stimulation of new cell growth in that organ.

Because of this quality, milk thistle has been used as a treatment for the liver conditions of alcohol abuse, including hepatitis and cirrhosis. It is also used in the treatment of viral hepatitis (particularly hep-C), and support in cases of mushroom poisoning which affects the liver directly. Some studies have suggested milk thistle may have anti-cancer properties, but this is as yet unproven and anyone with hormone-related cancers (breast, uterine, prostate) should avoid it. Double blind studies have demonstrated reduced mortality in cirrhosis patients, and biopsies demonstrated clear improvements in liver condition.

Milk thistle seeds can be made into extract, or munched dried, or steeped into decoctions to sip. The tinctures are stronger, so consider these a potent ingredient to be taken somewhat lightly or added to salves.

So, in case you have grown milk thistle too (or did in previous years and let the volunteers go ahead and grow just because they’re so pretty), here’s a basic how-to for making the extract that is so good for your liver and skin, and thus can be added to mixed tonics and such for your purposes…

Milk Thistle Seed Extract

Separate the seeds from their spiny flower calyx and dry, mix it around a bit to loosen it from the whispy aerial flight fluff. That fluff can then be threshed by tossing from a basket and letting the breeze carry it away. Good seed that you wish to market or store should be threshed so there’s not much waste matter. Drying should be open air (not in full sun), not done by heating. Stored seeds should be kept whole in jars kept in cool, dark and dry places until preparation.

Grind the seeds to break them open, either by blender or a bit at a time with mortar and pestle. Put about 3/4 of a cup of broken thistle seeds into a pint size canning jar. Mix in 1 cup of 100 proof vodka (get the organic stuff), or blackberry brandy for a bit of flavor. Cap the jar and swirl it around to mix well every day or two for 3-5 weeks.

The longer the seeds steep, the more potent the resulting tincture will be. Always make sure the alcohol covers the seeds completely, add more if necessary. DO NOT let them mold, as they will if they aren’t fully covered. After steeping for the period of weeks, strain the tincture into a sterile bottle (or several), preferably bottles of green or brown glass with tight lids or cork stoppers.

Dosage

Always check with the doctor if someone already under treatment wants tincture from you. Milk Thistle can affect the potency of pharmaceutical drugs, including anti-psychotics, drugs for various ‘nervous’ disorders, etc. Be on top of any reported side effects like nausea, abdominal cramps or diarrhea. Adjust dosages accordingly.

For general purposes a dose of 20-40 drops of tincture (straight or in water) 3 times a day is good for most purposes. That works out what I always start with, which is a solid 1/2 teaspoon 3 times a day, 1/2 teaspoon being equivalent to 30 drops. You want to spread this dosage out to 3 times a day to get a the best benefits of timing, but for those who just aren’t capable of keeping up with such a regimen (as for some alcoholics I know), half a tablespoon once a day will work but may cause more stomach upset.

At any rate, milk thistle is one of those beautiful and very useful plants that are both marketable and useful for herbal remedies that grow great in and around a garden and assorted sun-drenched homestead plantings. They will hurt if you don’t wear gloves when dealing with them, though, as the spines are cactus-sharp. They grow with no tending, they’re good to eat in salads and with pot likker at dinner time, and the seeds are precious. Those seeds when ground to rough powder also make very nice defoliating material for homemade soaps and cleansers, and are particularly useful for clearing up acne and rosacea.

So if you happen across a nice natural herb shop selling milk thistle seeds by the gram or ounce, pick some up and sow them in a sunny spot where the kids and dogs don’t hang out much. You won’t be sorry!

At right is the first rush of the bunching onion harvest, prepped for drying in my wonderful (but quite ugly) solar food dryer! These are just the whites – grown from seed – that have been seriously overrun by volunteer grape tomatoes. I decided to let the volunteers grow because the celeriac I’d put where they are all got washed away by torrential rains all spring. Unlike my Abe Lincolns up top, these actually are turning red about a month late. Rain and cool weather all the way through July has kept the Lincolns green-green for way too long, don’t know if they’ll ever ripen.

Seems that’s the story up and down the Eastern Seaboard this year. Cooler than normal, and wet enough to make swamps. I hear New Jersey and other states are having tomato issues, as are all my neighbors, so I’m not alone. Potatoes are taking a big hit as well, rotting in the wet ground or turning black with blight. Both crops may be total commercial losses this year, which means it’s even MORE important that mine come in and get preserved. That’s where my food dryer comes in!

I have so looked forward to not having to buy lids, boil jars, hard-prep and then water-bath this year. We don’t have AC in the cabin, since there’s no point for the perhaps 3 whole weeks of summer when it’s so hot we have to go sit under a tree instead of stay in the house, but it does get sticky and uncomfortable in the extreme when canning, even though I’ve learned to do the water-bath out on the gas grill.

The not pretty but quite serviceable dryer is something I’m more proud of due to NOT having cut off any digits or limbs with power tools than the fact that it works. So far I’ve been drying apples as they fall (Granny Smith and Macintosh) from what were supposed to be 10-foot tall single-limb “columnars” that got planted too deep and are now 20 feet tall and multi-limbed. Can’t get at the fruit with the ladder because most is too high, so must wait until they fall. They’re right outside the front porch, so I check a couple of times a day. Promptly cut off the bruised part from falling, core, peel and slice, dip in lemon juice (helps preserve color) and dry. Takes a day of full sun, or two of intermittent. Which is the story of the summer, and just my luck since I made a solar dryer. It just HAD to be a cool, wet, cloudy year. So far I’ve three quarts of dried apples and one of peels, which I’m going to powder and make applesauce, then dry into leathers strips.

So between apple batches (still waiting for ‘maters and pears, eggplant, leeks, peppers and pumpkins), I can dry the onions. The colander you see in the pic is full of cut greens. The very best thing about drying instead of canning is that nothing much goes to waste. I’ll cut and dry all the good onion greens crisp, jar them for now, then when I’m putting together powder mixtures for, say, veggie bullion or instant V-8 or potato soup or making salts and/or salt-free mixtures, I’ll blender-ize them into powder. Rather than just tossing them into the compost as usual, where they either rot or get eaten by da bear.

Greens shouldn’t take more than a day to dry, I’ll know by this evening because this is one of our rare full-sun days. If they aren’t quite dry by sundown, I’ll retrieve them and finish in the oven at 150º, which I’ve found works quite well. Dried food needs to be fully dried hard to store, as moisture will cause mold and rot. Half-dry stuff needs to go into freezer bags and frozen. The dry-dry will keep for years!

Figure I’ll half the grape tomatoes and dry those too, sort of tomato-raisins that can be added to all sorts of stuff, including a sourdough veggie-loaf I’m planning. The herbs (basil, rosemary, sage, oregano, tarragon, parsley, etc.) are doing great this year, so I’ll have plenty to add. Will let you know how that turns out! Harvested the bulb onions a couple of weeks ago, put some into storage and will slice the rest to dry and crumble into “instant onions” to add to soups and stews during the winter.

Figure after tomatoes (or during) I’ll dry sliced ‘taters too. Make scallop mixture and bottle that all up too. Have taken to saving coffee tins as well as miscellaneous jars and lids, since dry food only needs an airtight container stored in a dark cabinet, so those will hold a lot.

The very best thing about my summer project – the solar dryer – is that I’ll be able to put up most of the food grown, use almost all of it, and have a lot of good organic food on hand all winter. So much usually goes to waste! Now I’m planning a drying rack to be suspended above the wood stove, since judging by weather so far this year it’ll be getting cold enough for a fire by late September, the solar dryer’s not that big, and I’ve fall crops that should also be dried.

Stay tuned for developments on that end, and Happy Harvest!

Concerns about how the fall and winter are going to be shaping up with the “Novel H1N1″ version of swine/avian/1918 human flu is going to turn out. It’s already full-fledged pandemic, is less deadly so far outside of Mexico than originally feared, but is unstoppable and there is no effective vaccine on the horizon. It could do an instant replay of the 1918 pandemic, from which the human DNA elements of this novel strain are derived, meaning it will incubate as not-too-deadly all summer, then come back when the seasons turn to wipe out tens of millions.

That’s not guaranteed, of course. It could as easily piddle out and mutate itself into something not even infectious. Yet so far, that isn’t apparent either. I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry, so I’ve gone looking for the most effective natural ingredients for an immune-booster with likely antiviral properties that will also make a good day-drink just because it tastes good and is good for you generally. For regular cold viruses, bronchial/lung inflammations, sore throats, coughs, fevers, chills, etc. High in vitamins and minerals and antioxidants, plus some indications of anti-tumor agents.

Now, medicinal claims for natural herbs and such are strictly illegal per the FDA these days, so take it all with a grain of salt. Yet at the same time, many traditional herbal remedies have been and are being studied because they do appear to be effective. Many modern medicines are based upon traditional herbal remedies, even if they’re just the alkaloids artificially synthesized. First thing I did was go Googling for herbal “antivirals.”

There are several decent websites with ample enough disclaimers to get around the FDA, which I’ll list at the end of this article. But in addition to the immune-boosting, maybe anti-viral tea (cold or hot), there are some dietary things we should think about doing before we ever get sick. First, a good helping a white rice cooked with turmeric every day is a good idea. Turmeric contains curcumin, which imparts the bright yellow coloring. It’s an excellent anti-inflammatory (for any inflammatory condition), and may be helpful in mitigating the cytokine storm of flu as well as allergies like hay fever in general. Add an equal amount of cayenne or other pepper powder to the pot, as this pepper enhances absorption of the curcumin. Buy fresh powdered spice, store in the ‘fridge door – your new, improved spice rack! Or in a cool, dark place away from kitchen range heat.

When you’re food shopping, look in the fresh produce section for those nice bags of fresh cranberries. Buy as many as possible, freeze them. Not only can you make scrumptious whole cranberry sauce with these (do so, eat often, use raw honey if you can instead of sugar, 3/4 cup honey to 1 cup sugar), you can also make high molecular weight, high Non-Dialysable Material [NDM] with them. Just boil them about 5 minutes in good water, strain. Either drink a few ounces of this strong juice every day, or dilute it with more water and sweeten a bit with honey or maple sugar and drink as juice. If you’ve a blender and food dryer, make mush of the solid leftovers and turn it into fruit leather. Add blueberries (reconstituted dried or frozen) to increase the antioxidant value and enjoy like tart candy snacks!

If you can find good elderberry wine or brandy, get a bottle and drink 2-4 ounces every day as well. Elderberries are among the most ancient and valued of herbals, and may reduce the risk of contracting influenza. Do, but don’t overdo. If you can get a good organic basalmic vinegar (I make my own 1-year aged with native muscodines), take a tablespoonful every day – a healthy dose of basalmic and virgin olive oil dressing on a lunch salad will do. Throw some raw spinach and other actually valuable food-greens in while you’re at it. Good whole grape juice (with sediment) is also recommended, I bottle a couple of gallons of it every year. You’re going for your daily dose of supplements in the form of things you actually eat or drink, not taking a host of capsules or pills over the course of a day. If you’re like me, you get way more value from the real thing rather than somebody’s possibly questionable – and often expensive – supplements, and those generally go right through me.

The point of herbals and natural food-based remedies, in my opinion, is to get you to alter your daily consumption habits toward things that really are whole and good for you, as well as get you involved in preparing them for yourself. It’s a wholistic deal, this natural thing. Your thoughts, intents and actions all count toward the prevention/cure. Pretty soon you’ll find yourself healthy in spite of yourself, looking forward to your next meal or snack! Don’t forget alfalfa sprouts (grow your own) and nuts/seeds and hearty multigrain sprouted or seeded bread. Big on vitamin E.

Now for the great tasting tea with all the antiviral, antibiotic, anti-cancer and immune-strengthening ingredients! I start with peppermint, mostly because not only is it high on the list, it’s what grows like crazy in my garden. Have tons of it, always put it in my summer iced teas and winter hots. Lemon balm is the second ingredient, it’s got even stronger immune stimulating properties. Wild and red rose leaves, wild strawberry leaves and fruit, grape leaves, muellin, Japanese honeysuckle flowers and new leaves, pineapple mint, some ground spicebush twigs. I dry thoroughly and carefully, mix it up well and put it in a well-sealed jar, keep it in a dark place. When I brew a family-size couple of green tea bags (always good for you), I toss a handful of this dry mixture into the pot. Let it steep 5-10 minutes (10 if you’re dlluting), strain into a 2-quart pitcher. It’s still hot, so add honey now, preferably local and raw. I don’t like my tea very sweet at all, so only use half a cup or less for half a gallon. When this is mixed well, add pure water (we have mountain spring water out of our tap!) to fill the pitcher and stir. Refrigerate, drink over ice. I usually have an insulated cup with a lid that keeps it cold, sip on it all through the day.

If it’s cold, you have a cold, or you just want a hot tea, use a rounded teaspoon of the herb blend with a single-serving green tea bag, strain, sweeten with honey and drink hot.

I always fluff the dried mixture to mix it well before using, as some of the ingredients will tend to sink to the bottom of the container. That way you get all of it, and you’ll want all of it. You could add more exotic ingredients like St. Johnswort (good relaxer if you’re sick) or dyer’s woad or some other favorite, even mix with that hearty cranberry juice or whole grape juice. Any way you like it, it’ll help you fend off colds and flu as well as keep you refreshed!