Another Autumn Goodie: Rosehip Syrup

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.

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Another New CSA and a Change of Herbal Heart

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.

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A Busy Midsummer Day

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.

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Homestead First Aid Kit: Insect Encounters

Insects share our homesteads, our homes, outbuildings, land and gardens, and some of them are known to bite or sting. This can cause itchy welts, painful injuries and allergic reactions that make living and working on the land less fun than it should be. So in this second installment in the Homestead First Aid Kit series, I want to address the problem of unfriendly insects and what you can do to both protect yourself from their attentions and treat yourself for the harm they cause.

Disclaimer: Use your head first and foremost. Should a bite or sting show signs of painful swelling, local bruising, expanding allergic reaction, pus, red striations around the wound or symptoms of infection, seek medical attention.

First line of defense is always to wash the area of an insect bite or sting with warm, soapy water before applying any topical agent. Once clean, swab with rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide to disinfect. Applying ice wrapped in a clean, wet washcloth can immediately help relieve itching and reduce swelling.

Use scotch tape to remove the tiny stingers of bees if they are not prominent enough to remove easily with fingers or tweezers. Tape also works well to remove the spines of stinging caterpillars.

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Homestead First Aid Kit: Mullein

I have offered a few posts over the years about this or that home remedy, tonics, tinctures and immune system boosters with the idea that staying healthy is a much better way to live than being dependent on allopathic medicine and too often harmful pharmaceutical drugs. But anyone who does a lot of work around the homestead – building projects, repairs, gardening, wildcrafting, etc. – is going to encounter the slings and arrows of basic life on the land and will need some ready means of attending to various cuts, scrapes, stings, sprains, bruises and such. Thus this series on the essential Homestead First Aid Kit will focus on the best remedies and treatments to be found (or grown) on the land.

I call it a “kit,” but homestead first aid is as much about knowing and doing in real time out on the land when the medicine cabinet isn’t handy as it is about having the right things in that medicine cabinet ‘kit’. And for the most common types of minor injuries people encounter in this lifestyle, I will begin with the most useful plant I know of: Mullein.

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Curses! (Morel Season) Foiled Again!

See those lovely, begging-to-be-harvested morel ‘shrooms in the photo? We eagerly await the first part of April every year here in the wilds of western North Carolina, just for these tasty beauties. But just as Morel Hunting Weekend was called, when dedicated mushroom hunters and able chefs were to converge on the homestead for the annual harvest…

…this happened. Yep. Yet another spring fire, scheduled at exactly the wrong time. Took me by surprise this year, as we’d been getting plenty of rain – it had rained at least an inch just the night before. But the odd spring ritual of train engineers riding the brakes uphill once again sent molten metal (from the brakes) flying into the tinder-dry old kudzu vines and the leaf-fall took off.

Now, the forest loves this kind of fire. It’s too wet to get burning really good, isn’t going to take any trees more than a few years old. It’ll just add some ash to the forest loam just before the underbrush and kudzu gets going, in another month everything will be so thickly green you won’t even be able to tell there was a fire. But alas, we got no morels this year.

Morels are wonderful freshly cooked, but they also dry nicely for use in gourmet dishes later on. But with none to feast on over the weekend of April 9-10 this year due to the fire, we had to make due with some portobellos. These actually worked well as the main ingredient, rubbed with sesame oil and grilled, but if you eat meat this same dish made with morels sliced lengthwise, or thinly sliced portobellos would work as well.

As the portobellos were grilled, in the grill-plate on the second level we put some chunky-cut red onions, green and yellow bell peppers and fresh strawberries, some fresh basil and sage and a short shake of good chili powder, all drizzled with sesame oil and tossed. To this you’d add the morels if you were lucky enough to have any. I know this sounds weird – who in their right mind would grill strawberries? But when it all gets grilled soft and is well tossed, this ‘salsa’ (chutney?) is unbelievably delicious spooned thickly onto the grilled portobellos, or it would be spectacular on lamb or slices of good roast beast if you’re into such things.

For a side we had grilled halved brussels sprouts tossed in olive oil and cracked pepper tossed with fresh raw peas from the garden, over a bed of noodles. I admit I got ‘extra’ strawberry salsa and mixed it in too…

So we got our gourmet meal out of the deal even though the fire got this year’s morels. Sigh. The goldens will be up soon, so all is not lost. Besides, the red kale is almost ready to start picking, beets, salad greens and bunching onions are up, potatoes are in, and the tomato seedlings are up in the window. I figure if I just keep digging, there will be food enough this year.

The Elder Wand

Many readers are probably most familiar with the “Elder Wand” from the Harry Potter series of books and movies, but not all that versant on the lore surrounding the humble elder tree. According to the Harry Potter Wiki, the Elder Wand – made of the ‘given’ wood of the elder tree – is the most powerful magic wand that ever existed.

Author Rawlings drew from the large body of Celtic lore to frame her magical fantasy series, and among that body of lore the elder looms large. The elder tree [Sambucus nigra] is small and usually grows at the edge of woodlands and forest. Legend has it that the elder-mother resided in the trunk of the tree, a being who protected not just the tree itself but any home where an elder was planted. Fairies were said to visit troubles on anyone daring enough to cut or steal living branches from the tree, so any object crafted of elder wood had to be from a branch or tree ‘gifted’ by the fairies to the craftsman by wind or other natural deadfall. New trees can be planted by means of a live twig which will root in the ground like willow, and I am happy to say that there appear to be survivors among the several ‘gifted’ twigs my grandson and I planted in the ground last summer after a storm. Hoping, of course, to have our own elder grove at the bottom fenceline of the garden.

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Concocting a Winter Vita-Tonic

Today it is officially Autumn, my personal favorite season (for the colors and smells and crisp, clear air). Unfortunately, this year it’s been so cool and wet that we basically had no summer. The tomatoes turned black and died, pumpkins are rotting in the field, weeds have taken over and it’s been weeks since we’ve seen the sun.

But now is the time to prepare for winter, beyond just putting up the harvest. We managed to get the H1N1 flu right after school started, but the immune-strengthening tea I’d previously gathered and dried worked quite well to keep it relatively mild. Was only abed for a day, which is less than with any other flu I’ve ever had. It does seem to go straight to bronchi and lungs, though, so I’m glad I was prepared. I’d encourage everyone to either gather and dry the recipe’s herbs now, or get some from a local (and organic) supplier and have it ready to brew. It tastes good enough to drink hot or cold just for fun, and certainly won’t hurt you if you do!

The winter comes with its own issues for keeping yourself healthy. There’s a dramatic lack of sunshine – thus a shortage of vitamin D – and cold weather’s general ill effects on a healthy immune system. There’s also a notable lack of fresh foods (at least, those not from some South American country you’d rather avoid), and a steady diet of grains and processed or preserved foods will often come up short on nutrients that would help keep your family going. Thus as soon as it stops raining cats and dogs here on the ‘stead, I’m planning to gather and process the ingredients for a winter tonic packed with goodies. Only four ingredients (you can always add more, of course), and some local organic apple cider vinegar.

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A Delicious, Immune-Strengthening Herbal Tea

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.”

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The Most Refreshing Summer Tea

During the very hottest portion of the year I get really very sick of lemonade and regular old iced tea. Worse, I find that I can’t actually drink iced tea after noon if it’s been brewed honestly because it has even more caffeine than coffee. Plus, I live in the south where “regular iced tea” comes complete with about a full cup of white sugar per glass. I don’t like my drinks to be sugary, but I get pretty sick of plain old water too, despite having the Planet’s Best Mountain Spring Water right here in the tap.

So I make some cool summer teas from the first plants in the garden and the last to die out in fall – the mints. In fact, cool summer teas are the #1 thing to do with all those exotic mints – like apple mint, pineapple mint, chocolate mint and lemon mint (as well as good ol’ peppermint). To these I like to add a bit of rose hips, just for the tart flavor and excess vitamin C. I harvest those when they turn red in the fall, then freeze them in a jar for later use.

Now, the very name of the mints tells you all you need to know about the specific taste undertones you get out of them. I like to make my tea fresh, as making it of dried herbs requires less material and no simmering (I use the dry for hot wintertime tea). So in the following recipe, use your mint of choice!

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