Thanksgiving is just over a week away, which means one of my absolute favorite fruits are now being sold fresh in bags – often on half price sale – at grocery stores everywhere. For Thanksgiving I use just one of those 12-ounce bags to make my famous Crackberry Sauce (regular whole cranberry sauce with a bag of frozen blackberries added). But I buy as many as I can afford when they go on sale so I can dry them as “craisins.”

I’ve written quite a bit about how much I like drying food from the garden rather than canning. Which is a hot and expensive way of preserving things. But this time of year my handy-dandy home-made solar dryer is fairly useless, there’s just not enough hours of sun to make it work. So I use the oven, which can also be a relatively expensive proposition. Still, good craisins are expensive from the store in those little brand name bags, so it works out fairly. Even better, if you make your own craisins at home you can do some pretty spectacular things with them flavor-wise.

This year I’m doing the “Double-Dry” method for orange flavored craisins. It’s easy enough – just dry the craisins in single layers on flat baking sheets in a barely warm oven – I use the lowest setting, 150º – and keep the door propped open a couple of inches to allow the moisture to escape in natural convection. Takes awhile, and many of the berries retain their size and shape until they’ve cooled completely and wrinkle up into the ‘usual’ raisin-like form. I put these into a glass bowl and cover them with hot orange juice. Then cover the bowl and let the berries reconstitute. Then dry them again.

You could use any type of fruit juice to flavor your craisins, even wine or brandy if you want. Just be sure to label the containers you put them in so they don’t get mixed up. They are wonderful additions to holiday cakes, breads and cookies, or just as handy snacks. If you want your craisins to be sweeter, just thoroughly dissolve a tablespoon or two of sugar or honey in the reconstituting juice, it will get absorbed.

It’s cranberries this time of year, but drying and double-drying fresh fruit works any time of year, whenever the local harvest has big lots at the farmer’s market. I haven’t yet double-dried apples, as dried apple slices go so fast as snacks around here that it seems the hoards just stand around drooling to get them as fast as they can be produced. But if ever I did happen to have dried enough for, say, a Thanksgiving pie, I’d probably reconstitute them in spiced juice (mulled cider or even wine) just before putting them into the pie crust, using leftover juice as part of the filling. Just add sugar and corn starch to thicken.

Cranberries don’t grow in my locale, but blueberries sure do. I’m planning to dedicate several terraces on the upper yard slope to the ridge to blueberries, once I find a good source of thinned bushes I can get for free. Say, 4 100-foot rows of good producers, which works out to ~25 bushes per row spaced at 4′. Good producers will return ~5 pounds of berries per bush (some will give 10, but I’m being conservative here). Once they’re producing at that level, I’ll be getting an average crop of 500 pounds a year! That’s big enough to supply my family and friends as well as the local munchy market. Besides, blueberries come in high summer, which would let me use the sun instead of expensive electricity to do the drying.

As we quickly approach November and the portion of the year when things are mostly bare and brown instead of lush and green, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about things we homesteaders can do with all those fallen leaves that will help our general productivity over time.

We were gifted with one of those noisy, gasoline powered leaf blowers a few months ago when a friend moved from the countryside back into town and had no further use for it. Made me chuckle considering the fact that we live in the middle of the southern Appalachian forest – “thick” by anyone’s standards – and have enough fallen leaves to drive most towns crazy. Worse, living where we do we also get fairly regular fires that love nothing better than a good thickness of dead leaves to burn. I’ve learned through the years that the low-level “brush fires” that don’t burn much other than the leaf fall and a few scraggly saplings are actually good for the forest. So long as they don’t manage to get hot enough to engulf trees. Heck, most of the mature trees can (and have) survive the ground fires just fine, a bit blacker around the trunks than they used to be. And kudzu, of course, loves fire. Always comes roaring back twice as thick as before, and does way more than its share of eating forest trees, engulfing dead cars and stray cattle herds overnight.

Anyway, we feel a need to keep the approximately two acres immediately surrounding the cabin (including fruit orchard and grape vines) as clear of leaves as possible to help prevent any brush fires from getting close enough to do major damage. That means we have a hefty collection of leaf and garden rakes that go to work in November and continue on the job for as long as it takes in decent weather to accomplish that task before the winter snows come along to blanket everything until spring. There are several things to do with those leaves.

When raking them down from the ridge or across the disc golf fairways I always drag along a weathered plastic tarp that has seen better days. That way when the pile of leaves gets big enough to become difficult, I can simple spread out the tarp and rake the leaves onto it, then pick up its edges and drag it on down to the garden. In order to keep the actual leaf-clearing going, I simply dump out the tarp against the fence on the bottom tier of the garden near the compost bins and go back for more. When that tier has at least a foot of leaves on it, I start on the tier above. And of course add leaves to the compost bins themselves.

As the winter progresses the leaves are compacted and self-composted on the beds, are easily turned into the soil in the spring as organic matter to enrich the beds. When the compost bin leaves are turned in with the rest of the garden leavings and kitchen scraps (and mixed every 2nd or 3rd year with some composted chicken droppings or donkey barn leavings), it makes fine mulch to apply once the seedlings are a foot tall or so, to keep weeds down while fertilizing.

A thick mulch of leaves around the fruit trees out to the drip line is always good too, and around the grape vines. This will need to be scattered with crushed limestone in the spring so it gets well watered-in, but it’s good mulch/fertilizer by the time it’s good and black. If there’s a lot of leaf fall, I usually stack it in big piles next to the fence by the compost bins and cover with those leaky tarps to hold it in place. The garden is well away from the edge of the forest, and if there’s a fire in the spring that threatens the perimeter, my piles are close enough to be able to spray with water.

I have found that covering the beds with a foot or two of leaves has led to a filthy soil that works easily and doesn’t need tilling but once every few years. I do that the years when I’m adding animal leavings for nitrogen, and/or limestone to balance the acidity. The beds get so soft that I have to lay down planks to walk on while planting, or I’ll sink right on in. Makes planting easy too, at least for the crops that I start from seed indoors in February and plant out as seedlings in March. Just dig a little hole with a hand-spade and stick ‘em in.

My Aunt used to grow the most spectacular flower beds in her neighborhood. Her secret was to put the leaf fall into black plastic garbage bags and line those up against the back fence. She left them open until after a good rain, then twisted the tops and secured them. By spring the leaves inside the bags had turned to black mulch, and she’d empty that into her wheelbarrow and use it to thickly mulch her flower beds. She told me she never added any amendments, which I would have thought necessary because hardwood leaves tend to be somewhat acidic, but she said the flowers love it, so there was never a reason for MiracleGro™ or animal manure.

Some places out in the country still allow leaf burning, but that seems a waste to me. Sure, ashes are also good amendments to garden soil, but since we heat with wood we’ve always got plenty of those. Besides, burning causes air pollution, and sometimes ends up with the VFD showing up unexpectedly.

Some people shred their leaves before composting. And I admit a chipper-shredder would have been a more useful present than that leaf blower we’ll never use for anything but special storm effects in home movies. Shredding can speed up the process of decomposition greatly, but a big enough pile wetted down and covered with dark tarp (or put into black plastic bags) will decompose by spring into black mulch just fine without shredding. The leaves in the compost bins proper will be well-composted even quicker by greenwaste and kitchen scraps and earthworms – of which my bins are chock full. I’m only slightly concerned about a lack of direct sunlight on the bins since a peach tree decided to grow out of the bin and looks way too healthy to cut (we LIKE peaches!), but I’ll work around that.

So. The trees will be nearly bare in a couple of weeks, so don’t bother raking now when more leaves are still scheduled to fall. Once they’re done, get busy fire-proofing your acreage and transporting those leaves to where they’ll do the most good. Your garden soil will thank you for it, I promise!

As plans for the new water system move forward, we find ourselves in sudden possession of quite a lot of high-end good-sized PVC piping of various lengths, assorted odd couplings, some strips and scraps of new carpeting (good for insulation of trenches), and a surprising amount of aluminum ductwork. Salvaged from various places. Not being content to leave what look to be perfectly good but not immediately needed lengths of such pipe and ducting behind, we’ve been rescuing as much as we can get from the dumpster-side repository at the contracting facility next door to hubby’s day job.

Some of these lengths of thick-walled new pipe are 3 or 4 inches in diameter, so I’ve been considering how we could use them as we head into this major project, other than as the ‘head’ flow from the new spring to the ram jet in the pumphouse. Given as it’s nearly July, I have also been scouting around for some form of air conditioning that doesn’t require an air-tight home and way more not-cheap electricity than we care to use. We only need it occasionally during the hottest hot-spells of summer and only at times when it’s inconvenient to spend the afternoon in the basement, out under the shade trees, or down at the swimming hole. As part of that research, I’ve been looking at geothermal engineering concepts and technology as well as at modern iterations of good old evaporative cooler (a.k.a. “Swamp Cooler”). Which looks great and works well in places like Arizona, but is not so great here in the southern Appalachians where it’s around 85-90% humidity all the time. Geothermal still looks good, so…

A Do-It-Yourself heat pump! But without the compressor/heat element assist. This could work.

This old cabin is built right into the side of the mountain, thus the ground (basement) level stays almost AC cool all summer. I’ve previously considered installing an in-floor fan basically where the wood stove pipe rises through to the main floor and simply sucking that cool air upstairs, but in my experiments with portable fans to blow the cool air up, warm exterior air simply gets pulled in from the side of the basement that isn’t earth-shielded and then the basement level is as hot as the rest of the cabin. The installed in-floor fan is still a good idea, but needed to find cool air to replenish what’s blown up to the main floor.

This 100-year old chestnut cabin is anything but air-tight, and I must admit I like the fact that it “breathes.” We live on a beautiful mountain and love the fresh, green (and often pollen-laden) air, the constant breeze and such. Want to be able to refresh the air summer and winter to a certain extent, and this is where those pipes may come in handy to supply both cool air in summer and warm air in winter.

We’ll have to do quite a lot of excavation to get the water from the new spring and ram jet up to a new cistern above the house, which will also require a new supply pipe to the house from the hill-side rather than the bottomland-side. So I’m thinking we could hook these pipes together with ‘u’ joints (with an above-ground intake at the back end) as a geothermal collector about 2 feet deep out in the side yard. The ground doesn’t really freeze here in winter (just not that cold here), so the air that runs through this underground collector would pick up heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Then we could hook that to a small in-wall exhaust fan into the basement level to provide cool air in summer for the in-floor fan to blow upstairs. Thereby keeping the basement level cool while circulating to the rest of the house. Working just the opposite in winter.

In the dead of winter the air from this collection system is likely to be only around 50º F. But during the day when the leaves are bare and the sun is in the south, we get a hefty amount of passive solar heating when the sun shines. And the wood stove in the basement (our “central” heat) has always worked great to make the place toasty on the coldest of nights. The geothermal should help even things out quite a lot, and likely even save wood. If we can pipe in 50º air to where the wood stove is cooking and it’s 25º outside, the whole system should be more efficient. And the house would still ‘breathe’ in a healthy manner.

So once we get from the creek and springs up here to the house (on our way up the ridge where the new cistern will be), we’ll be doing work on two projects at once. As it takes shape I will be sure to take lots of pictures and report regularly on the progress. Again, stay tuned!

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!

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.

The vinegar is a preservative and solvent that will keep the vitamins and other nutrients active and accessible to your body in easily assimilated form. There’s no cooking involved, so delicate nutrients won’t be destroyed. Even herb teas have some issues with that, in that they are brewed with boiling water which destroys some of their effectiveness. So first thing on the list is to obtain a quart or two of the very best cider vinegar you can. Don’t substitute white vinegar, as it’s mostly just chemicals in water. You want the natural goodness and medicinal/nutrative properties of the cider vinegar.

First, cider vinegar is a natural germicide. It helps to fight infection and eases inflammation. It also helps to prevent blood clots and contains vitamins C, B6, E, beta-carotene (vitamin A precursor and anti-oxidant), potassium, magnesium, calcium, riboflavin and thiamin. It also stimulates excretory organs and aids digestion. Plus it tastes good!

Second ingredient is dandelion roots. We grow some hefty dandelions in a lower terrace of the garden for greens, but also for roots in the fall. They’re easy enough to harvest with a potato-fork or hand trowel in soft ground. The roots go deep, usually straight down but sometimes they’re forked or grow at angles around rocks and such. I usually just loosen the soil around at about a foot distance and a foot deep, then pick them out by hand carefully. Dandelion root is a rich blend of vitamins A, B, D (you’ll need this one), iron, magnesium, zinc, potassium, sodium, calcium and silicon. It’s a mild diuretic, eases digestion, and promotes healthy blood circulation.

Third ingredient is chickweed, of which we’ve plenty in the yard and garden. We don’t use artificial fertilizers or weed-killers or other chemicals, but if you do you should obtain your chickweed (as well as dandelion) from someone who doesn’t. It’s high in vitamins B1, B2, B3, E and C, beta carotine, calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, iron and zinc, and contains flavinoids that aid in absorption of nutrients. It’s rich in chlorophyll, contains saponins, is a rare plant source of essential fatty acids and is useful against respiratory infections. Chickweed is renowned for reducing inflammation and speeds healing. You’ll want to keep a good growth of chickweed going all year, as it’s delicious in salads as well as excellent for your skin (along with cleavers). But this time of year, we’re talking tonic.

Fourth ingredient is rose hips, best source of vitamin C anywhere, plus A, E, K, B-complex. Generally, wild rose hips need to experience a freeze before they turn red and soften enough for harvest. First freeze in my zone should come in October, so this particular ingredient will be added later to the tonic extract.

The recipe for tonic is easy. First, wash and drain the chickweed, pat softly with paper towels. You can cut it into small pieces with kitchen scissors, go ahead and dip the blades in boiling water for a few minutes first. Put about a loose cup of chopped chickweed into a sterile quart jar. Trim and soak the dandelion roots in cold water, agitating occasionally. After the dirt is mostly off or softened, drain and scrub them carefully with a vegetable brush or old toothbrush (pre-soak brush in boiling water for 3-5 minutes). When they’re good and clean, chop them into small chunks and add to the jar(s) with the chickweed. No need to dry the roots first. You’ll want 1/2 to 1 cup of root chunks per jar. Fill the jar(s) with cider vinegar, leaving enough head space to accommodate about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of rose hips when they’re in.

Cap and store in a cool, dark place. No need to process, the vinegar will preserve and serve as solvent for the nutrients. You may wish to strain out the ingredients at some point (I don’t bother) and re-bottle. If so, wait for at least a month for the nutrients to infuse the vinegar. Take a tablespoon of the vinegar per day, however you like it. I like it on salad, but sometimes I just like to take it straight. You can use it in cooking, but that will destroy some of the nutrients you’re aiming to ingest. This tonic extract is very rich in vitamins and minerals plus anti-oxidants and flavonoids, etc. Your body will absorb more of them in this form than you’d get from a pill or capsule too.

The fruit crops were abundant this year due to lack of a hard late freeze as well as due to a killing late freeze last year that killed off the apple, pear and cherry crops altogether and reduced the grape harvest by at least half. The trees and vines think they’re dying after such a bad year, so will produce like crazy the next year. Yet oddly enough, there are no acorns or hickory nuts or wild walnuts on the homestead this year. Either they’re all getting eaten as fast as they fall by deer, or there just aren’t any. So again this year I’ll have to gather my acorns a bit south at my sister’s place on the lake.

Cherries are the first to ripen in early June. My family eagerly looks forward to them and I’ve never had to try and preserve – they get eaten just as fast as I can gather. Then comes the apples in August. This year the golden delicious were fat and happy, enough to turn into pie and apple butter in addition to being eaten regularly fresh off the tree. The pears fall in September and there were plenty this year to process. These are hard cinnamon pears, not great to eat straight because they’re so tough even after sitting for a few days, so I make pear butter that needs very little sugar and is great on toast or mixed into hot oatmeal or cream of wheat.

The grape harvest starts with concords in early September and then muscodines later in the month. With those, I thought the fruit harvest was done for the year when I happened to discover now in mid-October a lone American persimmon tree [Diospyros virginiana] in the back corner of the yard behind the shed that is absolutely loaded. We’ve lived here 16 years and I never saw fruit on this 40-foot tall tree, so I guess it must have reacted to last year’s late freeze just like the other fruit trees did. Hmmm… what to do with persimmons?

These persimmons are a pretty golden with patches of red, about an inch or two across. To eat fresh you should wait until they fall and are quite soft and pulpy, picked they are just a bit unripe and tart. I quartered and seeded some of those and packed them into a jar with vodka. These will make tasty tidbits during the holidays. The rest, which I’m gathering on a sheet tied around the trunk and staked up off the ground to catch the falling ripe fruit, I will dry for use in my holiday fruitcakes and fruitcake cookies.

Dried persimmons are a little softer and sweeter than dried dates, but with similar consistency. Traditionally persimmons in Asia (some big enough to weigh a pound) are halved and dried for three weeks in the sun, then finished off in low ovens. I will use the low oven method exclusively, to avoid the “no-seeum” issue (tiny gnats that manage to come right through screens and mesh). I haven’t had any real experience with persimmons – this is the first time I’ve had them readily available – so I’ll let my readers know if they turn out well enough to use in baking. They sure taste good, so the trick will probably be to keep the family from eating too many at one sitting.

That can be an issue, I’ve learned from my researches on the internet, because of their tendency to induce diarrhea if you aren’t careful. The good news is that persimmons are high in vitamin c, packed with riboflavin (vitamin B2), and contain tannins as well as anti-tumor compounds and phytonutrients. They can be as good of antioxidants as dark grapes, and in traditional Chinese medicine the fruit is used to regulate the ch’i – the vital power. Below are some links to information about persimmons for those interested or who find that they too host a tree or few on their property.

Wikipedia: Persimmon
Persimmon – Diospyros, Ebenaceae
Persimmon General Crop Information

Part of homesteading in the country or in the city is to become familiar with the land and make it work for you. We grow as much of our own food as we can, and many of us will also (attempt to) grow as many useful plants as possible for various medical and/or income purposes. In the two terraces beneath the grape vines at the top of my garden we grow culinary herbs. The perennials have their beds and spots, the annuals are usually scattered in amongst the vegetables farther down the hill.

But there are other useful plants growing elsewhere on the property. There is blue flag growing at the edge of the driveway and bordering the disc golf fairway (orris root). There are large thickets of wild roses above the cabin and trained to a welded rebar ‘tree’ in the back yard (rose hips). There are small flower beds sporting yucca and yarrow, joe pye and wild sunflower. Our forest is thick with dogwood, tulip poplar and maple, growing in the shade in rich forest loam are ginseng and goldenseal and black cohosh and Mayapple. I can gather purslane and chickweed and cleavers galore, all are great in a muslin bath bag for a hot soak, soothes and moisturizes skin.

Becoming familiar with the useful plants that grow on your property – whether they grow wild or are managed, or you plant and tend them in beds, is a long-term project. You should know how to identify them in all stages of their growth through the year, as well as what parts are most useful when, and for what. For instance, the poplar buds in spring are known as “balm of Gilead” and make a fine ingredient in skin salves for cuts, scrapes or just dry, itchy skin. The winds of March blow them down by the basketful from the tops of 100-foot trees, I gather them as soon as the wind stops blowing. In fall the dogwoods sport bright red berries that are excellent tonic ingredients, rich in vitamins and flavinoids but only available in the fall. The wild rose hips have to freeze before they finally turn red and are ready to harvest, usually in November. Mayapple roots are best gathered in May, they’re pretty much invisible and impossible to find after that, once the above-ground plant has died back to nothing.

Here are recipes for some useful herbal teas that can be made with ingredients a homesteader either grows right near the house or can grow somewhere in the yard. As always, any serious condition should be treated by a doctor (if you’ve got one or can afford one). Until the access situation gets worked out one way or the other, millions of people will have to rely on themselves.

Migraine Headaches

Migraines can be life-crippling, and there just aren’t any “cures” or even treatments that aren’t themselves debilitating for sufferers. Herbal teas for the condition stimulate the sense of smell and help to calm nerves, and are gentle enough to be most useful well before the headache appears. Here is a good ‘breakfast tea’ that stimulates vasodilation (opens vessels and promotes peripheral blood flow)…

6 parts rosemary leaves (needles)
4 parts peppermint leaves
4 parts balm (bee balm) leaves
4 parts sweet violet leaves
3 parts feverfew flowers
1/2 part sweet violet flowers

Some of these ingredients are available for only a few weeks a year, so should be gathered and dried when they are available and kept in a tightly closed jar in a dark cupboard until all ingredients are gathered, then the tea should be well mixed and stored in its own container.

Colds and Flu

I get a good old cold twice a year, spring and fall. My husband seems to avoid colds and can go for years without getting one. But when you’re head is stuffed full of snot and you are coughing and you have a fever and ache all over, a good, soothing herbal tea can make you feel much better than just a couple of aspirin can. The best action of an herb for this purpose is to strengthen your immune system, allowing your healing powers to heal your cold.

For adults:
3 parts elder flowers
3 parts rose hips
2 parts willow bark
2 parts linden flowers
2 parts chamomile flowers
2 parts hawthorn leaves with flowers

For children:
4 parts linden flowers
4 parts mullein
4 parts elder flowers
4 parts rose hips
4 parts thyme

You don’t want to give the willow bark or chamomile flowers to young children, otherwise the ingredients are fairly interchangeable. Sweeten with a little honey and the tea is soothing, will promote sweating, and the hot liquid helps break up head and bronchial congestion. For coughs you’ll want anti-inflammatory herbs and those that will coat and protect inflamed mucous membranes.

For coughs:
8 parts plantain leaves
8 parts coltsfoot flowers
2 parts marshmallow root
2 parts mallow

To make a decongestant you can purchase a half-ounce of camphor crystals from a pharmacist or natural herb shop and mix it in a Pyrex pot with a cup of cottonseed oil (sweet oil, from a pharmacy or hardware store). Heat slowly and stir until the crystals dissolve completely. Remove from heat and put into a glass container with a tight fitting lid and allow to cool. Rub this oil on throat and chest when congestion is present.

Congestion can also be treated with vapor. Put a big handful of fresh-cut peppermint in the stoppered bathroom sink, fill basin with hot water. If your water heater isn’t set to scalding (and it shouldn’t be), fill the sink half way with hot tap water and add a quart or two of water brought just to a simmer on the stove so there is plenty of steam. Drape a towel over the head and lean over the sink catching as much of the rising steam as possible. Breathe deeply through nose and mouth to break up the congestion.

Calming Nerves

Life is stressful in the modern world, so a nice soothing and nerve calming tea at the end of a long day is a delightful luxury. It can help you get a better night’s sleep and that is certainly a useful quality!

6 parts hops
4 parts chamomile flowers
3 parts peppermint leaves
3 parts hibiscus flowers

If there is some general depression present along with the stress, replace the chamomile flowers with St. Johns Wort herb (aerial parts of the flowering plant). Sweeten with raw honey and add lemon if you like.

In the next installment of this series I’ll talk about further uses of common herbs for treating relatively minor health conditions and injuries.

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Who Needs the Knowledge?
Part 2: More Herbs and Their Uses

People used to think about water as an infinite resource. They could use it, abuse it, pollute it and sink their garbage into it with impunity, it would never run dry and would somehow clean itself of sewage and chemicals and industrial waste. This short-sighted view of life’s most precious and necessary resource justified the great post-war “turf boom” expansion of the population into designed suburbs of cookie-cutter houses with neat green lawns and homeowners’ associations that decided they could dictate what residents were allowed to plant, whether there could be a few weeds in the mix, and how often those green expanses of useless grass had to be watered and dosed with chemicals in order to maintain the cookie-cutter expanses of identical expanses of useless grass.

Now that we know water is a lot more precious than we thought, that climate change is imposing long-term droughts on entire swaths of the earth, that unwise allocations have drained ancient aquifers, and that a lot of the water people have to drink is polluted by things nobody really wants to know about, it’s a good time to re-think our entire approach to water. This is yet another necessary change in humanity’s relationship with the natural world that must start in the countryside and outer ‘burbs with motivated individuals who will commit to doing things differently, and educate their neighbors about how it’s done and how great it can be made to look.

Most of the surface and groundwater on the planet is salty. Shortages of fresh water have led to conflicts and open warfare through history. In Bolivia the American corporation Bechtel has attempted to corner the water market in order to privatize it, even making it illegal for individuals to harvest rainwater from their own property. Their model for this ridiculous legislation comes from Colorado, where it’s also illegal to harvest rainwater (because it diminishes downstream supply).

Food not Lawns informs us that 270 billion gallons of water are used in the US every year just to water expanses of useless grass on people’s lawns. Out west in the desert areas of the country 70% of water use is just to sustain turf lawns. We simply cannot keep doing this and still expect to eat and live. If your homestead doesn’t yet have rainbarrels with attached faucets and hoses for watering your garden crops, this is definitely the year to install some, one per down-spout from the roof. The food crisis has hit America and will only get worse. Homesteaders and small farmers – CSA memberships and organizations – will have to take up some of the slack in providing locally grown food to communities, thus we need to be first in line to totally rearrange our water priorities.

We can also educate others about growing native plant species (that do fine with just annual rainfall) where expanses of useless grass used to be – and turning unused areas of their property into vegetable patches and fruit thickets and orchards instead of trying to maintain expanses of useless grass. Grape vines growing on fences can offer summer privacy as well as tasty grapes. Miniature apple, peach, cherry and nut trees can add shady spots for sitting as well as fresh fruit.

Some suburbanites might be amazed at how much food can be grown in small spaces with proper management, or how great it feels to serve a healthy salad with tomatoes and cucumbers to the luncheon club that was entirely grown right there on the porch and in the yard. Getting more involved with our food and food production could do a lot to help encourage a more healthy diet generally, and an appreciation for where food comes from and what it’s really worth.

Once someone in an area visits a naturalized homestead and returns to remake his/her own lawn into a naturescape of natural beauty and healthy water use, it’s just not that hard to start a regular movement. Homeowners in any suburban subdivision are members of their homeowners’ associations. They can arrange for speakers to present at meetings, host xeriscaping field trips and tours, get the rules changed to allow those expanses of useless grass to turn into something naturally useful and beautiful.

Local creeks, rivers and water treatment plants will have to deal with much less of a load of toxins and chemical pesticides and herbicides, overall water use will drop significantly (saving homeowners money, important in a shriveling economy), and neighborly greetings over the fences will include garden talk and food exchanges and good advice and complements to the landscape, instead of just grumpy waves by sweaty, grumpy guys behind loud lawnmowers and leafblowers. Everyone’s lifestyle improves!

Many of us committed homesteaders either live near suburbia or actually in it. Or we know people who live there, and who are so caught up in their dead-end robotic conformities that they could really use something new and hopeful. Check out some of the resources below and see if there’s a way for us forgotten rural dwellers to add something back to what we left behind. Changing the world is a daunting task if you look at it in those missionary terms. But it’s not that hard if all you really want to do is expand your environmental skills to as many neighbors as you can!

Links:

Square Foot Gardening
Food not Lawns
Plant Native
Easy Lawns
Yard Beauty