Providence Acres Farm

Handmade Hair Toys

2012-01-29T16:01:00.001-08:00

I made the decision a few years ago to grow my hair out, very long. Only recently have I discovered using hair forks and sticks and I love them, particularly forks! These are usually very expensive at stores and online, so I have been experimenting with making my own.

UPDATE: You can find my hair forks for sale HERE.

I have a DIY personality to the extreme! lol! I must try to make it myself before I give up and buy one and I can make so many more when I do it myself.

The picture above is a hair fork I recently made. (I wouldn't be caught dead wearing pink. This one is for a friend, or for sale.) It's steel, shaped, sanded and painted by me with beads added. Here is another picture of the one above:

I have made several of these. Here is one I made for myself, in my hair. I like copper! It goes with just about everything I wear and I have other copper jewelry to go with it.

The copper wire is not as neatly done as I would like. I was just playing around with old wire I had on hand. I'm going to redo it with neater, tighter wrapping.

I also have them painted with a high gloss lacquer in dark violet, burgandy, rusty copper, burnt red. I hope to acquire other colours soon, maybe some blues and greens! I am going to experiment with twirling the paint colours or just dipping the pointed ends into another, coordinating colour!

Making things yourself is so much more rewarding and fun than buying everything, and cheaper too! I can make one to go with everything I wear, give some to friends and sell them!

If you want to buy one, send me an email. The one at the top is the only one (not mine!) that I have finished so far. I love the way they look in the hair.

If you want to see a how-to video on the above French roll hairstyle, you can get it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNO9O8N4Mv4
or here: (I like this one better.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOgbGP7bCls

or a figure 8 bun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0loExGWWgiM

And, no, I don't know who she is, have never communicated with her, nor am I getting anything for sending people to her videos.(She should send me a wooden hair fork for the free advertising...)

Seriously, it is so easy. I hope to have a lot of mine for sale at some point, maybe soon. You just never know!

World Class Meatloaf!

2012-01-27T19:20:00.000-08:00

This is a fantastic meatloaf! It's juicy and delicious with just a slight hint of cheddar flavour. It's Lloyd Gallant's recipe, developed in his kitchen.

World Class Meatloaf!

3/4 lb ground beef
3/4 lb ground pork
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup milk
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 large egg
2 tablespoon parsley
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon sage

Mix well, bake at 350F for 1/2 hour covered with foil. Remove foil and bake another 1/2 hour.

This makes a great meatloaf with well browned sides and bottom!

Wintersowing

2012-01-24T05:44:00.000-08:00

Well, winter is here, sadly. It's been winter here for about a month now. We probably won't see the ground again until spring. The only way a hardcore gardener like myself can survive this, is to plant in the winter too. I know it's not the same, but at least I am playing in the dirt and sorting through my seeds, dreaming of spring.

"Wintersowing" is a relatively new thing, as far as gardening goes. I first heard the term about 15 years ago, and that is new for gardening terms. It refers to someone planting seeds in containers and putting them outside so they get the freezing winter temps they need to germinate, but are up off the ground and enclosed. These wintersowed containers will warm up and thaw faster in the spring than the ground and the seeds will germinate much sooner.

You could plant these same seeds in the ground in the fall and get the same, eventual result, but wintersowing is faster. It also gives gardeners a chance to plant and garden in the middle of the winter.

Wintersowing is better done in deeper containers. The more shallow ones, as in the top picture from a few years ago, dry out too fast in the spring. Plastic pop and clear plastic juice bottles work well.

Here is one I did today. This is echinacea 'Double Decker'.

I drilled a few holes in the bottom center and cut more around the outer edge with a knife. Then I cut it almost in half, just enough that I could lift the lid to fill and plant but not enough to take the lid off completely. I want it as securely attached as possible outside.

I filled it with storebought potting soil, since our ground is frozen solid, and planted the seeds. Echinacea seeds need a winter to germinate and they also need a little sunlight, so they get covered very little, if at all.

I stuck in a label and put it on my south facing deck with a block of ice behind it to hold it in place during winter storms. I don't have many of these seeds and would be quite frustrated should it blow over and be destroyed. I planted about half of the echinacea 'Double Decker' seeds that I have, saving a few in case these don't germinate. (It's a foolish gardener who plants all of his seed!)

I have a few more seeds to wintersow this year. This is just the first one. I'm looking forward to these special echinacea seeds for the flowerbed. As far as the herb uses go, it doesn't matter which one I have since they all have the same properties. I have single purple ones and the 'White Swan'. These flowers look like this:

Almost anything that needs a winter to germinate can be wintersowed. I plan to do a lot more this month, if I have the time.

Winter Bulb Care

2012-01-14T07:19:00.001-08:00

That is my favourite dahlia, growing in the chair in the picture above! It's a 'Keri Blue', called that because of the slight blue tint in the very center. It's beautiful and I take no chances with these during their winter rest in my cold cellar. Also wintered over in the cellar are other dahlias, cannas, glad, 4 O'clocks and geraniums (pelargoniums). Many winters, if left alone, the small dahlias will dry up. Some of the other ones do too. This has always been a great disapppointment to me in the spring!

This year I decided to take steps to make sure that didn't happen! I read that it helps to take them out of storage in early January and soak them for a day or so, then dry well again and pack in cold storage for another couple of months.

I did that this past week. I took out the small dahlia divisions and small new dahlia bulbs, as well as the 4 o'clock roots and soaked them in room temp water for a few hours. I then laid them out on the kitchen floor on newspapers to dry for a few days. Today I repacked them in wood chips in plastic bags in the basement.

I had planned to leave them for a few more days but our wonky male cat, Shadow, who has cabin fever in the snowy winter, spent his morning attacking them and shredding the papers. lol! Since they were dry again, I put them away. It won't help him. He just attacks the little rugs and the furniture, rolling around on the floor and killing them with all four feet and teeth! lol! Abby, the female cat, prefers to play with and carry off any little hard things she finds around. Anything is fair game. Hubby swears that she has stolen a couple of his tiny wrenches from the desk. I have seen her batting other things to the floor and knocking them around, as well as finding wood pellets scattered all over the house in the morning! (I won't be the only one glad when spring comes! lol! We love them both dearly!)

I only soaked the small and new dahlias that would, in past years, be dried up in the spring. In past years I have tossed them down there to be completely forgotten until spring. This year I have new ones that are important to me, so I am tending them carefully, checking on them whenever I am down there and making sure they are not getting shrivelled.

The geranium roots are hanging up, dry. This is the first year I have wintered them over in this fashion. Usually I pot them up and grow them as houseplants all winter, and I did do a few like that, also. Geraniums love spending their winter growing in a sunny window and bloom continuously, right up until they go outside in the spring. I didn't have room for all of them this year. I am considering soaking the bare geranium roots hanging in the basement, too. Has anyone done this and does it help or will they be fine hanging bare root in the cold cellar until spring without intervention?

I had calla lilies and some dwarf white cannas last year, but neither survived last winter in storage. I grew them all from seed and was very disappointed when they didn't make it.

Organic Hair Colour - Henna

2012-01-11T04:48:00.000-08:00

One HUGE step in my journey to become self sufficient is switching to organic hair colour. I made this step last week and I am thrilled with it!

I have coloured my hair for decades. My natural hair colour is light brown with reddish tones. It's a dirty dishwater, dull, mousy colour that takes on a greenish cast in the winter, so I have coloured it since I was old enough to make that decision, even more so now that it is half gray. Don't get me wrong, I like gray hair on a lot of people. Long healthy gray hair is beautiful! Mine has a reddish/yellow tone. I would have to colour it gray anyway, so why not colour it red instead, since it looks natural on me. I have the orange skin tone and green eyes. It's the colour that looks best on me, so I have gone permanently, organically copper red.

Natural, organic hair colour is not dull or subtle. It's amazing in it's strength! I'm talking about henna here (lawsonia inermis), the red organic hair colouring herb. There is also indigo, which is black and cassia which is a more subtle golden yellow shade. You can mix them to get the colour you want. I went with straight henna and I love the colour!

You can buy boxes of so called "henna" hair colour in various shades off the shelf these days, but they have a lot more than just the organic hair colour in them. Even the "organic" ones have a mix of herbs with very little henna in them. So little that they are not permanent, but wash out after several weeks and fade. Other so-called "henna" hair colours are not even "organic" and contain metals, salts and some have chemicals in them. These commercial "henna" hair colours are not to be used on chemically treated hair and if you do so, you could end up with a really ugly colour, such as "frog butt green". This is the reason most hairdressers will warn you again using henna, so make sure that you buy only pure henna powder. If you get "body art quality" (BAQ) you can be sure it is only pure henna. Sometimes you can buy it cheaply at an Indian grocery or drug store in your area. It's worth a look. Read the label!

Pure henna, sometimes hard to find, will not harm your hair or give you anything other than a shade of copper red. (Online sources listed below.) You can use it on top of any chemical colour you want and even over a perm and get nothing but a shade of copper red. What shade will depend, of course, on the colour under it. Henna will not lighten at all, not one little bit. As a matter of fact, you will probably get a colour a bit darker than you started with.

If it comes in other shades, its not pure henna. Henna only comes in the one colour, copper red. Indigo can be added to henna and/or cassia to make it darker or used alone to make black. You can add cassia to henna to make a less intense shade of red. You can mix the main three organic colours to suit your hair in any proportions you want. You can also add a few other herbs to shift the henna shade a little, such as paprika, but it takes a LOT of these other herbs to shift the henna colour even a little.

So beware, henna is always a deep copper red, but if that is what you want (and I do) you will love it!

If you do colour your hair with henna, don't be shocked at the brightness of the colour for the first few days. You will need about 2-3 days off work to colour it and let it settle down before you take it anywhere significant. The henna colour is VERY bright and intense at first but it does change a lot in three days.

This is my colour immediately after henna:

This is four days later:

So don't be alarmed at the brilliant colour of orange you will have for those first couple of days. It will darken and settle into a beautiful and natural looking copper.

Another difference between the two pictures is the deep conditioning treatment. Many henna mixing instructions say to use lemon juice. The acid is necessary to break down the leaves to get better dye release but you can use vinegar or tea instead. I made the mistake of using lemon juice (3 parts water to 1 part lemon juice) which is drying and I already have dry hair, so I had to deep condition it afterwards (more on the deep conditioning treatment below). After further research (and after using the henna!) I learned that the acid is not necessary if you mix the henna with water and then freeze it. As you know from reading my wine making posts, freezing breaks down the cell walls and releases the juices and the dye. The next time I use henna, for my roots, I will just freeze it and forego the lemon juice altogether or I might mix in a little apple cider vinegar insead. No more lemon juice on my hair! It's dry enough already! I also mixed in 1 egg just before use, to furter strengthen the hair by adding protein.

Pure henna will not damage your hair in the least. It will strengthen your hair, forming a permanent bond with the keratin in the core. Henna and cassia are both great conditioners and will leave your hair strong and shining! People have already commented on the shininess of my hair since the henna.

Henna is permanent and rarely fades much. I assume mine will fade after a summer in the sun and it will fade after a dip in a chlorinated pool, but very few other circumstances will cause it to change colour. It is permanent. You don't flirt with henna, you marry it. Henceforth (from now on) I will only need to do the roots and brighten up the colour with a little henna mixed with conditioner occasionally. It's this permanence that first drew me to henna as an option for hair colour.

I intend to grow my hair to my knees and keep it there. Colouring the ends repeatedly is just not an option at that length. The longer your hair gets, the older and more delicate the ends become. I would not subject my hair to continuous chemical colouring at that length and it would cost me a fortune, as well.

This is the recipe I use for deep conditioning:

- 4 parts conditioner (I use Outrageous and love it!) Some conditioners with dimethicone will cause this mix to curdle, so a cheaper one is better to use for this.
- 1 part pure aloe vera without alcohol
- 1 part honey, heated to kill the enzyme which produces peroxide or it will lighten your colour. Not boiled, just hot. This will warm the conditioner when added, making it work better, too.

Mix well and apply to hair, coating every strand. Cover with plastic and then a hat to keep it warm. Leave on for 1 hour or all day or overnight. The longer, the better. Next time I am considering adding an egg for the protein. I might also consider using coconut oil on my hair ends regularly. Out of all the fancy oils people use on their hair, coconut is the only one that actually penetrates the hair shaft. I just wish it weren't so expensive!

These are the colours my hair has gone through in the past two weeks:

I am thrilled with my switch to organic hair colour! I am looking forward to having copper hair to my knees! (When I get there. it's a s.l.o.w.w.w.w process...)

Again, I cannot stress this enough: Use Pure Henna Powder!

Here are a few places it can be ordered online in Canada and the US:

Canada
They have different shipping costs, ranging from $5.95 to $12 but, at least, there won't be any customs surprises or duty charges.

Any Indian Grocer or drug store near you...or:

Henna Vancouver = The best deal. Pure Rejasthani henna (from Rajasthan, India). Cheapest shipping.

Mehndiskinart in BC

Mehndiandmore sells BAQ powder $5/cup

Dragonfly Designs in Edmonton

Atlantic Henna in New Brunswick

Henna4you

Healing Body Art

And lastly:
Hennaart in Edmonton. I would not recommend this company. Their advertising is deceptive. They lead you to believe you are getting bags of 100g each when you are actually only getting 50g bags. Nowhere in the shopping cart or Paypal does it tell you the size of the bags, either. They have been very careful not to let the customer know exactly what they are getting. It is a good product, shipping to Ontario is $11 for 300g, but beware, you are only getting 50g bags!

I feel that they misrepresented their product and would not buy from them again!

USA

Any Indian Grocer or drug store near you...or here are just a few more suppliers:

Halalco - Only buy the pure, body art quality henna. Other hair mixes are listed.

Hennasooq

Mehandi.com

Henna Caravan

Castleart

Homemade Detergent Update

2012-01-10T07:47:00.001-08:00

A while ago I wrote a couple of posts about making your own laundry detergent and making your own dishwasher detergent. The laundry detergent was a roaring success and I have been happy using it since with no problems! Not so the dishwasher detergent.

I have used that recipe for dishwasher detergent with citric acid for many months. At first it clumped so badly it was unusable. Then I added some dry rice to absorb the moisture and it helped, but didn't eliminate clumping altogether and I didn't like putting rice in my dishwasher. The clumping is the citric acid absorbing moisture which makes it work not so well in the dishwasher.

It did work VERY well when first mixed, however and all the dishes came out sparkling clean with no detergent residue whatsoever. It's the citric acid that does it. Now I use store bought dishwasher detergent or my own homemade without citric acid in it. I keep the citric acid in a small jar by itself and just sprinkle a little into each load - no more detergent residue! We are much happier doing it this way and with very little added trouble. I top up the rinse agent each time anyway.

For those of you who are on the journey to self sufficiency and are having difficulty with the dishwasher detergent recipe, try adding the citric acid separately.

Self sufficiency is a continuous journey, one that starts with the first step. That first step is not all that hard to take, either. I don't believe anyone actually gets there. I don't think it's possible to achieve true self sufficiency. You wouldn't be reading this on a computer if you had...

Wine Making Book

2011-12-31T08:08:00.001-08:00

As most of you know, I make a lot of organic wines at home. I wrote a book, about a year ago, entitled "Making Organic Wine At Home". It is free for anyone to download on the "Freebies" page of my farm site.

This week I added recipes for the wines I have made recently that we have liked. I use acid blend instead of lemon or orange juice. It's much more exact and much easier to control. Acid blend and pectic enzyme can both be found at any winemaking supply store or ordered online.

I hope these recipes will make winemaking easier for you and will help to give those timid people a good start. Wines without sulphite taste so much better, cleaner and you can really taste the fruit. A reasonable amount will not give you a headache, either. It really is a great hobby!

A New Look At Christmas

2011-12-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

Now that our children have grown and gone, we have the opportunity to re-evaluate some of our lifestyle habits and change them. A few years ago we took a second look at how we celebrated Christ's birth at Christmas and become dissatisfied with society's traditions, especially the feverish, stressful ones.

One decision we made two years ago is this: we no longer exchange gifts with anyone. Gift giving no longer has any meaning for society and has lost it's meaning for most Christians. The "Christmas Rush" has just gotten rediculous! Children look at Christmas as a time to get presents, instead of it's true meaning, that of worshipping and praising Christ for His birth and most precious gift to us.

This one change has made our holidays much more peaceful, with no worry about what to buy for anyone who will be giving to us, making sure what we give is equal and appreciated, last minute shopping in the long lines and noisy crowded stores and where we will get the money for all of this. We don't go near the stores during the holidays now. It also puts any guests at ease about gift giving. No one need worry about forgetting a gift, or deciding what to bring. No more gift giving related stress at all, for anyone!

We only wonder why we didn't stop doing this sooner! What a great change this has made! We now enjoy our peaceful time off praising Him for His gift and enjoying the company of a few small family members who come for a small and quiet, simple meal.

We don't load everyone up with food anymore and only cook a turkey if we feel like it (Great roast beef this year!). Easy simplicity is what we have at our meals during the Christmas holidays. This way, even the mom and cook get to relax and enjoy some vacation time at home.

Children will react to the quiet, serene environment by quieting down themselves, especially if candy is not everpresent. Just because it's the Christmas holidays does not mean one can load up on sugar and forget to eat properly! Nor is it a reason to replace all one's "still perfectly good" toys with new ones. If you use Christmas as a time to get presents of things you really need, keep this in mind: Everything is a lot cheaper after Christmas!

We also don't have a tree and didn't bother putting up any decorations this year. Christmas trees are not a celebration of Christ's birth, so we don't bother anymore. We just don't have time for it and living out in the boondocks, as we do, no one sees the decorations anyway. (It might be different if we lived in town, but that will never happen again!) I did think about putting a big red bow on the mailbox, but never did get to it. Decorating is just not that important anymore. The Christmas holidays have a whole new meaning now!

Is it time you took a closer look at how Christmas is being celebrated in your home? Society as a whole has dropped "Christmas" anyway and has just started calling this giant frenzy "The Holidays". Another reason to drop out of it altogether...

Should I be saying "Bah! Humbug!"

Making Herbal Salves

2011-12-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

I have begun to make many various herbal salves. We particularly like the purslane salve! (Read more about purslane in a previous post "Purslane".) That stuff is fantastic at removing the itch and sting of insect bites! We have been continually amazed this summer at how well it works. I got several big fly bites on my face that just went away in an hour or so after using purslane. These bites usually result in a swollen and black eye for days. (I'm allergic to them. I don't know what kind of flies these are but they always go for my eyes!)

I have stopped using mosquito spray and just opt to pick a purslane leaf, crush and rub on a bite as soon as it starts to itch. Sometimes I have a sit outside and rub purslane on several at one time, then forget about them completely. No more itch!! It really is a necessity out here where we live!

I just let the purslane grow where it wants to grow. It comes up all over the garden and makes a great ground cover to keep the real weeds and grass down. It's good cooked or raw and is less bitter in the afternoon. It's one of my favourite herbs, so I made purslane salve this year.

I also made a healing salve that has a long list of healing, antibacterial, antiseptic, antifungal herbs. It contains yarrow, thyme, oregano, comfrey, lavender, calendula, heal-all, St. John's wart and mullein flowers.

Basically a salve is oil (I use olive) that has been infused with herbs and strained. It is then heated gently and wax added to make it more solid. That's it, in a nutshell. I also add vit E as a healing agent and a preservative, although most of the herbs in the healing salve can take care of themselves.

Thus far, I have used beeswax but will soon be switching to soy. Vegans don't like beeswax and with good cause. The downward spiral of the bees is alarming and some less healthy, productive focused beekkeepers have not helped. The continued use of the old style Langstroth hive is not helping, either. Top Bar Hives produce less honey because the bees rebuild the entire things from scratch after it is harvested, which takes time, but it also allows no room or time for moths to lay eggs or other parasites to set up house. While there is less honey produced with the top bar hive, there is a lot more wax! The use of old hives and recycling materials and equipment by unscrupulous beekkeepers also leads to more disease and parasites in the bee population.

At any rate, we are switching to all natural and organic soy wax for making salves. Soy wax is also less expensive but cost is not the only issue. Soy wax is quite a bit more protective than beeswax, remaining in place and keeping out moisture longer and it is a more easily renewable resource.

The salves that I am making now are in little plastic pots (see above picture). I might switch to the thin metal tins, if these don't work out, but those tins are so hard to open with they have salve and wax in them or you have slippery hands. They are also more expensive, a cost we would have to pass on to the buyer.

In the mean time, I am going to put some of these little plastic salve pots on my farm site for sale. Each one holds 8g of salve and I am going to charge $2.50 plus shipping, for them. The salve goes a very long way and will last a long time. Purslane salve only takes a tiny bit on the bite to work well.

If you are interested in buying them from me, just send me an email:
providenceacres at hotmail.com

Strawberry Wine!

2011-12-06T04:58:00.001-08:00

The strawberry wine is ready to bottle and clear as a bell all by itself! Perfect wine! It smells so good, but I know it's green and not ready to drink. (I tasted it.) It needs to age at least until July 2012 when it will be a year old. I will try it again at that time.

This is the strawberry wine bottled. I also bottled what was left of the one gallon of apple I have been drinking and the one gallon of chocolate mint. Both cleared on their own and look marvelous! I got two small bottles of the apple and three large bottles of the chocolate mint. It sure has a lot of chocolate mint flavour! Wow, it's minty! I'm going to like that one! I think those will be gone quite quickly...

I had one gallon of maple and 5 gallons of rhubarb that were also finished and ready to bottle, but a little hazy. I had to add a clearing agent to them. I have been using chitosan to clear wines and used sparkaloid to clear beer but both of those are made from diatoms. (Diatoms are tiny, tiny shelled sea creatures used to make DE, diatomaceous earth, commonly used as a filter.) My closest friend has a grown son allergic to shellfish so I don't want to use those if something else is available that will do the job. I do have an electric wine filter, but it's so much work to use.

I went with bentonite, racked the wine off any lees, sprinkled the bentonite in the top of the jug and shook it up really well. I wanted to de-gas them anyway. A few days have gone by and it's looking quite clear now and ready to bottle when I have the time.

Making my own organic wines from scratch is such fun, especially when they turn out so well! The rhubarb is even drinkable, for those of us who are used to drinking wines a little green...

You can download my free ebook, "Making Organic Wine At Home" on the "Freebies" page.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

2011-12-04T08:34:00.001-08:00

I am a firm believer in recycling everything possible. The new catch-phrase for this is upcycling. It's become the hip thing to do. It's a great way to keep things out of our landfill and it's cheap too!

I reuse cardboard all over the garden. It keeps the weeds down between the rows and can be covered with mulch for more visible public areas. It sure cuts down on the mowing and weeding! This year I have begun to cover the more problem areas with carpet. Not the vegetables and things we eat, but the weedy trouble spots beside the garage and under the deck. I have succeeded in covering the entire under deck area with carpet and around the cold frames. I have also covered about a 3' perimeter around the garage and the parking area under the defunct truck. (You know you are a redneck if you have one car that runs and 6 that don't. We only have the one that doesn't work...)

I use shredded paper as mulch over the cardboard and around the plants in the veggie garden. I pick up bags of it on recycle pick up day in the nearby commercial area. It makes great mulch and sort of sticks together when it's wet making a good weed barrier. The only problem is that it is WHITE and causes some questions and comments from people that see it and think it's snow in July. It's also free! (I like free!)

Another way I recycle is using those plastic and styrofoam containers from the grocery store for seed starting and seed drying. Some even come with clear lids to make a small greenhouse. These make good winter sewing containers too.

I collect paper bags all year for drying seeds and herbs.

I buy curtain sheers at thrift stores to dry the seeds that are too tiny for my screens (also recycled) and to use as straining material for winemaking. I'm hoping to use them in cheesemaking, as well, but don't know if they will be fine enough. I think it's worth a try, WHEN and IF I ever get there...

I get three gallon buckets from the grocery store bakery and use them for everything. This one is a garbage can. I use them in the freezer to store winemaking fruits until I have enough material and time to make wine. I use them for overflow compost, for toting smaller things and for storage. I also use four litre ice cream buckets for a lot of things too. Both are food grade and can be used to store food stuffs, keeping out weevels and other varmits. We don't get many with the cats around.

These are one of my favourite scrounge/recycle finds - Fisherman's Friend display boxes! I have 6-8 of them in my seed store office. They have been great containers for things like envelopes, labels and so forth.

I recycled some old wood into a shelf in the window of my grow room. There is nothing growing on it now but soon it will be full of seedlings!

Another one of our favourite recycle projects is a pizza edger made from an old pan. It's the perfect size and keeps the edge from burning. It helps make perfect pizza every time.

I recently picked up a "like-new" sink and night table I got free! I plan to put them together into a bird bath for the garden in the spring. I'm going to spray paint the sink black. You can read about my plans to make a planter out of a dresser and the chairs I found at the side of the road in a previous post "Junking In The Garden".

Patio doors made into cold frames:

I have two cold frames and another two patio doors. I am hoping to get two more cold frames installed in spring 2012.

My best recycle project is my new tire garden. I plan to use all the small ones to build a small tire wall across the back of the garden, blocking the bush and overgrowth threatening to take over the garden at any time. It is at the very back of the back garden, against the jungle edge. I extended the garden into the wild area with cardboard in the spring and added the tires. I have cut the top off of the big ones where I plan to grow some of the heat loving vines, like cantaloupe and watermelon, that I have trouble with now. I might also grow tomatoes in the wall top, letting them hang over the side instead of staking. I'm considering covering the tires with fabric to keep the tomatoes away from the rubber and clean. The heat of the black tires raised off the cold ground will add much needed heat to the garden. I know that some of you are trying to find ways to keep your garden cool. Up here we look for ways to warm it up.

I also realize that there is some controversy around gardening with tires due to the health problems of teens with prolonged exposure to the new turf made from ground-up and broken down old rubber. I have done a lot of research into this. It will take years for the tires to break down to that point and should be safe for awhile yet, according to Mother Earth News. Also, the checmical that is causing the problems, which will be leached into the soil from the degrading tires in tiny amounts, is only a problem in nutrient poor, sandy soils and that mostly applies to root crops. The broken down ground up rubber used for the artificial turf is a different matter.

There is also some problem with using carpet in the garden, since it also contains chemicals such as fire retardent and so forth. Although I take these nay-sayers and alarmist with a grain of salt, I won't be using it in the vegetable gardens. I have plenty of areas, such as under the deck, where I need all the carpet I can get without putting it around food. I use cardboard in the gardens...and a hoe, of course :-) Make sure you use jute back carpet so the rain and air can get through to the soil.

Here are a few ideas I have seen but not done myself, that I think are great, but probably won't do myself. I think I will skip the first one but I would like to make the sandals!

Rednceck Barbecue:

Sandals crocheted from plastic grocery store bags:

Shed made from skids (pallets):

Are you doing all that you can do to reduce, reuse and recycle?

Overwintering Plants

2011-11-30T02:51:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that time again. Time to prepare the beds for winter. Last week I dug up the dahlias, cannas and glads. Some people have success keeping the glads in the ground here, but it's borderline. Since we never know how cold it will get (had -40c several years back) I dig them up too.

I am blessed with a stone cold cellar under my very old porch, that's the right temperature and damp enough to keep them fairly well over the winter. I do lose the little dahlias so I keep them in big clumps until spring. I split them in the spring, if possible. They have their "eyes" then so I can make sure each split has a growing piece.

The little pieces dry out, so this year I plan to bring them upstairs around Christmas and soak them all in water for a few days before putting them back into cold storage. I also planted a few small ones in pots of soil and watered them before putting some in the cellar and I put some on a sunny window to grow as houseplants for the winter.

Wintering them over as houseplants is an experiment and something I have not tried before. I cut them right back and let them dry out before potting them up and they have small sprouts now. We'll see how it goes. I have read that they don't do well indoors and are prone to spider mites. I have some tobacco handy to boil and make organic insecticide. I wouldn't spray it on food items but I don't plan to eat the dahlias. (Dahlias are edible, btw ;-)

I labelled the large clumps and put them in plastic bags full of cedar chips and put them on a stone shelf in the cellar. In the past I have wrapped them in newspaper and put into cardboard boxes but, as I said, the little ones have dried up in the past so too much moisture is not a problem. Last year I tossed them all in a heavy plastic storage container and the big ones survived and even sprouted before I got them potted in early spring.

I like the soaking in water at Christmas idea. I will soak the geraniums and four o'clocks too.

I dug up the showy geraniums this year and am attempting to winter those roots over in the cellar. This is the first year for this also. I washed the soil off and hung them upside down in the cellar with the onions. Some I potted up to grow as houseplants. I do this every year with geraniums and it works great. They bloom their little heads off all winter long and get quite large. I usually make several cuttings in the early spring so I have a lot of them for the big pots outside in June.

Another item I am attempting to winter over for the first time this year is the rosemary. I have 5 large, beautiful plants and don't want to lose them over the winter. I potted them all up and put two in the house and three in the cellar. I plan to keep them on the dry side in both places. I have also read that rosemary doesn't do well indoors, but we'll see how it goes.

I have some flourescent lights I would like to install for an indoor winter garden. I'm just not sure how to do the wiring and I need to get bulbs for them, I think. I haven't really looked at it yet. I'm sure I'll figure it out. I have become quite adept at DIY scrounging, troubleshooting and puzzles! I like a challenge!

I want this indoor garden enough to spend some time on it soon. I'm hoping to grow some tomatoes, peppers and lettuce indoors all winter! I have a large patio door that faces south with no overhang and lots of space for shelving. I only need to supplement the lighting at both ends of the day during the cheap power hours and maybe all day on weekends when days are their shortest.

Gluten Free Baking

2011-11-23T06:37:00.001-08:00

I have been experimenting in the past year with gluten free recipes and have been successful in making some excellent baked goods for celiacs and others who simply want natural, healthier choices.

Since this has gone so well, we have decided to start offering our gluten free baked goods for sale. We added a "Gluten Free Baking" page to our farm site. It will be mostly for local residence, since postage would add even more to the cost. Gluten free baking is expensive as it is, since most of the items contain xantham gum and other costly ingredients but they are worth it. The gluten free baking on the market is presently not very good. As a matter of fact, most of it is terrible, hard, odd tasting and just not very good, while still being expensive.

Our baked goods are delicious! Normal people who eat them, like them and can't believe they are gluten free.

It's one more step in our journey to self sufficiency!

Check it out at offwheat.com !

Keeping a Log

2011-11-16T11:27:00.001-08:00

...is really hard sometimes.

I am starting a gluten free baking business and am doing a lot of baking right now, tweaking recipes and so forth. I log everything, or I try to. Today Shadow is hanging out in the kitchen with me. He is usually sound asleep during the day. He stays out all night hunting, keeping the field mouse population under control. (He's a fierce predator around here! Nothing smaller than he is survives!)

Today, every time I sit down to write, he's sitting in front of me. He is just so obvious about his attention seeking. lol! Animals really have no guile! and, yes, he's a "Mama's boy". His mommy loves him dearly :-)

(I would never call him that to his face, however. As I said, he's a large, fierce, heavily muscled killer with huge teeth and claws, who purrs loudly if you even talk to him...)

He can sometimes make it hard to print things, as well.

Our Seed Store

2011-10-27T04:59:00.000-07:00

Our 2011 Seed Store will be open Nov 1st!

Here are a few samples of what we will be offering this year:

This year we are introducing seed from our

Hopi Black Squash!

See our blog post "The Perfect Squash!"

Seeds for this particular variety will be limited, due to a cold, wet start and extreme dry heat.

Our own
Portugal Beef-heart Tomatoes

Hopefully enough to fill all orders for them. We do apologize to those customers who were unable to purchase them last year when we sold out of seed.

We also carry other varieties of heirloom tomatoes, including San Marzano, the best paste tomatoes in the world!, Ailsa Craig and Reverend Morrow Long Keeper. We will have seed for the Manitoba tomato, developed to grow large and ripen in the short Manitoba season.

From seed to fruit in one season!

Ground Cherries and Chichiquelites!

Great for pies, jams and wine! We will have both of these seed for sale this year.

Medicinal Herb Seeds!
Meadowsweet, Mullein, Feverfew, Self Heal, Goldenrod, Evening Primrose,Queen Anne's Lace, Echinacea, Motherwort, St. John's Wort...

Tobacco
Virginia Gold Variety 100+ seeds per packet
Did you know that commercial cigarettes contain 599 additives, some poisonous carcinogens?
See the list here

Anyone can grow tobacco, anywhere. If you have a short growing season, you will need to start it early indoors. I am sure most northerners are used to starting seeds early indoors to grow tomatoes, peppers and many other common short season vegetables. Tobacco is no different and is no trickier or more demanding than your vegetables to start from seed. Isn’t having your own, home grown, organic and free tobacco worth a little time and effort?

Herb Garden Volunteers

2011-10-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

Does your garden reseed itself? Mine does, all over the place, but I like that! It gives me a second crop of everything, naturally. It's not in neat little rows, of course, it's in patches. Larges patches of spinach, green onions, chives, cilantro, thyme, oregano and anything else I leave to go to seed. I let everything go to seed because I have a seed store.

A lot of it escapes before I harvest it and I always lose some in the harvesting anyway, so I get a lot of volunteers. I love them! I am still cutting from a large, reseeded patch of spinach resulting from just one plant left to go to seed. I have a lot of cilantro growing all over the garden. That stuff really grows wild! I have baby chives coming up all over, baby dandelions, baby purslane, baby thyme and baby oregano.

I'm sure I would also have baby catnip, mint and choc mint, if I let those go to seed too. I will probably let them go that long next year so I have seed for the seed store but this year I cut them back and dried them.

If you keep your garden spotlessly clean, weed regularly or mulch heavily you will never know the joy of harvesting volunteers. I like my garden the way it is. Everything grows well and is green and healthy, shown by the ability of the plants to reproduce themselves all over the place. I do pull some weeds, but the useful things get left to grow.

Ground Cherry Wine

2011-10-14T05:41:00.000-07:00

We love ground cherries, also called "Cape Gooseberry". It's not a relative of the real gooseberry, but is sometimes called that. We call them "ground cherries" and they are delicious!

The key to their superb flavour is to eat them only when they are fully ripe. They fall off the bush when they are still a bit green, sometimes they fall off when they are really green. They need to sit out at room temperature for days to dry the husk and ripen. They are ripe when they are a bit orange and not just yellow. The skin also takes on a slightly translucent quality.

We often have large baskets full of them ripening on the counter. This year, due to all the rain we have had, I spread them out on screens dry and to help prevent mildew. Many grew mildew in the husk anyway, but were still good to eat. They just had to be washed and wiped off first. The mildew only grows on the husk, leaving the fruit whole and unharmed, although a few fruits had gotten moldy enough to throw out.

In spite of this, I managed to accumulate enough ripe ground cherries in the freezer to make about 6 gallons of wine. We grew a LOT of ground cherries! I planted a few rows of ground cherries in the garden but we also had about that same amount reseed themselves along the edge of the garden where they grew last year. I knew I was going to need a lot for wine, so I left them there. (I spent quite a bit of time this year, weeding them out of the strawberries. They really reseed!)

I froze them in buckets and when I had reached about 5 gallons of frozen berries, I made wine. I started with about 25-30 pounds of berries, previously frozen and soft.

I covered them with water in my two large pots and used the hand blender to roughly cut them up. Then I followed my usual wine making routine.

I have begun using an acid test kit, since I am making wines with a lot of different things. I knew the ground cherries would be a bit low on the acid, so I added three white tea bags for the tannin and tested the must when it was ready to make, after boiling, etc. It tested at about a 3.5 - 4 so I added 3 teaspoons of acid blend, bringing it up to about a 6.5 - 7.

Here's the ground cherry wine recipe:

25-30 pounds of ripe ground cherries
23 cups sugar
3 white tea bags
3 teaspoons acid blend
3 teaspoons pectic enzyme
Water to make 6 gallons of wine

I have this 5 gallon carbuoy full and a one gallon jug, as well.

It's a beautiful colour!
I now have six large carbuoys of wine, making. They are: ground cherry, wild grape, strawberry, raspberry, rose petal and rhubarb. I have enough hibiscus petals in the freezer to make another one. I just need another carbuoy. I might wait on that until I bottle the rhubarb, which should be soon.

I also have a few one gallon jugs making, as well. They are: 2 wild grape, 1 ground cherry, maple, apple and chocolate mint. If the chocolate mint is as good as I think it will be, I might consider making 5 gallons of it next year. At the rate that stuff spreads, I'm sure I'll have enough leaves for it by then!

I do love making wine, especially from materials I have grown or foraged myself!

Queen's Anne Lace - Useful Herb?

2011-10-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

Well, I have been shocked a few times this year while researching the things that grow in our fields! Some of these things that I have always considered "weeds", are now being looked at in a new light. Queen Anne's lace is one of these.

I know it makes a great cut flower and is one of those things you can colour by putting food colouring in the water, but I had no idea it was such a useful medicinal herb!

According to the "Carrot Site" (the "Carrot Museum"), Queen Anne's lace leaves "contain significant amounts of porphyrins, which stimulate the pituitary gland and lead to the release of increased levels of sex hormones". Really? Really? Is this true? Hmmmm...interesting... What does this mean, exactly?

More from The Carrot Site: "Queen Anne's lace (a wild carrot): "is an aromatic herb that acts as a diuretic, soothes the digestive tract and stimulates the uterus. (Pregnant women should definite NOT use it!) A wonderfully cleansing medicine, it supports the liver, stimulates the flow of urine and the removal of waste by the kidneys.

An infusion is used in the treatment of various complaints including digestive disorders, kidney and bladder diseases and in the treatment of dropsy. An infusion of the leaves has been used to counter cystitis and kidney stone formation, and to diminish stones that have already formed...A tea made from the roots is diuretic and has been used in the treatment of urinary stones.

An infusion is used in the treatment of oedema, flatulent indigestion and menstrual problems. The seed is a traditional 'morning after' contraceptive and there is some evidence to uphold this belief.

Ongoing studies are proving this to be a very valuable plant, useful in many areas of alternative medicine, a few are Alzheimer's, Crohn's disease, Parkinson's disease, Infertility, Asthma-preventive, most types of cancer, Diabetes, Leukaemia, HIV, Spina-bifida, Migraine headache, obesity, and much more, even the common cold. Used as a medicinal herb for thousands of years as an abortifactint, anthelmintic, carminative, contraceptive, deobstruent, diuretic, emmenagogue, galactogogue, ophthalmic, and stimulant..."

Wow! According to these people, Queen Anne's lace will fix just about anything! I wonder how much of it is true...

Apple Picking

2011-10-10T13:34:00.001-07:00

We picked apples today! It was such a beautiful day for it too! We are having a summer like week this week with warm temps and sun, all week long. It's a good time to get some fall work done outside!

My friend, Janet, and I picked the apples this morning. Hubby worked on another job.

We have several apple trees but most don't produce usable apples or they have just little ones. There is only one really good apple tree that is worth picking. I have no idea what kind of apples they are. I haven't made an effort to become informed about apples. I know 'Delicious' apples, 'Cortlands' and my grocery store favourites, 'Royal Gala' which taste more like pears than apples, but I am sorely lacking in apple knowledge otherwise.

This is what we harvested this morning. It's a lovely bunch of apples, especially for an organic, never sprayed tree. That's it pictured at the top too. Beautiful apples! If you know what kind they are, please tell me.

The deer have already eaten all the apples within their reach, (which is also our reach). We didn't have a ladder so we had to climb. I climbed up into the tree and out on the branches to shake them, then we picked them up off the ground. The apples are the perfect ripeness now. Ripe enough to fall easily when the branches are shaken, but haven't fallen on the ground on their own yet. We didn't have a ladder so we had to do it this way. It worked well enough. We got lots of good apples!

I haven't climbed a tree in decades! I used to be good at it, once upon a time. I have become more careful in my older age. It was a humbling experience. I have lost some of my nerve, but I'm thinking maybe that's good thing...

The apples will sit in the kitchen for now, where I will work on them here and there. I had thought to leave them on the porch until I had time to work on them but, after remembering that we get racoon visits, moved them into the house. I must always remember the racoons!

These will be made into apple sauce, pie filling, baked apples and the good ones will go into the cold cellar for storage. We can keep apples in there, at least this year, because we don't have any other veggies in there with them. We didn't grow potatoes or carrots. (Ripening apples emit ethelene gas that makes other things ripen very fast and not keep very long.) The squash will be in there, but just for a short time, until they are ripe, then they go into the freezer. I need the squash seed for the seed store.

It was a lot of work but well worth the effort! We are looking forward to homemade applesauce and pies!

I am also planning on making apple wine, of course, and I can do that in the middle of the winter :-)

All in all it was a great endeavour and well worth doing, even though I would not have wanted to do it by myself. Big jobs always go much faster and are more fun with a friend! Don't you think so? Thank you Janet for your help!

Update next day: I graded the apples into three categories and put them all into the cellar. They are in shallow boxes with newspaper between each layer. I have read that they keep the best if individually wrapped in newspaper but I'm not doing that! lol! This is the next best thing. I will probably process the "eat me first" category within the next couple of weeks. Possibly into wine, definitely into apple sauce.

I love having our own organic apples!

Homemade Gluten Free Bread!

2011-10-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

I have found a recipe for lovely, wheat free, gluten free bread! It rises tall and is light, fluffly, moist and soft. It doesn't get hard and can be used for anything you would use regular wheat bread for. It makes excellent toast!

It uses white bean flour and xantham gum. Xantham gum is very expensive but the recipe doesn't use much so it should last awhile. One loaf uses 2 rounded teaspoons. It is a lot cheaper than the gluten free alternatives and just as good!

I got this recipe from the "Mennonite Girls Can Cook" site. They have a lot of good gluten free recipes I am going to try, now that I know they are good.

My oven was a bit too hot, making the top too dark, but next time I will turn it down a bit or maybe try taking it out sooner.

I made my own white bean flour by grinding white kidney beans in my little coffee/spice grinder. It did a good job but it took a long time and the grinder got hot. I want to get a small flour mill. I think I will have trouble finding one in Barrie, however. If you know where I can get one nearby, (not mail order) please let me know.

Here's the recipe:
INGREDIENTS:

1 cup warm water
3/4 cup milk
3 large eggs
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp. molasses
2 rounded tsp. zanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup white bean flour
1 cup Kinnikinnik bread/bun mix (or 1 cup brown rice flour)
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 tsp sugar
1 pkg reg. yeast or 1 tbsp.
optional - add 1/2 cup of raw sunflower seeds

DIRECTIONS:

In heavy duty mixer beat eggs slightly, then add other wet ingredients. I proofed the yeast in the warm water and molasses called for in the recipe and put it all into the 'wet' ingredient mixer bowl after it bubbled.

Sift together dry ingredients and then add to the liquid, beating hard for about a minute . You will see the batter change and become smooth . (Constancy needs to be right.. batter that is too thick will not rise .. too thin it will rise and then fall. If it looks like a too-thick cake batter then it is probably just about right !)

This recipe makes one regular size loaf.

Line the bottom of the pan with wax paper and lightly oil the sides. It wills tick more than regular bread.

Let rise for about an hour until loaves round over the top of the pan.
Bake for 45 minutes at 350' - or until tops are nicely browned - do not underbake.
This bread keeps well, also freezes well and after the first day is good toasted !

I am going to make my own gluten free pizza dough next and then gluten free pastry with a squash/pumpking pie!

There are a lot of gluten free white bean flour and xantham gum recipes out there that I want to try!

Update Next Day:I have eaten half this loaf since I baked it yestserday morning, without any ill effect in migraines, digestion or blood sugar.

I'm thrilled! I haven't been able to eat bread like that in a decade! It makes great toast!!

I also has no "bean" flavour. It taste just like brown bread!

I have read that the store bought white bean flours do taste beany, but not if you grind it yourself. I bought the white kidney beans at the bulk store and ground them myself. This is also something that I can grow myself ;-)
(Should I ever find the time!)

Squash - Rooting Bucket - Forsythia

2011-10-07T04:03:00.000-07:00

These are our "Hopi Black" squash, grown this year. They are curing in an upstairs, south facing window. I like to leave them out in the sun to cure for a few weeks in the fall, until a hard frost threatens, but this year I had to bring them inside. Something was eating them (racoons, deer...) and one was smashed completely when a deer ran over it.

They will still cure here, it might just take a bit longer to ripen completely. That's ok, there are a few that are almost there now. This is not a large harvest of squash for us but I'm just glad to get any at all! It was such a bad year for squash! I planted 19 plants of this variety and this is all I got, but it's enough. We also got two "Upper Ground Sweet Potato" squash and three little "Sweet Dumpling" squash. I will probably have a few seeds from those two varieties for sale, as well, but not many.

I am not growing the "Upper Ground Sweet Potato" squash next year since I am switching too butternut and only want to grow one moschata. I will be growing the other two again, however. (I will always grow the "Hopi Black" Squash! It's our favourite!)

These are the best squash we have ever grown. You can read more about them in my previous post "The Perfect Squash". They are an old Hopi indian heirloom variety.

I will have these seeds for sale in my seed store when it opens on Nov 1st!

On another subject: Remember the post on "The Rooting Bucket"? Well, it didn't go as well as would have liked but I did have some success. I planted it full, with everything organized and well labelled. Then the racoons came.

They dug a lot of it up. They pay me a visit about once a month, just to let me know that they are out there and will wreak havoc whenever and wherever they please. So far it has been little, except for the blue corn. They destroyed every single ear. (So those of you who are waiting for the blue corn seed are going to be dissappointed, unfortunately.)The next morning I was able to replant most of
the forsythia and some of the other shrubs without labels.

Most of the forsythia cuttings rooted! I have enough to plant a small hedge now!

I'm very happpy about that, as I love forsythia bushes! Not the trimmed little landscape plants but the ones left natural to grow tall and wispy, bending long bright, yellow fronds to the ground, swaying in the wind. I especially like them with daffodils around them, being the same colour and blooming at the same time. They are beautiful!
(That's not my picture on the right.)

I also had a couple of other shrub cuttings root but, without labels, I don't know what they are. lol! Oh well, I do like surprise gardening and they were free. (I like "free" too!)

Junking in the garden

2011-10-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

I love junking! I go to garage sales every Saturday morning, whenever I can, even for an hour or so before work. I rarely come home empty handed. Sometimes I only find one little thing, but it's usually worth it.

The top picture is one of my large 'Keri Blue' dahlias in an old bentwood rocker with the seat removed. It has been such a good holder for the large dahlia, that I plant it there every year.

I recently found two other chairs for the garden while on a short walk down my road, looking for nettles and jewelweed. I live next to the county forest and people are always dumping their trash there! It's shameful!

On this particular occasion I was overjoyed to find these two black iron chairs. There is some glare on them in the picture. They are all black, not gray at all. They are a bit broken at a seam or two so not usable as chairs, but they will make great holders for the new large dahlias I acquired this year or any other large, tall plants that need a holder in the garden.

They are standing in front of an 'Intense Purple' amaranth growing in the flowerbed. It's a beautiful and stately small tree where a little shade is needed beside a bench and it grows to at least 8' tall in the one season (it's an annual). One of my favouite things to grow in the flower bed!

After seeing the dresser planter on another site, I searched around and asked on Freecycle for an old, solid wood, small dresser with 3-4 drawers, to make one myself. I got one from Freecycle and the owner even delivered it! Wow!

This is the dresser I have stored away until spring, when I am going to make a planter out of it. I will refinish it first, either stained dark with fancy handles or painted white, distressed and heavily sealed, of course, for outside use.

I love repurposing furniture and unusual things in the garden! I have a couple of old teapots that do well as planters too. I also have an old pair of rubber boots that I am considering using as planters in the spring. You just never know what you can re-use as a planter in the garden.

I like broken, mosaic tile in the garden too but I haven't done anything like that yet. It's on the list! I have gone so far as to collect some interesting tiles. (It's time I don't have!)

Whimsy and imagination are part of what makes up a fabulous and interesting garden space!

Four O'Clocks

2011-09-27T03:29:00.001-07:00

This is my pink four o'clock and this is the biggest one I have ever had! I wintered the root over in my cellar with my tender bulbs last winter. It's the first time I have tried it and I will be doing it every year from now on. It really makes a difference in the size! I have seen one house in town that has them 4' tall! I have always known that it could be done but just never bothered until last year.

I LOVE it! It blooms almost right away by the end of June and just keeps blooming until the frost takes it.

It is very easy to overwinter in the right conditions. If you already grow cannas, callas, dahlias, caladiums or other tender bulbs, you can overwinter four o'clock roots. I treated it exactly the same and it came back this year. I grew new ones this year, as well, a yellow and a white. I will be keeping those over the winter this year too.

Previously, I just grew them new ever year and was happy with them that way. I started them from seed early in the spring and planted them out after the last frost, with the peppers and tomatoes. I only need 3-4 of them so they didn't take up a lot of space growing that way, but this is so much better!

Mine are solid colours but they come in "broken" colours too. I would LOVE some of those! If you have seeds from broken coloured 4 o'clocks and want to trade seeds, let me know. They need to be all broken colours and not open pollinated with solids near by. It's been my experience that the solid colours are dominate. I have tried it before.

Each year they get bigger. I am hoping the pink one will be 4' tall next year! I don't know where I will put them. I'm rapidly running out of room in the new ornamental garden expansion. I'll have to expand again next year! lol! (It's not funny, really. I haven't finished this one yet.) I already don't have room for all my dahlias.

Do you grow four o'clocks? Do you keep them over the winter? As practical as I am, I still love my flowers!

I am going to have my four o'clock seed for sale in the seed store this year.

Milkweed as a Vegetable?

2011-09-24T01:59:00.001-07:00

Below is part of an exerpt from Forager's Harvest. It fit in so well with the foraging post that I had to post it here.

I had no idea that milkweed was even edible! I am going to try them next spring, especially using the silks like cheese!

"Milkweed season begins in late spring, just about the time that leaves are coming out on the oak trees, when the shoots come up near the dead stalks of last year’s plants. These resemble asparagus spears but have tiny leaves, in opposing pairs, pressed up flat against the stem. Until they are about eight inches tall, milkweed shoots make a delicious boiled vegetable. Their texture and flavor suggests a cross between green beans and asparagus, but it is distinct from either. As the plant grows taller, the bottom of the shoot becomes tough. Until it attains a height of about two feet, however, you can break off the top few inches (remove any large leaves) and use this portion like the shoot.

Milkweed flower buds first appear in early summer and can be harvested for about seven weeks. They look like miniature heads of broccoli but have roughly the same flavor as the shoots. These flower buds are wonderful in stir-fry, soup, rice, casseroles, and many other dishes. Just make sure to wash the bugs out.

In late summer milkweed plants produce the familiar pointed, okra-like seedpods which are popular in dried flower arrangements. These range from three to five inches long when mature – but for eating you want the immature pods. Select those that are no more than two thirds of their full size. It takes a little experience to learn the knack of how to tell if the pods are still immature, so as a beginner you might want to stick to using pods less than 1 ¾ inches in length to be safe. If the pods are immature the silk and seeds inside will be soft and white without any hint of browning. It is good to occasionally use this test to verify that you are only choosing immature pods. If the pods are mature they will be tough and bitter. Milkweed pods are delicious in stew or just served as a boiled vegetable, perhaps with cheese or mixed with other veggies.

Silk refers to the immature milkweed floss, before it has become fibrous and cottony. This is perhaps the most unique food product that comes from the milkweed plant. When you consume the pod, you are eating the silk with it. At our house, we eat the smallest pods whole, but we pull the silk out of the larger (but still immature) pods. Open up the pod along the faint line that runs down the side, and the silk wad will pop out easily. If you pinch the silk hard, your thumbnail should go right through it, and you should be able to pull the wad of silk in half. The silk should be juicy; any toughness or dryness is an indicator that the pod is overmature. With time, you will be able to tell at a glance which pods are mature and which are not.

Milkweed silk is both delicious and amazing. It is slightly sweet with no overpowering flavor of any kind. Boil a large handful of these silk wads with a pot of rice or cous cous and the finished product will look like it contains melted mozzarella. The silk holds everything together, so it’s great in casseroles as well. It looks and acts so much like cheese, and tastes similar enough too, that people assume that it is cheese until I tell them otherwise. I have not yet run out of new ways to use milkweed silk in the kitchen – but I keep running out of the silk that I can for the winter!

With all of these uses, it is amazing that milkweed has not become a popular vegetable. The variety of products that it provides ensures a long season of harvest. It is easy to grow (or find) and a small patch can provide a substantial yield. Most importantly, milkweed is delicious. Unlike many foods that were widely eaten by Native Americans, European immigrants did not adopt milkweed into their household economy. We should correct that mistake.

You will find that some books on wild foods recommend boiling milkweed in multiple changes of water to eliminate the “bitterness.” This is not necessary for common milkweed Asclepias syriaca (which is the subject of this article, and the milkweed that most people are familiar with.) Common milkweed is not bitter. Read more on "Milkweed As a Vegetable"... "

I will have these seeds for sale this fall.

The Neti Pot

2011-09-23T03:13:00.000-07:00

I LOVE my Neti Pot! No kidding, my Neti Pot and I are best friends!

The Neti Pot is a nasal rinse utensil. It is so simple and easy to use. It's natural, requires no electricity and it's cheap! It's just a little tea pot designed for that purpose with a bulbous end on the spout. Simple!

Basically, you use it to pour a saline solution through your nasal cavities. This clears them out, thins the mucus, shrinks the membranes and kills bacteria, helping to prevent and cure colds and viruses, while clearing your head so you can breathe.

It is a little "odd" at first to use it. I mean, you don't normally pour fluid up your nose, but it's not uncomfortable and you get used to it quickly. It doesn't burn like chlorinated water you get in your nose when you are swimming in a pool. If it's the right temperature, you hardly even feel it running through. It works so well that, once you start using it regularly, I think you will like it too. You just bend over the sink with your head to the side and pour it into the top nostril, or use it in the shower. It flows through and out the other one. You will have to adjust the angle of your head a bit to keep it running through your nose and not out your mouth, but you will get that after the first use and you can just spit it out. It's only salt water.

Sometimes you have to pour a few pot fulls through to get it all cleared out, especially the first time you use it. You might also need to use a bulb syringe with the saline solution first if your nose is really plugged. Then pour the saline through with the little Neti Pot.

You can buy a nasal rinse system that is a squirt bottle by another brand, and I am sure it works just as well. I have the Neti Pot because I bought it when it was a new concept and the only thing on the market.

I have had my Neti Pot for a few years and it looks just like it did when I bought it. It's important that it and the bulb syringe get a really good wash with hot soapy water after every use. It comes in ceramic form too, but I have been happy with the plastic one.

It comes with little packets of saline powder that you mix in the water in the pot. You can also buy boxes of just the packets when you run out, or you can make your own. Those packets contain pure, finely ground salt and baking soda. That's it!

You can buy pure salt in the form of sea salt, pickling salt and so forth. Read the ingredients and make sure it's pure. I have seen kosher salt and fine sea salt that contain a de-clumping agent. I buy coarse sea salt. The ingredients say "salt", period. I then grind it to a fine powder in my little electric coffee/spice grinder. (I clean it out really good first, not wanting to pour coffee up my nose!)

The recommended recipe for make your own nasal rinse solution is 2 parts baking soda and 4 parts salt. Use a teaspoon of this in a cup of water. The baking soda is to keep it from stinging and you can adjust the recipe to use as much or as little of it as you need. I imagine that the salt and baking soda will kill any bacteria in the water that you use, so it really doesn't need to be boiled first. If in doubt, use bottled water or boil the water and let it cool to lukewarm.

It should be lukewarm for comfort. You will know when you use it if it's too cool or too warm. With a little practice, you can run saline through your nose quickly and efficiently, with little fuss and time wasted. It is a good idea to stand up half way through and gently blow your nose to clear it before continuing, or more often if needed. I say "gently" because the mucus is thin at that point and it's easy to blow it all into your ears. I also wash my nose after using the Neti Pot to keep the salt from drying it out, especially when it is sore from blowing.

For comfort in allergy season, relief with a cold or as daily prevention to kill bacteria, I high recommend rinsing your nasal passage with saline at least once a day. You can do it as often as you like, since it's purely natural with no chemicals or medications involved. You can use it two to three times a day, every day, or just when you need it.

It is something anyone, anywhere can do. You don't need a doctor, prescription, medication, electricity or anything else from the "system" and it works! It's another step, for me, in becoming self sufficient.

Check back to read the comments to this post. I am sure we will hear from others who do this too and love it.

Foraging

2011-09-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

This year I began to forage over our property and the adjoining county forest. I am amazed at what I found growing here! We have been blessed with so much that we can use, right here at home, overlooked by most of society!

The medicinal herbs that grow here are astounding and are just growing wild in the fields! No one uses them, no one harvests them, many don't even realize what they are or how useful and effective they can be. I was one of these people until recently.

Now I look at everything with new eyes. I research every plant I find growing here, if I have the time. The medicinal uses of goldenrod alone have been a bit of a shock. We are over run with it and I truly thought it useless, until recently. Now I have armloads of it hanging to dry for winter tea.

There are fruits growing wild here that I have used and will use to make wine, such as the wild grapes, wild red and black raspberries, wild blackberries, choke cherries (top picture), and more.

There is a large colony of mushrooms here, shaggy manes, that are ranked very high on the list by professional cooks for their flavour. I am expecting these to make their yearly appearance any time now. I have the grass and weeds cut down to the ground in the area where they grow. I intend to cook and freeze them this year. I am also going to attempt to spread them to other areas, more accessible, on the property. They like disturbed ground and I have just the spot waiting for them.

Also, I believe I have found a few large colonies of ostrich ferns nearby! I know they are not cinnamon ferns, which also grow here. I will do some research to make sure, but if they are truly ostrich ferns, we will have plenty of fiddleheads in the spring!

There are cattails growing in the ditch and I know that their roots are very good baked, as a starch, although I think we will skip that one in favour of potatoes and rice or pasta, for now. They will still be there, if we should ever need them.

I know we could survive here, on our own, self sufficient, in a disaster or when society fails, and that is a comfort. We have emergency access to our well, and water is pentiful. We have our own source of firewood and a wood stove. There is meat here aplenty with deer, geese and ducks visiting us regularly and turkeys occasionally (even squirrel and racoon, me being from Tennessee and all! lol! maybe not...), medicine growing in the fields, room to grow our own food and plenty of wild food to harvest! We have a stone cold cellar and a natural freezer, just outside the door in the wintertime.

I don't know that anything will happen here anytime soon and I don't mean to sound like a doomsday prophet, I'm just saying...

We have been truly blessed!

Could you survive after a disaster or the fall of society?

(You know you have let go of material possessions when the thought of being self sufficient in a disaster is exciting. Is that a good thing? Hmmmmmm...don't know...perhaps not.)

Crabapples!

2011-09-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

I picked these crabapples yesterday morning! I drove about 20 mins to a friends house and picked them in the park across the street from her house. There were tons of beautiful, ripe crabapples there! These are the big kind, 1" - 1.5" across! I only need about 15 to 20 lbs to make crabapple wine, which is about two buckets full. I knew there would be a lot of waste, so I picked more than I needed.

After sorting and cleaning, I had about the right amount. Some were still a bit too green to use for wine, although they would be great for jelly. There is more pectin in the slightly green ones.

The secret to making good jelly and wine from the very tart, wild things is to use only the clear juice, without any pulp in it. Use a very fine strainer or straining bag and do not squeeze it.

It takes about 15-18 lbs of the small, very tart, wild things to make about 5 gallons of wine. This includes, but is not limited to, rhubarb, wild grape, crabapple and choke cherry (which I fully intend to make next year). It probably also includes wild strawberries and a few other things as well.

These things usually have a lot of acid or tannin which is what makes them so tart. So I don't usually add acid to the recipe, although I will for the crabapple, I think. Raw apples, as a general rule, are low in acid. I have a new acid tester now, so I can test the finished juice after boiling and straining and add just the right amount of acid blend to it.

I have enough left to make some crabapple jelly too! (It's TIME that I don't have!) Maybe I will just put those in the freezer for now and make jelly later. No pectin is needed for apple jelly. Apples have a lot of their own pectin. As a matter of fact, you can make pectin for general use from apples and crabapples, if you have enough.

Crabapple Jelly Recipe

8 cups fresh crabapples
water as needed
3 cups white sugar

1.Remove stems and blossom ends from crabapples, and cut into quarters. Place them in a large stainless steel or other non-reactive pot or saucepan. Add enough water to be able to see, but no so much that the crabapples are floating. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium, and let simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. The apples should soften and change color.
2.Strain the apples and juice through 2 or 3 layers of cheese cloth. Do not squeeze. Use just the clear juice. You should have at least 4 cups of juice. Discard pulp, and pour the juice back into the rinsed pan. Bring to a simmer, and let cook for 10 minutes. Skim off any foam that comes to the top. Next, stir in the sugar until completely dissolved. Continue cooking at a low boil until the temperature reaches 220 to 222 degrees F (108 to 110 C). Remove from heat.
3.Pour the jelly into sterile jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Process in a hot water bath to seal.

**NOTE: I will post the crabapple wine recipe when I make it.

Making Herbal Salve

2011-09-12T03:03:00.000-07:00

Since I have begun using medicinal herbs, I have learned to make salve. It is so handy! I grow a lot of herbs that are antiseptic, antifungal, antibiotic. Some are great healers, good for burns, good for bites and many other topical uses. The salve makes using them so easy! I can trake a small container of purslane salve for insect bites with me camping or doing anything outdoors. That stuff is amazing! Just a little and you can just forget about the bite from that point forward. It works much better than baking soda (After Bite).

I only use olive oil and beeswax as a base. Its all organic. The olive oil keeps much longer than other oils without going rancid. I also add vitamin E to heal and as a preservative. I don't add scent but could with essential oil, if I wanted to, but then I would have to take the properties of the essential oil into account, as well.

Today I made a healing salve for my friend, Janet, at her request. It's for her family member's acne and exzema. It contains a large variety of healing, antibacterial, antiseptic, antifungal herbs. Normally, I would not put this much material in a salve, as sometimes herbs are more specific in their uses, but since this will be used by several family members for a variety of problems, I used a variety of herbs. I call this "Janet's Salve".

I plan to make more salve for insect bites and some for burns/sunburn. I usually like to put salve in those little thin metal tins, but these work perfect for gifts. Janet gave me these jars, anyway, (They are good for so many things!) so it's only fitting that I use them. I am out of the metal tins anyway. All herbal products should be stored away from the light or put into dark containers.

I just love using medicinal herbs and they work so well! I have been amazed several times at how effective some can be!

Goldenrod

2011-09-10T03:50:00.000-07:00

Goldenrod is one of those wild flowers that people take for granted and consider a weed. So did I, until this year. I have begun to do a lot of research into medicinal herbs, focusing on what I have growing here. We have been blessed with so much growing here in the way of medicinal herbs, right at our fingertips! Goldenrod is one of them!

Goldenrod (Solidago) flower tea is used to treat most urinary tract problems, as well as inflammation of the intestines and kidney problems, especially kidney stones.

It is antiseptic, anti-inflammatory and antifungal making it useful for healing all kinds of sores and wounds externally.

The chemicals in goldenrod are specifically effective against infection from the Candida fungus, which causes all kinds of yeast infections and oral thrush in the human body. Goldenrod tea is also effective in the treatment of chronic sore throats, in alleviating chronic congestion in the nasal passages as well as in treating problems such as diarrhea and other digestive disorders.

Goldenrod tea can also be used as a mouthwash or as a douche for the treatment of yeast infections in the vaginal cavity.

Another "weed" that turns out to be a great herb. I have some drying now for tea and plan to cut and dry a lot more before winter comes. I am putting it in my immune boosting winter tea.

Great Gluten Free Muffins!

2011-09-09T17:05:00.000-07:00

These are fantastic muffins! They rise high and are tender, moist, delicious - and gluten free - without expensive xantham gum!

Some of these flours are hard to find. I got most of the ingredients at my local bulk food store. It is one of my favourite places to shop with so many varietes! I always come home with a bag full every time I go.

I gound my own sunflower seeds and the millet to make millet flour. I used what is basically my coffee bean grinder but will grind just about anything. It does a great job and is so quick and easy to use!

Gluten Free Carrot, Raisin, Banana, Nut Muffins

1/2 cup ground almonds

1/3 cup ground sunflower seeds

1/4 cup ground flax seeds

3/4 cup brown rice flour

1/4 cup corn flour (white or yellow)

1/4 cup millet flour (I grind my own)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup grated carrot

3 tablespoons oil

1/2 cup whole milk (or 2% with a teaspoon butter or cream added)

2 eggs

2 small or 1 large banana

Mix all dry ingredients in one bowl. Mix all the wet ingreadients in another large bowl with mixer. Slowly and gently fold the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Be very gentle and only mix them until they are all combined. Do not over mix.

Fill muffin papers to the top. Makes 11 standard medium muffins.
Bake at 400 degrees F for approx 18 minutes.

This recipe is from "Mennonite Girls Can Cook".

Herbal Ear Drops

2011-09-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

I made herbal ear drops for the first time today, for hubby. These drops are made with dried herbs infused in olive oil. Many people say that this recipe works very well for earaches, infections, swimmer's ear and so forth.

I believe it! One of the ingredients is calendula oil. Calendula is an antibiotic, antiseptic, antifungal, so is the garlic. The other ingredients are also antiseptic healing agents.

This is the recipe:

Herbal Ear Drops

Using herb infused olive oil:

30ml calendula oil
25ml mullein flower oil
25ml St. John's Wort flower oil
20ml garlic oil

After infusing each herb in olive oil, I used a small shot glass with the measurements on it to measure out the amount in militres. As with anything else like this, make sure everything is sterile and rinsed well before using it.

The bottle is a travel size taquila bottle. I beg these glass bottles from anyone I know who travels. I have even been known to take bottles out of the recycling as I walk by. They are the handiest little bottles!

Update, next day:

I had planned to make this ear oil and so have been collecting the flowers and herbs to do so for awhile now, since I have had a recurring mild earache for months. It comes and goes, usually about the time I say I'm going to the doctor, it goes away.

Hubby's earache had been getting worse for a few days when he told me about it. I asked him why he didn't say anything sooner. He said it was because I had been mentioning that I was going to make some herbal ear drops and he was just waiting for that and how much longer was it going to take me? I felt a little guilty but, hey, he never said anything. How was I suppose to know this? So I made them right away, yesterday, when I posted this recipe.

I also recommended that he take a decongestant to help dry it up inside, which he did, as well. I put several drops in his ear, he left his head to the side and moved his ear around so at least some of it could get down inside his ear canal.

This morning he woke up and the earache was gone! Completely better! I have tried a few times today to get him to continue the drops for another day or two, just to completely clear up the infection. He won't go for it, says he doesn't like oil in his ear. (Men can be awfully stubborn sometimes...)

I grow all of these herbs and have seed for them all, as well, except for the calendula. I didn't get much seed this year from those. I only had two little plants come up. Next year I will have a large double row of them in the herb garden. It's an important herb. It's antifungal, in addition to everything else it does.

Not only is this oil good for earaches, It will help heal just about sore you may have. (Don't get it in your eyes. You will be sorry, if you do!)

We have become great believers in herbal remedies this year. The purslane for mosquito and fly bites is truly stunning in how well it works!!

Likewise for the feverfew for migraines and the sleepytime tea mix I make up for hubby.

Braiding Onions

2011-09-02T03:15:00.001-07:00

I grew onions this year! Lots of big beautiful onions for the first time! It is not, however, the first time I have planted onions, just the first time they actually grew into onions. Those are my onions in the picture above! Next year I am planting a lot more. I didn't grow enough to last us a year because I wasn't sure they would grow well this time and I didn't want to waste the space.

Since I had the onions and the cold cellar with hooks in the ceiling, I learned to braid them. I love the look of hanging onions and garlic. I'd like to hang them in the kitchen, but they wouldn't keep long in that warmth. After they are cured and dried well, they have to be kept cold. The cellar might work. This year will be the test.

It took me awhile to get the hang of braiding onions. It's not something one can just sit down and do. I read a lot of sights online that had pictures and instructions, but I still couldn't get it to work. Then one day it just hit me, I had an Aha! moment. They are braided from the bottom up, not the top down! From that point on I had it. No one told me that! All those sights I looked at never said to start at the bottom of the braid and go up!

After that it went fast. I'm used to putting a French braid in my hair and this works the same way, going in the opposite direction. It has to be quite a bit tighter, however, to hold. I had to repeat it a few times to get it tight enough to hold the onions in place. If I braided my hair that tight, I'd have a headache in no time! This one on the left is too loose and came apart.

The top pic is a final tight braid but could be even tighter. I think that part takes some practice. I have to leave the tops longer next year too. I trimmed them back a bit and I shouldn't have.

I have learned a new skill! I will have to go back and read this post before starting next year. I will have forgotten the key elements by that time, I'm sure. Next year I will do better and have a lot more onions to braid, as well!

Unusual Garden Friend

2011-08-31T18:44:00.001-07:00

This lady lives in my garden! I took this picture of her yesterday. She is a Garden Spider Argiope. They are also called "corn spiders".

Garden Spiders are not harmful to humans and eat mosquitoes and any other bugs in the garden, most of which eat your plants. I'd love to have one living in my rose bush next June when the rose chaffers make their appearance or in the hibiscus plants when the sawflys show up! I wonder if I can move one to the rose bush in the spring...

They are not at all aggressive and will usually only bite you if you handle a female with an egg cocoon in the web. Even then, the bite would be no different than a wasp or bee sting. They are not poisonous and reports of them biting humans are rare. They prefer not to leave their web unless absolutely necessary. They spin the most beautiful webs with a "Z" across the middle, which can sometimes get as big across as 2 feet! This dense center section is consumed every night and rebuilt in the morning.

The female builds the webs and lays the eggs around the edges of open sunny fields. They tend to stay in one place most of their lifetime, which is 1-2 years. They mate once a year, after which the male dies and is consumed by the female.

I have seen several of these around my field and back garden this year but this lady is the biggest I have seen so far. Isn't she beautiful! I leave them alone as much as possible, but come on, I have to pick the ground cherries!

I have a lot of garter snakes too, and love them! I just wish Shadow and Abby (the kitties) would leave them alone. Abby, in particular, seems determined to bring them home with her! Bring the mice home dead, leave the garter snakes, please.

WIld Grapes

2011-08-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

We have wild grapes! We have probably always had wild grapes and I just didn't know it. We have a large grapevine on our old TV antennae attached to the back of the house, but I have usually cut it down every year. Last year I left it alone, mostly due to a lack of time and energy to deal with it. (Last year was the "year of the dogs" and a lot of things got "left alone".)

This year I discovered grapes on it and the world of wild grapes opened up! It is covered with them, but there are even more growing and fruiting on a few back fence areas that I didn't know were there. At this time of year our back fence is unapproachable due to the goldenrod and blackberry bushes. With the hope of wild grapes in mind I blazed a path through the weeds to the fence and found several enormous vines filled with grapes!

Half are ready now and half still need to ripen another week or so. Next week on Monday morning I will go grape picking again. The grapes growing in sunny areas are all ripe now. It is the ones in the shade against the woods that need to ripen a bit longer.

The picture at the top is what I picked now. I will probably get at least half that again in another week! This is about 13 pounds of grapes. We weighed them at 11 pounds, then I found about 1/4 of a bucket more and added those. So I am estimating it at about 13 pounds. That's the minimum amount needed to make 5 gallons (23 litres) of wine. Since I know there are more coming next week, I am going to wait. I do have some older, extra large 6.5 gallon carbuoys that I can use for this and make even more wine. I will also make some wild grape jelly (recipe below) but we don't eat much of it so I won't be making a lot. Some wild grape jelly I will make in fancy jars and use for gifts.

We have truly been blessed with an abundance of wealth here on the land The Lord has given us! He continually amazes me with His gifts daily! There is just so much here in the way of herbs, fruits, mushrooms and wildcrafting abundance!

This is the rapsberry wine I just racked into the secondary fermenter yesterday! It's such a fabulous colour! I am collecting wine bottles and large, 100 bottle wine racks in the basement. When this summer's wine is all bottled, I will have 100's of bottles of wine aging!

What I like about the natural organic wines is that they still contain all the properties of the fruits and herbs, all the phytochemicals that make them so healthy.

Wild grape jelly recipe:

3 lbs wild grapes, stemmed
3 cups water
4 1/2 cups sugar
1 (85 ml) package liquid pectin

In large saucepan, crush grapes with potato masher; pour in water and bring to boil.

Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes or until fruit is very soft.

Transfer to jelly bag or colander lined with a double thickness of fine cheesecloth and let drip overnight.

Measure juice (you should have 3 cups/750 ml) into a large heavy saucepan; stir in sugar.

Bring to boil over high heat, stirring constantly.

Stir in pectin.

Return to full boil and boil hard for one minute, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat and skim off foam with a metal spoon.

Pour into sterilized jars, leaving 1/8 inch headspace.

Mint Wine - bottled

2011-08-28T04:17:00.001-07:00

I stared my first one-gallon batch of mint wine in early, early spring, as soon as it began to grow new leaves. Today I bottled it!

It's as clear as a bell and beautifully finished! I tasted it too, of course. It's drinkable now (for those of us who are used to drinking wine when it is not quite done yet).

I am drinking dandelion wine made in early spring 2010 now, so the mint can age a bit longer in the bottle.

I won't be making mint wine again this year. I need all the mint I can cut now for winter tea. It's great for soothing an asthmatic cough!

I am, however, making all the chocolate mint wine I can! I have one gallon making now and I have tasted it. It's delicious! I will also dry some for tea. Next year I should have enough chocolate mint to make 6 gallons of wine and enough tea to last through the winter. It's growing like the blob from outer space!

Valerian

2011-08-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

I am looking for some valerian herb plants but am having a hard time finding any at this time of year.

I would love to trade with someone in Canada for some valerian plants. It's not the red flower valerian I am looking for, but the valerian root herb with the white flowers (Valeriana officinalis).

If you want to trade small pieces of plants that will fit into a bubble envelope, please send me an email. Let me know if there is something in particular you are looking for, I might have it.

Community Garden Plot Rentals

2011-08-21T17:36:00.001-07:00

We are going to start renting Community Garden Plots in 2012! I am very excited about this new venture! We have the space and a location convenient to south Barrie, right on a busy corner.

You can rent as little or as much garden space as you need.
Our garden plots are tilled for you in the spring. After that, it's yours! Spend as much or as little time on it as you like.

Water and manure are supplied nearby.

What you receive:
* A tilled 4' by 40' foot garden.
* Unlimited access to your plot between Apr 15 and Nov. 1.
* We will provide water access and composted manure for your use at the garden.
* We intend to have a variety of heritage seeds and seedlings available for sale, or you are welcome to bring your own.

What we ask for in return:
* No chemicals of any kind. Please keep it organic.
* Please be considerate of fellow gardeners by cleaning up your tools, equipment & garbage. There will be a compost pile for spent plants.
* No loud music or excessive noise.
* No pets. We are very careful not to expose our livestock and pets to other animals.
* All children must be restricted to the community garden area only and monitored closely for their safety.

Cost: $80 per 4'x40' plot, payable at the start of the season.

Rent your own garden space this year!
Finally grow those delicious, fresh vegetables yourself!

Located inside the city of Barrie, at the south west edge. Nearby and handy for Barrie, Thornton, and Innisfil.

See our website for more information on our Community Garden Plot Rentals.

Chocolate Mint Wine

2011-08-20T02:03:00.000-07:00

I am making a gallon of chocolate mint wine! I have been collecting the leaves since I bought the tiny plant about a month ago. I have been cutting them off, washing them and adding them to the bucket in the freezer. I finally had about 3/4 of a gallon of leaves! Just enough for a gallon of chocolate mint wine!

The first thing I do when I have enough material for wine, is boil it for a minute. Not enough to cook it dead, just enough to make a strong tea, then let it steep. I add enough water to make the wine, usually about 3/4 of the amount of wine I am aiming for, to leave room for the sugar. I put this in a pot with the frozen or previously frozen material. I always freeze whatever material I am using to make wine. Freezing helps to break down the cell walls and release the juices.

I bring the water and chocolate mint to a boil and boil covered for just a couple of minutes. Then remove the pot from the heat and do not lift the lid. I leave the pot tightly covered and let it sit undisturbed for 24-48 hours. I usually aim for the two days but don't always make it. I have to work and have a schedule to keep, so I follow on to the next step when it is convenient. Really, overnight will do. The longer you can let it sit, the more flavour it will have, of course. I wouldn't leave it longer than 48 hours or you might run the risk of contamination with a foreign yeast or bacteria. This is organic wine we are making, after all. Care has to be taken. This is one reason why it is important that you don't lift the lid while it is sitting. Don't bake yeast bread or make vinegar mother while your wine must is sitting in the pots or the primary fermenter. If you are continually working with yeasts in the kitchen, you might want to consider making your wine in another section of the house.

48 hours later, I am ready for the next step: straining.

Before I start anything at this time, I usually "proof" the yeast and let it sit while I am straining the tea. This way I know it is still good yeast and this will give it a head start. To proof the yeast, put a little lukewarm room temp water in a sterile cup and add a pinch of sugar, then sprinkle in the yeast and let it sit for about 1/2 hour or so. It should be good and bubbly by that time.

If I had put the choc mint leaves into the water in a straining bag, the straining part would be easy. Even so, it's still not difficult. I use a very large, sterilized fine strainer to pour it through into the sterilized primary fermenter. I use a one gallon or four litre ice cream bucket for a one gallon primary fermenter. (The lid needs to be sterile too.)

When I say something is sterile, I have dipped it or washed it in a mild bleach solution and rinsed it very, very well in hot water. the rinsing is more important than the sterilizing!

Once the tea is in the primary fermenter, I add the other things: 1 teaspoon of pectic enzyme and 2 teaspoons of acid blend for every one gallon batch of wine. That's pretty much my standard recipe for all of them. These two have to be added to hot water in a sterile cup and stirred with a sterile spoon to dissolve, before being added. I used to also add a tablespoon of frozen white grape juice concentrate, for body, but have stopped doing that. I don't think the wines need it.

The pectic enzyme eats any pectin in the wine. We do not want pectin in the wine! (We are not making jam here.) Pectin makes it cloudy and throws the taste off. Once the pectic enzyme and acid blend are dissolved, pour them in and stir very well.

Now, everything is in there except for the sugar and the yeast. The amount of sugar that usually goes into a one gallon batch is around 4-6 cups, depending on the amount of sugar already in the material being used. I use a hydrometer when adding the sugar. I always start with 3 cups of table sugar. That's usually a minimum for just about anything. The more sugar there is, the higher the alcohol content will be. I like my wines to be about 12-13% alcohol when finished, so I test it with the sterile tube and hydrometer as I go along. The measuring cup you use for the sugar should also be sterile.

After pouring in the initial 3 cups of sugar and stirring it well, I add one cup of sugar at a time stirring well after each and testing with the hydrometer after each addition until it gets close to the 13%. It can go over a little without hurting anything. It doesn't have to be exact. The Lalvin EC-1118 wine yeast can handle up to about 18% alcohol before the yeast start to die, so there's a lot of leeway there with the sugar. I only add enough sugar to bring it up to about 13% for personal taste. You can make it higher with more sugar, if that's what you want in your wine. Just keep in mind that the sugar which the yeast don't use will be left in the wine to sweeten it and there will be no way to remove that extra sugar once the yeast die off. So I would keep it well below the 18% level if you want a dry wine. The yeast will continue to consume the sugar and make alcohol until all the sugar is gone or the alcohol level is high enough to kill them off (about 18%).

Because I have sterilized both the tube and hydrometer, the wine used for the test can just be poured back into the bucket each time. There's not enough there to keep testing it and pouring it out! When the wine has reached the level of potential alcohol that I want, I stop adding the sugar and stir it all together vigorously. Stir until everything is well blended.

Then add the yeast, which should be bubbling by now. If it is not, just lightly sit the lid on the bucket and wait an hour or so. If you proofed the yeast with lukewarm room temp water and a little sugar in a sterile and well rinsed cup, it should be bubbling by then. If there is no action from the yeast, I'd get new yeast. If the packet of yeast is new, just purchased, and you know your supplier gets it in fresh every week or two, you can just sprinkle a little on top in the bucket and leave it. I have done that on many occasions.

Once you have everything in the bucket and well stirred, lightly sit the lid on and leave it to sit in a fairly warm, room temp place. Don't securely fasten the lid. The yeast is so active during the first week that the amount of carbon dioxide produced will blow the lid off or bust the bucket. It doesn't need much protection during that first week because there is enough carbon dioxide being produced to protect it from any contamination by foreign yeast or bacteria. (It is not a good idea during this time to keep lifting the lid to look at it.)

After about 5-7 days, it should have slowed down enough to go into the sterile secondary fermenter (glass jug) with a sterile air lock. Siphon it from the primary fermenter bucket into the secondary fermenter jug with a sterile plastic tube. This is better than just pouring it in because pouring would expose it to too much air. The air lock lets the carbon dioxide bubbles escape without letting air in. It's a very simple little cheap plastic thing. I buy the bung (stopper) and air lock set for less than $2 at my wine supply store. You can use a baloon for this, but you can't watch the bubbles escaping and know that it's working with a baloon.

It will sit in there, bubbling slowly away for a few months. After three months, rack (siphon) it into another sterile jug, leaving the lees (sediment) behind. It can be racked every three months until it is finished. You will know when the wine has finished by the air lock. The little plastic cup will be sitting on the bottom, no bubble will have come up for days and the wine will be clear, if you are lucky. At this time, test it with the sterile hydrometer again. The reading should be below 1.000 if the yeasts have used up all the sugar, stopped working and sunk to the bottom. Time to bottle it!

If the hydrometer reading is less than 1.000, the yeast have finished and your wine is cloudy, you will have to clear it before you put it in bottles. There are several ways to do this. There are a few things on the market used to clear wine, all work fairly well. Bentonite clay will work but should be added sooner than this. It takes time. Some people just put it in at the beginning, to be on the safe side. I have only ever had to clear one wine, the dandelion from last year. I used chitosan for that. It's a gel made from ground diatoms, sort of like DE in gel form. It worked very well. You can also buy islinglass finings or Sparkaloid. (Not had good luck using Sparkaloid to clear beer, btw.) All of these things are put into the secondary fermenter and shaken/stirred until well blended. They are then left for a couple of weeks to clear the wine. Most work with negatively charged particles that attract the particulate matter making your wine cloudy and settle it all to the bottom. You then rack the clear wine into another sterile container to bottle it, leaving the lees in the bottom.

You can use a filter to clear wine and I have an electric one. I don't use it. It is far too much trouble, especially for just one gallon and much of the wine is lost, absorbed by the filter pads. I also think the filtering exposes the wine to the air too much, as well, so I don't use it. If you are putting sulphite and sorbate in your wine, you don't have to be quite as careful. I make organic wine because we are unable to drink wine with sulphite in it. Hubby and I get severe migraines form the sulphite and he also gets a rash.

Make sure your bottles are clean, sterile and well rinsed, as well as the siphon hose. Boil the corks for a few minutes and leave them in the boiling water while bottling. Sterilize and rinse the corker, as well. Keep it all sterile and well rinsed and you won't have a problem.

Wine, especially organic wine, should be stored in a cool place on it's side. This keeps the corks wet so they swell and seal the bottle. The cold is to keep the wine stable. I have an underground fieldstone cold cellar where our wine stays cool all year. This is important if you are not using chemical stabilizers and preservatives, like sulphite and sorbate.

Beans

2011-08-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

How many different types of beans are there? I had no idea there were so many until last winter when I began researching them, looking for the perfect beans to grow. We have always grown yellow wax beans and love them, but hubby is not fond of the standard green beans, so I went on a quest for really good beans. If we are going to devote that much space and time to something, we should really, really like it and not just grow it because, well, you know everyone else does. I mean, what's a garden without beans?

We still grew the standard yellow wax bush beans because we love them, but we also grew other kinds, unusual and different kinds, this year.

One that we like a lot is the "asparagus" bean. It's touted to taste like asparagus and it does! It's delicious! This one is actually called "Gow Dauk Yard Long Asparagus Bean". It's not a yard long but it is long. Each bean is about a foot long, slender and tender and good and it does taste like asparagus! We will definitely grow a lot of them next year! I only have a few plants this year, not even enough for us to eat, just enough to grow seed for a row of them next year. I will probably also buy some seeds next year, if I can find them. I got these in a trade from another gardener.

One of the most promising and interesting beans I planted is "Aunt Mollie's Mushroom Bean". The beans themselves, not the pods, are suppose to taste like mushrooms when cooked in things. Interesting! I only have one plant and it doesn't have beans on it yet, so we may not be able to see if this is true. If we do get a few beans this year, it won't be enough to sell them, unfortunately. Not this year, anyway. If we do get beans and, indeed, they do taste like mushrooms when cooked in things, I might have some seeds for sale next year, maybe. If we like these, I may buy these seeds to plant next year, as well. Again, if I can find them.

Another bean I am growing and we like is an heirloom yellow flat bean from Romania called "Gold of Bacau". It's a fast, tall grower and good producer. I will have these beans for sale in the seed store this year. They did really well. That's them in the picture, growing above the hibiscus beside the deck and covered with beans!

I also grew "French Duet" beans, called "duet" because they are a mix of yellow and green. We liked these a lot! They are slender and tender too and grew very well. I may have these seeds for sale this year, still not sure if there will be enough or not.

I always grow scarlet runner beans, for decoration as well as eating. The young tender green beans are very good. Not sure if we will have these beans for sale this year or not. They sure are beautiful in the flower garden!

We also grew Kentucky Wonder yellow pole beans this year. These are excellent and I might have these seeds for sale this year. I grew these in an attempt to switch from bush beans to pole beans, (much easier on the back!) but they are ready much later so I will still grow both. The yellow bush beans are ready all through late June-July, while the Kentucky Wonder beans come after and are ready in August. Growing both will prolong the bean season.

I planted a few Blue Lake Stringless green beans too but, while the plants are up and growing well, they have not produced any beans yet, nary a one. That one is probably not going anywhere. Must need a longer growing season. Oh well, as previously stated, hubby is not fond of your standard green beans anyway. He LOVES the asparagus beans, however!

The beans that we grow are for eating of the pod. We don't grow beans that are for eating of the seed. Our season is not that long and, frankly, we don't eat them. I have considered growing pinto beans for chili, but we just don't eat enough chili to bother, but I do consider it every spring. It just doesn't go anywhere, maybe next year...

Although I have said here that I will probably have some of these bean seeds, nothing is definite until it is actually in my hands. Such is the life of a gardener.

There are so many different kinds of beans out there that I could not possibly grow them all. I keep looking for the fabulous, the unique and the useful, not just in beans, but in everything we grow! I am thrilled to find the "asparagus" beans this year!

The 2012 Season Wines

2011-08-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

I love making wine! Wines of all kinds, out of everything possible! The first thing I think of when I see something at all edible is, "Can I make wine from that?" I have many different wines in various stages at any given time.

This year so far I have made these three one gallon jugs on the counter: Apple, Maple and Mint.

I also have one gallon of chocolate mint in the primary fermentor that was just started last week.

The other wines I have been making are in the 5-6 gallon fermenters. I have rhubarb wine in a secondary fermenter.

I have strawberry wine in a secondary fermenter, as well.

I have 5-6 gallons of rose petal wine in the primary fermenter.

I have enough raspberries in the freezer to make 5 gallons of raspberry wine one day next week. These are red and black rapsberry mixed.

Also in the freezer awaiting their chance to become wine are this year's first ground cherries, just picked yesterday,

and the very first hibiscus blossom petals, just picked today!

The one I am the most excited to try is the chocolate mint! Tea made with chocolate mint is so good! I will probably make another one gallon jug of it before fall, perhaps even 5 gallons, if I can get enough leaves!

This year promises to be a great wine making year! You can get started making your own organic wines at home with a free e-book that I have written entitled, "Making Organic Wine at Home". The link to download it is in the left column. It's a lot of fun and a great creative outlet. I like drinking the wines because they contain all the phytochemicals and antioxidants of the fruits, herbs and flowers themselves. Making it into wine is just like making juice. There are so many things out there that will make excellent wine!

New Mini Paintings

2011-08-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

Three new paintings!

These are 4" x 6". The OSWOA trademark size.
(The lighter is just for size comparison.)
Click on this picture to see a larger resolution image.

All three are for sale. $25 each or the set of three for $65. The camera doesn't capture the intensity and beauty of the colours, unfortunately.

My Garden Helper

2011-08-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

This is Abby the Tabby. She's my little garden helper. She comes out with me in the morning and goes around with me, watching what I do, sniffing things and generally playing with anything interesting. She chases things that fly and jumps around and hides in the growth.

She's so cute! She is two years old now, but very small, so we keep a close eye on her when she is outside. She is only allowed to go out with me and is never left out at night or when we are not home.

Shadow hangs around with me, too, when he's awake and I'm outside. He's out all night and spends that time hunting. I know this because he often brings me "presents" like dead mice, half eaten, or the odd mole. I praise him for this, of course, and he loves it! He just coos and purrs and runs off to get another one. He often brings me two in the course of an early morning.

He sleeps a lot during the day. You can see why we call him Shadow. A lot of the time he gets called "Bud" or "buddy". He doesn't run around playing in the garden, but he does follow me around and just lays nearby. He's far too "cool" and probably tired to jump and run around.

We think both of our cats are wonderful and love them dearly! Both are smart, affectionate and have such personalities. Abby often stretches to reach the doorknob when she wants to go outside. If we had a handle instead of a round knob, she'd be opening the door!

A much needed rest after a long, hard day of gardening:

Homemade Dishwasher Detergent

2011-08-11T09:00:00.001-07:00

The next step in my journey to self sufficiency is making my own dishwasher detergent. I have researched it for awhile now and finally came up with a recipe that suits me. There are a lot of different ones out there.

Automatic Dishwasher Detergent

1 cup borax
1 cup wasing soda or 1/5 cup pool ph adjuster soda
1/2 to 1 cup citric acid depending on the hardness of the water. (I used 3/4 cup.)
1/2 cup kosher salt (or sea salt)
Vinegar in the rinse cycle

Use 1.5 tablespoons per load if using washing soda
Use 1 small tablespoon per load if using ph pool adjuster soda

The citric acid keeps the residue from building up on the dishes and makes them shiny and clear, as does the vinegar as a rinse agent.
The salt disinfects, cuts grease and scrubs off the hard grime.

I have not used it yet. I just made it this morning and will wait until after 7 pm to run the dishwasher. (We have a "smart" hydro meter. EVERYTHING waits for after 7 pm unless I get up early enough to finish it before 7 am, which is often the case.)

August 11, 2011 update: This recipe will clump. It will even form a solid clump in a couple of days. That's the citric acid. I broke it all up and worked it with my fingers and spoon until it was a usable finer granuar form again and it's been fine since. You could even let it clump for a few days then run it through the grinder to make it very fine. I didn't bother. If I were going to sell it, I would do that.

Used it this morning. Works great!!! Sparkling clean glasses like I haven't seen in a long time using commercial dishwasher detergent. I used a rinse agent from the store, only because I had it. When it is gone I will switch to vinegar. A rinse agent is important to keep the dishes sparkling too.

Update: Sept 02, 2011: This recipe clumps badly. At this time it is one solid, hard piece. I have to chop it into little pieces to use it. I have read that the addition of 1/4 cup of dry rice will help fix this problem without affecting how well it works. I am making more very soon and will add the rice to it. We will see how it goes...

It does still work well! The dishes are always sparkling clean!

Read a current update on this post.

Wild Choke Cherries

2011-08-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

These are wild choke cherries, also called "pin cherries" by some. They are very bitter, but, as with most of the small wild fruits, such as crab apples, they have a lot more flavour than their domesticated cousins. The secret is to use just the clear juice alone and NONE of the pulp, and more sugar, of course.

The choke cherry tree is a nice addition to the flowergarden too, as long as you are going to pick the fruit when it is ripe. If you leave it to just fall to the ground, it will make a mess and reseed in the garden.

The tree is small, not getting above about 8'-10' tall and flowers in the spring. It is really a nice little flowering tree for landscaping with the added benefit of bearing fruit!

We have several of these small trees growing wild on the property. This fall, when they are dormant, I will move one to the new, expanded section of the ornamental garden where it can provide a little shade for a nearby bench.

I also plan to make jelly and possibly wine from the fruits. I make wine from everything! I am always looking for unique wine possibilities. (I started a one gallon batch of chocolate mint wine this morning!)

Below are some recipes I found for choke cherries. Avoid swallowing the pits.

Extracting the Chokecherry Juice

10 cups washed,with stems removed 2.5 L
5 cups water 1250 mL

Add 5 cups (1250 mL) water to 10 cups (2.5 L) berries and simmer 15 minutes. Crush fruit with potato masher as it softens. Drain through a moistened jelly bag. DO NOT SQUEEZE THE BAG!! The clear juice make excellent jelly. If you squeeze pulp into the mix, it will be bitter!(If the juice is to be used for jelly, choose berries that are under ripe as well as ripe, so the pectin content of the juice is higher).

Chokecherry Jelly

3 1/4 cups chokecherry juice 800 mL
4 1/2 cups sugar 1.25 mL
2 oz package powdered fruit pectin 57g

Combine chokecherry juice and pectin in a large saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil. Add sugar. Boil hard one minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim off foam. Pour into sterilized jars. Leave 1/2 inch (1 cm) headspace. Clean jar rim. Seal. Process 5 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Yield: 7 -1/2 pint jars (250 mL jars)

Crabapple and Chokecherry Jelly
4 cups chokecherry juice 1000 mL
4 cups crabapple juice 1 L
6 cups sugar 1.5 L

Prepare crabapple juice by selecting sound, slightly under ripe fruit. Wash thoroughly, cut off and discard any damaged spots. Remove the stem, but not the blossom end. Cut the crabapples in half, or if large, in quarters. Be sure to cut through the core so that the pectin around the core will be readily released. Add only enough water to the fruit so that it is just barely covered. Boil fruit and water in a covered kettle until fruit is soft and mushy; stir often to prevent burning. Crush fruit with a potato masher during the cooking process to reduce the boiling time. Pour hot cooked fruit into a moistened jelly bag. Hang over a bowl until dripping ceases (about 12 hours). DO NOT SQUEEZE THE BAG!! The clear juice make excellent jelly. If you squeeze pulp into the mix, it will be bitter!

Make chokecherry juice, 1/3 from red and 2/3 from fully ripe chokecherries. Wash, sort, and remove stems from chokecherries. Add enough water to cover (about 1 part water to 2 parts chokecherries), and boil until soft, about 30 minutes. Strain through a moistened jelly bag.

To make jelly: Measure juices into a broad, deep pot and boil uncovered for 3 minutes. Remove juice from heat and test for pectin. If pectin test is good, add sugar slowly to hot juice. Stir until all sugar is dissolved. Return to heat and boil briskly, uncovered. Remove scum as it forms. Test for doneness using the jelly test. Remove remainder of scum with a cold spoon. Pour carefully into hot, sterilized pint (500 mL) jars leaving at least 1/ 2 inch (1 cm) headspace. Process in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes. Begin processing time when water returns to a boil.

Yield: 4 pint (500 mL) jars.

Chokecherry Liqueur

2 cups well ripened chokecherries 500 mL
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 375 mL
26 oz dry gin or vodka 750 mL

Thoroughly wash and rinse a large 40 oz. (1.25 L) glass container with a tight fitting lid. Wash and rinse berries. Add berries and sugar to container. Pour gin over mixture. Seal tightly. Let stand 30 days in a warm place, tipping the container daily until sugar dissolves. Let stand 20 more days. Strain several times. Rebottle and serve.

Chokecherry Wine

3 lbs chokecherries 1.5 kg
1 lb chopped raisins (optional)
3 lbs white granulated sugar 1.5 kg
1 gal. (160 oz.) water 1 gallon
1 tsp (level) yeast nutrient 5 mL
1/2 tsp pectic enzyme powder 2 mL
1 tsp (level) wine yeast 5 mL (Lalvin E-1118)

Use only sound ripe fruit and remove stems and leaves. Crush cherries, but do not break pits and put into straining bag. Put bag of crushed fruit into large pot and cover with 1 gallon of water. Bring to a boil, cover and remove from heat. Let sit, covered for 24-48 hours. Next day, lift straining bag and drain well. DO NOT SQEEZE BAG! Only the clear juice is to be used! Pour juice into primary fermentor and add all other ingredients. Stir well to dissolve sugar. Stir the must daily. Ferment for 5 - 6 days, or until specific gravity is 1.040. Siphon into a one gallon glass jug or carboy. Attach fermentation locks. Rack in 3 weeks and again in 3 months. When wine is clear and stable, bottle. Age 1 year.

***NOTE: As with everything else, I will probably have these seeds for sale in the seed store this fall.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

2011-08-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

I made my own laundry detergent yesterday! Many of you have been making it for years, but this was my first attempt. I didn't make a lot, only about 10 litres, being a trial first time and all.

I had a very hard time finding washing soda. I did have a little in a box that came with the house a few years back. I kept it, having the plan to make my own laundry detergent way back then and knowing I would need it. The amount in the box was exactly what I needed for this, smaller recipe.

I bought soda for adjusting pool ph to use instead. I have read that it can be used, as well, but in a much smaller dose. I had just enough washing soda for this recipe, but I will need to use the pool ph adjusting soda the next time I make laundry detergent. (I have no idea what this stuff is really called! lol!)

The ingredients you need to make this recipe are: water, washing soda or pool ph adjusting soda, Borax, Dawn dishwashing liquid, grated hard soap and water. Any hard bar of soap will work. Some people use Ivory. I make my own soap, so that's not difficult. What I used for this particular recipe was a "laundry bar" that I purchased specifically for this application, but next time I am using my own hard handmade soap. I grated the soap bar by hand, but you can use a food processor. (I have one, just too lazy to get it set up, wash all the parts because I don't want to put soap into the dishwasher, then put it all back together again.) Most recipes do not use Dawn dishwashing liquid but I have read that it makes a big difference in the grease cutting and stain removal power of the detergent, so I added it.

You can add some fragrance oil, if you want to. I left mine unscented.

You will need a large bucket. This recipe makes 10 litres, so you need a bucket that will hold that much and some, so you have room to stir vigorously. You will also need a large pot for the stovetop and something that measures 1/2 cup.

This is the simple recipe:

1 cup of grated soap or store bought Ivory soap flakes (also hard to find).
1/2 cup washing soda or not quite 1/8 cup of pool ph adjusting soda
1/2 cup Borax
1/4 cup Dawn dishwashing liquid

Bring a quart of water to boil on the stove in a large pot. Add all ingredients except the Dawn, slowly while stirring well. Stir in the boiling water until very well dissolved. Pour into bucket.

Add enough water to bring the amount up to 10 litres and stir vigorously until well blended. Let sit overnight. This should be a gel by the next day. Add 1/4 cup Dawn dishwashing liquid and stir vigorously. If you add the Dawn with the rest of the ingredients, it stops it from gelling as much as it should. Add fragrance oil at this time. Pour into usable size containers. Shake before using. Add 1/4 - 1/2 cup of this to a laundry load, depending on size of load.
It was quick, easy and cheap to make! I will find out very soon how well it works.

Meadowsweet

2011-08-02T13:55:00.001-07:00

I have a pink meadowsweet (filipendula rubra, ulmaria) plant in my flowerbed. (It also comes in white.) I have had it for years and only recently became aware of how valuable a plant it is.

It is large and beautiful, as always, but it also has a lot of other properties. The flowers can be used to add a soft almond flavour to wines, beers, jams and jellies. I LOVE almond flavour in anything. Before I developed this severe allergy to sulphite, I used to buy almond sherry and amaretto. They were always my favourite drinks. Now I can add this flavour to my wine too, naturally and without using almonds. There is nothing wrong with using almonds and I had planned to make some almond wine, at some future point. I can now grow my own almond flavour!

In addition to this important property, meadowsweet is also the plant originally used to develop aspirin. In 1897, a chemist called Felix Hoffman discovered salicylic acid could be produced from a waste product of the plant. He was looking for something to help his father's rheumatism and, while the benefits of this compound as a pain-relieving drug had been known for thousands of years, this was the first palatable and acceptable form to be found.

At the time, meadowsweet's official name was Spiraea and the drug that was made from it became known as aspirin. The invented word combined the ''a'' from acetylic acid and the ''spir'' from Spiraea. It contains several powerful salicylates, salts derived from salicylic acid that are chemically similar to aspirin but do not cause stomach bleeding. And, unlike aspirin, it has a positive effect on the digestive system, it protects and soothes the mucous membranes of the digestive tract, reducing excess acidity and alleviating nausea.

It can be used in the treatment of heartburn, hyperacidity, gastritis and peptic ulceration. It is also effective against the organisms causing diphtheria, dysentery and pneumonia. The anti-inflammatory action of Filipendula makes it effective against rheumatic pain without the adverse effects which can cause gastric bleeding, and it also acts to reduce fever.

All the benefits of aspirin without the gastric bleeding!

Meadowsweet likes damp roots and will do well in a bog, but it also does just fine in a normal garden. Mine is in half shade in the flowerbed and we have had a lot of hot dry weather this year. It hasn't even wilted and bloomed beautifully this year! The ideal place to grow it is in a low laying meadow area that tends to retain a bit of moisture. I am planning on making a large area for it in my ditch next to the garden and beside the driveway. I don't use salt so there's no danger of runoff.

I am growing my own natural anti-inflammatory pain killer (and almond flavouring for wine)!

I hope to have these seeds for sale in the farm store this year!

QUOTE: "In my life nothing goes wrong. When things seem to not meet my expectations, I let go of how I think things should be. It’s a matter of not having any attachment to any fixed outcome." - Deepak Chopra

First Onion Harvest

2011-08-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

Thi is not my first ever onion growing, but it is my first harvest. Live and learn. I'm so pleased! Next year I will grow them again, and some red onions and sweet onions and...

I read that the time to harvest the entire crop is when half the onions have tops laying down. Well, 3/4 of my onions had tops laying down. I didn't know the onion tops fell over by themselves. When they first started to fall over, I blamed the deer! lol!

I know they have to cure in the dry shade. These will get the early morning sun so I will have to put up some cardboard to block it in the mornings. I have a monstera potted yesterday beside them that needs to sun blocked until the roots grow, anyway.

When can I braid the tops and hang them from the ceiling to dry?

Weeds

2011-07-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago I wrote a post entitled "Dealing With Weeds" about my attempts to find an organic way to kill the weeds growing on my rock path. I tried all kinds of things at that time, including spraying them with pure bleach, pure vinegar and dish soap, etc. They turned yellow but didn't DIE. People told me then that it will work but I have to stay on top of it. I think they meant that it has to be reapplied all the time.

This is not what I was looking for. I have searched for an organic way to KILL weeds DEAD not just slow them down. I know gasoline will do this very well, but I don't really want it in the water table, especially since we are on a well right beside the rock path. (I wouldn't use gasoline anyway.)

Well, I found something that kills them DEAD and it's so simple. Boiling Water. Nothing else is added, just boiling water. I have read that you can use boiling salt water, but the salt doesn't seem to be necessary. I don't want to use salt because it will sting Shdow and Abby's feet and not be too good for them to lick off, either.

This is a picture of what just boiling water poured directly on the weeds has done. I am very excited about this find! I discovered it while blanching beans outside on the BBQ in the heat. I poured the boiling water out on the path, just because it was handy and wouldn't hurt any thing there.

Now I have been boiling the kettle outside just to kill the weeds!

I wonder if ti will work on the BIG weeds. We are drowning in burdock this year. Maybe next spring, just as they are starting to grow, I will give it a try. If I can remember that is...

Purslane

2011-07-22T19:05:00.001-07:00

This is purslane (Portulaca oleracea). I am sure most gardeners have seen this plant growing in their gardens. Most of you have probably been pulling it up and tossing it like a weed. I was too, until recently, when I became aware of it's nutritional value. Now I encourage it to grow. I even transplant it into the flowerbed as a ground cover. I like that it does well in dry conditions, like the non stop heat and no rain we've had for weeks now. I am also glad it does not form such a thick mat that the perennials cannot grow through it.

The stems, leaves and flower buds are all edible. It can be eaten raw, stir fried or cooked like spinach. It's good in stews and soups too.

According to Wikipedia, purslane contains an extraordinary amount of EPA, an Omega-3 fatty acid normally found mostly in fish, some algae and flax seeds. It also contains vitamins A, C, B, cartenoids, magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron. In addition to all of this, it has two pigments, red and yellow, that are potent antioxidants and have been found to have antimutagenic (anticancer) properties in laboratory studies.

Purslane is tangy if you pick it in the morning, but mellows out more in the afternoon. It's the malic acid that makes it tangy but this converts to sugar as the day goes by.

As well as great to eat, it also has a deep root system that bring up moisture and nutrients for surrounding plants, and some, including corn, will "follow" purslane roots down through harder soil than they cannot penetrate on their own.

Known as Ma Chi Xian in Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is used to treat infections or bleeding of the genito-urinary tract as well as dysentery. The fresh herb may also be applied topically to relieve sores and insect or snake bites on the skin. (Get that, INSECT bites! Must try that... )

I, myself, am going to start cultivating it. It am going to chop it and freeze like spinach and use it as a ground cover in the ornamental gardens.

Ok, people, with all of this information, how many of you are still going to consider purslane a weed? Lets save it for the garden!

I might even have seeds for sale this fall, maybe.

Beer Butt Chicken

2011-07-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

You've heard of "fluffy butt chickens"? Well, these are a little different!

Chickens sitting on an open beer can full of beer. It will boil and continually baste the inside of the chicken. The can should fit tight enough that the beer doesn't leak out the bottom.

The sauce recipe:
1/2 cup real butter
2 Tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika
Salt and pepper to taste
Pinch of cayenne
4-6 cloves fresh garlic minced
1/4 cup parsley

Freshly dried parsley from the garden!

OK, this was my chicken BBQ post. The following is an excerpt from hubby's, who actually did the prep and cooking, as he usually does. I do the baking...usually.

"I took my chickens for a walk today. I closed the lid so I guess they won't go far. That's 3/4 full cans of beer they're sitting on, a place to rest if they get tired. I'll come back in a couple of hours and see how they're getting on. I hope they enjoy the exercise!"

I had to post it. His is so much more colourful than mine! lol!

Drying Herbs

2011-07-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of July!! Yikes!! I still have a lot to do! One of the things I have to get moving on is drying the herbs for winter use. I grow a lot of herbs for the ktichen and to use medicinally. That is lemon balm drying on a screen above.

I prefer to dry them naturally, in the outside air, rather then use a dehydrator, oven or microwave. I have read a lot of bad things about drying herbs in the microwave. Many sites say the microwave partially cooks the herbs and doesn't leave a lot of the natural oils intact, so I am staying away from that. This is much easier anyway. Even though it takes longer to achieve the desired result, it's not MY time being used, so I don't mind.

This is yarrow drying on a couple of screens. I have a lot of screens for drying things since I have an online seed store. The screens are a great way to dry seeds and herbs. I am hoping to get all the herbs dried before I need to start drying large amounts of seeds on them. I need more screens!

I can also hang herbs to dry. A few years ago I strung wire under our large porch. This is only half of it. There are three strands that run the entire lengh. They are high underneath the roof so out of the sun, wind and weather. Half of our porch is enclosed with glass above the chair rail and this is where the screens are set up, also out of the wind and weather but they do get the morning sun for a short time. They get air circulation from the open part under the chair rail. It's a good set up for drying things, unless the racoons pay me a visit. (They come by occasionally just to tear things up a bit and keep me from becoming too complacent.)This is also where we plan to hang the tobacco to dry this year.

I tie the herb stems to coat hangers and hand those up onto the wires with my handy hooked stick. I just screwed a hook onto the end of a broom handle and it works great! We will do this with the tobacco, as well.

This is the set up. I also use open wire basket drawer things for drying smaller amounts of seed on paper towels.

This is parsley ready for the jar. I plan to keep my dried herbs in sealable glass jars on a shelf in the kitchen. The kitchen is usually the coldest room, in the winter anyway. The heat from the wood stove never reaches it. I have previously kept them in the freezer but will not have room this year.

I don't wash them before cutting, preferring instead to rinse them with the hose the day before so they are dry and fairly clean when I cut them the next morning. Clean mulch helps to keep the clean when rinsing. I use shredded computer paper for this and it works great!

I still have a lot of herbs to dry yet. Tomorrow I plan to cut a lot of prunella vulgaris (heal all, self heal) to dry and some echinacea, oregano, thyme, cilantro, lavender, St. John's Wort, hibiscus, choc mint, more lemon balm, more mint and a few others. I amd going to need more screens!

Wild Grapes

2011-07-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

Look at all those wild grapes! I would love to pick them when they are ready and make either wild grape jelly or wine!

This picture was taken from an upstairs bedroom window. The grapevines are growing on a old TV antennae just outside the window. The ground is a long way down!

Any suggestions on how to harvest these grapes without actually climbing out there and breaking my neck? If I pulled the vines down from the ground, would the grapes still be attached and intact?

Pruning Tomatoes

2011-07-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

To prune or not to prune, that is the question. Some people throw a cage on their tomato plants and just let nature take it's course. This means that their tomato plants will grow into a bush with a dozen separate branches.

I prefer to prune off the suckers and secondary branches, most of the time. If it is still early in the season, I will let a tomato plant split into two and sometimes three, if it gets ahead of me and I miss one, but I try to take off any suckers that grow.This is my Gordon Graham tomato plant. I have let it split into three stems only because it got ahead of me when I wasn't watching.

Pruning makes the tomatoes plants grow taller, so most of my tomato plants are staked instead of caged. I have tried caging them but they just grow over the top of the cages and fall over. I have seen tall homemade tomato cages that will do the job well, however. I still prefer to stake them and prune off the suckers. I find that this makes the tomatoes larger, with less per plant, and easier to see and harvest. These are my Portugal tomatoes, staked and producing wonderful, large tomatoes!

We were blessed with a pile of strong metal fence posts that I have used in the garden. I have hammered these into the ground and strung heavy coated wire between them. This is where I am growing the tomatoes this year. I just tie the plants to the wire as they grow up. Since I rotate the plants every year, I won't be growing tomatoes on this wire next year. I will probably grow cukes and pole beans on it. There is always something I grow that has to go vertical.

Suckers are little stems that grow in the leaf nodes. If left alone, they will split the plant into separate stalks, each growing tall, making a bush. About twice a week, I play in the tomatoes and nip off the suckers and tie up the stalks. It's an enjoyable activity and gives me a chance to keep a close eye on them.

I also prune the leaves on my tomato plants. I don't cut them all off, just a few. I trim off the ones that touch the ground. I think this might help to keep slugs off the plants. I also cut off any that interfere with the development and room needed by growing baby tomatoes and I prune leaves to open up the plant and let light and air circulation into the fruit. I do think it is important to leave a few big leaves on the plants to make food.

The 'San Marzano' tomatoes grow huge leaves that cover the entire plant. They have to be cut back some.

Using Herbs

2011-07-10T08:22:00.001-07:00

I have begun to use the medicinal and cooking herbs that I grow more this year than in previous years. I have spent years doing research into the various herbs and what they are used for today. There is a lot of information and dis-information out there regarding what they were used for in times past and what they are thought to do. This type of stuff doesn't interest me. I want documented, tested uses. Wikipedia has been a valuable source of today's recommended usages for just about anything!

My favourite method of using the herbs that I grow is in tea. I like drinking tea, usually with sweetener of some sort. Honey is good and I also used Splenda. I know, it's not that good for you but it is definitely better than aspartame or cylamates!! I did attempt to grow stevia this year from seed. Two sprouted but only one made it into the garden. It has long since disappeared. :-( I think I will buy a stevia plant if I can find one reasonably priced somewhere. Then I will take cuttings from it to grow a garden row of them next spring for drying.

I also, occasionally, make infused oils.

Because I sell a lot of herb seed, I have added a page to this blog that contains information on what each herb is used for, how to recognize them and recipes for using them. You can see the link to it across the top of this page, just under the header picture.

Later this year, I will have seeds for sale for most of these herbs. I do not have borage but will be growing it from seed next year.

Because I have begun to enjoy herbal tea mixes, I usually dry them on screens on the front porch. This works well for most seed, as well. The squash seeds and other seed that the squirells enjoy eating, will dry indoors in a spare room upstairs, although I have not had a problem since Shadow has begun living outside on the porch during the growing season. Shadow is our male cat and great dark hunter (He's really a mama's boy but he likes to pretend).

Strawberry Wine II

2011-07-07T03:33:00.001-07:00

This is the strawberry wine in the extra large 6.5 gallon secondary fermenter - at least 5.5 gallons of it!

It's a lovely deep red colour! That's the rhubarb wine behind it. Soon I'll have raspberry wine making too!

I'm going to need more bottles...

Squash for 2011

2011-07-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

I gave a great deal of thought to the variety of squash that I wanted to grow this year, for the freezer, for the seed, for fall decoration and for sale. I decided on the Hopi black (of course), Turk's cap, Hopi pale gray, sweet dumpling and upper ground sweet potato squash.

I planted 7 hills of our best Hopi Black Squash (C. maxima) with 2-3 plants per hill. I planted one hill of the Hopi pale gray (C. maxima) with just 2 plants, 1 plant of the upper ground sweet potato squash (C. moschata), one plant of the sweet dumpling (C. pepo) and three plants of the Turk's cap (C. maxima). They grew well this spring and began to bloom a few days ago. Now we come to the hard part - keeping the three C. maximas from cross pollinating.

I have been using the masking tape method. You can see it here: "Hand Pollianting Squash". I considered a few other methods this year, bagging the flowers, using screen boxes but settled on what I considered to be the simplest.

I have been going out to the squash field every afternoon and taping all flowers shut that were due to open the next day, then going out at dawn and hand pollinating them, then bringing the used male flowers into the house and putting them in the compost bucket. While this will work well, it's not ideal, especially for someone as busy as I am.

This morning I decided that I was too busy to keep doing that. We also have so many new things on the go here this year that I just don't have room in my stress quotient for it and the continued worry that I might miss one and sell seeds that were crosses. I made the decision today to grow only four squash each year, one from each family: maxima, mixta, moschata and pepo, since they don't cross between families. No more worry and work to keep the seed pure!

After making this decision, I went out and pulled up the Turk's cap and Hopi Pale Gray squash plants and put them in the compost pile. I then removed the tape from all plants. No more worry about cross pollination!! I will still hand pollinate the squash to get a bigger yield but I can rest assured that the seed is pure.

I am now growing 19 plants of Hopi black squash (C. maxima), 1 upper ground sweet potato squash (C. moschata) and 1 sweet dumpling (C. pepo). I am only growing 1 each of the sweet dumpling and upper ground sweet potato squash because that is all that came up :-( Next year I will add a large striped cushaw (C. mixta). I might change out the upper ground sweet potato squash for butternut (also a moschata) next year but I think I will like the sweet dumpling enough to stick with it. That means I don't grow zucchini or large pumpkins, since both are pepos like the sweet dumpling, but I'm ok with that. It's worth it to save myself the hassle and worry that I might miss something. We don't eat a lot of zucchini. As a matter of fact, I didn't plant it this year at all just because I didn't have the time.

Next year I might consider large, walk-in screen boxes that enclose the entire hill, maybe, if I want to grow more than the four squash varieties.

What a relief! Some things are just not worth the work and stress it takes to achieve them.

Making Yogurt

2011-07-02T12:15:00.000-07:00

We love yogurt and it's so versatile! You can eat it plain, with fruit on it, put it on cereal and cook with it. It makes all kinds of great desserts and it is so good for you!

We use so much of it that we make our own in a 2 litre bucket. It makes quick and easy, much faster than buttermilk, but not easier.

It doesn't make at room temperature like buttermilk does, however, so it has to be heated up and put into a container that will hold the heat long enough (about 8 hours). We ordered our 2 litre bucket yogurt maker from a cheese company in New England many years ago. It's just like the ones that used to be in every home in the 70's and 80's. It is a simple styrofoam cooler, not electric, that the plastic bucket fits in, so it can be made anywhere. I know people who have pur their yogurt containers in other small styrofoam coolers that hold in the heat and covered it wth a warm quilt or blanket. This seems to work and would do in a pinch, if you didn't have an actual "yogurt maker".

We let our yogurt "make" about 8 hours. If you like it less tart, you can take it off earlier.

The thickness of the finished yogurt depends on the milk solids in it. If you want a really solid yogurt, add powdered milk to the milk before putting it in the maker. We used to do this regularly until powdered milk got so expensive. To the 2 litre bucket we make, we added about 1/2 cup of powdered milk. Now that I don't use it, our yogurt is a bit thinner and wetter, but it's still great yogurt. What we make now is similar to many brands of store bought yogurt.

I have discovered that the addition of plain gelatine will help keep it from watering, so now I add about 2 tablespoons of gelatine to the 2 litres of milk when it is very hot and use the hand blender to dissolve it. If you are adding powdered milk to it, the hand blender would be useful too. If you wanted to get creative and you like fruit yogurt, I suppose you could use flavored gelatine, but I have never done so. You can also add sugar, sweetener, jam or fruit to it at this stage. Freezer jam makes great yogurt. It's the sugar and almost fresh fruit all in one.

I use yogurt to start it. I rarely ever buy actual "yogurt starter". Any yogurt will do, as it has the live bacteria culture (acidophilus) in it. I usually make yogurt when there is a little left in the bucket. It doesn't take much (1/2 cup to 2 litres). I spoon it out of the bucket and set it aside, then wash the bucket before making new yogurt in it. I also buy a small plain yogurt when I need to, in order to start a new batch.

Here is a list of what you need to make yogurt: milk to fill your container(s), powdered milk (if using it), gelatine (if using it), thermometer, yogurt starter, and a container/arrangement that will hold the yogurt and hold the heat in for 8 hours.

To make the yogurt, gently heat the milk to 190 degrees F, stirring more or less continuously. Turn off heat. Add the gelatine and powdered milk and blend until dissolved. Cool the milk to 112 degrees F, then add the yogurt starter. If you add to starter to the milk when the milk is still too hot, you will kill the bacteria and it won't make yogurt. If you let it get too cool, it won't make yogurt either. Anywhere around 110-112 degrees going in, with everything added, will make good yogurt. If you don't heat the milk to 190 degrees, you might get yogurt and you might not. It's risky. You might get another bacteria in there that will make something other than yogurt.

Being exact with cleanliness and temperatures is something one gets used to if one makes wine or soap regularly. Making yogurt is much easier ! Try it! Yogurt is so good for you!

Good, solid yogurt without a lot of water.

Goats II

2011-07-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

I have contacted two farms in this general area that have nubians, boers and crosses. I told them what we were looking for, asked what they had available for sale and the general price range. So, now we wait and see...

The farms I emailed are:
Half Caper Farm in Mt. Pleasant
Shannon Crow in Wiarton

Both are at least 1.5 hours away, so we will have to do some simple truck repairs and get it on the road soon, if we want to bring goats home. I think we have a little work to do around here first, anyway. Maybe we can have them bred before we bring them home...no, I think we better just get used to having two goats before we do that.

Like I need something else to do! I already have more to do than I can cope with!!

It's exciting, anyway! Maybe! It all in His hands now.

Goats

2011-07-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

We are considering acquiring a couple of goats to keep the brush down around here. We have empty fields full of brush that we'd like to clear.

It would be such a waste to just cut it down when it would make great goat forage. we could also have some meat for the freezer and milk, if we had goats. There are only a few of us but I would like to make cheese and we do make a lot of homemade buttermilk, yogurt and soap. I would also want butter.

I know milking is a lot of trouble with the sterilizing and so forth. I already make large quantities of wine. Can the cleanliness be more exacting than that? I have had chickens for years so I know about water in winter and daily care and feed. I have a vet tech for a friend who will give me lessons in trimming hoofs. I could let the milking dry off for a few months each year and share the milking job with the babies for awhile. We could have goat meat in the freezer and sell a few babies too. We could also have a bit of cashmere, maybe.

I just don't know what kind of goats to get. I don't want babied, spoiled barn goats. I want goats that forage outside all year but I want some milk too and meat. Is there one type of multi-purpose goat that lives well outside foraging in the north, gives enough milk for us and has enough body weight for meat and possibly hair that we can breed up for a bit of cashmere? What about Spanish goats? Does anyone keep these for milk, as well as meat?

Should we get a mix of breeds, maybe one dairy goat and one meat goat to start with? What is a good, outdoor hardy, northern goat for milk and for meat? There is a farm nearby with Spanish goats which are bred to produce cashmere. That's why I am asking. Will I be able to get enough milk from a couple of Spanish goats to do what I want with it? Any breed can produce cashmere, or so I have been told, if bred for it. They will also have to eat a lot of brush! I know we need sheep for the little grass but we are not concerned about lawn, we want the brush eaten. We are over run with thistle, curly dock, burdock, goldenrod, mustard and wild raspberries.

I have researched goats for years, but more for care than breeds.

Is there anyone out there nearby with a couple of goats we could acquire that would meet out needs? Am I asking too much from one breed of goat?

I know about the fencing problems. Been there, done that! I know there is no such thing as a goat proof fence. We are installing a double wire live electric fence.

I am more concerned at this point with getting the right goats for us.

Anyone have any advice on breed and locating them?

Strawberry Wine

2011-07-01T07:46:00.000-07:00

Strawberry wine in the primary fermenter bucket - at least 5 gallons of it! It is made with all fresh strawberries from our garden, just picked in the last couple of weeks and immediately frozen, same day, at the peak of ripeness!

After much research and blending of recipes, experience and thought, here is the recipe I used:

Between 18-25 lbs strawberries
16 cups table sugar (hydrometer reading of approx 13% alcohol)
5 teas acid blend
1 tea bag (I used white tea)
2 teas pectic enzyme
Water to make 23 L

Rooting Bucket

2011-06-29T10:50:00.001-07:00

I have made a rooting bucket. It's just a big bin full of sand, embued with very old chicken manure runoff. I have a piece of plastic to cover the top and intend to spray it whenever I pass by. I used rooting hormone for these.

In my new rooting bucket I have: rugosa roses, variegated dogwood shrub, climbing hydrangea, a golden leaf hydrangea of some kind, euonymous europaeus, forsythia, purple leaf sand cherry, pink rhododendron and curly willow. I have room in there for a few more and another bin just like that one, if I run out of room.

I have chocolate mint and large weeping willow rooting on a shelf. They don't need hormone or a special covered humid bin.

I'm very excited about it and have high hopes!!

Cultured Buttermilk

2011-06-28T06:02:00.000-07:00

Delicious!! I just ran the little blender through it and it's ready to drink, as soon as it's cold. You can read how to make your own cultured buttermilk in a previous post "Make Your Own Cultured Buttermilk"

I let it sit and "make" for 2.5 days. We have determined that we like the tartness of it best at that age. If you like a smoother, less tart buttermilk, let it sit for just the two days or even less. If you want someone to learn to like buttermilk, start them on a less aged product.

It needs blending because it starts to separate after a day or two. If you want to make a great soft cheese, just let it continue to separate, strain the solid curds and you have cheese. The liquid whey can be used in all kinds of other things. You can make sour cream by letting the bacteria grow in cream instead of milk. It's the same culture.

We always have a jug of buttermilk making on the counter. It goes fast around here!

Art Gallery

2011-06-27T06:21:00.001-07:00

I have redesigned my art site. It is now at Blogger. I have three blogs now. This one, which is my favourite and most important, the new Art Blog and the "Cool North Designs" blog, which is still in the making.

Please check out the new art blog when you have a minute. I like the colours!

My New Art Site

Using Medicinal Herbs From The Garden

2011-06-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

I started growing my own medicinal and cooking herbs a few years ago. It's another step in my journey to become more self sufficient and organic.

I am blessed with a lot of medicinal herbs that grow here naturally and I have planted many more. This year I plan to dry many of them for our own use.

Having raised chickens, dogs and cats and hoping to acquire a few goats, I have done a lot more research into using herbs for animal care in the past few years.

One herb that I have always grown and used is thyme. It is by far my favourite. It's main medicinal ingredient, thymol, is an antibiotic and antiseptic. Thymol is also present in a few other herbs, as well. Many years ago, before the discovery of penicillin, researchers were looking into the production of commercial antibiotics based on thymol but this research was discarded when pencillin came along.

I use thyme in everything. We like the flavour and it goes with so many things! It gives food that "can't quit eating it" taste.

I grow quite a lot of herbs for the kitchen but I also grow a lot of medicinal herbs. I usually medicate myself long before I go to see the doctor and I am very stubborn!

I sell a lot of my herb seeds, medicinal and culinary, in my seed store but it changes from year to year, depending on how the plants do in the garden. It is always better to use your own fresh herbs than to buy teas, tinctures or cures made by someone else. The product is stronger when it's fresh and you know what you are getting if you make it yourself. It's also cheaper and a lot more rewarding!

As with all things, herbal medication should be done carefully and in moderation. I like to use herbs as prevention, rather than trying to instantly cure a problem.

Before you begin to delve into herbal self medication or that of your family or animals you should do a lot of research and know the herbs you are using. I have found a few sites that have been very helpful with this. Here is a list that you can also reference:

Molly's Herbals - Natural Care for Animals

Herbnet (An extensive alphabetical list of herbs and their uses)

E-Medicinal

I am not an herbalist. If you are unsure of what you are doing, perhaps you should consult one before using any natural herbs. Just because they grow in the garden and naturally, does not mean they are safe to use for everyone and in any quantity. A little may do a great job, more may be very harmful. Some herbs can be as harmful as commercial drugs in the wrong hands. After all, most flower gardeners have things growing in their beds like digitalis and castor bean, some of the most poisonous things in nature.

People have asked me why I don't post the herbs that I use and how/why I use them. I am not a herbalist and the use of herbs as medication to relieve and prevent problems is complicated. I do not want to be quoted or said to give advice on the use of medicinal herbs for anyone's person or animals. Please do this research from books written by qualified individuals and/or sites online.

These are some medicinal herbs that I grow. Some I use a lot of, others I have for "just in case" but don't use very often. I hope to do more with some of these in the future. I am hoping that I will have seed for most of these in the seed store this year. Warning: Some of these can be invasive if not controlled! Some are a bit hard to find, such as the heal-all, boneset and motherwort. Others are very commonplace and most people have them growing nearby and just don't know it.

bladder campion
boneset
burdock
celandine
comfrey
clover, red
echinacea
evening primrose
feverfew
Greek valerian
heal all, self heal
lavender
mint
motherwort
oregano
plantago major
thyme
St. John's wort
yarrow

Growing Ornamentals

2011-06-23T03:16:00.000-07:00

I know that I mainly post about food and practical things around here, (I am extremely practical) but I do have some very large ornamental gardens, as well, and tend to hang out there more than anywhere else. That is where I putter. At the moment I am enlarging them, more for the purpose of ridding myself of grass to mow than for the acquiring of more gardens, per se.

I am currently enlaring the ornamental garden space. I don't say perennial bed because I also grow annuals, as well, and some shrubs. I hope to be adding small trees too. I collect all perennials, sometimes to the point of obsession, if left unchecked.

I have an iron bench the will go on the large cleared area. I am waiting for hubby to help me strong-arm it down the stairs from the deck. That thing is heavy!! It will make a nice seating area for me, when I want to pray, contemplate life, try to figure out myself and why I do some of the absolutely stupid things I do. You know...meditate. It's a good place to read, maybe. I hope that it will be so attractive a place that I will actually sit still there for a short time. I will have to spray myself all over with deet to sit there for very long in the evenings, but that comes with the territory, or the country, I should say.

I am also adding more roses and have a few pink rugosa roses in pots, waiting for it. I am trying to root cuttings from my good rose too. I have some softwood cuttings in sand with plastic bags over them. I have one family heirloom rugosa rose. It is a mauvy dark pink sort of colour and smells wonderful (see photo)! It belonged to my MIL most of her adult life and to her mother before her. She gave it to me last year. They are getting on in years and don't have the ability to care for their once large garden. This is a special rose and has been doing well.

Last year it had rose chafers all over it and I was just too busy to take care of them. This year, I swear I am going to hand pick every single bug I see off of it! Maybe I will spray it with rhubarb leaf/organic tobacco water. I don't want to harm the bees, so that will be a "last straw". I am also considering drenching the soil around it with a watered down doggie flea shampoo that I have with pyrethrin in it. WIll this harm the rose? Anyone know?

I cannot lose this rose bush. I have to pass it on to the future generations. Anyway, I hope the cuttings take. I used rooting hormone and did everything I read to do. I have some hardwood cuttings too, in pots at the moment. I plan to stick them in the sandy ground and cover with a jar.

I want more roses, especially rugosas, for wine, cooking and tea.). (See "Cooking With Roses".) They produce an abundance of hips and I already know that the petals make good wine :-)

I have picked up a lot of perennials in the past few years at the season end, mid to late July. Our Canadian Tire Hardware Store has a large greenhouse. They mark them all down to .25 at the season end and sometimes even .10 each! Two years ago I bought 30 of them at .25 each! Some didn't make it, but at that price, it's not much of a gamble. Many are doing well and blooming this year!

I have also acquired many through trading, plants and seeds. I am hoping to host a Barrie area plant swap later this summer! I think it will be a lot of fun! I want to finish these new areas first and get the grass under control :-( and some other areas tilled (so the place at least looks "lived in". lol!).

I have listed the ornamentals that I have below. There are a lot of them! I am hoping to have seed from most of these for sale in the seed store this fall! Some have not bloomed yet and I still have not seen a few of them yet this year, but most are doing well and blooming. It's an immense list! (I won't have seeds for all of them this year). I am finding it hard to believe that I actually have all of these myself. It's mind boggling to see it in writing! This list is also for my own benefit. I need a record of what I have growing out there.

amaranth 'intense purple'
aruncus, goat's beard
aster New England intense pink
artemesia "silver mound"
baby's breath, pink/white mix
beauty bush (kolkwitzia amabilis)
bergenia
bleeding heart, pink
bugle weed
campanula "sarastro" purple
campanula "glomerata" purple
campanula 'carpatica" purple
campion, rose and white
canna lilies, red flowers, red leaf and green leaf,
candy lilies
candytuft, white perennial
candytuft, purple annual
celandine, greater
centauria montana, mountain bluet
centaura dealbata, pink
cerastium tomentosum, "snow on the mountain"
cobaea, cup & saucer vine
colchicum
columbine garden mix
columbine native, red
columbine, winky red/white
cone flower echinecea, pink and white
cosmos mix
dahlia "keri blue"
dame's rocket, "hesperis"
day lilies, red
day lilies, Stella D'oro
daylilies, orange single
delphinium, small pink
dog tooth violet
euphorbia, "donkey tail spruge"
evening primrose
feverfew double flowers
filipendula rubra, pink meadowsweet
filipendula ulmaria, white meadowsweet
flax, red annual
forget-me-nots
four o'clocks, mixed
geranium, cranesbill bright fuscia pink
gladiola mix
globe thistle
hardy hibiscus mix
hens and chicks
hellebore
heuchera, "marvelous marble"
honeysuckle bush, pink
hosta "big mama"
hosta "blue angel"
hosta "Francis Williams"
hyacinth bean, purple and white
impatiens gladulifera
impatiens, red annual
iris, Japanese, blue and purple
iris, Siberian, many shades and mixes
Jacob's ladder, purple and white
joe pye weed
lamb's ear
lamium, "spotted dead nettle"
lilacs purple
lilies, oriantal/asiatic mix
lilies, Easter
lily of the valley, pink
lily of the valley, white
loosestrife, white garden
lupins, purple and pink
malva moschata, pink and white
morning glory mixed
monarda didima red (bee balm)
monarda fistulosa lavender
morning glory mix
obedient plant pink (definitely a misnomer!)
penstemon "husker red"
peony poppy mix
peonies
phlox paniculata, pink & "davidii" white (tall)
phlox sublata (creeping)
poppy, oriental "fancy feathers"
primula mix
rock cress, white
roses, rugosa
rose climbing "blaze"
roses, mini red and orange
rudbeckia "black eyed Susan"
rudeckia maxima (8' tall)
rose of Sharon
sage, Russian
sage, lyre leaved
scarlet runner beans
sea holly, eryngium
Sedum Stonecrop Red
Sedum Reflexum
shasta daisy
snowball bush
Solomon's seal, varigated
spirea "bridal veil"
sweet pea perennial mixed
sweet william mix
veronica, blue and intense pink
violas, "Johnny-Junp-ups" tiny purple/yellow combo
violets, yellow and purple
wisteria
yarrow, red

Rubarb Wine

2011-06-22T03:19:00.000-07:00

Here is the rhubarb wine in the secondary fermenter. Isn't it a beautiful colour!

Comfrey

2011-06-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

We grow our very own fertilizer - comfrey! It is easy to grow and spreads rapidly but we consider this a good thing. We use quite a lot of it on the garden throughout the summer!

Comfrey has a very deep tap root that collects nitrogen and other minerals from deep in the soil and stores them. When it is cut, it releases these things back into the soil. It makes a nurishing mulch for the garden! It also makes a healthy feed for fowl and farm animals!

I cut a couple of wheelbarrows full yesterday and mulched all the vegetables with it. It's quickly and easily done with a hack saw. I didn't strip the leaves off the stems, just laid the whole things on the ground around the plants.

Lemon Mint

2011-06-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

I harvested the lemon mint today! I did not cut it all today. I left a few stalks to go to seed so I can sell it this fall in the seed store.

It makes great tea and spice for cooking! I especially like lemon with chicken.

I rinsed it and laid it out on a screen for drying. I might hang some herbs to dry this year too. I do have the wire strung under the porch roof just for that purpose but this is drying on a screen. I will turn it a few times every day.

I collect large screens whenever I find them at garage sales and so forth. They are a great way to dry herbs, flowers and seeds!

Strawberry Jam!

2011-06-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

Our strawberries are ready now! I pick a large colander full every morning. We eat a lot, as is. They are so sweet right from the garden!

I put about half of them, daily, into my wine bucket in the freezer. Yesterday I made some strawberry freezer jam. I will make more tomorrow too. We don't eat a lot of jam. I hardly ever eat it due to the sugar content, but hubby likes a little now and then and it makes great gifts!

I will be freezing some strawberries for winter eating too! We love strawberries.

I hope I get enough this year to make 6 gallons of wine. If not, I will have more next year! I am enlarging the strawberry garden.

Rhubarb Wine II

2011-06-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

This morning I put the rhubarb wine, from my previous post, into the primary fermenter. I did a bit of research online, reading many, many recipes before I started.

After straining the juice from the boiled rhubarb, I ended up with about 6 gallons. I put this into the primary fermenter. To this I added:

- 2.5 teaspoons pectic enzyme, dissolved in 1/2 cup of hot water. (Still not sure this is enough. I might add another teaspoon or two before racking.)
- 1 tea bag in a cup of boiling water, left to sit and "stew" for a couple of hours before adding to the wine
- 1 package E-1118 wine yeast, proofed in 3/4 cups of lukewarm water with a sprinkle of sugar
- 20 cups of sugar, bringing the hydrometer reading to 13% potential alcohol, perfect! I added 8 cups, then did a hydrometer reading for every 4 cups of sugar added after that.

I ran out of sulphite for sterilizing, so switched to a mild bleach solution, rinsing everything very well, of course.

I did not use acic blend for this, since rhubarb has a lot of acid, however many of the recipes called for either tea (for the tannin/tanic acid) or liquid tannin. I used one tea bag (black tea), as asked for in several recipes, just to be sure. Acid is important. I would have preferred to use green tea, but didn't have any. I thought about using the white tea in the freezer, but that's special tea, to be used only when my MIL visits. ;-) I went with black. No one is going to notice the taste of one black tea bag in 6 gallons of wine.

All in all, I thought it went very well! I'm quite pleased with the resulting red liquid foaming away in the primary fermenter! I don't have pictures, because, well... I didn't take any!

It won't be ready for at least a year, which means I will probably be drinking it at about 8 months...

Rhubarb Wine I

2011-06-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

I started the rhubarb wine today! I have about 15 pounds of rhubarb saved for it, chopped and frozen. I took it out and boiled it in about 4 gallons of water. It will sit in the boiled water in the pots with the lid on until tomorrow morning. Then I am going to strain it, put it in the primary fermenter and add the stuff.

It is going to be so good!!

Today's Harvest

2011-06-07T09:46:00.000-07:00

Spinach and rhubarb! I chopped the rhubarb and put it in the buckets in the freezer. I have almost enough now to make five gallons of rhubarb wine! I'll do another cutting at the end of June and that will be it. The plant needs to grow and nurish itself for the rest of the summer. I found the stalks to be a bit thinner this year. It needs to be fertilized. I think I will add a mulch of old sheep manure soon.

The spinach was chopped small and frosen under water in ice cube trays. When it is frozen solid, I will pop it out and put it in a big freezer bag with the previous spinach from this year.

It's so handy all year long in ice cube size servings from the freezer. I just toss a few of them into just about anything. It's very good for you!

The Gordon Graham Tomato

2011-05-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

Twenty-one years ago Gordon Graham, an American painting contractor, grew a tremendous tomato weighing 7 pounds 12 ounces (3.52kg). It was as big as a lawn bowls ball and as heavy as a newborn babe. The Guinness Book of World Records certified that it was the world's largest tomato. And no one has grown a bigger one since then, although thousands have tried.

When the huge tomato plant had reached 14 feet, it blew over in a storm but kept growing. The plant reached a fantastic length of 53 feet 6 inches (16.31m.) and had just the one huge tomato growing on it.

Graham's humongous tomato gained national publicity after a TV crew visited his garden and taped a sequence that was shown on the CBS network. He also became the man to beat in Miracle-Gro’s $100,000 tomato-growing contest, but the closest competitors didn’t even come within a pound of Graham’s formidable fruit. The contest has since been discontinued, so now your only hope is to get your tomato listed in the Guinness book of records.

I have a child of Gordon Graham's world record tomato growing in my garden! Just the one plant, a direct child from a seed of Gordon Graham's world record tomato. Through great fortune and trading with a friend and fellow tomato enthusiast, I was able to obtain a few of these seeds. Only one germinated, but one is enough, if all goes well. Needless to say, I really baby this tomato plant!!

If it does well and I can get tomatoes from it this year, I will have these seeds for sale on my site this year. If all goes well. So many things can happen to a single tomato plant in a garden!

I considered growing it in a pot, but I'm notoriously forgetful and might forget to water it during a heat wave. No, it's better off in the garden than in a pot, surviving my tender mercies.

After the terrible blossom end rot we experienced with our tomatoes last year, I planted them all in my good lasagna wine garden this year. I dug in lots of old sheep manure (store bought) a little lime and one Tums per plant. The same person who gave me these seeds, told me that a Tums will give the tomato plants the calcium they need to prevent blossom end rot. It's cheap and easy, so why not? I'm going to sing to them this year too. (I sing in the garden all the time anway, but hey, I'm from Tennessee! :-)

So, keep watching our tomatoes this year! We might have some fabulous seed for sale in our store this fall!

Blue Corn

2011-05-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

This year I am growing blue corn also called Hopi maize! What I have is called 'Six Nations Blue, Long Eared Variant'. It's not really a new thing. Blue corn is a very old heirloom, grown by the Hopi and Aztec natives for hundreds of years. Isn't it amazing how the old things are coming back and they're better than the new generation foods!

Heirloom organic blue corn has 20% more protein, less sugar with a lower glycemic index. The blue colouring is due to the presence of anthocyanins in the corn. These are the same health promoting compounds found purple berries and red wine. It is ground into flour and used as feed for animals. It doesn't have the sweet, tender taste that we are used to in the new corn hybrids. Is that a good thing? The new hybrids are all sugar.

20% more protein is amazing! So much better for egg production in chickens, meat building in pigs and cows, milk production in dairy! It's also better for us! With less sugar and more protein it can be part of the diet of someone with blood sugar problems.

Here are some more facts that I have discovered when researching blue corn:
Blue corn has 20% more protein and 8% less starch. It has more lysine, zinc and iron than today's yellow hybrids.

Cooking with blue corn:
Blue corn meal is milled dry blue corn. Blue corn masa harina has been roasted before milling.

Blue Corn Pancakes
Yield : Makes about 25 small pancakes
Ingredients
1½ cups blue cornmeal
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1½ cups milk
4 tablespoons melted butter
Unsalted butter, for the griddle
Directions
Sift the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Add the eggs, milk, and butter and mix thoroughly. Cook the pancakes on a hot, buttered grill or skillet, using 2 tablespoons of batter for each pancake. Keep the pancakes warm in a low oven until ready to serve.

*******************************************************************************

Blue Corn Cornbread
Original Recipe Yield 1 - 9x9 inch pan of cornbread

Ingredients
1 cup blue cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup white sugar
1 pinch salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter

Directions
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x9 inch baking dish.
Mix cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Sift 3 times.
Stir the eggs and milk into the cornmeal mixture. Place the butter in the prepared baking dish, and melt in the preheated oven. Mix hot, melted butter into the cornmeal mixture. Transfer cornmeal mixture to the prepared baking dish.
Bake on center rack in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, until the edges of the cornbread pull away from the sides of the dish, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool 10 minutes before cutting.

If all goes well, I will have these heirloom, organic blue corn seeds for sale this fall!

Planting for 2011

2011-05-26T08:21:00.001-07:00

Most of the planting has been done for this year! I still have some tiny seedlings too small for the garden yet, but on the whole, most things are out there. The seedlings that I still have potted are mostly herbs and baby grapevines for the upcoming vineyard and a few perennials.

We have cut back on the vegetables we are growing, wanting to use that time and space for other, more interesting things. We've added a lot more berries this spring and more herbs too and will soon be installing a vineyard for our new 'Valiant' grape vines.

Here is a comprehensive list of what we have planted this year. I am sure there are a few things that I have forgotten. I will be writing future posts throughout the summer to introduce you to a few rare and new things on this list.

Squash:
Hopi black (our favourite)I planted 14 of these plants!
Hopi pale gray
Turk's cap
Sweet dumpling
Upper ground sweet potato squash (Grows in the poorest soil and conditions!)

Tomatoes:
Our Portugal beefhearts
San Marzano
Ailsa Craig
Manitoba
Rev Morrow long keeper
Gordon Graham original world's largest tomato seeds (Only 1 plant growing)

Beans:
Yellow wax beans bush
Kentucky Wonder yellow pole beans
Scarlet runners
Stringless blue lake green pole
Gold of Bacau yellow pole
French Duet pole
Dow Gauk yard long green
Gradma's Mushroom beans pole

Peppers:
Bells red, orange, dark purple
Mixed mini bells
Giant green bell
White Habanero hot
Red cheese sweeet
Feherozon
Lipstick Sweet
Jimmy Nardello
Corbaci sweet

Only the bells are big enough for the garden yet. Hopefully I will get peppers from the others this year. We need some heat! I want them for seed sales!

Others: (Up and growing)
Sweet peas
Blue native organic corn (For ginding and fodder. Has 28% more protein!)
Tobacco Virginia Gold
Cantaloupe (14 of these plants. Wine!)
Giant watermelon (Only 3 came up :-(
Large globe onions
Ground cherries
Spinach
Lettuce
Basil
Parsley
Catnip
Thyme
Lemon balm
Cilantro
Oregano
Celery
Rosemary
Flax
Quinoa
Chia
Lavender Muntead
Stevia (Only one came up)
Impatiens glandulifera

Planted but not up yet:
Haskap honeyberries
Cranberries
Blueberries
Hostas mixed
Lupins
Sea Buckthorn
Black currant
Jacob's ladder
Rugosa roses
Stevia
Purple leaf sand cherry
Amaranth intense purple
Amaranth red
Chichiquelites (Garden huckleberry)

Perennials and herbs still growing in our gardens: (not ornamentals)
Rhubarb
Strawberries
Raspberries
Blackberries
Gooseberries
Haskap honeyberries
Black mulberry
Black elderberry
Saskatoon berry
Black Currant
Green onions, scallions
Thyme
Oregano
Chives
Garlic Chives
Mint
Lemon Mint
Hibiscus
Comfrey
Red Bee Balm
Echinecea
St.Johns wort
Wild Evening primrose
Red clover
Motherwort
Feverfew
Chicory
Lappa Burdock (Close relative of the artichoke. Taste like them too!)
Heal all
Boneset
Yarrow white and red

Many of the medicinal herbs at the end of the list are not grown in the kitchen herb garden, but are planted in a space to themselves, where I leave them to do their own thing most of the time. The grass and weeds don't seem to bother them. They actually do better if left alone to grow wild, so I don't coddle them.

This is a fairly comprehensive list. As you can see, we have little room for much in the way of plain old ordinary vegetables! No zucchini this year. We just don't eat it often enough to grow it. No garlic either. It is always on my list of things I want to grow, but in the fall when it needs to be planted, I am busy and tired of gardening. Maybe this year, in October, I will plant some. No potatoes or carrots. Both of these grow on local farms nearby so are cheap and plentiful in the fall. No sweet potatoes this year. I grew them last year but decided that they weren't worth the time and effort.

Today's Harvest

2011-05-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

Spinach and asparagus! I know it's not much but it's still spring here.

I have been cutting the rhubarb and freezing it. I'm hoping to get enough this year to make five gallons of rhubarb wine!

We do have many flowers in bloom now too!

Things are growing!

Rhubarb Blooms

2011-05-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

My rhubarb is blooming! I have been waiting for this. :-) What comes with blooms? SEEDS! I will have hardy rhubarb seeds for sale this fall!

It's ready to start cutting now too. I'm going to start today, chop it freeze it and then make wine out of it when I have time. I also plan to make pies, cobbler and maybe jelly and so forth. I have a lot of rhubarb!

Looks like the strawberries are also blooming! Hmmmmmmm... Those don't look like strawberry blooms to me. Who put forget-me-nots in the strawberries!

Making New Wines

2011-05-14T11:25:00.001-07:00

Well, it's raining and blowing outside, a good day to work in the kitchen and make more wine!

Today I racked the banana and apple wines into new jugs. They tasted great but very sweet right not as they still contain a lot of sugar.

I started two new wines today, maple and mint!

The maple was made from real maple syrup. I started with a pint of syrup and added enough water to make a gallon.

The mint was a bit more time consuming. Yesterday I picked enough fresh spring mint growth to make a gallon of leaves packed into the bucket. I added a gallon of water to them, put it all in a pot and brought it to a boil. It sat in there with a lid until this morning. I strained and squeezed the mint with sterile hands and made wine with the strong mint tea.

I put each one in it's own one gallon bucket. Using a hydrometer I and added enough sugar to each wine to make them 12% - 13% alcohol when finished. I also added one teaspoon of pectic enzyne and two teaspoons of acid blend to each one.

I proofed each yeast in warm must in a sterile glass for about 30 minutes. This is both buckets waiting for the yeast. The one on the left is the mint. Odd colour for mint, eh? It was green until I added the acid blend. You can see the original colour here. This is mint tea that I didn't use. Now it is an attractive, pinky shade. Really strange!
I love both mint and maple flavours! I am hoping these wines will be ready to drink in about 6-8 months!

Next up: rhubarb and then strawberry! Here they are growing in my wine garden.

You can read more information on making wine in my free e-book, "Making Your Own Organic Wine At Home." Follow the link on the left to download it.

Plant - Rummage - Craft Sale

2011-04-25T13:29:00.001-07:00

We are having a giant, eight family sale on May 7! It's going to be a rummage sale and a plant sale and a craft sale and probably some baked goods too and anything else people can think up to sell.

I am focusing mainly on plants. I will have many hardy hibiscus, lilac bushes, bee balm, garlic chives, strawberry plants and much else. I will also have other things from the house that I am cleaning out. It is, after all, a rummage sale.

If you are going to be in this area on that day, do stop in!

We are having it right on the corner of Veterans (Innisfil 5th sideroad) and Salem Road. It's a very busy corner coming into town, especially on the weekends. It's also just a few short blocks from the Georgian Downs race track, which will also generate a lot of traffic.

Do come to see us there!

Spring is Here! Finally!

2011-04-25T09:02:00.001-07:00

Finally! After a very long and cold winter, all snow has disappeared and I am digging in the dirt! Things are growing! Above is a picture of one of my most valuable plants. It's a hellebore and I grew it from seed!This will be it's second summer. If you know anything about hellebores, you know that growing them from seed takes a great deal of patience and sometimes two spring seasons. I am hoping more of the same seed will sprout this spring, maybe. Germinating hellebore seed is tricky. They are very expensive plants to buy but so beautiful and very hardy! This one was growing in the snow!

I also have primulas from seed. These little babies are doing well after their winter's sleep! I love primulas!

This year I am putting in a second cold frame. My first cold frame is already full! It is planted with all my tender bulbs. I just planted them directly into the soil in the bottom of the cold frame. They can grow in there permanently, although I will put one dahlia in the "chair". They filled the entire cold frame space and so I need another one. I have a small portable greenhouse, but it is very small and doesn't even hold my seedling trays, much less the larger trays of potted up plants. Don't take that wrong. I love my little greenhouse but I need more room.

It has been a couple of years since I installed the first cold frame. I had forgotten about the rocks! I think the builders buried all their excess rocks and boulders beside the deck where I have decided to put the cold frames! I can use the rocks in landscaping but they sure to make the digging a lot of work! Some are so heavy I can't lift them and just have to roll them out. Sometimes I sit in the hole and roll them out with my feet. (Anything to keep from having to ask for help! I'm ever so slightly independant...) Needless to say, I'm quite dirty when I come in (and my friends wonder how I get dirt in my hair! lol! I'm happiest when covered from head to toe in dirt! You?)

It will be well worth the trouble.

I am considering making a three sided compost bin with pallets (skids) that sits beside the two coldframes. It will be so handy, right beside the deck where I can just walk out and toss the kitchen compost bucket in it during the wintertime.

That's a project that can wait until I have nothing else to do...(LOL! Now, that's funny!)

Lasagna!

2011-04-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

Hubby made us a fantastic lasagna on Saturday! We needed to use up the ground spinach and the pesto from the freezer. It was really, really good and much appreciated!

Hubby and I cook ahead on the weekends, making a fridge full of food to last the week.

I don't usually do the daily "cook dinner" thing, especially during the growing season. I'm not really very domesticated...

Snow! and A New Wolf Painting

2011-04-18T15:42:00.001-07:00

We had snow last night! Snow! Unbelievable! It came down thick and hard and stayed! Needless to say, I was not gardening in the snow this morning :-(

Will spring ever come? I had such high hopes this year. My poor little seedlings are struggling with the lack of light and the cold temperatures. Some are refusing to sprout in this!

It has been raining a lot with tornado winds...or snowing. This is giving me more time to paint. I'm a glass-half-full kind of person! I've been painting a lot lately, since the weather has been so bad.

I just finished this one a few days ago. It's almost life size, 40" tall. It's a gray wolf. I called him "Lobo" which is what one calls a single lone wolf. It is for sale, if anyone is interested. I'd like to get $250 for it, plus shipping. Click on the picture to see a larger, high resolution photo of it.

I like painting the wildlife, especially wolves. I think I will start painting wolves again. I painted nothing but wolves for years until I got so tired of them I had to stop.

Since I couldn't garden this morning, I took up the chainsaw and spent most of the day cutting wood. I cut down an entire large old apple tree, cut up the large branches and started on another tree. My arms were like lead when I came in after lunch but I'm thrilled with what I got done today! My chainsaw and I are buddies!

For those of you who do not know me, yes, I'm a girlie girl with long hair who bakes pies and makes cookes... :-)

Wine Update

2011-04-01T05:52:00.000-07:00

I was wrong when I said that the wines were all finished. They are not. The rose petal wine and the pea pod wine are ready to drink. Both are lovely, the rose petal being my favourite of the two. The lilac wine and the dandelion wine are not ready yet.

The lilac is close and I would drink it before buying more, but it still has a "jet fuel" flavor.

The dandelion has a long way to go, although it is developing well. According to the recipe, it is not suppose to be ready until aged for two years, but that recipe is old. Since the development of the turbo yeasts, aging times have changed.

They are all aging in the cool, dark cellar. I don't think the rose is going to be around a lot longer... Must make more of that next year and rose hip wine, as well. I am growing a lot more rugosa roses this year!