Bike ride finds

I thought this was a nice picture of red clover and red raspberry leaves drying on the cattail mat. I love the vibrant color of the red clover blossoms. We tried the infusion today for the first time. We found it to be mild and pleasant. It takes a lot of dried blossoms to reach the one ounce of plant material required for one quart of infusion though. We scavenged these blossoms from the farm and also along our new favorite bike route. The blossoms were along a road, but it seems like the road is seldom used so we risked it.

The other exciting find from our bike trips was yarrow. It is one of my most utilized herbs. We dried some for tea (mostly in the event of a tension headache for me but there are many other possible uses including if you feel a cold coming on). We also put some in an alcohol based tincture. It is an excellent bug repellant in this form, and it can also be used to stop bleeding or in any situation you would use neosporin. Tincturing it in vinegar is our new experiment. I've tried drinking alcohol tincture for headaches before and it does help, but if I'm already feeling nauseous then the alcohol is too much. Supposedly the vinegar will draw out the alkaloids just as well and hopefully not upset my stomach. The final experiment is yarrow in oil. Yarrow is pain relieving and antiinflammatory so I may try it topically for sore muscles. It also may be a nice choice for wounds when I don't want to deal with the sting of alcohol. If anyone wants reports on how well the different menstrums(sp?) work... Let me know!

Ok short blog this week. Maybe I'll have more pictures to motivate my writing next week...

De-hydrate, de-hydrate, de-hydrate

This week's theme is dehydration. We have harvested lots of yummy things and now we are drying them out for later use.

St. John's Wort drying out for future use as teas. I could have also used it fresh to make an oil infusion for sunscreen or a tincture (more potent that the teas). The flower is so beautiful, have any of you seen it before?

Comfrey (or as the ancient ones called it, "bone-knit") is being dried for herbal infusions. Comfrey has been used to heal broken bones, sprains, and tears.

Dried nettle for infusions (mostly), and also for soups or to be ground and added to gamasio

Cattails... Drying for mat making :) we ate the shoots at my herbal apprenticeship on Monday

My first attempt at mat making... Looks ok to me. Read the directions after I started though... Oops!

Mat looks nice and tight right after it is finished.

Mat is much looser now that it dried. Next time I will dehydrate the cattail, rehydrate it, and then make the mat to see if that helps. Raspberry leaves drying here for an astringent, nourishing tea 

And lastly, just for fun, we have the chiogga beets that are finally big enough to see the ring pattern when cut. Pretty and delicious... And also pretty delicious

New life and new eats

This hen was broody so we got three fertilized eggs from a neighbor. She hatched the first one today...more pics later when she is not hanging out under mama hen all day.

We think one of our new birds started laying eggs today. It was not in a nest box and is so much smaller than the other eggs.

We are still waiting for Catherine's Linden tree to bloom. The flower and bract can be dried to make a delicious herbal infusion with anti-inflammatory qualities.

Butter making kit we received for Christmas.

Washing out the extra buttermilk so the butter keeps longer.

Buttermilk... For the original buttermilk pancakes or ranch dressing. We just drank it straight. Yum!

Little butterbell for storage.

Neal is headed to a permaculture course this week, and We are hoping he can post about that experience and also about making a hugelkultur garden bed when he gets back.

Another photo log

Linden tree aka basswood. Edible flowers and young leaves. Nourishing and anti-inflmmatory

Just learned about it in my herbal apprenticeship Friday and here it is on the farm :)

You eat the leaves when they are still small and translucent... Too late for this tree. Now we have to wait for the flowers to bloom to make herbal infusions.

Another lilac

Katie Coldwell bought us a mushroom kit as a wedding present... Look how well these shiitakes are doing!

Poor raspberry didn't transplant well. I think it will make a comeback though.

Almond tree... Doing well!

Colleen and Marvin helped is mulch around all our new trees last weekend... Many thanks!

Older batch of chickens outside in paddock that is moved every Friday 

8 new pullets (adolescent hens) that we got on Wednesday. They are being hazed until the pecking order is established... Hence them huddled in the corner :( 

we got 2 of each type. The black and white ones are called Barred Rocks and are my current favorites.

Buff Orpington on the left and Rhode Island Red on the right

The gray one is an aracauna. She is tiny, but fast!

Automatic Chickens and Busy Bees

While Alicia has been busy posting about what trees are blooming and eating down our pantry, I have been busy with many other projects.  The automatic chicken feeder has long been complete and with the advice and help of family and friends it works great and can be set up to feed the chickens for a few days if we are gone.

 It really was a simple device to make.  The only parts I bought were the flexible drive shaft (clear plastic tubing), the hose clamps and the motor.

 Everything else was scavenged.  The one mistake I made with it though was winding the copper wire (leftover wire from grounding the electric fence to the ground rod) the wrong way.  Instead of the feed coming out the end opposite the motor it comes out the side by the motor.  So I  had to make a wood housing that just covered the motor but left spots open for the feed to fall through. One of my original problems had been that the auger would get bound up with all the feed so that resulted in installing the gutter ramp to direct the feed to a smaller area.  

Now with a digital timer I set to turn on for 2 minutes in dispenses more than enough feed for the hens that we have.

Another all winter project that just came to a conclusion was building 2 beehives.  I ordered a 3 pound box of bees through Dadant and Sons.  They are a beekeeping supply company.  They finally arrived last Tuesday.  Those bees were destined to go into top bar beehive that I built.  Topbar beehives are thought to be more natural than the traditional Langstroph hives.  That is because the bees are not given any premade foundation and have to make all the honey comb themselves.  The yield of honey is slightly lower because more energy is put into the comb but its more akin to what wild bees would do.

 This is the beehive before any bees have been put in.

This part comes off to reveal a plexiglas window that is inset into the hive.  This allows for quick checks on the bees without doing any invasive inspections.

This shows the boards that they will make the comb hanging from. Also note the 3 holes at the back of. The hive where they will enter and exit from.  The follower board in the center of the picture will move along the box as more bars are added as the bees fill them up.

The box that the bees come in is on the ground at the left.  One can see the thousands of bees swarming around and inspecting their new hive.  I will post the videos that I took on YouTube soon.

I also bought and just finished assembling with the help of Alicia, Colleen and Marvin a traditional Langstroph hive that I was going to take the bees that have been living in the wall of the old beer depot here at the farm.  However, like many bee colonies, it looks like they didn't make it through the winter.  So I might instead try to split the top bar colony once it gets more established.

The bees will do a great job of pollinating all the fruit and nut trees that were recently planted and are beginning to bud out.

Eating Down the Pantry

Neal and I declared May "eat down the pantry" month, meaning we are only buying dairy products. We are finishing off the produce and random bits from the cupboards, fridge, and freezer, and we haven't been suffering a bit. Who knew how much we had saved up? Between Meg Kelly from High Meadow Farm keeping us stocked with greens every week and our own little cold frame, we have been eating greens at least twice a day. We're expecting plenty of seasonal produce from the garden and markets staring in June and we want to have room for them.

So far we have tried out:

-"corn pudding" to use up our frozen sweet corn. We've been feeding the extra corn to the chickens and they LOVE it.

-enchiladas with cooked greens, Scallions from meg, leftover mushrooms, carrots, frozen corn, freezer chicken fro the fall, and canned salsa... Yummy

- beet and turnip gratin from Annie's website: leforthomestead.blogspot.com

-pasta with frozen pesto (wish we would have started eating down the fridge earlier because we already have greens in the yard that we could be using.

-asparagus from our CSB farmer.... Delicious 

-pizza with frozen tomatoes and fresh spinach from Meg

-rice and beans with scallions, fresh greens, and frozen corn

-black bean soup... Surprisingly flavorful

-sautéed greens

To date, we have been able to harvest these foods from our garden and cold frame:

~Lettuce

~Radish

~Kale

Meanwhile we have wild harvested:

*dandelions

*lamb's quarters

*red raspberry leaves (for tea)

*stinging nettle

*chickweed

*violets

We could be eating garlic mustard, purslane, and more... But we have so much good food from the CSA and in the freezer that we haven't gotten around to it.

Beet and turnip gratin

Asparagus for breakfast

Cheese kit I received for Christmas from my folks

The kit makes ten batches... So nine more yummy batches left :)

We used milk from Grassway Organics Farm. We'll be returning... So delicious!

Almost 2 quarts of whey and a half pound of queso fresco.

Radishes from the garden. They taste surprisingly good sliced and served with the fresh cheese

More May flowers

Lilacs!

Tulips

Crab apple... Mistakenly called the tree with white flowers an apple previously... Oops

More lilacs. These remind me of my folk's home and the lilac festival

Not sure what this shrub is

Also don't know what these flowers are. I like that they are a bit hidden

Neal and Mike installing a rain chain on the barn to channel water from the gutter to the rain barrels. We use the barrels to water our veggie bed and potting shed when they're full

Lastly, asparagus from our community supported beef (CSB) farmer... Thanks Brian!