Winter Gardening January 12, 2015

Here in south central Missouri – Zone 6, we are still able to grow about 90 percent of our fresh foods.  I’m not gonna lie to you though,  I am a slave to avocados, oranges and lemons and get out to the market at least once a month to stock up on those.

An Ozark winter isn’t exactly considered extreme, but during this time of year if you live on the river bottoms like we do, we often experience below freezing temps and single digits.  No complaints from me as this is my favorite time to hike, read, create music, do art and lollygag on the floor under the guise of a yoga practice.

Right now it is a balmy 28 and I just came in from a harvest and a bit of tending the garden.  The sun is bright and raises the air temperature of the covered beds to a steamy 60 degrees.  This creates some moisture and the possibilities of survival for our mature food crops as long as the soil doesn’t get too cold.  It does also give unfortunate habitat for the survival of pests that are normally dead or dormant this time of year and downy mildew (great band, not so great in the garden).  The good outweighs the bad for sure though as we are able to nourish our bodies with what gives us strength to do good work and stay healthy through the season.

If you already have a garden in an area with winters that are like ours or warmer and want to eat well from home during these colder months, you could plant cool season crops, and with an understanding of their needs and floating row covers or some green house plastic you should be good to go.  We use a combination of both depending on the crop.  If just using fabric row cover like Remay, there is no need for any hoop structure (better not to use one actually), but if you use plastic, you will need to fashion some sort of hoops to support it.  We use the bamboo like river cane that grows wild here, but anything that is already shaped or that you can bend yourself will work.  Keep the cover close to the plants to avoid cold air space and monitor the temps on days above freezing when the sun shines, uncovering when you can so that the plants are not assuming spring and wanting to bolt from warmer temps.

For us, this winter garden, with a solid harvest of potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, carrots and beets combined with sprouting yummy seeds and beans and collecting hickories, pecans and walnuts from the forest floor equals a daily toast to a winter of health and happiness.

3 layers of floating row covers

Under green house plastic

Roasting on the wood stove

 

 

 

Diospyros Virginiana Bless You! November 9, 2014

My husband has all but cured his seasonal allergies by making  Persimmon tea from the leaves of the wild trees on our farm.  We harvest the them  in the summer before the fruits set and the Vit C and antihistamine properties are at their highest, dry them in the shade of tree itself and drink the tea late summer and fall during our normal sneeze season to reap the benefits.

We saw 16 degrees last week in the bottom lands and have had fairly consistent light frosts since then in the wee hours.  This is good weather for picking the persimmon berries as they are just perfect after a few frosts and awfully butt puckering before that – so be warned.  I always say they are ripe when they are mush on the tree or have splattered on the ground. Luckily, we continue to ingest the goodness from this tree by pulping the berries and freezing it for future use in breads and puddings, using them as you would when baking with ripe bananas.  I love the pulp raw, slathered on rice cakes or mixed into oatmeal and as well, make breads and puddings – see recipe below.

The seeds themselves are so called fortune tellers of  winter coming.  Split one open and you may find a fork, spoon or a knife representing just how much snow you need to shovel or ice to cut through.  This year I got mainly sporks but here are some examples of proper utensils.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VEGAN PERSIMMON BREAD

INGREDIENTS

• 1.5 cups persimmon pulp
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp chia soaked in 2.5 Tbsp water
• 3 Tbsp melted coconut oil
• 1/2 cup sweetener of choice (we are bee keepers and  I use honey which is not considered vegan-  brown rice syrup or coconut sugar are good too)
• 3.5 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup almond
• 1 1/4 cup almond meal
• 1 1/4 cup gluten free flour blend
• 1 1/4 cup gluten free oats

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease up a loaf pan
2. Add all ingredients through almond milk and whisk vigorously to combine. Then add almond meal, flour and oats and stir.
3. Bake for 1 hour – 1 hour 15 minutes. When ready, it should feel firm and be crackly and golden brown on top.
4. Let cool completely before cutting or it will be too tender to hold form.
5. Eat it up Yum!

Loving this rotting world! May 31, 2014

Its been a few years since we last inoculated logs, and the last time I wrote about it was even longer still. Since then, lots of lessons learned, so time for an update.

This time around, we were able to get more logs going due to the graciousness of a dear friend. The White Oak, posing both as a loving, and an ‘oh, no we have 35mph north winds coming in’ threatening figure was de limbed of those arms hanging over the north side of the house, in late winter this year. Yes, she has been like family, and now besides gettin’ all up on our roof, she will be providing the base for the Shiitakes to feed us medicine as well. Lord knows we need this to do good work.

We let the limbs sit on the ground for about 6 weeks – just enough time to allow the decaying process to begin as Shittakes will not invade living cells. There is a fine balance between this and keeping good moisture content in the log needed for fruiting long term. Honestly, though we intend some sort of perfect timing, it just ends up happening when the time is right and we try to take into consideration, the celestial elements of water and heat. Hats tipped, we ended up inoculating when the moon was in Sagittarius which insures some sort of bio-deliciousness in my book.

Waiting to decay

Having done this before, and now with our own tools, bees wax from our own Sun Raw Apiary and a garden already made up for the logs, the set up was smoother than ever. It only took a few hours to inoculate 25 logs between the 2 of us.

The logs are approx 4’ long by 5” in diameter with 1” holes drilled in somewhat of a diamond pattern throughout. The sawdust spore is inserted with a special tool and then covered with a layer of bees wax so that it doesn’t dry out. We wax the ends as well and label them before laying them in the yard.

 

During the initial incubation period, we keep the logs moist with a sprinkler from our water catchment system. (After a few seasons, we only soak them when we have a long dry spell or would like a fruiting.) This mostly happens during spring and fall as it is simply too hot for them to grow in the summer and too cold in the winter. To inspire a flush, the logs soak in a tub of rainwater for 24 hrs. In about 5-7 days, the mushrooms begin to show themselves and we harvest as desired by size and weather outlook. There are times during the year that we resort to using well water as the rain catchment gets a bit too warm for the their liking. When the logs start to flush, we lean them up horizontally for easy access and less bugs. Sometimes we have had to make tents around them to stave off the deer. Not that I mind them having a few, but the critters tend to take all of them.

Incubation with wild ginger 🙂

We eat as much as we want fresh and the rest are dehydrated for later use in soups and stews. I actually prefer the taste of dried to fresh as the process brings out it’s umami flavor. Last year I started tincturing them as well and use it as an immune booster, to get a blast of B vitamins and a dose of iron. This in itself is a great supplement for those of us who choose a vegan diet.

Our sawdust spawn has been provided by Field and Forest, http://www.fieldforest.net/ a Midwest company who provides great information, customer service and a large variety of strains to choose from and experiment with. So far, we have tried, about 6 different varieties and WR46 seems to be the most productive in this area. Even 6 year old rotten, spongy logs with little bark left on them are still producing surprisingly well.

These mushrooms along with the wild ones, are so beautiful, nourishing and plentiful and we feel super lucky to have them as a part of our forest garden.

Mushroom garden

Kefir – a good name for our next pet? December 17, 2012

Here Kefir kitty kitty kitty

Not such a great name if you say it the ‘right way’ though.  I am the poseur who pronounces it kuh-feer, all but shaming my beautiful/ ugly American friends.  Still, those fabulous friends graciously shared some grains recently and I started making water Kefir for the family.

Water Kefir,  Tibicos or Tibi refer to sugar kefir grains as opposed to dairy kefir grains. Their origin is hard to place as they seem to be quite worldly.  Whether or not it came from a Mexican cactus, or from Russian sheep intestinal flora (ew! ewe!), what we are using now (and another good name for a pet) are SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeasts).  They are similar to that which kombucha produces. The bacteria and yeasts build a protective protein and polysaccharide matrix in which they live and propagate – this is the actual grain, the internal structure of which contains lactobacilli.  This culture is  the motivating factor behind the desire to make and drink it for most people.

I have been experimenting with just how little sugar I can get away with using to ferment the brew.  As of today, the recipe I use for a nourishing, probiotic filled, tasty and effervescent drink is as follows-

Ingredients

1/2 gallon well or spring water (do not use chlorinated)

1/2 cup water Kefir grains

1/4-1/2 cup sugar

a dozen or so raisins

* You can make less of course, but use the same amount of grains as you would for a 1/2 gallon.  Also, I use coconut sugar – It works just as well as white with a slightly different taste.  I suggest starting with white until the grains are thriving, then start to experiment.

Method 

Combine ingredients in a 1/2 gallon ball jar with a filter and a ring (cheese cloth or a ppr towel w/ rubber band works) on top and leave at room temp for 48 hrs

Strain grains, discard fruit and decant liquid into 2 quart glass jars.  Add whatever flavor additions that please you (like a drop of lemon EO or some grated ginger or fruit juice or coconut flakes) and cover with tight lids.

Allow the quarts to sit for another 24 – 48 hrs to taste at room temp –

Put in fridge for consumption.

Take grains and start the process over.

It may take a few weeks or more, but eventually the grains will multiply.  You can dehydrate them, pass them on to friends or use them in a host of other recipes.  Want some?  I will happily share.  If you are local – come get ’em.  If not, I can send you some dehydrated.

If you want more information about these grains – these sites make me wonder why I am even blogging about them at all.

http://www.yemoos.com/faqwaprepandsup.html

http://users.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html#intro

Kefir brew, tho unphotogenic, is a beautiful thing~

Dehydrated kefir grains – preserved just in case

Bittersweet Habaneros October 12, 2012

Harvesting the last of the summer crops is always bittersweet.  It signals the end of long and languid days swimming in the creek, thirst quenching watermelons and no laundry duty since very little, if any, clothing is necessary during this season.   More than that, it heralds the demise of snakes, chiggers, ticks and unbearable 24/7 heat and humidity.  Also, I can live without niteshades – cool season greens and root vegetables are a must in my meals though.

The sweet potato harvest is always a surprise.  The vines and flowers are so beautiful, but you never know just what will be underneath.  We got lucky and have enough for the winter for sure this year.  Read more about growing them in an earlier posting ‘Fresh Dug Up’

Sweet Tater vines

Prizes from the underground

Winter stock

Ivana Potatohead

The basil kept coming and coming this year and now we have more pesto in the freezer than anyone should.  Tomatoes turned into jars of salsa and sauce, cukes into pickles and now the peppers get the attention.  The plants are so hardy, standing the heat of summer, and in the end, the cold nights of early fall so,  I always put them off till the last possible minute – hoping they will all turn orange and red before the 1st few frosts.  This week we roasted, dried, froze and pickled.  The best use for us is to roast, dice and pack them into a quart jar, filling the rest of the space with olive oil and honey.  A tsp of that brings out the best in any dish I make.

Now that the summer fruits are harvested, all attention goes to growing  fall/winter/spring crops and putting the other beds to rest for the winter.  We love a variety of greens – kale, collards, chard, mustards, Asian mixes and such.  Lettuce and spinach are at the bottom of the list, but we do grow some to share and sell.  Rutabagas are my favorite root crop.  I eat ’em raw like carrots and cooked like potatoes.  The greens are as satisfying to me as collards are.

The beds, that are in the resting rotation, get a few inches of biodynamically charged compost added along with a foot thick layer of leaf mulch that will soon blanket the ground, be raked up and piled on the beds.  This makes for great planting in the spring without disturbing the beds by having to cultivate.  We just plant directly into the loamy, rich soil and wait for life to emerge from the seeds.  Then, it all starts over again.  Pure magic.

The Purple Prince – Formerly known as Lavender July 23, 2012

“with immediacy and intensity, smell activates the memory, allowing our minds to travel freely in time.”

Tom Robbins Jitterbug Perfume

Lovely layer of oil floating on top

The goods

gridded for the good of all

The lavenders are a genus of 39 species  in the mint family and is grown in temperate climates as ornamental plants for landscape use, and commercially for the extraction of essential oils.  As noted in earlier posts, the hydrosol I produce is not a co-product of the essential oil, but rather the object of my desire for the lavender.  The pure essential oil that floats on the top is mixed well so that it is always included in the jar packaging of the finished product.

Floral with honey overtones and a smooth,viscous finish – to camphorous, sharp and lively, Lavender hydrosol is definitely my staple ‘heal all’ as it has a multitude of uses and it seems to lift everyone’s vibe with it’s misting magic.

Having distilled many different varieties of Lavender, I am most impressed by Lavandula x intermedia ‘Provence’ which has a clean, slightly sharp citrus high note with a backbone of cinnamon and eucalyptus and Lavandula intermedia ‘Grosso’ which is deliciously sharp and tangy with a hint of honey.  Lavendula angustofolia is widely available as well in the Napa Valley where I harvest and most people truly just love it’s warm honey scent.  All are luxurious and transportive on a mental and emotional level and are strong yet gentle antiseptics.  Fortunately, the sources for these plants are organic and biodynamic farms and I am blessed to have the time and freedom to experiment with production under varied celestial states and by the BD calendar.

Hydrosols seem to  possess a magical in road to healing and can be used safely without the irritants that some may experience with essential oils.  Use them freely and often to enhance your surroundings and more…

A few Lavender Hydrosol Uses

• Spritz yourself- face, hair, body, and clothes.
• Cool a hot flash.
• Soothe a sunburn.
• Cleans wounds, cuts and sores.
• Clean the air, esp. when you are traveling as it acts as an air-borne viricide.
• Freshen the bathroom
• Make your own wet wipes- spray on tissue or damp clothe and use. Great for dirty faces, hands and bottoms.
• Add a splash to white wine or champagne.
• Spray in the dryer before adding clothes and directly on line hung clothes.
• Spray on your yoga mat
• Spray on cloth napkins and tablecloth.
• Spritz your face to change your mood and attitude, very calming.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence – Robert Fripp July 23, 2012

Once a week, for the last 5 years or so,  the boys and I gather with life long friends to create music.  Sometimes it is here on the farm around the fire or down at the creek but, more often than not, it is at Christinas house as her entire sunroom is packed with instruments ready to play.  Our only rules when we started doing this was that there were to be no ‘songs’, only exploration.  Band names followed – ‘No Sudden Moves’ may have been the first.  ‘Emergency Kill Switch’ came the next summer when, after a day on the lake playing to the wind, the pontoon boat wouldn’t start, so we all jumped in to tow it back to the dock.  Fortunately, some hot, bikini clad babes in a bitchin’ Bass boat told us to check the EKS by the starter (who knew?) and we motored back after dusk.

Instruments at hand range from Davids homemade – like the tin can harp,

the real one is in the other room…

wash tub bass

Bunny made a glockenspiel

and household percussion items,to school band grade wind and reed along with a cello, violin,  guitars, banjo, mandolins, big and small squeeze boxes -including a harmonium and a monster accordion named ZSA ZSA.  Some evenings, we set the sun down with funnels, flutes and colorful tubing and entice the moon to rise with a cacophony of percussion persuasion.  It seems like over the last few years however, a few songs have slipped in and the keyboards have taken center stage.  Get everyone on one and melodies of world  emerge.

There are many nites that the idea of being alone for the evening, using chores and chickens or a good book as an excuse almost stop me from going. I usually give up my drag though, for as Aldous Huxley wrote, After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music –  and because I always get so much from being with friends, eating and drinking fabulous food and wine and playing or listening to the creations of the soul.

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together  – Anais Nin

my favorite

more cow bell

steel drum

the ‘new’ string, percussion, wind section

turn it up

bda bum

baby squeezy

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life  – Ludwig van Beethoven

The Commonwealth of Common Weeds March 23, 2012

Because I love chickweed (and am stuck inside right now due to a much needed rain), I googled it, and was aghast at the links I could have followed dedicated to eradicating and killing the poor thing.   So, I thought I would lovingly write about it, and it’s sweet companions of spring.  Here I present, with fondness and adoration~

Chickweed, Violets and Dandelions

  

So happy together - Chickweed with Dandelion and Violets in foreground~

Chickweed (Stellaria)

A bed of chickweed for the taking~

Yep, the hens love it and so do we.  Raw it is refreshingly sweet and delicious, cooked – you got it, tastes like spinach.  It survives the winter and blankets the land with white flowers in the spring.  Invasive for sure, but its roots are shallow so very easy and satisfying to pull out if needed.

Chickweed is an excellent source of vitamins  B  and C as well as iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, zinc, manganese, sodium, copper, and silica.

Medicinally, it is a mild diuretic, without depleting the body of minerals and is great for skin care.  It is a main ingredient in the salve I make every year because of its soothing, anti-inflammatory abilities.

Grab it out of your yard and get it into your kitchen!

Violets (Viola)

Too sweet to eat? I think not~

With its blue, purple, yellow and white flowers and sweet, heart shaped leaves – who wouldn’t find pleasure in using the leaf and petals of this little beauty in their salad?  The leaves could also be used cooked – as a thickener, since they are so mucilaginous.  I read that it makes a great jelly too.

Medicinally it contains a cocktail of properties to fight diseases of the respiratory system.  Gargling with an infusion of the flowers may help soothe a sore throat and a decoction of the root applied externally, can be used for sore joints.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officianale)

Dandy!

Ok, come on- it is certainly one of the best potherbs, the loveliest and most delicate of the wild crafted wines and my favorite Biodynamic prep.

Really, all parts of the dandelion are edible and have medicinal  uses.  Young leaves, before the flowers emerge, can be eaten raw or steamed – then, there is always dried or roasted roots and fermented or frittered flowers.  All worth your while, tho at times, not so much for the taste but rather because it is a super strong liver tonic and diuretic.

As the biodynamic preparation 506, it gives the soil a certain quality, enhancing its ability to supply the substances a plant needs. It even is said to increase a plants sensitivity to help it  attract beneficial things from a wider area outside our planet ;).

If you can’t beat ’em… eat ’em 🙂

Snow Cap and Night Velvet March 8, 2012

Those names sound like some fancy, hard liquor drinks to order the next time you are in an upscale joint but really, it is just a few shiitake mushroom strains.  We added another 50 logs to our garden this week.   The trees had been cut by loggers (boo hiss) a few months back and the tops, left behind – the timing was right and the only good thing to come out of that mess.   You need to get the spawn into the logs when the moisture content of the tree is still high so, fairly soon after it has been felled is great.  These new logs are inoculated with a mix of warm and cool season varieties.  The process was much easier this time around because we got a tool which required little more than thumb pressure to insert the sawdust spawn.  No bruising ever again.  In order of process  – Qik did the drilling (diamond pattern – every 6″ with 2″ between each row) , I inserted the sawdust spawn and Marcus sealed the holes with wax from our bees.  It took a leisurely 10 or so hours from collecting the logs to bringing them full of spawn back into the woods.   See my previous ‘Have Fungi’ blog for more info on how to grow these delectables.

T is for Turnips and 10 Thousand Year Old Tools March 4, 2012

In the Barren Fork Conservation area this year, the government planted a community ;), monoculture garden crop of turnips. We harvested buckets of them, washed them in the creek and feasted all winter on raw, baked, stewed and boiled bulbous taproots.  Most didn’t seem to even know this was available.  We never saw anyone there except for an abundance of wildlife.  Hmmmm

My harvest happy husband~

Since it had rained recently, I had my eyes peeled for story telling pieces in the soil.  Qik found the bird point in the photo below a week earlier and I found the Dalton on the right a month before.  Amongst the turnips, untouched by the propagation process, was the one on the left – oh the stories it tells.  We are honored to care for these tools and absorb their history.

Walking home debating - who is cooking tonight~