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.

Sweet Tater… Fresh Dug Up October 13, 2011

This color, reserved for fall is like no other and I am drawn to it. The sweet potatoes come out of the ground bright orange and fade throughout the day, while sun bathing, to prismacolor terra cotta. As I was digging for the goods, I found one of my nephews man dolls. Strange to see a wrestler in in tight pants a foot beneath the earth.  How did he get there?  Is it a sign?

Today was the 1st real fall feeling day. The ground is now dotted with yellow walnut leaf. Not too many for us to mourn – just enough to enjoy laying in a hammock and watch them fall from great heights.  The taters will cure in the shade in temps of about 75-80 degrees for a few weeks at which point we will move them into the root cellar.

All shapes and sizes

You can start your own sweet potato slips in the late winter by allowing your taters to grow in a moist mixture of very loose soil or decomposing hay.   They will put out little roots which will grow into beautiful dark green vines. Keeping a dozen or so of them moist and warm in this manner
should give you enough to plant a 20′ x 4’bed w/ 1′ spacing.  In late spring, when the soil temps are up and it is a steady 65-70ish out, you twist off the vines and transplant them directly into your beds.

Sweet potatoes are a nutritional All-Star — one of the best vegetables you can eat in my opinion.  They are loaded with beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin B6 and vitamin C; fiber, thiamine, niacin, potassium and copper. They are also a good source of protein, calcium, vitamin E.

Eat ’em up!

Greens and Roots for the people September 14, 2011

Yes, I brought this weather back from California with me.  No thanks needed, I know everyone is in appreciation.  And now for some rain…

My favorite garden season is upon us.  Everything is planted now for the fall, winter and early spring crops.  Greens and roots for the people.  I love thinning little sprouts and eating them like an herbivore as I move down the rows.   We have kale, collards, chard, spinach, Asian greens, carrots, radishes and beets started and are still enjoying squash and a straggle of  watermelons, cukes, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant.  It is taking about 12 gallons of water every other day to get the crops going right now.  We still have rain catchment but, it is dwindling.

Tatsoi, Kale and Collards with hoops and remay to protect from hungry caterpillars and grasshoppers~

This week, the shade cloth came off the greenhouse and we boxed up the cured garlic.  Ok, some it was a bit over cured.  Lots of it already doing the hard part of peeling itself.  So, I finished the job and peeled about 20 lbs worth.  Some of it got pickled and some chopped, covered in olive oil and frozen.  We shall certainly enjoy the forced convenience of it throughout the year.  Garlic is planted the fall before the harvest in these parts and goes through the winter with a heavy layer of mulch.

The early beginnings for this bountiful harvest~

A mix of varieties in the box - 'Elephant' in bowl~

Still waiting to harvest winter squash and sweet potatoes,  both crops look pretty good.  In remembrance of last years extraordinary damage to the plants in mid September, I have been spraying  a mix of garlic and eucalyptus EO on the crops every morning, watering at nite and covering with remay to deter the grasshoppers-   So far so good.

Walking sticks.  They surprise me constantly- on the laundry line, the door handle, the watering can, chairs and the other day, there were a number of them waiting on our shoes.  Appropriately named.

Not as bad as monkey on his shoulder~

The Elderberries are beginning to ripen.  It excites me to think of sipping a winter tonic of Elderberry wine.  It is quite medicinal in flavor and power. Note from ‘A Modern Herbal’-

Elderberry Wine has a curative power of established repute as a remedy, taken hot, at night, for promoting perspiration in the early stages of severe catarrh, accompanied by shivering, sore throat, etc. Like Elderflower Tea, it is one of the best preventives known against the advance of influenza.

John Evelyn, writing in praise of the Elder, says:‘If the medicinal properties of its leaves, bark and berries were fully known, I cannot tell what our countryman could ail for which he might not fetch a remedy from every hedge, either for sickness, or wounds.’‘The buds boiled in water gruel have effected wonders in a fever, the spring buds are excellently wholesome in pattages; and small ale in which Elder flowers have been infused is esteemed by many so salubrious that this is to be had in most of the eatinghouses about our town.’

Elderflower umbel~

Drooping with berries~

A few days ago, we picked up a couple of bushels of the first crop of Jonathans in this area.  They are a tart, juicy apple that is perfect for wine.  As of about an hour ago, we have 5 gallons of juice waiting for some sugar and yeast action to get it on. 

It’s happening…

Under this harvest moon~

Sugar was never so sweet July 6, 2011

The thing that a bee profits from the most is that it derives its sustenance from the very parts of a plant that are pervaded by the plant’s love life. The bee sucks its nourishment, which it makes into honey, from the parts of a plant that are steeped in love life. And the bee, if you could express it this way, brings love life from the flowers into the beehive. So you’ll come to the conclusion that you need to study the life of bees from the standpoint of the soul.

You can study the matter further by eating the honey. What does the honey do? . . . Honey creates sensual pleasure, at the most, on the tongue. At the moment when you eat honey, it creates the proper connection and relationship between the airy and fluid elements in the human being. There is nothing better for a human being than to add a little honey in the right quantity to food . . . it makes human beings strong.

 Whoever looks at a beehive should actually say with an exalted frame of mind, “Making this detour by way of the beehive, the entire cosmos can find its way into human beings and help to make them sound in mind and body.”

~Steiner

The day after I left the hot sultry Ozarks for Lotus Land, Qik harvested 3 gallons of honey from 1 of the hives. Though I wasn’t there, I still wanted to share the wonders.

Honey is the magic elixer in our home.   Bad burn?  Honey.  Deep wound?  Honey.  Can’t sleep?  Honey.  Emotional, mental, spiritual or physical upset?  Honey!

Extracting Honey

Super sweetness

I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture… July 2, 2011

I am so drunk
I have lost the way in
and the way out.
I have lost the earth, the moon, and the sky.
Don’t put another cup of wine in my hand,
pour it in my mouth,
for I have lost the way to my mouth.

~Rumi

Having been asked many times how we make our bio-delicious wine, and since I racked a carboy today, I thought I would chronicle this batch of blueberry brew for you.

Started picking berries on June 8th.  By 9am it was 90 degrees already.  Things were starting to buzz around my head (and you know how I feel about that) when we reached our quota for the day. We finished with about 20 gallons to toss over our shoulders.  Most went into the freezer and a few gallons went to friends and family.  Marcus lovingly shmooshed 6 gallons by hand into juice which I put directly (pulp and all) into a 5 gallon bucket lined with a wine bag and topped with an airlock.  To this I added 1 quart of water and 4 cups of sugar, stirred it up with my right hand in a clockwise motion for 15 minutes ;)(that, of course, is the key to the bio-deliciousness) and called it a day.

By the next morning,  the fermentation began.  It is a glorious sound to have wine percolating in the house all summer long.  I made sure to stir the bucket a few times a day to keep the pulp from blocking the air at the top.  Around a week later, fermentation had slowed so, I added another few cups of sugar to 1 quart of water, gave the wine bag some good squeezin’ and let it roll once again.

A week after that, it was time to move the juice into the second fermentation vessel.  After wrestling with the bag for a while, I asked Qik to use his man hands to coax every last bit of the juice out.  I then ‘racked’ the wine into a 5 gallon glass carboy using a simple hose siphon and gravity.  Starting the siphon myself gave me the taste opportunity I had been waiting for and damn if it wasn’t good already!  Since I don’t want a whole lot of surface space, I added about a gallon of water plus another few cups of sugar.  So, at this point, it has taken 6 gallons of berries, 1 and 1/2 gallons of water and 8 cups of sugar to make 5 gallons of wine.

Another week and the process had slowed again. We racked it into a clean carboy avoiding about an inch of sediment at the bottom and added 2 pints of water.  I don’t really want to add anymore sugar unless I have to so, I will wait to see what happens tomorrow with this and will continue to update this post as I go along.   Feel free to ask questions – and start making your own wine.

So, after that transfer, the natural yeasts started eating up the sugars again like crazy within 24 hours.  My assumption is that in 2-3 weeks it will need to be racked again.  Taste will tell what we need to add.  Hopefully not too much more sugar.  I like a dry wine but, not too dry with the blueberries.  We may just add honey if need be.

The Lovers
will drink wine night and day.
They will drink until they can
tear away the veils of intellect and
melt away the layers of shame and modesty.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don’t even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love,
and you will not be separated from God again.

~Rumi

So here we are, almost 2 months later. The fermentation seemed to have died about about 2 weeks or so ago.  All is well tho, no need to add anything,  just one more racking before bottling time.  It is tasting good  already so, I think this will be a good batch to get us through a potentially perilous winter ;).

Late winter update.  This has been a frighteningly warm winter.  Here we are under the new moon in late February and hardly enough has happened to kill the ticks.  But, that is not the point.  How is the wine?  Ok-la.  Not the best batch for some odd reason – in fact, there was a period of time where it sort of smelled like corn chips before we bottled it.  Oddly, I was the only one that didn’t enjoy it.  Most folks said they did and asked for a wee bit more.  The apple wine turned out better this year for my taste.  Last month, we opened the last bottle of Elder/blueberry/mulberry from 2009 and that, my friends, may have been the best I have ever had.