Monthly Archives: September 2008

Please take a minute to vote

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http://boost08.perfectprize.com/voting/

Some of my friends have an amazing opportunity to win a Forbes contest that would give $100,000 to their local, eco asheville business Honeywear. So far they are just make slings (produced locally), but they are releasing a line of organic clothes for babies this Fall. They have gone from 1500 people to top 20 (actually they are in third place right now)!! Will you take a sec and vote for them? Click on the link, vote for Honeywear, then confirm from your email. Make sure to do both steps!! Feel free to send this on! I would love to see them win!!
Thanks!

Here’s an article about the business

Hot Chili!

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I canned up 10 pints of chili this morning. It was my first attempt at canning up meat, and it turned out really yummy!! Tomorrow I plan to make a very large batch of bone broth to can up. I’ll probably take some of the broth and add some chicken meat and veggies to it to make a chicken soup, and can that up too. It’s funny, I love looking at my filling pantry shelves, but I don’t want to open up any of it! I wonder when I’ll start eating from the supply 🙂


addendum: Here’s the recipe

With the night weather cooling, we’ve noticed a draft coming from under some of the doors. We haven’t done any winter insulating yet, and we need to get on that. But, in the mean time, Kaia and I sewed up some ‘door snakes’. We have a bunch of sand left over from building. So, we stuffed the snakes with sand. They are really heavy… I hope they hold up!!

Finally, truly settling in

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We had our house party (/birthday party/Equinox celebration) this past weekend. Finally! The house is complete, the yard is tamed, the trash is gone… Whew!! So, this past Saturday, we invited our friends and family, and anyone who helped on the house, to come over and see the finished product. I think there were over 70 people who stopped by and everyone loved it. It was so nice to show it off (and to hear everyone ohhh and ahhh 🙂 The last guests left a little before 1am and Toby, Kaia, and I crashed hard! The next day we spent laying around and trying to recuperate. Toby and I both noted that yesterday was the first time that we really felt like we could step back and enjoy the house. I think part of it is because having the yard cleaned up makes it feel more like home, and partly also because we have been working towards this party for months (project after project to finish up before the showed off the house). We sat by the fire pit last night drinking apple cider and eating apple pie with the neighbors and it was just so blissful!

So, my next project 🙂 is working on the garden space. I’m hoping to get a bunch of raised beds built before the winter, so they will be ready in spring for lots of veggies! I also have 17(!!!) fruit trees to plant. I got a Celeste Fig as a house warming gift and we planted that on the south side of the house. We are zone 6b, so we wanted to protect it from the cold winter winds. I also have (either waiting to get planted, or on its way here) A HardiRed Nectarine, Sweetheart Apricot, Wilson Delicious Apricot, UltraMac Apple, Pink Lady Apple, Arkansas Black Apple, Grimes Golden Apple, Honey Crisp Apple, BlackGold Cherry, Santa Rosa Plum, Methley Plum, Maxine Pear, Moonglow Pear, Lake English Walnut, Champion English Walnut, Prok Persimmon, and a Yates Persimmon!!!! (Most of these are from Stark Brothers) I ordered dwarf varieties when they were available, but the persimmons and walnuts will get 30+ feet tall, so I need to do some good planning to be sure that they don’t block the garden sun when they are fully grown. I also have a ginkgo that I have babied along in a little pot for over 7 years that I can finally put in the ground. But, Ginkgo trees have been known to get up to 80 feet, so I really need to figure out a good space for this one!!

I also hope to put in some grapes, blackberries, raspberries (and many other berries), passion fruit, hardi kiwi, rose (rugosa… for the rose hips), chestnut, and what ever else will fit!! I can’t wait!!! Now, will someone please come dig some holes in this dang red clay for me! 🙂

Look at my find!

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It’s an 1874 edition of John M. Scudder’s Specific Medication and Specific Medicines!!! This may not mean much to some of you, but for those of you who know herbal history, this is a very special find! John Scudder was an Eclectic herbalist who wrote fantastic herbal books, this being one of his better ones! His later (and maybe his best book) materia medica can be downloaded from here and printed out! It’s 770 pages long though… so get lots of printer ink!

Chickens

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Things are going mostly well with the new chickens. The 3 older ladies are slowly adjusting to having new chickens in their space. They still don’t mingle at all, and the younger ones often get chased away from the food if the old ladies are eating. I found one of the sussex pullets dead 2 days ago. There was no sign of a fight or disease. We think she might have tried to get on the roost and been pushed off and broke her neck. Creepy thing is that she was the one chicken that hadn’t been named yet.

Anyone know how to get them to go in the chicken house at night? The one sussex left has started going in and roosting on the edge of the laying boxes, but the other 4 insist on sitting on a log outside, even if it’s pouring rain! I have to figure out a way to get them to go in at night before it gets too cold, and just for their safety. I may just put them in there 5 or 6 nights in a row and close the coop up so they can’t jump back out.

Some Body Stop Me!

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I can’t stop canning things! Unfortunately, each recipe gets sweeter. I really need to work on adding some vegetables to the canning mix! Shesh!

This is the Apple Berry Syrup that I mentioned in the last post…

Yesterday, I canned up a 1/2 bushel of peaches!!

We made Spiced Peaches in a very light syrup, Peach Applesauce, and then dried some peaches.
Tonight, I made a peach pie with this recipe. We topped the pie with home made whipped cream and some home made chocolate rose syrup!!

The Chocolate Rose Syrup is something that I tried yesterday at a meeting (meetings with herbalists always entail great foods!) and I thought I’d try my hand at canning it too!!! It would make a great present.


The recipe made 25 4 ounce jars!!!
Here’s how to make it:
3 cups cocoa powder
4 1/2 cups honey
2 1/2 cups rose water
2 cups water
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
pinch of salt

Mix all in a pot and simmer 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
Pour into jars and process in a boiling hot water bath for 25 minutes.
Sit down and lick pot and all cooking utensils! Mmmmm!

OK, so next, I’ll work on green beans! 🙂

Yummmy, Yummy, and just plain yummy!

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Kaia and I went apple picking yesterday at the Long Branch Environmental Education Center, about 30 minutes north of us. They have 57 varieties of heritage apples! But they also had a ton of blueberries ripe and ready for picking. So, we ended up getting ~a gallon of blueberries and ~35 pounds of apples! I have no idea what kind of apples. We just hopped from tree to tree picking the best looking ones. Then we came home and did some canning!!
We made Spiced Apple Rings, Spiced Apple Berry Syrup, and Caramel Apple Butter!!!! MMMmmmmmm
Here are the recipes:

Spiced Apple Rings
6 pounds of firm tart apples
2 cups of sugar
6 sups of water
1 1/4 cups vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
3 Tbsp. Whole Cloves
8 Cinnamon Sticks

Combine sugar, water, vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon in a large pan. Heat to a boil and simmer 3-5 minutes.
Core, peel, and slice apples (I use one of those apple slicer thingies that does it all at one time). Place apple rings into wide mouth pint jars and fill with hot syrup, leaving 1/2 inch head space. Tighten lids and process in a hot water bath for 25 minutes. Makes 8 pints.

Spiced Apple Berry Syrup
6-8 cups Berries
Apples, cored, peeled and in little chunks
8 Vanilla beans
Big pinch of Chinese Five Spice Powder (you don’t have to have this for the recipe, but I do, so I used it 🙂
pinch each of nutmeg and cardamom
2 cups honey

In a large pot, put 6-8 cups of berries (I used blueberries, hawthorne berries, and rose hips and cover with water 2 inches over the top of the berries. Add to this vanilla beans, Chinese 5 spice, nutmeg and cardamom. Simmer until berries are soft (about 30-40 minutes).
Strain out berries and vanilla, pressing out as much juice and pulp as possible (if your berries have no seeds, you can keep them in the syrup! Just remove the vanilla beans.)
Put the juice and pulp back in the pot and add honey, stirring well to mix.
In your 4 or 8 ounce jars, put cored, peeled apple chunks.
Cover apples with syrup, leaving 1/4″ head space, and seal the jars.
Process in a hot water bath for 25 minutes.
Makes 18 four ounce jelly jars!

Caramel Apple Butter
8 pounds Apples
1 cup water
3 cups sugar
2 cinnamon sticks, broken into pieces
8 whole cloves
2 Tbsp. peeled, minced ginger root
2 Tbsp. lemon juice

Core, peel, and chunk apples and put them in a large pot with the water. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring often.
In another pan, heat 2 cups of the sugar over medium heat until it melts/caramelizes.
When apples are soft and mushy, pour the liquid sugar into the big pot of apples, as well as the last cup of sugar. Tie the spices in a muslin cloth and add to the mixture. Simmer for an hour, stirring often. Remove the spice bag, add lemon juice, and put into jars, leaving 1/4 inch head room. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. Makes ~9 half-pint jars.

Herbed Figs

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Man! I am on a canning roll! Look out, or I might just stuff you in a jar and plop you in the hot water bath!

Here’s the recipe I used for tonight’s extravaganza. It was given to me by a friend.

Herbed Figs

  • ~20 ripe figs, quartered
  • 1 Tbsp. water
  • 2 tsp. sugar (raw or brown)
  • pinch of Thyme (dry or fresh)
  • Juice of 1/4 lemon

Place all of the ingredients in a pan and simmer until juicy. Put figs and juices in a jelly jar leaving 1/2 inch of room at the top. Boil for 5 minutes in a water bath. Makes ~4 8-oz jars. Mmmmmmm!

Busy week already

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This weekend, Toby started working on the front steps. We are putting in 4 steps that come from the drive to the front door. We will also be putting in a little landing-type porch, just to keep the mud and dirt from coming in the house all the time.
Since you always get the butt and back shots of Toby at work, I made him turn around this time:-)

The steps will be filled in with gravel once he digs out a little more clay for a drainage pipe to help divert the water that comes down the stairs.

On Monday, Kaia and I took a little drive to get some new chickens. Our three old ladies are looking bored and seemed like they might need some company. They are also not producing many eggs these days. So, here are the new ladies:
The two small ones in front are Speckled Sussex and they are probably about 3-4 months old (the old ladies are in the background).

This cute little one is Poodle Noodle. She’s our Silkie and she’s also ~4 months old. She will be a smaller chicken, but still lays nice eggs and we just couldn’t pass up getting her.

Here are the other three. They are all about 6 months old. The larger one is an Ameraucana Rooster! I never really wanted a rooster in our bunch ’cause they can be so rough with the ladies, and so loud. But this breed is supposed to be more gentle, and if we hatch any of the eggs he fertilizes, those chickens could lay brown, blue, or olive colored eggs! Cool, eh? His name is Crowy. The whitish lady below him is Biscuit and she is an Ameracana female (so she’ll lay blue eggs). The orange lady is a Salmon Faverolle. I’d never heard of this breed until I went out to get the chickens, but she is very docile, friendly and supposedly will be a good layer. She is also really cute! I’ll have to get a better picture of her for you.

And just for the snuggle fun of it, here’s Kaia and her little friend Max 🙂