Summer Catch-up

It has been another strange Summer here in Western Washington. We've had a few 90+ degree days, quite a few 80+ degree days, and as of late, a lot of meh 70ish-degree days with overcast skies and relatively high humidity. The garden is as confused as I am.

We've been fairly fortunate so far this season, in terms of wildfires and the resultant smoke and pollution. They have been fewer and smaller in our state this year, which is a huge relief to everybody.

So the air quality is decent, but the humidity/heat/rainfall has been all over the map. Add to that that we've had a massive wild rabbit boom this year, and the sad state of my garden and it's output are thus explained. Even the zucchinis are under-performing this year. What the....???

The plants that are providing for us this year are our two remaining apple trees (two were lost in "snowmageddon"), our pear tree, the Himalayan blackberries that have enveloped the chicken yard, the pumpkins, the rhubarb, my porch-pot herbs (assorted thyme, chives, oregano, rosemary and pineapple sage) and the weeds, both good and bad.

Scabby Apples, variety unknown

A *volunteer* rhubarb!

The nettle harvest was decent, and made a good dozen jars of nettle pesto for the freezer. The broad-leaf plantain has also given plenty of itself for use in our soaps. The not-so-helpful weeds have been working overtime to try and take over the pasture - Canada thistle, tansy ragwort, and, my frenemy, the Himalayan blackberry, are trying the hubs' patience and doing a number on his scythe.

We've been getting about a five gallon bucket's worth of apples daily in the form of windfalls alone. The piggos are very much enjoying the bounty. Just the thought of trying to process those apples into something like juice, cider or jam wears me out, so I've more been more than happy to pass them along to the pigs, who will magically transform them in to bacon and chops for me instead.

Kevin Bacon, Hereford/Berkshire, 220ish #
 Jimmy Dean, Gloucester Old Spots, 190ish #
Both approx 7 mos.

Kev-Kev and Jimbo scarfing some apples

Our neighboring blueberry farms are having a great season, and I need to stock up before they're done for the year, but I just haven't mustered the energy to get myself down there yet. I know the window of opportunity on nabbing a lot of these fleeting harvesting and foraging opportunities is closing, so I need to hustle my bustle and get those goods socked away before this Summer officially peters out.

Blarg! Time to get out there and get 'er done. :P

Spring Foraging Begins!

Spring is a wee bit late in coming this year, thanks to a mamma-jamma of a snow fall in February burying everything for a week. But it's here now - better late than never!

Last year was a whirlwind, so I didn't get around to many of the springtime activities that I/we usually do - fishing, mushroom hunting, wandering through the woods, and picking stinging nettles. I more than exhausted my cache of nettles - and the two whole morels we found last year - so I had to, had to get 'er done this year.

This is today's haul, from the southern side of our property. Eight ounces of delciousness!

Do you suffer for your art? Well, my fingers feel weird, if that's what you mean. 

Half-a-pound isn't a bad afternoon's take. I have my eye on another nettle patch down the road a piece that looks pretty promising. Believe it or not, it's entirely possible that someone will have already nabbed them by the time I get down there with my trusty scissors. Olympians are nuts for wild foods!

If you're unfamiliar with the many uses of the humble stinging nettle, please check out my blog post from a few years back about making nettle pesto & nettle egg noodles. This year's leaves will probably end up as both of those things, plus I may dry and powder some to use as colorant in our homemade soaps. It depends on both my ongoing energy level and whether or not someone has already hit that patch I've been scoping out.

Autumn in the Hollow

Fall has very belated and abruptly, finally fallen on Boggy Hollow. The garden is very nearly wrapped up for the year, though not put to bed yet, that being a ginormous task unto itself. 

The temperature gauge on my car's dashboard read 39 degrees at 7:00 this morning, so I guess I'd better make it a priority to harvest the last of my hoop-house pimento and jalapeño peppers this afternoon before Jack Frost gets them. We also have a few scraggling pumpkins left out there, but - being volunteer mystery mixes - they're all destined to be chicken and turkey food anyway, so their cosmetic condition is not quite so important. To be honest, I'll be relieved when everything is buttoned up for the season.

I've been keeping fairly good track of our garden's productivity this year, but, as always tends to happen, I slacken off as the growing season progresses. Back in March/April, if we brought in a quarter pound of snap peas, it was written up in the log straight away. Now? We'll weigh one pumpkin and just assume the the rest of roughly the same size weigh roughly the same thing, and scratch it in the journal (maybe) when/if I remember to.

But anyway - I was talking of embracing the falling of Fall. Apparently a switch flipped and now I'm in hardcore Cozy Mode. In the past few days, I've suddenly rediscovered my love of knitting and have had my food dehydrator running 24/7, trying to put up one last jar/bag of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, calendula, spearmint, chamomile... etc. You name it, I'm drying it out and squirreling it away.

A new addition to my squirrelin' repertoire this year - wild mushrooms. Bill and I have always loved foraging, but were extremely intimidated about the idea of venturing into the world of mushrooms, as there is basically no room for error in identification. After reading half a dozen mushroom-specific guides and psyching ourselves up, a friend finally talked us into giving mushroom hunting a try by giving us the directions to his 'never fail' spot for lobster mushies. It was a bust for us. We've gone on hunts for morels, chanterelles, chicken of the woods and lobster mushrooms, all with ZERO luck. How bizarre it was then, to finally positively i.d. a much sought-after edible, the King Bolete (aka Porcino) mushroom growing in our very own yard!

Teeny-Weeny Porcini!

A very good day's haul

And to think that these have been growing there for years and we never realized - d'oh!

Apparently, they usually wrap up their Autumn flush in November, so I don't know how many more of these lovelies that I'll get before they're gone for the year, so I've been furiously hunting/cleaning/processing/drying them these past few weeks, trying to them all in while the gettin's still good.

Besides knitting and fiddling with mushrooms, I've finally got my baking groove back! Today's bake - a triple batch of Gingerbread biscotti. I've made this recipe several times and it always goes over big with anyone who has tried it. The smell of this in the oven will kick you into Cozy Mode lickity-split!

Lightly sweet and satisfyingly crunchy, Gingerbread Biscotti.

Gingerbread Biscotti 

Recipe courtesy of ShugarySweets.com

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 35 minutes

Yield: 12 large biscotti

Crunchy Gingerbread Biscotti is easy to make and delicious too. Have your coffee ready!

Ingredients

• 6 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 Tbsp molasses
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 cube Dorot crushed ginger (or 1 tsp), thawed*
• 2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup sparkling white sugar
• 4 oz vanilla candy coating, melted

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with sugar until combined. Add in eggs and molasses. Beat in spices, flour, and baking powder.
3. On a parchment paper lined baking sheet, shape dough into a 12x4 inch rectangle, patting evenly. Sprinkle with sparkling white sugar. Bake for 22-25 minutes. Remove from oven and cool 5 minutes. Slice biscotti into 12, one inch wide slices. Arrange biscotti onto sides, separating them on the baking sheet. Return to oven and bake an additional 6 minutes. Remove and turn them to opposite side, bake another 6 minutes.
4. Remove biscotti and cool completely.
5. Once cooled, dip bottom of biscotti in melted vanilla candy coating. Set back on parchment paper until set, about 15 minutes. Store in airtight container. ENJOY.

Notes

For the crushed ginger, thaw on counter while getting ingredients and baking sheet ready. OR, place in a small glass bowl and microwave for 5-10 seconds.

*I (Michelle) actually used fresh grated ginger instead, as that is what I had on-hand.

Happy fall, y'all! :)

Fall Done Fell

In the space of a week we've gone from humidity, thunderstorms and 80 degree temps to falling leaves and pea soup fog in the mornings. Fall has arrived in Boggy Hollow, and with it, as ever, a nearly-endless list of stuff that needs doing, yesterday.

As a bit of strategery, I am posting my to-do list here in the hope that the threat of an on-the-record public shaming will serve as motivation for me to get my crap together and not, say, take a nap with my puppy.

Hope springs eternal.

Chelle's end of Summer/Fall To-Do list:

*Finish harvesting the garden - tomatoes, tomatillos, basil, lemon balm, garlic chives, runner beans, pumpkins, cylindrical beets, sunflowers, chamomile, calendula, breadseed poppies, Fall raspberries

*Forage - apples, crab apples, pears, walnuts, hazelnuts, hawthorn berries, rose hips, dandelion roots, mushrooms?

*Can/Freeze/Dehydrate - Spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, tomatillo salsa, pumpkin puree, hard cider (apple, pear, hawthorn, etc.), wine (rose hip, hawthorn, raspberry), egg noodles (using beets, basil, etc.), pumpkin ravioli, chamomile, lemon balm and calendula for tea and soapmaking, dandelion roots (for bitters), pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, beet chips, beet greens, compound herb butters (basil, lemon balm, garlic chive), Scarlet Runner beans, 3 "surplus" roosters, 2 tom turkeys.

*Ferment - Cider (for ACV), wine, sauerkraut

*Make - At least 2 more batches of soap - one with goat milk and one vegan, re-batch soap trimmings, knit at least 2 dozen more dishcloths and 6 pair of bike helmet earmuffs

*Set up/Organize - The new pantry/storage room shelving - oy. This will probably involve a trip to IKEA, better known in our family as the Yuppie Modular Cattle Chute from Hell. Uff da.

As if that weren't enough, in addition to my regular Mom duties, a friend and I are in the process of starting a new business that entails real estate deals, meetings with bankers, tons of market research, paperwork and spreadsheets out the wazoo and a big, fat, healthy dose of sheer panic. Good times!

So, there you have it. My next 12 weeks, chock-full of farm housewifferey (did I just invent that word?), lava-hot mason jars and self-imposed stress and deadlines. Hold my feet to the fire to get this stuff done, guys and gals, because that nap is looking better with each passing minute.

The Birth of a Food Nerd

As an adult, have you tasted a food that you haven't eaten in a long time, and experienced a sort of sensory-fueled time warp that brought you back to some sunny day in your childhood?

I have a lot of food associations, both good and bad. I remember that Grandma Gwen loved deviled ham on Wonder bread, which, to me, looked and smelled like nothing so much as a square of cat food-smothered foam rubber. Blech.

But Grandma was raised in the long shadow of the Great Depression, and probably gained a fondness for potted meats and smelly cheeses from both her mother's German heritage and her exceptional resourcefulness. Feeding 15 people on a lumberjack's wages required a little creativity and an open mind when it came to meal planning.

But food at Grandma Gwen's house wasn't always so odd, in fact, looking back now, I see that we routinely ate like kings, without having any notion of our privilege.

That time-travelling bite that I mentioned earlier? That's what brought this whole train of thought about. I popped a handful of hazelnuts while standing in my kitchen the other day and felt instantly present in my Grandma's back yard, circa 1982, cracking open the few filberts that we were able to pick just ahead of the hungry, cranky Stellar's Jays. We had a system that we'd learned from the birds - if you dropped the hulled nut against the porch, and it bounced, it was empty inside - move on. If it landed with plunk, there was a nut inside. We used a caveman-style approach from there and clobbered them with rocks until they either gave up their goods or went shooting off into God-knows-where from an ill-placed whack.

We had similar semi-feral country kid gorge-fests on English Walnuts, crab apples (big mistake!), red huckleberries, black caps and blackberries. Sometimes we'd be sent out with a dented old MJB coffee can and told to fill 'er up with blackberries or huckleberries, with the promised payoff of pie for dessert.

Besides what we could glean ourselves, we were also spoiled with the fish and game that Grandpa brought home. A Navy man and a Pisces, Grandpa had an incredible affinity for fishing. He was an avid fisherman, bringing home limits of salmon and steelhead, which he'd smoke or Grandma would bake or fry-up for dinner. We had salmon so often that we kids actually grew tired of it and would say "Again?!" when told that salmon was on the menu for supper.

Grandpa fishing for tuna(?) off the coast of Guam, 1957/58.

We also regularly enjoyed venison, catfish, trout and occasionally, crawdads that we kids took great fun in catching from the nearby icy-cold Nisqually river. The kind of groceries that would set you back a pretty penny these days were standard fare for us. If you'd have said to me then that king salmon and hazelnuts were considered "fancy", I'd have had a hearty chuckle at your expense.

Along with all of the great foods that I experienced as a kid were also those not-so-great foods of a 1980's latchkey kid - Salisbury steak dinners, blue box mac & cheese, Fruity Pebbles, etc. And to some extent, I'm sure that those foods would evoke memories for me too, though not necessarily great ones. I'm glad that I spent time outside of my neighborhood experiencing wild food in situ, because those are the flavors and experiences that have stuck with me, and shaped my foodie-geek palate. I love rustic. I love full flavor. I have a special place in my heart for DIY, "seed-to-skillet" food, and I have my Grandparents to thank for that.

Waste

I've always been a frugal creature; not one to waste unnecessarily, and a bit of a pack rat when it comes to anything I perceive as potentially having a little life left in it. It's a blessing and a curse, really, in terms of the oddments and "junk" that I stockpile save. It is a relatively small percentage of the time that I end up doing anything with those spare buttons that come with my husband's work shirts, as he usually manages to wear the shirts out well before the buttons can go missing, but, even still, I can't just throw them away. I just... can't.

So I'm the first to admit that there can be too much of a good thing in terms of saving stuff. The HUGE exception to that rule in my book is food. There is always a body - be it human, chicken, ruminant, insect or microbe - that could use up that food's energy to a productive end and, in many cases, also produce a useful by-product (eggs, milk, compost, penicillin) besides. Therefore it pains me when I see any food irretrievably wasted.

To clarify exactly what I mean by irretrievably wasted, I'd define it like this - Useful potential energy that is irresponsibly cast off in such a way that renders it permanently unavailable for use by another living thing. Humans are the only ones who make waste like this.

If your family doesn't finish their dinner, saving the leftovers, composting them or sharing the food with critters would all be viable non-waste alternatives for taking advantage of the potential energy that is the raison d'etre, the very definition of food, and therefore a reasonable use of the food's energetic potential. Really, just about anything besides entombing it in non-biodegradable packaging and burying it 50 feet deep under thousands of tons of other trash, making it totally impossible to ever degrade, would be a reasonable use of the food energy. It's actually pretty easy to do.

Even so, it isn't unheard of to read tales of gross mismanagement of perfectly edible produce, as detailed in this story about an "unauthorized" public garden that was needlessly destroyed days before being harvested. As if that weren't tragedy enough, the ruined crops were then taken to a landfill and disposed of. I mean... why?

Irretrievable waste is hands-down the most complete waste of food, but there are others, though much less egregious, that still get under my skin. 

A major frustration that I'm experiencing a lot lately has to do with unharvested fruit trees. Washington state is known the world over for it's amazing apples. They grow almost effortlessly here, which is no doubt part of the reason that they are nearly as ubiquitous in our neighborhoods, parks and woodlands as the Douglas Fir is. But maybe having affordable, world-class apples available at the supermarket year-round has caused us to overlook the miracle of free food growing in our own front yards?

In Autumn, you can't help but notice all of the beautiful apples, pears, walnuts and hazelnuts hanging heavy in the trees, begging to be picked. And yet a vast majority of the time, the fruit will be left to drop and rot, perfect fodder for squirrels, yellow jackets and hungry deer, but seen as somehow less than their shiny supermarket counterparts, and therefore unfit and unworthy of human consumption. Have we lost our minds?

Yet another article (I've been reading a lot...) discusses just how much food we Americans waste on account of our acquired snobbiness and our reckless there's always more where that came from attitude. To illustrate just how insanely, ridiculously picky we've become as food shoppers, the article offers this bit of advice to producers and retailers for taking better advantage of "imperfect" produce -

Companies should look for alternatives in their supply chain, such as making so-called baby carrots out of carrots too bent to be sold whole at the retail level.

*Shakes Head* This is for real. People are going without and we're splitting hairs over carrot presentability. Phase two of my emotional reaction to this article (after weeping interspersed with multiple face-palms) was anger. I'm pissed, and that makes me loud, especially when it comes to things I feel passionately about. Taking care of people is one of those things.

I am only one person, but I am 100% responsible for choosing the food eaten by 4 people, 2 dogs, 20 chickens, 9 goats, 2 bunnies, 2 parakeets and one sassy turtle, therefore, my resolve to use food responsibly and with thanks has an impact that should not be, and indeed, is not taken lightly. I can participate in the system that keeps these problems going, or I can refuse, and take care of my family and farm on terms that both my head and my heart can live with.

Therefore, I resolve to grow, buy and use food even more responsibly than I have. I will buy less, grow and forage more, preserve more and use the food we do buy, find and grow as fully as can be done, and with all the respect it deserves.

Please join me.

The Case for Foraging

Harvested on a 90-minute walk in the woods with my 9 year-old:

Organically grown* Bosc Pears - $5.98/pound (8 pounds, 8 ounces = $50.83)

Organically grown* crab apples - $1.00/pound (10 ounces = about 63cents)

Organically grown* mystery apples - $1.00/pound (4 pounds, 12 ounces = $4.75)
{In season, in Washington state, apples can get pretty cheap, but this would still be a very hard to find price for organics.}

Organically grown* rose hips - $3.00/4 ounces (4 ounces = $3.00)

Organically grown*/Wild rowan (ash) berries - $4.00/pound (8 ounces = $2.00)

Organically grown*/Wild hawthorn berries/haws - $5.50/pound (4 ounces = $1.38)

Market value of fruit harvested today** = $62.59

Washington state minimum wage as of 9/29/12 = $9.04/hour

Amount of hours (before taxes) needed to work at minimum wage to earn $62.59 = 6.9 hours

*This assumes that since these are in the middle of the woods, that they are organic/unsprayed. Unless, of course, Montsanto has Round-Up ninja lumberjacks on it's payroll, which is certainly possible.

**Prices per pound are based on the most conservative prices I was able to find per item per pound on the interwebs.

Setting a Feed Budget - A Work in Progress

It's hard to believe it, but it's not quite been a year that we've been goat owners. We've come a long way, baby! Last night's milking was yet another record setter - 72 ounces total from our two milkin' Mamas, Chardy & Fritzen.

In the event that you don't follow the day-to-day deets of our little farm over at The Bog Blog, you may not have been privy to a few goaty change-ups that we've made lately that have increased our milk production and simplified our lives just a smidge.

First of all, all the boys are together at the moment, and in spite of Spike being the devil incarnate, it seems to be working out fairly well.

Secondly, we finally separated the doelings from their Mamas. The wee ones were not at all pleased by the new arrangements, but the Mamas seem to have taken it in stride. The amount of milk we're getting per day has more than doubled since the babies no longer nurse at all. I hadn't thought that they were really nursing all that much anymore anyway, but apparently they were still getting a good bit. The Mamas produce enough milk now that we could actually milk them twice per day, but since we are approaching breeding season and will soon begin to work toward drying them off, we're not going to bother with twice a day milking.

Anyhoo, now that you're up to speed on our ruminant living arrangements, I'll now get back to the original point of this post - feed costs.

The cost of good quality, local hay, alfalfa, minerals and treats adds up. It is not uncommon for us to spend $120 on a hay run, and we buy hay on average 2 times per month. Ouchie. I can assure you that we're not getting $240 worth of dairy products out of our goaties (not that that is the entire point of our having them), which means that the money being spent on them lands under the heading of "pet food". Love them though I do, these goaties are not technically our pets, they are our stock. Stock are supposed to earn their keep. We're not there yet.

So constricting the outflow of dough spent on feed and other critter essentials - even just a little - has the potential to put us leaps and bounds closer to our eventual goal of having an affordable, self-sustaining farm set-up. So Bill and I (mostly I) have decided to buckle things down and attempt to grow, forage, glean and trade for as much of our fall and winter critter feed as possible. Here are the angles I'm working right now -

*I've been posting to CraigsList, seeking windfall and slightly damaged/bolted fruits and veggies for critter food, and actually scored a few wheelbarrows full of bruised apples that way.

*I've told all of my friends with gardens that I will gladly accept their buggy, wilted and gone-to-seed produce and repay them in kind with eggs and dairy. Got a nice big bag full of bolted lettuce for the goats & bunzos just the other day.

*I've been picking berries for my family like crazy, and after weeding through them, keeping the weird/mushy ones, leaves, etc. for the critters. I've both fed them to the critters fresh, and started dehydrating some for winter supplements & snacks.

*I've been eyeballing abandoned and unpicked fruit trees and making a mental list of the places I need to hit to forage and glean. I'm wondering if folks would be more apt to let me scoop up their windfalls and/or pick their unwanted fruit if I came a-knocking with some eggs in hand to trade?

That's as far as I've been able to get with this. I wish we could have hayed our own pasture this year, but the layout of our property would make it hard, if not impossible to get a good-sized mower and baler in here. And for maybe 2 acres of harvestable grass, it hardly seems worth it.

I've toyed with the idea of doing the old school scythe & stack with our pasture, but for one thing, we have no idea of what sort of grass we have, or what nutrient content it has, and for another, with as soaking wet as this place gets, there is really no great storage space for great quantities of hay until we get our pole barn built.

So I'm scavenging, bartering and stocking up when and where I can for now. I hope to put together an official critter food budget THAT WE ACTUALLY STICK TO for this coming fall and winter.

What about you? If you can't grow your own animal feed, how do you source it? What do you do to trim costs?

I'd also love to hear how you store and use any produce, grain, etc., that you put up for your animals. I'm pondering trying a homemade rabbit pellet/treat. Are there any good recipes out there for homemade farm animal treats?

Foods that Fight Back - Foraging for Stinging Nettles

I like to forage for food. Dandelions, berries, mushrooms, you name it, I love to go out and get it. I mean, what's not to love about it? A walk in the woods, accompanied by birdsong, collecting the freshest, most wholesome foods available, all for free. I had been meaning to add stinging nettles to my foraging repertoire for years now, but always managed to somehow miss my opportunity. This year, I finally made it!

This past Sunday I went nettle picking with my beautiful and nature-knowledgeable friend, Kristin, just about a mile from my house. She is a more experienced forager than I, and showed me the ropes of picking stinging nettles. First of all, the window for picking them, like most other wild foods, is fairly small. They are one of the first shoots to pop up in Spring, and transition from tender stalk and leaves to fibrous and inedible giants in the space of a few weeks to a month. Secondly, the nettles, even with their smarting sting, are actually very fragile plants, and need to be harvested with care. The idea that these fierce looking little greens, the sworn enemy of my woodland wandering youth, were in fact delicate and easily killed came as quite the surprise to me. I had not thought of them as anything more than a nuisance, up to now, and as is often the way of nuisances, assumed that they were likely impossible to be rid of. Not so! When harvesting, the general rule of thumb is to pinch or cut just the top few leaves of the plant, taking no more than 4 inches at most (we took about 2 inches), and not pulling on the plants, as they are very shallowly rooted. If you're kind and gentle to the plants, they'll be there for you to harvest your little bit, year after year.

Another obvious fact of stinging nettle collection is that you need to dress appropriately for the occasion. Wear long sleeves, long pants and gloves, and prepare to get stung a time or twelve anyway. The stings aren't really that bad. To me they felt like more of a tingling/foot gone to sleep sort of sensation that lasted for about 24 hours. It's a small price to pay for a heap of free "superfood".

Here in Western Washington, stinging nettles are virtually ubiquitous in our damp and shady woodlands, so it didn't take us long to score enough nettles to fill our bags. In fact, it took less than an hour of wandering through the woods and shooting the breeze with my homegirl for me to gather twelve ounces of nettle tops. Not bad for a morning out in the fresh air!



After bringing my haul of fresh greens home, I set about blanching them. Blanching is one of the two methods used for removing the nettle's sting, the other is drying. I blanched my nettles in boiling, unsalted water for about a minute, then scooped them out and set them to drain thoroughly in a mesh colander set over a bowl. Note that I didn't drain my nettles, and that I went out of my way to save the water that they were blanched in, which was essentially nettle tea. I had every intention of drinking this liquid or saving it as a broth, that is before I found half a dozen poached baby slugs in my pot. They basically shot to the surface within seconds of the greens going in, and were fished out right quick, before the greens had finished blanching, but something about trying to drink tea, laced however lightly with baby slug slime, just wasn't going to work for me. And so, my nettle tea was re-purposed as the liquid in my goats' evening ration of beet pulp. It's supposed to be good for pregnant and nursing mothers, and we have them in spades, so I gave it a go. The goats ate the nettle-y beet pulp as eagerly as ever, and likely scored a few extra vitamins and minerals from it as well. Waste not, want not!

I proceeded to use my freshly blanched, chopped nettles over the next two days in a pesto recipe, as a seasonally fresh alternative to basil, and in some homemade egg noodles, in place of spinach. Both turned out wonderfully and had a fresh, green flavor nearly indistinguishable from fresh-cooked spinach. My twelve ounces of stems and leaves made four dinners worth of pesto, with about 1/4 cup of plain cooked nettles left over to add to my egg noodle dough and eventually, my chicken soup. My noodle and pesto recipes can be found here. For even more nettle recipes, including the one upon which I based my nettle pesto, check out Langdon Cook's Fat of the Land blog. Langdon is a fellow Pacific Northwesterner and a forager extraordinaire. If I can't convince you to get out there and grab your free food, reading his blog is sure to seduce you into trying the food-nerd-meets-nature-nut way of living.

For more info on foraging for stinging nettles and their uses and benefits, check out the following websites:

General Info on Stinging Nettle, Urtica Dioica

More general info on growing, harvesting and using nettles.

The medicinal benefits of Singing Nettles, eHow.com

Recipes using stinging nettle -

Pasta with Nettles, Sorrel & Lemon

Nettle Gnocchi

Nettle Pesto

Recipe: Stinging Nettle Pesto & Nettle Egg Noodles

I don't tend to post too many recipes on this blog for an assortment of reasons, the main one being that I am a slacker - writing up a recipe is hard for a lazybones like me. It certainly doesn't help that I'm somewhat of a lax cook as well; I almost never measure ingredients, and I add and tweak right up until the food hits the plate. I throw in odd bits of this and that as the spirit moves me, and therefore, A) never make anything exactly the same way twice (which cuts both ways, I assure you) and B) have a hard time putting my ingredients and methods into words that make sense.

But I had to post these recipes because they are not only earth-muffiny as all get out (thumbs up!), but are also great tasting and relatively easy to make. Let's cook with nettles!

My first go with harvesting and cooking nettles had me making a fresh nettle pesto. The recipe that I used was from Fat of the Land. The original recipe can be viewed here. The following recipe is my twist on the FOTL recipe.

Stinging Nettle Pesto

-2 cups (cooked) blanched and drained stinging nettles, squeezed-dry and chopped well (about 6 cups raw)
-1/2 cup +/- of Parmesan cheese
-1/2 cup raw, unsalted walnuts
-5 or 6 large garlic cloves, peeled
-1/2 cup +/- olive oil (I usually go for more. Nothing worse than a pasty dry pesto!)
-Fresh squeezed juice from 1 lemon (2 or 3 tbsps worth, I'd guesstimate)
-Salt & Pepper to taste

Just like any other pesto, you basically just pop everything into the food processor and whiz it up to your preferred consistency, adding additional oil and seasonings as you deem appropriate. (If you didn't take to heart my earlier disclaimer about not being a recipe writer, consider the proceeding recipe "Exhibit A". I hope that you'll try it anyway!)

Our second night of cooking with nettles had them in a less highlighted role, as the "spinach" in my homemade egg noodles. If you have a homemade pasta recipe that you like, simply add about 1/4 cup of blanched, squeezed dry, finely chopped nettles to your dough during the initial kneading and mix through well. Boom. That's it. If you're still game to try one of my recipes, well here you go:

Nettle Egg Noodles

-3 cups flour (plus extra for rolling out)
-2 whole eggs
-4 egg yolks
-2 tsps salt
-2-3 tbsps water
-1/4 cup blanched, well drained, chopped stinging nettles

Start with your flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle for your eggs & yolks. Gentle scramble the eggs with a fork, slowly beginning to incorporate the flour/salt mixture. Once the eggs and dry ingredients are well mixed, begin adding water in small increments, kneading and squeezing the dough together after each addition. Continue adding water as needed to the dough to reach your desired consistency. Now it's time to fold in the nettles. Knead them into the dough well, until the are mixed evenly throughout. Allow the dough to rest for 10 or 15 minutes before rolling out.

If you're lucky, you have an eager helper, just waiting to make a mess of your kitchen for you. Mine's named Scarlet.



This represents about 1/2 of the noodles produced. The rest went into our chicken soup.



Mmm, Mmm, Good!



The girls gobbled this up, not in spite of the nettles, but rather (at least in part) because of the nettles. They thought that it was pretty cool to eat something so "scary". Having them help with the preparation always demystifies new foods a little too. They always have seconds when they're the sous chef. ;)

They weren't the only ones pleased with these recipes. In fact, I want to get back out there and pick some more nettles while the getting is still good. I want to make some nettle tea. Nettles are purported to have numerous health benefits, including anti-inflammatory and anti-histamine properties and are said to also be helpful in the relief of symptoms of osteoarthritis. They also pack a ton of vitamins A & C, and according to various sources, when consumed as a whole (not in tea form), contain anywhere from 10-40% protein, the second highest plant source, next to hemp.

So this is me, encouraging you to expand your food horizons. Give wild food a try! The satisfaction of foraging your own is parallel to that of growing your own, without having to hoe a single row or live in fear of locusts or late blight. Mother Nature sweats the details, all you have to do is get out there and pick. ;)

The Bright Side of Bad Weather

Last night we got wailed on over here in Western Washington. The winds were as high as 60 mph, and let me tell you, being inside a little old house in a little hollow on a peninsula doesn't help to lessen the feeling of living in a wind tunnel in any way. After a night of howling and banging, I was scared to go outside this morning and see what might be missing, and/or freshly impaled by a tree limb.

But the goats wait for no wimp, so I had just decided to suck it up and go outside for morning critter patrol when I felt my couch gently, rather soothingly, rock back and forth under me. Yes indeed, we had ourselves an earthquake.

It was a small one, especially by West Coast standards, just a lil' 4.2, but fresh on top of a clobbering windstorm it was a little unsettling.

I sat back down for a few more minutes to wig-out on facebook. Am I nuts or did we just have a little earthquake? Almost immediately, my cousin Jen seconded my quake theory, and a quick trip to the USGS website confirmed it. Yikes what a morning! When do the other plagues arrive? I'm hoping that the four horsemen of the apocalypse get food poisoning or take a wrong turn at Albuquerque or something on the way to my house. I've had plenty of excitement for one day, thanks.

Anyway, beyond the inconvenience of navigating my house by head-lamp and this morning's initial world-coming-apart-at-the-seams paranoia, all inhabitants of Boggy Hollow escaped mother nature's wrath unharmed, which I will call blessing number one.

Blessing number two came from the skies in the form of limbs and branches. The wind knocked down a lot of tender branch tips as well as quite a few heftier limbs. The goats LOVE a good fresh evergreen tree and there were literally tons of them laying in the streets throughout the city. I only needed to go about 20 feet from my front yard to collect a yard cart full of them from the street in front of my neighbor's house. I'd say that we jammed a good 30 pounds of Douglas Fir needles & branch bits into my cart, which will supplement the goats' hay & sweet feed rations quite nicely, for free.

I may go get another cart load from a little further down the lane, but for now I'm going to chalk up my free goat chow score and my safe little house as my wins for the day, and sit back with a hot cup of coffee and a blazing fire and just enjoy my many blessings, in whatever strange forms they choose to present themselves.

The (partial) Reformation of a Layabout

I've had a little energy crisis of my own these past few months, in that I've had none. Laziness abounds with no end in site. But farm girls don't get breaks. There are critters to feed, leaves to rake, trees to prune, etc. I'm just having the devil of a time getting off of my comfy little spot on the couch where I've been holed up, watching Law & Order re-runs and knitting hats for everyone I know. And all the while, the chores, they call.

For one thing, my yard is teeming with weeds. Hawksbeard, English ivy, Scotch thistle, Scotch Broom, you name it. Why the weeds of the UK seem to find my lawn & pasture so attractive is a mystery to me, but here we are. I really should get on top of these puppies before they take over, but I haven't been getting it done. However, I've found a new way to trick myself into doing little bits of yard work.

Here's how it works - Whereas on a typical day, I would walk by a weed a hundred times thinking "Man, I should pull that." before actually pulling it, I now walk by a thistle or mat of ivy and think "Wow, the goats would so love to eat that", at which point I ACTUALLY PULL THE WEED and shove it in the num-nums basket to take down to my goats. The same is true for the bunnies and chickens. All have their favorite weedy snacks, and it has changed my perspective on weeds completely. Now I see those gnarly weeds as free critter food, which will eventually yield us "free" milk, eggs and fertilizer. Therefore the two minutes of my time spent pulling a weed today will net me even more free food/free time (less grocery shopping, fewer feed store runs) in the future, and therefore pays dividends in the form of time to nap and extended couch-sitting sprees. (Naps as currency - now there's an idea that needs exploring!) The chorus of excited MEHHHHHH!'s that I get the minute the goats see me coming their way with my basket o' weeds is just the gravy on top. ;)

Wine with a side of Whine

I'm still in the grip of real estate insanity, and have been seeking out small diversions here and there - napping, unnecessary trips to Starbucks, reading and re-reading my only remaining unpacked Diana Gabaldon novel, etc. And even though this is a much less than ideal time to start a new batch of wine, I'm hung up on the idea of making a batch of Hawthorne Blossom Mead.

According to my hasty research, hawthorn flowers & berries are thought to be one of the first fruits ever used to make wine. Archaeologists believe that some of the first wine ever made in China, over 9000 years ago, may have been made with hawthorn berries, rather than or possibly in addition to wild grapes. In addition to that fascinating little historical tidbit, I happen to live just a block away from a meadow where TONS of hawthorn bushes grow wild. Surely this is fate?

Now, if only we could have one nice, dry day or - God forbid - two dry days in a row, my homegirl and personal wine guru, Kristin, and I could walk on down there and shake those trees for all their worth and score us a load of petals. But Mr. Weatherman, he has no good news for me today. Rain, rain and more rain this week with ten glorious minutes of sun between downpours and drizzles. Uhg.

But just because I might not get a chance to make this wine this year, doesn't mean that you shouldn't give it a try. Here is the recipe that I plan on using, if and when the weather and other universal forces, good and bad, come together to allow me the time and space to make some mead. This recipe and other very unique and ancient wine recipes can be found at Celtnet Recipes.

So go forth and make wine, my good people! And bring me some, because good gravy, do I need it. Oh, and if you happen to stumble into a Godiva chocolatier on your way... ;)

Enter the Lion

We've had an odd mix of weather here in Western Washington these past few weeks. Torrential downpours interspersed with gorgeous sunshine and freezing overnight temperatures. Mother Nature's seasonal schizophrenia has tricked many a plant into popping up early, only to be zapped by frost. Of the nettles, daffodils, fiddleheads and dandelions, believe it or not, the one that I am most excited about this year is the much-maligned dandelion.

The dandelion, or Taraxacum Officinale, is so named because once upon a time, the raggedly-toothed leaves reminded someone of a lion's tooth or dent de lion. Like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I've hated them with the fire of a thousand suns for as long as I can remember. But if there's one way to change my tune about a plant, it's to tell me that it is not only edible but can be made into wine. Viola - instant dandelion fan!

Having been long-since sold on the sheer delightfulness of dandelion wine (described by many as "sunshine in a bottle"), I've been keeping a sharp eye out for the appearance of the first yellow menace. I found my first few just today. So far, they are only growing on the south side of the house which tells me that I caught them nice and early in the season - woohoo! And so, I pluck a few dozen flowers and sit down to the larger task of separating the petals from the greenery. This takes forever and a day, of course, and yields an amount so paltry that it won't even register on the scale. Hooboy I've got a lot of dandy-pickin' in my near future. I've already enlisted the kids to help me with the next batch of blooms. Wrangling my kids into helping me make wine - I've got the Mother of the Year award practically sewn up!



Fortunately for me, the recipe that I am using calls for a volume of petals (6 cups!), rather than a weight or I'd need to be picking weeds 'round the clock. As it is, I'm kind of eyeballing my neighbor's yards for dandelions. If I play my cards right, in addition to Mother of the Year, I can also be that-weird-lady-who-steals-weeds.

Right now I only have about a cup of petals, so it'll be at least a week before I can start my wine, but when I do, I'll be sure to post details & pics of the process.

Walter, the $170 clam

Say hello to Walter.



Walter and his elusive brethren, the pacific razor clam, once again lured our family out to the wind-whipped Washington coast for a nighttime dig in the dead of winter. The siren song of a fresh, hot bowl of razor clam chowder had even the littlest members of our family suited up and ready for a freezing, wet battle on the beach.

An hour and a half's driving, a spendy-ish hotel stay, a decent case of clam-gunner's bursitis and a touch of windburn (for good measure) yielded us naught but a lone clam. Such are the risks taken by a modern-day forager. A whole lot of planning, driving and specialized gear guarantee you exactly nothing. We weren't the only folks striking out though, and something about failure on a large scale lessens the sting of being outwitted by a 4 inch bivalve.

And so, our proposed dinner of razor clam chowder was instead, demoted to potato soup. Walter alone was sauteed and eaten by Billy, our resident shellfish stalker.



He was reportedly "clamtastic".

Name the Fungus!

Lately, I have acquired an interest in mushrooming and foraging in general. As is typical for me when first diving into a new hobby, I have amassed stack of books nearly up to my chin on foraging, plant identification, field guides, mushroom hunting, etc., all which I have been reading (and attempting to commit to memory) night and day. I've also taken to trying to i.d. each and every 'shroom that crosses my path.

However, I have a healthy sense of caution when it comes to ingesting/using anything that might be potentially harmful, and am therefore looking for a little help in determining whether or not the following 'shrooms are of an edible variety.


Might these be Chicken of the Woods?


I have no idea what these are, but they're growing on my nearly-dead mountain ash trees.

If you have a knack for shroomery, please feel free to weigh in!

Name that Domain!

For my latest project, I have decided to try and cobble together an informational website about foraging in Western Washington. I'm eyeball-deep in research at the moment, reading scads of field guides and encyclopedias of edible plants and fungi, and pumping friends, family & neighbors for information on their picking & fishing hotspots.

However, a larger task looms - settling on a proper domain name for this proposed project's website. So far I've purchased two, but I'm not super in love with either one, and therefore thought I'd ask y'all for your two cents on the matter. Here are your choices -

A) easypickins.info
B) millionsofpeaches.info (a tip of the hat to the Presidents of the United States of America's song "Peaches")
C) Something else altogether - but probably still a .info, because they are by far the cheapest, and I'm all about frugality. ;)

Kindly cast your vote and feel free to offer suggestions, please and thank you.

"You're being like a squirrel!"

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am currently in the grip of what might be fairly called a harvest mania.

Besides some of the great books that I have read on the importance of good food and living sustainably, and a natural inclination to take advantage of Mother nature’s offerings (free is good!), I am very lucky to have several like-minded friends who have abetted and otherwise encouraged my grow it/pick it/freeze it/can it frenzy this year.

I guess I should have noticed the warning signs that I was spinning a little out of control when I would post to my Facebook page “Going back to the blueberry patch today!” and my friends would playfully harass – You’re obsessed! You’re addicted! Out of control! Maybe when I nearly put my shoulder out of joint grinding tomatoes, or, when I began obsessively scouring Craigs List on a daily basis in the hunt for an affordable chest freezer… I probably should have realized that things were getting a little nuts.

As it was, it wasn’t until I was weighing, measuring and preparing for freezing yet another small mountain of zucchini that I was brought up short by my 9 year-old.

O: “Mama?”
M: “Yes?”
O: “You’re collecting a lot of food for the winter. You’re kind of being like a squirrel.”

It wasn’t an accusation; it was most certainly a fact. She was trying to let me know, in as gentle a way as she knew how, that I needed to put the zucchini down and back away slowly.

Since our little chat, I have tried to take it down a notch. I scrapped the spaghetti sauce canning and opted for bagging and freezing it. I have completely stopped my jam-a-thon – for now, and I’ve been giving away increasing amounts of tomatoes to friends and neighbors instead of trying to consume, dehydrate or can every last one by myself. The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Therefore I say with a mixture of pride and shame: I, Michelle, am being like a squirrel.