Golden Acre September

Golden Acre Update
Thanks, Verde, for the label (pictured above). To see all labels, visit Justice Desserts, my all-time fave blog.

Planted: Transplanted Thai and opal basil into big pots for wintering-over indoors.

Harvested: Tomatoes, okra, rainwater, grass cuttings for compost

Prepped: Continued to prep beds for next spring. My son Jacob brought us a frame for composting that I had sketched. I appreciate all he does for us.

Managed: Completely reorganized my kitchen. Cleaned out the garage. Put together a load for Goodwill. Sorted fabrics and craft items. Made bedroom drapes and kitchen curtains.

Stored: Canned tuna and chicken salad, shrimp boil, canned cream soups, Alfredo sauce, tomato paste

Cooked something new: Sicilian meatballs using the recipe of my friend’s grandmother. We fed three family meals off the batch then froze the other six batches.

Local Food Systems: Continue to purchase produce and milk from local suppliers.

Herbs: Purchased 100 empty tea bags to bag herbs for foot soaks. I’m making potpourri from this summer’s fragrant herbs. I decanted the gingko biloba, saw palmetto, ginseng, and lavender oil. My husband was very happy with the Saw Palmetto and its effects. I love the foot soaks. I also started making holiday gifts out of herbs, oils and salves.

Photos of Paradise

These gorgeous photos were sent to me by my friend Jan Barker from Birmingham, England, UK. She took the pictures in Devon.

Golden Acre Update

After checking my blog, I see that I’ve only been at this challenge for eight weeks. Eight weeks that changed our lives. The difference between our early photos and NOW is amazing. Our courtyard garden is a paradise full of colorful birds, busy bees, noisy hummers and lots of flowers, herbs and greenery. We took down the two art-glass hummingbird feeders and hung up the old Big Lots version, and as quick as that we have non-stop hummers in the yard.
Harvested: The garden is producing, there are no weeds, so all there is to do is water, water, water. And harvest tomatoes, squash, cukes, okra, black beans.
Coop orders/ Storing: We picked up our Breadbeckers coop order. The Beckers are an excellent source for some bulk products, especially bread baking supplies. Since we had prepared the pantry ahead of time, putting up our Becker’s booty didn’t take long.

Local Food Systems: I arranged to meet a local beekeeper at the Columbia Farmer’s Market who sold me a pound of beeswax for $5. I’ll use the wax for many purposes, including salves and balms for the feet.
Managing: We put in some time tying up the tomatoes again. Staking tomatoes can work wonders and yield higher production. Our plants are huge; prolific producers. We’re enjoying lots of fresh blood-red tomatoes. We also put out strings for the peas to grow on, and used my recovered lumber to build a sort of arbor in the courtyard. On Thursday I took all the veggies and broths out of the freezer and made killer soup.
Herbals: I’m working on more tinctures, and also foot teas. Since the bottom of the foot is very absorbent, using teas in a foot soak is a way to ingest herbs. One of my favorite simple soaks is dried lavender flowers in warm water, a very relaxing practice. If you don’t know how absorbent your feet are, try soaking your feet in warm water into which you’ve put with a mashed garlic clove. After ten minutes, ask somebody to smell your breath.
Harvested: This week I harvested and dried a bushel of lime mint. My mint tinctures will be a refreshing addition to the foot soaks I’m making. As for the remaining mint in the yard, I’m going to allow it to flower, then I’ll cut the flowers to add to potpourri.
Cook something new: I cooked Carmela’s Eggplant Parm using the recipe from the official Sopranos cookbook. I used heirloom eggplant. Outstanding dish! Recipe available. Also, I made bread using a new recipe from Breadbecker’s cookbook. The recipe calls for flax seed and gluten as added ingredients. Very good bread.

I also sprouted organic alfalfa seed this past week. The spouts are so fresh, they’re hard to beat. I mentioned before that I’d bought two sprouting jar lids. The lids fit a wide-mouth canning jar. And last, I made jalapeno and garlic jelly with honey. We use this jelly on just about all meat or fish we grill. Recipe available.

Golden Acre Update

That's an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail...female...which have lots of blue on the hind wings. Some are black, but the yellow is more common. Only the females come in both yellow and black forms...the black is similar to, but bigger than the Black Swallowtail. Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillars are dark green with two large eyespots. They eat various trees and shrubs especially Yellow Poplar, Wild Cherry, and Sweet Bay.

Herbs
I spent the past two weeks studying and being tutored about herbs and herbal remedies. During this time I carefully made oils, vinegars and tinctures.

Here’s how I made the tinctures: I used dried herbs (flowers or roots according to use). I put about two cups of herb into a quart jar. Then I poured just enough very hot water (not boiling) on the herbs, just enough to soak them. Then I added different 80-proof alcohols, depending on what I already had on hand. So I ended up with tasty-sounding tinctures. These tinctures have to be shaken twice daily.
English plantain in Rum
Red Clover in vodka
Gingko Leaf in citron vodka
Cinnamon sticks in bourbon
Siberian Ginseng root in bourbon
Siberian Ginseng root in vodka

Infusion Oils:
Lavender
I filled a small jar with dried lavender flowers and covered the flowers with sunflower oil. After removing the bubbles I floated two tablespoons of vodka on top. The alcohol helps to keep the oil from getting rancid and also aids in extracting the oils from the herbs. I covered the jar of oil with thick cheesecloth so the alcohol could escape and placed the jar in a sunny window. I check the jar every day for signs of spoilage then gently shake it.

Supplies: Small mortar and pestle, alcohol (vodka), bottles and jars, oils, beeswax for salves. I’m using different base oils according to how I’ll use the oil later on. Some oils are absorbed into the skin and some are not.

Golden Acre Update

BIRDS AND BEES

I talked to the Tennessee Bee Inspector in our area yesterday. He is a veritable fount of information. He assures me there are bees in my area. He inquired about the kinds of flowers, herbs and veggies I was growing, whether I used pesticides (no), whether there was a tree line, all kinds of questions. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to keep bees here on our land because of the potential danger to my grandkids. He suggested I put hives on a friend’s farmland.

Among other things, we talked about colony collapse disorder. Not only are there mites to contend with, drought and warmer temps to withstand, but millions of bees are transported to different locations all over the U.S. to pollinate large crops. Recently in the news there was a story about a Canadian truck that overturned and released x million bees. The generation that comes after these transported bees are unable to find their way back to the hive.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/bees/colony-collapse-disorder-55063001

The Beekeeper’s Society meeting is once a month so I’ve got that on my schedule for August. The first of the month a bee expert instructs on what a beekeeper should do for the bees that month. They offer mentors, so although I can’t have a hive in my neighborhood, I can still learn from somebody who keeps bees in the area.

In the “bird” category, I called the city manager’s office and found that a chicken coop has to be 1000 yards from any dwelling. Our home is within the city limits, and our lots aren’t big enough to make that happen.

Planted: Blackberry brambles along the back property line. Successive plantings of okra, Alaska No-Wilt peas, lima beans, peppers, zinnias, marigolds, cockscomb, Black Magic elephant ears, and more cukes, zukes and squash in case this group fails.

Harvested: I dug up several blackberry brambles on the nearby construction site [with the builder’s permission]. Some are a little worse for wear; they bear the imprint of heavy machinery tires on their backs. I read that wild blackberries are more soil and drought tolerant, and they produce more and better-tasting berries. We’ll cover them with bird net next year when the berries come in.
We harvested tomatoes and beans for Monday night dinner. Spotted cat’s eye for salad. Our water catch system is working well. In the past week we harvested more than 110 gallons of rainwater. Picked green beans and steamed them.

Prepped: Pre-ordered Sharon’s book! Cleaned out a crock to use for blackberry brandy. Hub built some a garden bed with lumber we got from the construction site. I ordered heirloom seed from Southern Seed Exchange: long-standing spinach, Buttercrunch lettuce, Deer Tongue lettuce, Yugoslavian Red Butterhead lettuce, Red Russian kale, Georgia Green collards, Red Giant mustard greens. The names alone sound good enough to eat. We’re going to plant tiny amounts of each for fall greens and save the remaining seeds for spring. I read that you keep the seeds in a jar or airtight container with an oxygen absorber out of light. Not in the refrigerator!

Stored: Scavenged more lumber from the construction site before they took the rest away to the landfill. Stored various canned goods, shelf stable milk, and more water. I was disappointed that my coop order from Breakbeckers isn’t coming in until July 30th. Still, lots of veggies are in season, and our own plants are beginning to put out.
I started a brandied fruit crock. When we got the gorgeous blackberries from Delvin Farms, I put them in the crock, covered the fruit with sugar, and about an hour later I covered the whole thing with brandy.

Managed: I started pollinating the pumpkins, squash, cantaloupe and cukes. I used a tiny artist’s brush. I’m finding that most of the blooms on the pumpkin are male, which explains why all the blooms drop. The high heat is also a factor. The following link gives a brief explanation and instructions on pollinating plants yourself. http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/cornucop/2000073258013975.html
This week we turned out the compost bin into a larger space, added string for beans to grow up to reach the lattice on our deck, started digging a hole for the apple tree. Cut and raked grass for the compost heap.

Recycled/Reused: We composted and recycled as usual. Shredded lots of white paper to use in the composter. Scavenged the construction site. We bought grapes and they went bad fast, so I spread them out for the butterflies.

Learn Something New: Bees get up earlier than I do. After the recent rainfall here we had a crop of sunflowers that bloomed. Suddenly our yard is filled with honey bees.

Local: Our collective neighbors tell us they have NO desire to garden. They want nice smooth lawns, every house uniform.
We bought produce from Delvin Farms, a local organic farm. The blackberries were huge…only half of them made it into the brandy crock.