Lovely Monday

Blessings Darlings!

It is a gorgeous day here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.  68 degrees, sunny, light breezes.  The Chubby Hubby and I went for a walk, after I meditated, got laundry on the line and started the dishwasher (yup, we're American).

I'm going to start today's manure hauling soon.  My current plan is to enlarge the garden, because I never have enough garden space for all my garden dreams, even if I too often have too much garden space for me to work as well as I'd like to.



The back roads here are just FILLED with wild edible plants.  All with the same calorie content as spinach.  They will fill your stomach, but leave you hungry.  For a gardener, beets and spring peas are the earliest veggies that will provide much in the way of calories.  Even strawberries are still  two months away.


If you farm and have animals ... lamb and veal are going to be looking very good to you for the next couple of months.  This my dears, even more than winter, was the hungry time of the year.  Less food with significant calories, while trying to put in crops to feed you later.

Spent a goodly chunk of time on home business stuff today, too. 

Maryland and Virginia stiffened their 'lockdowns', such as they are.

Coronavirus Cases: 783,898 worldwide

Deaths:  37,773 worldwide

US stats

• Total cases: 140,904
• Total deaths: 2,405 =  all as of 4 pm yesterday.

While I'm pissed that the Spawn went out and got his car fixed today - as long as he was out I gave him a shopping list of 'household stuff' we needed.

I never said I was the most consistent star in the universe.

Frondly, Fern

 

Old Projects Day

Blessings Darlings!

On top of the usual cleaning and hauling manure - today I finally put together a cheap garden composter that I bought like 4+ years ago.  Had to send the spawn to the storage locker to find it there before putting it together.  It's REALLY cheap, but was REALLY easy to put together, now that I finally had the time and will.



I weeded the obvious junk mail out of the mail that the CH had thrown on the dining room table, and got some other stuff off of there.  Might finish that tomorrow.  Might not. 

Maybe tomorrow I'll put the equally cheap 'greenhouse' together!

The purple dead nettles I wildcrafted yesterday cooked down to about a cup and a half total, even with the addition of wild garlic.  I added half of it to my scrambled eggs to get one of my servings of veggies today.  Tasted good, thank the Gods. 

If it's not too rainy tomorrow, I hope to harvest wintercress from down the road from us.  

Stock futures have opened - looks like it's going to be another bumpy day tomorrow.  Buckle those seatbelts!

Frondly, Fern

Poke Berries and Mullein.

Blessings Darlings!

I've been blessed with the poke berries and the mullein that I was looking for.  Poke berries are drying for future use even as I type, I'll dry the mullein after they are done and I've washed everything clean of the toxins.

I'm still putting out to the Universe that I'm looking for a few good hawthorn trees, one or more for the haws and one (best by a well or stream or river) as a clootie tree.

Oh, I got a bonus today - wild hickory nuts, when I thought I was going to be getting more black walnuts!  I'm not sure these will be my favorites, tho.  While it is FAR easier to get the outer husk off the hickory nuts, the meat itself come in smaller/narrower twists and turns in the shell, which makes the meat harder to get out once you've freed and cracked the nut.

Frondly, Fern

Wildcrafting: Plantain

Blessings Darlings!

We are finally getting rain here in the northern Blue Ridge Mountains.  We were at about half our normal rain for the year, with yesterday and today (today be Sunday) we might get up to 65% of normal.  The grass and fields planted in winter wheat are loving it - they were both VERY unhappy about the lack of rain. 

The wild greens are loving it, too.  We've moved out of dandelion and chickweed seasons (well, I have one patch of chickweed on the north side of the house I will harvest tomorrow, but that's it) and moved into the dock and plantain seasons.  Today, out in the cold rain, I harvested a scant quart of plantain.  Here are some pictures of it.  I have both the narrow and broad leaf varieties in the yard, but I harvest the broad leaf. 

Most parts of the plantain plant can be used, either for food or healing.  If you have a choice, the best parts for eating are young leaves.  The leaves get tough later.  And while the seeds are often listed as an item 'Indians ground and used for bread' ... that speaks more for how hungry folks got rather than the taste of the seeds, says a friend who tried doing that.

I'm going to use these as the greens in soup, with canned or dry tomatoes, whole wheat pasta or wheat berries, chickpeas, wild onion, and some asparagus.

What's fresh and tasty in your land base?

Frondly, Fern

Going-ons and On-Goings

Blessings, Fronds!

Sorry about the lack of posts - I may have to accept that over the summer I'll just be posting particularly sporatically. But let me tell you why ...

IN THE GARDEN

The spawn sort of hoed and weeded the older beds. I got the sweet peppers in (late) and started the first planting of beans (on time). The beans have not sprouted. At all. The exceptionally cute baby bunnies, who have worked hard at eating my parsley and salvia to the ground insist that they are NOT to blame for this (they say that they prefer them with the first tender real leaves before they eat them). So I should be planting more beans today. This planting was planned as the second bed. Oh well. The onions there are thriving, as are 4 of the 5 sweet peppers. I think my son mowed the 5th pepper, but I've not pressed him on that point.

The flowers by the front door are still not totally planted. Mostly because it has been too wet to plant them. We have had incredible rain this month! Oh - I have a new rain barrel, but haven't set it up with the downspouts yet.

Out in the back yard's new veggie bed I finally staked the tomatoes. They are coming along very nicely, especially the Roma's. The parsley is SLOWLY coming back - I have staked the 'body' of a milk jug around each of them to deter baby bunnies. I worry that I'm not harvesting the basil fast enough to stop it from bolting. Onions are lagging there.

I've harvested lambsquarters two times to serve as dinner veggies. The husband finds it a bit bitter, but LOVED it when I steamed it and added a cream sauce. Even if the 'cream sauce' was just a can of cream of mushroom soup!

FAMILY BUSINESS

Huband still working on getting new web site up. Main customer still down, no replacement. Should e-mail distributor today to see how month's product sales are going. Will eventually put a link to the NEW web site up here, but our current web site is so miserable I don't want to link it. I'm sure all of you want to buy USB HID and TCP programming products, but you'll just have to wait. Okay, if you insist on buying them, let me know. Or if you need Windows programming, or USB HID peripheral programming.

I'M STARTING A BUSINESS!!!!

I've been training to become a Mastermind group leader (Dr. Ben Mack's Carnegie Mastermind group construct). The first group starts tomorrow night, one hour weekly, by phone or computer. I'm looking to start groups on a whole variety of topics, including but probably not limited to: survival gardening, food storage, food storage cooking, divination/scrying, Wizard Tag, Intimacy with the Divine, Thaumaturgical magic, creating sacred space, and Business Skills for Pagans. All of this will be explained in more detail here and on .....

MY NEW WEB SITE

Far be it from me to let my husband have all the new web site fun. Yes, I'm finally building a full web site. I just installed Joomla on Sunday, and have been working on adding one article a day. I need to figure out buttons today, as well as adding a new article and getting a clue on how to do squeeze/registration pages.

THE REST OF LIFE

On top of all that, clothes still need to be washed, meals cooked and cleaned up after, the house needs cleaning, and the Solstice was this last weekend. Not that I made it to the ritual - the car died AGAIN, after $1K work of work on it. I spent the afternoon in a parking lot about 5 miles from the park we were meeting at, waiting for my husband's help.

So, that's what's up here. I'm not commenting on Iran, or the train crash here in DC yesterday, or any deep philosophical stuff at this point. But maybe someday I'll explain that in terms of Celtic Reconstructionism - in an odd way it makes sense.

Frondly, Fern

Hungry Time of Year

It's mid March. The weather has begun to moderate (aside from the odd snow storm), the snow is melted here in the DC area, I'm itching to start seeds. And itching in general, well, sneezing - some of the trees here are in bloom, spewing pollen.

Back in the day, this would have been the hungry time of the year. The stored food from last year would be running low, the new lambs would be just arriving so MAYBE there would be some fresh ewe's milk, and all that my yard is providing is wild onions.

Those wild onions are considered a nuisance weed by most folks. I consider them delicious, especially when made into scallion pancakes. There are two distinct types of scallion pancakes, Chinese and Korean. Today I'm going to share my recipe for the Chinese ones.

1 cup green onions (wild, scallions, whatever) chopped 1/2 inch long (I adore onions)
2 cups flour (less if you're using whole wheat)
1 cup water
sesame oil for brushing
Kosher salt
oil for pan frying

Mix the flour and water together to form a somewhat stiff dough. Divide dough into 12 lumps. Take first lump, roll into a thin circle. Brush with sesame oil, sprinkle with kosher salt, top with 1/12 of the chopped onions. Roll it up like a jelly roll. Then take it and make a tight snakelike coil, and roll it flat again. You will have flaky layers of dough and onions. Fry it in a little oil in a non-stick skillet, at a medium to medium high heat. Repeat with the rest of the dough and onions.

My family usually uses just soy sauce on these, but you could add ginger to soy sauce, and some chinese black vinegar, and maybe a bit of hot chili oil. Or maybe you'll want to use a sweet sauce, like a sweet and sour sauce.