Almost March

Not the BEST picture as he was sitting on the purple leaf smoke bush about a foot away from my living room window looking in, so the screen was between me and him when I took the photo. This is a sharp shinned hawk, he was feeding at my bird feeder (or should I say cat/hawk feeder). He sat there looking into my living room for a very long time.

Well we are at the end of February now. We must be over with our drought as we have had more rain/ice storms this winter than I ever remember before, so much ice under the snow that when the snow is shovelled or plowed I can no longer walk down my path or drive to the mailbox (can't find my TRAX somehow they got misplaced..wah).

We also have had a much colder and snowier winter for February than we have had in many years (last year we had 80's and 90's in February). But that is probably a very good thing as last year we also had all of our fruit trees bud out so early that when the weather turned awful cold in May and June we lost all of our fruit buds and only had 2 pears and a few other fruits, not enough to sustain life for sure.

We are very optimistic here this spring that we'll have a good fruit/nut season this year, although they are forcasting the next three months above normal temps and precip, I don't think it will be so dangerous for the fruit.

I have a several baby cherry and peach trees coming this spring and some kiwi vines again, I've tried kiwi several times and never had any luck with them but I'm going to really baby these. I hope they come in good shape.

Many of my baby food forest fruit trees should be of bearing age this year or next, hoping for at least a sample of fruit from them this year. And some should be well into bearing this year, esp some of my pear trees which gave me a sample last year despite the freezes.

I'm also expecting almonds on my Hall's Hardy Almond this year as it is quite large now. I got my first Hazelnut crop last year and it was great for a first crop, they look like they'll bear well again  this year. My other nut trees are too young to be bearing any real crops for a while yet.

I also am hopeful for some plums this year, the plum trees are all still very young, but one can hope. I have one peach that might be of bearing age in the next year or so, so I might get one or two peaches off of it. My other peach trees died so I'm replacing them with standards this year rather than the dwarfs I have put in in the past, they don't seem to be very strong. I also lost a sweet cherry last year and had damage on another sweet cherry, so I have 2 replacements coming this year, but my 2 sour cherries and my bush cherries should be able to bear a small crop this year.

I also got a small crop off of some relocated grapevines last year, and they were really yummy, but the remainder of my grapevines should begin to bear this year. My 100 year plus old antique grapes over my front arbor bear every year but they are only good for juice or jelly, not for eating out of hand.

I actually took a bunch of cuttings off of my seedless grapes this fall and just stuck them in all along my lattice fencing around the garden to see if they might take (they were basically just my prunings)..if so I should have some nice vines growing all over out there.

I always get a good crop of black raspberries and blackberries from two areas of my property, but the berry hedge I've been trying to establish out back just isn't doing very well, so I have hopes for that this year to catch up..if not I might rip it out this year..might  not be the best place for them?

This will be the first spring for the logs I innoculated with lions mane and shiitake mushroom plugs ..I have high hopes for them. One log was contaminated with some other fungus but professionals tell me that they still might be OK. I'll be keeping an eye on them. With the forcast for more warmth and moisture than normal it might be a really great mushroom year here ..so there is also great hope for morels and other forage mushrooms.

This will also be the first year for planting my new hugelbed that Joel built for me east of the pear tree garden. Ron has been depositing some ashes on top of it this winter, and we put some refuse from some pots that were used to grow other plants, worn out potting soil. I have some composted manure that I'll be putting on it just before planting and hope to mix in a little shredded paper with the compost and I'll be trying to get some ash chips to mix in as well, to make a good planting bed on top..now if I can find a good source for some mulch as well.

I also have a dream of maybe putting some protein fish into the pond. The goldfish have been muultiplying very well in the pond and would make a good food source for a few protein fish, I'm thinking also of some other forage fish from the fish hatchery, but that might have to wait a  year?

The plan was for chickens this year, but I'm thinking that won't work with Ron's difficulty with animals and he has had a difficult winter. I don't want to create more stress with that as the chickens are my dream not his, and he really doesn't want them or any animals for that matter.

Well, I'm desperately hoping for some warmer weather soon, I need to get outside and walk if nothing else, but working in the yard would be so much fun. Just as long as we don't get buds too early like last year..I'm OK.. 23 days till Spring.

rhubarb uses

5 Ways to Use your Extra Rhubarb:

1. Boil stalks down into syrup, and concoct a tart and tasty rhubarb drink.
2. Create a tangy homemade barbecue sauce with sliced rhubarb as your secret ingredient.
3. Two words: rhubarb jam
4. Slice stalks, and roast them in honey for a delicious gourmet side dish.
5. Make your surplus into pies, and start a successful home business.

Found the above on an email from a seed catalog, but there are other ways to use it as well.
There is strawberry/rhubarb sauce, rhubarb pie, rhubarb leather as well as above..add your own in the comment section.

Taken from Native foods from Stone circle farm .com

Native Foods

By Rita Bober
When I began adding native plants, shrubs and trees to our homestead and identifying edible and medicinal plants while studying herbalism, I wondered what Native People from the Midwest ate when they were the sole inhabitants of this region. This article will share some of my findings on Native food.
The Anishinabe People first lived on the shores of the "Great Salt Water in the East." Prophets came to the People and told them that to survive, they must move west. As they traveled west, they would know where to settle when they found "the food that grows on water." So when they reached the Great Lakes area, they did find "the food that grows on water" — Mano'min or wild rice¹. Since that time, wild rice has been one of the main foods of the Anishinabe People especially the Ojibway.
Another important food of this area is the sap from Ninautig, the Maple tree. At one time, all the maple syrup in North America was produced by Native people. Sap was also gathered from birch, poplar, and basswood trees.
Native people of the Great Lakes area were hunters and gatherers. They survived on what they could find in the woods and lakes around them. They ate according to the seasons. To the People, all this was given to them by the Great Spirit and their lifestyle reflected a gratitude for all of life's bounty.
Their diet included meat or fish, when it was available. This was supplemented with greens, herbs, berries, and roots. In an unpublished paper, Grandmother Keewaydinoquay², an Ojibway Elder, listed the unique foods that had been used in earlier times. Meat included: venison, porcupine, goose, wild turkey, partridge, quail, pigeon, buffalo, elk, bear, rabbit, squirrel, beaver, groundhog, muskrat, raccoon, turtle, bull frogs, and ducks.
Fish included: trout, smelt, whitefish, pickerel, bass, fish eggs, salmon, catfish, perch, carp, muskie, pike and more. Grandmother had been raised in a traditional Native family but was also trained in the Western tradition as an ethno-botanist and was familiar with many local plants.
She stated that the People gathered a variety of foods from the woods, fields, and lakes to supplement their meals. These included: cattails, wild leeks and onions, wild greens, mushrooms, rose hips, sumac, water lily, wild cranberries, cactus, wild cucumber, nettles, serviceberry, raspberries, wild crabapples, elderberries, blackberries, blueberries, wild cherry as well as nuts — acorn, chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts and hickory.
Along with meat, wild rice, maple syrup and eggs gathered from bird nests, they enjoyed a great variety of foods. Native people did not have dairy products such as butter, milk, or cream but they did have a variety of fats including animal fats, particularly bear, and nut oils from acorns, beechnuts, butternuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, and black walnuts. Traditional calcium and mineral sources included eating whole fish, making bone soup or broths and eating greens. Babies were breast fed for several years.
Frances Densmore, an ethnologist, detailed the uses of nearly 200 plants in her book about the Chippewa Indians (another word for Ojibway) How Indians Use Wild Plants for Food, Medicine & Crafts. Along with the items listed above, Densmore included: juneberry, bearberry, wild ginger, common milkweed, aster, creeping snowberry, wild bean or hog peanut, wintergreen, Jerusalem artichoke, mountain mint, Labrador tea, bugleweed, chokecherry, bur oak acorns, red and wild currant, arrowhead, bulrush, basswood bark, hemlock leaves, and wild grapes.
Carolyn Raine of Seneca heritage wrote about historical references to Native foods in her book, A Woodland Feast: Native American Foodways of the 17th & 18th Centuries. Her book is based on primary source documentation, from over one hundred original 17th and 18th century journals, captivity narratives, and ethno-botanical research.
Additional foods to consider include: skunk, snake, otter, tree bark, rendered tallow, sturgeon, gull's eggs, swans, organ meats and blood, broths of dried frogs and beaver tails. The general rule for any meal was to cook some meat in a large pot and whatever greens, roots, nuts or berries were in season. Plants and animals were honored and all parts were used either for food, clothing or utensils. Raine describes methods of food preparation and cooking including roasting, boiling, drying, as well as making soups and stews. Today, many Native foods are still available. You can gather meat by hunting and fishing or you can raise buffalo, turkey, rabbits, ducks, and quail yourself. Many of the green plants Natives used are still growing today. You can grow many of these plants in your own yard. It is commonly thought that edible plants like lamb's quarters, purslane, chickweed, red clover, and sheep's sorrel are native but they were brought here by European settlers.
Native people of the Midwest acquired seeds of pumpkin, corn, beans and squash from Mexico and South America which they often grew in round gardens. Europeans referred to "corn" as grain while Natives called "corn" maize. Maize came in many varieties. They included a soft variety known as bread maize, an 8-rowed flint, dent, and even popcorn. They came in many colors: white, yellow, red, black, purple or blue, and calico or multi-colored. The Grandmothers had many ways to cook or use maize. It was boiled, roasted, dried, parched, pounded into meal, and boiled with wood ashes to make hominy.
Natives used maize or hominy, fresh or dried, for bread. Pounded meal was mixed with water, and this was made into small cakes that were either baked in hot ashes (ash cakes) or dropped into boiling water, soup or stew to make boiled maize bread or dumplings.
Many varieties of beans were also brought up from the south. Both shelled and edible pod varieties such as cranberry, navy, arrow, "snap" or "string" as well as several types of kidney beans were grown. The beans were usually boiled with meat or vegetables and were also mixed with cornmeal to make cakes and dumplings. They were often dried so they could be stored and used during the winter.
Different varieties of squash and pumpkins were also grown in the gardens. The Grandmothers would boil, bake or roast them near the fire, and dried them for use in winter. Although maize (corn), beans, and squash were not native to this area, they were grown here before European explorers arrived.
If you are interested in growing some of the foods that the Native People ate, first check around your area. You will often find sites that have black elderberry and blackberry bushes. Trees to look for include sugar maple, black walnut, wild black cherry, mulberry, and white oak. Each of these has "a gift" to share with you. If you live by water, you may find cattails and water lilies. In the woods, violets, mature Mayapples, ramps (wild leeks); and in your fields, there may be Jerusalem artichokes and milkweed plants. There are even plants that grow in our native prairie's that are edible. For example, you can make tea with the leaves from monarda, mountain mint, and New Jersey tea.
Check out the resources below for more ideas. Many of the fruits and greens that we grow in our gardens today are variations of those that were used by Indigenous people. Eating things that grow in the wild, could save you money. Just make sure they have not been sprayed or are close to the road where salt and car emissions have polluted them.
Native seeds for maize, dry beans and squashes can be found through Seed Savers Exchange. There are too many people today for all of us to eat "wild" food all the time, so growing some of them in our "wild" places or in our gardens is a great idea.
Native People lived for years off what they harvested in the wild and were very strong and healthy. Perhaps it is time for us to consider including "native wild foods" into our everyday cuisine. Be sure to thank the plant for its gift and save some for the next generation.

I'm officially addicted, I knew it !!

Yup, I thought one tree order would do it, nope I was wrong.

I just sent out a second tree/plant order, yes I'll admit I'm addicted to trees.

I saw a great buy on some more peach trees (yes I had already ordered two, and Elberta and a Reliance), but these were some I had before the fire, a Hale Haven and a Red Haven, so I couldn't resist. They also had a grab bag of 25 strawberry plants, which I needed and a great buy on Hardy Kiwi so I ordered 1 male and 4 female of those too.

Yes I know, I'm bad.

But when there is still room to plant perennial fruits and veggies what is a gal to do !

Thinking back over the hurricanes...sustainability thoughts

When the superstorm Hurricane Sandy hit the East coast it really made a mess, some people still have no homes and no electricity ..months later. So now the subject comes up of sustainability.

Sure we all consume things year around that we wouldn't have if we were hit by a similar tragedy..and we could do without them quite eaisly should tragedy strike, like this computer, my paid t v, cell phones, etc.

But I'm thinking more about actually being able to survive, live, without the government stepping in to do things for us, no FEMA, Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc.

I'm thinking that this year I would like to become a little more able to sustain LIFE should something serious happen here. No not preppers or survivalists, but just able to sustain LIFE.

The things we NEED (not want) are shelter, food, heat in Michigan, water and in some cases medical equipment or supplies.

Shelter is a given as long as our home is intact (and we do have good insurance as we did lose a home to a housefire in 2002). We also have camping equipment and tents if we had to use them and live next door to our son so if one of us lost a home the other could provide.

Heat here in Michigan is very important. We have a new outdoor wood boiler and an indoor wood fired fireplace, both have electric fans and outdoor one has electric pump. The indoor wood fireplace would heat the house somewhat without the fan, but much better with the fan. However, we purchased a propane generator a couple years ago and when we had a prolonged power outage last March it was quite useful in running fans, refrigeration, pumps, etc. We have about a year's supply of propane at any time as well as a couple small back up tanks and our propane barbeque grill and propane camp stove. We have a large woodshed and always have about 2 years of firewood put up in the fall ahead, so we could get along for a while with that and have chainsaws so we can cut some as long as there is fuel for them.

I also have durable medical equipment that we use with our generator when we have to, when power goes out.

Water, well as I said we have the generator that will move the pumps, but we also have access to a flowing well in an emergency and creeks within walking distance of our house as well, so water isn't too much of a problem, more an inconvenience if we had to haul it.

Food, this is an area where I'm falling short. I have planted serious food forest gardens, but because we lost most of them in our housefire of 2002 ..many of our fruit trees and nut trees are very young. This year we are hoping to have a lot more of a harvest off of our fruit and nut trees and our berry bushes and grapevines, but last year was a disaster with our frosts and droughts. I really need to work on the food side of sustainability here. I have a canner and a small pressure cooker and water bath canner, and supplies, but I would love to buy a NEW canner this year and a lot more supplies. I also have a dehydrater and drying racks as well, so drying is something I do quite a bit of each year. I have 2 separate freezers from my refrigerator, but keeping those going with the generator would be a tad more difficult if it was prolonged need..but if it was I could remove the food and can it, cook it or dry it before running out of propane.

I have planted a lot of foods that can easily be eaten that are perennial in our area, and we have a lot of forage options that non foragers wouldn't recognize as food, like edible tree leaves and flower garden plant roots and flowers, etc..so this knowledge would save our lives in a food shortage situation.

Meat, well that is another situation that might be a problem as at this time we have no domestice animals other than 2 cats (who would bring us songbirds and mice, yuk)..but we have a lot of wildlife in our area which we do feed and we have ability to hunt and process those. I hope to get myself a flock of chickens in the spring and get a chicken house and run built, and am also thinking of putting a few ducks on my pond. This year we are trying a "bubbler" to keep the pond open in the winter, which is working, but does require electricity to run. This said, we can plant fish in the pond with the bubbler going that would be edible as well..so that is a plan for spring, stocking the pond with fish.

There are a lot of deer and rabbits and squirrels and other wildlife that is edible in our area and even game birds like turkey, pheasant, doves, etc. So as long as we are able to harvest them we will have meat but I do believe this is an area I need to plan better for in the future.

Fuel for vehicles and tractor is one thing that we might fall short of also, but we have bicycles and I enjoy walking, so access to transportation in the nice weather isn't a problem, I don't ski so some snowshoes might be a good investment in the future as well.

I'm sure that additions of some solar cells with batteries or a wind generator would be a good investment, which we have been considering but haven't had the $ to buy the equipment yet, and we are planning on putting in an outside access water well, hopefully will hit a flowing well, in the next two years which we  believe would be a good investment for our future.

I hope this has given you some ideas of what you might need to do if a Hurricane Sandy, or earthquake, or tornado, or housefire, or SHTF episode happens, or even for a zombi apocolypse hits..at least it has gotten me thinking a little more about the future in 2013..Happy New Year

fruiting on my shiitake log in Decemnber (Mich)???

I went for a walk in my food forests this weekend, and I found fruit on one of my shiitake logs yesterday. Went out and snapped some photos today. The fruit IS coming out around the shiitake dowels I put in the log in the spring, but it isn't shiitake..probably some stupid foreigner got ahold..hope the shiitake is still growing in there..but this is only one of several logs and others show no growth yet.

Unfortunately this is NOT shiitake fruit..not sure what it is or if it is edible.

Maybe I'll send the photos to Paul Stament and find out if he recognizes it ..and really should anything be growing in 34 degree weather in Michigan in December??

End of 2012/ looking forward to 2013

Well here we are at the end of 2012. The drought seems to be over as we have had a wet winter, there is snow on the ground now.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...This photo was taken from my dining room window toward the back gardens.

Well it is time for dreaming and planning now..can't do much outside other than shovel.

This week I sent out an order for 4 new fruit trees and a bunch of open pollinated garden seeds. We had a horrible drought with extreme heat last year, quite unusual for Michigan and so we lost a lot of plants, seeds and had damage to some of our trees. Also there was a very late hard freeze for a few days that destroyed all the fruit tree buds in May and June, so we had very little fruit crop for 2012.

The new fruit trees that I ordered were 2 standard peach trees, one a Reliance and one an Elberta, both freestone and very hardy for our area. I ordered another sweet cherry, Stella, this one is supposed to be "self fruitful" and it is standard size. The Windsor that I got last year had no real root and died, so it is to be replaced this spring, it is also a sweet cherry and standard, so there will be two new sweet cherries planted in 2013.

The large apple tree in the photo above on the left, is a volunteer from an apple core that had been thrown out many years ago. We believe the apple that began it was a Northern spy, probably crossed with whatever was in the area. It has medium size apples that come on quite late and are good keepers and are very tasty, but do have a bit of a bug problem from time to time. The 4th tree I ordered is a Nova Spy. It should be a good pollinator for this old tree, it is also a standard so we'll put them fairly close to each other.

In my food forests we have some trees reaching bearing stage at last. We got a really good first crop off of our 6 hazelnuts in 2012. They were small but very tasty (now I need to get a really good hazelnut nutcracker). No crop on any of the other nut trees in 2012, maybe next year, they are all still quite small. I even put in a few new nut tree babies this past year. So now we have black walnut, butternut, carpathian walnut, heartnut, sweet chestnut, hazelnut, Halls hardy almond, hickory nut that we hope soon will grow large enough to bear.

We had only 2 pears that formed on one of our pear trees this past year and one fell off, so we had one to eat, and it was heavenly  !! Hopefully we won't have those late freezes this year and we'll get a nice crop of pears. I have several kinds of trees and even have some roots that survived from trees where grafts died that I'm leaving in (I have the room for whatever comes of them). The other fruit trees didn't fare even as well as the pears, as we had no fruit on any of them except one fruit on the baby Medlar that I put in this year. Most of them are at bearing age so we are quite hopeful for 2013.

We did have a few lovely grapes on some of our newer grape vines this year, they were delicious.

We had the best crops ever of our asparagus and rhubarb this year, but the drought did a lot of damage on the annuals especially.

We had some good black raspberries, but they didn't last as long as they should have and the blueberries and other berries were pretty sad.

With all the moisture we have gotten so far this Winter, I am very hopeful that we'll have a better crop year, also I hope to be able to get some more mulching materials this year (our truck is still dead but we were given a lovely mini van which I can use to haul stuff with..woo hoo).

My old eyes are getting worse so I'm going to try a few things this year, one I have tried before and others are new to me. In the past I have planted PURPLE green beans and YELLOW ones too..well this year I'm doing that again and planting them up on a higher raised hugel bed. Hopefully  this will make them easier for me to pick (and see)..the purple ones turn green when cooked.

I also found a white cucumber, yup white, so I'm planting those this year also, green on green is very difficult for my eyes to see so that is the plan.

Well as I said, the tree and seed order went in. Henry Fields has a great sale going and I got some really great prices..so I couldn't resist. I am sure I'll order some more seeds (just can't help myself) and  who knows, might go crazy and get more fruit trees, there is still some open ground available.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all of you and hope your 2013 is bountiful.