 That lovely picture is of this morning’s harvest or if you will the product of my foraging, as I got them from a location I didn't plant intentionally. That is about 3/4's of a gallon of blackberries in one morning! They are being frozen until the season is over and I have some rose hips, then I am making some jam and maybe some syrup.
It made me think though, as I had help after I had gotten 2 pints already on my own by at first my youngest... then my oldest and then finally the middle child. I -LOVE- fresh blackberries, not as much as fresh strawberries; but hey nothing adds up to them.
To me there is nothing better than putting into my mouth a blackberry just off the bramble that has exploded into my hand from being sooo ripe. Sweet with a lite bitterness that comes from natural sugars. I did pause this morning when I tasted a particularly sweet one, with a moan escaping my lips. As oddly, considering modern life I prefer my sweets in the form of berries now. Don't get me wrong, I love chocolate... but it's just not the same.
I think many kids and adults miss something good when they don't eat something freshly picked, like fruit. It has it's own flavor and it's very unique. To me most of the processed sweets have all the same flavor, and it's missing something.
The other part that I was thinking on is how my kids pick berries. Had I handed them my berrying bucket and sent them out I'd have been lucky to get maybe a pint. ..and the thing is it would not be because they were eating while picking. Part of it is they don't seen them all on the brush. They also want to find the “perfect” berry. It really made me think when I realized that, as I just finished a book about primitive man(novel) and how they lived and that included gathering food.
If my kids had to rely on what we had found to eat.. they would wind up picking more of them. My youngest admitted that, so I told her then just think that way and we'll have tons of berries to make things with. One or two blemishes mean nothing, and partly dried out? Come on, people pay tons of money to buy dried fruits; pick them yourself. It'll do you some good to be out in the sun enjoying the fresh air... and grins getting covered in berry juice! It's an old family pastime, that I think needs to be revitalized.
People use to spend whole days going out “berrying”, and they'd bring a picnic lunch and the dessert would be the fresh berries with sometimes some home made cake. To me that sounds much better than going to the store and “foraging” for a nice looking package of berries. As that is what you are doing when you are in the store turning the berry packs all around to check every angle until you find just the right one that looks to be “perfect”. WOW.. I just realized where my kids' idea of perfection on berries comes from. As if you don't do “perfect” on ones in the store you are likely to have rotten berries.
I don't know if any of you remember seeing an older orange commercial a number of years ago from the orange growers. It had a woman explaining a ripe orange isn't always fully orange, which tech if it's green it's not ripe... but the point is most people have no clue what “ripe” is... I certainly don't know what a ripe wild blueberry looks like. So I am learning that, maybe true ripeness should be taught to all people; most of all children.
I hope everyone out there gets to experience the freshest of the season!
Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...
 This is half of my "horde" of green bush beans that I'm growing this year. Aside from maybe 3 plants having slightly yellowed leaves everyone of them is very healthy and in flower. I actually think they are putting out secondary flower stalks.
I am hoping to get lots of beans from them, I will try canning some. I know I cannot eat commercial canned veggies as they make me ill, so Silver is hoping/thinking that home canned I could. The thought is that maybe it's a preservative in them besides being too soft that is the reason for it.
I seem to have also issue(s) with over cooked ones as well so we are going to try raw packing them. who knows maybe they will do well and I'll be able to eat them. If I can't the kids and Silver certainly can.
Last year I had tried growing pole beans and I was sorely disappointed. That's why I am doing bush beans this year. I have grown "Blue Lake" bush beans for almost forever and I know they'll produce. This year I am determined to have a good harvest from my garden. As I said I do have my Tiger's Eye beans growing up front, we will see if I can get them to produce this year and if I can we will just go with those as they are also a dry bean. Pinto style, which for us means chili.
 This is one of the many cabbage plants I have growing, and this is one of the remaining three that I myself started. I had started 6 of the Early Jersey Wakefield, but after some four-legged lawn mowers went through I only have maybe three of these and the red cabbages I bought.
These green ones are a tad behind my red cabbages, as the red ones have been heading for a few weeks and the greens have only been for about one week. I am really hoping to be able to harvest them soon so we can have some cole slaw. I love fresh cole slaw!
Oh pardon the picture quality as my camera is out of batteries and we keep forgetting to buy them so I used our phone to take these pics.
 This is my volunteer squash, in flower (male flowers btw). It has had I'd say about 8-10 flowers at this point and they have all been the "male" flowers. I am waiting on the female ones to appears so I have a better idea as to what kind of squash it is.
Now like I said I think it's a Dark Star Zucchini, and next time I'll get a picture of those in flower as they are starting to get their flower buds now. Which for me is a wonderful thing, I am hoping again that they produce lots of squashes for us.
We got hooked our first year here eating for lunch a stir fry with two or more squashes in it and maybe some canned ham and a fresh herbs. I really want to do that again, so because last year our squashes didn't do much past producing male flowers we didn't get any of those fun meals.
One other "Crop" that I am hopeful on is melons. I love to eat melons and I have a wonderful recipe for a catulope jam that I made last year with half of a huge one that I bought. I have some melons sprouting and .. considering I had tried some vine peach seeds, which at this point they all sprouted then withered. I planted to see some of the melon seeds I bought last year. I planted "Oran's melon" which is suppose to grow well in this state.
 This is one of the two flowering heads on the one Elderberry that is blooming. I do hope the other one blooms next year. As you can see the flowers are starting to open up. I am going to be watching this closely as I have no clue how long it takes for them to go from flower to ripe fruit.
I spent the early part of this morning doing the kids' early chores of feeding the animals (which in the summer they do). I went out and took these pictures and I did a bit of pond digging. Maybe I'll post some pond pictures next time. A progression of what we have done so far.
I also checked my plants out and the Oran's melons are still very healthy, which is making me very happy. i do hope they do well and we get melons, in some amount. Even if we are overwhelmed by them. I would not mind, because if they do I'll just turn them into jam.
We've lost one of our chickens yesterday to I think a fox, and I'm wondering if maybe we've lost more than one. As a number of days ago they had managed to get out under the fencing and there was tons of feathers all over their yard. So after finding the dead one half pulled out of the fence and half eaten, I do wonder.
Well that's about ti for now.. I'm heading to wordpress and Blogger to put up updates there as well.
Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...
I love fresh bread, just ask anyone! I also really love my sourdough so when I found this new recipe I had to share it.
Now I am at this moment baking some of this bread, yeah it's a tad late in the day for us. However, we have a VERY good reason for it. I found another no-knead bread recipe for my sourdough. It's a white bread recipe, that you make a "batter" in the long rise time; it seems more like a sponge though.
The book is called:
"Adventures in sourdough Cooking & Baking"
By: Charles D Wilford
Copyright 1971 and 1977
ISBN# 0-912936-00-2
The First part of the recipe Page 31:
Primary Batter "B"
Ingredients:
1C sourdough starter
1 & 1/2 C white flour
1 C warm water
Yield:
1 & 1/2 C Primary Batter "B" for baking
1 C batter to return to your starter
2 & 1/2 C total
1. Assemble all ingredients and utensils
2. Remove your sourdough starter from the refrigerator and stir well. Take out one cup and place it in a warm bowl of 2 qt capacity or larger. Return remaining starter to refrigerator. The large size bowl is necessary to prevent spillage as the batter will expand greatly during it's proofing period. The final quantity will be around 2 & 1/2 or 4 cups total.
3. Add the warm water and stir until well mixed. Slowly add the white flour stirring continually to blend the flour in well. Stir 4 to 5 minutes or until the mixture is smooth and lump free, or use an egg beater or electric mixer. (yes it says a MIXER!)
4. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm, draft free area for proofing. (now I use a plate that fits over my bowl and it works fine)
5. The proofing period is 8 to 12 hours depending on how active your starter is when taken from the refrigerator. Your batter is ready when it is foamy and full of large bubbles. It can be used at any time after this point up to 4 hours. If your batter has many tiny bubbles in it, it has already reached the proper state. If no or few bubbles are present during the 8 to 12 hours after proofing your starter is not acting properly and you should determine the reason for this before continuing with the recipe.
6. During the proofing period there is a chance that crust will form at the top of your batter. If this happens just stir it back down into the batter. The same is true of any liquid which might form on top.
7. At the end of the proofing period stir the batter thoroughly. Take out one cup and put back into your starter container. Stir your starter thoroughly and return it to your refrigerator.
White Bread recipe on page 86
No-knead Sourdough Bread (white)
ingredients:
1 & 1/2 C Primary Batter "b"
1/2 C warm milk (I let it get to room temp)
1 &1/2 t salt
2 T sugar
2 T cooking oil or melted Shortening (I use butter)
1 egg
2 & 1/2 C flour
Yield: 1 loaf
1. Prepare the Primary Batter "B" following the directions in Chapter 4. Be sure that you return one cup of batter to your sourdough starter container before adding any other ingredients.
2. Assemble all ingredients and utensils. Let all ingredients come to room temperature.
3. In a warm 4qt bowl (I use my 8 qt pots) mix the milk, salt, sugar and cooking oil together.
4. Beat the egg well and (then) mix it thoroughly into the mixture in step 3
5. Add the 1 & 1/2 cups of Primary Batter "B" and mix well again.
6. Add 2 & 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup at a time; and beat vigorously until all the flour is blended in. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
7. Cover the bowl and set in a warm 85 degree place for about 2 hours for proofing. When dough has doubled in bulk stir it down thoroughly. (now I find this one "odd" no "punching" down)
8. Pour into a well greased loaf pan and spread it out evenly. Pat the top smooth with floured hands (btw.. I have not done this in the 2 times I have tired this)
9. Cover with a cloth and let rise in a warm 85 degree place until it reaches about 1 inch from the top of the pan. About 1 hour and 45 minutes.
10. bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 45 minutes. When bread starts to shrink away from the sides of the pan it is done.
11. When done, remove bread from the oven and brush the top with melted butter. Place on a wire rack to cool immediately.
Now this produces a beautiful loaf of bread, so good that when we made it the first time we ate the whole loaf as soon as it was cool. Well... ok... not quite all the way cooled. It is very good and I suggest trying it out. My family loved it, I am sure your's will too.
Be Well, Be safe and Blessed be
 Now I mentioned in my previous post about this cook stove that Silver made for us last year. Now it was very easy to make. It has metal from what Silver said was a commercial stove that was left on our property and we discovered it when we moved here. He took the metal squares from the base and took the legs off which were later used to hold pots over the fire. The metals squares though were filled with large rock then gravel. The other piece of metal is that back piece, which was also in the original base.
The next thing Silver did was put two standard cinder blocks on the rock/gravel filled base and then filled them with again rocks first then gravel till full. Now I want to say you SHOULD let them sit a day or 2 to let the stones and gravel settle. Otherwise they will get hollow spots in them. Then Silver put the flat cinder blocks on top of the standard ones, just offset enough for the leg "grate" to go across. Now that back piece of metal is held in place with a cinder block that is filled with concrete that we found on site with a rock on top. There was also a broken flat cinder in back to cover and uncover holes on that metal based on how hot you want the fire.
Now here is the only main problem, once you heat the cinder blocks and they get wet. You CANNOT remove them or they will crack and/or break. While this can be built in lass than an hour with all the materials like I said take the time to let it settle the gravel before finishing it off.
 Now like I said we are going to do a cob oven and stove, and we aren't quite going to be doing the "standard" way of doing it. Now I wanted to embed this but I have yet to find the way too so here is a link to the "type" of cob oven we want to make. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lGTGUo6tyQ&feature=channel_video_titleNow in case you were wondering why I am showing you a spot of "dirt" (it's actually clay). Well this is where we are going to build the stove and oven. This is the clay from our root cellar dig out (which we are still doing). After we filled in some "wet spots" on our property where we walk we just had the kids pile it here. Silver went out and hoed it down then raked and hoed it flat on one side. Then "tamped" it down a little to make it very flat. This will be our starting stop for both the stove and oven. The plan is to have a space between to hold wood for both. Now the stove will be redone in a more "rocket stove" manner with the outside covered in cob to help keep the heat in while we cook.
 This of course is the metal base from our first wood cook stove. Boy, did we have fun when we took the old one apart. Seems the local wasps had built a nest in one of the cinder blocks. It was pretty big too.
Now I'd like to point out that it's 2 pieces of metal in squares measuring a piece 2ftX24inX2in. So they aren't really all that big, but together they work well. Silver of course had to level it to make sure it was perfect.
Isn't that a pretty level it's a 6ft level that we only spent $14 on it at Harbor Freight Tools. Silver took me to their stores a few times and I was pleasantly surprised by them. I had never even heard of them until Silver told me about them. Anyway, I personally think a 6ft level is a very good tool for any homesteader whether you are "urban" or not.
 Now a few things have been done here. First Silver took the broken flat cinders (yep all the old ones broke like I mentioned above) and placed 4 pieces in the 4 corners of the metal to hold it in place. Then he put in rock and then filled with gravel. It has been sitting for 3 days now, partly due to the fact that it was raining yesterday.
We also had (at first) the kids put those rocks along the front, for decoration mostly. Silver went back through and straightened it a bit, and added more. He's good at eyeballing pieces that fit together.
Then he went and put gravel all along the flat surface that we are going to build on. Now the plan is to spread some concrete dust over it and let it dry in place hardening it to prevent "wash out". the hope is also that the gravel pieces will make little channels for water to go through. Silver thinks it will be pretty as well.
That is what we have so far, we need to do the concrete on it before we do anything else and for the cook stove we need to get some more cinder blocks. Silver wants to use earthbags for the base of the oven, we'll see what we can manage. Well at least the "platform" isn't the only thing we need to concrete. We also need to do the stairs into our home as it's just wood holding gravel. We've had to re-make those steps twice now so we REALLY need to get the concrete in it.
I'll update this as we go along.
Be Well, Be Safe and Blessed Be...
Hello!
For those of you who have not seen my blogs on Blogger or Word Press let me tell you about us. First I am 35 and a mom of 3 wonderful kids (yes my name rivenfae is fictitious, but I have my reasons) , my boyfriend is almost 53 and we live on 5.29 acres of land in the Missouri woods.
We moved here in April of 2010 and have had quite an experience. We started off in a tent and having to haul our own water from a neighbor's house. Let me tell you living in a tent is fun... until you do it for 6+ months with 3 kids. After about 4 months we had our power hooked up which required a $350 deposit here, so we had to manage to have that much money at one time to pay it out.
Before we had the power on and could use our deep freeze we had been only buying non-perishable foods to eat, which isn't as bad as you might think. It does take some getting use to only using canned meats in inventive ways. Oddly enough almost a year later with one of those "dishes" we are thinking of buying a few different canned meats to "recapture" some flavors we discovered we liked.  This is one of the "cook stoves" we had last year we built this one ourselves, all the metal on it was trash that was on our property. We had gotten so good at cooking with a wood fire that when we moved into our current (not final) home a 12X24 shed and started using a electric stove we wound up burning our food a few times till we got use to -NOT- cooking on wood. We are rebuilding this in a new location as summer's heat is horrible here for cooking anything, but we have learned a couple of things that will change how we do it. The cinder blocks we used when they are repeatedly heated and then get wet when you go to move them after they will break. As all homesteaders I have a garden, last year during our first year we just dug up and planted right in the ground. However, we did get for free a truckload of composted goat manure that i later added to the soil. i did learn things will grow in our very heavy clay soil. Just very slowly and that we need to water it a lot. So this year we have done a few things different, first the ground that got the goat manure is much better this year (no real surprise there), and all the amendment we put in; was straw once the plants were grown enough to put it down without choking the seedlings. We have started foraging more this year than last i have over a quart of blackberries in my freezer right now waiting till the season is over so I can make some jelly/jam for the first time. It will be a multi-berry as I do have a wild blue berry nearby and I have gotten the few I found there to the blackberries. i am also hoping to add rose hips to it for vitamin C content. I have also come up with a wonderful Lamb's Quarter wilted salad that one of my kids and Silver likes. We eat that once or twice a week, people say they taste like spinach; I don't think so. I can't place the taste either. As i said we are now living in a 12X24 shed, we got it delivered back in October and my 2 girls sleep in bunk beds built into the wall, my son is in the loft and me and my boy friend have a "room" next to the "toilet room". Our "toilet room" is just that our toilet is in it. It is a saw dust toilet, if you don't know what one is here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPg-n4czGE0I am surprised at how well this system works and you don't waste any water or have to worry about a septic backing up. We currently have a bath tub in a outdoor room in back that we use in warm weather (above 40 degrees). We are working towards building 2 additions onto this shed. One will be a better sleeping area for the kids and also a tv room. The other will be a bathroom, in which we will have a flush toilet (yeah!) and a shower. They will be built once we finish digging (by hand) our root cellar.Yes we are digging a root cellar and guess what...? It's soo easy! One of the biggest things that has helped is what we are using to "break" through the clay. It is a bulb planting drill bit that eats up clay. We put it on our masonry drill and it will tear right through the clay. then we just shovel the clay out. We have about 4 ft down to still go. Right now I believe it is 8X10X2ft. We need it just a bit deeper, which should be the easiest part.We are going to use all the clay we are digging up as well as we are going to build a cob-ish oven like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lGTGUo6tyQNot quite that one but very close as we are going to use a steel barrel for the body. I have a turkey in my chicken yard that is going to be a bit to big for my current oven so we'll need the cob-ish oven. When we put the addition on we will be using a rocket mass heater in it, this way we won't use any electricity for our heat this winter. We used just space heaters last year and our power bill went very high. For us wood is free so lets go with wood.So I hope you keep coming around to check us out here at Wolf Woods!Be Well and Blessed Be...
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