Unstuffed: Independence Days Week #5

Monday, June 1, 2009

Independence Days Week #5

Plant Something:
- spring garlic gifted to us from Martha's garden
- 2 pepper seedlings gifted to us from our garden neighbour
- yarrow
- 7 cucumber seedlings
- 4 cabbage seedlings

Harvest Something:
- spring garlic
- violet leaves
- Gill-over-the-ground (or apparently, more commonly known 'round these parts as Creeping Charile or ground ivy)
- chives
- red raspberry leaves
- nettle seed
- dandelion leaves and flowers

Preserve something:
- drying violet leaves, Creeping Charlie, nettle seed and raspberry leaves
- dandelion vinegar

Reduce waste:
- cooked chickpeas in sun oven while at work (it's nature's slow cooker!)
- used the chickpea water for soup stock
- scavenged wood to build cucumber trellis
- scavenged seed starting trays and pots out of blue boxes

Preparation and Storage:
- added bulk lentils to food storage
- added 2L water to storage for a total of 26L
- got hatchet and the blades on my antique food chopper sharpened by the neighbourhood sharpener dude who drives around in the summer time ringing his bell. He's like the ice cream truck for adults who have blade sharpening needs!
- learned to identify Lamb's Quarters, yellow dock, Lady's mantle
- registered and had first day of year long herbal apprenticeship

Build Community Food Systems:
- went to potluck with fellow wild edible's participants
- talked about Independence Days challenge at peak oil discussion group, and with a friend
- shared green garlic with others
- helped neighbour gardeners protect some seedlings from risk of frost
- went to farmer's market

Eat the Food:
- ate the last of my homemade sauerkraut
- used chives in a version of this tasty recipe

5 comments:

Rachel said...: Ooo, should I be harvesting some leaves from my raspberry canes? Anything I need to know to do this correctly? Cool!; June 1, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Amber said...: Yep! From what I've read the best time to harvest raspberry leaves is just before they flower, when the buds start to appear but right before the plant devotes its energy to flowering and producing fruit.

Red raspberry leaf is known as a uterine tonic, so it is especially good for pregnant women, however it is beneficial for women in general due to its high vitamin content and iron.

There is a good description of how and when to harvest and use the leaf here.

Very cool indeed!; June 1, 2009 at 2:16 PM
Amber said...: Oh, I should add, for folks who don't visit the link, that the leaf should be used when it is either completely fresh or completely dry. Apparently the leaf goes through a chemical change during the drying process, so using wilted, partially dry leaves can cause nausea and vomiting.; June 1, 2009 at 2:25 PM
Ruhh (aka Ron St. Louis) said...: Thanks for that tip regarding the best harvest/use time for raspberry leaves. My property and surrounding area is covered by them.

Oh yeah and although I've never made use of the sharpening wagon guy I've seen his truck around and always thought it to be an awesome idea.

I am considering buying a mushroom patch kit that you might find interesting too. Check the rest of Peter Stamens stuff too and watch his inspiring video on 6 ways mushrooms can save the planet.; June 2, 2009 at 1:14 PM
Amber said...: Hey Ron!

Glad you found the raspberry leaf tip helpful.

And thanks for the mushroom links. I was just talking about the possibility of growing mushrooms with my dudeguy the other day!

Amber; June 2, 2009 at 2:03 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali