Unstuffed: Around Ye Old Urban Homestead

Monday, February 21, 2011

Around Ye Old Urban Homestead

Getting in under the wire for the Urban Homesteader's Action day, here's what I've been up to on my urban homestead this weekend.

It was crazy mild on Friday, so I biked to the garden to check things out. Here are two of our plots.

And the other two. Everything is still under a blanket of snow, but it won't be long before things are lush! We sheet mulched as many beds as we could last fall, which should make for an already-prepped, easy start to the season.

Winter is actually a good time for certain kinds of plant ID, if you know what you're looking for. This stand of last season's Evening Primrose stalks and seed heads stands out so much more obviously at this time of year than when in a field of growing tall grass and other plants. Now I know where to look for new growth, this spring and summer.

Not all is dead or dormant. I was thrilled to see stinging nettle shoots pushing their way up out of the ground under a paper bag of leaves. Hello you beauties!

After I pruned the currant and gooseberry bushes and tidied up around the wild roses I'm trying to encourage to take over, I took a few moments of rest before my feet got cold and I made my way home under the setting sun.

The rest of the weekend turned cold, so I was content to stay warm inside with hot herbal teas and infusions.

I tinctured some fresh growth of willow twigs I harvested.

You can just make out the constituents extracting out into the alcohol. It's so pretty.

I've got homemade crackers in the dehydrator.

And a pie fresh out of the oven. I've been hoarding the strawberries and elderberries I froze last summer, but it's time to tuck into and savour them!

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend!

5 comments:

Chile said...: What a lovely crop of snow! :)

Do you use the willow tincture in place of aspirin?; February 21, 2011 at 6:55 PM
Amber said...: Yes, snow is one thing we 'grow' really well in these parts Chile! :)

This is the first time I've worked with willow, but yes, my plan is to use it instead of aspirin.

http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/willow-bark-000281.htm

My understanding is that it is less damagaing to the stomach when used this way. One source I read mentions that willow use could lead to irritation though, so as with everything, I will use it in moderation. http://www.henriettesherbal.com/blog/salicylate-herbs.html

I made a decoction of some of the twigs this weekend for a headache and was amazed at how well it worked.

I don't know what species of willow I used. One was a weeping willow and I collected twigs from another type as well. I plan to go back and get a proper ID.

Traditionally willow bark is used, however many contemporary herbalists use the new growth of twigs, buds and leaves. It's less damaging to the trees. Sounds like a good practice to me.; February 22, 2011 at 12:15 PM
Liz said...: I'm an idiot! I've found a few recipes on the net for homemade crackers made in the oven. Why didn't I think of the dehydrator?!; February 22, 2011 at 6:57 PM
Ottawa Gardener said...: Everything looks lovely and it's nice to see someone making a willow brew.; February 23, 2011 at 8:44 AM
Amber said...: Liz, this is my first batch ever of crackers in the dehydrator. They're awesome!! I can't believe I haven't been making them this whole time. Lots of fun.

Hi Ottawa Gardener. Thanks! I'm excited to add willow to my herbal medicine cabinet. I think it will be a wonderful ally. :); February 23, 2011 at 1:59 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