All About Nettles

  

 

 

Last weekend we ventured out to Marin for our All About Nettles class.  The weather was amazing, a perfect day to experience Lady Nettle in all her glory.  We hiked out to our favorite foraging spot and sat in a circle to discuss identification, how and when to harvest, nutrients, medicinal uses, energetic influences, preserving, recipes, companion plants and cultivation.  Then we visited the many different nettle communities to pay our respects and harvest this nourishing plant ally. Along the way students also gathered young fiddle head ferns to sauté for their evening meal and fresh cleavers to juice as a tonic for allergies and eczema. 

 

 

The week of a nettle harvest is always special, filled with fresh sparkling juiced nettles, delicious nettle soup, nettle quiche or frittata, green smoothies, then bundles and bundles of nettle leaves hanging in the kitchen to dry.  This year our preservation method of choice is to dry and powder as many of the leaves as possible and freeze them in small bags to use through out the year as our own local, deep green super food (in place of spirulina and chlorella). 

 



 

Herbalist Michael Moore says in his book Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West…"Nettle powder is something  that you can gather yourself in places that you trust, and you can add it to smoothies and salad dressings, put it in your bread, add it to tea, home beer, and so forth.  It is green food your body recognizes, and can help build blood, tissue, and self-empowerment.” 

Definitely our number one go to herb for extra nutrition and nourishment when we are stressed or depleted, an easily absorbable form of iron, vegetable protein, spring cleansing and so much more.  Thank you lovely nettles!

 

 *pictures taken by Amelia Avila

Sweet and Steady

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the

 changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."

-Maya Angelou

 



It's been awhile since I've written, almost six months actually.  Life has been both cruel and kind in it's lessons.  As an open hearted participant I can truly say I am always learning and growing, give thanks for evolution!  Much has transpired here on the farm since the last post in August.  The turkeys matured and went to their new abode in the freezer (weighing in between a whopping 30-40lbs each!).  Our Wild Feast Thanksgiving was amazing.  We successfully cooked our first enormous home grown turkey in the cob oven with an abundance of sage and rosemary.  The bird fed almost thirty people and the chef received many happy compliments. (Thank you beautiful birds for nourishing our family!)  We will definitely be raising turkeys again this year.

 

 

There is also a fairly new addition to the family.  Cinnamon (aka 2G) is our new jersey cow who we bought last August from an organic dairy up north.  We recently did pregnancy tests on both Cinnamon and Ginger and it's looking like both girls are pregnant and due in late spring.  Pretty exciting for us!  The milk has been slowing down as we get ready to dry them off for a break before calving. 

As the weather warms up, the bees are active and buzzing everywhere while the hillside has become lush and green.  The garden is getting more productive with peas, favas, cover crops and perennial kale, collards, chard, lettuce, garlic, onions and artichokes bursting.  Time to plant potatoes and start the summer squash and tomatoes in the greenhouse.   

 
We have a ton of chayote starts this year and are excited to line all the fences with these versatile squash.  I've also ordered more perennials bushes for the food forest...aronia, seaberry, gooseberry, along with more fruit trees including mulberry, hawthorn, and Asian pear. This time of year it is hard to contain myself from ordering everything, it's like having planting fever.

Classes and tours have also been going extremely well.  We have been blessed with so many wonderful students and great interest in what we are creating here. 



 
And so as we continually work on externally developing this land we are stewarding and internally developing our character, we experience the sweet and steady; the effort and the rewards.  We look forward in 2015 to implementing many new ideas, creativity, fun, travel, friendship, health and balance.  Many Blessings!

Inspiration

Sometimes when life becomes more work than play and the balance is out of whack, we need to escape somewhere beautiful for inspiration.  My recent destination of choice was the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas.

A day trip up the coast to visit this 17 acre permaculture farm was a perfect afternoon getaway.  I participated in a three hour tour of the grounds and gardens.  From orchards to medicinal food forest there was much to see. My overall impression - quiet, peaceful, wild, weedy and everywhere I turned I saw an overwhelming abundance of food growing and thriving.

A cottage house tucked away in the garden, artful signs waiting to be hung, comfrey growing EVERYWHERE!  There was the largest comfrey plant I have ever seen-probably eight feet tall.  A straw bale house, an interesting chicken coop set-up, and a beautiful herd of dairy goats roaming the hillside.

I sat on a warm cob bench in the sun by this tranquil pond after the tour to do some journaling and a thoughtful host brought this beautiful cup of tea with fresh borage leaves and lemon.  A perfect ending to a lovely afternoon.  Gratitude and blessings abound.  

What we see and what we don't see

What we know and what we can't know

The mighty and the small, The Father and the Mother

The creatures that prowl the forests

and the growing things in the fields

The young ones that tread the ground

and the old ones that sleep under it

The birthing and the dying

The laughing and the crying and the bearing up

All creation breathes with one breath.

-Johnathon Odell, The Healing

Aquaponics: Take One!

Our plans for fish farming have been in the works for a very long time now.  We've been dreaming, studying and gathering information for a couple of years.  We are really excited to be finally taking steps to bring our visions of this project into action. 

In the four years we have been working this land we have dabbled in all sorts of endeavors; natural beekeeping, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, varieties of perennials, drought tolerant edibles, the standard fruit and vegis, and our family cow.  With a little bit of experience behind us, we are refining our efforts to grow specifically what WE love to eat, which happens to include a good amount of fish!

In this set-up we used standard food grade IBC containers which had been functioning on the farm as containers for rainwater catchment. We are also using a large sump tank on the bottom as a water reservoir. There is a ton to be said about researching aquaponics set-ups. In a nutshell, our main source for a "how to" guide was Murray Hallam's Aquaponics Made Easy.   

As of this week the system we've been working on is ready. We just added about fifty fish, some babies and some breeders.  The fish are being fed a combination of what we have on hand; spent grain, garden vegis, insects and mosquito larvae.  

Tilapia are our fish of choice. They are warm water fish which grow to a large size quickly and they are adaptable and tasty.  The babies, called fry, take anywhere from six months to a year to mature.  The breeders are sexually mature and if all goes as planned, should  mate and produce more fry keeping the system functioning in a closed loop.

Adding our own fresh fish to equation feels like it might just make our homegrown diet complete. Exciting and lots of potential!  We will be reporting back to you all with the results including successes and failures, so stay tuned for more about this project.

Around The Farm: May

Broccoli harvested from the garden in our son's handmade basket

Many beds still bursting with different varieties of kale

Snap peas make perfect garden nibbles

Food Forest beginnings: Artichokes, kale, chard, sunflowers, banana, and a young hawthorn tree

Cylindra beets

Dehydrated beet chips

Strawberry beet fruit leather- try it it's amazing!

Lots of fresh cheese

Ginger!

Turkeys poults are growing up

Young hands jarring up honey- a sweet chore!

Drying the garlic harvest before braiding

So much to fit into these long, hot days.  Spring is feeling more like summer as we put extra mulch on the beds and get all the tomatoes, corn, squash, peppers and eggplant into the ground.  I've been feeling way behind as there are a ton of vegis to harvest and process with very little time and only a few hands keeping up all the work.  Our trio of goats are fat and due to kid in less than a month.  The stalls need to be cleaned out and bedded with thick fresh straw in anticipation of the babies we so adore.  The chickens are steadily laying away and the turkeys are growing large before our eyes.  I think those seven funny poults may have imprinted on me because they follow me everywhere squawking, "Mammma!" in turkey language.  I have become quite attached to them which is going to be problematic come Thanksgiving.  We harvested a good portion of garlic yesterday.  I'm excited to experiment with braiding both the soft and hard neck varieties later this week.  We harvested it still a bit green so the stems will be flexible instead of brittle.  We've been eating mostly out of the garden these days and can't wait for the fruit in the orchard to ripen: citrus and apricots first, then plums, apples, pears, grapes, persimmons and more...We are really praying and planning for a big harvest this year so we can put up the summer goodness for winter.  Much depends on the drought/water supply and how much our grey water can keep the soil moist.  For now, we're feeling optimistic and always filled with gratitude!

God never sends us more than we can handle. -Mother Theresa

Colors of Spring

"When the soul lies down in that grass, 

the world is too full to talk about."- Rumi

Onions blooming, artichokes reaching and stretching out their long leaves, technicolor poppies scattered over the hillside, a splash of chartreuse chalkboard paint on the milk fridge, kale-collards-mustard greens-broccoli-potatoes, grapes leaves unfurling, bees buzzing to and fro over the borage flowers, and a green grassy hillside that calms the mind and soul.  Spring has sprung, beauty hangs on every dew drop. All around us life is anew. 

Eight little bronze turkey poults entertain us while our chicks in the brooder get bigger by the minute.  Spring planting, lots of new laying hens, lazy pregnant goats and milk coming out of our ears.  The farm is bustling with activity keeping us sore, tired and so busy we can barely take a breath.  But somehow it's all worth it!  These times are unforgettable...the best times of our lives!

Happy Spring!