A Girl and Her Banjo is a Beautiful Thing

I've got a confession to make here. I'm madly in love, and I'm going to tell the whole world about it. After twelve years of waiting, I finally got a banjo, and I've been smitten ever since. I don't remember exactly when  the banjo fever took hold of me, but when I was about 18, I started entertaining visions of sitting out on the back porch picking away. College kept me pretty busy, and then children, and somehow twelve years slipped by without that dream being pursued. Life rolled along, the dream wove into my subconscious, and I just kept listening to more and more old-time banjo music. One day I found myself pretending to pick banjo strings in the air while singing along. This was starting to get serious, folks. Then Jenna Woginrich over at Cold Antler Farm really stirred things up with her Banjo Equinox post this Spring, making old-time banjo sound so darn easy to learn, that I just couldn't deny it any longer. I needed a banjo in a real bad way.

I decided my birthday was as good a time as any. I scrimped, I saved and the Hobo Bean Blossom arrived via UPS the day after my birthday. I just took it out of the box and stared at it for a while. I couldn't even believe it was my very own. Finally I picked it up and plucked at a string, and that sound was sweet music to my ears. Since the book I was planning to learn with, Wayne Erbsen's Clawhammer Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus was on back order, I decided to find some You-tube videos on tuning and get started with the basics. I studied banjo diagrams and fiddled around with my electronic tuner until I had Double C tuning figured out, as well as tuning the banjo to itself. Keeping to my 15 minute per day commitment, pretty soon I moved along to clawhammer picking, and even picking out a simple tune by ear. This week I started on my first tune, "Old Molly Hare" reading tablature. The lyrics involve bear hunting and some wild woman who smokes cigars, so it's really my kind of music. That's where I'm at now. Working my way through the book at 15 minutes a day minimum, and getting the hang of it as I go along. It's good to teach yourself something new every so often in life, just so you remember that you can.

So, there you have it, a banjo and a dream. One of these days soon I'll be sitting in that old rocking chair on the front porch, picking away at old-time mountain tunes on hot summer evenings with some sort of frothy, delicious beverage in a glass. Life will keep rolling on, good things will come and go, but I know I'll have my banjo. We've got a good thing going. 

June on the Homestead

June has been a busy month around here. The garden is all planted, tomatoes and peppers are growing in the hothouse, chickens are getting fat and sassy, seeds are germinating and strawberries are hanging red and ripe. I do love June. There has been enough precipitation to keep me from having to water all the time, so the kids' first week out of school felt like a real summer break. We hiked, we skipped stones on the river and just played. Food is starting to come on out in the garden and the earth is seeming more and more bountiful. I wanted to share a few scenes of bounty from around the farm, so here's a little tour in photographs.

The first week of June brought back our weekly CSA boxes from Groundwork Organics! This first one had ripe strawberries, green garlic, out-of-this-world arugula and many other organic, locally grown treats. You may be wondering why we would get a CSA when we're growing all this food. The answer would be hoop houses. Groundwork Organics farm has enough hoop houses to keep food production going June through Thanksgiving, and we just can't do that here. So, some weeks we end up with more of something than we need, but generally I try to keep our production geared towards canning and food storage crops. It all evens out pretty well.

The field is all planted and filled with potatoes, onions, pumpkins, squash, melons, corn, tomatoes, beans and cucumbers. By moving around a couple of sprinklers with hoses, I think watering is going to be much more manageable this year.

The garden by the house is growing radishes, mustard, carrots, peas, lettuces, eggplants, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, kale, tomatillos, basil and New Zealand spinach. I'm already tired of radishes, which I never thought was possible. Even the French breakfast ones. Too much of a good thing I suppose.

Here's that New Zealand spinach. I haven't grown it for a few years, but I remember how good it was and how long it lasted. You can just keep harvesting off of it until November, and it doesn't bolt.

I'm proud of my potato patch this year. There are about 6 different varieties, and all the plants look very unique. The goal is enough potatoes for the year, and this is looking like a whole lot of potatoes, so we'll see how that goes.

A big, beautiful poppy plant came up in the herb bed from some seeds I saved last Fall. It's been catching my eye every morning when I'm watering the carrot bed.

On sunny days, I've been able to use my clothes line again. One of my favorite things in the world is hanging clothes to dry on the line. I love the fresh air smell they have when you take them down, and there's something very poetic about all your clothes flapping in the breeze like colorful flags.

Summertime around here means backyard camp outs underneath the apple tree. It's good to see the old canvas tent out there again.

My one and only complaint are the Cornish Cross meat birds. Enticed by the promise of fat, juicy roasted chickens, I gave them a try this year, and I can say with certainty that I will never do it again. They are just not like normal chickens, and that really bothers me. Impaired walking aside, they don't act quite right. They don't scratch or forage, they rush at me when I come into the chicken yard as though they plan on devouring me, and they smell repulsive. The next time I raise meat birds, it will be Dark Cornish, and they can take their time growing as slow as they please.

Silkie and her chick are doing quite well, sneaking out of the chicken yard and wandering around the homestead scratching for bugs. They even hung around near the picnic table during a pot luck with friends, right in the middle of all the excitement. Silkie is a very sociable little bird.

These are the goings on of June on the homestead. Things are growing, things are changing, and the wheel of the year just keeps on turning around. It's a wonderful thing to see all your hard work beginning to take shape into something visible that literally feeds you. So, on we grow into summer.

Summer Solstice

In honor of the Summer Solstice today, I thought I'd share a fairy passage from William Shakespeare's

"A Midsummer Night's Dream":

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough briar,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;

And I serve the fairy queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats, spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In their freckles live our savours.

I must go seek some dew-drops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone;

My queen and all her elves come here anon!

How About That Honey Cow

It can't be denied, I've had bees on the brain all Spring. The neighbor's honeybees buzzing over to pollinate the flowers in my garden are helpful and lovely, but I couldn't help but pine away for a hive of my own. There are those times in life where pining pays off, and this was one of them. For my birthday last week, my husband and son surprised me with a handmade honey cow. Maybe it was all those links I sent out about this simple design for a do-it-yourself top bar bee hive that motivated this excellent gift, or maybe it was the promise of farm fresh honey. Whatever the case, I was very happy to receive it. This is my kind of birthday present. Right up there with farm equipment and manure.

I saw this design on one of my favorite places to go for homesteading inspiration, Jenna Woginrich's Cold Antler Farm blog, and decided after watching the instructional video that we could absolutely build this with materials around our place. For this particular design, a rain barrel would have to be sacrificed, but all for a good cause. Rain barrels come and rain barrels go.

This type of hive is over a thousand years old, and is thought to have originally began as woven baskets with sticks laid across the top as the bars. Today they are commonly found in non-industrialized nations and areas where resources are limited because of the low cost to build and ease of construction. It is also a very manageable way to keep bees, thus an excellent way for backyard farmers and beginning beekeepers like myself to get started. Since this is a top bar bee hive, there are no frames, foundations, or excluders involved. The bees simply build their combs hanging from the top bar, just as they would naturally in a fallen log. This design allows for better ventilation and pest control and makes for a less intrusive way to check on the combs, which also benefits the bees. Since the combs can't be centrifuged to extract the honey and re-used, honey production may be lower, but the quality is higher and in-comb honey is just way more fun.

For those of you who are interested in taking up beekeeping yourself, or just plain curious, here's that instructional video that Jenna shared on Cold Antler Farm:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-your-own-Honey-Cow-Top-Bar-Bee-Hive/

And here's a materials and tools list from that site:

55 gallon plastic barrel, preferably food grade (makes two hives)

22 feet of 1”x2” nominal lumber

46 feet of 1½”x1” lumber

2 X 8 foot of 2”x4” nominal lumber

A 3 feet by 4 feet piece of tin

20 - 1½” wood screws

10 - 2” wood screws

8 - ½ “ screws

Bungee Cord or tie wire

45 feet thin moulding OR natural fiber string and beeswax

TOOLS

circular or jig saw

drill

tin snips

tape measure and marker

That's it! I hope this helps some folks out there to bee inspired!

Sneaky Chickens

A lesson learned: When a cute little bantam chicken comes out to keep you company while you hoe and plant corn and bean rows, do not say to yourself "Awww, isn't that sweet" and allow it to hang around. You might just look out your window later to find the same little chicken scratching up and munching all the corn seeds, thinking all the while you left such delicious hidden treats, while discarding those not-so-tasty bean seeds neatly beside each mound.

Chickens are much more sly than they look.

No matter how cute and friendly they may seem, it's best to just send them on their way out of the garden to scratch around somewhere else.

Invite Someone Wild to Dinner

Tis' the season of wild edible greens, and lately I've been finding the makings for salads and steamed side dishes in my backyard. There's something fun about going out in the evening to forage up a wild dinner guest. With all the warm (and not so warm) rainy days of Springtime, emerging greens are tender, mild and chalk full of nutrients after a long Winter. It's also a time of year and economic trend when food is just plain expensive, so rounding out your food budget with wildcrafting can make a big difference.

A favorite of mine right now is Curly Dock (Rumex crispus.) It grows in abundance around here, especially in disturbed soils, and when steamed it has a distinctive lemon flavor. It's a great source of protein, vitamin A, iron and potassium. Because it is so high in oxalic acid, which gives it that tart flavor, it should be consumed in moderation to avoid risk of kidney stone formation. Truly, all things are best in moderation, so don't be afraid to try this plant. You'll find it's quite delicious. The root is also useful as a blood purifier and a means to bind and flush heavy metals from the body.

Oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is one of my favorite wild salad greens. When picked this time of year before the white flowers bloom, it has a mild, nutty flavor. The unopened flower buds may also be used as a substitute for capers. I transplanted this one into my garden where it is growing quite vigorously with all the good soil and watering, because I just couldn't get enough of it. Historically, the flowers are associated with the old prose saying "He loves me, he loves me not."

The wildest name award goes out to nipplewort (Lapsana communis), whose name dates back to nursing mothers of the British Isles using the leaves for a poultice to relieve discomfort from breastfeeding. It is an abundant weed in the garden this time of year, and delicious raw in salads, as well as boiled, steamed or sauteed.

Many folks spend a lot of time getting rid of their dandelions (Taraxacum officinale), without realizing they have an abundant food source right there in their lawn. The bitter greens are great steamed, in a soup, or in a salad, and the flowers make delicious fritters cooked in tempura or beer batter. They are high in vitamin A, vitamin C, and contain more iron and calcium than spinach. The root has a wide array of medicinal uses, including a ground coffee substitute, a liver tonic, and a diuretic to name a few. The milky substance in the stem can be used as a mosquito repellant and folk treatment for warts. Think about spending your time harvesting these rather than spraying them.

I transplanted some oxalis (Oxalis oregana) into my yard last year, and it is thriving underneath a large fern in the damp shade. It has a delicious tart flavor, and makes for a tasty nibble. This plant is high in vitamin C, and has been used historically to prevent scurvy. With high levels of oxalic acid, this is another one to eat in moderation, but the consensus among scientists is that toxicity of oxalic acid in persons of normal kidney function is highly unlikely, so don't be swayed from trying this as a delicious salad or snack.

If you are wanting more ideas on recipes and creative ways to prepare your wild greens, I highly reccommend this book by my wild foods instrutor, John Kallas, called Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate. You can find it on his Wild Food Adventures website, and it's a great resource for the field and the kitchen. Happy harvesting!

Wooly Moss Roots Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations Tracey! And thank you to everyone who left so many wonderful comments on the creations of Mystic Orb, and Taryn's blog, Wooly Moss Roots. I know that they appreciate all the heartfelt feedback. If you still have the giveaway bug and just can't wait to enter another, I will be doing another one soon with one of my blog sponsors, Moon Root Soaps, so keep your eyes out folks.

Draft Horse Field Trip

The third grade school year is drawing to a close for my children at our local Waldorf school, and they have been busy measuring, digging, and always learning. For those of you unfamiliar with the Waldorf education model, the third grade curriculum focuses on living on the earth, covering such things as shelter, building, farming, cooking, and working with fibers. Reading this, you probably thought right away that this would be right up this homesteader's alley, and you would be absolutely right! This week, our class went on a field trip to Ruby and Amber's Organic Oasis out in Dorena to learn about draft horse powered farming, and since I'm always up for meeting a local farmer and touring their farm, I was thrilled to tag along.

I had the job of coordinating the field trip with the farmer, Kris Woolhouse, and we spent a lot of time re-scheduling due to rain. This is a very wet Spring, and for farmers in the Willamette Valley, it is causing much difficulty with getting fields plowed and crops planted. The original plan for our field trip was to watch draft horse plowing in action, but by the time we re-scheduled to our last possible date, it was still going to be too wet. Thus, it became a "meet the farm animals" field trip, which none of the kids minded one bit.

The first thing that caught my eye and my fancy upon arrival was the chicken coop. Having lived in a school bus once, I will never look upon them with anything less than wistful appreciation again, and seeing one inhabited by chickens just sent my heart aflutter. It was genius. It was mobile. It was moving. It was a fine example of re-purposing in this modern throw-away world and pure poultry poetry.

I took way too many pictures, this one being my favorite.

After snack time, Kris led us over to meet the bees. I was excited to discover they had a top bar bee hive! I have had top bar bee hives on the brain this Spring, ever since a friend had a wild swarm land in his yard on Beltane and I contemplated bringing them home. They flew off before I was able to get a home set up for them, but I discovered that I have all the supplies on hand to build a simple top bar hive called a "Honey Cow", which I intend to build for next Spring. I was glad the children got to see something different from the traditional Western honey production hives, and hear about how top bar hives mimic natural conditions for the bees to build their honeycombs.

We learned a lot about the art of beekeeping and how to behave around bees. The beehive had a little clear window, so we all got a look inside to see what was going on. The only timid one was my daughter, who was a little put off after two bees landed in her hair.  I can see going to have some work to do with her around this before we set up our own colony, but I've got a little time.

Next, we headed out into the field to meet the draft horses. Ruby, half of the original team for which the farm was named, came out to greet us and spend some time being fawned over by all the children. She was one happy old horse.

We spent a lot of time petting and brushing the horses.

There was some all out horse snuggling going on.

Then the farmers put all the plowing tack on this team named Tom and Jerry, and the children got to take turns driving them up and down the road. It was pouring rain by this point, but nobody minded. We were having too much farm fun.

We met a couple of other lovely farm residents too.

The big, pregnant sows were happy to meet all the children, and to get an apple from Kris. We got to hear a little about pig midwifery and how to take care of newborn piglets. Apparently great care has to be taken so their mama doesn't roll over on them, until they develop enough agility to move out of the way.

We ate our lunch at the big farm kitchen table and drank hot tea while the rain kept pouring outside. The farrier arrived while we were eating, so we got to watch him work on those giant hooves for a little bit. After one last visit with the horses in the pasture, we said our goodbyes and headed out. I almost didn't want our visit at the farm to end, but we were on our way to one last stop at the Pacific Yurts showroom outside of Cottage Grove to see the three different models they have set up. That stop was brief, but fun. I like to pop in there when I'm in that neck of the woods, just to imagine for a few minutes that I live in one of those spacious 30' yurts out in the wilderness somewhere. The kids were getting a little restless by that point, but I think it was a good rounding out for their block on shelter. If I haven't mentioned it enough yet, I am so grateful that my children are receiving a Waldorf education.  Sure, most schools take kids on field trips, and many visit farms, but watching our class I was very aware of all the rich things they learned that tied in with this experience. They truly are learning about living on the earth and how to appreciate and engage with it. Even if they never plow a field of their own, these kids know where their food comes from and how they are connected to it. The future looks promising.