An Unlikely Pair: Wild Persimmon and Beautyberry

Wild persimmons (diospyors virginiana). You either cringe when when you hear the name or you smile and think of the spicy deliciousness. If you've ever had an under ripe persimmon you know what I mean by cringing,  The unbearable bitterness of the under ripe fruit is so memorable that you will never make the mistake of biting into one again.  However, if you wait until the fruit is almost to the point of being overripe and spoiled, you will be rewarded with an indescribably tasty treat.  To me, a soft, squishy ripe persimmon tastes something like a pumpkin pie - just as spicy and just as sweet. The wild cousin contains vitamins and minerals as well as antioxidants and fiber and it's sweet - in fact it's 25% sugar! Normally I wait until the first frost but I have heard of people picking the fruit while still under ripe and placing the fruit and some persimmon leaves in a paper sack for a few days and it ripens them. I don't have any firsthand experience with that - I just wait for a frost.

American Indians made fruit leather from persimmons, mashing up the entire fruit and spreading the pulp out on logs and rocks to dry.  When it was dried they removed the seeds and hung it from poles in their houses as a food source during the winter. Also, a nice fruit butter and a moist bread can be made from the persimmons but my favorite way to enjoy them is to make a version of the English dessert Sticky Toffee Pudding using persimmon puree and topped with a Salted Caramel Sauce - it's delicious.

Persimmon Pudding with Salted Caramel Sauce
1/3 C butter, softened
1 C white sugar
1 C brown sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1/2 t cinnamon
2 C persimmon pulp
1 t baking soda
1/4 C hot water
2 1/2 C flour
3 C milk
Preheat oven to 325. Cream butter and sugar, add eggs and pulp. Dissolve baking soda in hot water and add to milk. Alternate adding milk and flour to persimmon mixture, mixing just enough to incorporate. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray and spread mixture into pan and bake for 60-75 minutes or until set. Serve warm.

Salted Caramel Sauce
1 C heavy cream
1/3 C brown sugar, packed
2 T butter
1/8 t salt
Add all ingredients to a deep skillet or saucepan, bring to boil and cook on medium high heat for 5 minutes. Be careful while cooking, it tends to boil over!!

Even the persimmon seeds are useful. They can be dried, roasted and ground for a coffee substitute.  If you add a helping of roasted Yaupon Holly leaves, you have a coffee-like caffeinated beverage - a gift from the wild.  I remember going to visit my grandmother in the early winter and all of us cousins would go walking down the oil road, gathering persimmons. We didn't eat many but we did collect the seeds and crack them open to see the insides. Have you ever used a persimmon seed to predict the coming winter? According to early American folklore, the inner part of the seed comes in 3 different shapes - a spoon, a fork or a knife.

The shapes can be interpreted like this;
Fork - means it will be a mild winter
Spoon - means there will be a lot of snow
Knife - means it will be a hard winter with cutting winds

Whether it's accurate or not is up for debate, but kids (and adults) love to look at the seeds regardless!

Did you know persimmon wood is prized in furniture making?  It's in the same family as Teak, Ebony and Mahogony and it's considered an especially rare and beautiful wood.  Now, I'd argue the fact that it's rare because probably 60% of the trees here are persimmon but I can understand how it would be hard to come by - the trunks rarely get to be more than 4"-5" in diameter here.  Still, it is gorgeous wood isn't it?

The persimmon has several important medicinal uses depending on the stage of ripeness:
Anti diarrheal, laxative, soothes upset tummy, cough suppressant and several other ailments.  To see the list, here's a great website to explore.

American Beautyberry (callicarpa americana)
This is another of my favorite wild foods. It makes the best jelly, better than many other fruit jellies I've eaten and it's super plentiful.  Beautyberry grows well in zones 5-10, but are a nuisance the farther south you go.  Good thing they are useful! They bloom pink to white blossoms on long branches with large oval, serrated leaves in June-July, followed by heavy clusters of bright magenta BB-sized berries (make sure they are magenta berries - not white, those are not the edible ones!) in late August thru late October. The berries will remain on the plant long into winter, providing a food source for birds and other wildlife. If you just pick a berry and eat it, it's less than impressive but when cooked and the turned into jelly, it is magnificent.

I spoke at a conference in Arkansas a couple of months ago and Beautyberry was one of the featured plants.  I pointed out that it was an excellent money-maker for the stay-at-home mom or for anyone that wanted to make some extra money by making and selling the jelly.  I make hundreds and hundreds of jars of this jelly and sell the half pint jars for $3 each. I need only to buy jars, lids, sugar and pectin - the fruit is free for the picking.  It also makes a great gift item - just in time for Christmas!

Beautyberry Jelly
6 C Beautyberries
4 C water
1 pkg pectin powder
4 1/2 C sugar
Combine berries and water in pot, bring to boil and cook on med high for 20 minutes. Strain mixture through cheesecloth or a tea towel, squeeze as much liquid from the berries as possible and discard the solids (or give to the chickens, they LOVE them). Return the liquid to the pot, add pectin and bring to full boil. Add sugar all at once and return to full rolling boil and boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat, ladle into clean jars and seal.  Makes approx 6 half pints.

I know you can make wine from the berries but I never have, so I can't tell you how it tastes but there are a couple of recipes on the net that can give you some info, like this one:

 http://eattheweeds.com/forum/index.php/topic,2052.0.html

The leaves of the Beautyberry are an effective insect repellent - especially for fire ants and mosquitoes. Make an oil from the leaves and use that in a salve and you have homemade OFF and is just as effective as DEET!  The Agricultural Research Service (a branch of the USDA) spent probably a million dollars of your tax money studying it and if the info comes  from the government it MUST be true...right???  Any way, it really is pretty effective even with sweating,  but needs to be applied more frequently than OFF. Here's the recipe:

Beautyberry Insect Repellant (Homemade OFF)
3C water
1C Beautyberry leaves and stems, chopped
2T emulsifying wax (Amazon.com has it)
1/3 C almond or coconut oil
1 T Vitamin E oil
10 drops essential oil of your choice (eucalyptus, mint or rosemary is nice)
Put water and Beautyberry pieces in small saucepan and cook on medium low for 20 minutes, strain off solids and pour half of the liquid into a quart canning jar. Add emulsifying wax and almond or coconut oil to jar and sit jar in pan of hot water. As soon as wax is melted, whisk in Vitamin E oil and essential oil and the remaining HOT Beautyberry liquid. Place lid on jar and shake briskly until well blended.  Let sit at room temperature until completely set. If you notice the water separating, give the jar another shake.

Go make some Beautyberry jelly and some Persimmon Pudding to give as Christmas gifts and the lucky recipients will thank you forever!

Wild, Unbridled Passion....Passion Fruit and Goldenrod, That Is!

Who doesn't love a little passion? Especially if it's wild and it's free. Come on now!! I'm talking about Wild Passion Fruit - what did you think I meant?? I'm talking about one of those wild fruits that is almost as delicious as it is indescribable. It grows as a wild native in US Zones 5b-10 and is also known as Maypops and in those warmer climes it becomes invasive and a downright nuisance.  I could almost detest it if it weren't for the delicious fruits it produces. Its civilized cousin grows in tropical and subtropical regions and is also called Lilikoi.  It is red when ripe and slightly larger but lacks the sweetness of the wild version. Heck, it's even one of the state flowers of Tennessee! The Wild Passion Fruit (passiflora incarnata) is a vigorous, low growing vine that puts out three-lobed leaves in late May like this:


Followed by stunningly beautiful blooms like this in July:


Then by fruit in late August through September:


When the fruit is not yet ripe it has a most foul odor but as it ripens it becomes sweet smelling and perfumey - very tropical.  They are the color of Granny Smith apples when unripe but when they are ready to eat they will turn a lemony green color and fall from the vine. You'll find them laying on the ground all underneath the vines canopies, pick one up. break it open and just smell it. It's amazing, to say the least. Now, the seeds aren't quite as appealing to look at. They are a grayish green color and they are covered in a thick. squishy, juicy membrane. Yes, I know, it doesn't sound nice, but just taste them.....they are delicious.

And they make a fabulous jam! It doesn't taste quite like the fruits smell, more like pineapple when it's finished, but very tasty indeed. Great way to make a little extra money is to make jelly out of foraged fruits like this.  All you need is sugar and jars! Here's the recipe:

Wild Passion Fruit Jam
20 ripe passion fruit
juice of 1 lemon
4 c sugar
Scoop seeds out of the hulls and set aside. Reserve half of the hulls and place in a saucepan, cover with water and cook 30-40 minutes or until soft and translucent. Drain cooked hulls, reserving 2 cups of the cooking liquid. Let cool and scrape the flesh from the hulls. You will be left with a paper thin skin, discard that. Place the cooked pulp into a food processor and process until you have a puree. Add the seeds, puree, lemon juice and sugar into a deep saucepan, bring to a boil and cook on medium low heat for 15 minutes stirring occasionally to keep from sticking. Strain seeds out (if desired, I leave a few in there. They're crunchy and they make a nice contrast) skim and ladle into 4 oz jelly jars, seal. Makes nine 4 oz jars.

Now, jam isn't the only use for Passion Vine.  The leaves are a potent calming agent and sleep inducer. Just gather healthy green leaves and dry them slowly in a cool room on a cookie sheet or in a dehydrator then lightly crush them and add a tablespoon of the dried leaves to your favorite herbal tea blend and relax.  They are pretty potent and it's not recommended to use them more than 3 times a week.

The next plant I want to tell you about is Goldenrod (solidago canadensis).  Yep, I can hear some of you fussing already about seasonal allergies and blaming the poor Goldenrod for them but it's not the Goldenrod causing those allergies, it's the Ragweed plant.  It's easy to confuse the allergen source since they grow alongside eachother and they bloom about the same time. The species name, solidago comes from the latin word "solido" which means "to make whole" and that it does. Goldenrod is your friend and by the time you read about it, you'll agree with me!

This is a blooming Goldenrod as well as a closeup of the leaves:



Have you ever brushed up against a Bull Nettle plant and felt like you had been lit afire? It causes a painful burning sensation that can last for an hour.  Want that burn to stop immediately? Grab a handful of Goldenrod leaves, bruise them in your hand and rub them on the painful area - gone. Just like that. Teach your kids that and they won't come howling in pain! That's just one of its many redeeming qualities.....

Goldenrod blooms from late August to September and will last until early October, giving you plenty of time to harvest them.  It has many properties such as an antiseptic, antifungal, diuretic and antioxidant and has been historically used to treat urinary tract infections, kidney stones (although this is probably more folklore since it hasn't been medically proven yet), vaginal and oral yeast infections, diarrhea and minor skin irritations. It is also used as a substitute for tobacco in a pinch.   The blossoms are used to make oils for salves, soaps and ointments and the leaves and stem are used for tinctures and teas. I make an oil from the blossoms to make a healing salve that is very soothing for skin irritations such as poison ivy, heat rash or bug bites.  It has some anesthetic qualities so it's great for numbing the itchy areas too! Make the oil first by collecting 8-10 flower tops, place in a small crock pot and add 1 cup of either olive, almond,avocado or coconut oil and set on low, let it go for 24 hours. Strain and use the oil for salves, creams and soaps.  Here'e the recipe I use for the salve:
Stop the Itch Goldenrod Salve
1/2 cup Goldenrod oil
1/2 ounce beeswax, chopped
30 drops grapefruit seed oil
30 drops Vitamin E oil
Place all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat on low until beeswax is almost melted. Remove from heat and stir until wax is completely melted, pour into jars and store in a cool place.

If you like to make homemade lye soap you can add 1/2 cup Goldenrod oil and 1/2 cup dried Goldenrod blossoms to the soap for an anti itch soap.

If you're using it for tea, use the leaves and stems, dried slowly, and add 1 tablespoon to an herbal tea blend of your choice in 8 ounces of water, up to three times a day.

So....do you love Goldenrod now???? I hope so!

Thank you for reading my blog and get out there and forage!

The Wild Supermarket: Elder and Dock

The Wild Supermarket:  Elder and Dock

I'm always amazed at the secrets plants hold.  I shouldn't be I guess, because after all, our ancestors were healthy and knew how to use the same plants we have and because of that, we're here.  They used plant medicinals because that's all they had and while we have the luxury of doctors, Walgreens and CVS, that might not be the norm in the future.  Be prepared, whether it's because you fear an uncertain future or because you want to be healthy without chemicals or because you don't have money for medicines from the store, being prepared makes sense.

My very favorite herbal medicinal as of late is Elder (sambucus nigra) and after you learn about it, it will be one of your favorites too! It's very simple to identify and is one of those plants where nearly every part is useful. Below are photos of Elder foliage, flower and fruit:

    

As early as the 14th century Elder was being used in many ways from making pipes for smoking to being used as a tasty beverage and a powerful medicine. Elder is an adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon word aeld or Eldrun and loosely means "fire".  Probably because stems of the Elder are hollow and were used for making pipes for smoking or to blow on a fire to get it started. I thought that was pretty cool but if that weren't enough, there's more....

Elderflowers are used to make Elderflower Cordial, a sweet, perfumey elixir used to flavor just about anything you can think of from martinis to lemonade to club soda.  Want to wean yourself or your kids off of sodas and artificially flavored drinks? Elderflower Cordial might do the trick. This is made from the flowers of the Elder, gather responsibly from different locations - don"t eliminate your patch by over collecting in one area. Here's how to make it:

Elderflower Cordial

1 qt water

4 c sugar

2 lemons, thinly sliced into rounds

1 orange, thinly sliced into rounds

1 t citric acid

25 elderflower heads, stems removed (about 2 cups flowers)

Remove flowers from stems into large bowl or gallon glass jar,  Slice lemons and orange, add these to the flowers and then add the citric acid.  Bring sugar and water to a boil in a saucepan till sugar is dissolved. Let cool to room temp, pour over flower mixture and stir to combine. Cover and put in fridge for 3 days.  After 3 days, strain liquid thru cheesecloth into a quart jar and store in fridge. To serve, pour 1 to 3 tablespoons into a glass and add mixer of your choice.

Another wonderful product of the Elder is the berries. This is the part that just amazes me....the berries have compounds in them that can prevent the flu or if you are already sick, can dramatically lessen the severity. When the doctor prescribes a flu remedy such as Tamiflu, the drug simply masks the symptoms of the flu and doesn't actually kill it.  Elderberry syrup or tincture (called Sambucol) actually coats the viruses and prevents them from attaching themselves to healthy cells therefore they cannot replicate and make you sick.  They are then just flushed out of the body naturally.  See how that works??? Tell me that's not amazing! There are two ways to make Sambucol - syrup or tincture. The syrup is nonalcoholic and obviously suited for children or teetotalers while the tincture is made with grain alcohol.  Either works, but I prefer the tincture, it is more potent because it hasn't been exposed to heat.

Sambucol aka Elderberry Syrup

2/3 c elderberries

3 1/2 c water

2 T fresh ginger or dried ginger root

1 t cinnamon

1/2 t whole cloves or ground cloves

1 c honey or sugar

Into a medium saucepan add all ingredients except honey or sugar and bring to a boil and simmer for 45 mins or till reduced by almost half. Remove from heat, let cool a bit, add sugar or honey and stir to dissolve. Store in lidded jar in fridge. 

Dosages:To prevent flu use 1/2 to 1 t for kids and 1 T for adults every day. If you are already sick use the normal dosages just take it every 3 hours daily until symptoms disappear.

Elderberry Tincture

2 c elderberries

Grain alcohol like Everclear or other high proof alcohol

1 c sugar

Pour berries into quart Mason jar, add enough alcohol to just cover the berries. Seal and let sit in dark, cool place for 6 weeks, shaking vigorously every few days.  After 6 weeks, strain off the liquid into a bowl and squeeze the berries to get every single remaining drop out of them, discard the berries. Pour back into the jar and store in cool, dark place.  

Dosage: THIS IS FOR ADULTS ONLY!!!

 To prevent flu take 1 T daily. If you're already sick, 1 T every 3 hours.

You could also make jelly and wine using Elderberries, but why would you waste these precious little gems on that?? If you do happen to have acres of the plants available and you want to make some, here a link to a great website that has tons of recipes and some cool trivia on Elder.

http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/e/elder-04.html

  

o   Now, see the pics above?  Let's talk about some Curly Dock (rumex crispus), it's a versatile food and an important medicinal. You can recognize it by the unusual leaves that have a frilly, ruffled look or as it's called, curly. The seed heads form and when ready they turn a dark brown.  When I first started foraging, this was one of the plants I started with because it's easy to identify.  When the seeds are fully ripe, the leaves tend to develop a powdery looking mildew on them, making identification even simpler. The leaves, if picked very young can be added to salads or soups and have a pleasant tangy taste.  If you gather them a little older you'll need to parboil them in a few changes of water to get rid of oxalic acids that can be damaging to the urinary tract and also can flare up gout in some. Once you've parboiled them you can eat them as you would any cooked green.  The seeds are gathered when brown and ripe and then can be ground into a fine or coarse flour and used in oatmeal, breads, etc.  A word of warning about Dock seeds - they have a strong laxative effect in some people,  That can be a very good thing if that's an issue with you but if it's not, then it can be a messy surprise because it's like a stick of dynamite for your colon!.  I add about a teaspoon in oatmeal or sprinkle it on top of muffins before baking. The root is also valuable, it is very high in iron and can be used as an iron supplement when dried and powdered and added to foods.

     

     

  That's it for Elder and Dock.  Get out there and forage!

The Wild Supermarket: Red Sumac

Isn't a supermarket a wonderful thing? Don't we all love going shopping and getting whatever we are hungry for?  Maybe some people don't LOVE going grocery shopping but we can all agree that we LOVE having the luxury of shopping for everything we need in one location.  I am 99.999% sure that no one reading this can remember when there were no supermarkets.  The very first grocery store opened in Manhattan in 1916 and was a failure, closing a year later.  However, in 1916 Clarence Saunders opened the first of a chain of self-service grocery stores in Memphis he named Piggly Wiggly. Up until then, your only option was your home garden or the General Store and both were indeed limited in variety.


If the recent crises in Greece and China are any indication of the direction the world is headed then I'm thinking we need to get a better food plan together - and I don't mean on a national or global level, I mean on a personal and community level.  Depending on farmers in California, Texas and even farmers in other countries is not a responsible way to go about your life.  We could wake up one morning and the convenience of the supermarket would be a thing of the past.  If you couldn't run to the store how would you feed your family? If we plan for this possibility by raising most of own organic food and by working within our community for other items then a crisis like that won't be as difficult to survive.  If that idea is a little farfetched to some, look at it like this: the food you raise will be free of pesticides and artificial ingredients and it's 100 times better for you. Not to mention the exercise you'll get from working in your own garden!

Not everything need be raised in your garden.  Some things grow wild and can be foraged close by where we live.  That is FREE FOOD!! and who doesn't love free food?? It's your own private Wild Supermarket!  I want to give you a quick tutorial on foraging today and how simple it is and the plant we're going to start with is:

Red Sumac (rhus glabra) is a great intro plant. It has an unmistakable appearance so you won't get a wrong version of it.  There is a Poison Sumac (toxicodendron vernix) but it doesn't look like Red Sumac, below is Red Sumac:


And this is Poison Sumac:


The easiest way to positively identify Poison Sumac is the berries, they are white and don't form the torch shaped panicles that the Red Sumac has. I will add that Sumac is related to Pistachios and Mangoes, so if you have allergies to those foods, be careful when trying Sumac products.

Right now through September is peak Sumac season and they are super high in Vitamin C! They are a vivid crimson and the leaves are just starting to get a hint of red as well and you'll be able to spot groves of the plants from some distance away.  There are couple of great uses for Red Sumac.  The tastiest is Sumac Lemonade and it's easy to make too.

You'll know they are ripe by the color but also by the tart red powder covering each little berry.  Want to know why the drink is called Sumac Lemonade?  Rub a berry between your fingers and touch your finger to your tongue.  It's quite tart, kind of like a lemon but to me it's more like the tartness of leaving a Vitamin C tablet on your tongue too long.  Gather at least 12 heads (the red seed clusters), just snap the entire head off and give them a gentle shake to make sure you don't have bugs in them.  Get a large pitcher or jar (I use an old glass gallon jar) and place them in the jar.  Cover them with warm water, and close the jar.  You can let the jar sit at room temp for several hours or you can put it in the sun for a few hours.  You will see that the red powder has infused into the water and now it's a gorgeous red color.  Get a big pot and pour all of the contents (berries and water) into the pot, bring it to a boil and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.  Remove the berry heads and discard or compost. Rinse that same jar and using a triple layer of cheesecloth, strain the remaining liquid into the jar.

You'll want to rinse the pot out well now because you'll need to strain the liquid another couple of times between the jar and pot with fresh cheesecloth each time.  There are little hairs on the Sumac and they aren't pleasant to drink so strain it 3 times!  Once you've finished straining it, add sugar to taste - start with a half cup and add more as you need it (you will).  It's ready to enjoy now!


Go out and start foraging in your own Wild Supermarket!

Tomatoes Tomatoes Everywhere...

It's been a looooong time since I wrote anything on my blog.  Life gets busy and hectic and I just never seem to find the time.  I moved away from the city to lead a less complicated life and I think it has become the opposite.  I'm busier but with more important things like food preservation, gardening. livestock and learning new homesteading skills. Since I last posted in March of this year, a bunch of new things have happened and I want to share a few with you today and especially share some tomato surprises.

The summer garden production was over-the-top this year.  The tomatoes, peas and greens were spectacular but the beans and corn, not so much.  Even so, I filled up a chest freezer and my side by side fridge freezer and 4 under bed storage drawers with food and canned goods this year. I also learned to make cheese, use a cold smoker, make homemade medicinal salves, made homemade soap (dismal failure lol) and taught a couple of foraging classes. Somewhere in the midst of all that, I managed to complete my busiest cake season in a long time, lots of wedding cakes and birthday cakes and even a couple of baby shower cakes - one of those being for my first grandchild that's due Christmas day!!

Since my last post was about my new endeavor - Hugelkultur Gardening - I want to update you on how that went.  As you recall, I was trying a new method to be able to cut back and/or eliminate the need to water the garden at all in the summer and I think it was successful.  This last summer was relatively mild compared to what we normally have in Texas since we never reached 100 and had a couple of showers during our normally dry season, but even so, a traditional garden would have needed supplemental watering but not this one.  I watered every couple days after I planted to get the seedlings and transplants started but once they were established in mid May I didn't water at all until the rains started in September - that's 4 months that I didn't water a single time.  Imagine all that water I saved.  I deem this a success!!

This is the Hugelkultur garden at 6 weeks (a month of no watering):

These are some of my harvests:

 Lots of peas and good times with my mother, reminiscing of old times:

I bet I picked 100 lbs of tomatoes.  I had Rutger, Cherry and San Marzano tomatoes and they all produced like crazy.  I canned 12 jars of spaghetti sauce, 10 jars of tomato sauce, 4 pints of Chili Sauce, 3 pints of ketchup and 15 jars of stewed tomatoes not counting the 20 qts of tomatoes I put in the freezer.  I discovered a new way of doing tomatoes that I think is a favorite of mine - Smoked Tomatoes.  I bought an electric smoker and then I ordered an A-Maze-n Pellet Smoker and some JC's Wood Smoking Pellets, loaded up the smoker with 20 lbs of the San Marzano's and cold smoked them for 12 hours.  The result was amazing.  The tomatoes were soft and sweet and incredibly smoky and were almost like eating BBQ sauce all on their own.  I skinned them and pureed them using my wonderful Victorio Processor and canned 6 half pints of Smoked Tomato Sauce. I'll be doubling that recipe next year, it's that good. I used it in some chili I canned and it gives it a wonderful smoky flavor.  I bet it would be good in some enchilada sauce too!  Look at the difference in the Smoked (on the left) and Regular sauces:

Never one to be wasteful, I dehydrated all the tomato skins I had reserved (the chickens got some of them) and ground them up in a spice grinder and made 2 half pint jars of Tomato Powder.  A tablespoon of this can be used in lieu of tomato paste in dishes or even added to 8 oz of hot water for an instant cup of tomato soup. Very cool huh???

So...that's my Hugelkultur Experiment this year.  I think it's well worth trying if you live in an arid or semi-arid area and you don't get much rain in the summer, it'll save you mucho money and valuable time not to mention all the precious natural resources you'll be saving as well. Give it a try, the instructuons and a video are on my Hugelkultur post from March 2014 and I think you'll find it's worth the initial effort.
Merry Christmas Ya'll!

A Time For Planting...

I remember the warm spring and summer evenings before dusk and Mama behind the tiller, turning the soil and making rows for planting.  I remember the smell of the freshly turned earth and the damp coolness of it under my feet as I stepped in the fluffy mounds of dirt, even the feel and sound of the paper sack and the slickness of the dried seeds as I held them in my hand and dropped them from my fingers into the rows.  I can hear the freight train going past and can remember looking up to see Melvin Loyd flying his plane above us almost every time we were out there.  At the time, I didn't appreciate all of those things, but now I sure do. 

With Spring just around the corner, I wanted to do a blog on gardening, pre-gardening to be exact. I don't know of any place you would consider having a garden that wouldn't require some preparation before you began.  Whether it was soil amendments, a fence or even deciding what to plant that would grow best in your area, there's always preparation.  Growing up, I never paid any attention to anything garden-related.  I was forced to help in the family garden when I was young and I hated it.  I couldn't figure out why my family was so old fashioned and they insisted on having a garden every year, why they didn't just go to the store and buy food like everybody else did.  When my mother would drag me out to the garden in the evenings and hand me a sack of seeds, I would dump handfuls in one spot just to get it over with.  I, in my ignorance, never imagined I would ever be found out because when the seeds came up in clumps they'd know what I did! Or, when it was time to shell  peas, instead of  really shelling them, I'd throw handfuls of the unshelled ones in the trash along with hulls, to get my pan emptied out faster and get finished.  I look back now and think of how I wasted those precious seeds and peas and I cringe.  My family wasn't rich and those things cost hard earned money and I was so selfish that I threw it away.  I also think back and wonder why they never got me for it.  I'm certain they had to know I did it!  Even so, with the constant drudgery of gardening as a youth, I grew up with a love for it that far outweighed the labor. 

Up until last year, I thought the soil of Gilmer was just special or it sure seemed so for my family.  I thought that powdery dirt was going to be the perfect media for my first garden since moving back here from Dallas....oh how wrong I was.  It was poor and drained far too quickly and got too hard and compact.  When I walked in the dirt it would rise up in wisps of fine, sandy smoke and curl around my ankles.  This was not the soil of my childhood at all....it was horrible.  I don't know what my family did to that soil to make it grow things, but grow them it did.  I assume it was from years of amendments like growing a crop and turning it under at the end of a season and using the cow and chicken manure we had to enrich it.  Not to mention there wasn't a drought back then like there is now.  That's what I've come up with after a hugely failed garden last year.  This year I'm doing something different.  Since you can't grow Pizza Rolls and Corn Dogs in the garden, and that's all my son will eat,  it's basically just me I'm feeding out of the garden.  I decided to have a smaller, raised bed garden and use a technique called Hugelkultur.  It involves digging holes where your bed frames are going to be and filling up the holes with a mixture of dead and green limbs and brush and covering that with dirt.  The general idea is the limbs rot under the soil and become spongy and then absorb the rainwater which they store for up to a year.  The crops are then planted in the soil that above the limbs and the water in the limbs is released into the soil and plants are kept watered as needed from below. According to what I've researched about this, only a single yearly rainfall is needed to provide enough water for plants with no additional hand watering or rainfall required for the entire growing season.  With the heat and drought in Texas, that will be a miracle.

Here are a couple of YouTube videos that will explain the Hugelkultur process:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sso4UWObxXg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkx2JFO0Dhw

I had a friend of mine build me (4) 4x8 frames and (1) 6x12 frame and then in November, I hired a handyman to do the manual labor of digging the holes under the frames.  I had him dig them 2' deep and we filled the holes with about 20" of limbs and covered them with the local sandy soil that was left from digging.  Over the next month it rained pretty frequently and the soil settled into the spaces and around the limbs and we added more local soil as needed until the limbs were encased.  Once it was solid, I went to the local composted soil place and bought truckloads of a premixed raised bed mixture to top the beds off with.  Since I have chickens, turkeys, horses and donkeys, there's lots of poo at my place so in between the layers of the purchased soil I added layers of manure and some kitchen scraps and finished it off with more soil mixture.  Along with my chickens, rabbit and deer are a huge problem where I live so I also built a fence around the garden, allowing enough room to plant some fig, olive and fruit trees at the ends. 

Here's a picture of the Hugelkultur project in progress:

I planted some late winter crops of kale, spinach, lettuce, rutabagas and radishes a couple of weeks ago and they are coming along nicely!  Good gardening ya'll!

The Turkey Shoot

At the end of December a friend called to ask if I wanted some turkeys.  He had a friend that had 2 toms and 4 hens that needed new a new home.  I, thinking I am sooo capable, said "Sure, I'll take them!".  I got my handyman busy adding a turkey coop onto the chicken house so I'd have a place for them to live as well as fencing off a yard for them.  I was all prepared for when they arrived - until I saw them.  I thought my sisters turkeys were big but these birds were ENORMOUS.  Even the hens were huge.  The coop and yard I had built wasn't even remotely big enough for all 6 of them.  I inspected them and noticed one of the white hens had a bad leg and was spotted with blood so I put her in the brooder section of the coop. The blood was from the white tom trying to mount her and had given her some severe lacerations on her backside and she was just dripping blood everywhere.  I kept her there for 5 days and, although the mating injuries healed over, she never was able to bear weight on that leg.  Since her leg was so badly injured I decided to slaughter her. Now, I had seen my grandmother process chickens many times in my life and I figured it wasn't much different, just a bigger bird so I texted my oldest son and asked if he wanted to come watch and he did (thank goodness).  I made a butchering surface, had a water hose and all my knives sharpened and ready, took my big copper pot and some cinder blocks out to the back yard, grabbed my 22 rifle and set up shop.  While I was waiting on my son to bring his cooler and a blow torch, I built a fire under the pot and got the water hot. I was excited and nervous and also reluctant.  I was excited because it was a skill that I was perfecting for the future yet I was reluctant because I didn't want to take a life.  Still, I made myself a promise that I would only have livestock that contributed to my family and if they didn't contribute anymore, they would be used in other ways.  The hen was suffering and it was the most humane thing I could have done.  By the time he got there the water was hot and I was set to do it.  After we began plucking her I saw the mating injuries and was even more glad we had done it.  I kept remembering how my grandmother did it and in about an hour we had her plucked and dressed out.  She ended up making 18 lbs of meat for the freezer and canning.  Two weeks later, we slaughtered the white Tom and he contributed 31 lbs of meat to the freezer.

Since it was well after the holidays and she was 9 mos old when we butchered her, I decided to debone her and grind up the meat for burgers, tacos, chili and sausage, etc. I was going waste nothing at all of the hen.

Here's my process:

Deboned entire hen, separated dark from white meat

Ground dark meat and made Turkey Breakfast Sausage

Ground breast meat and vacuum sealed it

Added skin, giblets and bones to pressure cooker and cooked for 1 hour

Removed the cooked meat from the bones

Canned the cooked meat and broth

Used the skin and cartilage and various bits for dog food

Dried the cooked bones in the oven, ground them up and added them to the garden soil

Rendered the fat to use for cooking

 

 

The following Sunday morning we had a feast for breakfast. Everything but the fried potatoes was made by hand by me. There was Turkey Sausage, fried turkey eggs, homefried potatoes (fried in turkey fat) and Honey Wheat Bread with Beauty Berry Jelly.

 

It was delicious and made me so proud that I did it all.  I even made the Beauty Berry jelly over the summer and canned it so we'd have it for a special occasion like this.  It's a Jewish delicacy to use rendered chicken fat (aka Schmaltz) to fry potato latkes in so I figured I could do the same thing with turkey fat.

Even if you don't raise your own meat, you can make homemade sausage and use any kind of meat you want: pork, chicken, beef, turkey, etc.  This recipe will work with any kind of meat.  It's super easy and delicious, give it a try and you'll never buy it from the store again!

 

Turkey Breakfast Sausage with Fennel and Sage

1 lb ground turkey

1 clove minced garlic

1 T rubbed sage

1/2 t dried fennel seed, crushed

1 1/2 t coarse salt

1/2 t black pepper

1/4 t crushed red pepper flakes (or more, according to your preference)

1 egg white

2 t olive oil (I used bacon grease)

Mix all together well, refrigerate for 1 hour.  Shape into patties and use immediately or freeze in single layer then store in baggies.

 

Enjoy!