What's Up at Motherhouse

Better Butter for Thanksgiving

2011-12-06T16:59:00.000-08:00

WREA THinking, en-TWINED

2011-10-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

All winter long, Local Farm cows eat dried grass hay that is stored in bundles or bales tied with twine. As she feeds out the hay to her cows, Farmer Debra cuts the twine at the knot and hangs each strand over a peg until she has enough to bundle like those hanging from the tree by Joyce.

On Columbus Day, Motherhouse offers a free workshop on wreath-making with leftover twine and wire coat hangers.

We bundle the strands of twine with the knots in a clump and braid them around the bent hanger frame...

...and decorate them with dried flowers and ribbons.

This year, we had a bumper crop of straw flowers!

Finished wreaths can be purchased for $15-$25 at the Motherhouse table at the West Cornwall Farmer's Market or directly from Debra@Motherouse.us (860-672-0229).

Lacto Pickle With Lacto-Bacillus?

2011-10-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

Sauerkraut, beet kvass, ginger carrots, kim-chee, traditional dill pickles, and other foods fermented with the help of lacto-bacillus are chock-full of health-supporting enzymes and probiotics. Alicia North of Northstar Botanicals led us in starting our own on a gorgeous October day. When making dill pickles, she adds oak leaves to cucumbers and summer squash to keep them firm and crunchy.

Some links Alicia recommended for continued experiments are: wildfermentation.com, thenourishingcook.com, nourishedkitchen.com, and www.cheeseslave.com.
We grated and mashed, measured, and sliced... then turned our attention to beverage-making!

Water Kefir (for a detailed guide, visit: http://www.yemoos.com/waterkefir4tbs.html)

To make the basic recipe, you will need:

*1 QT jar or bigger

*4 TBS Kefir grains ( a basic ratio to remember is about 1 TBS grains:1 TBS sugar:1 cup water)

*4 cups spring water

*1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar (4-6 TBS)

*a couple figs, apricots, dates or a small handful of raisins

*1 to 2 teaspoons of lemon juice from a lemon or 1/4 of a fresh lemon cleaned & sliced w/skin on

Put all the ingredients in the jar and cover it with a cloth, paper towel or parchment paper held by elastic so your kefir grains can breathe and to make sure nothing can contaminate it.

Let them rest and do their thing! ... out of direct sunlight... 24-48 hours.

Days End, Jarred Beginnings!

CowMOOntary

2011-09-17T19:27:00.000-07:00

The following cowmoonts arrived shortly after our September 17th workshop; Keeping a Family Cow.
Debra, I just wanted to thank you again for the workshop last Saturday. It was such a delight to finally meet you! I also felt a sweet kinship, with you personally, and also the work you are doing there with Local Farm. I find it is always a gift to rub elbows with such comrades, especially in these challenging days often imbued with materialism and paranoia. I also want to thank you for helping me to feel so much more confident than I ever thought I would about taking on my own cow, and also for helping me to feel like it’s even possible in the first place. Oh, how I have longed to nurture a close relationship with such a benevolent creature. Now that I have attended your workshop, I am pining all the more! Warmly, Brenda ArmstrongDebra, Thanks again for all your effort on Saturday, our family greatly enjoyed our visit to your farm. We have been talking about it together and with our friends ever since. :) One of the things that we appreciated the most was your willingness to teach and share in such an unintimidating way. (Peter never thought that cows could be calm and gentle, and insisted that he would never milk one) Now he admits that it would be possible and beneficial for our family to adjust to life with a family cow to take care of and milk. We are still discussing some of the fine details of how, when, and where, but I just wanted to share with you our admiration for all that you do to educate and encourage people about cow ownership. thanks Caity
Thanks, Zjeke, for the photos! For Margaret's report of a typical Family Cow workshop, click HERE.

Be-an Corny!

2011-09-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Lend me your ears!!!

Grill-master Wyatt Whiteman, his daughter Indiana, and our neighbor Sally O'Shaughnessy served up a delicious, nutritious heap of roasted sweet corn at Saturday's 20th anniversary Cornwall Ag Fair. Brent Prindle donated the corn, Margaret Hopkins and Rhonda Jaacks represented Motherhouse Market, and Alicia North made some herbal, corny comfort packs with whole corn "stuffing." Debra brought out the grain mill and corned some passing children into preparing ground grain to feed her chickens. Wyatt dreamed up this crowd drawing picture-taking fun placard and Debra & Zjeke Hermann painted it!

Just to

YO GAtta Try Yoga!

2011-09-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

The days are getting shorter and we are approaching the darker time of year. Join us Monday mornings at 10:30 to breathe in the light to nourish body and soul while finding peace and relaxation with yoga guide, Angelina Tan. Contact Debra@Motherhouse.us or 860 672 0229 for location.

Angelina has studied yoga in the tradition of Sri Krishnamarcharya since 1999 when she discovered yoga in her rehabilitation from a horseback riding accident. She has studied with Dr. Dolphi Wertenbaker in New York and Vedic Chanting with Sonia Nelson in New Mexico. She continues her studies in yoga therapy, philosophy and Vedic chanting with A. G. Mohan and Indra Mohan in Chennai, India.

Svastha Yoga class. The meaning of the word “Svastha” in Sanskrit refers to the state of physical and mental well-being. The practice of yoga incorporates working with the breath in movement to move to a place of stillness and quiet. With each posture, students learn to coordinate movement with breath. There will also be a period of conscious breathing (pranayama). The practice is design to give participants an experience of using breath and sound in postures and developing an awareness of breath in daily life.

Please bring a mat or, a small rug. The session is open to all levels. Suggested contribution is $15.

Honoring Our Foremothers

2011-08-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

Gathering for four Wednesday evenings in August,
we shared stories of our
school principals,
mothers,
grandmothers,
and other women who we admire
and in some way,
who have made a difference
in our lives.

We brought in photos,
made drawings and collages,
and wrote cinquain poetry
and letters of appreciation.
We reproduced our work on 5X5 inch card stock,
and bound the pages with artists tape
into accordion books.

We are already
thinking ahead
to who we'll honor this winter
in our next book-making series
and hope you'll join us!

UnCANny!

2011-08-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

Once again, Can-Do Wyatt Whiteman has demystified home canning, while orchestrating an opportunity to enjoy the pleasure of working as a group to put food by. New this year, was making salsa. We learned not to touch our lips or eyes while cutting peppers and that one person's cool may be an other's hot. Click Can Can and scroll down to see more detailed canning reports of the past.

Our Eggs-Perience

2011-06-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

Some of us came because our parents brought us.
Some of us came because we felt that as meat eaters, we should be able to take a life for our food.
Some of us came in support of our partners.
Some of us came to share our homesteading skills.
Some of us came to learn about housing options for, and care of laying hens.
Some of us came because we want to raise meat birds and wanted to see how our children would handle their harvest.
Some of us came because we raise laying hens and want to be prepared for the day they get old or injured.
Some of us came to bridge our suburban childhood to our partner's farm background.
Some of us came because as vegetarians we feel we must be fully responsible for any meat we eat.
ALL of us came to a deeper appreciation of our own lives, forged close bonds with each other, and went home richer in many ways besides the delicious bird we had prepared for a future meal.

TEAMWORK with Oxen

2011-05-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

Local Farm team Jigger and Jolly and their devoted teamster Chuck met with participants to share the basics of training and driving oxen. Highlights included working in the woods, and hauling hay.
Click this link for a video of Jigger and Jolly in action: jigger & jolly. The first part is of their April Earth Day community service project, cleaning the roadsides of Popple Swamp Road. That's followed by the May 14 Old Style Life Skills Series Day of "Teamwork with Oxen" held at Local Farm by Chuck Duncan.

Beeginning With Bees

2011-03-12T07:55:00.000-08:00

Are you interested in bee keeping? Wondering about getting your first bees?
We have a class to help.

Heidi Lindburg of Windsor Connecticut is the Motherhouse contact in the bee keeping world.

Heidi lectured on all things bee related. She broght books, posters, hive bodies, frames and other bee equipment.

After Heidi's talk we put together a super and frames.

At the end we dipped candles.
For more info see last years report here.

Family Cow Forum

2011-02-19T23:15:00.000-08:00

Motherhouse Presents The Second Annual Family Cow Forum!!
On February 19 at 9:30 attendees started trickling in the door at the UCC parish house in Cornwall, CT. By 10:00 we had a good sized gathering.

First on the agenda was a talk on backyard cow nourishment by Al Earnhart of Lightning Tree Farm.
Al grows, harvests, mixes and sells organic grain for pigs, cows, goats, chickens and more.

Next a panel of back yard cow keepers and one goat keeper answered questions such as How many cows do you have? What is your milking setup? What was your biggest challenge and how did you solve it?
From left to right Dominic Palumbo, Garrick Dinneen, Rachel Gall(goats), Terry Bell, Brigitte Ruthman and Jean Ilsley.

After the panel was done we went outside to see Garrick work with his ox Buck.

Buck works as a single ox, Garrick has been training him since he was a calf.

And then we had lunch. When we were almost done eating we got to hear about Brigitte receiving a cease and desist order to stop farming and how she is dealing with it.

After lunch cow breeder extraordinaire Bob Kennedy talked on how to recognise when your cow is in heat. Also how to pick a bull that will improve on your cow's physical traits.

Good time was had by all.

Serious Dough

2010-11-13T12:09:00.000-08:00

Do you know where your spoons are??? If these look familiar, please contact Debra@Motherhouse.us.

Caring for your sourdough starter:
In a quart jar, mix 1/2 cup water (if it is chlorinated "city" water let stand in an open container for at least 24 hours before use), 1 cup flour, and all of the starter you brought home today.

Loosely put lid on jar and store in refrigerator until ready to feed it again and/or bake bread. It must be fed weekly by mixing 1/2 cup starter, 1/2 cup water, and 1 cup flour in a clean qt jar and returning to refrig. What's left after you take out 1/2 cup for replenishing is what you use for making bread or flatties.
Here's Angelina's rendition of how we made flatties at the workshop:

You start with what is left of the sourdough mixture when you remove 1/2 cup for the starter.

Add a dash of sugar

1Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp salt

a handful of caraway seeds
enough flour to make it handle like bread dough

The mixture is very yeasty. And you should knead this dough a fair bit unlike the quick bread. Let it set for 10 mins to 2 hours.

Pinch the dough into balls and flatten or roll them into discs. Grill them on a cast iron skillet.

Here is a recipe for white sandwich bread adapted from Sara Pitzer's leaflet Baking with Sourdough published by Storey Publ.

In a large bowl mix:
1 cup sourdough starter
1 1/4 cup white flour
1 cup warm water
Let stand in a warm place for 10-24 hours til bubbly.
Heat 1 1/2 cups milk and melt in:
2 Tbsp. honey
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. butter
Let 2nd mixture cool to lukewarm then stir into bubbly starter mix.
Beat in approximately 6 cups white flour to make kneadable dough.
Turn out on floured counter, cover with damp dish towel and let rest 10-15 minutes.
Knead until dough is smooth and elastic.
Place dough in clean greased bowl, cover with damp towel and let rise until double in bulk (probably 2 or more hours).
Punch down and let rise until doubled a second time.
Knead it down and shape into 2 or 3 loaves (depending on pan size),
place in loaf pans, cover, and let rise til double.
Brush tops with melted butter. Bake in 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes
until loaves are nicely browned, pull away from sides of pan, and sound hollow when tapped.
Wrap in towel to cool.

Mature wheat plants.

Round Irish Soda Bread and rectangular Basic Bread from today's workshop.
Salt available from Selina Naturally or from Debra for $5/pound.
Wheat berries from Lightning Tree Farm in Millbrook, NY available through Debra for $0.50/#.
For cheesemaking workshops see New England Cheesemaking Supply Co.

Pi = ?

2010-10-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

A Standard Pumpkin Pie Recipe:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix in a blender:
1 large can pumpkin
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
2 tsp. flour
2 Tbsp. water
4 eggs
1 can evaporated milk
1 tsp. vanilla.
Pour into two 9" pie shells and bake 45-50 minutes until firm.
______
On Oct. 9, 26 pioneers learned to make a pie from scratch:
picking butternut squash and milling it,
boiling down maple sap to syrup,
grinding and grating whole spices,
gathering eggs,
milking a cow,
grinding flour,
rendering lard,
skimming cream and making butter.
______
Visit this link for the recipe of a full and exciting day:

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

See www.Motherhouse.us for future Old Style Life-Skills Series workshops and other potential adventures.

We CAN Do!!!

2010-08-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

On August 14, Master Canner, Wyatt Whiteman of 1760's Farmhouse in Fairfield, CT met in Cornwall at Local Farm to impart his wisdom to 15 canning wanna-be's. As one happy participant noted, "The 'Yes, We CAN Can' workshop was just that; a demystification of the canning process and an affirmation of our ability to go home and can whatever. Even though there was little formal instruction and we were all so busy doing various parts of the process that no one had time to step back and observe all the steps, the group accomplished SO much working in such a primitive set-up, I now feel confident that I could find and follow a recipe to can almost anything." Wyatt recommends the Ball Blue Book Guide to Home Canning and Freezing for recipes and instructions. Other informational/experiential tidbits we gained were...

Even after carefully washing and examining jars for chips and cracks, sometime you lose one.

We learned that pre-boiling beets and scalding tomatoes and peaches made them much easier to peel with next to no loss of produce. The skins just slipped off with minimal effort. However over-scalding fruit cooked it and made a sloppy mess.

Wyatt emphasized packing the jars very tightly so that they would still be full of fruit even after it had cooked, softened, and settled into place. We used knife handles and plastic spoons to release as many air pockets as possible so that the jars would not have a large empty space at the top after processing.
To ensure a good seal, one must leave the specified space between the produce in the jar and the CLEAN top rim. Carefully wipe off any spillage before putting on the lids and rings.

One can can acidic fruits (like tomatoes or peaches) and anything pickled with vinegar (like our dilly beans and pickled beets) with the hot water bath method. Everything else must be canned with a pressure canner. Wyatt recommends heating the loaded canner until steam has been pouring out of the top for ten minutes, then put on the pressure valve and start timing according to your recipe. A big fan of pressure canning method, Wyatt says "It uses half the time, half the energy, and a great deal less worry."

We discovered the truth in the adage, "Many hands make light work."

Working with others makes the job so much more fun AND productive!

Wyatt's DVD, A Visual Guide to Canning, is available for $12 from Debra@Motherhouse.us. For other Motherhouse workshops and events, visit Motherhouse.us.

Jamming

2010-07-19T10:27:00.001-07:00

Jamming experts Brent Prindle and Joanne Wojtusiak.
Home kitchen jam and jelly makers of the best kind.At the end of the day we would go home with four types of jam and jelly.
Strawberry Rhubarb Jam
Blueberry Jam
Rhubarb Ginger Jam
Green Apple Jelly

Green Apple Jelly
3 1/3 pounds green apples
4 2/3 cups granulated sugar
6 1/3 cups water
Juice of one small lemon

Rinse the apples in cold water. Remove the stem and cat the fruit into quarters without peeling them. Put them in a pan and cover them with water. When the apple mixture comes to a boil, simmer for half an hour over on low heat.
Collect the juice by pouring the preparation into a fine chinois sieve and pressing lightly on the fruit with the back of a skimmer. Now filter it a second time though cheese cloth, which you have wet and wrung out.

Pour 4 1/4 cups of the juice into a preserving pan with the lemon juice and the sugar. Bring to a boil, skim, and continue cooking on high heat for 5 to 10 minutes. Skim again if necessary. Return to a boil. Check the set. Pour the jelly into jelly jars and seal.

This jelly is used as pectin for low pectin fruit.

Ginger Rhubarb Jam

4 cups diced fresh rhubarb
3 cups sugar
3 tablespoons finely chopped candied ginger
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Combine rhubarb, sugar, ginger and lemon juice in a large saucepan. Let stand until sugar is moistened by juices, about 20 minutes. Place over medium-high heat and cook, stirring, until thick and clear.
Skim off foam. Ladle into hot sterilized canning jars and seal immediately.

Blueberry Jam

Blueberries are low in acid and equal amounts of blueberries and sugar will not set without added pectin. Pectin packages contain recipes that are really sure fire and easy to follow. The one on the Ball powdered pectin product follows:

4 cups crushed blueberries (use a potato masher)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 package of dry pectin
4 cups sugar

Combine blueberries and lemon juice and gradually add pectin. Stirring constantly, bring mixture to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down. Add entire measure of sugar and stir to dissolve. Return mixture to a rolling boil and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and skim off foam. Ladle into clean, warm jars taking care not to spill any jam on rim.Place hot lid on top and apply ring, but not too tightly. Turn jars upside down for 5 minutes to seal. Turn right side up and check for seal by pressing down on the lid, there should be no give.

According to Joanne there are three must have books.

It was a lovely day and much was learned by all.

Jam Session

2010-07-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

EGG-sperience Chickens

2010-06-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

That yummy looking chicken on your dinner table? Did you ever wonder were it came from? Well we did and now we know.

First it's a little baby fuzz ball that comes in the mail. You can get mail order chicks from Murray McMurray and many other hatcheries The post office is always very eager to get them to you and will probably call repeatedly until you pick them up.
When you get them home you need to put them in a draft free box. They should have a light for warmth. Food can go on the floor for the first couple days. Water can go in jar lids. After about two days you'll need to start using feeders and waterers.
And in a few weeks they get big enough to go outside. Once they are ready to go outside there are many different styles of chicken coops to keep them in.
These are Buff Orpington pullets

and these are white broilers the same age.They are the same age but the broilers are much bigger then the layers because they are bred to grow big and fast. We would recommend that you raise a heritage breed like Kosher Kings. You can get Kosher Kings from Clearview Hatchery in PA 717-365-3234. The standard white broilers have all sorts of problems like they are prone to heart-attacks and leg issues.

If you don't like reading about slaughtering then don't read any farther.

After we had walked around and seen the set up for the live chickens we got ready to kill, pluck, gut and dress. You shouldn't feed your chickens for 24 hours before hand. When you go to bring your bird to where you're going to kill it, pick it up by its feet so the blood goes to its head and it doesn't struggle.

Then you hang them up by the feet against a flat surface. Another way that works really well is an up-side-down old traffic cone with the end cut off.

First you open the beak and then you stick your knife up through the roof of the mouth and twist it. Then you slit the bird's throat and let it bleed out.

You need to hold the bird still after you have killed it until its death throws have stopped.
If you're using cones you don't need to worry about this.

Once the bird is dead it's time to pluck it.
We scald them first so the feathers come out easier (it also makes the bird stink wretchedly, but it really helps with the feathers so it's worth it). The water should be about 180F. It helps to put some dish soap in to break the natural waterproofing on the bird's feathers. They're done when you can pull tail and wing feathers out. If you scald them to long they start to cook and then the skin rips when you are plucking.

Now it is time to clean and dress them.

The first step is to take the head off.
You cut a ring around base of the head cutting through the muscles and tendons. Then you grab the head and twist it off. DO NOT try to cut the bone. It kills your knife.

Once the head is gone next comes the feet. You put the bird on its back. Then you take one of the legs and bend it backward so you can see the joint. You'll see two sets of two round lumps and you cut right in between them.
The joint will separate, so you don't need to cut the bone.

Next flip the bird back over onto its front. Then slit the skin on the neck starting from in between the wings.

Use your fingers to separate the skin and gland from the neck and then the glands from the skin.
Then you make another ring like the one you made to remove the head at the bottom of the neck. Once again NO CUTTING BONE. And break and twist the neck off.

While the bird is on its front it's time to remove the oil gland.
They are on top of the tail.

Now it is time open the cavity. Flip the bird onto its back. You make a small cut across horizontally and then use your fingers to finish it. Be careful not to cut the intestines. Then you cut down and around the anus in a horseshoe shape.
Next you reach in with two fingers and loosen every thing from the top of the cavity.
Once everything's free from the top you reach forward to the front of the cavity. You'll feel a small hard lump. It's the heart. Grab around it and pull.

Everything should come out.

After all the guts are out you can pick out and save the heart, liver and gizzard. When taking the liver remove the gall bladder. Do not break it!! It will taint the meat and make it bitter.

The only thing that won't come out are the lungs. You need to reach back in and get them. The lungs are attached in the front of the cavity on either side of the backbone. Use your fingers in a hooking motion and they should come out.

That should be everything, just check and make sure. Then hose the bird out well.

Keep the bird in you frig at least 24 hours before you cook it.

Yummy dinner!

Organic Gardening

2010-05-08T16:19:00.000-07:00

At 10:30 a group of back yard gardeners gathered in the Local Farm barn. With excavations underway we felt and smelt four different kinds of soil.
Then we put a blend of the four in pots. A little sand on the bottom for drainage and then the dirt.
After we a filled our pots we went over to a table on which Debra had three plants for us.

Monarda

Lemon Balm
Wooly Mint
Each family could take one or two of each.

After we had our plants we put a few leaves of lemon balm and mint into jugs of cold water so that by lunch we would have a cold refreshing tea.

Then we trekked out to the garden.
Debra had cold-frames set up with Mitzuna, Chamomile and Borage growing in them, we could take one or two of these as well.

Debra has cleared her garden using various methods, where the cold frames are she had kept chickens in a coop.

We put out a sheet of black plastic to kill the sod. In the plastic we poked holes and planted baby squash plants.
After that we went back to the barn and had a lovely lunch.

When we were done with lunch we went back out to the garden and planted some seeds.
A friend is raising young plants for sale and brought the back of her car full.

Dear Friends:

We have many plants for sale this season. Click on our website for a list of plants.

www.perryhillfarm.com

Perry Hill Farm grows plants very differently. Our seedlings are grown in our own compost, made from our organically fed livestock's manure instead of a sterile potting mix. Our soil is not tilled, which is better for the environment. Our produce is grown in permanent raised beds and is co-planted with mutually beneficial plants. We have a garden insectary, which is small garden plot of flowering plants designed to attract beneficial insects. Those beneficial insects devour many common garden pests. This natural approach, combined with co-planting is Perry Hill Farm's safe alternative to pesticides.

We want to make gardening easier for you. Each plant is grown in a CowPot ready to be put into the dirt. No need to pull the plant from the pot to disturb it's roots....you plant the whole thing! CowPots are made nearby in Connecticut and of course, the plants are grown right here at Perry Hill! For more information on Cow pots please see link at the bottom of this email.

Pricing:

Large six packs of plants are $4.49 each.

5" pots are $3.99 each

Our main goal for the farm is environmental stewardship, while producing organically grown food and plants. We do not use pesticides or chemical fertilizers and use sustainable practices. We have signed the NOFANY farmers pledge and we are working towards our certification with the USDA. Many of the plants are open-pollinated heirloom varieties and the seeds were purchased from Turtle Tree Seeds or High Mowing seeds. All of the purchased seeds are certified organic and even some are bio-dynamically certified. A few of the plants were propagated at Perry Hill Farm.

Call or email me to arrange to pick up the plants. vharkness@perryhillfarm.com 845.877.7021

CowPots

From CowPots website:

Created by two ingenious dairy farmers, CowPots are a revolutionary pot made with 100% renewable composted cow manure. CowPots are manure-fiber based seed starter pots, which allow for unrestricted root growth creating stronger, healthier plants. These earth-friendly “pots you plant” are an exciting high-performing alternative to plastic and peat pots.

The CowPot manufacturing process removes all weeds, pathogens and odor. All that’s left is the natural fiber and goodness of manure: the perfectly plantable pot!

Please feel free to pass on this email. If you wish to not receive anymore emails from Perry Hill Farm, please let me know.

Here's to a great gardening season!
Vicki

For more Motherhouse events go to www.motherhouse.us

Organic Gardening Resources

2010-05-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

Vicki sent this photo of our boys in their bean planting parade... and two links to organic seed sources:
HighMowingSeeds is the business started by Tom Stern of Sherman, CT who once helped Debra out on Local Farm during a break from college. The business is in Wolcott, VT.
TurtleTreeSeeds is out of a Camphill Community in Copake, NY.
Vicki plants her seedlings in cowpots from the Freund Family Farm in East Canaan, CT. Other useful links she thought we might be interested in are:
Hay Bale Gardening and no-dig-gardening. An example of another type of no dig garden....a living wall..... not your veggies but pretty to look at: is at woollypocket(She wonders if you could plant some veggies...herbs, greens in those pockets and stack. Perfect for balcony in the city or apt building.) And the NY Times just had an article on living walls at:2010/05/06/garden.
Two links about companion gardening: OrganicGardening and ghorganics
At the workshop, we separated and transplanted three plants from the mint family. Photos and links to information about their uses as herbs follow.

Lemon Balm:
http://www.herbs2000.com/herbs/herbs_lemon_balm.htm

Here in my home garden, you can see how the plant remains fairly compact and not overly invasive.

Red Bee Balm:

oswego_tea
Here you can see how red bee balm or monarda loves to spread and fill and area.

Woolly mint::
or Apple_mint
This plant is SO prolific that I keep it confined to pots on my porch... Even so it tries to escape as you can see by this sprout coming from the drainage hole in the pot bottom!

Plants we transplanted from seedlings started in a cold frame were:

Borage is an excellent bee plant. Its leaves can be steeped in water for a cooling beverage like we did with the mint leaves. Both the flowers and new baby leaves can be used in salads.

German Chamomile: will blossom with tiny daisy-like flowers with yellow centers. These can be picked and dried for a soothing tea to help induce sleep or relieve a stomachache.

Calendula, a resinous plant that is good for the skin. Blossoms can be dried and prepared like tea for a soothing wash or merely wilted and then steeped in oil as a primary salve ingredient.

Plants we picked, washed and added to our salad were:

mitzuna, a cultivated slightly biting Asian green that is delicious raw or cooked,

and volunteer lamb's quarters that can be used like spinach.

Haven sent this link about our mystery "weed," SweetFlag or Calamus. She warns that it is considered carcinogenic.For a list of plants and prices that Vicki has for sale, check out her website PerryHillFarm.
To see Debra's favorite recipe for smoked cheese, scroll down through Care for Cows to about page 13.
Our next Old Style Life-Skills workshop will be Eggs-perience Chickens on June 12.

A Stitchin' Time

2010-04-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Introducing the Amish-Style Covered Dish Carrier....Great for pot lucks, picnics and more!
Debra Tyler told us to come in and set up our sewing machines, if we hadn't brought one with us to use one of the Motherhouse collection.

After that we chose our fabric for the project.
We used a pattern that Debra had made for us and cut and tore our fabric into the right size pieces.
After we had our fabric ready we got down to the deadly serious business of getting bobbins wound and machines up and running. And started stitching.
For the bottom of the carrier we used a piece of plywood that slid into a pocket made by the over-lapping strips of fabric. For the handles we used dowels that also could be removed so the whole thing could be thrown in the wash.

And VOILA!!

For more Motherhouse events go to www.motherhouse.us

A Stitchin' Time

2010-04-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

Four happy stitchers with their almost!-finished covered-dish carriers.

Spring EGG-quinox Retreat

2010-03-20T15:30:00.000-07:00

EGGS-tra Credit Math EGGS-am:
EGGS-plain how 2 moms + 2 daughters = 3 EGGS-traordinary women!

Because our EGGS-cellent organizer stayed home EGGS-pectorating, it was not EGGS-actly the retreat we EGGS-pected..
but we did EGGS-perience an EGGS-tra special EGG decorating EGGS-travaganza!!!!

Bee-gining With Bees

2010-03-13T08:28:00.000-08:00

Debra Tyler and Heidi Lindberg

Both backyard bee keepers.
They each had hive that had died over the winter and opened them up for us to see inside.
Debra's hive is hexagonal while Heidi's is the traditional rectangular shape.

They showed us how to put on a bee suit and use a hive tool. Heidi uses a full bee suit as she is allergic to bee stings. Debra uses a bee hat and gloves but not the full suit. While the adults were going through the hive the kids had the option to either participate or color at a nearby table using bees wax crayons. Because honey naturally kills bacteria nobody minded dipping their fingers in for a taste.

At one side of the room Debra and Heidi each had a table set up with their favorite bee books and tools.
Debra's table.
Heidi's table.
After we had finished going though the hive we put together a starter hive kit that Heidi had brought with her.

Debra had some frames to put together as well.

When we were done with the building projects for the day we went outside for a quick lesson on smokers.

Heidi burns dried pine needles in her smoker.

Debra burns a verity of stuff. Sage, Sumac and cardboard.
Then we went back inside and and talked about getting a package of bees and queen cages.

A potluck lunch was enjoyed by every one.

After lunch we made hand dipped beeswax candles.

For more Motherhouse events go to www.motherhouse.us

Bee Sources and Resources

2010-03-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Better STICK with me, HONEY!!!

Sources of live bees seem few and far between this year:
Usually one can find a few ads of bees for sale in the CT Weekly Agricultural Report. This year, there's only one: Maggie and Jim Grey of Riverside Apiary in Marlborough, CT (860-295-8972). They are expecting a truckload of bee packages around April 26. They charge $86/package. The March 27 truckload has been sold out already. They may also sell nucs at $106 each, starting April 10. Debra would love to coordinate car-pooling to pick up of packages. If there are others interested in making an order, please call her SOON. 860-672-0229. Another possible source of packaged bees is Rollin Hannan of Hannan Honey, LLC at 480 Hulls Hill Road - Southbury, CT 06488. Phone: (203) 264-7005.

Packages and nucs can be ordered in January from BetterBee.com (800-632-3379) and then picked up in Greewich, NY from the end of April through the end of May. George@NorthernBredBees.com (508-882-3336) sells nucs only from his place in Oakham, MA (about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Cornwall.) Order early in the year for pick-up in May. Chris Harp of New Paltz, NY may also sell nucs but is difficult to get in touch with. Rossman Apiaries in Georgia will send packages of bees via the mail but again, one must order very early in the year. Vera ordered hers through www.DraperBee.com. They are located in Millerton,PA (800-233-4273) and ship UPS. Their very busy website includes daily blog entries about their bee business and a constantly changing photo display taken from inside a living, working bee hive.

Heidi's favorite supply source Bushy Mountain Bee Farm out of NC, where one can order an 8 frame English Country Hive. She also highly recommends The CT Beekeepers Association at: www.ctbees.com. They are a fine resource for hands-on classes and information. Other resources she recommends include: www.beeculture.com, www.beesource.com, www.honeybeeworld.com, www.scientificbeekeeping.com, and what she describes as a "funky little site with interesting info on skeps:" martinatnewton.com.

Debra buys bee-keeping supplies from www.BetterBee.com in NY. For more "esoteric" beekeeping, she recommends classes through Chris Harp's site: www.HoneybeeLives.org.
Plans for a top-bar hive body similar to the one Todd has built can be found through the Barefoot Beekeeper at www.biobees.com.

Juliette de Bairacli Levi's recipe for BEE TEA is from the 9th chapter of her Complete Herbal Handbook For Farm and Stable (link to Amazon's book description). It is to be used more as a tonic than their sole source of food.

BEE TEA:
Heat but do not boil:
***1/2 cup finely chopped sage
***1 pint water
for 20 minutes. Let cool until tepid. Strain out sage. Stir in:
***4Tbsp. honey
***1/4 tsp. salt
***1 cup apple cider (or wine) vinegar

Nancy asked for our honey bun recipe so here it is: (adapted from the Joy of Cooking's overnight roll recipe)
HONEY BUNS
Combine and let stand 3 to 5 minutes:
***1 Tbsp. active dry yeast
***2 tsp. sugar
***2Tbsp. warm water (105-115degreesF)
Scald:
***1 cup milk
Stir in:
***7Tbsp. lard or butter
Cool. Combine and beat well:
***7Tbsp. sugar
***3 beaten eggs
***1 tsp. salt
Stir in the milk and yeast mixtures. Add:
***4 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
Beat dough 5 minutes. Place in foil-covered bowl in refrigerator overnight. Take out just before baking. Roll out dough in oval shape. Brush with honey glaze. Roll up dough like a jelly roll. Slice 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Crowd slices in greased 9 1/2 X 13 inch baking pan. Let rise until double in bulk. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Pour on remaining honey glaze and bake 45 minutes or until done.
HONEY GLAZE
Cream:
***1/3 cup sugar
***1/3 cup butter
Blend in:
***2 unbeaten egg whites
Add:
***2/3 cups honey
***1tsp. cinnamon
Spread on dough before rolling. Then drizzle the rest over your rolls just before baking.

Family Cow Forum

2010-02-27T04:25:00.000-08:00

In one large room put 8 tables, add some chairs, 6 loaves of bread, a dollop of cream cheese, tea and coffee and lots of like-minded cow people, mix and you get? A Family Cow Forum!!
The agenda?

Affordable Do-it Yourself Barn Building
Panel of Family Cow Keepers
A Quiver Full of Fencing Tips
Oxen Tails and Demo
Great Lunch and Chat Time
Back Yard Vet Care

Brigitte Ruthman has built her own barn and had lots of things to share with us.

Brigitte
and her Barn
Brigitte's barn is built on an Alaskan slab foundation, which is a concrete slab poured on packed gravel. She said you can't build very tall on a Alaskan Slab Foundation maybe 1 or 1 1/2 stories. She told us that one of the key things you need to do is to know your land because water is a very destructive element. If you can watch your land for about a year it's a good idea. The siding is southern yellow pine 2" thick tongue and groove laid horizontally. Because the boards are horizontal they also act an insulation. For all the interior fittings www.gardnerbarn.com.

Panel of Cow Keepers
Micki, Emily, John, Vicki

Tracy, Maria, Perry

The panel was then asked a series of questions:
How many cows do you have? What are there names and breed?
Micki: 3, Jerseys, Luna, Marcie, Halle
John & Emily: 2, Jerseys, Rosie & Roxie
Vicki: 1, Miniature Jersey, Brieanna
Tracy: 2, Jerseys, Patches & her companion cow Kokah Rose
Maria & Perry: 1, Randall Lineback, Noreen

How do you tie your cow while milking?
What do you sit on?
How do you deal with breeding?
And much more was discussed.

A Fencing Routine
Debra Tyler gave us her take on easily movable, user-friendly fencing and thoughts on best posts, insulators, wire and routine ideas. The backpack/quiver was designed and built by a fellow cow keeper because it can be very useful to have both hands free. He has nothing against others taking and improving the idea.

Oxen Tails

Chuck Duncan a work week salesman and a weekend ox trainer.

Jolly and Jigger
Chuck has been training two steers from Local Farm for a year and a half.
Chuck showed us how to put the yoke on them. There are 4 basic commands: Hep (forward), Wh (stop), Gee (right) and Haw (left). Then he let us take them for a walk if we wanted to.

FOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!
Lunch and a time to ruminate

Angela Greco talked to us about how to take care of your cow on your own and what the vet needs to know when you call.Angela showed us different cow care stuff.
Bolus Gun for giving pills.
Drench Gun for giving liquid orally.
She then took us outside and showed us how to check a cow's breathing and pulse, how to tell if they're dehydrated or not, take their temperatures, check mucus membranes... and much much moooooore!!

We are planning next year's and hope to see you there!

For more Motherhouse events go to www.motherhouse.us

Family Cow Resources

2010-02-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

Some resources shared at the February 27 Family Cow Forum are:

The fair trade, organically grown Chai Tea and Coffee we enjoyed come from: www.Coffee-Tea-Etc.com in Goshen, CT. Naren Sonpal started the business in response to the economic and environmental devastation caused by conventional coffee production that he observed while serving in the Peace Corps. He roasts the coffee at his home in small batches. Any electricity used in the process is indirectly supplied by a bank of solar collectors mounted on his barn roof. Call (860) 491-9920 or visit the website to order.

The whole-grain, sourdough bread is hearthbaked at Bantam Bread in Bantam, CT by Niles Golovin. We had his Holiday Bread and his Cinnamon Swirl Bread at the forum. Stop in at 853 Bantam Road or call (860) 567-2737 to be sure he's baking your choice before pick-up.

Brigitte Ruthman at bruthman@msn.com offered to trailer heritage breed milking shorthorn livestock (see photo) from her favorite source in New Hampshire for the cost of gas and a cup of coffee on the way.

Her farm website is JoshuasFarm.com, phone: 860 671 0327.

Visit GardnerBarn.com in Wisconsin for interior barn fittings.

Chuck can be reached at duncan.chuck@gmail.com. His favorite DVD is Training Oxen: Rural Heritage Video 2007 from www.ruralheritage.com. The book Oxen: A Teamster's Guide by Drew Conroy and published by Storey Publishing can be found at Blue Seal Feeds in Torrington, CT. Helpful websites are: the site of Chuck's favorite charity www.CareForCows.com, BerryBrookOxSupply.com and NewEnglandOxSupply.com.

The display on Management Intensive Grazing was supplied by Gund Sonpal of Sonpal Power Fence in Goshen, CT. She has a variety of Gallagherusa.com fencing equipment for sale from her home. Her phone number is (860) 491-2290.

The farmer Micki Pratt works with to impregnate her cows via embryo transplants is Tom Breakell of Goshen, CT 860-491-3085.

Hot tulsi tea (homegrown "sacred basil" from Alicia's garden) and cooling foraged sumac berry, fresh ginger tea were donated for lunch by Cornwall's resident herbalist Alicia North of www.NorthstarBotanicals.com. Call her at 860-672-6854 for all herbal needs.

www.CrystalCreekNatural.com is a good mail order source of organically-approved veterinary supplies.

A few other choice farm supplies including stainless steel milk pails for the price I paid 25 years ago, can be found at MotherhouseMarket.com... and don't forget to visit my favorite: RLocalFarm.com!
Click the highlighted link to read the Lakeville Journal story about the forum.

Visit Motherhouse.us for more events.

Scent-sible Herbel Gifts

2009-12-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

Alicia North of North Star Botanicals led a bunch of 7 in making great gifts to either give away or use ourselves.

Alcohol-free Hand Sanitizer.
2 cups pure aloe vera gel
1-2 teaspoons witch hazel
30 drops eucalyptus essential oil (1/2 teaspoon)
20 drops rosemary essential oil (1/3 teaspoon)
1o drops lavender
8 drops cinnamon essential oil
8 drops clove essential oil

Herbal Eye Pillows
Flax seed because it's cooling.
Lavender flowers for soothing.
Mint to make things look brighter (but go light on the mint 'cause its a stimulant).
Hops if you want, to help you remember your dreams, only a little bit (it smells like dirty socks).
Stitched up tight in a pretty fabric pouch, frog shaped or mask like or a starry blue sky.

Calendula Salve
3 oz. calendula infused olive oil
1 oz. beeswax
Calendula salve is an all purpose healing salve. Good for cracked hands, to keep cow udders from getting chapped, helping heal burns and other things of this nature.

Christmas Tea
1 cup each dried cut rose hips, lemon verbena leaves, and orange peel
6 cinnamon sticks broken into small pieces
1/4 cup cloves
Infuse 1 tsp tea blend in 1 cup freshly boiled water for ten minutes. Serve with honey if desired.

Fizzy Bath Salts
1 cup Epsom salts
1 cup sea salt
1 cup baking soda
8 drops lavender essential oil
6 drops orange essential oil
6 drops neroli
4 drops peppermint essential oil
1/2 cup citric acid
Mix dry ingredients first except citric acid. Add oils, mix, add citric acid and mix thoroughly.
We had an accident with the bath salts because we used Celtic sea salt instead of regular sea salt.
After riding home we discovered the salt had pulled enough moisture out of the air to cause the bath salts to fizz right out of the bag!

Corning Spices
1/2 kosher salt
1 Tbsp cracked pepper corn
3/4 Tbsp cloves
1 Tbsp thyme
1/2 Tbsp paprika
1 4-6 lbs. beef brisket or tongue. Rinse and pat dry.
Rub each side evenly with salt, mix, place in 2 gallon Ziploc bag and force out as much air as possible. Place in a pan, cover with second pan and weight with 2 bricks or heavy cans. Refrigerate 5-7 days. Turn once daily. To cook, cover with water and boil 2-3 hours.

To perches these and others go Alicia's website www.northstarbotanicals.com

Contra Dance

2009-12-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

On the cold and snowy night of December 5th contra dance caller Fern Bradly and Still the Home Grown Band gathered at the Cornwall town hall to call and play for two families plus roadies and we had a tiny but lovely contra dance.

Shave-Horse Making

2009-11-22T06:22:00.000-08:00

Joe Brien and a lively bunch of 7 wranglers embarked on a wild ride to capture, train and ride a shave-horse.
Joe had a table with the shave-horse parts already cut out and ready for assembly. There were several work stations set up. We all needed do was plane edges, drill mortises, cut tenons, and assemble a jumbled assortment of wooden pieces into something resembling a four legged, very loose necked, slow moving but once its dumb-head gets ahold of something lets go only when asked, wooden creation. In short a shave-horse.

The Whey of Cheesemaking

2009-11-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

Angela Greco, an experienced kitchen cheese maker, led the whey through the process of making "Meso Fresco".The first step was to warm up the milk. The pot of choice was selected by Angela for each table to use. A good place to get stuff http://www.cheesemaking.com/ Warm the milk to 90 degrees F through indirect heating in a water bath of 110 degrees F. Then sprinkle the culture on top of the milk and let sit for 30 to 60 seconds. Stir GENTLY!!!!Dissolve 1/4 rennet tablet in 1/4 cup water.
The correct whey to add rennet:
The culture bacteria make the milk acidic and rennet likes acid and 110 degree heat but if it's too happy the curd turns out rubbery, so we only give it 90 degrees. It took a group effort to keep the milk at the correct temperature.Then we let the curd set. After getting a clean break in the curd we cut it. A clean break is when you make a small cut in the top of the curd and it breaks cleanly and fills with whey.

Cut the curd into 1 inch cubes and give it a stir.Warm the curd to 95 F ( by adding hot water to the water bath) while stirring.
Then put the curds into a stainer lined with butter muslin or cheese cloth. Let drain for 15 minutes.
Then mix 2 1/2 tsp of salt in with your hand GENTLY.
And then put the mix in a basket mold and let it sit at room temperature for 1 hour.
Cut serve and enjoy!

Milking Stool Making

2009-10-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

Joe Brien took us in-hand, in using hand-tools to make a handy milking stool.

This is a draw shave used by pulling towards yourself and with the grain of the wood.

By clamping the pre-cut stool seat in a neat gizmo called a shave horse. It's a foot operated clamp.
Another way to hold your stool seat.
Smoothing the edges.
Using piece of wood, a nail and a pencil to figure out where to drill holes for the legs. A little decoration.
A hand operated drill press.

Tapering the ends of the legs.

Marking where wedges will go.

Making splits for the wedges to go into.

Putting glue on the wedge.Setting the wedge.

Sawing off the extra leg length.
Planing the top smooth.
How long do you want your legs?
All hard at work.

All done now!!

Applly Ever After

2009-10-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

Hmm... what can we do with apples? Lets find out shall we?
Debra told us that to make good cider you need a good blend of different types of apples or else "it turns out really REALLY yicky.We made some last weeks with only red delicious and it is awful!" Then we put the apples into a stainless steel sink and filled it up with water and added a dash of hydrogen peroxide.After getting the apples well rinsed and sorted (if less then half rotten it's still good), we cranked up the cider press.

After pressing a good amount of cider Debra brought out three different vinegars that she had made for us to smell. One was made by just taking cider, putting it in a glass jar, putting the lid on tight and putting it in the cupboard(quart jar). Another was cider that had had a little Braggs(a natural organic cider vinegar) added to it(small roundish jar). The third was made by soaking the pomace and then using the water(large square jar). We took some of the pomace and put it in a pot with water to cook until it was soft.
Then we ran it through a food mill(brand name Roma)to make apple sauce, which we poured into a pot and added sugar,cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. And put it on the stove to cook into apple butter.
Debra showed us and let us taste dried apple rings that she had made by coring, slicing and drying in a food dehydrator. Apple leather made by chopping up and coring apples then with a little bit cider putting a few chunks at a time into a blender and blending them in to mush.And last but not least apple heads for witch dolls

Keeping A Family Cow

2009-09-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

The Local Farm barn became a class room for a hands-on workshop on handling, milking and using the milk. Meeting, greeting and a brief word about the paraphernalia to be taken home at the end of the day by Debra Tyler our guide to cowdom. We brought Stormy a miniature jersey into the milking stable. Debra told us that "where you milk your cow should be a place where you are comfortable, relaxed and like to spend time". Letting down milk is part of the parasympathetic nervous system so a cow needs to be relaxed to let down her milk. Beginning by brushing Stormy and then washing her udder with warm water and a gentle dish detergent. " A cow has four quarters, four glands, four teats and ONE udder". So if one quarter is bruised or inflamed you can feed the milk from that quarter to your chickens or your pigs and still use the milk from the other three for yourself. Learning to milk followed. Make a tight ring with your thumb and first finger at the top of the teat. Then roll your other fingers down. Do NOT let milk flow backward up into the quarter. Another way of milking is to slide your thumb down.

After everyone had a chance to try milking, Debra brought out the milking machine and finished milking Stormy out. This took only a few minutes and someone asked, "wouldn't it be easier to just have a machine?" Debra answered, "once you get good at milking by hand it takes about twenty minutes to milk out your cow. It takes twenty minutes to wash the milking machine. You choose, twenty minutes under your cow or twenty minutes at the sink washing MOORE dishes".
The milk was poured through a milk strainer. Some people will fold a filter disk and put it in a funnel and pour the milk through the funnel into their bottles, others put a clean dish towel over a wide mouth jar with a rubber band around the outside and strain the milk that way.
We took a little bit of the fresh warm milk (milk comes out of the cow at about one hundred degrees F the perfect temperature for making cheese and yogurt) poured it into a quart glass jar and added about two tablespoons of yogurt mixed it up and then filled the jar the rest of the way with the warm milk. It then needs to be kept warm over night. An oven with a pilot light works well. Debra says "this particular batch has been going for over two years now. When I have to start a new culture Dannon yogurt works the best."
To the rest of the warm milk we added one half of a rennet tablet dissolved in a quarter cup of COLD water. Rennet is an enzyme found in the lining of a new born calf's stomach. Debra gets her rennet from New England Cheesemaking Supply company http://www.cheesemaking.com/. Then we put the bucket in a styrofoam cooler filled with warm water. Next Debra brought out a bucket of milk that had been sitting out at room temperature for two days so the cream had risen to the top and gone slightly sour. To skim the cream off the top we used a cup by pushing the bottom of the cup down and letting the cream slip over the edge. Not scooping out the cream just letting it slip over the edge.
When the skim milk begins to show through the cream when you lift your cup out it looks like blue swirls. Then we poured the cream into an old fashioned daisy butter churn and cranked it as fast as possible trading off when the cranker got tired. As the cream is agitated the fat globules bump in to each other and latch on to one another and get bigger and bigger until you have butter!
At first it just looks like milk, then it seems to get bigger and splashes up and sticks to the sides of the jar, it goes through a whipped cream stage then gets grainy and finally turns to butter! Be careful because if it's a hot day and you keep cranking after it has buttered, the butter will be beaten back into cream. While someone was cranking the butter we took the skim milk left over from skimming the cream to make the butter and put it on a hot plate to heat. When it was just scalding, bubbling around the edges and steaming a little, we added apple cider vinegar until it turned to a soft cheese.

Ice cream...need I say more? Debra brought a custardy thing that she had prepared the night before. Scald 3 cups whole milk over low heat. Stir in 1 1/2 cups sugar an 1/4 tsp. salt. Slowly pour the milk over 4-6 beaten egg yolks. Beat until well blended. Stir and cook in a double-boiler over hot water until thick and smooth. Chill. Fold in 2tsp vanilla.We
skimmed four cups of cream and poured the custardy thing and the cream into the canister. Then put the canister in the freezer and layered ice and rock salt around the outside.
The ice needs heat to melt and it draws it from the mixture in the canister, the salt speeds the process. Cranking at about 1 crank a second turns the dasher and beats air into the ice cream. When it gets stiff, crank like crazy for 1 minute, then let it sit for 1/2 hour. Serve and enjoy!At lunch time Debra brought out the renneted milk that had solidified into a curd. Then she cut the curd so it would separate into curds and whey.
We ate a luscious lunch and had a wonderful time!

Spoon Carving and Campfire Cooking

2009-08-23T18:49:00.000-07:00

Sixteen Successfully Seasoned Spoon Carvers

On August 23, Joe Brien of Lost Arts workshops demonstrated how to light a fire without matches. We used flint and steel to create a spark in charcloth, then friction of a bow drill to ignite a bit of wood. The tiny ember was carefully transferred to a tinder pack of very fine combustible materials and encouraged to burn with a light breath of air. Once we got a fire started we turned to our spoons.

Starting with pre-cut blanks of easy-to-carve basswood, we learned to keep a safe distance from our neighbors, to carve away from ourselves, and to work with the grain of the wood. Sometimes we levered against an angle of the spoon to round corners and edges.

We left the bowl of the spoon to be hollowed with a live ember from the fire. Holding the ember in place with a scrap of wood, we blew on the coal until the area we wished to remove was charred and brittle. Then we scraped away the burned wood with our wood scrap and/or sandpaper.

Wyatt Whiteman of 1760's Farm House prepared a vegetable stew in a cast iron dutch oven hung over the fire by a tripod The soup and spoons were finished in time for lunch.

For Wyatt's DVD on Hearth Cooking: 1760farmhouse
Visit lostartworkshops for info on Joe's workshops.
Joe's presentation was funded by individual donations and
a grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism

Yes! We Can Can

2009-08-22T16:58:00.000-07:00

Yes! We Can Can
Saturday s August 8 and 22 Wyatt Whiteman taught a group of canners in canning tomato's, peaches, pickled beets and dilly beans. The essentials: "when in doubt [of food's goodness after canning and time] throw it out". Get the Ball Blue Book the Guide to Home Canning and Freezing "it's the king of canning books"
For more details see last year's canning report.

Contra Dance Music Workshop

2009-08-17T10:44:00.001-07:00

At 3 o'clock on August 1st a group of 13 musicians gathered at the Cornwall Town Hall for a workshop led by contra dance caller and musician David Kaynor.

And, as in all musical gatherings, the first thing we did was tune up.

Starting with the song Simple Gifts and then introducing ourselves.

Some scales, arpeggios and tune sketches in the key of G followed. Once we knew the tune, as much harmonization as possible was encouraged. “If in the key of G and you’re playing any note in the G scale and it doesn’t sound right, it’s only one note away from one that does”

We learned a foot tapping rhythm. If you’re right-handed, start with your right foot counting 1, 2, 3, 4. On 1 tap right heel on floor. 2, pause 3, right toe 4, left foot. If left-handed start with your left foot.

Than attempting to do it while playing a tune. There was no sheet music so it was an exercise in playing by ear as well. Over all a fun, well taught and well enjoyed time.

August 1 Contra Dance

2009-08-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Contra Dance August 1st. Music by Still the Homegrown Band.
Caller David Kaynor.
Pianist Debra Tyler, Fiddlers Jane Prentice and Mickey Koth,
Concertina player Jim Prentice,
Golrified Washtub Bass Michael Prentice,
Guitar Kathy Lyon, and add-ons from the workshop.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Jam Session

2009-08-08T03:29:00.000-07:00

On July 11, jam-making enthusiasts Joanne Wojtusiak and Brent Prindle shared some of their sweet techniques with us at an Old Style Life Skills Series workshop held at Local Farm in Cornwall, CT. Although it is ideal to make jam whenever fruit is in season and plentiful, we learned that it is fine to freeze it to use at a more convenient time in the future.

For example, Joanne brought rhubarb that she had frozen earlier this year to make the following recipe for about 5 8oz jars of Rhubarb Ginger Jam:

2 ½ # of rhubarb stems cut into 1” pieces (fresh or frozen)

3 cups sugar

1 T fresh ginger – grated

1 T crystallized ginger – finely chopped

1 ½ lemons – zest and juice

Layer rhubarb and sugar in a bowl and cover with a dish towel; allow to stand overnight at room temperature (often referred to as “weeping”).

Combine sugar and rhubarb mixture with lemon juice and zest and fresh and crystallized ginger and bring to a boil while stirring frequently. Continue to boil for 30-40 minutes (sometimes it takes even longer) or until it gels (this typically occurs when the mixture reaches 220 degrees F). You can also test for gelling by seeing if the mixture will coat the back of a spoon. Using Brent's digital thermometer made this step VERY easy.

The chopped candied ginger gives this rhubarb jam recipe extra pizazz!

Peel the fresh ginger root before grating it so the grater doesn't get clogged.

Brent brought frozen blueberries for Blueberry Jam. Unlike rhubarb, blueberries are low in acid. Equal amounts of blueberries and sugar will not set without added pectin.

Pectin packages contain recipes that are really sure fire and easy to follow. Joanne stressed that for best results, never vary the amount of sugar and pectin. However, both she and Brent concurred that jams and jellies never fail. If they do not fully gel, they merely become sauce for ice cream or glaze for meats, fruits, cake, or vegetables. The following recipe from the Ball powdered pectin product makes about 6 8oz jars:

4 cups crushed blueberries (use a potato masher)

2 T lemon juice

1 package of dry pectin

4 cups sugar

Combine blueberries and lemon juice and gradually add pectin. Stirring constantly, bring mixture to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down.

Add entire measure of sugar and stir to dissolve. Return mixture to a full rolling boil and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Have the sugar measured and ready to dump into the fruit and pectin mixture all at once. You can speed the process by preheating the sugar in a 350 degree oven.

Remove from heat and skim off foam. (1/2 t of butter or margarine can be added while cooking to reduce foaming).

Ladle into clean, warm jars taking care not to spill any jam on rim (clean rim if necessary); place hot lid on top and apply ring, but not too tightly. Turn upside down for 5 minutes to seal.

It is important that the jars and lids are steaming hot when using this method. Brent is using a jar-holding tool to transfer jars from their boiling hot water bath to the filling station.

He uses a magnetic screw driver to "grab" the flat metal lids out of the bath to place on the jars. Here, we are using Joanne's "pen" magnet to do the same.

When the jars are cool, turn right side up and check for seal by pressing down on the lid; there should be no give.

You may also use a water bath to seal jars and process for 10 minutes instead.

You can try a no-pectin version of Blueberry Jam by adding a 1/2c of 5% acidity vinegar (preferably an herb or spice infused one like anise or ginger) to 4 cups of blueberries and 3 cups of sugar.

Liquid pectin recipes often use more sugar than the powdered pectin recipes. Brent shared the following liquid pectin recipe for mint jelly.

1/2 cup vinegar

1 cupwater

1/2 cup mint leaves

green coloring

3 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup liquid pectin

Combine vinegar, water, mint leaves and enough coloring to give tint desired. Add sugar, stir, and bring to a boil. Add pectin at once, stirring constantly, and bring to a full boil for 1/2 minute. Strain off mint leaves and pour into glasses. (Makes about 6 6oz. jars)

Although the recipe calls for whole mint leaves, Joanne likes to chop them in order to release more flavor. We learned to layer several leaves and roll them up for easy slicing.

Not using coloring results in a pale, tannish jelly.

We also made a jam of gooseberries.

Many of our workshop participants asked about recipes using less sugar. After the workshop, Joanne checked her recipes and sent us the following. She reports that it is delicious!!

Low Sugar Apricot Jam (using kernels)

1 kg (or 2# plus a few) apricots

1 1/3 C sugar

¼ C water

2 T lemon juice (fresh if possible)

Use a heavy bottomed enamel or stainless steel pot (this recipe can burn easily). Melt sugar and water and bring to a boil and simmer until clear and slightly thickened.

Halve the apricots (twisting them apart is easier than cutting) and save 5 pits so you can crack them open (use a nutcracker or hammer) and remove the “kernel” inside the pit. These kernels have a very distinct almond flavor. Wrap the kernels in cheesecloth and add to the pot. Add half the apricots to the syrup/kernel mixture and simmer until the fruit is falling apart; then add the rest of the apricots and cook until they are almost falling apart. The cooking takes nearly an hour.

Add the lemon juice and cook for 5 more minutes. Remove the kernels in the cheesecloth and jar up.

NOTE: Each 8oz jar contained nearly a pound of fresh apricots when finished.

Eggs-perience Chickens

2009-07-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

For the most delicious chicken ever -- grow your own!

Debra Tyler led the Eggs-perience Chicken workshop at Local Farm in Cornwall CT. We learned how to feed, house, care for and slaughter chickens.

Feeding and Housing:

If you're starting from scratch, get metal containers. If you already have plastic bins be aware that they are not rat-proof. Choose your feed based on what you are raising. Broilers get a different ration than layers. Organic feed for all livestock can be purchased from Lightning Tree Farm, Millbrook, NY. They can be reached at 845-677-9507. Chickens are not, by nature, vegetarians. They'll eat grubs, insects, small rodents. The chickens will enjoy your food scraps - just don't give them any poultry or eggs. You'll need a dish for water and one for feed. They can be placed on the ground or hung from the "ceiling" of the coop. Feed twice a day, making sure your second feeding is well in advance of dark. Don't feed more than the chickens will eat or you'll just be attracting rats.

Debra has her chickens in chicken tractors. This portable shelter, from The Chicken Tractor book, is 10' long, 4' wide and 3' high. It will hold 10 hens. Made of 2x4's, plywood and chicken wire, it's lightweight and can be moved by one person. Cover 3 sides with a tarp to prevent raccoons from catching the chickens. Three nesting boxes fit across one end giving easy access to collect eggs and for cleaning. Put raccoon-proof latches on the top doors. Screw handles onto each end for ease of moving. Bed the nest boxes with hay or straw.

Electric mesh around your chicken tractor will protect it from raccoons, roaming dogs, etc. Premier http://www.premier1supplies.com is an excellent source for electric fence, chargers, and now sells chicken equipment as well. Also online is Gallagher Fencing. Local sources are Tractor Supply, Agway. Electric mesh fence is easy to install and easy to move. You will need to ground your charger -- you can use a coil of wire laying on the ground, or a metal rod driven into the ground. Debra uses a crowbar driven into the ground. Your mesh will work better if you mow/weed whack the area before you put up the mesh.
To electrify your chicken area you will need: electric mesh, a charger (solar or plug-in), wire to connect the mesh to the charger and the charger to the ground rod, and a ground rod or coil of wire if you're area is wet enough. A fence tester is recommended to ensure your fence is working and carries enough charge.

Chickens come in a wide variety of sizes and colors. They can be purchased as chicks from http://www.privetthatchery.com/ , Clearview Hatchery and http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/ to name a few.

You can move the chicken tractor every day - the chickens will have mown the grass and fertilized it. Moving it every day increases the fertility of your field. Or you can leave it in place for 3 months, adding straw or hay to the entire 'floor' of the coop so the chickens aren't standing in mud. The layers of straw and manure build up and create a wonderful garden bed. Add a bit of soil, put in seeds of a light crop - like lettuce, and you have a new bed!

Another option for housing was a cattle panel turned into a hoop house. It's not as easy to move and you have to create a door to get to the birds.

Broilers are short-term birds, layers you'll keep for years. The layers begin producing eggs around six months of age. You may want to build a more substantial coop for your layers as you'll be keeping them through the winter. "Chicken Coops" by Judy Pangman has many wonderful coop designs.

Slaughtering

The broilers ready for slaughter had not had food for hours so they'd have empty bellies. They were all Cornish Kings purchased as chicks from Murray McMurray. A good-sized meat bird, they're ready in 8 weeks for slaughter.

After catching the bird, carry it by the legs with the head down to quiet it. It might squawk at first but it will settle down. Tie its legs together - another handy use for baling twine!
Hang the bird with its back against a wall. Have someone hold the wings -- they'll need to hold quite tightly. Or use a cone to hold the bird. Place something absorbent underneath like hay, straw, shavings, a bucket, to catch the blood. The blood or blood-soaked straw can be used as fertilizer.

To pith the bird: Hold the bird's head, open the mouth, insert a sharp knife with a narrow blade through the roof of the mouth and twist.
Take the neck skin below the jaw (visually its above the jaw now since the bird is upside-down) and pull it toward you, insert the knife in the neck and cut towards yourself -- severing the arteries. Hold the head back so the blood drains quickly. Once the blood has stopped draining it's time for scalding.
You'll have a pot of hot water (apx 180 degrees) at hand. Holding the bird by the legs, dunk the bird into the water. Swish it around. This will both clean the bird and loosen the feathers. Check the bird every 20 to 30 seconds by pulling on the wing feathers. When they come out with a tug, you're done.

Hang the bird by the feet again and remove the feathers. Handle the skin gently -- it will tear easily. Compost the feathers.

Now to dress the bird. Cut off the feet. Set them aside for scalding and removing the skin and toenails -- the feet can be added to the stock pot.

Cut the head off behind the jaw. Remove the neck glands. Loosen the crop and remove the neck. Set it aside for the stock pot as well. Remove the oil gland at the top of the tail and toss it in the gut bucket.

Then cut under the tail, cut around the vent, preserving the tube and remove it along with the guts of the chicken. Toss into the gut bucket. Let liquid drain if necessary. Sweep the membranes out and into the gut bucket they go. Save the heart and liver.

Hose the bird well with cold water. An outdoor sink is nice if you have one.

Now bag the bird. Put the parts you're saving into the cavity and close the bag. Put the bird in the refrigerator and let it rest for a day before cooking.

We roasted our bird and it was delicious! Garlic bulbs under skin, olive oil and thyme on the skin. Tender, juicy, so good! Even old birds are good -- they have more flavor than 8 week old ones. It will be tougher, necessitating longer cooking. Crock pots and other slow cook methods are ideal.

Keeping chickens requires less space than I had thought and slaughtering is less messy and less difficult than I expected. Now to start on our chicken coop .... there are chickens in the future for us!

Making Milking Stools with Joe Brien

2009-05-17T20:05:00.000-07:00

Planing the edges of the seat to make them round and smooth.

Drilling leg holes holes in the seat.

Shaving the leg-ends to fit the holes in the seat.

Driving them home.

Splitting the leg ends on the seat top.

Driving a wedge into the split leg end.

Sawing the legs off so they will rest evenly on the floor.

After sawing the wedged end off flush with the seat top, planing the top smooth one more time.

Our finished work! with thanks to individual donations and to our instuctor extraordinaire: Joe Brien of Lost Art Workshops!

Organic Gardening: Peas & Cues

2009-05-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

At Organic Gardening: Peas & Cues, a workshop in Motherhouse's Old Style Life Skills Series (OSLSS), we learned a few simple ways to start a garden from scratch, discourage garden pests, feed the soil and extend the growing season. The Workshop was at Local Farm, in Cornwall Bridge, CT.

What exactly is organic gardening? Debra Tyler, who led the workshop, said that when you garden organically you think - not only are the plants alive, the soil is alive too; and you work in harmony with Nature. The key to organic gardening is creating and keeping a healthy balance in your garden.

The soil is the basis for everything that grows in our gardens, and it is indeed alive. Feeding the soil by adding organic matter such as compost, manure, chopped leaves, and mulches insures that your plants have a good foundation for healthy growth.

At the workshop, we constructed a compost bin out of wooden pallets. Position the bin near your garden and tie the sides together. For one year fill your bin with a balanced mixture of: green stuff (high in nitrogen) to activate the heat process in your compost, such as weeds, grass cuttings, chicken manure, and table scraps; and brown stuff (high in carbon) to serve as the fiber for your compost, such as fallen leaves, dead plants, cardboard, old straw and hay.

In the following year, make another bin and fill that with green stuff and brown stuff, leaving the first bin to decompose. In the third year, start yet another bin, fill that, and so on, year after year. In the third year you will have compost for your garden in the first bin. In fact, in three years, even the wooden pallets and twine will have deteriorated. If you follow this system, you will always have compost to feed your soil.

Using a cold frame extends the growing season. This cold frame was built with 2 by 12s and 2 by 8s. When designing a cold frame, use whatever old storm windows or storm doors you can come by, which will determine the size of your cold frame. This one uses four windows set side by side. A cold frame usually has a slope to the top of the frame, and it’s best to have the low side facing south to capture as much of the sun as possible. This slope also helps rain water run off the top.

To make an "instant" garden, without digging and tilling, lay down cardboard, as you see we did at the workshop. The cardboard keeps the sun from the sod. Put layers of hay, compost, ashes.... anything you would put in your compost bin on top of the cardboard. This no-dig, no-till organic gardening method results in rich, fluffy soil with very little work from the gardener! If you start such a garden in spring or summer, you will need to add layers of compost or topsoil, so that you can plant in the garden right away.

Here we are learning how a chicken tractor can help with organic gardening. A chicken tractor is a bottomless, portable pen. By setting this wherever you need help - or want a garden - the chickens peck and scratch the soil, eating the bugs, grass, and weeds. Without a cage bottom, the chicken manure goes directly onto the ground and becomes fertilizer. The chickens are happy and by putting them in the garden, they become your personal garden helpers, so you will be happy too!

Gardening in a bale of hay? Try it! Bales that have been sitting out in the weather will give you a head start because the bales need to rot before you plant in them. Debra thinks the bales need 4 to 6 weeks out, getting wet, before planting. (You may be able to accelerate this by keeping the bales watered.) Plant young seedlings by pulling apart the bale, using a trowel, and depending on the state of the straw, put a handful of compost soil in too, then let the straw go back into place. Seeds can be planted on top if you put a layer of compost soil there first. Debra is going to plant cucumbers in these bales.

Companion planting is an age old tradition and we discussed it at the workshop. It’s a gardening technique that involves planting two or more plants near each other to derive some type of benefit. That benefit could be more vigorous growth, higher yield, repelling pests or attracting predators of common pests.

Handy items and resources for organic gardening are available on Motherhouse Market.

Sourdough Starter Course

2009-04-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

Sure enough, by Saturday evening my new starter was bubbling away and filling up the jar I had brought it home in, just as Angela had said it would at Motherhouse's OSLSS Sourdough Starter Course. When I say new, I only mean new to me, Angela told us the starters we were taking home were descendants of a starter that began over 250 years ago!

Dr. Angela Greco, a verternarian, led this workshop for Motherhouse and will be leading two more Old Style Life Skills Series workshops this year - Jam Session and The Whey of Cheesemaking. For descriptions of these workshops, visit the Motherhouse web site.

By the time you finish reading this post, you will see just how many ways you can use sourdough! This versatility is exactly what Angela set out to show us at the workshop. We made two different breads, pancakes and also pretzels at the workshop. In addition Angela brought a Sourdough Chocolate Cake she had made the day before to the workshop. This was the piece de resistance!

As families arrived for the workshop, equipped with bowls and jars and baking sheets, they settled in and then started grinding wheat berries, enough to yield the whole wheat flour needed for the two breads we were making at the workshop. Three different grain mills were set up for this purpose and everyone had a lot of fun doing this.

All the recipes we followed at the workshop were adapted from the Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin, "Baking with Sourdough". Everyone went home with a copy of this book which contains basic procedures for using sourdough as well as many recipes.

We mixed ingredients together to make a Sourdough Bread with Whole Wheat and a Molasses Rye Sourdough Bread.

We obtained the appropriate amount of sourdough sponge from Angela, started the night before. The sponge contained the starter, white flour, oil, honey, and warm water; making a sponge and allowing it to ferment is a necessary step if you are baking a kneaded bread. It is also an example of how using sourdough takes some planning ahead. For the workshop, Angela did all the planning i.e. giving the sourdough time to grow and work as a leavener. At home, using sourdough means planning and beginning the baking process further ahead of time than you would if you were using yeast or baking powder.

When we had the sourdough sponge mixed in, we stirred in enough white flour to make a dough we could handle. We formed the dough for each bread into a ball and covered with a damp cloth and let rest for about 15 minutes. Then, we kneaded until smooth and elastic.

And here are the two breads everyone took home for baking. There are few aromas more wonderful than the smell of home baked bread!

The Old Fashioned Pancakes were light, fluffy, and delicious! When I said so to Angela, she said "that's because they're alive..." and indeed using sourdough starter in the recipe makes a difference!

Here we are rolling and shaping pieces of the Sourdough Pretzel dough into long ropes, then twisting the ropes into pretzel shapes.

We brushed the pretzels with a mixture of beaten egg yolk and cream before covering with a damp cloth to let rise. After rising, we brushed the pretzels with the egg mixture again and sprinkled with salt. Notice all the different pretzel shapes!

The pretzels were baked for just 15 minutes in a preheated oven and allowed to cool before eating. They were absolutely delicious and although this is not the best photo, you can see what they were like.

Before leaving, Angela told us how to feed and keep a starter. A starter has to be fed with the same amounts of flour and water you take out on a weekly basis. You can use the starter to make bread, or give away to a friend, or discard. The idea is to maintain approximately the same amount of starter all the time, although it is also possible to expand your starter. Here's to the fun, challenge, and good taste of sourdough!

Honey Bee Mine

2009-04-07T09:56:00.001-07:00

Cornwall's Town Hall was a buzz a few Saturdays ago with Motherhouse's Honey Bee Mine Workshop. It was great to have so many new or soon to be beekeepers together in one big room; this workshop was full for weeks in advance and continues to be one of the most popular in the Old Style Life Skills Series. Good news also that the Obama family is joining the growing ranks of Americans engaged in backyard beekeeping and including two bee hives in the organic garden at the White House!

Debra Tyler, with assistance from Chris Hopkins, led the workshop. Here Chris is demonstrating how to fire up a smoker. He put a little paper, twigs, green grass, sumac, and some burlap in the smoker. One participant suggested adding an ice cube and we all thought that was a good idea.

Most beekeepers use smokers to blow smoke into a beehive before inspecting or handling the hive. Under normal circumstances if a beehive is approached i.e. threatened, the guard bees will release a pheromone that alerts the bees in the hive to defend the hive by attacking the intruder. When smoke is blown into the hive first, however, the guard bees' receptors are dulled and they do not sound this alarm. The smoke also has a secondary effect in that it initiates a feeding response in anticipation of possibly having to abandon the hive due to fire. This feeding has a tendency to calm the bees. Smoke, we learned, is one thing a beekeeper can use when working with bees.

Wearing protective clothing is another. Here, Debra is wearing gloves, a hat, and a veil. Sometimes experienced beekeepers do not wear gloves because they are cumbersome. The face and neck are the most important areas to protect, so most beekeepers at least wear a veil.

Many resources were available to browse through at the workshop and everyone went home with a copy of Debra's Working The Hive, a beautifully hand-drawn, hand-bound, fold-out hexagonal book that can be colored with Beeswax Crayons. For fascinating reading on honeybees, I recommend The Queen Must Die And Other Affairs of Bees and Men by William Longgood, of which he says - This book is not intended as a work of science or a manual on beekeeping. It is an effort to capture some of the mystery and poetry that I have observed in bees, and to enlarge our conception of the importance, beauty, and universality of all life.

It's important to have a hive set up before getting bees. A hive is a set of rectangular wooden boxes which can be opened at the top and which are filled with move-able wood or plastic frames. Each frame holds a sheet of wax or plastic foundation. The bees build cells upon the sheets of foundation to create complete honeycombs. The bottom box, or brood chamber, contains the queen and most of the bees; the upper boxes, or supers, will eventually contain just honey. At the workshop some participants put together frames.

Situate the hive in a good spot. Debra suggested having the hive face south or southeast so that in winter the sun will warm it. A water source nearby and shelter to the north or northwest are other considerations.

Here Debra has a frame in which she has cut the foundation wax. She does this, she explained, as if to say to the bees, please fill this frame for me. She wants to let the bees do their job, their work. By setting up the frame like this, the foundation wax is just a suggestion to the bees of where you would like them to build their comb.

Debra described a few ways of getting bees for your hive. One is to order a package of bees and at the workshop we looked at such a package. It is also possible to get a Nuc, or Nucleus Colony, a small honey bee colony, 5 frames, created from a larger colony. The term Nuc refers both to the smaller size box and the colony of honeybees within it. The name is derived from the fact that a nuc hive is centered around a queen - the nucleus of the honey bee colony. Debra suggested calling Chris Harp, HoneyBeeLives, in New Patlz, NY about Nucs.

Rarely is there any honey available in the first year of beekeeping, Debra explained, and even if there is some, she never takes it, leaving it for the bees during the coming winter. In subsequent years, she leaves one deep super and one shallow one of honey for the bees and extracts the rest. Above is a demonstration of how honey can be collected with this extractor, which works by centrifugal force.

Bees not only make honey, but beeswax; and after learning about beekeeping and having lunch, some people stayed to dip and roll candles.

Bees also play an important role in our environment. They help distribute pollen among various flowering plants, which leads to pollination. Bees are responsible for pollinating nearly 80 percent of all the fruits and vegetables we eat!

Motherhouse Market contains resources for Hands On/Bee-ginning with Bees, including a Honeybee Plant List for the Northeast compiled by Grai Rice/HoneybeeLives, a Bee Tea Recipe that helps strengthen the bee's immune system, information about Better Bee, Beekeepers serving Beekeepers, a short video Call of the Honeybees to watch, and more.

During lunch, Debra read a verse entitled Short Course, written by Michael Goldman, a fellow participant in a beekeeping workshop she attended, and his words are what I leave you with -

Recall the honeybee's source in Spirit. Be calm in their mystery. Provide their natural circumstances as best you can. Allow their natural tendencies to emerge. Refrain from manipulating them. Keep selfish ends in check. They are connected to all things.

Wool Gathering

2009-03-16T18:11:00.001-07:00

It was fitting of Motherhouse to invite sheep to our Wool Gathering this past Saturday! They were Border Leicesters, the ram, a Blue-faced Leicester; "in theory this will result in softer wool, but no proof of that yet", says Jessica Marshall who keeps the sheep on her farm in Cornwall, CT. They seemed content to spend a few hours in front of Town Hall greeting us as we entered the beautiful old building.

At the Wool Gathering, some of us made a woolen pot-holder: picking out the colors, stretching the wool loops to fit on the loom, then weaving over, under, over, under.... to reach the final step, a tricky one, of taking the potholder off the loom.

Others made knitting needles, learned how to knit, or tried crocheting!

The biggest group was around the Needle Felting table, led by Deb Curran. Needle felting is the art of sculpting wool with a needle.

Unable to attend the workshop at the last minute, Rhonda Jaacks invites anyone who is interested to come to Harlequin Farm in Lime Rock, CT. There she is raising Finnsheep, a fabulous triple purpose sheep - good for producing a lean but flavorful meat, fleece, and also milk that can be made into cheese and yogurt. These friendly sheep are ideal for family farms or as fiber pets. Breeding stock and fiber is available at Harlequin Farm or arrange for spinning & knitting instruction with Rhonda. Call 860-435-9865 or email rjaacks@sbcglobal.net.

For resources and more details, visit Hands On/Wool Gathering on Motherhouse Market .

A Stitchin' Time

2009-01-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

Motherhouse started the new year with A Stitchin' Time workshop in our second Saturday of each month Old Style Life Skills Series (OSLSS). Check out the other OSLSS workshops planned for 2009 on the Motherhouse web site! There are some old favorites: Honey Bee Mine, the Wool Gathering, Keeping a Family Cow, and Yes, We Can Can, as well as some new ones, such as Sourdough Starter Course, The Whey of Cheesemaking, and Appley Ever After.

At A Stitchin' Time each family worked together to make a handy apron. The first step was to select a pattern and the fabrics - one main fabric and if desired, a contrast fabric for pockets.

We learned how to read the patterns. As each pattern had several variations, we had to identify the pattern pieces needed for the particular apron we were making and separate them from the rest.

We referred to diagrams in the patterns to see how to lay out the individual pattern pieces on the fabric. Does this fit?

Some of the patterns were creased from being folded, so we ironed them! This really helped in having the pattern lay smoothly on the fabric for pinning, the next step...

We pinned the larger pieces first, then positioned the smaller ones, placing all pieces as close together as possible. Some pieces had to be placed along a fold. Some had a grain-line arrow that meant the pattern piece had to be positioned so that the arrow ran parallel to the selvage, or finished edge, of the fabric.

Now, we were able to cut, carefully along the line... It is a good idea to have a pair of quality sharp scissors and only use them for cutting fabric, cutting paper will dull the blades.

Before we were able to do any sewing, we had to thread the machine. There were a variety of sewing machines at the workshop - a few Singers, a White, and a Brother.

We're off.....and sewing! It takes concentration and a steady foot on the pedal!

For hemming, we turned the fabric over twice for a neat edge, this helps to avoid fraying also.

Here is an apron with the pockets sewn on. Snow began falling and I had to leave and didn't see any of the aprons completely finished! I'd love to see them! If you were at the workshop, send me a photo of your apron and I'll post it here!

Update:Here are a few photos Debra took at the end of the workshop. She says: We were all so excited that my hands must have been shaking!

Aprons

I don't think our kids know what an apron is...

The principle use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.

It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.

When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.

And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms.

Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.

From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.

When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter or seconds.

When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.

Remember:

Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool.

Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.

Author Unknown

A Stitchin' Time

2009-01-10T14:37:00.000-08:00

Serious Dough

2008-12-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

We learned how to bake bread at Motherhouse's Old Style Life Skills Serious Dough Workshop on Saturday. It was a nourishing experience in many ways - Bread feeds us, unites us, and comforts us.

The first thing we did at the workshop was grind hard red wheat berries into flour. Each family needed enough whole wheat flour to make Basic Bread and Frankie's Irish Soda Bread. As you can see, it was a joint effort!

This Serious Dough workshop was the third bread baking workshop offered since Motherhouse began it's Old Style Life Skills Series in 2006. One of the attendees at the first workshop has been baking bread ever since! She returned to this workshop to demonstrate how she uses a Grain Mill Attachment on her Kitchen Aid.

With freshly ground flour in hand, each family paired up with another family. We warmed up some Local Farm milk and stirred in salt and honey. We mixed and worked in the flour. Our teacher and the founder of Motherhouse, Debra Tyler, told us our measurements didn't have to be exact. Every time we make bread it will be different, she said.

Debra had cubes of yeast as well as packages of dry yeast for the Basic Bread. Debra explained that yeast is a living organism and it would feed on the sugars in the flour and grow. As it grows, it gives off carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide from the yeast fills thousands of balloon-like bubbles in the dough and this is how yeasted bread rises. This is also what gives a loaf of bread it's airy texture, once baked.

Kneading the dough is one of the most fun and important steps in bread baking. To knead: Turn the dough out on a clean, floured work surface and flour your hands, as well. Using the heel of your hands, compress and push the dough away from you, then fold it back over itself. Give the dough a little turn and repeat this. You will get into a rhythm with these motions. Keep folding over and compressing the dough until it becomes smooth and slightly shiny. The most common test for "doneness" is to press it with your finger. If it springs back, it's ready for rising. Debra said that kneaded bread dough has been likened to a baby's bottom.

Time is as essential an ingredient as flour is in making bread - time for the dough to rise naturally. While making bread is an all day process, it doesn't take all day, Debra said. It just requires being attentive to it. If Debra is not going to be at home, she takes the bread she has started with her in the car, so that she can punch it down after rising. Everyone at the workshop took their Basic Bread dough home to let it rise for the second time and then bake.

We also made a quick bread - Frankie's Irish Soda Bread. Quick breads are quick in two ways, Debra explained. They do not contain yeast, so you don't have to set the dough aside to rise. They are also quick in how you handle them - mix just enough to combine the flour and other ingredients. If you handle quick bread too much it will be tough.

The Tassajara Bread Book is what got Debra, and many others, started baking bread. It was first published in the late 1960's and written by Edward Espe Brown, then a young Zen student who lived and worked at a Zen retreat named Tassajara, in Monterey County, Calif. Everyone at the Serious Dough Workshop went home with a copy of the 25th Anniversary Edition.

In a 2003 New York Times Magazine article, Flour Power, about Edward Espe Brown and his book, he says: ''When I was growing up, nobody could show me how to bake bread -- and it's only gotten worse. It seems such a shame that as a culture we don't teach our children about the basic things in life -- bread making, gardening, sewing -- and the value of work. At some point, all these things got to be beneath our dignity. If you can't work with your hands, you lose the richness of your life and the sense of being productive.''

He continues: ''In my book, I wanted in a small way to share the fact that you could actually learn skills in your life that would help you become able to take care of yourself. It's so simple. It's such a clear vision. People have the capacity to cook and garden and farm, and we don't use it. It's very sad to me that it's come to this."

Find resources and more details on Motherhouse Market for: the beautiful mixing bowls which were lent to Motherhouse by Cornwall Bridge Pottery for the workshop; the hard red wheat berries from Al Earnhart's Lightening Tree Farm; Hand-Turned Grain Mills; Celtic Sea Salt; Local Farm Milk; the Tassajara Bread Book; and recipes for Basic Bread and Frankie's Irish Soda Bread.

Before the flour, the grain.
Before the grain, the mill.
Before the mill, the earth,
the sun, the beauty of God's will.

Mother Daughter Retreat

2008-11-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

At the Mother Daughter Retreat last Saturday, we had a relaxing day of quiet activities for mothers and daughters to share. We put our hair in a do, made gifts in a jar, and ate lunch in a pocket!

Blood and Guts

2008-11-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

For thousands of years, people have been coming together to slaughter animals, prepare the various meats, and eat a meal. Although not common now a days, this is exactly what happened in the November Old Style Life Skills Workshop - Blood and Guts. Chris Hopkins and Francisco Alves led this workshop with gratitude for how animals nourish us. The emphasis was on how to use all the parts of an animal. A full report, with recipes, will be published soon on the Local Farm web site.

What's In A Pickle?

2008-10-23T10:37:00.000-07:00

It's just over a week since the OSLSS What's In a Pickle Workshop and I'm drinking the Beet Kvass we made that day. It is bubbly and tangy and I've grown to love it! I brought it home and let it sit on the counter to ferment. I shook it every day for a week before I began hearing it fizz. This, I learned at the workshop, meant that it was fermenting.

Jill Oneglia led the What's In a Pickle Workshop for Motherhouse and she explained what pickling is - a process of preserving food by fermentation in brine, to produce lactic acid. She referred to the cookbook Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. In addition to many recipes, Nourishing Traditions contains information about how pickling not only preserves food, but unlike modern preservation methods, the process of lacto-fermentation makes nutrients in foods more available, and supplies the intestinal tract with health-promoting lactic acid and lactic-acid-producing bacteria.

Nourishing Traditions is based on research done by a dentist, Dr. Weston Price, who studied the health and eating habits of isolated traditional societies. He found that, almost universally, all these peoples allowed grains, milk products and often vegetables, fruits and meats to ferment or pickle before they were eaten.

At the workshop Jill had us get started coring, chopping, and shredding cabbage for sauerkraut. We started with 1 medium cabbage; because the cabbages were so big, we cut them in half. The cabbages and other vegetables were from Chubby Bunny Farm.

In a large bowl, we mixed the shredded cabbage with 1 Tblsp of caraway seeds, 1 Tblsp of sea salt, and 4 Tblsp of whey.

We used wooden pounders Debra Tyler made to release the juices from the cabbage. Then we packed wide mouth quart jars with the cabbage and pressed down firmly with the pounder until the juices came to the top of the cabbage. The top of cabbage should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar. We covered the jars tightly and brought them home to keep at room temperature for about 3 days, Jill said better for 7 to 10 days, before storing in the refrigerator or cold storage. The Sauerkraut may be eaten immediately, but it improves with age.

At the workshop we also made Lactic Acid Fermented Butternut Squash with Lemons and Spice, Ginger Carrots, Fermented Red Cabbage, and the Beet Kvass that I already mentioned and am especially taken with. What is trully marvelous about pickling is neither refrigeration nor pasteurization is required; it is an ancient way (i.e. Old Style Life Skill) of preserving food that also improves health and makes delicious foods and drinks.

We enjoyed a pot-luck lunch together after all the chopping, shredding, and packing. At lunch time we sampled some jars of sauerkraut Jill had brought with her for us to try. She said she has two refrigerators at home, her husband bought her a second one for all of her experiments. Everything was delicious!

Jill gave us some tips for pickling: Use well or spring water, not chlorinated water, for all pickling; Date your jars; When you've drunk most of the Beet Kvass, you may fill up the jar with water and keep on the counter, at room temperature, for a few more days. This second batch will not be as strong as the first, but still good. After the second time, discard the beets and start again; Try to use fresh whey made from raw milk, if not available add another Tblsp of salt; Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon is a great resource to have.

Wreath Making Workshop

2008-10-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

knotty! knotty!
all tied up
a balient effort
knot at all abrading
tangled up
ensnarled
interwoven
entwined
all together
blessed be the tie that binds - Debra

Autumn We'd Walk

2008-10-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

A small group of women took an Autumn We'd Walk around Local Farm today. We'd Walks, in all seasons, are part of the Old Style Life Skills Series offered by Motherhouse. Founder Debra Tyler says it is especially important, she feels, for mothers to connect with the mother (earth) and she offers these walks as times to do so.

This We'd Walk had the extra distinction of being part of the CT History Hunt. Visit www.locallygrownhistory.org for more information about this program.

Our fearless leader, Alicia North of Northstar Botanicals, arrived with a car full of goodies and offered us each a cup of Holy Basil tea she had just made. Holy Basil or Tulsi is an herb native to India and revered for it's amazing healing power. Alicia said many people use Holy Basil to help counteract the effects of stress.

One of the first plants we encountered on our walk was a type of Plantain and Alicia told us we could eat the seeds at this time of year.

We dug up two types of Burdock roots. Debra is holding a Yellow Burdock plant above. The roots of these biennial plants can be harvested and eaten as a root vegetable. These plants have burrs in their second year, it is best to harvest the roots from first year plants and Fall is the time of year to do this. Alicia recommended roasting them with Dandelion and Chicory roots and also gave us a Burdock Pickle recipe.

We sampled some Rose hips from this wild rose bush just outside of the pasture. The cows had eaten all of the Rose hips on other bushes we passed. Rose hips are particularly high in Vitamin C. Alicia said the best time to collect Rose hips is after the first frost.

These Cattails growing in the culvert by the road are one of the most common wild foods, with a variety of uses at different times of the year. The early heads can be eaten like corn on the cob and the roots can be ground into flour. It was a staple for the American Indians, they put Cattail fluff into soups.

Near the end of our walk we passed Coltswood and Horsetails growing along the road. Herbalists have recommended Horsetail for joint pain and it was interesting to see that Horsetails themselves have joints. Alicia referred to a system known as the Doctrine of Signatures that Herbalists can use. By careful observation one can learn the healing properties of a plant from some aspect of it or where it is growing.

After our walk we gathered for a pot-luck lunch and tasted some Carrot HorseRadish Salad Alicia had made. I found that taking the time to see what is growing around me was fascinating and nourishing.

Pie in the Sky

2008-09-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

The Motherhouse Old Style Life Skills Pie in the Sky Workshop was described as follows: Celebrate harvest season with a homegrown pie. Pluck a ripe squash, collect eggs, make maple syrup, grind flour, and render lard to make a delicious “pumpkin” pie from scratch...

But as we gathered around the table in the milking room at Local Farm, Debra Tyler, founder of Motherhouse, handed us each a Pumpkin Pie recipe and told us she had gone shopping - to two supermarkets - and here were the ingredients for a pie. Were these ingredients really the makings of the Pie in the Sky? We wondered... Then we talked about each ingredient.... and how we could make the pie, from scratch, with what we had available around us... It was beginning to sound like Pie in the Sky....

The recipe called for 2 1/2 cups of pumpkin. Because there was butternut squash growing in the pasture at Local Farm, Debra said we could substitute squash for the pumpkin and off we went to the patch. Each of us picked a rosy colored squash to bring home. We left the greenish ones to ripen on the vine.

The next ingredient called for was 1 cup of sugar. Sugar comes from sugar beets and we didn't have any growing here. So instead we used local maple syrup. September isn't the time of year for collecting sap and boiling it to make the syrup, that time is in the early Spring when the night time temperatures are still below freezing but the days warm up. However, Margaret, Debra's daughter, demonstrated how a tree is tapped and the sap collected.

And lucky for us, Debra had some sap from last Spring, so we each tasted it.

We started the sap boiling early on in the workshop so that we could see how much syrup we would end up with. It takes some time. Because we were using a liquid sweetener in place of the white sugar, we substituted 1/2 cup maple syrup for the 1 cup of sugar.

The recipe also called for 1 can evaporated milk for the filling and 1/3 cup of butter for the crust. We could use milk from the Jerseys at Local Farm in place of the evaporated milk. Jersey milk is notoriously rich - rich in protein, fat, and minerals.

In order to make the butter, we needed cream, and to have the cream, we needed to get the milk and to get the milk, we needed to call a cow. Debra called for Lovely and in she came. Many hands tried milking Lovely, who is a very patient and beautiful Jersey.

Then we learned how to take the cream off of the milk, it is more of a sliding off then scooping motion. We took turns churning the butter.

We needed flour, 2 t. in the filling and 1 3/4 cup for the crust. We are fortunate to have locally grown wheat available from: Lightning Tree Farm in Millbrook, NY, 914-677-9507.

We learned about different types of mills and we took turns grinding the wheat berries, using two different types of grinders.

Along with the butter, the recipe called for 1/3 cup of lard to make the crust. Debra told us that lard makes the very best pastry, making it flaky, and butter is best for taste, so that is why we used both. We learned about the two types of fat from a slaughtered pig and we learned how to render the lard.

The recipe called for 4 eggs and since there are some laying hens at Local Farm we collected eggs from the nesting boxes.

There were a number of ingredients - salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla that are not available locally. Debra described their sources.

The butternut squash can be prepared in two different ways - cut up into cubes and cooked on the top of the stove or baked in the oven. Debra prefers baking it, as the flavor is preserved.

Here is a Pie in the Sky which we each sampled, made from scratch, following this recipe:

Mix:
2 1/2 cup pumpkin (we used butternut squash)
1 cup sugar (we used maple syrup)
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. ginger
2 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
1/4 t. cloves
2 t. flour

Add:
4 eggs
I can evaporated milk (we used Jersey milk)
4 t. water (we did not add because we used the liquid maple syrup)
1 t. vanilla

Pour into crust. Bake at 400 degrees for 45 - 50 minutes.

Crust:
1 3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup lard
1 tsp salt

Mix 'til like cornmeal. Add cold water by the Tblsp.

Build a Milking Stool

2008-09-08T17:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks again to the Arts Presentation Grant awarded to Motherhouse from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism to support it's Old Style Life Skills Series of Workshops, Joe Brien, Lost Art Workshops, was back at Local Farm on Sunday leading a Build a Milking Stool Workshop. In this workshop, participants rotated through a series of work stations called shaving horses as they learned how to hand craft a stool to take home.

Each building team was provided with a seat blank made of eastern white pine. Here are pictures of participants planing the seats:

Each building team was also provided with an assortment of kiln-dried hardwood branches to use for the legs. In this step, this father and son team are shaving a leg tenon:

Here a participant is drilling seat holes for the leg tenons:

Chiseling split into leg tenon:

Tapping wedge into split tenon:

Sawing wedged leg tenons flush with seat top:

Two pictures of cutting legs to length:

Marking legs to length to be cut:

And the final planing of the seat top:

Voila, the group with finished stools:

Building a Stanchion

2008-09-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

My daughter and I were one of six building teams at last Saturday's Build a Cow Stanchion Workshop, led by Joe Brien, Lost Art Workshops, and Izzy Fitch, Battle Hill Forge.

This workshop was another workshop made possible because of an Arts Presentation Grant awarded to Motherhouse from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism to support it's Old Style Life Skills Series of Workshops.

A stanchion consists of a framework with at least two vertical bars, one stationary, one movable, and is used to secure a cow for milking or for any other reason.

We assembled stanchions which can be mounted to an existing stall.

In addition to learning and using basic woodworking skills, each building team formed a 1/4 steel rod into a bail with blacksmith Izzy Fitch.

And here are a few of the stanchions, ready for future family cows...

A Family Cow featured in the New York Times

2008-09-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

If you read Sunday's New York Times on August 24th, and got to the Connecticut/In The Region section, you would have seen the large photograph taken at a Motherhouse Family Cow workshop including the caption "With food and fuel costs rising, some families have opted to keep cows. From left, Alice, Peter and Rosie Villano at a family cow workshop in Cornwall Bridge. Page 2" Turning to page 2, is the article "In the Backyard, Not Just a Garden, but Cows" with another photo, this one of Debra Tyler, founder of Motherhouse, showing how to milk a cow by hand at a workshop. If you missed it, read it online at www.nytimes.com.

From The New York Times, August 24, 2008 © 2008 The New York Times All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.