Organic Gardening: Peas & Cues

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

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

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

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.