Wreath Making Workshop

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

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

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

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: