We are an ASC

That one plum tree can put out so much fruit is boggling. The tree overwhelmed us this year, making up for last year’s  plum absence. We suspect there was a frost then, unnoticed by us as the tree was in full flower. This year the tree flowered and then fulfilled on its promise.

One branch of plums provided for eight pints of plum chutney (click here for the recipe), another branch for another eight pints. Yet another branch allowed for six bags of plums to be frozen for pie fillings, cobblers, and crisps. All of this canning and freezing turned my fingers brown with the tannin, and used up only about half of the plums.

Naively hoping that one baked dish would use up the rest of them, I baked a cobbler. Foolish me. I then picked two dutch ovens-full and prepped them for jam. Again, I went through the routine. Washed, plucked stems, halved, pitted, lemoned, and filled two large cooking pots. That was it; I’d had it. I was done.

Out to the tree I went and picked every last plum. Relieved every last sagging branch. Got out the Japanese handsaw and cut down a really tall branch that I could not reach. I plucked it all clean. I did not wash, stem, pit or lemon these. Packed them into grocery bags and carted them off.

To the local food pantry. This felt good. Bags of plums that I do not have to process. We signed up with the local Cooperative Extension for them to quantify our donations. Last year, gardeners in this county contributed 40,000 pounds of produce to food pantries. Many farmer/gardeners have become CSA's: Community Supported Agriculture. We are now an ASC: Agriculture in Support of Community. This, too is a good feeling. It feels gratifying. It seems like this connection is one that can work for us. -jmm

Plum or Peach Cobbler

Cobbler is something we look forward to this time of year as the tree fruits ripen. Easy to make, and freezes well. This is my adaptation of several cobbler recipes; some use a lumpy, biscuit-like dough, but I like mine smooth...! This recipe makes a lightweight dough that seems to compliment the fruit. Delectable! 

Plum Cobbler 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine in a mixing bowl and mix well, then place into an 8 x 8-inch baking pan, or a glass 7 x 9-inch oven-proof glass pan (with a plastic lid for frige or freezer storage):

6 cups halved, pitted plums or sliced peaches

Dash of lemon juice

1/2 cup raw organic sugar (not needed if the fruit is very sweet)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp cornstarch

Place in a mixing bowl and mix thoroughly:

1 or 2 eggs, slightly beaten.

1/2 cup honey or raw organic sugar

6 tablespoons butter, melted

1/3 cup sour cream

1/3 cup water

Combine in a small bowl and mix well, then fold into the egg mixture:

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

Place spoonfuls of the batter onto the fruit, and spread to cover. Bake for 30 minutes until the fruit mixture is bubbling and the topping is lightly browned.

To thaw a frozen cobbler, place covered in oven for 20 to 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

Midsummer Pie

Makes one 9-inch pie

Fruits and berries are ripening, so why not celebrate with a scrumptious fruity pie! Our garden has provided the fruits listed in the recipe, but feel free to experiment with the fruits in your garden, or with some of this and some of that purchased at a farmers market. Combinations including berries of any type, apples, peaches or other stone fruits will work for this recipe.

Blueberries ripening

Filling

6 cups of mixed fruits such as raspberries, blueberries, rhubarb

1/2 cup raw sugar

1/4 cup of whole whear flour

1 tbsp cinnamon

Place ingredients into a large bowl, stir thoroughly. If you are using apples or stone fruits, add a dash of lemon juice, and stir. Allow the filling to sit for 15 minutes while making the streusel topping and the pastry crust.

Streusel Topping

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup raw sugar

2 tbsp molasses

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup chilled butter

Place the raw sugar and molasses into a bowl and mix until they are combined. Add the flour and cinnamon and mix well. Add the chilled butter, cutting it in with a pastry blender until the mixture is a coarse texture. Set aside. 

Single Pie Crust

1 cup minus 2 tbsp of whole wheat flour

Dash of salt

1/4 cup chilled butter

1/4 - 1/2 cup of ice cold water

Place flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Stir well to combine. Using a pastry blender, cut in half of the butter until the mixture resembles small peas. Cut in the remaining butter. Sprinkle with a small amount of ice water and toss with a fork. Repeat until the dough holds together when you pick it up and press it together. Place the dough onto a floured surface and press it flat. With a dough roller, roll out the dough into a circle a bit larger than the pie plate. Fit the dough into the pie plate, fold the edges under and crimp.

Scoop the filling into the pastry crust. Evenly spread the streusel over the top.

Bake for ten minutes at 425 degrees, then turn oven temp down to 350, and bake for 30 additional minutes or until topping is browned and filling is bubbling.  -jmm

A Tree Stump in the Oasis

Carving a place for a house out of woodlands leaves plenty of stumps behind. Although most of them have been excavated or cut even with the ground (a lot easier than digging them up), the one in the middle of the oasis (see the oasis post here) has stuck around. It dates back to when the house was built, making it about fourteen years along.

The oasis, an area between house and driveway and with a pathway separating it from the rose garden was a little isolated area of forest. It had several sweet birch trees and assorted undergrowth. This oasis was my first experience with transforming forest into cultivated land. I went up the road to the hardware and bought an ax.

A good place for heather 

After the trees were out, I added some plants into the area. Around the base of the stump seemed like a good place for heather that had been brought from the previous residence. And it seems happy there. Its long stems lie against the stump making it look like it is rooted into it. An illusion- the roots grow into the ground around the stump.

Colorful things grow on the stump

After fourteen years the stump has a patina like an antique thing covered in mosses and lichens. Quite beautiful with all of those tiny, tiny things thriving on it. It’s a true wonder. 

A parking place for containers

The stump is useful for more than propping up heather. It’s also a parking place for rusted and earthen containers- yard art in lieu of pink flamingos. Aged, rusty, dented, torn and chipped, the objects seem right at home on top of the mossy, rotting stump.

How long does it take for a stump to rot? Will the rusty bucket give way before the wood turns pucky? By virtue of its natural beauty it deserves a spot in the oasis and will stay until it finally rots into nothing. It’s kind of nice to have a stump in the yard that will not have to be wrangled out of the ground. -jmm

Arugula Salad

A thickly sown patch of arugula is about to go to seed. This plant really should be succession planted- sowing the seeds every week or every two weeks throughout the growing season. But, with all kinds of non-gardening stuff happening this year, it was easier to plant it all at once. 

And now, there is a lot of it. First, I made an organic pasta salad, lining the bowl with bright green arugula leaves. I took it to a pot luck and it went over extremely well. Next, I made pesto, substituting arugula for basil, and using it as a topping for mashed potatoes. Mmmm, very tasty. Tonight, I made arugula salad. Try this and you will never go back to ordinary lettuce. And there is still more arugula out there in the garden. Ideas, anyone?

Serves two.

3 cups freshly picked and washed arugula leaves

1/2 cup almonds, halved

1 pear, cored and sliced

2 oz. chèvre (goat cheese)

your favorite olive oil viniagrette dressing

Cut or tear the arugula into bite sized pieces and place into a salad bowl. Add the dressing, and toss. Arrange the nuts, fruit and cheese over the top.

Substitutions: use walnuts in place of the almonds, and apple instead of the pear. -G.H.

Stinging Nettle, Part 2

Yarn, potherb, butterflies, tea, and fodder: 

what’s not to like?

(Click here for the earlier post about Nettle). Besides its reputation as a weed, nettle is considered to be a herb. So, what is a herb? According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, a herb is "a plant or plant part valued for its medicinal, savory, or aromatic qualities." In the case of nettle, we can rule out aromatic since it isn’t very scented. This plant actually has more in store for us than the remaining two qualities of medicinal and savory would indicate. Although it is a sting-eee weed, nettle has some interesting benefits.

Essential for a butterfly garden

If you have a garden area for harboring butterflies, consider nettle if it is not there already. According to Wikipedia, there are between 24 and 39 different varieties of nettle, and not all of them sting. They are food for caterpillars- your future Red Admiral, Peacock, Comma, and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies eat it. 

Good for knitting

The stalk of the plant is fibrous. Nettle fiber is processed in a way similar to flax; a labor-intensive process that involves rotting away the unusable parts, and then carding and spinning the resulting fiber. Nettle yarn is similar to linen; both are stringlike and the knitted fabric has a soft luster. Not an easy thing for d.i.y.; click here for an artist’s blog post showing her experiment with making nettle yarn.

A drawstring bag knitted of nettle yarn

A fresh green to eat in late spring

In late spring, before the garden gets going, nettle leaves are available for a potherb. So, what’s a potherb? According to a dictionary app for iPad, a potherb is "any herb prepared as food by cooking in a pot." Only the young leaves of nettle should be eaten. The book, A Modern Herbal*, says to pick the leaves when the plant is no more than 6 to 8 inches tall. Instructions in the same book say to wash the nettle, then to place it into a saucepan without adding any extra water, and to cook it with the lid on for twenty minutes. After cooking, drain, and chop it. Then eat it as is, or sauté in butter with salt and pepper to taste. Cooked nettle can be added to any dish that calls for greens or spinach. Use it in place of chard in the recipe, Swiss Chard Pie.

You can make beer out of it

The Modern Herbal gives a recipe for making nettle beer. I also googled “nettle beer” and found a number of sites with recipes. Click here for one of them.

Squelch your allergies

Nettle is said to help suppress seasonal allergies because it contains antihistamines which help relieve nasal congestion and sneezing. Nettle can be used either dried or green as tea for allergy relief. According to The Modern Herbal (a very useful book!), steep two to three tablespoons-worth of leaves in a cup of hot water for ten minutes. 

Add it to the medicine cabinet

Research turned up a number of medicinal uses for the herb. These include using the juice of nettle for stopping nosebleeds and certain types of internal bleeding. A tea of nettle is good for purifying the blood, and is also said to be good for the kidneys. Another old timey prescription consists of flogging oneself with fresh nettle in order to ease rheumatism or to warm oneself in cold weather. Do your own research before trying any of these, and let it be known that this blog is not a recommendation for any particular use of nettle. 

Benefits and hazards for livestock

Nettle is said to be useful for supplementing livestock feed- apparently containing too much protein to be used by itself. Added to feed, cows give more milk, hens lay more eggs, and the health of a sickly horse improves. This isn’t, however, something to grow in a pasture. Grazing animals prefer to avoid it, and it must be cut and dried for them to eat it. Here is a source telling how a horse develops a painful skin rash from rolling in nettle.

Great for compost

This plant makes a good garden helper and compost builder. Nettle tends to prefer good soil. Look for vigorous growth, strong stems and healthy green leaves. Wimpy growth is telling you the soil needs a boost. As nettle grows, the plants absorb nutrients from the soil. Cut the plants back and toss them onto the compost pile to reclaim these valuable nutrients.

That’s eight great reasons to nurture at least a small patch of nettle near to the garden or pasture. Our little patch recently flowered. On one of the hottest days of this summer I clothed myself from head to toe. And then chopped the patch to the ground. Now, there are little sprigs of leaves coming in, and I’m using them for tea. -jmm

*A Modern Herbal, by Mrs. M. Grieve, originally published in 1931, and republished by Dover Books in 1971.

Sustainable Paper Products

Do you think about paper? 

We are all familiar with recycling. Cardboard, newspaper, office paper, telephone directories, magazines, and scraps from paper manufacturing can be remade into new paper. One advantage of using this recycled paper is that less paper ends up in landfills. The US Environmental Protection Agency reports that 28% of landfill content is paper.

A bag of paper awaiting recycling

Recently, I did some research for a resort. They wanted to know whether the paper products that they had been using could be more sustainable. Here is some of what I learned.

There are two processes for making paper products that are considered sustainable. These are paper recycling, and making paper from tree plantations using rapidly renewable virgin fiber. Both of these processes are recognized for LEED* certification, receiving equal point values. There are variances in the two processes, with each having different effects on the environment.

The use of plantations is an idea that took me by surprise. Can you guess what this means: Rapidly Renewable Virgin Fiber? if you guessed trees, you are right. The trees are used to make toilet paper, tissues, and paper towels for use in resort and hotel settings. Trees grown on these plantations are fast growing types such as poplar which produce harvestable materials on a six to eight year cycle. This helps to save our native and old-growth forests, keeping more carbon absorbing trees in our precious forests.

It's great to know that resorts are choosing between sustainable paper options. Now, if I could just get them to put solar panels on the roofs... -G.H.

*Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design- a program that documents sustainable practices for businesses and residences committed to protecting the environment.