March 30 Herbwalk

The weather was awful for an herbwalk, but Evelyn was in town all the way from Tennessee, and she was still game. I actually like hiking in the misty cool rain, but you know, this is not typical of most folks. The bench pictured below was our destination for the day. There are a lot of different woodland plants to see, even so early in spring. I don't have the other pictures downloaded yet, these are from Evelyn's camera - thank you Evelyn for sending them and I hope you don't mind that I've posted them to my blog!We saw a few things poking their heads up after a long winter's rest. Among them were adam-n-eve orchid leaves. I have a picture of one we dug up to look at the root and the baby root (or the 'Eve' root) coming off of it. I'll upload it later when I get it off the camera. Mayapples were just beginning to open their umbrella-like leaves. Chickweed is in good form and ready for harvest. The ginseng is still fast asleep, as is the goldenseal. Bloodroot would have been flowering full-blast, but the recent rains tattered their dainty petals completely off except for a few here and there. Dutchman's britches have leaves out. We stopped to take our lunch break under the big rock. Here's Evelyn in late March. Later I'll post the plants in late March, too :)

Here's me, looking more tattered than the bloodroot blossoms, haha! I'm dressed for cool drizzly rain, but the rain suit was a little warmer than I wished at some points. Walking up steep hills gets the blood moving, that's for sure!

I'll post more later.

Fencing Project

The horses have been getting out by going up the logging road and over to a neighbor's place. This weekend I finished a project I started last weekend. Fencing here is not very easy because there are a lot of rocks! So my fence is not straight - it goes from tree to tree. Here at the big rock there is no tree and no way to get a t-post into the ground...On the other side of the big rock, there are a couple small caves. The one on the left goes in quite a ways and we haven't gotten to the end of it yet. 'I' haven't gone in much at all, hahaha, but I stayed outside and talked to Garrison while ~he~ went inside. This is heading back to the beginning now.

This is the logging road behind our house; I believe it is how the horses are getting out.
And the mountain over there is the one they keep going to - the pasture is on the other side! It is about 2 miles taking the county road to get there, or maybe a mile taking the logging road.

This is how I made the fence strands tight, by twisting a stick on it. Later, when the fence loosens up, I can tighten it more.

Flooded Again!

Frank called to tell me I'd best stay put and then said if I can get down to the creek it would make a good picture. Well, I couldn't get to the creek because the driveway is too flooded to get past it. Don had called Frank and told him the water was up to our mailboxes down by the creek. The 'creek' he is referring to is where the road crosses the creek to go up past his house. The creek in the driveway is the same creek, just normally it is not in my driveway so much! The place I wanted to get a picture is all the way to the end of my driveway, but I'll have to wait til this water slows down some before I try to cross. And by then it might not be at the mailboxes any more, LOL.

Land Locked!

The usual way out is impassable (see above) and the back way out is too high, too (see below). A general rule of thumb is if the water is over the center of the tire, it's too dangerous to cross. The back way is about up to the top of the wheels and would come in under the door. I've lost a dog to the bridge when the water was high on the front way out a couple years ago. She managed to swim out, but she was a large dog and was swept off the edge like a little piece of flotsam. Sure convinced me to never try crossing that bridge with the water high! Water has a tricky way of looking shallow or easy to cross when it is high like this. Since we moved here the locals have always called to warn us not to attempt to cross when they see the water looking like this, or they will let us know that it's okay to cross if they know it's moving slow or not too deep. I sure appreciate them sharing their knowlege like this!

First signs of Spring

It's beginning to at least SOUND like spring at my house. This morning I heard a crow's call when I woke, and some other bird song that I don't hear all winter. It warmed my spirit and really gives me hope that yes, winter is almost done. Today temperatures will climb to the 70's but by tomorrow night we are expecting a severe winter storm with ice and snow accumulation. That's a wild swing, but hopefully this is winter's last throes. Oh! I saw daffodils blooming on the roadside yesterday, too. There used to be such things here, but I think the horses have eaten anything green that might have come up over the last few weeks. The tulips that have escaped their attention must be getting ready to bloom by now, too.

Dreary Days

It is so time for Spring. Last weekend I was sick and this weekend will be dreary again. It is time for Winter to move on out and let some good gardening weather in! I don't have much to write about today, I'm still recovering from a bout with the flu or something similar and it has sapped my creative energy for now. The picture of the beebalm is from last year's garden. I moved it to my new garden, but not sure if it will come back or not. I hope so, but if not, I have seeds on standby. Beebalm is a great hummingbird, butterfly, and medicine plant. I use it in my cold/flu tea and tinctures, but last year I didn't harvest any tea supplies at all. This is the first time in many years that I've gotten the flu, and wouldn't you know it would happen when I am least prepared?? This year, I will be harvesting the necessary ingredients all year long as they become available. Send me an email if you'd like to be notified when the tea is ready, if you'd like a sample. I'll put you on my mailing list. The tea usually includes things like beebalm flowers/leaves, echinacea flowers, yarrow flowers, elderberry flowers and berries, lemon balm leaves, heal-all flowers and leaves. And maybe other things I run across that would add useful qualities to the mix, like spicebush berries and twigs and peppermint and other wild mints. Last year I found a really nice little wild peppermint and I forgot that I intended to transplant some to my garden. I'll have to remember to go look for it when the weather clears up.

Hey, it won't be long before it is time for the first spring herb walk! Be sure to send me an email if you want to be put on the mailing list - the first walk is scheduled for Mar 22 or 23 (can't remember which day and I can't see the sidebar while making this post, LOL). But that's about when the bloodroot starts to bloom and a few of the other woodland plants begin to pop out and show leaves.

Last weekend Gary and I raked pine needles and refreshed the chickens nest boxes with it. The horses kept poking their heads in and eating all the hay before, so we thought maybe pine needles would last longer. Well, the hens must be happy! Five eggs yesterday and the first white egg from our spangled hamburg hen, to boot. We have been planning to make lots of chicken jambalya if they didn't start laying soon, so maybe they have redeemed themselves now ;)

In other news, Gab's brown recluse spider bite has almost completely healed and it doesn't even look like it will leave a scar. This is excellent news because this bite was on her forehead! She did get the standard medical treatment for it, plus I had her keep a clay pack on it most of the time during the early stages. The clay contained herbal tincture of myrrh, goldenseal, comfrey and cloves as well. I think a person may also gain some resistance to the venom, because this one reacted less than the bite last year.

Zack has started the driving part of his CDL classes and he is thrilled - he feels like this is what he was destined to do with his life, loves it as much as he loves hunting. Now that is saying a lot for him! He did say it is very hard to learn how to make turns, but he will get more practice on that today.

The horses have been in my new garden. I must finish the fence this weekend, even if I have to go out in the ice to do it because they'll tear up all the work we did last weekend if I don't. There's nothing growing in it for them to eat, they just like to check out all the new rows...and three horses walking around in soft ground spells disaster.

I've started a seed swapping blog. If you would like to offer heirloom or organic seeds to trade, please join me. Send me an email and I'll add you as an author to the blog. If you don't want to join, then keep an eye on the posts and chip in whenever you feel like it.

This weekend was a good and productive one. First, I made up our household budget. This was a sorely needed chore that I've been putting off for a long time. Now that it's all organized I am happy. On Sunday I worked in the garden all afternoon. Now there are 4 tilled rows and 2 of them are planted. On the first row we have Bull's Blood beets. There is 100' of beets and they should be ready to pull right as it is time to put in the artichoke transplants in that same row. On the second row we have 25' of red onions, 25' of yellow onions, 25' sweet peas (Lincoln), 20' Lady Finger Carrots, and 5' Red Globe radishes. The peas will give way to the snap beans and the radishes to lettuce. Row 3 and 4 are unplanted right now because I just ran out of time. It will be raining too much this week and likely next weekend to do much more in the garden for now, but I will be working on the fences if the weather allows.

What did you do this weekend?

Yesterday my daughter and I groomed our horses. Mine has a wavy mane and tail that gets little wringlet knots in it and they're very difficult to unwind. But I managed to get them all undone this time. He also has very long hair on his jaw and legs, LOL, he looks like a wooly mammoth. This spring I will begin working with him and riding some, but he'll only be 2 in May and I'd like to give him another full year of growth before I ride him often. We'll get a lot of the ground lessons started, though.

Bobbie Sue and Pooter (the dogs) were busy trying to dig up a mole. Just when Bobbie Sue closed in for the kill, I ran and snatched it up by the scruff of it's neck so I could get a look at him. I've only seen pictures, never seen a real mole before. Boy! They are fiesty little critters! He kept trying to turn around and bite me, and I know he must have been terrified, but I wanted to hold him long enough for the kids to get a look at him, too. Some people think they're ugly and I'm sure most would think I should have killed him, but to me he was cute with his huge front paws and long little nose. And as long as they stay out of my garden, I don't care if they till everywhere else. They can even till in the garden out of season and I'll be happy with it.

Speaking of the garden, I was out there on Saturday. I took down the bean trellis and moved it out of the future perennial garden. The pieces are lying in the future annual garden waiting for their new life. While I was there I noticed all the mole trails and saw that they completely avoided the garlic rows. So I am thinking that I will plant a garlic boundary around the entire garden. That might help with both deer and moles. I hung the bluebird box while I was out there too. I've been seeing them on the roadsides, maybe they are scoping out spring nesting areas. I want a family to move in by my garden this year.

While thinking about a book I am writing, the POV it needs came to me all of a sudden. Going over it in my mind, it is definitely the right one! All the ideas are flowing better now, so I'd better get busy with it.

If you've never read 'The Essential Herbal', now is a great time to find out more about it! Click on the link and it will take you to a free online issue. This is a great little herbie magazine with articles about herbs ranging from culinary, to medicinal, to folklore usage. The advertising is non-obtrusive and the products and companies are those that we herbal folks want and need to know about anyway. Try it, you'll like it :)

Okay, today is going to be a work related post. I have to tell you what the guys have done in the lab! We got a sample in, oh, it might have been a couple years ago now. This sample smells soooooo badly that it has earned a permanent place on the lab director's bench. Not only that, it also earned a name: Mean Joe. The guys love to open this sample from time to time to make the lab smell really really bad. Imagine the worst smelling baby diaper you've ever encountered and it is worse than that. They've been trying to have it smelling real bad like this when the Cintas guy comes to pick up our towels, but they keep missing him. This morning they made a pre-emptive strike and took the cap off the jar and left it off, letting the air in the room become so thick you have to cut your way through it to get to the door for a breath. Of course, the Cintas guy is running late. I just wanted to talk a little bit about this, it's one of the things that makes life interesting around here. I'm going out for air now!

Today Gary helped me gather horse manure. We applied it to the row I tilled yesterday - and it's actually 115'. I know because we measured it today...seems my estimating was a little off, lol. On that first row will be a 3-sisters planting every 3 feet. So that will 38 hills with 3 corn stalks each... so, 114 plants with hopefully more than one ear each. I sure hope the horses, deer, coons, and bears cooperate to let me have some corn this year! We will get the fence up before I plant anything, or I can guarantee nothing will survive.

Here's the first row of the new garden. This will be a fairly large endeavor and will supply our family and our little CSA's members with some good eating this year. The new addition measures about 100' x 30'. This is nice sandy loam, but it's low in organic matter so I will be adding amendments to make it better. Every year the soil condition will get better and every winter I'll grow a green manure to incorporate every spring. Right now it is too early to plant anything, but soon the sweet peas and beets, turnips and carrots will go in. I am collecting bagged leaves, so if you live in the vicinity and have some to donate to the cause, I will pick them up!

Here's a new blog for you to visit; it belongs to my friend Dena: http://giftsofgodherbals.blogspot.com/

She makes and sells all sorts of excellent herbal formulations. I use her super tonic and tooth and gum formulas all the time and they work great for me. She also has pretty much every single tincture you can think of, and if you happen to ask for one she doesn't have, I'll bet she can get one together for you.

Today was one of the best days I've had in a long time. The weather was perfect, not too cold and not too hot. I planted some more ginseng seeds, laid out the garden and planned what was going to go where this year, cleaned up around the outside of the house, and caught one of the new hens on the nest laying an egg. Gary brought Garrison to basketball practice, so I had most of the day to do whatever I wanted. Right now, a pot of coffee is brewing and I'm going to go outside and sit on the swing and enjoy the end of a wonderful day. I hope your day was as good as mine was ;)

I took a survey today to see what the kids wanted most out of the garden this year. Asparagus was top on the list from Gabrielle, Garrison wants carrots and corn and peas. Zack likes turnips and radishes, but both he and Gary especially want some beets. I know my daddy doesn't want onions and garlic, but I have to plant those! I have green beans and potatoes planned, so I think he'll eat those. Momma probably likes most of what I'll grow.

It's hard to not plant things too early when the weather is nice like weekend before last. But this past weekend was typical January weather and I stay inside when it's like that. Cold, drizzly and windy. Yuck! And last year's lesson stuck pretty good. That late freeze snared a lot of gardeners who thought it was safe to plant already.

The kids at Garrison's school say I'm crazy for thinking I can grow figs up here. But my fig tree is very happy sitting under the window in a pot in my living room and it is putting on new leaves. This year, it will make figs and Garrison can bring them to class to prove I'm not so nuts after all. I'm going to make sure and not put it out too soon, especially not until after mid-April. And then later this summer I will build a cage around it so I can mulch it heavy all winter and not have to bring it inside every year like that.

If you like to write, you will be interested in this website I stumbled upon today. It is full of inspirational stories and blog entries and very useful information! It's called "Writers on the Rise" and its a site good for beginners and seasoned writers alike. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Something that occurs to me is this. Yes, it is important to be truthful in everything I say. But it is also important to know when to speak and when not to speak. That kind of discernment seems to me to be harder than simply telling the truth. If I am committed to saying only truths, then there is no judgment needed in that respect on my part. Judging WHETHER to speak sometimes is very difficult. Another difficulty is in deciding HOW to speak, what words to choose. An artist can paint a picture in many different styles, and it still portrays the same scene - but some styles are more easily looked upon than others. The same applies to the spoken word and the written word.

Those are my ponderous words to guide me for the new year :)

Today is the start of a new year and a new month. I feel optimistic. The seeds came in for the spring garden and each seed represents the hope and promise of good things to come!

What is on the menu for today? I am cooking a duck gumbo to bring to work tomorrow. The guys marked it on the calendar to make sure I'd remember. It's hard to find good sausage out here, and even harder to find andouille, but I found some and that fact is very encouraging, LOL. Usually, we have family members bootleg good cooking supplies from down south, but its nice to know that I can at least get those two items locally now. But to eat for today we are having corn beef, cabbage, and black eyed peas. That is our traditional New Year's Day fare. It is supposed to bring good luck. Oh, and I'll try to make another cornbread with grits, and another pie - but this time I'm using store bought crust. It's good to know I ~can~ make it if I have to, but I sure like being able to buy it from the grocery when I'm in a pinch for time.

Plans for this year not only include an awesome garden for our CSA members and our family, but also include getting Comanche ready for me to ride. He'll be 2 in May and although I don't want to ride him much yet because I like to wait until he is 3 for regular riding, he is old enough to learn to carry my weight and follow commands. So we'll start with the ground work when the weather gets nicer and from time to time I'll sit on him and let him get used to that feeling. He's such a good boy already that I don't think this will be too hard for him. When he's 3 I want to start using him to get me and my supplies out to my ginseng patch and forest gardens. I also want to get a buckboard wagon fitted to him so I can pull a vegetable cart to the farmer's market if the economy all comes tumbling down anytime soon, LOL. But he's not a stocky horse and may not be built for that kind of labor. I'd love to have a draft horse for that sort of thing, though.

The experiment is done. Okay, the pie came out good. It tastes just like pumpkin pie - except it's made with cushaw instead of pumpkin. The crust was even good, which surprised me. However, there was a complete and miserable failure with the meringue. Apparently, you can't make one with a blender. Or else I did something else wrong. I am not sure, but when I get a mixer I'll try that part again. Maybe I'll try the whole thing over again, but it better not ever take so long to make a pie again!

I'm trying something new right now. I'm making a pie from scratch! I know, this is probably old hat for a lot of you, but I've never made a pie completely from scratch before. Starting with the cushaw squash that my neighbor grew. It took me more than an hour to cut up and peel the squash - that was a chore! Then I added too much water to the cut up squash and it took all day yesterday and today to cook it out. But now the squash filling is ready and the pie crust is in the refrigerator getting ready for me to roll out. I made the pie crust too, and I sure hope all this tastes good in the end because I've never heard of someone spending TWO days making ONE pie, LOL. Hopefully, it won't take so long next time because now I know what I did wrong and will do it better next time. There will be a next time if this pie holds at least enough promise to make it worth a next time :)

It's a yucky drizzly rainy day. But I did get out and plant some ginseng seeds before it got too bad. I'll have plenty potted seedlings to sell again this year and enough to plant some out in the woods too.

"Word of the Year
Editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary announced their "word of the year" and this year ... "locavore" is it! Congratulations are in order to Chelsea Green author Jessica Prentice (Full Moon Feast) who is one of four women to coin the phrase (actually they use the word locavore without the second "l" as in location as has been adapted elsewhere in the country and used as localvore) and spark a food movement that continues to grow in popularity as people become more aware of the benefits of supporting their local food systems and reducing the amount of food they eat that is trucked in from hundreds and hundreds of miles away."

Link to Oxford site: http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/locavore/

From Chelsea Green’s e-newsletter 12/07

Shrimp Etouffee. Another great way to use green onions, and also garlic and celery from the garden! This dish was prepared by my husband today. Too bad he's down in Louisiana visiting his daughter and grandaughter and not up here.

Today's project was to move the old iguana cage and turn it into my seed-starting mini-greenhouse. It's very heavy so I had my oldest son help me move it. The ground where it is has a drop of about 1' for every 5', and the cage is about 5' deep, so I had to stack rocks under the back end a foot high to make it semi-level.

It didn't go well the first time. I had almost all the the rocks stacked and needed just one more under the front end to make it look just right. Well, when I lifted the front end to slide the rock under, it started an avalanch on the other end and the whole thing slipped off the little walls I'd so meticulously, but apparently not correctly, stacked. Yes, some mortar would make it a lot stronger, but I don't have time for that today. Ha, but I have time to stack the whole thing over again!

Finally got it mostly finished, at least enough to keep the chickens out of it. Still need to drape the plastic over it and make some shelves inside, but I won't need it until later on anyway. I have a picture of it to post, but the picture loader wasn't working a while ago. I'll try it again in a minute.

My friend Dena will be doing the seed starting, for the most part, but this mini-green house will allow me to hold seedlings and start a few seeds of my own. Without the cage, the chickens wreak havoc. The garden is not right here by the house, so they don't bother that. I do have a little garden by the house, but covering the roots of the plants with feed sacks weighed down with rocks seems to be enough to keep them from dying. But last season the chickens were still very small. This year they might be ravenous for that to work. We'll see.

Just wanted to post this recent picture of Comanche :) He's such a sweetie! I can't wait to begin riding him, but he's only a yearling right now. This has nothing to do with herbs, or gardening, or writing, but horses are my first great passion and I couldn't resist putting his pic up here for ya'll to see.

Whooo-hoooo! Today I got the news that my little grandbaby Lillie will get to go home for the first time tomorrow. She is 6 weeks old and hasn't been home yet. Her mom is so happy to finally be able to have her home and get a schedule of normalcy to both of their lives. Lillie was born with CF and was having trouble gaining weight. Now she is taking some pancreatic enzymes and hopefully all will be well from now on.

I haven't been very good at making regular blog entries, I know. But I have been writing a lot in other places, LOL. Does that count? I need to work on my websites, but my program isn't working (FrontPage) because my computer crashed and now it won't reload. I'm not good enough at HTML to make many changes without the WYSIWYG type of program and I just don't have time to learn it right now. Maybe Santa will bring me a new computer for christmas and all the stuff I need will be already loaded onto it...

Corn Bread Recipe

This recipe came about quite by accident, it was an experiment that turned out really good! It is true what they say about necessity being the mother of invention :) After I had all the flour, eggs, and other ingredients in the bowl, I discovered that my cornmeal was rancid. The only other thing I had to use was the yellow grits. This cornbread makes a nice large-crumb cake style cornbread. I like mine on the sweet side, but if you don't like yours so sweet, use less sugar. It is delicious with red beans and rice!!

2 cups coarse ground yellow grits (preferably from pawpaw's gristmill)
2 cups self rising flour
1 heaping tsp baking powder
1 level tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs (preferably nice, dark yellow yolked ones from the hens outside)
enough milk to make a runny batter

Put all the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Heat the stove to 350, oil a cast iron skillet, with enough oil to have a little extra to rise up around the batter when you pour it in, and let it get hot in the oven while you mix the cornbread ingredients. I don't have a mixer, so I just stir till all clumps are broken up and the eggs are well blended.

Pour the batter into the hot skillet and bake until golden brown and the sides are pulling away from the skillet. This makes a fairly dense cornbread, so the test method of inserting a knife might not work so well.

My husband had two boxes of Jiffy mix out waiting for the failure of this recipe, haha, but we didn't need them.

Enjoy!

This weekend I harvested the short row of green onions I had planted late this summer. My neighbor laughed because I was planting onions at this time of year, but these are not bulbing onions and they grew plenty enough for what I needed. You can use the whole onion, including the bottoms, but I cut them off at about 3" so I can replant the bottoms. This herb is essential, it is the essence, of cajun cooking! I know the hispanics use it in their dishes, too, so I can never have enough of it. It is delicious added fresh on top of chili and mexican rice, and it is delicious added fresh on top of a steaming bowl of chicken and sausage gumbo. It is delicious cooked in with crawfish stew or rabbit sauce picante, with a fresh handful added right before pulling off the fire. I just can't cook good food without them!

And I have more to say about these green onions, lol. These are special because they came from my grandpa's garden. He gave me the bulbs and now they've all divided several times over and I can plant many times more next year than I planted this year. I'll sell them at the farmer's market and through my little CSA, and I'll offer an incentive to return the bottoms to me so I can plant them again. So this is an heirloom plant and it's one I dearly love for many reasons.

Wild and wild-simulated Ginseng sold for $805/lb last weekend! For those of you who would like to learn how to plant ginseng (wild-simulated) in your own woods, I'm planning a workshop out here at our property. Hunting season has interfered with the November planning. I believe it is no longer gun season on Dec. 1, though, and that's the date I'm aiming for now.

Cost will be $25/person. All materials needed will be supplied, but we'll have to take turns with the rakes and seeder. If you have a garden rake you'd like to bring, you're welcome to do so. I'll buy a few more if enough people register to warrant doing so.

Some things to keep in mind. It's a fairly good/hard hike out to the planting/growing site, so wear appropriate shoes. The hike itself is short, but it's steep until we reach the location. Bring a bag lunch and water, and make sure to bring a sack to pack out your trash. Smoking is allowed if you pack out your butts (a friend of mine who smokes has a cute little case that looks like a pocket watch, made just for this. A foil bag will work if you don't have the little gadget, though). Tick season is pretty much over, but if you're very sensitive to insect bites, make sure to bring spray. The ticks can be awful when a warm spell happens.

I have dogs, but will tie them before leaving the house, so dogs are welcome if you don't mind tying them at the horse trailer or your vehicle while we're in the woods.

The ginseng seedlings for 2008 will be ready for sale beginning in April until it gets too hot to safely transplant them. If you pick them up at the farmer's market, bare-root seedlings are $2/ea for quantities <50. For 50 or more they are $1/ea. If you will want more than a few, it is a good idea to book them now because that way I can make sure to plant enough. They always sell out by the time it gets hot.

This morning I went outside before daylight because the dogs were barking up a storm. Badger, the great pyr, was really sounding upset, barking with more aggression than usual. Bobbie Sue, who never gets right into the middle of things, was on the sidelines cheering him on. Once they realized I was out there with them, the turned up the heat even more. Whatever it was sounded large, lots of crashing noises out there behind the shed. I yelled for one of the kids to bring me a flashlight. My youngest yelled back "What about the shotgun?!", but I just wanted the light, not the gun. I did think it might be a bear, since we do have lots of those around. but they don't normally come that close to the house. Finally, the light was delivered and I shined it out there. It was a coon, high on top of a huge rose bramble, and Badger was in the bramble with it, furiously trying to reach it but just getting caught up in the thorns the more he tried. That was the source of the loud noise, just Badger in the bramble. The coon saw his opportunity for escape and made a run for it, and the dogs followed him down into the gully. They came back to the house soon, checking to see if I was pleased, which I was. He does a really good job of keeping the chickens safe, but we did lose one a few weeks ago and I'm figuring it was to that coon. I hope he won't keep trying to come back for second helpings. The chickens are free range, but they go into a house at night. Other critters live in the gully, a fox and a weasel, and now I guess the coon too. I don't try to clear all the woods and mountains of critters, that's their space. But near the house and garden is our space and they need to steer clear of it. That's what Badger does, he enforces the "Green Zone" around our home. And Bobbie Sue does a good job of helping him. Sometimes she's the first one to sound the alarm and Badger takes it from there. She doesn't like direct confrontations. Some people couldn't sleep with all the barking they do at night. But it actually doesn't bother me. When I don't hear them barking I will wake up and wonder what's wrong, or if they fell asleep at the post. Then I have to get out of bed and check. Usually, though, it's just a calm night and they don't see anything worth barking at.

The other day my sister, Jennifer, called me and she said that a pelican had eaten all the goldfish in their pond! One of them that went missing was a pretty old fish that had survived all sorts of mishaps, so what a shame that some mis-guided pelican found her pond and did him in. They don't really live near the water, so it was pretty odd for him to even be out her way. She and her husband Brad have also purchased some land in Arkansas, over near Yellville. One day I'll have to do an herbwalk over at her place because the soil composition is different and there are different plants there than what is at my house. In particular they have lots more dogwood and it's really beautiful in spring when they're all in bloom.

Today I went hiking in the woods with my friend Dena, looking for ginseng. There are a few wild plants scattered around out there and sometimes I can look all day and not find them. Today I was lucky and found several, but they were all small. The old ones are already retired for the year or dormant or gone. We also found some slippery elm and gathered a little bark for each of

us. The picture is of dena stripping some slippery elm bark. None of the other pictures I took today came out very good and so that was disappointing.

Last night I went to the Benton county Master Gardener's meeting. It was a delightful way to spend my evening! Before the meeting we toured the exhibit hosted at the Rogers Historical Museum - The Healing Power of Plants, a traveling exhibition from the University of Colorado Museum. That in itself was awesome and without having been invited to the meeting I would have otherwise never known it was going to be so close and would have missed the opportunity to view it - thank you Chari! Afterwards, Chari Cross presented an excellent slide show program on common medicinal plants and their uses, featuring plants we can grow right here in our own Arkansas gardens. I brought some of the ginseng seeds from my planting stock and some goldenseal rhizomes to sell after the meeting. I met lots of wonderful gardeners and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Yesterday we got the floor seals put up on the house. Today Gary bought some boards to go on and finish the porch so we will have somewhere to sit and rest while we work on the rest of it. I am sooooo looking forward to a real house for a change!! The old house we're in has been .... er ... a challenge, to say the least.

Also yesterday I checked on my garden and saw that the horses had broken in and trampled much of it and something ate all the peas down to the ground - again. So today I reworked the turnip bed and replanted and put up a cage over just that row and put protection around the peas. It won't stop mice or rats, but it should handle just about anything else. Everything concerning my garden is always feeling like one step forward and two steps back. I can't ever seem to get ahead and stay ahead!

I just visited the website of some herb-growing friends of mine, Dave and Floralyn Perry over in the Missouri Ozarks. You should definitely go have a look and plan a get-a-way at their new lodge: http://grapevinehollow.0catch.com/dave1.html , it's very beautiful! They also grow ginseng and medicinal herbs. I haven't been able to go see it yet, but I sure hope to do so soon.

This morning we saw a beaver at the bridge on our way out to school. I love beavers! Most folks out here do not like them, though - they don't like the way their dams cause the water to back up in their hay fields. Then when they take the tractor out to cut hay, it sinks them down to the axles... at least that's why my neighbor up the road doesn't like them. So I told ol' Mr. Beaver to head on over to our creek if anyone out here gives him trouble. I'd love to have my creek backed up, haha. It would create a great habitat for some skunk cabbage that I've been wanting to grow. Skunk cabbage is one of the greatest antispasmodic roots in the herb world, but the plant is endangered or rare in some areas. I've never found any out here, but it is supposed to be here, so maybe it is rare here, too. And if Mr. Beaver is really eager, it might make a good swimming hole, too.

Today I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow Ozark herbalist, Kristena :) We met first over the internet a while back but today we met in person and walked around looking at "weeds" at the Compton Botanical Gardens in Bentonville. Her daughter Olivia joined us. You might like to check out Kristena's website, and her blog too.

We saw a few plants that we stopped to pay attention to, but this garden is a great resource for hurried folks; I like to eat lunch here and it helps to break my day if it's been stressful at work. One of the plants I was most excited to see is boneset. I've been searching all over our own land for this one, and it should be there, but I haven't found it. Another one was perilla, which I do have in abundance, but have never really studied it to get to know it better. I do know that it stains my fingers a pretty brown, so if you are interested in natural dyes, this might be a good one. And we saw what I believe to be Lady's Thumb - click on the link to go to a website to read up on it. There was a different name tag near this plant, but I believe the plant it identified was no longer there, or else I am mistaken about the identity.

Planted more peas and carrots, cabbage and turnips yesterday. My dad brought his "arrowhead digger" up with him and while he's here I'm using it to till up some new garden. My husband got his bulldozer fixed, so site prep was easy between the two of them. Now to fence it in and get it growing! I should have enough room now to grow more than enough vegetables to supply my CSA and our own household. The trick is now to make the time to get the 4-year rotation plan together and get started :) I'll probably go on and get it certified now, since the entire bench will be ready this year. Rather than "certified organic", I'll do "Certified Naturally Grown". CNG is the new grassroots organic movement, and it's tailored for small growers and direct-marketing farmers. They require growers to follow the same stringent rules as "organic" but it is not so influenced by the big ag business. I think it is less likely to become corrupt (at least until big ag wants to use this name, too).

A critter has been eating my sugar snap peas, and some turnips, and the sweet potatoes. the poor little seedlings weren't but a couple inches tall. about half of the peas are gone and only a few turnips are gone. but ALL of the sweet potatoes are gone, at least the leaves have all been eaten. I'm not sure they can continue to grow without leaves, but I haven't given up all hope on them yet. It is becoming clear that I need a good fence if I plan to come close to substinence gardening, not to mention market farming!

As with almost everything else I need these days, money is an issue. I can't buy fencing materials until I get my Christmas bonus, and there's a big "if" about whether we will even be getting bonuses this year. If we don't land the contract we need, even whether I have a job or not next year is up in the air. I'm really not worried about not having the job, I think I can get another one fairly quickly if I want to - but I will have to learn other ways to do things that don't involve buying everything I need. As for the critters, I am sure that my sons will be happy to sit out one evening to see who's coming to dinner and turn the tables on it. LOL. Hopefully it is something good to eat, like a rabbit. I've never tried groundhog before, but maybe I will soon. How did people garden before fences were available? If I plant more, will there be more predation or is there a point where volume of produce will exceed predation by enough to supply my own household and a few others with food?

On another subject, the pediatrician called today and they still want my son to see a specialist. His pain was gone, but yesterday it was back although the Aleve aleviated it this time quickly and he didn't need additional pain medication. The fact that it was back is worrisome, though, and it completely blows my theory for what happened out of the water.

Here are some pictures from a little hike I took right before dark today:

oh boy, moving the propane tank turned out to be quite a chore! but we did get it done and i have pictures to prove it :)

getting ready:

trying to decide exactly how we'll do this:
Plow-reining down the driveway backwards was harder than it looks! (1/2 mile and HILLY)
Too far left on the pads:
Reposition the chains and get ready to pull it backwards a little:

All done, FINALLY!

It's a beautiful day today in the Ozarks! It was around 50*F when I got up this morning (late because I was out til around 1:30 taxi-ing my daughter and her friends around) and now at 1:45 p.m. it is still only about 70*F. Wonderful weather for working outside. We're getting ready to move the propane tank down to the final resting place near where we're building our new house. I'll try to get pictures of us hauling this 1000 gallon tank with the bulldozer and me holding it in the right alignment by walking before it with a rope. Or maybe we'll load it on the trailer and pull it up to the house. I don't know yet how we're going to do it, but we'll get it done somehow today. It will be nice to start using this huge tank rather than the small ones we've been using. The only thing we use propane for is the hot water heater right now, but eventually I will have a gas stove and oven, maybe a clothes dryer too. Right now all those things are electric and I hate being dependent upon the electricity especially in the winter when the power is likely to go out during an ice storm. At least with the propane, as long as the tank is full, we will always have the stove to use and with our gravity feed water system we will always have running water. When the kids are all grown and moved out, I may just drop the electricity all together. I rarely watch TV and solar can power a few lights and the computer fairly easily.

Did you know that those blue-belly lizards, otherwise known as Western Fence Lizards, have a protein in their blood that deactivates Lyme disease? When the ticks are very small their main food source is our cute little blue belly lizard. When the baby tick bites the blue belly they get a dose of the protein from the blue belly's blood and if the tick had the lyme-causing bacteria, then they will no longer be carriers of that disease! We have lots of blue bellies out at our place and every time I see one I am so grateful for them. Here are a couple links to sites that talk about this in more scientific terms if you are interested:

http://www.anapsid.org/lyme/sceloporus.html

http://www.downtowntomatoes.com/archives/2005/11/lyme_disease_an_1.html

We have a lot of ticks and I'm always afraid that the kids will be bitten by one that has a disease. Every day we check for ticks before taking a shower, but it seems that the longer we live here, the less likely we are to be bitten. I've noticed this with my horses, too. The horse we brought up here with us, Snippy, was plagued by ticks the first year here. The horse we bought from our neighbor didn't seem to get so many. This year, Snippy only got about as many as the native horse, so maybe we also are building a deterrent-smell or taste to them too, lol.

uh-oh. I just found out that I have to give a presentation to a client that's walking through the lab in a few minutes. you cannot begin to imagine the amount of dread i feel about this! it doesn't matter that all i've lived and breathed for the last 6 months is ICP-MS (at least at work) - i am TERRIBLE at explaining or talking in public! please say a prayer, or hold me in your thoughts, or do SOMETHING to help me through this, lol!

10:11 same day

well, the results were all negative - whooo-hooo! so apparently all this pain was just leftovers from a virus his immune system went overboard in fighting. but just to be on the safe side, i think i'll leave Garrison out of the bamboo harvests in the future.

9-12-07 (just in case Blogger gets it wrong again, it's a habit now)

Not too much to write about today. We should find out whether Garrison has a tick disease or whether his hip has been hurting because an infection settled there, at least. We had to bring him to the emergency room last Thursday morning because he was hurting so badly he couldn't even sit up in the bed. This is a child who did not shed a tear when he broke his arm last year, so I know the pain must be intense. The only other thing I think it could be is that he's allergic to that bamboo we harvested last monday - he rode back to the road in the truck on top of the pile, and he also had a rash by Monday night. But the ER team didn't seem to think much of the idea.

In the garden we have planted some seeds: english peas, sugar snap peas, turnips, spinach, lettuce, carrots, and beets. Last time I looked, the carrots were well up and the turnips were all looking strong. Oh, I also planted some italian leaf cabbage, something new that I've never tried before. It's supposed to be really good and tasty for soups and stews.

I made a pretty little fence with the bamboo and now I need more of it! I'll have to post a picture later.

9-4-07

I had a great Labor Day weekend, but it wasn't labor free, lol. Saturday we poured the concrete footing on the chicken house and barbequed, and harvested big bamboo from a nice lady who lives down the street from our county road. Sunday after church I made my husband come help me harvest river cane to fill in the fence I started Saturday afternoon with the big bamboo. I love bamboo and wish I had plenty of my own growing here so I didn't have to gather it from other people's houses, but both persons who gave me the canes over the weekend said that I could get some started from theirs. The river cane grows like wildfire, so I'll have some of that quick, but the big bamboo takes a while to get going. In 10-20 years, I'll have plenty, lol. I hope I'm still able to be active in my 60's!!

8-28-07 Tuesday

It has been a long time since I posted. My good friend's husband died recently and that was sad. It has been so hot outside for the few weeks earlier that we haven't done much more on our house building, but now it is cooling (only 90 and not 100, lol) and we can get started again. Also, my husband is waiting on a job to start and he doesn't want to be in the middle of framing when they call him.

One good thing to talk about lately, though. I am now the owner of a 2008 Scion xD and I love it! It's funny that the two mechanical things I spend most of my time with (Agilent 7500ce ICP-MS and the car) are both made in Japan. I hope my car embodies the excellent workmanship that the instrument at work displays!

Not much going on in the gardens. It's been so dry and hot that the first attempt to start fall seeds failed. Neither the seeds in the ground nor the ones in pots lived for very long. But we got 1/2" of rain Friday ( I guess because the new car was being washed and fueled up for me to take home) and Saturday I planted out some carrot seeds.

7-25-07

We've been very busy working on the house. The foundation is completely done and this week Gary's been working on the pylons for the porch supports. The next phase will be my project- building the rock wall around the foundation and a retaining wall under the porch behind the supports. Here's a picture of what we expect the house to resemble when we're done. This is looking at it from the east, coming up the driveway which will go on around the back of the house and back down to the front. There won't be any windows in the back, just the door, because that's the north side and there's no sense in battling cold drafts for nothing. The front porch will be large enough to use as an outdoor room and the view will be awesome to the east and west and over to the valley where the horses like to graze most.