More Adventures in Backyard Foraging

So my next great adventure involves the lowly dandelion.  Well, lowly is a relative term.  I have plenty of neighbors who probably see my lawn as nothing more than an infestation waiting to happen.  Come mid-morning, our yard erupts into a field of yellow and soon, if we don't mow it first, a field of pestilent seed heads.   But every morning I go out there and collect whole dandelion plants and chickweed for my chicks who gobble it up like there's nothing better.  They might be on to something.

I recently became a little more fond of the flower myself.  No, I haven't put it in my salads yet, but I've missed that boat this year anyhow.  It's no secret that dandelions are tasty but I'm speaking today of dandelion wine.  I've always wanted to try it, let alone make it.  Now that I've got a few batches of grape wine under my belt and a peach wine too, it's time to expand my repertoire.   Armed with a paper bag on an absurdly windy day, I picked enough dandelions to fill nine cups of nothing but the "petals".  But more on that in a bit.  The flower heads are actually very beautiful if you give them a second look.  They are nothing short of miniature zinnias.  I once heard a guy say that they are only weeds to those who like vast expanses of green nothingness.  But really, to those who appreciate them, they are very beautiful flowers that grow REALLY well.  And that's the truth.  I've even heard it said that they are indeed native to the U.S. due to accounts of the Native Americans using them in their own concoctions before Columbus even landed.  Here I've grown up being told they were a non-native weed.  Who knows?

 

So I took this large crop of dandelions into the house and began separating the green from the yellow.  I've heard it said that each petal is actually a flower in itself, having all the necessary parts to be deemed a whole flower.  I'll believe it, botany class being so far behind me.  So I really separated all the flowers from the flower head, many times over.  I was rudely interrupted halfway through the process by a Kirby salesman who practically forced his way into my house and thought I was rude for kicking him out - but that's another story altogether.  It took several hours to amass nine cups of "petals" at any rate and they are patiently waiting in the fridge for the rest of the ingredients to come together.  Our neighborhood wine-making supply shop is on the other side of town and I need yeast.  All of the other ingredients are on hand, including the tannin and nutrient.  I've also heard (lots of variations and speculations with dandelion wine) that rhubarb can be used in the recipe.  This will require a bit more research.  If I can't find the information, I'll probably used citrus and white grape juice.

 

This is an ongoing project that will take a year to complete so consider this a first installment.  So far my fingers and nails are nearly permanently stained and my blue jeans bear bright yellow blotches from kneeling in the field.  It's all good.

Stinging Nettle

A couple of nights ago my husband and I were taking some yard waste to a compost pile behind the barn.  I noticed some wood sticking out of an old manure pile and when I went to investigate, was painfully stung on the hand.  It wasn't a bee, though it felt like it.  It was STINGING NETTLE, a nasty barnyard weed that injects poison into anything that brushes up against it.  My hand burned painfully for the rest of the evening.


I did some research on the plant though, having never encountered it before and learned that it was edible.  THAT plant?  Edible???  You've got to be kidding me!  The white, raised welt on my hand protested.   But apparently it's true and nettle is considered a medicinal herb, once used and eaten by the Native Americans.  I feel bad for the desperate person who was driven to try this one.  But anyway, once you carefully gather the leaves and boil them, they are supposed to be healthier than spinach and just as tasty.  Intrigued.

These carefully plucked leaves are still very dangerous.  You can see the small hair-like barbs that inflict great pain.

So the next day I went out armed with gloves and a shopping bag.  I filled the bag and brought them in the house.   It turned out we had a lot of them back there, plenty.  Not wanting to poison my entire family, I decided to whip up a batch of them for myself.  The collected leaves were very fragrant, herbally so.  Following some directions I found online for proper care of the leaves, I soaked them in warm water.  Supposedly that is supposed to draw out the toxins.  However, after the required amount of time, I strained them out and began sorting through them to remove rogue stems.  It wasn't a minute before my fingers started to burn so I turned to snipping them with gloves.  What did I learn?  Soaking does not remove all of the toxin.  It turns out that this was in the fine print after that particular set of instructions.

Boiling the stinging nettle leaves takes away the sting.

Anyway, the recipe that I chose to make, to soften the blow of what I deemed to be a brave endeavor, was a Swedish soup called Nasselsoppa.  It's basically a cream of spinach soup recipe with nettles in place of the more common leafy green.  So I boiled the leaves as per the instructions.  They smelled of cooked spinach so that was promising.  Everything else was fairly straight forward, the usual roux, cream and stock.  I have to say, it tasted really good.  My only issue with the soup is that it acted like a strong diuretic.  I mean, STRONG, like stronger than a few cups of regular black coffee strong.  I think next time I would not use the cooking water in the soup, like it called for.  The cooking water is bound to contain a lot of the substances found in nettle that act in certain medicinal ways.  It was a dark tea color after cooking and reading up on that phenomenon, yes, it can act as a diuretic and is thus used for lowering blood pressure.  This is not a problem that I have.
 

The finished soup.  I did not add the full amount of nettles to the soup, erring on the side of caution.  The blue on the egg is from a dyed Easter egg.

That said though, it was a great experience.  I was stung, I got revenge and learned a lot in the process.  Stinging nettle is a fascinating, and tasty, plant.

Magical Fruit

Spent the day yesterday picking and shelling beans from the garden.  This is one raised bed's worth.

Some of the yin/yang beans, many in fact, have little personalities.  It will be hard to eat them!

Yesterday's Storms

Storm overhead.

Retreating.

Sun during the storm.

The Sourdough Experiment: Part II

This is the second loaf I've made from the vintage sourdough yeast.  The first was unremarkable but this one is like those overfed Chinese watermelons.  It split!  But it's so yummy.  It's amazing what complex flavor you can get from a culture of yeast, flour, water and a little salt.

Spring Onions

A bunch of spring onions(walking onions) from the garden, chopped.

That is all.

Short Pictorial Fiber Story

If you ever wondered why handspun yarn is so expensive, here is an extremely quick overview of what goes into creating a ball by hand.  It's a lot of dirty work but the rewards are great.  It's hard to put a dollar sign on something so personal.  Typically I grow attached to the yarns after running the soft, lanolin-smelling-feeling wool through my hands so many times.

Raw wool, skirted.  That means picked through for short bits and other undesirables (veggie matter, VM for short).  I like to find local wools from small farms.  This fleece is a columbia/rambouillet cross.

Scoured wool, washed.  Sounds harsh but it's just a soaking in hot water with mild detergent and rinsed repeatedly.  This step takes an entire day to wash and dry, sometimes two but is very important and tricky.  One misplaced agitation and your wool can be felted into an irreparable lump.

Flick-carded wool, cloud.  This step removes extra dirt and VM while opening up the locks.  It's time consuming and best done while watching a good movie.  I use a pet brush for this step.

Carded wool, batt.  Carding aligns the fibers for spinning.  This was drum-carded twice.  My carder handles one ounce at a time and my spinning wheel bobbins each take two ounces.  Having a sensitive scale is a must!

Hand Spun Wool, natural.  This was spun on my antique spinning wheel.  Worsted weight, 2 ply.

Hand-dyed wool yarn, hank.  This was dyed in Sandalwood (of the incense variety) and Onion Skins.  The wool needs to be mordanted before dyeing in the case of natural dyes.  That means boiling gently in alum and cream of tartar before adding to the yarn to the dye bath. 

Balled and knitted yarn, the final product!  Hand-knitting is another labor of love, all of itself, so a knitted product made of handspun yarn is one of a kind and priceless.

Ghost Town

I love this yarn so much I decided to share.  It started with this Merino/Romney/Mooritt blend I bought from a farm on Madeline Island on Lake Superior (in Wisconsin).  It's a blend of fiber from sheep with names like Twill, Tweed, Tattersall and Tapestry.  That was reason enough for me but when I received the package and opened it...  It smelled like a ghost town... really.  Now, that might have turned some people away right there but to me it was like catnip to a cat.  I want to roll in it!  Seriously!  Indeed, you can find me with my face buried in it, breathing it in. 

Merino/Romney wool and silk noil

But what to do with it?  Well, I had this bag of natural silk noil laying around just waiting for a project and I couldn't see dyeing either perfect ingredients so... blend them!  Silk noil, if you're not familiar with it are the left-overs from the carding process.  They're nits and nubbins and bits of papery cocoons that are basically undesirable to the fine silk fabric industry - great for spinners though.  So I carded them together and got this soft pillowy blanket of smell-good fluff.  Yay!

The batts of Ghost Town, ready to spin

Spinning was delightful as it simply slipped through my fingers.  I plied it, a rather thick yarn for my antique machine.  It is absolutely beautiful and soft and has that smell...  like an old restored building, a hundred years, thousands of memories, humanity and decay.  I can't really describe how much it affects me, words seem trivial and I wonder if I'll be able to sell it.  

The finished yarn.

A Day of Strings

Our school system is very fortunate to have a wonderful string program!  Every year they gather up the students during school and bus them over the high school for some intensive practice, feed them and then end the day with a massive concert and a special guest.  Last year they featured a local composer.  This year it was a Bedford Alumni and musician, Matthew Bell.  His skills are amazing and he began by serenading us with a round of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' on his amped up violin.  Just amazing!  Overall it was a great concert and we're very proud of Andy.

Andy, just to the right of Mr. Koch

Matt Bell and his electric violin

The entire assemblage, fifth grade to high school (off camera to the right)

April 'Snow' Showers

Daffodil

This is not completely unexpected - it's happened before.  I have photos from when we lived in Jackson of snow covering our hyacinths and forsythia.  But it is still a rare occurrence and always worthy of photographing.

Pachysandra

Euonymus

Musical Masterpieces

Last night, my middle child had a concert at his school with his fellow third-graders.  It was awesome!  The idea was this: they chose a painting, painted a backdrop and wore costumes to recreate the piece and then sang a song they felt was related to the painting.  For instance, my child's picture was Baile an Tehauntepec by Diego Rivera.  So the girls dressed in red and the boys in white and posed in front of a backdrop painted by a student and sang La Bamba.  Logan insisted on sewing his own costume (he would have tried it himself if I hadn't intervened) so I taught him the basics of sewing and I'm proud to say he pretty much sewed his own pants.  Pretty clever, this concert and definitely complex.  Kudos to the teachers for putting this all together.  There were 13 paintings and songs all together.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Logan is on the right, in yellow

 

Baile an Tehauntepec, Diego Rivera

The Lantern Bearers, Maxfield Parrish

 

The Drinkers, Vincent Van Gogh

Buying Ponies in the West, Frederick Remington

The Umbrellas, Renoir

Indoor garden: April, 2011

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and tomatillo

So far, the garden is growing well.  I have much to plant this year and only a fraction of it is started indoors.  I have here both my dyer's garden and my vegetable garden.  I save up plastic trays that I get at nurseries for my transplants and make other pots out of newspaper (see the tomatoes).   As per usual, I've planted more than I can grow and probably planted things that really ought to be directly seeded outdoors but after our long, dreary winters, I can't help myself and plant extra just to see green.  If they don't make it to planting time, I will simply direct sow and play the taps at the compost heap for the ones that didn't make it.

Weld and chamomile

Other veggies I will plant this year are corn, squashes and beans.  The strawberries that I planted last year from seed are doing well and are growing already, even though the weather has been fairly cold.  The salad garden that I planted in March is up as well.  I'm still waiting on the asparagus and horseradish to sprout.  The rhubarb is growing (I planted more too).  The grapes this year seem to be holding off, which is good considering they usually sprout leaves and bunches well before the last frost date and get frozen.  Hopefully they hold off a little longer.  We still have until mid-May before planting time.

Madder

I have a ton of plants for dyeing too.  The Calendula is already planted and growing outside. Madder, weld, indigo, anthemis, coreopsis, calliopsis and dahlia are some of the others.  I'm sure some of these won't fare as well as others but it is experimental so we'll see.

More weld and dahlia

Tomatoes

Indigo vat dyeing

This is my first time experimenting with indigo vat dyeing.  I followed the instructions in my natural dye book.  Next time I will likely follow a different set of instructions as I'm not particularly fond of spectralite.  I've heard of methods using simple fermentation that sound much more appealing to me.  I am, after all, versed in wine and bread-making so it should be no issue. Following are some images of my efforts. 

It is important to remove all of the oxygen from the dye.  This what the spectralite does.   Reduced indigo is yellowish or bronze.  Oxygenated indigo is blue.  Other additives are salt, dish soap, and soda.  Pretty common stuff.

The stock jar of reduced indigo.  It has a distinctive smell.

Straight-up indigo-dyed muslin rag yarn

Exhausted indigo vat

Stained yellow gloves

Columbian cross wool dyed with weld and indigo to varying degrees

Columbian cross and llama dyed for different lengths of time in the vat.

Indigo and tea-stained muslin rag yarn

This dyeing method also varies from other traditional methods in that it requires no boiling and cooling, etc.  One simply dips the fiber to be dyed in the vat until  the desired shade is achieved.



I found myself dunking in anything I could find, including some old pink towels that didn't match our "decor".










One of the most beautiful greens can be achieved with the use of weld, another plant dye.  Then the wool is put through the indigo.  Yellow and Blue make GREEN!

















Tea-staining gives the indigo a nice faded blue jean coloration.




Sandalwood, which I have grown fond of for it's
easy pinks, makes a great (albeit unpredictable)
color combination when dyed with indigo.  I found that the spectralite tends to remove the pink if it is pre-dyed.  I'm hoping the fermentation method will eliminate this side effect.

Sandalwood and indigo-dyed muslin rag yarn