Dandelion Harvest

This afternoon, my son helped me with our dandelion harvest (or as it's more commonly known, weeding).

Dandelions can be quite a pain obviously, since if left unattended they will take over your whole garden. They do have many uses though, which partly makes up for their overbearing nature.

The whole plant is great for your liver, kidneys and digestion. The bitter leaves can be used in soups and salads, as can the flower petals. The flowers can also be used for yellow dye. The roots can be made into a wonderful decoction.

A decoction is like tea, but you simmer it for 25-45  minutes instead of just steeping in hot water. The extra heat and time helps extract the healing properties from the more fibrous plant materials.

I like to make a decoction of licorice root, dandelion root, milk thistle and fennel seed for liver support.

Happy New Year! Plus Cold Remedies!

I've been very neglectful of this blog lately. I won't make a resolution to update more often, because those things are so difficult for me to keep - but I will try to follow through a little more on this in the future.

2014 has been a very rough year for me and many people I know. Solstice is a lovely new beginning, and I treated it as such - but there is something special about the New Year also; a culturally agreed upon time to look back, put away the things that no longer serve us and start again fresh with renewed hope. Many wonderful things happened this past year, but it also was a year of things breaking and falling apart. Fortunately I am as yet unbroken.

The days have already started getting lighter, but the cold of winter will be upon us for quite some time. In case you need it, here are my favorite cold-weather sniffles remedies.

Thyme cough syrup: Take at least 3 tablespoons of thyme (fresh or dry) and add to 2 cups water. Simmer for 10 minutes, then let sit at low heat uncovered for one hour or until liquid is reduced to about a cup. Add about 3 tablespoons of raw honey and stir until disolved.

Cayenne sniffle and cough syrup: Juice of 1 lemon, 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon raw honey, dash of cayenne pepper. Mix the ingredients together and stir on low heat until the honey is disolved.

You can store both kinds of cough syrup in a glass jar in the refrigerator for up to 2 months.

Take them by the tablespoonfull. The cayenne one packs a punch, and will clear out your sinuses real good if you add enough cayenne. Both kinds contain natural anti-bacterials and immune system support.


Enjoy the cold and dark of winter. I will be doing the same.

 

Black Walnut from Yellowood

I have some of the coolest friends! I know people who are up to some very interesting things. My friend Cayce and her roommate Elise are urban homesteaders raising chickens and vegetables on Yellowood Farm here in Seattle. Their commitment to ethically raising their chickens for eggs and meat, sustainable farming, and respect for their animals and the land is heartwarming and inspiring. In fact, they are the winners of the Seattle Tilth Chicken Coop and Urban Farm Tour Frugal Urban Farmer award for 2014, which is very neat.

Last year I attended a Cockerel Farewell party at Yellowood, to celebrate the shortish lives of their roosters before culling. It was such a fun, welcoming, warm, homey party - it was a wonderful way to get together as a community and show respect and gratitude for food we receive from the land. It's so easy to take meat for granted and be disconnected from its source when you buy it in a store. Not so when you are meeting the rooster who will soon become Thanksgiving dinner for the denizens of Yellowood.



Elise, me, and friends and family at the Cockerel Farewell

One other thing Yellowood has, aside from chickens and veggies, is a walnut tree! This, I am told, is a bit of a nuisance on the farm, as it attracts hungry squirrels who launch walnuts into the chicken coop and are generally not the most pleasant creatures to share space with. However, it was very relevant to my interests since black walnut husks are wonderful for natural dying, yielding a lovely rich brown. I brought Cayce a jar of the blackberry jam I made over the summer, and in exchange I left with a whole bucket of walnuts. Also, I got to hang out with Cayce and some chickens. Well worth a jar of jam, in my opinion.

Yarn dyed with black walnut



Many Mitts

I just published two new patterns on Ravelry! Hooray! Siouxsie Gloves and Snow Flurries are now live - and free! The cold is coming on and it's going to be mitt weather before you know it. ♡♡♡♡♡♡

Gifts of Late Summer

Life can be difficult. My life is a bit complicated and stressful right now, what with my partner's serious injury, and my regular responsibilities continuing uninterrupted - even though dammit, sometimes I just want to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. In spite of this, I remain receptive to life's gifts, and life continues to provide spontaneous treasures and joy.

For example, my fig tree produced a lovely crop, most of which we were able to harvest. The critters took their share, but unlike years past they actually left some for us too! Hooray!  I cooked up a batch of fig jam. It is yummy and it makes me feel fancy.

Another unexpected gift came from one of my wonderful friends. I received a just-because-gift of a delicious skein of alpaca yarn. I asked it what it wanted to be, and it said it wanted to be a simple hat. It is so dreamy and soft. I think I will be wearing it a lot this winter. Even in hard times, there is so much to be grateful for.

Urban Foraging

Today I explored an undeveloped hillside by my house, and found that it was absolutely overgrown with blackberries and tansy. Double score!

The blackberries will become more jam. More jam! All the jam! I will dye yarn with the tasty.

I left plenty of berries for the birds, and lots of flowers for the bees. Even in the city, the land bears wonderful treasures. I will harvest these with gratitude, using the gifts of the earth to feed my body and soul.

Self Preservation

It is the height of summer and everything is blooming, ripening, and flowering. There is so much fruit and so many useful and edible plants growing that you can't possibly use all of them. So now is the time for preservation projects! I have made two batches of blackberry jam so far, and plan to make a couple more. The figs and plums aren't quite ripe yet, but when they are I will be making jam from them also. I'm pickling beets and turnips, making sauerkraut, and I've harvested herbs from my yard and hung them up to dry. My kitchen looks like a witch's lair!

The other, less exciting thing that is happening with me right now is that my boyfriend is in the hospital with two broken heels. He will be in the hospital for quite some time, he will have reconstructive surgery on his heel bones and then he will be in a wheelchair for several months. At times like these it is very easy to get so wrapped up in caring for another person that I forget to take care of myself. Now is the time that I need to be especially aware of self-care. Last night, for me, self-care looked like going to the Dead Baby Downhill. The Dead Babies are a bicycle club, and the Downhill is a bicycle race followed by an after-party that takes up an entire neighborhood. There are many bands, many friends, many bicycles, many freak bicycles and many wheeled, bicycle-like contraptions. It was good to be around my people, and good to be somewhere other than a hospital room or home by myself.

Wonderfully, I unexpectedly ran into Caitlin Ffrench of We Will Tell You All Of Our Secrets who is a fiber artist and designer based in Vancouver BC Canada. I had heretofore only interacted with her online. She was just as wonderful and charming in real life as her online presence would suggest. I am a fan of her designs, as a visit to my Ravelry finished projects page will attest. It was great to meet her and talk about natural dyeing and our cats.

I'm feeling very fortunate today to have such a full life and be surrounded by so many wonderful people.