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.

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



Summer Doings

I have neglecting this blog! Bad blogger! I had committed to myself to update it at least once a week, but I have been doing many wonderful summer things and it got away from me. Summer things that weren't really within the scope of this blog and also I'm terrible about pausing in the middle of adventures to take pictures. So. No photographic evidence. You'll just have to take my word for it.

This morning I was walking to the train and I saw some plantain growing in a neighbor's yard. Not the kind that looks like a big banana - the kind that's a weed that grows in your lawn. For some reason I don't have any growing in my lawn so I took some seeds from the plant in my neighbor's yard and sprinkled them on the edge of my back garden. Hopefully they will sprout and soon they will look like this:

If you live anyplace where dandelions grow, you are probably familiar with these guys. They are everywhere where I live. Except my lawn, mysteriously.

Plantains are a great edible plant, and you can also make a healing salve from the leaves. To make a salve, simply fill a jar 3/4 full of plantain leaf and then pour in olive oil to cover. Let it sit for 4 weeks, then strain the oil and mix with melted bee's wax. The salve will help stanch bleeding and reduce healing time. You can also put mashed up leaves on bug bites to speed healing and relieve itch.

Plantain leaves are edible, though they can be bitter and stringy once the plant is older. Younger leaves can be eaten in a salad. Mature leaves can be used for tea, or you could toss them in a green smoothie. Plantain is nutrient dense and really great for the liver and for digestion.

I love useful weeds!

Solstice

Happy Solstice! Or happy belated Solstice, I should say. Obviously I am posting this on Monday and it is no longer Solstice. The days have already started getting shorter.

But I do want to tell you about how I welcomed summer this year because it was quite lovely. I am more of a cool weather type person, but summer does have its good points. For instance: lots of light and many growing things.

Saturday I tended my garden, played outside with my son, harvested dye plants, finished my Sunlight Shawl for Sad People (I've got it blocking right now), and ate strawberries straight out of the garden. Perfection!

Sunday I spent cleaning my house and dyeing yarn. I have two wonderful pieces of news: the fig tree in my yard is healthy and growing and had lots of leaves to use for dyeing,  AND whatever was eating all my figs in years past has apparently moved on - there are still a ton of figs left and I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch but it looks like we might get a harvest this year!

I don't have a fancy camera, and unfortunately I had trouble capturing the color with my camera phone, but the fig leaves with alum and iron yielded a very cool variegated spring green and mossy green.

My fig tree this morning

I looked out my kitchen window this morning and found that my fig tree is covered in many tiny baby figs. There are more figs than any one family could possibly eat. Which won't be a problem because if years past are any indication we will get exactly none of them.

The critters in the neighborhood aren't very good about sharing.

At least I can use the leaves to dye with.

Spring planting!

It’s time for spring planting! The last frost has passed and my seedlings have been allowed to harden and get used to being out of the greenhouse so it’s time to get the little guys in the ground. This year I planted kale, cabbage, chard, collards, snap peas, fennel, onions, and leeks. I’m staying away from summer squash because they require more water and I’m concerned about the possibility of drought this summer.

My kale, chard and collards from last year are still producing but they're old ladies now. I'm letting them flower and produce seeds!

Then there are the strawberries, which have been coming back every year since before we lived here. 

Now I have dirt under my fingernails and a garden full of food plants, and I'm unwinding with a knitting project. No need to buy industrially produced vegetables this summer!