Making Sap at Home -- yes, you can!

When you speak to professional "sugarers" they'll usually tell you horror stories about making your own sap at home, how your walls will get sticky and wet, and how it's just not economical. Well, they aren't completely wrong, but it's pretty easy to do it so that you don't have any of these problems.

First off, if you heat your house with wood, use the heat from your stove or fireplace to boil your sap, and kill two birds with one stone.

Second, especially if you are making syrup on your regular stove, turn on all the fans you have, and open a window or two. Your walls don't need to get wet, or sticky, or anything of the sort. The fact is that the sugar is NOT boiling off, only the water, so there is no reason why your walls would drip with syrup no matter what. I can make 4 ounces of syrup on the stove from 2-3 gallons of sap in about 3 hours. Considering the fact that same home-made local syrup would cost me $12-15, I find that quite economical. It generates the same amount of steam (or less!) as making my own tomato sauce.

And for a little extra frugality, do what the native americans did -- collect the sap at night and let it sit outside overnight. Most likely, in the morning the sap will have some ice on the top, and that ice has none of the sugars in it. Discard the ice, and you have less sap to boil! The Indians would do this over and over again, until all that was left was syrup.

Happy Sugaring :)

It's Maple Time! Fight cancer and diabetes with your favorite sweet stuff.

We've had a few warm days here and the maple sap is really running. I collected over 5 gallons, and today I anticipate just as much. I tapped fewer trees this year, just 5, but it looks like we are getting just as much sap. I boiled down half the haul in three hours yesterday and made a pint of perfect syrup. This morning I am rendering the rest down. Of course, it's still really cold out, so I can't have too many open windows to let out the steam -- I have the front door cracked open and my window box, too, in the kitchen. And of course I am running the wood stove as usual, making it super warm and toasty in the house.

Last year I used all gallon jugs to collect the sap from the trees, which works great when the sap is slower, but not so much when you're getting over a gallon a day. So this year I am using buckets on the biggest producing trees -- three of the trees are right on a small stream's banks, and they run like crazy.

For more info about Maple tapping, check out my previous blogpost: http://healinggreen.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-do-you-juice-tree.html

In the year since my last maple post, it's also come out in scientific journals that Maple Syrup fights bacterial infections, inhibits cancer growth and contains natural acids that benefit diabetes and other metabolic disorders. So eat up, and as always, ENJOY <3

Garden Planning

This year I have just a few things planned for the garden. To eat, I am planting tomatoes on the trellis next to the clematis, among a bed of basil and tomatillos. I am planting early, indeterminite (tall growing) vines. San Marzano paste tomatoes for canning and drying, and black cherry tomatoes for the kids to pick and eat. Tomatillos are for making verde sauce for my son, and my husband gets some early hot peppers, perfect for our cooler climate (Padron Peppers). I bought all my veggie seeds at anniesheirloomseeds.com which has a wonderful open-pollinated selection and doesn't charge too much for shipping.

Yesterday my family and I picked out flowers to surround the chicken run: morning glories, moon flowers and and fragrant sweet pea. We also bought cilantro to grow right away in a container. Kmart was having a wonderful "buy one get one free" sale on their seeds which is worth checking out.

I can't wait to get planting! Today is a dreary rainy day, but the maple sap is boiling away on the stove and I have a pile of peat pots waiting on the counter. Of course, it's still a bit to early here to start anything but cold weather crops -- but I am going to start a tray of cilantro today in an old salad container. Honestly -- I love my supermarket, but rather despise the fact that package all the salad inside these huge containers. Plastic bags would work fine, too! But I have found a great use for these containers -- seed starting. I use them every year before recycling them.

New chickens and a wattle run!

What? Wattle what? Wattle is a sort of free fencing you can weave from saplings, twigs and vines on your property. You can build houses, shelters, and furniture out of wattle, too. I've always particularly admired this sort of wattle on the left, and have been planning since last fall to make a wattle arbor on the property somewhere -- since we're not moving after all! At least not for a couple of years. So I've decided to give in and make my home all artsy rather than keep it simple for prospective buyers. Who know when the economy will really shift, and a girl's just gotta be able to DO stuff, you know?

So, along that vein, I have reserved a new flock of chickens, due to arrive mid-may. This time, I want to move their coop behind the house and build a huge run so they can be fenced in rather than free-ranging all the time. I've picked a spot under a bunch of pine trees that will offer natural shade in summer, and less snow burial in winter. It will also drop lots of needles for them to play in and help keep the run fresh and clean. I was planning on making the run with 2x4s and poultry wire, but as I was looking at my pictures of wattle trellises and pondering the vast forest of saplings out back which I neglected to prune last summer,  I thought, hey, wattle RUN! Some people do this by making solids walls (one man even calls his wattle coop a "castle" as it is son impenetrable) and others use nails to secure wattle, while some use loose wattle with wire between for their sheep. I still plan to use poultry wire, because I want to be able to sit and watch my chickens, plus I don't want anything sneaking in if I miss a spot. So the whole run will be wired in, all 6 sides, sort of like a box car. But a very very pretty boxcar!

I'm also buying a bunch of morning glory and shell vines to cover it with pretty flowers (one hopes). I don't generally have much luck germinating morning glory, for reasons unknown to me. I have tried everything, every method I know of -- if anyone has any suggestions, for the wattle or the vines, please do give me some. It'll be a pretty shaded spot.This year I will try nicking the seeds and putting them in a damp paper towel, see how that works.

I'm sure you're all just dying to know what sort of chickens I am getting (9 chickens, 7 kinds!) but I will just tell you for now that they are all rare or heritage breeds, and they are all know to be calm and docile, perfect for run-living and being around small children. More about the birds soon, I promise.

Shaping Up

For the next few months I have a  nice little side project: getting in shape! We received a Wii Fit for christmas, and have been using that quite a bit. At a Superbowl party my friends and I decided we could all use some incentive to lose a bit of extra fat, so we enetered into a small contest. We all weighed in, and the largest loser in 2.5 months and then again a month later will receive one-third and two-thirds of the proze money, respectively. We are basing the weight loss on percentages, since we are all wildly different in height and weight.

I don't believe in dieting for the most part. I've always eaten everything I want, and since I have a good metabolism  and am relatively active this has worked for me. I was curious how my calorie intake stacked up to me exercise caloric expenditure, so I found two great tools online: myfitnesspal.com, which lets you track calories and exercise online and through your phone, and a smaller "calorie counter" app for my google homepage. Both are quite easy to use and I'm finding that my calorie intake is actually quite lower than what I thought it was, despite large intakes of cheese (I'm an addict!).

So by lowering my calorie intake by a couple hundred a day (easy to do by substituting pitas for breads, and grabbing smaller portions of desserts and cheeses) I am aiming to make my exercise routing much more effective. Let the love handles dissolve!

For exercise I am on the wii for at least an hour a day -- 35 minutes of strength and yoga exercises in the "my routine" area of the wii fit, at least 10 minutes of running and hula hooping, and then another 20-30 minutes of games like sword fighting, boxing, segway courses and balance training. As the weather warms I am taking to the roads and trails with the kids and dog, as weather permits.I hope to start running in a few weeks, tho I'll be needing to find a jogging stroller first. Today it I am getting over a cold and it's snowing outside, so I'll just stick to the 35 minutes of yoga and let the rest slide.

I must say, the wii is just about the best present I ever asked for in terms of how much we're using it and how much we're getting out of it. I don't have the time or money to get to a gym, and it's too cold and yucky out most winter days to get out and exercise. My house is on the wee side (just under 1200 ft, with a big wood stove in the living room) so there's no room for home gym equipment. The wii is compact, fun and the whole family enjoys it. Even my mother-in-law has gotten one after enjoying ours.

What are you all doing for exercise and fitness during these winter months?

Choosing and Buying Heirloom Seeds

My very first blogpost ever was about buying seeds, and I love to re-post that article around this time each year because it is so appropriate. What are you going to plant this year? 

 

I am going to focus on tomatoes and tomatillos, and I plan to put them in a sunny corner of my herb garden on some trellises against the house among the clematis. My son has developed a passion for Mild Verde Sauce, so I hope to can some this summer, and make a whole bunch more tomato sauce (we are almost out of what I canned, just one jar left!) I do still have a couple quarts of my dried tomatoes left which will last us until the local hot-house tomatoes begin to come in. They go in our pasta sauces, on our salads, in soups and stews, and are gobbled up plain for snacks.

 

This year I've decided to look into some new seed companies, I'll let you know how that turns out! If any of you have any suggestions for great climbing, heritage tomato breeds or a favorite seed company, let me know.

This winter has been particluarly hard on most of the people in my region, with leaking roofs, collapsing barns and 12 foot snow drifts on everyone's mind. So spring and seeds are a welcome focus! Enjoy the rest of my article, and have fun buying seeds.

"Having turned the corner through the dead of winter, our days are getting longer and everyone (at least here where I live) is dreaming about Spring and days that don't begin with a stoking of the fireplace. Seed and plant catalogues are a great way to feed the mind and soul during winter, with beautiful images of flowers and vegetables, herbs and exotic grasses. I recently found a great article from Mother Earth News that had links to seed companies all over America. This is a fantastic resource, because when you buy seeds locally you are accomplishing two things: you are supporting local business communities and your plants are more likely to thrive in your soil, having been bred for generations in that spot of earth.

When you are reading about seeds, you will come across the terms Hybrid (F1), Open-Pollinated (OP) and Heirloom. Hybrid seeds produce specially bred varieties that are often disease and drought-resistant, or have special production properties. They are also usually designed to create more seed buying and protect the seed company's economic interest in their stock, which means that they will not breed true: if you want the same plant next year, you'll have to buy the seeds again. If you try and use seeds you collected from the plant, they will grow into a different plant, generally with different fruit production, or not even germinate at all.

Open-pollinated seeds breed true, and are often organic or grown without pesticides. You can save seeds from an open-pollinated plant and expect the exact same plants the next year. Environmentally, they present a better heritage for our children because these seeds are dependable and safe. Heirloom seeds are generally considered open-pollinated seeds which have been growing true for over 50 years or plant generations -- these are the seeds of our grandmothers, and theirs. Some heirloom varieties are endangered, and I love knowing that I am preserving a little bit of istory by planting these varieties in my garden. Here in Connecticut, I often choose to order from two companies. The first is Comstock, Ferre, which had many OP seeds to choose from, does a lot of their own growing, and is the oldest seed company in the United States. How cool is that?? The other is a small company just a few towns aways from me, in a really tiny town, actually, called John Scheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds. I also have some seeds from last year from Park's and Seeds of Change that I will use up."

 

Another great resource for those of you who are uber-serious about saving and using your seeds for next year is the fabulous book, Seed to Seed.

Dreamcatchers for a better night's sleep

One of my favorite things to do on a cold winter night is sit by the fire watching a movie while I make dreamcatchers. I start with round wreaths made from my own wild grapevines, harvested and wound in the fall. Then I take natural sinew and weave it around the circle clockwise, periodically adding stones and feathers until I reach the center.

Dreamcatchers are an old tradition in the Americas, originating with Native Americans. They have been used for centuries to help "catch" bad dreams and let the good dreams come safely through to us.

I especially like to give them as gifts at baby showers to help protect the newly born and bless their room, and I believe they help young and old alike have pleasant dreams. We have one in every window in the bedrooms in our house (some windows even have 2 or 3!). Hang one by your bed or in the window for best effect.

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Scenes of the fall

 L's new pet

Greyledge Farm, foxhunting jumper's gate

Sharon Audobon Society

Really comfortable leather shoes

You know how sometimes you try something on in the store and it feels great, just to get home and be worn for a few hours and feel horrible? This happens to me mostly with shoes and bras. Sometimes other things, but these are the main culprits. Bras I have figured out that if I just stick to a couple brands that I know feel good, that helps tremendously. And shoes? Well, I am pretty careful now about buying expensive shoes -- I walk around the store in them for as long as I can get away with, and after 35 years I seem  to finally know which styles bring me the most joy. But still, sometimes I fail. Recently I bought a pair of beauitful Liz Claiborne shoes. Usually her shoes fit so nicely, and these felt great in the store, but now I realize they are uncomfortable in a few places.Luckily, they are leather, and I have a few tried a true tricks to stretch them out.

First, I tried walking in them with thicker socks to stretch them out. Ouch! They needed help. So I moved on to step two: I moisturized them with some great beeswax shoe paste, all over the outside (which will waterproof them too) and a bit on the inside where they hurt, and I stuffed some plastic cups in the to strech right where they hurt. If that didn't work I could spray 1/4 alcohol and 3/4 water solution on the spots that hurt and walk around in them until they are dry -- this would get me a great custom fit. If I needed some all over stretching, I could fill some baggies with water and stuff the shoes with them. Then, freeze the whole thing, which results in gentle expansion of the water as it turns to ice, and a good all over stretching!

Flea Control

Though it's September we are still experiencing warm, dry weather here in the Northeast, and with it the flea populations continue to multiply throughout the region. Vets say that many people are experiencing infestations and general irritation with the little buggers. Our own home has been no exception, as well as that of my mother's. We have bathed the animals, used flea collars, diatomaceous earth, garlic, sprays for bedding, and even bombed the homes multiple times. My mother has sprayed the areas just outside the house, too. 

All these chemicals make me nervous. Obviously, they aren't working, and layering them on one after the other, powder on top of spot treatment on top of collar seems very dangerous for the enture household, but most especially for the animals themselves.

I am especially wary of yard treatments: isn't this part of the reason why there are less bees and praying mantis and such? I usually just stick with diatomaceous earth, a safe inseect killer, and lots of vacuuming though in an infestation situation I have done what I have to keep the home safe. I am ill at ease with the concept that we humans have the right to kill ALL insects outside the house. I mean, I hate the ants that come in my home every year and I do put out traps in the kitchen and spray the base of the house to keep them away, but they are more than welcome to inhabit all space oustide of my home. I have similar distaste for Roundup, and will only use it on persistant poison ivy which refuses annihilation by pulling up (yeah, you know who you are, you, you plant in the back!)... 

There are tons of safe alternatives for flea control out there -- beneficial nematode spray will decrease flea larvae in the yard by 90% within 24 hours. D.E. can be put around your home and rubbed safely into your pet's fur. Nylar is a safe chemical that you can use indoors with a lot less fear of toxicity than other products -- try I.G. Regulator. Flea collars are less toxic to animals than the spot on treatments, but not as effective, and a bit more hazardous to your humans...try natural neem oil or repellants. 

And if you still want to believe all those chemicals are good for your animals, or you, here is this excerpt from the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association’s newsletter:

In response to more than 44,000 potential adverse reactions to spot-on flea and tick products reported in 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency is intensifying its evaluation of these products. No recalls have been issued at this time. The AVMA will continue to maintain contact with the EPA and monitor the situation, and updates will be posted as they come to our attention. To see the EPA’s statement, including a chart of products, go to www.epa.gov/pesticides/health/flea-tick-control.html. For information about reporting adverse events, go to www.avma.org/animal_health/reporting_adverse_events.asp.

And this from the EPA itself:

U.S. and Canada to Increase Scrutiny of Flea and Tick Pet Products
Release date: 04/16/2009

(Washington, DC - April 16, 2009) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is intensifying its evaluation of spot-on pesticide products for flea and tick control for pets due to recent increases in the number of reported incidents. Adverse reactions reported range from mild effects such as skin irritation to more serious effects such as seizures and, in some cases, the death of pets. . . . Incidents with flea and tick products can involve the use of spot-on treatments, sprays, collars and shampoos. However, the majority of the incidents reported to EPA are related to flea and tick treatments with EPA-registered spot-on products.

For more info check out this great site:
http://www.alt4animals.com/flea.htm

Smoother Legs, More Free Time, Less Resources: A Product Review!

I'll just start this off by saying that I am a hairy girl. Thank you, mom, for the black Spanish hair that grows in furry profusion  :)  Over the years I have tried waxing, cream depilatories, razors, sugaring, bleaching, tweezing and it was all a losing battle...until my sister-in-law let me try her epilator. This is not the epilady (OUCH!) of the 1980's. These little machines have come a long way, and while not pain-free, are not all that bad. The first time was the worst, and each time after hurts less and less. Most parts of the leg don't really hurt at all after the first time! And, being that VERY hairy girl whose hair also grows incredibly fast (can you say 5 o'clock shadow... on your legs?) I can vouch that the results are long lasting. I only use it once a week. The best part is that my machine (the Revlon RV565 Gentle 2-in-1 Hair Removal System) comes with an electric razor on the other end that actually works!! It shaves really, really close. I never used one that worked on leg hair before, and am ecstatic that this one does. It is perfect for the bikini area and for any hairs that the epilator misses.

So, not only am I more hair-free, but I have more time, and am saving precious resources. I use less electricity and water epilating my legs for 20 minutes than I did shaving each day since I had to take incredibly hot, long showers and shave in the shower to prevent razor burn. I use 100% green energy in my home, so I am good with using an electric machine. Before, I could only use high-end razors like the Venus, so this saves me money (one time price for my epilator/shaver 18.95 on Amazon.) I also save money and resources by not needing to buy shaving cream anymore. After years of experimentation, only hair conditioner would work to prevent razor burn afterwards on my sensitive skin. I used VO5. Amazingly, the epilating doesn't cause me any skin irritation, I just moisturize afterwards as I did with shaving, and I am good to go. I haven't even had a single ingrown hair!

I wish I had owned one of these earlier. I'd probably be leg-hair free by now, since every time you epilate or tweeze or wax you damage hair follicles a bit, and there's always some that simply don't grow back. Ever. And that, in itself, is enough incentive for me :)

Today is.

http://landscaping.about.com
/od/galleryoflandscapephotos
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a beautiful day!  The dogwood leaves are starting to turn colors, and the air is crisp and bright.

Life is always beautiful after you've had a full night's sleep and you and your children are all feeling better after a fall cold.

Perhaps that is why we have illness. So we know what  feeling better really feels like.

Today my daughter is dressed in one of my favorite outfits of my son's, and it brings back such fond memories. She has little pigtails, and has made the outfit all hers, complete with drool and bits of wet paper stuck all over her. Enchanting :)

Holly Flower Essence: Hurricane Holly #9

I've been having some crazy dreams about the number 9 and various herbs, and Holly came up as a good flower essence to create this week. Flower essences are wonderful healing tools: basically you imbue pure water with the healing, energetic imprint of a flower by setting the water and flower out in the sun or the light of the moon. Then you preserve this essence with an equal amount pure alcohol or vinegar and make a dosage bottle according to homeopathic dilution principles. 

Yesterday I made "Hurricane Holly #9", which I really can't wait to start using. This essence was made during the buildup and approach of Hurricane Earl, with two Holly flowers, a four-petaled flower and a five-petaled flower, and with 9 quartz crystals surrounding it. This Holly essence empowers and balances all the forces of nature and the five elements within you to create the strongest clearing effects possible. Parasites, miasms, dark beings and genetic disturbances scurry and flee before it. Damaged cells are purged and you are left feeling clean and clear. If you suffer any de-tox symptoms while taking this essence, drink an 8-ounce glass of water with ¼ teaspoon salt (the higher-vibration the salt, the better: Himalayan, Pure Sea Salt, etc) up to three times a day. Traditionally, holly essence is used to heal and expand the heart chakra, and to alleviate anger and envy while generating acceptance.

Flower and crystal essences are available at www.earthlodgeherbals.com/flowers.htm