Bee Brode

I'm going to leave a series of links here to one of my favorite websites for both wild and nose to tail eating. Just nettle recipes today, but not all of them. There are lots of good ones.

https://honest-food.net/nettle-risotto-recipe/
https://honest-food.net/nettle-soup/
https://honest-food.net/nettle-pesto/
https://honest-food.net/nettle-pasta/

I cannot vouch for all of the above, but there is nothing of Hank's I wouldn't try if all the other mouths in the house were more amenable to things like fish. I can say that Spring hasn't happened in my house until we've made the brightest green pasta you've ever seen!

And generally, any recipe that calls for spinach or another green leafy vegetable can have nettles sub in. MY kids would have me add in ALWAYS blanch the nettles first, even if you're putting them in a soup. I once made a garlic ginger chicken soup, and added the nettles straight to the pot. The soup nibbled back. Not a huge sting of discomfort, but not fun for the littles either.

Nettles are my favorite leafy green. I love the umami that they bring to bear, I love the color, I love their prickly nature and the education I get to share when I tell people that we had stinging nettle (fill in the blank) for dinner, and yes, my kids eat it, and no, it isn't a health hazard.

I also love that pheasant back mushrooms (easy beginner wild mushroom, no deadly lookalikes) are frequently found in the same locations and at the same times, at least in my neck of the woods. We've had many a stroganoff with pheasant backs over green nettle noodles.

We are also quite fond of using dried nettles as an herbal tea that reduces seasonal allergy symptoms. Nettles have some antihistamines built in, it seems.

As I do things differently, I'll bother posting here.  I DO pressure can my tomatoes, because I hate the way the sauce tastes with the extra acid (lemon juice/citric acid) added. Also I can stack jars.

I love pressure canning homemade bone broths a couple days after sending all the [chickens\pigs\sheep\goats] to the freezer, as then said broth is occupying space outside of a refrigerated environment (which is premium real estate). I keep ~3 jars of each in the pantry, and the rest is typically under a bed, in a plastic tote.  I've also pressure canned potatoes (makes for fast hash browns), and chicken, but not for a few years.

I'm also a huge fan of steam canners for anything others water bath. I inherited one from a fellow congregation member, and what do you know! USDA has recommendations for using them again! It takes so much less time/energy to heat/run.  But it isn't a pressure canner.  I use it for the jams, applesauces, pickles, grape juice, sorts of things.

I know this frustration!

I've landed on a pair of men's work boots from Walmart.  The first time I bought them I wore them regularly for 9 years as a not-farming-yet hiking and winter boot (living in the Rockies). When that pair finally succumbed I reckoned that I could probably spring for a "solid boot."  That far more expensive boot lasted for under 2 years in farming conditions. I went back to Walmart. They still sell the same cheap boot. I wore that one on-farm daily for 4 years before the sole cracked this spring and I was getting my socks soaked. I was in a crunch, so I went back to Walmart and got my third pair.  The price had gone up $10 since the last time I had purchased, but still very reasonably priced.

Brahma Men's Bravo, they only come in Wide, but for me, they've worked.





And because I can, I invoke Sir Terry Pratchett.  

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

Homeschool mom here, and I've lead elementary woodworking classes in a co-op setting. "Woodshop for Kids : 52 Woodworking Projects Kids Can Build" by Jack McKee was my principal text in leading those classes. I liked how it focused on putting hand tools into the kids' hands, and gave recommendations on how to make accommodations for varying skill levels. While doing research for that class I also landed on some Waldorf books/blogs that had some useful information on leading children with tools and pursuing less commonplace crafts with them.  

Here's the quote I found on stone working in particular. "There is every reason to have stone and stone tools in the playground as well. Limestone and marble are not too hard.  An old no-too-sharp hatchet or roofer's hammer is a good tool. Again, children do not need a preconceived idea of what they are making, nor do they need verbal instruction in how to use the tool. All that matters is that the children have the freedom to chip away [...] In terms of safety precautions it is sufficient that we are quietly present nearby, provide safety goggles, and allow only one child to work at a time." p66 "Educating the Will" by Michael Howard

I'd also recommend soapstone and rasps.

Hope that points you in the direction you're wanting to go.

I've read somewhere that mulberry will exude a juglone anti-toxin when planted near walnuts. I have seen mulberries growing quite happily near walnuts, and have seen a diversity of species thriving in the vicinity, so I am inclined to believe the claim, but don't have any scientific data to back it up.  

Never grown or processed sugar beets, but I have made maple syrup and sugar.  To get sugar it isn't too dissimilar from making fudge actually.  You cook it to the soft ball candy stage, 235-240 deg F, take it off the heat and beat it.  For fudge you stop beating it when it is smooth and not too crystalized, for sugar you keep beating it until it looks like brown sugar clumps.  

Once more this is the process for maple sugar, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for beet sugar.  

We do gingerbread structures every few winters or so, and what I've found that I like to use for "glue" is candy melts/almond bark/melting chocolate or whatever it might be called.  The stuff frequently comes in wafers with instructions on how to melt it on the package.  It sets up quickly enough that the small people in the household don't get impatient waiting for royal icing to harden, it is easy to "make" more if you bought enough up front, and you can pick your choice of colors, if you care about such things.  To keep it at a workable temp I store it in squeeze bottles and stash those in a metal mixing bowl that I've lined with a heating pad.  

And while candy canes may be a traditional winter snack, any hard candy stick would work.  ...I'm thinking about the kind I see in places like Cracker Barrel, I think they're a little shorter than canes, don't have the bend, and come in myriad of flavors, including chocolate, raspberry, bubblegum, etc.  A quick google search tells me "Gilliam Old Fashioned Candy Sticks" is what I'm thinking, or something else like them.  If you were wanting an edible wheel spoke or support they may work.

Just some ideas, take 'em or leave 'em!

I've grown duborskian rice in a "paddy" that didn't hold water, the plants that tended to grow with it were stinging nettle (not my favorite in this setting), plantain, wood sorrel, dandelion, and whatever grasses we had pulled up to trench out the "paddy."  Oh, and cottonwood trees.  I would recommend trying a low growing clover.  That sounds Fukuoka-ish. The plantain wasn't a problem once the rice was up.  The nettles and grasses did their best to shade out the rice, and on a particularly lazy year I only got a harvest on the southern edges of the block.

Rice polycultures are pretty well documented.  If you haven't read "One-Straw Revolution," now is probably a good time to do it!  If you end up deciding to try a flooded paddy then the book "The Power of Duck" is another one I would recommend.  

And I'll second that hulling is a pain.  Not impossible, just a pain.  We tried converting a Corona corn cracker (found at a thrift shop for $10) with some soft rubber.  It worked okay-ish.  Sorting through the grains to run the remainder through again was the bane of the job.  

We've since tried building the rice huller designed by Brill Engineering.  The answer that came with that one is that their recommended wheels are no longer offered where they linked them, so the guess and checking left us scratching our heads, also the shape of buckwheats (having tabled rice for a few years now, to revisit another day) doesn't work so nicely in a rice huller!  We do suspect that rice would work better.

...Thinking about Fukuoka's rice methods, clover and barley straw mulch are kinda his things for a dry rice culture!  

I'm now thinking about trying rice again in an aquaponic setting.  Thanks for the impetus!

The water does move.  A 2ft high flooding event will be down in the banks within 36 hours usually.  But it usually doesn't move fast over the area outside of its banks.

Yes, trees get moved along, but I don't see much silt building up.  Likely due to the property immediately upstream from us being overgrown, there isn't much bare soil, and the vegetation there will filter what silt is being carried from further upstream.  

Thanks for the fencing suggestion.  

I've lurked here on permies for a few years, but finally have a question that I cannot answer.  

I live in Southern Michigan, USA.  I have a property just shy of 3 acres, or a tiny bit bigger than a hectare.  The 1900's farmhouse sits on a hill above a creek with a substantial floodway, about a third of my property.  We get seasonal flooding every spring and that land goes under about a foot (30cm), possibly as high as 2ft of water over it in outstanding flood events.  

Considering ways to utilize my margins I tried planting highland rice on it a few years in a row.  I never got my "paddies" (more like shallow trenches with very sandy soil) to hold water, which complicates rice culture in this climate substantially.  I had abandoned the project for a couple years until yesterday my kids asked if we could give it another go.  

The only way I'm doing this is if we can get the paddies sealed.  I've watched the BB video on building a tiny pond in sandy soil.  So I know it is possible to seal it, the issue becomes the flooding.  If I get these shallow paddies excavated out again and sealed, what are the odds that the flooding will undo all the effort and somehow wash out the seal?  My husband thinks it'll wash out, "Never underestimate the power of running water."  I'm not as convinced, but he's beginning to have me questioning my stance.  

What do you folks think?