Chris Clinton

During the hot season I get into drinking a quick concoction that I just refer to as haymakers, whether or not that's accurate...  I splash a little apple cider vinegar (or any homemade vinegar I might have or alternatively any kind of fruit juice) add a pinch of Himalayan salt and sometimes but not always blackstrap molasses or maple syrup then top the glass with water. It's easy, cheap, tasty and refreshing. Easy to make all kinds of variations.

This is a submission for harvesting the small wild black cherry, Prunus serotina. This is a very abundant wild cherry and is having a good year. As it is highly variable in quality I look for both trees with fruiting branches within reach for harvest and hopefully largish and tasty fruit. I think I like the taste of these more than most other people I know. I haven't found a good method or food mill to remove the pits so I usually dry whole whatever I don't eat straight from the tree. I'm guided by the advice found at the following link to deal with the cyanide precursor amygdalin. I have infused it in liquors in previous years and hope to try some of the other recipes in the future. https://foragerchef.com/eating-the-whole-cherry/   I'm still gathering more but pictures show a harvest of 2.75 lbs.

I picked these wild blackberries (dewberries)  to take to market for a few weeks, this submission is for one weeks harvest. I'm pretty sure I tared the weight of the bowl for the photo but at 10.18 lbs it's well over the needed 1-2 lbs regardless. Keep riding the fruit wave, there's always something else coming into season.

These are my glue pots, aside from a little one I carved out of soapstone for more primitive activities. I haven't actually used the electric one, I bought that cheaply from a print shop auction thinking I was going down the rabbit hole of casting composition rollers for a letterpress press. It still has remnant composition in it which is primarily hide glue. I went with getting some new rubber ink rollers made by an experienced person for now, realizing I didn't have enough experience with letterpress to know what a good performing roller would be like and my setup is in a place that may experience high heat and humidity which necessitates adjustments to the recipe that are not entirely spelled out in sources I've looked at. I haven't had a need arise yet that would call for that kind of volume or more frequent use of hide glue, the little cast iron double boiler type tends to be enough for small projects. I do want to try making glue in the electric pot at some point, by which I mean cooking the rawhide (or whatever) at the stabilized temperature this thing should operate at.

Here's my submission for drying lemon balm. We always have more of this around than we can keep up with but it's nice to keep a jar full on hand for tea blends and such. This harvest made some tea when fresh and the dried remainder topped up the gallon jar.

I gathered cottonwood buds with the intention to make a salve, but first comes the oil! Got a jar full and topped with olive oil, then left the jar on or around the wood stove to infuse. Strained into a new jar when I got around to it. Then into the cupboard for another rainy day to make salve.

I taught a beginners class on spoon carving at the first installment of the spoon carving club I've started. I made and hand printed a flyer that I posted at the farmers market and shared online. I had at least 10 attendees but didn't get all of them in every shot, I was teaching so wasn't behind the camera. I demonstrated roughing out a spoon from a section of split log for around an hour and then gave guidance individually as people started chopping at their own piece. It all went on till dark but I have some photos with another phone to document about a two hour passage of time (not the best, will have to figure out something better for future bb's with this requirement). I think some attendees might have never used a hatchet before so there wasn't a lot of spoons brought near completion on this day but everyone seemed to have a great time and we've had another meet up since. I'll be submitting that for the start a club bb once we've had enough meetings.

I made soup to use up some leftover broth from making a beef roast. I harvested some nice lambsquarters which I needed to weed out of one of my air prune beds in my nursery, in this case planted to Bigleaf Magnolia. Yielded much more than a cup and I also used some fresh nettles amongst other ingredients. Cooked and pureed and served with cornbread. yum yum

I harvested some lemon balm that was crowding some other plants and made a pot of tea with it fresh and dried the rest.

Might be slash pine too, not that easy to tell from photos. There's lots of pines in Ga, range maps here:  https://resources.ipmcenters.org/resource.cfm?rid=15836