Chris Clinton

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

I removed a fence that was put up a number of years ago by a coinhabitant here to keep dogs out of a garden plot. It was cobbled together from various types of welded wire fencing attached to mostly t-posts. The dogs are no longer here and the fence has just been a hindrance for a while and was well on its way to becoming a weedy hedge of unwanted saplings, briars and vines. Time for it to go! It measured out at 120 feet. I went through and removed the baling wire and zip ties that held the fencing to the posts and snipped the vines near ground level to free the mesh. I removed all the fence posts with a puller and stored them against the side of the red barn and the rolled up fencing on the inside for the time being. I removed the saplings and mowed it all down some time later, much better now.

We're having a droughty Spring around here so I set up a bee watering spot using the bottom of a broken chimenea. I added broken terracotta, rocks and sticks and then some shells and flowers to make it a little easier on the eyes. A quick and simple way to support our insect cousins.