Tag Archives: medicinal garden

by

The Gardening Begins…

It’s a little chilly out there today, but we’re in full on working in the garden mode now.
The ducks and TD (TallDuck the sweetgrass turkey who thinks she’s a duck) are going back to their yard today, now that flood waters have receded enough.
Then, I start hauling loads of straw to mulch the areas of the garden where grasses tried to take over.
We garden no-till, so straw is my best friend at this time of year.
🙂
Next week I can start planting out my onion sets, my spring garlic and any cool weather seeds…beets, carrots, fava beans, lettuce, spinach, and the like…
We are absolutely going to get a few more nights of frost, so I’m not even thinking about my tomatoes going outside yet.
Soon I’ll start hardening them off tho…

The medicinal plants are doing much better, now that they have their chance under the grow light:

There’s been a growth explosion since this picture above too, so for that I’m glad.
And the reseeded mullein is starting to grow too…mullein is going to be a big one for harvesting (I hope!) this year, since it’s main usage is for respiratory issues. So between what I seeded this week, and hopefully what grows in the the winter sowing jugs, I hope to have an ample supply!

The stinging nettles are up.
Nettles are a nutritional powerhouse, and an excellent medicinal.
Last year I was sad because I thought we didn’t have any growing…then I realized, we have them literally all over the Farm, but the birds (turkeys mainly) were getting them before I found them…and then when I did find them, they were big and older.
Now I know *exactly* where the best stands grow and the turkeys are still in the garage, so *I* get to them first!

And the rhubarb plants are coming back, as well as my asparagus and the honeyberries survived being buried under 5 feet of snow, and the apples trees…well they took some damage, being buried under drifts of snow, but they’re budding and I think they’ll be okay.
So, all in all, we’re getting onto growing season, albeit a wee bit late, but now the spring/summer work begins.
Days of hauling straw, planting, mulching, weeding and maybe even some watering…
I’m looking forward to longer days outside in the sunshine.

I’m still working on the garden expansion out front too…cardboard down, bedding from the duck house next, some rotted horse manure than another layer of straw and finally topsoil.
I haven’t ordered the topsoil yet, but that area is going to be for the peppers (that survived 🙄🤦‍♀️😭) and some tomatoes, so I’m not in too big of a hurry for the dirt.

And just now, after moving ducks, I checked more of the winter sowing jugs and lo…there is growth in quite a few of them!!
For that I am excited.
Later on, I’ll go out with my list and see whats germinated and perhaps (like the plant nerd I am) share some pictures.

Oh, I am so grateful for spring!!
Winter this time ’round was way too hard and we *need* the growth of Spring to rebalance ourselves.
🖤🖤🖤

by

Oh Sable…

Remember back in the Fall I said I was harvesting as much of the broadleaf plantain weed/herb on the Farm as I sustainably could?
No?
Okay, here:

Plantain is edible, and the young leaves are delicious in salads.
But the main reason I harvest it is for it’s other, well known, use.
To help cuts/scrapes heal.

I dry it, then when I need it, I powder a leaf or 2 in my mortar and pestle, then mix a small amount of raw honey in until it’s a paste.
Then I clean the booboo and coat it with the (not so tasty) honey concoction.

Today I did my first (and hopefully last) ice cut of the season:

Oh Sable…

Not as bad as some she’s done.
Of course it always looks the worst on the Palomino Princess.
And it’s superficial.
It’s from running through drifts of snow…as I said in the Instagram post above, the skin on horse legs is thin and delicate. And cold is not kind to thin, delicate skin.
It can be cut by the sharp crust of an icy snow drift rather easily.
But with the plantain goo, it heals beautifully.
Which is good because our BellaHazaBooBoo needs that goo far too often.
😉

And, just because this past summer I had 2 plantain plants that I could harvest from, I bought seeds in order to plant some in the medicinal garden.
It’s handy to have on hand for humans as well and equines.

by

Melting

We’re back into a heat wave, with no rain in sight.
I think this is the driest I’ve ever seen it.
We need rain.
Bad.

The heat makes getting things done a little more difficult.
I feel like I’m melting.
lol
So the birds get let out at the hint of dawn, while it’s still (relatively) cool.
I’ve been working on weeding the garden early too…which doesn’t happen some days because the sprinkler needs to run to keep the food plants alive and that has to happen early too.
Truthfully, I’ve been feeling a bit defeated by our garden this year.
At least…until this morning.
When I saw that some tomato plants have rebounded from what I thought was certain death in our June 21st frost. The irony, right? First day of real summer and we get hit with a killing frost?

So I was excited to see a handful of tomatoes in the mulch, with several having blooms on them!
*swoons*
I might get a tomato sandwich yet this year!
And this morning, while I was weeding the thistles, I discovered a fair bit of our corn was up…and quite tall already.
Just hidden in the thistles.
So there’s hope for that too.
I planted mostly feed corn (for homemade libations, if y’know what I mean 😉 ) and for the silk.
Corn silk is dried for tea for a handful of things, including inflammation and urinary health.
I’m happy to find a few stalks coming up amidst my thistles…which I have also been harvesting and drying for teas.
Thistle is excellent for your liver (I’m hard on mine 😂😂😂 I admit it).
Plus the goose bebes love it!
I had hoped to harvest flowers for a mead, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

Stinging nettles will be collected this weekend for stinging nettle beer.
I was supposed to do it earlier in the week, but by the time I got the basic chores done, I just wanted to melt…so tomorrow morning I’ll don my gloves and pick a whole bunch of them.

Oh, and we have another house duck…temporarily, of course…

I hadn’t planned on this one coming in, but the hen was in a poor spot when she hatched them, and chickens killed the rest of the clutch off…so we snagged this little and brought her in.
She’s been named Oreo.
I am hoping this is a hen, because she’s just so darn pretty!
And we don’t need anymore drakes…extra boys are Freezer Campers.

And, our final round of incubation is finishing up.
Pipping and peeping started in the incubators yesterday.
By the end of the weekend, everyone who was going to hatch, will have hatched.
And we’ll be done ’til next February.
All that’ll be left is the butchering.
Which should start in a couple of weeks, as some of our first hatcher roosters are close to size now.
Then my weeks will be filled with butcher, process, can, sleep, repeat.
Until the end of November or so.
😂😂😂

This weekend will be a fiery hot one, but we still have the final wall of the greenhouse to build, then we put it up…
And I have hay to cut.
And more weeds in the garden.
And a fence line to move.
And boxes to flatten and lay out over the next garden area (to kill the grass).
And somewhere in there, some sleep…
😂😂😂

We’ll get done what we can, and keep picking at the rest.
That’s just how it is.
🙂

Maybe I’ll go have a nap with Ruby…or a beer.
Prolly a beer is a better idea.
😂😂😂
by

Rhubarb

Remember how I said I wanted to add a rhubarb plant to the Farm’s food forest?
Not because I like it (I don’t really) but because medicinally, it’s a good thing to have growing here.
There must be a reason every farm wife and baba had one or two plants growing…and I don’t think it was just for the baking! 😉

So Hubby had found one for sale at the local hardware store, and snapped it up for me.
Then, a friend in the city messaged me to say her neighbour had one to split and if I was interested, we could get some of it. Um, yes please!

So this past Thursday, Hubby went over to her place and split this massive rhubarb plant…
What he brought home was an incredible bounty of plantable roots/crowns!

So now, where I wanted 1 or 2 plants, I have…
11!!
Plus a gallon sized bag of rhubarb in the freezer, because I pulled all the stems that were on the crowns he brought home…I’ll save that for a small batch of wine. 😉

So I planted 2 big crowns straight into the main garden bed, put 4 smaller ones into one of the raised beds out front of the house, potted 4 for myself to add to the next garden expansion project, and potted 2 to give to another friend who was looking for some.
Plus, I still have a few smaller crowns that I plan on potting, so that if anyone else near me is looking for some, I’ll share those with them.

But I’m not complaining about having so many plants.
I’ll definitely find a use for them.
Even if it’s just making a rhubarb syrup to add to moonshine.
😉

And just for fun…if you look behind Ruby, way in the distance, there is a chicken…because here, chickens do whatever the hell they want. 😂😂😂 (I think there’s actually 2 chickens…but I’m not 100% certain…)
by

This and That…

Back in the Fall we ran out of time, energy and money to get the greenhouse built.
I’d say material wise, we’re about 90% there…now it’s just having the manpower come spring to get ‘er going.
As much as I wanted it done before the snows came, we are only 3 people and there was A LOT of other things to get done.
And, considering what a bag of dog excrement the person who runs our province is, it’s not like we could put out a call for helpers to get it done either. 🙄
No matter how one feels about the entire virus issue, any politician who encourages snitching on friends, family and neighbours is, IMO, of significantly less value than a bag of dog excrement.

At any rate, without having the entirety of the supplies, it made no sense to knock ourselves out to build and leave it part way done…but now!
Ah, but now I’ve found a source of free reusable building materials!
Hubby has been stopping at the place for couple weeks now, and the pile of materials is getting to be awesome.
So once the ground thaws, the greenhouse project is a go…as well as a couple bachelor coops for roosters and another area for raised garden beds.

I have this plan…

LOL!!
It always starts with a plan!
So over the Yule break, in a random internet search for an old, long gone from my life acquaintance, I found her latest project. It’s an amazing, powerful, heart breaking, yet beautiful project.
And I immediately signed the family up.
It’s One More Candle (clickable linky)

From their website:

Our Vision

One More Candle offers you the opportunity to adopt the memory of a child whose life was cut short by hubris and deep seated human evil.

One More Candle is committed to remembering every one of the 1.5 million children murdered in the Shoah (Holocaust).

L’dor v’dor
From generation to generation

Simply stated, One More Candle needs you to adopt the memory, a child to honor as though having been one of your own family.

As I said, I got the family on board (trust me it wasn’t hard) and we’ve all adopted a memory.
Please consider doing so too.

So, how does this connect with my plan I mentioned above?
Well, the past year has shown me how much I need to work on an herb/flower/medicinal garden to go with my food gardens. I’ve been collecting seeds, planning additions, and looking at raised bed ideas to create.
And then, yesterday while The Kid and I were doing chores, we were talking about the medicinal garden and we struck on the idea of turning it into a memorial garden.
We’ve lost a few important people in our lives in the past few years (including one on New Year’s Eve…but that’s an entire different blog post) and it would be nice to have something on Farm as a memorial.
Really, what better than our herbal/medicinal garden?

And then The Kid says “And we can include our children too…because they’re family now, right?”
Well damn…
I wasn’t crying, it was the stupid turkeys cutting onions. 😉
But she’s right.
So, the planning is on for memorial stones for our loved ones (including our children) to remember them.
And if I can’t get stones made in time, I do have some lovely scraps of copper sheet and a alphabet punch set that I can make pretty little tags to hang in the apple trees as chimes until I get stones done…in fact, I think the chimes is a great idea to do as well.
❤

In other news…

I’m attempting to do the entire Capture52 project again this year.
Last year I fell off the photgraphy wheel way too early, and never really did pick the camera back up to finish the prompts.
Ah well.
Try, try again, right?
And so here I am, giving it another go.
The first week was “New”.
What better than our “new” dear boy, Hobbes?
It seems I’m always going to have neighbour’s barn cats come find us here…it goes with the fact that our cats eat well. It is always The Rule. Everybody eats.
So when Hobbesy showed up, we just started adding an extra scoop of cat food to the daily rations.
*shrug*
Ain’t his fault that he’s here.
He’s a super handsome boy…and like aaaaaalllllll the other boys, as soon as we can get him in to the vet, he’ll be losing his boys. 😉

Ain’t he the handsomest?

Once he’s neutered, there will be peace among the felines again.
*sigh*
That’s the biggest problem with these guys showing up all the time.
No one else around here neuters their boys and I end up with them coming for food and fighting with my TroubleCat.
And Trouble is the King.
He takes no guff, but he’s getting older and eventually he’s gonna slow down.
I’m tired of the young boys showing up thinking they can beat the crap out of the King and take over.
Them young boys are too dumb and full of their balls to realize the girls ain’t interested since they’re all spayed.
No kittens for my hunting girls!
But at least Hobbes listens when I tell him to knock it off…and he’s slowly learning that Daphne just wants to play. lol

Snow loving weirdo freak dog…