I’ll show pictures here to prove it! The sand patch we use as an exercise ring for Bella, has threatened to overgrow in Lamb’s Quarters this summer! This was how that patch looked in the fall. The hint of green in the foreground is now quite a thick patch of the plant! In an effort to keep the plants from taking over, we have literally “weeded” this patch three major times now, and a couple smaller times as well. The last two major efforts finally dried, only to make room for another major round of ripping this herb up by the roots! I’m not even done with this round at the patch either, as there is another area remaining and I should probably do that when we get to the barn later tonight.
It took me two days’ worth of effort to crush the previous two hauls and begin laying out the latest haul onto trays, clear out the shelter of it’s hanging branches, and start to hang more. I finished hanging the latest load this morning. We got a few drops out of the sky this morning, so trays are all stacked under the umbrella. One of those grocery bins holds a few large lamb’s quarters plants, while another bin holds a fair bit of mallow that needs to dry. Two of the trays contain knotgrass/weed, and the rest are all lamb’s quarters! A few bags, both cloth and plastic, contain more mallow, some pig weed, and home-foraged stuff such as prickly lettuce, dandelion, and mustard weed.
Not much is growing in the home lawn patch now, although recent bits of rain have the pineapple weed wondering if they can grow again. We do have some broadleaf plantain growing, but I didn’t harvest those last week. We have some stunted salsify growing as well. Other than the so-called weeds, our patch is now quite brown. I raked up some of the dead grass last week after doing my harvesting.
Remember my mugolio experiment with the fir? That turned out so well, that I decided to make more! In between times, Ashley found a closed pine cone, and I started a slightly more authentic version of mugolio,  Here is a picture of how that’s going. Again, I am using regular white sugar. One reader says that one reason the chef could have recommended brown sugar instead of white, is due to the brown’s higher moisture content keeping the sugar suspended longer in the fermentation phase. While the white sugar does look packed down in the moisture from the cone, it scraped out of the jar without too much trouble after heating it in a pot of water for a few minutes for the fir version.
I found another fir at the barn with quite a few green cones on it, so I gathered roughly a third of a grocery bin worth of cones and brought them home. Many of them were literally dripping with sap and some had it starting to crystallise! I picked with one hand, trying to keep the sap to just that hand, but when I tried to wash it off, I used both hands and eventually was trying to use soap and oil to get both hands clean. I managed to get both hands mostly clean before we had to come home and the rest came off while washing dishes. Whew!
Today’s effort once the Lamb’s Quarters were hung, was to measure out one cup cone to one cup sugar and fill however many jars that took. I did it alternating, one cup of cones to one cup sugar, and in general, each jar took two cups of cone, sometimes two cups of sugar/sometimes a little less sugar, and a couple of the larger jars took a third cup of cone and half a cup more of sugar. The result is this photo of 13 jars total! The previous set of jars 3 quart and one half quart, resulted in three 368ml tostito jars of fir mugolio. If that ratio holds true for this next batch, I should have 10 to 12 of the 368ml or similar jars of syrup a month from now. Today is mostly cloudy, so the jars are not in the sun. Now I have 14 jars to burp daily and shake occasionally.
While I was busy today, my son brought home another large former laundry detergent tub. I filled one the other day with crushed lamb’s quarters, which is why the grocery tub is 2/3rds full. When I spotted the new tub, I ran inside, worked off the lid (these tubs are not easy to get the lid off), poured out remaining detergent, and ran to the washroom to use the handheld shower head to wash and rinse it. It is now drying! When it’s fully dry, I will dump the grocery bin into it. I still need to label the other tub. When the fire ban lifts, these tubs will largely be burned for use as salt. We don’t need that much for teas and medicines around the house and certainly couldn’t eat that much raw in salads. I know some like their pot herbs, but unless it’s in a soup, which my household doesn’t really eat that much of, I don’t care much for wilted greens myself. So I fully expect these tubs of crushed lambs quarters will be reduced to plant-based ash salt. A tray of catnip got blown onto two trays last weekend, so those trays are now crushed and marked as a blend that will be used in household teas and other infusions. Nothing like accidentally making your own tea blends. But hey, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade right??? So when the wind blows over a tray onto other trays, guess what? You now have a tea blend!
We’ve been so busy over the last number of weekends, that the best we’ve done for berry scouting has been to eyeball the berry bushes along roadsides. Berry season is now upon us and we need to get out there now to grab them! This weekend, that won’t happen till Monday morning, because Sunday, we are at the Oyama Garlic Festival! They will have around 100 vendors inside and out, and we’ll be one of the vendors indoors. This allows us to set out our liquid tea samples, have the hot water karafe plugged in for anyone who wants to buy a cup of tea, and not worry about any gusts of wind off Wood Lake to take out our display. I’ll have my 38 Nutritional/Medicinal Profiles book out with a business card in the Garlic page, showcasing it’s amazingly long list of nutritional and medicinal benefits! If you are in the Central Okanagan that day, be sure to stop by and say hi.
The following weekend, August 18th, we are at Priest Creek Winery again for another afternoon craft fair. We’ll be outside in front of their tasting room this time.
Foraging that weekend will be on the Monday as well. Mondays are errand days, so first we’ll go shopping in the forest, and then go shopping in town. We need to beef up some of our late summer bins to get ready for the fall and Christmas craft fairs. Already, teas that require wild rosehips are starting to get thin in number. We may have to fill in those slots on the table with limited run teas, but we’ll see. I’m watching the rose bushes in hopes of an early harvest to tide us over until the major post-frost harvest begins.
If you are wanting to plan a foraging workshop date, the next available Sunday when both Ashley and I are free, is August 25th. If you don’t mind Ashley not being with us, feel free to commit to a Wednesday or Saturday as well. Choosing and committing to a date involves sending in your $30 registration to bnhc@naturalhealthgodsway.ca. This lets me know you are are firm about the date you chose. I then blast that date out to the newsletter so others can join us if they wish. Check my website calendar to be sure the date you want is not pre-booked.
