We’re up in the Berkshires this weekend enjoying beautiful fall weather. The family next door, who are big homesteaders, invited us to come over and press some apples into apple cider.
We gathered about two bushels in a wagon. In the end we pressed about six gallons worth to keep. Some will be drunk fresh, some will be made into hard cider, and some will be made into apple jack.
Yesterday Neil pulled out the stops to celebrate my birthday. We had brunch together, played hooky at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, celebrated with Lindsay by eating sundaes, had a great dinner and then had drinks with friends.
One of the many highlights was this dapper blue heron walking around the koi ponds at the botanic gardens looking for lunch. Blue herons are my favorite bird, so this was an especially nice treat. He wasn’t bothered by all of us gawking at him. Herons have clued into the “fish in a barrel” aspect of these ponds. One of our friends saw a black crowned night heron swoop down and grab a fish.
Here’s a chicken pot pie in which no chickens were harmed in the making. The chicken used is a mushroom called chicken of the woods. It is a gorgeous bright orange, and when cooked has the flavor and texture of white meat chicken.
The recipe was adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s chicken pot pie. Instead of making individual pies, I put all of the ingredients into an oven-proof casserole dish and covered with the pastry. It was absolutely delicious and I would definitely make it again, although I would cut the quantity of butter down drastically.
I have many readers write me about fighting chicken mites. They are annoying to both the chickens and their keepers. Before you find yourself fighting them, you can make a dust box for the chickens to do their own daily maintenance. By rolling around in the dust/dirt, they kind of scratch any mites off their bodies. Chickens love to take dust baths, and will dig in your flower beds, in their run, or wherever they can to find relief.
How to make a Dust Box:
Find a sturdy tub. I have a Rubbermaid-type thing with a lid, so that when it rains I can cover it.
Fill it with equal parts of sand, food-grade diatomaceous earth (make sure it’s food-grade!!) and wood ash. We use natural charcoal, so we use the ashes from that. If you use regular charcoal briquettes, or lighter fluid, do NOT use those ashes. Use ashes from your fireplace instead.
And now comes the hard part. Put the dust box in the chicken’s run and walk away. Chickens are naturally curious and will explore the box soon enough. They instinctively know what to do with a big pile of dirt.
Try and resist the urge to “show” your hens what to do by plunking them in the box. I did this. They will be convinced that you are trying to kill them and never want to go in that evil box again. I have 2 chickens who love the box and two who think it is the source of all evil in the universe. You can imagine who’s feathers look better, right?
Okay, so now all of you have run out, picked sumac and made juice, right? Great. Here’s the recipe for a nice cocktail. It is based on a cosmopolitan, which if that sounds too 90s, you can just mention your foraged ingredients and get your street cred back.
2 shots vodka
3 shots sumac concentrated juice
1 shot elderflower liquor like St. Germaine
Mix together in a shaker with ice, shake and strain the ice out. Yum.
I know what you are thinking… You are thinking Poison Sumac. Relax. There are other varieties, which are completely wonderful and harmless. Check your guides before you eat any wild edible, but a good rule of thumb with sumac is that if the flower stalk is red, it isn’t poisonous.
The juice you make from a sumac has a wonderfully tart lemonade-like flavor that is very refreshing in summer.
We drove along the roadsides with garden clippers and a big shopping bag. I can’t tell you exactly how many we picked, but it felt like several pounds worth. It filled the bottom 1/3 of a large shopping bag. Here’s a photo of our haul.
Okay, so once you have gathered a bunch of flower stalks, grab a big canning pot, or stock pot. Fill it halfway with room temperature water. DO NOT rinse the flowers off before you use them or all the flavor will wash away.
Drop a few stalks into the water. Grab and squeeze the flowers. The flowers will fall off the stalk and that’s fine. Just keep kneading and squeezing the flowers. You will notice that tiny red hairs from the flowers will start sticking to your hands. They will wash off.
Take the flower stalks out and add new ones. Keep doing this until you run out of flowers. The more flowers you have, the stronger the juice. Here’s a photo of our concentrated juice to give you an idea of the color it will be.
The juice is really great, and lends itself well to many things. You could cook with it, but we just added seltzer to make spritzers. There will be a cocktail recipe coming up shortly!
What’s been growing in my urban garden?
This squash plant grew from homemade compost. I had no idea what kind of squash would grow, and for most of the summer, nothing did.
I just noticed that there are some small squash starting to grow. These look like one of the more exotic ones that came in our CSA. Looking forward to trying them.
Not sure why tomatoes are deciding to grow in my garden this year, but I’m definitely not complaining. The big striped ones are green zebras, which is a lovely heirloom variety. They are tart and unsettling because of their color. We have a variety of cherries that mostly grew from compost. Unfortunately we ate all our white currant tomatoes before I took a photo of them.
Our purple Joe Pye weed is flowering. This is one of the native plants I got from Project Native. Something is happily eating away at the leaves. I know most people don’t like to have their plants eaten, but that is part of the point of planting native varieties. I’ve given something a food source. I keep checking for caterpillars, eggs or cocoons, but haven’t seen any yet.
And this crazy looking thing is a mushroom growing out of the mulch by my chickens. It’s a type called a stinkhorn. They attract all kinds of insects. You can see many sitting on the top of the one in the foreground.
What’s growing in your garden?
Off to Maryland for a few days to visit family and friends. Be back soon!
This past weekend we went up to the Berkshires. I always get my nature groove on when we’re up there. This weekend was no exception.
My favorite plant nursery in the world (it’s so much more than that!), Project Native, was hosting a butterfly safari. They specialize in native plants as a means to promote a healthy ecosystem. I’ve probably gone into it before, but without native plants, there aren’t food sources for native insects and bugs, which then in turn affects what the native birds eat, etc. etc. etc. There are also some insects that will only lay their eggs on one type of plant (called a host plant). Monarch butterflies are one such insect. They will only lay their eggs on plants in the milkweed family. And their numbers are declining drastically. In fact our guide mentioned that their numbers could be down anywhere from 30-90 percent, and that they haven’t seen one all summer! But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
During our safari, we were given butterfly nets and instructed on the best way to catch and then release the butterflies into the holding box. Our guides were amazingly knowledgeable about the different plants and butterflies we saw. They walked us through their property, which was a fun glimpse of the different plants they sell growing in a wide, open setting.
We caught several butterflies. Lindsay was by far the best at it. And then we brought them to their newly built butterfly house to release them. The butterfly house is a hoop house, with netting instead of plastic. It is filled with native plants for the different butterflies to feed and lay eggs on.
Inside, we saw loads and loads of caterpillars. This one is particularly great with its false eyes on it.
And, you might have noticed that after I said that they hadn’t seen any monarchs, my first photo is of a monarch. That was from a woman who donated monarchs she used in a classroom setting. They were from PA, so aren’t considered native to the Berkshires. They will not release the monarch when they release all the other butterflies for the winter.
