Browsing Archives for Projects

This is Hal Sears.  Hal and I used to work together at the Community Mercantile which is a cooperative grocery store in Lawrence, Kansas specializing in natural foods, organic produce, and a vast selection of bulk herbs.  

Hal was the herb buyer for the store and for a few years, I was the ‘herb stocker girl’.  This means that once or twice a week, during my shift at the store, I would go through all the glass herb jars, pour them out, add new herbs into the bottom of the jars and then put the old herb stock back in to fill the jar to the top.  The store easily carried fifty different herbs and herb blends as well as whole leaf teas, powdered broth, and some bulk baking agents like baking soda and baking powder.  I enjoyed the job, especially re-stocking the peppermint and the cinnamon, but I quickly learned that powdered Valerian is the most vile smell on the face of the earth, and that I must pour the chili powder and the cayenne slowly or my eyes would sting for hours.  

Hal is extremely knowledgeable about herbs and their various medicinal uses.  At one point he created and sold his own herbal tinctures under a brand called ‘Thunder Wind Apothecary’.

Here is a bottle of Hal’s Echinacea Purpurea.  

Echinacea is an herb that can help fight off upper respiratory infections and is purported to boost the overall immune system.  The Plains Indians used it for snake bites as well as a myriad of other illnesses.  They passed their knowledge of this herb onto a travelling salesman named Joseph Meyer who began to market a concoction of the herb from a covered wagon.  To sell his echinacea tincture, he would goad a live rattlesnake into biting him, take a swig of his medicine and he would never get sick… or die… or anything.  He called his miracle drug, ‘snake oil’ and became the first in a long line of snake oil salesmen.  

Now who wants some echinacea tincture?

Let’s make some with Hal! 

First, Hal digs up a purple cone flower in his yard.  The scientific name for purple cone flower is either echinacea purpurea or echinacea augustofolian.  Either variety is suitable for an herbal tincture, but the augustofolian variety can numb your lips and mouth.

Hal keep the entire plant in tact.  He is going to use every part of the cone flower, including the heart, the lungs, the eyeballs, the bladder and the bowels.  

There will be dirt.  

Hal removes as much of the dirt as he can, but it is insidious.  Just when you think the plant is clean, you will find more dirt.

After a thorough cleaning, Hal hangs his echinacea up to dry for a while.  He wants it to wilt a bit.  

While the cone flower was wilting, Hal and I sat on his back porch and chewed the fat.  We rifled through all of the people that we both worked with at the ‘Merc’ and where they are now.  We talked about the changes over time in the co-op from it’s humble beginnings in a tiny store on Massachusetts street to the full service grocery store that it is now.  We also covered Buddhism, Catholicism, wild-crafting herbs, his adorable two year old granddaughter named Mercury, comfrey, ducks, my four boys, living in a small town, community life, peace, peach farming, baptism, the french horn, aloe vera, theocracy and the Latin mass.  

I love talking to Hal.  

I brought Hal a few varieties of cone flowers that we sell at the Garden Center.  

The orange one is called ‘Tiki Torch’ and the yellow one is called ‘Harvest Moon’.

This is what the echinacea looked like when Hal took it off the clothes line.

He brought it inside to his kitchen and chopped it into four inch pieces.

Hal stuffed two glass jars with pieces of the plant.  He placed the roots in the bottom, then added the stems and leaves…

The flowers went on the top.

He filled the jars with vodka.

One jar was finished, but to the other Hal added a few other herbs.

He added some goldenseal.

Some licorice for sweetness…

And some cayenne to clear out the sinuses.

He topped it all off with just a tad more vodka.

Hal then demonstrated how he would filter the tincture after it had set in the jars for one month.  

He simply folded a paper towel inside of  a kitchen colander and set this on top of bowl.

He would pour the contents of the tincture through the colander and then bottle the resulting amber colored liquid.

Hal labeled the jars for me.

He showed me a few books that had shaped his own herbal knowledge.

And then he made me lunch!

Who got the best deal out of this little excursion?

Thanks Hal!

Addendum…

Several commenters have been asking about dosage recommendations for this tincture.   I hesitate to put medical advice on my blog because I don’t actually know anything.  I will say that the only way I have ever used echinacea myself is to simply  steep the dried root  in a nice hot cup of water whenever I feel the first bit of a scratchy cold coming on in the back of my throat.  You can purchase dried echinacea in most stores that have a good herb section or any health food store.  Now that I have Hal’s tincture, I will try it out and I will probably follow the dosage advice in this article (scan down towards the end of the article for the dosage info.)

Happy Herbing!

Rechelle

My spinach has been growing gangbusters.

Fearing that the warmer weather might cause my spinach crop to bolt…

…like my arugula did.

I decided I better go ahead and harvest most of it and see if I could figure out how to ‘put it up’.

I collected enough spinach to fill a tall kitchen trash bag.

I set the bag into the sink and filled it with water, letting the spinach soak for a while to loosen the dried on dirt.

The boys helped me to remove the stems and any unwanted bits and pieces.

I set up an assembly line on the island.

Here we have cleaned spinach, boiling water, and a large container filled with ice and water.

I placed the clean spinach in the boiling water for one minute, which is called ‘blanching’ because that makes you sound smart and gives you an edge on confusing the heck out of people.

I found several recipes for freezing spinach, and they all had different recomendations for how long to ‘blanch’ your spinach. Some said two minutes, some said thirty seconds, some spoke of enzymes and some spoke of nutrient leaching. I finally gave up on finding a cook time that was predominant, and went with an average… one minute. My spinach will probaby have both bad enzymes and nutrient leaching. I just hope it tastes alright.

After one minute I removed the spinach from the boiling water…

…and placed it in an ice bath.

The ice bath stops the spinach from cooking, which also stops the enzymes from ‘enzyming’ and also stops the nutrients from leaching.

I left my spinach in the ice bath until I had processed all the spinach.

I labeled my freezer bags.

I then drained the spinach and loaded up the bags.

Two small freezer bags.

That is all that came from a trash bag full of spinach.

That stuff cooks down… way down!

I can’t wait to try this out in a batch of spanakopita!

After a few weeks of discussion, I finally got the Country Doctor to build a fence for my garden.

He wanted to pound a few metal stakes in the ground, stretch out some chicken wire, and call it done.

I really needed something a little prettier.  

Yes.

I did…

Hey!

My garden is right outside the windows by my kitchen table!  

Can it really be helped if I need a nice view to go with my morning Eggo waffles? 

The Country Doctor finally gave in and built a wooden fence for me.

But not without first commenting…

“The nice thing about the fence that you want, is that it not only requires half a day to build and brutal post hole digging, but I also have to go out and buy a bunch of new supplies instead of using what I already have on hand!”

“I am glad that things are working out so well for you dear.” I replied.

Here are the three brutal fence posts that took an hour to dig, which had to be purchased instead of using the metal stakes that we already had, which could have been pounded into the ground in less than ten minutes.

Hey!

I never promised that life with me would be easy!

He did however make use of a few boards that we already had up in the barn rafters.

We attached rabbit fencing to the boards as the Kentucky Wonders and the Asparagus beans prefer to climb a metal grid instead of wood boards. 

Which yes, this means that the Country Doctor’s metal stake and chicken wire fence would have made far more sense.

But this garden is not just about making sense.

It’s about trying to create something magical!

MAGICAL!

What’s the point of creating anything without a little magic involved?

Maybe this fence doesn’t look so magical to you?

Well, it’s a damn site more magical than metal stakes and chicken wire!

Tomorrow…

A magical country urn!

Thanks dear!  

Of all of my husbands, you are my favorite.

And also the only husband.

So far…

This story begins with a nice pile of bricks. A pile of bricks that our family salvaged from an old sidewalk in town which ran in front of my friend Kara’s house. Kara was having a new sidewalk put in and called to let me know that we could take the old bricks out of her sidewalk before the concrete truck arrived –  if we still wanted them.  We did want them and spent the next two weekends digging the bricks out of her old sidewalk, loading them into the back of the pick-up, driving them out to our building site, and unloading them.  

WITH OUR OWN HANDS!!! 

And this makes us much better than most people on earth. Because WE ARE SALVAGERS…and EVERYONE in AMERICA knows that re-using old building materials is what makes you closest to God these days. 

This is what our sidewalk looked like back when I was having a delirious visit from Beverley Nichols, my favorite garden author.

Over the course of the summer, the only thing that changed in this path was that the weeds got taller and taller and taller.  I am very glad Beverley was not around to see that happen.  

One of the reasons for the delay, was that we needed to pick a pattern in which to lay the bricks.  While on the UC Berkeley campus – we found our inspiration.

In the shadow of a tall clock tower were bricks in a herringbone pattern.   We thought if it was good enough for Berkeley, it was good enough for us.

Back home, the Country Doctor, tilled up the dirt in the sidewalk.

Mixed in some cement.

And then we had to move the pile of bricks from behind the house to beside the pathway.   

I did not help with this step as I had seen a black snake crawl out of this pile of bricks earlier that summer and had no interest whatsoever in seeing him again.

I was further vindicated when the Country Doctor found a snake skin.

The bricks were unloaded in various piles around the pathway.  You can see here the sand and the screed that the Country Doctor built to smooth out the surface evenly before setting the bricks in place.

Here’s the screed again… 

At least I think it is called a screed.

And here is a live snake they found in the brick pile.  

The Country Doctor lined both edges of the pathway with bricks placed end to end, and then he started working on the herringbone pattern.

It was about here that we realized how many bricks we were going to have to cut to make this pattern work.  

And right about here, we realized that we would be cutting bricks to fill in the holes in this pathway for the rest of our lives.

And when I say “we would be cutting bricks” ….

I actually mean “the Country Doctor” would be cutting bricks.

Because my hands started to sweat buckets every time I watched my husband slice one of those bricks in half.  I eventually had to retreat to the porch and sit there helplessly, fanning myself with a wide brimmed straw hat, saying things like “I do declare!” and “Glory be!”  and “Heavens to Betsy!”

Besides, why exactly did I have all these boys, if not to help their father build a brick pathway?

Here is Drew marking chalk lines on the bricks to show their dad where to make a cut.

The thousands and thousands…..

And millions and trillions of precise brick cuts…

Eventually, the Country Doctor wore out the blade on the big saw and for the last twenty odd cuts he used a hand saw.

This is the last brick!

This is the last cut!

But it isn’t over yet.  

I was able to help the Country Doctor spread a fine layer of sand over the sidewalk as there were no snakes and no saw involved.  But I did have to take frequent breaks to drink my coffee, admire my roses, practice some modern dance steps on the sweeping front lawn and oh yeah… take some pictures…. 

HEY!  SOMEONE HAS TO TAKE THE PICTURES!

The final step involves sweeping the sand into all the cracks and crevices in between the bricks…

And using one of these thingys to… to… Heck I have no idea what that machine does.

Jack gave the new/old sidewalk a test drive.

Here is the Country Doctor standing on his new brick pathway.

Nice job Honey!

Now honey… we have to get that other sidewalk done.

Honey?

Dear?

Honey?

On a recent trip to the Italian Riviera…I mean to Lawrence, Kansas (which is practically the same thing) I stumbled across these very cute poster sized Italian papers at a wonderful store on Massachusetts Street called Brits.

So I started playing with the papers thinking maybe I could use one paper to frame another paper.

We mixed our own stain for our trim and our kitchen cabinets. Why did we do this? Because we are insane.

I was just not happy with any of the stains I found in every hardware store within a twenty mile radius. I wanted something deeper, something a little more red, something a little more black, more heft, more bravado, more vitality! Less gray, more ochre, less yellow, more copper – and on and on and on – until I grabbed three cans and mixed them together. Jack will demonstrate…

Apply stain with paper towel, to wood species you intend to use (ours is quarter sawn oak)? Wait ten minutes and then wipe off.

And wa la – we have stain. Stain that is not too red or black or brown or yellow or quiet, or loud, or spirited or youthful. A stain that is refined yet says bring it on! A stain that says Farmhouse with quirky people living inside. A stain that reflects peace and joy while simultaneously dancing chaotically about the room. My stain – my genuis, my gift to the world. I call it La Rechelle!

There are a few spots around this house that are presenting new “Christmas dilemmas” that I feel compelled to try and solve. I have a banister, where before there was none. I have a porch with a railing where before there was only an primeval aching emptiness. I have these sort of stone pillar rail stoppers that are crying pitifully for some sort of ornamentation where before…yeah, I didn’t have these things before. So I did what I had to do. I drove to Target.

On the way to Target, I passed Horticultural Services, which despite the really stupid name choice, is a fabulous, full service greenhouse. I mean I can think of a few worse names for a green house like maybe “Complicated Lawn Care” or “Biological Root, Leaf and Plant Engineers”, or maybe “Clinical Specialists In The Cold Damp Earth”, but Horticultural Services is also pretty bad. It sure doesn’t inspire dreams of a dewey garden or irresistible birdbaths does it? But it is a great store and I made a mental note to stop by on my way home and look at their urns to hopefully find something to put on top of those stone pillars.

I wandered around Target for some time and did find a few wreaths that were very plain which I felt suited the house. They also had some completely natural items like pinecones, dried fruit, colorful dried berries and nuts, but they were really expensive (six bucks for a plastic box of pinecones?) so I passed it up.

I eventually landed back at the greenhouse and as soon as I pulled up I regretted every second I had spent in Target searching for new Christmas decs. Horticultural Services had everything I wanted, fresh evergreens, bright red and green fruits, swirly gold sticks, fresh wreaths, gorgeous natural arrangements and a great selection of urns.

I gathered huge armfulls of their evergreens and twigs and watched as they wrapped it all up in brown paper with a bit of twine. A bit of twine! Brown paper! I love twine! I love brown paper! This lovely, simple packaging more than compensates for the less than thrilling name – Horticultural Services. When I got home I unloaded everything on my table and arranged my new urns. You wanna see how I did it???

Here we have forlorn urn.

Here we have fresh ever green branches tied in neat little bundle with twine. Be still my heart (flutter flutter).

I just started jamming…I mean uh artfully arranging the evergreens in the urn.

I put the more “bushy” evergreen in the bottom to sort of fill up the pot and then I added the more “drapey” greens on top.

The intersections of all the stems created a sort of “web” for the…

…real live sticks. These red sticks are a dogwood.

These twisty yellow sticks are um…er… catwood?

I jammed in uh…I mean I…artfully arranged the sticks.

And threw in some fruit.

The second urn was even better.

Until I discovered that I only had one apple left.

First I tried this big green rubber ball, but it seemed slightly out of proportion to the urn.

Next I tried this smaller KU Jayhawks basketball, but the color wasn’t right.

So I found this old, crappy wiffle ball under the couch, but somehow… it made me feel depressed.

These limes will have to do.