Day 98 of 365 days in the lofe of our small family farm

Well today I though I would share with you about one of the plants the grows wild here on our farm and is quite tasty and useful, the best part is this plant grows in most of the world, so who knows it might be lurking in your yard right at this very moment.
 

Curly Dock or Yellow dock

A little about curly dock:

Common Name: Curly Dock
Scientific Name: Rumex crispus
Family: Buckwheat/Smartweed Family (Polygonaceae)
Other Common Names: Curled Dock, Yellow Dock, Yaller Dock, Sour Dock, Bitter Dock, Bloodwort, Coffee-weed, Garden-patience, Narrowdock, Out-sting, Winter Dock
Flower Color: Green
Habitat: Fields, highway ditches, waste grounds, disturbed soils, riverbanks, found coast to coast in North America
General Bloom Dates: June - September

General Characteristics:
The tiny green flowers grow in dense heads up a spire. Each flower has six sepals that are light green/white/pink in color. Curly dock is a biennial plant, which means it takes two years to reach the flowering stage.
Alternate. The leaves have a coarse texture and wavy leaf margins with noticeably curled edges. Small veins curve out towards the edge of the leaf and then back in towards the central vein. Older leaves have a red primary vein. At the base of the stalk there is a basal rosette of leaves. The leaves grow in a circular pattern and are long (up to 2 ft) and narrow (3 1/2 in wide). There is a papery sheath that covers the seed and the leaf axil, a common characteristic of the Buckwheat family.
The winged seeds are dark brown. Seed wings are described as triangular shaped or heart shaped. There are up to 40,000 seeds per plant!
The plant grows 3-5 feet tall. New growth can be observed in the spring alongside last year's brown stalks. The new plant is green, 12 - 18 inches high with wavy green leaves.
Taproots are long, stout, and yellow. A plant can regenerate from only the roots.
 

                                                     

                          HOW IT WORKS IN THE BODY

 The presence of anthraquinones in yellow dock enables the herb to function as a laxative. In fact, yellow dock is mainly prescribed by herbal medicine practitioners for its laxative and cleansing properties. The anthraquinones invigorate the colon which in the process helps to throw out the waste and toxins from the body. It may be noted here that any substance that has laxative property also helps in cleansing the system when taken in small proportions. However, when they are taken in large doses they act as purgatives leading to peristalsis (causing a rippling motion of muscles in the intestine) and gripping pain. Nevertheless, when yellow dock is taken in the right doses, it acts gently and helps to alleviate constipation. In addition, the yellow dock is also beneficial for the digestive system. When mixed with other herbs, yellow dock is also useful in assisting the liver, removing toxins from the skin as well as healing ailments like eczema, psoriasis, and acne. Yellow dock also acts as a cleansing agent in the musculoskeletal system where there is regular accumulation of toxins owing to constipation.

                 Things you can so with it...

Fermented Curly Dock Leaves

2 large handfuls of young curly dock leaves
1 T salt(5ml)
1 clean quart-sized Mason jar

Wash your curly dock leaves well. Take a clean quart sized canning jar and place rolled leaves into jar.

Add salt to roughly 3 cups of water and pour over curly dock leaves, leaving at least 1 inch of headspace in the jar.

Push leaves down to the bottom of the jar, and if they float to the top you will need to weight them down.

All leaves need to be submerged below liquids, otherwise mold will form! Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days, then transfer to cold storage (refrigerator or root cellar).

NAVAJO SYRUP

• 4 cups (1 liter) water
• 2 lb (300 g) fresh yellow dock roots
• 2 cups (500 g) wildflower honey

Slowly boil the roots until half the water has evaporated. Strain and melt the honey in the liquid, heating slowly. Keep this syrup cool: it's ideal in the fall for treating respiratory ailments. Take 1 t (5 ml), 3 times daily, as a pectoral, and laxative syrup.

                                                                   

                       Homemade Root Beer Syrup

Now I know this is not a traditional root beer. Traditional root beer is brewed with yeast, is mildly alcoholic — and can be tricky to make. This recipe will give you a root beer flavored syrup that tastes amazing, is stable in the fridge for a year, and needs only seltzer water or club soda to become a wonderful homemade root beer.

When you make your root beer, start with a tablespoon of this syrup to a pint of seltzer water.

You can adjust the strength of your drink from there.

Makes 2 quarts.
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

• 6 cups of water
• 3 ounces of sassafras roots
• 1 ounce of curly or yellow burdock root
• ¼ cup molasses
• 1 clove
• 1 star anise
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 2 drops wintergreen extract or peppermint extract
• 6 cups sugar

Instructions

1. Run the sassafras and burdock roots in a food processor until they become small pieces into small pieces, about ½ inch or smaller.
2. Put the roots in a medium-sized heavy pot with the clove, star anise and coriander seeds and cover with the water. Cover the pot and bring it to a boil. Simmer this for 15 minutes.
3. Add the molasses and simmer another 5 minutes.
4. Turn off the heat and add the wintergreen or peppermint extract. 1. Put the cover back on the tea.
5. When the mixture cools, strain it though cheesecloth to remove any debris.
6. Return it to the pot with an equal amount of sugar. Stir to combine. Bring it to a simmer and cook it for 5 minutes, uncovered.
7. Pour into sterile quart mason jars and seal. Keeps a year in the fridge.

                                                                                

Be Blessed Dears ones and enjoy....

Shekhinah, Michael and all the kids and critters on Mahanaim Farm

Day 97 of our lives on the farm....

Today was another rainy day which has caused me huge amounts of grief and money.  the man came to shear the sheep, it was imposable to do as there wool is wet and has been on their for a year and a half.  It took me forever to find this man, who did the best he could, we got the wool off the big boys and a few of the girls, but not with out injury.  One of my ewes got gashed when she jerked when he was working on her.  I cryed to see it, I love the girls so much.  Another got nicked on the leg and one a bit on the ear, they were the worst, but it seemed like all but one girl he did did not go well, so we stopped and he will be back in about a month and G-d willing that week they will be dry.  I may try to cut some of the surface wool off of them before than.  Where is a Bedouin when I need one, they would know what to do, all I can do is my best which is sorely lacking.  the cost for shearing the few we did was $125.00 and most of the wool is unusable, well maybe as insulation some where.

We bougth the calf two socks from a very sweet friend, thanks MK, your awesome.   The kids, Michael and I, took him to the butcher.  MK gets the hide, MR.R gets the feet.  He and I are splitting the meat. The price was not horrible it cost us each $347 for our share in the animal and than $82 to be made into yummy meat, with fuel it cost us each  around $1.25 per pound and we each ended up with 180 pounds, not including the "scap" parts.  I think the butcher people must think me mad...lol  We wanted everything but the Moo back.  She does not often here this, and we always seem to ask her for things she has never done.  This time it was smoking the tongue.  I have heard of it being done and had it once before, but had no idea of how to do it, so we both had to come up with a course of action.  None of us could remember if you skin the tongue first...if any one out there knows, please let me know. 

Roof has not progressed any further due to money and weather...
We are getting a ton of strawberrys from the garden, not tilling the soil has worked very well, tons of fruit, hardly any pests and the soil does not dry out as fast. Our radishes and turnips are going to seed, so I am letting them, let them plant themselves...we have harvested lots of yummy greens and hope to get the rest of the garden planted soon.  Everything it taking huge amounts of time with the weather, but the rain is good for the land, so we must take our blessing with love.  I looked at artichokes today at the feed store, but they wanted 5 bucks for each plant, just to much money for me, I know they grow back year after year, but really five bucks...I just don't know, it would take a long time to pay for it's self I think. 
Still need hay, I guess I may have to buy square bales to get use threw till the round bales come in.  Still need to make enough money to pay for it.  Right now we are grazing them everyday, so it is making what is left of the hay go further. 
So there is where we are...hope to go to the swap, but no longer counting on it...lol

Be blessed dear ones and know that you are greatly loved...

Shekhinah,Michael and all the kids and critters on Mahanaim Farm

Day 96-needing to find a good grinder for flour

ok so now even though I have 50 pounds of wheat in my kitchen I have to go out and find a differnt grinder at least for now as I have nothing that I can hook the grinder up to.  It is set up to work with a thiner table than we have or counter...ughhhh!  ao now I have to go to the store and buy flour, gosh I hate to do that and wuite frankly it is not in my buget for the month.  

If anyone out there nows an inexpensive flour grinder,maybe german made,please let me know.

Be Blessed Shekhinah

Day 95 of 365 days in the life of our small family farm in the USA

I hope you have all had a great day.  It has been a hot one here on the farm, well into the 80's. 

Today we had to work on a few horses and we stoped at a indoor flea market where we got some nice bargains.  A show halter for Rachael's horse, for $6 bucks, a great deal, a counter top for the new kitchen for $6.50, a two draw filing cabinet for $7.50 and a pair of new leather sandals fro Rachael for I think $5.00.  Our find of the day at a cost of $15.00 bucks for the pair, below is the retail cost of the item so the savings are huge.

30"wide X 15"tall 12/12 Aluminum Triangle Gable Vent 30" wide X 15" tall 12/12 Pitch enamel finish or primed aluminum Fully Screened Price: $83.89     Anyway more to tell you all about tomorrow,very sleepy and it has been a long day. Be blessed and sleep well...Shekhinah, Michael and all the kids and critters on Mahanaim farm....

Jumping ahead to day 94 of 365 days of our life on our small family farm

Hello dear family and well wishers, I am jumping ahead to day 94 as it has been a full seven days since I last posted, so I will try to catch you up on whats going on.


Finals week was a mess and so was I.  I feel I was lucky to get out alive...lol  I scored very well with a 3.88 GPA this term and a over all GPA of 3.65.  I hope to be able to join their honor society this next term, as I have never had the time and desire to do this before now.   Other than returning...my school books which I will try very hard to do on Tuesday of this week.  I miss most my Dear J, who had lunch with me once a week, and was truly enjoyable and enlightening.  I go back to school in about 3 months and hope to have much accomplished on the farm by than.

We survived the storms, the house of course did not fair quite as well, as we still have not had enough dry days and money to make the repairs that need done, but we are working on it and hope to have it fixed soon.  Truthfully I can not wait to put the shingles up and would do all the shingles if I could, there is something so peaceful about hammering the 4 nails in each one, the way they all line up in such perfect order, it is like a form of meditation for me and a joyful task. As I have said in a previous post, we now have the bulk of the shingles, but are still saving for the plywood and other stuff, I hope to start on it before the end of the month, G-d willing.

We have had tons of rain, our wild green crops as well as our garden is doing very well and we have our first tomatoes on the vine already.  To date, we have harvested, shell peas, snow peas, strawberries, radishes, beats,spinach, onions, asparagus, Brussels spouts and dandelion greens, oh and lettuce.  While this is not a huge amount of food, it is very helpful and along with our wild greens can sustain us quite well.  Currently we have eaten milkweed flower tops (sort of like broccoli), curly dock(very yummy), dandelion of course, plantago, both long and short, lambs quarters and wild garlic.  Soon I hope to cook burdock and polk greens, Kudzu and who knows what other wild treasures we will find, cattails,Day Lily bulbs?  Maybe some nice mushrooms, it is time to start looking with all the rain they should be choice this year.

We are still planting in the garden, zucchini,dill (mostly for our butterfly's),more cucumbers ( we make and eat a lot of pickles nearly 70 jars a year), plus lettuce.   Got the sweet potatoes planted  in the baskets yesterday, they are gonna make some great salad greens in a few weeks, the leaves are very tasty and great for you .  Found a new forage patch of lambs quarter, they are so yummy and a member of the spinach family that truly is a weed , grows like a weed, totally food, from leaf to root. 

Our neighbors below us the R's were very kind to offer us some interesting fig trees, which are now in the ground and our other kind and lovely friends, just today brought us some red raspberry plants.  We had planted red raspberries last year, but my guess is we failed by planting them to late in the year before the roots could take hold in the soil, so they died.  I will get the new ones which are sitting in a bucket of water, in the ground tomorrow.  I hope they make it, I plan to talk very nicely to them.  We have many black berries which are some wild, wayward cousin to the humble raspberry, so a change of color and flavor would be nice.  Earlier this year I did order golden raspberries from a friend of our who owns a small berry farm but he never got back with me, so I have no idea what happened with that.  Sad really, we were so looking forward to having all three colors, they are all so very pretty and the bees just love them.

An update on the bees they are doing great. The girls have not stung anyone yet, and are just making oodles of honey, three combs out of the ten are full all ready and they have not even been here a full month yet.  I plan to pull and drain those combs and give the first of our honey to our neighbors the R's who live not far from us, his breathing is a little off and I hope it will help him.  He,his wife and daughter are very good people and have made livening the middle of no where a whole lot nicer. 

Speaking of such things I went and saw our meat cow today, all I can say is wow! What a tight short pack of meat, I want to rub him down and feed him beer for a week and have him butchered, he looks very yummy, but not very large, around 500 pounds or so, but all muscle.  The people who raised him have a wonderful healthy, beyond organic farm and raise just a few head of cows, all lovely, and that is what I like.   When you have a manageable number you can give them more care and greater love, there by producing a better, higher quality of meat.  Now if only other people would see that , maybe they would quite mass producing the cows, chickens, turkeys and other animals that they raise and go back to small family farms.

In my life and in the lives of my children we have stopped drinking diet anything as feeding ourselves dangerous nerothougtht and get back to me...I will be awaiting your reply.

As to work it is slow because of all the storms, I 40 in Arkansas is closed and sadly it is one of the ways one would get to Calf.  This will for sure drive food prices up in the states...

I know many of you are wondering how I feel about the US "#1 terrorist " being killed.  So here it is uncensored:  I hope that it is not true, not because I side with the man they allegedly killed, but because it was done in a underhanded and crude, unsophisticated way.  You do not march on to another country's soil and do that sort of thing.  We are lucky India did not declare war on the US that day, who would blame them.  Imagine I saw your dog out in my pasture,I saw a dead lamb at it's feet.   I knew it was your dog, so I went into your yard and killed your dog, took it's body away and told you how it was your fault for not playing by the rules I had just invented in my head five minutes prior to all this.  Where is the UN and why in the hell are they not kicking some one's hind quarters and taking names.  The fact the US went to another country and set soldiers on the ground and the UN looks the other way, yeah, very impressive civilian protection there.  Lets get real it's about the oil, nothing more, nothing less.  We do not need to lie about it, lets just say, to the ruler of this place, give us your oil and we will leave you alone, oh wait I remember why.  He was the guy who organized all the other Arabs selling oil and set new rules and pricing outside of the control of the British and the Americans.  Now he wanted to change things and both world Powers through a fit.  Grow up boys you are not world leaders anymore, you are like France.  America is broke and we need to tend to our own and butt out of the lives of other people, especially the Arabs.  As a Hebrew I can tell you all, that we and the Arabs have been fighting for century's and we all we end up with a stale mate as we are both fierce and have no word for surendered that we can understand.  Once you make any Arabs angry they will never stop coming, it is just not worth it.  There are no winners in war and peace can only come by understanding.  No one fits in a one size fits all t-shirt, nor will they fit into a one size fits all government.  I feel as Americans we are doing the world a huge injustice by not being kind, once again, we can not buy our friends and we can not win unwindable wars, with non-existent causes.  There is still time for all of us to change and learn to work together with out stepping on each others toes.  To do this we must all set aside our notions of each other, our religions, our hatred and allow each nation to rule as it sees fit, no one group should have the power over all groups, it can never work.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely...

I want to say I am very proud to be an American, I love this country, but I am really pissed at my Government.  Right now while you are all reading this, America is coming up with a way to take benefits away that have been payed for once already, medicare will be switching to a voucher type program.  Why you might be wondering, well our government borrowed from that fund because it had so much money in it, and now all the fund contains is a worthless I.O.U. , so these other people will now suffer.  Programs that take care of our women and children were cut in favor of sending more money to foreign countries and governments, all at the cost of some of the most vulnerable members our young and old. A culture is not based upon the wars it wins but on the care of itls people and compassion.  Education was also hit hard in these new budget cuts, but good new women of Afghanistan, American will still give you a free education, free medical care and many other perks as they try to draw you into the demoralizing lifestyle of the American women.  American women for the most part let others raise their children, sending them to daycare centers,then to publicly funded schools, so they can work, keep house,care for their husbands, ect....yes you too can enjoy the benefits of working your self to death and never seeing your children and when you do, being to tired to enjoy it, and what mother would not want her child to grow up and be Brittany Spears...all this can be yours and more.  Consider the working class medical plan you maybe offered, in just five years you will be forced to except government health care, no matter the cost or face fines, maybe even jail, but that is more good news, in American jails, more often than not, you will get medical care, a free education, free food and shelter, clothing and other perks as well.   If all this is not enough, you will live in constant fear of all the people your country has pissed off doing all of this, and you will never feel safe in your own home.  Think American women are safe from abuse, just Google it and see how many are abused ever day and how many men get away with it.

Just to let you know the Native Americans as they are now called, were given these same perks as listed above, some even still get most of them.  Most started with nothing and they still have most of it.  Today they are still by rights prisoners of war in their own country.  Most live at second world conditions, with doctors far from their homes and lack of quality, water, food and education many fall pray to drugs and alcohol  In some reservations they still do not have running water.

When I see our vets homeless, with out medical care, food, shelter and other things, I can only be angry.  I become more angry when people from another country are also given these things before our vets...

It is with in our reach to change tomorrow, to make the world a better place, it starts with one person, one act of kindness compassion and understanding, we may not all be alike, but we can all try to understand each other.  In the end it is not about some one being killed, it is about us living...and doing it well with out destroying others to gain.

Be blessed dear ones, know that you are loved!  Know that G-d loves every one, we should at the very least try to meet him half way!  Know that one candle can light a room, one light can illuminate the world...be the light!

Shekhinah

Day 87 of 365day of our life on our small family farm in the USA

Today has been a very rainy day and other than doing chores and trying to ge the last of my home work done, I have done very little of anything.  I answered some email, did not plant the plants I wanted to get into the ground saddly, but did some work on the website, where I found a whole page missing..lol  Oh well what can I do, i am only one person.  Anyway I focused today on leaning about wheat since I bought 100 pounds and now wonder what I can do with it.  Well other than making flour, which is great and I am not complaning about being able to do that I wondered what else could this lovely grain yeild, well here is the short anwer, Bulgar wheat, cracked wheat, hot cerial...probabley more, but I am just getting started.  so here is what I have for you all so far, and to let you know it is posted here and on Milk comes from cows on our main website.

Wheat, what do I do with it?

What to do with wheat, well we all know we can make it into flour, but wheat is so much more. 

It can be made into cereals, bulgur wheat and many other really neat things. 

Just keep reading to find out more.

The first thing you can do with wheat is grind it into flour for cooking and baking.

The next is bulgur wheat which is a more Middle Eastern version, but very useful healthy way to eat wheat.   

I bet you have wondered to yourself how do they make that, well I did too and here is what I found out. 

I thought it was just cracked wheat, nope it is so much more than that and here why. 

It is a super fast cooking product because it has already been cooked. 

Here is how you make it.

How to make bulgur wheat at home and save tons of money

   Bring to a boil one part rinsed whole wheat berries plus two parts water, simmer for about an hour or until the whole wheat berries are tender.

Next take them out of the pan and onto a baking sheet or cookie sheet and back at 225 degree oven for around another hour, stirring and moving them around a bit until dry. 

Now is the best part, you get to smash them. 

I use my marble rolling pin, but you could grind them in a food processor or a med grind in a flour grinder, if all else fails, stick the berries in a paper bag, grab a hammer and whack away, what a great stress reliever. 

To use this you can add equal parts of boiling water to your now made bulgur wheat and cover let sit for 30 minutes and serve. 

 Now you have an almost no work side dish that whole bunches of neat stuff can be added to. 

Add vegetable and meat and it is a meal…I love it with garlic, onions and lentils.

To use it as a hot cereal

1 cup Bulgur wheat

1 cup boiling water

1 t salt (earth or sea)

Combine bulgur wheat, salt and water,place a lid on the pan and cook on low for 15 minutes. 

Take and let sit for covered for another 10 to 15 minutes. 

Eat and enjoy. 

 

 

Bulgur wheat burgers

 1/2 cup homemade bulgur wheat

 

2 grated carrots

 

1 finely chopped onion

 

1/3 cup finely chopped mushrooms, any sort will do

 

1/2 cup firm homemade tofu, grated
 

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 tablespoon hot sauce
 

2 tablespoons flour

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive, corn, grape seed or other non canola oil to cook in.

 

 

Soak bulgur wheat in one cup of hot water for 4 minutes, drain and set aside.

 

Combine and mix all the ingredients in a bowl except the oil.
 

Divide the mixture into 8 parts and shape into patties
Cook patties in you trusty caste iron skillet with a little oil, until golden brown on both sides.

 

Serve and enjoy…

 

Return to milk comes from cows

News From The Doghouse and a Sunday edition...

 

Finished listening to weft.org and the Rabbi's show a.k.a. Borscht Blender, all in acapella no muscial instruments, another show I wish I had recorded, oh well...

 

It's storming here again, got most of the outside chores done before the heavy rain, but still got wet filling up waterers for the birds, at least I did not have to dodge lightning bolts lol, the morning started out nice and sunny, just beautifully crisp outside, and Samson decided to go into the south woods, just didn't quite make it all the way over the fence, so Rachael and I had to get his back leg out of the wire, he's fine, no injury, just was trapped and didn't panic. Not sure why he did this, as Isaiah, Dahveed and I rolled a bale of hay to the horses yesterday, before our gully washer on Saturday. We didn't go to the swap because of that rain and end of the month considerations, then found out that the monthly sale was at Fordland anyway, so maybe we would have done great maybe not, but the weather outlook sealed the decision I guess.

 

Today started out nice at 60F but got colder, then rain, and I was soaked and working in the 52F range, had everything done around 2PM and got a hot shower to warm up basically. Got a fire going in the woodburner/ basement as it is suppose to be in the 40s tonight and like this the rest of the week. Going to have to cut wood soon I guess. The Bears and I got more trees planted, don't remember if I posted that info yet...got our pecan, red mulberry, and asian persimmons planted. Found another turtle today, probably the same one The Boss found yesterday on the road lol We ate really well off the land and from the farm the last few days, and heard today on the Vegan show (proceeds the Jewish hour on WEFT) that quite a few chicken broiler houses are out of commission in Alabama due to the tornado storm, SO, that means your feathered lizards will be going up drastically when inventory makes its assessments TOMORROW, if you live around a 24 hour grocery you might go buy what you can, just because of management practices of supply and demand...I am thinking the slaughter cluckers we have had for awhile , trying to sell at the swap and donate to the needy, may have doubled in price...not that I am gouging, and in a moral dilema and proverbial pickle, I don't need to and don't want to sell the dinosaur evolved birds than the bare minimum I was asking, yet unscrupulous mundanes will buy them then turn around and sell them for a quick profit, SO...dunno what I am going to do yet.

 

Got the back porch cleaned and fed the shovelings to the pigs and various spots for the free ranger downey encrusted reptilians...got Nightshade ewe sheep on the watch, as she has been exhibiting the signs of staying apart from the herd and other little telltale signs, but no clostrum as of yet. Short of having someone stick their head in Moo to see what's going on, I dunno...The Bears say hi to everyone, but too busy playing with Lego creations to say much more, and that is only because they are waiting on battery recharge to get back to game-boy games...Forgot to say we had the shingle delivery man come back out with his family and they bought the 4 ducks he had picked out, 1 lucky male duck and 3 lucky females, going to their own private pond on a farm, to be loved as pets...The Road grader will have to get back out here as the road is washed out again and perhaps worse than before...oy.

Be Blessed dear ones and be kind to each other...Shekhinah, Michael and all the kdis and critters on Mahanaim Farm.

Day 85 and 86 of 365 days of life on our small family farm in the USA

Yesterday was a rather uneventful day aside from gathering some nice with greens and mixing them with garden greens as a lovely add on to dinner.  It is very sad to me that so many people have no idea of the food growing all around them.  Our weed feast included Plantago (bandage plant), a yummy green that has twice the iron of spinach and tastes just as good if not better.  Curly dock, I think is a wonderful and quite yummy weed, it's ruffled long leaves taste a tiny bit sour, so it is it a nice touch to both pot salad (cooked in water like spinach), or used in salad or stir fry. Some dandelion's, one of the most useful plants you can pick, the flowers make a great wine,made into jelly or jam, as well as blossom fritters, The roots are roasted and used as a coffee substitute and the leaves make great greens.  Wild garlic, this needs no words, we use a lot of wild garlic. To these lovely weeds I added from our garden,fresh green peas, some young broccoli, some radishes with there greens,some onions, some asparagus, some dandelion greens, with a the addition of some frozen broccoli, a store bought onion, some pickled ginger, a little soy sauce and some olive oil in my flat bottom wok, it was an amazing meal.

Today I think we will have milk weed with dinner, this little plant is one of the most useful of weeds. The new shoots can be slightly boiled, water cast off and than eaten or cooked in a stir fry or eaten like asparagus.  The new seed pods, when hard can be eaten like okra and even pickled for latter use.  The flower heads are like yummy free broccoli and can be eaten the same way and the flowers once they bloom can also be eaten.  The roots as also edible though I have never tried to eat them.  I am also going to hunt down some burdock, only the root of this plant is food, but it is enough...at nearly a foot long in most cases a two year old burdock plant can be a yummy treat.  The root is thinly cut up on the diagonal and than boiled and added to other things,raw it has a almost potato smell to it.  It is used most often in japan's cooking.  Anyway I am toying with making egg Yong for dinner with milk weed as the main vegetable in in it...it does sound yummy.  I would make an egg pie but I would have to make some cheese and there are only so many hours in the day, lol.

Here are my goals for the day, to get some more of the garden set up and planted.  I bought six zucchini plants and four green/red pepper plants for the garden and they are going in before the rain.  I need to plant corn, more peas, radishes, carrots,and now green beans and maybe some other greens, cucumbers.  I am pleased with the progress of the garden as we are getting quite a bit out of it already;each day I harvest peas, greens, asparagus and onions.  I still have home work to get done for college and a few tests to study for. Gathering food of course as talked about above and in a feet of grandness I hope to move the fish pond to it's new home.  I hope to use the fish water to water the plants where ever I can and I am concerned about trying to move the fish themselves.  We have some good size ones in there now, but if I want to order the tilapia, I have to move the pool, plus the kids are bugging me to put the new pool up, which is bigger and better, I hope as it cost us a bunch of money a month or so ago. It will be nice to get just some of this done out side.  I am still messing with grain in the house as one of the bags broke as Dah'veed was lifting it out of the van, what a mess very expensive grain all over the place, we sat on the ground picking it up and putting in a Rubbermaid container,(rolling my eyes), I guess I will be grinding it very soon.  The bulk of it was not spilled and is safely in the kitchen.  I still have to go tot he feed store and pick up some eggs from Ken, I get extra guinea eggs from him, don't worry I pay him, it is really good for both of us.
Yesterday we got a new hard bed for Elijah from our neighbour down the road, he is a very kind man and unbelievable smart,not sure there is much of anything the guy does not know or has not at the very least studied.  Plus he is very kind abut our enumerous animal escapes, horses, birds, cow, ect..lol  He is a blessing for us, as we are still a bit wet behind the ear and we do not always plan the best, but my heart is in the right place, lol....
No new news about the cow, or my spoiled goats and sheep who are waiting for some outrageous storm to have more babies.  Michael got more of our trees planted and we talked about finig the pond, I lost my fish from there most certainly.  the storms have left their mark upon our little farm, but like our busy bees, we will work hard and get it all back up to where it needs to be.  In other news, more peepers were born, some rally cute little guys and they are already to be placed in homes.  I have a few ducks left to sell if anyone needs some and I am looking forward to getting the sheep sheared on the 13 of this new month, poor man canceled on us again.  His son is sick so I would ask you all to find it in your heart to put out a little pray that the sweet child make a full recovery.  With this said I must leave you all for a little while, have to go to town, gee, I hope they have whole ginger at Town and County I need to make some soda starter....

Be Blessed dear ones and love one another and be kind, in kindness there life in cruelness only death...live well, Shekhinah, Michael and all the kids and critters on Mahanaim Farm