A Noble Viking!

Christmas is hard for us here at the Farm since the loss of our son - and it is hard for us to find gifts for each other that are meaningful and memorable.  Sometimes we get each other a BIG gift that is for multiple events, like a birthday/Christmas - it has to last a while!

This year Christmas has been harder.  Last year we were in a fog that buffered us from the memories of Rye, the small memories like smells and songs and his favorite Christmas cookie.  This year the fog is gone and we have a time getting through each day of the "celebration time" as upright humans.

My husband this year did a ton of homework, talked to a ton of people who know me, and bought me a lifetime gift.  A gift with so much thought and love that I could hardly believe it!  I got a noble Viking!  No not the Netflix kind - this kind:

It is a Viking/Husqvarna Model 6000 from 1976.  It is completely rebuilt and is heavy duty - the friend who helped Chad buy it for me lives in Glenallen and does embroidery and sewing for a living (part of the time - hes a Jack of all trades) said it would sew anything from pantyhose (which I will NEVER do) to Carharts and leather (which I might do on the RARE instance).  Mostly I will be getting some quilting done and a lot of it!

The Hubby even said that I got it because "you haven't been naughty this year" - which means that I have been REALLY NICE! 

I hope that your year has been REALLY NICE and that your New Year isn't naughty either!  Blessings on the New Year to all.

Just a little Christmas Bite!

We do not have a love for all things Christmas lately here at the farm.  It is hard for us to get into the spirit now that we are one short and Rye is gone.  We do however have other people relying on us to put on a good face for Christmas and make it look good darn it!

We do still have some Christmas things that make us happy and one of those is Peanut Butter Balls!  I dont know why they say Christmas for us and make us happy but its chocolate, peanut butter, sugar and sea salt - how is that not a happy bite?

I might get in trouble for giving away the recipe but what the heck?  Im doing it anyway because what makes me happy will surely make other people happy and also because sharing food with other people makes me happy!

I did have a friend who is diabetic tell me that I need to include in my recipe the dose of insulin that will counteract each ball so please plan ahead if you are bent that way or have a sign ready that says that you are just in a blissful peanut butter ball coma and not a diabetic one!

Start with the peanut butter filling;

Filling:

2 C. Peanut Butter – whatever you like as far as crunchy or creamy

1 C. Butter

2 C. Powder sugar
2 Tbsp Cinnamon

Mix all together to form a stiff peanut butter dough. If your mix seems too thin add more powder sugar.  It has to be able to make a good solid ball.   I use a stand mixer and the bread hook for this part - it gets really hard to stir by hand.   Roll into 1” balls and put in the freezer for at least an hour while you melt your chocolate coating below:

1 box of Bakers semi sweet squares

1 box Bakers unsweetened chocolate squares

2 C Chocolate chips

1 oz of paraffin wax shaved - I know this seems weird but it helps make them shiny and thins the chocolate enough to keep it a nice ball coating.  If you hate the idea dont use it - all good!

Melt the above together in a double boiler – Ok – I don’t I just use a small sauce pan on the stove but….. PC and safety of your chocolate says you should use a double boiler.... just sayin.

Once its all melty and smooth get your balls out of the freezer.  

  

Drop one at a time into the melty chocolate and fish them out with a fork or slotted spoon.

 Place them immediately on a wax paper cookie sheet spaced a little apart.  If you are going to sprinkle them with salt, peanuts, candy cane chunks or anything else now is the time to do it.  I dip a few at a time and then sprinkle them so they are still able to hold onto what ever we are sprinkling on.

We have also put in a little Cayenne pepper or chili powder to the peanut butter mix or to the chocolate for a little kick.  One of our favorite versions we add smoky sea salt to the top of the balls before the chocolate hardens - its delightful!

 When your sheet is full put it in the freezer until the ball is hard again and then store in the freezer in ziplock bags!  Yum!

These are great to take for hostess gifts, or to send to school with the kids in a lunch - its a great bite of Christmas love for anyone you choose to bless with one or two - or five is good too!  Its ok to let them thaw out before you serve them - they just store best and keep their shape best when frozen.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!  Have a ball!

Those Wicked Pumpkins

Over the Halloween week there is always a lot of pumpkin - it IS Pumpkin Spice Everything Month - which I LOVE!  I went over the other day the carving and the pumpkin seed roasting we did, but this is something you can do for Thanksgiving and it is super easy!

I showed you how we separated the pumpkin stuff into three bowls, one for seeds, one for compost and one for the cooking pumpkin!  Keep in mind that all of this is done before you have put a light or candle in it!

And here is why we do that - pumpkin Custard!  Now, there are a few ways to keep the pumpkin so that you can use it for Thanksgiving, cook it and freeze it, turn it into custard and freeze it or just put it in bags and freeze it, or turn it into pies and freeze them!  Lots of options!

We choose to make what we call pumpkin custard.  A number of years back my oldest had to have his wisdom teeth out.  He was getting ready to go out of state and do some hockey at the next level, so he still needed to be able to get calories and protein in his body without having to chew on anything that had any bulk.  So we came up with pumpkin custard.  Place your cooking pumpkin in a crock pot (a stove top simmer pot will work but it is more work).  I use fresh apple juice as my "broth agent" so to speak.  About a pint - just dump it in on top of the pumpkin in the crock and let it cook all night on low.  I do add spices to the crock depending on what Im going to do with the  material.  If you know what you are making with it add the spices on the initial crock cook - if not hold off.

After your cook is done you will have smooth, creamy delightful pumpkin!  I just use my crock as a mixing bowl for this part - no sense in dirtying up another bowl.  Your pumpkin should be cooled at this point.  Into the pumpkin add the following:  (this is about 8 cups of pumpkin - the recipe is for two cups - in case you have to use canned)

1Tbsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp Allspice

1 C Brown Sugar (taste the pumpkin first - if the apple juice was sweet you wont need this much)

4 eggs

1 can of evaporated milk (can milk)

1 full scoop of protein powder (optional) - we use the french vanilla flavor for this recipe.  

Mix all together well.

The protein powder is totally optional and if you are miking the custard for  pie or something like that you might want to leave it out.  But it is a great way for protein to get into a teenager and they dont feel like they are eating a punishment for something!  When Reed had his shattered elbow we made lots of this because it digests easily, it is good hot or cold and they feel like they got something in their belly without having to work too hard at it.  Same when the wisdom teeth came out.

For baking the custard I have found that it is super easy in bread pans.  I am not using a crust so if you are making pie - of course put it into the crust in a pie plate - works great either way!

In the bread pans you will bake at 350 degrees for about an hour or until the center is fairly solid.  I dont cover them usually with foil or anything.  Serve as is or with a scoop of Cool Whip or Whipped Cream.  You can see above where someone already "tested"' it!

To freeze just put the custard into a ziplock bag or other freezer container and freeze.  When you are ready to use it pull it out and thaw and you are good to go!

I like to keep some in the freezer for just in case..... we never know when we will need it!

A Halloween Visit

We had a little Halloween fun earlier this month and tonight - All Hallows Eve - Samhain to be exact - we had a little more Hallloween fun.  Reedo had a hockey game he needed to go to in Anchorage to support the team - I didnt have to go since he wasnt playing and that left me alone at home with 3 Great Pumpkins!

But not for long!

Here are the pumpkins - I got them after the weekend carnival for $5.00 each - they were leftovers and needed to get used up.  I got out three bowls for the pumpkin bits - one for seeds, one for compost and one for cooking pumpkin.

Above shows the pumpkin that I drew a raven on in Sharpie Marker around my Wicked Raven logo.  you can see the seeds from this pumpkin in the bowl next to it.  Ill tell you how to roast them in a minute!  Yum!

And along came the girls!  These little beauties are Andrea (left) and Becca (right)  Andrea is a great friend and we call her our neice even though we arent blood we are family!  Becca is her Bestie and we are related to her somehow... its a 6 degrees kind of thing!  Both special!  

They dove right into the pumpkin carving.  It was a heap of fun and pumpkin!  Andrea is putting the cooking pumpkin in a bowl to be cooked later.  Stay tuned for that in another blog!

The girls helped make the decision to put a dragonfly on the second pumpkin.  They drew it freehand from an example on a coffee cup!  So creative and artistic - I wish!  I drew stick amoeba in high school thats how good my drawing is!

Above is the finished pumpkins - ready for the candles and enjoyment!  My raven looks like a seagull sort of - but it made us laugh and is a great memory point!

SO tonight you get a two-fer in the blog.  Above is the pumpkin seeds from two of the pumpkins - we didnt cut the third - saving it for the weekend. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and layer the pumpkin seeds in a cookie sheet with sides that has been coated with butter, oil or pan spray.  Sprinkle some sea salt over them and put them in the oven for 10 minutes.  Stir them with a spatula or turner and put them in the oven for 10 more minutes.  If they are looking roasted and golden brown take them out, if not give them 5 more minutes after another stir.  Once they are nicely roasted and golden brown take them out and let them cool.  Transfer them to a bowl and enjoy them to your hearts content!

While you are enjoying your pumpkin seeds enjoy your lovely carved pumpkins!

Happy Halloween!

A One Apple Farm!

This summer has been an adventure in wonky weather - as you have read in my earlier posts!  We had a regular Late May warm spell that we thought indicated that Spring has sprung - but alas- not so fast!  After about two weeks of great weather, the apples bloomed, the cherries blossomed (those that weren't still under snow), and we thought we were on our way to a banner year for fruit at Wicked Raven!  Sadly - it dropped down to well below freezing for a week solid, and froze everything solid.  Many of the fruit trees went false dormant and did not recover for the whole summer - I have cared for them and am hopeful that they will come back out next summer.

This is the lone apple from Wicked Raven this year!  It is a Westland and it is the first fruit that this tree has produced.  This particular tree is in its second year at Wicked Raven and so is well established.  The Westlands are super hardy - I got this one because a couple of years ago - three to be exact - we began "baby sitting" our "Grand Dog" - Brix.  Brix is Rye's dog and when he would go to the North Slope for work for two weeks at a time we would often watch the dog.  We have him full time now.  Another reason we have to get out of bed in the morning - like it or not.  

I mentioned it in an earlier blog, one of the times we were keeping Brix - he was only about 6 months old or so - I was planting the first Westland apple tree - I had the hole dug, the compost in, watered and had the tree in the hole ready to bury.  All of a sudden I heard a commotion near the house and I see Brix running at full speed ahead towards me.  I braced myself - steeling myself and flexing my knees - ready to jump out of the way or at least not have him take my legs out from under me.  Away he went past me at full speed and I looked and peered and braced myself for whatever was chasing him - there was nothing.  What the heck?  I turned back to my tree planting only to find the whole tree gone!!!

 Brix had run past me and stole the whole tree and was out at the end of the yard!  By the time I got there he had chewed the tree in half and had eaten part of it even!  With a sad heart I planted the little stump of a tree - and it lived!  So I ordered another Westland.  The one shown above is the second tree.  Hale and Hearty with one lone apple upon it!  Its little stump of a brother is still alive and trying to grow toward the sky - it will be a few years before it recovers enough to produce though I fear!

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Above is the beautiful Westland Apple next to two Early Girl tomatoes out of the greenhouse for size comparison.  My dad has a Westland at Snowfire Gardens and his got bigger than this but his has produced before and his first apples were small also.  They are tasty though!  This apple was tart and crisp and juicy!  A perfect lunch apple or for anything you might want to do - I am wishing I had a bushel of them for Halloween - they would be great caramel apples!

And so I continue to go forward with faith because I was able to produce this lone apple!  Stay tuned - Ill update you on the Wicked Cherries soon and we got a ton of those!  

A little Halloween Fun!

Halloween is my favorite time of year - I know its not a "regular" holiday but here at Wicked Raven it is a holiday!  We have so much fun and so many fun memories from Halloween - with everyone in the family!  Even my mother in law gets INTO it.  She has been making Halloween Ghosts for as long as I have known her and it is always fun to make them and then see how many she gets to give away that year.  I think the record was 104. They are fun and easy to make and fun to give away!

All you need is a couple of bags of Tootsie Pops or Blow Pops, a box of tissues, a sharpie marker and some colored yarn or ribbon - I like to use fall colors.

Draw a face on the tissue - sometimes I do this after I have the tissue on the blow pop - works either way.  Draw spooky, silly or smiley faces - they are all fun!

Drape the tissue over the Blow Pop....

Gather it at the base of the pop (the neck of the ghost) and tie it up with your ribbon or yarn.  Just make a simple knot or you can make a bow of some type too if you want to be fancier!

Enjoy handing them out to the kids (or grownups) in your neighborhood!  Trick or treat-ers love them and since they are still individually wrapped they arent too scary for the parents either!

Have a Wicked Happy Halloween!

A Ploughmans Lunch

My greenhouse did very well this year in spite of the crappy weather and the gloomy cloud cover.  It really was my best cucumber year ever!  I had really great success with pickle cukes and this year for the first time in a long time I got to make the quick pickles that my grandmother used to make.  They are super simple and you can make a little or a lot at a time.

Start with at least 2 or 3 pickle cukes, I slice mine into rounds about 1/8^th inch thick (Ill tell you why in a minute) or you can cut them into spears.  I also slice some carrots into sticks to put in as well.  It adds some fun color and they are tasty as well.

Layer your cukes and carrots into whatever size jar you have chosen to use - place either fresh or dry dill in between the layers of veg – I have used both and it works well with either.   I use a mix of jar sizes since they aren’t going in the pressure cooker and  I like to use wide mouth best as it makes the pickles easier to get out of the jar.  Pack them in pretty good as they loosen up when the brine goes in.

In a saucepan heat 3 C of Vinegar, 2 Tbsp. of coarse sea salt ( I like the pink but any will do), ½ tsp celery seed,  1 tsp. mustard seed, ½ tsp turmeric, ¼ tsp chili flakes or white pepper,  and ¼ to ½ C. sugar (I use less since my people like them more dill and less sweet).

 Heat to just boiling and then pour the brine over the vegetables to completely cover the them.  

Put the lids on them and refrigerate immediately until cool.  The jars will usually seal themselves 

but it is best to leave them in the fridge for storage.

These make a beautiful hostess gift as well.  Such a pretty jar!

I like to make them as a sliced pickle because a favorite snack at our house is sort of a ploughmans lunch -usually cheese, pickle and bread– we make it on a cracker with sharp white cheese (you can use whatever cheese you like though) and then a slice of pickle on top of that.  To make a meal out of it add some apple slices and a little ham.  It’s a great farm lunch and it’ll help to keep you sturdy and regular!

Enjoy!

Houston High and the huge Hose

It has been a strange year in the Valley where Wicked Raven Farm is located.  We have had some of the strangest weather that I ever remember having.  What started out as the coldest spring we have had in five years turned in to the coldest and clammiest summer that I can remember ever.  Even though we didn’t set records for rain it was cloudy and gloomy.  Like I always imagine London might be the way it is described in some of the tv shows.

That being said – we didn’t always have the rain we needed to water things and we still had to haul out the hoses.  And at the Houston High School Garden that means 400 feet of hose!  

Do you know how much 400 feet of hose weighs?  A ton!  We ended up spooling it in to a wheelbarrow and hauling it across the parking lot that way so that we could water and refill the rain barrels at the garden.  We are working with the welding group to see if we can develop a hose reel that will hold the whole shebang.  Its in the works.

Above left is about 3/4 of the distance between the garden and the school.  Above right is the hose in the wheelbarrow ready to spool out to the hose bib - at the school in the background.  Its right in the corner of the school that you can see.

We are also well drillers – yes- that is also one of my jobs.  Drill a well at the garden you say?  Yes!  That would be ideal but NO! says the company who’s gas lines run under the garden, and NO says the school district and NO says the State separation guidelines.  And all with good reason.

First of all, the garden is situated in a gravel corner of the school property, out back that used to be the school snow dump area.  The snow plow guys from the school were kind enough to work with us when we first started the garden to move the snow dump area to another location that works for everyone and our garden area will only be used as a snow dump in extreme snow years – when the other one gets full.  A snow dump is where the snow from plowing the parking lots at the school gets dumped and stays there in mounds sometimes until the middle of summer here – depending on how much there is and how warm the year is.  It can be a long lasting yard full of snow.

The reason it is a gravel area that was an open space in the first place is that it is a Gas line (main line) easement that runs along the inside of the fence here at the school.  We cannot put anything permanent on top of the area where the gas line runs directly, and certainly a well cannot be drilled there.  We have some of our tire tomato planters, our soil mixing station and our storage cabinet against that part of the fence, all of which can be moved fairly easily around the garden if it should need to be.

Secondly, there is a septic station for the school that is only about 100 feet from the garden area, and it’s a big one.  A well could not be drilled that would be outside the gas line easement and also outside the separation distance for the septic station – there is just not room.  And yes, this is the best spot for the garden, where moose can’t get easily to it, and kids still can, and it is within a camera view – for those little vandals when they get fired up – which has happened!

And lastly, we have drilled another well on the school property – for the baseball field sprinkler system.  If you didn’t already know it, Houston High has one of the nicest baseball fields in the State.  Almost all of it was made via donations and in kind work.  The Kramer Family, the Ruta Family, and us – Ace Water Wells – to name a few – and if you get a chance come on out for a game in the spring!

So for now we haul hose in the wheelbarrow, and we plan for the future where we will have a greenhouse and rain catchment system to assist us with our watering and go along with the hoses.  As always - things are a work in progress!  Happy Gardening and Happy Fall!

A whole year.

IT has been one full year since our Rye guy passed away.  We have no more answers now than we did then and we are still struggling to make sense of the universe and why it would choose us and ours.

This grief comes in waves – I had been told that it would – sometimes for no apparent reason at all it washes over you.  Sometimes it is soft and gentle like the surf lapping at your beach chair, but sometimes it just beats you into the surf and tears your swimsuit off leaving you crying and naked and wet with your breath stuck in your chest and the pain in your heart worse than ever. 

Some days I get through the day one minute at a time.  Sometimes it is one hour at a time.  Sometimes I don’t make it through the day and I sit on the couch or on the bed and I stare at the door or the ceiling or the television that I am not actually watching.  Sometimes I watch too much television.

It helps to stay busy, and I do that well, but sometimes I just run out of energy and it is all I can do to get up and go to the bathroom without melting into a heap on the floor.

My “good thing” at a work meeting the other day was that I got out of bed and came to work.  I would have worn my pajama pants except that they didn’t have pockets and I have to have pockets during the day.  It’s a personal rule.  Im sure my co-workers were glad that I have that rule!

Life goes on and so do we, my family and all the people in it are changed now though.  Every two steps forward and then it seems something will happen and we go back to square one.  Sometimes it is only a step back, but sometimes it feels like starting over.  The death of another person whether we know them or not sparks all sorts of panic and setbacks.  News that another mother met the child that got her childs heart, or eyes, or lungs begins the pain anew.  She gets to hear her childs heart beat again, to look into his eyes or to hear him breathe.  I am happy for her and terribly jealous and sad at the same time.

My hope and my heart keep thinking that once we get through this horrible first year, that everything will start to feel better or at least not hurt so much, so often.  My head knows that it won’t help to just get through this year, the next year will just begin.

There is also the ongoing issue of “Does what I do matter?”  Every day when we get up we have to find a reason to get out of bed, and then we have to convince ourselves that what we do matters, and that if we keep going we will keep finding reasons to go on.  Some days we cannot find that reason to get out of bed or if we do we cant focus on anything enough to actually get anything done.  Some days we cannot find anything that matters enough to focus on.  It just doesn’t matter.

Then there is the insomnia.  A desperate need and desire to sleep but a complete inability to do so, we have tried everything, melatonin, Simply Sleep, working until we can’t move anymore, to no avail.   Alcohol does not help.  Nothing helps – so I get up and get some things done – or I try to get some things done.  Between the grief fog, lack of sleep and the thoughts of my son it all gets jumbled into a tattered mess that cannot be sorted out and does not allow me to focus for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Some have asked me to help them understand what it is that I go through each day since my son passed but I cannot and I will not, for to make them understand I will have to make them endure death by 1000 cuts, only you don’t die you wake each day and start again fresh and raw and with that piece of your soul missing.  You cannot explain how it feels.  It feels like you are digging a ditch on a beach with your forehead through sand that the waves fill in as soon as you pass through it.  You feel like you should be able to lift your head and see all the beauty around you on that beach which would be so lovely.  But all you can do is push sand with your forehead.  Foggy and hurting and unwilling to have anyone else feel that way.

I do not want to be touched or hugged even though I know you need to do that – I feel fragile and breakable and I don’t like that feeling – the more you hug me the worse it gets as though I am made of glass.

Some days even talking out loud hurts.  Of course, those are milestone days when 18,000 people want to check on us – and we do appreciate that and we know that you love us and that feels good to have that support and feel that love.  We just don’t want to or can’t talk that day or that moment.

Loud noises are not ok and neither are crowds of people pressing and asking and wondering with all the questions in their eyes.  Even though at one time I was the loud one!  They wonder if we are ok and we have to say yes – no matter what we are feeling because to not say we are would be to hurt the person asking and then they try to “fix” something that cannot be fixed.

I once told a friend that in order to fix what was broken we would have to have our son back.  She said “well then it would be the Zombie Apocolypse – and who wants that for their kid!”  I had not thought of Zombie Ill be honest – just raise up him the way that other guys son got raised and he was fine for years after that – you know who Im talking about. 

I looked  into the mirror yesterday (something I rarely do), the one year anniversary of his memorial and realized that he had my exact eyes.  When I look in the mirror I see my sons eyes staring me  back.

Apparently all loss mothers feel this way – at least all of the ones I have talked to do.  They say it never goes away.  17 years, 22 years, there will always be some part of you pushing sand.

We will survive – the same way that other families have survived this, from day to day and year to year.  Yoga and meditation will help and maybe some therapy too.  We will find joy again in some of the things that we did before and find ways to find it in new things that we do.  We will love and smother our other child until he wants to scream at us to stop treating him like a baby – “I’m gwown”!  We will laugh when he acts just like his big brother did and we will not let him get away with some of the things that his brother did!  We will travel places and say “Rye would have loved this” and eventually we will go back to the Highland Games and to the Fair again and it will be fun for us – not something we are getting over with so that we can get that first time out of the way on our own terms.

We should get to do just “whatever the F*&K we want to do” – I was told that at the beginning of this journey, but life doesn’t work that way.  When one of us is doing good it seems the other is not doing so good.  All of us doing good on the same day is a very rare occurrence and it seems that we never get to be together on those days for long – running in different directions taking care of the things that need taken care of while we are up to it!

So if you should see us and ask how we are doing – let “fine” or “ok” be the answer.  That is the best we can do without letting some of our hurt come out like the vicious demon that it is and get all over you and yours.  Let it be.  Blessed Be as we start on the second year of the journey.

Herbal Helpers for Tumultuous Times - an Herbal Retreat

Mom and I attended an herbal retreat (plant class I call it) that was called "Herbal helpers for Tumultuous Times" about a month ago in Palmer.  I mentioned it in an earlier blog about the travelling of the "People Quilt", as the quilt had gone with me for sleeping and comfort.

The class was taught in part by a lady named Janice Schofield and she lives now in Australia, but had once lived in Alaska for many years.   She is the author of a number of books on plants and harvesting plants in the wild as well as their medicinal uses.  If you Google her you can find volumes of information and reference her books (click the link on her name for a class information flyer).

The other teacher/leader of the class was Ellen VanDevisse of Good Earth Garden School.  She lives full time in Palmer at Artemesia Acres.  A wonderful little, "zero waste" permaculture farm.

Here is Janice getting us ready to harvest Devils Club at the Matanuska Park in Palmer, where the Park maintenance had been creating a new trail and were going to cut a wide swath of the stuff down, so it was providence that  we were having the class at the same time so we could make use of a product that would otherwise have been wasted!  My pictures from the actually processing of the Devils club have been lost somehow so Ill be going over that in another blog after I've had time to  recreate it.

Here she is (in the red) talking to us about Cottonwood and how to harvest the buds for salves and other medicinal uses.  It was a jam packed class, full to the brim with information and hands on education about plants.  

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This is our sitting circle at the plant class.  It was a place that we would all post up and tell about why we were there and what we hoped to learn on the first evening as well as where we took our meals.  On the second day it was the place where we talked about our personal herbal helper (as I said before mine was Detox Tea).  Others had helpful tips, or recipes, or essential oils that they used and told about.  It was an amazing group of people and ideas.

Here is one of the other group members herbal helper and I have put it on my list of things to try soon!  As I am back at the school working too now, there is a lot of flu and such going around so I will make use of this one too, along with the Fire Cider - you will learn about that later!

If you get a chance to read some of Janice Schofield's or Ellen VanDevisse materials or to take a class from either of them - do it!  Dive in past your comfort zone (which this was way outside of mine) and make some new friends, learn something new and maybe get a little bit grounded along the way!

Herbal Harvest - Oregano

A few weeks ago I went with my mom to an herbal retreat.  I mentioned it in my previous post (see here).  We were asked to bring our favorite herbal helper - whatever we use to help us through our stressful, crazy, mental and physical challenges.  I took my detox tea recipe (see it here) and a batch of it so that everyone could sample it if they chose.  Included in this batch I also used Oregano.  The reason for that is that Oregano is a super beneficial herb to help with sinus and respiratory issues.  Reed and I had both been having issues with that during the time that the class was happening.  Just add two teaspoons of dry or 1 tablespoon or fresh oregano to the detox tea recipe.  It is a great natural way to solve sinus issues without chemicals.

Oregano is a wonderful little herb that will grow almost anywhere it seems!  It is not a perennial here in Alaska, but it will cooperate growing outside in containers or in the ground and it can also be brought inside to help you all winter long if placed in a window with light and a fair amount of heat.

Above shows an oregano that lives in a terra cotta container (it actually lives in a black pot inside the terra cotta one), right outside the greenhouse door.  Another of the uses of Oregano is as an insect repellant and since I have two lovely Birch trees outside the greenhouse that sometimes draw aphids I like to have the Oregano as a little buffer to help keep them out of the greenhouse.

It is also a great way to have it handy to harvest a little whenever you have need of it!

Use your herb snips (or any scissors really) to snip the stems just above a two leaf set (that way it will produce two more stems for you to harvest later).  I know there are "rules" about harvesting herbs - do it in the morning, once they are dry of dew and before they start to flower - I say poo poo to that!  Harvest when you have time and the plant is big enough to handle it!  Don't be afraid to snip it!  It will be fine!

I like to bundle the stems together and wrap them with a rubber band or one of the bread ties and then clip a binder clip onto that so that herb can hang to dry.  I use this method for most of my herbs - thyme is the only one that doesnt really lend itself to this method as it tends to drop its tiny leaves all over the place (more in another blog about thyme).

Above two photos show the Oregano tied and binder clipped ready to hang.  My drying rack is so techno advanced!  See below....

Gotcha!  It is really just tacks pushed into the wood beneath the cupboards and the binder clips hand on them - effectively drying the herbs!  Simple but works great!

The above photo shows Sage and two bundles of Oregano in various stages of drying.  I harvest a little any time it needs it and bundle it up.  After the bundles are dry I strip the leaves off and store them - some in jars in the spice cabinet and some in bags in the apothecary cabinet.

This is a great way to have enough herb that you grew yourself to have all winter, even if you don't have room to bring your herbs inside for the winter to use.  I hope you can find a spot for at least a few pots - it doesn't take much.  Have fun with it - even if the only place you have is in the bathroom - it'll make the bathroom smell great when the shower steam hits your plants!

Happy Herbing!