Hunting Shed Antlers

If you live in an area that deer live in this is a good time of the year to get out in the woods and look for shed antlers. Deer such as the WhiteTail Deer, which is the local species, shed their antlers and grow new ones every year. The pic shows a couple of shed antlers and a drinking cup I made with a shed antler and a cow horn. Antlers can provide interesting material for various  projects such as tool and knife handles , drawer pulls, buttons, or whatever else your imagination comes up with.Hunting for shed antlers is a good excuse to go for a nice walk in the woods. Find a well traveled deer trail and follow it. Keep a sharp watch if you do find a shed antler as supposedly when the deer losses one antler  he tries to knock off the other so he is balanced. I've never found a second but I have talked to people who have. Any antlers us humans do not pick up soon get eaten by rodents for the mineral content. The big shed antler in the pic has the ends of several tines chewed on. The weather here is supposed to be nice tomorrow so I think a walk in the woods is call for!

Chicken of the Woods A.K.A. Sulfur Shelf

 Laetiporus sulphureus, Chicken of the woods as it is commonly known is a great mushroom. The name refers to the texture of the cooked mushroom which is very much like the texture of chicken breast meat. The sulfur part of it's Latin name refers to the bright yellow underside. It is a good mushroom for beginners since there are no poisonous mushrooms that look like it. It only grows on wood, never on soil. It is large, this clump went about 5 pounds but they occur in much larger bunches. These were actually past prime and at this stage only about an inch of the outer edge is edible, the inner portion being to tough. The smaller ones on the far end are a better size for eating.When picking any wild mushroom to eat you must be absolutely sure of correct identification and most should not be eaten raw. Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora is a very good book on mushrooms. While this is not the best eating wild mushroom you will find it is fairly palatable and it is easy to identify. As long they are not to old I would never pass them up.

Recycling photos

 Recycling some pics from a former blog I started but never really got into.
Epigaearepens L.,Trailing Arbutus is one of the first plants to bloom in our area in north central Wisconsin. This pic does not show it but the blossoms are often a pale pink and they have a beautiful scent. It is a trailing perenial with oval leathery leaves. The tubular five lobed flowers are in clusters. This member of the Heath family contains arbutin which is a urinary antiseptic but it hydrolyzes to hydroquinone which is toxic.

American Indians used leaf tea for kidney disorders as do some folk remedies. It is a plant I always look for as a sign of spring but I have never used it medicinally. For me this is the first true sign of spring.

  The third pic down is of Wild Ginger, Asarum canadense L., which we spent years trying to find and now see  all over. Very tasty and it has quite a zing. We like to add it to tea.

Center is a yellow violet, not sure which one as there are several native to this area. Top is Marsh-Marigold,or Cowslip, Caltha palustris L. which are edible when very young. I said edible but that doesn't necessarily  mean good. Boil them in several changes of water if you want to eat them. Not worth the bother in my opinion.

 

Canning Jars

 Yesterday we were on our way to a birthday party for one of our grandsons and had to stop and get a card.  While in the store we spotted these canning jars on sale for $5.00 per case. That is about half off from what they sell for around canning season. We promptly loaded 10 cases on our cart and were on our way. Before we had them in the car two different people remarked that we must do a lot of canning.  Well, yes we do, but 120 jars is NOT a lot of canning. Which brings me to the point of this post. How much do you need to can? If you want to eat a home canned item just once a day you will obviously need 365 jars.  Ok, but Ann is a great baker and makes apple pies,and peach pies, and cherry pies, and...well, you get the idea. Add another fifty jars for pie filling! Then of course there is apple sauce, and wild plum chutney, raspberry jam, salsa, and apple butter. Better add another 100. Wait , we can some of our home grown meat too. Add another 100. And.. we like to can some fingerling potatoes because they are quick to fry up if you are in a hurry. Then we learned about canning butter, add another 100. What are we up to, 715! I forgot to include the fact that we put our maple syrup in quart canning jars and that some of the veggies we dehydrate will be in canning jars. Did I mention jelly and marmalade and grape juice? Any way, it is easy to see that if you are going to try to preserve most of your own food you will need lots and lots of jars.

Sauerkraut

 Our cabbage crop was very poor this year so we had to buy cabbage to make sauerkraut. We had the cabbages in the root cellar for quite a while and didn't get our kraut made until December! We just opened up the crock today to see how it was doing. It is yummy! We use a recipe that Ann found in a book from Chelsea Green Publishing . The name of the book is Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning. The recipes are all from the gardeners and farmers of Terre Vivante which is a French organization promoting natural and organic methods, etc. I don't want to infringe on their copy right so you will have to find a recipe on your own.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone who lives off grid as it has been very useful in helping us find ways to preserve our food. These are traditional recipes from a time when fermentation was one of the few dependable methods of preserving the harvest. We have kept this sauerkraut in the crock in our root cellar with no additional processing. Of course the U.S.D.A. and F.D.A. say this should be canned in a hot water bath to be safe. I guess we are just reckless and wild. We eat it right out of the crock as is. Every one has to decide for them selves on that issue.

Non -Edible Mushrooms

I was looking through my photo files the other day and found several pics of interesting but non edible mushrooms. Unfortunately, all of them were taken at very high resolution so it is almost impossible to get them uploaded with my satellite hook up. This picture is of a earth star. There are a quite a few varieties and I don't know which this is but isn't it awesome! There were very many of these in the area. It was mid autumn because we found ginseng with berries on there too.  They were under big open hardwoods on gravely hillsides. I have found one other variety of earth star  but they were not nearly as large as these. Hope to get back to that area again this fall to look for them again.

 This one is probably the Horned Fairy Club. These have appeared in the same place now for several years only a little ways from our cabin. Though inedible they are totally cool. We always have lots of wax caps in our woods. Some are brilliant orange and another variety is scarlet. Over the years we have had lots of fun hunting mushrooms and I can hardly wait for the season to start. We pick for the table as well as some medicinal types. If you are interested in picking mushrooms I would definitely recommend going out with some one who has lots of experience. As every one knows there are some very poisonous mushrooms out there so do be very careful. No mater how deadly they are they can't hurt you if you are just looking so it can be a fun activity and completely safe too.

Spinning Wool

We don't own a television and haven't for several years. One side effect of this is having a lot more time to pursue your hobbies.  One of Ann's is spinning fiber. The top pic shows Ann carding the wool. Carding straightens the fibers in preparation for the actual spinning. It also helps remove some vegetative fiber  that may be in the wool as well as being used to blend different lots of wool uniformly. This is a drum carder which is faster than using hand carders. Hand carders are a sort of brush to do the same thing and are used  as a pair. Next is a pic of Ann spinning some wool. The spinning goes much faster than the carding. This spinning wheel is from a company in New Zealand, the Ashford company. Not sure what the full Company name is but they make a full line of very nice equipment. I'm not sure but I think the drum carder was from them also. Right now we don't have any sheep, three llamas doing fiber production duty for the moment. We had Shetland sheep before and will probably get them again soon. They were very hardy as well as easy to work with and their wool is very soft. Hard to beat wool socks for warmth and comfort.