Mother Nature's Medicine Chest

    This is a good time of the year to replenish or replace some of the items in your natural medicines cabinet. Don't have a natural medicines cabinet? Well, this is a good time of the year to start one! The four items in the pic are four that I try to keep on hand . Lower left , a little hard to see, are Turkeytail Mushroom, Trametes versicolor.It is the subject of much scientific research and is credited with helping rev up the immune system.
  Above the Turkeytail  is Chaga, Inonotus obliquus.The golden colored part is the interior, the black charcoal looking surface is the exterior. Chaga grows mainly on birch trees. In my area I find it mostly on Yellow Birch but in other areas it is more common on Paper Birch. Chaga is another widely researched member of the fungi world. It has been used medicinally for centuries and makes a pleasant tasting beverage. It is generally used for it's anti oxidant qualities.We put a few small pieces in our coffee percolator once a week but I know people who drink it instead of coffee. I'm too much of a caffeine addict to go that route!
 To the right of the Chaga ,I show a bag of Usnea sp.. There are a half dozen or so species of this lichen in my area and as far as I have been able to determine, they are interchangeable for medicinal purposes.One species common in this area is Stag horn Lichen, another is Old Man's Beard. I find the Staghorn  on Black Spruce most often. All of these lichens seem to like areas with fairly high humidity such as Black Spruce- Sphagnum moss bogs. Usnea  species are known to absorb airborne contaminants so judgement is required in choosing harvesting locations. Try not to harvest in areas with a lot of human activity that puts pollutants into the air. Usnea species all contain Usnic Acid which is a strong antibiotic and anti fungal agent.There are some suggestions that it should only be used externally but I have used a mild tea orally for a few days at a time.
  The bright red mushroom in front is Ganoderma tsugae, one of the two species of Ganoderma mushroom known as Reshi. The more common Ganoderma lucidum generally grows on hardwoods while the tsugae grows on Hemlocks.They are widely distributed through out the world. In traditional Chinese medicine this is known as Ling Chi or Ling Zhi and has been used for thousands of years.This is the "mushroom of immortality"and is believed to enhance overall wellness and to support the cardiovascular system.
  I keep and use all four of these health power houses. While the scientific research continues with all of these materials, in this country they are not considered to have any therapeutic benefit. Is this because no substance has been isolated that can be patented as required by drug companies to insure their profits? Used in moderate amounts,none of these have harmed me. Can I prove they help me? No, but I am willing to err on the side of thousands of years of human experience that say these are good for me.

Autumn in Wisconsin

 Here is a little bit of the fall foliage. This clump of maple is just one of hundreds showing off great color this week. There is not much rain in the forecast so the leaves should hang on for a while.We have been out foraging a lot the last few weeks. The hazelnut crop is very disappointing this year and the bears are really working them hard so it was a race to see who got them first. Sorry to say the bears beat us by a mile! Oh well, that is how it goes. We scouted a grove of butternut trees but it was another disappointment. Most of the trees seem to be suffering from butternut canker and probably won't survive much longer. None of the dozen or so trees appeared to be bearing any nuts.
 We did score on a huge patch of wild mint while looking for those butternuts. The native wild mint makes a great tea.
 We have gotten some nanny berries but were late going for elderberries and found most had already been eaten by the birds.
 Our foraging timing has been off this year and we have not got out in time to harvest several things like the elderberries. We did have a good wild rice harvest bringing home about 500 pounds of green rice. That should finish out to at least 150 of finished rice. Our biggest problem was the constant rain which made getting the rice dry next to impossible. Some of it ended up being dried over a wood fire in my maple syrup pan.

I'll work on finishing the rice after we get done bringing in our firewood for the year. I will be putting up a new shed for our rabbits yet this fall. It will be built mostly with pallets so I'll be doing a post on that and I want to tell about our blueberry season and my DIY berry rakes. We also have a miniature pig due to litter within a few days so that should make a interesting post too.  That's about it for now except here is one more pic of Lily waiting for me to throw a stick for her.

Hen of the Woods

This is 11 pounds of Hen of the Woods mushroom. Grifola frondosa, which also goes by the common name Sheep's Head, is a fantastically good eating mushroom. Add to that the fact that it would be almost impossible to mistake anything else for it and you will understand why this is one of my favorites. This is the third year we have picked from the same area so if you find one remember to look again next year. Specimens over 100 pounds have been found but this 11 pound cluster is fairly normal. This one is safely dried and stored away, ready to add it's distinctive touch to many meals to come. I like to powder some of the dried mushroom and use it as you would use a spice in almost any meat dish. A Cream of Mushroom soup made with these has the unfortunate side effect of making any other mushroom soup you try bland and unappetizing. Look for Hen of the Woods near the base of  big,old hardwoods, especially oaks.

Wool Gathering

  Here I am with my trusty helper,Lily. Fortunately watching me type turned out to be boring so she has gone back to harassing the cat. The cat doesn't seem to mind that much as she only occasionally uses her claws to discourage Lily's interest.
   The most viewed post for this week was one I called, DIY Drum Carder. I have had several request for plans from that post and am sorry to say I do not have any. Most of my projects come about when a need runs into a pile of junk within the depths of my shop. I very seldom start out with more than a rough idea of how the thing is going to work. I just start building with what ever I have on hand that will do the job. Sometimes a project will stall due to lack of parts and sit for months until that  AH HA moment when something shows up that will work.The point I'm trying to make is that these projects are not necessarily designed all that well but were designed to work with what I had.
  All that said, I am perfectly happy to answer questions about these projects, just don't expect A to Z directions on how you should build them.

Here is one pic of part of our garden. Closest row cabbage, broccoli in next row, then Poc Choi, garlic in the back row. This years garden is doing very good so far. If we don't get a early frost it will be the best in quite a few years. The cucumber beetles have wrecked one variety of squash but the other varieties of squash and pumpkins seem to be more resistant and have not shown signs of wilt yet despite fairly high counts on the cucumber beetles. I will not plant that particular variety of squash again. Variety selection can mean the difference between a good crop and a poor crop when it comes to organic gardening. No sign of any blight on tomatoes and potatoes which has had me worried since it has been a wet ,humid summer. Those conditions foster blight and wilt problems.

These are black raspberries which are doing good this year as all the berries seem to be doing. I even have blossoms on my lingon berries which is a first. I re-acidified the soil around them and added lots of bark mulch/compost so maybe that's what they needed. I've also started building my perma- culture beds around the existing raspberry plantings. The idea there is to duplicate the conditions I see wild berries doing good in. I am mixing large amounts of wood, both solid logs and chipped brush, with soil in a mound around the canes.I give the whole thing a big dose of mushroom spawn to help start breaking down the wood.So far it seems to be working very well for the raspberries and I will be trying it on some of my new blueberry plantings this year. I'll get some pics when I do that and show a in-depth look at what I'm doing.

OK, Let's Try That Again.

I am going to try this blogg'in thing again on a more leisurely schedule, one a month or so. I was going at it there for a while with two or three post a week and just burned out. It is hard to come up with new topics constantly since homestead life tends to redo the same basic things each year. I choose the pic for this week cause pie is what's for breakfast today! Fresh baked wild blueberry pie to be exact.
  We did a short road trip north to the shore of Lake Superior this past weekend for some berry picking. This is turning into the best berry year I have seen for a while. The trip was very relaxed and laid back so we did not pick nearly as many berries as we could have but it was a great weekend. We will probably make another serious berry picking run this coming week and stock up on these blue beauties while we can. We also managed to pick a few quarts of nice Juneberries while there. The Juneberry crop near us was a fail this year. Nanny berries look good right now as do the hazelnuts. Our gardens are looking good,especially all the cabbage,broccoli, kohlrabi,and even those little green balls of death, brussels spouts.My new horseradish planting seems to really be taking off and the herb section has produced great.
  I will be getting some current photos uploaded soon and then I think I will revisit some of the more popular post and do a update on those.

Catch'in Up

Things are getting back to normal around here so I should have time to write a bit again. We have finally gotten into a more normal weather pattern and haven't had any snow or freezing temperatures for several weeks now. I managed to keep all my transplants in the greenhouse going and have started setting out all the cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi,and brussels sprouts. All of those can take cooler temperatures as can the onions which we are started on .Potatoes and peas will be on the schedule after that and then the warm weather crops like tomatoes, corn, and peppers. We took a few days over the last few weeks for some foraging. Ramps are up in all of our usual picking spots but we haven't picked any yet. Ostrich fern fiddle heads should be up this week if temperatures stay warm. Not much for mushrooms yet although morels are about due to appear. We have been busy with a bunch of new projects but I'll save those for later this week. If anyone in the northcentral Wisconsin area has a hankering for ramps we will be picking next week. Price will be $1.00 per ounce, fresh. Email us here or message us on facebook.

Done Sugar'in

We ended our maple syrup season with our best year ever, making a total of 35 1/2 gallons of syrup. After last years 7 quart season it was a welcome change. Considering that maple syrup makes up a big part of our sugar supply it was nice to see a reserve building up in our pantry for times like last year. We like to be as self sufficient as possible and having our own sugar is one more step in that direction. We have made actual maple sugar some years but just kept it all as syrup this year. I did slip a few gallons of partially finished sap into a

fermentor to try a maple mead recipe I found. Of course as with most things that are cooked, the work starts when the cooking is done. All of the buckets, bags, and barrels have to be scrubbed out before they are stored away until next year. Maple sap contains 2-5 percent sugar which means everything it was in is slightly sticky. If not washed up properly it will all grow a lovely coat of mold. I got that job done yesterday and every thing neatly packed away. I want to make those little sheet metal roofs for all the buckets before next season. Keeping extra water from snow or rain out of the buckets will mean less time cooking to get rid of it. I have about 125 buckets left which I am replacing with the bags as the buckets get damaged or break. The only problem I have with the bags is the fact that they only last a couple years so there is that added expense. With syrup season over I can now concentrate on catching up on a few other projects. I have gotten all my seeds in the greenhouse going but now they are forecasting freezing temps at night again! I really do wish the weather would cooperate a bit.

Took a little time off from our chores to take Lily for a walk. Here she is with Ann . We took her to a park where she had a chance to interact with a few strangers and  another dog. She really is quick to adjust to everything we have throw at her so far.  Here is one more pic of the high water at Big Falls, Jump River.