Lughnasadh or Lammas

Tomorrow is August first, the approximate date of the ancient Irish festival of Lughnasadh, a celebration that marks the start of the harvest and the beginning of summer's warmth declining to winter's chill. It was most often celebrated by picking berries, climbing to hill tops and visiting sacred wells.
My family and I went berry picking yesterday, not as a celebration of Lughnasadh, but because this is the season to do it. Which, I guess, is why I am so attracted to the Wiccan holidays, they are still so connected to the natural cycles, and they don't require lots of sugar and plastic to celebrate.

MMMMmmmmmmm! We do love berries. We also like hiking up the mountains around Vancouver, but we may not do this for a few weeks, as this time of year is so busy. 

Visiting Sacred Wells seems kind of funny to me, but likely because I've always grown up with indoor plumbing, I imagine that Wells were important to home life, and that some would be known to provide special water (maybe cleaner, maybe sparkling, or maybe infused with some mineral.) I don't even know how I would attempt this if I were to even try, but it does make me pause and consider how much the role of Water has changed for Humans over the last century.

There are two other common activities to perform on Lughnasadh, baking bread and getting married.

The bread make sense to me, it all ties in to harvest, and abundance. At this time of year, grain is just starting to ripen, and hopes are high that the harvest will be plentiful. Baking bread now seems like an act of faith, that there will be much more of this to come.

This is a sensible time of year to throw a big party, the weather is nice and food is plentiful. So getting Married, or Handfasted now would ensure that the union begins well, without undue stress. But Wiccans also believe that, as this time of year is the peak of summer (ruled by male solar energy), and the beginning of the longer nights of winter (ruled by female lunar energy) this is a time in the cycle when the Sacred Masculine and Sacred Feminine are in balance, are getting married themselves you could say. 

Ahhh, I wish our lives today in these big glass cities could still be so connected to these natural cycles that continue to occur. 

In a personal attempt to celebrate this lovely season, I will share with you a wonderful and easy biscuit recipe. I've never had success raising yeasted breads. But these biscuits always come out wonderfully fluffy.

Biscuits for Lammas

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup white flour

2tbs baking powder

1/4 cup milk

3/4 oil

1/2tsp salt

1tbs honey

Preheat oven to 450 degree F. Mix together dough, do not over knead. Either drop onto a baking sheet, or roll out and use a cup or cookie cutters to get your desired shape. Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden.

Enjoy!

Garlic and The Winter Garden Cycle!

On July 10th we harvested our garlic. We got a huge haul this year: 150 heads, and I'm happy to say that ~100 of them are market worthy, big, beautiful and intact.  

Harvesting them has created a free bed in our garden (a pretty big one too!) It is way too late to sow summer vegetables, but a perfect time to start sowing winter vegetables. Kale is a classic winter vegetable that I have grown every single year, but this year I am experimenting with many more veggies, that, started now, can be harvested in the fall and even through the winter.

So far I've done the first sowing in only half the space I used for the garlic.  I've sown the Scallions, Turnips, Rutabaga, Kohlrabi and Radishes. And they've already come up. In this heat (our peak summer weather) it is really important that I keep them well watered. But they are growing so fast, I can tell that I will be eating them very soon. In two weeks I will do a second sowing in the garden which will involve Walla Walla Onions, and more Turnips, Radishes and Scallions. I plan to sow Arugula and Corn Salad in my containers upstairs so they are more easily accessible.

I'm so excited, especially for the Turnips, which I've recently discovered I LOVE boiled slightly in salty water (turn your water into broth after) and having their greens cooked in a tomato sauce. MMMMmmmm.

Mint, the overlooked weed.

Mint propagates itself very easily. We got our mint plant by pulling a stem with a little root attached off of a plant growing in our alley. We planted it in our garden, and have divided it twice already. The tendency of the roots is to thatch underground until it has spread itself throughout the garden, prompting many to not even attempt to grow it at all. I think we should be welcoming it, it is one of the earlier things we can harvest through the year, and we can harvest it numerous times in a season. In fact, continual harvesting may be the best way to keep its growth in check, making the task of weeding into a task of harvesting.

Mint is delicious dried as a tea, but lately I have preferred it as a seasoning or even a vegetable. Try these three recipes, and tell me if you don't agree.

Strawberry Mint Smoothie
A power boost to any morning

2-3cups strawberries

1/2cup chopped mint

2 cups water or ice

1/4 cup honey

Juice from half a Lime

Blend together and enjoy immediately, garnish with a mint leaf.

Pasta with Mint, Peas and Pecorino 
Cheese
This is simply an amazing pasta to have for a sunday lunch in the spring

Pasta
Fresh green peas or Fava beans
Mint, chopped
Pecorino Cheese, grated
butter
Freshly grated pepper

For one serving, boil pasta in salted water.
In a small sauce pan, sautee 1/2c fresh peas or beans in 1 tsp butter until bright green

Drain the pasta, toss in the mint, cheese and pepper.
Top with the peas/beans and butter
Adjust amounts to serve more than just you.


Nettle Mint Phyllo Pies
Adapted from a recipe that appeared in Edible Vancouver, Mint and Nettle make a harmonious combination, however kale, spinach, collards or chard could replace the Nettle. Nothing, can replace the mint though.

2cups chopped blanched Nettles
1cup chopped mint
1 white onion diced
1/4 c feta crumbled
Phyllo pastry.
Olive oil

Combine the first 4 ingredients in a bowl, set aside. Find your happy place, then gently start to pry apart the Phyllo, oiling it as you go. Once you free up a sheet, place about 2tbs of filling onto one corner, and wrap and fold it until you have a triangle pocket. Google it if you don't find this too clear. Brush oil on each side and bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven (that is Fahrenheit)

Enjoy!

My Favourite Books and their Authors

I've spent much of the last few months reading and I wanted to share with you some of the authors and books I've come to love this last year...

Steve Soloman has a no nonsense writing style, he also has loads of experience and shares if he has difficulties seeing how more "fashionable" methods of gardening could work without much difficulty. He especially comes down hard on the square foot gardening concept, with reason. I've followed his advice and have had really good results. He specializes in coastal gardening, but his book "Gardening When it Counts" is essential reading for anyone interested in being self sufficient.

Toby Hemenway  with "Gaia's Garden" was able to write the most coherent book on permaculture I've yet to read. Beyond coherent it is positively inspiring, invoking awareness of all of natures connections and awakening you to your role as conductor to the organic orchestra occurring in your garden. It has a usable index and lays the concepts out in friendly, easy to understand chapters, while not watering down what permaculture is all about.

Tamar Adler wrote an instant classic with "An Everlasting Meal." A wonderful meditation on cooking which prompts you to finesse your skills in the kitchen until nothing is wasted and everything is savoured again and again. Reading this book will make you a better cook, which will save you money and make you and your family healthier.

Paul Staments is already the stuff of legend among those who know about him, and thanks to his book "Mycelium Running " future generations will venerate him as one of the first to share the knowledge of cleaning up our toxic history with the power of Mycelium, or mushrooms. This book will take you beyond where you imagined was possible, and infuse you with hope for the future. I'm so excited about this book that I signed up for a workshop with him to learn how to cultivate little mushroom helpers of my own. More on that to come...

Zone bending!

After a cold spring, like the one we had this year, where we wonder whether even one pepper will mature past green. I can't help but feel a little jealous of the warmer climates. To curb some of the envy, I have bought a few of the more hardy warm climate plants, I suppose you can call it Zone bending. All of these live outside in the sunny half of the year, and inside for the cloudy bit of it.

My Olive Tree. Its tiny, and these trees grow oh so slowly, but given the very right conditions, most likely against a south facing wall with very well draining soil, some olives trees have and do fruit in Southern BC. Don't believe me? Check out http://olivetrees.ca/

 The Meyer Lemon. I watched a man who worked at a reputable garden centre essentially call a lady stupid because she was curious about growing citrus here. I'm shy, but if I wasn't I would have sent her here aGrowingTradition a top notch garden blog based out of snowy New England. My humble tree needs a bit of love before it gets there, but don't think it can't happen.

 The Tea plant of course, which actually prefers shade and moisture, but cannot tolerate cold. Hopefully more people in BC will try growing this, so that we'll have more inspiring photos to refer to. Til then, about.com it is growing tea at home

Wasabi! Another one that prefers cool, shady and damp, but not cold. I found this cool pdf put out in the states that was trying to guide farmers in how to grow Wasabi for market, check it out here Growing Wasabi in the Pacific Northwest

Lemongrass. This one is new, and truly lovely. My baby shreds it to pieces every once in awhile, and it just keeps growing back strong and fragrant. I keep it moist all summer long, but in the winter I will cut the leaves right back (makes a lovely tea) and keep it almost bone dry in a nice dormant state.

I don't expect to stop here, I saw this great video on growing ginger and I have a cardamom plant that my camera just keeps neglecting. I've seen cocoa trees with pods (growing out of the trunks) at the Vancouver Aquarium, Coffee with cherries at the Bloedel Conservatory, Banana trees with Bananas at the Calgary Zoo and my partner and Love of my life sprouts Avocados compulsively. An Orangery was a common site in the mansions of the rich not to long ago (but before our food system was globalized to the minute.) But possibly what I'm after is more what this lovely family who live in an Earthship in Ontario have, PINEAPPLES!

The Garlic Harvest

I like growing Garlic! This was my first year, so I'm likely benefitting from so much beginners luck, but I found it so easy. I also like the cycle, how it needs to be harvested in the middle of summer, leaving space in the garden to plant your winter crop. 

So, to catch you up, I planted the garlic on October 10th, in plenty of compost and leaf mulch. It started growing in february and got pretty big by mid June, when...

The garlic scapes began to emerge out of the center of the stalks. These are flowers, or plantlets, but I was advised to just clip and eat them, to help make my bulbs bigger. 

They are delicious, and were abundant. The first veg we got to eat out of the garden this season.

Fully a month later, after digging up one bulb per week to see if they were ready to harvest yet I decided they were.

I decided because the cloves were seperate from each other, and big. But they were not bursting out of the skins, which really reduces the amount of time they can be stored for.

Satisfied that it was time to roll I used a pitchfork and dug up all the bulbs, and left them out to dry flat, in the shade for a few days.

Then I removed the outer leaves, and much of the dirt in the process. Then the bulbs were hung to dry out of the way in my cool bike storage room.

About a month later they were dry enough to try braiding. Not easy, at least for me, but I finally got the hang of it right at the end.

But still, this is my best braid, and as you can see, its a little messy. What an art form, next year I'll have to grow lots more garlic to practice this on.

These are some of my seed bulbs, they are the biggest ones I got, and the ones in the best condition. They look like the nicest garlic you can get at the farmers market and I love them so much they are currently hanging up in my living room. I look forward to planting them in October and starting the cycle again.

The Experiments Continue...

Way back in May, I went to VanDusen's Plant sale, where I found a very special plant...

Originating in China, a country who for years held the monopoly on this plant, which quickly became a global commodity, rumoured to have been responsible for the creation of the British empire, the dried leaves, pressed into a brick have been used as currency.

Of course, China lost its monopoly on Camellia sinensis, once a variety was discovered that grew well in Assam India. Since then a few other strains have emerged, the one I bought does well in Russia, so hopefully here as well.

Most tea growers wait until there plants are three years old before they harvest. I got really excited after seeing this documentary All in this Tea ...

...and I also figured, based on the size of my plant, that it was at least two and a half years old. So, a few weeks ago, once small leaf buds started to emerge, I started plucking them off.

 

I got an alright handful,...

 Into the steamer I put them

 then onto a rack to dry in the oven, at 250 degrees F for 20 minutes

At this point they were looking and smelling like green tea, I was hopeful.

But the results were weak, tasteless with sad colour. 

Oh well, thats why it was an experiment. 

Tea is the stuff of ceremony for a reason, it is hard to perfect. The bug has bitten and I think I will keep trying to get my own, nice cup of garden grown caffeine.