Armloads of chickweed and lamb’s quarter, willow herb and strawberry spinach, shepherd’s purse and plantain have been dumped into the chicken runs this year. This summer these 6 weeds are my most abundant. The aggressive field bindweed, foxtail barley, and prostrate knotweed have been bagged up for burning for when it is safe to have a fire again. There are always more weeds growing in the garden and now that harvest season is competing with garden maintenance I am just trying to keep on top of what is about to seed.

While removing these weeds from the vegetable garden, I have time to think about the many useful ways to utilize them in addition to fresh eats for the chickens.

Chickweed (Stellaria media): One of our Bourbon red turkey poults had an eye swollen shut a few days ago. I think he got pecked in the eye and I was worried we would lose him to infection. We used a calendula tea to clean it initially and then washed it a couple of times a day with chickweed tea. The swelling is gone, the eye back to normal and he is infection free. Chickweed is a great herb for eye washes. But it is also good as food, medicine as a digestive aid, and externally for all kinds of complaints: rash, bug bite, acne, or any other skin inflammation.

Lambsquarter (Chenopodium album): This is a weed that I really do not worry about. It is easy to identify when it is young and easy to remove when it gets bigger. It spreads readily from seed but is good to eat being high in vitamins A and C. Just like spinach and chard, the leaves contain oxalic acid which some folks are sensitive to. If cooked, the oxalic acid in the leaves is broken down in the heating process. The only medicinal use referenced is as a mouthwash.

Willow herb (genus Epilobium): This plant is new to my garden as of the last few seasons. It spreads readily from seed and I have had a million of them this year due to not enough weeding last August. Last fall, all of a sudden I had a bunch of little plants covered in white fluff. They had seeded and this year I am very well acquainted with their offspring! The kind I have is a delicate stalk with small pink flowers about 10 inches to a foot tall, though a few are 3 feet where they stretched for light in the raspberries. They are a relative of fireweed and commonly called willow herb due to the willow-esque shape of their leaves. It took me a while to find out what this plant was as it was absent from the Alaska weed lists I have. I still do not know which species I have. A little online research revealed that it has been used as for prostate disorders. According to wikipedia: “The main use of Epilobium by humans is as an herbal supplement in the treatment of prostate, bladder (incontinence) and hormone disorders.” How interesting that this little, somewhat non-distinct weed, has been used in so many herbal remedies!

Strawberry spinach (Chenopodium capitatum): This weed is also in the same family as spinach and lambsquarter. It is a beautiful plant and I have seen seeds for sale in seed catalogs. It has the same medicinal use as lambsquarter (a wash for mouth and throat ulcers.) Both the leaves and the red flowers are edible and make a great snack in the garden. My daughter also likes to use the flower clusters for temporary body paint. They are also used as a natural dye. 

Shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris): This is a beautiful weed that I remove all traces from my vegetable garden due to the fact that it is in the brassicaceae family and can be a host to the root maggots that I try to keep away from my cauliflower and cabbages. I let it grow unimpeded in the perennial garden and lawn and enjoy the heart shaped seed pods. The bumblebees like the white flowers and I watched them feeding with some amusement this week as the heavy bumble made the whole plant arc over when landing on the flowerhead and then slingshotting off. It has many medicinal uses, the most prominent being a blood clotter due to the high content of vitamin K.

Plantain (Plantago major): This is another weed that is so useful it is hard to get worked up over its appearance in the garden. For the gardener, the crushed leaves are a wonderful instant remedy for insect bites. Simply chew a leaf to make a spit poultice and place it on your bite for relief. It can be made into a lotion or salve to treat bug bites, scratches, and scrapes as well as chronic skin conditions such as eczema.

Often weeding is synonymous with harvesting these plants to consume or dry for herbal use later on. After all, a “weed” is only a plant that is growing where it is not wanted. Many times those “weeds” are good pollinators to our native bees, nutrient dense and good for us to consume, and have practical medicinal applications. What weeds are growing in your garden?

This online pdf has been a great resource for identifying weeds in my garden: http://plants.alaska.gov/pdf/TerrestrialWeedIdentificationGuide.pdf

 And my current favorite book (because of the excellent glossy photos) for learning about plants in our region is “The Boreal Herbal” by Beverly Gray.

The sparrows and junkos have fledged and the yard is undulating with these busy and curious bodies in motion. In the trees, on the ground, on the windowsill, even trying to perch on the twine holding my lilac sapling upright. It is dead calm on the lake this morning and the ducks and loons make ripples that spread to the far shore. Our southern mountains appeared again a few days ago when our second rain this month scrubbed a vast majority of smoke particles from the air. My daughter said “the mountains look so big” and indeed after weeks of just seeing shadowy blurs on the horizon, the sharp focus of clear air did make the mountains seem bigger and closer.

A new fire has started nearby on the Chetaslina River. I was up that way on snow machines last March after Tim’s bison hunt in that area. It is just a little bit up the river from us. Many friends reported seeing the smoke plume yesterday and now we just wait and see what happens. It is in a limited protection area and it is part of the natural cycle of this forest to burn. Our fear of course is if the fire gets out of control…

Harvest season has begun in earnest and I am feeling a little overwhelmed with all the projects that are now taking a back seat to food preservation. Yesterday morning, my son and I picked peas and green beans. The earliest and largest green bean harvest ever! And the shelling peas that I am trialing this year are doing exceedingly well. I just need more kids to help with the shelling! It took awhile to shell them but we all ate our fill of delicious and wonderfully sweet peas with dinner last night. The kids like them raw best but I like them cooked briefly in a bit of butter just till they turn bright green.

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And our strawberry crop is starting to wane. It has been a heck of a good run. We had some version of strawberry shortcake for dessert for three nights in a row while the whipping cream lasted. We started with the Joy of Cooking recipe which was too sweet for my taste and while the crushed strawberries made a delightful sauce, it was not my favorite. The next night we had the leftover shortcake cold with sliced and unsweetened berries and lightly sweetened whipped cream (delicious!). But my favorite was the third night, just a bowl full of sliced berries and whipped cream. We are not a dessert every night kind of family but the kids quickly got into this routine and now wonder “what are we having for dessert?”

Peas…

With all the heat and direct sun this summer, I have been surprised at the sweetness in our broccoli crop, which has been excellent. We harvested our first cabbage this week and it too was excellent and sweet and made great turkey soft tacos.

We are getting to the bottom of our freezers and having to get innovative to make dinners that are light enough for this heat and do not take hours to cook in the oven or stove. I was not as diligent as I could have been about using all the cuts of meat that do well with long slow cooking on the wood stove over this past winter. Thankfully a friend who is moving away gave us a stainless steel pressure cooker and I have been learning how to use it. While pressure canning is very familiar, pressure cooking is not and I am in love with everything I have done so far. I am still blown away at the transformation of tough hock to tender, fall off the bone morsels after a mere 45 minutes in the pot. Good thing because it is too warm to do any all day cooking in the oven or on the stovetop!

The sun is up over the trees and it is time to open up the greenhouse and tunnels. Till next week…

This past week has been a blur of hot and sunny summer days. Watering, weeding, and surviving the daily highs in the 90s with frequent dips into the lake seem to be all I can manage. We even took the horses swimming in the lake!

We have reached that point in the year when every time you turn around, the garden has grown another 6 inches. If you don’t check on it for a few days, it will be a jungle the next time you walk through. With the intense and steady heat, the plants in the greenhouse have exploded in height and girth. The strawberries are ripening quickly and hang heavy over the sides of the raised beds. The tomatoes are fully blooming to the delight of the busy bumblebees and the cucumbers fatten up overnight.

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Our family is a little obsessed with cucumbers especially my son and daughter. They prefer to eat freshly sliced cukes with coarse sea salt and drizzled with balsamic vinegar. Our cucumbers are just starting to come on this week so we have cut off and devoured each one as it matures.

But soon we will have an abundance and it will be time to start fermenting our other favorite food, dill pickles. We make them by the quart or half gallon jar with lots of garlic or garlic scapes, dill heads, and enough celtic sea salt to make a 3.5% brine sealed with a fermentation airlock to let CO2 out and keep oxygen from going in. We have tried all sorts of additions over the years but always gravitate back to the original dill, cucumber, and garlic combination that is so delicious. 

To make one quart of fermented dill pickles assemble 3 to 4 pickling cucumbers (or as many as will fit in a quart jar and still leave 1 inch of headspace, 3 to 4 garlic cloves whole or sliced, ½ cup dill or dill tops (3 to 4 big ones), and 1 quart of brine. We make our pickles with a 3.5% to 5% brine depending on the kitchen temperature. When it is hotter we use a stronger brine as food ferments faster at higher temps. To make your brine add 33 grams (3.5%) to 47 grams (5%) of sea salt or canning salt to 1 quart of water and stir until dissolved. (This website has an excellent brine chart: http://www.probioticjar.com/brine.html) Do not use any salt that has impurities or additions such as iodine. Add everything to your jar smallest to largest and fill with the brine so that all vegetables are covered. It is important to keep everything under the surface and you can do this with special glass pickle weights, bamboo skewers wedged horizontally into the jar, a 4 oz canning jar, or any other non-reactive, non metal, food safe item that works. Attach your lid with fermentation airlock or cover with a cloth to keep out insects and secure with butcher string or a rubber band. We leave at room temperature for 3 to 4 days when it is this hot and up to a week when it is cooler. Remove from room temperature to the fridge for at least another week of slow fermentation before consuming. Your taste preference will determine how long you ferment and keep in the fridge. I like a pickle that has developed its flavor slowly in the fridge for a few weeks the best.

There are lots and lots of internet sites with recipes and techniques. My favorite is

http://www.killerpickles.com/ and my favorite book is “Wild Fermentation” by Sandor Katz.

Fermented foods are alive and good for supporting your gut microbiome health as well as being “predigested” by good microbes and therefore easier for you to digest and absorb nutrients. What originally drew me to the process was the allure of learning an ancient art of food preservation. But I also really like that I get to talk about microbes and our symbiotic relationship with them with my kids as we make and eat delicious food.

I cut all the garlic scapes off the plants yesterday, about a week later than I should have. In my defense, everything in the garden is about 2 weeks ahead of the “normal” summer schedule (who knows what normal is anymore!) I will start harvesting the bulbs at the end of July. The scapes are really delicious and you can cook with them, make them into pesto, or save them for winter. I chop them up finely in the food processor, freeze them in ice cube trays, remove them to a freezer container, and add the cubes to soups all winter.

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In other homestead news, we finally purchased and installed the beginning of the solar power system that we have wanted to do for years. This week I have done my laundry, watered the garden with the big irrigation pump, and run our freezers all on solar power. I am ecstatic! Today it is overcast and sprinkling (good news for our dry forests!) and the system is producing enough power to run the normal house functions but I am running generators to irrigate. I like the silent, sun powered option much better…

There is rain and cooler weather in the forecast. It will be time to catch up on all those projects I could not bring myself to do in the intense heat and sun of the past few weeks. Hopefully the cooler weather will help get all the wildfires in Alaska under control. It is terribly dry here with smoke haze obscured mountains. This morning as I drank my coffee, I heard the repeated booming of thunder in the Wrangell Mountains. All I can think is “Please don’t let one of the lightening strikes start another fire.”

I am on the cusp of the harvest season. While lately we have been eating from the garden everyday, we have not been selling produce or flooded with vegetables. From the look of things, that is about to change! Broccoli heads are maturing, potatoes are in flower, zucchini are flowering like crazy, lettuce heads are gorgeous, and the peas have started producing. It is about to get really busy around here!

Till next week…