Sweet Potato Nettle Horseradish Soup Recipe

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

 

Sweet Potato Nettle Horseradish Soup Recipe

  • 2 Medium Sized Sweet Potato’s Peeled and Diced
  • 2 cups of spring harvested nettles (washed and diced)
  • 1/2 cup of spring Dock(washed and diced)
  • 3 green onions, diced
  • 1 tsp of diced garlic
  • 1 tsp of minced fresh ginger root
  •  4 inch piece of finely grated fresh horseradish root.
  • 10 cups of veggie stock
  • 2 tsp of Olive oil
  • Salt, Pepper to taste

In a heavy bottomed soup pot, add your oil at med heat.. add your garlic, ginger root, onions, nettles, dock and horseradish, cook till the greens are wilted an touches of brown on your garlic shows.

Then add your veg based soup stock (if you want a thicker soup, use 8 cups) and your sweet potato..  Cook approx. 15 to 20 min (depending on how big your diced cubes were till sweet potato fully cooked though) check your stock, add salt and pepper to taste.

At this point, you can blend your soup with a stick blender or you can transfer it over to your blender (careful.. its hot) and blend till smooth.

While the soup is cooking, prepare your horseradish cream

In a bowl mix

  • 1 cup of sour cream
  •  3 tbsp of finely grated fresh horseradish
  •  1 tbsp of sugar (if you want)
  •  1 tbsp of heavy cream
  •  1 tsp of paprika
  •  1/2 tsp of fresh cracked sea salt and cracked black pepper

Mix together and set to the side to blend flavours.

Serve up your hot soup and to the middle add a heaping Tablespoon of the fresh horseradish cream, try and get a little bit in each soup spoon as you go..

The cooking really mellows out the horseradish in the soup and the cream levels out the fresh uncooked, giving you a clean hit of heat without it being overwhelming..

Farmgal Notes:  The Dock, horseradish, nettles and green onions are all spring fresh harvested.. the sour cream and cream are from my milking sheep.. what a delightful spring soup..  The flavour of this combo is mouth watering!

 

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Spring Greens – Dock Greens Sauce

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Dock is a spring plant to me..  I like its young tender leaves in the spring but once it starts to flower and or in seed mode, it becomes quite a bit stronger in flavour..  I love using the seeds to start baby dock greens so it’s a win-win in the fact that is self-seeds and or is easy to collect and use as a micro green.

Spring Dock greens are tender and they come with built-in lemon tang..  It works perfectly with a white meat, be that chicken, turkey or pork..  it is something you might lemon pepper on.. you would like it with a bit of dock greens to give that fresh green lemon combo coming in.

While you can certainly use raw dock leaves chopped up in a salad or even a bit chopped up fresh in a salsa.. if you want to wow someone who has never had this place.. consider making a dock cream sauce..

Don’t just think of this sauce for meat, consider making this for your sunday brunch and using it with Egg’s Benedict with a small sliver of salmon in there..

O ya.. so good! Just remove the garlic if you are making it for the breakfast dish

Cream Dock Sauce

  • 2 cups chopped dock leaves (see above, fresh young leaves, picked, washed and coarsely chopped)
  • 1 cup whole sheep’s milk or 1 cup light cream
  • 1/4 cup of Parm cheese-grated
  • I clove garlic diced
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 tbsp butter

In your pan, add your butter and garlic at med heat till its cooked, then add your prepared 2 cups of chopped dock leaves, cook till wilted. Bring your heat down just a touch and add in your rich whole sheep’s milk or light cream or if you want to go full-out, heavy cream.  Bring it up to a very soft simmer, stirring often.. Add you cheese and allow it to naturally slightly thicken. Add salt and pepper to taste

This was served over the pouched chicken breast and on the mashed potato’s. It works for either or both very well indeed.

Lots of people try to eat dock fresh in salads and then believe they don’t like it much, if you think of it as a “lemon” Green in your cooking, it will open up idea’s on how to use this plant.

 

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Soap Making Class Success.

Posted on April 28, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

My first Soap Making Class of the Year was a great success.. A truly outstanding group of ladies came to the class. While the weather and flooding did mean that the class was a touch smaller but the personality’s were big!

This was a cold Process soap making class, which means that I spent Friday making three batches of soap to be cut by the class and it was from these soap loaf’s that they picked their take home soap from.

They watched, listened and asked lots of questions while I made the first batch of soap..

They got impute on coloring, patterning and so forth. It turned out a nice two tone mix with soft green/red colored with clay, unscented.

Then I stepped back but with a careful eye and let them get to it.

Congrats on successfully making “Snow Cherry” Soap Bars. This is a rich lathered bar with a light cherry scent topped with my home grown, dried and ground red current skins on top for extra pop of color. They loved the crinkle cut over the straight cut.. so be it.. It is nice indeed.

It was a lovely start to my teaching classes this year and I am sure that all the ladies will be back for the more advanced soap making classes in the fall that will be tailored to learn tips and tricks to WOW for those Christmas gifts!

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Water.. Rain! and Climate Change Baby

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Once in a hundred year flood, Once in a thousand year..

Come in, hurry that rain is cold.. here.. let me dry those dogs feet before they come in, did you remember your house slippers! Awesome!

Coffee is on today and I have made a strawberry custard pie for our dessert..

Hope you didn’t have to detour to much, so many roads are closed due to flooding right now. The flooding is bad and its going to get so much worse.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-flooding-bell-falls-dam-evacuation-1.5111947

I have been listening or reading the news for the past days and we all thought that it was going to be ok.. lots of sand bagging and some flooding but it truly did seem like for the most part things were under control, that many of the things learned in the floods of 2017 where working and helping.. people had rebuilt with their homes higher, folks had put wall around their homes to direct and hold back water, more pumps added, sloping and more.

But suddenly yesterday, it all changed, it flipped.. and IF we get the rain they are saying that is coming, if the melting of the snow pack continues to flood out the river and one of the biggest worries is that with this heavy snow over the winter and this cool cold slow start to spring means that there are a number of lakes still have enough ice cover but with the water moving into the lakes from the snow melt, that they are very worried that when the ice gets pushed to the rivers that we will have ice jams and water build ups.

Then there is the hydro dam on the Quebec side, they say it was built for the thousand-year flood which appears to maybe be now? They have been even air-lifting folks out from their homes in the dam flood pathway.

I am so sorry to everyone in the path of these waters, across the province, in the past week, roads have been washed out, bridges out, sadly at least one death when a car went down on a bridge.

But what truly amazed me was how quickly folks came out on the news saying.. well this is the second time, stop helping the people that own their homes.. give them a check and buy them out and move them out..  So many folks seem bitter towards them..  they are already splitting them into.. those that have “river frontage” vs those that could never live on the river.. it was just sad to see how angry and bitter they were..  if we can see this split so fast already.. what are we going to see as the climate continues makes itself know.. and trust me.. it will.. kick your heels, stick your head in the sand.. stand loud and proud and declare that its not happening..

It will just go on without you! Its here and its not going away!

On the Quebec side (which is a short drive from the farm) they are already talking about offer 200, 000 to 300, 000 and buying out the home owners.. now I would like to point out that these house in many cases are worth 500,000 to 900,000 each. but the province is hinting at a few things

  1. this is going to happen again and we are not going to keep giving you money to rebuild when we know it!
  2. We are going to offer this money and then if you will not take it,  we are going to say.. fine but its on your head and good luck on getting insurance for it.
  3.  If we are not willing to keep the roads and such.. then we will force you out.

Is it a surprise to anyone that considering the money being offer does not come close to what the homes are “worth” normally has the owners flapping their hands. I get it, I really do.. if you owe 500, 000 on a 900,000 river front mini-mc mansion then the idea of getting 200,000 for your home would have you having a melt down..

and I am not sure that its a fair amount either..

But I am sure of one thing.. as this becomes the norm and it will! this is not a once in a hundred years or once in a thousand years any more.. unstable weather IS THE NEW NORM..

We are about to see a new shift, for thousands of year, the wealthy lives on the high, and the poor lived on the flood plains, the lows, the edges.. as things became more stable, as we hit that sweet spot, a pretty stable climate, and ways to move the water around, block the water and so forth (and trust me history channel will show you that we have done this all before!) and somehow building on flood plains and building by the water has become “the desired spot”

That shift I am talking about.. the value of homes on waterfront first off and flood plains second are about to take a major nose dive..  people are going to find themselves under water in more then one way.

It will come again, much sooner then we think that those with more wealth will again be buying, building on the higher land with views and it will be those with more to lose that will be pushed down into area’s of the town, city and countryside that will be more effected  by the climate pushes and pulls.

They had someone come on from Holland talking about the fact that even in a country that is always planning and working with water that they had to take out homes and give back the land to the river as they knew with the current climate changes that they had been warned with the over floods now and that it was going to get worse, not better.

Thankfully there are MANY people that are close by but not in the direct path and they are truly the lucky ones.. The ones that I feel the worst for are the ones that rebuilt from the 2017 floods and they raised their homes by 3 or 4 feet but its still not going to be enough..

The army was called in a couple days ago on the Quebec side and now they have been called in here on the Ontario side..

Just for today alone and that’s before the rains hit,, they say at least another 30 homes today are done.. no going back.. the houses will have be taken down..

I am watching the big nation river back two big crop fields back and the Black Water Creek to the one side of the farm and they are both running high and they are moving but so far? they are not flooded out into the fields yet..

We will see.. we will see..

There will be no line drying of cloths for a few days that’s for sure.. just more and more rain! I have the heater on to help my soap set up properly, its very damp in the house and the heat will help drive it out!

 

Posted in At the kitchen table | 11 Comments

Farmgal’s Photography April 25th

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

This is a old photo but so worth sharing.. My wonderful Dezzy girl turned 4 this week and this is her first baby photo.. listening to my heartbeat and stealing my heart at the time.

The first of the bees were out, so glad I forced some of the cherry branches into early bloom for Easter, the pussy willows are all out now in full yellow pollen, so the first of the bees do have food in the yard!

Last but not least I have been busy starting to make my soaps.. Sheep milk soap in one of my favorite fancy bar molds 🙂 Man its tricky to get a clean cream soap.. my best trick is almost freeze the milk to start, go slow and mix at a lower temp between the lye and the oils to try and keep it as creamy/off white as you can get.  If you get even a touch to high in your temps, you will end up with a soft brown color to your soap.. nothing wrong with the soap at all, it works just as well.

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Strawberry Raised Bed

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

 

 

Creating a Cinder Block Raised Strawberry Bed

Last spring we knew that we had to do some work on taking down and doing some major reno work, this meant that it was very good odds that we would lose our main strawberry in ground garden rows.

So in Spring of 2018, Dear Hubby picked out and potted up three plants per large 5 or 4 gallon pot of strawberry plants out of the garden and we grew them in pots all season long.. they produced a small crop of strawberries for us but they certainly made extra babies as well.

Come fall, we had hoped to have moved them to a planned higher ridge garden area in the food forest edge, but just as the big potato patch was crushed so was this area that we had been working on in the “Big yard Shake up of 2018)

Winter was coming and there sat my tubs of plants.. We have very cold winters and if you want plants in pots to come though it, you either did them holes in the ground to place them in or you must get them into the ground..

So late in the season, we had a nicer day and we grabbed the blocks that have become available from a different project and we put together a quick and fast raised bed.. I didn’t even try and pull them apart, as I didn’t want any root damage to happen in the late fall.. instead we interfiled between the plant clumps and covered it up and banked it for winter.

This was a slow area to melt out, with a ton of snow on it.. hubby put a sprinkle of sand on the snow to help it melt out faster and it did work compared to the area around it.. but how much was the sand and how much was the raised bed and the extra heating of the cement block? A little bit of this and a little bit of that..

You can see what I am talking about in the photo that I just pulled the plants from the pots and put them in as a solid mass.

Once we were done, the blocks were filled with a 50% compost/ 50% Local Soil with sheep wool balls in tucked in the corners to hold the water so they will not dry out as quickly.

The main bed had another full wheel barrel of compost/soil mixed into it.. there are 24 plants in the main bed, and they are tight on space, haven been only given 8 square inches plots instead of the proper 1 square foot they should get and when you add in the ring around.. a total of 52 strawberry plants.

Hopefully we will be able to get the proper strawberry bed done again in the food forest edge and we will be moving over the 30ish from the rings late season 2019 but this works just fine for this season 🙂

But we are not done here yet.. that area of the yard is currently very much sloped and we will be having a load of top soil, we will be planting out a curving bush row that will grow to be a private hedge for the front yard, the rest will be leveled down and turned into my new kitchen garden.

Once the soil arrives and is spread out, the blocks will be at least half or more covered in soil on the sides. This will go a long way to reducing the heat sink the bed will be, which means it will hold more water that way as well.

On a final note, in approx two or three weeks, the main bed plants will have grown up nice and high and we will then bed down the whole top with a thick cover of clean dry straw, not only for water and keeping the soil cooler but also so that the fruit will be resting on clean straw as well.

Photo updates as the work goes in progress..  I know that 52 plants will not meet our strawberry needs for the year but its a start and it will make us more babies for next years crop.  The rest will be gotten down the road at the local u-pick.

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A little bit of hurt will slow you down..

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Morning Folks..

First Happy Belated EASTER to everyone.. From my little farm to you and yours!

It was truly a lovely Easter here on the farm.. Friday I got cleaned up and headed down the road some to where the local 4-H club was hosting Soil Club and I got to listen in while folks talked about living soil and what soil is etc.. Then I got to my little part helping the kids make seed balls.. nothing like clay, compost and wild flower seeds to get hands o so mucky!  It was a fun time, I enjoyed watching the kids figure things out and ask questions an so forth..

Lovely group of kids and moms 🙂 I look forward to working with them again in the near future.

Then Saturday came, which meant feed run, getting the tires switched from winter to summer but the main part of the day was the sump pump.. the bleep-bleep sump pump.. it decided very late Friday night to stop working properly.. which meant 4 inches of water all over my whole cellar (thankfully no water in my basement as the house is two different sections) so time was spent trying to fix it as we had parts.. the issue was figured out enough to run it to drain the basement but not being able to keep it going so it was a very late night indeed. With the last draining happening at 2 am in the morning..

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/flood-risk-april-2019-1.5105575

“downstream communities like Clarence-Rockland, Ont., volunteers have been working hard to prepare homes and other properties for potential floods.
Other towns like Rigaud, Que., have reported minor flooding, with residents there already being urged to pack up and leave their homes.
Sarich is warning that water level records could be broken for some of the Ottawa River’s tributaries.”

Compared to other folks.. we were doing great.. the cellar is prepared and everything is lifted off the floor by 6 to 8 inches depending so its a matter of fans and drying it out and then giving everything a swipe down with bleach water to makes sure we don’t have a mold issue afterwards but overall its the best place to have a water issue if you are going to have one.

The yard has been draining so well and all heading down and holding in our “Front Pond” and the overflow into the rain garden. I am happy that this water is not all leaving the farm.. but even more happy to see if collecting the water in the yard..

We are also looking at doing some work to direct the sump pump so it can be used to water in certain area’s of the garden.. we will see how that works.. I want it set up so I can switch it from watering the garden to going to the swale depending on what I want.

Saturday the alarm went off early as we needed to be at the hardware for new pump first thing but things just didn’t go as easy as expected, leading to more parts required in the afternoon run to town for the tires and then far more time then should have been spent.. It was one of those.. get this part working but then issues to get the correct backflow stop valve in place correctly..  It was a long day and we were also trying to get things ready for the company on sunday.

Sunday came with two truly lovely families (Hubbies cousin’s) arriving on the farm for a nice ham meal, a egg hunt and some other fun things on the farm.. it was busy, filled with short visits as we all took turns giving a helping hand looking after little ones.  It was a true blessing!

Monday arrived and it was a garden day.. we worked on the strawberry bed in the morning and got it all done up.. then lunch break and the afternoon was spent working in the bigger raspberry patch.. more on the garden stuff tomorrow on Gal in the Garden series.

Really chores where needed to be done and then extra work in prepping the gardens for some coming planting this week.. I had a short hard nap and then it was Monday which means gaming night..

As you can see the weekend flew by!

However you are by now wondering how this is connected to the title.. and that is because I wanted to share that I am moving a touch slower then normal due to the fact that I hurt myself a touch.. I have a inflamed/slipped disk in my lower back along with a pulled tendon.. I have been working on it and its getting better but boy do I know when I push it.

I am under orders on what I can and can’t do.. so some low ground upward lifting is really limited at the moment but I can walk and I can do upright work and I can use tools.. it might be the only year you ever see me using more bare soil just around the plants, I plan to just cut and drop the weeds in the place as a green crop but I believe that it would be easier to cut and drop in place with the long reaching tools then having me try and kneel and pull etc.

It will be a slow but steady time here.. with more rests then normal..  but so be it!

 

Posted in At the kitchen table | 8 Comments

Easter “flowers” for the Table

Posted on April 19, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

Easter is here and so many will be in the stores buying Easter lily’s (keep them away from your cats please,) and others will be buying hot-house raised flowers. While they are lovely, they are also costly, often have traveled hundreds of miles and have a massive carbon foot print..

Might I offer a more frugal natural choice, head out into your garden with prune’s, red bush is stunning in spring, reach for your willows, flowering bushes, or in this case I kept back my cherry tree cuttings and they are now coming into bloom.

Grab a pretty Vase and the nice thing about that is you can use a canning jar if needed or a funky teapot, or all kinds of things if you do not have a vase.. This lovely will continue to bloom and open all weekend long.

Posted in frugal, Gal in the Garden Series | Tagged | 3 Comments

Farmgal Photography April 18th 2019

Posted on April 18, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

cat

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Gal in the Garden Series- Slow start to spring..

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Just another day on the farm

What a strange time it has been in the yard and gardens, we have had some really nice days that almost got to second digits. They say that we are going to get into the low teens this coming week..  I hope they are right.

We have had snow, hail, sleet, freezing rain and a whole lot of rain! While the farm just got a nice amount of rain.. it was good but it was not crazy.. up the valley it was not the same at all.. they broke the local record for the most amount of rain fall in 24 hours.. It was a good amount of rain, it led to roads flooding out, and bridges going out and from the reports on facebook a lot of local folks had flooding in basements and so forth.

I was a touch worried but watch in great relief as our new collection systems went to work and while it did rain enough that the pond overflowed over into the rain garden system.. it never made it past there.. outstanding to see the water staying on the farm and at the same time to see it being collected and pulled away from the house and buildings!

We did get more pruning done.. we have finished all the fruit tree’s, plus the high bush cranberry bushes and I have 15 cuttings hopefully rooting out. We have nine babies that can be transplanted out into the other areas that are already well started and rooted out..

I took a good amount of off, I wanted to be able to open up the middle for air, removed anything cross branching and most important, give us walk around room for picking as they were closing in the middle to create a thicket..

That’s a great thing in certain places in the yard but not in the food production area. there we need to be able to walk around, bark was also peeled and dried for future use in the homestead herbal pantry by its herbal name Crampbark.

We had some rabbit damage on two of our Pixie gooseberry bushes. We cut them right down and I think they will push back up from the roots. The other six bigger bushes all took a good trimming and we have successfully rooted out four new babies to growing and transplanting into the food forest.  They really need a circle cut back on the plant undergrowth and a good compost feeding so they can produce to their best level this year.

Speaking of babies.. we got the first clean up round done around the teepee garden (above before) and that included trimming down all the “pop up” rose bush babies that need to be dug out and moved to different locations. Looks so much better now and once it dries out a bit more and I add a inch or two of compost to dig, I will get it early spring planted out and prepped for the full planting on it by may long weekend..

Ah rose’s once you are in a place, you are hard to get out!

We did very light pruning on a number of other fruiting bushes as required and I finally got a answer on one of Dear Hubbies.. It is flowering, it must produce fruit, I will dig it out of the ditch and bring it to the farm.. here honey I found you a present lol 🙂

Turns out its a Nannyberry and its growing quite well in its area so I am looking forward to adding a new more of them to the farm for better production on them. I am very interested in trying the fruit.. I have been told its a combo of grape/date.. which just sounds different but good!

We did a some smaller and bigger pruning in the hedge rows, some was trimmed upward on the lower branches so I can mow and or underplant depending.  I want to be able to do a single mow track between the rows and so we needed to clean out some under brush..

Some things were cut up to a higher point so that we could use the below area for seating and resting, I want the air movement but I want the shade as well. So I can’t take down certain tree’s until I get others better choices in place and grown big enough to replace some of what was lost.

I found one more use for binder twine and laid out in the roughest way the general outlines of paths and beds for in the kitchen garden..  This is just one little section of it in the photo but I spent a hour plus slowly digging out grass clumps.. I am going to try and put a hour into this garden on any day that the weather will let us.

Hubby also cleaned out the gate garden for the gate part but we still need more snow to melt before we can pull out the outer rows and it to dry out enough to work and finish cleaning up.

Seven of the rhubarb plants have started to pop their pretty heads upward into the sun.. the rest are still under snow.. it will come in due time.

Its a slow start to spring and we are still about 3 weeks behind compared to normal.. I expect that will just stay that way for the next month.. here is hoping we keep getting a spring! That last thing we want is a straight jump into summer heat.. stay slow, stay cool.. let us have a spring season here on the farm this year.

 

 

Posted in Gal in the Garden Series, Garden | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments