Tuesday is Blog Day

This blog started out as an experiment on writing about local food and other related activities. It has morphed into more of a studio/stitching journal. Today we return to the local.  

Up on the Halifax Commons where the local high school used to exist, an urban farm and allotment garden project has been developing for 5 years.

There about 170 allotments now. They measure 3feet x 7 feet. This bed is super organized, using the "Square Foot" gardening model.

There is a farmer with a half acre section. He is growing a wide range of crops. Notice at the head of each bed, he has planted some kind of flowering plant, sometimes an herb sometimes a flower. These attract pollinators.

There are also beds that are eating beds. As you walk along, you are encouraged to try something from specific beds. At the time we were going through, strawberries were in season.

Other parts of the site include a shaded sitting area, a common soil area, a single tap for too many crops, a play area and an interactive area.

The top of this hill is a very hot, dry place. The crops seem to be a couple of weeks ahead of backyard gardens in the city. There sure isn't any shade. There has been all kinds of political rodeos about this site, but that is best left to the newspapers, people with decision making power and the activists. All I know for sure is that walking through these gardens is a great experience. So many people are connecting back to the garden in so many ways. People with mobility issues, several workplace or school place groups have a plot they work in as a smaller community, children get to muck about and adults have a friendly place to learn and teach about food.

I have a lovely, large garden with too much shade. This is the sunny hour of the garden, in mid July. Only that central section gets good sun and it doesn't last long enough for anything to really get going. We have instead treated the yard as an insect refuge. There is a small fountain at ground level just on your right of the photo. There are several bird baths filled often, many shady nooks, many tree stumps and logs for small eco-systems and the bees love it here. The last time our beekeeper buddy,Michelle, came by, she told us the bees had already enough honey for the winter.

The little bit of area that does get enough sun is subject to gardeners ineptness. It really doesn't matter what kinds of seeds I plant (indoors or outdoors) they just bomb out.

The white pails are filled with a red potato or a blue potato chit and these are coming along nicely. The green window boxes are filled with lettuce seeds and are doing nothing in particular. The mauve frame is for the peas that refuse to climb. In front of the raised bed you should be seeing bergamot (failed) camomile (bought the plant at a nursery) sage (scraggly) woad (the jury's still out) and in front of the flowering bush should be nigella. Nope. Every spring I am determined to succeed in this area, every July I fail, every August I swear to never veggie garden again and then it begins again in March. Given the amount of space we have, it seems greedy to apply for an allotment, yet I wonder if I might succeed better where there are other gardeners to give advice. On the third hand, I love shopping at the farmers market and vegetable stands, supporting those folks who already garden so well.
mmm, I love our farmers.

Local Food and Winter Blahs

There are other colours for winter foods besides brown. If you are trying to go local or organic, this winter preparation will help to make your cooking more interesting. All it takes is about 2 hours on a weekend afternoon, 3 veggies and one box of snack sized zip lock baggies, one cookie sheet, a broiler or a bbq. If you want to go extreme, add in one fruit and one very large zip lock baggy.

Here's how:
Clean out your freezer of junk and knock off the ice build up.
Buy 1 box of snack sized baggies. Find one or two large sized baggy or 3 of the plastic bags that veggies go into at the grocery store.

Buy (from the Farmer's Market at Seaport on Saturdays, or the Farmer's Market at the VG Hospital on Fridays):

one bunch of celery
10 red peppers or a selection of different coloured peppers, not green (because green makes you burp).
10 small eggplants
4 pints of blueberries

Wash all of the above and do the following:
Celery - make sure there isn't any dirt in the lower regions or the leaves. Cut the root off. Cut the entire plant up into 3-4 inch bits. Yes, the leaves also. Toss it around a bit so there is an even distribution of leaves and stems. Stuff into baggies, squeeze out air, place on a cookie sheet or a shallow cardboard box. Wait.

Red peppers - core out the seeds. Cutting into strips is optional. Toss with olive oil or any other cooking oil, but sesame oil might be weird. Roast on a BBQ or under a broiler until pepper has lost its shape. This usually means the skin will burn. Allow to cool. Using a rounded spoon, scrape off the burnt skin. Stuff into baggies, remove excess air and place onto cookie sheet and Wait.

Eggplants - cut into quarters. Toss with olive oil or another oil. Sesame oil might be interesting for these. Roast on the BBQ or under a broiler with the red peppers. They are done when they are completely soft. They may take a bit longer than the peppers. Using a sharp knife, peel off the burnt skin, if you don't like it, otherwise, leave it on. Once cool, stuff into baggies, remove excess air and move onto step 2.

Blueberries - wash all the blueberries, remove any stems or bugs, place onto a large tea towel and sort of gather up the tea towel into a bowl shape. Shake the bowl shaped towel so the berries dry. Place all the berries into the large baggy or the several thinner bags. Place at the front of your freezer so you see it every time you open the door.

Step 2 for veggies:
All the baggies except the blueberries have been place on the same cookie sheet, No? If not, then do so. Place the cookie sheet in a level position in the freezer. Let freeze for 10 hours.

Step 3 for veggies:
If you are an organized person, remove the frozen baggies from the cookie sheet, return cookie sheet to its home. Place the 3 frozen veggies into the door of the freezer. Make a sign to remind you they are in the freezer. If not, just make the sign and tell someone where the cookie sheet is this winter.

How to use your fruit and veggies when the winter is looking pretty bleak for local food stuffs.

Celery - use in making homemade soups, chop into chili or spaghetti or bean soups, add to casseroles, and you have a few spots of green in another wise dull looking dish.

Red Peppers - add to anything that is looking forlorn. Add to pizzas, foccaio, hummus, bean soup or salad, eggs, chicken sauces, fish sauces. Whatever, it adds a nice red to everything.

Eggplants - really, these are brown, but they are a good protein source and can be added as is, or pureed to pizzas, eggs, pasta sauces, into meatloaf. They just extend the flavours of winter a little bit. Some people think they are tasteless, but I think they add a dark, roasted flavour to food.

Blueberries - chip off a 1/4 to 1/2 cup at a time and add them to muffins, plain cakes, coffee cakes, oatmeal cookies, oatmeal, pancakes, french toast, yogurt, applesauce, smoothies, drinks, martinis, and you have a nice blue juice. No long distance fruit for you!

Finally, beloved September!

I just love September, always have. It's back to school time for Steve and the kids, even though they are way past the usual going to school age.Yesterday was the first day of lectures, so Steve did his nearly famous introductory class to Sustainability 1000, Phoebe picked up her keys for the office that Teaching Assistants use at King's College and Lucas headed back to his study carol to get back to work on his thesis. It was also Lucas' birthday, we had a nice birthday breakfast for him.

Here's the newest member of the family, Snow. He's Lucas' cat and does he add a lot of excitement to the place! Mostly nice. We don't have carpets, so he's finding the lack of traction difficult.

I am not back into the rhythm yet. Too many outstanding issues from the summer, but the gap is closing. Just by writing this blog entry, I am nearly back to my desired schedule. I have been working on my online embroidery course all August. Mostly it's about making samples that can be worked into my future textile pieces.  The one above is a machine made fake organza ribbon that I have embroidered and later added to a different piece. The ribbon is about 4 inches long.

This is my current favourite, even though it is a beginner effort. I like the peek-a-boo-ness of the textile coming up from behind. I have plans for this lesson.

I also liked the techniques I learned on this sample. There is cutwork (the big open hole) and stitching on mirrors and adding lace or textiles behind holes
.

I worked it up a bit more and ended up with this as my sample.

I confess that I am a little confused as to what to do with this blog these days. My initial intention was to write about urban sustainability issues and tag on a few bits of studio work when they were relevant. These days, the blog is more about the studio and less about urban issues.

We are still heavy practitioners of  attempting to live simply and sustainably. The folks I interact with on a daily basis give me good feed back on the studio work. There is a pounding silence on other matters. Since I don't really know who is reading and for what reasons, I wonder what I should continue to write about?

For the time being, I will chat a bit about our dehydrator. Last summer, we dried about everything we could put our hands on. Not everything was a success. I did not like the apples with the peelings still on, nor did I like the strawberries, but Steve did. The bananas were a dismal failure. Too bad because I really liked the idea of banana chips. The blueberries were the best so we repeated that just last week.

We watched a Blue Jays Game, luckily a slow one, while we stabbed about 8 cups of wild blueberries before putting them in the dehydrator. It gave us 5 x 1cup baggies of dried blueberries, to be used in scones, muffins, and trail mix.

Cleo Belle decided to help, by keeping Steve's legs super warm, while the dehydrator was heating up the kitchen when the temperature was nearly 80. We are going to do the apples and pears again this summer, but this time peel the apples. The dried pears were very nice in trail mix, which was sucked down every time it was tucked into lunches. It was especially popular when the lunches were made for a day of sailing.

This summer's drying experiment is going to be mushrooms. I'm not sure if there is a local producer of mushrooms, we'll scout around the market this Saturday. But even if we can only get Canadian mushrooms, and dry those, it will be better than those from Brazil or Australia this winter. Less oil.

Regrettably, the list of things to do left over from the summer includes some finances, cleaning the camping gear in the basement, sorting out the boxes in the garage and attic from Lucas' move home and finding storage for it all.  Too bad the list doesn't have things like pedicure and lemonaide with friends on it this week.

Asperagus warning

Asparagus is in the grocery stores.
Don't succumb! Be brave, be bold, be daring and don't buy it. It is coming from somewhere far away. I know it's nice and green, it is nearly fresh and nearly Spring. What better way to celebrate than by having a heaping helping of a green vegetable?

But just hang on a little longer and wait for your own local asparagus to come up. It is only a few more weeks at the most. If the crocus and snow drops are up in your area, the greens are nearly here too.

If you must have something/ anything green, check out the spinach in your store. It is just possible that there is some local spinach available since it is often grown under plastic frames or in green houses for an early crop. Lightly stir fry some onions, garlic and raising in olive oil, place the slightly chopped spinach on top and steam until smooshy and you have wonderful side dish. Or chop up some boiled up eggs, chop some feta, toss in a few chopped walnuts with a home made dressing, and you have a terrific green salad.

I admit, I am having trouble passing by the salad greens these days. And my craving for an orange is killing me. Or a banana. Or..... but no... we can do this together. Just walk on by. Head for the free trade chocolate if possible or get some ice cream from your local dairy.

If you just can't resist, at least don't give in to the strawberries. They are miserable things this time of year anyhow. Limit your cravings to one thing and then buy some nice wine to give you courage to resist.

Good luck.

First Potato!

I managed to find several half hours this week to tend to the suffering garden.

I started at my back door and worked my way on the left side to the floating deck.

Then I returned to the centre where the potatoes are currently living. This new bed is meant to be for veggies, potatoes seemed a good choice and they are certainly good for breaking up soil. There is original soil, which may have heavy metal contaminants, but who knows. There is tons of leaf mold from before the maples were hit with black spot and there are three buckets full of worm debris. The robins last year had a blast scratching that around, eating up all those worms.

Weeding away I managed to scour the top of the earth and this teeny tiny beauty came up. I wasn't searching for a potato, only weeds.

Lucas and Natasha gave me about 6 purple and 6 red potato chits this spring, and none of us expected a huge haul. I haven't done any of the proper things for these plants. They aren't planted in a depression so I can mound up the earth, nor are they planted in a device that allows for earth mounding. No earth mounding will occur. My goal had been to break up the soil and if a crop resulted, then extra bonus. Given this little potato's arrival, I think there is a very local potato salad in our future.

Preserving made easy

I just bought this magazine

I rarely do impulse buying, unless it involves chocolate or fabric. But this one hollered at me. I love looking at recipies for canning and jamming although I'm not so good on the follow-through. This magazine has great recipes, small quantities for preparation so it won't kill me and (here's the part I really like) suggestions on what to do with the preserves once they are done.
What I really like is that the recipes are grouped into major content of jar. Berries, rooted vegetables, citrus fruits and so on. In the index, the recipes are grouped by kind; salsa, chutney, jam etc.

A jar of pickled green beans merely stares at you accusingly, doesn't it? As a vinegar hater, the cry of the pickled anything falls upon deaf ears. But this magazine has links to Better Homes and Gardens (the publisher) and recipe suggestions. Chop up several pickled somethings and toss into a tuna salad. Oh yes, that is a good idea.

Take a look at these onions ! (Sorry Natasha, avert your eyes). Are they not amazing looking? Who would have thought of a) preserving onions and b) tossing them around like that?

Here is YOUR opportunity to be creative and help avoid buying imported fresh fruits in the winter when blah blah blah. You've heard it all before and thought, "good idea, I must do something about this" Here's your easy pickings chance.

Option One: The easy way to preserve - find someone who does it for a living.

Think of something that you buy in the winter and, naughty you, know you shouldn't. What about peaches or strawberries? What about kiwi or apricots? What about fresh peas!? Oh my God, fresh tomatoes !! are you listening?

Decide on a vegetable or fruit or both that you could change your buying habits about, and instead, buy a jar of preserves from someone. Just one. Small steps remember. On your calendar, chose a date mid-winter and write down "Open the bloody jar of preserves so Laureen will a) stop whining and b) feel satisfied she has changed your life.

Serve the jar as it is, or go hunting to bhg.com for a recipe. There are a gazillion things to do with jam besides put it on toast or make thumbprint cookies.

We go to Pat's Preserves at the Market

http://patspreserves.wordpress.com/

We are partial to his corn relish, two kinds of great pickles, hot pepper jelly, rhubarb jam and applesauce cake which is amazing for camping or times when you are too busy to make a desert for those expecting one. I have also looked at the preserves on the shelves at Bob and Boys on Hwy. 103, around exit 15 and that preserving maniac has the most amazing mustard pickles and a blueberry rhubarb jam that looks very good.

Option two: Harder but not impossible, in fact, a chance for some fun.
Buy the magazine from above. I found it at Soeby's on Queen Street on the impulse magazine rack.
Open it up, have a napkin in hand to stop up your drooling and choose one recipe. There is a cider jelly that looks very easy and scrumptious. No fruit or veg to clean, just cider and pectin and few other bits. Have a go at it and see how simple it really is.

Local Diet - a new season

(We're back from Spain and I have tons to share but the computer is in a bit of a gasp trying to import the 850 photos from the camera. So I'll start with this today)

We stared at the freezer a few times this spring. We had bought several apple ciders to tide us over the summer. Going in and out of the freezer, one time it didn't shut fully and we had a leak and a cider container explosion. We had to clear out all the contents, give it a scrub and re-pack.

This led to a bit of honesty on both our parts. I really do not like the frozen asparagus, I find it a bit woody. Neither of us is thrilled with the frozen green or yellow beans but agree our own frozen beans beat the Green Giant any day. We were also bold enough to be truthful that the beans as a side dish on their own nearly suck. They are nice in a stew or salad, but as a stand alone dish, un uh.
I took a look on line at several pickling options, canning options and drying options. I have found a new pickling recipe for the asparagus and since they use green beans in the illustrations, I think I could get away with it for the beans as well. But then, reality sunk in. We were leaving in 3 days, no time to really attend to canning asparagus. So we switched gears and dried some herbs.

We set the de-hydrator up while doing the laundry and packing. Loveage (a celery replacement), marjoram (transplanted from Jane's garden) and golden oregano, all dried in about 24 hours. It was humid and we had to run the machine longer than expected. Decisions: forget asparagus until next spring; see if we can dry beans instead of freezing. Concentrate on strawberries when we get home. The preserving season has begun.

Atlantic Provinces Dark Days - Parsnip Soup -tastes great

Today's Dark Days challenge is brought to you by Steve. I asked him to do the writing. It seems a bit harsh because he also does most of the cooking, but I thought the cook's view on local food might be interesting. Steve made a very surprisingly great parsnip soup. He took the photos during his prep time. OK Steve, interest us.
...

It's of course a great honour to be the first guest blogger on the site. But I do think that I should have been able to dictate this post, since my hands are always messy with food prep stuff.

Since we started the "as local as possible, maybe even more so" diet a few years ago, most people react with a sense of pity when the question comes up of what vegetables to eat in the "dark days." Squash, turnips, parsnips, potatoes (getting spongy), cabbage - yum! Of course, there are always brussel sprouts. A couple of years ago I came across a recipe - cut the sprouts in half, brush with olive oil, roast in the oven, toss with balsamic vinegar, top with bacon bits. By the time it's at the table, you can't taste the sprouts at all. As another winter market regular said, you can make anything swallow-able by adding bacon. Old Man Leudeke was right - "If I'm not mistaken, the answer's bacon." This does seem like cheating, although the bacon is local, and now Boates is doing a Balsamic-style cider vinegar...

Then, I had roasted parsnip soup at a winter fundraising lunch at the university that is truly local. Aramark's chef, Gary Hillier, had put together a fully winter menu, with a nice range of truly winter food items. The soup, though, was exceptional. And you could still taste the parsnip. After culinary espionage (I sent an email asking), I secured the recipe. It is deeply complex,and not for the faint of heart.
First, gather the stuff. Here is the local array, minus the parsnips, which had already been cubed and brushed with oil before Laureen remembered to get out the camera. The bread (made with my sourdough Archie, now 8 years old), the Dutchman's Dragon's Breath and Gouda are for the side dish.
The parsnips are pasty white at the start of roasting.They need a fair while (20 minutes at least) at 375 degrees Farenheit and a lot of turning, and want to get to be golden brown. They start to smell pretty fine.
Not local. The oil is from the Italian Market, selected after a lengthy tasting and education session with the owner. Local in a very curious and roundabout way; tasty enough that we use it to dress green salads without adding vinegar most of the time. The oil and pepper go in the soup, the wine and the antipasto do not.
(Laureen- It is still mostly the spices that give us the pip on this local food life style.)
Fry diced onions in oil until nice and fragrant, then the roasted parsnips go in the pot, add double the volume of water, boil for a while until the parsnips are soft. Meanwhile fry the bacon or pork belly that Laureen forgot to photograph before.
Don't worry about what goes on in the kitchen if you aren't cooking. If you are, walk through the other space every once in awhile and pretend this is very hard work. (Laureen- I didn't notice him walking through the room pretending he was having a tough time. I was busy with my own hard work)
Use a hand held blender to smoosh the parsnips, which should make a nice thick soup. Add a few grinds of pepper, maple syrup (local of course) to taste, maybe 1/8 to 1/4 cup, and a dash of tabasco. Thin with cream if it's too thick.
Eat. Taste the parsnips, and their brownish roasty goodness, with a nice hint of maple - not enough syrup to make the soup sweet, more just to open up the flavours. The bacon/pork belly we found to be not very important to the taste, and I'll leave it out the next time (or cook the pork belly in, rather than add as scrunchion topping).

The amazing things about this recipe: Pasty, whitish parsnips become rich golden brown, with the roasty crunch making a nice depth of taste in the final soup. Almost no ingredients - parsnips, oil, onion, maple syrup. Roast parsnips. boil in water, smoosh with blender - Julia Child would be frustrated by the lack of technique. Every stage smells yummy. And Laureen's favourite aspect (because our rule is, if you don't cook you wash the dishes) - if you skip the bacon, the soup requires just one pot, one baking sheet, and one handblender to wash.

The satisfying thing about cooking seasonally in the summer is that the tastes of fresh vegetables are so rich and popping, you don't need a lot of fussing with preparation and added ingredients. Too much fussing really just gets in the way, and reduces the flavour of the main ingredients. Winter recipes often have more combinations, more cooking time, less clarity of flavour. Of course you can't eat a parsnip the way you might chomp a baby carrot in September, but the roasting avoids the blanding-out of flavour that comes with stewing and other slow wet techniques.

I think the recipe would work fine with a butternut squash as well. Possibly with turnip, though I'd probably add some balsamic cider vinegar after roasting. All the sad, worthy looking vegetables at the market in January always call to my do-gooder instinct (Laureen - meaning he buys them despite my objections, but now we won't feed them to the worms.

Resources:
Parsnips, Onions - Elmridge Farms (market)
Butter, Cream - Farmer's Dairy (everywhere)
Dragon's Breath Cheese, Medium Old gouda - Dutchman's Cheese (market, Pete's)
Sourdough - flour - Speerville Mills (Grainery Coop at market, organic sections most Halifax stores)
Sourdough starter - Steve (convince him you won't let Archie's offspring die and he might give you some)
Maple Syrup - several local church group fund raisers
Bacon or pork belly - Roselane Farm (market)

Parsnip Soup recipe:
4lbs parsnips peeled and rough chopped ( aprox 1 -2 inch in length)
1 lrg onion med dice
4-5 L water ( it should be aprox double the amount of water to parsnips in the pot
maple syrup ( to taste)
salt to taste
pepper to taste
canola oil (steve used olive oil)

Toss chopped parsnips in canola oil and a little salt and pepper to season. Just enough oil to lightly coat.
Place oiled parsnips on a cookie sheet and roast in a 375 degree oven until the parsnips are nicely colored deep golden. Stir to cook on all sides
Once parsnips are roasted, heat 2 tbsp oil in a large pot to saute the onion. Cook till translucent, add the parsnips and cover with the water. Simmer for aprox. 45 min to an hour, or you see the parsnips are starting to break apart.
Stir occasionaly
With a hand blender, blend mixture till smooth. taste for flavor and add S&P and maple syrup to desired flavor.
If the mixture is too thick add a little 35% cream
If too thin leave on the stove and reduce till thickened while continuing to taste.
Add a pich of cayenne for a bit of heat if that's your thing.

Harvesting through the freezer

I am very protective of our freezer. We bought this johnny nearly 18 years ago.

It is a front door opening kind of unit, not quite half the height of a fridge. It probably has a quantity like 3 cubic feet or something but I haven't any idea anymore. I paid $50.00 for it from a young couple who were taking their two babies and driving out west to start a new life.

Some years our freezer has stayed unplugged especially when the kids were little and it took all my energy to just deal with right now, let alone next month. During Hurricane Juan, I was in a total state of panic, we had just put in all kinds of frozen blueberries and would lose them if the electricity didn't turn on soon. We shoved in ice packs and ice bags and wrapped it up and 8 days later when the lights came back on, we still had frozen blueberries.

I would not have done that with meat, just in case you think I'm completely bonkers.

As we have been challenging ourselves with the hundred mile diet (more on that in the future) we have been learning to use our freezer most creatively. We don't freeze any meat in that unit, we put in broccoli, cauliflower, blueberries, green and yellow beans, rhubarb, asparagus and in the late winter we stock pile some cider for Steve's drinking in the summer. We also put our soup stock, chilies and spaghetti sauces in there.

This summer we expanded our freezer contents to include corn and we have concluded that last winter's experiment with tomatoes was a great success. This summer we put in a pint of peaches to see if the skin will peel off as easily as the tomato skins do and what the texture and flavour will be like.

Where the freezer really makes it's presence felt daily is upstairs. We have the usual fridge size freezer and in the door, in little wooden pint boxes we have frozen parsley, dill, basil, sage, marjoram, onion greens, roasted red peppers, roasted egg plant and celery.

I written about the celery on an earlier blog. The remainder of the frozen herbs make the winter local food restrictions more than bearable. It makes the root vegetables and the frozen products from downstairs simply delicious. The roasted red peppers are by far the best bang for the effort there is. On the barbeque over the season when they are available, we roast extra peppers, and pop them into snack size baggies. Then whenever we want a nice deep tone to a soup or a dish or even an omlette, out come a few slices of red pepper and bingo.

In this freezer we pop any meats that we have bought at the market. They are usually used up within two weeks of purchase except for the pepperoni and barbequed sausages. Those get used up more slowly but keep their flavour nicely. This is where we store any doubling up of recipes that we have made, there is usually a reason to double a recipe, such as taking something to a potluck, so those don't reside in the freezer for long. Steve also stores extra loaves of bread. He and Phoebe have an exchange program worked out. He bakes her sour dough bread, she bakes him scones. When ever Phoebe has time to make some scones, she trades him.

Apparently the energy efficiency of freezers hasn't changed much in the past 20 years, if the seal on the doors is good, then it is about as efficient as research allows. I figure that we save a ton of money by owning one of these. The electricity burn is compensated for by the reduced consumption of shipped in food stuffs over the winter and spring. Our winter eating is very, very good. It helps that Steve likes to cook because if it was left to me, the menus would be pretty ordinary. Even so, the quality of anything I toss onto the table (if I haven't burnt it because I was reading a book) is much higher than anything I ever tossed in years gone by.

Dying with Chives and Golden Rod

Most of the silliness is gone from my process of dying with plants found in my own garden. I am still putting the plant matter back into a colander and putting it back into the dye pot just because I haven't found anything to reassure me that the plant matter isn't needed. Looks like I need another resource book.

I did go to Joybilee Farms for entirely different reasons and she mentions that she lets the dye liquor ferment for a few days, build up a few bubbles before adding the wool. I did try to do something along those lines, at the end of the Golden Rod experiment.

http://joybilee-farm.blogspot.com or www.fibrearts.ca

Chives: Little Buggers.

I cut up more than 6 cups of chives, using my cup measurement method as opposed to the more normal one of using a scale of grams or ounces. I figured the same method should be used through out this process to be consistently wrong. The ratio of chives to wool was 3:1 and I had 2 cups of wool meaning I needed 6 cups of chives.

I soaked the wool as usual, did the whole routine as usual and look at this!

Nada. There isn't a drop of colour. I checked the book, Spectrum, Dye Plants of Ontario, edited by Nancy J. McGuffin, and my plant parts were correct (leaves) and my ratio was correct. I confess to a complete brain cramp. Once I had tidied everything up and started to write my notes I thought “Did I use Alum or Copper” I forget. I think it must have been alum because I don't remember having to pick chives out of my copper scrunchy. How do we forget things like this. It is sort of important. Never the less, that piece of information is gone. But since I didn't get any colour it hardly seems to matter.

The Burr House dyers group had their problems also. Here is an additional comment they made:

“The colours from the original dyebath of 1:1 ratio were pallid. A stronger dyebath was used in an iron pot and the skeins re-entered. Very strong rich shades resulted. The ammonia rinse gave an extremely deep golden yellow.”

I did not do an ammonia rinse, because I thought I had no colour to begin with and it wasn't until re-reading this book for the umpteenth time that I saw this sentence. To confess to my deep ignorance, I didn't even know you could still buy ammonia, I thought it was no longer on shelves because it is so toxic. Guess I need to go shopping.

Golden Rod: Great weed

An entirely different experience happened with the Golden Rod. First, I had way more fun collecting it. We were in Pugwash at a friend's cottage and she has a field of it, so out we trotted and gathered a bag of the stuff while the white wine cooled. It counts as growing in my garden because Steve designed the cottage and we've been visiting this site for two years watching this building grow. I have a bunch now growing in my own garden for next year.

The Golden Rod is hidden behind my hat.

The next day I made the liquor up. My mom, who was visiting for several days, was horrified. It was very hot in the house, a Maritime heatwave (3 days) was in effect and the fans were a churning. Plus we were having guests that night and Golden Rod is nothing if not stinky. We left it out on the back porch to cool and de-stink. It cooled, but never de-stunk.

Same usual mayhem in the dying of the wool but this time out came a rather interesting green. Alum and Golden Rod give a green that looks like it is soft but then you realize it is holding its breath trying not to let you know it is having a PMS experience. It is an angry soft green. And a little stinky.

I still had lots of the liquor left over and had a brain wave. Why not toss in some carded fleece? I scrunched in 4 small batts of the carded fleece, layering a rag of cotton between them in case they matted together. I put it out in the back yard, lid on, in the bright sun so it could cook. Then it rained and I heaved it into the back shed. Then I forgot. Then we took it out and gave it a rinse in the kitchen sink. Everyone fled except me. I had to see this through.

The unspun fleece is from that sleezy sheep Floozy I told you about a few months ago.

It starts out as an oatmeal/taupe and with the golden rod, it looks like an oatmeal taupe that cats peed on. The awfulness of the colour is not showing on my monitor. Squeeze your eyes while smelling vinegar and anchovies, you'll get the idea. I need to spin a few metres to see it is as awful as I think it is. One of the challenges is that it stinks too. The cats are very impressed. It is a full open-mouth-whiskers-straight-out-ears-back kind of stink. I am keeping it on the back porch in case the cats think it really is another cat's markings and they decide to join in. I think some Eco-wool or Woolite is in this fleece's short term future.

The future dying adventure plans include carrot tops, rue and fern bracken. I am tempted to try some Sunflowers and the Smoke tree. The Sunflowers I didn't grow myself so that seems a bit of cheat given that I wanted to use plants that were in my own garden and I can only buy them. I will have to ponder the ethics of that. The smoke tree in my yard is still a baby and it seems kind of harsh to prune it. Another dilemma. Would it be a cheat to use someone else's smoke tree twigs instead of my own? Anyone have a smoke tree to tempt me with?