Soap Making Classes added for Oct & Nov

Now comes the season of crafting, making and doing...

In that spirit, we've added three new soap making classes to our fall schedule of events.  They are each an "intro to natural soap making", where participants will make their own batch of earth-friendly soap from scratch using lye, oils, organic botanicals, and pure essential oils using the traditional cold process method.   Workshop dates (Oct 13, Nov 10, Nov 17) and registrations are listed on our website.   Learn to make beautiful natural soap just in time for holiday gift giving...

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Autumn is here

These days...

~ firing up the woodstove for the first cold nights...
~ covering our still-growing basil, eggplant and tomatoes in case of frost...
~ preserving last jams, jellies, salsa, pickles, hot peppers...
~ preparing foods to share at our annual Great Food Swap this Saturday...
~ harvesting beans, basil, tomatoes, lemon cukes, nasturtiums, kale, chard...
~ drying herbs for winter teas...
~ eating warming soups on cool evenings (our favourites: lentil dahl, kale-potato-bean, or miso...)
~ collecting - count them!- 5 fresh eggs each day from our lovely laying hens...
~ making soap to get ready for our neighbourhood Art Walk & Studio Tour in October 20-21...
~ enjoying walks through crunchy leaves wearing warm woolens...
~ anticipating our part in the exciting new local Forest School project taking place in Oct-Nov...
~ baking fresh breads for the last remaining weeks of our neighbourhood CSA...
~ watching the bees humming among the goldenrod, cup plant, oregano...
~ savouring wood-fired pizza with our friends near the cozy cob oven...
~ feeling the turning of the season...

Seed & Harvest Events at Little City Farm

It's feeling like autumn now - time for preserving the last of the summer harvest, collecting seeds for next year's garden, and being thankful for what we have enjoyed from our gardens and farms.  To help with celebrating the harvest season, we have two annual events at Little City Farm that are coming up this month. 

Seed Saving Workshop - led by the executive director of Seeds of Diversity Canada
Sat, Sept 15 from 1-3 pm
No registration necessary as this is pay-by-donation.

Great Food Swap - our 2nd annual food swap! 
Sat, Sept 22 from 1-3 pm
No fee, but bring your best homegrown/homemade/home preserved food items to swap (see poster below for details).  Please RSVP for this one so we know how many people to expect.

Chicken love

Yes, there is some chicken love going on at our homestead...

Summer birthday cake

We've celebrated several birthdays around here in the past little while, and our favourite zucchini chocolate cake always makes an appearance for these occasions.  We usually add 2 eggs to the recipe for a lighter cake that rises well, but this time we modified it with banana in place of eggs for a vegan version.  We've made it with gluten free flour in place of wheat for a GF version, and used chocolate-avocado-maple icing for a sugar-free version.  Any way you make this cake it always turns out perfectly, and uses up a good load of zucchini which is in abundance at this time.

This Moment

{This moment} - This moment - an end of week ritual, no words, just a special photo to remember, savour, enjoy. 

Wonders in the garden

The August garden is full and ripening, despite the lack of rain over the past many weeks.  Some things have not grown so well this year (zucchini and sunflowers, for example!) but there are other wonders we discover as we weed our way through the rows and peek under leaves...ripening dragon beans, scarlet runners climbing high, a rainbow of tomatoes everywhere, first cucumbers, first carrots, first edamame...also crickets hiding under every garden pot, and delicate little star-shaped mushrooms (non edible) growing out among the woodchips.  So good to remember the beauty in imperfection and be open to surprises.

This Moment

{This moment} - This moment - an end of week ritual, no words, just a special photo to remember, savour, enjoy. 

Being thankful

A few things we are grateful for at our homestead this week:

1. The two long days of cool refreshing oh-so-needed rain.
2. Our youngest hens are starting to lay eggs!
3. First ripe tomatoes from the garden.
4. Buttons, our 5 year old hen who appeared sick seems to be getting stronger again.
5. A little holiday time away where we got to reconnect with friends and family.

Shiitake mushroom logs

We're on our second attempt at growing our own shiitake mushrooms on logs.  We got aged oak logs from a nearby farm, drilled about 40 holes per log and filled them with the shiitake mushroom plugs we had bought from the "Fun Guy" near Stouffville.  There are a few important elements about growing edible mushrooms on logs - the logs must be about 2 years old (not too freshly cut, but not aged so long so they are dried out); the logs should preferably be hardwood; the logs need to have the bark intact (to protect the spores from possible contamination caused by too much water seeping into the log); the logs need to be moistened after filling with the spore plugs (not misted too lightly, and also not soaked too long - a little tricky to figure out exactly); and they need to be stored in full shade set upright propped against a fence.  After all that, it should be fairly easy to grown mushrooms - well, we'll see.  On our last batch we had one pretty successful crop of mushrooms but then the logs seemed to dry up, and we later learned the logs may have been too old.  We were told we should get several crops of mushrooms from this set.  Another foray into producing our own food on 1/3 acre here in the city...

This Moment

{This moment} - This moment - an end of week ritual, no words, just a special photo to remember, savour, enjoy. 

Fruit preserving season

Peaches, plums, cherries, apricots...in southern Ontario the stone fruit season is on.  Although it's hard (almost impossible) to find locally grown certified organic fruit of these kinds, we can get lovely no-sprayed varieties from farms that use sustainable methods of growing and soil care.  Many folks we know order fruit through Petters or Bailey's Local Foods, both which source their fruit from the Palatine Farm in Niagara.  Their peaches were absolutely delicious this year, and although we canned several batches for the winter we also ate our fill of fresh peaches.  We also dried the fruit, made fruit leather for the first time (yum!) and pitted cherries to freeze them whole for winter pies.  I'm enjoying a new cookbook - The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making which includes down-to-earth affordable simple recipes that empower you to be more self-reliant at home rather than depending on expensive store-bought products (e.g. make your own "from scratch" chai blend, breads, pasta, cheeses, yogurt, crock pickles, salsa, condiments, etc).  Many of these recipes I already have in various other books, but here they are all in one place!

Neighbourhood Art Walk & Soap Making Classes this fall

We are excited to be taking part in the Central Art Walk later this fall.  It seems so far away to think of festivals in the fall, but the planning and organizing starts months ahead.  Look for it October 20-21 if you live in the area and want to experience a unique walking tour of numerous local artists and crafters living right in our neighbourhood!  Here at Little City Farm we'll have handmade soaps, artisan wood-fired bread, and another friend offering her gorgeous pottery.  More details to come later in the fall on this blog and our website.

Soap Making Classes - Here are a few of the latest soap photos using calendula, lavender and rosemary from our garden.  I love using herbs I've grown myself, and try to incorporate at least some herbs or herbal oils we've made into each batch for colour, fragrance, texture, and of course medicinal healing value.  The soaps are made from scratch using the traditional cold-process method and all natural ingredients, pure essential oils and organic herbs.  Although I long to make more soap right now, there's just not the time for it during the busy summer months (let alone offering workshops).  However, we'll be offering several soap classes again starting in September and the dates and registration will be posted on our website in a few weeks time. 

This Moment

{This moment} - This moment - an end of week ritual, no words, just a special photo to remember, savour, enjoy.

Plantain first-aid salve

We had a run-in with some wasps yesterday.  There was one nest being created on our back porch, which we thought we had taken care of (knocked down in the middle of the night to disperse the wasps).  A second nest had been made, unnoticed by us, under an old wooden board that acts as one of our garden paths through the kale bed.  When harvesting some kale yesterday I heard a little shriek behind me, and saw my daughter dancing around saying there were wasps on her.  I brushed one from her arm and swatted another from her hair, and we ran from the garden to see what damage had been done.  Four stings, one on the arm, and several on her ankles and feet (one wasp got caught inside her sandal)!  She was brave, saying she felt more sorry for the wasps than for her stings.  We slathered on crushed fresh plantain leaves as a poultice (see below) - not pretty but very effective - after administering the homeopathic remedy "apis".  Since this was the first time our 4-year old had been stung by wasps I decided to have her rest quietly while we read books, so I could watch closely to see if there would be any serious swelling or other reactions.  There was not, and amazingly the plantain took the sting, redness and pain away within less than 15 minutes.  Now plantain is called a "magic" healing herb by her, highly prized right beside comfrey, peppermint, lemon balm, nettle and lavender - and we have a large batch of plantain harvested to make a salve for our herbal first-aid supplies.

Plantain is an easy herb to find - it's growing wild in nearly every yard, park or sidewalk crack.  If you wild harvest make sure to harvest in a non-sprayed area, away from where dogs have been walked (i.e. harvest uncontaminated plantain).  Use broad leaved plantain if at all possible.  Here is the recipe for Plantain Salve - add it to your list of "must-haves" among your herbal remedies.  This salve is a great help for bug bites, bee and wasp stings, mosquito bites, stinging nettle rash, poison ivy, and other skin irritations:

Plantain Salve

You will need:
fresh plantain leaves, slightly wilted and not damp/wet (enough to fill a 1 litre mason jar)
olive oil (enough to cover plantain leaves in 1 litre mason jar)
pure beeswax (aprox. 1 oz per 1 pint/2 cups oil in your recipe)
vitamin E oil (aprox. 1 tsp)
a few drops pure essential oil (e.g. lavender, peppermint)

1. Do not wash the plantain leaves as water on the plant may cause mold to develop during the steeping time.  Roughly chop plantain leaves and pack into 1 litre mason jar.
2. Pour olive oil over plantain leaves and fill jar with oil upto about 1/2 inch over the leaves, to completely cover them.
3. Let steep in a sunny warm window for 6 weeks, shaking jar every few days.  When oil is fully infused it should be a rich dark green colour.  Other methods for infusing include lightly warming plantain and oil in a double boiler or crock pot for a few hours; or blending plantain and oil in food processor and straining this fresh oil into your salve.
4. Strain oil through fine meshed sieve.  Reserve the oil, and add aprox. 1 oz pure beeswax per 2 cups (1 pint) oil.  Heat over low in a stainless steel saucepan, stirring to combine and melt the beeswax.
5.  Test for consistency by dipping a teaspoon into the oil/beeswax mixture and setting this spoon into the freezer for a minute.  Add more oil if consistency is too thick, or more beeswax if consistency is too thin.
6.  Add vitamin E oil, and pure essential oils (optional).  Pour into clean dark glass jars, label and store in cool dark location.