Healing Herbal Summer Drinks Workshop! Making Herbal Sun Teas, Syrups, Shrubs, Lacto-Fermented Sodas

Upcoming Workshop:
Healing Herbal Summer Drinks! Making Herbal Sun Teas, Herbal Syrups, Herb-Fruit Shrubs & Lacto-Fermented Sodas

Date: Sat, July 7 (pre-registration required)  REGISTER HERE
Time: 1-3 pm
Facilitator: Karin Kliewer, traditional herbalist
Location: at Little City Farm

Herbal summer drinks are a delicious way to beat the heat AND get nourishing, creative flavours (without refined sugar) made right from your garden.

All of these herbal drinks, which were once common and popular, are again seeing a revival. And for good reason! These drinks are flavourful, healthful, and endlessly creative in the combinations you can come up with, Many of these drinks (syrups, shrubs and sodas) also have a fairly lengthy shelf-life, allowing your to make larger batches that can last all summer long for your drink mixing.

In this hands-on class we will introduce you to 4 types of wonderful herbal-based drinks you can easily make at home:

• herbal sun tea,
• herbal syrups,
• herbal shrubs (raw apple cider vinegar infused fruit-herb combinations),
• lacto-fermented sodas (and lacto-fermented ginger-ale)

You will get the chance to taste a wide variety of the amazing flavour combinations, and participate in making your own ginger bug and personalized herbal shrub to take home.

More info & registration here.

Next Fermentation Class April 14! and NEW, The Seasonal Spread fermentation gatherings at Little City Farm

Make kraut!  It's so simple, so healthful, so delicious, and so affordable when you make it at home!  Take part in the next Fermentation Workshop, on Sat April 14 at Little City Farm.  More details here.

And join us at Little City Farm for The Seasonal Spread: Grow, Forage, Ferment, monthly fermentation demos featuring seasonal produce and wild edibles.  May 2 (SOLD OUT), and June 6 registration available now.

2 Fermentation Classes next weekend - sign up soon!

Strengthen your health, boost your immune system, and build overall vitality this winter with delicious lacto-fermented vegetable krauts, pickles, and kimchi.  Join us for one of our hands-on fermentation classes, to learn all you need to know to confidently make your own ferments at home, brimming with healthy microbes to boost your gut health and build immunity through the cold and flu season (and all year round!).  We'll be tasting various veggie ferments so you can experience the range of complex flavours and tastes.  Then we'll be making root veggie krauts with local organic vegetables, plus herbs and spices to round out your choices of flavour - topping up with the all important sea salt brine.  Participants each take home a large jar of kraut!  Read more, or register for our Feb 3 or Feb 4 classes here.

Classes are held at Little City Farm - spots are still open so sign up soon!  Here are some photos from our previous kraut-making workshop. 

Fermentation workshop

We had a great fermentation class here a few weeks ago.  This is a favourite class around here, that we offer several times per year - since making kraut is so simple, so healthy, and really great hands-on fun.  In the class we made a mixed winter root veggie kraut with every local winter veggie we could find (leeks, red cabbage, green cabbage, kale, daikon, black radish,  carrots, onion, garlic, beets...)- honestly, this is the BEST tasting kraut I have ever had (and the richest colour - beet purple!).  One of our workshop participants took fabulous photos.. here are a few, courtesy of the talented local photographer Natalie Nunn.

Autumn Lacto-Fermentation

Last weekend's Kraut & Kimchi class is a favourite that we offer several times a year.  At this time of season the group make an autumn root-veggie inspired lacto-fermented kraut to take home.  We had lots of samples to taste and show the breadth of flavour and texture that can be done with lacto-fermentation.  Then the hands-on work began, at which point many hands made short work of a huge pile of carrots, daikon, beets, cabbage, turnip and more!

NEW Fall 2016 Workshops Posted!

Wow!  The new line-up of classes at Little City Farm for the Fall 2016 (and some Winter 2017) is now posted. Loads of new topics and intensive series of classes, to gain hands-on skills for more self-reliant living!  Check out our workshop page here.

We are excited by a whole series of great Herbal Medicine Making classes this fall, including Autumn Wellness Remedies (immune boosting tinctures & fire cider); Winter Health Remedies (cough syrups and more); DIY herbal shampoos; herbal gift-making near the holiday season (felted wool soap, herbal salves and balms, herbal bath bombs & soaks).

There are a number of Soap Making workshop dates (sign up soon to claim your spot, these workshops fill up quickly!), as well as Goats Milk Soap Making - all favourite workshops around here.

Also our usual popular classes on Wild Edibles Foraging and Lacto-Fermented Foods are back for the fall season, with a focus on autumn plants and harvest.

NEW! And new this fall, a series of Waldorf-inspired Art Classes for both children (10 Thursday afternoons from Sept-Dec), and adults (6 Wednesday evenings in Oct-Nov)!  To bring mindfulness, appreciation of nature, joy and calm into our homes through the creative use of natural art materials.  Read our facilitator bios here, and more details to register for these exciting art classes.

NEW! Finally, coming this January 2017 - a 6-Part Organic Gardening Intensive, led by our famous local organic farmer Angie Koch from Fertile Ground Farm.  We are really looking forward to this session, which is limited to 10 participants so that this small group can work through individual garden plans and take 6 weeks to gain intensive organic gardening knowledge.  Sign up here!

Hands-on Workshops at Little City Farm: Kimchi making & cheese making

We've had some delicious workshops here recently...

and here at Little City Farm we try to keep everything as hands-on as possible.  Our homesteading classes focus on "reskilling", teaching valuable skills related to organic gardening, food preservation, baking, soap making, herbal healing, natural building, and other topics that will be useful for enhancing your own home.  We believe in learning by doing, not just following notes or watching a youtube video - but instead walking you through step-by-step with an experienced facilitator to learn the process together and take home your results.

Here are some snapshots of the wonderful hands working here during our kimchi making and mozzarella cheese making classes.  Look for more of these topics to come this fall.

Sauerkraut & Kimchi Workshop

We are back into full swing of our workshop schedule with classes taking place most Saturdays until June.  Today's session was on lactic acid fermentation, specifically making sauerkraut and kimchi.  This workshop would be good to offer in late summer just in time to preserve/ferment all the bounty coming out of backyard gardens, local farms and CSA's.  However, in late winter we are also glad to revive our cabbage and root vegetable flavours by fermenting them, while biding our time for the fresh garden veggies that are still a few months to come.  We used organic local produce, including carrots from our favourite CSA (Fertile Ground) that we have stored since the fall buried in a large container of damp sand.  They are still perfectly crisp and juicy!

What is lactic acid fermentation?  Live cultured, probiotic, unpasteurized vegetable and fruit ferments that are health promoting foods packed with beneficial bacteria and enzymes.  The lactic acid creates the sour flavour and preserves the food, preventing spoilage. 

A few key tips:
~ shred -- salt -- submerge
~ use only good quality sea salt, filtered chlorine-free water, whey (from live cultured yogurt)
~ use top quality organic produce
~ keep fermented veggies submerged under brine 
~ salt water brine is made of 2-4 Tbsp sea salt per 1 litre water
~ season and salt to your taste - add spices, herbs, garlic, ginger, green onion, cayenne, chili, etc
~ keep ferments around 18C (65 F) during fermentation
~ check ferments often to taste for flavour and watch for mold, etc
~ when ferments are ready (at desired flavour) store in cold cellar or refrigerator
~ use ceramic crock or glass mason/gallon jars for fermentation
~ eat and enjoy your ferments often!

Harvest foods

Now that our Symposium is over and the calendar page has turned to September, it's time to work on finishing our garden harvest, canning & preserving, drying, fermenting & pickling for the winter months.  The greenhouse shelves are stacked with drying racks layered with herbs; our kitchen counters are lined with jars of beans and cucumbers that are being lacto-fermented; our counters are covered in bowls and containers brimming with tomatoes, basil, eggplant and beans to be preserved into sauce, pesto and ratatouille.

And our meals these days are simple, but fresh and glorious with the abundant garden harvest - kale, chard, beans, various pestos, tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes every day!  Using these veggies on different kinds of pizzas has been a fun way to experiment lately.  We were recently at a wedding in Muskoka where pizza was served by All Fired Up, a portable wood-fired pizza catering business.  We loved their pear-pesto-arugula-goat cheese pizza, and made our own version of it last night using all these ingredients sourced from our yard (we even have our own pears this year!).  Yumm!

Fresh Pear-Pesto-Arugula Goat Cheese Pizza
Ingredients:

Fresh pears, 2 sliced thinly
Freshly made Pesto (our version uses fresh basil, sunflower seeds, olive oil, garlic, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, sea salt)
Fresh arugula, about 20 leaves (we used Surrey Greens, a spicy arugula-type leafy green)
Fresh soft goat cheese

Roll out thin whole-grain pizza dough.  Let rest 15 minutes on your pizza pan, pizza stone, or peel.  Spread with thin layer of pesto to cover whole dough.   Cover in concentric circles with sliced pears.  Sprinkle with arugula leaves, and dot with clumps of fresh soft goat cheese.  Bake at 500F for about 6 minutes!  Serve hot with fresh arugula leaves tossed on top.

Lacto-fermenting workshop

We held our annual lacto-fermenting workshop a short while back.  This is a great workshop to do in the spring or fall, as it is such a great reminder of the simplicity of preserving (and enhancing!) the nutrition of foods through the lacto-fermenting process.  We brought in Jackie McMillan again as our facilitator to guide participants through the basic understandings of the health benefits of lacto-ferments, and how to prepare these delicious foods at home.  Jackie is a local whole foods educator and wild food enthusiast.  As part of the workshop we were treated to all manner of lacto-fermented pickles she had prepared in advance (dilly beans, whole cloves of pickled garlic and ginger root, cabbage kimchi, beet kvass, and more) and then prepared a root vegetable kimchi together using rejuvelac, a salt water brine, and all kinds of great seasonal root veggies that we can still source from local farms at this time of year (daikon radish, beet, turnip, carrot, onion, garlic, red and green cabbage)...