honey, eggs & earth day

Happy earth day (every day!)

Our daughter told me she felt we spent today in the most earth-loving way possible - spending most of our day with earth-loving friends who inspire us: who also love growing food, caring for animals, keeping bees, getting their hands into the soil, raising their kids to be conscientious and kind, living simply and exemplifying creative, sustainable permaculture principles in so many ways (in approaches to parenting, unschooling, gardening, household routines).

Whenever we are at this friends' house we are served simple nourishing wholesome food that they have grown or wild-harvested, our daughter spends as many hours as she can holding all manner of their birds and animals from bunnies to quail, snuggling with cats and dogs, and we never leave empty handed.  Today we were gifted with a dozen tiny quail eggs wrapped in tissue to keep them safe in our bike trailer; a piece of sweet precious honeycomb from the first honey harvest of their top bar hive; and freshly cut willow for spring decor and to root for ourselves.  An inspiring family that I am so glad to have as members of our community.

For those who want more information on natural beekeeping, check out Gaia Bees site and Gaia Bees videos.  The section on alternative bee nests is quite beautiful (see the straw hive and sun hive).

Tapping trees!

We decided it was time!  The days have been warm and sunny, so we got all our maple syrup gear together and tapped our trees this week.  The sap was already running well, especially on the most southerly facing sides of our trees.  To get good sap flow we have noticed that it really makes a difference which side of a tree is tapped.  Given we are tapping here in our yard in the city, we have limited tree options (so we area again tapping our black walnuts and manitoba maples).  We also have  buildings and other obstructions keeping full sun off the trees, but last year yielded several litres of delicious finished syrup, plus loads of learning opportunities - we called it a success!  Funny though, living in southern Ontario, you never really know what the spring weather is going to be like - for example, tomorrow, there is an unexpected snow storm blowing in.  But this is March and the weather can still change every day.  We are hopeful that this snow will melt quickly, and the days will warm up again by the end of the week...we'd like to get back to tapping!

There are lots of great books and websites giving details instructions on how best to tap trees.  Better yet, ask someone locally who has done it (or follow along while they are tapping) to learn hands-on.  We offer a few basic tips that are geared toward the small-scale novice home based tree tapper:

• ideally, tap the south side of your trees for the best running sap
• sap runs when day times are between 0-10 degrees C, and night times drop to just below freezing
• tap above a thick root or below a strong branch
• tap healthy trees (stay away from hollow or diseased trees)
• tap at least 6 inches away from last year's tap hole
• tap approx. 3 feet up from the ground
• when drilling use a 7/16 inch drill bit and drill tap hole on a slightly upward angle
• clean out sawdust from tap hole before inserting spile
• some trees that can be tapped include birch, black walnut, sugar maple, manitoba maple 
• black walnut syrup is made from a ratio of 60:1 (60 litres sap to 1 litre syrup)!
• sap can be collected in food grade pails or containers, but should be kept cold until boiling time
• sap will run for several weeks (4-6 weeks) in a good year
• boiling down takes many many hours, and is best done outdoors do to the high moisture content that is evaporating from your sap (it will make your kitchen quite humid)
• invest in good spiles and hooks, but you can rig up plastic pails instead of sap buckets (if you are on a shoestring budget) - but use some kind of filter or screen to catch residue falling into your sap

Spring Homesteading Workshops Open for Registration!

Our list of Spring 2014 Homesteading Workshops is now posted and open for registration!  Take a peek at our website for full workshop list, workshop descriptions and prices.  We are excited about a few new topics, and also welcome back some old favourites by popular demand!

New this season:
~ a Cultured Kitchen Series - including Sauerkraut & Kimchi; Yogurt Making; Apple Cider Vinegar Making, Sourdough Starters; and (hopefully) Kombucha!  Learn all you want about live cultured foods and making healthful ferments at home in these delicious, hands-on and very practical kitchen workshops.  All these workshops allow tasting and to take home generous amounts of samples.

~ a Felted Soap Workshop - come to this workshop to learn about the wet felting process and make your own bars of felted soap using natural wool, dyed with beautiful vibrant colours!  Participants will take home their own creations.

~ we are now offering Handcrafted Wooden Soap Molds & Soap Cutters for purchase - these are perfect for using during our Intro to Soap Making Workshops, and for further use at home.  Our wooden soap molds are made right here at Little City Farm!  We have been using these types of molds for many years and think they are the best!  These molds & cutters can be bought through the Little City Farm website here (scroll down to Soap Workshops section), and are coming soon to the Homestead Herbals shop.

Back by popular demand:
~ Intro to Permaculture; Wild Spring Edibles, and Intro to Soap Making

Please note the Intro to Soap Making classes are both coming up VERY SOON so register now to ensure your space (March 8 and March 15).

Let's make pie!

Who doesn't love pie?  Sweet, savory, vegan, gluten-free, or just old fashioned with real butter...there is a way to make pie work for almost any palate.  We held our first pie making workshop here this morning.  What a delicious way to start the day!  We used a vegan recipe with organic coconut oil, organic spelt flour, sea salt and water - which makes for a healthful flaky pie crust that rolls out easily and tastes great for either a sweet or savoury pie.  The two hour workshop also covered tips about pie making tools (e.g. pastry rollers and pie weights), differences to watch for based on what type of pie pan you are using (e.g. glass, ceramic, tin or aluminum), ways to creatively top and edge a pie crust, and what each ingredient does in the recipe.  For example, the fat creates a flaky pastry but this only happens if it is chilled before rolling and baking.  The water activates the gluten, but too much water can create a tough dough that is not flaky...etc.  We tried to cover all the best tips for creating perfect pie, and in the end there was a table filled with beautiful pies made from scratch and satisfied participant who went home feeling confident to keep on making pies.

Homesteading Symposium!

Last weekend we held our first annual Homesteading Symposium here at Little City Farm!  It was a day-long event packed with 15 workshops to choose from, ranging through a variety of homesteading/sustainability skills including fibre arts, beekeeping, chicken keeping, herbal healing, home brewing, wild edibles, pasta making, yogurt making, natural building, and much more!  The day brought together nearly 40 people wishing to share and/or further their self-reliance skills. 

We are inspired to have met so many wonderful people, proud to know so many friends who are talented facilitators in the homesteading arts, and renewed in the belief that cities are places where we can rely on each other to actively create the kind of ecologically focused homes and communities we want to live in.  Here are just a few photos of the day...

New Homesteading / Self-Reliance Skills Workshops open for registration!

We are excited to let you know that the new HOMESTEADING / SELF-RELIANCE SKILLS WORKSHOPS for this summer-fall 2013 at Little City Farm are now posted. 

We are taking registrations through our website via paypay here.

If you prefer not to pay using paypal please contact us directly to arrange another registration method. 

The Topics!

As usual, these down-to-earth, practical hands-on workshops are led by local facilitators (enthusiasts, not experts) - and are designed to help you "reskill" yourself in the arts of homesteading, organic gardening, permaculture and urban sustainability.  Topics this summer-fall include: building a cob oven; preserving sugar-free jams; edible landscaping & fruit tree care; DIY non-toxic household cleaners; fall wild edibles; bread baking; growing mushrooms; herbal winter remedies; soap making, and more!

Homesteading Skills Symposium - Sat, August 24

We are also very happy to announce the first ever "HOMESTEADING SKILLS SYMPOSIUM" at Little City Farm, Sat August 24 from 9 am - 4 pm.  This day-long skills & info sharing event features 10 mini workshops to choose from, a wood-fired organic pizza lunch, and lots of informal time to socialize with other urban homesteaders.  Topics for this day could include: making herbal salves; building a strawbale home; rainwater ponds; permaculture; chicken keeping; sprouting; wet felting; cob ovens; beekeeping; and more...

We are only taking 25 participants for this day, so register early to ensure your place.  The cost is $60, including workshops and lunch.  Registration is also here on our website.  Any questions please contact Karin at info@littlecityfarm.ca

Fresh syrup!

Well...after collecting sap from our 8 trees (we're just a small homestead in the city!) for 2 weeks and boiling the sap down, we came out with just over 2 litres of delicious syrup!  What a fun learning experience, small-scale that is was, with so much anticipation and incredible results.  Remember, these were syrups made from Black Walnut and Manitoba Maple, not Sugar Maple.  There was lots of tasting at all stages: sap from the tree to thickening syrup, and in the end both our syrups are delicious, yet very distinct flavours that are different from other maple syrup.  More wild and nutty tasting, and oh, so satisfying!  Just another one of those projects we've wanted to try, as we continue to learn to make our handmade life here at our little city farm.  I'd do it again next year, or even look around the neighbourhood to see if other homeowners would like to either share their trees or do their own tapping and share the boiling (in that case we could build a larger evaporator and boil on a fire pit).

Eating our pancakes this morning was the perfect blend of seasons - made with the last blueberries of the past year's harvest, yogurt topped with our last jar of home canned peaches, side by side with this fresh new syrup was the ending of the old year and starting of a new year of production, garden and harvest.  Happy spring!

Sap boiling day...and fresh oatmeal bread

We decided today was the day.  We've been storing our sap long enough, and the days are getting warmer.  We started out with sap boiling outside, and this went well for several hours.  While boiling we enjoyed the first really sunny spring day, with an outdoor lunch picnic, and planting up the cold frame with lettuce, chard and spinach greens.  Then the sunshine turned into a surprise spring rainstorm...not so great for an outdoor boiling event.  The sap boiling was moved indoors - given we are doing a very small batch this didn't seem so bad to have some of it be done on the stove.  Hoping for sunshine tomorrow to take the boil outdoors again.   And, if we ever do this on a bigger scale we'd set up a proper fire pit and evaporator...some day.

During the boil day we were staying close to the house, so it seemed like a great day for baking bread.  Having it rising while we checked and stirred the sap, and freshly baked when we came in from the cold rain, was perfect!  We adjusted our favourite oatmeal bread recipe to use up this morning's left over oatmeal.  Yum!

Here's the recipe:

Oatmeal-Rye 4 grain seeded bread
2 cups left over cooked oatmeal
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup honey or maple syrup
3 Tbsp butter
2 tsp sea salt

Combine the above ingredients in a large bowl.

2 cups warm water
1 Tbsp quick yeast

Mix the water and yeast in a large measuring cup.  Stir, then let sit for about 5 minutes until it foams.

6 cups unbleached wheat or spelt flour
2 cups whole rye flour
1/4 cup millet grains
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
Extra oats and sesame seeds to sprinkle on top of risen loaves

When yeast has foamed, mix this with the wet ingredients.  Then add flour and seeds and mix well.  Knead about 10 minutes to make a soft dough. 

Put dough back into the large bowl that has been oiled, and cover with a cotton cloth.  Let rise 1 hour, or until double. 

Form dough into 3 medium sized loaves and place into lightly oiled loaf pans.  Wet top of loaves lightly with water, and sprinkle with oats and sesame seeds.  Let rise again for about 45 minutes in a warm room (near your stove that is preheating to 400F). 

Bake at 400F for 5 minutes, then lower heat to 350F and bake another 30-40 minutes until golden brown.
Let cool before slicing.