Jam, butchering, and playing in the fountains!

Whew! We had a full day yesterday! First thing in the morning we got up, ate breakfast and took care of chores. Then we made Strawberry freezer jam! Yum! After that I was headed to take a shower so we could leave and run some errands when Matthew suggested that we butcher the extra rooster we have been meaning to get rid of.

Every year I fall prey to those adorable little balls of fluff in the local feed store and end up buying extra chicks! Usually of the straight run "assorted" bantam variety (that means you pay your dollar and you take your chances... no telling what breed or sex you'll end up with!) They are so fun to have around and I love the extra variety they add to our little "barnyard-backyard". Well this year we found that we had several extra roosters, one of whom seemed rather ornery. I might have ignored that fact, but we now have a baby in the family, who will be toddling around soon, and I have seen too many "ornery" roosters turn down-right mean when they see a little bitty person roaming around "their" yard. I wasn't going to let that happen! So we talked about it and decided that we would just eventually put that rooster in the stewpot!

Well, the boys decided that yesterday was time to do just that! So we took the rooster and had regular high school biology dissection lab in our backyard. The boys were enthralled! My parents weren't very big on raising their own meat when I was a kid... so I learned how to humanely kill, eviscerate, and butcher poultry, deer (that is a story for another day), etc. from a book! (That is what you get from teaching a girl that she can learn anything she wants from a book, and allowing her to be interest led and practically self taught! Homeschooling really is great!!!)

After the rooster when into the Crockpot, and I finally had my shower we set off on our errands. Meanwhile some friends called and invited us to go down and play in the big fountains in the World's Fair Park. We had a wonderful time! The boys stayed cool and wore themselves out playing in the water, while Claire and I sat under a big shade tree and occasionally strolled over to splash in the water a bit too!

Matthew with the Sunsphere in the background.

Then we all went up into the Sunsphere to have a look around. We had never been up there before; it was a lot of fun looking out over the city trying to recognize familiar things!

After that we went home to enjoy a delicious supper of chicken chow mien! :-) and tell Daddy all about our day's adventures!

Strawberry Jam

We made our jam this morning while Claire crawled around under our feet at top speed proving to me just how much more of this house I still need to baby-proof :-)

Nothing quite compares to the absolute RED of starwberry freezer jam! It is such a beautiful vibrant cheerful color! I like to make mine in regular glass jam jars, because those little plastic freezer containers seem so cheap and somehow degrading to put my gorgeous red jam in! I've never had a problem with exploding glass in the freezer, I just make sure to leave plenty of head space for the jam to expand as it freezes! I know what we'll be having for lunch :-)

Now we're off to deliver the herbs that I promised last weekend!

Gathering Herbs for Tea

I am so very happy to be back home with my own little family! They are glad to have us here as well; a home just isn't the same without Mommy in it!
As I walked around outside last night seeing how our garden had grown in my absence, I noticed many of my herbs were ready to be harvested for use in herbal teas! So this morning after the sun had dried the dew off of the plants the boys and I went out to harvest some herbs to be used in our homemade herbal teas throughout the rest of this year. Everyone in the family loves drinking herb teas all year long (well, everyone except Logan, although he will drink it if he is feeling bad, as "medicine" to help him heal). So during the growing season I try to get enough harvested, dried and stored away to last all winter long until the next summer.

I am trying to teach the boys all about the herbs that we grow and what they are used for. They love learning about them, but taste testing far outweighs everything else ;-) Today we gathered Red Raspberry leaves, they are great for use as "pregnancy tea" as well as tea for alleviating PMS symptoms. And while at the moment, I don’t need Red Raspberry leaf tea for anything (thanks to Claire who is still very much nursing on demand!) … it never hurts to be prepared!

We also harvested leaves of the Passion flower, which I have been reading are great for PMS when mixed with Red Raspberry leaves as a tea. Passionflower is also given as a tea to children as a calming agent (great for over-stimulated or hyper-active kids!) it helps restore calm and can even act as an extremely mild sedative to help soothe and relax and combat insomnia.

Then we gathered Bee Balm also known as Wild Bergamot. Bee balm is good for coughs, sore throats, nausea, and menstrual cramps. And it makes a very tasty minty-slightly citrusy tea. We grow the Monarda fistulosa which has a lavender colored blossom and a very strong fragrance.

Then Matthew and Ethan gathered spearmint while Logan concentrated on collecting catnip. The spearmint, everyone enjoys as mint tea. I also liked adding it to my red raspberry leaf tea last year when I was pregnant with Claire because I really loved the taste! The Catnip makes a good digestive aid, tonic, and mild sleeping aid. I have read however that some herbalists believe it can slightly increase menstrual flow, so they suggest never taking catnip while pregnant… I can’t honestly say I’ve ever noticed that effect myself, however, I would never take it while pregnant just in case! Catnip is also a wonderful insect repellant! I have found that crushing the leaves and rubbing a tiny bit of the juice on exposed skin really works well at keeping the mosquitoes away! Maybe that is one of the reasons cats love to roll in it so much? It probably works just as well at repelling fleas!

My very favorite flavor herb for tea we have growing right now is this:

It is an Anise Hyssop plant. This plant is three years old now and self sows easily! I’ve shared baby plants with most everyone I know! (If you live nearby and want a baby plant, be sure to ask!) It has the most yummy anise scent and flavor. It makes delicious tea! I’ve read that Anise Hyssop is good for fevers, coughs, colds, and to aid digestion.

While we were gathering the anise hyssop, the boys found a recently shed exoskeleton of a Praying Mantis below the bush.

So we searched and searched until finally we found the bright green now larger praying mantis hiding among the leaves.

It was a good harvest! Now I am moving the cuttings inside to hang in the pantry so that they can dry in the dark. Once they are dry and the leaves have been removed from the stems, we will store them in glass jars to await future use!

 

Drinking a daily cup of tea will surely starve the apothecary. ~Chinese Proverb