Drying Herbs

Herbs can be used for a variety of purposes: as culinary flavoring, adding spice and depth to meals, or as medicine to treat or prevent common ailments.

Having a home medicine chest of medicinal plants is extremely useful and growing ones own herbs and preserving them for later use past their normal expiration time are two big advantages of being able to dry your own herbs.

But preserving them in such a way as to maintain flavor or, for medicinal plants, in such a way as to keep their medicinal properties intact are two main concerns when doing this.

Thankfully, this isn’t a difficult process, so if you’ve been thinking that this would something for you, you should go for it!

Can Your Own Food

For the self-reliant out there, few skills are more useful than the ability to preserve the food one has grown. Canning is the process of storing processed foods, homegrown vegetables, meats, sauces, stocks and many other food products that are then preserved during the lean months for consumption when not much that is fresh food is available.

After the rain….

We went down to work in the garden this morning

And all we could say was, “Oh my!”

…. and we said that for the next 1/2 hour as we gloried in the beauty before us.

I am still stuck for words.

A summer garden after the rain……

“Oh My !!…”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Being back to work is Delicious!

I know, ‘delicious’ is not a term usually used to describe work, but in our line of business, at this time of year, it is thoroughly apt.

We all trundled in to the packing shed last Monday morning and set to work surrounded by the sights and smells of the best that Summer has to offer (apart from swims in the dam, or for my youngest, our favourite local pool) and we were all happy to be there. Imagine going back to work and being happy to be there! May you all be as blessed.

It’s all happening….

We were not quite prepared for the gardens surprises today. As soon as my back  was well enough I went down to the garden.

Head down, tail up, I spent my time trying to get on top of the rampaging weeds I took notice here and there.

But obviously not enough to be prepared for the gardens abundance today.

You know how it is with life. Sometimes you wake up and almost immediately your to-do list starts scrolling through your mind. Other days you wake up to the sunrise, hold your breath in awe of the day, and start your day hand in hand with life….. definitely the preferred option!

Today it was the latter, thankfully.

And look what I found in return!……

The rhubarb is plentiful and pleading to be picked…..

Beekeeping

Beekeeping (apiculture, from apis, Latin for bee), is maintenance of a colony of bees, usualky in a man-made box that contains a hive. People keep bees for honey production, as well as the production of beeswax and other by-products, such as pollen (which is a remedy for allergies), and royal jelly.

Bees are also integral to agriculture that requires pollination, as bees pollinate plants while collecting nectar (which they use as food). To this end, the relative instability of bee colonies worldwide (generally referred to as “Colony Collapse Disorder”), has been distressing, as global agriculture is very dependent on the health and abilities of bees to pollinate commercial crops.

Beetroot curry & how grand is the humble beet?!

You may suppose that with all this lying around I’ve been doing I’d be ahead on these wee messages…..

Two weeks on my back & what do I have to show for it?
1 half finished song

… And that’s it!

I didn’t read any books, though browsed through some old gardening favourites.

I didn’t watch any movies, though watched a couple of the ‘Human Planet’ series… Brilliant!

All in all I just lay there !

Oh things floated around & in and out my head but I’m pretty dang sure you don’t want to know about that!

I did, however, get treated to some lovely food & with just a little harassment ( & a raid on the good women’s cookbooks ) I can offer them to you by way of appeasement for the total lack of anything else tangible!