Recently I had the great fortune of attending Eric Toensmeier’s Edible Forest Gardening workshop in Holyoke, MA Oct 16 to Oct 18. Before I go any further let me just say that if you have a chance, please go to this workshop the next time they hold it. You will be very glad you did! I am not sure when the next one might be. I will certainly blog about it here when I find out. There are other workshops that look VERY interesting at Eric’s “Event” page.

As you may recall, Eric, along with Dave Jacke, wrote “Edible Forest Gardens (Vol.s 1 and 2)” and he also wrote “Perennial Vegetables“, a resource for those of you interested in learning about new perennial edibles suitable for your region.

There were three other people who made this event possible.

Jonathan Bates, of Food Forest Farm, who was a fantastic co-presenter and amazing resource for so many of the MILLIONS of questions that I had. Check out his site and learn more about what his farm can do for your budding perennial food garden.

Steve Breyer, Tree God Extraordinaire and moss evangelist of the Tripple Brook Farm, very generously hosted the workshop on two of the days. His farm / nursery is an amazing play land of edible plants and northern food bearing trees.

And finally, Marikler Toensmeier (Eric’s lovely wife) who did a ton of work putting together all the delicious and wholesome foods at this event. I dont have any photos of Marikler because it seemed intrusive!

The conference began on the evening of Friday October 16th at Holyoke Community College. We gathered in the conference room you see in the photo at the top of this page and Eric and Jonathan did a lovely job of immersing us into the world of edible forest gardening with an overview of the various aspects of forest and forest-like gardens as well as some permacultural principles.

This got us ready for the next day when we were going to be meeting at Eric and Jonathan’s homes and shared urban perennial garden for a tour and further discussions about edible forest garden design. If you have the book Perennial Vegetables, you will recognize his garden in some of the photos in the book.

Before we ended the night, we snacked on ripe paw paws!

The next morning, Saturday, bright and early and quite chilly, we met at Eric and Jonathan’s home to begin our tour. We started with the very sunny morning sun side of the house and learned about it’s microclimate and the sorts of plants that they are able to grow there. Mind you, back in my garden it had been snowing and the season was DEFINITELY over. It actually snowed at our home while it was nice in Holyoke.

We started the day off by tasting these cute super tiny wild cucumber like fruitlets. I can not remember the name of this plant, sorry!

They also grow non-edible bananas here.

We walked into the back and learned about how they went from a hardpack urban waste lot to a wonderful abundant perennial garden via a specific design process.

I want to take an aside and say just how glad I am to have gotten a chance to meet Phil and Tom, up from Brooklyn. They have been diligent campaigners for our world and transition. They have put together peak oil, permaculture, urban gardening, and many other sorts of events in the NYC area over the years. I look forward to getting to know them better in the future!

We then split up into groups and Eric and Jonathan took us through the garden, plant by plant, and explained pretty much everything about them from their polyculture setting, to their function in the larger design, to the types of fruits they bore (and we got many taste tests) as well as how they didnt fit in or might need to be or had been modified or moved to be a better part of the whole design.

Here are a few photos from the tour.

After lunch we took off for the Tripple Brook Farm to begin a look at a large scale of edible forest gardening.

As I mentioned before, Steve Breyer owns this amazing place. There is so much one can say but I am going to simply share images from the tour we took.

Steve feels very strongly that mosses should be the preferred ground cover (versus grasses).

These photos totally do not give you a sense for how raw and cold it was that day. At this point in the tour we sheltered in Steve’s work shed (with warm wood stove) where we got to taste pine nuts, chestnuts and hardy kiwis and american persimmons and cottonwood tree fruits.

Steve had the chestnuts roasting on the woodstove all morning. We have nut allergies so I didnt taste them but I fell in love with the way they looked! I shot a series of photos of these crazy spiky chestnuts.

That evening we went back to Holyoke community college and delved deeper into polyculture design and learned quite a lot about grouping polycultural plantings that enhance and nurture each other and which build a more robust environment.

Some of what we learned that evening we used the next day in a practical way.

I went home just wiped out from that day. I was really worried that I would have no energy to get up and make the hour drive out early on Sunday, the third and last day. An odd thing happened though. I awoke really refreshed and ENJOYED driving at the crack of dawn out into the cold weather. I think there is something in these fruits that did me some good. Its also the fresh air and also, hugely more important, that I was doing something I found VERY exciting and engaging and with people who I really respected and admired.

This is quite a change from most of the jobs I have had in recent years – soul robbing activities. I can definitely see myself doing this for a living (I cant say how but it would be deeply satisfying).

The third day was intense. We assembled ourselves in Steve’s work shed and set to work on designing a new planting design for part of his nursery.

We did site assessment, analysis, and then in-depth design, as groups. It was an exercise in design as well as interpersonal communications.

While we didnt implement this particular design (there is only so much you can do in a few hours!) we pitched in and helped clean up the site and also put in some new plantings.

I have learned so much from this workshop. I would recommend it highly to anyone and I hope that some of you are able to attend future events like this. If you cant come out to tundra-like Massachusetts, you likely can find some near you!

Let me know if you do and how it goes!

One of the things about permaculture that really resonates for me is the drive to use everything, to have no waste, to get a yield from as much as you can.

Something about looking at what WAS clutter in my eyes in a new way that makes it a resource, it seems magical. I am one of those people who can not stand clutter but I live with people who seem wholly immune to it.

By opening my eyes to the power of yields and re-use, my brain doesnt see clutter but a riddle.

If you would like to learn more about the 12 permaculture principles you might want to visit this site – Permaculture Principles.com

This is a lovely graphic that they developed, allow it to draw you in and entice you to learn more.

I had a pile of really sturdy feed bags that I perceived as an eyesore and clutter and garbage – garbage I had to find a way to deliver to the transfer station without too much cost to us.

One day I stood staring at the bags as I was milking the goats and it came to me in a flash, cut open the bags and use them in the sheet mulching method to build the extension to the garden!

I had to pause that project because I had used up the feed bags until I had enough for some more beds. Yesterday I put down two more beds but the Vermont cart you see above was in use (we are stacking wood in the basement for heat this winter) so I thought I might be out of luck.

Then I put on my permie-beanie and thought of this ancient wheelbarrow! (it was on the edge of our yard, almost eaten by the forest)

But, it had rotted through even before it was given to us! It was now in sorry shape…

I figured, why not try the brainstorm idea I got, use a tarp to cover the hole…

It worked perfectly well and I was able to move many barrow-loads of compost from the pile to the new beds.

These beds will get a LOT more compost and then percolate over the winter with a layer of leaves and straw on top. In the spring they will be planted out with a mixture of tender annual vegetables and perennial vegetables.

In between the rows I want to put down wood shavings so as to control the weeds which WILL rule this area if I let it.

Our neighbor is a lumberjack who brings waste wood to his land next to ours and cuts it into wood for heating (sells it). Their waste is wood shavings that have been contaminated with dirt (and thus can not be burned in their biomass generator).

Their waste is our yield!

Today some shavings were brought over and I am looking forward to spreading it around. I think I will need more than this though!

Here are some shots of the delivery.

Think about how you can re-purpose and reuse to gain a previously unexpected yield from waste, share it with me!

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Early on in the pandemic, a bit less recently, I immersed myself in flublogia. These are long standing flu communities, lots of intellectual capital out there.. people I really admire and who really know what is up with the pandemic (doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, scientists in the field and those not in it – like me, am not a viral biologist).

To cut to the chase – neither I nor my kids will be taking the H1N1 vaccine. Why? Beyond the usual concerns that arise from the fact that this vaccine has been extremely fast tracked, under emergency actions, the vaccine to be deployed just about anywhere in the the world was generated from sequence from the earliest identified infections.

This means that the epitopes generated (the proteins that were produced from these early genetic sequences and then used to create a vaccine) may possibly be sufficiently different from those that H1N1 now carries, having passed through so many people, so as to render the vaccine of little use.

Also, poorly reported on in the press (as usual), is the problem of the spread of two genetic changes of note: tamiflu resistance and also a change that allows the virus to be more virulent in colder temperatures (this impacts the where and how the virus replicates in our lungs – shallow or deep).

These sorts of things makes a mom mostly want to hide her kids away but its hard, we do not homeschool all our three kids, just one.

I have stocked up on all sorts of meds, herbal teas for fevers and vitamin C boosting, rehydration powders and liquids, etc. I have laid in stocks of N95 masks and gloves.

I am ready to take on the swine flu but I would rather we never get it. I actually suspect that we did get it this past March (sick for a month, all of us) but if we did, it likely would not confer any meaningful immunity to a second wave or third wave virus that would have evolved sufficiently to bypass our nascent immunological defenses against this disease.

With all this in mind, my ears perked when I heard about a traditional medicinal that was shown in scientific studies to have activity against H1N1 – Elderberry, also known as Sambucus.

The wiki says:

In a placebo-controlled, double-blind study, elderberry was shown to be effective for treating Influenza B. [1] People using the elderberry extract recovered much faster than those only on a placebo. This is partially due to the fact that Elderberry inhibits neuraminidase, the enzyme used by the virus to spread infection to host cells.

A small study published in 2004 showed that 93% of flu patients given extract were completely symptom-free within two days; those taking a placebo recovered in about six days. This current study shows that, indeed, it works for type A flu, reports lead researcher Erling Thom, with the University of Oslo in Norway.[2]

Thom’s findings were presented at the 15th Annual Conference on Antiviral Research.

The study involved 60 patients who had been suffering with flu symptoms for 48 hours or less; 90% were infected with the A strain of the virus, 10% were infected with type B. Half the group took 15 milliliters of extract and the other group took a placebo four times a day for five days.

Patients in the extract group had “pronounced improvements” in flu symptoms after three days: nearly 90% of patients had complete cure within two to three days. Also, the extract group had no drowsiness, the downside of many flu treatments. The placebo group didn’t recover until at least day six; they also took more painkillers and nasal sprays.

It’s likely that antioxidants called flavonoids—which are contained in the extract—stimulate the immune system, writes Thom. Also, other compounds in elderberry, called anthocyanins, have an anti-inflammatory effect; this could explain the effect on aches, pains, and fever.

Elderberry extract could be an “efficient and safe treatment” for flu symptoms in otherwise healthy people and for those with compromised immune systems, such as the elderly, Thom adds.

Russell Greenfield, MD, a leading practitioner of integrative medicine and medical director of Carolinas Integrative Health, advocates treating flu with black elderberry, he says in a news release. “It can be given to children and adults, and with no known side effects or negative interactions,” he says.

“But don’t expect grandma’s elderberry jam” to ease flu symptoms like body aches, cough, and fever, he warns. “Extract is the only black elderberry preparation shown effective in clinical studies.”
refs:
1) ^ Zakay-Rones, Zichria; Noemi Varsano, Moshe Zlotnik, Orly Manor, Liora Regev, Miriam Schlesinger, Madeleine Mumcuoglu (1995). “Inhibition of Several Strains of Influenza Virus in Vitro and Reduction of Symptoms by an Elderberry Extract (Sambucus nigra L.) during an Outbreak of Influenza B Panama” (PDF). J Altern Complement Med 1 (4): 361-9. PMID 9395631. http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/acm.1995.1.361. Retrieved September 8, 2009.
2) Z Zakay-Rones, E Thom, T Wollan and J Wadstein. “Randomized Study of the Efficacy and Safety of Oral Elderberry Extract in the Treatment of Influenza A and B Virus Infections”, Journal of International Medical Research (pdf)

More recently the following study came out, specific to pandemic H1N1:

Roschek B Jr, Fink RC, McMichael MD, Li D, Alberte RS., Elderberry flavonoids bind to and prevent H1N1 infection in vitro., Phytochemistry. 2009 Jul;70(10):1255-61. Epub 2009 Aug 12. PMID 19682714

Abstract:
A ionization technique in mass spectrometry called Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (DART TOF-MS) coupled with a Direct Binding Assay was used to identify and characterize anti-viral components of an elderberry fruit (Sambucus nigra L.) extract without either derivatization or separation by standard chromatographic techniques. The elderberry extract inhibited Human Influenza A (H1N1) infection in vitro with an IC(50) value of 252+/-34 microg/mL. The Direct Binding Assay established that flavonoids from the elderberry extract bind to H1N1 virions and, when bound, block the ability of the viruses to infect host cells. Two compounds were identified, 5,7,3′,4′-tetra-O-methylquercetin (1) and 5,7-dihydroxy-4-oxo-2-(3,4,5-trihydroxyphenyl)chroman-3-yl-3,4,5-trihydroxycyclohexanecarboxylate (2), as H1N1-bound chemical species. Compound 1 and dihydromyricetin (3), the corresponding 3-hydroxyflavonone of 2, were synthesized and shown to inhibit H1N1 infection in vitro by binding to H1N1 virions, blocking host cell entry and/or recognition. Compound 1 gave an IC(50) of 0.13 microg/mL (0.36 microM) for H1N1 infection inhibition, while dihydromyricetin (3) achieved an IC(50) of 2.8 microg/mL (8.7 microM). The H1N1 inhibition activities of the elderberry flavonoids compare favorably to the known anti-influenza activities of Oseltamivir (Tamiflu; 0.32 microM) and Amantadine (27 microM).

Thus, I have been meaning to make some sort of elderberry syrup for my family but wasnt sure where to start.

Then, I stopped by a recently opened herbal medicine center and found that they not only had two different elderberry syrups on hand, they also had a recipe and the ingredients to make it at home! I asked them for the latter and brought home all sorts of goodies!

Elderberry Elixir

Ingredients

• 7 cups spring water
• 1 cups dried elderberries
• 4 medium tongues of dried astragulus
• 6 pieces of Fo Ti (Ho Shu Wa)
• 1 ounce dried rose hips
• 1/4 ounce dried nettles
• 2 cups honey

Directions

Bring water to boil in enamel or stainless steel pot. Add elderberries, astragulus, fo ti, and rose hips, stir, cover and simmer on lowest setting for 35 minutes. Add nettles, stir, simmer for 5- 7 minutes. Take off heat and crush elderberries as much as possible. Strain through cheese cloth several times and, while still hot, add 2 cups honey. Mix until in solution. Store in the refrigerator.

Dosing:
Adults: 2 teaspoons/day all winter
Children: 1 teaspoon/day all winter

If you are actively sick take as follows:
Adults: 2 teaspoons 4 times a day
Children: 1 teaspoon 4 times a day

On the plate above, from top left clockwise: dried nettles (green), dried rose hips (red), astragulus (bark tongues), and dried elderberries (dark purple).

Sorry, in the shot above I left out the Fo Ti, seen below.

How they came home.

It doesnt taste too bad, the 3 yo loves it!

As per request, I have added the contact information for the herbal apothecary where I sourced these ingredients (and recipe!)

Alternatives For Health

381 Sturbridge Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
(413) 245-6111

(Some of the contents of this post might be disturbing to the more gentle or delicate reader. I do not mean to offend you, please accept my apologies. I dont mind if you stop reading and visit other of my posts that are much less gory!)

Make no mistake, if you get goats, you will get your hands dirty, less sleep, more manure, lots of broken fences, some broken hearts, and some experience pretending like you actually know something about goat health and veterinarian practices.

If you are a long time reader, you will remember the excitement of this last early, snowy spring, when we had our kidding season. We lost one goat (RIP Wheatie, our sweet goat girl), gained lots of goat babies and some modicum of caprine midwifery experience.

I even got to reach into the back of a screaming goat momma, up to my upper forearm, to pull out what I was certain to be a dead goat to find it perfectly healthy and I didnt kill the momma either (was certain I would do that too). As I was holding that baby, feeling more alive myself although also a bit shocky, I re-learned something I always know as a scientist – I know little but in knowing that I know little I am open to learning a bit more. As I knelt there, holding a strong little buckling and watching the momma goat de-stress, I knew that I had no idea if she still had another kid inside. I palpated her tummy but it all felt like a round tummy and I had no objective concept of what another kid might feel like.

Our goat mentor arrived and kindly helped re-assure me that we had done well and that the momma had only one kid.

I have been trying to steel myself for the next kidding season since. We have been breeding the girls up in recent weeks so it seems we will go through that hell again!

But, of course, I always have something new to learn. One is that its not just kidding season that can bring medical emergencies. About a week ago last Saturday we noticed one of the 6 month old kids was acting odd, tilting her head, acting dizzy, eyes sort of vibrating around in their sockets, back and forth.

The followng images shows you a bit of what it was like. She essentially had no control over one side of her body because the bacteria were attacking her brain stem. The movements or the odd positions you see were involuntary and also very painful for us to watch.

This first shot shows the improvised enclosure we made for her.

Here are a few positions of note.

My first and relatively long lasting response was to feel panic, panic I KNEW was counter-productive but which was there anyways. Panic because we have no way of affording any vet care at all. Period.

I looked in our goat health books and realized how hard it is to do a differential diagnosis while in a panic and also while looking at these diseases for the first time. I googled her symptoms and was able to triangulate closer to the possibilities.

I finally settled on two diseases which are commonly co-diagnosed because they are so similar: Goat Polio (thiamine deficiency – easy to treat) and Listeriosis (HARD to treat and bad prognosis).

What is Listeriosis? Its a bacterial infection, run away infection of listeria. It occurs in goats, cows, all sorts of animals including we humans.

Wiki says this about this disease:

Listeriosis is a bacterial infection caused by a gram-positive, motile bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes. Listeriosis is relatively rare and occurs primarily in newborn infants, elderly patients, and patients who are immunocompromised.

The symptoms of listeriosis usually last 7-10 days. The most common symptoms are fever and muscle aches. Nausea and diarrhea are less common symptoms. If the infection spreads to the nervous system it can cause meningitis, an infection of the covering of the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms of meningitis are headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, and convulsions.

Listeriosis has a very low incidence in humans. However, pregnant women are much more likely than the rest of the population to contract it. Infected pregnant women may have only mild, flulike symptoms. However, infection in a pregnant woman can lead to early delivery, infection of the newborn, and death of the baby.

In veterinary medicine, listeriosis can be a quite common condition in some farm outbreaks. It can also be found in wild animals; see listeriosis in animals.

More specifically, in non-human animals:

Listeriosis is an infectious but not contagious disease caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, far more common in domestics animals (domestic mammals and poultry), especially ruminants, than in human beings. It can also occur in feral animals—among others, game animals—as well as in poultry and other birds.

The causative bacterium lives in the soil and in poorly made silage and is acquired by ingestion. It is not contagious; over the course of 30-year observation period of sheep disease in Morocco, the disease only appeared in the late 2000s when feeding bag-ensiled corn became common. Moreover, in Iceland, the disease is called “silage sickness”.

The disease is usually sporadic, but can occur as farm outbreaks in ruminants.

Three main forms are usually recognized throughout the affected species:

* encephalitis, the most common form in ruminants
* late abortion
* gastro-intestinal septicemia with liver damage, in monogastric species as well as in preruminant calves and lambs

Listeriosis in animals can rarely be cured with antibiotics (tetracyclines, chloramphenicol) when diagnosed early, in goats, for example, by treating upon first noticing the disease’s characteristic expression in the animal’s face,[4] but is generally fatal.

The Merck Vet Manual describes the symptoms as follows:

Initially, affected animals are anorectic, depressed, and disoriented. They may propel themselves into corners, lean against stationary objects, or circle toward the affected side. Facial paralysis with a drooping ear, deviated muzzle, flaccid lip, and lowered eyelid often develops on the affected side, as well as lack of a menace response and profuse, almost continuous, salivation; food material often becomes impacted in the cheek due to paralysis of the masticatory muscles. Terminally affected animals fall and, unable to rise, lie on the same side; involuntary running movements are common.

I called my goat mentor and she has had the great fortune of never dealing with this disease in her 20 years and 100s of goats (she has a great business – Shepherd’s Gate Dairy). She cautioned that the prognosis was poor if it was listeriosis. She suggested I call Tufts Vet.

I did a postdoc at Tufts Vet and have had animals vetted there so I know how massively expensive they are. I was profoundly fortunate to be able to talk, on the phone, for free, with a vet who was able to tell me some things about this disease.

The consensus was, put her down. I have grown an aversion to killing and I do not own a gun or injectable drugs to do the job so I chose to do the treatment and see what happened.

At that point I was less worried about the sick goat and MUCH more worried that my son was going to get it from the does in milk who might have it and be asymptomatic (we drink – drank – their milk raw). My son has seen enormous healing strides from a non-verbal autistic child to a verbal intelligent child who just started preschool today. He got almost a year of daily one-on-one ABA therapy and gallons upon gallons of raw goat milk with I think was instrumental in his progress.

Now, I was panicking that the raw milk was also going to kill him. Panic is an evil evil human emotion. Must remember to be more Vulcan next time.

I found this amazing resource on treating listeriosis at Onion Creek Ranch.

So 8 days ago we started injecting our little goat, Felicity, with 3.9 ccs of 300,000 IU Penicillin, subcutaneously, every 6 hours, 24 hours a day. She was almost paralyzed when we started. I pinched up her skin over her ribs and injected the milky white antibiotic into the gap between her lifted skin and the muscles and ribs just beneath.

Our schedule was this (rain, shine, wind, light, dark, cold, chilly, somewhat warm) 12 noon, 6 pm, 12 midnight, 6 am, rinse and repeat.

She was a trooper and continued to eat. My daughter was my vet tech this whole time. She forced water into the goat’s mouth the first few days but the goat has been eating and drinking on her own.

We have likely 2 more days, possibly more, of this schedule. She, against all the odds, is healing! She still seems to tilt her head so we need that to resolve. She is HATING her isolation and she gains strength every day.

You can see her here. She fears me now, thanks to the brutal injection schedule.

We have to be careful when we stop treatment with the antibiotics by treating her with probiotics to repopulate her rumen with beneficial bacteria.

Right now, she is one sick animal but I think she is going to make it.

Before this, I had never given an injection to anything but chicks, rabbits, and mice. Now I am quite a pro at it.

I would prefer to not have to do this ever again.

We love her now, have grown attached.

The rest of the herd seems perfectly fine.

Homesteading is all about the DIY worldview. You may gain some sense of mastery but its illusory! We are now battling a massive drop in milk production due to the seasonality of this breed and we STILL need to get things ready for our -20 F winter days.

As part of my self-learning on permaculture, I have been walking out my back door and selecting a plant that catches my eye and then finding out everything I can about that plant. I will write here about some of the more interesting ones.

To identify plants and trees, I use google, twitter (especially with hashtags #horticulture #permaculture #botany #garden and similar relevant terms), and especially a certain flickr group called “ID Please” where people post images of an organism they would like to identify. Once they do this, others then give pretty educated guesses on identification.

I will add identified plants, mushrooms, trees, fauna, to my Humble Garden permaculture page at the link -> Permaculture.

Eric Toensmeier, co-author of Edible Forest Gardens (2 volume set), wrote about pokeweed in his book “Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles“.

On page 176 he explains that while the mature plant is quite poisonous, especially those parts with red coloring, people have been eating the young leaves for likely thousands of years.

Young shoots 6 – 8 inches long are harvested and then the dickens is boiled out of them (breaks down the poisons). The berries are an intense red color and look rather juicy.

Keep this plant away from kids, pets, and livestock as the mature form is not fit for fresh eating.

It seems that red is Mother Nature’s way of saying “Beware”.

My own observations:
This plant grows VERY fast and puts on a lot of biomass in one season. It is growing in a region that was greatly disturbed (was fill brought in to build up part of the landscape) and has been spreading somewhat every year. I have not noticed it growing in the much more mature and undisturbed forest adjacent to it so I am guessing it came with the fill or the top soil that was imported from a dairy farm (the top soil from the pasture of a local dairy farm that went bust, filled with cow bones!).

Use strategy:
As I have small children and loads of mischievous goats who do not speak english and even if they did, are so oppositional that they would eat the pokeweed if told not to, I plan on trying to suppress this plant as much as I can.

I know they have a tenacious root system and that they also spread by or are disbursed by birds who eat the berries.

I am going to analyze the surrounding vegetation to see if they can be considered beneficial. If yes then I might just yank the pokeweed and let those beneficials fill in. If not, then I am going to look at this “waste” area a bit more closely to see how I can use it better (ok, I am going to do that anyways but the pokeweed may be asking me to do this sooner than later).

Scientific Name:
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Caryophyllales
Family: Phytolaccaceae
Genus: Phytolacca
Species: P. americana

Medicinal Uses: (sourced from the Wiki: SOURCE)

Physiologically, phytolacca acts upon the skin, the glandular structures, especially those of the buccal cavity, throat, sexual system, and very markedly upon the mammary glands. It further acts upon the fibrous and serous tissues, and mucous membranes of the digestive and urinary tracts. Phytolacca is alterative, anodyne, anti-inflammatory,antiviral, anti-cancer, expectorant, emetic, cathartic, narcotic, hypnotic,insecticide and purgative. (Phytolacca.—Phytolacca. | Henriette’s Herbal Homepage, http://www.swsbm.com/FelterMM/Felters-P.pdf)

Anti-cancer: The anticancer effects appear to work primarily based upon anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory properties, along with immune stimulant functions. Additional support for fighting cancer may come from antiplasmodial or cytotoxic fractions of the phytolacca toxin. And, although it has not been confirmed as a cause or factor of cancers, the antimicrobial, antiviral and antithelmetic properties of certain constituents might also play a part in anticancer activity. Further there are aromatase inhibitors and antioxidant properties that may affect cancer. Anti-cancer, antileukemic or anti-tumor constituents include: ascorbic acid, astragalin, beta carotene, caryophylline, isoquercitin, oleanolic acid, riboflavin, tannin and thiamine. Of the constituents known to fight cancer, oleanolic acid appears to be the most significant with its anticarcinomic; anticomplement, antihepatotoxic; antiinflammatory, antileukemic; antileukotriene, antinephritic, antioxidant, antiperoxidant , antiPGE2, antiplasmodial, antisarcomic; antiseptic, antiTGFbeta, antitumor (Breast, Colon, Kidney, Lung, Pancreas); antiviral, aromataseinhibitor; cancer-preventive; hepatoprotective; immunomodulator;leucocytogenic; NF-kB-Inhibitor; phagocytotic; and prostaglandin-synthesisinhibitor properties (Jeong SI, et al, Phytolacca americana inhibits the high glucose-induced mesangial proliferation via suppressing extracellular matrix accumulation and TGF-beta production, Phytomedicine. 2004 Feb;11(2-3):175-81)

Anti-inflammatory constituents include saponins in poke root and triterpenes in the berries: alpha spinasterol, ascorbic acid, calcium oxalate, caryophylline, isoquercitin, jialigonic acid, and oleanolic acid.

Immune stimulant constituents include astragalin, ascorbic acid, beta carotene, phosphorus and oleanolic acid.

Anti-AIDS: Pokeweed antiviral protein (a Single Chain Ribosome Inactivating Protein or SCRIP) is being considered as a potent inhibitor of human immunodeficiency for AIDS There are also well-known three different pokeweed antiviral protein (PAP)isoforms from leaves of Phytolacca Americana (PAP-I from spring leaves, PAPII from early summer leaves, and PAP-III from late summer leaves) that cause concentration-dependent depurination of genomic HIV-1 RNA.[1][15] (Phytolacca americana – Plants For A Future database report, Bodger MP, McGiven AR, Fitzgerald PH, Mitogenic proteins of pokeweed. I. Purification, characterization and mitogenic activity of two proteins from pokeweed (Phytolacca octandra), Immunology. 1979 Aug;37(4):785-92)

Antiviral: PAP, oleanolic acid, ascorbic acid, tannin, mitogen.

In addition: Betanin and oleanolic acid are antiperoxidative and the vitamins plus caryophylline and oleanolic acid are antioxidant. Astragalin, isoquercitin and caryophylline are aldose-reductase-inhibitors.

Clearly pokeweed has an impressive diversity of bioactive compounds on-board. Its strong medicine and an advanced topic!

Lily, one of our silky-old english game hens went broody and then, after lots of hard work, became the proud mother of 5 precious little chicks (of various parentage).

Lily is a fantastic mom. Another chicken, Jenny, who refuses to stay in the hen house has adopted Lily and babies and they all walk around the garden beds and forest undergrowth and compost heap together.

Lily taught the babies how to scratch for food and they do it with great energy and tenacity.

Yesterday we came across a different sort of chicken in the woods! This is an edible mushroom called Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus)

This shot helps to show how huge this mushroom is!, size of a basketball.

We have many of these chicken of the woods in our forest and its always net to come across them unexpectedly.

Laetiporus sulphureus

Kingdom: Fungi
Division: Basidiomycota
Class: Agaricomycetes
Order: Polyporales
Family: Polyporaceae
Genus: Laetiporus

Am in the process of FINALLY reading my two books on permaculture “Edible Forest Gardens Vol 1 & 2″ by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier.

As a result, I have been designing the next phase of the Humble Garden with an eye to increasing food growing space on land that doesnt have much top soil (its on ledge).

My initial design is seen above. Its something that will evolve over time!

I have started work on the first bed, next to the future frog pond. As money is tight, I need to be able to find ways to do this all for free with stuff we already have. Am recycling feed bags for the bottom of the new raised beds and am using the TONS of goat, chicken and llama manure and litter we have. I just need some wood chips and I think I will be set.

This is also very much the way permacultural principles would have you do this.

Inputs:

Llama and manure

Grass clippings (from neighbor)

Chicken and goat manure and litter (compost heap).

The following are a few photos of how the first raised bed was put down, sheet mulching or lasagna garden style.

More grass clippings and layer of llama manure pellets

I will be adding more organic material and possibly some lime or ash over time. Next spring this will all have composted down a bit and it should be ready for it’s first year of growing.

I hope to be able to get those other new beds built this summer/fall.

(I have been debating with myself about which blog to post this at, this garden/homestead blog or my peak oil blog, Peaknix. I decided to cross post it to catch both audiences)

Over at Kathy Harrison’s wonderful The Just In Case Book Blog, (Kathy wrote “The Just In Case” book on the practical aspects of preparedness in the home) a post today “How much is too much?” has some great comments (all of her posts do).

One of the commenters wonders about how to chose the “right” meat to store. Should one focus on low cost “low quality” meats grown in CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) so as to maximize the ability to buy a lot of meat on a limited budget or buy and store organic pastured meats. Its an important question and one that will impact your health. One can ask the same about any part of their food storage.

Meat, thinking about it makes me wax philosophical, angry, perplexed, confused, hungry.

It will require several hands too.

On the one hand meat is what we in the US are raised to eat, lots of it too. Its the main attraction. It means satiety. It defines it.

Without meat, your snacking, your nibbling, your waiting for supper.

For lots of us, that goes a step further and its a meat/starch combo that really signifies a filling meal. I was raised on rice and meat (rice being hugely important to Colombian cuisine, pork being THE meat).

On the other hand, in terms of climate change, meat is a curse to our ecosystems in MANY ways and it endangers the futures of our children.

On the other hand, thanks to swine flu, pork has NEVER been cheaper and when you are on the financial edge, that is deeply welcomed.

On the other hand, the low prices are killing the US pork industry.

On the other hand, we are talking CAFOs here, and they really are the infectious disease problem in terms of being GINORMOUS viral bioreactors.

Its at least 2 fold:

• massive use of antibiotics and growth hormones to make it possible to grow pork flesh in the CAFO setting – that inevitably leads to the breeding of antibiotic resistant strains and meat doped with hormones that ruin our metabolism
• then there is the issue that porcine genetics and anatomy are such that their lungs represent a unique environment where flu viral particles from MANY species can be harbored (and without significant lethality for the pig), side by side, leading to what is called reassortment. The viral genes are swapped back and forth such that new strains arise that can be pandemic in nature, case in point – this is EXACTLY how H1N1 Swine Flu arose in the Smithfield CAFOs in Mexico.

By not supporting this industry through buying their meat products, you the consumer vote against the many dangers that this sort of capitalism generates. Its very simple.

I know that people’s livelihoods depend on CAFOs. Things change and change can be painful. Take for example, my grandfather who used to farm and raise pigs for market in Illinois. He left farming in the 1950s or 60s exactly because of these CAFOs. I have a certain perspective, if you will. After leaving the farm, he never again found a job and sank into alcoholism and died at 61 from congestive heart failure and untreated diabetes.

On the other hand, even just FINDING pastured healthy meats can be quite difficult. It will also be more expensive.

Being raised in a natural setting their immune systems will be INTACT and thus will not require 24/7 vets to pump them full of antibiotics.

More importantly to this discussion – living this way means that the pigs do NOT ingest GMO and species inappropriate feeds that leads to meat and fats literally poisoned with the transfats you thought you were avoiding.

You can eat the fat of pastured animals (beef, pig, lamb, chicken) and receive health benefits. You will not when eating CAFO meats, the reverse is true, you will be eating toxic fats.

Thats just the basic truth of the matter.

(This little guy is a CSA tamworth pig, sold by the Many Hands Organic farm in Barre, MA. See more photos about Many Hands at this flickr set link.)

Now, after all that, I have really run out of hands.

I have a certain bias after thinking on all of this for a while. I do not ascribe to simply storing away a few months or years worth of store bought dried foods. I have never had the money to do that and I dont think I could feed my kids that either.

My sort of preparing is building self-sufficiency so that these skills are passed on to my kids (as this blog has covered at length!) and part of that has been about growing and raising protein.

As The Smiths and the runner duck on “Babe” say, Meat is Murder. Meat requires the death of an animal. Until you have killed your own chickens or pigs for you to eat, you simply do not understand meat.

Now, I am not saying to not eat meat.

I am saying that long term self sufficiency requires serious thought about meat. The health issues mentioned above will ebb away as one raises and butchers their meat. This will be a Good Thing.

The need for meat to be the starring attraction on the dinner plate will likely also change to a more vegetable diet that is accented by proteins that meet the needs of the body not just the corpulent mindset.

I know from personal experience that if I have to go out and kill a chicken to have meat my worldview shifts. My mind runs a calculation – does my body really need the meat or can more vegetable do the trick. If I had no children I would likely be 100% ovo-lacto vegetarian because my calculation really is weighted more to the NO side in terms of an answer.

But when I think about the bodies of my kids, meat gets a big thumbs up! I know that is absolutely my own bias and that many people raise their kids as vegetarians. To each his own, especially in this aspect.

None of us asked to be born in such complex, conflicting, and confounding times. Its not our fault that our world is filled with about 5 billion too many people (WELL over its carrying capacity). Its also not our fault that a guy at the beginning of the previous century figured out a way to use the technology created to make chemical bombs in the first world war and apply it to the making of artificial fertilizer – leading to the profound shift in our food production systems and a mortal link to non-renewable fossil fuels that has a significant impact on the global climate.

It is said that without that innovation, making artificial fertilizer from fossil fuels, 3/5ths of the people alive today would not have been born.

These are all facts of our modern world. How we weather the changes or how we prepare our children to weather the changes will be important, even if its a small choice between CAFO meat or organic pastured meat (supporting small farms who value their land) or if it means eating less or no meat at all.

Two days ago we noticed a pile of feathers on the grass around our house. Then we saw some on the driveway. We knew then, upon inspecting the feathers, that one of our old english game hen roosters had met a bad end. I think it was the rooster on the left in the photo above.

We then found another pile of feathers closer to the chicken tractor where all of our layers were kept. In the photo below you can see two downy feathers.

The chicken tractor is not predator safe by any means so I decided as soon as I saw the feathers above to bring an end to the pastured chickens for now and have all the girls in with the roosters in the hen house.

I made sure to patch all the holes in the hen house run and now they should be all set for a while.

Here are a few shots of the chicken run.

That rooster that we lost, he had been loose a few days and in that time he visited with one of our small chicken hens and now she has gone broody. She laid her eggs in this broody house we had made up in years past and has been sitting on them. So, even though we lost this rooster, his genetics were passed on. I dont know if these chicks will hatch or make it, but the hen is working hard on it.

I have the fence there for her protection. According to my daughter, the broody hen really only wants off for about 30 minutes a day to run out and “use the facilities”. My daughter opens the fence and takes the hen out for this time. Then she closes it back up. We learned the hard way that the other non-broody hens and roosters will smash the eggs under a broody hen and then if chicks hatch, they will kill and eat them. Broody hens and chicks need to be protected.

I have learned that “old wives tales” and old sayings like “Dont count your chickens before they hatch” and “No use to crying over spilt milk” have a real profound meaning when you are caring for these animals. Not counting the chickens before they hatch is a guard against putting too much planning and intent into a delicate process (such as gestation) so that one can deal with the inevitable losses that WILL come.

The other day we were milking by hand in the morning because I didnt want to have to drag the milker out twice that day. We had just finished a load of milking and then, poooof, the goat lifted her leg and splashed her filthy hoof down into the pure white milk.

It made me white hot angry – all that work and all that lovely milk – but I was able to let it go quickly and cool off. The moment that hoof touched the milk, it was no longer useful. There is no halfways about it. No ambivalence. I just had to let it go. Thats what the saying “No use to crying over spilt milk” is all about, you have to let it go because it is 100% irretrievably lost.

Here are a few shots of the cucumbers that are WAY behind (like the whole garden) but which are coming along. I think they will have time to bear before the frosts!

These are pickling cucumbers

And these are lemon cucumbers (which I thought had died!)

I have been quite blocked on all of my blogs (technology, weather, misalignment of stars and muses, who knows) but I am hoping that I can start to dig out here.

In my last post you saw how I was having early blight. All 60 tomato plants are now history. I pulled them a week ago but it has been raining steadily and at times torrentially so I have not been able to burn the plants and stakes yet. The dead wilting vines are taunting me.

Today I am going to share a snapshot of our homesteading life and I hope it entertains on some level.

Lets do a census first. Amongst the humans, we have 2 adults, one 12 yo, one 5 yo, and one 2.5 yo. We have 5 cats who kill but do not eat rodentia. We have something like 35 chickens who are threatening to go into molt because of this hideous weather. We have one llama who is hitting the upper limits on tolerating said hideous weather. We used to have 18 goats but we FINALLY sold 6 kids (they were literally eating us out of house and home) and now we are down to 12 goats, 7 of which we milk on a daily basis.

These goats like hay. They dont eat every bit so some of it ends up on the ground. The hay acts like a sponge once it hits the mud. We have an enormous amount of urine/manure/hay/mud that we need to muck out and every day we get more torrential rain that makes this mess even worse.

We live with it and await a time (sometime?) when the rain will stop and we will be able to make some headway.

Goats are strangely prissy when it comes to the rain, you would think they feel actual pain when wet. They will do just about anything to avoid it (although that doesnt keep them from laying down in wet muck and soaking their teats in filth right before I need to milk them).

Needless to say, our goats are as close to the edge about all this rain as I am, I promise. I worry we might be getting to a point where pharmaceutical interventions might make sense! (winks)

Our Days

So, some of the does in milk still have their kids so every morning 2 of us have to go out into the knee deep slipperiness that is the goat enclosure and separate the moms from the babies. The momma goats are catching on and come willingly on some days, other days they run away, down the hill (slippery) and we have to track them down.

So, with that done, we feed them all hay and top off water. A bit later we give them some grain, more water, more hay, etc.

In the afternoon or early evening the DH drags out the portable milker which consists of a 50 pound pump and a slightly lighter set of milking claws and reservoir (stainless steel).

My 12 yo and I do the milking alone. She fetches the girls one at a time and on some days, when the caprine-oriented planets are aligned and the goats are hungry enough, they come running to the stanchion. Other days, the goats will make a break for the garden or the forest and we have to go after them.

Getting the 12 yo to simply use a rope every time seems to be more difficult than herding the goats.

My milking experience is one of dual frustrations; between early adolescent misery and goat toddler-with-hooves misery.

When a goat gets on the stanchion I use wet paper towels to clean her teats and then I dry them. I then turn on the pump and put the teat cups on the teats. I stand back, massage my old aching back and watch as the milker extracts the milk. I also watch the goat for signs that she wants to kick the cups off or jump off the stanchion. If she tries to make a break for it, I grab her and HOLD her in place until her udders are empty. One goat, Oaty Goaty, seems to love me ok but HATES to be milked so its always a struggle with her. I can not take my hand off her leg or she will kick the teat cups off (into the yuck).

Since removing her babies, Rye the goat – henceforth called “Emotional Rye” – is fighting the milking process from the gate to the stanchion and back to the gate again. I dont understand why. We have to be consistent and not give up because if we did then it will only continue or get worse.

SOMEONE’s will WILL be broken, just hope its not mine is all.

During this entire process, the baby goats (who are now 5-6 months old, adolescents really) are peering into the milking shed or just making the worst sort of bleating sounds that I am convinced neighbors miles away can hear. The 6 we sold were SO LOUD I feared that the neighbors would call the police or board of health for animal mistreatment. The silly goat babies would stand in the middle of their enclosure, unmolested in any way and with bellies filled with hay and grain, and bleat at the top of their lungs. So very glad they are gone.

(remember, we have this circus every day)

Once all the mommas are milked, my DH will lug it all back into the house, into the kitchen, where I decant the milk, filter it and put it in the fridge or add cultures to make cheese (mostly chevre right now). These days we get about 2.5 gallons a day, which we mostly drink and we drink it raw.

Labeled and ready to go in the fridge.

Now the work really gets started.

Now I have to clean the milker and this takes as long as the milking (an hour or so).

First I rinse everything with a cold spray (including the inside of the milk pail) and then I fill the red pot with cold water and flush the cold water up through the tubing into the milk pail.

I dump all that and then flush the lines with hot water that has a special cleaner that removes milkstone (a build up of calcium and magnesium that can really mess up your machinery).

I then scrub the interior of the milk pail and everything else and then dump all that and then flush/wash everything with even more hot water.

By the end my arms are exhausted and I am usually soaked head to toe.

Mind you, this is every day!

As I type this and hit post, I am getting ready to go out and milk. The sky is dark, its sprinkling, and the goats are cowering in the murk. I hope the sheeting heavy rain can hold off until we are done. If not, it will be like most other days around here.

Homesteading isnt easy kids. Being a goat mistress is not easy either. Being a goat mistress with pissy goats, grumpy pre-teens, teething toddlers, and obsessive 5 year olds who want to help but mostly cant – its almost more than any three women can bear!