(I got this recipe from a great herbal information site, HerbMentor, from a recipe by Heather Nic an Fhleisdeir - I'll paraphrase some from John Gallagher's great lesson on making tooth powder)

Ingredients:
~ 1/4 c. fine sea salt
~ 1/4 c. white clay (Kaolin)
~ 1/4 c. baking soda
~ 1 Tbsp. sage, dried & ground
~ 30 drops essential oil (I used Wintergreen)

~ a small bowl
~ a small jar (a half-pint worked for me)

Measure out the powders: sea salt, white clay, & baking soda, into your bowl.

Finely grind up your sage, and add it to the powders.  Mix.

Add 30 drops of essential oil, and mix again.

Yay!  You made tooth powder!  Now put it in the jar, seal, and store near your toothbrush.  It should keep indefinitely.

To use, just sprinkle 1/8-1/4 tsp. into your palm and dip a wet toothbrush in the powder.  Brush as you usually do!

So... let's backtrack.  How does this stuff work, again?  Turns out, fluoride isn't the only thing that can prevent cavities.

The salt, baking soda, and white clay (which dentists use in their tooth-polishing mixture) all work to scrub off cavity-causing gunk. 
This 'gunk' is called dextran, and it's a glue-like substance that forms when carbohydrates (aka all those potato chips I ate before bed) and your mouthy bacteria mix.  Dextran binds plaque to teeth, causing gums to recede to get away from the plaque, making little pockets in your gums where food ferments.  Gross. 
Tooth powder helps remove the carbohydrates so dextran doesn't get made in the first place, breaking the cycle of decay.  Awesome.

The sage is, apparently, a natural whitening agent.  Plus, it's yummy, like the essential oils.

Simple as that. 

I'll be trying this tooth powder regularly for the next while - if you try it too, let me know how it goes!  Or, if you have a different recipe to offer, I'd love to hear it!

Fall has a different set of tasks... foremost, to rest.  After my last day at the farm, I spent the next three weeks of my 'funemployment' drinking tea, watching silly movies, reading, journaling, and sleeping 10-hour nights.  Granted, I was also nursing a cold, but the self-imposed rest was a perfect end to a summer spent saturated in hard work.

There is still work to be done, but of a different nature:
Last week, I secured a Winter CSA share from a local farm to split with a friend. 
Yesterday, I took inventory of all my preserved foods from the summer. 
Today, I'll start making bone broth from several stewing hens, elder laying chickens from a farm two counties north.
In the weeks to come, I plan to set up indoor greens-growing (gotta have some chlorophyll over the winter!): plant cilantro on my windowsill, revive my sprouting jar, and maybe even try my hand at micro-greens.

So, farewell to summer, and to my time at the farm. 
Here's to the first signs of winter, a bit of rest, and a stocked pantry...

August is just around the corner, and the craziness of summer harvest is nearly here.  For me, high summer means lots of work, and even more delicious food!

Today, I came home from the farmer's market with a double armload of local, organic, (free!) vegetables.  Some were new this season, like our Japanese eggplant and heirloom tomatoes. 

Inspired by these mid-summer gems, I decided to do a lil' fancy cooking and make gluten-free eggplant pasta!

Ingredients:
~ 2 Japanese eggplant, local & organic
~ 1/4 large heirloom tomato, deseeded & chopped, local & organic
~ 1 tsp. garlic, minced local & organic
~ 1/8 tsp. red chili flakes, from bulk
~ 1/16 c. half & half, gifted
~ 1 Tbsp. basil chiffonade, fresh, local & organic
~ sprinkle of Parmesan cheese
~ RealSalt, sourced near my home state
~ cracked black pepper, from bulk
~ olive oil, from bulk

See all these delicious veggies from the farm?  I'm so lucky.

There's actually no onion in the eggplant pasta, but it's big, beautiful, and onions were the first thing I planted on the farm!  Also, I got confused about the recipe...

I found the eggplant pasta recipe on Food Network (courtesy of Alton Brown) and stayed pretty true to it.  Here's the original recipe, with my edits, for your cooking ease:

"Peel each eggplant... Slice the eggplant thinly lengthwise, about 1/4-inch thick.
Evenly coat each slice with the salt and purge on a sheet pan... for 30 minutes."  This is totally necessary and draws out the eggplant's natural bitterness, leaving only deliciousness! 
"Rinse with cold water and roll in paper towels to dry." No, no paper towels!! I used a clean dishtowel.
"Slice the pieces into thin strips to resemble pasta.

In a large sauté pan heat the oil" on medium. 
"Add the garlic and chili flakes and toast" for 1-2 minutes.
"Add the eggplant 'pasta' and toss to coat.
Add the tomatoes and cook for 3 minutes.
Add the cream and increase heat to thicken sauce" for 1-2 minutes.
Turn off the heat, then "Finally add the basil and Parmesan and toss to combine.
Season with pepper, no salt needed as the eggplant will have residual salt from the purge. Serve immediately."

Here's how mine turned out!  Delectable and gratifying, served with a bottle of Belgian blonde homebrewed beer.  Life is good.

Here I am - the farm hand - in all my sun-hatted, latex-gloved, pea-picking glory. 

My mouth isn't usually shaped like that, for the record - I was trying to say something clever, like that I'm peeved about all these peas, and the photographer caught me mid-pun...

It's summer, folks, and the overabundance of harvest season has begun.  For you, maybe this means delight at the farmers' market, or a surge in home canning from your garden's cornucopia of veggie-goodness. 
For me, this means picking peas.  Lots of peas.  Or, as the Mexicans would say, muchos pinches chícharos!

After a 14 hour day last Friday, which culminated in 5 hours of all hands on deck to pick every single ripe pea on the field, sugar snap peas (as delicious as they are) have become our collective nemesis.

The peas are nearly done with, but June is just the beginning... I'm bracing myself for the tomato harvest - it's gonna be a doozy.

You might like:
~ Farm Girl Diaries: First Month Insights
~ What Makes Homemaking Radical, Again?
~ Forget 'All or Nothing' - Do Something!
~ Why Homemaking?

It's hard to believe it's almost June.  I've been a farm hand for a month now, and it's already changed my life.

What to say about my first month farming?  There's so much - things I didn't expect, new skills I've learned, parts of myself I feel growing as I work with the soil.

You've already seen a typical "day in the life" from my Farm Girl Diaries: Week 1 and Week 2 - so I'll give you a deeper insight into life as a farm hand on an organic veggie farm. 

My sense of time to shift so dramatically.
First of all, I now sleep and rise with the sun.  My bedtime is 8:15 pm, and I wake from dreams at 4:30 am.
Second, farm tasks take a long time - my patience and focus have expanded to match.
Yesterday was a 10 hour day, where I harvested for 4 hours, washed radishes for 2 hours, bunched garlic scapes for an hour, washed lettuce for an hour, weeded for an hour, and planted honeydew melons for an hour.  It all flew by, especially the varied tasks near the end.  Of course, there are days where we only weed, or spend 9 hours thinning beets.  Even then, an hour seems like a short time. 

My job security to be so low. 
Mother Nature rules all.  Despite the serious expertise of the owners and all their human ingenuity, when there's drought, there's drought.
I have developed a much greater respect and awe for the powers of Nature.  When it rains I feel such gratitude, I thank the sky.

To find such camaraderie with the other farm workers.
I'm surprised and grateful for the hours we spend laughing at bad puns about beets, telling and sympathizing with personal stories, trading language skills with the Spanish-speakers, and sharing our food freely.  One of the Mexicans now makes a point to bring potato chips drenched in hot sauce, papas, daily - just to share.

How to use a water-wheel transplanter. 
It's such a nifty machine - attached to the back of a tractor, it's got two parts:  The water-wheel goes first, pokes holes in the ground, and drizzles them with water, preparing for planting.  Trailing behind the water-wheel, we sit in a pair of low-hanging lounge chairs - as we graze along just above the ground, we drop plant starts into the holes and secure them in the soil... it goes pretty fast, and feels like a video game - don't miss a hole!

How to harvest, wash, and bunch pretty much everything.
Harvesting rhubarb is a full-body workout, and searching for large turnips is like a treasure hunt.
Washing radishes is one of my special skills (I've got a system built for speed!), but washing greens in the plastic tubs scrapes my forearms raw.
Bunching appeals to my visual & detail-oriented side, but it's a delicate matter - aesthetics are everything.  I love bunching garlic scapes, since they're so beautifully spirally.  I can get pretty distracted arranging the scape spirals, and often wish I had a camera.

How to take care of my body during long days of repetitive physical tasks.
Farming can be hard on your body, but as a dancer I've picked up some great body knowledge that's helping a lot.
Awareness is key.  It's too easy to focus on a task and ignore your body's warning signals (like pain).  I'm learning to work quickly while still using good body mechanics. 
Most importantly, I don't bend over from my lower back.  Protect the lower back - bend in your hips and knees, keep your lower back in line with your spine.  I call it the Monkey Squat.  Special thanks to my teachers for Alexander Technique!

In the future, I want pursue a different kind of farming.
Ours is a relatively large-scale produce farm, focused mainly on selling at farmers market, to restaurants, and to CSA members (in that order).  I enjoy it a lot, and I'm so pleased to be learning and working outdoors all day.  But, for me, it's a stepping-stone.
I want pursue a more intimate and sustainable style of farming.  I want a smaller-scale, community-focused intent, with farm dinners and educational outreach.  I want to learn permaculture techniques, and wide-ranging skills like beekeeping, ecosystem management, egg & dairy husbandry, mushroom inoculation, and even more food preservation skills. 
It's exciting to gain that clarity, to see my next step in a long-term vision.

My sense of capability and competence.
At first, I wasn't sure if I was cut out to farm, if I would be strong and endurant enough, if I could work alongside others who were surely better suited to farming.  That changed quickly.
I found that I can do and handle more than I expected, that I'm getting stronger and quicker (plus, my biceps look awesome).  The self-confidence that comes with that sense of capability is wonderful.

My food knowledge and skill.
I'm cooking and preserving foods I never dealt with before, like braising greens and rhubarb, let alone knew existed.  Sorrel?  Lovage?  What the...? 
I'm learning, and it tastes so good!

My understanding of and gratitude for the Earth.
I'm starting to get a broader sense for Earth's cycles - of plants' germination, growth, maturity... and I'm getting a first peek at the seasons' characteristics, of springs' flavor & tone, of the subtle shifts in temperature and daylight as we head towards summer.
I'm grateful for cloudy days, for rain storms.  I'm awed at how naturally our food grows, the intelligence within Nature - how the entire plan for a fruit-bearing melon vine is encoded within one tear-shaped seed. 
It's beautiful and humbling to watch.

I love late spring so much.  Strawberries, rhubarb, preserving... oh my!

Okay, that was cheesy, but seriously - I'm a little ecstatic that it's finally time to start preserving.  We had surprise strawberries at the farm (120 pints of 'em), and I harvested rhubarb for the first time!

My first act of fruit-in-jar goodness?  You guessed it:

Strawberry rhubarb preserves.  It's a classic.  And I've never done it before!  It's more chunky than a jam, and positively oozes with delicious sauce.

Ingredients:
~ 3 c. strawberries, sliced
~ 3 c. rhubarb, sliced
~ 1.5 Tbsp lemon juice
~ 1.8 c. granulated sugar (okay... just go for a bit less than 2 c., and more than 1+2/3)
~ 3/4 tsp vanilla extract (which I just so happened to have, ever since making granola!)
~ 2 pint jars, clean

First, slice up your strawberries and rhubarb into 1/3-1/4 inch pieces.  Incidentally, I found that a mature rhubarb stalk equals about one cup of sliced rhubarb.  Neat.
(Don't listen to the picture - it took about a pint and a half of strawberries to get 3 cups)

Continue to simmer and stir often for 15-20 minutes, or until mixture is thickened and/or you lose patience (like I did!)  Luckily, I wanted it to be chunky, more like preserved fruit and less like a jam.

Carefully pour your hot preserves into your clean pint jars - if you've got a jar funnel, more power to you.  I don't, so I was just careful and didn't spill onto the lip of the jar.  I don't know the exact headroom (space from the top of the lip) that fruit preserves need, so I eyeballed 1/4-1/8 inch.  Good enough, right?  (if you know, feel free to tell me!)

Lid your jars and give them a boiling water bath for 10 minutes - or 15, if you live at 5,600 feet elevation like me.  This seals those jars up tight and ensures you'll enjoy them throughout the year!

Once your preserves have sufficiently boiled, get 'em out of that water and let them cool!  I'm the lucky semi-owner of a jar-lifter (bless those roommates of mine, with all their nifty stuff!), but if you aren't, I found that tongs and a firm hand can work... just be ready with a potholder, in case your grip slips.

Now, admire the ruby beauty that is your strawberry rhubarb preserves!

Did I mention that the strawberry rhubarb sauce is absolutely delicious over soft cheese?  It tastes like a melt-in-your-mouth cheesecake. 

How do you like to use strawberry rhubarb preserves?  In pie?  As a jam?  Please share!

You might like:
~ Pickled Radishes
~ Pickled Green Beans
~ Chocolate Almond Milk
~ Simple Cheese (Yet Oh-So Gourmet!)

These pickled radishes are good.  I mean, I expected them to be good, but I didn't expect them to be this good!

Thanks to my weekly farm haul, I had a bunch of Easter Egg radishes in dire need of consumption. 
Raw radishes are too much for me to eat in bulk, so I decided to give pickled radishes a shot before they all withered into magenta-colored shrunken heads.

It was a great choice on my part, for sure.  Pickled radishes are the kind of salty snack I'm likely to go for in moments of boredom & salt munchies. 

Plus, they're so darn purty...

Ingredients:
~ 3 cups Easter Egg radishes, sliced
~ 1 walking onion, julienned
~ 6 small cloves garlic, peeled, whole
~ 1.5 c. rice vinegar
~ 1.5 Tbsp lemon juice
~ 1.5 Tbsp honey
~ 2 Tbsp + 2 tsp pickling salt
~ 30 peppercorns, crushed
~ 2 pint jars, clean!

First, prep the veggies:  slice yer radishes into discs, julienne your walking onions (fancy word for 'slice diagonally') & peel your garlic cloves.

While you're at it, sterilize your jars & lids in boiling water.

Combine all the pickling ingredients (vinegar, lemon juice, honey, salt, peppercorns) in a saucepan and heat until boiling.  Stir to dissolve honey & salt.

Meanwhile, toss together your radishes, onions, and garlic until well mixed. 

Pack the clean jars full of your veggie blend.

Pour your hot pickling sauce over the veggies, until jars are full. 

Lid the jars, tightening the rings 'til 'finger-tight', then set aside overnight.

In the morning, the pickling brine will have turned bright pink from the radishes! 

They're ready to eat now, but the longer you let them sit, the more depth the flavor will develop.  Refrigerate jars & enjoy!

NOTE: I don't anticipate mine lasting more than a couple months, since they taste so damn good, but if you want to store yours for more than two months, or are storing them out of the fridge, process them in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes.

How do you like to eat radishes?  Got any good uses for pickled radishes, aside from straight-from-the-jar snacking?

You might like:
~ Pickled Green Beans
~ Farm Girl Diaries: Week 2
~ Make Yogurt!
~ What Makes Homemaking Radical, Again?

Last week on Farm Girl Diaries: 
It was my first week on the job at an organic veggie farm here in the Rocky Mountain Foothills. 
I dirtied my boots, iced my knees, practiced Spanish, and found out that if we don't get rain, my job is in serious danger!  Yikes.

This week...

Rain!  We didn't work Monday or Tuesday, because a sudden rain storm swept the foothills.  Thank goodness.  We still need more rain (and snow!), but this is a blessing.

Low point:  They wouldn't let me work!  I didn't know what to do with myself... Don't worry, I figured it out real quick!

Highlight: Blessed rain!  If this keeps up, I may even have a job in a month.  Fingers crossed...

By Wednesday, it dried out enough to work in the fields.  We weeded the beet field all morning, and then I went out to plant zucchini and cucumber.  Zucchini seeds are kind of big and doofusy, like, "Duuude... just put me in the ground already."
Cucumber seeds are fragile little divas, all high-pitched, "Oh goodness, no, that's the wrong end... oops!  I'm so featherlight, I just couldn't help but fly away!" 
Yes, if you work in the fields long enough, seeds start to develop personalities.

Low point:  There was a grisly murder near the zucchinis.  I think a bird got tilled under our plastic mulch sheets, because the squash field is littered with mangy feathers and smells like a rank carcass.  Charming.

Highlight:  We got to come back to work!  I didn't expect to miss crouching in the sun for 9.5 hours at a time , but it's nice to be back. 

Plant, weed, harvest, wash - the farmer's life.  Not necessarily always in that order, though.
Today, I harvested loads of white turnips and easter egg radishes, then washed them all. 
After lunch, I painstakingly weeded baby spinach, then poked a ridiculous amount of holes in black plastic mulch, preparing to plant more cucumbers.  I even planted a few cuke seeds towards the end (persnickety as ever), until I got burnt out - figuratively and literally (nine hours in the sun is a long time!)

Low point:   It was so hard to wake up today... 5:30 am has never felt so early before.  These days, I consider 5:30 as sleeping in!

Highlight:  Good conversation and laughs with a new friend.  I was essentially partnered with one other girl all day - we moved between each project together.  She was a little reserved at first, but by midday we were having meaningful conversation and by the end, we were giddily giggling over rows of black plastic! 

Friday, harvest day!  And this harvest day was grey, cold, and drizzly.  Guh.  My fingers were frigid by 6:15 am, despite two layers of gloves.
I harvested broccoli rabe, red baby kale, and mustard greens, then bunched them all on-field.  Let me tell ya - bunching is a lot harder when it's windy and your fingers are numb beneath thick gloves.
After that, I washed arugula and green onions for the rest of the day - and for the record, it's no picnic having your hands submerged in water for 5 hours when it's only 50 degrees out.

Low point:  My poor, cold fingers.  But you were probably gonna guess that already, huh?  It wasn't too bad, actually - during washing, I had on thick cotton gloves underneath waterproof latex gloves, which helped a lot.

Highlight:  I successfully told a joke in Spanish!  Thanks to the expertise of a dear friend, I made two native Spanish-speakers laugh.  It's not funny in English (it's a Spanish pun), but here it is anyway:

Dos hombres en una playa
Two men on a beach
y uno dice, "No nada nada?"
and one says, "You're not gonna swim at all?"
y el otra dice, "No traje traje!"
and the other says, "I didn't bring a suit!"

You're welcome.

Saturday is the Farmer's Market!  I love the Farmer's Market so much... I've been going for years as a customer.  It's a festival-like atmosphere, great for picnicking and people watching, and is full of cute dogs and beautiful arrays of abundance.  I love it!

It was my first day working market and we showed up at 6 am to set up shop - what a cold, grey morning.  The food truck was an hour late (dead battery), so we hustled to set up everything in time.  Literally, we ran.  Good thing I've been working out.
The fast-paced market day flew by: weighing and bagging loose greens, maintaining our beautiful display (one of the top three best-looking booths at market, for sure), answering folks' questions about the veggies, and working the cash register. 
After a 6-hour market, we broke down our tents, put it all back in the truck, swept away the wilted veggies, and went home.  All the evidence gone, like it never happened.

Low point:  My mental math skills are a little rusty... working the cash register was kind of stressful, and I don't do math well under pressure.  There was one particularly embarrassing exchange where I tried to give a man $1.50 in change when he paid $5 for a $2.50 bunch of radishes.  Ugh.  Then our calculator broke, of course!  Luckily, my mind sharpened up quickly.

Highlight:  Everything.  Seriously.  I loved working market.  At one point, kick-ass manager commented, "You're built for market!"  I really am.
My top 4 highlights, cuz I'm not gonna choose:

1. Free coffee and sausage from local vendors - made a BIG difference in my attitude.
   
2. Chatting with enthusiastic customers about how to make radish green pesto, pea shoot salad, and braised greens.
3. Giving away our leftover veggies to grateful and surprised market workers - I felt like the Arugula Angel.
4. Getting to take home all sorts of delicious fresh vegetables, plus a random hemp ice cream sandwich that a grizzled old hippie of a vendor traded for mustard greens!
   

Whew!  Second week down.  I'm still praying for rain, because I want to keep this job!

Up Next -  Farm Girl Diaries: First Month Insights

Do you have any questions about my life as a farm hand?  I'm happy to share!

You might like:
~ Farm Girl Diaries: Week 1
~ Farm Girl Rising
~ Farm Internship: Drawn by the Earth
~ 10 Commandments of Radical DIY