Squirrel Medicine

Squirrel Medicine: October’s Busyness

 

   Preparing for the future is something we all have to do. Some are better than others at this. Nobody wants to get caught off guard and unawares and tossed into crisis mode. Yet all our lives we have to prepare for things – work, holidays, change of seasons, maintenance, life changes, and ultimately – death. The squirrel gathers stores of nuts and stashes them in various places. Survival is the goal. As habitual beings what we do now affects what we do later – whether we store nutritious karmic nuts or yucky ones – might affect our fate. One way to get into doing things we don’t want or like to do, but are useful and necessary, is simply to find ways to enjoy them, though I admit I am often not very good at this. I can be resistant and procrastinate. Canning and drying food seems a squirrelly activity. We ahave been crazy at it this year. Re is the expert - I am just learning. I am the grower and picker mainly.

     Living on a farm or owning land and house – one has significant preparation for each season. Things have to be put out and put in, shored up, cleaned up, planted, picked, turned under, ad nauseum. We have a greenhouse with potted plants. Our animal houses and shelters need to be readied for winter. Our ice-free waterers need to be set up. We need extra straw and hay.

 

     The first fire in the fireplace – Oct 7 this year – with flowering pear wood ripped down by the super-derecho at the end of June. It was warm. We won’t turn the gas heat on till November as usual.

     The smell of apples is still pervading the house as we make more awesome applesauce from wildish apples given to us by the neighbors. Ripe Keiffer pears and delectable dried Asian pear slices also abound. I have been collecting leaves – Italian basil, purple basil, perilla (shiso), and Japanese parsley (mitsuba) - to make pesto. Hopefully this will be a tasty experiment. I have pine nuts and hemp hearts to add. I think walnuts might be good too. Made them last night - pestos - 3 different kinds - mitsuba-walnut-lemon-vinegar-shallots, Italian Basil with hemp hearts, and shiso with pine nuts and garlic. All are quite different in color and taste but really fukn good! Next I need to do the purple basil. I bought a few plants about 10 years ago at a pagan gathering and they have re-seeded every year all over the yard. They make a nice mild tea too - similar to Tulsi basil.  

 

 

 

     The dehydrator has been quite busy as well - drying Asian pears, apples, bananas (great dried), eggplant, peppers, and hot peppers. Some of the veggies can be dried and powdered into soup stocks and the peppers made into super hot pepper powder.
 

     The autumn greens garden is in full swing with kale, turnips and greens, lettuce, endive, spinach, radishes, broccoli-raab, collards, Tyfon greens, a few cabbages, and a few mustard greens. One more week and our first batch of kombucha should be done! I want to try flavoring it with Asian pear, ginger, and Pawpaw. I froze some pawpaw pulp from the few that I found here among the thousands of trees in the woods - I guess the derecho knocked many off and they ripened early (like everything this yr) and fell off and the deer got them. However, we did get tons from a neighbor that came from West Virginia - maybe from the mountains - as they were really late. It will be time to break out the recipes this winter.  

     The late sunflowers are blooming – Jerusalem artichokes (good eating too – raw or cooked) and Maximilian sunflower. Leaves are falling making everything messy – but they will be the brown in the compost to mix with the green to make the black. I will probably mow through some of the leaves to make them smaller.

     The smell of apples pervades the house as we make the last of the applesauce. I must say, eating warmed cinnamony apple sauce by a roaring fire is rather relaxing. There is also the proliferation of ‘pumpkin spice’ products. We have pumpkin spiced ale, coffee, and even rooibos tea. In a few weeks there will be the big quinces left out to make the house smell good. They seem to be too hard to cook. I have another tree that will eventually make smaller ones to cook into jelly and sauces. The bitter trifoliate oranges will make a perfumy lemonade and I want to try marmalade with the peels which is supposed to be good. They are said to have anti-tumor and anti-inflammation properties. Picking them is rather unsettling as the tree is full of 3 inch long foreboding thorns but we managed to get a bucket full of them.

 

     We have about 30ft of fence covered with luffa gourds for making the sponges. Did this several years ago – not the funnest but they are big and we should have sponges. Gotta wait till they frost and dry up a bit though.
 

     Another thing maybe for this fall is harvesting, sweating (singing the oils out in a fire), and making some projects out of bamboo. We have several different varieties and more every year so we need to start harvesting it. I hope to harvest some shoots for food next spring as I just had some fantastic ones.

     Some winters I have made wreaths – mostly for relatives at Yule time but I have mucho Akebia vine which is said to make very good baskets. I may try something but I have never done before so I might just suck at it. The fruit pulp is sweet and edible but not much there except seeds. Before they split open they look a lot like pawpaws – thought about pulling a switcheroo at the PawPaw Festival! I just read that the rinds are often fried as a vegetable in Japan. Too late this year but will have to try it next. Strange berries can appear this time of year - beautyberries (cultivated), coral berries (wild), bittersweet vine berries, persimmon fruits, etc. Persimmons get edible after a frost but there is still a risk of getting a bit of the horribly astringent skin. We cooked with them one year - made bread that was good. October is a good time to transplant trees, shrubs, and perennials, and to plant bulbs. I wanna do some garlic and possibly some asparagus as the oldest bed has pretty much dried out. I have blueberries and wild peach trees to move among other things. Puckery persimmons are just about ready - better after a good frost - horribly astringent if you east any part of or near the skin.

 

     We got hay for the barn – food for the goats and bedding/insulation for the animals – straw coming tomorrow. Re brought home way too many pumpkins too – to can. May try some in a juice recipe too. The goat house needs to be shored up - They have banged a couple of the walls to smitherines with their butting - appatrently head-butting is fun. I dread having to cut hooves - mainly on just one goat but Re holds them while I carefully saw off the overgrown hooves with a hacksaw being careful not to go too deep as there are nerves and usually a bit of blood. All five girl goats have their horns. For the first few months when we got them - about 8 years ago - they would get their horns stuck in the fence and bleat(?) horribly - but they learned how to disengage them very well after that as it never happened again. The hens are making about 4 dozen eggs a week - we don't eat them but give them out to people.

     Still have a bit of work on the bird feeders. I need to repair and reload the niger feeders for finches. The deer have broken many of the bird feeders = frustrating. We have put out mineral and feed blocks for deer and turkey and a plot with turnip greens. We also put out salt blocks. The raccoons get the spent apple stuff and some of the rotting apples – we have been throwing them food over the hill for years now. Sometimes the fucks live in little holes adjacent to the roof and I have to climb out onto the roof to clean up their shit piles. They share the cat food much of the time – not much to do about that. I did put up another bird feeder, a bird house, and a hopefully deer-proof squirrel feeder. Re brought back ten bags of 'squirrel corn' from a nearby farm. Peanuts in the shell I need for the furry squirrels. Apparently they have been using the rocks of the medicine wheel for cracking hickory nuts. Indeed every flat service seems to have become a processiong station for hickory nuts.
 

     There are things I hate about autumn though, the busyness for one can be taxing and I tend to resist and complain. Whine and bitch are probably better terms. Those pesky ‘sticktights’ and ‘hitchhikers’ SUCK. When the snow comes it sucks trying to do shit with your fingers when they are numb. It was frost cold the other night and my poor bare feet were chilled under the tiny blanket but I was too lazy to get up and get socks and another blanket. Cutting wood is a good way to warm up on a cold day.
 

                                     Compost

                                    Witch Hazel in bloom

                                                  Eleuthero (Siberian Ginseng)

     I am sure there’s more but that’s quite enough braggy babbling for now. Guess I should get off my lazy coffee/computer ass and do some work.

As I Roll Along My Wheel (a song)

As I roll along my wheel
The sun sets behind me in a world that seems real

As I roll along this wheel
With beginnings and with endings will we all have to deal

We surf at the summit but are crushed at the base
Dead skin and bones
Recycled like the stones
Like the water, like the air
The fire is rare, it imbues our lively stare
Space invisibly pervades us

As we decay under this wheel
Time will yet betray us as our fates time will seal
As I roll along my wheel

And as we worry and we feel
We give away our moments though it seems that they steal
As I roll along my wheel

We live as if we will live forever but what else can we do?
But carry things from here to there?
And collect things to offer and share?

As I roll along my wheel
The days pass behind me for the past to conceal
As I go, in front of of me the future to reveal
Time swirls, time whirls
As I roll along my wheel.