Friday, April 3, 2020

Coco is so loud!  Every morning she comes out and bock bock bock bock bock bock bock.  What is she talking about?

Cob-weaver and I made berry muffins again this morning. This time we used baking powder and baking soda.  They were much yummier.

Mosquito and Cob-weaver raked the chicken yard.

For lunch we made spring greens soup.  I love soup.  It's on my menu for Thursday nights, but last night Mosquito and Cob-weaver groaned so much, I gave in and Ant made them hamburgers.  They don't appreciate soup night.  That's OK.  They used to groan a lot about hiking, biking, gardening, and journaling too.  But now they love these things as much as I do.

It helps if they make the soup.  This one is especially fun because we gather all the spring "weeds" from the yard to eat and our spring garden leafy vegetables.  Mosquito and Cob-weaver love to forage from the wild, so were eager to help. This soup is different each time because it depends on what is growing.  Our early spring greens are mostly too old- I can tell because flower buds are forming, but there was plenty to cook with.  We collected for our soup: nettles, chickweed, sourgrass, crane's bill, New Zealand spinach, fava bean shoots, asparagus, kale, parsley, arugula, and wild lettuce. It was delicious! Everyone said so. Miner's lettuce would also be a good addition to this soup, but we don't have it growing in our yard.  If you decide to wild forage, make sure you know your plants well.  As one of my teachers, Paul Stamets*, says, "Mushrooms can heal you and they can also kill you."  This goes for plants too.

While cleaning the arugula, I found a caterpillar.  It's our first caterpillar of the year.  It looked like a cabbage white butterfly caterpillar to me, but Cob-weaver (who is a caterpillar and butterfly expert) says that it had an extra stripe down its side.  We are going to raise and find out what it turns into.  We do this with all of the caterpillars we find and have figured out how to identify everything in our yard that way.  There are no good field guides to caterpillars that I've found, and even when we do find the caterpillar in a guide, its hard to compare a caterpillar picture with real life.  So we raise them.  We put the caterpillar in a glass mason jar with the plant we found it on and poke holes in the metal lid. We have found that all our caterpillars eat comfrey, so we always put comfrey in it too. It's best if you can find a fat caterpillar because they quickly will make their chrysalis or cocoon and you don't have to feed or clean up their poop daily anymore.  We find underwing moth crysalis' in the soil, so we put them in a jar and bury them in soil.  We've raised cabbage-whites, painted ladies, underwing moths, and looper moths.  The chrysalis of a painted lady is so beautiful, trimmed with gold.  Did you know that moths make a cocoon and butterflies make a chrysalis?

Cob-weaver found aphids on the fava beans today.  Then I spotted them on the kale.  I wonder if they are at the school garden too?

Spring Greens Soup

1 medium onion, halved and sliced
1 tablespoon cooking oil
3 cups bone or vegetable broth
Salt
3 medium potatoes, quartered  ( I used 1 a huge sweet potato because I didn't have potatoes)
3 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (optional) (I didn't have any)
2 tablespoons butter
10 cups fresh spring greens (spinach, parsley, arugula, kale, chard and anything wild you can find), cleaned with stems removed.

Garnish:
Fresh arugula
Yogurt
Lemon
Green onions or wild onions

1. Cook onion in oil over medium heat for 5 minutes.
2. Add potatoes and saute 2 more minutes turning them to brown
3.  Add broth, pepper, and salt to taste. Bring to boiling, then reduce to simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.
4. If using mushrooms, saute in a separate skillet with butter for 6 to 8 minutes or until tender and liquid has evaporated; then set aside.
5. Remove soup from heat. Use an immersion blender to blend onion-potato mixture until almost smooth. 
6. Add greens. Return to heat. Bring to boiling; remove from heat. 
7. Using blender (I have to do this step with my Vitamix blender because my immersion blender can't handle it), puree soup again until nearly smooth and flecks of green remain. 
8. Season to taste with salt. Serve immediately topped with sautéed mushrooms, fresh arugula, lemon, green onions and yogurt.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

*My mentor and teacher, Paul Stamets (his work is the reason I studied mycology in graduate school) is featured in the newly released documentary, Fantastic Fungi.  This one didn't make it to my recommendations list because it contains content about hallucinogenic mushrooms.  I do recommend it highly for adults and for kids whose parents have pre-screened it and are comfortable with this topic, or are prepared to fast forward the part not appropriate for kids.  I have watched it with Cob-weaver and Mosquito.