It’s out of committee. It’s being readied to vote on the floor. Then signed by the governor. Exciting times. Nerve wracking times. Time to farm: And I am distracted from the task at hand which is to seed hay, pasture, oats, oats&peas, spread compost, fieldwork, long days. And yet here I am.

The hard work has yet to be done.

How important the next 20 months are – to getting the permanent law we really want – NOW is the time we need to come together like never before – in safety, with pride and confidence.

Wisconsin’s Proud Family Dairymen.

We have been, and we will – make all of Wisconsin proud; all the world, when Raw milk becomes legal.

We can do this safely. We can save farms. We can help people.

Stay tuned here. There is certainly more coming. There is leadership, there is more farmers, better farmers, a time like none you’ve seen before: Happy farmers, happy Wisconsin

PROUD WISCONSIN DAIRYMAN

Scott Trautman

Nine apricot, two nectarine, a peach, two pears, five stanley plums, a 30 ft pecan & a 6 ft cherry. About half are in bloom and the rest look like they will. 

I walked through the young fruit trees amazed at the blossoms that have made it to the edge of April. Could this be that rare year without a late spring frost?  

Our County Fair is fast approaching! My son and I love to enter things in the fair, always hoping for a blue ribbon! He sells Justin’s Ranger Cookies at our market and he always tells a joke when you buy a cookie. “Why did the cookie go to the doctor” ? "Because he felt crummy”. He has won a blue ribbon for his cookies, but the customers love his jokes! He is quite the entrepreneur. He is going to sell fish bait (worms) for the campers who come to our produce market. He already sells them  fire wood . He is as excited as I am about the Fair, we talk about it all the time. What jams and pickles should mom bring. What should we bake? But there are times when we can’t wait to eat funnel cakes , kettle corn, corn dogs,fried Oreos ,let me stop! I have included a few  recipes for you to make at home. You don’t have to have a big fancy kettle to make kettle corn . It’s fun and easy. Moms Dill pickles are always a treat, the best I have ever had. And a simple funnel cake recipe. Enjoy! See you at the Fair!

               Easy Kettle Corn Recipe

Ingredients:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup popcorn kernels
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt

*Special Equipment – A large pot with lid

Directions:
Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.  Add popcorn and sugar giving it a quick stir and then cover with lid.  Once popcorn starts popping, pick it up and give it a quick shake every few seconds until popping slows down, between 3-4 minutes.  Remove immediately from heat and pour into a large bowl.  Sprinkle with salt and serve immediately.  Do not make the mistake of removing the pot from heat without transferring to a bowl. Due to the high heat of the pot, if you don’t transfer the popcorn it will caramelize and perhaps burn

                   Keuchels (German Funnel Cake)

Keuchels (KEE-kulls) are wonderful things! They are puffy, round pieces of fried dough which are thick and chewy around the edges and thin and crunchy in the middle. A proper keuchel should be about the size of a luncheon plate and be a lovely, golden brown color. This is an old German recipe, similar to a funnel cake!

Mix well:

 1 qt. milk

1 c. sugar

1 stick margarine or butter

Dissolve a yeast cake in ½ c. warm water.

Knead together 8 c. flour and 6 eggs. Add the yeast and the milk mixture. Knead well. Cover and let raise.

Pinch off pieces by the handful and shape into round, flat shapes that are thicker toward the edge and flat toward the middle. Drop into a fryer of hot oil and fry until golden and floating. Drain well and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Eating them warm with jam or fresh fruit on top is a real treat.

Mom’s Best Dill Pickles
They are the very best pickles she has ever tasted or made.
Boil together:
3 quarts water
1 quart vinegar
½ cup salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp alum
Pack 20 to 24 small cucumbers into glass jars. Add 2 cloves of garlic and a head of dill to each jar. Pour the hot brine to fill the jars. Seal and process.

Tomato Marmalade

This is excellent with any meat. If you mix equal parts of this and hearty mustard it makes a great glaze for roasts.

Peel 3 oranges and 2 lemons. Cut the peelings into very fine slivers. Combine with 2 cups water and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain.

Remove all pulp from the fruit and add it to the peelings. Blanch and peel 5 ½ pounds of tomatoes and slice.

Combine all ingredients in a kettle and mix lightly. Add a spice bag containing 5 cinnamon sticks and 1 tbsp. cloves. Add 6 cups sugar and 1 tsp. salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until thick and clear. Ladle into sterile jars and seal. Process 15 minutes.

Its garden tool time! Time to sort through tools, make sure they are clean and decide what to do with extra tools.

photo credit: Andrei!

You only need a few tools but garden tools seem to build up and before long you have too many. At least that happens to me.

So, this weekend I spent time sorting tools, making sure they were clean and hanging them up.

And yes, I had extra tools. Confession time – it was more than a few. I just can’t turn down tools at sales, especially if they are free or only 50 cents. So I looked at the extras and sorted those. A few will head to the flea market but most will have new uses.

I need a few tool handles replaces on my favorite tools so I chose tools with better handles to replace my old handles. And I will save the tool part for other uses.

A few tools will be used for garden art. They will be made into garden tool animals and tools picket fences for growing vines on. Both the animals and picket feces are perfect for almost any yard.

I will also be offering a few garden classes, one up at the Chautauqua Institution, and I will show how to make the garden tool fence there.

There’s always a use for an unused or unwanted garden tool. And this is the time to check your tools for the upcoming season.

Technorati Tags: clean garden tools, create garden art, garden art tools, garden tools, gardening

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With the gardening season just starting it’s the perfect time to create garden pots with flair.

This you tube has ideas for decorating terra cotta pots.

Decorating garden pots can change the look of your garden, patio or backyard instantly. You can color coordinate the home to the garden, match your colors in a flower garden or create a gift for a friend. It’s also a perfect way to keep children busy on a rainy day or a day where they need a change in activity.

The you tube also mentioned pot socks. Pot socks would be a great idea for the end of a season when you want to keep a plant warmer.

Terra cotta pots also make great nightlights, luminaries, wind chimes and garden art animals. The ideas are endless and terra cotta pots can be picked up at many stores or even garage sales and auctions. I usually do the latter and get great bargains

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This past winter we raised vegetables in a cold frame.  Until mid-November we had fresh zucchini and summer squash.  Leaf lettuce, radishes, brocoli, cauliflower, Swiss chard, and spinach were harvested up to the second week of December.  The winter was fairly harsh, and the doors froze shut.  Until February, we were unable to get into the cold frame.  Once we did we found that some of the vegetables actually made it through the winter.

The third week of March we harvested our first cutting of leaf lettuce and  baby carrots.  Peas are up and blooming and we are looking forward to having fresh radishes in about a week.   The cold frame has extended our season and gotten us in the ground earlier.  When our summer CSA begins, we should have a wider variety of vegetables to offer people.

Looking forward to a great year!

If you are ever in Wooster, Ohio and you love
plants, (trees, shrubs, perennials, rhododendrons and much more) it is a must
see,
THE SECREST ARBORETUM, best of all it is Free!

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE DIRECTIONS, 

I have been visiting the arboritum since 1979, and it never gets boring.  Sad to see some of my favorite tree specimen have passed, but they have added so much other landscape areas and you now can even get married in the Rhododendron Garden

My wife Janet has been interested in fiber arts of one form or another as long as I have known her. She does cross-stitch and she also knits. Her specialty has mostly been knitting socks and hats. Lately she has taken an interest in weaving.

Over the winter she took a weaving class and the interest intensified. She brought home projects and proudly showed all of us the things that she had made and talked about the different weaving patterns and techniques. While I was obsessing over my farm planning, she was cruising the Internet and dreaming of owning her own loom.

On some evenings our paths would cross and we would have simultaneous one-sided conversations about our consuming interests. I would go on and on about my planting plans and farm research, no doubt an exceedingly dull topic for someone distracted by the lure of websites full of looms for sale.

True to form, I always responded to her talk of buying a loom with a predictable dissertation on our financial priorities and the laudable goal of me making a loom for her from scratch with my woodworking equipment in the garage. Undaunted by my reasoning, she correctly pointed out that it would probably be years before I would have the time to take on such a project. My weak rejoinder of "…yes, but how many opportunities will I get to build a loom for you?" had little effect.

The stalemate existed for quite a few weeks until she trumped all of my arguments by pulling the Ebay card. Wearing a skeptical expression, I leaned over her computer to peer at the image of the loom for sale. It turned out to be right here in Michigan. A glance at the very reasonable price tag and the vintage beauty of the simple loom that was advertised brought all of my objections to a swift end.

Before I knew it, I was drawn in hook, line and sinker. I asked her how much she was willing to spend on it and then I secretly put in a bid for considerably more. We impatiently watched the hours crawl past until the end of the auction and were delighted to learn that we had won. The price ended up being considerably less than either of us had been willing to spend.

I called the seller of the loom and set up a time to pick it up. That evening after work I met the man and his father at a church on the outskirts of Detroit. The loom had been purchased by them years before from an elderly woman who could no longer use it. It sat in a side-room in the church and was occasionally used by the children. Ultimately it was deemed to be taking up more floorspace than they could spare and they put it up for sale.

A stamp on the back of the loom indicates that it was built in Michigan in 1938 by an obscure and short-lived "Fredrikson pattern shop". I’ve been unable to find much of anything about them and would not be surprised if this is the only surviving loom of their manufacture. To my engineer/woodworker’s eye it is extremely well-designed. We were able to dismantle it for transport without any tools as the entire thing is cleverly held together with simple wedges.

Unfortunately the loom is missing a few critical pieces. The previous owners confessed that they accidentally gave away the frames, heddles and supporting pulleys with another loom that they had sold earlier. I didn’t really mind because the missing pieces creates an opportunity for me to employ my woodworking skills without being too big of a project.

Janet and I spent a few nights reading up on the finer points of loom design. We concluded that our new loom is a "counterbalance" design and is extremely similar to one sold by a Swedish loom company called Glimakra. After sketching out my ideas for the missing pieces, I headed out to the lumber store to pick up some maple boards for raw materials.

Now we just need to clear enough time in the crazy farming schedule for me to get those few pieces made. In the mean-time, the loom has become a conversation piece in our farmhouse living room. Janet is doing her best to withstand the wait.

So
what’s with all these weird names with the suffix "wort" like St.
John’s Wort, Mugwort, Birthwort, Lungwort and so on? Well, "wort"
derives from the Old English wyrt, which simply meant plant. The word
was used in the names of herbs that had medicinal uses, the first part
of the word denoting the complaint against which it was specially useful. But, by the middle of the 17th-century -wort faded from everyday use.

Just wanted to share an interesting fact today…Enjoy!

As always, please email any questions to herbalist@morganbotanicals.com.