The mulberry, though actually a collective fruit rather than a proper berry, is a nutritious little thing that grows wild in many places. They grow on relatively small trees and remind me somewhat of blackberries though not quite so delicious. They’re fragile, don’t store well, are sort of a pain to collect when they’re growing at the top of a spindly tree but so worth the effort if only you know what to do with them.

What you do with them is make jelly or syrup. This is how we do it.

1. You need a source of fresh mulberries. About a month ago, a rumor began circulating that we had a mulberry tree on the property. When I finally got around to walking down with the children, we discovered not one, but two mulberry trees.

2. You need children. Preferably your own since you’re going to send them to the top of a tree and get them back slightly discolored.

The goofy grin has nothing to do with mulberries, however, and everything to do with pointing a camera at a five year old.

3. You need patience and lots of time. For three days, I sent the children out to collect mulberries. For three days, I received purple children and three or four berries in return. I finally joined them and the bucket was filled surprisingly quickly. I even still got purple children out of the deal. And they weren’t the only ones enjoying the harvest. See this purple little bill? It led me to yet two more mulberry trees.

4. You need a recipe of some sort. This part proved about as difficult as getting children to put berries in a bucket rather than their mouths. Maybe it was a good thing I had an extra three days to search.  See, everything I found included corn syrup and seriously the main reason I am willing to go through the trouble of making my own syrup is to get away from the corn syrup in everything.

But then I finally found this, a recipe for Sharab El Toot. And for the homeschooler in me, it was a wonderfully educational adventure to incorporate into the mulberry picking. The children didn’t like the end product so much. Well, except for L.E.Fant who drank everyone else’s, but the pictures on the site were lovely and we all enjoyed sampling some Lebanese refreshment.

This is a slightly modified recipe, intended for canning. And let me tell you, this stuff is fabulous on ice cream. Wow. After having some at my parents’ house, I went out and bought ice cream just to put the syrup on.

Mulberry syrup

4 cups mulberry juice
8 cups sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice

To get the juice from the mulberries, you can use a food mill. But we don’t have one. So I threw them in a pot with a bit of lemon juice and a bit of water and heated them up while squishing with a potato masher. Once it was heated and mushy, I poured the mess into a muslin bag and tied it over a pot to drip overnight. In the morning, I mushed the bag until I couldn’t get any more dribbles out.

You can add some syrup to the mush to make jam, or fold it into muffins. I, however, was a bit lazy about separating all the little green stems from the berries so I fed the mush to the chickens who were already filling the hen house with purple poo since discovering we had mulberry trees. They were pleased.

Add the lemon juice and syrup and heat slowly. Bring to a boil, stirring continuously. Cook down to desired consistency. Or add 1/2 cup of pectin, but we just cooked it down. Skim the foam regularly for a nice clean syrup. Process in a boiling water bath.

Try some Sharab El Toot. If you like flavored waters, you’ll love it. If not, well, at least you’ve tasted a bit of Lebanon. Then get some ice cream and try not to overeat.

(Image courtesy oceandesetoiles’ Flickr photostream under a Creative Commons license.)

Enjoy! If I don’t post for another week, just know I’m feverishly collecting mulberries to replenish my dwindling stores before they’re gone for the season!

canning preserving syrup mulberry syrup

And I should have told you about it ages ago, but here it is. Waiting for you.

I’ve been craving a little spring amidst all the dreariness we’ve had of late, but it doesn’t look like it’s making an appearance until this weekend. Fortunately, this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is delivering a virtual spring in all its flowering beauty.

Tonight, should I not simply fall asleep as I did last night, I shall share our chicken slaughtering adventure from yesterday. Don’t worry, there won’t be any graphic pictures. There would have been, but as you know, I am without a camera.

It’s Mrs. Mama Hen’s first time hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling so stop by and show her some love!

Well, it seems our year of changes shall include yet another change. The addition of another little bundle of joy come December or so.

Wow.

I’m not actually sure how to express my thoughts, but maybe that is because I’m sleeping through most of them.

I have a garden to plant, chicken tractors to build, geese to prepare for and you don’t even want to know what my house looks like right now. Oh, and did I mention homeschooling?

And mentally, there’s something about six children that I can’t quite get my mind around. Maybe because I’m still imagining going into labor while snowed in without power in the middle of nowhere. A not-so-pleasant fancy aided along by my mom’s friend telling me about someone she knew being taken to the hospital on the paramedic’s snowmobile.

But I don’t even know anyone with a snowmobile.

Maybe I can borrow Mr. B’s tractor–his sprayer, since we are trying to learn what all this stuff is we see all around us every day now. We were watching it on the fields yesterday. I think it has enough clearance to go right over our minivan.

Or maybe I can just go get a hotel room for a month. Except hardly anyone has rooms to accommodate a family with five children, let alone six.

The children are excited. They have been arguing about whether the new little bundle should be a boy or a girl. They have finally come to an amicable agreement, however.

“Mom can just have twins! One of each! That’s fair, mom, right?”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Can you imagine?

Well, I’m attending my very first writer’s conference this weekend and have decided to step outside myself a bit and participate in the public readings this evening. The only problem is, I need something to read.

That’s where I need your help. I’m going to bring along one of my blog entries because, well, that’s all I have at the moment. But which one to bring? These are the ones I’m considering at the moment:

In which my husband tries to burn down the county

Late night visitors, or attack of the coyotes

In which I beat off a coyote with a box of Rice Chex

Which one would you suggest? Or can you think of another that might be appropriate?

Oh, and, uh, what do you wear to these things?

Thanks!

Congratulations Holly Canfield! You won the Share the Harvest Challenge! I hope you enjoy gardening and I’ll email you shortly to get your gift certificate sent!

I sit typing this at one in the morning to your pitiful whines, Hunter, and I want you to know you are a good dog. You are not locked outside in the kennel for punishment. Quite the opposite. You are locked out there because I trust you. Because I know you are the only one who can do the job I have set before you. Because you are a good dog.

It all started with a little Ameraucana chick named Nacho. Well, it actually started with an appointment for a dress fitting which required me to lock the chickens up early. This isn’t usually much of a problem. By afternoon, the hens are rather peckish and are willing to follow a dish of food anywhere. The chicks, on the other hand, have not yet learned this.

I was pleased to note, however, that all the chicks were already in the hen house taking their afternoon nap. That makes the chicken round up ever so much easier.

Except one decided that easy was not in the plans for the day and slipped out as I put the hens in.

She immediately sought shelter under the hen house and refused to budge. No amount of coaxing and cajoling and poking with sticks would convince her to move from her place of refuge. I couldn’t just leave her there, but I couldn’t stay, either.

So you, dear Hunter, are there in my stead. Pepper would kill the chick quicker than a fox. Copper would chase it until it had a heart attack. But you…you, Hunter, would stand over the little chick and growl at anything that dared come too close. If the little chick is to make it through her night of freedom, it will be because you are there to protect her when I couldn’t catch her.

You are out there now for the same reason that I let you run the property without a leash. For the same reason that you are not normally kenneled when we leave but are allowed to stay in the house. For the same reason you’ve never been chained since we moved here. For the same reason you are allowed to come in and out of the house at will.We trust you because you are a good dog.

It is sort of like my eldest daughter who sometimes balks at her added responsibility. She forgets the privilege that comes alongside that responsibility. Except she’s a girl, somewhat capable of understanding the explanation. You are a dog and all I know to tell you is this:

Good boy, Hunter. Good boy.

That and expect an extra treat in your dish tomorrow and maybe a good game of fetch.

Our recent fire produced many unintended positive consequences beyond just the immediate change of perspective it granted me that day. So many, in fact, that it sort of seems like one of those “all things work together for good” kind of things, which is much easier to recognize after the fact and especially when nothing “bad” actually happened in the first place. If you’ve never had someone try to encourage you with that after something bad truly has happened, well, just trust me on that, OK?

1. You get to meet the neighbors.

There isn’t much to do out in the middle of nowhere, and when you notice your neighbor’s property going up in smoke the instinct to gawk, er, see if you can help is strong. We finally met the farmer who owns the fields adjacent to us. Who, incidentally, consoled us with a story about the time he accidentally set his neighbor’s pasture on fire back in the time before cell phones.

Oh, and when the neighbor drops in to help you in your time of need, it provides a good excuse to bake some cookies and bring them down to solidify those early ties and let them know you aren’t a complete loss as a naive city-slicker.

2. It gets things done.

In Lancaster County, you got things done by calling and complaining. At least there was a number to call and complain to, and Lancaster County has something called money to do something about it. OK, so they’re always complaining about a lack of it, but they aren’t This County which truly is lacking in the resources to take care of things like our road.

The sign says that the gravel ends a quarter mile up the road, but it lies. The gravel ends at the sign, and deep ruts begin. Ruts so deep that our cars scrape the bottom and mud so thick we can’t always make it up the hill. But you see, the head of the volunteer fire department also drives one of these.

And I think it is no small coincidence that he showed up in it the day after the fire and graded our road.

I also think it no small coincidence that his friend, the guy with the giant dump truck full of gravel, showed up the day after that and dumped a fresh load of gravel on our stretch of the road. Gravel which the news was just reporting was coming at a premium this year, leaving the county to prioritize the worst stretches of road (and leaving a sinking feeling in my heart with regards to the prospects for our road).

3) You learn valuable information about the area, and most importantly about your own property.

When the neighbors congregate, they like to swap stories, and there’s nothing like a new neighbor who hasn’t heard them all already. We finally gained some insight into our coyote issues. It seems this used to be a favored dumping site for the local poachers with NINE deer carcasses piled up next to our garage at one point. Yes, this was the all you can eat buffet for the local coyotes, and apparently they haven’t quite given up the idea that its doors will reopen. Since I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to dump a carcass now that someone is actually living here, I have hope that with time, the coyotes will simply move on.

4) Fire is healthy for grass.

This property was vacant for two years. In that time, it became somewhat overgrown as it slowly reverted to a semi-wild state. The grass was having difficulty pushing up through last year’s dead growth, and the whole land looked messy and unkempt. Mostly because it was messy and unkempt. Now, just over a week after the fire, I can still see where the fire was as I drive up our road, but not because of the blackened dead area it appeared to be just after the fire.

No, it and the flower garden it took are now the highlights of the property. The land is green and lush, marked by the distinct outline of the fire’s path.

Before:

After:

Pretty impressive, huh? And, uh, yeah. I just provided the world with photographic evidence that I have done nothing in the last week to clean up that little pile of stuff. Oops. Anyway, it is leaving my husband to sort of kind of wish that the fire, so long as it was to be, had somehow taken the rest of the grass while also miraculously leaving the buildings and trees untouched.

Disclaimer: I in no way advocate setting fire to anything in order to reap the aforementioned benefits. But so long as it did happen, I shall count my blessings, naming them one by one.

Last year, we started seeds in our garden in February after a prolonged warm spell made my garden irresistable. No such luck this year, with winter barely releasing its grasp by mid-March. There’s actually still snow on the ground, and the garden soil is nothing but mush. But my early gardening experiment went well enough, I am trying to get my hands on some 2 liter pop bottles to try it again this year but on a larger scale. After all, last year, my garden measured 200 square feet. This year, we’re going for 2,000.

Why on earth would I need 2 liter pop bottles for my garden? For cloches, of course!

Around here, “cloche” is just a fancy word meaning used milk jug or used 2 liter bottle. In other places, like France, it means bell. Some people go all out with these little mini-greenhouses. But not us. We just stuck our trash in the garden to see if it would do any good.

And with some minor frustrations, it did. We found that plastic milk jugs just tend to collapse when you push them into the soil and blow away once you get them in so they are kind of pointless. Two liter bottles hold up much better, and old V-8 bottles don’t even crinkle when you press them into the soil around your newly planted seeds.

You do need to watch them, though, and they take a little care. The lids for the bottles worked well to hold in heat at night. When taken off in the morning, the openings served as a perfect vent to keep from cooking the plants during the day. And oh yes, even on a cold day, those things can start cooking your seedlings so long as the sun is out. Which means paying attention to the weather every day and lidding or unlidding cloches accordingly.

You also have to watch the moisture level. The cloches seem to suck water from the soil and regular watering is a must. Trying to aim a narrow stream of water from a hose three feet away was a bit of a challenge, and sometimes I did give up and go over with a cup of water. I think next year, I may try to start the cloches closer to the hose. Or get a longer hose.

Finally, when we went to take the cloches out, they tried to take the garden soil and all its vegetable contents with them. That was a little annoying and two of my cloches are still in the garden because I can’t get them to let go of the soil.

But then, I didn’t expect trying to start plants outdoors a full two months before our last frost date to be easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it. Last year was just an experiment to see if it did work and how well.

Comparing the beets grown in the cloche:

to the beets grown outside the cloche with a little mulching (that blew away in a storm anyway):

clearly demonstrates that the concept works. Even with my leftover pop bottles.

But where to get that many pop bottles?

_____

Check out Heavenly Homemakers blog for her Little Green Project. Lots of fun green stuff to try!