Early May 2024| Practical Self Reliance

Early May in Pictures

May is one of those months where it’s best to let the pictures do the talking. There’s just so much going on, in the kitchen, garden and woods…and sometimes a picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.

Here’s a look at what’s on my camera roll for the first half of May…

Some of the first blossoms on our Manchurian Apricot. It’s a cold hardy zone 3 apricot tree that we planted just 2 years ago. It was just a 6’’ tall stick then. They’re fast growing, and I’m hoping we’ll get a few fruit to set this year so I can taste them.

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I’ve started a fish canning series on Creative Canning, and home canned salmon was the first to be posted. Later this summer, I have 5 different fish soup and chowder canning recipes, along with tutorials on canning tuna, trout, shrimp, clams and more.

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The finished jars of home canned salmon. It can be put up with or without skin. The skin is full of healthy oils, and helps keep the fish moist during canning. The picture above has three jars with and three without skin included. All are pressure canned and shelf stable indefinitely…perfect for last minute weeknight fish cakes served over fresh greens from the garden.

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One of our bottle baby farm cats that my daughter raised from 4 weeks old last summer. He’s grown into a beauty, and he’s giving the field mice a run for their money in that daffodil bed.

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Homegrown strawberries are some of our favorites, and we devote a lot of raised bed space to classic junebearing, everbearing and alpine strawberries. They’re best planted bare root, and plants come in bundles of 25 for just a few dollars. These bare root strawberries will be lush plants in a month or so, and they’ll save you a lot of money over those individual potted strawberries at the garden center.

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Rainbow trout for stocking into our pond. I’m working on a post about harvesting food from your homestead pond, be it protein based like these little guys, or plant based with more than a dozen edible water plants (most of which are also stunningly beautiful…so they’re dual purpose!).

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Wild foraged garlic mustard is one of those plants everyone loves to hate. It’s actually qutie beautiful, and tasty…and it’s appreciated as an edible in Europe where it’s native. Here in the US, it’s popular to organize garlic mustard erradiation parties where friends go out and try to uproot every last bit…but all in vain. More soil disturbance means more garlic mustard. If you can’t beat it, eat it I say!

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Field Horsetail (Equisetum arvense) is another prolific edible plant, and it starts out as spore bearing cones early in spring. Later on, sterile fronds pop up that look like tiny pine trees. The cones produce millions of microscopic airborn spores, so it spreads rapidly and it’s common as a garden weed or along roadsides. It happens to be a tasty edible plant, and potent medicinal, and it’s almost 25% bioavailable silica by weight. It’s used mostly for joint pain, either eaten (cooked or raw), or made into a tincture or tea.

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Horsetail flower cones. I sent my kids out on a mission before dinnertime to harvest some of these crunchy little guys, and they came back with a gallon in about 10 minutes. As you can see, they barely dented the patch. All parts are edible, but the early flower cones are particularly tasty. They have a texture like bean sprouts, and they add a light, sweet crunch to meals. I like them simple, just sauteed in butter.

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Cornelian Cherry flowers in early May. These are one of the very first flowers of spring, and they’ll even flower before crocus, coltsfoot and february daphne some years. If they’re lucky, and it’s a warm day, the bees will pollinate them and they’ll turn into delicious edible fruit that’s treasured in Eastern Europe.

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I finally got around to processing the seaberries (sea buckthorn) fruit in our freezer. A gallon of fruit made half a gallon of rich, tropical citrus flavored juice and a pint of pulp and seeds. They’re hardy to zone 2, nirtogen fixing and make a nice thorny hedge or windbreak. I processed it raw through a food mill so that the seeds could be thrown to expand our patch. The juice is incredible, and the most tropical flavor you can get this far north…but quite acidic, and more acidic than oranges. Think of it as a mix between orange, pinapple and passionfruit…plus a splash of lemon. It’s wonderful, but most people like it diluted or sweetened a bit into a lemonade like drink.

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We were doing some work with a backhoe, digging out a low lying area into a small frog pond and I accidentally harvested a bucket of Hopniss (American Groundnut). They thrive in wet areas, and produce beautiful flowering vines in the summer. The chains of tubers are easily recognizable, even if the plant is dormant as it is this time of year.

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Another shot of American Groundnuts, this time peeled (at the top). They taste like parsnips, with a sweet starchy flavor and small round parsnip texture. Wash, peel and boil them for a real treat. They’re delicious, and calorie dense, and a great way to harvest a meaningful amount of food during the “hunger moon” before spring wild edibles come in (provided you know where to dig).

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This time of it seems like our plum orchard can be seen (and the perfume enjoyed) from space. The branches are absolutely covered in blossoms, and when the wind is just right, you can smell thier intoxicating fragrance 100 yards away. Bees have better noses than we do, and you can bet they found them too!

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What are you working on, harvesting, or just plain excited about this spring?

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance