Mid-May 2022| Practical Self Reliance

Spring Greens, Violet Wine and Stock Tank Pools

It’s been “spring” in a technical sense for almost a month now, but we’re just seeing our first real blossoms. Earlier this month, we got hints of spring with blossoms from Cornelian Cherry, Honeyberries, Red Maple, Spicebush, Forsythia, Spring Beauty, Daphne, Coltsfoot, Trillium and Bloodroot. Those early bloomers keep the pollinators fed well before the dandelions appear.

Once the dandelions arrive, as they did this week, it’s hard to walk a straight line in the yard without smaking into some species of pollinator busily carrying food back home.

There’s so much to forage this time of year, for both bees and humans.

A quick walk around the yard fills my basket with more than 20 species of edible wild plants, and there are easily dozens more…I need a bigger basket. Last week I talked a bit about edible wild roots this time of year, so this week I’ll take you through some of the edible wild greens and flowers.

For greens in my basket, you’ll find chives, hostas, yarrow, ground ivy, dandelion, mullein, cleavers, rhubarb stalks and asparagus, as well as the edible leaves of raspberry, thimbleberry, blakcberry, currant and strawberry. With enough space, I could have added plantain, all heal, chickweed, sorrel, birch buds, linden leaves, and dozens wild edible weeds.

For edible flowers, there are apple, cherry, plum, dandelion, strawberry, ground ivy, chive, violet and lilac. It’s missing redbud, maple, serviceberry, blueberry and a dozen other tasty blossoms the bees are enjoying these days, that also happen to be edible to humans.

Redbud blossoms harvested this week for making redbud jelly.

In my ongoing quest to try make jelly out of just about every flower under the sun, we harvested redbud blossoms this week for jelly. You can make jelly out of just about any edble flower using this basic floral jelly recipe.

I’m working on new wild violet recipes, and we foraged half a gallon of blossoms this morning to experiment with violet wine. There are historical recipes going back as far as Ancient Rome, and I’m basing my version on a recipe in a 18th century herbal.

Wild violet flowers taste surprisingly like fresh berries, and a simple way to enjoy them is in violet jelly. If you want to try your hand at wine this year (before my violet wine recipe comes out), you can adapt my lilac wine recipe to use violet flowers.

Normally this time of year is pleasantly cool, with nights still occasionally below freezing and daytime highs in the 50s and 60s. We occasionally get snow on memorial day weekend, and our last frost happens as late as June 7th….but not this year.

This year, we’ve had a whole week of record heat just shy of 90 degrees without much relief in nighttime lows (and extreme humidity). Everything’s growing like crazy, the garden’s happy and we’ve even planted our tomatoes 3 weeks early…but the humans are suffering.

We decided to put in a stock tank pool, and everyone’s absolutely loving it. It’s 8 feet wide, so plenty big for the whole family to lounge in, and two feet deep is enough for the adults to have a comfortable seat while the littles can actually practice their swim strokes without bumping the bottom.

Filling it was quite the party, with lots of splashing and the unseasonably warm spring air perfumed by plum blossoms.

I’m not sure yet whether we’re going to outfit it with a filter system or not, we’ll have to see how it goes and I’ll update y’all as the summer progresses.

It holds about 700 gallons filled to the brim, or closer to 600 filled to a reasonable level. A little quick math, and 600 gallons of water is just right to give our our 30 raised garden beds an inch of water, and that doesn’t even touch our trees, raspberries, blueberries and other perennials.

We normally don’t water that much, since we get quite a bit of summer rain in an average year, but the last few years have seen incredible drought. In the past few seasons, we’ve seen extreme heat and went more than 60 days without a drop of rain during the hottest part of the year.

So much for that steady inch a week we’re supposed to get in a normal year. There hasn’t been a “normal” year in quite a while, so it’s best to be prepared.

I have a small pump that we purchased for about $40, and it allows me to power a garden hose from the pool, meaning I could just empty the whole thing every week or two watering my gardens (and then re-fill it instead of watering from the well). It all depends on how much rain we get…more rain means less watering, and a filter to just keep the pool filled might be worth it then. Time will tell.

Either way, with severe thunder storms knocking out power for a week or more at a time sometime sin the summer, having a backup of water’s not a bad idea anyway.

This week, I wrote an overview of emergency water filtration and purification options, and any of them would work to filter water from our stock tank. Just about all of them would work to filter from a steam or pond too, or if we were on city water, to purify water during a boil water notice.

I also put out a guide to planning an emergency food supply for your family. The supply chain’s still not doing that well, and with fertilizer shortages, there’s never been a better time to get your pantry in order. I talk you through all the options, whether you’re just keeping a deep pantry of non perishables, or buying an off the shelf option.

For our own pantry, I’m working on more meat curing recipes, especially ones that are easy to make in the summer months like bacon (and beef bacon). I’m also continuing to experiment with historical meat preservation techniques, all before refrigeration.

We potted meat this week, using an old Finnish recipe that calls for mutton neck and popular Scandinavian spices (like white pepper).

Properly made, potted meat should keep about a month in a cool location like a basement, root cellar or spring house…but doing it properly takes work. And food safety takes a lot of meticulous research.

Mutton neck with spices for a traditional potted meat recipe

I’m hoping to have my research into the topic finished by the fall to share with y’all, not just because potting is a great historical technique, but also because everything we’ve made using this technique has been darn delicious. Seriously, you should try duck confit.

Never a dull moment over here, and there’s always something new to learn. I’m so happy to have y’all to share it with =)

Until next week,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance