Dandelion Flower Cordial

This recipe makes a great light flavoured cordial and makes 1-2 bottles. Enjoyed best over a slice of lemon and ice cubes this is a perfect spring and summer drink. The flavour is very mild and sometimes outweighed by the syrupy nature of the cordial so those who have a sweet tooth may really enjoy this one.

Due to no preservatives or additional ingredients, this cordial has a high sugar content to prevent it from going bad.
Dandelion flowers can be collected around March to April when the sun is in full swing to ensure the flowers are out and full of goodness.

Ingredients

100 Dandelion Flower Heads or more
1kg sugar estimate
half a lemon

Method

Collect at least 100 dandelion flower heads fully opened and trim off the green bases. It’s okay to get a few green bits in with the petals and they usually get in the way.

Give the petals a quick wash/rinse but be careful not to loose all the flavour!

Boil the petals with roughly 1 pint of water and allow to cool and steep overnight in a covered bowl.

Add the juice from a half a lemon and strain out the petals thoroughly.

Weigh the liquid (a bit tricky I know) and for every 1g of liquid you have created add 0.95g of sugar. You can use different sugar types if you prefer but they will affect the flavour, for a clean basic flavour use white granulated.

Stir in the sugar and gently heat until dissolved (do not boil).

Pour contents into bottles and seal.

Dandelion Coffee

This coffee can be made all year round, but to get the best size of dandelion roots harvest them around February & March just before they flower.

Ingredients

Dandelion Roots

Method

Scrub the roots to ensure they are clean from soil.

Dry them or oven roast them at a low temperature until brittle to the touch.

Grind up the roots and store in a clean dry jar.

To enjoy this coffee, boil the powder in a saucepan until the water turns dark brown like espresso and you can smell the “coffee”. Then pour into your cup as per normal instant coffee. The great benefit of this coffee substitute is that not only does it taste almost the same as coffee and have a great robust and smooth savoury flavour but it also has zero caffeine in it. If you are looking to cut back on your caffeine this may be the answer for you.

Convert Gutters to Grow Salad

This project was quick, easy and very effective to do and best of all, it only cost a couple of screws and a glue stick. If you are like us stuck for places to grow your salad food close to home you can take advantage of any spare guttering you have or find in skips. You can find old guttering down the side of houses, at building sites or in skips, just check with the house owner first in case they still want them.

Step One

Collect Guttering from Authorised Source – You don’t need to buy new guttering, it’s expensive and there are lots of gutters laying around going to waste.

Try to find the brackets too. If you can’t find any brackets you can pick them up from your local DIY store for £1.50 each for the cheapest kind.

Step Two

Dig some plastic milk bottles out of the recycling bin, if you don’t have any you may find a few in any of the recycling bins in your street. It’s better to reuse something than to recycle it so don’t worry about it but you can always ask permission from the house owner first just to make sure. In fact, it usually strikes up a fun and interesting conversation! Cut the milk bottles in half vertically and horizontally and take the halves of the base.

Step Three

Using a low watt glue gun (available from most DIY or arts & crafts stores), glue the base and sides of the milk carton quarter to the guttering to seal up the ends like this:

Step Four

Drill holes along the base of the gutter to allow the water to escape and avoid boggy soil.

Step Five

Fill the bottom of the gutter with small pebbles or rock fragments to improve the drainage of the soil. Than top the gutter up with good all purpose compost or general soil fit for planting.

Step Six

Transplant plants of your choice to the soil and ensure you water after planting.

Step Seven

Place gutter brackets on to your chosen area with screws such as a bare fence panel or the side of your garden shed. Make sure the guttering gets plenty of direct sunlight through out the day but also gets the most light for the longest duration of the day. When fixed into place simply slide and snap the guttering into place.

Warning: Acorns as Chicken Feed

Having just got two big healthy chickens my partner and I have been looking at low cost ways to supplement their pellet feed. This means compiling big lists of poisonous foods and foods that are okay. It’s actually quite complicated and lots of foods that are okay for us are actually poisonous for chickens including nettles and parsley! We now make it a habit of researching any spare scraps we have properly before giving them to the chickens to ensure we are not harming them in any way. I will post a growing list of foods that are poisonous to chickens shortly that I will update as I learn more.

Now I am pretty thorough when it comes to my research, I do not do anything by half. Not everyone is as keen on this side of things and tends to jump on ideas as soon as they see them however. My partner Alan saw a long and well established blog called Living the Frugal Life where the author had become quite excited about feeding his chickens Acorns in abundant amounts to cut down feeding costs. The problem was that he mentioned at no point how to remove their TOXINS and actually feeds his chickens raw crushed acorns. This sent alarm bells ringing in my head as I was sure I had seen somewhere previously that Acorns were poisonous to Poultry because of the Tanins in them – the same reason they are toxic to us. Now chickens have delicate and simple digestive systems, if pretty much nearly everything is toxic to them, surely Acorns would not be so good for them either? I found a few lesser blogs that claimed they were okay and a few that also claimed it was poisonous. Who was right?

It was then I came across this blog post: Acorns: Toxic Feed for Poultry which is not only an experienced homesteading blog it also contains the facts and maths behind Acorn Toxicity!

Now which blog post am I going to trust? The one that simply says ” I did it and they haven’t died” or the one that says “scientific studies show not to and here is my source of information”.

If I could, I would quote the entire blog post from Woodridge Homestead. It’s basically a pure block of useful knowledge. But let’s glean the facts we need to know out of this:

Acorns have KNOWN TOXIC and ANTI NUTRITIONAL effects on certain animals including POULTRY.
Studies with poultry and other animals have been conducted and all of these animals show negative side-effects with Acorns used as feed.
Chickens show weight loss, egg production changes, and other adverse effects, including DEATH.
Tannins in Acorns negatively affect FEED INTAKE, DIGESTION and PRODUCTION.
Tannins (<5%) cause DEPRESSED GROWTH RATES, LOW PROTEIN UTILIZATION, DAMAGE to the DIGESTIVE TRACT, alteration to the excretion of certain cations and increased EXCRETION of PROTEINS and essential AMINO ACIDS.
Chickens react to as little as 0.5% tannins causing SLOW GROWTH AND LESS EGG PRODUCTION. Level from as low as 3% can cause DEATH.

“Generally, tannins induce a negative response when consumed. These effects can be instantaneous like astringency or a bitter or unpleasant taste or can have a delayed response related to antinutritional/toxic effects … Tannins negatively affect an animal’s feed intake, feed digestibility, and efficiency of production. These effects vary depending on the content and type of tannin ingested and on the animal’s tolerance, which in turn is dependent on characteristics such as type of digestive tract, feeding behavior, body size, and detoxification mechanisms.

”

Cornell University’s Dept of Animal Science

It was after reading this I also noticed the guy on Living the Frugal Life had even HINTED that his hens were not LAYING as they should:

“I would bet they’re pretty well on their way to a complete laying hen diet.”

The more I looked at his post the more anger I felt. It was basically guesswork and irresponsibility. Not only is he feeding his chickens a toxic substance he is telling other people to do so: and they are listening. His chickens hadn’t died yet so he figures that’s okay, never mind their long term health and wellbeing, his responsibility to his readers or finding out the facts.

What we Recommend

If you want to give your chickens Acorns you can but you MUST remove the Tannins first just like you would for human consumption and do not use them as sole or main feed crop, they are a special treat for your chickens and do not hold nutritional value.

To remove the tannins you can cook the acorns through thoroughly or run them through running water such as in a stream for several weeks. We suggest cooking is easier, faster and more reliable.

It goes to show you how untrustworthy a lot of information online is, always triple check or quadruple check your facts before making any decisions! This goes for anything and everything but especially for food stuffs!

Nest Reminder Eggs for Chickens

A handy little trick I just picked up was to buy fake eggs for your chickens. We have just got two chickens in our yard and after a quick change of things we built a new nest box. The chickens were taking it in turns on just one nest so I wanted to encourage eggs in the new nest box too.

I picked up 9 of these plastic eggs from the supermarket for just 75p all in. It’s easter, so take advantage of this and get some fake eggs for your chickens just in case. You can also get proper chicken eggs that look much more realistic but I found it really doesn’t matter. Pop an egg into each nest and your chickens will get the idea. It also prevents them laying outside of nest boxes with a gentle reminder of where to go.

As you can see compared to the real deal these eggs are much smaller and definitely not chicken like but my chickens are quite happy with their egg reminders and now laying in both nest areas.

Chives or Crow Garlic

Name: Chives, Crow Garlic

Location: Rocky areas or roadsides

Months: March, April, May, June, July

Edible Parts: Young Leaves (softer brighter green ones)

Non-Edible Parts: Flowers

It’s amazing what you find out and about on a pathway or woodland path. In this instance I found Chives or Crow Garlic. They are essentially the same thing, long thin tubular leaves that smell and taste of onion/garlic. You can use them fresh as they are or dry them out to use as a herb later.

Nettles

It’s not just goosegrass that’s popping up this spring nice and early. Nettles are growing new shoots in abundance and these new baby leaves are perfect for a variety of household kitchen uses.

The newest youngest nettle leaves can be picked for a variety of meals and treats including nettle tea and nettle pesto. Why pay an obscene amount for a small jar of pesto or a few bags of tea that you can basically get for free from your garden?

Name: Nettles

Location: Anywhere.

Months: March, April

Edible Parts: Young Leaves (softer brighter green ones)

Non-Edible Parts: Tough older leaves (just not very tasty)

Caution: Wear gloves when picking and wilt before eating!

Make sure before you eat any nettles that you properly wilt them first. To do so, place the nettles in boiling hot water and push under the surface then take them out and put them into cold water right away to stop them cooking. This removes the sting and makes them edible.

Wild Garlic Paste

Now that the Wild Garlic is springing up again this season take advantage of it and try to store as much of it as possible to last you until your next garlic harvest.

A simple and easy way to store wild garlic is to create a garlic paste. All you need is some high quality oil such as Olive Oil and a bunch of wild garlic leaves/bulbs. SO long as the wild garlic isn’t flowering, you can use the whole thing for this paste.

Step One: Add a touch of lemon juice, a dash of salt and pour a tablespoon of olive oil to your Wild Garlic. Then, blend them together, a handheld blender works best.

Step Two: Add more love oil if necessary to make a strong garlic paste to the thickness you desire and mix well.

Step Three: Pour into a jar and top with a layer of oil to seal it in and stop air exposure.

You can keep this paste in the pantry or in the fridge, so long as the oil layer is maintained it shouldn’t go bad. You may find in the fridge the oil layer becomes hard, that’s normal! Just scoop underneath it and reseal after use. You should only need a teaspoon per meal to replace your usual garlic cloves as it’s reasonably strong flavoured.

Goose Grass Tea

If you have picked up some goosegrass this spring for eating, save a little to one side for some goosegrass tea.

DIABETICS SHOULD AVOID THIS RECIPE.

Making the tea is very simple! Just dry out the goosegrass at around 50 degrees in your oven or dehydrator. Then collect in an air tight dry and sterile pot.

To brew the tea, simply add a little to your strainer or pot and allow to steep for ten minutes.

This tea makes a great herbal remedy for constipation as it’s a mild laxative.

Goosegrass

It’s spring! and One of the first things to come up this spring that you may not be aware of as being edible is – Goosegrass! You may know it by many names including sticky weed, it’s distinctive due to it’s sticky nature and most people know it from their childhood days of sticking it onto the backs of unknowing parents and siblings.

It’s been a while since our last post, and we haven’t been idle but winter is a hard season. Next year we will be able to tell you more about the various wine, cider and food stuffs we have been collecting in more detail.

Name: Goose Grass, Sticky Weed.

Location: Anywhere, usually poorly drained and compacted soil.

Months: March, April

Edible Parts: Leaves, Seeds

Non-Edible Parts: Burrs

Caution: Diabetics should avoid Goose Grass Teas.

As one of the first edible plants to pop up at the start of the spring season, Goosegrass is a handy herb to know how to use as a part of your diet. Best picked in March in full sunshine, you can take advantage of the young fresh leaves. The leaves can be used like a salad leaf or replacing basil in a pesto. If you use the leaves to make a tisane (Tea) it becomes a powerful diuretic and a mild laxative. The seeds can be used as a coffee substitute although in our humble opinion Dandelion roots make a much more substantial and tasty coffee flavour.
Even the root of this plant is useful as a red dye agent.