2015 – Sustainable Life Birmingham

Jelly Ear Hunting

Sometimes it is handy to get a look at a foragable item “in motion”. Pictures do not often do it justice when thinking about location and 3D appearance.

For this reason I have produced a short clip of my jelly hunt this year in a well known mushrooming spot in Birmingham.

View the video here.

These jelly ears were found in a man made wood consisting of Pine, Fir/Spruce and Elder. Jelly ears are commonly found on dead elder trees and here was no exception. For help identifying Jelly Ears for yourself you can also check out of Jelly Ear Identification post.

For comparison here is a picture of some of the jelly ears I found yesterday both fresh and old.

Volunteer Work for “Trees for Cities”

Today, sustainable life course leader Stephanie Adelaar took a trip down to her old haunt Walmley to help plant trees. Working with Kingstanding Food Community, Forest Schools Birmingham and Trees for Cities we helped to plant up over 50 meters with two lines of small trees packed together to form a mixed wood bush including hawthorns and sloes.

We got quite a lot done despite some set backs (lack of a coffee shop, rain etc). For more information check out their website.

Thimblemill Library Event

Sustainable Life attended the Thimblemill Library event and managed a stall showcasing our courses and produce. We felt it was really sucessful with many people complimenting our preserves and goat’s cheese! We also had lots of people interested in our future courses (yay!). Then later on we took a selection of people outside to thimblemill brook for a short foraging walk where we found:

Pears
Dandelions
Yarrow
Horseradish
Puffballs
Velvet Shanks
Inkcaps
and more!

Thimblemill Library Event Gallery.

Thimbleful Library Event, Bearwood

Sustainable Life have been invited by Grandma’s Apple Crumble (A heritage project) to have a stall at the gathering at Thimblemill Library in Bearwood on Sunday 15th November 2015. Here we will be available to answer questions, sign up to hear about our courses or just drop by and pick up an information pack. Our course leader Alan Bale will be attending the event to do a foraging walk at Thimblemill Brook and a brief talk.

Grandma’s Apple Crumble is self described as: project centring on food scarcity during World War One and how that relates to our current situation in the area. It’s about connecting people through a shared experience of what life is like for us today against the backdrop of what it was like back then. The project involves planting fruit trees by the Thimblemill Brook with Uplands School and a Gathering at Thimblemill Library on the 15 Nov 2015 to which the wider community is invited.

More information and pictures of this event will be forthcoming!

Highbury Harvest Festival

Sustainable Life had a small corner at the Highbury Harvest Festival this year where we demonstrated how to make nettle rope. You can view the gallery for this event here.

We had lots of fun at the festival this year and spent most of our time making short lengths of Nettle rope which turned into wonderful little bracelets! We tested the rope (with a few failures but mostly sucesses) to see how strong it is and used some of it to help tie the photograph boards down.

We had a lovely array of photographs from our last nettle workshop at Sarehole Mill (taken by Dean Gammon Photographer), and a basket of information bundles all about nettles, our next two workshops and a special offer!

We didn’t just make nettle rope either, we also threw together the start of a woven basket using nettles in the style of a willow basket weave (on display with a bramble basket). We had nettle tea on the boil for most of the afternoon with a selection of extras including cammomile and lemonbalm.

We were also very pleased to get a positive response to our Nettle and Neem oil moisturising bars and gave a few away!

Thank you to everyone who came over and had a look at our section and thank you to everyone who signed up interest to our courses for 2016! We hope to have many more dates planned for the next year very soon so stay tuned!

How to Make your Own Real Tomato Sauce

Do you have a thriving tomato plant in your home, garden, polytunnel or conservatory? Great! Then by now you are no doubt getting handfuls of tomatoes from it and looking at more unique ways of serving them up. This is a fantastic way of preserving the tomatoes and gaining a tasty sauce you don’t need to feel bad about adding to your dishes. This sauce keeps for up to 12 months sealed and 6 weeks once opened (if stored in the fridge when open). It tastes great too!

Ingredients

2.5kg tomatoes
1 large onion
2 tsp ground black peppercorns
2 tsp coriander
4 cloves crushed garlic
1 teaspoon tomato paste
2 teaspoons ginger (ground or juiced according to taste)
dash of chilli according to personal preference
600ml white wine vinegar
250g white sugar
1 tsp salt

Method

Roughly chop the tomatoes and onion, and place in a large pan with all the spices. Add the vinegar and bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes.

Add the sugar and stir until dissolved then bring to the boil. Once boiling point is reached reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour.

When the sauce is thick and pulpy blend or sieve the mixture according to your preference and store in an appropriate rubber sealed bottle.

How to Make Goat’s Cheese (Chevre)

Goat’s cheese (Chevre variety) is a light and soft crumbly cheese with a lemon zest. It’s a traditional favourite and making it for yourself can save quite a few pennies even if you don’t own your own goats. Standard store bought goat’s milk will do the job and one carton does roughly three ‘rolls’.

You can also use some plants instead of lemons to coagulate the milk such as Nettle, Sorrel and Yarrow. However I am still experimenting with these so more on these later on.

Ingredients

1/3 Carton of Goat’s Milk
1/2 Lemon

Method

Heat the Goat’s milk until it reaches 180c. The milk should suddenly expand and go crazy in your pot attempting to boil over. Immediately turn off the heat and remove the pan from the hob.

Add Lemon Juice and let it sit for a moment. The milk should curdle but it will be difficult to spot this as it’s quite a subtle thing with goat’s milk.

You shouldn’t have to wait more than a few sceonds.

Place a muslin cloth over a bowl and pour the mixture in. Allow it to sit for at least 2 hours. The cheese will sit on the top. The liquid is called whey and can be used in a variety of ways including as rice stock water for extra flavour.

Wrap the cheese curds in baking paper and store in the fridge to firm up over night.

Poppy Seeds

Name: Poppy Seeds

Location: Gardens, Parks, Sidewalks

Months: June, July August

Edible Parts: Seeds

Caution: Make sure you correctly identify the poppy flower before proceeding.

Poppies of all sizes and colours make wonderful nutrient rich seeds to add a little extra to your cooking.

After the flowers have bloomed the pod develops and then dries out. All you have to do is tip it over and the seeds will pour out of the holes at the top of the pod.

How to Tell if your Hen is Broody

For those of us that don’t have the inclination to buy an incubator and brooder and spend months rearing chicks by hand ourselves every day while loosing a substantial amount of space to the brooder in our homes, there is an all new invention: The Broody Hen.

Okay so it’s not so new, but it is a rare and beautiful find to possess. I figuritively cry when I see forum posts about broody hens when the owner just doesn’t want thier hen to go broody. Of course, I understand in smallscale operations you just want a couple of egg layers and no fuss, but don’t break your broody hen – give her to someone who really needs a broody prone hen and swap her for an egg laying machine. Not only is it kinder to the hen, it’s also vital for many natural method chicken owners. Personally not only do I find it MUCH easier to get a broody hen to rear your chickens, but I can’t stand the fact that many breeds of chicken now simply do not go broody, it’s been specifically bred out of them to ensure relentless egg laying machines for your supermarket eggs. If we didn’t incubate them, they would be in serious trouble as it’s quite rare for them to get broody and raise chicks naturally. Surely that isn’t something we should be encouraging just for our own convenience?

I digress…

Clear Signs you have a broody hen

1. You hardley ever see her outside anymore
This is a big one. If your hen is outside all day – the eggs are not being incubated. Eggs can be left without a hen sitting on them for approximately half an hour maximum before you start to loose eggs. Therefore, during brooding the hen has a strong urge to make sure they do not get off those eggs except to feed, drink and poop. For the first few days this can mean they don’t get up at all – as if they are making absolutely sure the ball is rolling before they risk anything. If you don’t think your hen has budged an inch for a couple of days, you may wish to consider picking her up off the nest and plopping her down by the food to encourage her to eat and drink before she sits down again.

2. Her poop is big and smelly
Because she isn’t eating and drinking throughout the day she also isn’t pooping regularly. This means when she does get up off the nest she has a nice big poop before she get’s back to work. All that extra stored up poop is going to be pretty ripe and much larger than her regular poops.

3. She has stopped laying eggs
Sometimes, she will brood even with no eggs underneath her! These are what I refer to as “Hardcore broodies”. But whether she has enough eggs or not, she will stop laying if she wants to sit and brood. If she still hasn’t “set” try adding some extra eggs into the nest box as it may be she doesn’t have the right number for what she wants to brood. Unless she is an old bird (4 years ish for most breeds to hit ‘menopause’ up to 7 years in some cases), not laying eggs is a good indicator that she has decided to try to brood.

4. She makes the “Broody noise”
I made a little video of an example of a broody noise from quite a tame broody hen which you can watch below. Basically, while she is sitting on the nest if you go anywear near her she will make a gutteral warning noise telling you to stay away from her and her eggs. The severity of this can vary depending on the hen, broodier breeds like maran and maran hybrid types can get quite upset puffing up to increase thier size, pecking at you and being very noisy! Your tamest most gentle hen can suddenly turn into a viscious rapter ready to eat you alive.

Video not working? Use the direct link instead and click here.

5. Missing breast feathers
In order to get her lovely hormone elevated hot skin on the eggs to transfer her body heat more effectively, the hen will often pluck a few chest feather out (little downy ones). She will then use these to line her nest for extra insulation. What a clever mommy! Seeing breast feathers in nest boxes is a great indication someone in the flock is getting ready to brood.

Worries/Concerns/FAQ

Q. My Hen refuses to eat/drink what should I do?

A. I have had this happen once, during the first week or so of brooding. Even picking her up off the nest did not deter her, she would storm right back to the eggs immediately. The brooding was strong in this one! My solution was to bring the food and water to her. I made sure they were both within reach from the nest if she stretched out her neck, she seemed happy with this solution as it meant she could have a drink and didnt have to leave her precious eggs uncovered. After a week she calmed down and fed/drank/pooped off the nest and I moved the food and water further away. If you have to do this, keep an eye out for pooping on the nest, a hazard caused by the hen’s unwillingness to get off the nest which can kill eggs.

Q. My hen is showing signs of broodiness but isn’t staying on the eggs enough. What is going on?

A. Your hen is thinking about brooding but something isn’t quite right yet. Sometimes I never figure out what it is! It could be not enough eggs, not dark enough, not private enough, not the right size nest area, the weather turned a bit too cold, she doesn’t feel safe there, it’s just not her favourite place to nest or her breed is ‘easily broken’ i.e. a commercial chicken breed that likely will never brood. Good luck!

Yarrow

Name: Yarrow

Location: Grassy areas, short grass or long

Months: All Year Round

Edible Parts: Leaves, flowers

While this is a picture of Yarrow on my allotment, I can assure you this plant grows everywhere and you are as likely to come across it as you are to find docks or dandelions. Often hidden in short grass the plant Yarrow can appear to be horizontal for most of the year only revealing itself by a few well trodden on curls of leaves in parks and pathway grass. However, at this time of year it also starts to grow upwards as it attempts to throw out some flowers and it can get very tall in the right location.

The leaves and flowers of Yarrow are used in salads and yarrow oil is also used in shampoo. Some people chew on yarrow to relieve toothache. In the garden it makes an excellent compost activator. Medicinal uses include easing the symptoms of fever, colds, gastrointestinal issues including IBS symptoms and to induce sweating.

WARNING: Do not consume excessive amounts, may contain thujone, cause drowsiness and increase urination. For some people, it can also cause a skin irritation.