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Posted by Mom on September 19, 2017

The sounds of late summer fill the air outside: chirping crickets, strumming katydids, humming cicadas, twittering sparrows and squawking blue jays. All these noises coincide with the ripening of fruit and the opportunity for homesteaders to busy themselves with canning and “putting up” preserves to enjoy during the cold, dark winter months. 

Around here, the preserving season begins in early summer with strawberries. Other than the ones we all enjoy eating fresh or baked into pies, I freeze bags of berries or process them into jams. We like to use these frozen berries to make a sauce for pancakes and waffles. This past year was the first year we really got a worthwhile harvest from our own strawberry patch but the majority of strawberries we preserved came from a local farmers’ market.

We’re blessed to have two farmers’ markets near our home. The first is The Stand in Burford and the second is Your Farm Market in Woodstock. Both are great sources for locally produced food. When it is open during the summer season, a trip into Burford (our nearest town) typically includes a stop at The Stand. The little Harrolds are keen to visit The Stand because they are given a free lollipop and will request a visit when we are in town even if we were not planning one. Your Farm Market is in the City of Woodstock and we include it as a stop during our weekly shopping trip. 

After the strawberries, we shift to making pickles as the farm markets have baskets of pickling cucumbers to offer. And then the blueberries come into season and we can harvest them ourselves from neighbourhood U-pick operations or purchase flats full of blueberries. Again, what we don’t enjoy fresh we either freeze to use later or transform into pie-fillings and jams. This year I made a Blueberry Lime Jam that the little ones like to eat on their toast.

Come August, the stone fruits ripen and the smaller tomatoes are ready for picking. In our house, the little ones like to use plum sauce, and rather than buying bottles of plum sauce, with much more sugar and pumpkin than plums listed among the ingredients, I made a batch of plum sauce. I used red plums rather than yellow plums, so the colour of the
sauce is a deep red instead of the typical pale orange, but the little ones don’t mind and give it a thumbs-up.

The next bountiful harvest we enjoy is peaches. The cling-stone peaches ripen first and we feast on those so that shortly after, by the time the free-stone peaches ripen, we can use most of them for canning. I came across a recipe for Honey-Spiced Peaches that is delicious and was able to can seven jars of it, in addition to some peach pie-filling.

Around the same time as peaches arrive at the markets, larger tomatoes come into season. We grew a few tomato plants in our garden and about once a week we’ll have amassed enough of them to make a batch of 3 or 4 jars of crushed tomatoes. Diced and crushed tomatoes are so versatile that we never seem to have enough put up for the winter. To improve our chances of making it farther into the New Year before exhausting our tomato reserve, Dad Harrold brought home a bushel basket of Roma tomatoes. While being shocked at the massive amount of tomatoes that we needed to process, I couldn’t help but be happy that Dad found a real bushel basket – I thought those were a thing of the past.

As I post this, apples are coming into their peak. As much as I would like to can and put up some apple sauce or pie-filling, I don’t know if I’ll have the energy left to do it!

Posted by Mom on September 11, 2017

If you have any interest in living lighter on the land and becoming more self-sufficient, whether you live in an urban, suburban or rural home, then you should check out Mother Earth News. What started as a bi-monthly magazine in the 1970s has become a multi-media repository of information for those keen on learning how to be more self-reliant. We discovered the magazine several years ago, which led us to the corresponding website where oodles of articles and blog posts are waiting to be discovered.

From Mother Earth News we’ve found tips for keeping chickens, recipes for our garden’s harvest, and ideas for off-grid energy production, among many, many other topics. Knowledgeable people from all over North America write articles or blog posts that provide a wealth of information gained from real-life experiences. We too at Harrold Country Home were recently approved to blog for Mother Earth News. Last week (while camping with the family) my first official post describing the beginnings of our permaculture orchard was placed on montherearthenws.com. You can check out my Bio page too! I’m excited to be writing posts for both Harrold Country Home and Mother Earth News.

Posted by Mom on August 21, 2017

My children spend a lot of time outside. They do not, however, spend a lot of time watching TV or staring at screens. This combination is producing some very observant youngsters who take the time to pay attention to the world around them and to notice the wonders of nature.

I came across a quote from Vincent Van Gogh (attached to my tea bag, no less), that brought to my mind my eldest daughter and the way that she interacts with the world around her: “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere”. Those words suit her so well.

When she steps out the door all of her senses are on alert. She scans the vista before her and cocks her ears to the sounds about her. She takes a deep breath to breathe in the scents and then skips off to whatever it is that grabs her attention for further investigation. Soon I hear the call of “Mommy! Come look!” and I know she has found or seen something that speaks beauty and wonder to her and she wants to share it with me. If her discovery is small enough, she will bring it to me to show me. Often her younger sister and brother get caught up in her excitement and share in the discovery as well.

To encourage my little ones to continue making discoveries, and to look closely and truly observe what they see, I follow Charlotte Mason’s suggestion to keep Nature Notebooks. Each child has his or her own blank notebook that he or she fills with sketches or paintings of natural objects that appeal to them. Opposite the artwork is a page for writing notes about the object, such as where it was found or some interesting fact. My eldest daughter is able to write/copy her own entries; her younger sister still gets help with hers. And little brother likes having his own book of blank pages to fill with nature-inspired art alongside his sisters.

For the most part, the children choose the objects they wish to sketch. If we make a find together, I’ll suggest to them that it could be something they put in their Nature Notebook. During school season, I schedule a time for Nature Notebooks, but during the summer, I try to set aside some time once per week to make an entry. Not that they need me to tell them to do it. If something strikes them, they will pull out their books and begin to draw it without my reminding them.

Miss Mason values Nature Notebooks because what starts as a weekly routine, becomes a lifetime habit, and eventually, a way of seeing life and science. The keeping of the notebook takes the curiosity of a child and develops it into a keen sense of observation; the world around him becomes his classroom and the working of nature his lessons. I can see the truth of this in my own children, but in true Charlotte Mason fashion, the process of becoming keen observers stretches over many years; as their bodies and brains develop and mature, so too do their observations and their ability to put down on paper what they see. I am enjoying the process.

Posted by Mom on August 14, 2017

After beginning our orchard, we’ve become more aware of the insects that co-exist with us at Harrold Country Home. In terms of our trees’ health and resilience, the insects can be lumped into two general categories: the good or the bad.

First, the good insects, which can be further divided into predators or pollinators. The majority of people find the pollinators easier to like; the beautiful butterflies and moths, the bees busily working away. Pollinators not only endear themselves to us with their brilliant colours and fanciful life cycles, they also serve an invaluable role in our food systems. Simply put, without pollinators, our food options would drop by 75%, at least*. Just imagine a world with no more chocolate, coffee or fruit. Inconceivable!

When we picked up our 36 trees from Wiffletree Farm, we also picked up two Bee Kits. Each kit includes 10 mason bees, 25 leafcutter bees, 25 nesting reeds and a bee house. We set up the bee houses within the orchard when the weather conditions were favourable (average temperature about 10℃). Now, in the middle of summer, our waiting is over and the bees are using the nesting reeds. Although our fruit trees did not blooming this year, the bees are finding plenty of pollen from our flower gardens.

Our native bees, unlike the Old World honey bees that were introduced to North America during European colonization, are the better pollinators. Honey bees prefer nectar, which they take back to the hive to be transformed into honey. Our native bees prefer pollen; and it’s pollen, after all, that needs to travel between blossoms in order to pollinate a flower and produce fruits and seeds. The female bees fly from flower to flower and collect pollen with their fuzzy bodies. The bees then comb the pollen off themselves, stuff it into a chamber along with an egg, and close off the chamber (the larva feeds upon the pollen when it hatches from the egg). Mason bees close off the nest chambers with mud and leafcutter bees with (did you guess?) pieces of leaves.

Unlike the loveable pollinators, predators tend to give people the willies: spiders, wasps, hoverflies and dragonflies. But these maligned insects are priceless. They are responsible for keeping the bad insects under control and preventing them from eating their way through our fruit trees. When we walk through the orchard on a search for the bad, we try not to disturb the spider webs. If we spot a wasp, we seek to identify it and discover which bad insect it preys upon (unlike the bees that leave pollen to feed their larvae, wasps leave a paralyzed caterpillar, insect or spider to feed theirs). When we see hoverflies (flies that mimic bees to avoid predators), we give a “yahoo” because their larvae voraciously eat pests, such as aphids, thrips, scales and caterpillars. When we see dragonflies, we grab our field guide to learn its name so we can know it next time we see it patrolling the orchard.

And now for the bad insects…

For the most part, the bad insects are those that harm our fruit trees. I’m referring to the leaf-munching caterpillars and beetles. With our trees so newly planted, they are not setting any fruit; and fortunately, we are not pestered by the flies and moths that lay their eggs in the developing fruits. The easiest to spot leaf-muncher in the orchard is the Japanese Beetle. These iridescent copper and emerald beetles like to eat the softer parts of the leaves and, if left to themselves, will skeletonize the leaves of a small tree from the top down. In an effort to reduce their numbers, we walk the orchard and scan the trees for beetles. If we spot one, we pluck it and plop it into a bucket filled with soapy water. The soap prevents them from breaking the surface tension and they drown.

We also keep a look out for caterpillars as we walk along. In the spring, a gentle shake of a tree would yield a few caterpillars dangling from silken threads to be collected and tossed to the chickens. Lately, we find the caterpillars hiding in brown, rolled-up leaves. We either unroll the leaves and clean out the caterpillars or pull off the leaves and squish the caterpillars inside.

As our trees mature, the bad insects that visit our orchard will change too. When the trees are bigger, the Japanese Beetles won’t be such a problem. But we can expect the arrival of apple maggot flies and yet-to-be-learned flies that will look to infest our pear, peach, plum or apricot trees. To combat these pests we are looking to install a pond that will provide habitat for dragonflies and encourage more of these beneficial predators to patrol the orchard for invaders. The pond will also provide the necessary water that ducks require. And ducks are fantastic at foraging for grubs, slugs and other arthropods that live under the orchard. I think it’s time to investigate duck-keeping…

* http://pollinator.org/pollinators (accessed August 8, 2017).

Posted by Grandma on July 27, 2017

It’s hard being the youngest of three and being the only boy. My poor grandson has had to put up with being bossed around incessantly. When he was younger the girls played house and he of course always played the baby. For a while he didn’t mind as he got all the attention and when they put him in the high chair he got treats to eat, even if it was only Cheerios or fruit.  It was as he got older that things changed. One day the three of them came into my living room holding hands and dressed in one piece girls bathing suits. The eldest, eight at the time, asked, “do you like our baby sister?” I didn’t stop for a moment to think, which I admit I do much of, and blurted out. “No! I want my grandson back.” Well the poor little guys face fell. I had ruined their, ‘day at the beach game’ but I also saw something else in his face that day.  It was somewhere near my grandson’s fourth year that he decided he would be no one’s puppet. I may have inadvertently played a small part. The girls would ask him to do things and he would say,  “No, I don’t want to.” Then the weather changed and they spent so much more time outdoors. When outside you didn’t hear his refrain. He wanted to do everything. The girls climbed high up in trees. So did he. They spun in circles in the tire swing. So did he. They chased the chickens. So did he, until the Rooster chased back.

Well he just celebrated his half birthday. He’s now four and a half. Everyone at the farm gets a birthday cake but no presents on their half birthday. The exception to this is grandpa, who gets pie, not being a cake kinda guy. Well, I tell you, the three have grown into a beautiful unit. They play well together, a little sibling stuff, but that’s normal; however, when disaster strikes and knees get skinned or a lip gets split, big sisters come to the rescue. Doctor/nurse/mother mode is put into action. The wound is cleaned and bandaged. The lip is soothed with a popsicle – and one for each of the helpers as well.  I guess being the youngest has it advantages as well as its disadvantages. Right now the girls leave their dolls behind more often than not to play dinosaurs or look for fossils with my grandson. I’m not sure what will come next but what I am sure of, is that there is another half birthday coming up and I love cake almost as much as the kids do. 

Posted by Mom on July 24, 2017

We are converts from free-ranging chickens to pastured chickens.

When we started keeping laying hens two years ago, we had at most 16 birds at a time and they wandered about our property at will. Besides the scratching in mulch and digging up of some seedlings, we had little to complain about. We felt the nutrition of our eggs and the insect control offered by the hens were balanced by the digging, uprooting and occasional messing on the deck, and were satisfied with the arrangement.

This spring we sold the last of these chickens and started anew with 30 laying hens and a rooster. Like their predecessors, these birds we free to range far and wide, which they most certainly did. However, unlike the birds before them, our new flock had a taste for hostas. In an attempt to co-exist with free-ranging chickens that ravaged the hostas and scratched about in the gardens, we purchased roles of plastic poultry fencing and set them up around the gardens to keep the birds out. Eventually we came to see the ridiculousness of the arrangement when we ran out of poultry fencing… after erecting over 850 ft of fencing. And then the lightbulb moment came: why not fence the chickens rather than our gardens!

Other factors came into our decision to pen and pasture the chickens. For one, the birds did leave a lot of droppings strewn about the yard and walking in flip flops was risky and bare feet was insane. And then the birds, even though they had their wings clipped, were still getting enough lift to get over the permanent cedar fence around our raised beds and into the vegetable gardens. They also wandered into our neighbours yard and scratched about in her flower gardens. And the last straw was the rooster beginning to show aggressiveness and charging Dad, Grandpa and some little Harrolds.

From the door of the run we’ve stretched out electric poultry netting (we’ve yet to turn it on) that allows the birds access to the yard, field, and a hedgerow. To make sure the chickens are still eating lots of forage, we also toss in any weeds pulled from the gardens or around the yard. Roughly every one to two weeks we will re-arrange the perimeter of the pasture to give the birds new forage, especially access to the Lamb’s Quarters that they favour.

On the plus side, the hostas are re-growing their leaves now that the chickens can no longer access their salad bar. We’re also finding more toads hopping around our yard. The little ones can run around in barefeet again and have the freedom to play without having to look out for the rooster, Sir John.

In the evenings we will sometimes let the birds out to forage in the fading daylight. With dimming light they do not range as far, yet still manage to find plenty of tasty morsels. As twilight sets in they make their way back to the safety of the coop for the night. This arrangement is working for now but Dad and I are looking to create a mobile chicken coop and put the chickens to work preparing or cleaning out gardens.

Posted by Grandma on July 20, 2017

I came back from holidays to find a grand-daughter I didn’t recognize. Her face was swollen and bright red, almost purple. The poor girl’s eyes were tiny slits and blisters covered large areas. An allergic reaction to poison ivy is what I was told. Mom and dad donned rubber gloves and went in search of the culprit. Plants were pulled out by the roots and disposed of in plastic bags and some needed to be sprayed as they wrapped themselves around trees.

I was amazed at the damage done to the poor girl and wondered how? Apparently the chickens wandered into a patch of poison ivy and while carrying and cuddling one of her favourites she rubbed it on her face. I would say she learned a lesson but she loves those chickens. I suggested to mom it was time to get a family pet. The children are four, six and nine, what better age, but another responsibility is not what was needed. The children and their tutoring, the chickens and the gardens are a heavy enough burden she said and I agreed.

Right now baby toads can be found hopping along in the grass. The children run around collecting them and place them in an old fish tank on the porch. They have also placed rocks on the bottom in some shallow water and added some greenery. They collect food for them and watch them hop around. Every night after they go to bed mom goes out and releases them only for it to start again the next day. This I know won’t last much longer as the toads will grow and escape to the wetlands across the road minus the ones that turn into compost under grandpa’s lawn tractor.

Posted by Grandma on July 4, 2017

Being home schooled by a mother who has a masters degree in environmental studies is really obvious. The three grandchildren on our homestead continue to amaze me. They recognize plants, birds, insects and even rocks. The latter is from their dad’s teachings. Their curiosity is never ending. When they see something, for example a butterfly or moth, they capture it and put it in a jar. Out will come one of the many books which pertain to the subject and the search begins. After the identification is made they release whatever it was now the wiser.

The children are like sponges, soaking in all kinds of information. A bird sings, they tell me what kind it is. We find a caterpillar, I’m told what it will turn into. They are happy to pass their knowledge on to me. As we ride the golf cart around the property I’m bombarded with words of wisdom. The six and nine year old obviously outshine the four year old but he too shows his knowledge in other ways. While sitting on the porch swing one day a bee was coming toward them. Not long ago his sister got stung and he remembered her cries. Pointing at the offending bee he warned, “a pollinator.”

They say the older you get the more exercise your brain needs. We’re told to do crosswords, learn a language or in my case, go for a ride in the golf cart with my grandchildren.

Posted by Mom on June 27, 2017

Children need something to love. Something that they can give special attention to. Something that thrives under the care they shower upon it. Pets and young siblings are wonderful things for children to love. Unfortunately, at our house, our two daughters have neither a pet nor a younger sibling who appreciates their coddling (4 year old brother wants to be a big boy, not a baby). Not to be thwarted, however, they have set their sights upon our chickens.

Unlike a cat or dog, chickens are neither cuddly nor appreciative of any attention. Despite their ignorance of the love lavished upon them, the girls do their best  to wrangle the hens for some cuddle time. While the hens run around squawking at the indignity, the girls chase after them, grab them by the tail, pin them down and then swoop them up into their arms. A quick “put down the chicken” from mom or dad sees the hen thrust away with another indignant squawk and a ruffle of its feathers.

To us adults, one chicken is like another. But to the girls, every hen is unique and distinguishable from the others by the pattern of her feathers and the length and degree of floppiness of her comb. Each hen also has a name. To my knowledge, we have hens named Laura, Flora V and Flora C, Lydia, Fuzzy, Pocahontas and Jezebel. Our rooster, dubbed Sir John, is truly a chivalrous individual. During the first two months he was docile and the girls picked him up just as they did the hens. That didn’t last long.

Just recently, he has shown aggressiveness toward the men at our country home by running at them and trying to hit them with his wings. The children are now cautions of what they do outside and keep an eye out for him when the flock is free-ranging. This change in the rooster has prompted a change in the girls; they are very cautious when near the hens and no longer feel entitled to pick them up for cuddles. They have also been stranded on a table, slide, and in a tree because of their over-active imaginations and healthy respect for Sir John.

Sir John is living up to his name; not only is he becoming more protective of his flock of 30 hens, but he is also a model of chivalry. When we bring out a bowl of kitchen scraps, the hens are trampling over one another to get to the pickings, while Sir John stands back and watches. When ranging around the property, Sir John always has a following of hens. He also has, what seems to me, a very altruistic relationship with his hens. When he comes across some tasty morsel, be it an insect, worm, or food scrap, he won’t gobble it up himself. Instead, he has a particular series of clucks that summon any hen nearby to come and enjoy his find. The hens run in and eat up the treat while he stands over them and watches.

I suppose the hens are glad to have their knight in shining feathers protecting them from the two-legged dragons that used to sweep in and carry them away. We’re also grateful that we no longer have to wonder where the girls are and what hen needs rescuing.

Posted by Mom on June 5, 2017

We get our share of bumps, bruises and scrapes while working and playing at our country home. Our preferred treatments are herbal or homeopathic. I’ve outlined two of our go-to remedies below.

Our first treatment, comfrey salve, we use for skin irritations. Luckily, the previous owners planted comfrey next to the compost bin, as its leaves can be tossed into the compost heap to accelerate decomposition. We discovered that comfrey also improves soil, but more pertinent to this post, it also works wonders for bruises, rashes, bug bites and other skin irritations. Made into a salve and then spread over the affected spot, the comfrey speeds healing. Comfrey should not be taken internally or used on open wounds. Here’s a good read to learn more about comfrey from Mother Earth News. 

Since the salve we make uses dried comfrey leaves, we begin by cutting and drying the comfrey. The best time to harvest comfrey (and any herb for that matter) is in the morning after the dew has dried from the leaves. We then lay the comfrey on something that allows air to circulate fully around the leaves, and place that out in the sun (last year we used a piece of a wooden pallet). We let the comfrey sit in the sun for several days until no trace of moisture remains. At night, we put the comfrey under a shelter to prevent the dew from settling on it, then place it back in the sun the next day to continue curing. Once dry, we crush the leaves and store them until we can make the salve. If you want to give it a try, I recommend following the directions to make the salve posted by Creative Christian Mama. If you need a source of dried comfrey, we can help you out.

Our second treatment, a poultice, we use to relieve pain. Dad Harrold aggravated a tendon in his elbow through the chore of splitting firewood. This injury is also known as tennis elbow or golfer’s elbow, but we refer to it as chopper’s elbow.

We came across a recipe for a poultice for pain relief and mixed up a new batch to try. We spread it on the elbow, wrapped it in plastic wrap and left it for the recommended 30 minutes. Afterward, Dad was able to use his elbow without much discomfort for the remainder of the day. We applied the poultice again on the next two mornings. The elbow still causes him some discomfort, but it hasn’t been as debilitating since we used the poultice. You can find the recipe for the Spicy Pain Relieving Poultice below 

Comfrey salve is also beneficial for muscle pulls or strains when smoothed over the injured area.

But… sometimes things happen that make you appreciate modern medicine. I was collecting some leaf mulch to put into the chicken run with a narrow-tined pitchfork. I jabbed the pitchfork into some leaves near my feet and managed to also put it through my rubber boot and through a toe. Since my last tetanus shot was 10 years ago, it was off to the walk-in clinic. I received my shot and some antibiotic pills and cream. As a rule, I don’t like to take antibiotics, but they do have their place and time, and this was one of them. I tried to compensate by upping my intake of probiotics.

Dad Harrold assured me that he would collect the leaf mulch from now on, since he has steel-toed boots and more presence of mind. However, I think he is over-confident about his presence of mind since the first time he went to gather some mulch he wore open-toed Crocs!

Spicy Pain Relieving Poultice

1 tablespoon aloe gel
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons ground  turmeric
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper 

Blend all ingredients into a paste. Spread the paste over the affected area and hold in place using plastic wrap. Wash hands with soap and water as the cayenne can burn sensitive areas. Remove the paste after 30 minutes.

Note: Turmeric can dye fabrics and will stain clothing. It will also temporarily dye skin yellow. 

Source: Linda White, 2014. Spice Away Soreness, Mother Earth News Food and Garden Series: Guide to Healing Herbs. pp 61-63.