April Dandelions
Oh, weather in the Midwest. Wednesday, it was 53 and sunny. Thursday, we got 3 inches of snow. But don’t worry, it all melted on Friday, when it was sunny all day and 50 degrees!
With that goofy blip behind us, we are now elbows-deep in planting and caring for our acreage. We had planted onions and our strawberry patch before the snow, the coverings we used, a mix of row cover and old curtains (use what you have!), seemed to do the trick. However, the couple days of no watering, and crazy heat changes, appears to have both fried and froze some plants in our low row tunnel raised bed. Growing pains! So, we’ll be replanting onions, greens, lettuce, spinach, and kale this week. But today, we started tomatoes, peppers, and corn!
Man-o-man, the dandelions are/were completely unphased by the snow. We Rambo-knifed (aka hori-hori knifed) trash cans full of dandelions. (Affiliate link for the hori hori knife we have.) I hadn’t realized before that a trash can could be a unit of measurement for dandelions. I estimated that we had 17 millions dandelions, and I suspect my rounding error was only marginal. Yesterday, my love filled one of those trashcans on his own, while I ran around and just plucked the blossoms, defensively, to limit propagation. Or, so I told myself. We barely made a dent! Today, I pulled two 5-gallon buckets full, and gave about a dozen discovered grubs to the chickens. Since they’re still chicks, I’m not sure they appreciated my extra efforts, but it always makes me rather excited when something from the homestead synchronizes to support something else on the homestead. : )
For example, I’m super excited about some dandelions. Not the ones in the yard! However, I recently read and learned about dandelions. My love asked, while we were both fighting sore backs and blistered hands, ‘what is the point of all of these, surely they must serve some sort of purpose….’ So, later, I looked into it. I knew that our rabbits had (sort of) ate some of the flowers and leaves, so there was one sparing use. I knew, too, that dandelions were also eaten during the Great Depression as dandelion salad. And I knew that if you didn’t get the taproot, those suckers would be back. In my quick search, I learned that “foraging” dandelions could also be used for dandelion tea, either made with the blossoms, or as a coffee-like substitute from the root. Sold! I rummaged through the trash barrel my love had “foraged” from the yard (yay knowing no chemicals have been sprayed!), and selected my sample for this DIY homestead experiment.
I pulled the blossoms, and set them aside. I chopped the roots clear with the Rambo knife, and dunked them in clean water, scrubbed, rinsed, and repeated until the draining water ran clear. Same for the tops, but gently! I trimmed up the roots, sliced them, and layered each on the dehydrator. Yes, I’ve seen ways to do this with solar screens for natural sun dehydration, but it was after dark, after a long day, and we haven’t made such screens. Yet. (The materials are in a heap in the kitchen corner. Some day we’ll have all our systems in place, and a place for everything!)
But this story is incomplete, because they’re still sitting on the counter, staring me down every time I walk in the kitchen to clean up the creation I started. While I’m excited about this “foraged” experiment, I’m also a little leery of how bitter these experiments might be, but I’m sure the local honey on the counter will do the trick! I’ll leave you with a silly thought instead. After feeling particularly witchy, digging up taproots, preparing foraged flowers, and tediously tending to ingredients for a brew, I texted Mom that I hadn’t realized how much I enjoyed herbology… but that once I whipped up the brews, I’d let her know what I thought of potions! : )
Tonight, my love mowed while I plucked more dandelions. That helped immensely with the yellow blossoms. Hopefully that will give us an advantage to be able to keep up with the new ones over the next few days. And if not, well, that’s why we bought the zero-turn!
PS- Potions was a success! Dandelion (flower) tea tastes like an earthy green tea. From our yard! It was great with honey.
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