My Research Blog

Our wildflower mix is starting to bloom, with these beautiful tiny Baby Blue Eyes flowers.

Sometimes your chickens give you something weird, like this shell-less egg. The hen that laid it usually has green-shelled eggs.

Chickens in the sand bath, having some socialization time. All the black hens are daughters of the black & white hen. The white hen is unrelated. The trees surrounding this area are starting to grow and shade the area nicely (sugar bush and mulberry, both are drought tolerant trees that produce edible berries enjoyed by chickens).

You will need a large amount of leaves as they will compact down a lot in subsequent steps. But you can keep adding more each day until your container is full. You can use scissors or clippers to cut the leaves off the stem, as shown below. You want as little stem as possible as it interferes with layering.

The first thing we need to do is thoroughly wash both sides in running water to remove insects, dirt, etc. Discard any leaves with orange rust spots or serious insect damage. After washing, spin dry in a salad spinner. They don't have to be completely dry, just not super wet.

Now that our mallow leaves are clean and excess water removed, we are going to do the really hard part of this recipe. Grab a small plate and put some granular sea salt on it. (I used Kirkland Signature sea salt, but any brand of sea salt is fine. Do not use iodized salt or chemical salt/NaCl.)

Grab a leaf, then touch the salt (you should pick up a small amount on your damp fingers), then rub onto both sides of the leaf. It should feel like rubbing it with sand. You only need a small, evenly distributed amount on both sides to draw out the moisture. Once the leaves are rubbed in salt, start stacking them in a clean glass container (I used a half gallon kimchi jar, but a glass bowl will also work).

Stack them in layers, altering position on the leaves to keep everything as flat as possible. Try not to tear or otherwise damage the leaves. Once you have added your leaves, add a bit of liquid culture from live, active kimchi or sauerkraut.

This is extra liquid from a previous batch. That will also work. Let everything sit for at least a week to ferment, pressing down daily into the liquid. Then put it in the fridge until you need them. If you want to use them right away, soak in plain water to desalt (optional). You can also use them as a substitute for fresh seaweed.

To store them long term, the next step is to dehydrate them. This will make them crispy like chips and they can be eaten whole & dried (you can also coat them with a thin coat of oil prior to drying if they will be eaten right away, but don't do this if they will be stored more than a week).

The batch shown above had some kimchi brine added, which gives it a reddish color. I dried them on parchment paper to make it easier to get them off the dehydrator tray. If you have some that break, put them aside to be ground up into a salt substitute, as shown below.

You can grind the dry leaves quite easily, I used a wooden pestle (or even a small glass/metal container with a flat bottom) in a salad bowl. Pass them through a sieve if you want them to be a uniform size (keep grinding the bigger pieces until they pass through.)

The powder has a nice flavor (a bit seaweed like) and can be used to add salt & flavor to dishes and baked goods.

If you are in Southern California, there is native buckwheat growing wild everywhere. See photo below. They make attractive informal hedges and grow nicely between roses. You can also purchase plants for your yard at any local native plant sale.

Now (fall/winter) is the time to harvest the seed heads to make a gluten free flour substitute. (You can also eat the young shots in spring, which have a lemony flavor). One plant can easily yield one or more paper grocery bags of seed heads. See photo below. (They are a little underripe, the dark brown ones are fully ripe and ok to collect as well. White seed heads are too immature).

Once you have acquired your seed heads (we grow several plants), it is time to get them ready to eat. They need to be soaked overnight to get rid of the bitter compounds. Put them in twice as much volume of water as you have seed heads and soak overnight (8-12 hours).

Once they are done soaking, scoop them out into a fine strainer and rinse until the water runs clear. Be careful with soaking water as it may stain surfaces (or experiment with using it as a dye). Once you are done rinsing, it will look like below.

At this point, you can cook everything up wet like a porridge. If you want to keep it longer, you will need to dry it. You can spread in thin layers to air dry or put it in a dehydrator on low (which is what I do). Once it is dry, you can store it in glass jars to use as a gluten free flour substitute. It has a distinct flavor, so have fun experimenting. It makes delicious pancakes, especially when mixed with an equal part of acorn flour (see previous post). Photo below shows after dehydration.

You can grind the flour in a blender to make a finer texture, or toast it before use to alter the final flavor.

Chickens snacking on California buckwheat and Toyon berries. (Please note Toyon is legally protected in CA and cannot be foraged from the wild. We have our own plants to harvest from).

Both plants are drought tolerant and native to Southern California. The Toyon berries are a bit too fibrous for my taste (eating them is like trying to eat cherry flavored chewing gum), but the buckwheat produces an acceptable flour substitute (from gorgeous seed heads not pictured). I'm pruning back the buckwheat to shape it up for next year, so chickens get the prunings. The young shots of the buckwheat are extremely tasty, especially when added to salad (they have a sour lemon taste like sorrel).

If you have access to incense cedar saplings, this is a great way to extract their unique flavor (like a minty vanilla). It will also work with other edible trees (be sure to do a small batch first to check flavor).

Step 2: Press small pieces of the saplings (which you washed & dried) into the sugar. Try to do this as soon after cutting the saplings as possible so they don't dry out. Ideally they should be a little sticky. Fall is the best time of year as the trees should be at the peak of dryness and flavor.

Continue adding pieces of the tree, cut so they lay flat, until you have a shallow layer. Don't go too thick as you want to maximize contact between the trees and the sugar.

This is about as thick as you want to make the layers. You should still be able to see some of the sugar underneath. Now add more sugar to cover as shown below.

Keep layering branches and sugar until you have filled the container. Add a bit more sugar to the top & poke down any stray bits of branch into the sugar with a clean spoon. Then let it sit for several months to a year to infuse (a year is good because then you can reuse the container for the next batch). If you have a basement/cool spot, that would be a good place to store this while infusing. When it attains a nice flavor, remove the branches (they can now be composted) and store the sugar dry until needed. This is lovely to sprinkle on baked goods or make holiday sugar cookies.

Mallow & onion saute:. Dice one onion & saute in your favorite fat. You can also add your favorite seasoning at this step. I used Montreal steak because garlic & black pepper pair well with this combination. Once it turns translucent, add 2 cups mallow leaves (well washed & dried in salad spinner). Cover for a few minutes until bright green. Uncover, stir & add a little toasted sesame seed oil to finish off the heat. Serve warm.

Eating my weeds is the best reward for pulling them.

How to break down a tree (or just really big branches) for firewood.

We had a big ice storm that knocked alot of branches off our incense cedar timber trees. So of course it is time to turn them into renewable fire wood.

This is a branch that fell off the main tree (probably 100-200 ft tall & 3-4 ft diameter trunk). To start, break off the small side branches (or use handheld clippers if they don't break easily for you). Sort the trim into not firewood (leaves, very small twigs better suited for kindling or mulch) and small branches.

Discards are shown above. I used them to fill in a gully created by rainwater. They would also be good mulch, or dry & use as kindling.

This is the bag of small twigs broken off by hand or with handheld pruners depicted above. I store my firewood in paper grocery bags as it makes it easy to carry, store, & stack, plus you can burn the empty bag.

The picture above shows the same branch after the twigs were removed. The next step is to cut as much as possible with bypass lopers.

Photo above shows bypass lopers (this is a really nice one that can cut branches up to three inches/8 centimeters). Again I cut pieces to fit into paper bags.

Once you have the small and medium branches removed, you are left with the bigger pieces that can be cut for woodworking, large fire logs (with hand or power saw), or stacked for fencing. If I cut these for firewood, I stack them as is because they don't fit easily into paper bags.

If you plan to heat with wood, it is best to have a Franklin stove (basically the whole firebox is inside, so most of the heat goes into surrounding air). If you want to heat & cook, a potbelly or similar stove is the best choice. Wood heat is great for backup heating, but can be a pain as the primary heat source due to the amount of wood needed, especially in cold climates.

How to make acorn flour (because there are tons of free acorns everywhere this time of year):

The first step is to find some acorns. These are black oak acorns. I usually gather in a grocery bag. If you find a good tree, you will get over 100 lbs (300kg) of acorns. Average to poor trees give around 20-40 lbs (60-120kg). Once you get them home, wash them in a bucket of water & discard any floaters. Then let the acorns dry for a few days to weeks until you have time for the next step. Do not store in the shell long term if possible.

The next step is to remove the kernel from the shell. I give them a whack on a palm tree stump covered with a towel (to stop them from rolling) with the flat side of a hammer. Any hard surface will work. If you find white grubs (acorn grubs), they are edible. Usually I give them to my pet chickens along with any "bad" acorn kernels.

Shown above are the kernels. They don't have to be pretty because we will grind them up later. These kernels are white with a brown skin, but different varieties will be different colors.

Once you finish shelling your acorns, grind them in a blender in enough water to cover. For these black oak acorns, it looks like a creamy, milky liquid. Make sure you have a container that can hold four or more times as much water as acorns for this step. I am using commercial plastic storage that holds one gallon.

Leave the container in the refrigerator overnight or at least several hours and the acorn flour settles to the bottom. Pour off the liquid on the top, being careful not to dump the bottom two layers. It is ok if you can't remove all of the top layer. Add more water & stir to mix. Then repeat the process as long as needed to remove all bitter flavor from the acorns. Depending on what kind of acorns you start with, this could be 1-12 changes of water. The black oak acorns took about 8 to be leached. All acorns should be leached at least once, even if they taste sweet. If there is a layer on the top of the first leaching' clear layer, this is the skins & should be discarded with the clear layer.

The final step is to dry your acorn flour. Small amounts can be dried in shallow bowls/plates covered with a towel. Larger amounts are dried in bowls in a dehydrator on low. Once it is dry, I run it through a strainer to remove any chunks. Once dry, you can use as a gluten-free, starchy flour. Please note that because we didn't cook it during the leaching process, the starch will set when cooked (like cornstarch). These black oak acorns changed color to a dark brown when dried

One hot rooster (literally). This is our half Maran, half white Silkie rooster. My kids picked him for his comb, but he is a favorite with the hens. He is especially adept at nursing sick hens back to health. He is shown with his wings spread facing into a breeze in this photo trying to stay cool in the summer heat. Paper shreds on ground are for insects as it is dry here 90% of the time. They seem to be especially good for getting lots of crickets for the chickens to eat.

How to Make Fruit Butter (or Fruit Sauce)

This example is made using Brown Turkish Figs, but you can substitute any fruit you have lots of (apples, pears, loquats, etc.)

First harvest your fruit. The more, the better as it will cook down. You can store in the fridge/cool cellar at this point if you need to pool several days of harvests before proceeding.

Next, wash your fruit as you will be processing it whole. A few drops of fruit & veggie wash in a bowl works well.

The advantage of the fruit wash is that you can easily drain & rinse fruit without needing to scrub it (for the most part). Then put fruit on a towel to dry. You want clean fruit for canning, so this is a necessary step.

For the next part, I like to use an electric corkscrew juicer, but you could also use a food mill or strainer. If you don't use an electric juicer, you may need to pre-cook your fruit to make it soft enough to process. You want to separate pulp & juice from seeds & fiber at this stage. Photography on left is the fig juice, and on right is the seeds & fiber.

You won't be doing anything more with seeds & fiber, so you can feed that to your pets (chickens love it) or compost it. Now take the "juice" (which should have lots of pulp) & put it in a big pot or slow cooker. You want several inches between liquid & the top of the pot. Now you can add sugar if you want (it makes a huge difference in texture of the final product). For figs, I add 1 cup sugar per 4 cups fig juice. Do not use artificial sweeteners (if you need to use artificial sweeteners, add just before consuming). For fruit sauce only, the sugar is optional. For fruit butter, the sugar gives a more spreadable final product.

Now you need to cook it until it reduces to a thick paste. This can take hours, so definitely do it in a slow cooker with the lid off if possible. Try to remember to stir it as much as possible (every few hours in slow cooker. Once it is thick enough for your spoon to stand upright, it is done. If you are making fruit sauce, you only need to cook to your desired final consistency. You may get a fruit "cake" if you leave it overnight with stirring in the slow cooker, but just stir it down & all will be well.

Now get your canner/giant pot of boiling water ready with jars. You need to boil clean mason jars to sterilize for the next step. Once you have your mason jars starting to boil, add acid to your fruit butter. For something that resembles fig newton filling, I used lemon juice. But any 5% acid liquid works here. You can use lemon juice, lime juice, apple cider vinegar, wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, etc. I add 1/4 cup acid liquid per 4 cups juice, you can go up to 1/2 cup to add more flavor. Add the acid liquid, stir well, and add hot to hot, clean, sterile mason jars. Add lids & bands & can in boiling water for 15 minutes. Let cool for 24 hours, then store in a cool, dry place until needed.

If you omit the sugar, you will get fruit sauce unless you cook the butter for days to caramelize the natural sugars. Never omit the acid liquid or the fruit butter/sauce will not be safe to store long term & must be refrigerated and consumed right away.

The only fruit that I have tried that didn't work well was prickly pears, because it changed to a weird orange color & tasted almost minty after the slow cooker stage.

You can spread fruit butter on bread, use as a cake filling, or mix with plain yogurt to make fruit flavored yogurt. You can also make it savory by adding a small amount to cheese & crackers, using as a meat sauce, or mixing into barbeque sauce.

This is probably too late to be much help right now with the situation in Texas, but if you lose power in winter and don't expect it back on for a while, you should immediately shut off the water main to your house (usually rectangular bar valve on water main coming into the house) and drain the pipes by opening the lowest garden hose outlet (and turn on highest faucet in house to break any vacuums). Leave the faucet open once water stops flowing out. This will prevent pipes from bursting.

If you have a fireplace (preferably a Franklin stove), set up camp in that room & find whatever you can to burn. Cardboard, junk mail, fallen branches (may need to be dried out first), etc. to keep that room warm. You can heat canned food by opening can, put lid back on (manual safety opener is best) and stick in ashes. If you have cast iron pans, they are safe to use on an open fire (unless they have wood handles).

If you don't have a fireplace, choose a small (interior if possible) room and put down lots of padding (mattress, towels, clothes). Then make a nest with all the blankets & sheets on top & food/water nearby so you won't need to leave this area. Lots of layers of clothes also help to keep warm. Silk thermal undergarments, cotton clothes and wool sweater/coat on top always worked well for me, with a down coat on top if really cold.

If you don't have a fireplace, it is probably best not to try to heat food in the house. This is often the cause of house fires (I prefer battery lamps to candles/kerosene/oil lamps for safety reasons). You can make an emergency fire pit by putting rocks/bricks on concrete and making sure there is nothing flammable within 10+ feet (2-3 meters) if you have no other way to cook/boil water, but any open flame should be continually watched with a means of extinguishing it nearby at all times.

Things you can eat without cooking that are shelf stable and somewhat healthy:. Crackers (whole grain is better), beef jerky, nuts, dried fruit, canned fruit that can be eaten within 6 hours of opening (dilute canning liquid with water for tasty drink), applesauce (packaged in one serving amounts), dried milk (reconstitute with water & vanilla extract in amount needed for immediate consumption), and canned fish (I prefer whole fillets in sauce as they can be served as a meal on crackers).

Annual update on the citrus. Usually things should be pretty lush & green, but we haven't had a good rain since Spring. So everything shown is growing without irrigation or rain. What is doing well:. Principle Bolagnase tomato (going on its third year), California native buckwheats, gogi berries, California native currents, dragon fruit, estafiate, avocado, and even baby oak trees are still growing despite the dry weather. I'm putting in lots of California native berries this year, so in a few years we should be self-sufficient in berries.

Our Maran hen with her nine chicks (you can see them all if you look close). She has raised several batches of chicks and is an excellent mother hen. Finding a hen that is good at raising chicks is great, especially one like this that accepts chicks hatched by other hens (two of her chicks were hatched by a different hen and she still raised them--she is very aggressive about taking all available chicks as hers).