Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb.

It's been rhubarb week on the little acre, and every year 'round this time I’m on the lookout for new ways to preserve - and enjoy in its season - the rhubarb.

I’d never made fruit leather before this week. I figured it might be a nice way to preserve the rhubarb, so I gave it a go, and I can’t help but wonder why I’ve never made fruit leather before. This week I made a couple of batches for the pantry shelves, one simple with some lemon zest, and another with some of our homemade freezer wine (which, this tear, featured res raspberries and black currants from - yep~ - freezer). This mint is coming up, so the next batch might be a rhubarb mint. We shall see...

And to enjoy in the moment I made some deliciously tart rhubarb crisp that’s inspiring me to put vanilla ice cream on the shopping list… or maybe I’ll make some. ::nods:: In  the meantime, it's nice on its own, and with some kefir in a bowl to eat with a spoon. 


Peace. 🕊

Perpetual Spinach

This week we cut back our perpetual spinach. Perpetual spinach, also called beet spinach 'round these parts is actually a chard, and we’ve been harvesting it all spring to add to our salads. But it was time to cut it down, strip the tender leaves, give them a steam and a cold water plunge, before lightly straining and packaging it all into two pint containers for the freezer.

The stems were simmered with astragalus root, some bay leaves, and sea salt to create a stock to use for a risotto.

I bless my garden, it blesses me. I bless the earth, she blesses me. 

Peace. 🕊🌱🕊

It's the Lusty Month of May

May Day arrives, cool, gusty, sunny, and with the promise of warming spring days, and still-expanding daylight. May Day arrives marking the lusty midpoint between spring and summer, and then some.

I love and appreciate all of the seasons, all of the holy days of Nature's wheel (which, to me, is every single day). Yet today I pause to observe my world - holistically - as we corral into the first day of the month we call May. I pause to renew my lusty passion to honor this warming earth, this compassionate mother, her sumptuous and ever-spiraling berth for seed, root, sprout, leaf, bud, bloom, blossom, fruit, and more - much more. As I pause to acknowledge my shortcomings and renew my vows, I offer her - and you - this prayer: May we venerate the undeniable greening and renewal that makes manifest in ways unlike any other spoke in the wheel of the year; may we hold sacred the miracle of life, with all its enchanting diversity; may we treat this earth and all life she supports better than we do today; may we practice the reciprocity that she - and all life - deserves.

May reminds us in very bold ways - if we're paying attention, that is - how much this earth, our Nona Gaia, loves life, is life. If only we would reciprocate... with lusty passion of intent and action. 

Peace. 🕊