Wood harvest

This winter has been milder than last winter so far. We have more than half of our wood left. We burned through all of the wood we bought and are burning the wood we cut last winter. We started harvesting dead trees off our land for next winters firewood so it has several months to dry and cure. My husband cuts and bucks the tree and I haul the logs and stack them. Winter weather of 20 degrees is the perfect temp to do this sort of work, no bugs and you stay nice and cool.

This pile is from two aspen trees, one of which the wood peckers were going after and we split open part of it to discover a colony of frozen flying ants, it was pretty neat.

I have been busy sewing baby bibs and revamping my etsy shop. https://www.etsy.com/shop/handmadebynikki057?ref=search_shop_redirect 
I also was able to connect with a local gift shop to sell my baby bibs there. I am continuing to network and connecting with local people about the summer events and craft shows.

I taught my second class through community ed. It was DIY body care products. We made champagne whipped body butter, alpine sea salt foot scrub with juniper oil and rose clay mud mask. I also threw in some of my homemade sea salt caramels. My class sizes have been small but the student reviews have been positive. I hope they continue to grow. It seems like small towns are always looking for new people to teach their skills through community education. If you have cool skills give teaching a try.

 

 There was a cold snap for a few days so I got busy crafting. I made an earring holder out of a frame and some scrap chicken wire I got from the neighbor. Now I can hang my earrings and not keep them in a giant pile. 

My son and I kept busy doing science, we made fake snow and gak. My son loved the fake snow and thought the gak was too weird. I will post the recipes below. Both of these projects can be kept in a plastic zip lock bag after and used again.

http://www.funathomewithkids.com/2014/11/magic-puffing-snow-recipe.html

http://www.pbs.org/parents/crafts-for-kids/gak-attack/

Chaga

I went for a short winter hike on my property and found some chaga mushroom on my birch tree. I have never found chaga before so I took some pics and consulted a local mycologist to be sure I had identiified it correctly. It sort of looks like rotten wood or bear poop. He confirmed it was chaga.

What is Chaga?   

from:https://www.annandachaga.com/pages/frontpage

"The Chaga mushroom is a unique polypore fungi that grows on living birch trees. A symbiotic relationship is formed between the Chaga mushroom and its host that can sustain one another during their entire lifespan of up to 20 years. 

Chaga Mushrooms may be found on wounded or dying white birch trees in temperate forests around the northern hemisphere. Chaga looks like encrusted black formations; the sterile conk or mycelium grows out of wounds sustained after storms and other impacts that break branches.  Chaga covers the tree's wound and protects it from invading micro organisms.  The host tree and the Chaga can co-exist for many years and the mushroom can be harvested up to three times over the course of its lifetime.  

The Chaga Mushrooms is known as the "King of Medicinal Mushrooms."  Considered by many cultures as one of the most powerful healing plants on Earth and used for centuries in Traditional Chinese Medicine.  After it as been harvested, the Chaga needs to be air dried and broken into chunks or ground into a course or fine powder.  The outer cell walls of Chaga are protected by chitin and need to be broken down or extracted.  Over the centuries chaga has been extracted by steeping it in hot water to make a medicinal Chaga Mushroom Tea or matured into a potent Chaga Mushroom Extract by soaking it in alcohol.  Both the hot water and alcohol methods over long periods of time help to dissolve the chitin protecting the valuable nutritional contents inside the Chaga. 

Chaga Mushrooms have been known to improve the immune response, lower blood sugar levels and combat abnormal cell growth.  Chaga is also anti-inflammatory, relieves pain and purifies the blood and the liver."

I found a saw and cut my chaga off the birch tree. I brought it inside and sawed it into chunks. It was very hard, not soft and spongy like regular mushrooms. I took all the powder from sawing the chunks and stuck it in a jar with vodka to make tincture.

In three weeks I will be able to strain it. I have also been playing around with steeping it for tea. The first batch I steeped 3 chunks in hot water for 1 day. The second batch I have been steeping 6 chunks for 3 days now and increased the water volume. The tea itself doesn't taste bad at all. I like to mix it 50/50 with my other teas I drink. I gave some to a friend of mine that likes mushrooms.

I am surprised with how much my property is proving us in wild edibles and medicinal plants. The more I walk my property and learn the more I find.