Month 1 Sunset Magazine's One Block Party contest with Team Found Fruit

We are busy as bees getting our gardens planted and food projects underway. It's exciting to have 4 gardens with all heirloom varieties of veggies growing. Though the snails are continually eating our seedlings, we have planted some exciting varieties like Tigger melons which are small melons with brilliant red and yellow stripes that we're training up a trellis, Black Sea Man tomatoes that are black on the outside and green white and red on the inside, Parisian carrots which are tiny and round, and even peanuts! Kitty has started raising rabbits for our feast, and I have frozen some harvested prickly pears and nopales as well. Our bees swarmed recently but we were still able to harvest some delicious honey. It's all part of learning and perfecting the art of living sustainably.

Pic 1 is of Kitty's vegetable garden. Intensive gardening in a 72 sq feet bed!

photo credit Lori Eanes

Pic 2 is taken in Nola's yard, an oasis of fruit trees.

photo credit Lori Eanes

Pic 3 Kate and Jonah Voyageur in the garden. Just look at those tomatoes!

photo credit Lori Eanes

Pic 4 Oletta enjoying the fruits of her labor. Literally!

photo credit Lori Eanes

Pic 5 Jamie in the hive. We harvested 2 pints of honey recently from our Kenyan Top Bar hive.

Pic 6 Perfectly ripe Prickly pear fruits. We harvested fruits and young paddles or nopales to freeze away for our One Block Feast.

Pic 7 Jonah Voyageur helps water the newly planted peppers and eggplants.

photo credit Lori Eanes

Morel Morals

What do you do when a friend announces, "I have a mushroom growing in my garden.  Can you tell me what kind it is?...and she shows you these beauties.  Before me stood over 20 large Morels; the ultimate "Found Fruit." I explained to her that she has rare choice edible mushrooms growing right in her backyard.  Although she offered them to me, I initially declined and encouraged her to try them herself first.  This is what I call "Morel Morals."  Her and her husband did trust me enough to eat them and when they kept coming up she offered me some again.

Morels are rare and are more often found in the wild.  So where did they come from?  She recently hired StarAppleEdibles to do some edible landscaping at her house.  A lot of new dirt and mulch was brought in which must have contained the mushroom mycelium.  Mycelium are the living body of the fungus and the mushroom is the fruit.  Hopefully they will get more than one season of these beautiful mushrooms to appear in their garden.

My favorite way of enjoying wild mushrooms is to saute in butter. Wild mushrooms contain a lot of water. The water will release, so keep cooking until the water evaporates and the oil returns to the pan, then salt and enjoy like you would any other mushroom.  One caution is to always cook Morels in a well vented kitchen to evaporate toxins they contain called Hydrazines.

Now that the rains have returned to the Bay Area, it's the perfect time to get out and forage for wild mushrooms.  To learn more about mushrooms and foraging check out these local mycological organizations: Mycological Society of San Francisco, Bay Area Mycological Society.  Sonoma County Mycological Association.  Once a month the Sonoma County Mycological Society holds a mushroom foraging event with guides in Salt Point State Park that should not be missed.  Check their site and calendar for more information.

Found Fruit - Plum Wine

Need a reason to celebrate?  The fruit season is on with plums and apricots adorning our neighborhood trees.  What better time than to start a batch of plum wine or jam?  Found Fruit happens simply by asking -  Place a want ad on Craigslist or Freecycle to get started.  Many of our neighbors have fruit trees and are simply too busy to utilize the fruit or their trees produce more fruit than they can use.  I usually offer to share jam or wine with our neighbors if the batch turns out well.  The plums pictured to the left were small and tangy - too tangy to eat - but boy did they make some good wine.  The owners would never have utilized this fruit.  Neighbors sometimes are happy to part with fruit because it damages their lawns or their dogs eat the fruit.  If you have fruit that you wish to part with, you can also try bartering with your neighbors for other fruit or vegetables.  You can also contact fruit gleaning programs who will deliver the produce to shelters.  Here is a simple recipe for starting a 1 gallon batch of plum wine:

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Backyard Beekeeping

Who doesn't love getting the perfect gift from a friend who really knows you? For my 37th birthday my friend Todd enrolled us in a Kenyan Top Bar beekeeping workshop at Institute for Urban Homesteading in Oakland, taught by Ruby aka Sparky Bee Girl. I had been wanting to try my hand at beekeeping, having had a lifelong fascination with bees. We built 4 Top Bar hives and then got on a local swarm list. Busy with the chickens, and it being late June, I was prepared to wait til next year, but then this morning I got word of a swarm in Richmond about 10 miles away! Off I went with a cardboard box, hedge clippers, a hoodie, and some gloves. There I met two great gals Anni and Carol, and found the swarm about 2 feet above the ground in a Manzanita bush next to their house. After away some low lying branches I placed the box underneath the swarm and gave the bush a good shake. Most of the bees fell immediately in while others flew around me in a frenzy. Quite a rush! I got a bite on my cheek and a sting on my neck before getting the box closed up and getting out of there. With all the adrenaline pumping I hardly even felt it. The rest of the bees starting swarming on the branch again so Carol cut it while I shoved it all in a second box. I wanted to be sure to get the queen!

A good rule of thumb when transporting bees is...make sure the box is closed up well. Can you see where this is going? After parting from our bonding bee adventure I begin the drive back home to East Oakland with my new found friends. A few blocks later I glance in the back and notice a few bees flying around. Few more blocks, few more bees... I drive home like a bat outta hell with my hoodie pulled over my head.

Back home, I left the windows for awhile while running the boxes to the backyard. Nothing to see here folks, nope nothing out of the ordinary happening here... The roar from the boxes was deafening! I was definitely intimidated to open and dump the contents into my hive but I had a lunch date in 30 minutes! I removed the bars cut the tape and dumped the bees into the hive. With bees flying all over the place I slowly and carefully replaced the bars on top of the hive. Tonight I placed a bowl of sugar water in the hive. Peeking in I could see a large clump of bees hanging off some of the bars in the back. I hope the bees take nicely to their new home and thrive!

(http://iuhoakland.com/) Institute for Urban Homesteading
(http://www.sparkybeegirl.com/bees.html) Links to Ruby's hive blueprints/ useful links etc.