The Front Porch Swing

[perchie.girl]

We do have nettles here in So Cal. We pull them before they get big enough to be invasive. The HOrses LOVE them just as they are.... Dont let them kiss you after they eat em though.....Pull the leaves off and rinse then boil them Um er blanch. then you can use them just like spinach. I havent cooked them myself but I read up on them when someone said you could eat em.

There is another nettle we have UM.... not sure if its a nettle or not... its a thistle I believe.... I believe its an annual with a purple flower on top. The spikes on even the leaves will go right through levis and draw blood.

My friend Leslie had a horse that loved the purple heads on them..... He would draw his lips back.... A frightening thing to see on a horse Then open his mouth wide and smash the thistle head flat with his teeth then snap the head off with a flick of his head. He would carefully smash it till he could get his lips around it..... Then gave a huge sight while he chewed it up.... Like OH MY GAWD that was worth the effort.

Then I got to thinking.... Artichokes are Thistles..... I wonder if those have a similar flavor. I never gave it a try.

For What its worth just because our livestock can eat it do not assume we can. I Watched a mare HOVER up Olives from under an olive tree once..... She picked only the black smooshy ones.... shed nibble chew and foam purple at the mouth.... Then one by one the pits would drop out of her mouth to the ground.... Then she would hoover some more.... The owner of the stables owned her and used her for lessons.... Bucky was always Fat Kept on a diet..... What the owner didnt realize was she was loading up on olive oil every day.... LOL. Bucky always had a beautiful coat and extremely good feet....

I dont recommend eating olives off the tree.... The tannins in there are not poisonous but man they are incredibly bitter.

Whew...

deb

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

We do have nettles here in So Cal. We pull them before they get big enough to be invasive. The HOrses LOVE them just as they are.... Dont let them kiss you after they eat em though.....Pull the leaves off and rinse then boil them Um er blanch. then you can use them just like spinach. I havent cooked them myself but I read up on them when someone said you could eat em.

There is another nettle we have UM.... not sure if its a nettle or not... its a thistle I believe.... I believe its an annual with a purple flower on top. The spikes on even the leaves will go right through levis and draw blood.

My friend Leslie had a horse that loved the purple heads on them..... He would draw his lips back.... A frightening thing to see on a horse Then open his mouth wide and smash the thistle head flat with his teeth then snap the head off with a flick of his head. He would carefully smash it till he could get his lips around it..... Then gave a huge sight while he chewed it up.... Like OH MY GAWD that was worth the effort.

Then I got to thinking.... Artichokes are Thistles..... I wonder if those have a similar flavor. I never gave it a try.

For What its worth just because our livestock can eat it do not assume we can. I Watched a mare HOVER up Olives from under an olive tree once..... She picked only the black smooshy ones.... shed nibble chew and foam purple at the mouth.... Then one by one the pits would drop out of her mouth to the ground.... Then she would hoover some more.... The owner of the stables owned her and used her for lessons.... Bucky was always Fat Kept on a diet..... What the owner didnt realize was she was loading up on olive oil every day.... LOL. Bucky always had a beautiful coat and extremely good feet....

I dont recommend eating olives off the tree.... The tannins in there are not poisonous but man they are incredibly bitter.

Whew...

deb

One of our businesses is landscape maintenance. I cannot tell you how many times one of our crew has "weeded" the "thistles" out of someone's artichoke patch. BOY does that make the customers angry.

Can't say I blame them one bit.

 

[Triple Willow]

Speaking of plants... I had a secret polk salad thicket just full of it. I went by there yesterday and somebody has put a dang driveway right through the middle of it and they are mowing all around it. Ahhh...people!

 

[perchie.girl]

While I am not an extremest with regard to saving ants and spiders I have been known to escort a spider out side. Safely captured with kleenex.

If necessary to get rid of ants I first take care of what is attracting them..... Garbage or moisture.... Some Ants here come in insearch of water.... Small Black ants are grease ants.

Then I spray down surfaces with Windex and give it a good wipe .... Windex kills ants. It also has Formaldyhide. Which confuses the "ant trail" .... But any cleaning spray works.

I also use orange oil cleaner which is a soap and an excellent insecticide. Same as Dawn.

For what its worth I also use Simple green on the horse...... She has incredibly oily waxy skin. If you give her a bath it takes two scrubbings with soap and water to get down to her skin..... Simple green is non irritating but strips right through all of that in a sinlge scrubbing. At the time Katee had an ichy episode and I wanted to clean her down to the skin to apply some calming salve.

deb

 

[perchie.girl]

Speaking of plants... I had a secret polk salad thicket just full of it. I went by there yesterday and somebody has put a dang driveway right through the middle of it and they are mowing all around it. Ahhh...people!

What is Polk Salad.....? I remember a song called Polk Salad Annie.....

deb "off to look it up on the internet"

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: Oooh Its poisonous.... according to Wikipedia. Edible only if its prepared properly....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytolacca_americana

OK.... Whew this is better and gives me an understanding on how and when to harvest and prepare

http://www.examiner.com/article/all-about-pokeweed-and-how-to-make-poke-salad

deb

 

[bruceha2000]

There is another nettle we have UM.... not sure if its a nettle or not... its a thistle I believe.... I believe its an annual with a purple flower on top. The spikes on even the leaves will go right through levis and draw blood.

Yep, that is thistle. We have a lot of that as well. The flowers are pretty but OH those spines! You have 2 choices - shovel (and it is hard to get the entire root) or grab them below the lowest leaves where there are no spines and pull. Works only when they are young though. I spent HOURS with a dandelion puller clearing large patches of thistle that were about a foot high. A week later it was clear I hadn't gotten all the roots because little thistles started popping up.

Bruce

 

[lindz8504]

This is very true! I have never gotten it before even though I have pulled it up and everything! I guess I'll have to be careful from now on. .....

 

[heartsizedfarm]

Years and years ago my dad told me about an encounter he once had with an old farmer who was advising him on how to get ants out of the house. The old guy said: "Everything has something it loves, what kills it. With man, its whiskey. With ants, its cucumber."

So my dad always put out strips of cucumber peel when he saw ants and he claims that did it. Says they would scarf it down and then take it back to the nest and kill everybody in the nest too.

Don't know if that's just carpenter ants, or not. I try to live and let live but will make an exception for ants and houseflies. Oh and mosquitoes. No mercy. But I leave the spiders alone. DH will get rid of them when we have company and he thinks that particularly large brown one in the bathroom might be off putting to guests.

 

[bruceha2000]

OK, round one of the "how to boil an egg so the shell comes off" experiment:
Mostly successful with the eggs that had never seen the inside of a refrigerator. Not before cooking Saturday night and not after. They were 1 to 6 days old. The Anconas, my only white layers, held out on us last week, 9 of the eggs were "pre dyed" blue or green by the chicken that laid them.

9 of the 12 were eaten at dinner last night.
Only one required careful attention to not start losing chunks of white. This one spent the most time in the dye (according to my daughter) and I don't know if that had an effect.
The shells didn't "fall off" the others but they came off without undue picking at the shell.

I had erased the date and weight on the eggs since they were going to be dyed so I can't make a determination as to "age of egg" vs "ease of peeling". That will have to wait until the next time we boil eggs.

Bruce