We're wrapping up our last two days here at WoodSong Hollow Farm, and we begin our next (brief) work exchange Wednesday afternoon. One of my favorite parts about this work exchange has been the intimacy with food. From collecting wild plants for eating to being involved in the process of raising chickens for meat to preparing everything from scratch with organic ingredients to planting and harvesting things from the garden, food has been a big part of this experience. 

One of my growing interests is wild edible plants. I've been reading parts of Stalking the Wild Asparagus here, which is a great book about wild edibles, and, as a bonus, the author did much of his living and foraging here in PA, so many of the plants he talks about are literally growing in our backyard. 

These are nettles, which you have to collect with a rubber glove because they will "sting" any exposed skin. We harvested the young, tenderest part from the top of the plant. Amazingly, when you put the nettles in something hot, the stinging quality goes away, and they are quite nutritious and very delicious. We added them at the very end of the cooking time for chili and just left them in long enough to wilt, as you would with spinach. They were so tasty! 

While we didn't cook with any violets here, I did recently learn that they are edible, medicinal, and growing everywhere! I'd love to make some violet jelly. Apparently a poultice made from them is also a good remedy for headaches. 

This is poke weed, which seems to generate a lot of discussion regarding its usability as a food. When it gets this purple color, beware! The plant is poisonous. However, apparently many people eat and love the young green shoots. 

Some mushrooms growing in the yard. Non-descript mushrooms like these are difficult to identify without making a spore print. 

Grapevines. 

We planted potatoes in the garden last weekend using the bucket method. You lay a piece of cardboard down (to control weeds), then put a bucket with the bottom cut out on the cardboard. Put about two small sections of potato with eyes in the bottom and fill with dirt. For these, we used really excellent compost from the local municipal compost center. When the potatoes are ready to be harvested, instead of digging around in the dirt to find them, all you have to do is lift up the bucket, and voila! There are your potatoes. No more loosing half your harvest in the potato hills. 

This is one of the brick walls we've worked on since we've been here. And look at how huge that comfrey plant in the herb bed is getting! 

P.S: If you found us from our banner on Oliver and Abraham's, welcome, and thanks for visiting! We're excited to have begun a month long sponsorship with Oliver and Abraham's, a blog that's definitely been an inspiration to me and which I always eagerly look forward to reading. :) 

This is Plucky. We isolated her from the other chickens because she was inexplicably molting (loosing all her feathers) in the spring instead of the fall and in the process was getting pecked by the other chickens. They're growing back now, and she's looking much better. Shawn, the newest work exchanger on the farm, is in the background. 

It's been neat hearing Alfred get his voice back. A few weeks ago, he didn't crow at all, and when he started crowing again, it was timid and on the quiet side. Not any more! Alfred loves to tell us good morning. 

The chickens love leftover veggie scraps, especially lettuce. It's one of their favorites, along with strawberries, pears, and tomatoes. 

Dave sharpened this scythe with a whetstone and used it to cut a long swath through waist high grass in a field before we moved an electric fence we use to keep predators away from the meat chicks. 

Dave and I moved the electric fence and set it back up all by ourselves. It was cool to use the skills we've learned and know things have actually stuck in our memory. 

After one of his runs, Jeff brought back a morel mushroom he found, and we cooked it up for all four of us to share. It might have only been two bites each, but it was delicious! No wonder they fetch such a high price per pound. (It is very hard to cultivate them, so the only way to obtain these mushrooms is to forage them in the wild during a specific period of the year.) 

The gorgeous redbud tree by the barn. 

Tomorrow, we're going to a nearby farm to do some paid work, which is really awesome. Then, just three more work days here at WoodSong Hollow before we move on to our next work exchange, which is also nearby, for a week. Time flies! 

One of the neat things about being here at WoodSong Hollow during this time of year has been helping the farm make its transition from Winter into Spring. Part of this process has been moving the laying hens from the barn out into the field, which we finished last week. 

This is the egg mobile. It is on wheels and hitches to the back of a truck to be moved from place to place. It is the chicken's shelter and includes their nest boxes, food, and water. The idea behind it is that it allows you to move your chickens to different places so they can help you with scratching up weeds (especially the garlic mustard here!) and fertilizing the soil. You can set up as large or as small of an electric fence perimeter around it as you'd like, giving your chickens plenty of room to roam while keeping them protected from predators like foxes. When they've dug around for a while, you can re-hitch the egg mobile to the truck and move them and the fencing to another spot. 

The chickens are quite happy with this arrangement, and very pleased to be out of the barn after the winter. 

Dust baths are the best! 

We found two mice who had made their way into a feed sack at the bottom of a barrel, which is impossible for them to climb out of. A few of their friends clearly hadn't made it, but we were able to let these guys out into the wild, making for some very happy mice. 

The chicks have grown so much since we've been here! That's been another neat thing about staying for a month...getting to see the chicks grow along with all the other springtime farm transitions. 

Today (after our usual Saturday morning yard sale-ing) we went for a drive through Lancaster County, PA, where there are tons of Amish and Mennonite farms. 

The amount of farm land in this area is staggering. We were not expecting it to be this vast. 

We drove for miles and miles past nothing but farms like these.

Mamma and baby horse. 

It was really neat to see all the Amish and Mennonites traveling down the main roads in their horse drawn buggies. It was like being in a different time period. 

Happy weekend to you! 

Dave's new camera came in the mail yesterday, and we couldn't be happier with it! It is a Nikon like his last camera, so using it is intuitive and easy to use, and it has some great features, like a much better zoom than the last one. We're so excited to have good photography again! We're also really excited about our Etsy store...we've made a sale a day for the past three days! It's really starting to feel like a business, and it's so much fun. 

WoodSong Hollow Farm, where we are staying. 

Lance, the farm dog. He's a husky. 

One of the WoodSong Hollow cats. 

These guys are just adorable. 

Check out that spider web! Someone was very busy. 

We had a really foggy, rainy start to the week here. 

On Tuesday, we volunteered at the Lehigh County Envirothon, which is a competition between students (high school, in this case) in 5 different categories like Soil, Aquatics, Wildlife, and this year's special category, which was livestock. The students are grouped into teams, which go around to various stations and answer questions on their test forms. The winning team goes to compete at the state level. Our job as volunteers, along with Nitya, Jeff, and several others, was to grade these tests so the winners could be announced by the end of the program. 

The Envirothon was held at the Wildlands Conservancy. We took advantage of some of the nature trails during a break and did some bird watching. 

Dave and I decided to make candied ginger. Our goal was to make it by hand for significantly cheaper than the $7.50-$8 price range when we buy it pre-made in bulk, because we use a lot of it. Candied ginger is a delicious spicy treat and is really good for any sort of stomach upsets. It's also excellent at reducing motion sickness. 

We did about 4 pounds of the ginger. The trick to peeling it? Use the back of a spoon. Right now, we're giving ours extra time to dry out, because the sugar coating melted down overnight and returned to a syrup in the jar. (Odd because we dried it for hours and hours longer than the recipe called for.) We'll see how it turns out after some extra drying time. We also have lots of the yummy ginger syrup from it which we've been mixing with homemade seltzer water for ginger ale! 

When it was raining on Monday, we got a bunch of seedlings planted inside. We'll continue bringing them in at night until it really warms up outside, and we'll transplant them once they have begun to sprout. We have seeds planted for everything from pink banana squash to asparagus peas! 

In great news, Dave's new camera is on the way. (We apologize for the less than great photos in the meantime.) Business on Etsy is actually picking up...thanks to Steve and Amy for your recent purchases! :) 

As we wrap up our second week here at Woodsong Hollow, here are a few photos around the farm. 

Feeding the chickens in the morning is fun. When we take the feeder down to refill it, this white hen always climbs on top to eat. 

She's one of our favorite birds. She's very vocal and likes to walk around clucking loudly. 

We had a lot of hands on the farm today. Dave and John, a short term work exchanger from Philly, seeded an area where the pigs were last year. Jeff and his son Ty built a new pond in the woods and cleared out a little pool by the house. Nitya and I worked in the garden and completed the brick wall around the herb bed. 

Hello spring time! 

We also worked on mulching the garden beds with this, which is old bags of mushroom substrate from Joe and Angie. It makes great mulch! 

Putting cardboard down in all the paths is a great way to control weeds without the use of pesticides. Getting all the paths lined is a work in progress. We picked up the huge cardboard boxes from the recycling center last week. 

It was beautiful weather for working today. We had lunch in the front yard. 

In the mason jar is homemade yogurt, which Nitya and I made this week. It's a bit tart because we forgot about it and left it sitting out too long, but it was great to learn to make it, and it's still good. We'll do another batch soon.