Bear here... 

Just another reminder why "weeds" are your friends. We wanted salad without going to the store, so we went to our yarden instead. We found Turkish rocket, chickweed, and lambs quarter...  and...
​
Wha-la... Weeds Salad...

Fun facts: 

• People spray weed killer to get rid of chickweed and lambs quarters. We let them grow. Theresa has a stock tank in our garden just for growing lambs quarters because she loves it in soups and salads.
• Chickweed has lots of vitamins. 
• 2/3 of this salad was provided for us by Mother Nature .
• With homemade vinaigrette dressing this Yarden salad brightens up any breakfast (see below)...

Time to get outside and see what else we can harvest.

Except I almost forgot- our shameless plug- there are more chickweed (and other "weed") recipes in our book:
Eat Your Wild Yard.

​Type at ya later...

If you didn't see last week's blog, click below for more details about the bundle and our book:

EAT YOUR WILD YARD: SPRING
Growing & Foraging for Wild Edibles in Your Own Backyard
​Text & Photography by Theresa & Bear
Graphic Design by Theresa

You can view some sample pages here.

From Theresa: We built our tiny wildlife pond in 2012, and it immediately started to attract wildlife, including dragonflies, snails, water beetles, birds, squirrels, and chipmunks. We built it hoping for frogs, because I love falling asleep listening to their calls. In its second summer we had one resident frog, but there weren't many mating calls. This Summer, we were serenaded for many nights by calls from the American Toad, tree frogs, and a third frog we couldn't identify. And this time it resulted in a pond full of hundreds of tadpoles, which have now become incredibly tiny frogs!!

"We're sunbathing and she's taking pictures of us- How rude!"

Frog with a Duckweed Hat
(Theresa was trying to clean some of the duckweed out of the pond,
and was surprised to scoop up a frog along with the duckweed.):

King of the Mountain:

King looking for a smaller mountain:

We first noticed tiny tadpoles in our pond on 6-6-2015:

Then the gang got bigger (6-12-15):

By 7-11-15 the tadpoles started to get legs (Bear says we should call them frogpoles):

Then they lost their tails and became frogs!
(Walking on water with the help of duckweed):

This American Toad could be one of the parents (dad or mom, we have no clue):

This is the wildlife pond we built, 
although Bear says it looks like a swamp since it's covered with duckweed. 
It's been amazing to sit next to the pond every day 
and discover first hand how tadpoles turn into frogs, 
knowing that we played a tiny role in supporting new life.

For instructions on making your own tiny frog habitat, 
see our page on how we built this wildlife pond:

Bear here....  Some of you may recall that Theresa and I bought nine mushroom logs this spring that were inoculated with shitaki spoors last year. We set them up and were ready for the big hauls of edible shrooms, one in late spring and the other in the fall. Let's see how much 80 bucks can save us. During the "mushroom season" in early spring we got... 1 f*ing mushroom, a small one. Theresa picked it and I left the damn thing in the refrigerator too long and we had to throw it away.   I was not amused.

All you need is patience, and good timing, and good things will come to you. I am frying these shrooms tonight! I have also stopped thinking that these logs would make a nice, large bonfire and am instead waiting to see what the total bounty will be.   Type at ya later.

From Theresa:
This is the fourth Summer after we constructed our wildlife pond... 
and we're thrilled to see tiny tadpoles swimming around in it for the first time
(see the black spots hugging the rock).
At least we assume they're tadpoles, either that or Bear says they're "sperm dark."

Here's a close up:

This is also the first Summer that we've been serenaded by multiple frog songs as we fall asleep.
Maybe this is one of the parents... Bear met him by our wood pile:

This is also the first year that any plants overwintered in the pond- 
we're seeing a lot of native arrowheads popping up (Sagitarria latfolia, which have edible tubers).

This is what the pond looked like this morning.
Click to see how we built our frog pond:

From Theresa:
Here's the Sunday morning harvest from our gardens. I've been trying to convince Bear that all the money I spend up front on the garden gets paid back to us in food to eat, 
so I asked him to come look at what I brought in. 
 Just to make it fun, I asked him if he could identify everything I picked.

1. Here's what we got from our new annual vegetable garden:

Bear correctly thought this was (counter clockwise in the colander): 
orange nasturtium flowers, nasturtium leaves, green onions, and lettuce (center).

(From the big guy...  Doin the seat dance & showin' off now... uh Huh...)

I harvested these annuals for salads. We're growing them in stock tanks:

Bear wasn't sure about this one from the stock tanks-
 and said it was "that weed we've been eating a lot lately"

This is lamb's quarters. 
The young leaves are great raw in salads, 
or the older leaves are great slightly steamed 
and used any way that you would use cooked spinach. We add them to rice dishes.

(Bear here... To be fair... we have been using a lot of LAMB'S QUARTERS lately.) 

2. He got this one from our perennial vegetable garden right away (probably because I had pointed it out to him when we were sitting in our bay window eating breakfast this morning):
(Bear here... It still counts as a right answer... so there...)

This is Turkish rocket. 
This is the first year we've harvested it, so I am still learning how and when to do it.  
You're supposed to eat the flower buds before they flower, 
when they look a lot like broccoli, but I am too late this time. 
We can also eat the flowers, so I harvested them.
I think this will make more grow back for another harvest.

Here's what the full Turkish rocket plant looks like (this one is 3 years old):

Here's what's the Turkish rocket flower buds look like 
when you're supposed to harvest them, before the buds flower. 
You use it like broccoli, which it obviously resembles, eating it either raw or steamed.
It feels like broccoli in your mouth, but tastes a lot more tangy.

  Bear offered his usual comment to his first bite- "Tastes like plant."
(You know who here...WELL... it does taste like plant...)

3. On the right is more Turkish rocket.  On the left Bear wasn't sure if this  was parsley or cilantro- 
but he said, "Wait a minute," and put a little leaf in his mouth. Then he knew it was cilantro. 
 
(Yep, it's me... Right answer, a little late... Enough said)

4. And here was the real stumper.... Bear blurted out that this was broccoli!!

We got a great laugh out of that, since he knew immediately that he was wrong.
(Me... Duh...)

We've been growing lots of rhubarb around the foundation of our bay window
 for a couple years now, where it seems really happy,
but this is the first year we've found the time to figure out how we like to eat it. 
 Today, I'm putting it in a crock pot with some lamb to make a savory stew over noodles.
 Last week we stewed it with brown sugar and almond extract 
to make a sweet rhubarb sauce side dish.

It's been wonderful to see Bear get more and more interested
in our gardens as the years have gone by,
because I surely need his help keeping it going 
and learning how to cook the harvest.
I'm thankful we're in this homesteading adventure together!

(Me getting the last word... Hah... I got her to blog. Summertime is Theresa's tome to be outside and do the yard stuff. To kinda quote her "Now is the time to garden and take pictures, 
Winter is when I can blog about it."  Ain't team work grand...  Type at ya later...)

There you have it. Anybody think grass is the only thing that should be grown in a yard? Heh... look up.

Type at you later.

Grill Bread:

Saturday morning's breakfast was grill bread from Friday night's leftovers reheated in the oven. For instructions on grilling bread, see my Grilled Pizza page. This is Friday's grill bread:

The herbs were fresh from our garden and the ambrosia was from our freezer. We made it last summer by baking chopped tomatoes and garlic, tossed in olive oil at 375 degrees. Bake until all the liquid from the tomatoes is gone, then use or freeze. 

This is the first time we tried reheating grill bread (there aren't usually leftovers). For a crispier crust, reheat at 400 degrees. For a softer crust, try 350. Theresa recommends the crispy crust.