Red Maple Farm Delights

My stepsister Meghan and her family live on a farm and are busy making too many delights to keep track of. They gave us this amazing basket of wedding goodies, including homemade wine and beer (both delicious!) fresh-pressed cider, and honey from their hive, comb and all. We're ready to invest in a share of Red Maple Farm.

We mixed the crabapple juice with soda water to make these juice spritzers.

Infusion

Infusing alcohol is so darn easy. Inspired by Martha Stewart, and by Nick and Jess's blog, I tried lavender vodka, cucumber tequila and rhubarb vodka. I let them sit in a cool, dark place for a week, filtered them through coffee filters and they came out great. Margaritas with cucumber tequila are delicious.

The Lavender Drop

aka "The Lemon Eye Pillow," or "The Purple Scurvy-Buster."

Recipe

1 serving

1 1/2 oz. lavender infused vodka*

1 1/2 oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1 Tbsp. (or more) sugar or agave nectar

Add ingredients to shaker with ice. Shake well until ice almost dissolved. Rim martini glass with sugar. Shake. Serve. 

*Lavender infused vodka:

Wash several sprigs of lavender. Place in jar and cover with high-grade vodka. Let stand for 4-7 days. Sample flavor to determine strength of infusion. Remove lavender, filter vodka through a coffee filter into a decorative bottle. Enjoy.

Plant Dyes

This morning was my first trip to the Kingfield Farmer's Market. One vendor was a lovely woman, Kim Christiansen, who experiments with natural dyes and yarn. I was mesmerized by her booth, perhaps because it was 50 degrees and I wished I'd brought my handwarmers. 

She explained that the color of a dye is a result of the dye substance, a mordant and the yarn itself. The mordant sets the dye on the fabric and different mordants can produce different colored results.

Pink yarn: Dyed with cochineal, a bug native to Latin America.  Cochineal was used by the Aztec and Maya populations, later coveted by the Europeans. Cochineal are now cultivated on cactus plants and you can mail-order them from Oaxaca, Mexico. The mordant for this yarn was Rhubarb leaves! I don't understand what it is about the chemical properties of these two substances together that works, but Kim does.

Yellow yarn: Dyed with rhubarb leaves and stems.

Brownish yarn: Dyed with ivy berries and "unknown berries."

Green yarn: This one is my favorite. Kim was leading a group of middle school students in a chemistry of dyeing class to gather experimental dyes. One kid wanted to try buckthorn berries. This invasive shrub attacks yards and public lands in Minnesota. Its berries are a deep blue and are guaranteed to stain your sidewalk. but, when used as dye on merino wool, buckthorn berries leave a beautiful green. Another wool skein dyed with buckthorn was a lighter green due to the specific reaction between that wool and the berry.

Rosemary Box

Deck garden season has arrived. I found a collection of $2 terra cotta pots at the Salvation Army (yeah!), along with this little wooden crate. I didn't weatherize it, and expect it will last only a season. But with some holes drilled in the bottom it makes for a nice little rosemary planter.