How to Preserve and Press Fall Leaves

I know that there are many ways to press leaves and flowers but as a little kid learned to used heavy books and wax paper. Using weight is the simplest method of saving all your goodies. Collect some heavy books, wax paper and pick out some leaves that are flat, thin and still malleable.

1. Clean off any dirt that might be on your leaf and then arrange them on your wax paper. Once arranged sandwich the leaves between sheets of wax paper and your book pages.

2. I like to do this with several books and then use them as decor that can be stacked upon with other heavy objects.

3. Please your books in a dry location. You’ll want to check on them in about a week to ensure that the leaves are indeed drying and not rotting. I tend to leave my leaves for a while and work on other projects but typically 2 - 3 weeks your leaves should be dried.

4. You can arrange your leaves in a scarp book or a float frame. Just make sure to keep them out of direct light, which will cause them to deteriorate faster.

It’s been a very long time since I pressed any flowers but with all this nature around us, I got pretty nostalgic. To commemorate our firstish year in our new home I decided to press whatever floral or greenery that was season. For the Fall we collected lots of color turning leaves from Birch, Maple, Oak and even Ferns.

Our first batch of Fire Cider

As I set off to research how one makes this spicy concoction, I noticed that the nice part about fire cider is that, at least from my point of view, you can generally speaking add-lib it as your taste buds like. So, this recipe was created using different ingredients and amounts from multiple recipes.

Grate, chop all of your veggies and place in your container then cover with apple cider vinegar. We used two large mason jars. Once full we placed a piece of parchment paper between the lid and liquid and sealed it tight. Place your jars in a dark and cool space for 4 weeks. Once the 4 weeks is over strain your liquid, add honey and serve. I found Fire Cider is really nice in broth, mixed with seltzer or served as an immunity shot.

I’ve always been into DIY and learning how to do things on my own; both helpful and also time consuming. Honestly, I am quite happy living in a place where Seamless hasn’t infiltrated and food delivery is scarce. Not having these “luxuries” has reminded me how much I love to cook, bake & explore. I’d have to say that one of my love languages if for sure feeding and taking care of people, so fire cider was an easy choice for me to experiment with.

Our fire cider batch contains the following Ingredients (from the top, left to right):

• Fresh Grated Horseradish (about 6”) - funny, when we purchased this our checkout person was so freaked out.

• Grated Fresh Ginger root (about 4”)

• Braggs Raw & Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar (you’ll need this to cover all of your veggies) I used one 32 oz bottle

• 4 - 6 Habanero peppers chopped and with the seeds in

• 1 lemon, sliced and with the rind still on (feel free to include more if you like more of a lemon flavor)

• 1 orange, sliced and with the ring still on (feel free to include more if like more of an orange flavor)

• 1 large onion diced

• 2 cloves of garlic unpeeled

• Turmeric (we used about 3 tbs) - ours came from Bija Bhar

• Honey (to be used after you steep your concoction for 4 weeks) - our honey came from local beekeepers: Damn Good Honey Farm.

Foraged Shagbark Hickory Syrup

Moon over snow covered land

Once home I cleaned all the pieces of bark ; removing the dirt and lichen that settled in each cranny. After that you must toast the bark in the oven on low heat, which makes the entire house smell incredible - maybe I’ll reuse the bark for this during our holiday get together. Here is the recipe that I followed, which was found on Real Tree Though I didn’t have any corn syrup, I don’t particularly even like it so that was fine. We used sugar and the tea created when we boiled the hickory bark - reduced it to a thick syrup and then canned it. I’m so incredibly pleased with this beautiful syrup. It has a smoky sweet taste and was incredibly easy to make ( I don’t think I quite got all the sugar absorbed but it was my first try so yo u see a little crystallization starting). I’m even going to pat myself on the back since this was also the first time I ever sterilized and canned anything. Looking forward to foraging and canning more in the future. Next adventure is collecting white pine to make tea.

Last weekend, my partner and I took our Saturday date day to the woods and joined The Outside Institute on their Winter Foraging Expedition. Just a few weeks before our area got about 15” of snow so finding a safe place to forage was a bit hard but Laura managed to scout a good location at a state park. On our journey, we learned about identifying plants and ways to use them like rose hip, barberry, blackberry, birch, spruce, cedar, crab apples, and hickory. Hickory stuck in my head because Laura mentioned that besides it being great for smoking, hickory was also delicious as a syrup. Since our Christmas was going to be a savory brunch with our family, I was super interested in adding a special syrup to our day. So, we foraged some of the bark that was already pulled away from the tree.

Finished homemade Shagbark Hickory Syrup

Living deliberately - Our Studio's Future

It’s a lazy and gloomy morning here on the farm. Though, I’ve already accomplished quite a bit, I’ve decided to take an extra couple of minutes to sit back with a cup of tea and just read.

We’ve been in the Catskills for about 4 months and as the cold weather starts to descend I’m finally settling in. Our studio space has been taking shape - the heat is working, the lights are on - but there are still so many nexts to plan and figure out. Like the title suggests I am very much focused on living deliberately but what does that really mean? In the current environmental climate we have the opportunity to define how we live and for us it’s time to act on it. Our first phase was to get up and running to continue our exploration of pottery. Our second phase is to start incorporating more environmentally conscience ways of working, which means that we will be exploring solar energy and ways to recycle water. I’m putting this here as a form of accountability. It may take us sometime to figure these things out as we also grow and expand our farm but the goals are clear.

Art: Unison Arts Center

Saturday’s are our sacred days. As our weeks are filled with work, winter prep, and other important household things we leave Saturday open to adventures. On my way to purchase clay & supplies over the last few weeks I’ve noticed this red sign along the highway with the name: Unison Arts Center. It stuck in my mind and became part of our last Saturday journey.

After brunch at Hoot Owl in Pine Bush we set off to the Unison Arts Center and Sculpture Garden. Unison is described as a “5-acre park-like sculpture garden in a country setting laced with paths that weave their way through the woods, opening up to a large wildflower field sited with contemporary works.”

Their current exhibition is titled Composed to Decompose, which is their Annual Curated (Curated by members of the SUNY New Paltz sculpture program) Eco-Materialism Exhibit. As a person who really loves the Land Art movement it was quite exciting to stumble into this exhibition after several months of it being on view (opened July 2019). Some of the pieces made of wood, twine, and other natural fibers are already returning to the earth. On the Unison website, Co-curators Michael Asbill and Linda Weintraub explain “They demonstrate that it is through decomposition that fertility is replenished, ecosystems are revitalized, and life is renewed.” I’m very much looking forward to returning in a few months to see where each piece is in it’s decomposition.