Clagett Farm Notes

Eat your enemies, or make tea out of them

By Megan Caine

Weeds are generally unappreciated; their nutritious value and long histories of medicinal uses, ignored. After a day of hoeing and hand weeding, it would be especially easy to hate the pesky plants that crowd our precious crops, stealing their water and sunlight. Early on I learned that a weed is any plant which grows where you do not want it. Using that definition, and keeping in mind our desire to control what is growing in our fields and lawns, most plants become weeds. Agriculture and modern medicine have allowed us to entirely discount plants that were once depended upon for sustenance and healing.

An abundance of useful wild plants are found in abundance at Clagett Farm. I have been learning about them through asking lots of questions of anyone who might know, from reading DC public library books, and from experimenting with eating and using them medicinally. Here are some suggestions and a bit of information on some easily found plants

Lambs quarters (left) can be cooked or eaten raw as a salad. Related to beets, chard, and spinach, they are high in vitamins A and C. To cook, sauté garlic in olive oil, add just washed, still wet lambs quarters and cook for just a minute and add salt and pepper. You could also add it to whatever you might put spinach in – sandwiches, stir-fry, soup… Lambs quarters are also found in the city and in parks. Another plentiful weed is pigweed (above right). Best eaten cooked, boil it for few minutes, until tender, and drain. Add salt, pepper, butter, margarine, or olive oil.

Plantain (left), which is as prevalent in the city as on the farm, has long been used for its properties in healing skin irritations and wounds. Fresh, crushed leaves applied directly to a poison ivy rash or bug bite are soothing. Young leaves are good in salads and older leaves add nutrition to soup stocks. Another source of relief for poison ivy and bug bites is jewelweed (above right). Break open the stem joints and gently crush to extract the gooey insides, then rub on affected areas.

Most people have especially negative feelings about stinging nettle (left), but its one of my favorites. Young leaves are excellent cooked as you would spinach, and not to worry - the heat kills their ability to sting. The leaves also make a mineral rich tea.

Mugwort (right) leaves make a calming tea, and can be added to bathwater for the same effect. Dried mugwort is often mixed with other herbs in“dream pillows” to promote an active dream life.

One of the herbs I have yet to experiment with, but am fascinated by is Queen Ann’s lace (left). Among other things, in the Appalachia's it was used by some as a contraceptive.

Interesting, huh? Go off and read more! Get ideas and recipes. When you visit the farm, ask us if we know where a particular weed might be plentiful – or wander and discover what’s growing for yourself.

Popcorn

Two days short of a year ago, Carrie wrote about what to do with the popcorn shareholders got in their share. If you want to read her informative post, click here.

What do I do with this popcorn?

Even better than surveys, it's popcorn time.

Before you can pop your popcorn, you need to dry it. We tried drying a few test batches for you in a warm oven, but we've had a tough time getting the popcorn to the ideal 13% moisture level. I suspect it's a little too moist right now, and with a few hours in the oven, our popping success raised from 10% of kernels popping to 50%. But perhaps we are over-drying it, because we can't seem to improve on 50% popping success. In years past, we've recommended that you keep your popcorn in your pantry for a month or so before you pop it, which worked well for me at least. Next year, I hope to get access to a moisture meter (most corn growers keep one if they hope to store their corn in a silo).

Until then, here are my suggestions...

To Dry:

1) Leave the popcorn in a paper bag--not plastic. In a month, test a few kernels. If they pop, then pop the rest and enjoy!
2) If you want to eat it now, you're welcome to try the same thing I did. Leave the popcorn in the oven at it's lowest setting (100-200 degrees) for an hour or two, and give it a try.

To Pop, follow the same procedure you would for store-bought microwave or regular popcorn:

1) Microwave: Put the loose popcorn or the whole popcorn cob in a closed paper bag in the microwave. Set it for ten minutes, then allow it to pop until the rate of popping slows down. Don't pop it for the full ten minutes or it will burn! (My microwave took about 6 minutes.) If you want to watch the kernels pop off the cob, you can leave it out of the bag.

2) On the stove: Cover the bottom of your dutch oven or some other heavy, lidded pot with a good amount of oil (my parents used to use 1/4 cup oil and a 1/4 cup popcorn). Heat the oil until a few test kernels pop. Then add the rest of your popcorn and shake vigorously while it's popping. Again, remove it from heat when you hear the popping slow down to one pop every couple seconds.

In general, don't season the popcorn with your butter, salt, parmesan, tamari, etc. until it's popped.

If you have a little time and curiousity, I recommend the kid-friendly Jolly Time  Popcorn Science site. They have a much better review of the science of popping corn that's interesting for kids and the young at heart.