Fun Weekend: Watermelon Day at the Farmer's Market and Raw Potluck

Yesterday was super fun and and busy. The Fair Share Garden volunteers met at the Daytona City Island farmer's market for Watermelon Day instead of the garden. GoGreenDaytona was kind enough to share their tent with us. We passed out free watermelon, painted faces, promoted the garden, sold fair trade crafts and soaps and balms.



Here is my little sweet pea Moira with her face painted by artist and Fair Share Gardener Lucy Csihas. Moira was getting ready to win the 2nd kid's watermelon relay contest, and her picture is in the Daytona Beach New's Journal today. She and her team mates won a free smoothie for thier effort from the Avocado Kitchen in downtown Daytona. Not to be outdone, I was first in line for the women's watermelon relay. I'm not too proud to race for smoothies. I'm often downtown on the same block near to Avocado Kitchen at Mandala Bookstore. I made certain that all the ladies on my team ran barefoot instead of in flip flops. Our team won, and Moira was terribly excited for me. She has quite a competitive streak.

I had a fun time passing out samples of my new Fair trade coffee soap. I finally met Naomi who runs the City farmer's market and she asked me if I would like to set up there. I have been wanting to set up there for a long time, so hopefully I can become a regular at the market starting around September or October when the heat and humidity reach a more reasonable level for my soaps. Most of my products I kept in a dry ice chest for the morning.



Ms. Ocie and her family are my favorite vendors at the farmer's market. The make jams and other preserves, and I get all my honey from them for making elixirs and syrups. I have been buying from them for six years, and they gave me Onsies for Moira when she was born. They represent the best of our local family businesses.



Saturday night we also went to the Daytona Raw Food Potluck. This is fun group, and John's hosted in a primo location. Check out the view from the clubhouse. I am managed to catch a little bit of the lightening storm on my camera before I ran out of memory.



This was my second time to the Carribean Clubhouse. We sampled Jack fruit and an amazing raw chocolate made with Coconut oil, Carob, Cacoa, Coconut, Agave and Stevia. I made a holy basil pudding with Avacado, Banana, Chocolate mint, Moringa, and Stevia. Erin Elizabeth was kind enough to introduce me and my products to her friends at the party, so I'm happy to return the favor. Check out her amazing raw food retreat in St. Augustine.

Thanks so Much! Premio Meme Blog Award. A bit about me.

I just received a fun blog award from Linda B's Jewelry. So I'm going to pass it along just for fun to some other blogs that I like.

Here's how it works...

I'm going to share seven facts about myself and then pass on the award to seven other happy bloggers! Seven facts about me:

1. I always wanted to live near the ocean when I was younger, and now I do.
2. I'm an early bird.
3. My favorite color is green.
4. I like Sci Fi/ Fantasy books and fiction. I'm currently on a Marion Zimmer Bradley reading binge.
5. My favorite soap is my Ocean Wave Sea Salt Soap.
6. I am slightly organizationally challenged, and am constantly working toward becoming more orderly for the sake of efficiency.
7. I'm a double Gemini. Maybe that relates to #6. :)



I would like to pass this award along to the following great bloggers:

Yellow Finch Designs
Magic Markings Art
Deb's Gift Boutique
Garden Plum
Cournty Windows
Witchen Kitchen
TorchsongStudio

Weekend Pictures from Maggies Herb Farm: Next Herbal Medicine Making Class August 8th

Over the weekend I took a wonderful trip up to Maggie's Herb farm in St. Augustine. Amazingly this was my first trip to the farm, and I'm very happy that I will have many opportunities for return visits. I spent the day at the farm teaching my Salve and Balm making class to a group of eight students who learned the basics of infused oil and balm making. We harvested fresh Mugwort, Lemon grass, and Rosemary for a pain relief salve. We also made sweet orange lip balms and a Comfrey-Yarrow skin soothing salve. Our class was held in the lovely gift shop at the farm, which is filled with dried herbs, ceramic plant markers and decorations.



Maggie's Herb farm is owned by Dora Baker, here she is with her very talkative friend Gracie in one of the green houses.


One of my favorite flower's were in bloom at the farm. The beautiful Passiflora incarnta is pictured below.


More than half of the participants signed up for my August 8th Herbal Medicine making class. There are still four spots left though. Would you like to join us?

Learn the basic methods for herbal home medicine making for your family. This is a hands on class in which you gather herbs from the farm for making tinctures, liniments and a cough syrup. We will focus on methods for making preparations, properties of herbs used during the class including Mints, Mugwort, Lemon grass and more. 10 a.m.- 2 p.m. Fee $35 bring a sack lunch. Please pre-register by calling the farm: 904-829-0722

Go Green Etsy Twitter Team Sale Starts Next Week!

The Etsy Twitter Team is throwing an eco-party, and everyone is invited!

From July 21st to July 27th, the authority on Twitter for all things handmade will be offering a summer feast of cool eco-friendly tips, suggestions, awesome handcrafted genius and a scavenger hunt with lots of “green” prizes for the winners.

Beginning on Tuesday, July 21st, our blog will have a list of participating shops that feature eco-friendly handmade items and more details about the fun scavenger hunt. See you there!!

I have donated one of my eco-friendly all natural soaps as a prize for the scavenger hunt, and will be offering a special sale in my Etsy Shop next week. I hope you will check back to participate.

Graphic created by Susan Brown of SalonDArte

Keeping Chickens Healthy with Herbs: Deworming and Parasite Prevention

Backyard chickens are becoming extremely popular. And 'free-range' sounds all the more natural and healthy. Unfortunately, I have learned the hard way that free range chickens are also more susceptible to parasites from wild bird droppings. Using herbs only it appears I have almost won out the battle against parasites.

I woke up up 4th of July morning to find dropping with roundworms! Yuck! I suppose I should have guessed at this possibility as I was noticing that the earlobes and eggs from my grey Araucana Meenie were fading from a pretty baby blue to an off white over a period of about 2 weeks. She also had loose stools that I thought were related to poor health from all the rainy weather we have been having. For some reason I did not make the connection though. Two of my herbal friend's with more chicken experience suggested a chemical wormer for the birds, being wary of treatment with herbs only, but I was very encouraged by this article that I found about naturally worming chickens. I felt like I should try with herbs first, and given that it was a holiday, and the following day was a Sunday, my options were limited as to what I could purchase. I remembered from my herbal training as well as from Juliette Levy's Farm and Stable Handbook that garlic was the number one choice for treatment of chickens with round worms. So I immediately stockpiled a batch. I had been giving them garlic on occasion previously, but they really didn't seem to eat it so I had been sticking to apple, eggs, various weeds and watermelon as extra treats for them. No more. From now on garlic will be a staple.



I am on day nine of treating all the birds for worms and at this point today I am very encouraged that the results are good. I have not seen any more worms since the first day, then two days ago my husband said he saw the Araucana still had loose stools, today I was so excited to see she had a normal formed stool. This is very encouraging and I hope that we can avoid the chemical de-wormer all together. The following is what I have been doing to help the birds:

Day 1: Made a strong garlic tea with 6 cloves of crushed garlic and 1/2 cup of boiling water. Cooled the tea and fed each of the 5 birds about 3 droppers full of tea. Repeated this process again once that day. Mixed about 1/4 cup of this strained tea with one gallon of water and replaced regular water with this solution.

Days 2- 8 (present): Made a cold infusion of crushed garlic in 1/2 cup of water. Again I mixed about 1/4 cup of this strained tea with one gallon of water and replaced regular water with this solution. I made sure that the chickens did not have access to any other rain water during this time. Next was the Chicken egg salad! It is getting a little tiresome to make but the chickens love it. I hard boil their eggs chop up 2 or 2 of them with the shell left on, plus minced garlic, chopped onion and elderberry leaves. Onion and Elderberry leaves were two other anti-parasitic herbs suggested in Juliette Levy's book. She had a number of other suggestions a few of which included adding bramble leaves, wormwood, rue, and hyssop as available. The chickens seem to not mind the garlic anymore now that it is mixed in with eggs. My other two mature hens, the gold Buff Orpington "Buffy" and the Rhode Island Red "Fifi" both laid two eggs the day after they had their first egg salad.



Ongoing: I plan to keep up the above treatment for the next 6 days or so. Then I am going to switch to just adding minced or powdered garlic to the feed on an ongoing basis. I am considering to continue treatment with the Arucana, however to be extra cautious. I will probably give her droppers full of garlic tea for a few days for an extra week or so, and then monitor her stools to see if they stay normal and formed.

I am very interested to see if anyone has any positive outcomes for prevention and treatment of parasites in chickens with herbs only. Please leave a comment if you have anything to share.