Ramp Salt, Real Milk, Hummingbirds,and Randoms

57°f this morning, about 16° C. Huge thunderstorm in the night put on quite a show. 

The wind was crazy yesterday! Blew hard all day, big gusts that made the clouds scoot quickly across the sky. An uneasy kind of day. High of 80°f, too hot for this time of year.

We dehydrated the ramps I brought back from the mountains this past weekend, and boy did my porch stink for a couple days! Unless you have had some experience with ramps, it might be hard to believe that such an innocuous looking little onion could be so powerful, but believe me, it is. A newspaper editor here in WV once decided to use ramp juice in his printing ink so people from other places would know what they smelled like. The US Postal Service refused to deliver any more papers from him unless he promised not to pull that stunt again--post offices across the country reeked for days, apparently! Click here to learn the scientific name and description of ramps, which are also called rampion or rapunzel---the plant in the Grimm's fairytale Rapunzel that the expectant mother craved.

I decided to use some of them to make ramp seasoning salt.

Simplest thing in the world: put some dried ramps and a bunch of salt in the blender and whiz it up. I used three large handfuls of the dried leaves to about a cup and a half of salt.

The rest of the ramps I chopped up in the food processor, to be used in cooking whenever we want. Once dried, the ramps lose that over-the-top potency, and just have an excellent, unique flavor. 

Ramp salt and chopped, dehydrated ramps. Took about 3 pounds to make this much.

In other news, we found a source of fresh milk!

I am so excited. I used to have 2 Jersey milk cows until about 1990, I guess, when we had to put down our last old girl. I have really missed that good milk. So now we will be able to get a gallon a week, plenty for the two of us. 

And just look who's back! Mr. Hummingbird, and we rather foolishly want to believe it's Little Mister, a hummer who has been coming for years, and always perches in the same tree. Probably it is just a random fellow, but still...

A few more photos from the weekend:

Quite a horseshoe bend.

The old mill at Millpoint, WV:

An interesting screened porch in Richwood, WV.

In Craigsville, WV:

At camp:

and along the road:

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.