Hello Harvest!

It is a moment of transition as we say good-bye to Summer and Hello to Fall…the veil between the worlds starts to grow thin as well head into the dark, quiet time of year. Sending out this newsletter a little before the first, to be able to remind you about this weekend’s events! We are still hoping for people to discover Alice Duvernell’s two classes on medicinal preparations for beauty and health taking place on Sunday the 2nd. Read more below. And a reminder that I will have a final event at my Oakland home this Saturday morning—a breakfast social and giveaway. Other than that we have a small selection of wonderful classes this month including Animal First Aide with Becca Wetherby, The Whole Pig and Made with Masa with Seth Peterson and Backyard Chickens with Jeannie McKenzie. If you missed my Natural Beekeeping class and wanted to take it, I will be teaching a shortened version in Walnut Creek on October 22. And if you missed out soap making class I have scheduled another one for December 12th.

we got some jahradale, pink banana, cinderlla, big max,butternut and white cushaw

Handmade Health and Beauty with Alice Duvernell
For those of you interested in home healthcare and handmade body care this class is not to miss!. Alice is one of the Bay Area’s premier teachers on these topics, having long taught for the now defunct Nova studio, which was a small school of soap making and handmade body care products. This Sunday she will offer two fantastic classes on topics otherwise hard to find. The first is harnessing the magic of the honeybee hive—using honey, wax and propolis to craft health and body products for human use. The second class focuses on the little known art of making Hydrosols—these are plant distillates which are much like essential oils that you can make at home on your stove. Learn a simple distillation process and how to use these wonderful plant extracts for beauty, cooking and medicine making.

Hello/Goodbye ~ Breakfast Social & Giveaway
Saturday October 1, 10am-1pm
Come say hello and lighten my load! Coffee and Tea are provided.
You are welcome to bring pastries or other easy breakfast-y, brunch-y things to share.
Or just stop by to peruse my pile of giveaways. Lots of free stuff and a small pile of “make me an offer” items.

How Does Your Garden Grow?
So many times we assume that when a crop does poorly, it was due to our own inexperience or bad gardening skills. But comparing notes with other gardeners we learn that some years are just bad tomato years and others everyone gets a bumper crop of peas or cukes. So how did your garden grow this year? My conspirator and I had great crops of basil, carrots, corn, beets, cucumbers, summer squash, apples, figs and peppers. And it seems to be an amazing year for persimmons—every tree I see is packed—including my own tree here on 60th Street, which has never made me more than a handful. But it was a terrible year for me for tomatoes and onions. Tomatoes seemed to gee an initial great flush and nothing further and the winter squash for how much we planted was under productive. I am curious to hear reports from others…. what thrived and what bombed in 2016? emeryville pink grapes