Good Hope Heart Gazette

Blueberries

Farmers, cooks, readers:  Do you have photographs and recipes about blueberries to post here? 

Today, I am featuring an excerpt about blueberries from a beautiful website called www.treesofantiquity.com.  There are a number of excellent features on this particular website—all of great interest to me in my goals of learning more about local harvests, trees (including Christmas tree farming) and local crops (including buying, selling, and sustaining local crops).

I came across www.treesofantiquity.com while looking for heirloom seeds and for small trees to plant—with encouragement and instructions.  This site has both of these answers (about heirloom seeds and plants –and about trees, including purchasing and planting your own) in abundance. 

If you have recipes to share on this site,  please send an upload or attachment to “Justy Leigh” at goodhopeheart@gmail.com for publication here on the  www.goodhopeheart.blogspot.com  and on the website by the name www.goodhopeheart.com –Please be sure to include a statement that you are old enough to give your permission to publish and/or permission from your parent or guardian. 

I will consider for posting:  photographs of meals and/or recipes featuring blueberries; photographs of the blueberries In the fields; photographs of products you sell related to blueberries (jams, muffins, scones, jellies, syrups); drawings; artwork; crafts—research statistics –anything about blueberries.

I research to learn about the crops that not only provide a living for farmers but also provide beauty in the landscape, incentive to enhance the soil naturally, sensory appeal—and, most of all, healthy nutrients. My own appreciation for these elements in blueberries is recent—and I’ve learned that blueberries are now a major crop in my home state of Georgia.  I am asking for contributions from the readers about your experiences with blueberries—your recipes, your harvests, your products—and even your landscaping in neighborhoods.  The following is the excerpt from the information-rich website for a business called:  www.treesofantiquity.com

As the following excerpt from the www.treesofantiquity.com website attests: blueberries are a major crop throughout the USA.  Blueberries

Vaccinium corymbosum

Blueberries make a lovely landscaping bush, with attractive green foliage and red fall color and are surprisingly long-lived (up to 40-60 years!) They are associated with many health benefits such as better eyesight, lowered risk of certain cancers, healthy urinary tract function, improved memory function, and healthy aging due to their rich antioxidant content. To top it off, they are simply delicious! We offer the northern highbush and the southern highbush blueberries. The northern highbush are the most widely planted blueberries throughout the northern U.S. Southern highbush offer California and the southeast an opportunity to enjoy blueberries like their northern neighbor. The varieties offered are all self-pollinating but the berries will be larger if two varieties are planted together. For success with blueberries, soil is more important than climate. They require a soil that is moist, acidic (pH of 4 to 5), high in humus and heavy mulch to moderate moisture levels. Mature plants will reach 4-6 feet.

COMING UP:  More references and activities about fruit, trees, heirloom seeds, journal writing and more …with permission from the owners at this featured website for me to provide excerpts within my writing along with links to their site www.treesofantiquity.com

TREES:
I return to my previous posts about Christmas tree farms and how to find them nearby maybe with plans to adopt one or to buy a baby tree to plant yourself.  I will be happy to post photographs, videos, notes about your trips to Christmas tree farms—or any other materials that you send with your permission to post.  I am particularly interested in journal entries about planting and caring for Christmas trees; journal entries about an experience with a Christmas tree—indoors or outdoors; journal entries and/or drawings and photographs (again, I must have your permission to post the entries to my journal blog and/or web page). 

You may ask for further information and post to me at goodhopeheart@gmail.com

RECIPES:

Previously I agreed to post my grandmother’s delicious recipe for Toasted pecan cake. Instead, I reminisced a couple of times about my father’s favorite treat with pecans.  He just toasted the pecans—watching carefully so they did not burn or scorch.  The aroma of toasting pecans is wonderful in every way—good in coffee mix too. The promised toasted pecan cake is still to come.  I had to find it.

SIMPLE SEED STARS AND WREATHS FOR OUTDOOR TREES ALL THE TIME:

I am adding a link to a place where you will find wondrous (and EASY) ways to make seed stars for outdoor trees –along with making a seed wreath for outdoors using a bundt pan!  (I think having outdoor seed stars on trees will make them into Christmas trees even if they are palm trees, pine trees—or any other type of trees)  Hint:  you just use starshaped cookie tins for these.  Be careful not to mix into seeds anything not good for baby birds, small birds—or large birds.  Make the stars spread out so little birds can stay away from the big ones! 

The websites that I found with the ethereally beautiful and often simple styles of nature based crafts like the star shaped and wreath shaped bird seed gifts and the inviting styles of journaling are available to you in different formats.  I will feature some of the links and suggest some ways to use them.