Saturday: Reacting to Sandy and Prepping for Winter: Survival Books, Drying Herbs, Extracting Honey, Tincturing Lavender, and what happened yesterday

Ok so my 100 days of blogging stalled on day two - that may be a bad sign! So a quick update on yesterday:
- Lots of conference calls! Researching app programmers & LMS's & eTexts and more
- Playing with the hootsuite hootlet - kinda liking it!
- Updated the style guide for video editing for my newest team member
- Great lunch time workout with my co-conspirator, co-worker and friend Tracey Abell at Rivers Edge Gym plotting out optimal email follow ups for new students - its great when you can have a meeting on a treadmill! Only at ACHS!
- Evening spent reading Survival Mom - loving this book! The right amount of info blended with humor! Reassured that - being a kiwi and running a school that specializes in herbal medicine helps I guess - I already have a lot of the skills she recommends: canning - check; stockpiling food - check (growing up on an island that was then without a supermarket helped train that into me); producing own food (chickens, bees, vege garden) - check; grow and preserve own herbal remedies - check
- But I realize we too are super dependent on electricity and we need a backup plan. My preference is to have non-electric backups rather than get a generator. DH - being an engineer I suppose - wants a generator - we will see who wins that one!
- We have some water but not enough. I grew up on Waiheke Island - where we lived on tank water. Yes, all year round. yes, it barely rains in the summer. So when we built our addition here I tried to find someone to install a water tank but  you'd think I was asking them to make our house fly! That was 10 years ago and there are more options - we have a small tank at ACHS - but to sustain oneself you really need at least 5000 gallons so I guess I'll have to put that on the Xmas list!
- Have a horrible feeling that I gave away my non electric wheat grinder since I haven't used it in so long. Thankfully my inbred hoarding nature stopped me donating my non electric coffee grinder so Ive only the wheat one to replace! I do have a nice electric wheat grinder courtesy of a good friend of my moms, but its electric.
- Have just received my red cross solar and wind up radio and flashlight. Small but makes me feel prepared just looking at it. Ordered that on amazon after sandy. Had bought DH one years ago that also had a TV - sharper image if I remember rightly - but he can't find it. Recalling that makes me realize I've always been a prepared kinda gal!

And then onto today:
- Picking herbs to dry for the winter before the heavy frost kill them to put in the dehydrator (electric!). I love italian food so lots of oregano, thyme and rosemary are in order! All three survived through the winter fine last year and I was picking them fresh in January but I want a back up plan in case this winter is colder!
- Crushing more honey. Im doing this the old fashioned way this year and harvesting honey with the old crush, strain and drain method! Since we only have three hives and I leave lots of honey on for the bees to sustain them through our cold winters, its not worth renting the big centrifuge! Since honey lasts forever I love the fact that we have this resource and I LOVE my bees!
- Packing a bin with foods that have 2014 expiry dates.
- Packing a backpack to leave in the car with three days worth of supplies.
- Harvesting the last of the Lavender - Lavandula angustifolia - to make a tincture. I'm hoping to get a friend to video this as lots of people ask me about making tinctures and its super easy!


Beekeeping Update - Late Fall Check
Last weekend I switched the two deeps on one hive as all the bees had ended up huddled in the top one leaving lots of food in the bottom - and bees always move UP for some reason. And I set lots of yellow jacket traps as two hives were being robbed by the nasty yellow blighters! Luckily I managed to work with the hives without getting stung by the yellow jackets but they did send me running off across the pasture a couple of times - a funny sight I'm sure in my bee suit - I sure did scare the UPS guy when he showed up with my arbonne supplies! (Oh yes Arbonne shakes and bars are part of my emergency kit!)

Thats it!

New Tools for Old Tricks: Webinars, Lavender, SMS systems, and websites...

Some days I love working from home - other days I hate it. Today: Sick kid + foggy and cold + lots of coding requiring peace and quiet + need for online research + helpful farm worker using scrap wood from a torn down old garage to extend a barn and needing occasional direction = a good working from home kinda day.

I write a lot about different things: Our lavender farm, my master gardening, technology, lesson and course materials, etc, but I'm thinking I should have a central blog, about the stuff that tickles my fancy but doesn't fit anywhere else. If nothing else, it will help me remember what I've been doing!

So today's ramblings, in no particular order or importance:
1. Webinars. They save a heck of a lot of time in airplanes and let you access experts without having to leave the comfort of your fuzzy slippers! Earlier in the week was a great herbal medicine webinar on fertility (featuring the results from this program http://www.foresight-preconception.org.uk/); yesterday I attended a webinar on legal issues in employment (exempt? non exempt?); and today I'm attending one on winter natural remedies for kids with Aviva Romm, and more tomorrow. I may need a webinar 12 step program! We love doing webinars at ACHS but find some are easier than others for students, prospective students, alumni, and faculty to use. And some are cheaper with more features than others! So to help rank them, I put together a list that you can vote on your favorites!

Webinar Tools

View more lists from Erika Yigzaw

2. SIS, LMS, CMS... ?
I'm looking at new options available in the marketplace. A colleague recommended Populi and it does look interesting - Ive signed up for a demo and will keep you posted.

3. Lavender
I did warn you I have eclectic interests, right? I grow lavender at Sherwood Lavender Farm, and as a Master Gardener get lots of questions on it so I've put together another list of my favorite resources here:


At the very least be sure to review some of the full text journal paper on lavender in pubmed here.

4. I'm also working on the achs.edu website, in particular landing pages plugging in some more useful and specifically relevant information, including videos from our youtube channel and working some more on the video editing style guide I created yesterday with my team. Whew!