Lickedy-Split

Asher’s nap was practically non-existent, so only a moment today (but so much I want to say!):

• We have been eating peas every day or two. Sugar Anns, Sugar Snaps, snow peas, and even a few mouthfuls of shell peas. How have I never tasted a fresh shell pea before? It was a life changing experience, and I’m not being all that hyperbolic. Need to blog about my pea experiences from this year so as to remember for next.
• All the garlic scapes have been harvested and eaten, save a small handful still in the fridge. Most of it was made into pesto. Mmmm.
• Kale is crazy. I still can’t stomach it, so the chickens got a kale fest yesterday. It should keep on producing if I keep it picked.
• The weeds are winning right now. Need to mow and mulch, mow and mulch, mow and mulch.
• Tomato plants are looking great. There’s a huge Delicious tomato that’s going to be a lunker. And the Yellow Pears ought to turn yellow at any moment. I will shout with joy and make much ado when we eat our first tomatoes.
• All the pole and bush beans are up.
• Every curcubit hill is growing nicely, save the Lemon Cukes, which did not germinate (sadly). Again, weeds are having a good time, so I need to weed and mulch.
• Peppers and Eggplants are touch and go. They just never took off, though they’re still hanging on. A couple of pepper plants look continually droopy, but never quite die. I’m hoping they’ll dig their roots in and start perking up. The cool, wet weather certainly didn’t help.
• Potatoes are flowering.
• Potatoes, peas, and fava beans all fell over during wind storms earlier in the week. Nothing died.
• Harvested the first fava bean pod yesterday! I thought surely we’d get none, as the aphids had a field day there, but I see a few more pods developing. Did you know the inside of a fava bean pod is fuzzy like velvet?
• Tomatillos doing great. One of the four plants is smaller and not really taking off, but it still has a couple of tomatillos on it.
• Thinned the radishes, and they immediately went crazy. They are spicy when they’re small!
• More weeds than plants in the rows that were seeded recently. Only one broccoli plant up, hardly any of the herbs, and a handful of lettuces. Most of the carrots are up, though! And I see chard. No horseradish.
• Re-potted the rosemary and snapdragons. Looking for a pot for the stevia.
• Really have to go now. We’re headed out to the garden to do some weeding, mulching, and hanging of strings for the pole beans to climb.

Crowing

Our chicks are now 12 weeks old. (They are as many weeks old as I am pregnant; isn’t that handy?) They look like chickens. They’re very pretty. I’m still working on the pictures, promise.

Anyway, we’ve heard feeble teenage crowing attempts for weeks. It sounds like a chicken with a head cold. “Er…er…ERRRRRR!” And we don’t spend hours out in the pasture, so I’m sure there has been crowing before now, but today, we heard a rooster actually crow. The full “cock-a-doodle-doo” and all. It was fun!

Since all 13 of our roosters look alike, it’s difficult to tell who’s crowing, who’s nice, who’s too agressive, etc. I can still tell who Crazy is (though he’s getting bigger and his feathers are growing back – I think he’s less picked on in the bigger coop), but that’s it. It’s less than four weeks (!) until we send all but one lucky fellow to Freezer Camp, and I have no idea how we’ll choose who to eat and who to keep. I should start going out there with different colored permanent markers and marking the promising ones’ heads, or something. None of them are so aggressive that they jump on me or attack me, but the more curious roos will peck at my boots or try to jump out when I open the door. I’ve read that they start to get very rowdy around 16 weeks, and they’ll especially start to fight with each other over who’s Head Roo. Which is why 16 weeks is a good time to butcher your heritage breed chickens; long enough to get some size, but not too long that they’re tough or fighting all day.

Curried Sprouted Lentils with Ginger & Garlic Cilantro Sauce

Oh, wow. I’ve found my newest curry love:

Curried Sprouted Lentils with a Ginger and Garlic Cilantro Sauce

The curry is so simple and easy, and the sauce….mmmmm….it’s amazing. I already knew I loved cilantro, but this took it up a notch.

Notes:

• I used 1/2 sprouted lentils, 1/2 sprouted wheat, as per the recipe, but I found I didn’t love the chewy sprouted wheat in this dish. The lentils were awesome, though, so I’ll be making this with the full six cups of sprouted lentils next time and skipping the wheat.
• I served this over rice. You could skip the rice if you use the sprouted wheat, but I found that I couldn’t wrap my mind around curry not served over rice. Using all lentils will make for a more balanced dish next time.
• The cilantro sauce is divine. Did I say that already? It’s fantastic. It made the dish. I used thinnings from my overcrowded cilantro seedling row in the garden; it amounted to a medium handful of little cilantro bunches. I cut off the roots but threw the whole plant, stems and all, into the food processor. Since I was low on cilantro, I added a small tomato (frozen and thawed) from my mom’s garden last year. I substituted two jalapeno peppers (again frozen and thawed, and seeded, from my mom’s garden last year) for the Anaheim pepper, and substituted  2 garlic scapes for the 3 garlic cloves. So delish.

Thanks to Michelle for pointing me to this recipe.

12 Weeks!

I’ve officially been pregnant longer than my last pregnancy (which ended at 11 weeks, 6 days) and it feels really good. Almost as if she knew, Ellery drew me a family portrait this morning; it had Mommy, Daddy, Maya, Ellery, Asher, New Baby, and Winter. Bring on the tissues.

I am feeling so much better. Oh, I’m still exhausted, and I probably overdo it too often. (If you could see my kitchen, you might disagree, but I promise that I’m working hard on other things.) But the Debilitating Nausea has been downgraded to Minor Food Aversions, and I’m able to eat more. Still can’t stomach a plate of steamed kale (not even topped with cheese!), which is too bad, since we have a ton of kale that needs to be eaten. (Locals, come by and pick it!)

I just ate the best lunch. Jason took the girls on a date ice skating (weird for a heat spell in June, but they really wanted to go), and Asher is sleeping. I’m all alone, but enjoying the solitude. And the food. I sliced up some fresh homemade bread, topped it with cheddar and mayo, and scrambled up an egg in bacon grease. Oh my. Would it be gluttonous to go make another one? I suppose I should save some bread for the kids.

And to drink – iced red raspberry leaf tea! (With nettles and alfalfa, of course.) I decided that since I’m 12 weeks and my herbs came in the mail, I’m good to go. And it tastes so refreshing. I did some math and settled on 1 heaping tablespoon of rrl, 1 tsp of alfalfa, and 1 tsp of nettles per quart of boiling water. Steeped for a while, strained, and refrigerated overnight. I might need to start making larger batches, because the kids wanted some, too. Even Asher held out his sippy cup and pleaded, “Tea!”

I’m in that awkward phase where nothing fits but t-shirts and yoga pants. (Guess what I’m wearing this very minute, even?) I need to get rid of a ton of maternity clothes that either don’t fit or I’ve never worn due to the style (I received hand-me-downs). I don’t have much that’s actually usable after four pregnancies, so I need to start shopping or sewing. Just a few basics: some skirts and dresses for summer, a few pair of jeans/pants, and some shirts that actually cover my belly past the second trimester.

On My Mind

1. Eggs in Toast! We made Eggs in Toast this morning, out of our stored dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. (Seriously, easiest bread ever. I like it even better than No Knead Bread. And there’s so much you can do with it!) Skipped the bacon because we didn’t have it. It was amazing. We will be making this again. (Um, I need to buy this book. I just returned it after borrowing it for the third time from the library…)

Pickin’ mulberries in the rain

Originally uploaded by dayna1

2. Mulberries! We have been picking mulberries for a few days now! They aren’t super sweet yet, because they probably aren’t quite ripe, but we can’t help ourselves. They’re nice and dark, but if we let the berries sit for another day or two, they’d probably be super sweet. Again, we just can’t resist. Two of our five trees have dark berries scattered here and there; there are lots more young berries on those trees, too. The other trees’ berries are still white and green. We’ve eaten the berries out of hand, in bowls with milk and sugar, and on PB&J as fresh mulberry jam. Mmmmm…

3. Bed & Breakfast! I have this dream. I’ve always wanted to own a bed & breakfast. I want to find an old, beat up farmhouse or cottage in the country or on the lakeshore. I want to buy the property, build a small eco-friendly cottage for our family to live in, and renovate the farmhouse/cottage for the B&B. This way, we can have the cute old house without subjecting the children to the remodeling hazards associated with old houses (lead, asbestos, mold, etc.). And owning a B&B? Is right up my alley. I’d cook fresh breakfasts from food grown or produced on our farm, get to socialize with folks from around the world, but also have my own private quarters with my family. We could even make it a destination vacation, with guests able to join in on the farm chores for the total farm experience. I’ve actually considered paying for that sort of thing, and I know there are a lot of farm B&Bs out there.

Beans Are IN!

It’s like I forget that I’m still in the first trimester of pregnancy. Until I garden for five minutes; then I remember. But I press on, because I have a goal. And due to the timing of all the planting this first year, we are going to have a cah-razy August and September harvest!

Today I planted more stuff.  Jason played with the kids in the later afternoon/early evening so I could do so. He also took advantage of 20 minutes when the kids were all happily entertained to install eight posts for the bean trellises. It was a seriously difficult 20 minutes, though!

The first thing I did was plant the 30 Alaska Nasturtium seeds that I had soaked for 24 hours (per packet instructions; these are Botanical Interest, and I bought them at a local garden store). These are supposed to protect against squash bugs, so I wanted to surround my squash with them, but I didn’t have enough seeds for that. Instead, I planted one seed per hill (23 curcubit hills), doubling up in some places. We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully neither of us pricks the nasturtium seedlings out as weeds.

Next I transplanted our 15 pepper and 3 eggplant seedlings (finally!). I’ve been babying these things for just over three months, so it was about time.  I planted two rows down one 30″ wide x 21′ long bed; the rows were about 15 – 18″ apart, and the plants were staggered and 18″ apart between plants. I planted three each of California Wonder Sweet Peppers, Chocolate Sweet Peppers, Early Jalapenos, Orange Bells, and Peacework Sweet Peppers. Then I planted three Rosa Bianca Eggplant seedlings right after the peppers. There are a couple three feet left at the end of that row for me to plant.

Next I moved on to beans. I had to cull a few varieties that may take too long to mature for this year; I’ll try them next year, when I’ll have more time to plant earlier. [The ones I skipped are Black Turtle Soup Beans (85 - 105 days), Jacob's Cattle (80 - 100 days), and Red Kidney Beans (102 days)]. Since Fedco’s seed packets are frustratingly pithy, I couldn’t even tell which of my varieties were bush versus pole. I did some googling and made my best guesses. The two bush varieties shared a 24′ row; I sowed them 3″ apart in short rows spaced 18″ apart. There were 16 short rows , so I planted eight rows each of Provider Bush Green Beans (50 days!) and Black Coco Shell Beans. I’ll thin to 6″ spacings after they’re up. They shouldn’t need support, or so I’ve read.

We had enough 2″ x 2″s to make two 24′ rows of trellises. Each trellis section is approx. 8′ long, so the remaining five pole bean varieties each got a section, and the sixth section was split between my two favorites. I planted Nodak Pinto Soup Beans, Cannellini Shell Beans (may be bush, but I couldn’t figure it out), Scarlett Runner Beans (these are totally gorgeous!), Kentucky Wonder Pole Bean, Garden of Eden Pole Bean, and one section of half Garden of Eden, half Scarlett Runner. (Those two varieties are also great because they can be eaten as green beans, or left to dry as soup beans. And both are so pretty to look at!) All the pole beans were planted 2-3″ apart, and I probably won’t thin them unless it looks pretty desperate.

I bought a new sprinkler today. It’s another rainbow one, and it has lots of nifty features, like a timer, and can be set for both narrow strips and wide. Unfortunately, I think our water pressure isn’t the greatest after travelling 400′ from the well, because what was supposed to cover the entire garden only covered perhaps 1/5th of it. I will try our older impulse sprinkler out this week to see if it does any better.

11 Weeks, 4 Days – Kicking?

I’m pretty sure I can feel the baby kicking, intermittently, as I sit at the computer. I put my feet up on the first rung of the chair, so my knees are high and as I lean forward to type, I kind of squish up into a ball. This is the same position in which I was able to feel Ellery and Asher kicking early. But never this early.

It just started today, and time will tell if it’s really the baby. Or just gas. But I’m kind of an old pro at the pregnancy thing by now, so I’m nearly certain it’s kicking. That would just make my day!

Pictures Coming Soon. Ish.

I have so many pictures that I want to post that I will probably picture blog for weeks and weeks.

I’m working on getting all of my pictures downloaded to SmugMug. Then, between that and our backup external hard drive, I will feel comfortable enough to delete the pictures on my desktop hard drive to make room for more. Having the photos in two places (SmugMug and external hard drive) makes me feel better.

If you are a friend or family member and would like access to SmugMug, which will eventually contain every single digital picture I have ever taken, just email me. I can send you the login info.

*If you like SmugMug (we’re pretty thrilled with it) and decide to join, you can get $5 off (and I’ll get $10 off through your referral) by entering my email address (serinatoman -at- yahoo *dot* com) or my personal coupon ( f36AmCK7mpRpU ) in the ‘Email / Coupon’ field on the signup form when you start a SmugMug account.

Lots of Stuff Planted

I probably got too much sun on my face today, because I didn’t put suncreen on it and I couldn’t stand my wide-brimmed straw hat after about 30  minutes. (Too hot and muggy. Note to self: get/make washable wide brimmed cotton hat, and sell the awesome but stifling and unwashable straw hat. Any takers? It’s way cute.) But I put in three hours work in the garden this afternoon, and we’re getting closer to having all the summer stuff in. The big things left to do: peppers, eggplant, green beans/pole beans, flowers, and corn. Our sweet corn is a 74 day variety, so we do have time for it (though we’ll have to skip the popping corn for this year; it’s 102 days). There are other things that are not as important to me, but I still would like to try to get in, like edamame, celeriac, and parsnips. And, of course, fall plantings will start in July and August.

Lots of stuff is up! All that rain (so, so much) really helped. Look:

• Plum Purple Radish
• Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage
• Nearly all of the curcubits (cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, winter squashes, pumpkins, melons). The are a few hills that have no plants yet, including Lemon Cucumber (which I remember because I’m so excited about them, so I was bummed that they’re not up). I noticed some curcubits up as early as Thursday and they were all planted Sunday, so I got great germination.

What I put in today:

• Horseradish: We saw this in a little bag at Lowe’s this winter, and couldn’t resist. We love fresh horseradish sauce. But when I opened the bag, all I could find in the handful of soil was two shriveled up stick-like things; they looked like skinny wood mulch. I don’t have much hope for them, but I planted them anyway, 12″ apart. If they miraculously grow, then I know I will need to dig them up every fall to harvest the roots and re-plant just what I need to grow for next year, because horseradish will spread like crazy and is very invasive.
• Mint: Another invasive plant that I can’t resist. My girls gave my mom some cilantro and peppermint (not actually sure what kind of mint, but I think it’s peppermint) seeds as a gift last year, and the gift was passed back to me as a clump of mint last fall. Since we didn’t have our garden dug up yet, I threw the plants in the ground near our house to keep them alive until this year. I finally remembered to transplant them to the garden today – one 10″ clump, next to the horseradish. They weren’t growing or spreading much where I had them near the house, because there wasn’t enough sun. In the sunny garden, I fully expect them to take over, so I’ll need to dig and cull from time to time. I eventually want to plan the mint where I can let it go a little crazy, but I’m not sure where that is yet, so I (perhaps foolishly) put it straight in the garden.
• Lemon Balm: This herb makes the best tea. A friend of mine from Pittsburgh introduced me to it, only she calls it “Melissa” (it’s Latin name is Melissa Officinalis). She has it taking over growing in her back yard, and she made me the most delicious iced tea. I was hooked. So I’m thrilled to be planting this in my garden. Only I just read that it needs light to germinate (my seed packet didn’t say that), and I buried the seed at least 1/4″, so I’ll need to go throw some on top of the soil now. I sowed a couple of rows 4-5′ long; I didn’t measure, just divided up the rest of the row into three equal sections and dedicated one to lemon balm.
• Greek Oregano: Same as lemon balm; didn’t measure how long the rows were (maybe 4-5′), sowed couple of rows.
• German Thyme: Same as lemon balm and oregano.
• Carrots: Sowed three rows 8-10′ long, 10″ apart. First row: Scarlet Nantes Improved Carrot. Second row: Napoli Carrot. Third row: half Danvers (free seed from Baker Creek), half Red Cored Chantenay Carrot. I just made a little furrow with a spare board, tried to scatter the seed evenly within the furrow (shooting for every 1/2 – 1″), and covered lightly. I’ll thin to 1″ spacings after they (hopefully) germinate, and then thin to 2″ after than, hopefully waiting long enough to thin to get baby carrots out of the deal. I will probably sow another succession of carrots down the rest of the row that I sowed to lettuce today.
• Lettuce: Five varieties: Jericho, Buttercrunch Bibb, Antares Oakleaf, Tom Thumb Baby Bibb, and Black Seeded Simpson. After planting the carrots, I divided the rest of the row into five equal sections, perhaps 2′ long each, and simply scattered the lettuce seed over the top of the soil. Then I patted down the soil to help the lettuce seed make contact, sprinkled soil over top in some places, and let it be. I’ll thin the lettuce and eat as baby greens.
• Basil: I finally transplanted my basil seedlings out. They were looking more lime green than healthy basil green, if you know what I mean, but I think they’ll make it. I didn’t have any fertilizer with me today, but I’ll side dress with something, or water with manure tea, soon. I think just being in the ground, rather than a small recycled seedling tray, will help it green up right away. The basil took up 2/3 of a 21′ row (again, all my raised rows are 30″ wide), half being Sweet Basil, half being Genovese Basil. As per the advice in this article, I’ve been pinching all the tops of my basil to help it get nice and bushy. Tonight, we ate the pinchings on our pasta.
• Bright Lights Chard: With the other 1/3 of the basil row, I planted two rows (about 12″ – 15″ apart) of chard. I spaced the holes 6″ apart, and put 2-3 seeds in each hole. (By the way, chard seeds are wicked cool.) I’ll thin to every other plant when the plants are big enough to be baby chard in my salads.
• Parsley: I planted two sections, perhaps 5-6′ long, with 2-3 rows in each section, of Forest Green Parsley and Dark Green Italian Parsley. I probably should have soaked the seed first, per packet instructions, but I had so much planting to do today that I just grabbed packets and planted them. So hopefully germination will be okay, if not stellar.
• Bouquet Dill: Planted next to the parsleys, another 5-6′ section, this time with only 2 rows. I heart dill.
• Broccoli: To finish off the parsley-parsley-dill row, I planted four holes each of Arcadia Broccoli and Thompson Broccoli. (I actually didn’t order Arcadia; it was what Fedco sent me as a substitute for the Umpqua, which was not out of stock when I ordered, but apparently became out of stock before they sent my order.) I put 4 seeds in each hole, and will thin to the strongest seedling. The holes were 16″ apart down the center of the row.

Whew, okay, so that’s what I did today. I broke out our old rainbow sprinkler, which is wonky and only sprays in whatever direction it feels like, and somehow managed to get all the newly sown seeds watered (along with a lot of extra stuff, depending on the sprinkler’s mood). It’s nice to have water in the garden; Jason had to do some serious plumbing to get the water all the way out there. It involved drilling through the foundation wall and 400′ of irrigation tubing, 350 of which still needs to be buried. Still, we have water, and I used a sprinkler rather than my little watering can, and I felt like a queen. Note to self: get a new sprinkler of some sort.

Just for the curious, and for my own records, I’ll talk a little about how the garden is laid out. It is 54′ wide and 60-some feet long. The width is divided into two sections; one side is 21′ long, and the other is 24′ long, and down the center is a 4′ path. (I can’t really say why one side is 21′ while the other is 24′, other than to say that it just worked out that way. We may move the path to the actual center next year, or we may not.) Each side is divided up mostly into rows; at the bottom (south) side of the garden, there are hills for curcubits that are 4-5′ in diameter. But from the top (north) of the garden, each row is 30″ wide and either 21′ or 24′ long, with 12″ in between for walking. The rows keep going until we ran out of time, and then there is blank earth (growing lots of weeds) before you hit the curcubit hills. As Jason has dug new rows for me, I have planted them, and the blank earth section between the rows and the hills has slowly shrunk. Eventually, once we’ve planted everything in rows that we want to, we’ll stop digging rows and just plant the rest of the blank earth section to corn. Next year, we’ll row up the whole thing.

Jason’s been assigned the job of mapping out the garden, as he’s good at that sort of thing. But I’m going to see if I can’t list off what’s been planted from memory. Jason’s map will be very helpful as we plan next year’s garden; you don’t want to plant the same thing in the same place. We hope to make use of a 4-year rotation, if it works out.

Here’s what’s currently planted on the west half of the garden, where the rows are 21′ long. From north to south, one row per bullet:

• Sugar Snap Peas, Blizzard Snow Peas, Fava Beans
• Sugar Ann Snap Peas, Mayfair Shell Peas, Fava Beans
• Potatoes (can’t remember what’s planted where, but I’m sure it’s in a potato post somewhere)
• Potatoes
• Potatoes, one 2′ section of cilantro at the end
• Korean Onions, Evergreen Hardy White Scallions, Bleu de Solaize Leeks, Clear Dawn Onions
• Sweet Potatoes (see sweet potato post for what’s planted where)
• Sweet Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Horseradish, peppermint, lemon balm, Greek Oregano, German Thyme
• Carrots (four varieties), Lettuce (five varieties)
• Sweet Basil, Genovese Basil, Bright Lights Chard

And here’s what’s currently planted on the east half of the garden, where the rows are 24′ long. From north to south, one row per bullet:

• Tomatoes (eight plants per row)
• Tomatoes
• Tomatoes
• Tomatoes
• Tomatoes
• Verde Puebla Tomatillo (four plants), Korean Perilla, Plum Purple Radish
• Mammoth Red Rock Cabbages
• Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbages
• Parsleys, Dill, Broccolis

And south of all that you have Blank Earth with Weeds, and south of that you have 23 curcubit hills. The garden is enclosed by a 3′ tall woven wire fence, plus another wire a foot above that. We have t-posts at the corners and centers of all sides, and recycled plastic fence posts in between those (they were much cheaper). An international student/friend came to help in the garden, and he built us a simple gate. Jason used two 3-4″ diameter saplings as posts for the gate, and our student/friend used scrap wood, leftover woven wire fencing, and lots of galvanized wire to fashion the gate. It’s all very rustic, but perfect for us. Now I need Jason needs to paint a little garden sign.

Red Raspberry Leaf Tea

I am 11 weeks, 2 days pregnant. There are only four days until the day I passed Winter in my last pregnancy, and I haven’t had a sign of spotting in many weeks. My uterus is easily palpable, and the kids and the hubs are both able to feel the “baby bag” in the mornings. I’m feeling very positive about this pregnancy, and thank God for the blessing of life. We continue to pray that we will meet our healthy, full-term baby in January (New Year’s Day would be perfect).

I drank red raspberry leaf tea with nettles mixed in during most of the second and third trimesters of Asher’s pregnancy. (See Mountain Rose Herbs for a great way to buy bulk and organic; they are currently out of stock of raspberry leaf, so I bought from here instead this time.) I brewed a strong quart each day, strained and refrigerated it, and drank it iced. I found it delicious and refreshing. I don’t know if it has anything to do with my bag of waters remaining intact until I was fully dilated, but if there’s any chance it does, I’m totally going for it again. Labor with the bag of waters intact was a whole different (preferable, wonderful) animal, compared to labor after my waters have broken. I already have quick, intervention-free labors, so I can’t say if the RRL tea helped with that or not, but many people think it does help with easier labors. (See this thread at Mothering.com for dozens of pages of testimonials, including my own, here.)

This time, I ordered red raspberry leaf, alfalfa, and nettles. I’ll mix them all up (8 parts rrl, 3 parts alfalfa, 2 parts nettles, per the recipe given here for Mama’s Red Raspberry Brew, minus the peppermint) and brew a pot daily. (You can also buy the Brew pre-mixed at the link I gave, but I calculated that I’ll save money and get 50% more by mixing my own. Plus, I didn’t need the peppermint.) I strain the herb leaves out with a sieve, but you could easily used a fine mesh colander, cheese cloth, or tea towel. (Just be sure to wash with a castile soap and boil your cloths several times to remove detergent residues.) I didn’t order peppermint because we have peppermint growing here, and I can add fresh leaves in if I want to. We also have a stevia plant that I can add leaves from if I want the tea to be sweet. But I prefer it the way it is.

Why did I wait this long? Because I wanted to be sure things were going well before spending the money on the herbs. There has been some talk of RRL tea being linked to bleeding and/or contractions during the first trimester, though the research indicates that’s not true. But due to our loss, I’m not taking any chances. So we decided to wait until the second trimester to start the RRL tea. I do think that RRL tea during the first trimester is probably completely safe, but I think I can still reap the benefits by waiting and starting in the second, so that’s the path I chose.