Interested in making your own elderberry syrup?  I use a modified version of this recipe from The Healthy Home Economist.  I like their recipe because it is simple, with just 3 ingredients, and it tastes great!  If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can see some images that might be helpful in understanding the directions.  This recipe will make about 3 cups of syrup.

Ingredients
3/4 cup dried elderberries (or 2 cups fresh elderberries)
3 cups water
1 cup raw honey (I use Irish Ridge honey of course!)

Directions

1. Bring elderberries and water to a boil, simmer for 30 minutes on medium-low.  As the original recipe states, you are trying to reduce your volume by about 1/3, so don't hold back on the bubbling.  I stir the boiling mixture a few times during the 30 minute period.
2. Remove from heat and mash the elderberries with a potato masher.  Wait a few minutes to cool the liquid a few degrees before the next step.
3. Strain the mash/liquid through a filter (see below for filter details) into a glass bowl.  Then, using clean tongs, press against the ball of mash in the filter to squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
4. Cool to 100F.  I cool the liquid this low so that it remains below maximum hive temperatures, which means that the raw honey won't be compromised when you mix it in.  
5. Mix in raw honey.  Note that I often mix in completely crystallized/solid raw honey and it does dissolve, even at 100F.  But it will take some extra stirring.
6. Store in the fridge in glass jars.  I use pint sized mason jars. 

Notes

• For the filtering step, I use a nylon filter that originally came with a honey bucket that I ordered online a few years ago (see picture at the bottom of this post).  I like it because it is reusable (unlike cheesecloth) and easy to clean, with no chance of cotton fibers getting into the syrup.  
• I've stored this syrup in the fridge with no issues from November to February (3 months). That's the longest I've needed to store it before it was all used up! But I do take precautions to keep it clean, like no double-dipping of spoons and no drinking directly from the jar, etc.  
• I eat about 1 Tbsp per day whenever I feel run down, as a preventative (placebo or otherwise).  When I get sick, I eat maybe 3 Tbsp/day.  But of course, I NEVER get sick because of my magical elderberry syrup, right? right?
• I usually double or even triple the recipe when I make it.
• Yes, this will stink up your entire house (good stink if you like the smell of elderberries; bad stink if you do not).
• Don't be a fool and store the syrup under a canning lid that was previously used to store fridge pickles. Unless, unlike me, you like your syrup with a faint taste/smell of garlic, vinegar, and celery seeds.
• Elderberry bushes are not hard to grow and make really pretty shrubs.  If you live in the northeastern US, I recommend Nourse Farms as a supplier of elderberry plants that should fruit about 2-3 years after planting.  

Enjoy!  :)

I've been teaching BIO325 Botany at Utica College since 2011, my first year on campus. Each year*, I've required that students conduct an original research project:  

Your project will need to build on the scientific literature and must in some way relate to the biology of plants. Working in teams of 3-4 students each, you will choose a project, design an experiment and write a proposal, collect and analyze data, and give an oral scientific presentation.

When I introduce students to the Botany research project in the first week of lab, I take care to tell them that the goal is a publishable product.  They must ground their study in the literature and design it so that it has well-developed controls, sufficient replication, etc. The goal is that if all goes basically as expected the project will be--at a minimum--worth presenting at a conference; the ultimate goal is, of course, publication.  

I also give students as much freedom as possible to choose their topic.  The only rule is that it must somehow relate to plant biology.  This freedom often leads to interdisciplinary projects that make bridges between plant biology and the areas of expertise of my faculty colleagues.  As a result, I get to explore many new areas of biology (like microbiology, molecular biology, animal behavior, endocrinology). It also demonstrates that I have very generous colleagues, because they are always willing to lend their expertise, equipment, and even their labs to Botany students who ask for help.  

Here is a list of all the projects that have occurred in Botany over the years (by title).  My first thought after assembling this list**:  I'm so proud of all these students and their hard work!  It is one of the most inspiring, creative, exciting, challenging, and fun parts of my job to mentor students as they design these interesting research projects when they are so new to studying botany, i.e., when they are budding (ha) botanists.  

Second thought:  I need to work on encouraging students to come up with more descriptive titles and get away from the standard "Effects of X on Y."  A task for 2020!

2019

• Effects of Pseudomonas uticensis on germination and development of Arabidopsis thaliana
• Interaction between Arabidopsis thaliana and Setaria viridis under different nocturnal LED light intensities
  
• Growth effects of intercropping Anethum graveolens and Brassica oleraceae var. capitata
  
• Action potential propagation in maize plants
• Artificial light at night and germination rate of Arabidopsis thaliana
• The insecticidal effects of essential oils on adult milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus)
• Arabidopsis thaliana growth in Martian and Earth conditions

2017

• Effects of Pseudomonas uticensis and Rhizobium leguminosarum on the growth of Glycine max
• Effects of chlorine on growth of tomato plants
• Impact of biochar on final biomass of tomatoes intercropped with soybeans in nutrient poor soil
• Effects of erythritol on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and corn (Zea mays) plant growth and seed germination time [resulted in this publication!]
• Effects of artificial light at night (ALAN) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on Arabidopsis thaliana
• The effects of 17-beta estradiol on seed germination in an invasive ornamental grass, Miscanthus sinensis, versus a native counterpart, Panicum virgatum

2016

• The effects of atrazine and 17-beta estradiol on Zea mays growth
• Domestic applications of copper absorption by Helianthus annuus L.
• The effects of intercropping on yield, biomass, and height of scallions and lettuce compared to cultivating those crops individually
• Synergistic effects of linalool and linalyl acetate on behavioral and physiological responses in mice
• The effects of sound on the growth and biomass of Zea mays
• Comparison of anthocyanin concentrations in organically versus non-organically grown blackberries (Rubus fruticosus)

 
2015

• Effects of herbicides on bean seedling pole selection
• Effects of sound waves on the growth of Zea mays
• The effect of estrogen on the growth of Zea mays under three different soil conditions
• The effects of magnetic field strength on the change in height of Zea mays
• Effects of artificial wind and sand abrasion on transpiration rates in Phaseolus vulgaris

 
2014

• The effectiveness of companion planting Phaseolus vulgaris and Cucumis sativus
• The effects of temperature and germination time on pole selection in bean plants (Phaseolus vulgaris)
• The allelopathic effect of cigarette butts on growth of Cynodon dactylon (Bermuda grass)
• Assessment of the effect of climate change-induced lake effect snowfall on tree ring width
• Impact of Manduca sexta herbivory and simulated herbivory on Solanum lycopersicum
• Effects of streptomycin on the growth of Zea mays
• Effects of intermittent light at night on germination in Arabidopsis thaliana

 
2013

• Allelopathic effects of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) soil on radish (Raphanus sativus) growth
• Effects of road salt on growth of Zea mays
• Effect of chlorpyrifos on soybean biomass
• The effects of environmentally relevant concentrations of the herbicide atrazine on the growth of duckweed (Lemna minor)
• Effect of 17-beta estradiol on the growth of Lemna minor, a common aquatic plant
• The effect of vibratory stimuli on Raphanus sativus during seed germination

 
2012

• The effects of light on chloroplast development in Glycine max
• Road salt on biomass of radishes
• Effects of sandy, peat, and top soil types on the production of nepetalactone in catnip (Nepeta cataria)
• Effect of fertilization on radish growth

 
2011

• Effects of cinnamon and cedarwood essential oils and caffeine on Candida albicans
• Olfactory testing for the photochemical degradation of isohumulones in canned pilsner beer
• Effect of gentamicin and plant extracts on growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa
• The influence of Carassius auratus waste water on the biomass of Lemna valdiviana
• The effect of UV light on Zea mays
• Effects of caffeine on shoot and root growth in radish plants (Raphanus sativus)
• The effect of soil salinity on growth of three species in the family Fabaceae:  Alaska pea, red kidney bean, and lima bean
• Combined effects of mycorrhizal fungi and Rhizobium bacteria on the growth of soybean plants

*2018 is missing because I was on sabbatical that semester
**for 2011-2018, I assembled the list by looking up proposal titles in my turnitin.com classrooms.  I hope I didn't miss any groups by doing it this way, but a few years are looking suspiciously sparse.

This year, for the first time, I'm finally going to produce some cut comb honey.  I've wanted to do it for several years, but haven't.  This year is the year!

I thought it would be helpful to explain a bit about why cut comb honey is desirable, and also why it is so expensive compared to extracted (regular) honey.

What is cut comb honey?
In my last blog post, I discussed how honey is extracted.  I explained that honey is stored by the bees in frames of honeycomb.  (If you don't know what I'm talking about, maybe go read my previous post.)  

To make cut comb honey, the beekeeper cuts intact honeycomb (with honey inside) off the wooden frame, then boxes it up for sale just like that!  

I don't have any pictures of my own cut comb honey to show yet, but there's a pretty picture in this article.  

Why is cut comb honey expensive?
So if cut comb honey saves the beekeeper the time of extracting honey, why does it cost more than extracted honey???  I'm telling you, this is a PLOT by beekeepers to get RICH.  I'm gonna blow this whole thing wide open!!!

The reason cut comb honey is expensive comes back to drawn comb.  Drawn honeycomb, as I explained in my previous blog post, is extremely valuable to beekeepers.  Because it saves the bees from having to make new wax cells, it allows the bees to make more honey for the beekeeper.  It also seems to make the bees want to ramp up honey production.  They seem to get extra busy and productive, knowing that there are empty wax cells that need to be filled with honey.  The best way to make bees want to make honey in the spring is to put on some drawn comb. (And one of the best ways to make this beekeeper happy in the wintertime is to visit my boxes of drawn comb in the barn.  They smell like bees and honey and summer.)

When the beekeeper produces cut comb honey, it means that the drawn comb is not returned to the bees.  The bees therefore must make all new wax before they can fill honey frames with nectar/honey.  This means a lot more work/bees/resources must be expended by the beehive.  That work ends up costing the beekeeper in bees, time, and honey.  

And that is why cut comb honey is more expensive than extracted honey.

Why is cut comb honey worth the time and expense?
The reason I want to make cut comb honey is that it is AMAZING.  

One of the reasons raw local honey is so special is that the delicate floral perfumes and tastes that originate in flower nectar are preserved, whereas they seem to be absent (at least given the limits of my sensory abilities) in heated, filtered supermarket honey.  Cut comb honey takes that excellence of freshness, smell, and taste one step further.  In cut comb honey, the honey remains perfectly preserved within its wax cell until the cell is opened.  Therefore, all the delicate smells and tastes that were in the nectar remain in the honey that is within the cut comb, unchanged, until you eat it!  It is the freshest honey it is possible to find, unless you're a beekeeper who often does some snacking right out of the hive while checking her bees...  :)

Cut comb honey can also take longer to crystallize than extracted honey.  And it retains all of the pollen and probiotics that were in the honey when the bees sealed it up with a wax capping.  

How do you eat it?
Kids: "With your fingers. Then you lick them off and wipe the spit on your brother."
Adults: "No!  We use utensils!!"

Many people take a chunk of the cut comb off with a knife or spoon, and spread it on toast. My kids like to remove a chunk and plop it straight into their mouths like chewing gum.  They chew until all the honey is gone, then (I think?) either swallow the wax or spit it outside when I'm not looking.  

Old-school
My grandmother gave me this glass dish a couple of summers ago.  She asked me, "Do you know what this is for?"  I guessed it was for candy.  She kept looking at me, waiting patiently for me to catch on, but my detective skills were disappointing and she had to tell me that it was for storing cut comb honey.  Brilliant!  The extra honey drips to the bottom and then can be used later.  

I can't wait to use it this summer.

What do I miss most about grad school?  My freedom of time.  
Having that precious, wonderful ability to structure my own time allowed me to work when I felt creative or productive, and to not work when I felt blah.  I'm a hardworking, self-motivated, semi-introverted type.  I am usually most productive when working  from home in my pajamas, coffee or tea nearby.  So being able to figure out when *I* want to tackle each item on my to-do list has always been a beautiful luxury, not a productivity-problem-in-the-making.  Even after the birth of my first child, when I was writing my dissertation from home, I still enjoyed freedom of time when he was taking his blessed 3 naps per day.

So what do I love best about my first sabbatical? You guessed it: my freedom of time.
It is soooooooooooo wonderful.  I am grateful every day that I'm able to use my energy in the way that is appropriate for that day.  When I'm in the mood to design experiments, that's what I do.  When I'm in the mood to plan my honeybee operations, I do it.  When I'm in the mood to fold laundry, or stack wood, or plant some garden seedlings, those things end up on my to-do list for the day.  

This morning, I spent 3 hours designing a field experiment that will start next month, so this blog post is my reward for that productivity.  After this post, I will eat lunch and then...work on the next thing that I feel like doing.

I'll admit that some days on sabbatical, I've found myself at loose ends. That restless, slightly grumpy and at odds feeling usually happens when I'm in-between projects or waiting for a response from a colleague, collaborator, or journal.  At their best, those days end up being used for future planning, creative brainstorming, or some extra exercise or outdoor time. At their worst, those days plod by as I waste time on social media, recognize that I would have been better off meditating or exercising or doing ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT I DID, and then go to bed early in disgust.  

Cow time and flow time*
It seems to me that there are two major purposes to sabbatical leave.
1) to leave behind the burnout that happens after years of giving your academic job your very best;  
2) to achieve as many "flow" days as possible.  

Regarding 1, the burnout-inducing parts of academic jobs are probably different for everyone (e.g., I'm guessing extroverted morning people love large meetings at 8:00 AM?**) but most academics work a lot, whether by choice or not.  In my case, I have often taught an extra course each semester for the good of my department/students.  When I'm teaching 5 courses (15 contact hours, plus many hours of prep and grading time) and also participating in 6++ hours per week of meetings and service activities, the only way to get research accomplished is to work late nights and weekends.  But the problem with squeezing research in around the edges like that are two-fold: you get burned out because you have subpar work-life balance, and you never have time to ruminate.  Research requires rumination; you need time to be a cow, really mulling over your research goals and questions in a peaceful, contemplative manner.  But when I'm not on sabbatical leave, I'm much more like a hamster on a hamster wheel because I'm trying to squeeze in research around my enjoyable and meaningful--but quite intensive--teaching and service responsibilities.  Running on a hamster wheel doesn't leave much time for rumination.

So the first purpose of sabbatical is to channel your inner cow and tamp down your inner hamster.*** 
Cow > hamster.

It's interesting to see that the famous author Barbara Kingsolver in her Civil Disobedience at Breakfast also used the phrase "Cow Time."  In her essay, it was used to describe a Terrible Two version of a Senate filibuster, in which a toddler attempts to control the speed at which she travels to necessary but rather boring appointments.  My cow time instead refers to a state of mind.  It can be achieved at very high speeds on the highway*** and doesn't necessarily mean that you'll arrive late to your appointments.  But the two concepts are similar in that toddlers are champions at rumination of all kinds.  I can remember watching my kids contemplate the movement of their feet as they walked, in a Terrible Two version of a walking meditation.  What I'm advocating for here is achieving a Terrible Two version of the scientific method, i.e., cow time.

The second major purpose of sabbatical leave:  flow.  I have always recognized and appreciated what is now called "flow" in the pop psychology articles that I've read on social media.  Flow refers to working actively, without distractions, and with such concentration that you aren't aware of yourself or time or whether or not you remembered to pay the electrical bill this month.  It's like being in the research zone.  A fruitful and satisfying sabbatical probably has a lot of days of flow.  For me, flow time has happened regularly on my sabbatical, usually while I sit in my favorite armchair by the fire, working on research while the rest of my family is at work/school.  When I'm not on sabbatical leave, flow time seems to happen at the kitchen table during the months of May and June, when the kids are still in school but I'm mostly finished with my teaching/service responsibilities for the academic year and can devote myself fully to research.

Overly pampered whining academics
^^Is that what you're thinking?  Oh dear.  If so, I'm surprised that you read this far--you must really feel like getting mad today. :O

But no, it seems like the public narrative is cranky about professors and colleges lately.  And sabbatical leaves probably seem (to some people) like one of the most outrageously pampering of all the ridiculously pampering things that whiny faculty get to experience, amirite?  I could respond by discussing in depth my typical daily/weekly workload during the semester, even given my strong time-efficiency skills.  I could point out that I often don't have time to eat lunch or use the bathroom during the work day and certainly can't make it to doctors' appointments during the semester.  But really that's really beside the point because many jobs have similar characteristics and I've chosen this job and love it, so why whine about it?  

So, here is my honest response: yes, I am experiencing the luxury of freedom of time for 16 weeks and I am extremely grateful for it.  What I'm doing with it is refreshing myself so that I will come back to my normal job in the fall with strength, energy, excitement, and creative new ideas--things that benefit my students, my college, and my community. I'm also producing new scientific knowledge in several different fields of study.  And behind the scenes, I'm volunteering in my kid's classroom and elsewhere in the local and even national community (h/t to Planting Science!).  So my goal is that this freedom of time is not just used to benefit myself but also to benefit many others, both directly and indirectly.  We'll see if I succeed in that goal or not.

*I just google-searched "cow time" and I'm amused to see that there is a dairy cow-related educational website called Cow Time that actually has a section called Go With the Flow.  (Just trying to cite all web sources related to this essay, in the interests of full disclosure.)  
**Note: this essay on meetings is one of my favorites.  So great! 
***Is it possible to achieve cow time when you aren't on sabbatical leave?  Yes!  For me, cow time is best achieved while walking or driving somewhere, and is one reason I have grown to semi-like/tolerate my commute to work.     

I'm a professor at a small, private college located in Utica, a small city in central/upstate New York state.  I teach a lot of courses each semester (4 - 5 courses, or 12 - 15 contact hours per week), which doesn't leave much time for research.  But I love research, so I work hard to make time in my schedule for it.  

To be frank, I'm not so sure about starting this blog, because perhaps it will take time away from getting my research done.  But there have been a lot of calls recently for scientists to improve our PR skills.  Although I have mixed feelings about these calls to action (maybe that's a subject for another blog post), I do think that scientists need to do more outreach.  

Here is my current vision for how to use this blog:
1) I won't worry about making my writing grammatically flawless.  If you want edited perfection, please just go away now.  There are sure to be dangling participles and misplaced modifiers ahead!  I'm sorry, I really am.  I feel your pain.  I know how annoying it is to see YET MORE grammatical errors and typos, in a world that is full of them!  But I'm not quite sorry enough that I'm willing to spend hours editing blog posts when I could be teaching, researching, spending time with family, beekeeping, gardening, exercising, etc....

2) I may or may not cite every. single. thing. as I write.  I am scrupulously careful about citing my sources when I write for the scientific literature.  It makes the writing process very slow and laborious, but it is essential, ethical, 100% not optional, required, MUST-DO!--I believe in citing very strongly.  However, I feel that writing for a blog should be light and quick, and at least a little bit fun for me.

3) I might not put a lot of pretty pictures in the middle of my text.  I often seek out cooking recipes on blogs, and the recipe writers like to put many well-lit, attractive images of: 
--the ingredients,
--the mixing of the ingredients (at all stages),
--and the final product from multiple angles.  
These images seem to be for aesthetic purposes only, not to improve understanding.  So I find all the incessant pictures irritating rather than illuminating.  {Grumpy professor eyebrows DOWN.}  They will also bog down the writing process (see "light and quick," above).

4) I will share at least one "file drawer" study.  File drawer studies refer to unpublished research, particularly studies with null results, i.e., no statistical sign of a treatment effect.  Probably all scientists have a few of these studies sitting around  for various reasons.  I try to not have file drawer studies--I will explain why later--but I do have one right now, and have for a few years.  This frustrates me.  (Side note:  for some reason I remembered these studies being called "file cabinet studies."  Not sure how I expanded from one drawer to the entire file cabinet.)

5) I'll attempt to do a press release-type summary of two of my studies that will be published later this year.  Both of these studies were done with my much-valued collaborators.  I LOVE my collaborators (and actually, that might be another good topic for a blog post).

6) I might talk about some honeybee research as I come across it.  Or discuss some aspects of my beekeeping operation, Irish Ridge Honey.

7) ​I might talk a bit about what it's like to work as a professor in higher education.  

8) I will almost always put two spaces after every period, and will unfailingly make use of the Oxford comma.

And now, I see that I have let the fire go out while I wrote this!  Time to go for now.