Tag Archives: food

Early Harvest

Posted on August 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on Early Harvest

Here it is barely August and my garden has officially given up for the season.  The only plants that are still producing are a few of the heirloom tomato plants, the basil, and the potatoes I have yet to dig up.

This weekend I will go out and lightly till the dead and rotting vines back into the soil and set about getting the fall plantings ready.

The biggest challenge this year hasn’t necessarily been the heat.  It’s true that the overly warm night time temperatures slowed production, but the plants all did, eventually bear fruit.

The lack of bees (remember I was supposed to have bees this year?  You can thank the uber slow progress of the landscaping for that not happening) didn’t seem to slow pollination any; there were bumblebees aplenty buzzing all around.

What really hurt this year was the epic number of pests.  Squash bugs.  Cucumber beetles. Blister beetles.  Caterpillars. Cabbage moths. Slugs.  You name it, we had it, and in hordes.  The blister beetles took my entire wisteria vine down to nothing OVERNIGHT.  Literally. One day it was there, the next, gone.

So, it was a disappointing growing season, but I am not letting it get to me too much.  I had enough tomatoes to make a batch of salsa.  We had so many summer squash and zucchini it felt like they were never stop.  The cucumbers even managed to hold their own long enough for us to put up dozens of jars of pickles.  Not to mention the mini sour gherkins – those tiny little garden workhorses.  They are still producing, seemingly invulnerable to the pestilence around them.

I have also formulated plans to improve things for next year – that’s the silver lining of garden failures. You learn from them.  Next year I’ll be buying plenty of Neem oil and organic and natural pest controls.  I will have bees.  I will also move the squash and pumpkins to their own garden – they overtook everything and drowned out my peppers and watermelon, killing them off.
And if I can find a way to eradicate my land of the blasted Virginia Creeper that invades everything, my beans and peas might stand a chance.

All in all, if I can manage a decent fall planting (beets, cabbages, greens, a few root veg) I’ll be pretty happy.

And speaking of fall, I made an early harvest that has everyone trying to fight off the autumn-y mood they create:

Bunches of sugar pie pumpkins, a Connecticut Field pumpkin or two, and some Jack Be Littles.

Check out this Jarrahdale Blue pumpkin!  Now if the two big Musquee de Provence pumpkins would hurry up and ripen before they fall prey to the zillions of squash bugs surrounding them, I will be happy!

 


Tagged: Farm, food, Garden, Seasons

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I May Have A Problem

Posted on July 29, 2012 by | Comments Off on I May Have A Problem

A Weck Jar problem.  As in, I can’t stop collecting them.

I have shelves full of them, both empty:

and full:

There’s plenty more of them full of good things in the fridge as well.

I just think they are so much better than regular old Ball Jars.  Not only are they prettier, but they are made to be obvious if your food has been compromised:  the clips are removed after processing, and if there is any spoilage along the way, the pressure it causes will force the seal open, thereby letting you know the food is bad.  The screw – on lids of Ball Jars don’t have such a fail – safe.

If only I had more garden bounty to fill them with!


Tagged: food, Garden

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Summer Honey

Posted on July 29, 2012 by | Comments Off on Summer Honey

On Friday afternoon, our friend Erin came by help us harvest a bit of honey from our bees.

We’ll wait until later in the year for our full-on fall harvest– this is just a small summer sampling. It was wonderful to crack the hives open and see that all four of them are healthy and strong.

We’re planning on brewing up something special with it– I’m really excited to see how it turns out!

This early-season honey is light in color and delicately flavored. I keep thinking that it’s a perfect distillation of all the blooms we’ve had over the summer– the borage, the lavender, the sunflowers.

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Tractor Vs. Tractor

Posted on July 24, 2012 by | Comments Off on Tractor Vs. Tractor

Around here when we are talking about “tractors” chances are good we are talking about portable chicken pens.  It’s a way to keep chickens safe and give them access to fresh grass.

Since we are raising chickens for meat right now Paul has been busy building new tractors for them to live in.  We wanted to feed them a combined diet of standard chicken feed and pasture.  We also wanted them to have plenty of space to move around and stretch their wings and play.  In other words, we wanted happy chickens, since they are going to be feeding us.  We can at least return the favor by making sure they are happy and healthy leading up to freezer camp.

Originally Paul was going to build 3 of these triangle – shaped tractors.  They are very basic, very sturdy, and light-weight enough for either me or the kids to move around easily.

Problem was, I didn’t think that they’d be big enough for fifty birds to have room to roam around.

When they were still fairly small we put them all in this one tractor.  It was roomy enough for them, but it wouldn’t be for long.

So Paul stepped outside the box and built them a new tractor.

From an old trampoline.

They now have a ton of room to move around and not be on top of each other.

As they reach their peak size we won’t have to worry about overcrowding.  We move it every two days or so – and they do quite a job mowing down all the grass in there.  They have a waterer that Paul put a float valve in so that they are never without water.  They get fresh air and shade.

As for the original tractor, there is a new family living in there for now.

Fleur and her babies have taken up residence there.  They’ll stay until the babies are old enough to be introduced to the flock at large (in other words, big enough to defend themselves from the inevitable bullying of the newbies).

 

 


Tagged: Farm, food, Pets

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Melons of All Sizes

Posted on July 24, 2012 by | Comments Off on Melons of All Sizes

Whenever I get too down about summer in the South, and long for a perfectly cool New England summer garden, with nothing crisped up or frizzled or killed and brown, I remember melons– those awful, sticky summer nights are what allow us to grow piles and piles of delicious subtropical wonders with complete ease.

With fruit like these, it might all be worth it (and with central A/C, it definitely is).

Those Petit Gris de Rennes melons I was so excited about have finally came to fruit around the beginning of the month, and our CSA members have gotten them in their baskets for the past three weeks (yesterday, they each got two!).

This might be analogous to hearing your children complimented, but it was the most gratifying thing in the world to hear that these melons were the best they’d ever had.

And, honestly, I agree.

They’re perfectly sweet, delightfully perfumed, and, on the whole, small enough to make a meal for a single person (for all their good qualities– or, in fact, because of them– these melons are not for sharing).

There is really nothing more decadent than bringing a whole, warm, luscious melon straight in from the field, and enjoying it as a slow breakfast.

However, all the rain we’ve had– right on the heels of a considerable hot and dry spell– has caused a few of them to split and crack wide open. Once the yellow jackets have found a melon, it’s a little too risky to try and pick it up and compost it, so I’ve just been leaving them to compost in place.

 Over on the other side of the garden, we’re growing Mexican Sour Gherkins.

 They’ve apparently been on the hip vegetable radar (?) since 2007, when New York Magazine ran a story about them, although I learned about them in last summer’s Bon Appetit (at which point, of course, I had to wait until the next summer to grow them).

They’re literally the size of a jelly bean. They look like watermelons and taste like a sour cucumber. We haven’t been able to keep them around! Despite the fact that the vines are prodigiously prolific, and seem to thrive in the heat, I snack on a handful nearly every trip out to the garden.

Which is why we don’t have so many left.

 Luckily, though, the vines are putting out more. See how absolutely tiny they are when they start out?

The most adorable thing about these adorable little guys, though, might be that their name in Spanish– sandia de raton– translates to Mouse Melon.

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Two of the Highlights of My Week

Posted on July 22, 2012 by | Comments Off on Two of the Highlights of My Week

WildFibers, a great shop in Mount Vernon, Washington, had this cake made for my event on Monday. It was as delicious as it was lovely!

I woke up from a nap today to find that Charlotte had made chocolate chip cookies while I was sleeping. This post-it was next to a tea towel covered plate, stacked with cookies. See, I think most chocolate chip cookies suffer from far too many chips. I insist that three is the perfect number of chips, and knowing that, Charlotte made a special batch just for me.

I am a very lucky woman.

 

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Finally Clear!

Posted on July 20, 2012 by | Comments Off on Finally Clear!

Today we have some cause to celebrate -  the loggers officially finished clearing out the remaining trees to be felled.  This means that all that is left is for us to clean up a bit and fence it all in!

Paul and I walked all the way back to the very back edge of our property – something we have never been able to do in the summer before – and marveled at just how much more land we have than we thought we did and how nice it will be for the animals.  There’s plenty of trees left in the back portion for shade, and plenty of wide open space in the middle.  The landscaper expressed concern with all the underbrush that is left out there but I told him to leave it – the goats will make very short work of it.

This is standing at the back edge, looking toward the house.  See the grey in the very center of the photo?  That’s our roof.

I love that there are still some big old trees to provide shade on these hot days we’ve been getting, but there’s still enough sun filtering through that grass shouldn’t have any trouble growing.

Gully had fun running around like a mad dog and flying off the tree stumps.

The next step will be fencing, and hopefully that will go smoother than the clearing did!

To celebrate I made some peach jam from Marisa McClellans’ Food in Jars.

It tastes like the filling of a peach pie.

In other words, divine!


Tagged: Farm, food, Pets

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In the Garden: Patty Pan Squash

Posted on July 16, 2012 by | Comments Off on In the Garden: Patty Pan Squash

I think I’ve mentioned we’re trying to be more responsible about the meat we are eating.  We’re making a major effort to only eat organic grass – fed beef, organic chicken, etc.  It’s majorly more expensive and not as easy to come by, so it’s forcing us to eat less meat, and this is, of course a good thing.  It also means that when we do eat meat, it tastes sooooo much better and we enjoy it that much more.

So a few days ago I bought some hamburger patties from Whole Foods Market that were grass – fed AND local, and was thrilled to grill them up and put them on some homemade buns.

Emily, on the other hand, was not enthused.  She is a vegetarian, and no amount of humane, environmentally responsible- ness will change her mind in that regard.  Occasionally I struggle to accommodate her.  Generally it is her responsibility to maker her own dinner if she chooses not to eat what we are having.  However, there are nights when I am cooking meat and I realize there is nothing that she can really cook for herself.  This recent hamburger night was one of those.

And that is when the garden came to the rescue.

We have a lot of over-sized pattypan squash right now begging to be useful.  It occurred to me that with it’s flat, round-ish shape, a sliced pattypan might fit nicely on a bun.

Emily was game for the experiment.  We sliced it thin – ish and brushed it with olive oil and A-1 sauce.

Next, we chucked it on the grill and let it brown for awhile.

Emily ate it with no condiments and pronounced it a success.  In the future, we are thinking we can grill it up, slather it with barbecue sauce, top it with coleslaw and eat it on a bun.  Healthy veggie alternative to meat, straight from the garden!

 

 


Tagged: food, Garden

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Creamed Swiss Chard

Posted on July 16, 2012 by | Comments Off on Creamed Swiss Chard

Swiss chard (also known as perpetual spinach) is a fantastic green to grow because it never seems to bolt, and produces in both hot and cold weather. The smaller leaves add bright flavor to a summer salad, while the larger leaves are best used cooked into just about anything. My favorite way to highlight Swiss chard is to cream it. The Swiss chard has enough flavor to stand up to cream and other strong flavors. This dish has turned into one of our house favorites.

First cut the Swiss chard into very fine ribbons. I like to leave on a bit of the stem because it add nice color to the dish. Boil the chard in salted water just until it begins to wilt. Remove, drain, and rinse with cold water.

In a medium sauce pan on medium heat add the bacon fat, country ham, and chilies. This combination will create an excellent base flavor for the chard. The chilies brighten things up, while the country ham adds richness and mellows out the chilies.

Cook until the country ham crisps up. The crisp country ham will add a great texture. Throw in the garlic and cook quickly. Make sure not to overcook the garlic or it will become inedible and bitter.

Now we add the flour. This will thicken up the final dish. Stir constantly after adding the flour to prevent it from burning.

Once the flour is evenly distributed and the pan is lightly bubbling, you know it is time to add the Swiss chard back into the pan.

Now stir in the Swiss chard so that the thick sauce coats every single leaf. This is a good way to prevent the final sauce from forming clumps.

Finally, add in whole milk and chicken stock. The chicken stock helps to add body and the milk creates the perfect creamy richness. Cook until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of your spoon and then you are ready to eat.

I like to serve this as a main course over some spiced rice but it does equally well as a side dish. Make sure you make enough because it goes quickly

 

Recipe:

5 large leaves of Swiss chard

1 slice of country ham

4 cloves garlic

1 dried ancho chili (or any other dried chili)

3 table spoons bacon fat (or butter)

3 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup chicken stock

1 cup whole milk

 

Wash Swiss chard and remove most of the stem. Then finely slice. Place in a medium sized saucepan that has been filled halfway with water. Meanwhile, finely slice the country ham, chili, and garlic. Bring the Swiss chard and water to a boil, then strain an set aside. Dry out the pan and add bacon fat, chili, and country ham. Cook over medium heat until the country ham begins to crisp. Then add the garlic followed almost immediately by the flour. Reduce temperature to a low heat and cook until the bacon fat and flour have fully combined and the entire pan is bubbling evenly. At this point, add the strained Swiss chard and cook until the sauce thickly coats the Swiss chard. While constantly stirring, add the chicken stock and milk. Reduce until the sauce can coat the back of a spoon and then remove from heat. Serve as a side dish or as a main course over rice.

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Peachy …

Posted on July 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on Peachy …

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