Bringing Our Farm to the Table

Our long weekend was equal parts farm work, research and relaxation.  We are hit with the bulk of our harvest and trying to find innovative ways to preserve it.  The nice thing about canning, is that after the upfront work, the canning process takes anywhere from 40 minutes to 90 or more minutes.  That leaves a little bit of down time to take a breath, read a book, cultivate new ideas and implement wild hairs....like my sudden desire to re-arrange the family room!

We have been fortunate in our tomato harvest this year and so far harvested 80 lbs of tomatoes which have been eaten fresh and put in farm bags, but mostly gone into 17 quarts of roasted tomatoes in our pantry.  I think that we will have one more round of paste tomatoes to can, and then onto making green tomato relish!  This is a favorite of ours and this year we are going to crock ferment it!  Excitingly enough B and I will be speaking about crock fermenting at an event on September 12th, so this crock may just find its way into our demonstration.

We have tried to grow leeks a few times over the years, with varying success.  This year was a bumper year for them.  So in our search for ways to preserve them B pulled out Julia's Vichyssoise recipe and we found it a perfect match for pressure canning.  We pulled a few potatoes out, a very small portion of another crop doing very well, and put up 7 quarts of lovely soup.   In addition to what we canned, we had a large pot left over ready for an alfresco supper last night.

We also got our seventh farm bag of the season out yesterday!  As each year goes by we get a little bit better at planning and implementing our farm bags.  We have averaged five a season up until this year.  We may get one final bag out, but the plants are all slowing down and showing signs of finishing.  This weeks bags included Kale, Potatoes, Garlic, Cherry Tomatoes, Green Beans, a Bell Pepper, Eggplant, and leeks.

Even with warm days still hanging on, we are winding toward fall.  I love this season, it is comprised of lots of enjoying the outside time to its fullest, as well as an inner pulling toward preparing the nest.

Remember when I mentioned that we had a blogger for the Boston Store at our Chili Cook-off?  Well, we are almost famous in this little write up!

A Chili Saturday

Seven years ago when we moved to the farm we wanted to have a kind of welcome party and decided to make it a chili cook off.  Over the years it has developed into quite a party and something we look forward to hosting and attempting to make bigger and better each time.  This year's chili cook off was a wonderful event!  Each year we try to dial it in more, so that it becomes something very manageable, yet with some fresh new ideas.

This year was especially exciting because we had a blogger from The Boston Store come out to feature us in a little farm to table spread that they will be blogging early this fall.  So much fun, I cannot wait to see it!

Of course, I could not resist taking a few pictures of them taking pictures of us.  Hi Lisa! :)

Since just more than half of our 111 guest this year are kids we added a couple of new games to the standard  basketball, badminton (I had absolutely no idea it was spelled this way!), volleyball and trampoline.  We did a lawn painted twister game, and a space for giant Jenga.  Both of the new areas were well used, and fun to watch.

We had nine chilies and six pies this year and I have to say that all of the contenders out did themselves!  The winning chili was a chili verde and the winning pie was key lime.  Each of the winners got a couple of goodies to take home as well as bragging rights and the trophies (the stuffed pig and golden rolling pin in the first picture) for their event which they will sign and bring back next year.  I wonder what little touches we will add for the next one?  Stay tuned.