In The Garden :: August 23

Leaving on vacation for nine days in the heart of the season always leaves us with a bit of anxiety.  I was thankful that we got so much preservation done before we left, because I do not feel so much panic in seeing the current surplus'.

This is one thing that we will not preserve, these little cucumbers are perfect just to pop whole into the Greek salads that may just be dominating our diets for the next couple of weeks.

I think if anything defines the state of the garden as we return from vacation, it is blush.  As we continue to preserve the summer squash and green beans, the next phase is blushing nicely.  Hints of canned tomatoes, sauces and salsas come...and oh the masses of butternut!  For a season that started so slowly, some things are well ahead of last year.  We were keeping our fingers crossed for ripening on winter squash up until we harvested them in late October last year.  This year?  Well, they are well on their way!

Along with the garden bounty, the late summer blooms are dotting the landscape in all of their glory.  The first goldenrod is just beginning to put on its show.  The garden tends to do what it wants this time of year and really you just must wait for it to provide and then eat and process.  The animals, on the other hand, gave Ellen quite a run for her money while we were gone, but that is a story for another post :)

In the Garden :: August 9

In the last week the garden has definitely hit its stride.  The extended cool to the beginning of the season has us running a little behind last year's harvest. Most notably, several of the plants themselves are much smaller.  Though our harvest dates have started a bit later the yields all seem to be great, even from the smaller plants.

We harvested the garlic, which in and of itself ended up being quite an adventure.  B ended up putting on his bee suit to harvest the last few rows as we had discovered a group of ground wasps had decided to take up residence in that bed.  We yielded 168 heads this year!

We enjoyed the first of our yard long beans.  They have been fun to watch grow, and have a special sweetness to them that gives them an asparagus like quality.  I think these will become a quick favorite, and be something that we grow again.

Both summer and winter squash are making impressive showings.  It is not unusual for summer squash to be abundant, I am sure you've heard of national sneak zucchini on your neighbors porch day (which happened to be yesterday)!  What is most exciting is the sheer volume of butternut squash that is well on it's way to maturity.

The late summer wildflowers are abundant and peppering my kitchen with their display.  There is just something about fresh cut flowers!

As I mentioned earlier, this is the crunch time for food preservation.  So far we are keeping up, but are really trying to get ahead.  As you can see the tomatoes are beginning to blush so along with what I hope is a big tomato season and the backlog of everything else, I know we will come back to quite an onslaught after we return from vacation.

In The Garden :: July 31

It is hard to believe that August is almost here!  We have had a sustained heat for the last couple of weeks, and I am not complaining.  Finally, Summer.  Everything is growing beautifully and my hopes for the warm weather crops that become winter staples in my pantry have been renewed.

We had our first small handful of green beans, they were delicious, and picking that first handful means that we will have buckets of them within days.  This year for the first time we are also growing yard-long green beans.  Look at these babies!  The flowers are large like broad bean flowers, and the baby green beans look like little snakes.  I can not wait to see how these turn out, and more importantly how they taste!

Many seasons the winter squash does not begin to set fruit until September.  This year with everything else a good two weeks behind, the butternut plants are full!  This will be a great bumper crop this year.  I think that I will look at canning some roasted butternut puree, that would be such a convenience on busy fall evenings that I do not want to spend the time dicing and roasting raw squash.  

We have two varieties of Kohlrabi growing.  They are a favorite of ours, and perfect for farm bags.

Speaking of farm bags, our fourth one of the season went out this week.  This week we were harvesting winter green lettuce, kale, kohlrabi, squash, eggplant and jalapeño peppers.

Finally,  as I mentioned in last weeks update, I was hopeful that the cucumbers and dill would be maturing at the same time.  Yesterday B began our first crock of pickles fermenting.  With the way the cucumbers are coming on, I suspect within the next week we will have a few crocks going!  What's growing in your garden this week?

#100HappyDays :: Day 79

The first blush of the season makes for a very happy day!

In the Garden :: July 15

As promised here is a garden update, hard to believe that it has only been just over ten days since my initial summer garden update.

We are eating fresh from the garden many nights, and though full yields have not come in yet, with our recent bout of warm weather, things are coming on increasingly every day.

The squash and cucumber plants have tripled in size and giant blossoms are open in the early morning.

The berries will be ready for picking within the next couple of days, I am already dreaming of those wonderful raspberry scones.

With the garden beginning to produce, so too comes the time to start preserving surplus for future months.  The last several years I have done lots of red currant jelly, which the kids love.  Last years harvest was so abundant, I still have some stores remaining.

So this year to mix things up a bit, and in anticipation of the home grown proteins that are heading toward the freezer, I branched out into a red currant chutney.  The initial batch is really quite delicious, I think that it will be perfect to use as a marinade.  My initial currant harvest yielded just over five cups of fruit, so I calculated 2 1/2 times the recipe and it made two cups of chutney, plenty to portion out into 1/2 cup servings and freeze.  Do you have any tried and true currant recipes?  If so, please share!

#100HappyDays :: Day 63

One of my favorite things to make is risotto.  It is such an easy dish, yet can be filled with many flavors and has a richness that defines comfort food.  After such a busy weekend, I wanted to hunker down in the kitchen and enjoy making a meal that required a slow almost meditative stirring to incorporate the ingredients.  With our beets coming in nicely, I have been craving the flavor of the Borscht that we made for Tastebuds last winter.   While my kids enjoy eating out of the garden, and love beets, neither of them like risotto!  I know, hard to believe, I guess they just do not dig the texture of it.  So this meal ended up being for mom and dad, while the kids ate salads, homemade apple sauce and leftover brats from the 4th.

Roasted Beet and Garlic Scape Risotto

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1/2 onion, minced

2 ribs celery, minced

2 garlic scapes, diced

1 1/3 C arborio rice

1 C red wine

5 C beef broth

1/2 lb beets, roasted, peeled and grated

2/3 C Parmesan cheese, grated

2 Tbsp. butter

chopped dill, for garnish

sour cream

In a large skillet or pot over medium heat pour in olive oil.  While that is warming in a separate pot bring the beef broth to a simmer.  Add onion and celery to olive oil and cook until soft, then add the garlic scapes and sauté until fragrant.  Stir in the arborio rice until it has absorbed all of the oil.  Then pour in the red wine and stir until absorbed.  Now, one ladle full at a time, stir in the beef broth until each portion has absorbed, about 10 minutes.  Once the last of the broth has absorbed stir in the grated beets until warmed through and then remove from heat and add in the Parmesan and butter.  Once incorporated, serve with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of dill.  Enjoy!

#100HappyDays :: Day 49

A few warmer days and the summer crops are beginning to grow like mad.  Everything is setting little flowers, this baby eggplant is a late summer treasure in the making.  

Hugelkultur

B is always looking for new ways to do things.  As a constant researcher, we never need to worry about finding innovative ways for re-use.

Due to various storms we have lost a number of trees over the last 8 years.  There is some wonderful wood that we have seasoned and hold onto for fires and cooking, but there is also a lot of more junk wood like willow and box elder.

Enter hugelkultur;  a permaculture method creating a raised garden bed, by layering logs of wood and soil.  The natural settling and breakdown of the wood over time gives wonderful nutrients to whatever we may choose to plant there.

Fortunately, the timing worked perfectly for us to clean up areas of various logs, and the fact that we had a great deal of surplus soil from where the pool area was just dug.

With the bulk of the work done, we plan to water it thoroughly and cover it with a row cover while it initially warms up and begins to break down.  Then I think we will plant a variety of perennial plants on it to make it a more permanent fixture in the garden.

#100HappyDays :: Day 44

We do not often get much of a spring.  Many times we go straight from winter to the mud of the thaw, and then onto balmy summer temperatures.  This year however, we seem to be stuck in perpetual Spring, as we head into the solstice this weekend, we have seen persistent rain, and many days of cool temperatures peppered with a few warm days here and there.

As a result the garden's summer veggies are off to a slower start.  Thriving, and even some beginning to flower, yet still small plants aching for warm and sunny weather to grow.  On the flip side of this is the cooler early summer crops of lettuces, cabbages and broccoli are growing beautifully and beginning to grace our nightly table.

Seeded, Sprouted & Strong

We seeded two 72 plant flats for the garden on March 15th.  The above shot was on the equinox, a mere 5 days later and a near 100% success rate in germination.  On Saturday B moved the sprouted flats from our kitchen down to the mini growing chamber that we have in our basement.

What a difference 3 days makes, they all look happy and strong!  After our little bout of spring snow today and with rain showers later this week, by the weekend we should be seeding spinach and lettuce and radishes to the cold frame and prepping the mini hoop houses in the garden.

Spring is coming and there are loads of great farm projects in front of us this year, not the least which is getting ready for the spring batch of babies...chicks, ducklings & piglets!

The Magic of Herbs

I have enjoyed all of the River Cottage Handbooks that I own.  Each written on history, experience, and thoughts about the given topic.  I found myself quite enamoured with No. 10: Herbs.  How can you not be taken with a book whose opening paragraph is: "Herbs are beautiful, life-enhancing, seductive things.  Whether you see them primarily as plants or as ingredients, they are enticing.  I find it hard to believe that anyone could look at a lavender bush nodding in the sunshine or sniff a torn bay leaf and not experience, at the very lease, a flicker of pleasure."

Maybe it is just us, but as we walk around nightly in our garden, or our yard, we constantly brush up against the greenery, pinch a plant between our fingers and sniff to identify it.  Wild lemon balm, lambs quarter, catnip.  After reading this book I am more enchanted than ever with herbs.  As vital in cooking as salt and stimulating multiple senses, herbs can fix a state of mind.  When harvesting lavender a few weeks ago, my whole home smelled of the woody floral beauty that was drying.  I began to utilize it in recipes and found a whole new appreciation for it.   I ran out immediately to Milaegers to fill in our herb plantings and bought up multiple varieties of sage, and I am currently on the hunt for a bay tree that I can overwinter indoors.

This evening as I snapped the flower head off of a dill plant for a cucumber salad, I smelled the intoxicating aroma on my hands.  The oils released into the air and linger.  Smell is such an important sense that can immediately calm a mood or send you to a different place.  Herbs are magic, and I am only just beginning to realize how to use each individual to it's fullest.

Getting the Hang Of It!

I have not been able to write as regularly here as I would like.  We have been amazingly busy implementing new strategies at work, and then took a quick weekend trip for a family gathering over the Fourth holiday.

We have been very fortunate this year.  Our garden is flourishing above and beyond years' past and today we put out our third farm bag of the season!  Last year our first bag came out the middle of July!  I love to be able to look back year to year at photos.  The above photo is our garden as of July 15th last year.  The top photo was our garden this afternoon.

Most of the individual pictures and details of the farm bags along with recipe ideas are being shared over on our Aisling SmallHolding facebook page, but to summarize:  our farm bags in the early part of this season have consisted of lots of salad greens, green onions, kohlrabi, bok choi, green garlic, garlic scapes, radishes, beets, dill, thyme, lavender, sugar snap peas, and a few baby carrots.  Our tomato plants have already set tons of tomatoes, some are just beginning to blush with color.  We harvested our first few eggplant this week, the chickpeas look to be getting close, and it seems we will have a bumper crop of raspberries.  It is so rewarding to walk through this years plot and just breathe.  We seem to be getting the hang of this thing!