In The Garden :: July 23

Nature is cool.  Another gratuitous tomato photo.   This time of year around the farm is equal parts keeping up and expectation.  The sugar snap peas and raspberries have been prolific this week, so I have tried to cook with some and put some up.   We are watching tomatoes set and display their first blush.

Baby eggplant, peppers and squash are expanding by the day.

The first of the green beans are about 1/2" long!

And, my oh my, I think the cucumbers and dill are in sync this season, and may actually mature at the same time!  Can't wait to get those baby's fermenting!  How has your garden progressed this week?

Good Morning August!

Well hello August!  It is hard to believe that you are here already and even harder to believe that I spied the first blush of color on the trees three days ago.  As you can see from the picture above, the trees are not the only things that are beginning to blush this first day of August.   The light is lower and more golden, and school starts in less than three weeks.  I cannot say that these are necessarily the dog days as we have had such a mild summer, yet it is crunch time.  We will spend our weekend knee deep in prep for our Seventh Annual Chili Cook-off, which is one week away, and the perfect event to kick off making the most of the end of summer.  Happy Weekend!

Random 5 Friday

 1.  After a three year hiatus, this year we brought back the Hillbilly Tomatoes.  Still by far our favorite, and they are just getting ripe.  Our crazy season has left us with late and only moderately producing plants, so I think that we may just end up with about a dozen quarts.  I may hit up the farmers market to supplement so we can put more away.

2.  You never know what you are going to find while walking around the farm.  This little snapping turtle that B found this morning in the garden, was a bit out of place, and is swimming inside for the moment...at least until the kids can take a peak at it.

3.  Aren't firsts wonderful?  After many years searching and scrimping by without, we are now the proud owners of our first and forever tractor for the homestead!  Sorry for the blur in the picture, but the first driving lesson went fabulously, and Charles was burning rubber!

4.  This time of year is my absolute favorite and as we head into the equinox this weekend, I am decking the house with the beautiful feelings of fall.  As I picked Charles up at soccer on Wednesday, the sun was as large as I have ever seen it while it was setting.  The fall light is just magical, wouldn't you agree?

5.  Today was crazy hair day at school.  Whatcha think??

Linking up with:

 

A Strange Garden Year Indeed

note to self, must find a way to capture the whole garden in one shot!

The garden is thriving, but it is funny how in-tuned you become to the ebb and flow, and how the variances from year to year can be glaring.  We knew we were going to be six to eight weeks late this year with the incredibly long cool wing (yes, that is what I am now calling our late winter/early spring). This week we have begun to harvest our first few geode squash, and despite the sweltering heat, the sugar snap peas are still thriving. 

To everything it's season and to every season a purpose.  Hmmm.  I think each of our little garden delicacies have decided that they will mature by type, and not all in harmony.  They want their own moment in the sun.  As we watch the baby veggies beginning to take shape, I am realizing that this year instead of everything at once in a nice succession, we may have things one at a time.  Then, once they have started and continue (hopefully) to yield for the remainder of the season, we will have multiple varieties at once. 

I do not mind savoring each new, fresh, lovely taste one at a time.  It gets me in mode for preservation, to put up the bounty to sustain us through the dark days of winter.  For farm bags, I think that at least with how we are beginning, we may need to adjust to providing these individual tastes to savor on their own, and expand those flavors as the garden allows.

Regardless of what the season brings, we will enjoy every reward that we receive, and I am sure learn a ton of new ways to preserve them.  How is your garden coming in this strange garden year?

Canning Tomatoes

 As you can see, our garlic did amazingly well this year! 

I have always thought of harvest in general, and tomato harvest specifically, and a race to get it all preserved.  We would get a ton of ripe tomatoes and dedicate an entire day or a whole weekend to processing everything.  Maybe that is because it is always a race against the clock here in the North to get enough ripe tomatoes at once to make that all happen.

This year they began ripening right on time, between the warm weather, and our pick of a couple of determinant types we are having volumes ripen, but staggered slightly to more an every other day time frame.  It has been a refreshing change to be canning a batch each night for a couple of hours, instead of the marathon to get them all done at once.  Trust me it is much more relaxed!  I have found that two cookie sheets of quartered Roma tomatoes will produce four quarts.  So far we have eight quarts done and another four that we made into sauce right away for consumption.  To give you a comparison, in the entire of last season (albeit a cool one) we had a total of six quarts of ripe roasted tomatoes; then of course 150 pounds that we processed into green tomato relish and sauce.  I must say that I am enthusiastic to be able to stock up and at this much more relaxed pace, it is the perfect way to settle into Fall!

Ahead of the Curve

What to do on a final long weekend of summer that we have no plans??  Yes, that's what I said, nothing, I think a first all summer long.  Once in a while when we begin farm tasks we will have a single, super productive day, that makes us wonder how we could have gotten that all done.  Well this non-committed weekend was four full days of just that!

It is now only September fourth, and I feel like we are well on our way to having our Fall farm prep not only under control, but in several areas complete.  Many of the chores that we got done, we are normally still struggling with come November and the turn to colder weather.  It was hot and muggy, but we got the chicken coop mucked out and B expanded and got everything incorporated into the compost area.  A large portion, our biggest yet, will be ready to top dress all of the beds later this fall when we put them to sleep for winter.  All we need are the fall leaves and we will have next years compost well under way! 

We harvested about a quarter of the tomatoes and they are finishing a final ripening on the porch table to be processed and canned this week in the evenings.  While B was turning compost, I closed down the front porch, just leaving our fall items and the table.  As you can see we are set for all of the fall loveliness.  The honey collecting supplies, mums, decorative gourds, and egg collection baskets, and oh that fall light is starting to appear!

If you noticed something in the background of the last shot, it is the new raised kitchen herb bed.  we got it finished this weekend and will be planting herbs and spinach in it in the next week.  Now we can transplant what we want from the former herb garden and work on the foundation of the greenhouse. We decided that if we completed the foundation of the greenhouse this fall along with all of the other harvest and garden wrap up chores, that we would work on the structure itself this winter in the barn and hopefully have it up February/March (depending on this year's snowfall).

Before

Finally, we removed all of the overgrown hedges from around the front of the house.  It's amazing how much larger that made the house look!  The next step is weed barrier and bark all the way around the porch.  Then next spring we will divide our hostas and plant them strategically around the porch.

After

So, I'd say that we are well into prepping for fall, and I am very excited that we are running ahead of the curve this year... I wonder what else we'll get accomplished?

Monotonous Rewards

I have a love hate relationship with canning.  I love to find recipes, create, process jars and fill the root cellar with the fruits of our labor.  With canning tends to come an afternoon of repetition, and by the end, exhaustion.  Oh, don't get me wrong, it is well worth it, but with a never ending processing to do list right now, it can be tiring.  Then after peeling and roasting a few of our tomatoes, that thankfully ripened, there was just a little of each kind left over.  Not enough to fill a jar, but they melded together beautifully, visually preserving a fresh reward to be opened in winter's darkest days.  Note to self: growing multicolored tomatoes is not only fun, it has the simple benefit of taking the monotony out of canning!

First Fall Friday

What a perfect fall day.  It's cool and windy.  The windows are all wide open, you can almost hear the house sigh with relief at the movement of fresh air.  We are now filling it with the rich smells of roasting tomatoes and garlic.  You can peak at the recipe here.  I think it will be a wholly garden dinner, using the sauce to top one of our beautiful spaghetti squash.

 Today has been a welcome relief from all of the humidity and masses of mosquitoes.  We bid fond farewell to a couple of friends who were very good to us this summer, yes, the cucumbers and tomatillos are now a thing of the past.  But they will be part of the future.  The hens are on cloud nine with all of the bounty we threw their way this morning in the form of vines and a few straggling fruits.  They will scratch this down and it will become part of next years compost which will enrich the soil of our gardens future.  The circle of life.

 Oh yes, and today was farm box day.  We had some cute Chinese food containers that we filled with the cherry tomatoes and all blue potatoes.  We also had the final zucchini and cucumbers today, baby bell peppers a couple of ancho chilies and a nice spaghetti squash for everyone.   Ah Fall, maybe I'll fill the house with the warm smells of baking tomorrow...

Happy Friday

Canning vs. Freezing

 This years unusual rain has been amazing for the garden.  Even more noticeably than the vigorous plants is that the harvest has been staggered.  What a relief!  Last year we had tomatoes & cucumbers simultaneously.  Though we still have cucumbers, the bulk of the cucumber eating and processing is done.  I think one last farm box with cucumbers will be distributed if the recipients aren't burnt out on them :)

Now this weekend, we have consistent tomatoes ripening (those too should be in this weeks box).  Because of last years onslaught, we peeled and froze most of our tomatoes so that we could take our time and make sauces etc. as we needed them.  Yes, we used them up, but it wasn't as convenient as I would have liked.  On busy school nights, I don't want to think about making something from scratch.  I want to reach for something healthy that won't sap what's left of my waning energy.  So we are making a very conscious and calculated effort to can quarts of tomato sauce and pints of salsa.  We started as soon as we had several ripening at once and I'm happy to report, we're staying on top of things nicely so far!

I guess since we started canning so early this summer, it's become a bit of a habit and I don't see it as so much of a chore or inconvenience.  We've also discovered some recipes and techniques that make delicious healthy food and aren't horribly labor intensive.  Don't get me wrong, the deep freezer is virtually full (yet another reason to can, I'm out of space)!  Since we're in a tomato kind of mindset, I thought I'd share our two newest recipes...

Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce

5# ripe heirloom tomatoes

1 sweet yellow onion

8 lg. unpeeled garlic cloves

1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped

2 teaspoons sugar, to taste

salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 475.  Cut tomatoes in quarters and seed (we used our Roma's and only needed to cut them in half).  Put them in a large bowl.  Peel onion, cut into wedges and add to bowl along with the garlic cloves.  Drizzle with olive oil, toss and transfer to a broiler pan.  Place in oven for 10 minutes then reduce the temperature to 425. Cook for 40-50 minutes.  Let cool.  Remove tomato skins and squeeze garlic cloves and discard skins.  Transfer to a pot, add basil, sugar, salt and pepper.  Use an immersion blender and puree to desired consistency. 

Ladle into prepared canning jars and process in a water bath.

**for appropriate storage acidity, you need to be sure you've put 2 Tbsp of lemon juice in the bottom of a quart container or 1 Tbsp for a pint container.  Makes 4 Quarts.

Sweet Pepper and Tomato Salsa

3# cherry tomatoes, quartered and left to drain

2# baby bell peppers

2 onions

1 head garlic

1/4 C. apple cider vinegar

1 C. cilantro, roughly chopped

1 Tbsp. Cumin

1 Tbsp. Coriander

Roast all vegetables in a 425 oven until slightly caramelized and onion soft.  Once cool enough to handle, roughly chop peppers and onions and squeeze  caramelized garlic cloves from head.  Place in a pot, add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.  Place in prepared jars, and process (10 minutes for pints).  Makes 9 pints.

** remember to use the lemon juice in the bottom of jars!

Don't get rid of the 'tomato water' that has drained from your tomatoes!  It can be used to make wonderful cocktails, both of the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic varieties!

Enjoy!