The Garden Walk

Growing a garden takes commitment and a good bit of time. It's not a something for nothing proposition. Aside from the bursts of very hard work that come with planting and planning there's the maintenance. Weeding, watering and watching for that just right time to harvest.

It's that part, the maintenance part, where A~ and I have come up with a very pleasant way to keep up with it; our garden walks. Every night, nearly anyway, after I've come home from work and we've eaten dinner together she and I take the garden walk. And yes, we actually ask each other "You ready to take a garden walk?". So, after the last couple of weeks of hard work in the garden, planting, double digging, moving, rearranging and such, I thought I'd ask YOU.."You ready to take a garden walk with me?"First out the back door we notice that the sunflowers that A~ started from seed and has planted all over the garden for the bees to enjoy are coming along great.Next up is one of my test plants from last year. They're beets that are going to seed. What a gnarly looking plant!Here on the East facing part of the house where I only really get morning sun I've found that there's a great micro climate for growing my lettuce. Here's some Iceberg and Romaine.This is one of our new garden beds that we added to the South side of the house. I'm trying out the Three sisters here. Beans, squash and corn.You can see the sisters better in this pic.
Now then...sliding over to the south fence line we check out another new bed for this year, the Lasagna bed that I added in the Fall. Along it, I've planted some watermelons, peppers, Casaba melon, Eggplant, bush cucumbers and 12 Hamson determinate tomatoes of different sizes. I tried to make it a good mix of different types in order to get a good idea of how things do in this part of the yard.Going around the corner from the south side of the yard to the East one, I have eight Roma VF determinate tomatoes (not pictured) and then yet another patch of tomatoes. These are some Celebrity and Heartland tomatoes. Brussels sprouts and Swiss Chard here... First time for Brussels this year. They're looking healthy though.
Here in the slightly shadier area behind the pergola our raspberry and rhubarb patch has gone crazy this year. Oh yeah! Pies and jellies here we come... Don't believe me?
Well just beyond them is the strawberry patch. These three together, the raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb that is, make up what we call the "pie garden". Last year this little 3x10 patch yielded 25 lbs. Looks like this may be another great year.
I skipped a couple of beds obviously, well obvious to me anyway, but it was not on purpose. They both held Kohlrabi and some cabbage plants. Either way, I've move over to the north garden now, and here's the crop of the year, my peas. This is one of the beds that I planted approx 300 seeds in. So far they're all growing great.
I had the question of how they would be supported. I've decided to try two different ways. The first picture has literally no supports. They are completely self supported. This bunch have clung to a horizontal layer of strings that I tied around the trellis structure. Both are working fine so far. In fact...
They're starting to bloom!! But I need to continue or we'll never get done.
The next bed on the walk brings us to our cabbage and Broccoli plantings. It's got Napa Cabbage that I'm getting ready to harvest, and broccoli that is coming along great.
Check it out, Heads! We're so excited to try these out soon.
This was the bed that we grew our squash in last year. It's an odd sized one from the others, so we've decided to grow a mix of stuff in it. The left side are Sugar Snap peas and the other fern looking things are our multiple plantings of carrots for the summer.
Finally, one last bed of cold weather crops round out our original North side garden beds. This has more broccoli mixed with a bunch of Kale. I say original north side beds because we've had yet another expansion this year.
Ta-Da...The new north side Expansion. Four new 4x4 beds that will be holding indeterminate tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans this year. This was the previous location of my compost bins and all my junk that I collect for projects. I'll have to show you where those ended up on another post.
Now we're heading through the gate into the front yard. And this area is the very last bit of newly added garden space from this year. It's the potato and onion garden. These of course being the onions, and these...
being the potatoes! We just love watching these grow. I can't tell you why necessarily, but we both do. They're growing fantastically. Full, green and healthy. Just about ready for some mounding too. Stay tuned for more on that.

Well, that's about it for the food gardens. They're coming along well I think. I do want to finish off by closing out this idea of the garden walk. The point isn't just to walk around and admire, although that is admittedly a perk, but rather to check on things and make sure all is well. This routine of regularly checking on everything gives us the opportunity to pull a new weed here or there, and make sure we aren't starting to see a new pest infestation.

So get out and check on your gardens. Keep in tune with them and they'll reward you.

Till next time.

P~

I've got Leather Britches!

Yeah, and their green and kinda slowly getting wrinkly and...oh wait, you didn't think I meant like actual "leather britches" did you? No no no no no... that's just not something that anyone would want to see!

What I'm talking about is green bean leather britches. Strings of green snap beans that are dried to preserve them for later use. It's one of the oldest ways of preserving food, and one I'm excited to see how it works out. Here's what they look like in my cold storage downstairs.
When A~ was out in West Virginia she spent some time talking with her mom about the kind of things we are doing out here; growing, harvesting and preserving food for instance. As they talked, T~ (that's her mom...) reminded her of stringing leather britches when she was little. A~ said it was like a little door to her past opened up and she could totally remember it and couldn't believe she had never remembered it on her own. I was intrigued, having never heard of it, so of course with the glut of beans we've had this year I had to at least give it a try.

Here's a detail of how the beans have been strung up to dry. I started one with a darning needle and a strong but thin string (I used crochet string.) through a thick bean, tied the string around it and then proceeded to string the beans through the center onto the string.
It's a lot like stringing cranberries or popcorn for garland. After stringing about three feet of beans, I doubled the strings over and tied them together. These I hung over the old curtain rod downstairs to dry.

After I did a little research, I found out that this kind of preservation of beans is a very common and very traditional method of preserving the harvest in Appalachia. If you have a few minutes, this is a very interesting read about some of the ways leather britches are cooked and some of the history of the Appalachian cooking and methods. These are the kind of gems of knowledge that are out there in the world around us, but are hidden in plain sight for the most part. But, if we take the time to ask questions and share about the things that we're working on, and then actually listen to their answers, I think we'd be surprised how much useful and traditional information is out there for us.

I'm so thankful for the great Appalachian heritage that A~ brings to our home. We'll certainly think of it fondly while we're warmed by a hot bowl of vegetable soup with leather britches on a cold night this winter. Just one more way to preserve, extend and make the most of the harvest.

Till tomorrow.
P~

Still alive

Yep, I'm hanging in there. I wasn't sure to tell you the truth. I mean I'm not a bad dad or anything, I actually think I'm pretty good truth be told. The thing is, in our home, we have "roles" (here's where any feminists may part company with me...sorry), and I wasn't sure how I'd fit ito both of them at the same time. What do I mean?

When I say that we have roles, it's a pretty simple thing. I go to work everyday (for money), I take care of the "heavy lifting" and I do the dirty stuff (bugs, compost, most of the garden work, etc.). In addition to that, I tend to be the stern voice in the house. I'm tough on my boys sometimes. I've had the world smack me around a few times and whether we like to believe it or not there's double standards out there so I tend to the firm side with them. A~ on the other hand go to work everyday as well, her work is in our home. She shuttles kids to and from school, does our budget, cleans the house and all our clothes and keeps us all fed like a band of princes. She's also the voice of moderation in the house. She tempers my hard edges, loves the boys when their scared, let's them pile on her on the couch and keeps them safe on a day to day basis. This week it's been all me and I have a renewed appreciation of how hard she works and how much she brings to the table.

But this week's reminded me of one even more important difference between us; all the time she gets to spend with the boys. In the morning, they have their tradition of listening to 101.9 on the radio. They sing the songs they all love and set a good mood for the day. After school she gets to hear about everything that happened that day fresh, before they forget half of it in their blessed childish way of living in the moment. I've been lucky enough this weekend to get to have that too.

And speaking of hearing from the boys when we pick them up from school, on Friday I picked them up and hadn't even left the parking lot when B~, the youngest, spouted out, "Dad, can we just pack up and go camping tonight? Pleeeaasseee???". To which of course the other two chimed in with "Yeah Dad, c'mon, let's just pack up and go!" Because you know of course in a child's world there's nothing to it, just grab a tent, something to eat and you're good. So what's a dad to do? Duh...I said YES. In all honesty we were planning on going up to the mountains anyway on Saturday. Grouse season has come to Utah, and we thought we'd spend a little time doing what I like to think of as "hiking with guns." So what's a little detour to spend time together, take advantage of a rare opportunity to bond and oh yeah, did I mention that the mountains we were heading up into are regularly voted as one of the best places in the western U.S. to view the fall colors?
The turnoff to our camp is about 60 miles from our house and from there we drove five or 6 miles back into public lands. We camped in an area that we've hiked and hunted a bunch of times but have never camped in and found the BEST camp site. We didn't have 4-wheelers going by all the time because it was off the road a ways and was not a through road. The tent site was cleared already of all the sticks and rock, and there was a big meadow for the boys to play in with a log pre-set to hold the "targets" (aluminum cans) for the BB guns.

We spent the night, hiked/hunted the next day (in which we got nothing), and had a great time together. Saturday we came home, cleaned up and watched a movie. And as a sign of a good time being had the boys fell asleep within minutes.

Today, I got to experience the other side of A~'s day to day as I spent most of the day washing clothes, making lunch, cleaning the kitchen and cooking a pretty tasty ratatouille for dinner. Oh yeah and by the way, I found out how to get kids to eat this heavy vegetable stew. I put about half of the ratatouille into our food processor and pureed it. I had to add a bit more salt after all the vegetables were pulverized, but they not only ate it, they had seconds. On the Harvest Keeping front, I also put up another 6 qts of beans for the winter.

It was a great weekend. We lived through it, enjoyed it, and still miss A~ terribly. No matter how capable I can be, our home's just not the same without her. Hurry home sweetie, we love you.
P~

I promised

Ok, I promised a Harvest keepers post tonight, but it's gonna be a quick one. We were able to make some last minute plans tonight to go and hear T. Boone Pickens of "The Pickens Plan" speak to Utahns about the ideas that he has for resolving our nations energy crisis and moving us toward energy Independence. It was very interesting and I'll be posting on it as soon as I can, but right now I am t i r e d!!
And speaking of "can"...on to the harvest keeping post.
This year we've been trying to make sure that we put up any extras that we have from not only our garden harvests, but from our gleaning efforts and from the farmers market. We're pretty happy with the nice array that we're building in the pantry. (BTW, that's not everything. There's about twenty - thirty more can's of stuff down in the basement cold storage.) What you can't see to the left of the picture is pickles and some beets. All told I believe we counted 63 total jars of canned goods. Some are qts, some are pints, but all have been tallied on our new handy dandy record tracking system...Umm yeah, that's a regular school notebook but it works! As we have read and learned from a lot of books and many of the great blogs out there, we decided that we needed to keep track of what we have, or we may miss something later.
We are going to be beginning a similar tracking system for the dry goods in our basement as well as the stuff in our outside chest freezer.

I also had a question the other night about "what are dilly beans" and my mouth hit the floor as I thought "hmm, there only like, the greatest way to put up beans!". But here you go, you know who you are, here are what dilly beans are.

"How do you make them?" That was the question from Meadowlark the other day. Here is the recipe:
cook beans for 10 minutes. (approximately two pounds)
Into approx. 5 sterilized pint jars, place 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes. 2/3 garlic cloves, and 1/2 tsp dried dill.
Separately boil 3 cups vinegar and 3 cups water with 4 tsp salt.
After boiling beans, pack them into jars and cover with the boiling liquid.
At this point you will need to put on the rings and lids and boil the bean jars.
I'm sorry but I don't have the times available for water bath canning but if you Google it, you will find the answer I'm sure.

And finally, I leave you with this thought.
"Happy vegetables come from Happy farmers" ...Be happy!
P~

Another long weekend

Got quite a bit done. Compost bin has been stocked and is cooking nicely. (I'll show you soon.) Also, the whole composting area has been cleaned and straightened so is much more presentable. I harvested another ten pounds or so from the garden, mostly cucumbers and beans, and A~ put up six more jars of beans and we'll (read: she'll) be putting up more pickles tomorrow. I also managed to get a good bit more work done toward out lawn liberation project for next years expansion.
Of course the weekend wasn't all work, family time is a must and we spent a while at our community center pool on Saturday and watching a little football today. All in all, a good weekend. I'll post more details this week, but for right now...I'm tired.
G'nite!
P~

And yet ANOTHER campfire use

So, are you tired of hearing about my campfire uses yet? I hope not. I have to say I've been really really pleased so far with the benefits that we've been able to get from it. We're using waste wood (If your food will be directly exposed to the wood smoke or flame, make sure that it is 'clean' wood not plywood, OSB or particle board. Those woods contain glues and chemicals and can be hazardous to your health. This does not apply to heating water for water bath canning. The jars are sealed and will be under water...no risk.) which in itself saves a lot of power usage but it also helps us to keep out home cooler during a normally very hot process. This reduces our energy use further by reducing our AC usage. Not only that, but best yet, in the words of MeadowLark ( a regular reader) "it involves FIRE - what could be un-fun about that?"
So, what's on today's menu? Chilies!! A few posts back I talked about all the produce that we were able to get from our U-pick-it farm. Part of that was nearly a full bushel of chilies. Aided by the miracle of modern refrigeration these fresh as could be chilies were put on hold until this weekend when we decided to fire roast them before canning them for the winter.
There's really not another way to make chilies taste better in my opinion. If you've never roasted them, any variety at all, you're truly missing out. And it's so easy. Make fire, put chilies over fire, when they're black or nearly so remove them and plunge in ice water (actually even just very cool water will work). After they've cooled for a few minutes, just work them under the water until the skins slip off. Ta Da... roasted chilies.Most of the chilies that we roasted were "Big Jim's", a very large, meaty and mild green chili like the kind you would find in the small cans at the local store. However, we also had some yellow wax peppers, some Ancho chilies, and some Jalapenos. Anyone ever heard of Chipolte peppers? You know, the trendy little spice that comes in everything from Doritos to high end Mexican food? Any idea what it is? Fire roasted Jalapenos, that's it and you can do it yourself.
Give it a try, you'll love it.
P~

Local produce, Campfire-Baking and Canning info

This weekend was another busy one. I took Friday off, as I had already met my hours required for the week and we ran errands all day; and I do mean all day! One of the tasks we decided to do was to make a stop by our local you-pick-it farm. They are not an organic farm unfortunately, but I think supporting our local small scale agriculture is more important, not to mention the HUGE savings that we're able to get from it. Check out this haul.Clockwise from the bottom left we got Ancho chilis (to be roasted and frozen for salsas later), jalapenos (also to be roasted and turned magically into chipolte peppers), Yellow wax peppers, Black Beauty eggplants (made ratatouille this afternoon), Green Bell Peppers, Yellow Bells, and Big Jim green chili's (to be steamed and canned for later use.) All together we got two full bushels of veggies. Guess how much? Go on, bet you can't get it?? Twenty bucks total! Ten dollars a bushel of whatever we can get in the box.
We had some shopping to do later that afternoon so we checked on the going prices and we estimate the store value to be approx. $128.00. So if you count the time we put in, which was about an hour total from the time we left the house till we got back, we made a little over $50.00/hr. each. I can live with that!
An observation that A~ and I made to each other while we were there was that there was so much diversity of people there. We saw Asians, Eastern European and of course Mexican families there along with us. Sadly, we were one of only two families of what might be called the UT majority, i.e. non-immigrant whites. I think we have a lot we could learn from some of our immigrant neighbors on this front. I won't get into the issues of legality or immigration policy here because that's not what this blog is about, suffice it to say I have strong opinions. My point here is that these are families that are, generally speaking, on the lower end of the income scale. When we see them doing certain things, like sharing rides, harvesting their own foods and cooking fresh meals and not wasting them, you can bet those are pretty good ideas for someone wanting to live a little more frugally. Our standards of living are, in much of the world, in the top 5 to 10 percent overall. I think this has made us a bit lazy. That's all fine and good in a world of plenty, but I think we can all see that to at least some degree those times are creeping into extinction. Enough on that for this post, you get my point I think.

I alluded to having been inspired by our success with our outdoor Campfire-canning (as I like to call it), and as a matter of fact we did another batch of 4 qts and 1 pint of dill pickles this weekend using that method, what I was talking about was wanting to try my hand at baking some NY Times no-knead bread over the fire.I made sure that since this was a food product that was going to be exposed somewhat directly to the smoke from the fire, to use clean wood and not OSB or other treated woods for this. I burnt down a good deal of coals, and placed our large cast iron stove on them to preheat. After prepping the loaf and coating the bottom with cornmeal (to reduce sticking and allow me to slide it off the cutting board) I dropped it into the pot and placed a few coals on top.
And here's the finished product. You can see that the pot was a little too hot by the thick, blackened bottom, and the little too-dark top crust. All in all though I'd say it wasn't an all out loss. The texture and crumb of the bread was very good. Perhaps a slight bit more undercooked than I'd have liked, but the taste was the best I've made yet. It had a very similar taste to the sourdough pancakes that we eat for Saturday breakfasts. Not necessarily a true sourdough but a very bready taste. I attribute it to the longer time I allowed it to sit before the first forming. For the novice bread bakers out there time equals flavor and that's the real strength of this recipe, it's ability to be slowly made. To help you plan your bread making with this recipe check out my NY Times bread planning scheduler.
And last but not least, for Sandy, a quick bit of wisdom on starting to can. First off we, A~ and I both, are still novice canners. I think the best advice I can give is to not be afraid and to research, research, research. And after you research it thoroughly, respect what you find out. If the recipe calls for 'X' amount of sugar or vinegar or to cook it for 'X' amount of time then add the called for sugar or vinegar and cook it for the right amount of time. Canning your harvest is a great way to preserve your hard work for later enjoyment and it's really nothing to be afraid of with care and attention to detail. One book that A~ and I picked up from the library this year and have really been enjoying is the "Ball Complete book of Home Preserving" (seen below).
I've also read very good things about Balls, "Blue Book of Preserving". You learn about these books or find great resources on their web site as well. Another great resource is Causabons book, a blog with very detailed and concise information on not only canning, but dehydrating, freezing and myriad other food storage and peak oil survival information.
And now that we're up to date on my weekend, how was yours? Hope it was as fun and productive as mine.
Till tomorrow.
P~

Harvest Savers - Apricots

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned getting 9 lbs of apricots from a "good neighbors" yard that I had met just before she moved. Last weekend past we put up most of those for use later on through the year and processed some for our use now. It's something that we're trying to do more of, canning and preserving that is. Last year we did can some pickles and a little of this and that but this year we are making a concerted effort to do all that we can to eat what we can and can what we can't. This applies not only to food that we grow on our own, but as well to foods that we get at good prices from local farmers and you-pick-it farms and even to foods that are basically foraged such as the apricots we had this weekend. Foraging is not something that I'm too proud to do. In years past it was often looked at disdainfully to waste food. That includes food that grew wild, or was left unattended. I see it as a waste of Gods bounty and when I am able to take advantage of it (within the law and the bounds of good ethics of course) I will.

The apricots that we were able to get were very near there peak of ripeness and only a few of them were of sufficient firmness to be able to handle traditional canning without turning to mush. Because of this A~ decided to process nearly half of them into Apricot syrup to enjoy with our Saturday sourdough-pancake feasts. It came out incredible!

That's them in front, we got two pints and one half pint. In back you can see the three quarts and one pint of canned apricots. Of course we ate quite a few of them fresh as well. When we were processing for the canned apricots, we ended up with a few pieces of softer sections that wouldn't have canned well, but the rest of the fruit was firm. We cut those pieces off and A~ found a recipe for an apricot basil dressing that sounded tasty so we made up a big batch.

We've used it so far as a marinade for some chicken and it gave it a great flavor (although in the future we would salt the chicken before grilling it.) Have some extra apricots or find a great deal on some at the farmers market? Here's the recipe.

Apricot Basil Dressing
2 apricots
2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. sugar
1tbsp fresh basil (or 1 tsp. dry basil)
1 /4 cup vegetable oil

Combine 2 fresh ripe apricots (pitted), 2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar and 1 Tbsp. sugar in blender, whirl until blended. With blender running, slowly add 1/4 cup vegetable oil until thick and smooth. Stir in 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh basil or 1 tsp dried basil. Makes 1 cup.

More canned stuff to come later. How're things canning up around your 'stead? Any great success? Failures? (They happen to us all... we lost a couple of cans of carrots earlier in the season, but I'll cover those to come.)

Have a great weekend all.

P~

The logo used at the top of this post is for the Harvest Keepers challenge sponsored by Path to Freedom.