Life is good

Sometimes, you just have to stop and say to yourself. "Self, you lead a pretty darn good life." Yesterday was one of those times.After a long afternoon working in the garden building some long overdue trellis systems for my beans and cukes, I came in to dinner and this little bit of homemade goodness. Mom, you asked what we did with the (now over 14) pounds of strawberries? Well, of course we have frozen a good bit of them for later, but this is just one of the treats of the season, and a reason that I bother to grow food. Homemade strawberry ice cream. Fresh cream, sugar, strawberries and a touch of vanilla, whatya know, ingredients I can pronounce! All credit to A~ on this one, I didn't even know she was making it until I came in a was presented with a taste.

And as for the trellises, well I have to say I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.
This one is for beans that I have planted in the middle. I want to train to grow out slightly so that I can reach them. As always, we'll see how it works and adjust next year.
And here's the updated view of the whole raised bed section.
P~

2008 Garden update - June 26

OK this will be a quick one. I just wanted to document the harvest from tonight because there were a couple of firsts. Of course there was more strawberries Tonight was just under 2 lbs. I seem to have underestimated their production for the year. Tonight I re-tallied them and am already over 14 1/4 lbs and still harvesting. So much for 12 lbs huh? But who's complaining? Not I! I also pulled 2 lbs of shelling peas tonight. After shelling they were just under 1 lb and oh man how sweet they are!
On the pea front I also got a few of the sugar snaps tonight. I've harvested these one other time so far this season, but really they are just now coming on. I should get a bunch more this weekend. Anyone ever freeze these? Advice? I would hate to freeze some and have them be terrible when I take them out.
And tonight's firsts... TaDa! Carrot, beet and potatoes. And the story behind them is this...
The carrots, I pulled because I noticed a slight rust forming on the leaves and didn't want it to spread, so I pulled them and was surprised at their size already. The beet was a surprise to me too. I didn't think that they were that ready to be pulled. I was pulling a weed from the patch, and sat the top of the beet peaking out and realized it was a good sized one so I of course had to pull it. Again, I need advice from you, my "master mind group", on ways to serve fresh beets. I love the greens sauteed, or in a salad, but I have little experience with cooking them. I can find some recipes I'm sure, but hey, you all are easily as well versed as anywhere I would search so I thought I'd inquire.

Now, the potatoes. I have been noticing a slowly developing blight on some of the potato plants that I have in the pots. I didn't know if the plants were healthy below ground, dry or wet, or if they were even beginning to develop potatoes at all. So... I dumped the worst looking pot and checked it out. The soil in the pot seemed to be a bit hard although seeming perfectly damp. Maybe I'll take some pics of them either tomorrow or Saturday and see if any of you potato growers have any suggestions.

Hope all your gardens are doing well, as well as yourselves and your families.

Till tomorrow.

P~

Putting-up and making it yourself

OK folks, this is a long one so get comfortable. This weekend was a busy one around the house. We headed over to our local you-pick-it farm and picked ourselves 8 lbs of strawberries on Saturday morning. Yes I just talked about how many strawberries I've been getting from the garden, but were enjoying those fresh, or freezing them for later. These were picked at their peak of ripeness especially to be made into Jam. Below you can see that we also picked up some imported fruit as well.These two cases of Raspberries were something that we just stumbled on while at a local grocer later that afternoon. These cases contained 12 of the normal size containers and cost a mere 10.00 / case. You just can't pass up a good deal like that when your trying to stretch a dollar. First we smashed the fruit up to a pulverized consistency but not pureed. It's good to have some bits of fruit still in the finished product.
I pointed out to my son about half way through the process how much sugar is in each batch. 7 cups!!! Now maybe he'll understand why I cut him off on the jam once and a while. )He could live on it, I swear.) After adding pectin and cooking the fruit, we added the sugar and again cooked it for a little while longer. A~ and I worked together on this of course (we're such a team!) so one of us would be prepping and sterilizing jars while the other was filling some or cleaning utensils.

Here's the set up as we had it going Sunday afternoon. The Steel pot in the back was going for both sterilizing jars, and for extra water to top off the water bath after adding the filled jars. The large black pot is the water bath and other pot is cooking jam. We had a pretty good system set up I have to say, but that's not hard with a great partner. And finally, the finished products. 8pt. Strawberry, 8pt. Raspberry, 4pt. Strawberry-Raspberry. These will go a long way to keeping us in Jams for the year. There will be more, mind you, Blackberry and a little thing we named tombstone jelly, but more on that at a later date.
Here they are, from the left, Strawberry, Strawberry-Raspberry, and Raspberry.
So, now that those are done, what's a guy to do on a weekend afternoon when he already has sterilizing water going and the kitchen is already ablaze? Well he makes yogurt of course!!

I don't use a machine, I use very basic tools, but I've never had a bad batch yet, and it always comes out as the thickest almost custardy consistency. I have however read many peoples recounting of very difficult times doing this, and more often than not quiting and moving to a machine. So I figured I'd detail the way I do it and maybe help someone out.
I start with the basics,

1/2 gal whole milk (This is the first time that I actually even used store bought milk. The other times I have made this was out of milk that had been reconstituted from powdered milk. I did this as an exercise to establish the fact that it could be done if the need arose, and honestly I can't really tell a difference.)

1 cup dry powdered milk (You can use less, if you prefer a thinner consistency.)

2 tbsp Vanilla

8-12 tbsp sweetener (To taste really, I used 10 tbsp of splenda because it dissolves very well but I have heard that you could use honey or sugar too.)

Live yogurt culture. (This time I used Yogourmet cultures 2 packets. In the past I used some frozen plain yogurt that I kept from a good quality yogurt from the store. Of the yogurt I used enough to equal about a cup of starter. Note: when using a frozen culture, take it out a little while before you start to let it defrost. DO NOT microwave it to defrost, you will kill the culture.)

First I add the milk to a good stainless steel pot with a thick bottom. The thick bottom is important to keep from burning your milk. I heat it over medium high until it gets close to 180 F. When it nears this, I turn down to medium to keep from boiling it. monitor the temp, and don't let it go too much beyond 180 for a couple of minutes. (You can help keep it from burning or over-heating by stirring it while it is at max temp and watching the thermometer.)
While the milk is getting up to temperature, I fill the sink with water and ice to create an ice bath for the milk pot. After the milk has reached 180 and maintained it for a short time, I remove it from the heat and place the whole pot into the water bath to cool it quickly. This isn't necessary, but the milk needs to get down to between 125 and 130 F. If you don't cool it down enough, you will just sterilize the culture and will not get a good set on your yogurt. The other thing to do either before you start, or while the milk is heating or cooling, is to gather your additional ingredients. Once your milk cools to near the 125 to 130 mark, you want to be able to get the mixing done fairly quickly.
Take your milk out of the water bath, and ladle off around a cup to add to your yogurt culture, this is like a wake up call for it.
Next add the powdered milk to the remaining milk and whisk it in until it is as well mixed as you can get it. It's powdered milk so you won't get it all dissolved.
Pour the milk from pot through a wire mesh strainer into another bowl to filter out the chunks. To this bowl add your vanilla, sweetener, and the mixed up culture/milk and stir it up.
I like to put my yogurt into sterilized mason jars. I sterilize them because I figure I am dealing with a living organism here, I don't want it to have to compete with anything.

Here's the trick for incubating the culture. After I sterilize the jars, I pour the remaining hot water over a little cool water in a cooler like the one below. Close the lid and let it sit until your yogurt is mixed and poured into the jars. At this time, check the temp on the water to make sure that it's not to far above 130 F. Place the jars inside and cover them with a couple of tea towels. Next, close the cooler, and cover with a blanket of some kind. This insulates surprisingly well. I like to make my yogurt in the evening before I go to bed. I put it in the cooler and go to sleep. In the morning, Presto, yogurt.
There you go, this recipe made four pints of yogurt. The Yogourmet culture seemed to have a bit more tang than the other culture that I made but it's quite good. You can see the texture and quality of the yogurt that I came out with below. This is after letting it cool all day while I was at work.
It's thick, creamy and has a great tang, not at all like the bland, too sweet store bought vanilla. This morning I had some at work for breakfast with a little of the foam from the jam. Oh man, what a treat!
I hope this can either help or inspire you. It can be done. Good luck.
P~

What would I refuse to do without?

Robbyn of “The Back Forty” has tagged me for a meme that has been bouncing around. I’ve said before that this is the place where meme’s go to die, and honestly that still stands true, but I’m going to at least answer this one because it’s gotten my wife and I talking quite a bit.
If memory serves, the actual question was “what would I REFUSE to give up to save Mother Earth?” Well prepare for the riot…

First off, again, saving the planet is not my primary concern. WHOA, don’t throw that tomato just yet. We do practice a lot of things in our home that are in line with the whole “Green” movement and I do truly believe that we need to change a lot of the things that we do as a society in order to tread lighter on the earth, but honestly, I didn’t come to this point from a save the planet perspective. In our home we began to make a lot of the changes that we did based on research that followed our oldest sons diagnosis with asthma and allergies. We found that a lot of the “normal” cleaners and home materials (i.e. carpet, paints, air fresheners, etc.) could very likely be doing more harm than good to not only him, but to the rest of our family. This was combined with a belief that we do live in a time of change. I/we believe that our typical industrial system is pending a change, if not collapse, and that yes global climate change is a reality. (Did mankind cause it, or merely exacerbate it is still out for debate for me.) I foresee a time when, like Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we need to make sweeping changes in the way that we produce food, transport ourselves and conduct business. I don’t know that our changes will be as immediate or as wide spread as Cuba’s were, but I do believe that it will happen to some degree and in our lifetime, certainly in my children’s. As a father and a husband I try to be proactive in whatever I can to prepare myself and my family for things that I see coming. I rarely use the term “Green” because I think it has really lost a lot of its bite, similar to the word “organic” for that matter. (When the USDA claims something, defines it and regulates it, you can bet more people will be certified in it, and more people will be gaming the system.) I prefer to use the term sustainable. I try to be more sustainable in everything I do. Let me rephrase that, I keep sustainability in mind with everything I do, big difference. We have a lot of things around our home that are not sustainable, and certainly wouldn’t fit into the “green” mold.  Paper towels, soda pop, and frozen pizza are couple that pop into my head. Not the healthiest or most sustainable packaged products, but their a fact of our home. We leave a light on in the bathroom all night, with no one in there and I can’t tell you how often I forget to turn off our outside garage lights; far too often I assure you. So I guess you see my point. Saving the planet, while noble and certainly of importance to us, is not an obsessive thing.
Now with that said, back to the question at hand. “What would I REFUSE to give up to save Mother Earth?”

1.       MyTruck: I could accomplish a lot without it and yeah, I could probably go without it if I had to, but it’s something that I think helps me to accomplish a lot of the things around our home that I couldn’t do, or at least very easily do, without it. Salvaging and repurposing both items and materials to accomplish the things I need while saving both money and “stuff” from entering landfills. Besides that fact alone, what would I do with it? Does it make sense for me to forego owning a low gas mileage vehicle and (assuming it is even possible) selling it to someone that may well use it much more than I do thereby increasing its impact?

2.       Meat: I love meat. I could live a mostly vegetarian lifestyle and be pretty happy, but eventually the carnivore inside kicks in and I need it. I suppose I could live without it were it absolutely necessary, but is it? I don’t think so. I’ve written many times about how I believe we need to eat less meat. It’s a fact that has been pointed out to me that I may not have qualified that statement correctly. What I mean by this is that as a populous, we need to eat less meat, not necessarily individually. Huh? What I mean is that if the “American Diet” continues to be such a meat centric diet, and as the developing countries of the world seek to embrace said “American Diet”, we are going to starve ourselves in excess. We’ll have lots of cheap meat, while our grains and bio-diverse agriculture disappear other than in how they relate to the production of meat or processed foods, both of which are tied to feed crops. By choosing to eat less meat or, where available affordably, grass fed and  heritage breed beef, I believe we maintain not only a valuable part of our food heritage but help to steer (get it…steer…meat…I slay myself sometimes.) the agricultural ship toward a more sustainable end.

3.       Movie Theater: Some of you may remember me mentioning it, others not, but we have a movie theater in our home and I would not be willing to go without it unless movies no longer existed and the power grid completely failed. Why? What’s so big about a movie theater? Well, simply put, we love movies. We enjoy the time we spend together in it either watching a movie, a good HD Nova documentary or a football game. It’s not a TV, those are what you just click on for mind numb time and I could do without those. This is an escape, a place where we can enjoy time either alone or together without disrespectful (and oft times plain rude) kids and adults alike. Again, this is also one of those things that I think generally is a net zero detriment to the world due to reduced energy use going to and coming from theaters, not to mention the huge overhead for the theater whether I am there or not. I save money, have a better experience, and heck I just love it. It stays!

Now, to take a more fatalistic view there’s nothing, really, that I would refuse to give up. I don’t feel that I am that tied to anything tangible so much that I would abjectly refuse to give it up were there a viable option to replace it. At some point many of us may have to actually look at the things that we are willing to give up, perhaps not due to global climate change as much global economic change or food supply chain change, but changes nonetheless.

I hope this frames me and my positions on this in a reasonably clear way, it’s a difficult topic to pin down, I think, without a bit of pure SWAG (scientific wild-ass guessing). So many variables and so many things that could potential become more important than others in a changed/ing world. Till that time, I guess I’ll just keep plugging away, doing the best with what I have and trying to be a good steward. We have all been entrusted with a great deal, the least we can do is make thoughtful decisions about our lifestyles rather than just run on autopilot.

P~

 

2008 Garden update - strawberries and greens

I thought a little garden update was in order in case you all thought maybe I had stopped growing things and just talked about it now. As many of you have noticed this is the season of the berry, and for now that means strawberries! And what strawberries they have been!

The picture above is one that I pulled from last week. It's of the first small harvest that I brought in. It was modest to be sure, I believe it was a little over 8 oz. (I've been weighing everything that I bring in this year. Totals aren't huge, yet, but their picking up now.)
By the end of the week, I started getting bigger harvests everyday. The last couple of days I have brought in a full pound of strawberries every day. As of tonight, I have harvested almost 9.5 lbs. Pretty good I'd say for a patch that's only 10' x 3'. And it hasn't slowed yet! I should pass at least 12 lbs. Now granted, in the bigger picture 12 lbs isn't a massive haul, but I'm pretty pleased about it. We eat some, have smoothies, but freeze much of them for later. We like to have strawberries in the winter too you know.
The other biggie that's been coming in very well this year has been the greens. The picture above is a little selection of Kale and Collards that I remembered to take a picture of. This is the first year that I've grown either of them, but I've been really enjoying them. I've also had a good bit of beet greens that I planted early this year. I've never been able to get a good harvest of any of the greens (other than chard that is) but this year I seemed to be a bit more organized and got them in the ground at the right time of year. Just another bit of the learning curve coming around.
Another green that I've been really pleased with this year has been my spinach. I've tried to get it to grow for the last couple of years and although I managed to get a little, it always seemed to bolt before I really enjoyed it. This year I was able to take advantage of a bit of a cooler micro climate in our yard and have had a boom year for it. It is bolting now, but I think I'll try another planting there and see if I can get another harvest before planting for a fall crop.

So far so good I'd say. Now I'll be focusing on bringing in peas, and some onions, while my zucchini's finish growing up, those will be in before we know it.

How's things in your neck of the woods?

P~

A great family night.

We had the best family night last Friday. After the evening chores were done, and everything cleaned up A~, the Queen of Ambiance, lit our new citronella torches and the candelabra under the gazeebo as well as some hanging candles around the yard. We turned the stereo on with a little Vivaldi Four seasons and had a great night outside until about 10:30.

After playing a little low-light horeshoes, there is actually more light than it looks like especially just after sunset, the boys started a campfire in the ring and had a couple of marshmallows for dessert. It couldn't have worked out better. It was a great time for us as a family, the type that you hope that your kids remember and try to have with their children one day. I was thinking tonight that minus the stereo and the small "Christmas lights" that are strung under the gazebo as well, this would be a great lights out event for us to enjoy some time. Maybe we'll have to do that.

P~

Can't they just get along... Maybe.

Anyone remember these ladies?

No, maybe this will help. Yep, these are the chicks I picked up on April 4th. They've gotten big. I thought since I showed you yesterday how I've relocated the birds to the outside. I would Time Travel about three days prior to moving them and show you how I got the girls to know each other.
It's maybe not the best picture that you could ask for, but you get the picture. I tried to first introduce them to each other via the "toss and hope method." Never heard of it? It's where you just TOSS them into the coop together and HOPE for the best. It didn't work.

I learned quickly where the sayings "Hen pecked" or "Pecking order" came from. The older white hens were not friendly at all! I had to put up some temporary separations between the two flocks at least until they got to know each other. You can see the white leghorns staring through the wire at the brown ones. Oddly, the next morning the browns had flown up and squeezed through the space at the top of the wire and they were all snuggled up in the hen house. I thought great, they made peace. Nope, the next morning I had to separate them again once the feed showed up. This kept up for a couple of days.

Now that they're outside they seem to be getting along much better but the browns are still scared to death of the whites. I think they'll be alright now though. The browns will eventually realize there are 6 of them and 3 of the whites. Basically it's just another day in the life of the Urban homestead and learning to raise livestock. Learn a little, get some things right, get some things wrong. I'll get there.

P~