M . I . A ???

I talked to my Dad the other day and he and my Mom wondered if we we all doing well here or if there had been more health issues or what was going on... I hadn't talked to them in what seems like ages and even missed his birthday!? Yeah, I felt like crap! So it got me to thinking... if my own parents have been wondering what's been going on with me, I guess I have been out of the loop. Sorry...

We haven't driven off any cliffs or anything, and my back's been actually feeling fairly good. We've just been busy as bees keeping up with things around here.

Our youngest son B~ broke his arm, his right arm, did I mention that he broke the left one this spring?? He's boy alright... through and through. The worst part was it was one week before school started. They're going to a new school here where they have to commute on the local light rail system. They think they're such cool urban-chic teens! And the best part is that it's saving us a bunch of gas by having them commute that way!

I know I mentioned that I'd been studying for an important test that I needed to take. Well, at the risk of airing my failures... I failed it. It was close mind you, and I had studied incredibly hard, but I failed it nonetheless. So I cussed and pouted and ranted about how ill-formed the questions were but at the end of the day I failed and now I'm studying for it again.

Our summer has been one of our coolest and strangest that has been seen here in some time and I take no small solace in the fact that while A~ and I spent time volunteering at the county fairs Master Gardener information booth we heard gardener after gardener complaining about how their gardens were soooo far behind and how many still hadn't gotten any red tomatoes! That was last weekend!

But you know what? Our kids love there new school, we're both employed, our health is generally better than it has been and if we're going to have a bad weather garden year, this is the year to have it. All in all, things are alright.

I have tons of pics, and there have been some interesting things going on that would be fun to share but, alas, I'll have to get back to you on that. This test must take priority for now. In the mean time, why not check out some of the older posts. Maybe you'll have some questions that I can work on getting answers to you for?

Either way, hope all of you are well and I look forward to hearing from you and being back to blogging regularly soon!
P~

Yeah... I'm a Duck Rangler!

And so goes my reputation in the neighborhood. I am... the duck wrangler.

Saturday afternoon, I got a message on my phone from a neighbor asking if I had some chick starter. Apparently he had a duck in his backyard with a couple of small ducklings. This wasn't a neighbors domestic duck that had gotten lost mind you. Oh no, this was a wild mallard hen with two very, very little ducklings.

Apparently that morning, while outside, My neighbor heard some quacking in the corner and upon investigation found a doting mother with her two chicks. They observed them for a bit, but as they didn't move on, she called the county animal control officers to come out - hoping that they'd assist the happy family back to the wetlands area a few miles away. Ah, yeah....NO! What they did do was to try to throw a blanket over the hen and scared her off into the wild blue yonder leaving her little ones behind.

Enter, I, the duck wrangler. We had the ducklings in a crate, with a bowl of water and a little powdered chick feed; now, how do we get mom back? She finally flew back, gliding in at top speed like an F-16 and cruised over to the neighbors driveway and began the squawking. We dropped off the ducklings across the street and she promptly waddled over to pick them up. It was then that the problem came about.

She immediately led them right back across the street to the shade of the neighbors garage. Um, did I mention that this was the same neighbor that has like 5 cats that roam the neighborhood. Yep, that neighbor. So now you see the problem right?

OK, plan two. The neighbor (Is all this neighbor reference getting confusing? The one neighbor I keep referencing was actually two neighbors, husband and wife.
Just FYI) Anyway, the neighbor and I began herding the ducklings toward my side of the street. The original plan being that, we'd get them into our backyard and let them have their place there until they were ready to go on. Our yard is safe, fenced and I have equipment available to make a duck tractor if the need came about. At least they'd be safe until I could find a way to take them to the wet lands. Well that changed quickly when she find a nook in the fence between my house and the next one and holed up there. So now came the wrangling.

We had no way to get her and the kids out but it needed to be done. The ducklings were so small that they took a few minutes just to get across the street; They would never make a couple of miles to the safe wetlands. I got on a coat (to protect me from claws, yes they do have them) and some gloves and my kids butterfly net. The plan was to get a hold of mom, get her into my dogs small carry crate and get her to the wetlands with her kids. So, with the fates on my side, I made a clean move and was able to get mom on the first try. She didn't like the crate at all and hissed heartily at us for the ten minute ride to the wetlands, but she made it in one piece.

We put the ducklings right out in front of her and flopped the door open for her to join them and it worked perfectly. Out she came and took her little ones into the water and they were on their way.

So anyway, nowadays I'm just known as the Duck Wrangler.
P~

Just the way things are...

I'm tired. I have to admit my mortality and I'm not happy about it.

I know I've probably whined enough about my back and such lately, but it continues to make me accept things that I really don't want to accept. The last couple of weeks, since I had the cortisone shot put through an epidural into my back, I've felt quite a bit better. The problem is that I haven't really been doing much of anything, so really I've only been been feeling better from not exerting myself. Not really a realistic picture of my day to day; at least not as it has been to this point. That will be changing for at least the rest of this year.

What do I mean? Well, typically at this point in the season I would be harvesting and turning over quite a few of my garden beds and preparing to plant another whole batch of second crops for the fall. I generally keep working the garden intensively right up until the end of the fall and then put in a couple of long weekends prepping for the next year. Not this year. As of this point, for the most part, what is in the garden is all that will be in the garden for this year. I have some sunflowers that I will be planting in the next couple of days mostly just to take up space, but that will be just about it.

What I will be doing is beginning to work on my end of the year stuff now. I'll start turning in organic material like grass clippings and straw, I may even sprinkle some cover crops like vetch or alfalfa to let that enrich the soil while I neglect it, but that will be about it. With the help of my strapping young boys, I will try to make some progress toward cleaning up our back yard and hopefully will be able to put things in place this summer and fall so that next year we can have a better year.

The other thing I will be doing is trying my best to get myself healthy. Stretching, exercising lightly and losing some of my extra poundage. As I said, I'm tired. Not tired from working too hard, just tired of dealing with this unhealthy, miserable, achy no good way I've been feeling.

Time to take charge, accept some things for being just the way things are and do what I can to change others.

Sorry for complaining, but life is not always perfect I guess.
Take care all.
P~

Ah, Kohlrabi... the sputnik of the garden!

It's funny, that's how I first heard kohlrabi described, as resembling sputnik! I had to look it up to find out exactly what sputnik looked like.Guess what? good description don't you think?

The edible part of the kohlrabi, besides the leaves that is (yes those are edible too. but I'll get to that.) is not a root or a bulb as many would think. It's technically the swollen meristem of the plant and forms above ground just like in the picture above. As the kohlrabi forms, it looks a lot like a kale plant or a broccoli plant. Then, after a few weeks of growing the stem will start to swell just above the ground. That's the good part, just like what you see below.

This oddball brassica relative of both broccoli and cabbage definitely HAS become a family favorite though. We first grew it three years ago on a whim. It was one of the first of what would become known as our annual "test crops". Crops that we would sow a small section of just as a test to see how they would do and if we would like them at all. It's funny that the more you get into gardening and the more confident that you feel, the more you want to try odd and unique plants. Well, with three kids at home I was hesitant to grow large amounts of anything that we didn't know for sure we would eat.

We have learned a few things in the last few years and have come up with some good ways to prepare and to cook kohlrabi. Because I've gotten a couple of requests and because it is apparently showing up now in CSA shares, I thought I'd share them with ya'll.

First off, bigger is not necessarily better with kohlrabi. This was a lesson hard learned last year. Because we had determined that we liked it, we wanted to maximize our yields from the plot that we were growing. So we let our kohlrabi get to a really big size, like softball sized. When we got around to cooking them, we found to our dismay that the insides of the "bulb" had gotten stringy. Not stringy in a good spaghetti squash kind of way, but stringy in a woody, not pleasant to the palette kind of way. Anyway I digress, The point is, you can harvest some as they form up, and then continue to harvest as they get larger. if you start to see them stall at a particular size, chances are they are done.

To prepare kohlrabi we cut off the stems and set them to the side. Then I like to cut the top and the root section off the bulb and work my way around with a knife cutting off most of the woody outer section. I finish peeling the outsides off with a regular potato peeler. You can tell when you've gotten down to the good part because it will look exactly the same as if you had peeled a thick stem of broccoli. That's because they are essentially the same thing! Now that you know that, I bet you have lots of good ideas on what to do with them. First though, let's talk about those leaves.

The leaves of the kohlrabi are a totally edible part of the plant. They're a sturdy leaf, much like kale for instance and can be treated much the same way. After harvesting a good number of kohlrabi plants, I generally take the young new growth leaves from the center and set them aside in a separate pile. These should be sauteed as soon as possible to get the best flavor and texture from them. The older leaves toward the outside of the plant have a much woodier stem that needs to be removed before cooking; the easiest way is to fold the leaf in half along the stem and slice the stem right off, even up into the leaf portion. You can slice the leaves up thin and steam them or sautee with some onion or use them much the same way you would a kale or Chard leaf for instance. They're not the best part of the plant, but they're definitely a usable part of the plant particularly if you are a fan of greens. The other thing to do, if you have chickens, is to slice up the leaves and feed them to the girls. They love em and it's a good source of green vegetation too. Now, on to the good part... the bulb!

I don't know about your families, but in our home one of the ways we can always count on veggies being scarfed down is to put them in a dish with a little veggie dip and just go at them raw. Kohlrabi is great for this. After peeling the bulbs you can cut them into thin french fry size pieces perfect for any veggie tray.

Of course you can cut them into chunks and steam them till they're just tender to the bite, and plate them with just a little salt (and butter if you like) and they're great too. If you like the ole cheese sauce thing with broccoli that's a perfect way to serve them as well. (I personally am not, but to each their own!)

If your a fan of stir fry, broccoli beef for instance, you can take the peeled bulb and run it over a course grater or mandolin to get a thin julienne that you can drop in a hot pan with some garlic and onion and a little soy sauce for instance for just a few minutes till the strips are tender. If your vegetarian some marinated tofu would go great with this.

Probably our biggest family favorite for kohlrabi is to put them into hobo dinners along with whatever else is fresh from the garden. Early potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions and a ground beef patty seasoned well and wrapped in an aluminum foil pouch and placed on the grill or around a campfire till the veggies are done. Mmmm, we just had these last weekend while we stayed up at a cabin in the mountains and they were as good as ever!

The flavor of kohlrabi is familiar yet unique and the plants are reliable as an early and late crop. Where broccoli can be picky in some climates and bolt early or not form heads at all, Kohlrabi is generally a lot less finicky, gives good yields and has a very similar taste profile. If you haven't tried it, give it a chance, if you do I think you'll find this interesting looking veggie will become a favorite of yours as well!

If you have any personal recipes or if you decide to try any of the ones I've mentioned please share your input. I'm always looking for more ideas and would love to hear how your taste tests worked out!

Best of luck!
P~

Rhubarb-aide

A~ was reading something or other online a while back and read about an interesting thing called... Rhubarb-aide?!
I'd never heard of such a thing but as we had a big harvest of Rhubarb that - coincidentally - needed to be processed and since I'm always up for something new and interesting, well, here we go...

The way we like to process our rhubarb is to clean cut and sheet freeze them. Doing it that way allows us to store the frozen rhubarb in bags and lets us take out only what we need for a recipe.

In the back of this picture is a couple of the sheet pans that we filled with our cut rhubarb. In front is the cuttings and little bits that didn't make the cut... Didn't make the cut... hee hee.. get it? OK, I'm a dork.. anyway, they're in the food processor where we pulverized them with a little water, into a thin completely pureed slurry. We then filtered that slurry through some cheese cloth until we had this...

Essence of rhubarb. To which we added water and sugar to taste and voila.

The strangely iridescent green color that is Rhubarb-aide.

I'm not sure whether to say we loved it or not, but I'm gonna go ahead and add it to the list of at least once a summer tonics that we'll tweak and work with over the years to come. It certainly holds promise.

Have you tried it before? Any hints? recipes? Care to share?

Best to you all til next time.

P~

Kombucha Making

I spoke some time back about how I was experimenting with making some kombucha and I realized that while I had taken pictures of the progress I hadn't shared it with you, so I thought I'd take a minute to bring the blog up to date with the progress on that front.

To start with I needed to get a SCOBY started. For those not yet initiated in the ways of kombucha, a SCOBY is an acronym for Sybiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast.
This was the "mini"-SCOBY that I started with. It was collected from a store bought bottle of kombucha that a friend of mine gave me. To grow it into something that I could make a sizeable quantity of Kombucha from I placed in this bowl full of sweetened green tea. The Yeasts in the SCOBY consume the sugars in the tea and ferment it producing alchohol. This alchohol is then consumed, through further fermatation, by the various (beneficial) bacteria to produce acetic acid. An additional by product is the Cellulose that makes up the body of the SCOBY.

Now, biology lesson completed, I was successful in culturing my SCOBY into a nicely formed disc of Bacteria and Yeast which I would now send forth to do my komucha bidding!
That white color is from the cellulose that I was talking about.

Although you can't really see the bacteria, being microscopic and all, if you look in the photo below you can see the whispy tendrils hanging from the main body of the SCOBY. Those are mainly yeasts. Many of them being the same types that do our work for us in other goodies like Sourdough and kefir.
In fact, I was successful enough in culturing my SCOBY that I am now able to have two gallon Suntea jars going constantly brewing for me.


Now that only problem I have is that I'm running out of bottles. These bottles were from my Mr Beer experiment last year and have come in handy for bottling the finished product.

Kombucha is a naturally effervescent drink because as the yeast comsume the sugars, they also "breath" out CO2 as a by-product. After bottling the kombucha, I let it sit at room temperature for 3-4 days during which time it continues to brew and breath. The bottling holds in the CO2 and when it's opened. Phzzttt... Carbonated!

It's an acquired taste, I will say that for it, but once you've acquired it, you gotta have it. There's been some issues with the labeling on some of the store bought Kombucha out there lately and some of it has been pulled form the shelves. The nice part about making your own, as with all things, is that you always know what's in it, and more to the point that you can always get it!

You should try it out. You may not even like it after trying, but it's a great science experiment and fun to watch progress. If you do try... good luck!
P~

Strawberries and the new Dehydrator

You may remember the dehydrator we were able to get this winter because of an arrangement I made with CSN stores. You know, the online store that offers everything from Lighting to, well, to dehydrators for instance. We've used the dehydrator a couple of times so far for jerky, but now we have fresh strawberries that we wanted to be able to use for things later this year and decided we wanted to test out dehydrating them.
The strawberries weren't huge, so I cut them right down the middles and lay them flat after a quick dip in a citric acid bath (To preserve color and flavor.)
They really thinned out quite a bit, but the flavor is like.. POW! STRAWBERRY! These will be great in some recipe or on dry cereal.

But of course when the strawberries are fresh for that little window of the year, you have to have some fresh! When A~ makes fresh sourdough waffles (Yeah you heard that right, sourdough waffles.) nothings better on top than a little whip cream and fresh strawberries.

Maybe if we ask real nice we can get A~ to start blogging on here with some of her great recipe's? I think I've almost got her conviced... anyone else out there want to hear fromthe other (read: better) half of this equation?

Take care all.