Preserved and Preserving

It's almost mid-July and the summer gardens are off to a fair albeit rocky start. We have had to take some pretty drastic measures to assure a good harvest for this season...more on that in a subsequent post. Some things are going quite well for us though. For instance, we are still eating and enjoying last year's squash,

beets, potatoes and carrots. The carrots are starting to taste a bit bland but everything else has retained it's flavor quite well.

Micki just finished sorting through our garlic and she came up with more than enough good cloves to see us through until our August harvest. We also have plenty of canned goods left in the pantry although we are out of pickles. I miss my pickles and hope to have the chance to can many more this fall than I did previously.

We have been busy harvesting kale, bunches of kale. Each one of these large ugly orange tubs, bought on sale after Halloween last year for almost nothing, equates to only 3 quarts of blanched and frozen greens, hard to believe, but true. So far we have 15 quarts frozen and will be satisfied once we harvest about 5 more. Mostly, we use these greens for kale and potato soup during the winter months when the fresh ones are harder to come by and I think this winter is going to be a doozy so we are putting up a bit extra. Which reminds me that I will need even more than that as it is also a vital ingredient in our homemade dog food.

Kale is an excellent green for freezing. We blanch them for a couple-three minutes, cool in ice water, wring them out like a rag, spread out on a towel to dry a bit more, mix with a hint of olive oil and pack into freezer bags.

Yesterday I picked a good gallon and half of strawberries which we also froze. Most of our plants have been thinned out and transplanted this year to various locations throughout the garden, considering all the abuse they have received I am happy to see them all starting to fill out with berries...lots of berries. We grow an extremely hardy ever bearing plant that needs no winter cover and on a good year will provide three crops of berries the last two being smaller in number than the first but with much bigger berries. I suspect that these particular strawberries are actually a "day-neutral " variety that, unlike prolific June-bearing strawberries, will continuously produce fruit anytime the temperatures are above freezing and the sun is still shining, often well into October. Lack of water and weeds are their primary enemies.

Our walking onions are filling out with nice little clusters of bulblets on top of their stems. Either end can be eaten but normally the bulblets are used for new onions and the in-ground bulbs for eating. They are often called "Egyptian" walking onions because they tend to become top heavy, fall over, and replant themselves. Honestly, I'm still not sure what any of this has to do with Egypt? Ever since a friend sent us some a couple years ago we have been busy growing them out in order to enlarge our patch. I can't begin to explain how fascinating I find this particular type of crazy allium, sometimes I just sit there and look at them shaking my head in wonder.


Last but not least our strawberry spinach plants are doing quite well, they seem to flourish come hell or high water, growing and producing regardless of the weather. Although the little "Malt-O Meal" flavored berries are much sweeter if they have adequate water and sunlight. The flavorless leaves on this plant are high in vitamins (especially C and A) and along with the the berries are a great addition to any salad. Be aware that once planted they do tend to readily and vigorously re-seed themselves. I would love to know more about the nutritional benefits of the berries themselves if anyone ever runs across any information?

"Sweet Afilia - Oh what a tangled web you weave."

One of the varieties of peas we are growing this season is called "Tacoma Afilia." I first grew this great little bush pea last year and was absolutely delighted with the results. Not only did it provide us with two nice harvests of sweet uniform peas, from successive plantings in the same location, but was easy to work with as this particular bush pea has been gifted with many more tendrils and fewer leaves than your average pea vine, allowing it to easily grasp on to any support provided for it. In our case, we normally like to use field fencing as a trellis for our peas.

Most of the pea pods can be found towards the top half of the plant and being semi-leafless we found that last years second crop did not suffer from the powdery mildew that often affects our late season crops. The plants grow rapidly once they have germinated reaching a height of approximately 3', tall enough to easily pick off of but not so tall as to shade our other plants. This gave us the distinct advantage of being able to pretty much plant them wherever we wanted unlike our pole peas that must be grown in specific locations so as not to block out the much needed sunlight from surrounding plants in the garden.

When you take into consideration the fact that these compact plants mature in about 60 days or less allowing for multiple crops, they are, in a sense, more productive than our much longer maturing pole peas that we are not able to replant in this manner due to our short growing season and issues with late season mildew.

One must be careful while picking lest Afilia's wild grasping tendrils take hold and pull you in.

The above pictures were taken a week or so ago, today I noticed that the flowers are fading and being replaced with peas.

My Favorite Flower

Sanguisorba minor (Salad Burnet)

Thinning and Weeding

This past week has found us on our knees busy thinning and weeding in the gardens. We are trying to get everything thinned out straightaway this year as the gardens are about three weeks behind due to this spring's cool rainy weather. Our veggies need to have every opportunity to grow over the next 2 months...time is not on our side. That's OK though, I enjoy the challenge and Mother Nature does not have the endurance to go 12 rounds with us.:)

When we worked our beets the other day I made sure to save some of them for the freezer.


This mess of greens, roots and all, will be used cooked, in soups, and even added to the occasional smoothie.


Two minutes of blanching, run some cold water on them, gently squeeze dry and they are ready for the freezer.

Honeyberries

I am excited to see that our little honeyberry (edible blue honeysuckle) has finally developed a few fruits for us this season. Honeyberries, with their frost tolerant flowers, are known for their ability to fruit early, a couple weeks before strawberries, and with a little luck they will even produce on 1 year old bushes. Ours has taken quite a few more years than that but then again we have uprooted and moved the poor bushes on several occasions which no doubt has set them back a bit. From what I've read they will produce berries for well over 30 years so I am willing to be patient. Some varieties are supposed to produce anywhere from 3-5 lbs of fruit per bush when fully mature...ours has about 20 berries on it.

The plants require cross pollination so at least one other, preferably more, different and compatible varieties are necessary for fruit set. Although our other bush is very small, produced no flowers to speak of, yet we still have these berries on the larger plant so they are obviously able to self pollinate to some degree as the flowers are (I think) hermaphrodite (having both male and female organs). Life will find a way I suppose. If memory serves me, I believe our bushes are Berry Blue and Blue Belle. There are many varieties and not all are compatible with each other.

I'm excited to start taking cuttings for propagation and hope to have more than a few bushes in the near future. Theoretically, this Siberian honeysuckle should be a perfect addition to our berry patch as they are not at all picky about the type of soil they are grown in and can be hardy from zones 2-8 and -40°F.

So anyway, I hope to become more involved with this particular plant now that it's obvious they will indeed grow and produce for us. I plan on purchasing a few more varieties next spring and also hope to focus on propagating some of my own through cuttings and maybe even seed. The plants are not cheap so I had better start saving my pennies.:)

The berries have a sweet tart flavor that I really like.

A Hodge-Podge of Garden Pictures

I thought I would post a few pictures, nothing too exciting, as we are pretty much still waiting on the weather to warm up and dry out before we can finish planting and really hit the weeds hard. Things are starting to grow in the spring salad garden, the cool weather has slowed everything down but the lettuces are progressing slow and steady. We have had so much rain of late that the slugs are starting to become an issue, not much I can do about that especially considering they are all such little buggers this time of year.

My wife working in the greenhouse on a rare sunny afternoon attempting to determine the difference between weeds and flowers. I pulled all of our personal tomato plants out for some fresh air, they are getting a bit tall and gangly. No matter, I almost prefer them that way as the long stems make it easier to plant them deeply allowing more roots to form along the stalk. No wise cracks about the Topsy Turvy, it's not ours.:)

Our giant cape gooseberries are finally starting to fill out as are the various cucurbits...the peppers on the other hand are growing oh so slow and in desperate need of a little sunshine and warmth.

Our older currant, gooseberry, and josta bushes are about as full of berries as I have ever seen them, they must like this weather.

The main garden is half planted with root veggies and various brassicas but we are still waiting for warmth and dryness before planting any of our tender crops.

While it's hard to see, this is a picture of some fava beans, weeds, afilia bush peas, kale and spinach thrown in for good measure, and more weeds. One of these days I am going to do a post on why I love weeds and what a great value I perceive them to be for our gardens, if controlled properly.

Parsnips and red and green Belgian endive

The below picture depicts a row of potatoes next to a row of garlic. As soon as the potatoes came up we had a lot of frosty mornings to deal with so I used pots to cover them, all 100 plants...put the pots on in the evening and take them off in the morning. Just today I cooked up some of last year's perfectly fine potatoes for breakfast and also boiled some up with other root veggies for the chickens, we're not exactly in desperate need of new potatoes so perhaps patience in planting would be prudent next season.

Wild onions that I borrowed into our garden are beginning to flower, they like us, unlike our boughten ramps that have pretty much died off...too cold, too wet, not acidic enough, I'm really not sure = no ramps for me.

Liquorice flavored chervil with a few pansies in the background...some of our first flowers of the season besides the wild ones and those found on the fruit trees.

A patch of scallions with a little sea kale growing in front. All of our sea kale plants survived the winter and it will be interesting to watch them grow, flower, and with any luck become a permanent member of the perennial/self-seeding group of garden plants that we work so hard to establish. With any luck I will be planting tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucurbits, and corn out this next week...weather permitting.

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Our little house in amongst the green.

A Very Busy May

Of late, we are often found working outside of the house from early morning till dark and truly enjoying every last minute of it. Unfortunately, tending to the numerous duties required if one is to attempt to live a "simple" life makes it pretty darn hard to keep up with blogging...but it is raining today, so I find myself with a bit of spare time this afternoon. We have been very busy with gardening, working on our long term goal of "financial self-sufficiency," and various other projects including gathering firewood in our spare time.

My wife, the dog, our old Ford pickup and I have to make about a 30 mile round trip, give or take a few miles, when we gather firewood. It doesn't sound like that far until you take into account that half of those miles are on heavily rutted winding mountain roads where the un-posted maximum speed is between 5-10 mph. On a good day we can cut and load over a cord of wood into our poor overloaded truck in about 4 hours, snake our way back down the mountain and be home before noon. This has been a great year for firewood as windstorms have blown over so many trees. That said, our goal is to take advantage of this and stockpile a couple years worth of wood.

And to think in days gone by, while living a much different lifestyle, I used to go to the gym and lift weights for exercise...silly me.

I love cutting wood, splitting wood, and heating with wood. I might have been a logger in another life, there is just something about the sound of a saw and the smell of freshly split wood that brings a smile to my face...even on the days that I forget to bring the chainsaw gasoline and have the nasty taste of fuel in my mouth all day from siphoning it out of the truck...yuck.

For an excellent total body workout try hauling just over a cord of wood uphill, by hand. Good clean fun, I like to tell Mrs. H, although at times I think she might not agree.

The best part of a day spent cutting and splitting wood and tending to all the necessary tasks that are involved in ones life when they attempt to live by their own hand is the utter exhaustion that comes at the end of each day. We eat good and sleep good....every day.

Last night we had with our meal the best loaf of bread, my new favorite, and so very easy to make in a snap. You can find a link to this most wonderful and Perfect German Bread at the Metamorphosis blog site. Thanks Silke! We loved it so much.:)


What else?

The garden is finally starting to grow, albeit very slowly as this has been an abnormally chilly spring with record breaking cold and frost. I don't have any pictures but will do a garden update soon. Also, my wife has recently completed her third race, a half marathon. I'm very proud of her and she did great, having advanced quite a bit from the previous year. I'm also very glad it is over so we can finally get back to our shorter more enjoyable runs.

Rowdy, the wonder dog, is adapting very well and thinks of our chickens as his 13 red headed step sisters whom he spends a good part of each day wandering about with while we garden.

That's it for now, time for me to get out to the garden and pick a salad. I'll leave you with a video of our farm animals enjoying their breakfast.:)