Father's Day Food!

check out the little jalepenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped with bacon!
tomatoes and peppers and onions roasting for the salsa-making: red beans on the stove...ditto yellow squash...salad on the table. yea summer.

Garden Survey

well. I wanted to say the garden is now at it's peak, but I believe we are beyond that point.
Things are getting gnarley out in the herb beds, but we're holding our own for now. The zinnias, planted especially for the wedding, are as pretty as they're ever going to get. The sunflowers have started blooming. The field peas went from this to this in one week!
There's okra, but you have to know that because all of the other vegetables are so distracting!
There are more cucumbers than anyone could possible deal with, and the squash have to picked every single day. Small squash in the morning, giant squash in the evening. I kid you not! The drought and heat wave are taking their toll on the garden and on us, but so far, we're persevering...I figure a high pressure system has to move or break down at some point, although this one has lasted - what - three weeks? four? I guess it's better than 'severe storms' with big hail and 80 mph winds, right?

It Just Does NOT Get Any Better Than This

Purple Hull Peas...that is all.

Braving the Blackberry Patch

...actually, it is a really, really long row - but a gnarley one! Used to be a row - now it is a wide patch of all sorts of stuff, including massive blackberry vines. We kept meaning to get out there and make it oh-so perfect for picking time. But it wasn't meant to be - too much else to do. The berries are plenty accessible, it's just a little creepy. I seem to remember that snakes like berries, and of course we used to pick them from all manner of semi-dangerous environs when I was a kid. This is pretty tame by comparison. Got enough to freeze and last night make blackberry turnovers (but the Filo was very uncooperative!). Yummy anyway. And I was able to send Will to work with a smoothie this morning.
If we were willing to draw down the pond more than we've already had to, we would flood the berries - but we need to conserve and use the water only on the vegetables. Yes, we're in a little drought - in the 95+ degree heat. That's fine, as long as we stay ahead of things and come inside by 9:00 a.m....on to the next thing - sorting tomatoes and putting them in boxes! yea! Glad the garden is so prolific, but MAN, there's a lot of tomatoes!

After the Party

I cannot BELIEVE that I took no pictures this Saturday morning...week 2 of our CSA!
Many members came to help - they picked yellow beans, green beans, helped pull up ALL of the strawberry plants (that's a pretty big deal)...helped pack baskets, sort potatoes. A crazy time, to be sure. Lots of kids, lots of sweaty hard-working people. It's beautiful, I must tell you. But it never occurred to me to get the camera; I was just too busy. This time, I tried to get out earlier. I woke up at 5:30 and was in the garden at 6:30. It took me two hours and more to cut and bag all of the herb orders and flower orders: next week , I don't know - maybe I'll wake up at 5:00.
A great success, all in all. We are lovin' this CSA thing!The cats are hot (big heat wave here) and they lay around a lot. The Crazy Cat is very very sociable, and likes to mingle with all of the folks on Saturday morning. Last week he got ahold of some woman's purse and he was NOT going to let it go! But the others are close at hand: here is the Kitty Witty trying not to move very much:
And the Crazy Cat just daring Will to pick up his farm hat: This morning (Sunday), we heard the driveway alarm, and Will calls out: "Hey! It's Claire and her Dad!" And they're on horseback!" Claire is the daughter in a CSA family, a hard-working young lady and very smart to boot! She was the very first helper of the season, coming over to weed strawberry plants way before the garden was even planted. Here are the horses tied up for a moment on the fence. And so we begin another week...let's have some voodoo from out there - we are need of rain.

Remember the $64 Tomato?

Those were the Brandywines, last year...well this is kind of the $64 Tomato Redux. Heirloom tomatoes can be a wonderful thing. In fact, there's a man down the road who grows all manner of interesting and beautiful ones...Purple Russians, that sort of thing. He gives them away. He grows them 'just because'...This time, it's a packet of free seeds from one of the seed companies. Uh - I can kind of see why they're giving the seeds away. An interesting tomato, to be sure, but not only are they way-ugly; it's hard to get any actual tomato to eat from one of these guys. We made a salad last night, and Will said he'd just use one of these and 'they better be good!' They were ok, but nothing to write home about. Give me a giant creole tomato anytime.

Attack Of The Vegetables

It's THAT time...well, this particular job wasn't that big of a deal; Ian and Senna (son and girlfriend) sat around with us on Sunday and helped shell all of these Horticulture beans...so it was only a matter of blanching, dunking in ice water and bagging...THIS, on the other hand, is a different story! I remember a really funny Garrison Keilor story from way back about his childhood and all of the excess vegetables, mainly tomatoes, from the garden (and of course leaving bags of zucchini on people's doorsteps in the middle of the night - I totally get that). 'Canning' tomatoes is daunting in it's way. First of all, the ones you work with are the ones with imperfections - holes and little soft spots and such - and you stand at the counter and cut and throw the good parts into a really big pot and dunk the other stuff into a bucket at your feet. This goes on for a long, long time. Yesterday, I wound up with two huge pots of cut up tomatoes simmering on the stove. Then you wash the jars. Then you boil the jars. Then you line up the jars. Then you boil the lids. Then you haul the pot of tomatoes over to the jars. Then you fill the jars and continually wipe up the spillage. Then you wipe off the tops of the jars with a paper towel dunked in boiling water; Then you put lids on the jars. Then you figure out which pots you have left to set the jars in...then you set the jars in the water bath and then you let it come to a boil and then you let it go for ten minutes and then you pull the jars out and listen for them to go 'click',,,'click' - that's the sealing.
And then you realize that you never sterilized enough jars to begin with and here you are with half a big pot of tomatoes. Then Will comes in and offers to do 'Round 2'. That's a good thing, because by that time, I was just done in. I need an attitude adjustment...it's way to early in the season to feel overwhelmed by this kind of thing. The result is a beautiful thing, though!
And I still can't figure out why they call it 'canning' when in fact you are putting stuff in JARS.

'Many Hands Make Light Work'

...Saturday and it was officially WEEK 1 of our CSA activities; I had gotten out early to pick and wash and bag herbs for the orders, but our members showed up early too. When I was finished, I heard laughing and talking in the distance and I thought...'man, I have to get over there...they're having too much fun!" Will pulled up both 70-ft rows of Horticulture beans, and folks were working pulling them off the plants...it's amazing how much work six or seven people can do! At some point, I was back in the carport beginning to line up the baskets for our 20 families......and was helped mightily by Caroline, who was spending the day with Dad....she learned to weigh out and bag 3-lb allotments of beans - and Caroline is going into the 2nd grade! A fast learner and a big help!in the meantime, members were busy pulling yellow beans off plants, and Will was free to till up the rows in the field - a luxury for him to be able to do this so quickly after vegetables are pulled up.I don't know what is up with this year's crops. We've talked about it a lot. Look at the size of these bell peppers - and it's early yet. But they're HUGE! Also, the crepe myrtles are crazy-blooming and if I'm not mistaken they're VERY early. Hmm. I'm not complaining, it's just that things seem to be in a big, big hurry.

Post-Wedding Farming

The month of May has seen one son's college graduation and another son's wedding here at this little farm....the wedding is over and the vegetables are calling!The garden is not much worse for wear, considering we've done little in the past week or more...but the weeds are already asserting themselves, trying to get the best of us. I'm pulling weeds and hoeing and Will is tilling between rows - we both know it's only a matter of time; a couple of months from now, we'll just hand the garden over to the weeds and concede. But for now the garden still belongs to us. The produce is charging ahead, doing what it always does, and on its own schedule.Our PLAN was to begin our new CSA adventure this coming weekend (June 6). Thankfully, our CSA members happily chipped in a couple of weeks ago and helped with early harvesting and maintenance, and understood that the schedule had bumped itself up a week or two. This will be the first weekend that we will pick and pack for 20 families...kind of intimidating, but it looks like it will work! Thanks to Will who, scientist and horticultural maniac that he is, plotted the whole shebang out months ago, trying to make sure everything happened with some kind of order. It is kind of like herding cats, but fenced-in cats...in other words, there is a perimeter of sorts.

It's amazing that only three weeks ago, folks constructed this cucumber fence and the little plants weren't even THINKING about climbing it!vegetables wait for no one...