Farm Day!....WOW

What an EXCELLENT Farm Day! I don't know how many CSA members showed up altogether - at least twenty - but everything we hoped to accomplish got done! before noon!
We had members from last season, who just walked out and started working - they know the garden, they know how to weed and plant and mulch and anything else...and their stamina is amazing.
We had new members and in many cases their children...all were eager to get in there and work; no matter what the job. I was a little anxious after the first couple of hours...I did not want them to overdo it in the beginning of the season. But everyone was energetic and happy to be there. These people are just wonderful. It's one thing to be out in the garden when everything is lush and the produce and herbs and flowers are everywhere. It's quite another to be dealing with planting and weeding and construction! And so I admire their ambition and their willingness to contribute to what will be the summer garden.
Heck, we had one lovely young woman who came out just to work!. She's not a CSA member, but wants to know more about what is involved in the growing process. Fabulous.
Here is what our little community accomplished:
Two women set to work on harvesting lettuce. They carefully and beautifully snipped lettuce and laid it in the wheelbarrow to be brought to the carport and bagged. Meanwhile, one young man pulled all of the larger heads of lettuce from another row and set aside those that had not bolted. These were bagged and left in the shade by the garden. Oh my, so much lettuce!
Three or four folks were busy with the difficult (and seemingly not as rewarding) task of pulling big flowering vegetable plants up...this is a sweaty and tiring thing to do. But no one was complaining.
Two parents (from different families) helped to oversee two absolutely cute little girls in digging up all of the carrots and setting them aside. The girls stayed excited about this all the way to the end! - and there were may, many carrots. They loved laughing at the funny shapes carrots actually come in - certainly they all didn't look like the ones you buy at the grocery store...
Several women were busy on the other side of the garden, carefully pulling weeds away from permanent herb beds and, after that was done, helped mulch the whole business!
Two or three young guys helped load the truck with hay from the barn, then set to tossing bales out by the garden...one particularly impressive young man spent almost the whole morning picking up piles of detritus that had been created and hauling them, one wheelbarrow at a time, to the compost pile. I couldn't believe he kept this up for as long as he did.
The men got shovels and completely dug out the mint beds, setting clumps of mint buy the fence for future replanting. This was some serious manual labor! And a job I had not counted on having completed on this farm day...I am very grateful. thanks, guys. Afterwards, two of the teenagers pulled the hoses around and made sure the mint was watered.
One of the last big jobs was the building of the cucumber fence. This requires many hand, stakes, bamboo poles, lots of twine, netting, and everyone working at once to make sure the fence is straight and tight. The result was impressive.
Finally, four or five adults and kids carefully planted the second round of corn, laying the seeds about three inches apart. We're talking four 75 ft. rows here. That's a lot of bending down and carefully depositing seeds. Backbreaking for the big people...the kids are closer to the ground, so they don't have to bend down quite so far!
One thing I want to say about this wonderful morning. Anyone who wants to see good parenting at work should visit us when our member families come to the farm. It is just so heart-warming to see all of these kids - little ones, pre-teens and teenagers - ALL of them - pitching in and working and smiling and eager to do whatever was asked of them. Makes one know that the future is in good hands. Excellent work, moms and dads...

First April Weekend

It started off like this...We had planned our first Farm Day of the new CSA season, but when I woke up and saw the rain, I hurredly sent an email to our members, telling them it was just too wet in the garden to get out there and do anything. Thankfully, some people just don't look at their email in the morning! Several new members showed up, the sun came out, and off we went.
When it was all said and done, the garlic and strawberries were weeded.
I always worry that we'll wear folks out. Don't want to do that. It's hot out there, and the work is something one has to become acclimated to. Thankfully, those who stayed to help called time when they had had enough. We're glad they had not gotten the first message. We do need the help. Everyone went home with lettuce and cabbage and some with carrots as well. There aren't many berries yet...it's the beginning. But I did manage to snag a few for Monday morning breakfast. We got quite a bit of planting done by the time the weekend was over. Red beans, Horticulture beans, zinnias, Bright Light chard. Probably things I'm forgetting. It's beginning to snowball, but that's a good thing.

Weapon of Choice

This is the work of spring...digging out, pulling weeds, making breathing room for last year's plants trying to reach up past the winter grass. At last, the winter grass is beginning to die-which doesn't mean it just goes away. But it's a tad easier to deal with. Still, after having walked away from the herbs beds late last fall, we have to decide what to save, what to till under. I had planted some sage last season, and it did not have time to do much before the cold weather set in. I was surprised to see it peeking out from the weeds on the end of this thyme bed, but there is was...

Behold, the Weapon of Choice!

the long-handle weeding hoe...

with a blade on one side and a fork on the other, you have a hoe to use when you come across a mean big weed with a giant stalk (gotta have a hoe for that); with the fork you can hoe parallel to the ground and gently lift weeds out - even right up against a plant. I gave up the regular garden hoe a long time ago...I just love this tool....
And here we are after just an hour or soI would have made it all the way through the thyme as well, but came across the world's biggest nasty ant bed. Because we don't whip out the poison for this (or anything else!), and I'm not about to pour boiling water on top of my precious thyme plants, I just get in there with the above-mentioned weapon and mess the bed all up. If you make them mad enough, I find the ants will move. Which is fine. They can move ten feet over. that's fine too. Just get out of my thyme bed!

ok, I think I've been Had

So, I was in the Ace Hardware, and I was picking up a big bag of birdseed, and I was looking at the rack of seeds...the herb seeds in particular. On the top, there was a pretty big envelope of something called "Cat Grass". And I thought...hmmm... well, I'm going to start some catnip in a flat anyway ( all I had in the herb beds had been tilled under for the last time). And, I thought, Cat Grass must be something they'd like too, so I'll start some of that, and I'll have TWO things they'll like! 'I wonder what Cat Grass is?' No Matter - this looks like an interesting thing.
So I seeded it in a flat when I started all of the usual suspects; basil, etc.
And, wouldn't you know, it came up (vigorously, I may add)...first thing up, in fact. But, it does look mighty like grass - just plain old grass. hmmm. I felt a little silly, and Will made a little joke or two about it. But, you know, I always like to try a couple of new things every year. You never know - maybe you'lll get something you'll grow forever and ever - right?
Well - here we are.You can see the problem. It's grass - I mean, it's just grass.

So I looked into it and sure enough - here's the definition (there are a bunch of definitions on the 'net, but they all amount to the same thing).

"Cat grass is grass which is cultivated for cats to eat. Cereal grasses like oat, rye, barley, and wheat tend to be especially popular choices for cat grass, as these grasses are very easy to grow, and safe for cats to consume. Some pet stores sell cat grass kits, allowing pet owners to grow grass at home, and others sell cat grass which has been cultivated, so that it is ready for use."

ok. I feel pretty stupid. Apparently, this is what folks in the city who have cats trapped in apartments do to make up for the fact that their cat never sees grass, or any other kind of greenery. And you know how cats go outside and eat grass, and we all think it's probably to settle their stomach or some such? I think this is just plain old grass. Don't know what I'll do with it. I think I should make a special place in the garden for this amusing mistake.

YES YES YES!!!!!!!

Tis' Spring!

Flowering pear trees!

Japanese Magnolias!

A veritable explosion
...and such a relief from the very long, very very cold winter we have had....

Flowers in the Ditch!

Yea!
whew

and finally, a plowed field. more on that later.

butterfly film - amateur version!

obviously I have no idea what I'm doing....
I'm going to experiment with this today...
can't get good video of the flowers - very sunny today
but here we also have the fountain
because water noises are so soothing!

After the Storm

After Passage of the Front...


I know it could have been much worse; everthing is relative. Saturday morning greeted us with sunlight filtering through the bamboo blinds, blue skies, cool-dry air. Lovely! But sooo wet!!! The Weather Channel the night before went on and on about Shreveport - something like 15 inches in some areas. We only received three inches. But it comes at a bad time for us and I've seen this movie before. The grass we had hoped to cut for hay now stands in saturated ground that would not support the hay equipment even if it (the grass) were to dry out enough to cut, and much less the pickup truck and trailer to haul the bales out of the field. The garden has sections of standing water - I usually hill up the whole field so it will drain during the winter, but this time I was lucky to get the fall cover crop tilled in and another one spread before the rains of last week made it too muddy to work. The last time we had this sort of weather foolishness, there were no strawberries planted, and I can see that happening again. But there is good news as well; the Australian Winter Peas that I spread and was unable to cover have remained so wet that they have worked their little primary roots into the mud and are spouting nicely, along with the crimson clover and sprinkling of mustard and turnips that I spread at the field margins.













Although pictures only a farmer could love, these sprouts promise to cover the field with green going into the winter and ought to pay dividends in the spring when they break down into humus. I wandered across the front of the field where we have planted a modest winter garden for us (modest, if you think two can eat 40 broccoli plants). Of course that is the problem when you start plants like these from seeds; it's hard to resist planting all of the starts - and we really only planted about half of the cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and brussel sprouts plants - and this time gave the rest away before they were too old. Yet, there are flats remaining...

These on the left are more lettuce, some parsley, some cute little violas, and white and yellow California daisies from seed collected and given to us by a CA native - yes, Loree, they are indeed spouting. The flat below is more cabbage that we will probably give away because we are out of room.












But, back to the garden...
Here's a look at the ready-to-munch lettuce and the shot below that is the cutting celery that made it through the dry summer and is now mired in the mud at the wet end of the garden. This is some hardy stuff and I would recommend it to anyone who likes celery flavor.

On the right is shot of the turnips; already thinned
for greens and about two weeks away from nice roots to cook with bacon and cane syrup (a Cajun technique). There are more pics of the garden to come later, but I wanted to post a couple of zinnia and butterfly pictures. With the relatively warm and very wet weather, the yard has a spring look to it and I meant to take a couple of pictures of the giant marigolds that are in full bud, but we will have to do with the zinnias, Mexican sunflowers and fall butterflies. Till next time...Will.

Deer Bones In The Yard

Here we have a hunk of dead deer. If you are already nauseous, just don't read this post, ok?
Poor old Dude, who doesn't get around much, apparently can smell a freshly gutted deer from a mile away. We have neighbors who hunt deer. That's just what they do. Hey - anyone who loves a venison roast should just man-up about this...because this is indeed where it comes from!
So the neighbors (and probably friends) go deer hunting. They clean the deer, and don't use the hind quarters for anything, so they toss them into the nearby brush. Dude wakes up from a nap and thinks "hey! I smell deer!"
So he goes way over to the neighbors property (its not THAT far, but it's pretty far for this old dog). And next thing you know, he had dragged a whole deer leg into the yard.
Will calls out and says 'Hey! Bring a cookie sheet!'...at first I'm thinking...oh no. He says..."we can either let it rot out here or we can roast it!" And then I'm thinking ...'uh...roast it? you mean, like...'
Of course not. He was thinking that Dude will drag it over, but we both know he won't actually EAT it. Not unless it's roasted, of course. I am guilty of roasting meat for this dog on a regular basis! ok, fine.So Will brings it into the kitchen and into the oven it goes! I must say, a venison roast smells yummy. A raw deer leg, not so much. Matter of fact, it smells pretty rank!
In the end, old Dude has three large hunks of deer to much on. I'm so glad it wasn't intended for us because, well, you know.
This morning I took the last one out of the outside fridge, but made sure to take a picture before I put it down for Dude. This probably looks very yummy if you're a dog...ok..I promise...no more blog posts about meat in the yard!

Cover-Cropping...Let's Do It Again!

Of the two of us, only Will takes the deep breath and cranks up the tractor...to mow down the very last of what we have been hanging onto from the summer garden. Well, first of all, only Will drives the tractor, but secondly, it just kills me to see things go - which is why he is the farmer of course.
I suppose if it were up to me, we'd just have a big gnarly mess of old vegetation until it dried up and eventually became compost(!) (with a bunch of weeds). That anything is left at all after August 1st is only because Will is humoring me.

Here we have the last things to go:

italian basil in it's last throes, and huge yellow cosmos as a backdrop...

goodbye to that, right? nothing like a clean slate
(pay no attention to the herb beds at the end of the field -
even Will can't mow down the celery leaf. Next comes the cover crop...

very exciting if you're into that kind of thing. Happy soil, happy plants next time. a few weeks later, and you have the mother of all cover crops!! Knee-high and dense, ready to plow under (if the weather cooperates). Lo and Behold! We actually have time to do it all again! It's mid (to late) October and - hey...two cover crops are even better than one! Out comes the tractor and down go the peas! The other evening, Will was out there walking back and forth, back and forth - with the bag of seed and his little device that spits it out when you crank the handle round and round.
He walked and walked and it got dark and he was still walking. But it was going to rain (and it did) and the seed had to be down. Didn't have time to till it in, but it ought to come up anyway. Pictures later for those of you who think cover crops are groovy.
I promise a blog post about something a little more colorful first. Like, maybe, zinnias!

What Was I THINKING?

...last week of the CSA; we're down to okra, squash, and one more watermelon for everyone. Yeah, hot peppers, but how many of our members want more of THAT? (answer: not many). Week 6, everybody got rosemary jelly as a 'supplement' to their market basket. Week 7, everybody got a jar of Hot Sweet Garlic Pickles AND a container of Dill Dip (very popular!). So, Week 8, Will makes pepper jelly and I decided that everyone would get a loaf of herb bread! Sounds good in theory, I suppose; and I have lots of experience with bread-making...especially this recipe. But 24 loaves of bread????? All having to be baked on Friday so everybody gets it fresh??? Good Grief! Luckily, I have a friend with a counter stand-mixer, so she lets me borrow it. I figured I could just whip out 24 batches of dough on Thursday, rise them once, put them in plastic bags in the fridge, and bake them all on Friday. this also sounds good in theory. right?

NOTE: This is a pretty long rant about bread-making, so if you're not well for it, you can just look at the pictures and get on with life!

So I go to the store and load up: 15 bags of flour, four jars of yeast...
I experimented on Wednesday. just to see what happens when you try to preserve dough for baking the next day- the only smart move so far. I made a regular batch of bread, by hand, put the dough in a plastic bag in the fridge. It just kept on rising and rising in the coldness of the fridge! It just wouldn't STOP! At this point, I realized I'd have to freeze all of them first, THEN put them in the fridge for later use. (Note: once they unfreeze, even in the fridge, guess what? yes. they keep rising. That little item I'd find out much later. So I just forged ahead. I had already planned to do this, and it was our only plan, so I had to go with it.
Thursday morning, I pick up from said friend's house the Kitchen Aid Accolade 400! I mean, who on earth decided to name a mixer the Accolade?! That's a car name, or it should be.
First, I just figure I'll do it the way I always do; no measuring, just rise the yeast and alternate hot water and flour until I get the right amount and consistency. Do not try this in a standing mixer! The mixer will have none of it! I wound up #1 with a great glob of goopy mess that of course never turns into a dough ball while using the dough hook attachment! But I had been smart, and knew from reading online conversations about this appliance that the dough wan't ever going to do that anyway. #2, I thought it would be a good idea to wrap the first two I did in wax paper before putting them in plastic bags. big mistake. good thing I didn't continue to do that with the other 21 loaves. more later. #3, I really should have made sure they were all frozen solid before transferring them to the outdoor cooler. I was flying by the seat of my pants. I had ten loaves done by 1:00 p.m. I figured I was making good progress. From start to end on Thursday, I had been on my feet (I kid you not) for 12 hours! I had to drag myself through the last 4 or 5 loaves, because I was ready to jump off of a tall building by then. But, by 10:00 at night, I had 24 bags of dough, once risen and cooled down in the freezer, on the highest shelf of the cooler in the shed.
Friday morning, I figured this would be an easier day. My oven will only take three loaves at a time which is good, because I only have three loaf pans anyway. I go out to the shed and open the door. My goodness it smells like bread in here! Uh...one of the bags had exploded (remember the 'keep on rising' part?) and spilled all the way down the front of all the bee boxes stacked in the cooler. gross. I start hauling all the bags out, crossing my fingers. Although this was the only actual explosion, many of the bags had expanded and popped the ties on the bags...I brought all of them inside and began stuffing them into the two freezers. What now? I only have this one day! I chose three and set them on the table. The goal is to get the dough to room temperature before baking. well, I waited an hour and a half and that just was NOT happening. So I put the first three in the oven. yet another mistake. I buttered the tops at 20 minutes. I looked in at 45 minutes, figuring they'd be ready but the bread just wasn't baking all the way! I left them in for an hour, and the middles STILL weren't done! Patience, patience. Three loaves maybe ruined. One exploded and ruined..AND, the two wrapped in wax paper? Well, let me just say that the wax paper became ONE with the dough and there just wasn't any way to separate one from the other. into the garbage. That's three ruined loaves before baking and three baked loaves probably ruined also (although they looked alright, I didn't trust them at all).
Good thing I am a very determined woman. I hauled all of the loaves from the freezers out onto the carport, put the bags on trays and in bowls covered with plastic wrap and dish towels. The real challenge here is making sure that as they got warm enough to bake, they never came into contact with a fly. With everything covered with tablecloths, I felt pretty confident about that. The day progressed, and every round looked better than the one before. After putting the last three in the oven, I whipped up three more by hand..the baking was done by 10:00 p.m. But I did it!Like Will said, everybody will be excited with a loaf of bread in ther market basket, but nobody will think 'MAN, 24 loaves of bread!' No matter. Here is the basket everyone received on Saturday...Watermelon, Okra, Squash, Pepper Jelly, Bread, and herbs.

Our CSA Members seemed to be sorry the whole thing was over, eager to sign up for next year, and pleased with the whole experience. Hey! We managed to pull it off, beginning to end! Now, as we do every late summer, cut it all down, plow it all under, cover crop...and rest.

CHOPPED!!

...for those of you who have never seen the Food Network show 'Chopped', the premise is as follows: four chefs compete during the hour, making first an appetizer, then an entree, then a dessert. For each dish, the chefs are presented each with a basket. They open the basket, and there are three or four items, sometimes a pretty weird combination, and they must use all of them to make the dish. For example, 'Make an appetizer using....asparagus, Fruit Loops, squash, and ketchup!' Well, it's never been QUITE that strange, but sometimes it comes close....
Last week, week 6 of our CSA, we were a little concerned, because we are now down to the very late summer veggies, and we do like to keep our members happy, but we also know they've seen plenty of hot peppers and eggplant. So, we decided to take the basket we gave them last week, and do our own version of 'Chopped!', just to see what WE would do presented with the same items.
Here is the basket, exactly as our CSA members received theirs last Saturday:
the basket contains:

okra
zucchini
parsley
eggplant
chilis
jalepenos
rosemary jelly
watermelon

We cheated a little bit; we didn't make one dish, we made a complete dinner. By the way, chefs are allowed to use other stuff from the pantry, but other than spices and a 'protein', as they say, (and why can't they just say meat?) we didn't stray. Here is what we came up with:

the appetizer:
jalepenos, stuffed with cheese, battered and fried, served with rosemary jelly
the entree:
stuffed eggplant, with zucchini, shrimp, and chilis
served with fried okra
and dessert:
watermelon sorbet!

after this little experiment, we felt that the basket was actually filled with things very compatible with each other, and everybody was probably pretty happy with their weekly share. On to Week 7!

Please...I Beg You!

NO MORE PICKLES!

one can only take so much pickle-making. A night and a day is my limit of the house smelling like vinegar and spices (sounds good, I know...). Buckets of cucumber slices in the bathtub; the washing of jars, the standing over a pot of pickle fumes stuffing jars...etc. etc. Will rushing around with giant pots of steaming jars - out into the carport - back into the house - he was just trying to be efficient. There were more cucumber slices this morning, in pots on the stove. We were supposed to finish this evening. But I couldn't take it. I wanted my stove and counters back. I just went ahead and finished them off this morning.
done.

Tomorrow - Rosemary Jelly!

4th of July

Week 5 of our CSA adventure...and what a crazy gardening summer it has been: heat heat heat and no rain (except a violent inch and a half last week). Everything in the garden, in it's rush to complete the life-cycle, came to fruition almost simultaneously, or at least way earlier than it normally would have. I answer phone calls all day long from folks who want fresh things from the garden - but our CSA members come first, and I can only turn everyone else away. Our focus now is gathering all of the available produce...cutting okra, hauling in the eggplants, and this week: watermelons! yea! I don't remember when we have EVER actually had watermelons ON the 4th of July! We always try (or, rather, Will does) but it never seems to happen right on time. Not so this year...all of our members will have one for Saturday! Also, Will hauled in the bee boxes this past week. Amazingly, the bees have come through, even in these desperate-weather times. Some of the most beautiful (and bountiful) honey we've ever had. With help from a member family and a friend, we spent two evenings spinning. Everyone also gets their honey this week. fabulous.
Will had the foresight to put in a little bed (relative term) of lettuce late in the season, so we can harvest for this week, and that's a good surprise this late in the game>
In the meantime, value-added days are upon us: this means pickles, tomato sauce, jalepenos, and anything else we can can or freeze or dry. All I've done so far this morning is cut the okra: well, one row of it anyway. Got to get out and water plants and hose down all of the porches etc. Think I'll get to it. They say it'll be 100 degrees today. Oh boy, can't wait.

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.