The Fourth

Sometimes the little thrown-together gatherings are best. Two cold salads, a few glasses of wine, camp chairs and hickory shade. My mom and dad came out yesterday, ostensibly to swap plants and seeds and show photos from a big trip they just returned from. But mainly, we visited. 

Patrick was with us briefly, before he had to leave to play his gig (being in a country band means ALWAYS having a gig on the 4th of July). But that was okay. Del and Pete helped me extend the best in hospitality, as always.

And we ate nectarine pavlova for dessert. Who can beat that? Hope everyone had a happy and warm holiday!
Psst! Click here to subscribe to the feed!

Garden update: July on the verge

Two weeks ago, above.

... and yesterday afternoon. You know how last week I told myself I'd commit to a big harvesting and preserving session every week? (I imagined that would be sufficient to get everything in.) Well. So far this week I have frozen a gallon of peas, a gallon of broccoli, a gallon of spinach, and a gallon of beet greens. I made another batch of arugula pesto and froze it. And last night I pulled beets and did four pints of pickled beets, plus sesame noodles with peas and scallions and kale, and salad with steamed baby beets (the ones too small for the jars) from the garden. HEAVENS.

Heaven and HEAVENS, all rolled into one. Every afternoon when I let the big chickens out, they bee-line for the currant bushes shown here, loaded. Nothing funnier than a chicken running.

And you know what? I just better settle in and get used to harvesting like a mad woman. I have four zucchini hills with three plants each, and they all look more or less like this guy, above. Hoo boy.

I'm loving the little pockets of flowers that have sown themselves all around: catchfly, coreopsis, and three different kinds of poppies. Bright-colored, self-seeding flowers will always be welcome in the vegetable garden. 

I feel like this photo is going to appear in a big "before" blog post in like five years, when the shed and the garage and the rest of the house are teal, and maybe we've built new back steps, and when we're probably driving something more exciting than a 14 year old Altima and my father-in-law's truck. So I hope, at least.

The potatoes are flowering. So pretty, and so weird to see such pretty flowers on such a homely plant.

This year I grew bona fide grocery store-size beets. I think the key is in the row spacing. I've always thinned my beets within each row, but this year I left a solid 16 inches between rows-- partly on accident, as I was counting on carrots growing between the rows, but they never showed. Happy accident, then, that these beets are so stellar.

Amiright?

I'll close with Delmer's opinion of the canning-kettle-steamy house on an 83-degree day.
Psst! Click here to subscribe to the feed!

Garden eating: June

I love summer eating. I write about this every year, the turning point when garden produce goes from fun meal accessory to mainstay-- and what a good point it is. Second or third week of June, usually, when the spinach and lettuce are joined forcefully by peas and broccoli. 
This summer and fall, I want to do one post per month that's just a week's worth of meals from the garden. It'll be a way of celebrating the abundance, and also a way of documenting how we're eating now. So much fun, I imagine, to look back on in ten years.
Above, we have a vegetable tart with garden broccoli and arugula pesto, and of course salad from the garden. This tart is one of our favorite go-tos: a light whole wheat crust-- not a buttery pastry crust-- filled with our eggs and whatever vegetables we have on-hand. It's such a nice break from the easy stir fry/soup/pasta rut we get into from time to time.

This was a sweet potato and broccoli curry with coconut milk. I made curry paste from an onion, some frozen garden jalapenos, and a bunch of cilantro and basil from the garden. I just started making curry paste regularly, actually-- in the food processor, I can make enough to use fresh and freeze for several more dinners. And it's worlds better than what comes in that little $5 Thai Kitchen jar.

Sesame baked tofu with peas.  I swear I've made this every June for the past five years.

Giant salad with deviled eggs. This was yesterday's lunch. The tomatoes are not from my garden, but they are local. And I made green goddess dressing (basically a really amped-up ranch with basil and spinach included) to drizzle over top. 

Which brings us to.... more peas. Good thing they're so delicious. This was just a simple stir fry with turnips, peas, bok choy, and a peanut butter sauce.
There were a lot of Asian flavors in our meals this week-- I guess inspired by the peas. The snap peas I love to grow just go best in stir fries, with sesame oil and soy sauce and those sorts of flavors, though this week I'm planning to use some in a pasta carbonara. 
For all these peas we've been eating, I've still managed to give some away and freeze nearly two gallons' worth. Amazing, how fast they come on and how fast they go. For now I'm just making the most of pea time, and broccoli time, and speculating how long it will be before we have zucchini to eat, too. 

Psst! Click here to subscribe to the feed!

Strawberry pilgrimage

It had been years, according to the date on the top of my jam jars. The last time I made strawberry jam was 2009, if that can be believed-- and apparently when I did I made enough to last us four years. Strawberry jam is something our household should never be without, so Wednesday I made the journey. A little over 15 pounds of berries, 27 half-pints of jam, a gallon sliced in the freezer, plus five cups leftover to eat fresh (perhaps alongside the truffles Patrick gave me for our anniversary).

It took me some time-- it always does-- to get back in the rhythm of canning. This being the first production session of the season, I found myself dawdling, being inefficient, and eventually re-remembering all those good lessons of kitchen multitasking I forget between October and July, every year.

In other news, I have a trunk full of perennials to get in the ground (Anninursery! A few weeks late, but still my favorite holiday of the year). Patrick took me to my favoritest garden center, the kind where they have variegated hydrangeas and all the plants have highfalutin names like Black Snow and Princess Chiffon, and let me pick out a passel. Connivingly, the garden center offers 10% off when you buy six, so as a result I have a variegated sedum, a new fern, a wild bleeding heart, a plum-purple heuchera, a hellebore, and an astrantia (that last one is new to me).

Fittingly, the house front is looking a little finer every day. Two weeks ago:

This morning:

Well, um, I'm gonna go cry now, because those yellow spindles and brackets took me a whole week to paint, front and back, up and down, and you can barely notice it in the photos. It's visible in person, though, let me tell you. And yesterday I climbed out the second story window (onto the porch roof) and started pulling down the soffit, and scraping the siding. I won't say it was easy, but the paint was definitely letting go more readily on those flat expanses of clapboard (vs. those pesky porch spindles!) Oh, jobs. My fingers are crossed that I will make it through this project without getting stung by wasps or hornets, without running off the edge of the porch roof to escape said wasps or hornets, and with money left over to afford the new wood we're going to have to buy to replace the rotting eaves. Fingers crossed.
Psst! Click here to subscribe to the feed!

One evening

THIS is why I grow food. This evening, I spent nearly 45 minutes just harvesting and shuttling produce into my kitchen: arugula for pesto, radishes, peas to blanch, broccoli to blanch, lettuce for dinner, herbs to freeze or dry. Scapes for... tbd. Kale to blanch. Then I loaded up Terry Gross interviewing Amy Schumer (brilliant!) and set my knife in motion.

This summer I have made it a mission to start filling my freezer early. I usually have no problem in the peas and beans department-- they're so numerous, in their season, that there's nothing to do with them but freeze 'em. But kale? Kale we always run out of mid-Feb, just when I need that green lift the most. So, I took pruners to my garden kale-- which I've begun lovingly calling Kale Henge, it is so architectural-- and gave it a trim. I've tried many varieties of kale in my years as a grower of the stuff, and I have to say, for vigor you cannot beat Red Russian. It grows like a weed, and tastes terrific. 
As summer moves forward, I'm going to try to commit myself to one big prepping and freezing session per week-- time to put away more than what needs to be put away, this minute, time for things like freezing fresh herbs and oh, that kale. So far in the freezer I have a gallon and a half of peas, and 3/4s of a gallon of broccoli, plus the herbs. And a big bag 'o kale.
The garden is looking terrific. The potatoes and tomatoes are flowering, the zucchini have buds, the peppers have buds, the peas are getting ever-higher. The garlic is about ready to be pulled, and replaced with carrots.  The beets are about ready, too, and I'm looking forward to another installment of this stuff. 
Life is, generally, a swell thing. Dinner was veggie tart with arugula pesto, scapes and broccoli, plus a giant salad. It was awesome.

Psst! Click here to subscribe to the feed!

A weekend in the Adirondacks with a pup

What a fine little trip. The photos really tell the story-- we canoed, we hiked, we chilled at camp. Del was such a champ adapting to campsite life, riding in the car (he made a nest out of our gear and lied down), riding in the canoe, sleeping in the tent. He did throw up. He did steal kindling from our kindling pile. He did really really really want to chase the red squirrels he saw along the trail. He was less interested in chasing the geese and the ducks and the blue heron we saw. 
I took him for a walk around the campground loop yesterday morning while Patrick was packing up. There was a little kid who wanted to pet him, and I was able to say "It's okay, you can pet him, he loves kids." And so the kid petted him, and Del wagged his tail and sniffed the kid, and I was... proud. Proud to have such a dog as this guy, who loves us and everyone and is gentle and sweet and good. 
He was completely and thoroughly tuckered in the car coming home yesterday. He is currently catching up on his sorely missed sleep, in my armchair. Ah, this dog. Good pup.

Psst! Click here to subscribe to the feed!

Orchard chickens

We integrated the chickens-- small with big-- last week. It's one of those less-than-idyllic homestead happenings. It sounds sweet, right, like now they can all be one happy chicken family? Well, not really. The big ones try to kill the little ones, the little ones can't find the food, or water, or coop for a few weeks... it takes some time for them to jell as a flock. The biggest surprise, for me, is that Patsy, the sweet semi-lame hen who got mauled this winter, has turned out to be the most aggressive bird towards the newcomers.

Of course, it's Patsy who has the most to gain by subordinating the chicks. Of course.

So most evenings I let the big chickens out by themselves for a few hours, to give the little ones a reprieve from military rule (that's a pretty good analogy) and to let the big ones fill up on grass, which keeps our eggs awesome. They love the orchard and the back fence area at twilight, when the snails begin to emerge and the dew falls. Each tree (and its attendant clump of companion plants) is like a circular salad bar for the chickens, who love eating the loaded grass seed heads this time of year. And, to my delight, the snails. 
Oh, chickens.
In other news, Delmer took a flying leap over his invisible fence last night, and into the mud on the other side of the back fence. Like he'd been planning it for weeks. Just wheeee! and splat, and roll, and wallow, and shake, and wallow. And get dragged to the brook to wash off by disgruntled me. He looked so pleased. Le sigh.
Patrick and I (and Delmer!) are heading north this weekend for a short little camping getaway. Del's first camping trip. Any Strain dog must be properly vetted for canoe travel, and tent sleeping, and mountain climbing, you see. And so he shall be. Back Monday.

Psst! Click here to subscribe to the feed!