an apple sauce day

Yesterday Brian and I put up some apple sauce.
Around noon, we bought a bushel of nice Paula Red apples from a local orchard, 'Love Apple Farm' (gotta love the name). Brian used our old fashioned hand-crank countertop apple peeling-coring machine to peel and core the apples, and he made the apple sauce in a big spaghetti pot, one pot at a time. Brian makes great apple sauce.
Meanwhile, I sterilized the canning jars, packed them with apple sauce and processed them in boiling water in another spaghetti pot, four pints at a time for 20 minutes.
We had a regular little assembly line going.
By evening we had 35 lovely pints of fresh chunky apple sauce. The Paula Reds were so perfect we didn't even need to add any sugar at all...just a touch of cinnamon.

a pickling day

A generous friend let me pick a whole slew of pickling cucumbers from her garden. I gave her some of my lettuce and scallions. I also had a bag of beautiful striped pink Chioggia beets we had gotten from the local organic farmer's market as a thank-you for us playing music there. So I decided to pickle them all today.

I made 16 pints of sweet bread and butter pickle slices. I had enough beets for four pints of pickled beets. The Chioggia beets are pink and white striped on the inside, not the usual dark inky red. They look so pretty in the jars, with a soft golden pink glow.
After canning and processing the 20 pints of pickles and pickled beets, I had about 3 cups of pickling brine leftover. I hard boiled 12 small fresh eggs and packed them six to a jar into two clean pint jars, then filled with pickling brine. Those I won't bother to process, I'll just put them in the fridge to mellow and eat pickled eggs over the next few weeks. :) A good way to use up the leftover brine!

Lots of lettuce...

Well it's been such a rainy cloudy summer mostly this year here in the Northeast- a poor year for tomatoes, but a great year for lettuce!
Here is the new garden (about two months old now, formerly just backyard lawn) and you can see all the wonderful lettuces we are now harvesting. I had planted most of the lettuces in the back bed that runs along near the trees, since lettuce dislikes intense mid-summer sun. I love the various shades of green and maroon, and the interesting ruffly leaf and head shapes. Getting some great scallions, and I am almost ready to harvest some nice big turnips- my first turnips ever. You can also see some fluffy carrot tops, and the small scallion and leek patches.
The key is to keep planting seeds in succession, in short rows, so that nothing matures all at once.




Yesterday we were given a big bowlful of organic tomatoes (in exchange for our playing music at our local farmer's market), and from our own garden I picked cilantro, scallions, and parsley. To all this I added chopped onion and spices and made a nice big batch of fresh salsa. One valuable thing I learned this summer is that for my needs I should wait to plant my cilantro seed in July, because then it matures at just the right time for me to use during tomato season to make salsa, and in the early Fall to put in my black bean soup. Those are my favorite uses for cilantro, so it doesn't make sense for me to plant it in the Spring. Best to raise a crop of Spring lettuce on that spot and then when I pull the lettuce, hoe some compost in and plant with cilantro seed. That way I can use the same spot to get two crops, one after the other.

Still planting seeds....

This morning I planted a few more rows of seed in my vegetable garden....ever hopeful to harvest more before the frosts! Lettuce and spinach is good for that since they don't have to be totally mature to get good leaves from them for salads.
I planted a little three foot row each of about 5 different kinds of lettuces, the last of my spinach seeds, and several kinds of radish. I was also able to hoe a couple gallons of my kitchen earthworm casting harvest into the ground as I prepared the seed rows. Later today I will turn the 'regular' compost bin for the first time with a large garden fork.
By October 1st the first frost should be threatening, and I plan to set up a clear plastic tarp over the long bed in the garden where most of the lettuce is planted, to try to keep them going as long as I can into the cold weather. My goal is to keep harvesting greens until Christmas day.
Right now in my new garden (which was put in and planted during mid-summer) I am getting lots of lettuce of various kinds, scallions, a few string beans, and odds and ends radishes. I see little turnip and beet bulbs forming here and there, and I'm hoping the carrots will hurry up and form soon. Of course at this same time next year I will have more to harvest because I will have been able to start things earlier, in the Spring.

Young banjo player

A bittersweet day today...
My wonderful little banjo student of the past two and a half years came for his last lesson today. I sent him off with his last lesson under his belt, my two favorite banjo books, and my favorite banjo CDs under his arm. His family is moving across the country to the west coast, following a golden opportunity that will be wonderful for their whole family. His mother takes mountain dulcimer lessons with me, so she will be gone as well.

It has been a true privilege and to know and teach this absolutely delightful young man. I will miss him deeply, but I'm happy for him too- their destination is a place with many wonderful things to offer and many fine musicians and artists.Goodbye and God speed, my dear little friend!

Little visitor

This morning as I started to work in my upstairs home office, something caught the corner of my eye. A little brown bat was peacefully hanging from my office window curtain. I'm not sure how he got into the house, but I was happy to get the chance to photograph him briefly.



I loved his soft looking shaggy lion's mane, and his little dog snout. After the last photo closeup, he took off flying about the upstairs rooms. At one point he landed on my banjo hanging on the wall, clinging to the strings. That would have made a great photo, but he took off again quickly and landed on the floor. That's when I dropped a towel over him, gathered it up gently, and escorted him outside. He was making those wonderful bat sounds in the towel- squeaking and clicking. I opened the towel out on the kitchen porch and away he flew, happy to be free again.

morning garden

Here are some pix I took of the new vegetable garden this morning, before the sun was all the way up.

Here you can see our little kitchen back porch on the left, down the little hill from the garden:

A view from the far end of the garden. The bed in the forground will have blueberry bushes next Spring:

It makes me happy to see the little bright green rows of baby seedlings:

Vegetable seedlings in the new garden

New 'baby pictures'...

Butterhead lettuce:


Carrots:


Beets:


Spinach:


Radish:


Multi-colored Romain lettuce:

Of compost bins and bee baths...

Bees are good. Bees and countless other creatures tend to have a hard time these days what with everyone mowing down wild grasses, wildflowers, and meadows into stunted useless wildlife-unfriendly lawns. The rampant use of herbacides and pesticides compounds the problem.
One day I would love to have our own bee hive or two, but we currently have our hands full with all our other projects right now.
In the meantime, I read about ways to make one's back yard a little more 'bee friendly'. One big way to attract bees is to provide them with drinking water. So today i bought this simple ceramic bird bath, which I laid upon flat slate in my garden and filled with fresh water. There is a stone in it to provide footing for any bees or other insects that accidentally fall in and need to crawl out. Not only will birds and bees and other insects enjoy it, but I find it pleasingly meditative to look at. Look how prettily the crabapple tree branches are reflecting in the water's surface!



Today I also bought two compost bins and set them up in back of our shed. I've already put about 8 inches' worth of pulled weeds in the first one. It'll be great when the autmn leaves fall, and also when I do the Fall garden vegetable cleanup. I'll still put my prime fruit and vegetable parings in my worm compost bin, but these traditional compost bins will handle the bigger yard loads of green stuff. I'll need to get a little manure now and then to add into the mix, I think.
They are very well designed and made from recycled plastic, and I think they will last us many more years than the usual home-made circle of mesh or wooden pallet arrangements. I like that they can be unstacked and restacked as you fork the contents over to the new spot to turn it. There is no bottom, it just gets stacked right on open ground. I like that too.
In the photo, the bins are behind our shed, and you can see our house and kitchen porch in the background on the left, and the new garden's fence just showing on the right.

Two kinds of sprouts this week

Here are some dark green broccoli sprouts on the right, and some 'sandwich mix' sprouts I tried out. This is simply a produce storage container for the fridge- not what the sprouts grew in. I grew the mixed sprouts in a sprout mason jar, and the broccoli sprouts in a tray, on a little piece of clean towel. I have to learn to start with less seed- my jars get a little too jam packed with sprouts towards the end! It's hard to believe how little seed you really need to get a whole jar full of sprouts.

kitty flypaper

All you have to do is put a piece of wrapping paper down for a second on the bed, and within 30 seconds there will be cats on it.

The big new garden fence is in!

Three and a half weeks after planting the first seeds in my new beautiful vegetable garden, the fence in finished! Now I can breathe a sigh of relieve that none of my new growing veggies are going to be mauled and eaten by deer, woodchucks, or rabbits...all of which we have plenty of around here.

The paths and the garden perimeter have yet to be fully mulched in and tidied up, but hopefully that will be done next week. In the meantime, I can continue tending to the new seedlings I've planted over the past 3 weeks. A bit of thinning and weeding already needs to be done in the 'virgin' soil.



I'm so happy and excited! The garden and fence is very utilitarian because it had to fit somehow within our budget- no English country manor look here. But there is a certain elegance to be appreciated in a no-frills practical design approach. Functional simplicity can be beautiful.

Sprouts

A friend recently gifted me some little broccoli seeds sprouting in a tray, and I was so delighted by their refreshing green-ness that I decided to start growing some sprouts myself. So I bought a 'sprouting jar' at my local health food store, a hemp 'sprouting bag', and various organic sprouting seeds to try. I read about how jam packed full of nutrition sprouts are.

I happen to love alfalfa sprout sandwiches, so I sprouted a bunch of alfalfa seeds in my sprouting jar (basically it's just a Mason/canning jar with a screen lid). I was very diligent about rinsing them with fresh water twice a day, and look how beautifully they came out!:These alfalfa sprouts took about 4 days to mature. I got about 3 whole cups of sprouts from 2 tablespoons of alfalfa seed in the 1 quart jar. Today I spread a sesame hamburger bun with a little cream cheese and a dab of mayonnaise, heaped it high with sprouts and a sprinkle of salt....mmmmmmmmm!!!! Brian put a big handful of the sprouts on his cold string bean salad today too.

As per the instructions, the hemp bag (from Sproutman.com) is especially good for sprouting the larger seeds, grains, and beans, so I put some mung beans in that and I submerge it in fresh water also twice a day to rinse and wet the sprouts, then hang it to drain over my dish drainer. This picture was taken after just two days growth. I figure another day or two and the mung sprouts will be ready to eat...
I can't get over how cheap and easy it is to grow sprouts- I had never tried it before! Sort of makes me feel like I'm back in the 1970's again. I ate sprouts back then but never thought of growing them myself. I stopped buying sprouts at the supermarket long ago because they often looked a little sad and wilted.
Anyone living in an apartment or even a dorm or room can grow their own fresh nutritious greens with no soil or pots or fertilizer at all!
I now look forward to fresh green sprouts even as snowy blizzards howl outside this coming winter.

String bean salad

Today i went out in the old little vegetable garden to do a bit of weeding and cleanup. I had seen some baby string beans developing on the tops of the bean bushes, but as I poked around in the foliage I discovered a whole mess of string beans all ready to harvest! Mostly Kentucky Blue Lake, with some yellow wax beans as well.
I picked a big bowlful, then cut them and lightly cooked them just until tender. They looked so pretty in my old blue bowl...
I decided to just make them into a nice cold summery vinaigrette bean salad that we could snack on over the next few days right from the fridge.

To the lightly cooked stringbeans, I added:
Olive oil and balsamic vinegar
dill, salt, and pepper
one can garbanzo/chick peas
one can small black olives
a generous handful of capers
a couple thin slices chopped raw onion
a little chopped garlic
a few chopped sweet pickles

yum yum yum yum -a great way to enjoy fresh string beans from the garden!
We're having them for dinner tonight, piled on some of our own fresh lettuce and a few slices of tomato...

Fence going up

My old little garden has been providing us with endless harvests of greens for the past two months, and no end in sight yet. As you can see, things are pretty much full up in there, not an inch of space left anywhere. The lettuces have been a great treat, and I've had to give away quite a lot of it to friends. I was surprised at how nicely the romaine grew, and have planted some in the new garden as well. Most of the bright lightest green you see here is Black-seeded Simpson leaf lettuce. It's very quick growing. Tomatoes are along the right wall, and bok choy nearest the camera, along the path.



Today the fence guys came and put in the big posts for the new garden's fence. Very exciting and impressive! Should be finished just a few days from now. I do hope they get the fence done before the rabbits and deer discover all my baby vegetables as their personal free buffet...I've been very lucky so far, considering I see deer footprints here and there in the fresh soil every few days.

You can just see some of the green rows of baby seedlings sprouting up in the garden already (if you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can see it better). Those are from the seeds i planted two weeks ago. I made a new succession sowing yesterday, and will plant more seeds in another two weeks again. This will hopefully give us a more even supply of Fall vegetables and greens, rather than have them all mature at once.

A good July 4th

What a lovely July 4th I had!
First a wonderful breakfast at Ralph's Pretty Good Cafe with my honey.

Then we went for a nice 14 mile bicycle ride in the countryside.

After that I brought in a HUGE amount of fresh lettuce from the 'little garden' and carefully washed it. Such sparkling bright greens and ruby reds! It was enough lettuce to fill a spaghetti pot like four times over! I divided it all in four portions- one portion I gave to my neighbors, one my husband took with him to a party today, one we are bringing with us as part of a large salad for a party tomorrow, and the last batch is just for our own use at home over the next few days. Funny thing is the little garden doesn't look much different even after taking out all that lettuce...I really have a lot of lettuce right now.

After that I did a little bookcase organizing.

Lastly this afternoon I made two nice white boules today in my Dutch oven pots. They rose nicely! One has a poppy seed top and the other is sesame. I also mixed up a batch of semolina dough for next time I bake, let it rise, then put it in the fridge to 'ripen' for a couple of days. The flavor improves over a few days in the fridge before baking.

Suki loves to play turbo ball...

Our new adopted kitty Suki has lots of energy. We got her these Bergan brand track-ball cat gizmos.
She seems to enjoy them...

Forming the beds and paths...

Today we started shaping the beds and paths in the garden. We still have to stay well clear of the outside perimeter of the garden, to allow the fence people ample room to install the big fence that will keep out the marauding woodchucks, rabbits and deer.
But the interior of the beds are now plant-able even though not quite finished. Once the fence is put in (two weeks from now) we'll be able to finish the path that goes all the way around the garden inside the fence.
There are three long vegetable beds running down the length of the garden, and one wider bed on the end for blueberries, strawberries, and rhubarb. The long thin beds are 3 1/2 feet wide, and the two paths between them are two feet wide to accommodate a wheelbarrow.


I am terribly excited because now I can actually start planting seeds for a Fall crop! Hopefully not too many rabbits and deer will nibble the seedlings between now and when the fence is up. I can now start to sow seeds for lettuces, spinach, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, radishes, beets, and various other Autumn loving vegetables. All I have to do is wait for it to stop raining.

Topsoil is in...

The new topsoil mixed with compost has been brought in for the vegetable garden. It's about a foot deep. We'll be laying out the bermed beds and the mulched paths in the interior of the garden over the next few days, while trying to steer clear of the perimeter so the fence people can put the fence in around the outside a couple of weeks from now. Meanwhile, I should be able to work in the center area of the garden once we have the paths set.

New vegetable garden- breaking ground!

Well, they broke ground for the new 40' x 18' vegetable garden in our back yard today- so exciting! They are coming back tomorrow to do some more digging and bring in some new topsoil and compost to heap in the middle. After that it's a matter of waiting for the fence to be installed around the perimeter (to keep all the marauding varmints and deer out), then lastly laying out and sculpting the beds and paths inside. I can't wait to starting planting! (but I'll have to). The robins feasted on some yummy nightcrawler worms after the excavators left for the day. Poor worms! That's me in the last two photos...