Yet Another Smorgasbord of Blogicity

PEASSSSSS!!!! Actual, live, eat 'em right off the vine sweet peas. I eat the smaller pods, I open the older ones and lick out the peas in an ecstasy of gardening goodness. The ones above will be eaten for dinner tonight. (The ones left after River got to them, that is.)


So much has been going on in our "inside lives" that we haven't spent a lot of time doing anything outside. The garden is woefully underplanted, and I'm going to have to go ahead and get some plants from the store, as much as I hate it. You do what you can, right?

A couple of weekends ago, we took a trip to a local strawberry farm to pick our own berries. I've done berries here, and they'd be fine for a novelty for the kids, but I don't have enough space for a big patch. We wound up with an enormous mass of the lovely red fruits (including Jeffrey's "magic"--i.e. "unripe" ones)

and so later that afternoon, I set to preserving them. I made one big wad of them into strawberry jam. This was my third attempt at jam--the first resulted in a thick brownish sludge, the second resulted in a thin, goopy mess and the third:


I kinda wish I had a "TA DAAAAHHHH!" sound bite right now. Or, like, angel trumpets. The jam set beautifully and I made eight half pints of it! Huzzah!!

The rest of the berries I culled and sliced for freezing. They were so pretty on the tray that I took a picture of them. After they froze on the trays, I popped them off and slipped them into some Ziploc Vacuum Freezer bags. I'd been thinking about one of those vacuum storage systems for a while, because I make ahead and freeze pancakes, muffins, cookies, biscuits, etc. and wanted to be able to preserve them for a bit longer if possible. And I hate it when my blocks of cheese go bad fast. But the price of the systems kept me from buying them, along with the fact that reusing the bags for anything is impossible. I had heard about a Reynolds product that worked on a battery and the last time I went to HellMart, I headed to the freezer bag aisle, where I found the Ziploc system. Four bucks got me some bags and a little handpump. At face, this is pretty low-tech: a handpump goes over a hole in the bag and you, um, pump the air out. But the storage potential made me go nuts. I would prefer to can our produce, but Jeffrey hates what he calls "olive green" green beans and peas that are canned. And the kids LOVE frozen berries. So the idea that I can freeze stuff without the frantic "suck-with-a-straw-hurry-to-seal-curse-the-invention-of-air" deal is awesome. The pump removes every bit of air in the bag and you can reseal them after cutting off a wodge of cheese or grabbing a few berries.

The package and website cautions against reusing the bags, although to be honest, I'll probably reuse the ones I keep fruit and breads in--at the very least, these would make great "keepers" for wet socks and clothes that the kids mess up while on the road. No more icky soured clothes!!! You can check them out here: http://www.ziploc.com/?p=b10 Oh, by the way, I got five quart bags of frozen berries. I'd like to have more, but I'm going to fill out our fruit stash for the winter with blueberries (maybe even a few from our new rabbit eye bushes below),

peaches, and blackberries from the farm in Cowtown.

Let's see...I've given up hilling the potatoes...they grew all the way up to the top of the potato bin and I couldn't see using any more soil or straw. I'm hoping all the growth will mean lots of potatoes, but you know my skepticism with this concept. I was pretty surprised to see how close the blossoms of the potato are to eggplant blossoms and interested to find out after some research that they belong to the same family: edible Nightshade. Cool.


I decided to dig a corn trough this year instead of put them in a raised bed. Corn requires a lot of water and gets so tall that a raised bed made it difficult to deal with. The trough is roughly six feet by six feet, and I was able to get thirty-six kernals planted. I put mini pumpkins in each corner. The corn is starting to come up now, so tomorrow I'll put in some Henderson limas. YUM!! The corn trough picture is bad, I know. I think I'm going to call it: Large Lopsided Square of Dirt. You might be able to pick out the corn if you squint and say an incantation.



I dug out a BUNCH of the chocolate mint when I discovered it was started to invade the raised beds. Um. No. I transplanted some of it to a different spot, but was going to dry the rest until I decided to try doing some mint jelly with it. It has such a nice flavor that I thought it might do. The only pectin I have is powdered, though, so I have to make a HellMart run for some liquid stuff. Hope I can find it...

In other, horribly disgusting news, I have stinkwort mushrooms in one of my beds. I'm not sure what sin I committed to deserve the variety I have. They're nicknamed "Dead Man's Fingers" (charming) and emit an odor that is so gross and profound that you can smell it when you walk out the back door. Topping off the nastiness is a brown slimy wad of ook that apparently draws flies, which adds to the general grodiness. (Click on the pic to get a gander at the mushroom loogy. Shudder.) A Googling of the mushroom revealed that you can actually cook with these, which makes me want to yark. I just...no. I'll have to dig them out soon, once I gather the courage to do so.

Tomorrow is a planting day! Woohoo!

I Pea'd Myself!

Oh, garden humor. I am a laugh riot.

For real, I have finally managed to plant sweet peas in such a way that I get, you know, actual peas on the vine! Woohoo!!!! The trick wound up being: plant early, plant in the shadiest spot in the garden, and sing to the vines encouragingly every day. They prefer Bob Marley. I'm sure that this won't necessarily work for everybody, depending on your region. If you live in the Northwest, for example, you might do better with full sun and, say, Lyle Lovett. The point is: I HAVE SWEET PEAS!! To be sure, there aren't a lot of vines, probably because the seeds I planted were old. Next year, I'll put trellises on the back of every bed in the shade and try to get a bigger harvest.


In other garden news, the potatoes got a second layer of hilling, this time with mucked out straw from the school farm. Forking it into barrels made me so happy that I'm pretty sure the Ag teacher thought I was insane. I doubt any farm I have will have cows, but the smell of straw + cow + manure is lovely to me. The taties already need another hilling. I'm considering going to the Ag Center, which is a huge complex where the state fair and various animal contests and RV gatherings are held. They have a pile of shavings and manure that anybody can go and get for free. I don't know about hilling potatoes with it, though. Maybe I should just try to find some more grass clippings? I remain skeptical about the potatoes, although they look beautiful and healthy in their golden bed (I'd take a picture, but we've been under a weird little streak of thunderstorms since around five, so I think I'll stay in here so as not to get zapped...maybe later after the weather clears.) I wonder what type of music they'd like? Garth Brooks springs weirdly to mind.

The first batch of compost is officially ready. There are still some bigger strands of grass left over from last year before I realized you really need to shred your stuff before chunking it into the bin, but I'm not too worried about them. I'll use the compost on my seedlings, which will go in this weekend. Poor babies. Winter sowing, it turns out, is a science for at least one person living in the South. Again, it might be easier somewhere else with more predictable seasons. This spring has been fairly consistently coolish, but our winter was a wee schizophrenic, especially at the end. The plants sprang up fast and then have been hunched down in their pots for at least a month. Transplanting them seemed to have little to no effect on their growth, although most of them really seem puny now, like they want to stretch their legs. I'll be trying to find fish emulsion this weekend to perk up the squash. I've read that too much nitrogen makes for not a lot of fruit. And I want a LOT of fruit!! (Oooooh, the thought of fried squash is ALMOST enough to make me long for the heavy heat of summer.) The others will get some compost--and maybe some Andrew Lloyd Webber show tunes.

On the homefront, we've been doing good on the eating-in department. We took Jeffrey out to eat yesterday after a doctor's visit, but otherwise, we've eaten at home for the entire week. The rest of the month hasn't gone as well--we've done a terrible job of eating-in AND of keeping our budget. Sometimes I feel a bit like, "Dang, I'm growing a garden. How much do I have to pare down?" but this mainly comes on days when the kids are fractious or we have a packed schedule or when (to be honest) I'm just being lazy. Budgeting simply must be part of the homesteading effort, as well as doing a better job of using what we have here instead of buying something new. Baby steps.

I've settled officially on a biscuit recipe for the family. It yields yummy, tender, buttery, soft, crunchy on the bottom bread that everybody loves. It's a variation of Mama's recipe, one I read in "Better Homes and Gardens" by Scott Peacock, and one from Alton Brown, my culinary boyfriend (and fellow UGA grad.)

Not Hannah's Biscuits O' Joy

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, three teaspoons baking powder, and one teaspoon salt. I use a whisk, other folks use a food processor. Eh.
3. Pour one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into a measuring cup. Add milk to make one cup. I use 1 percent milk, for what it's worth. This is a replacement for buttermilk. I don't know that I make biscuits enough to buy buttermilk since I don't know how long it lasts in the fridge, nor how much it costs. I'm perfectly happy with this substitution.
   
4. Cut a half stick of cold, unsalted butter longways and then shortways. You're aiming for little butter cubes. Plop those into the flour mixture.
   
5. Squoosh the butter cubes around in the flour mixture to break them up. "The experts" say aim for pea-sized pieces combined with smaller bits, which always makes me go, "Ack! Are we talking sweet peas? English peas? Crowder? PURPLE-HULLED PINKEYES????" Dude, you just want some bigger bits (field peas) and some smaller bits (graham cracker crumbs) and some flour. Don't have big hunks of butter in there.
6. Stir up the milk and cider mixture. The acid in the vinegar will combine with the baking powder and make a nice fizzy dough that rises in the oven.
7. Pour about 3/4 of the milk mixture into the flour and butter mixture. Some folks say make a well in the middle. Eh. I just pour slowly and hope for the best.
8. Stir gently with a fork. This is the "Do this part carefully or you'll wind up with tough, dry, disks o'sadness" part. I mix until it's all just combined. Depending on weather, I sometimes have a bit of milky stuff in the bottom of the bowl. This is okay--I can always add a bit of flour during the kneading part.
9. Plonk the dough out onto a floured surface. I use a wooden cutting board and I sprinkle maybe an eighth of a cup of flour onto the board. I have no idea if this is the "lightly floured" surface the experts go on about. This is what works for me.
   
10. Now the kneading part. I flatten the dough out to about an inch and a half, fold it in half, flatten it to an inch and a half, fold it in half, repeat and repeat and repeat maybe six or seven times. I've heard you should knead eleven times, that you shouldn't knead, that you knead only enough to coat the back and front of your dough with flour. Whatever works, y'all. This works for me.
11. Roll the dough out to about half an inch. I use a fairly large biscuit cutter and with a bit of smooshing the cut out parts together, I can get eight big biscuits and a little wonky one that I call the "sample." Don't spin the cutter; just push it down (I love the poofy little sound it makes) and lift it up. Put the biscuits on a parchment sheet lined pan so that they're almost touching, like maybe a centimeter between them. Poke holes in the biscuits all the way down to the pan with a fork, twice. Top each biscuit with a tiny piece of butter.
    
12. Bake for, oh, eleven or so minutes. I never time it...I always go by sight.
13. Eat and experience bliss.

Still working on the Cracker O' Joy. Will report when I've figured it out.

Homesteady

I actually wrote this...um...a few days ago. Wednesday? I don't know. Will's been on break and it screwed my sense of time all up. I did another homestead-y thing today and I'll document it tomorrow maybe, after a trip to our favorite herb farm.

Guess what I just did? No, really. Guess.

I ate a homemade graham cracker slathered with peanut butter. And it was AWESOME.

Or at least very, very good.

The recipe from Baking Bites proved to be spot-on and even when I totally mixed two steps up and wound up with largish blobs of butter in my rolled-out dough, they still taste good. Jeffrey is kind of squicky on the texture (he doesn't like crunchy at all and still speaks with longing of the thick, chewy slabs o' dough that were my second batch of crackers) and River refused to eat hers at all (it was sweet, you see, and I have decided this child might actually be a foundling--she eats neither chocolate nor peanut butter and...) BUT--Will and I liked them. Next time, I'll do a few things differently, starting with, you know, combining ingredients in the correct order. I also think I'll to process the graham flour a bit and try to break it down. The biggest difference between these and storebought was one of texture--storebought are smoother and...flakier, maybe? I also will substitute one of the tablespoons of molasses for honey. It won't change anything but the taste and I feel like, especially for the little ones, molasses makes for a more complicated taste. All in all, this was a successful test. I'm really stoked to think that in a few weeks I'll be able to mark one more item off my shopping list. Woohoo!


Now guess what I just did? It's about six hours later and I'm finishing up the post that work kept me from. I'm not snuggled down in bed because I had my very own Laura Ingalls Wilder moment and got up to water down the plants because of the expected frost. To my relief, it doesn't appear that it got down to freezing. NOAA has the temp at 35 degrees and while that's cold as poo poo, there's no frost on the car or the plants. I'll check again as it gets closer to twilight, but I think we were spared. (I have my fingers crossed for the peach farmers.)

The anxiety the forecast frost caused me was considerable; I'm not really sure why. Certainly, I don't depend on my garden for sustenance. And with our warm climate and long growing season, there's plenty of time to plant seedlings or even grow some crops straight from seed. I suppose it's that a lot of work went into my little seedlings--physical work, but also planning and hoping and dreaming. I'm starting to consider this venture to be less something fun to do because my Daddy gardened and more an actual lifestyle change, and the threat of frost threatened that lifestyle. Just checked the veggie garden again...no frost! Yay!

So now I have a slew of newspaper-potted tomatoes and cukes and peppers sitting in my kitchen for no good reason. Ah, well. Better safe than sorry.

I dug out most of the seedlings from their winter-sown homes yesterday. (I had to leave some because the kids were clamoring for supper and my fingers were numb from making newspaper pots.) First, I needed to bring them in from the cold and second, they were getting a bit root bound and nitrogen-starved in the containers. It was odd to look at my garden sans containers. This has been an interesting experiment. I'm not sure what I'll do differently next year. I expected the peppers to go great guns, as I've frequently had volunteer peppers come up from missed fruit, but I only got two California Wonders and no banana peppers at all. I expected no eggplant, but yesterday I lifted two healthy seedlings and two "trying hard" seedlings from the container. (More than enough in our house, as I'm the only one who eats it.) The tomatoes got a mixed review, although I had to restart the seeds after a hard freeze. The Jelly Beans went pffff (I think I have three?), the Romas and Better Boys did okay, and the Cherokee Purples surprised me by going CRAZY and springing up all six. So...I'm set for tomatoes. (Will doesn't know this yet, but I'm thinking I'm going to be stuffing some of these jokers into a flower bed or two. Or, you know, seven.) I'd like to experiment a bit more...starting the seedlings earlier, bringing them in for frosty nights, etc. But I'm also going to look at a small grow-light set up for my herbs and peppers next year.

On Monday (again, ahead of the expected freeze), I hilled my potatoes. I had been meaning to do it, but I didn't get around to it and I had a good foot or so of plant sticking out of the soil.

Good old Ed and Daddy both recommend mounding soil or (in Ed's case) marsh grass around the plants as they grow to increase production. My soil being less than satisfactory in the organic matter department and lacking any marsh grass (or marshes, for that matter), I elected to do a hodgepodge and make my own marsh grass. I mixed soil from the big pile left from last year with grass clippings I got from friends and piled it all up around the plants. There was something so pleasing about the process: the rhythm of of shoveling the soil, stirring the clippings and soil together, forking it out of the wagon. Hilling potatoes is hard when you're using a box bed. The potatoes are crammed in as it is and mine are close to the edge. The answer was using a vinyl-wrapped chicken wire to create a sort of cage around the outside. I have no freakin' clue if this will work, but if it does, I figure I will have roughly eighty blue million pounds of potatoes. This means figuring out how to build a small root cellar, finding out if potatoes dry well, and unloading mounds of taties on all friemily who'll take them.


I think I'll head back to bed for a few more moments of snuggling with the hubs before the day gets going. It'll be warm today and there's still so much to do to get the garden ready. (Not least of which is figuring out what to do with a laundry room full of misplaced seedlings.)

Bonus shot of my precious little farmer boy: