Three Plus Two

Country Diary: About dinner

Weather: Cloudy and damp after a hard rain overnight.  42 degrees at 8:30 and I don't think the temperature is going to budge too much over the course of the day.

At the feeder: We're late in getting our feeders set up this year, but Katydid managed to clean and fill most of them a few days ago.  We finally hung a collapsible feeder that holds 5 lbs of sunflower seeds.  The birds love it.  Right now I can count at least 6 goldfinches clinging just to the sides I can see.  A downy woodpecker flew away a few seconds ago, and yesterday we had a female cardinal.  The chickadees have also been out in force, 5 or 6 at a time, and our tufted titmice are back as well.  We need to get our suet feeders set up for the woodpeckers now.

In the garden:  In spite of it being November, we are still eating from the garden a little.  Well, brussels sprouts actually.

Here's what the plants look like "in the field".

And on the stalk.  When we went to the farm store last week, I was pleased to see that our brussel sprouts compared very favorably to theirs.  In fact, ours looked better.  (Ok, shameless bragging, but it was such a hard gardening year that I ought to be allowed to wallow in what few successes there were.)

(A brief feeder update... I need Katydid's binoculars... are those goldfinches or pine siskins out there???)

However, most of the garden is now planted to cover crop.  I think Andy used crimson clover, which stands up to our winters pretty well.  In the summer, the crop of choice is buckwheat, which he mows when it flowers so that it doesn't go to seed and become a weed.  We rotate our beds and try to leave some fallow every year.  After four years of cover cropping, adding compost, and 2 seasons of chickens, the soil has become a lot softer and easier to work.  (Not now, of course.  The ground freezes a little overnight, then thaws every morning so it's always a little muddy.)  The cover crop comes most in handy in the spring time when the snowmelt comes rushing down the hill.  Having a cover crop down instead of exposing bare dirt helps to retain our soil.

 
 An exciting photo of a mat of young crimson clover.  In the spring time, it blooms a vivid crimson.  It can be a little hard to get rid of, but it's not as invasive as, say, rye.

Or mint.  This is my own fault.  In desperation, because bugs and everything else were ruining my squash plants, I set out a chocolate mint plant beside them.  Now the plant itself is nowhere to be found, but I discovered this healthy specimen about 10 feet away in a different bed.

In the pantry:

• 2 pie pumpkins, which I will try to bake this weekend for pumpkin pie
• half an already baked pumpkin, which I will turn into pumpkin custard tonight (technically this is in the refrigerator)
• 6 Delicata squash
• All the Walla Walla onions have started to sprout.  They're not keepers.  The Cippolini onions are fine, though.
• A 5 gallon bucket of potatoes 3/4 full, mostly Yukon Gold, which we're eating through. 
• a half-bushel box of sweet potatoes from the farm store

 
  This is how I bake pumpkin and winter squash: with butter and maple syrup.  The butter and maple syrup form the stickiest candy ever on the bottom of the pan.  So it's important to spoon that up while it's still so hot that you burn your tongue on the spoon as you lean over the stove. Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course.

In the coop:

There are a lot fewer chickens in the coop these days.

But the ones in my freezer make really, really good chicken soup.

Using heritage breed chickens for meat was kind of a toss-up.  On the one hand, they were all small, the biggest not quite 5 lbs, and they took a long time just to get to that weight.  On the other hand, the taste is so much better even than the Cornish x Rock broilers raised on pasture.  The meat is firmer (probably because our chickens were free-range, not raised in chicken tractors, and breeds that were not bred to sit by the feeder and eat), the dark meat darker, and just in general, more flavorful.  But because it took so long to get them to butchering weight (such as it was), I'm not sure it was economical, and it was a lot of work.  

If you're keeping track at home, we used White Rocks and Delawares.  The Delawares were, in general, nicer than the White Rocks, which even Katydid looked forward to eating.

The turkeys turned out a little better in the weight department -- or at least the Naragansetts did.  They were butchered at the beginning of the week and are currently all jammed into the freezer ( all 6 of them.)  Everyone is a little sad that the turkeys are gone, I think, which was not the case with the meat chickens.  The Naragansett tom dressed out at 17 lbs, so he will be our Thanksgiving turkey.  Will we raise turkeys again?  I don't know.  The learning curve is pretty steep with turkeys.  They break your heart the way they die as poults, then they get interesting and curious personalities and the thought of eating them does not make you happy, and if you really want to pasture them, you have to clip their wings or they will fly 20 feet up in the trees at night or disappear with the wild turkeys.  But heritage turkeys are so much more beautiful and impressive than the typical Broad-Breasted White.  So -- I don't know.  I think we are going to take an animal breather next summer and just worry about the 23 laying hens we've got right now.

None of which are really laying at this point, however.  The old hens are moulting and should probably be turned into stewing hens, but they have all been named.  (Don't name your chickens.)  The new hens are not laying yet, or are laying in some incredibly out of the way spot I haven't discovered yet.  I've been buying "free-range" eggs to make up the difference, but their idea of "free-range" and my idea of "free-range" are obviously different:

 
  The orange yolks taste better, too, if you've never eaten an orange-yolked egg and you're wondering.

 

 

Bountiful Brussel Sprouts

 Our winter has started early here.  Snow is in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow, and varying combinations of illness, rain, and wind have kept us inside much of the past few weeks.  Yesterday wasn't a great day, weather-wise, but it wasn't raining and we didn't have a wind chill, so out we went.  It was the first time I'd had a chance to walk through the garden in at least 2 (or more) weeks.  We picked the last of the fall raspberries, noted that there were still cherry tomatoes on the vine (albeit squishy ones, destined for the turkeys), took a look at the kale (doing nicely in this cold weather), and had a walk through the brussel sprouts.  Prior to the first frost, the brussel sprouts didn't look like much.  This is the first year we've grown brussel sprouts, and we've had such lackluster performance in the garden this year that we weren't expecting a lot.

You can imagine my surprise when I found that all of the brussel sprout plants looked healthy, robust, and quite full.  And by all of them, I mean all 20 of them.

Andy and I like brussel sprouts, but the kids aren't too enthused.  (But then the kids aren't too enthused about many vegetables.)  Andy likes them best sauteed in garlic butter.  I must confess, however, that when I realized I had approximately 20 dinners worth of brussel sprouts I was a little daunted.  Who decided to plant all these brussel sprouts anyway?

Oh, yeah.  That would be me. 

I was the one who loaded all those plants onto the cart at the farm -- banking on my past experience that you ought to plant more than you think you'll need because there is always some sort of garden disaster skulking around.  I remember that Andy asked me, "What are all those?" And I said, "Brussel sprouts," and he said, "O-kaaay," and I said, "Well, the very first year we were here, I tried to grow brussel sprouts twice and they didn't work.  So I'm getting a bunch this year."

Well. 

In any case, when I came in from our walk yesterday, I immediately pulled Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living off the shelf and looked up brussel sprouts.  Carla Emery says that you can harvest brussel sprouts through snow, probably "until January". Apparently, you can freeze them, but "most people" just leave them in the garden.  The stalks will (supposedly) grow new sprouts, so that each stalk can produce "as much as 100 sprouts!"

Quick calculations indicate that 20 plants -- theoretically -- could produce as many as 2000 actual sprouts. 

That's a lot of brussel sprouts.

I'm not sure what I would do with 2000 brussel sprouts.  So I guess I'm not that upset that when I asked Andy to bring me some brussel sprouts for dinner, he cut the whole stalk instead.

Country Diary Daybook: First Frost, First Day of Fall

I began this post on Monday, so I guess this is now a Days Book, isn't it?

FOR TODAY... Monday, September 20

 

Outside My Window... Crisp, sunny blue autumn sky, 42 degrees at 9 AM.  The maples are starting to really come into their color, with big patches of crimson, scarlet, and orange among the green.  We had our first frost yesterday morning.  I was awake at 4 AM and watched the temps dip: 37 to 36 to 35.  When the sun rose, the field across the street glittered yellow-under-white with a light frost.  (Wednesday morning: waking up to a light rain.)

 

 

In bloom: Goldenrod, New England aster, frost aster.  I like the pale lavender of the frost aster more than the bright purple of the New England asters, which remind me of a Crayola color.  The field is yellow and purple and while beautiful, sometimes reminds me of a high school football team.

 

(I had the camera on landscape setting, and I really don't think it does justice to the purple. Also, sorry about the smudge.)

 

(by Katydid)

 

 

In the garden: We picked ahead of the frost on Saturday: a few pounds of beans; whatever remaining tomatoes that hadn't gotten hit by blight or picked over by the bantams; some okra; a pound or so of peppers.  Now we switch to fall crops: leeks, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts.

 

(Cilantro I need to freeze)

 

In the barnyard: We're trying to find a processor to "do" our meat chickens.  But the processor we've heard about doesn't answer the phone.

 

I am thinking... that I wish this cold would go away so we could enjoy the weather!

 

I am thankful for... antibiotics.  Chipmunk is feeling much better now.  He's slept through the night for the past 2 nights.

 

From the learning rooms... Fossils, most likely.  The little boys have already been outside this morning, pounding on rocks with hammers.  They went out in the pajamas and bare feet, because they're still expecting it to be summer.  It didn't take long for them to realize it had gotten cold.

 

 

From the kitchen...  Last night I made these toffee bars that Jen recommended. YUM.  They're awesome.  And easy. I also made pesto with a bunch of basil we picked ahead of the frost.  I'd never had pesto before.  It was yummy, too.  But very green.  The boys tried it -- and liked it -- reluctantly.  After they made all sorts of unflattering comparisons as to what they thought it looked liked.  Boys.

 

Monday: Ratatouille to use up eggplant, peppers, zuchini, tomatoes.

Tuesday: Roast chicken? (Nope, salmon patties)

Just discovered yesterday that Weds, Fri, and Sat. are Ember Days.  Not sure what we'll be eating, really...

 

I am wearing... Pajamas again. (I know, it's 9 AM, but we're still getting over this cold.)

 

I am creating... Well, I wrote down some notes for a story, but I'm not sure about getting from A (writing down notes) to B (actually writing the story).  In typical Angela fashion, a page of notes will probably turn into a novel anyway. I also managed to draw in my sketchbook a little over the weekend -- trying to figure out shading and shadows.  Not doing so well either, but taking a deep breath and reminding myself that it will probably take me longer to figure out if I'm only working 5 minutes a day.  (Still, 5 minutes a day would be a great victory!)

 

 

I am going... to really work on laundry this week.  With all the sickness of last week, we are behind.   I think I am also going to sit down with myself and get a better handle on my time. 

 

I am reading... Crow Planet, by Linda Lynn Haupt.  I'm not enjoying this as much as I had hoped.  I like it when she writes about crows, but... there's something about the rest that is not grabbing me, and I'm not sure why. (Just finished it and am still not sure what didn't grab me about the book.  Can't put my finger on it.  Now I'm on to Fruitless Fall by Rowan Jacobsen.)

 

Also, thanks to Amy, I have subscribed to a bunch of people's shared items via google reader and thereby discovered many new blogs. :-) 

 

I am hoping... this stupid cold will end soon.  

 

I am hearing... Well, it's afternoon now and what I'm hearing is John Deere Action on TV, the sound of the dryer, Katydid coughing, Chipmunk playing with cars, and the occasional snore from Farmerboy who fell asleep on the floor.  Everyone's still recovering.  (And on Wednesday morning, everyone is sleeping late and it's quiet except for the tapping of my keys. I guess all the dirt everyone covered themselves in yesterday helped them sleep?)

 

 

Around the house...  What doesn't need to be done? I have to get a handle on the laundry first. (Working on this, bit by bit.)

 

One of my favorite things...  reading picture books that unexpectedly contain one of my boys' unconventional nicknames and watching their eyes light up.  (The book is Rattletrap Car and the name is "Jakie", without giving anything away ;-)

 

 

 

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week... Well, seeing as how it's now the "rest of the week"... I'm still trying to get a better handle on my own time, but improving... we have a doctor's appointment to get to, the library, and Katydid and Gareth are both going to volunteer along with Andy at his company's annual 5K for charity this weekend.  This will also be the fourth of the past 5 weeks that Andy will be out of town.  Next week will make it 5 of 6. Still just trying to keep my head above water. 

 

 

Blackberry Picking

Last Saturday we went blackberry picking at "Scout Farm", a piece of land near us that is owned by the Boy Scouts.  The wild blackberries are free for the picking, and all Scout families can go up there whenever they like.  My kids (especially Chipmunk) tend to eat every single blackberry off our bushes as soon as they are picked, and I wanted to make a cobbler.  So we packed into the van and headed up to Scout Farm.

I have to warn you, though, the whole experience was less idyllic than those of you who live in the city or suburbs might assume.  In order to thoroughly understand this experience, you must add to these pictures the sounds of gunfire not as far away as you might hope (target practice, I am assuming); the grumbling noise of construction equipment; and the chug-chug of an old tractor cutting hay.  Mix them all together, and you have a nice "quiet" day in the country.

One of the first things we saw were these prints.  The picture doesn't do them justic, because they were big.  Bigger than dog prints.  Bear maybe??

This is a beaver pond, but we couldn't find the lodge.

Andy and Katydid did most of the picking.  I was busy keeping track of Chipmunk, and the boys decided they would rather "hunt bear" than pick blackberries, even with the promise of blackberry cobbler.

Fortunately, they did not find one. 

Katydid and I had more luck "hunting" with the camera.

Frost Aster, by Katydid.

On the way home, we saw a porcupine crossing the road, but Andy couldn't get a good picture.   Can you see him in the grass there, a big blob of white-tipped quills?

Landscapes from the way home...

And finally, blackberries for cobbler:

  

Country Diary: Pick a Peck of Peppers

Weather: upper 70's today, cloudy, off and on showers which prevented me from picking beans today...I picked cucumbers (most notably) in the rain.  Chipmunk, who was out in the garden with Andy and me at the time, was not amused.  This surprised me, because he will cheerfully dunk his head in a mud puddle.  All last week it felt like summer with highs in the 80's.  We even had to use fans.  But this week it looks like temps will slump into the 60's, with overnight lows dipping into the 40's.  Fall, I guess.

In bloom: Well, my rosebush is still going, which is hard for me to believe.  It likes the chickens.  Otherwise, the field is full of goldenrod, black-eyed susans (Pip calls them "black-eyes"), and the first asters.

Photo by Katydid

In the Barnyard: It's been a while since I posted a Country Diary.  About a week and a half ago, we lost two of our turkeys to what we think must have been raccoons.  (Only raccoons tear off the head and leave most of the meat untouched.)  So Andy spent one very long Sunday converting the the frame of a larger chicken coop he'd been working on into a turkey coop.  It looks a lot like an aviary.

But Andy says not to give Katydid ideas.

The poor turkeys... they are really not meant to be cooped up like this.  What we've discovered is that heritage turkeys are excellent flyers and, unlike chickens, they don't particularly care if they make it home to roost or not.  When we let them out of the coop to forage on grass, they will fly up about twenty feet into the tree behind the woodpile on the right.  I guess raccoons can't get them there, but still.  Another worry we have is that there has been a wild turkey hen hanging around with her poults since we put the turkeys out.  The other day I looked out the window to see the wild hen having a bit of an alteraction with our Bourbon Red hen, who might have been trying to tag along. 

The wild hen is becoming increasingly less afraid of us, though.  The boys and I came upon her and the poults in the garden a couple of days ago and were able to come quite close before they all flew away.

The turkeys do have interesting personalities, though, and if you ignore the bald heads, the rest is beautiful and graceful.

Our Naragansett tom...

Blue Slate hen in the left background and Bourbon Red hen in foreground...

Close-up of one of the Blue Slates...

In the Garden:

It's not a banner year.  There's very little to freeze or can, and the blackberry bush seems bent on ripening only a pint of berries at a time.  I put away 2 qt. of beans and 2 1/2 qts of squash last week, and that was the first all season.  I had to use farm stand tomatoes to make freezer salsa with my peppers.

Of which there have been quite a few.  The peppers have actually surprised me this year.  Usually our pepper production is not good.

The tomatoes are such a disappointment that I'm not even going to show you a picture.  They started out beautiful and lush.  And then -- late blight struck.  It's epidemic in the Northeast this year.  I couldn't even go into the garden for days.  Some of our tomatoes seem to be pulling through okay, but most aren't.  I can't can the green tomatoes (as pickles or whatever) because canning potentially diseased produce doesn't sound smart to me.  If you pick the tomatoes green and leave them in the windowsill to ripen, most rot anyway.

I have to tell you, it's heartbreaking.

Here's what our late August harvest looks like, sans tomatoes:

That's what I picked in the rain today, along with a bunch of okra Andy picked last night.  Apparently we had forgotten about the okra patch for a few days.  Those long purple things are eggplants.

A funny curlicue one using my garden journal as background...

A comparison of cucumbers... Marketmore slicer on top, Homemade Pickles on the bottom.  Homemade Pickles is a producer.  Even in a wet, mostly cool summer, it will give me more cucumbers than any other variety.  I sliced up the pile of cucumbers I picked this morning for refrigerator sweet pickles.

And some homemade salsa, using all home-grown ingredients except for the lime juice. 

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the rest of those peppers and that giant striped zucchini!

Country Diary: July Garden

I was going to name this post "Tomato Madness," but then I thought, well, there are other things going on in the garden, too.  So instead I went with the boring "July Garden".

Weather: 75 ish and the sun has come out again after a few brief rain showers.  I believe it has rained almost every single day this month -- at least a few sprinkles.  We have spent more than a few soccer games huddling in sweatshirts.  I made Italian sausage and onions Friday night.  It was raining again, as usual -- a steady cold rain -- and as Andy sat down he said, "Boy, this is a good dinner to warm you up..."  And I finished for him, "... on a cold July night."

In Bloom:

Black-eyed Susans at the edge of the comfrey bed...

Katydid's miniature wildflower meadow...

A closer-up view of Katydid's flowers...

The roses, which are a bit past their prime.  The old growth is already spent, and now only the new growth is blooming.  I'm not deadheading the flowers because I want to try to collect rosehips in the fall. 

The milkweed smells wonderful and has been buzzing with bees all week.  I haven't seen any monarch caterpillars, but...

Katydid found this Mourning Cloak caterpillar on the driveway and brought it inside to see if she could watch it form a chrysalis and turn into a butterfly.  We see a lot of Tiger Swallowtails around here, but we've never seen a Mourning Cloak, so it should be interesting.  The caterpillars feed on birch and wild roses, so it's strange we've never seen one before (as we have both in abundance).  Katydid has been taking pictures every day to chronicle the caterpillar's progress.  She reports that it has formed a complete chrysalis already.

Another insect related to blooms...

The milkweed beetle.

In the Barnyard:

Turkeys.

Actually, they're in the orchard with the elderberries.  The elderberries were teeming with Japanese beetles, and the turkeys love to eat Japanese beetles, so it seemed like a good match.  We have them enclosed with electric poultry netting, which does absolutely nothing to stop them from getting out.  Heritage turkeys are exceptional flyers.  And they don't seem to care about getting shocked by the netting either, which I find strange.  Their favorite place to go after they get out of the netting is the chicken coop, where they eat the chickens' food, then fly up to the roof to roost.  They have good personalities, though.  They're very inquisitive and people-friendly.  The Bourbon Reds and Blue Slates are not very smart.  The Naragansetts (the ones that look like wild turkeys) seem to be far hardier and more intelligent as well. Oddly, of the 8 turkeys that survived out of our original 15, only one is a tom.  He's the big Naragansett with the red neck.  I like the turkeys far better than the meat chickens, who will not only peck but bite you when you try to change their food and water.  (We ordered a straight run of White Rock and Delewares for meat birds, so I'm talking about the young cockerels here... Katydid has actually already decided which one she wants to eat first, which is something.)

In the Garden:

This is why I wanted to call this post "Tomato Madness":

We thought these tomato plants were going to die.  The night after we planted them, we had a light frost here and there.  Some of their leaves curled up and turned yellow and black.  Andy went out and bought more tomatoes to replace most of these, which looked pretty bad. Now they have formed their own tomato jungle.  These are not the only tomato plants I have.  In fact, this is just half of one bed.  I have another bed this size full of more jungley tomato plants.

I am really scratching my head about this.  Usually in a cold, rainy year, the tomatoes do not do well.  The plants don't blossom, the blossoms don't set, and the tomatoes take forever to ripen.  Or, they are ruined by slugs.

Can you see all the tomatoes in there?  They're pulling the branches so close to the ground the branches are developing roots.  (All those little hairs on a tomato plant have the potential to turn into roots, which is why when you plant tomatoes, you're supposed to stick them in the ground right up to the bottom of the first set of true leaves.)  It's been raining so much (or we've been at soccer so much) that we haven't had time to attend to the garden.  So now we have super-sprawly tomatoes and weeds run wild among the eggplants and cabbages.  Anyway, these are Early Girls (I think), a hybrid variety, but even my heirlooms (Brandywine, Striped German... and oh, I can't remember the others) are doing well for the most part.  I had to toss a big half-ripe Striped German to the chickens this morning because of slug-damage and rot (which made me gnash my teeth a bit) but most of the tomatoes don't look that bad, even though they're growing so close to the ground.

I did pick this one before it could get any worse, though:

First tomato.  Not pretty, but my expectations have been low in the garden this year.  Deer ate every.single.pea plant. Rabbits ate all (all) my lettuce and spinach.  Something is decimating the brussel sprouts. The squash and cucumber seeds rotted in the ground it was so cold and wet in June.  And crows stole all our corn twice.

See the corn plants here and there? (If you squint?)  We planted that whole space to corn.  The only corn that actually managed to escape the crows are two rows on the right, which happened to be under netting.

I'm not feeling very charitable toward the crows lately.  They run the hawks off, but I don't think that makes up for stealing the corn.

A few more garden pictures (because I like to look back from year to year to compare):

This is the first year we've grown cabbages, and they're doing well in this wet, cool weather.

My few remaining squash plants are starting to bear.

The peppers are not doing too badly.

The onions are getting rather large.  They like the steady supply of water.

The blackberry bush is still my favorite.  It's loaded with fruit and will need to be wrapped with bird netting before too long.

Harvest this week:

2 yellow squash, one sweet pepper, a handful of purple and yellow beans (not pictured),  1 zucchini, 1 cippolini onion that Chipmunk stepped on and knocked out of the ground, 5 giant Walla Walla onions (not pictured), 10 Yukon Gold potatoes, 5 stalks of rhubarb, roughly a half-pint of raspberries, eaten off the bushes, 1 cherry tomato, and 1 nearly ripe Early Girl tomato.

I made a strawberry-rhubarb crumble that everyone pronounced one of the top 10 best desserts ever... and a 3 bean salad (with squash and zucchini added) that I am going to have to eat all of myself. (Ahem.)

And now I had better go tie up some more out-of-control tomato plants. Before it starts raining again.

Emergency preparedness: working on the pantry

Last week, when I wasn't thinking or writing or reading about educational philosophy, I did a fair amount of reading and thinking about groceries.  Actually, since I plan on making emergency preparedness a focus of our year, this does actually relate to homeschooling. :-)  Periodically it hits me that we live in area where winter storms might knock out the power for long periods of time (as happened to many people we knew during last winter's ice storm).  It also hits me that I have a bunch of little kids.  How would we be able to get them out in a fire? (This thought kept me up nights when the twins were infants and Farmerboy was only 2.)  What if something happened to me?  Would my kids know what to do?

So we're going to work on this throughout the year.  (I'm putting it in the curriculum I submit to the school district as health.)  Gareth and Katydid are both working on the Boy Scout First Aid merit badge right now (Gareth will be able to actually earn the badge; Katydid is doing the same work for the Pilgrims of the Holy Family badge) and I am working on rebuilding our pantry.

When we decided to eat mostly local, the number of meals using canned goods we bought from the store went way down and we had very little canned food in our pantry.  The freezer was full of meat, vegetables, and fruit, but the pantry was not.  It's far easier for me to freeze our produce than to can it. There's a problem with having most of your food frozen, though.  What if the power goes out to the freezer?   And sometimes (like last week) we ran into tough weeks where there wasn't a whole lot that was easy to make (or that didn't require defrosting, as in a five pound chicken or a four pound roast), and of course we fell back on what American families often seem to fall back on. McDonald's. 

As it happened, we also loaded Quicken this week and were able to see just how much falling back on McDonald's in a bad month (or two) was costing us. Yikes! And then there was this conversation at 4real on the cost of meals per serving, which has given me a new hobby. ;-) The challenge is, of course, in using high quality local in-season ingredients in an economical way. In thirty minutes or less, since Chipmunk still refuses to sleep anywhere but on me.

Anyway, this week I bought extra emergency rations to start rebuilding our stock of just-in-case canned goods -- primarily so we'd have something to eat if we all got sick or if I got sick or if we'd been running hither and yon all day.  After this, the plan is to keep stocking up a little at a time, taking advantage of sales, etc.

(You know, some people think about how the world will be beautified or inspired by what they blog, but I must confess that I just think things like, "Hey! My cupboard's full of food again! I think I'll take some pictures! LOL)

So here are my "the cupboard's full of food again" pictures, which I hope you'll tolerate... I am working on a couple of homeschooling posts, so if you come here primarily for those, just click away and come back later :-).

This is the cupboard I use for canned goods.  You can see that it's not very big.  Our house was built in the 1950's by a doctor with five children -- girls.  Apparently large families in the 1950's only stored food in their bomb shelters.  Actually, I'm not really joking; the doctor did put a bomb shelter in the basement of this house, along with his practice, and this bomb shelter (totally wasted on a house outside tornado country) is lined with wonderful can-size shelves.  In contrast, the kitchen has a skinny little pantry with an almost uselessly deep cupboard on top.  I don't like storing too much in the basement, because a)I forget about it down there and b) it's damp, and I don't want the cans to rust. I'm sure it was all much nicer when it was first built.

Anyway, I restocked some of our "emergency" food, which in our case means soup, canned fruit, and creamed corn. (And spaghetti sauce, since I usually make and freeze my own.  But I used up the two emergency jars right before I took this picture.)  Everything else I use in regular cooking: canned beans, various tomato products, canned salmon, coconut oil, molasses, and (you can't see it) enchilada and barbecue sauce.  I'll continue restocking a little more every week, since this is obviously not enough to keep a family of 8 going for any length of time. I cleared off a shelf in another cabinet so I can expand.

I would also like to can tomatoes this year... if it ever gets warm enough or dries out enough for them to ripen... and if the groundhogs don't get them first.  My garden this year has been one catastrophe after another.  But that's another story.

This is the cabinet next to the canned goods, which I use for pasta and rice (and dried beans).  We had gotten low on spaghetti, which is also an emergency around here.  The blue bags are tortellini --  convenience food, but a lunch staple. Definitely something to rely on when I can't cook, too.

 

The actual "pantry".  I had it organized not too long ago, but it doesn't take long for it to degenerate.  Top shelf is really supposed to be staples like various vinegars and sugar (I keep my flour in the freezer because of bugs), but you can see that a couple of bags of chips-on-sale have crept in, and that the sugar has moved accordingly to the third shelf.  What you can't see in this picture is the 5lb jar of buckwheat honey that's out on the kitchen counter, or the jars of strawberry jam tucked in behind... something... on the 2nd or 3rd shelves.  The Gatorade is also gone by now, even though it was supposed to be for sick emergencies, not for kids to come out drinking after playing soccer in the yard.  We really try hard to avoid all food dyes, BHT, and TBHQ because they affect the behavior of some of our kids.  I don't think Gatorade is on anybody's diet.  There's more juice in the basement, because Wal-Mart was running a sale.

The freezer forms the bulk of our food storage, but I was more excited about actually having food in our cupboards.  We're in that time of year when the garden hasn't really gotten going yet and the supply of meat is dwindling, too.  I think we're pretty much done with the lamb we bought last year, and we've eaten a good chunk out of the side of beef we bought in October.  We have a few chickens left -- in the freezer, I mean.  The bulk of our chicken supply is pecking each other in the brooder right now.  It's the time for inventory: we need more lamb, I can't buy enough pork, we didn't eat very much of the broccoli I froze, I stumbled upon two more bags of squash, we're out of corn, and we're still eating last year's green beans.

I am beginning to refill the freezer in a small way, though:

 

14 quarts in the freezer.  And like I said, I made jam.

 

It turned out pretty well, if the rate at which it's being eaten is any indication.

So... anyone else want to share a peek in the pantry?  If you do, leave me a link in the comments!

Fruit Trees and berry bushes

Gae asked recently about our fruit trees.  I tried to leave a comment but I'm having trouble commenting on my own blog. Gae, I'm working on your Reggio questions in a different post, but since I was out working in the garden today, I thought I would take some pictures and answer your question at the same time.  (The sun was out so I needed to take advantage of it!)

Gae wanted to know if our fruit trees provided enough fruit for our family.  Unfortunately... no.  This is only their fourth season, so the only tree bearing fruit right now is one of our peaches.

 

They're very small right now and will ripen next month. Last year was the first year this tree bore, and I am very happy to see it bearing again. Our other peach bore a few peaches last year, but this year there isn't a single one on it.

It's also become apparent by now that our cherry trees have died (possibly because they've been repeatedly stripped by deer every winter).  Our apple trees are bigger, but it takes 5-7 years for an apple to bear.  So no apples yet.

 

One of our young apples.

Our trees are all semi-dwarf or dwarf varieties.  Some of them are smaller than others.

 

If you look closely you can see that this volunteer squash plant (growing out of a compost top dressing) almost completely dwarfs this dwarf tree.  I think the tree is a pear. It's not supposed to be this small.  I think it's been hit by a few too many late cold snaps and a few too many hungry deer.

On a totally unrelated note, I am going to stop planting winter squash.  The best plants always grow out of the compost.  The others get eaten by cucumber beetles.

Anyway, Gae, if you're looking for a new place, one with mature fruit trees already bearing would be a HUGE plus in my opinion.  I wish the doctor who built this house fifty years ago had planted apples instead of crabapples.  If we ever end up moving away from here, mature fruit trees will be high on my list of what to look for in a new place.  Mature fruit trees and barns.  The house would be optional. ;-)

Berry bushes are a different matter, though.  They bear in a year or two.  We've had the best luck with blackberries.

 

This is one bush, which is also in its fourth season. It is loaded with flowers and berries this year.  It's also propagated at least one more bush which is bearing this year, too.  When we planted it, it was tiny.  Last year, blackberries were selling for $4.95 a half pint.  We paid 4.95 for the bush, and it gave us -- oh, I can't remember how many quarts of berries.  We ate most of them within 30 minutes of picking them.

We also have blueberries, which are doing better this year -- their second season.

 

We fertilize them with pine shavings from the chick brooders because they like an acid soil.  I don't know that we have enough bushes to really be self-sufficient with them... or maybe self-sufficiency is just several years down the road. They're very small bushes right now.

Andy also planted some less common berries this year which are doing much better than say, our grapes and raspberries...

  

These are jostaberry bushes.  Jostaberries are supposed to be high in vitamin C.

 

And these are elderberries.  They have blooms already, so I think we're going to get berries in the first year.  You can make wine out of elderberries, but I believe we'll stick to jam. ;-)

Well, that was probably more than you wanted to know... but I was so excited to see the sun today I couldn't help myself.  Of course it's getting to rain... again... but that brief glimpse of summer was nice.

 :-)

ETA: I totally forgot about the highbush cranberry in the front yard, and after I took these pictures, Andy cut the grass and discovered a seaberry we thought had died.  The seaberry was actually in pretty good shape, so we were pleased.  And we also noticed that the blackberry bush has another new bush on its other side. 

I also have to apologize for the template flipping.  I liked the honeybees, but I couldn't take the small photo size. 

Country Diary: Memorial Day Week

(I am really bad at using forms so I'm afraid that my diary entries will never end up the same way twice.  I just occasionally feel the need to document what's going on in my garden. Maybe I should buy a garden journal.)

Weather: The weekend was about half and half for good weather: Saturday it rained most of the afternoon, which was good for the garden but bad for us, since we still had an enormous amount of stuff to plant.  Sunday was cool and cloudy until late afternoon.  Monday was gorgeous: sunny and 70. A stiff wind kicked up in the afternoon, heralding cooler temperatures.   Andy covered all the tender annuals he could -- tomatoes, peppers, melons, winter squash, okra. Good thing, too, because we had a little frost Monday morning. The rest of the week has been fairly rotten -- more rain than we need, cold, blah.

Blooming Now: Lilacs (finally); peonies getting ready to bloom (finally); irises just purple at the tips.  Saturday when we went to the farm to buy plants, there was a dogwood in full bloom.  Andy and I laughed; it's been nearly 2 months since we saw dogwoods blooming in Tennessee. I have seen some roses blooming at lower elevations, but alas, my rose seems to have contracted some disease which is turning the leaves yellow.  It usually blooms in June anyway, so maybe it will recover enough to have a few blossoms. We splurged on an enormous fuschia for the front porch on Saturday; I am hoping it will attract our hummingbird pair.

In the Garden: Rabbits ate half the pea plants. Something ate my asparagus. Half the new strawberries died. Ditto the pawpaw.  I fought an extended battle against bindweed yesterday afternoon, trying to clear out a grow bed to plant melons.  (Michael Pollan agonizes over bindweed in Second Nature.  I knew it was a pain but I had no idea it was so insidious.  New plants can grow from every part of its broken root.  Every little piece!  I combed through that bed for nearly an hour pulling bindweed and sorting through the dirt to get more pieces of root.  It's a losing battle, but hopefully I made a little progress.) I think our water (even after it's been boiled) is killing the shiitake mushroom kit.

On the plus side of the equation (the negative is on my mind this morning, sorry): potatoes are up; we found the carrots in the bed that was a weedy disaster; and somehow in all the other activities of the weekend we made time to plant corn, beans, summer squash, my beloved Italian zucchini from last year (also, Zucchini Rampicante, another Italian zucchini), cucumbers; and as transplants -- more cucumbers (I have rotten luck with cucumbers); 4 kinds of pepper, a bunch of tomatoes, brussel sprouts, a few cabbages; two flats of okra (in black plastic this year for warmth); and roughly half of the melon plants I started from seed.  Still to go: watermelons, Charentais melons, pumpkins, and Gareth's experiments of the year: Chinese noodle beans and a couple different open-pollinated varieties of corn (he wants to see if they'll cross.)

I'm also putting in a modest herb garden this year by the deck: cilantro, parsely, thyme, rosemary, oregano, basil, chocolate mint (in a pot!!), dill.  I already have invasive amounts of lemon balm and mint from the previous owners.

Barnyard: This is not going as well as I had hoped.  We got 15 turkey poults last Thursday - 5 Blue Slate, 5 Naragansett, 5 Bourbon Red. We've lost five so far. So now we're down to 4 Naragansett, 4 Blue Slate, and 2 Bourbon Red.  Unfortunately, heavy losses of turkey poults seem to be the rule rather than the exception.  This doesn't make me feel any better. Those little poults are terribly cute. 

From the kitchen: I think I'm going to be able to pull radishes this week.  What to do with radishes when the salad greens aren't ready? I also have mint.  Radishes and mint?  I don't think so!

What else is going on?: Maybe a better question would be, what's not going on? Sports. Sports are not going on. Otherwise... Katydid is getting ready for a violin recital, we're preparing for the arrival of 52 new chicks next week, various children have had eye exams and well-child checkups, I had to go to Urgent Care for oral steroids since my regular doctor's office was booked solid (but I feel almost human again, so it was worth it), Andy's in NYC again this week (only once, though), we're finishing up school books, I'm trying to write a guide for Gareth's study of evolutionary biology, Gareth marched in a Memorial Day parade, and Katydid and Andy got up really early to attend the annual Early Morning Birdwalk at our local arboretum. And the snapping turtles are trundling through our field and yard en route to their breeding sites.

A few pictures:

 

Pip is a deep sea diver, isn't that obvious?

 

Katydid in her element. (Photo by Andy.)

 

The snapping turtle we found in the field last weekend.  The females apparently come out this time of year to lay their eggs.  This particular turtle was fairly large -- probably about a foot long -- but apparently they can grow much larger.  Later in the weekend we saw another, much smaller snapping turtle on our front steps.  All children now know how to identify snapping turtles and have been warned to STAY AWAY from them.

 

The snapping turtle's head. (Photo by Katydid.)

I have only ONE picture of Gareth in the Memorial Day parade, and it's hard to pick him out.  Then my batteries gave out.  Andy and Farmerboy got to march along with Gareth's Scout troop so Katydid and I "had our hands full" with the twins and Chipmunk.  It is therefore doubtful whether I could have gotten any more pictures anyway, but just so you know... they all looked wonderful.

Country Diary: May Flowers

Weather: Temperatures have been in the 50's and low 60's this week, with lows down into the 40's. We've also had rain almost every day -- not much in sum, but a regular drizzle.  Andy was able to plant two long rows of onions, but that's been about it.  We're supposed to get a steady rain today, and rain for the next 2-3 days. The kids have been saying, "May showers bring June flowers," which is actually how it works here.

  

Katydid took some pictures of flowers blooming in the yard after she and Andy came home from her birthday trip.

 

  

 

At a lower elevation, the crabapples and lilacs have already started to bloom. Ours are still in the bud stage... but swelling more every day.  Coming home from church on Sunday, I looked at our land from a different perspective, wondering why our blooms lag behind everyone else's.  Elevation is certainly part of it - we're at 1100 feet or so -- but I think the slope of the land behind and around us means that we may be caught in a mild frost pocket.  We always have more snow, too.

In the Garden:

Not much to report.  I've started about 6 flats of seedlings in the dining room window: 2 of okra (just done last night); 1 watermelon (all up and beginning to get their seed leaves); 1 winter squash (not doing so well, but a few are up); and 2 cantaloupe (not up yet).  I don't have room to start cucumbers.  I need a greenhouse.  (I say this every year.)  In the actual garden, Pip's radishes and chard desperately need thinning, since he dumped an entire packet (or two) out in the same place.  The spinach is coming up -- and probably likes this rain -- and the peas are beginning to grow quickly.  Two of five of the rhubarb plants we planted last year have made it.  No asparagus yet.

Gareth has started both of the mushroom kits I ordered: shiitake and portabello.

In the Coop:

We're down to 10 hens, and Andy has ordered electric poultry netting.  Our turkeys are scheduled to ship May 18. I have heard so many bad things about turkeys -- how fussy they are, how they'll crowd into corners and suffocate, how they're more prone to disease -- that I am not sure I'm looking forward to brooding them.  Andy wants to get a stock tank to use as a brooder because it has rounded corners.  At least they won't be in my laundry room this year.

From the kitchen:

Fiddleheads! 

They don't look very appetizing, do they.  I didn't forage these -- I have no idea if our ferns are the kind you eat or not, though it seems like they might be, since these fiddleheads here came from 30 minutes away -- I bought them at the farmstand we frequent when we can.  I had never eaten fiddleheads before, and I could only find two recipes in my books.  One was for a fiddlehead and morel risotto.  I didn't have morels or arborio rice, but I did have a nice big portabello.  So I decided to saute the fiddleheads and mushrooms in butter with garlic the way the first part of the recipe said to, and then I salted them with sea salt and gave them a few good shakes of pepper.  Then, tentatively, I ate one.

Wow! So much better than they look.  All the kids liked them.  Let me repeat that, in bold.  All my super-picky kids liked fiddleheads and mushrooms.  They taste a little like asparagus, except better.