Truffula Tuft

Basil and Sunflowers

 
Been extra busy. The garden is literally going to seed. I need to start collecting it for next year.

Can't keep up these days. But here are a few pics from recent weeks.

We had a pesto making party with the bountiful community garden basil. We processed armloads of it, as Susan demonstrates.

 

We pulled off the leaves and rinsed them, then chopped them up with garlic, nuts, lots of olive oil and salt. Had two food processors going.

Discovered that half pine nuts and half walnuts gave the best taste (IMHO).
Altogether we made 22 quart size ziplock bags full. Shared it with 10 families. I put several bags in the freezer. We've been eating it on everything.  

  

We had a small forest of giant sunflowers in the front garden this summer. They got to be 7' tall and made me smile everytime I saw them.

They have been tipping over lately as the seeds get bigger and the stalks get weaker, so I chopped them down today and set the heads to dry on the porch.

Connor hulled some to eat. They were big and tasty.

That's all for now. It's way past my bedtime.

Peace,
Jennifer

Food Preservation on Full Speed

The garden is amazing these days. The summer rains have wrought miracles.

Now, while madly making inventory for our next festival and prepping for fall homeschooling, I'm also trying to preserve some of the harvest. It's a busy season.

 

I took a pickling class at the Extension office last month. We canned cucumber pickles and made relish. Here are some lower energy cucumber ideas - refrigerator pickles and lacto-fermented pickles. Also a yummy salad with calendula petals and mint. The refrigerator pickles were the biggest hit. They are sweetened with sugar but next time I will try honey. Will post the recipe soon. It's really easy.

 

Here's a pretty but failed experiment in preserving zuchini by drying. The sun dried stuff molded in 3 days and smelled ghastly. The electric dryer (got it on Craigslist for 10.00!) dried them fast but there was almost nothing left. My friend Anne said she tried this and later used it in a recipe. The taste was like cardboard.

 

Nettles are a girl's best friend. This picture of nettles drying in the kitchen window is from early July. We picked these in the woods nearby. Wear gloves when you pick nettles! They are a rich source of vitamin A, C,E, and D, and lots of minerals including calcium, magnesium and potassium.

Make an infusion by filling a mason jar with a cup of dried nettles and pouring boiling water over it to fill the jar. Leave for several hours, then refrigerate. Refreshing and nutritious!

 

Hooray for garlic! I was thrilled to have enough garlic to braid it into 2 big braids. I've got one hanging in my kitchen now and love to snip off the bulbs as needed.

 

Vegetables are God's art:  True Blue potato, Valentine beet, and Danvers carrot.

Next on the preservation agenda are about 30 pounds of beets. We are planning a canning party next week.

peace,
Jennifer

Yellow Plum Haiku

Some newer pics of the garden.

Our first yellow plum
never made it to the fridge
sweet juice drips down chin

(apologies to William Carlos Williams)

 

Elderberry flowers. We hope to be making Elderberry cough syrup by autumn.

 

The Comfrey is very happy. Got a pair of 2" plants in March and now they are approaching 3'. The leaves are good for skin salve, the roots have been used traditionally for broken bones (it's also called Knitbone or Boneset). It makes a great green manure and compost tea ingredient as well.

 

Our lawn is now about 50% "weeds", many of them edible. This is Narrow-leaf Plantain. We've been juicing it and eating it in salads. The bees like it too. Supposedly if you chew one and put it on a mosquito bite, it takes the itch away. I need to try that on my 47 mosquito bites.

 Another edible weed - Lambsquarters. Tastes like Spinach. I'm transplanting them as I find them in the lawn, over to one spot in the herb garden.

And here's a link to an artist that I recently discovered and love - Sarah Applebaum. She makes wildly colorful environments out of recycled afghans, knitting, felting and weird needlepoint projects from thrift stores.

 

Peace,
Jennifer

Fence Jumping Beets, Community Potatoes

More reasons why GMO's are a bad idea - Monsanto's sugar beets jump fences into organic farms in the Northwest (Daily Kos).

Good news about Europe's opposition to GMOs and the patenting of life, via The Permaculture Research Institute. There was a recent court case in Germany in which Monsanto applied for an emergency ruling to overturn that country's ban on new GMO plants, to allow for its 2009 planting. Monsanto said the ban is "arbitrary and goes against EU regulations". The court rejected their application, saying

"Germany’s law on GMOs does not require that a ban on a new plant variety is justified by proven scientific research which showed without doubt the crop to be dangerous; it was sufficient when research showed there were indications that the crop could be dangerous. "

 
On the homefront, we're eating lots of greens (romaine, green curly lettuce, chard) from the kitchen garden and sharing the abundance with neighbors. We harvested the first potatoes and squash from the community garden on Saturday. AND the chicken coop/shed now has 3 and half walls!

peace,
Jen

ps - I love the way the Yes Men use humor and hootzpah to get in the back door of media. They recently put out a fake International Herald Tribune to inspire and educate on climate change (as reported by the NYT). 

Rain Makes the Garden Grow

It's been a wet spring, about to turn to to a wet summer. This May was the wettest since they began keeping records in 1903 - 9 inches. Last night I got caught in what they call a gullywasher 'round here. Whew! The skies opened and dumped unbelievable amounts of water all at once, with dramatic lightning and thunder that shook the floorboards. I was driving and could see only 5 feet in front of me. Wild!

Been very busy for 2 months. Went to Pennsylvania to sell Organic Armor. Visited family around the northeast. Planted the vegetables. Built a shed/chicken coop (still working on that one).

Here are some pictures:

 

Apples on the old apple tree,named "Goldy".

 

Bush beans in succession planting. They are snap (Blue Lake) and drying beans (Queen Anne Black Eyed Peas).

 

Potting shed/composting toilet/chicken coop in process.

 

Kitchen garden with radish flowering, beets, lettuce and various other things still tiny.

 

Onions flourishing.

 

Beautiful Western NC scene - a working water wheel on a farm near Hendersonville.

 

Me in the studio, wearing Organic Armor horns.

Lastly, check out this trailer for a new doc called Food, Inc. Looks like a good one, and very timely.

peace,
Jennifer

Seedlings and Sprouts!

 

Just some quick photos of the garden. "Goldy", our 40+ year old apple tree is about to bloom. It looks like pink fireworks from our bedroom window when she does.

 

Only one brave little pea plant has come up so far.

 

The spinach and lettuce are thriving in the cold frame. We eat fresh greens everynight, sometimes with dandelion and chickweed from the very overgrown lawn. I call it "Yard salad".

 

Lots of baby lettuce in the kitchen garden. These are the red leaf variety, from seeds I saved from my LA garden 2 years ago.

 

The bees from our hive are out and about, enjoying the so-called weeds.

 

A rainy day outside the kitchen window full of tomato, pepper and squash seedlings.

I love spring in the mountains!
Jen