Though my Mother never really planted or tended a garden, her mother (Grandma) always had a beautiful patch. She had a garden for every season, and it escapes my memory what veggies grew in which season, but seems like every day of the year, she went to the garden to fetch something for dinner. And my most fun thing to do, especially in the summer, was to spend a week at Grandmother's house. Whenever she started toward the garden, with basket in hand, my stomach started laughing, because it knew that it wouldn't be long before it would be filling up with something more than delicious that Miss Maud would send its way.

Now, I must admit, I never helped her tend her garden, and she never asked me to. Because I did so much other field work, I never really liked digging in the dirt and hoeing and pulling up grass. Then again, it could have been laziness that made me sit on the porch in the swing while she worked. I would wash the dishes and clean the kitchen, but garden work just wasn't my "thing." And to this day, I still don't like growing anything, not even a potted plant. So, so much for my "green" thumb.

I grew up eating all the vegetables that my Grandmother grew. We seldom ate anything from a can except sardines, mackerel, and occasionallyVienna sausage. The majority of our food was grown or came from what we raised. Actually, to this day, I don't really like anything canned, but living in the city, there aren't that many options for garden-grown produce (except the grocery store or Farmer's Market).

At any rate, Not only did my Grandmother grow some mean vegetables, but she was one heck of a cook. I can still taste her yellow summer squash, fried with what we call "country cow butter" stirred in with garden fresh onions. Now, that's just good, down-home eating and you can't get much better than that.

Let's see if I can remember what all grew in her garden. Okra, butter bean, summer squash, collard, mustard, and turnip greens, turnip roots, cabbage, onion, corn, peppers, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, field peas, snap (string) beans, sweet potatoes, and of course, most of our fruits, we bought from surrounding farmers or from grocery stores.

My hubby had to do a paper for school and it involved the children’s book and movie “The Lorax.”  If you haven’t read this Dr. Seuss book, I highly recommend it.  The movie is also really entertaining.  It gives a great perspective on how the way society is moving, the appreciate for the earth has steadily gone by the wayside.  Old trees with stories to tell are demolished for parking lots and grocery stores.

This book/movie highlights what happened when society disregarded nature in exchange for technology and wealth.  It ends up becoming a world with no clean air, real trees or animals.  A little boy takes interest in what trees used to be and meets the man who was responsible for the decline of the appreciation of nature.  In the end, the town realizes the error of their ways and makes a decision to change how things have been.  Below is a clip from the movie…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slpz0D35oRI 

This message makes my Homesteader heart happy.  I get such a sense of wondrous fulfillment each time I see the bright green life emerge from the dark, wet earth.  It feels like a completion of a circle of life every time I harvest a rich, bright vegetable from its plant and nourish my family with it.  I feel such a true sense that this is the life I was called to lead and can’t imagine it any other way.

Until next time…

On Sunday, Andy was able to realize a goal of his for the last decade; roast a whole animal in a pit in the ground. Ever since I met him in college, he has wanted to do a pig in the ground, wrapped in leaves, Hawaiian style. However, the very act is incredibly intimidating. It's not like people do this every day and you can flip to page 53 in your Betty Crocker cookbook. Also daunting is if the process goes wrong in any number of ways, you've potentially ruined an entire animal, not just a single cut of meat.

As I mentioned last week, I was inspired to keep writing in this blog, but I never fleshed out what I might be writing about. A short list of items includes homesteading, harvesting, unschooling and urban foraging.  

One of the sessions I attended at the Mother Earth News Fair talked about all the food she had within reach of her backyard, or on the roads she travels to and from work. Living in Maine, she had an abundant supply of wild blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. But she also found that the plants in her own garden, so often ripped out as weeds, were very edible and sometimes more nutritious than the very veggies she was trying to protect. 

In our home, we have already known from our time at Foxwood Farm that pigweed, purslane and lamb's quarter were very delicious and hardy weeds. The kids make a regular snack out of the purslane we keep in our backyard garden this year, pulling it between bike rides and the tree swing. They love the idea of foraging for food, even in this small way. Sometimes they'll bring me a stalk or leaf and ask if its food? After careful identification, I give them the thumbs up or down. Since I am so inexperienced in what herbs and plants can be consumed, most of the time it's been a thumbs down. 

Well, no more. I endeavor to learn every plant we can eat on our 1/2 acre lot we rent here in Oshkosh. 

An easy one to start with is our city garden. 

I suppose this can't be considered foraging as we intentionally dug up the ground and planted it with peppers and tomatoes. However, seeing as the spirit of foraging (especially in the city) is to be more self sufficient, the garden is our number one supplier of free* food. 

* We paid $30 at the beginning of the season for all the started plants and $15 for some makeshift fencing.  

In June, when I was holed away in an office for 12 hours per day, Andy took on more than most Stay At Home Dads (SAHD) do. He kept the kids wrangled and dug up a garden from sod that hadn't moved in well over a century. At first he did it by hand, spending three hours moving sod from a 6 x 3 foot patch of lawn. 

  

Then my father graciously offered the industrial sized rototiller we had used when we gardened at the farm. There is a setting on the tiller specifically made to uproot grasses and this made the work much more expedient, though still exhausting. 

  

We decided to make four rows, three feet across and about forty feet long, with three foot stretches of grass in between the rows. 

  

This was a good start for the garden. Good for this year. Next year we will likely expand it just as many rows. As it is, the plants we bought completely filled in the rows and we had no room for anything but tomatoes and peppers. We have some large stuffing peppers, but mostly hot banana peppers, which we think was a labeling error on the part of the gardener we bought from, as we never had a need for that many hot peppers. The tomatoes are two varieties; the classic red heirloom Brandywine and a new (for us) long-storing red tomato called Mountain Mist. You can easily tell the two apart both in appearance and flavor. It's nice to have a small variety; we usually have about 15 different tomatoes, but in the end, they all get boiled and canned and look about the same, even the colorful ones. 

Very late in June, shortly after my temp job ended, we planted the tomatoes and peppers in the fresh farm compost my father had driven over in the pickup truck. Since it came from several composting sites on Foxwood Farm, there was a rich variety of nutrients and compost age. A lovely black earth, Andy took the same tiller and worked it in with the hard, poor soil the sod had been hiding. At last, he used a hiller function on the tiller and gave us "raised beds." Not the fancy ones held in by gleaming white pine boards but certainly enough to keep the plants from drowning in case of a flood. (Little did we know in June that this would be a record breaking year of drought for not only Wisconsin, but over half of the United States. Drowning...not really a concern this year.) 

  
In the process of planting, we discovered lots of bones in the compost. Some were small. Some were large. Now before you get the willys, remember that this came from when Andy and I were still on the farm. Do you remember us talking about those sheep we purchased from a Craigslist ad? We had been told they were wormed before we got them, but shortly after their transition to Foxwood Farm, we lost three ewes in as many days. On a farm, all flesh is grass and they went into the newly formed compost pile to aid in fertilizing our fields in the coming years.  

We really didn't think about that very much after we left the farm. We had a nice little reminder of our time as shepherds and thanked the sheep for their contribution (however untimely) to our new garden here in Oshkosh. At the time of their death, could we have ever known how that compost would be used? It served as a simple reminder of how God works things out in much more perfect and complicated ways than we ever could.   

After the tomatoes were planted, we headed out west and came home to find an amazing growth spurt in both the tomatoes, but also the weeds. In fact, before we even put our luggage back in the house, Andy and the kids and I spent two hours weeding compulsively, before dusk and hunger pains shooed us indoors.   

 
Above, before mowing the walkways. Below, after. Isn't it beautiful? This of course, before the great tomato take over in about a month! 

   

After that, we kept the garden watered during July and August to preserve the parched plants. Our lawn was brown, but our garden was gorgeous. As the farm market vendors began to showcase their Early Girls and Cherry Tomatoes, we were beginning to get restless for our own brood to hatch. Plenty of green globes danced about the ever-expanding vines but nothing even hinted at ripeness. We bought our tomatoes from a vendor friend instead and dreamed of the first sun-warmed red fruit that would sit triumphantly on our kitchen counter, proclaiming to anyone who cared, "I'm as local as they get!" 

We didn't have to wait long. Early September came and we were getting a steady sprinkle of red maters  hanging out on our counter, waiting for bruschetta or BLTs or a simple slice and rock salt. Then...we didn't look for a few days. We got a heat wave followed by a steady rain for three days.   When the thunder clouds cleared, our own homegrown downpour had only just begun. As Ethan excitedly proclaimed, "It's tomato season everybody!" 

  

And we set to work. Since we didn't get the tomato plants staked in time, they literally took over the garden and even finding our grassy walkways was a tall order. All the super ripe fruits begin at the bottom, so much of the work is gently and firmly lifting a plant to find it's hidden treasures below. It's exhausting work for a normal person, but with my belly expanding daily and heat tolerance near zero, harvesting became quite the chore.   

Thankfully, I had two excellent helpers in Elly and Ethan...and Liam was just amusing to have around as he eagerly picked all the tiny green "balls" he could find. I found out that while Elly has an eye for the very ripe ones, Ethan was fearless, burying his small 3 year old body deep in the monstrous tomato plants for the red globes underneath. 

  

Over the course of the month, Ethan has been my best and most eager helper in the garden. As a middle child, it's sometimes hard for him to have a niche in the family. I want him to know that his help has been irreplaceable and of great value to his Mommy and Daddy.   

 
Once the harvest is in, the time comes for processing. This is where Andy takes over and shines as his personality must find the most efficient and effective ways to can food. Putting eager kids to work never hurts and much of canning is very kid friendly.  

 
One Sunday about two weeks ago, I had some pressing freelance work that needed to be completed by Monday morning. The tomatoes were just as dire. So beginning right after church, Andy began the long day of processing what we guessed to be 120 lbs of tomatoes.  

  

  

It was a long day indeed. Hours after the kids were in bed, he was still boiling water and slicing stems and peeling skins. Hours after I was in bed, he was cleaning the kitchen and making sure the last jars sealed. In all, he worked for 14 hours. We are now blessed with 50 quarts of stewed tomatoes and sauce. When I asked Andy if that would supply us for the winter, he laughed and said, "Maybe til Christmas!"   

It's a good thing that when I began harvesting tomatoes again this morning, we got 90 lbs in boxes and I still have 2/3 of the garden to pick.     

  

Our neighbors in our small block think we're nuts. Some even have gardens, but only enough to supply them for the fresh season. An older lady saw us weeding in July and asked if were had planted a truck garden. For those of you who may not know, truck gardeners were the equivalent of the farm market vendors of today; people who planted huge gardens with the intent to truck the produce into the nearby towns and cities to sell. No, we assured her, this was not our intent. We explained that we just liked to make our own food and her eyes brightened immediately. She told us a story of her own mother, canning away in the kitchen and how she had to help put the food by. We promised to share our harvest with her when the time came and she seemed delighted. "Can't beat homegrown tomatoes and how I do love to slice them and eat them fresh!"     

We love how a garden brings people in a small community together. The rag tag family down the alley comes by often and offers to pull weeds from time to time. The divorced hairdresser across the street checks up on the progress regularly as she has a green thumb for landscaping. The blended family two houses down has a little girl about Elly's age and after a few get-togethers, we gave the mother several tomatoes and hot peppers. Just yesterday her daughter came over with a homemade cake for us.  Just three days ago, we got a note in our mailbox from a handicapped woman who walks through our alleyway regularly. She asked for some of the green tomatoes for fried green tomatoes. She offered to pay for them, but we'll just give her a bag to enjoy. We'll certainly have enough! 

As the canning season winds to a close in the next two weeks (our first hard frost often lands in the first week of October), we will turn to other means of foraging and winter prep. As I'm actively learning, there's a lot of food out there if only we are willing to work for it.   

  

This brings me to the country garden.     

A few days ago, we headed about fifteen miles due west to the farm (formerly known as Foxwood Farm). My brother and his family live there now, keeping up the house and front yard quite beautifully. My father continues to raise crops and beef cows on the rest of the acreage while the fate of the family farm seems more securely in generational hands than when we first exited two years ago.     

One of the projects they are diligently working on is repainting the house and garage, no small task as they are doing it without help of a contractor. My parents and brother and sister-in-law have been working for the last month, prepping and priming and painting the wooden siding and sills. When Andy and I pulled in the driveway late in the afternoon, the house fairly glowed with fresh white paint. Ever the classic midwest farmhouse, she is doing well under new management. Having spent about 75% of my life in that home, I am pleased with the care being given.     

Our purpose, however, was not to supervise any home improvements that might be brewing. Today we came for pumpkins and potatoes.   

A joint project between my parents and my brother's family, a large field garden was planted with rows of sweet corn, pumpkins and potatoes. What used to be sheep and cattle pasture is now commercial corn. The temporary fences long taken down, the lane between fields offered ample access for a small strip of garden. Here is where the sweet corn and pumpkins grew. Across the lane, a small triangle of land with very sandy black soil holds the two long rows of potatoes.   

Last week the farm experienced an early frost, killing the family garden and causing the field garden to die down as well. My family harvested the pumpkins and brought them to the front lawn in hopes of selling a few to passersby. Mom and Dad have been involved in a year long fundraiser to build a well in sun-parched Uganda and decided that half the proceeds from pumpkin sales will go towards that cause. We thought it would be nice to see the operation and get a few orange cucurbits ourselves. 

  

I had hoped to help with the harvest, but they had to grab them last week when I was in PA, so we got to benefit from the season's labor by just walking amongst the beauties and choosing what we'd take home. Since we had no hand in helping grow the pumpkins and yet were invited to take some home free of charge, we chose sparingly.   

  

I was a bit surprised when the kids gravitated towards the smallest pumpkins in the group, but pleased that they could carry their prizes to the car all by themselves. It also gave them a sense of accomplishment, I'm sure. Even wee Liam managed to grunt a pumpkin over to Daddy before thumping it at his feet! 

And of course, the obligatory kids in the pumpkin patch photos ensued. :-) 

  

Elly with her new hat from Grampa Steve. 

   

Ethan, with his exuberance flowing through even a static photo. 

  

Liam, more than displeased to have been deposited in between these cold, slippery lumps of orange, attempting a fast get-away.   

After we chose our pumpkins, we drove down the dusty lane and began our subterranean search for potatoes. Again, beneficiaries of my family's hard work, we were thankful for the homegrown goodies that lay in wait of our digging fork. 

At five and three, Ethan and Elly have been two full years removed from the last potato harvest we undertook. I knew they wouldn't remember that potatoes grow underground. I asked Elly as we stepped out of the car where she thought the taters were. She looked around and guessed at the remains of the pumpkin patch across the pathway.   

Nope, we told her. You've got to look under the ground. She thought we were crazy and when I explained that a potato was part of the root of the potato plant, it didn't really help her dismay. The best way was to just show her. Andy and I had good fun playing up the digging experience. What could have been a sweat-inducing, mundane task became a veritable hunt for treasure as our children squealed in delight at the sight of each colorful tater emerging from the black earth. 

  

Here, Elly grabs handfuls of a red variety in which the name presently escapes me.   

  

Ethan and Elly work together to find the "baby ones" and add them to our grocery bag.   

  

Finding a particularly large potato caused ripples of excitement. 

  

Below, Ethan shows off his "Swimming Cow" potato which he dug himself. As I found in the tomatoes, Ethan was again our best helper, sticking with Andy as he dug for the duration of the hunt. Elly lost interest and began exploring the fields with Liam, which was fine. However, our Little Man here never lost focus. 

  

Before we knew it, we were joined by three of our nieces, who walked the 1/8th mile from the white farmhouse to join in the potato dig. They had come from digging potatoes with their own parents not one hour earlier, but enthusiastically helped us up and down the rows by finding the biggest and most unusual looking taters to add to our bag. In no time at all, we filled the bag much past our initial intent and had to call the search party to a close. With 6 pairs of helping hands, the abundance of food will last us a solid few months. 

  

Again, I am thankful for the generosity of our family in sharing the feast without any help from us during the season. We were able to share a 30 pound box of tomatoes which mutually helped us out. 

We intended to eat potato soup that evening for supper but by the time we were back in Oshkosh it was already 6pm and the kids were clawing at the windows for food. Poor planning, Mom and Dad! We stopped for pizza at Papa Murphy's instead. I know I know! We're not perfect by any means and we do love a good pizza... 

We had warm potato cheese soup for lunch the next day instead. :-)   

 

Hello and greetings to all Grit readers--I'm a relatively new gardener--this is my second year--and I'll be writing each week or so about my experiences, education, and ongoing projects in the gardening field. I've always been a DIY type and I decided to pursue a vegetable garden due to the quality of vegetables available in the supermarket. Additionally, I have no faith in the USDA to protect the food supply, and I wanted organic food.

Last year, I began by buying organic seeds--cucumbers--and using large clay pots to grow them in. I also made a box from wood and grew parsley. Tomatoes were grown in five gallon plastic buckets. My fertilizer was obtained from an ag student I know who has been of considerable help. Considering that this was my first effort, I had some good fortune. The tomatoes, which were of a plum variety, produced relatively well, although I did have some blossom end rot due to a lack of calcium. I learned this later after researching it online. But I had a good enough harvest to can seven quarts.

The cucumbers also had positives and negatives. The harvest was good--I had lots to give away and to eat, but some of the plants died due to the wilt caused by cucumber beetles. I noticed a beetle one day but did not realize what it was. Shortly thereafter, some of the plants became sick and died. Again, I researched the matter online and learned about wilt--most of my help has come from the Ohio State and Penn State extensions, and from Colorado State as well.

Last fall I decided to make a garden using raised beds and terraces. Wood frames formed the boundaries of my 300 square foot garden and I also made a terrace as the ground slopes sharply away from the southern sun. A good deal of excavating, leveling, and filling in was required. The soil was made from store-bought topsoil, sand, peat moss, and clay. Mixing these elements was done by hand and using a rototiller.

One of my last zucchinis  

This year after studying both online and in The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, by Edward C. Smith, I planted cucumbers, zucchinis, mizuna, lettuce, pole beans, broccoli, beets, peppers, tomatoes, parsley, basil, and cilantro. My seeds were ordered from High Mowing--the tomatoes and peppers were started for me. Fertilizer was made by mixing lime, potash, and phosphorus, available organically at ag and garden supply stores. I also had some fish emulsion.

The tomatoes, which were of the Rutgers variety, were doing will and had been producing fruit, when at one point I noticed that the individual tomatoes had orange spots in a circular, mosaic-like pattern. The leaves had lost their rich green color, and had numerous small black spots. Research at the Colorado State extension indicated that my plants were infected with spotted leaf wilt, caused by a virus vectored to the plant by the thrip, a tiny insect barely visible to the naked eye. Something else I'd never known about! There is no treatment once infection has taken hold. I had to pull up and discard all eight plants.

On the positive side, I had researched cucumber wilt and learned that radishes, planted with cucumbers, can deter cucumber beetles. Planting numerous radishes resulted in no infestation and a substantial harvest.

 

My other plants produced well. Above, peppers are still growing at the end of the season. I had a large number of zucchinis, a good number of beets, and my pole beans are still producing as well. My broccoli harvest was quite small--I'll research this. All in all, I believe I had a good season--I've learned how little I know, but I do know that:

Soil and amendments are crucial.
Examine the garden daily, and look for pests and signs of disease. Weed regularly.
Water regularly and carefully, and keep aware of rainfall and weather patterns.
Know each plant's needs.
Use a notebook to keep records of all you do, and use a camera.
Study and ask for advice.
Plan ahead.

One of the challenges that come with a successful garden is the issue of what to do with the excess produce you produce.  Often you can give away what you don’t use, or sell it at a farmer’s market, but if you’d like to keep some of it for use later, when your garden is not offering up summer crops every week, you’ll need to preserve it.  In past articles I have discussed canning, freezing and drying (dehydrating) various kinds of vegetables and herbs. Today I’d like to look at how we store these goods after they’ve been put up. 

Our house is quite small, and we do not have a basement, so storage of food is limited basically to things to be consumed in the very near future.  Most of the preserved food, and a little short-term storage, has been incorporated into my workshop: what Marie humorously refers to as our Grocery Store (as in store – or stash - of groceries).  Occasionally she will call over on the intercom/phone saying, “Is this the Edwina Quick-Mart?  I’d like to place an order for delivery please.” Other times she likes to browse to see what we have.

 

We set up some shelving in my office to handle canned goods and dried produce.  The office is the only area that is air conditioned, and subjecting canned goods to the 80, 90 even 100 degree heat of the workshop proper is not a good idea.  I vacuum-sealed all of the dried goods (except dry beans) into serving-sized pouches so we need open up only as much as we would use.  Dried goods include peppers (hot and sweet), tomato slices, apples, pears, and of course herbs.

Onions and garlic can be hung in here after curing.  They will keep well as long as they have been treated gently and have good air flow around them.  Bruising them allows rot to set in.

 

We were offered a second hand chest freezer at a good price.  We make good use of that for long term storage of tomatoes, peppers, corn, green beans, okra and some herbs.  This year I’ll be adding turnips, beets, squash and strawberries to the inventory.  I prefer to vacuum pack as much as I can as this removes the air that allows freezer burn to set in and extends the safe storage time by at least double and up to 5 times, depending on how careful you are in packing the bags before evacuating the air.  I often freeze the food on cookie sheets, quickly pack the frozen pieces into bags, vacuum seal them and return them to the freezer.  This way, when the bags are opened up we won’t have one huge frozen mass to deal with, but individual pieces can be removed and thawed, returning the rest to the house freezer for use later.  This is especially handy for tomato wedges, cherry tomatoes and peppers.  Cooking for two seldom uses up large quantities of these.

As we empty the freezer we add soda bottles and milk jugs of water to help provide thermal mass to get us through the occasional power outage without losing all our frozen food.

In my office I have a mini-fridge that we bought at a friend’s garage sale for just a few dollars – a cheap luxury intended as a place to keep my lunch and to provide bottles of cold water (and an occasional “Dew“) while I’m working.  It has since been pressed into service as short term storage for cucumbers, zucchini and lettuce, three things the garden is producing faster than the fridge at home has space for.  Some of this gets taken to work with Marie to share with her co-workers.  Mom enjoys some of the lettuce but has her own squash and cucumber plants to contend with, and our new neighbors enjoy fresh veggies.  But I need a “buffer” to handle them while we decide where they will all go.

Potatoes could be stored in the office with the onions and garlic except that potatoes react badly to light until they’re cured out.  Our early crop potatoes (Yukon Gold) don’t hang around long enough to fully cure because we like potatoes and they get eaten.  I store them in a mesh bag hanging in a closet at home that is normally kept closed and dark – and somewhat cooler than my workshop.  The main crop potatoes (Yellow Fin) won’t get harvested until late summer and they’ll go into a box of wood shavings that will keep them dry and dark for the few months that they will last.  If we ever got so far ahead on potatoes that we were in danger of losing them I’d cut them into chunks, par-boil and freeze them for extended storage.

Sweet potatoes don’t get harvested until late fall or early winter (typically the first light frost) and they’re tricky.  They need to be cured for a couple of weeks at 85° then stored for the winter at around 60°.  The 60° is no problem; at that time of year that’s the normal temperature of my shop and office.  The 85° curing period may require setting up a space heater.  If I’m very, very careful in digging up the sweet potatoes, curing them may not be as much of an issue as it could be because curing is normally done to “heal” wounds incurred while harvesting so they don’t rot.  Using my raised garden bed method, we’ll produce somewhere around 75-80 sweet spuds at most and I will dig them out by hand.  It’s the use of shovel, fork or especially a plow that will scrape and cut the tubers.  Once properly stored these should keep all winter long.

And that is our simple life strategy for food preservation.  We do it on a small scale, but the same methods work just as well on a larger scale for those with big families and larger gardens (as well as bigger storage rooms – like a basement).  What methods do you use to store food for later use?

June marks the beginning of our sixth month in urban gardening and general homesteading shenanigans. Happy half-birthday to us! Hubs and I have learned some hard lessons (watermelons will overtake everythingif you’re not careful; without thinning, peach trees drop their fruit; and the dogs will poop in the garden boxes given the slightest opportunity), and I don’t doubt the next six months will continue keeping our egos in check.

Some of the lessons have been absolutely necessary, namely: patience. Though we both have country in our background, we’re city folk these days. And although our particular city prides itself on a laid-back, casual lifestyle (we named a downtown street after Willie Nelson, my friends) we are guilty of getting swept away in the flurry of work, volunteer obligations, birthdays, baby showers, and everything in between. Growing our own food has required –demanded– us to slow down. We pay attention to the details: the weather patterns, the birds and insects on our property, and does that Ancho Gigantea look a little droopy? And we wait, wait, wait, until just the right time to plant those seeds or thin that row. Nowhere has anticipation been more painful than waiting for harvest, as my mouth practically waters everyday I see our tomatoes on the vine. I’m this close to pulling them off, green, and frying them in a pan.

But not all lessons have been so difficult. One in particular has been delightful: sharing. In our excitement to garden Hubs and I maybe –okay, absolutely– overdid it with our summer vegetable sowing. Hear me now, believe me later: no two people need four watermelon plants, six okra, eight squash, or seven cucumber (I believe wholeheartedly we need four tomato plants). While I’m giddy at the prospect of learning to can, our pantry space might not support my new hobby. So. Giving away it is.

A few weeks ago, we were hosting a cookout and after a couple glasses of wine, I gave a giggly tour of our newest garden addition– the front yard rows. Star of David okra, Lebanese squash, Yellow Crookneck squash, and Pencil Pod beans were barely peeking out of the soil. I beamed with pride as our friends oohed and aahed. Exactly seven days later, they had more than quadrupled in size and were becoming proper young plants. I was thrilled. We again had friends over for dinner. One in particular praised the new veggies and wished she had her own. While everyone finished dessert I snuck out to the front yard, gently dug up a few plants and put them in small pots with soil. I loaded them into her arms on her way out.

Okra seedlings turn out to be a great gift.  

I prized those veggies. I carefully nurtured them to life, protected them from the elements and helped them grow. I couldn’t wait to eat the fruits of my labor. But more than that, I realized, I wanted someone else to feel the same quiet satisfaction of growing something good. That day, our rows were a little bit thinner but our hearts a little bit lighter. The cherry on top? Getting a message the next week from our friend, glowing about her new plants and how much they perked up her backyard. She, too, is excited for the harvest. 

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, tells us “kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”

I have a feeling our garden will be creating a lot of love in the coming months.  

It's cool today.  Highs are expected to only reach into the 50s, and the steady breeze seems to work its way right through my 4 layers of clothes.  Did I mention I'm always cold?  Fall seems to have arrived, and we've had to break out the jackets and hats as lows hover dangerously close to the freezing point.

We decided to head out to my parents farm and see what they were up too.  My aunt picked up my daughter last night so they could try some fishing today, which was nice because that meant I didn't have to set my alarm in order to get her up and ready.  She's meeting us at my parents later so I won't have to run and get her.

My lil man wanted to go and "see Papa" who, with my brother's assistance, was working on getting his old combine up and running in order to get his corn harvested.

  

Well we found them at the shop taking apart the combine trying to get the outer pieces out in order to get to some inner part they needed work on.  My son was having fun pretending to drive and looking out the big glass windshield. 

We hung out for awhile and eventually headed back to the house.  There was also a large pile of ground that he found interesting.  Good thing I put on his new tennis shoes...

It was nice to spend some time on the farm and let the lil man roam.  He loves Papa's trackers and hanging out on the farm. 

 

My husband, Doug, had to leave on a two week business trip this week that was planned long ago. He grieved and begrudgingly left with our small farm crops, about 20 acres, still in the field to await his return. His heart is ready for the harvest process to begin. The combine sits greased, tuned and standing by in the shed. The truck has its battery all charged, the license plates on and all set to haul a bountiful harvest to the elevator in town. Our grandsons are chomping at the bit to ride along, but the moisture content of both the corn and the ground made it impossible to gather the crops before he had to leave.

To add insult to injury, the weather forecast is, of course, the perfect weather to bring in the crops.

My greatest efforts to assure him that the corn will still be here when he gets home were of no comfort to him in the least. I have learned that the acts of the harvest itself have the utmost importance to a true farmer’s heart. It is like that of air to breath, it is that significant.

The harvest is about the gathering of the abundance of God’s blessings from tiny seeds painstakingly planned, planted, fertilized and cultivated. It is about the purring rumble of a well-tuned, albeit very old, six-row combine. It is about sliding the lever that engages the gears that run the chains that put the entire process in action. It is about our four- and two-year-old grandsons sitting on buckets in the cab with their faces pressed to the glass fascinated with the entire course of action. It is about the rhythmic rumba beat motion of the straw walkers smoothly doing their job. It is about the sun shining through the dust of the chaff as it is scattered in waving patterns behind the machine. It is about the sound of the grain pouring like spun gold out of the combine’s auger and into the back of the truck that sits unused in the shed all year just waiting for gathering time. It is about waving to each neighbor on the trip into town to unload. It is about comparing yields and moisture content. It is about the wait at the elevator and the chatting with the fellow harvesters who have hearts similar to yours. It is about a steaming cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup held in gloved hands as the corn unloads. And, perhaps most importantly, it is about acknowledging the hand of God in every step of the process.

My days are busy as usual. The daycare children are winding down from Halloween and gearing up for the coming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. We are making the transition from the out of doors to more inside time. There are more groceries to buy, as with the cooler weather, there are many new recipes to try. All the children appreciate cooking but one of the four-year-old boys I am privileged to have in my care has a baker’s heart and truly appreciates every step of the process. Next week we are going to bake bread and I cannot wait to share the experience with them. And I instill in them with every step that it takes a farmer somewhere for us to be able to get flour from the container, eggs and milk from the refrigerator and the rest. God willing, they will absorb and come to appreciate a bit of what I have learned from living the past decade with a farmer’s heart at my side.

So, I anxiously await his return so the harvest can begin. It is unfortunate that life sometimes gets in the way and delays our plans but that is just the way it is and so we are obliged to become the way we are.

Doug will get to complete the harvest; the whole gathering process will take place; a true farmer’s heart will beat at peace once again; and I’ll close the gate with grace.

As usual, I am beginning this blog with a heartfelt apology for not writing sooner. It’s been another month and so much has been going on that it’s hard for me to have the energy and/or time to sit down and put into words all that I’m observing and feeling.

You see, I always have a “blog on my heart” about something or someone here on the farm, but so easily time slips away and there are too many things to take the place of a good, honest blogging session. This time, it’s been the Harvest Season. It has earned capital letters and truth be told, could probably be put into all caps, but writing like that is a pet peeve of Andy’s, so I held back.

Harvest Season. Never in my life have I understood the seasons like I have this year. Living by the seasons and working with nature and God’s design for animals, food and life has never been so real. We began the warm weather (mid-April in Wisconsin) with high hopes and zeal for a bunch of new projects and enterprises. By the time we hit Independence Day, we were in a low spot. Struggles with getting the dairy up and running, getting all the seeds and plants planted, building fences, chasing sheep, new calves, new milk cows, bringing in hay, family stresses and long, long daylight hours combined to bring our spirits low and our zeal down to a minimum. You may recall the “One Step Forward” post that I made on our farm blog.  I concluded that post with a hopeful and positive note that all we were doing was totally worth it in the end. At the time I wrote it, I only half believed my own words.

But August brought a certified dairy, the first bountiful fruits from our garden and the promise of the end of summer. I know that sounds negative, but when you awaken every single day knowing that there are at least 16 hours full of work ahead of you and there’s no weekend to “get to,” those first cold days of September are something of legend.

As we rounded out August and flew into September, I suddenly realized that my summer had, indeed, ended. Now, the days were still warm and balmy, but it struck me one day as I traversed our back garden: the mid-day sun was hitting me at an extreme angle and my shadow extended noticeably to the north. I glanced up and saw that our Sugar Maple had nearly emptied itself of those magnificent red leaves while the Elms were hinting at gold. The lush grasses were a dull shade of green and all around me were tans, golds and browns. The tomatoes were in full swing and so were the peppers, cauliflower, snap beans and herbs. Our apple trees had begun dropping loads of fruit and even our Miracle Pear tree (it’s a wonderful story, please ask us about it) had a few green fruits to be proud of. I was struck with surprise and a tinge of sadness to see it gone so soon. Yet ...

... We had entered Harvest Season. Harvest Season is like a separate part of the end of summer and beginning of autumn. It transcends calendar dates and simply crashes into the shoreline, one crop after another, until a few sparkling frosty mornings call the tide to a halt.

At the beginning, I was so rarin’ to go that I collected all I could and stressed about any single bean left on the bush or any hidden tomato under the foliage. I pushed Bret and Cortnie (our young garden/farm helpers) to get back out there and look for more. We’d collect and pile and stack and bag everything that looked ripe.

Then, we’d share the bounty. Once we had what we needed for each family, we had to step back and see the enormity of the task at hand. How to take all this fresh, organic and BEAUTIFUL blessing of food and keep it until we needed it this winter? So began our legendary days of canning. First, we made Catsup. Our favorite condiment and one so old-fashioned tasty that we had to share the recipe with our friends (via our newsletter). Next we moved on to stewed tomatoes. Such diverse applications in the kitchen and one of the easiest ways to keep those ’maters around. We made a lot of stewed tomatoes. A lot. I mean, A LOT.

Then we had a peck of perfect peppers to deal with. Ok, maybe like 15 pecks! I froze a bunch of them, but you can only use so much thawed pepper over the course of a year, so we turned to our star-player: Lacto-fermented salsa! Thanks to Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation and her cookbook Nourishing Traditions, we have a whole host of alternate preserving techniques at our fingertips. The beauty of this recipe is that you use tomatoes, peppers, salt, garlic, onions and cilantro, like any other salsa recipe.

But then you get a little crazy. Instead of cooking everything to a boil, you cut it all up and mix it in a large bowl (In our case, due to the large amount of ingredients, we mixed in two 5 gallon buckets)! Then, instead of taking your mason jar and pressure cooking it for up to 40 minutes, you add sea salt, whey (the actual by-product of making cheese curds, not the powder power-lifter stuff) and close the mixture in.

You let the food do the work. Over the next two-three days, the good bacteria and the Lactobacilli found in the whey work together to eliminate all the bad, spoilage-producing bacteria. Then, the food begins to ferment. This is always a good thing. Fermentation is a documented age-old way of preserving food. This is a thousands of years old way to keep food around, and since the invention of refrigeration and even heat canning, we have lost this amazing art.

Andy and I are just learning. After a few days of fermenting, the salsa is ready to eat. I trusted this recipe enough to take our first mason jar of it to a bridal shower and serve it as one of the treats. It went over great and people had to ask, what gives it this great color and flavor?

Having never been cooked, the salsa looks just as fresh as the day we harvested it. And indeed, the fermentation causes the mixture to be even healthier than it was as a raw veggie. It’s pretty sweet. But be warned, when opening anything lacto-fermented for the first time, realize that the contents are under a lot of pressure. Both Andy and I had to rush to the sink (me at the bridal shower and he here at home) as the salsa came fizzing and sputtering out like a Coke that just took a turn on the Tilt-a-Whirl.

Yes, the fermented salsa comes out carbonated! (see whitish spots in the freshly sealed jar above) But it’s a natural fizziness, not from carbonated water and is the reason our soda beverages are carbonated in the first place. Did you know that original “soft drinks” were made from lacto-fermented ingredients and so were drank with this natural fizz that we encountered? The original recipes for Root Beer, Haymaker’s Tea, Sassafras Beer and others are also found in Nourishing Traditions. These ancient sodas were actually really good for you and restored a lot of lost nutrients and enzymes. But, I digress.

We made 43 quarts of salsa and cleared out our harvest table of the tomatoes and peppers, only to go picking more the next day. We moved on to tomato soup, chili, red sauce and gardeniera (basically pickled veggies, see below just before heading into the canner).

We froze corn, beans, cabbage, cauliflower and peppers. We ground up pears and apples and made Prapple Sauce. Our canning took place in the evenings, mostly after the little ones went to bed so that we both could devote time to putting the harvest up.

So began our late night canning sessions with Nora Jones crooning in the background, and the two of us enjoying a beer or a glass of milk and getting punchy late into the night. Then I hit upon rigging up the lappy as a sort of movie machine and we watched movies while we canned. We watched Hitch and a couple others before one night, when we knew it would be a long one, we popped in the first DVD of The Lord of the Rings. We have the Super Duper Special Extra Long, Director’s Cut Collector’s Edition which means each 3 hour movie turns into a 4 hour movie. In the course of two long nights, we finished the first two movies. We have been working on The Return of the King over the last week or so as our long canning nights have not been so long, or so frequent.

But I must say, I thought I would begin to dread those long nights. When you have small children as we do, there is no such thing as sleeping in. They go down relatively early in the night (between 6-8pm, depending), but they always arise at the same time: 5:30-6:30am. Nothing keeps them from that magical hour. So when you finally rest your tired body on your scrumptious bed at midnight thirty, it is a bittersweet peace. You know darn well that you’ll be up in 5 short hours!

And yet, I did not dread the long nights. In fact, as we fell into a preserving food routine, I began to look forward to it. A few nights into it, and I realized why: Andy and I, for the first time since Elly was born, were getting dates! Now, we’ve been out together here and there, but to know that you will be with your mate one on one for a lengthy period of time, enjoying one another’s presence and mutually bettering the family ... well, that’s priceless.

I will cherish our canning nights. We aren’t done, mind you. As I type, we are silently enduring another late night; Andy making chicken stock from our freshly butchered chickens, me creating this blog and looking forward to the last of the garden harvest the rest of the week. But in a few days, it will all be taken care of. Our lacto-fermented sauerkraut will be stored away, our chicken stock will be canned up, our herbs will be hanging to dry in the basement.

And then we turn inward. Our chores lessen and our home grows warmer. The temperatures plummet and our family time soars. Rain gives way to flakes. Dew turns into frost. Color fades into brown and grey.

And it will come to me, about a month from now, or maybe two. I’ll rush down to the cellar and grab a few items for dinner. It will already be dark, and the wind will be whiping outside. In the kitchen however, the sweet smells of apple cider, slow-cooking roast and mashed potatoes will greet my return. I’ll twist open the jar of Prapple sauce in my hand and all the loveliness of summer will again flow over me. The memories of late nights with my beloved, the hard days of harvest and the wonderful sense of accomplishment placing that single jar onto our cellar shelves had brought me will overwhelm me.

What a wonderful priviledge we have to toil long and hard right up to the end of ourselves. How much greater it is to have another to share that with. What beautiful seasons we have indeed.

That is what Harvest means to me.

Photo Essay: Our September Garden

A family heirloom, this cast iron, hand-crank apple peeler comes from my great grandparents. The base is labeled with the company and the patent date of 1896. I’m not sure it’s actually that old, but I tell ya, this thing does the trick and it’s way fun to use.

I had to show off the plethora of colors and variety of goods that came from our blessed soil.

The kids, enjoying the Sugar Maple leaves (while the rest of the world claims that it’s still summer)!

Just to give you perspective, my mom and Elly stand next to our Harvest Table. The My Little Pony also gives size relevance. No, not really. Elly just insisted that her pony need to go into its “tomato house” and close the door right before I took the photo. Mom is looking for a suitable tomato to be the door. The couch you see behind the table is long enough for a grown man to stretch out on without hanging over. We filled this table three times like this.

Heirlooms galore!

Here’s Elly wearing her “Pepper Cape.” After cutting up 50-60 giant bell peppers, I got a little crazy. Of course, that’s not crazy to a 2 year old. Wearing a pepper clipped on with office clips is totally fun!

One of our new bullcalves, T-Bone. Poor guy, marked from birth!

What you see here are three eggs from our hens. The one on the left is classified as “Large.” The one in the middle would just fit into a “Jumbo” egg carton. The egg on the right would be placed in one of the cartons labeled “Our Hens Can’t Actually Walk Anymore.”

Ethan, after helping me harvest cauliflower one day.

A change of clothes and a flowering cauliflower. Ethan is there for size reference, and for his tactile pleasure.

Both our babes, enjoying a misting morning and an apple and pear for each. Elly actually picked them out for her and Ethan, and another for Daddy and Momma. It’s an understated blessing to have her be so involved in her food.

Thank you Lord, for everything you’ve given us. It’s taken this blog posting for me to truly see the magnificent scope of your blessings.

A little over a month ago, the editorial team here at GRIT was engaged in a fairly spirited debate – they usually are spirited in my experience – regarding the proper manner in which knives are sharpened.

The discussion stemmed from one of the pieces in the January/February issue of GRIT, entitled, “How to Have the Sharpest Knife in Your Drawer,” written by Tom Larson.

Although a couple of us had sharpened knives before, the difficulty arose with trying to craft the words and sentences so people would know exactly what was being done, especially since being right and left-handed plays a big part in this skill.

This led us all to agree – after four of us editors spent a considerable amount of time sitting in a circle with props, sharpening plastic spoons and such on our personalized bench stones (our hands) – that the package for our online edition of the story should include a video.

The need to sharpen my skinning knife was imminent, so the timing couldn’t have been better for me, and I set about trying to acquire a bench stone that would sharpen a skinning knife.

I sprung for it last year and bought myself a new Gerber knife since I’d always used a grinder to sharpen knives. Come to find out, sharpening with a hand stone, and even a strop, is much better than grinding. Grinding your knives can overheat and damage the temper of the steel, and knives once able to shave hair off your arm are rendered dull. The worst thing that can happen to your knife through grinding is for the blade to become curved in places, making it completely ineffective. I was ready to try manually sharpening my blades.

First on my list in setting out to find a bench stone was www.sharpeningsupplies.com, and those folks didn’t disappoint. I was immediately attracted to a very cool-looking Hard Black Arkansas Stone (Model HB376). It came in a wooden box and is beautiful to look at, plus the stone is a hard black Arkansas stone so it’s for achieving the sharpest of edges.

But after talking with SharpeningSupplies.com Manager/Owner John Carmona, he urged me to also consider a combination stone, since he worried that the hard black stone was so fine it’d be tough to employ when dealing with extremely dull knives. He was absolutely right.

Within two business days, I not only had the Hard Black Arkansas Stone in Wooden Box but also the Norton Combination India Sharpening Kit, which includes a combination stone (this one was 8-by-2-by-1 inches), sharpening stone oil, and a black case (Norton IM50 Case-Black) that sits on four little rubber stoppers so you don’t have to hold the case in place when sharpening.

The case is more useful than one might think, since with it you’re allowed to sharpen without using a hand to hold the case in place – very important when trying to keep your extra hand out of the way and your fingers unharmed.

Come to find out, the hard black stone is great to use, but I could have gotten away with just the combination stone. I wouldn’t want to now though, since the hard black stone provides such fine, smooth sharpening that your knife truly will take hair off your arm like never before. I was sharpening last night to the point that I was out of knives and all my blades looked and cut perfectly, but I was so pleased with myself I couldn’t put the stones away.

In the future, after dealing with hides, I will turn to the coarse side of the combination stone (black side), then the finer side (red) before putting the finishing touches on my Gerber with the Hard Black Arkansas Stone. All three made my once-dull knife look and cut just like new once again.

I can only imagine how useful the stones will be when I resharpen blades for filleting fish, an experience that only goes as smoothly as your blade cuts.

For the past month the pumpkin farms near and far are in full swing! Carnival rides, petting zoos, haunted houses, apple cider and homemade fudge … fall fun at its best! The many different varieties of pumpkins – miniature, white and striped, to name a few – are quite different from what I remember growing up. We would shop for our one pumpkin (maybe two) and the family would make an event of carving the design and roasting the seeds. In recent years, I have enjoyed painting designs on the pumpkins and have expanded my designs to include a few gourds. This year I approached the pumpkin farm differently.

This time around, I was looking for unique pumpkins to grow next year in the garden, and I found a few.

 

I also became quite fascinated with gourds and more so now that I actually have some drying.

The drying time differs with each individual gourd based on the size and thickness of the skin. I did end up with one swan gourd from my own garden and also purchased two others along with apple gourds, a huge bushel gourd and a handful of miniature ornamental gourds. I have several books on the subject of gourds and after the drying takes place, they have to be cleaned and made ready to work into pieces of art; in my case it will be a bowl or vase. As I patiently wait for them to dry, I am brushing up on my painting skills so I can apply some impressive techniques. The American Gourd Society has chapters in most states and membership along with a wealth of information about gourds and creating artwork and functional pieces. Another organization, Decorative Painters, is dedicated to painting skills and teaching techniques.

Luffa, also known as the sponge gourd, is not a true gourd. It is currently in the final stages of drying on the vines in the garden from earlier this year.

I had quite a successful crop last summer and made luffa soap for Christmas gifts and will do the same this year, since I am receiving requests for it already! Once the luffa skin dries, it can be peeled away to reveal the sponge within. The seeds are removed and the sponge is washed, dried and cut into pieces to work with.

 

As for squash in my gardens, zucchini has always been a regular member producing plenty to keep my mind searching for new and interesting recipes! Zucchini is a summer squash and another that did very well in the garden this past season was yellow scallop squash.

The summer squash has a thinner skin and can be eaten raw, whereas, winter squash has a much harder skin and should be baked or steamed in the microwave. Winter squash lasts longer than summer squash and can keep up to several months in a cool cellar to be eaten all winter long. Discovering new varieties of winter squash is presently occupying my time as I browse around for gourds and pumpkins. So far delicata squash is my favorite and I made sure to purchase enough to cook up and take to our Thanksgiving dinner so the whole family can experience a new and different dish!

 

Sweet mama buttercup was the chosen squash to try this weekend along with butternut.

We did pick up three more types, and those that I really enjoy I will be saving the seed and growing next year. Delicata is definitely a winner!

Pumpkins, gourds and squash need a large space of the garden to grow. Some varieties grow in a bush manner, but most develop vines, and the vines can reach many feet in length. A trellis or some type of support is recommended for those that don’t become too heavy as they grow. Regular watering and a watchful eye for pests is about all that is needed to grow a successful crop.