Garlic, Geese and General Stuff

I think my garlic isn't quite ready to be harvested, but yesterday I couldn't stop myself from digging up one bulb to see what it looked like.

If it all turns out as good as this one, I'll be one happy garlic gardener.

The geese love watermelon rinds and came running when I threw these most recent ones into the poultry pasture a few minutes ago.  The chickens also like the rinds but don't stand much of a chance with the non-sharing geese.

The gravely-rubble you see in the picture is the first load of fill we've had brought in to build up and level out the area where we'll be building the new winter waterfowl house.

The miserably hot, humid weather continues.  Yesterday was dreadful.  Our dear daughter put in a "work day" with her dad doing roof work.  (You've heard of making hay when the sun shines?  I guess you could say do roof work when the sun shines also.)  I couldn't very well sit in the shade sipping lemonade while they were doing that so I put in a full day in the garden.  I really wanted to get a couple experimental fall beds planted because rain was forecasted for all day today.

We did wake to very dark skies which opened up into a brief thunderstorm giving us 3/10th of an inch of rain early this morn.  We need more but now at 10 a.m. it's just overcast and very, very humid.

Our first harvest of blueberries also was made yesterday in anticipation of a wet day today.  Eight pounds, six ounces was the total, or 6 quarts plus 1-1/2 cups.  It's a start and we're looking forward to a good, good blueberry season as the bushes are just loaded with as-of-yet unripe berries.

It's too wet to do much outside today so you know that means I get to catch up on all those inside tasks that mostly fall by the wayside this time of year.  Heck, I may even get out the vacuum and actually remove a few layers of dust, dirt and debris.  (Gosh, seems like I just did that a month or so ago . . . )

 

Full-Blown Summer Time

We have the sprinkler going in the garden this morning.  All the heat has made the garden grow like it's on steroids this summer, but presently we're in a rain-less period and everything really needs moisture.

The ripening blueberry bushes got a good watering close to sundown last night.  We haven't made our first picking yet, but soon.

The strawberries are done except for the Everbearers which should give us another (small?) crop late in the season.  I can't tell the flavor of them has improved much over this first harvest period, but Papa Pea picked the last couple of cups of them yesterday and reported (from sampling in the patch) that he thought they tasted more like "real" strawberries now.

Raspberries are coming in, but I think our patch is trying to tell us all the canes are contemplating moving into a retirement home, and we should start some replacements.  Very soon.  We've had excellent harvests from these plants which have to be at least 15 years old and a new patch has been on the list for a couple of years now.  Maybe it will (had better) actually happen next spring.

A week or so ago my old (and I do mean old), but faithful Bee Beyer dehydrator stopped putting out heat.  Wouldn't you know it would happen right in the midst of harvest season?  ('Course, when else would it happen other than when you were using it?  Duh.)

Thankfully (and, yes, I am lucky), my dear husband has the know-how to tear into it . . . and get it up and running again.

Turns out the way the unit is designed, there is an old-fashioned glow-coil (circa 1950s or 60s, he says) with a standard bulb-type electrical base.  The glow-coil is screwed into and held in place by a small plastic bulb holder which after years of use and heat fatigue burned out at it's bottom (don't cha hate it when that happens?) creating a short which disconnected the heating element from the power.  (Got that?)  Papa Pea had a new plastic base in his spare parts inventory.  (How does he do that?)  He added an insulating ceramic screw-in adaptor between the glow-coil and plastic socket base so we shouldn't have the problem again.

I was back in business so I could get another batch of parsley dehydrated.

I harvested the last of the shell peas yesterday, came in and processed them for the freezer and then went back out and pulled up all the spent pea vines . . . with copious quantities of sweat dripping off me.  (That's good for detoxing the whole body, right?)  I ended up with five more servings of peas in the freezer than last year which is better than I expected to get since the peas matured in our hot, hot weather.

With the area where the peas grew cleared, the pumpkins will have more room to spread out.

If I can coerce them into traveling that way.  Which may be a challenge and involve chains and stakes.  And possibly whips.

My beans are about 2" long so perhaps by the end of the week (?), I'll start harvesting them.

A gaggle of geese to say hello this morning.

Then heading to the pond for a swim.

The day has dawned a little overcast so we have the sprinkler going in the garden again.  If things go as they usually seem to, a thorough watering of the berry patches, new fruit trees, raised beds and field garden should bring on a natural rainfall . . . which would still be very welcomed.

Kale, Kale, Beautiful Kale

I don't remember exactly when I first was introduced to kale, but I certainly didn't grow up eating it.  And what a shame, because it's an easy-to-grow, powerhouse of a green vegetable that we love.  I grow it every year in our garden.

 Fresh in from the garden, washed

and ready to use.

Kale contains high levels of vitamins, minerals and brain-boosting (can't go wrong there) phytonutrients. 

It's touted as being good for your heart health, detoxification (a great source of antioxidants), bone and skin health, and cancer and diabetes prevention.

The bigger, older leaves will take on a strong, kinda bitter flavor so I use only "baby" or the smaller leaves for our table.  The occasional leaves that get away from me get tossed into the poultry yard where one or more of our feathered friend varieties enjoy them.

It's been my experience that kale is rarely bothered by any insects.

You can use it in so many ways.  Chop a bit and saute in some bacon fat with onions.  Adding cooked bacon pieces and/or mushrooms adds a bit of the fancy-schmancy.  Steam a big batch of it, add salt, pepper and a little butter, spread out in a shallow baking pan, cover with grated cheese and put in your oven until the cheese is melted.

It's easy to dehydrate.  Then during the winter months, you can toss some into many different soups to add to the nutritional value.

Chop and put in scrambled eggs.  The baby leaves add a nice touch and texture to a tossed salad.  You can find any number of recipes for using kale on the Internet.

 So, are you a kale lover, too?  How do you enjoy preparing it?

Written at 4:45 A.M.

These busy summer days, I'm always tired at night.  Sometimes I'm not even sure I will make it into bed before falling sound asleep.  If I let myself stretch out in a horizontal position during the day (just to "rest" for a couple of minutes), I fall asleep -- klunk, just like that -- usually waking 10-20 minutes later feeling totally disorientated.

But getting an hour or so of (probably) needed sleep in these mornings seems an impossibility.  Even with the blinds closed on the one window in our bedroom, the slightest beginning of daylight signals my body that sleep time is over.

Am I simply being in tune with the seasons?  Sleeping when it's dark, being active when it's light?  Sounds good in theory and when living with the cycles of nature.  I just hope I can survive until winter arrives, and I can go into a sleepy, snuggly, plenty-of-dark-hours of rest, relaxation and restorative sleep mode.

As active as I may appear, I've always said there is a very lazy person inside me longing to get out.  And when she does, I know she'll make a comfy nest of cozy quilts and act like a big, ol' hibernating bear.

In the meantime, I'm gonna go get started on my ridiculously large list for the day.  But it's all good.  There's nothing I'd rather be doing, nowhere I'd rather be.

Now, can I have a second latte, please?

HOT!

HOT!  We've been experiencing temperatures very unusual for us.  The thermometer in the shade has been hitting the high 80s which means it's got to be well into the 90s anywhere in the sun.

HOT!  We had roof work planned for yesterday, but it didn't feel even safe to be on a sizzling roof in these temperatures.

HOT!  I was out early yesterday morning harvesting the first of the shell peas.  With these abnormally high temps, I'm crossing my fingers it won't be detrimental to the whole pea crop.

HOT!  There was an early morning heavy dew on the strawberries so I waited as long as I could to pick them.  (Supposedly handling the plants when wet can cause mold.)  Processing the berries and peas in the (relatively) cool house wasn't too bad.

HOT!  The garden, although growing by leaps and bounds, looks wilty.  No amount of watering with the hose does much good right now.

HOT!  My main freezer desperately needs to be defrosted and organized before I add more of this year's harvest to it.  Why-oh-why wasn't I bright enough to get this done before this heat hit us?

HOT!  I stripped the bed, washed sheets and the light summer blanket, got them out on the lines . . . and they dried in about 8-1/2 minutes!

HOT!  My body doesn't sweat easily.  In this weather I have been positively dripping.  Both Papa Pea and I have been trying to work as much as we can outside, but reach a point about mid-afternoon when we have to say "uncle" and give it up except for the animal chores such as watering, again and again, that must be done.

HOT!  Just too hot for us when we're used to a "hot spell" of maybe three or four days that might reach 80 degrees each summer!

Haskap Berry Frustration

The haskap or honeyberry is presently not well known in the U.S.  If you're interested, I wrote a blog post last year (you can find it here) on their origin and desirable qualities.  Papa Pea and I are always eager to pursue any edible product we can grow right here on our own little homestead that offers us high nutritional value so when we came across the haskap berry plant which is purported to have a higher antioxidant value than the blueberry (which we already grow and enjoy), we decided to try them.  Besides that, we're always ready to try a fruit that can be grown in our short-season location.

This is the first year our four-year old haskap berry plants have produced enough berries to constitute a real harvest.  The bushes are lush, beautiful and healthy.  However, our enthusiasm for the berries is . . . waning.

The berries need about ten days more to fully mature after they turn a dark blue color.  An indication of the ripeness of the berry is when you see a few under the bush which have fallen off.  I think we waited at least three weeks, rather than ten days, before this happened.  We kept taste testing a berry here and there to see if the flavor was changing.  Nope.  Just as terribly sour (picture ugly face here) as when first sampled.

Supposedly they mature before strawberries grown in the same location.  Not ours.  Our strawberries came in about four weeks ago and our haskap berries were harvested just this week.

The information we keep trying to gather seems conflicting.  One source says they bear over a 2-3 week period.  Another says a desirable characteristic of the berries is that they all ripen at once making harvest much easier.  How's that for creating confusion?

Picking the haskap berries is not clean and easy.  The berries are mostly "hidden" down inside the leafy bushes, and it's a game of hunt and seek to find them all.  They are very wet and juicy (no, the bushes weren't wet when we picked them) resulting in fingers and hands stained with juice after picking.

The cleaning task is much more difficult than with blueberries.  Removing any remaining stems (of which there were many) results in half the insides of the berry being pulled out with the stem.  The juice stains any cloth with which it comes into contact.  Really stains.  Even commercial stain remover didn't begin to remove the stain.  Fortunately, the stain did come off my hands!

The final taste test:  Still sour and unpleasant.  I could never eat a bowl of haskaps the way I do a bowl of blueberries.  

We got somewhere between two and three quarts of the little undesirable sour pods of poison gems from our three bushes.  I froze them for use this winter.  Would they make a delightfully delectable jam?  Perhaps.  Our daughter who has made some wonder cordials with fruit in the past wants to take them for that use or possibly to try a small batch of wine.  In some of the information I've seen, they are touted as making excellent wine.  Could be, but I'm reserving judgment on that until I can see (or taste) the proof in the pudding.

Well, as they say, there are no failures in gardening, only experiments.  To date that's all I have to report on our experiment in growing haskap berries!