Eighth of an Acre Bounty

The Friday before last, we went to a local u-pick strawberry field and walked away an hour later with 28 pounds of strawberries. I froze several bags for use later in the winter and I also immediately baked up some shortcake for dessert that evening (real shortcake, not that angels food sponge-like substance you get at the market). I reserved some fresh and some frozen berries for my parents and had the remainder to play around with.

I ended up making a strawberry-black pepper jam and a strawberry-lemon marmalade. Both turned out quite well for my first foray into jam making. I’ve been canning food for years, but somehow never got around to making jellies or jams. We aren’t really breakfast eaters around here and jam or jelly has never been on the shopping list so I suppose it just didn’t occur to me. But - there is more than one use for jam, and Gary does go on PB&J kicks every once in a while.

The first two tries were made using powdered pectin, quite successfully, but I started getting curious about naturally made jams (without added pectin). I was flipping through the Ball Blue Book when I saw a recipe for grapefruit marmalade and I realized that I still had a good number of pink grapefruit in the closet from a bulk purchase earlier this year. The grapefruit marmalade was a two day process, but I am happy to report that it was successful as well! It set up perfectly and is a nice balance of sweet and hints of bitter. I’m thinking it will be great incorporated as a glaze for one of our ham roasts from the half pig we got earlier this year.

By far the easiest little experiment is in the half gallon jar in the picture above. After years of talking about it, this year I am actually experimenting with making fruity booze. The strawberry liqueur is my first attempt. If it turns out allright, by the end of the year I hope to have a little variety of strawberry, raspberry and blackberry liqueuers to bottle up and gife as gifts for the holidays. The assembly was quite simple. I looked up a number of recipes and ended up with a baseline idea of how to approach this. After washing and stemming the strawberries I filled the half gallon jars full of berries. I then poured sugar over the berries (I eyed this, perhaps 3/4 to 1 cup?) and filled to the top with vodka. After a few days the berries had given up most of thier color to the liquid. I plan on keeping teh berries in the vodka for 1-3 months and then I will strain and rebottle the liqueur. I also did the same on a smaller scale with gin. I like gin quite a lot, but know that others are not as fond of it - so I may just reserve those jars for myself and other gin lovers (that is assuming any of it is palateable).

Sunflowers full of promise

Borage

Boy in the garden, planting lettuce in the shade.

A bee with deformed wings. The result of mites, or simply worn out?

A theme apparently developed here, this concludes the furry section of our picture show

A garden intruder, looks like your standard cabbage looper - but check out that red racing stripe along its side. Any body know what this is?

I am letting several bright lights chard plants go to seed this year. These particular plants survived our insanely cold and snowy winter without any protection, so in my book they are survivors and it would be well worth keeping thier progeny around. We save some other seeds around here each year. Obviously the simple stuff like tomatoes and arugula, and Gary saved some cabbage seed last year as well. But here is the issue with the whole ‘urban’ self sufficiency thing. I need more room!

While the chard plants above are beautiful in thier own right - they are taking up a LOT of summertime growing space. I have to constantly do a cost/benefit analysis of the items in our limited garden space. Letting this chard go to seed means we will have plenty of seed for successive years. That seed will feed us well and ideally for a longer period of time since we have selected for plants that showed the most resilience in the cold. But for now, that chard is taking up the space that my tomatoes would be occupying. It is a constant assessment and reassessment game. Delicious fresh greens in the fall and winter means that many fewer quarts of ruby tomatoes for this year.

For the most part I think I am reconciled to mostly just saving seed for annual plants. Those plants that take 2 years to produce seed simply don’t pay back enough for the space they occupy on our little eighth of an acre.  All of this garden economic theory aside, I do get a simple joy out of watching the full life cycle of these plants. So many of our crops we harvest and consume without a thought to what they may look like at the peak of thier maturity. Sometimes it becomes an entirely different animal alltogether…

Despite my promise to post more frequently I’ve failed. You see, I’ve been busy making pie. In fact, the whole household got wrapped up in the pie making for a day or two. You can see Gary’s documentation and newly developed (soon to be patented) pie holder for all this pie here. These pies above are all rhubarb-blackberry pies, made for my cousin’s graduation party from our own backyard rhubarb and blackberries that we picked last fall. Gary was charged with delivery of the pies (since I was going to be at my permaculture class and arriving late to the party) and took his job very seriously.

Eleven pies in total were made, in addition to an asparagus, provolone and egg tart for the permaculture class. (God, the food we eat every class! It has evolved into a full blown potluck each day and I can’t even fully convey the deliciousness that is laid out on the table each morning. There is something to having a potluck with a bunch of gardeners I tell ya). I spent most of Friday cooking, and Gary spent the day making pie racks - what a team, eh?

Gary made this sweet little birdhouse a few years ago from our old fence boards. The first year we set it close to the patio and a pair of chicadees moved in and set up house. We watched thier comings and goings all spring until one day we woke up to a massacre. Nin had decimated the chicks as they tried out thier wings for the first time. (No need to lecture me about the impact of domestic cats on wild bird populations, I struggle with it already. She is the only real hunter of the three cats, and even then she is pretty half-assed about it).

After the slaughter we moved the birdhouse up along the fence and further out of her ‘goatpath’. Bad news travels fast and no birds have set up a home since that summer. Just the other day, I noticed a bunch of winged activity around the entrance, but it was not of the feathered variety. It appears that bumblebees have taken over the birdhouse and now have a nest going. Perfect!

Unseasonably warm weather has our fair city projected to hit 90 degrees this afternoon. Thats right, 90 degrees, in the first week of June. The last 3 weeks have been noting short of remarkable in the heights of temperature reached and lack of precipitation. After whining all winter, I was more than happy to don shorts and a tank top and glory in the warmth, but now I am beginning to worry that the garden isn’t getting that good dose of rain we usually get in May/June to take it through the reliably dry months of July-September.

The warmth has pushed my Oregon Trail Shelling Peas into an abundance of blooms within a matter of days. Likely a good thing as I didn’t set up an appropriate trellising system for them this year, and last year’s cold spring had them growing to heights of almost 6 feet before setting a single flower. This year’s heat promises to keep them at a more manageable height while still promising a harvest.

The Mr. Big peas have already set pods (a 60 day vs. 100 day variety) and boy are they tasty (and short!). Dahl the chicken has gone broody again. This is the second time this year. I am contemplating either finding some fertilized eggs for her this time, or perhaps picking up a chick from the feed store for her to mother. She might as well make herself useful if she is just going to sit on her butt (belly?) all day. Mother Earth had an article this month in which the author had (successfully) experimented with setting a bunch of cornish cross (meat) chicks under a broody laying hen, and let the hen raise the meat birds instead of fussing with a brood box and separating the birds. It’s got me thinking with the red hen just sitting there….

We are scheduled to head up to Laura’s this weekend to help in the processing of the 79 meat chickens she has been raising for our household, her own freezer and several other local families.   Thankfully the forecast has adjusted down to the 70’s for Saturday.

Gary and my father weren’t so lucky with the weather earlier this week. My dad came over to go through the bee box with us and do the weekly check. I was more than happy to pass off the responsibility to him and Gary, letting them crawl into the hot monkey suits on an 88 degree day. The bees continue to be incredibly docile, further making me wish I had just bought a veil instead of the full getup. They are thriving in this heat and put on a daily show for us.

I think I am off my little mini-vacation from blogging now, and have more stories to tell at some point. The next few months have incredibly filled up with various engagements, celebrations and appointments so I suspect I won’t be nearly as regular in posting as when nothing is going on. It feels good though, I love this time of year and things are happening!

“Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating…”

Go here to read the entire text of Paul Hawkens address to the University of Portland.

I know, posts have been few and far between lately. And this post is mostly to say that I won’t be posting for the next few days. We are actually leaving town to get some camping and exploration in. We will be camping in western Montana with friends for a few days but plan on taking the slow way back to check out Northeastern Washington (Okanogan county). I’ve never been up that way and land is still affordable there from what I have seen. Of course in Washington, if land is still affordable, you can be assured it is most likely under water for half the year, or never sees water (in the case of Eastern WA). In any case it seems like a good opportunity to wander around a bit.

A good deal of Washington’s cherry harvest comes from that area and I know there is a significant snow pack in the winter so I am holding out a little bit of hope! I am also hoping that we can get in on the asparagus harvest in Eastern Washington as we make our way to Montana, and with any luck there may be some Morels hiding in the woods. It has been years since we’ve gone camping so I am actually pretty excited to get out there.

It is still hard to leave home at the height of planting/chores season. We have so many unfinished projects right now. I never got the beans planted, we still have to construct trellises, winter squash needs to be planted, potatoes need to be hilled again, etc, etc and ugh. That, and leaving all of the fresh greens that are pumping out of the garden right now after we waited all winter for them is a bit disconcerting. I’d probably be laughed right out of camp if I brought one of my lettuce flats, right? Picture me rocketing across Washington, Idaho and Montana with my safety lettuce in the back of the truck? (Don’t worry, I won’t really do it - but the thought did occur to me!). Hopefully my wild edibles identification skills are sufficient enough that I’ll be able to cobble together some green stuff for dinner without taking the garden with me. Mark that as one of my goal this year, to become much more proficient at wild edible plant identification.

This winter I purchased a one pound package of “chicken lettuce” from Wild Garden Seeds. This mix is made up of seed that was passed over for inclusion in regular seed packets due to rain stains, excessive chaff or lower germination rates. But it is cheap - a one pound package was $19 (do you know how many lettuce seeds fit in a one pound package)? Imagine one and a half quart size ziplock bags filled up tight. On a whim, while starting seeds for other things this spring I took two nursery trays with drain holes, filled them with soil and broadcast seeded the lettuce mix over the top.

Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago when I started harvesting. As I’ve mentioned before, space is at a premium around here. While I did pull off several seedlings from the trays to transplant into wider spaced rows in the garden (for full head lettuce), I left the grand majority of the lettuce starts in the trays and just placed them on the patio table which is functioning as my potting shed at the moment. Round dinnertime when I am wandering the yard in search of green things to put in a salad I take a pair of shears and snip off handfuls of the baby lettuce about an inch above the soil level.

The picture above gives a good idea of the cycles of regrowth. The center area had just been snipped for a salad, the area to left has already been harvested once and is regrowing, and the area to the right of the tray is lined up for tonights dinner. This has been a fantastically easy (and space saving) way to get a greater variety of lettuce greens. The only thing you really have to keep an eye on is to make sure you are watering. Having so many plants so densely spaced means that water is at a premium, but the seedlings usually give you a heads up by looking a bit wilty when they need water.

In other news, I completed my first permaculture class session last weekend and am positively amped about it. I will have to dedicate a separate post to the topic to treat it fully, but suffice to say it is everything I had hoped it would be and I have the feeling I will walk out with a much improved skill set and framework through which to filter all of my endeavors. I also just finished a welding class and arrived home late last night with a brand new garden gate. We still need to set the posts to hang it, and I am debating whether to powder coat/paint it or let the rust set in.

The rain has been coming down in sheets for days now. I am hoping it lets up enough to allow me to construct the bean trellises. The full weekend of class time last week made me realize how much I depend on weekends to get major projects done around here. I feel a bit behind the ball now and hope to catch up this weekend with numerous additional seeds to put in. The knotweed and blackberry over at the land still awaits me as well, although I did manage to clear a 14×10 area the week before last. TIme to get some seeds in over there too!

Just a quick note in case any local people were unaware of the recently created Seattle Urban Farm Co-op. In their own words…

The Seattle Urban Farm Co-op is a community-based project to start a co-op to purchase supplies for urban farmers in the Seattle area.

Our focus will be on obtaining supplies such as animal feed, fertilizers, mulch, seeds, etc., from local & organic sources. We are also promoting the ideas & values of sustainable living. We hope to collaborate with organizations such as “Urban Grange” & “Seattle Tilth” by providing a place for tool & resource sharing, educational classes, community information, etc.

The Co-op is having a meeting at 6pm this evening at the Columbia City Library. We plan on attending and hope to see you there!

The Co-op also has a Yahoo Group and can be found as a group on Facebook.