July Harvest and Preserving

Although I post to our Daily Harvest and Preserving pages almost daily, readers of this blog might not get a glimpse of what we grow and raise around here plus what we try to put away for later seasons. So my thought is to share from those links monthly in a separate post. Just looking back on what we had access to is sometimes quite surprising. Another reason to be thankful for the property we have and the ability to produce healthy foods for our family.

July's Produce

free-range eggs
twice-a-day goat milkings - ricotta, chevre, feta
snap and snow peas
strawberries
Russian and Nero kale
Swiss chard
endive
radicchio
radishes
green onions
Romaine lettuce
spinach
mache
arugula
snow and snap peas
winter mesclun mix
red onion thinnings
a tiny amount of basil prunings
fresh hardy herbs - chives, thyme, oregano

July's Preserving

7/1/10 - 14 oz. Romano goat cheese
7/2/10 - 14 oz. Parmesan goat cheese
7/8/10 - 10 oz. Italian seasoned ricotta salata
7/11/10 - 14 oz. Romano goat cheese
7/15/10 - 10 oz. plain ricotta salata
7/17/10 - 16 oz. Romano goat cheese (might not make it though)
7/19/10 - 18 oz. farmhouse goat cheddar
7/29/10 - 14 oz. Romano goat cheese

7/15/10 - 24 pounds blueberries u-picked from Redland Blueberries
(blueberry tart; 6 gallon bags frozen)
7/30/10 - 15 pounds blueberries u-picked from Redland Blueberries
(lost track of how many berries were frozen; lots though)

7/19/10 - 2 pint bags frozen Marionberries
7/23/10 - 2 pint bags frozen Marionberries
7/26/10 - 1 pint bag frozen Marionberries
7/29/10 - 2 pint bags frozen Marionberries
7/31/10 - 2 pint bags frozen Marionberries

7/28/10 - 12 oz. lime basil white wine vinegar
7/31/10 - 12 oz. thyme red wine vinegar

So as you can see this year has been a pretty productive gardening year for us. Plenty of material to work with and to be creative with in the kitchen.

Do You Like Radishes?

Well, do you like radishes? Some people don't. They're spicy...too hot...tough...just don't care for them. Nice garnish, but nothing to really consider eating. I never was much of a store-bought radish person either. But home-grown radishes are really tasty. We have been growing Cherry Belle for the last few years, and then added Scarlet White Tip this year. These are good!

Radishes need to grow quickly enough to avoid being invaded by root maggots or becoming hot and tough, so they need plenty of cool, moist soil. They are a  perfect vegetable for growing in the spring or late fall. The fact that they mature in 30-something days makes for a rewarding effort in the garden when there isn't much of anything else growing. OrganicGardening gives some great tips on growing radishes too.

But what to do with these guys other than putting into a salad? Here's what I do. It's not much of a recipe; pretty much more of a procedure:

Toast a somewhat thick slice of peasant/rustic bread.
Butter it. (THIS is the key ingredient. Don't skip this step.)
Layer thinly sliced radishes over the entire slice.
Sprinkle with kosher salt. (Table salt would work but would not taste quite the same.)

Enjoy, and then find yourself making another helping.

It's the first part of June here, and the radishes are still growing strong. So I've kept up my succession planting. We've had an extremely damp, cool spring which has probably helped. I know that once our temperatures start climbing, the radishes will just be a memory until fall.

My Techie Garden - PlanGarden.com

I debated last gardening seasoning whether to spring for an online subscription to PlanGarden.com. What is PlanGarden.com? Well, imagine it as an online tool allowing you to track the seeds you start, when you transplant, your harvest details, plus a visual layout of the garden. There are probably other online gardening tools out there, but I'm perfectly happy with PlanGarden.com after stumbling upon it. I started using their 45-day free trial early this spring, and by the time that subscription ran out, I was convinced it was worth paying $20 for a full year's access.

One cool feature is the ability to take a snapshot of the screen which can then be printed out or uploaded to your blog as I have done here.

A series of snapshots could be filed in your garden notebook by month showing your progress. Yes, the one I mean to start. But I'm really anxious to use the harvest feature. What better way to determine if a particular variety grew well or even met your taste expectations at the end of the year. I am prone to forgetting exactly which variety of lettuce I really enjoyed or which tomato succumbed to blight early. Their online tracking and ability to enter daily notes will take care of all that for me. There are also handy planting calendars and harvest calculators as well as tutorials to help you get started.

Or if you want to link your PlanGarden site to your blog, you can also do that as I have done here.

Abernathy Creek Farm Garden Design

If you want to check out what their site has to offer, click on the link below.



They also feature gardeners and their PlanGarden sites which can be inspiring or intimidating depending on how you look at it. I'm just excited to finally have a tool to use that won't get left out in the rain to run the ink or disappear from one gardening season to the next. A perfect mix of technology and good old fashioned hard work I say.

Asparagus

This week has been marked by our first asparagus harvest.  Probably due to the fact that I took a little time in early February to cut down the old fronds, pull some major weeds, and drag a little compost over the bed, the asparagus is looking marvelous.

It looked so marvelous in fact that my neighbor who happened to be outside stopped me and asked if that was really asparagus. I walked over to the fence to show him and asked him if he wanted a taste. He asked if it could really be eaten raw, at which point I couldn't actually remember eating it raw myself, but replied, "Sure," and popped some in my mouth as well.  It was so sweet and tender, I began to wonder why I even cook it at all.


Needless to say, I now only lightly steam my garden asparagus. Last night's was served with a little squirt of Bistro Sauce from Cash and Carry which has just enough horseradish in it to make it interesting.  Oh, so good.

 They say you can harvest an established bed for up to eight weeks.  I can only hope I've kept the bed even somewhat vigorous for a harvest even half that long.  Checking OrganicGardening.com for their asparagus gardening tips it would seem I'm on the right track...removing dead fronds before the growing season, keeping the bed as weed free as possible, and mulching in early spring.  As I didn't get any fertilizer put down this spring other than the composted manure, I will be sure to add some after the main harvest is over in order to strengthen the plants for next year.

Any way to coax more asparagus out of the ground each spring will be high on my priority list from now on.

Tomatillos from the Garden

One of my favorite cookbooks is Mexican Kitchen by Rick Bayless. It is pure and simple authentic Mexican cooking. As such, it is one of my main resources to turn to when the garden is full of produce utilizing vegetables and fruits native to Mexican cooking. Specifically, I love the recipes using tomatillos.




I had never heard of tomatillos for many years until I stumbled across them in my seed catalog and decided I should try growing some. They are an unusual looking... small green globes covered in a papery husk. I also hadn’t realized they were the main component of many of Mexico’s green sauces. They are also prolific. These small, innocent little plants usually get planted among peppers and other 1’ x 1’ square plants in my garden, as I seem to forget every year how they grow. They sprawl and crawl and take over an enormous amount of space rivaling that of a well-manured zucchini. Hence, after planting two of these guys this year, I will be way over my head in tomatillos.




Rick Bayless advises using the tomatillos whose husks have turned papery but have not become golf-ball sized yet. After collecting a bowlful of the ripest tomatillos, it’s time to head to the kitchen and remove the paper husks. The husks leave behind a slightly sticky residue so a rinse under cool water is necessary. My favorite way to use them is his “Essential Simmered Tomatillo-Serrano Sauce” although I don’t add as much heat as the recipe calls for and adapt it slightly.

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
Fresh chile peppers (1 ounce Serrano or jalapeno for spicier, 2 ounces banana for milder taste)
2 large garlic cloves, unpeeled
1 small white onion, finely chopped
¼ cup loosely packed, roughly chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (if needed)

Place tomatillos on baking sheet and place under broiler. Boil until skins blister and blacken then turn them over and repeat, about 10 minutes total. Cool.

Roast chilies and garlic in a dry cast iron skillet over medium heat, turning occasionally until blackened in spots and soft, 5 to 10 minutes total. Cool and then remove stems from chilies and peel garlic.

Place cooled tomatillos and their juice into food processor along with cooled roasted peppers and garlic. Pulse until reduced into a coarse-textured puree.

Scrape the sauce into serving bowl and stir in ¼ to ½ cup water to thin to a spoonable consistency. Place the chopped onion into strainer and rinse thoroughly to remove its hot taste (trust me on this little extra step...it works). Shake dry and add to salsa along with cilantro. Season with salt and add sugar to taste if too acidic.

Grab your bag of chips and enjoy!

Busy Season

This is definitely one of the busiest months of the year for us. Family visiting. Church camps. 4H horse fair. Lots of garden harvesting. Berry picking. Animal and house sitting for others. Goat kid weaning and sales. Extra milking.

Therefore, posting here may seem sporadic but should start to improve. I still update our daily harvest here and am just keeping a daily journal posting over at our home blog site, Six in the Northwest.

In other words, don't go away. So many wonderful and interesting things happen around here but there just doesn't seem to be the time to get them posted. Working on that though.

Daily Harvest Here at Abernethy Creek Farm 2009

8.10.2009

goat's milk
dozen and half eggs
2 quarts Nickel fillet green bush beans
6 very large golden beets
1 small Stupice tomato
3 pints everbearing raspberries
2 pints wild blackberries
2 average zucchini
more cucumbers as well as a few slicing cucumbers
2 very large heads Broccoli

8.9.2009

goat's milk

8.8.2009

more cucumbers - too many to keep track of any more
small handful of first green pole beans
3 small tomatoes
more wild blackberries - just enough for milkshakes

8.7.2009

goat's milk

8.6.2009

goat's milk
1 pints raspberries - fall crop coming on strong
1 cup of final marionberries
3 small Stupice tomatoes - all that's been ready yet
8 Orient Express cucumbers
3 good sized zucchini but still manageable

8.5.2009

goat's milk
pint of wild blackberries
picked final batch of Santa Rosa plums

8.4.2009

goat's milk
dozen eggs or so
small bunch golden beets
large batch green bush beans - a little big - should've been picked before we returned from trip
basket of Santa Rosa plums

8.3.2009

goats milk
large bunch basil for making pesto
2 lbs. red raspberries
2 small heads bok choi
1 bunch spinach
2 lbs. Marionberries
radishes and bok choi that had gone to seed were pulled and composted
armfuls of zucchini that had escaped my daughter's eye while we were out of town
20 or so Orient Express burpless cucumbers
6 slicing cucumbers

Due to extended vacation, there are no postings in this date range. Our daughter picked far more zuch's and cucumbers than she could use however.

7.23.2009

goat milk
4 cucumbers
3 zucchini

7.22.2009

1 1/2 lbs red raspberries
3 lbs. marionberries
goat milk

7.21.2009

dozen eggs
goat milk
4 side shoots of broccoli
9 cucumbers
5 zucchini
bunch radishes
cinnamon, sweet, thai, and lime basil
3 head pac choi chinese greens
4 lbs. red raspberries
3 1/2 lbs. marionberries

7.18.2009

3 1/2 lbs. marionberries
1 1/2 lbs. raspberries
1 head Romain lettuce
goat milk

7.15.2009

4 cucumbers
1 zuchinni
2 gallons goat milk

7.14.2009

2 stalks broccoli from side shoots
3 lbs. mixed raspberries, black cap raspberries, marionberries
1 head bibb lettuce
1 head cabbage
2 gallons goat milk

7.13.2009

1 zuchinni
3 cucumbers
2 gallons goat milk
3 lbs. marionberries
2 lbs. red everbearing raspberries
4 lbs. Montmorency pie cherries

7.11.2009

2 gallons goat milk
3 lbs. marionberries
1 1/2 lbs. blueberries
2 zuchinni
3 cucumbers
1 bunch radishes

7.10.2009

2 gallons goat milk
2 lbs. red everbearing raspberries
small basket snow peas

7.9.2009

basket of first ripe marrionberries
6 lbs. Montmorency pie cherries
2 gallons goat milk

7.8.2009

1 head broccoli
2 cups black cap raspberries
2 quarts red everbearing raspberries
1 bunch radishes
5 burpless cucumbers
1 zucchini
2 cups snap peas - pretty much last of harvest
dozen eggs
5 quarts goat milk - now milking additional does since all kids now weaned


7.7.2009

too busy with family to do hardly more than get watering done
3 quarts goat milk

7.6.2009

1 zucchini
1 head broccoli
2 burpless cucumbers - 'Orient Express'
3 lbs. Montmorency pie cherries
3 lbs. Rainier sweet cherries
3 quarts goat milk

7.5.2009

no harvest
3 quarts goat milk

7.4.2009

3 quarts goat milk
4 heads Chinese cabbage - nice large ones
4 head Bibb lettuce - just about ready to bolt in heat
5 lbs. Montmorency sour cherries
10 lbs. Rainer sweet cherries

7.3.2009

3 quarts goat milk
1 pt early raspberries
large bowl snow peas
8 bunches spinach - just about ready to bolt in heat

7.2.2009

3 quarts goat milk
gathered dozen eggs

plenty to harvest - but alas, no time toay. check daily journal for today and you'll see why.

7.1.2009

9 lbs. Montmorency pie cherries
3 lbs. Rainier sweet cherries
1 bunch red and yellow beets
cilantro
3 quarts goat milk

6.30.2009

3 cups sour Montmorency pie cherries
1 zucchini
2 heads Bibb lettuce
1 head Romain lettuce
spinach leaf thinnings
3 quarts goat milk