Owlhaven » gardening

Mucho randomness

Owlhaven — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:30:46 +0000

The tail end of summer is roaring past me at ridiculous speed.

We opted to skip the ‘big’ fair this year– it costs so much!– but had a great time going to a church carnival on Saturday. They had 50-cent hot dogs, corn dogs, burgers, ice cream, snow cones and cotton candy, if you can believe it, plus free drinks and watermelon. We gave the kids 3 food coupons each and they had great fun eating their way around the place and hanging out with friends. There was also face painting, a bike demo, a car show, a Boy Scout rope bridge and other coolness. Good fun.

My tomatoes are finally coming on– got 9 quarts canned with the able assistance of the kids today. Hooray for them! I’ve done my fill of cucumbers already…might do a bit more relish later this week since my family really loves that. Am also planning to buy peaches this week for canning.

My $700/month pay-only-cash-for-groceries went well this month. I’m feeling like it is doable long term, tho I will definitely benefit from meal planning to keep it feeling easy and not tight. Sometimes I just fly by the seat of my pants with meals, which results in more trips to the store. Much better for the budget to have a plan. The other day I made 3 lasagnas, which felt like a nice accomplishment, and reminded me how nice it is to have prepped food in the freezer. I’m thinking of doing a major cooking day in the next week or two– make a bunch of casseroles, brown some burger, cook some chicken, so I’ll have a bunch of easy meals handy as we start school soon.

Speaking of school, this summer I had the kids continue to do a bit of math and reading all summer, and I really liked it. No one had the chance to forget things, and we definitely fit in learning, albeit at a more relaxed pace. This summer we’ve worked through a couple of the Little House books with the youngest girls, and I’ve so enjoyed it. This year I want to do more reading aloud TO the kids– interesting books that we’ll all enjoy. And having done some school all summer, I’m not dreading jumping back in like I often do near the end of the summer. It’s nice.

We’ll be butchering one of the cows at the end of the month. I’m looking forward to getting my freezer stocked again. John is wondering if we should just butcher both, to save on hay (and livestock hassle) this winter, but I really have no idea where we’d put two cows. When we butchered one a couple years ago, I had to borrow freezer space from my dear MIL, and I’m pretty darned sure she doesn’t have that much space… Am thinking maybe the butcher might rent us space? But I have no idea how much that might cost…

One final bit of news: I’ve been asked to speak at the Oklahoma state homeschool conventions next April. I’ll be leading 3 breakout sessions, which is pretty exciting. Among other things, I’ll be talking about grocery budgeting, streamlining your kitchen time, and prioritizing time when you’re homeschooling multiple children. Speaking of prioritizing time, I’m also trying to figure out how many of my Oklahoma friends I can meet up with while there. It should be really fun!

Lunch

Owlhaven — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 05:39:45 +0000

My lunch today.

From the store: watermelon

From the garden: tomatoes, cukes, canteloupe, and CORN!

Also: this french bread - it has a secret!

Our morning

Owlhaven — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 06:04:05 +0000

This morning we headed out the the garden to see what was going on: apparently a lot more than I realized. We spent probably an hour picking, and then came back into the house to do something with all of our bounty.

First on the agenda was sweet relish. The kids diced about a dozen cucumbers. Into that I added diced onion, sweet pepper, grated zucchini and typical sweet pickle seasonings: turmeric, cloves, mustard, celery seed, sugar, and vinegar. Then we heated the mixture to boiling, ladled it in pint jars, and ran them through the canner to seal them up. We got a dozen pints today.

Next came sweet pickles. The knife work is less time consuming, and you soak the slices in salted ice water for a few hours before canning, but the recipe after that is very similar to relish. Today we got 10 pints of pickles. I didn’t get them into the canner until after VBS this evening, but they’re finally done– hooray!

My 5yo begged and pleaded to be allowed to help slice cucumbers, but I wasn’t quite ready to hand her a sharp knife. So she got the job of cutting the ends off the green beans with a butter knife, which she handled very skillfully. Once the beans were ready, I just stuck them on a big cookie sheet in a single layer to freeze. It might have been more ideal to blanch the beans before freezing, but that was all I had energy for today. Tomorrow I’ll scoop them into quart ziplocks and return them to the freezer. Nice to be getting a stash of food stored away for the winter!

Since my hubby has already started giving them to neighbors…

Owlhaven — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:31:18 +0000

It’s begun already. Earlier it seems than most years. I’m awash in zucchini. I vowed to pick them tiny, I really did. It’s so much easier to pick/eat/give away 6-inch zucchinis than 18-inch monsters. But then we went camping and came back to plants that had gone berserk in our absence. John and I picked 10 zucchini on Monday alone, mostly big ones. John gave one away to a neighbor driving by on his tractor. You could tell it is still early in zucchini season because the neighbor took it with pleasure. A month from now he’ll be running from us.

Here are Tuesday’s zucchini, along with plums, raspberries and the first of the green beans. At least I caught a few at the desired 6-inch size instead of the bully-big-brother size. But what to do with the abundance that is now overflowing our fridge? Monday I used two huge ones– about 8 cups of cubed zucchini –in hamburger zucchini stir-fry. Today there’s zucchini bread on the agenda. And I’ve got a few new recipes to try. There are these nice looking zucchini fries from Dinner, A Love Story. Maybe lunch? Smitten Kitchen has a gorgeous zucchini and ricotta galette. Maybe dinner? And, the most pre-emptive zucchini strike of all: Edible Squash Flowers from Wise Bread. Those recipes, along with my plan to pick zukes TINY should help my current zucchini crisis. What about you? Anybody begged you to take a zucchini off their hands lately?

unexpected fruit

Owlhaven — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 06:41:40 +0000

When we first moved to our place in the country, the landscaping consisted of a hillside full of weeds, a good-sized rock pile, and a bedraggled wild rose that still today ekes out a living on our ditch bank. We dreamed of trees, huge ones, shady and rustling in the wind. So whenever we had a few extra dollars, we’d go buy another tree.

That particular day, we had colorful leaves in mind, and so we went to the nursery and picked an ornamental plum tree. I was sure that we needed to go get the pickup truck to tote it home, but John was equally sure that it would fit beautifully into the back of the minivan. It was one of those moments that flamed to fierceness, both of us frustrated at the other’s bullheadedness.

Tired of doing battle in the nursery parking lot, John forced the tree into the back of the van. Tender toward the tree instead of my husband, I insisted on riding in back to support the tree. Unable to dissuade me, he spun out of the parking lot with unnecessary force, with both me and the tree shifting uneasily around in the back of the minivan at every turn.

My hissed cautions from the back only gave him more of a leadfoot. He was determined to get home where he could escape his shrewish wife. By the time we finally made it there, we were both so upset that the last thing we wanted to do was plant a tree together. We did somehow, but as I watched his strong angry shovel toss fresh dirt grave-like onto the root ball, I knew I’d never be able to look at this tree without remembering the feelings of this moment. Including the shame already creeping in at the realization that my cussedness had played way too big a role in the tempest.

I wondered if the tree would die– almost hoped it would, actually. But it was made of tough stock. It grew and thrived and grew some more. Soon the mailbox became hard to see past the plum.

Ornamental it is. The leaves are a lovely purple, especially in the spring when growth is new. But a handful of years after the planting, it surprised us by bearing fruit. Tart, yes, just like the words spoken as we barreled home that afternoon. But lovely for plum jam, and also much coveted by hungry children who spend July afternoons swimming. Late in the day just before dinner, they can often be found standing around the tree, reaching high for the ripest, warmest, deepest-purple treasure.

I still wish I’d handled that day with more grace, more love, less stubbornness. But instead of being a bitter memory, that tree to me is now living evidence of resilience, of forgiveness, of grace, and of unexpected blessing, more than we deserve.

Farm kids

Owlhaven — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:33:56 +0000

What my hubby and 6 of my kids did this afternoon

More details

Pantry pictures

Owlhaven — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:00:42 +0000

A few of you asked to see our pantry after all the canning. My kitchen is not especially huge, but I’m lucky to have a really nice-sized pantry. The space is triangle-shaped, with two sides of the triangle taken up with deep shelving and the third side of the triangle being double doors for easy access. This first picture is the right hand side of the shelving, looking in. Each shelf fits about 30 quart jars. As you can see, I’ve got pint jars stacked in some places, so there are actually more than 30 jars on several of the shelves.

You may also be able to see the 2-quart jars at the back of the bottom shelf. Those jars are from my grandmother. I sometimes can grape juice in them, but more often I use them to store dry goods like wheat germ, popcorn, Ethiopian shiro (ground chickpeas), and cornmeal. Below the bottom shelf, out of the picture, is a space big enough to keep an 18 gallon Rubbermaid. In that Rubbermaid I store opened 25 pound bags of flour, sugar, rice and oats. The Rubbermaid keeps these opened bags bug-free until I need to use them. I have smaller bins of each of these items close to my baking center.

This next picture shows part of the left side of my pantry. A cupboard blocks me from getting the whole thing. The shelving is actually a couple feet wider than the picture shows. There’s also one more shelf below for small appliances, and floor space below that where I store potatoes and dry beans in small bins. The lowest shelf visible in the photo usually contains cans of food from the store, not canned tomatoes. But I took this picture at the end of September when my home-canned goods were peaking, and my store-canned goods were all eaten up. However, in truth I do not buy many canned goods. Tuna, salmon, condensed milk, pineapple, and occasionally coconut milk are almost the only canned goods I buy.

This final picture is of the food we got during our last run through the garden before the frost. Besides what you see in the picture, we also got about 2 bushels of green tomatoes, which we wrapped in newspaper to ripen in the garage. Using this tactic, we usually have fresh tomatoes to eat until December. They are not quite as wonderful and juice as summer-ripened tomatoes, but they are still better – and cheaper – than store-bought!

How to: Freezing corn

Owlhaven — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:31:57 +0000

This week we have devoted a few hours to freezing some of our abundant corn crop. It’s a fairly simple project, but after three people in two days asked me how we do this, I thought it might be worth offering a brief tutorial here.

Start by husking the corn and removing all the silks. My kids have discovered that rubbing a dry washcloth gently on each ear assists greatly in removing the pesky silk. Then the corn needs to be blanched. Fill the biggest pot you own about 3/4 full of water, and let the water come to a rolling boil. Once the water is boiling, set as many ears of corn in the pot as can be submerged, and let it cook for 3-5 minutes. Remove the corn from the pot.

At this point the official wisdom is to immediately plunge the corn in ice water for a minute or two, to stop the cooking process. If you only have a moderate amount of corn, no problem. But we tend to have such ridiculous amounts to process that I run out of ice quickly, and frankly, I don’t see any problem with the corn continuing to cook for a few more minutes. So I simply set the hot corn on the counter on a nice absorbent bath towel, and let it cool.

Once it is cool enough to handle, slice the kernels off the cobs. You can use a special doohicky if you have one, but I find that a nice sharp knife works quite well. About 6 passes of the knife down the length of the corn cob, rotating the cob a little with each pass, does a great job of removing the kernels. You want to go deep enough to get most of the kernel, but not so deep as to cut into the sharp membrane kernel-holders stuff deep in the cob– you know, that stuff that gets stuck between your teeth if you bite too deeply into an ear of corn.

I find that it works well to cut the corn onto a cookie sheet or casserole dish, because the lip of the dish keeps the corn contained. Once you have a good heap of corn cut, you can transfer it to whatever storage containers you’ll be using. Think about what constitutes a reasonable amount of corn for one meal for your family. The year I chose to use gallon size ziplocks, I regretted it. Packaging was easy, but the quantity was just too much to use in one meal. This year I froze some corn in 3-cup plastic containers, and the rest in sandwich size zip-top bags that hold about 2 cups of corn. I’ll need to thaw a couple bags for a side dish for a meal for my family, or maybe just one bagful if I want to add corn to a winter soup.

Once the corn is packaged, with as much air removed from each package as possible, simply put the bags or boxes in the freezer. You’re ready to enjoy late-summer corn goodness all year round!

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It must be August

Owlhaven — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:47:41 +0000

This past week I have been sucked into the garden/canning vortex. We’ve been given free picking rights to a friend’s apricot and plum trees. Plus the garden is exploding: cukes, peppers, zucchini, corn, and the beginnings of the tomato crop. Saturday yielded a couple dozen each of cucumbers, corn, and tomatoes, enough to overload my counters.

In the past week we have canned apricots, plums, apricot jam, plum jam, sweet pickles, pickle relish, and plum chutney. I have never done chutney before– I used a recipe that I adapted from Recipezaar.

Plum Chutney

Makes 10 half-pint jars

Ingredients

6 cups plum puree (seeded plums, whirled in food processor)
2 cups brown sugar
2-1/2 cup white sugar
1-1/2 cups white vinegar
2 cups seedless raisins
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup minced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons grated ginger
1/2 packet fruit pectin (optional, for thicker sauce)

Directions

Combine sugars and vinegar in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring until sugars dissolve. Add remaining ingredients; mix well and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook gently 30-40 minutes until slightly thickened. Stir often to keep chutney from scorching. Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal. Process in boiling water bath for 30 minutes. For best flavor, allow at least one month to season before opening.

Saturday…sacrilege?

Owlhaven — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:03:57 +0000

You might remember that this spring we got 18 chickens with the plan of having a flock of egg-layers. The feed store only had straight run chicks, so we figured we’d just make chicken dinner out of whatever roosters we happened to get.

Well, roosters we had in abundance. Loud ones. And for those of you who are not familiar with roosters and think that they only crow in the mornings, that is a fallacy, pure and simple. Ours crow about every 37 seconds all day long.

After listening to the din of 8 — yes, eight — roosters for the last month or so, my husband decided that today was the day that seven of them would meet their…ummm…freezer compartment. It was either that or be run out of the quarter-section by the neighbors.

The 4 youngest girls became aware of dad’s foul plan only when the first 3 roosters were delivered to the kitchen, headless and neatly skinned. (Yes, among many other talents, my hubby is a tidy chicken-skinner.) The 13 year old was horrified initially– a puzzling reaction since she’s seen chickens, sheep, and goats being butchered many times in Ethiopia. However she and most of the other kids quickly recovered from the shock, and raced outside to watch Dad.

The 4 year old wasn’t disturbed in the least by the sight of the roosters, and was perturbed when she was told she could not go watch. The 7 year old’s upset lasted longer, and she wisely chose to stay indoors where she did not have to witness any unpleasantness. “How could Daddy do this?” she wailed. “And on the day right before Sunday!”

“What’s wrong with doing it the day before Sunday?” I asked, curious.

“Mom! Now when people at church ask him what he did yesterday, he can’t lie. He’ll have to tell them what he did!”

Apparently she is of the opinion that only those with unstained hands should gather before the Lord on a Sunday.