Garden Report

The alternating hot weather and plentiful rains have gotten most everything growing like crazy.

“Knee-high by the fourth of July” is for under-achievers.  The beans are blooming, the punkins are blooming (with one teensey little green punkin already).  The tomatoes are starting to get a couple of blossoms.  Japanese beetles have become the bane of my existence.  I am keeping a jar of soapy water to knock them into and leaving it in the garden as a warning to other beetles (which hasn’t really made a difference, but it makes me feel better).

I think the bugs have all but killed off the watermelons, but the edamame is flourishing.

Miss Bean’s geranium is still hanging in there.  The other geranium appears to have bit the dust.  The wildflower mix appears to be long on the wild and short on the flower so far.

The flower in the corner has two buds getting close, so I think Miss Bean will forgive me for breaking off the first flower.  The herbs are growing, though the bugs have been in my basil and marjoram.  Also, the chives appear to remain annoyed at the insult of being replanted.

Finally finding a kitchen system

Making grocery lists and planning meals have long been a bane of my existence.  I have A LOT of trouble finding the mojo to sit down and plan a week’s worth of meals, especially doing so the evening before I might actually have a chance to get to the grocery store during a part of the day when the kids aren’t completely tired and acting that way.  For a couple of years now I have been compiling a binder of recipes we use and like so I can flip through it for ideas rather than dragging out a bunch of cookbooks.  Also having my own copies makes it easier to make out a grocery list as some cookbooks have some of ingredients tucked into the instructions, which I never discover until I am standing in the kitchen, knee-deep in prep.  I have a standard format for my binder, so I can find ingredients or prep time in the same place for every recipe.  More recently, I have been experimenting with ways of listing out meals so I can remember what I have ingredients for.  I rarely plan out which meal for which day, but I may make a note that a particularly quick meal would be good for say, Wednesday, when we have park day in the later afternoon and I don’t have a lot of time to get supper together.  I also like to have notes to myself with reminders of things that need to be defrosted (e.g., big ol’ pork roast) or that need some attention first thing in the morning (e.g. crockpot).

While this system has been better than panicking nightly when it is time to start supper there were still a couple of big obstacles.  First, I was having trouble making the list of of odds and ends that come up during the week mesh with the list I sit down and prepare before doing groceries.  Second, I wasn’t very consistent with checking the meal plan list to actually notice the reminders for night before or early that morning jobs.  Nothing like discovering that the only meal that you have ingredients for is a crock pot meal and it is just an hour until dinner.  Third, I rarely get everything we need in one place.  Now that we are in summer, I get my pastured meat and eggs from a nearby farm, my veggies from our CSA on Thursday, other veggies from the local Farmers’ Market on Friday, milk from the mystical milk fairy on Thursday.  Occasionally, I need to run up to the Fitchburg Farmers’ Market if I need pastured lamb.  Several time throughout the summer, we go berrying (strawberries in June, blueberries in July, raspberries in August or early September) or pick up canning quantities from either the CSA market or the local Farmers’ Market.  So…complications combined with the attention span of a fruit fly…not pretty!

There have been two recent additions to my method of madness that seem to fill in the missing pieces.  First, a homeschooling mama at park day said something about using dry erase markers directly on the refrigerator.  Genius.  My dinky dry-erase board wasn’t doing the job, but a big space…

I can list out what is in the crisper drawers from the CSA so I don’t have to go digging.  Upcoming meals are easy to see.  I can make lists of other kitchen business.  The notes in red were items stuck in the upstairs freezer without labels when I finished a roll of masking tape and discovered that we didn’t have anymore (Ms. Bean, the artiste, goes through a LOT of tape these days).  Once I got the tape, I got the jars labeled and in the deep freeze.  I have made notes with cookbook pages for recipes.  Plenty of room for everything I need to remember and easy to wipe off when I don’t need it anymore.

The second element is ZipList in conjunction with my iPod touch.  Since I can no longer live without my iPod, it is always close at hand, so I can add a couple of items to my list as I am standing in front of the fridge.  I can add other things when they occur to me.  Plus, ZipList has all sorts of neat tricks.  List items can be assigned to stores (Co-op vs. Pick-n-Save) and aisle order can be set up for each store so the list appears in the order you go through the store.  There are a few minor kinks that I am sorting out and or getting used to…for example, the last time I added ‘hot dog buns’ to the list, the default aisle was pet supplies.  I am also still working on getting the aisles in order for the stores I use.  Plus getting used to how it works and where things are.  But, I think it will be a workable system in the long run.

It’s Growing!

The frequent rainfall, combined with a few days of scorching temps interspersed here and there has resulted in crazy garden growth.  The corn, beans, and pumpkins/gourds have been going crazy and I am starting to get a little frightened of the oregano (front row, center right).

The tomatoes are still on the small side, but the seedlings didn’t get a great start and then got abused during hardening off, so I’m just grateful as many survived as there are.  I did have to fill in a couple of tomatoes from a friend with some spares, but over half survived a rough beginning!

Miss Bean got a pink geranium and Bug got a sun sugar tomato from our CSA open house last week.  The geranium is thriving next to the lavender in the front and the tomato, christened Hin III, is in the topsy-turvy on the deck.

We get our first CSA box this week and there have been rumors of garlic scapes, so I am very excited.  Also, I think tomorrow morning will be strawberries U-pick.  Yum!!!

The ONLY good thing about the hot weather…

…is that it make green things grow.  After a largely coolish pleasant spring, we have been beset with three days of 80’s and 90’s and plenty o’ humidity.  Not my favorite weather.  But look what it does to the plants:

That was only six days ago!  And wee little things are sprouting all over:

And crazy little herbies (cumin on the left and on the right is basil with its volunteer lettuce friend…I figure we might get a bitsy salad before the basil needs the space):

And crazy little kidlets:

And finally, since I had to be outside to limit the amount of chaos and mayhem generated by the Beeb, I finished some planting:

I wasn’t real clear on which were the roots and which were the shoots on the Lily of the Valley, but I figure they’ll be smarter than I am and figure out which way to grow in spite of my efforts to confuse them.  The rhubarb isn’t looking too pleased about the change, but I am optimistic that will perk up once it gets a chance to acclimate.

Gotta run for now…I have a pan of gyro meat ready to come out of the oven…made with New Glarus ground lamb from Patty Reedy.  The tzatziki sauce, made with homemade yogurt is waiting in the fridge.  Jealous yet?

From the files of “A village no longer in search of an idiot”

First a little animal husbandry.  I’m sorry if this insults your intelligence as I know for a fact that my five- and seven-year-old already know this, but clearly not everybody knows this.  This is the bovine food pyramid (borrowed shamelessly from the Raw Milk Facebook group):
As you can see, the typical bovine diet is very complicated.  Lots of stuff to measure and provide in proper proportions, etc.  Thank goodness for dairy science.  Okay, enough sarcasm. 
Prior to Doyle’s veto, this impassioned plea for a veto appeared in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.  It’s the fifth one down with the heading “RAW MILK.”  While I have plenty of compassion if anyone’s child is sick, I have a lot of trouble with her misleading letter.  Given the cow nutrition lesson above, do you want to know what this self-proclaimed expert on farming and nutrition feeds the cows on her family’s dairy farm?  Do you?  Are you sure?  Okay, you can look here at her blog*, but don’t say I didn’t give you a second chance to back away from the crazy.
How can you compare healthy milk from healthy cows that are fed a diet that is perfectly adapted to how cows have evolved to the so-called milk that comes from cows that eat inappropriate foods that make them so sick to the point that antibiotics are par for the course.  I would say it is like comparing apples and oranges, but I think a better analogy would be “comparing apples to sewage sludge.” 
Sorry for turning into rant central…I have some happier post drafts in the queue and will get to them sooner rather than later, but at the moment I have a whole bunch of ticked off to work through…

*ETA:  If you read Laurie Kyle's blog entry be sure to scroll down to see her response dated 5/30.  Apparently, she needs a copy of the bovine food triangle.  Preferably wrapped around a stick and applied firmly about her head, neck, and shoulders.

Garden Time

Aaaaand, turning to a happier topic…

We will be doing the same CSA as we did last summer so we are getting very excited for lots of wonderful veggies to come.  The things I selected to plant around the yard were things for canning and/or to fill in CSA gaps.  I thought I would photograph, label, and blog so there is at least a remote possibility I’ll remember what is where when things start sprouting.  First, the little garden plot:

Herbs in front…we got the onions as transplants from a friend, the cilantro was just seeded today and the oregano and sage are back from last year

Tomatoes around the edge…three varieties.  We ran way short on canned tomatoes last year, partly due to the late blight, so my motto is “Never too many tomatoes.”

The three sisters in the middle…corn, beans, and squash.  Since we get a ton of regular squash from our CSA, we did half in sugar pumpkins and half in birdhouse gourds.  We will experiment with dried corn and cornmeal with the corn, dried beans to be canned for chili, pumpkins for canning, and birdhouse gourds to dry and make into projects.

Next along the side yard:

Watermelon for eating and rinds for watermelon pickles and a little bit of soybeans for edamame snacks.

In the front:

Lavendar for drying and making lavender syrup.  I have gotten fatally hooked on lavendar white chocolate iced mochas at the ‘Bou and rose white chocolate iced mochas at the Ear.  Wild flowers are for the pretty.  I will try again with bulbs in the fall.  I planted bulbs in the fall shortly after we moved here, but they keep getting nibbled by critters.  Not enough to completely kill them off, but enough to keep them from budding or thriving.  The little SOBs were tunneling under the steps and up into the bed.  So this spring I dug all the dirt (down to clay) out of the planter, made a five sided wire cage out of wire mesh left over from the compost bin project, and put the dirt back.  We’ll let the rodents give it the old college try over the summer and plant bulbs this fall if it is a success.

And finally, herbs on the porch:

The only planting I have left is three topsy-turvey planters that I will plant with seedlings that I’ll get when our CSA has its open house, a rhubarb plant I got at farmers’ market last week and some Lily of the Valley that will be put along the back of the house.  I’m thinking a cherry tomato, a jalapeno, and maybe a green pepper for the topsy-turveys.

Dear Soon-To-Be-Former (but not nearly soon enough for me) Governor Doyle:

Good-bye, good riddance and don’t let the door smack you on the backside on your way out.

I hope the dairy industry and/or public safety have a nice big cushy chairmanship waiting for you.  I’ll bet you’ll be getting a nice fat paycheck for having your name on some board of directors with no actual effort involved.  Why else would you choose to have your legacy remembered as the Governor that killed the family farm and criminalized healthy food?  Here I thought I was living in a democracy where the people had a say.  Turns out I live in a state where the governor can be bought by the highest bidder.  I hope you are pleased with yourself. 

If you weren’t purchased by Big Ag, then you heard Public “Health” telling you the sky was falling and ran into the cellar like a good little chicken little.  That would mean that you think I am too stupid to decide what is healthy and safe for myself and my family.  I hope not.  That is probably the only thing that would piss me off more than having an elected official living in Big Ag’s pocket.

Yours truly,

KittyMommy

Holy Shiitake, Batman!

At what point do I need to start worrying about locking the bedroom door at night?  I'm pretty sure you can actually see them growing if you watch for a while.

There's a fungus amongus!

Last Saturday we ventured out to the Alliant Center for the Garden Show.  Except for the whole screaming heebie-jeebie thing from facing a great mass of humanity all piled into one place, it was an afternoon well spent.  Bean didn't get to look at flowers as long as she would have liked to (see "humanity all piled in one place"), but we promised that we would go look at some nurseries so she can get her flower fix.  We were mostly just looking and getting inspiration, but found a couple of cool things to bring home.  One of these is a Shiitake table-top farm.  We got it unwrapped and set up on Sunday:

and we already have mushrooms sprouting:

The kids are sharing the responsibility of misting the block every day.  They still have plenty of growing to do before harvest, but there are plans in the works for a pizza with some of our harvested mushrooms, homemade mozzarella, and canned from garden/CSA/farmers' market tomato sauce, and perhaps some pastured Italian sausage from the Trautman's farm.

Yogurt 101

I have been making my own yogurt weekly and eating it most days for breakfast.  It is much yummier than the stuff that I have gotten at the grocery store and it (fortunately) isn't very difficult to make!  I got the culture (more on that in a sec), a recipe, and some helpful hints at Dairy Connection, Inc., which is a short hop away up in Madison.  After some experimentation, I think I have it down and thought I would share.

The equipment and ingredients are pretty easy.  First off, equipment:

An appropriately sized seal-able container.  I find that canning jars work swimmingly as I usually make a quart or half-gallon at a time

A kitchen thermometer.  I love my nifty digital thermometer, but I have a cheapy analog that works just as well.  The important temperatures are 185°F, 115°F, and 110°F.

A sauce pan.

A picnic cooler.  It just needs to be big enough to hold the container upright.

Next, the ingredients:

• milk (a quart to make a quart of yogurt, a half-gallon to make a half gallon, etc.)
• the culture.  I have done this two different ways.  One is using 1/8-1/4 tsp of a freeze-dried culture (I use ABY-2C).  The other is using about a 1/2 cup of a yogurt that you like.  I have had consistently good results with the freeze-dried culture and generally good results with the second option using yogurt from the previous week's batch.  I have found that the results have tended to dwindle with time, but I suspect that as I get more consistent from batch to batch the piggy-back results will be better.  I have had a couple of batches that have wandered away from the ideal temperatures and I think that may have degraded the culture for reuse.

The process (taken from here):

Heat milk to 180°F.  I use medium heat and I stir pretty frequently to prevent scorching on the bottom of the pan.  Since I have a tendency to be easily distracted I keep some knitting or a book nearby so I can keep myself from wandering off.  I have been known to run to the computer to check my email and then head right back to the kit---ooo, shiny.  *time passes*  Hmmm, I wonder why this scorched milk is sitting on the stove?  Oh crud.  Yeah.  Not pretty.

Put the milk into the jar and cool to 115°F.  I use a sink of cold tap water.  When cooled add culture and stir gently to mix.  Put lid on jar.

Fill the cooler about 2/3 full with warm tap water (110°F).

Put jar in water in cooler.

Put lid on cooler and leave for about 8 hours.

Put finished yogurt in refrigerator and, when cool, enjoy!  I usually eat with some granola stirred in or some combination of nuts and/or fruit, a little honey or maple for sweetness, some cinnamon or nutmeg.  The possibilities are pretty much endless.

Opting Out

First, obligatory mutterings: Yeah, it's been a while; no, I'm unlikely to try and catch up on what has transpired. Onward and upward. Anyhoo...

While reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, I came across the term "opting out" applied both to homeschoolers (opting out of public schools and all that goes with it) and locavores (opting out of supporting #2 corn production and the whole accompanying military-industrial complex). I have decided that I like the term and am shamelessly co-opting it.

It was a timely discovery as it is what has been living in my head a lot lately. There are (at least) two major sides to opting out. The first is the best part opting out: choosing something that fits better and works for oneself or one's family. This is the good part, the fun part. For homeschooling, this is not having to live on a strict clock and get everyone out the door at the right time to deliver everyone to the places they need to be; not having to have "discussions" with teachers when Bug digs his heels in and/or acts like a lively, active six-year-old boy; watching skills, abilities, and interests unfold and blossom in all three kids, on their own schedules. For eating local, it is getting to eat tomatoes that taste like tomatoes; getting to know the people that are involved in growing our fruits, vegetables, and meats; understanding how local and sustainable can get a lot of petroleum out of the food chain and get more of each of my food dollars into the hands of the actual farmers.

The other side is the downside. And that is pretty much the rest of the world. For homeschooling, it's the fact that everybody (okay, not really everybody, it's hyperbole, people) thinks they know more about what is best for my kids and what my kids need. In this regard, we are fairly lucky. Wisconsin has a fantastic homeschooling organization that has been instrumental in making it one of the more "hands-off" states for homeschooling. On the other hand, there are still the legion of people with whom the standard conversation goes something like this:

Them: Do you have kids?
Me: Yes, three.
Them: How old are they?
Me: Two, five, and almost seven.
Them: Which school do they go to.
Me: We homeschool (and/or clarify that we unschool)

Next comes the helpful advice part. And a big part of me feels really bad complaining about this, as I know that the helpful advice usually is coming from a good place, that the adviser is truly trying to be helpful, and, like me, wants the absolute best for my kids. The problem is that I have thought (a lot) about homeschooling and unschooling; I have read (a lot) about homeschooling and unschooling; I have been in the trenches with trial and error. And a lot of the advice I get is the equivalent of asking someone with kids in public schools if they have thought about keeping lines of communication with their children's teachers open; if they have thought about volunteering in the classroom if they have time; if they talk with their kids about what they are doing in class and as homework. On good days, I can truly appreciate that others mean well, even when their remarks are somewhat misguided. On the worst days, I usually manage to smile and say thank you and keep the crankiness to myself. I guess the upshot isn't so much "I'm crabby and don't want to hear your advice" as that I sometimes get tired of having to explain (and occasionally defend) myself and my choices. There are times when opting out can be much harder work than it seems and it would just be nice to live in a place where the things I do are normal and I'm not such an odd duck. Or that I could select my own communities (which I often do) without having to drive all over creation to meet up with them.

Likewise, as delicious as eating local is, it isn't without pitfalls of its own. Like living in a state where the state government lives in the pocket of big ag where our milk supplier, who was following the rules for distribution, can be shut down when the state decides to "reinterpret" the law in favor of antibiotics, corn-fed cattle, and factory farms. As furious as I am about losing my milk and yogurt, the thing that absolutely scares the dickens out of me is the possibility that the political winds could shift and homeschool law could be reinterpreted in some pretty scary and invasive ways. Plus, with the loss of the milk income, my farmers could lose their farm or decided to move to live and farm in a less hostile environment. Then I would also need to find a new source for my beef and pork and summer eggs. And how ironic is it that the state needs to shut down farms that are doing things right to prevent competition for big ag, while at the same town, the local cooperative grocery can hardly sell enough to stay in business?

Anyway, enough cranky ramblings for now. This is the hazard of storing up too many crabby blog posts over the last several months. Also, I have gotten dreadfully behind on posting finished objects and updating Ravelry. There have been fibery pursuit including at least a partial conquering of my crochet-phobia! More, and more chipperness coming soon, I hope!

*snicker* *snort*

Oh man. It doesn't get any better than this. Eating local and organic, Star Wars, and painfully bad puns...



Clearly, someone out there has too much time on their hands.

Yes I Can!

and have been doing so frequently. Can, that is. I got a pressure canner for my birthday and have been using it a lot. So far this summer I have "put up" strawberry and raspberry (both red and yellow) freezer jams, concord grape jelly, pickled beets, watermelon pickles, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, sauerkraut, beans, greens, creamed corn, and pinto beans. I did the pinto beans as an experiment with my new pressure canner and many other kinds of dried beans will follow when the weather gets cold! The low price tag of dried beans without the hassle of always remembering to soak them the night before? Priceless! At some point, I need to get some pictures of my stash. The grape jelly is particularly lovely if I do say so myself. When I held it up to the light for Miss Bean, she said, "It shimmers like purple diamonds!"

Also, it turns out that the veggies in my chili recipe fit nicely in a quart jar:

So this winter, if I get kidney beans canned, there will be some super easy batches of chili this winter! Other than dumping jars and cooking, the only thing I will need to do is measure and add seasoning, water or beer, and ground been and/or TVP.

There will be at least one more trip to the orchard for apples for apple butter and apple sauce. We got a big bag of eating apples and all the grapes for jelly there last weekend. The concord grape jelly? Between that and the freezer jam, I don't think I am ever going to buy jelly at the store again. The homemade is SO GOOD, that I believed I have been completely spoiled rotten for the other kind. This weekend will be another big batch of sauerkraut as we currently have two CSA cabbages in the fridge.

There are FOs to post and lots of other stuff coming soon...I hope!!!

More recent garden pictures

These are from just two days ago! The front porch tomato has gotten taller than its cage and has several green tomatoes:

The pumpkins appear to be planning world domination, starting with the entire rocky area. Tomorrow, the whole yard; the next day, you might want to be careful when you go out your front door...I'm just sayin'

We have had tons of blossoms, but have only found three little pumpkins so far and all three are sugar pumpkins (pie pumpkins). I really hope we get some jack-o-lanterns, too, or the kidlings will be disappointed! There is plenty of time yet, so I'm not worried yet. Here are two of our tinies (the third picture was even blurrier than these two...)

Next, the main garden with tomatoes growing tall and quite a few green tomatoes. The beets are few and still pretty scraggly and I think there ended up with a grand total of four carrots. Yeah, live and learn, I guess!


The herbs. Top row: cilantro and basil, second row: oregano and sage (not rosemary as I said in the last post)

And last, but certainly not least, Hin the topsy-turvy tomato.

It was clear from the start that Hin was more than slightly neurotic and refused to have anything to do with upside down. If you look at the previous post the vine is grosing in a very insistent U-shape. However, just a couple of days after the last batch of photos, a wind storm finally managed to make Hin see the error of his ways. After a windy night, I went out to check on Hin and discovered that the bottom of the U was now the middle of an S:

Right after the wind, you could see daylight through the broken stem, but the branches beyond the break have continued to flourish, so it appears all is well and no major veins or arteries (or the plant equivilent thereof) were severed. The broken part has even filled in a bit since then.

Old Garden Update

These pictures are over two weeks old, so already woefully outdated, but I'll get them posted and then try and get a set of new pictures in the next day or two.

Container tomato on the front porch:

Pumpkins beside the house:
The whole garden:
Close-ups of the herbs - cilantro:
Basil:
Oregano:
Rosemary (I think, need to double check):
Topsy-turvy tomato with actual tomatoes:
A quick comment about the topsy-turvey...I had been trying to heft the watering can over my head and hit the smallish hole in the planter. The usual result was water all over the deck and me and no clue how much I had given the tomato. After several weeks of this, I finally hit on a solution. I now fill a 12 oz. pop can and put it upside down in the hole. The lid is tapered and the hole is slightly smaller than the can so it just sits there and empties. I am inordinately pleased with myself for coming up with this.

And finally watering the garden: