Planting the Garden

 

Our 2013 garden is our fifth garden.  This year seemed later than others due to the weather and general busy-ness.  Anna was a great helper this year!

 

 

Clara mostly watched, either from the little red wagon, or from a nice blanket at the edge.  I admit that I did more watching and picture taking than helping.  In fact, let's be honest.  Eric does everything with the garden.  I just watch and later, during harvest, I cook and preserve.

 

 

Anna helped to plant green beans this evening.  The sky kept threatening to storm, but it held off.

 

 

She's very hard at work!

 

 

Yes, watching is quite nice.

 

 

I love this picture of Anna holding a big old handful of bean seeds. 

And I love this farm girl t-shirt.  "Anything Boys Can Do I Can Do Better."

 

 

Just by observing daddy, she learned how to line the bean seeds up in a row.  And poke them into the ground.  We may have beans coming up in the spinach row...

 

Clara decides to venture off of the blanket to the garden edge.  Not too sure of the grass/dirt textures yet, but she'll get there!

 

 

When our two black barn kitties came to visit, Anna was overjoyed.

Bye, Bye, and Good Night Garden!

 

What a wonderful May evening!

Picking Pumpkins

 

Eric threw some seeds out in a compost pile, and pumpkins and squash grew wild.  We took the girls out to pick some pumpkins a few weeks before Halloween.

 

 

Anna looked at the pumpkins when I asked her to sit on one and said, "Cold I think."  She didn't really want to touch them because they just might get her hands dirty, but she did sit on one for a picture, anyway.

 

Baby Clara watched from her carseat.  At times she was not amused by being so bundled up.

 

Anna sat in the bucket of the tractor as Eric loaded pumpkins.  She especially liked the big ones, heavier and bigger around than her.

 

Eric did all of the heavy lifting, while we watched and took pictures.  :)

 

Anna got to ride on the tractor home. 

 

 

What a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon in the fall!

Baby Food

I always think that the second child must get the short end of the stick.  Well, any child after the first.  You have more time and energy to do more for the first.

 

Let it be said that I am doing something special for Clara that I did not do for Anna.

 

I am going to make her babyfood. 

 

I'm not really sure why I thought it was so big of a job or daunting of a task when Anna was a baby.  Of course, I haven't attempted said job yet, so maybe it is going to be a lot of work.  But right now it seems like it's going to be easy.

 

Here's the plan.  I bought a kitchenaid mixer attachment which strains foods.  I've already used it a lot to make spaghetti sauce from my tomatoes.  Yummmm!

 

I am going to run large batches of veggies and fruits through it to make purees, and then freeze the puree in ice cube trays.  Each cube will be about 1 ounce of food.

 

We had a large abundance of carrots from our garden.  We actually do not happen to eat cooked carrots, and we couldn't possibly eat all of them raw (I did make some carrot cake).  So my goal was to use most of the carrots for baby food. 

 

Since Clara is still a month or two away from eating baby food, I decided to get the carrots into the freezer for now.  I can later pull them out and heat, run through my nifty kitchenaid machine, and voila! baby food to freeze! 

 

 

I washed and peeled carrots for 2 hours.  Yeah, that wasn't so much fun.

 

 

I cut the carrots into slices and blanched for 5-6 minutes.  I eventually figured out that dumping the entire pot of carrots into a strainer, and then putting the strainer right into cold water allows you to avoid having to scoop carrots out of the boiling water and into the cold water and then scooping them out again.  Ideally, I should get a large strainer that can go in my pot so that I don't have to discard the boiling water each time I blanch. 

 

I got over 20 quarts of carrots.  I am hoping it makes a decent batch or two of baby food.  I feel good about saving some money and hopefully having excellent nutrition for my little peanut.  She had better like carrots!



A Corn Binder

 

If you don't know my husband, he's an old fashioned kind of guy.  He likes old wooden clogs from Sweden, hangs original framed paintings of his ancestors on our walls, and sometimes pulls out his great-grandfather's pipe just to have it between his teeth (not to smoke). He also has two great big Belgian draft horses named Jerry and Digger that he occasionally uses for field work.

 

The dog, Sadie, likes to make sure everyone is behaving.  She sat in front of Jerry and Digger just in case they decided to take off.



 

These boys are gentle giants.  I feel fairly comfortable letting Anna be around them.  You can never be too careful, though.  One kick could knock you out.

 

After Eric's first pass at our two rows of corn in our garden, he had to pause to figure out why it wasn't tying the bundles of corn.  The corn runs through the binder and at intervals it is supposed to make a bundle and tie a string around it.  It was bundling, but wasn't releasing any string.  Anna watched her dad work, but was eventually impatient for a ride.

 

So Eric took Anna for a little ride and did the last row.  We now have several bundles of corn, which he leaned up into 3 "shocks" of corn stalks.

 

Afterward, we relaxed in the barn.  Anna and Daddy had their drinks of choice- pepsi and milk.  Anna says, "cheers, Daddy."

 

Little Corn Husker

Our sweet corn from the garden is finally ready (August 12) and we were excited to taste it.  I made Anna work for her supper.  Here is a video of her determined to husk that ear of corn.  She husks corn like she unwraps presents.  Slowly and methodically.

What I like about putting food in jars:

1.  You have to follow a recipe.  This might be tough for some people.  Some daring cooks throw ingredients in a pot and watch the magic happen.  I have never been one of those cooks.  I follow a recipe.  Pretty much every time.  I still pull open the cookbook to see how to make a pie crust, even though I've made pies a hundred times.  I still follow the recipe on the back of the Bisquick box for pancakes, even though I make pancakes at least once a week.  Sure, I experiment sometimes with substituting ingredients if I don't have something on hand.  But my mac and cheese is straight out of the Betty Crocker cookbook.  Somehow I never manage to accurately memorize a recipe and don't even ask me to experiment on a classic!  With canning, you need to follow the recipe to a T, or you risk ruining your hard work or worse, getting sick off of improperly preserved pickles.

2.  Jars of food are pretty on a shelf.  There is nothing better than organizing your little stockpile of jars.  I totally get why people on the coupon shows buy and stockpile.  They have OCD about arranging their treasures on the shelf.  I am not a couponer, but I do enjoy lining up my jars.  The raspberry and strawberry jams are a beautiful red, and the pickles and green beans are amazing shades of green. 

3.  Preserving tradition.  People used to can out of necessity.  Then it became something to do to save money and to put up one's garden.  Now, it is a hobby.  Canned products in the grocery store are so cheap, it is arguable if you really save all that much money canning your own fruits and vegetables.  Plus, frozen products are so handy and taste pretty fresh.  But there is something nostalgic about food in jars that gets me going.  I mean, how neat is it that I am storing my jars where Eric's grandmother (and her grandmother) stored hers for years.

4.  Preserving local.  I am a "local" nut.  I am not a true locavore (someone who eats food only from within a certain mile radius of home).  But I believe in the value of buying local for economic development and to support healthy and vibrant communities.  At work, I am involved in a variety of projects to increase the utlization of local products in our county.  So I guess I'd better walk the walk and talk the talk.

5.  What else am I going to do with all of these cucumbers?  I can't stand to see things go to waste.  And since Eric is REALLY into gardening, I've gotta do something with the stuff!  I used to just freeze everything, but it's not that much less work and the taste of freezer-burnt green beans is absolutely disgusting. 

6.  It lasts for a long time!  Canned products are shelf-stable for 12 months to ? years.  I like feeling that if we had a complete societal meltdown and we all had to live off of the grid and independently, we'd survive a lot longer than most!  I'm not paranoid, and no, we do not have a bomb shelter just in case.

Anna Try It? Yumm, Mommy!

My picky eater is still picky.  But there is a bit of light to this dark cloud.  She seems to like raw vegetables and fruits.  Ok, so not all raw vegetables.  She spits out raw peas (even though they taste like candy to me!)  Here is my girl, all sweaty from running around on a hot afternoon, snacking on a raw green bean freshly picked and snapped.  It was her idea to try it, too.  She's also started eating watermelon and canteloupe.  "Juicy!" she exclaims.

Pickles Pickles Pickles, Oh My!

The past few weeks I have been trying to keep up with the abundance of our garden.  I am very tired of cucumbers and zucchini, two vegetables that ANY gardener can grow because they produce like maniacs.  I am not a huge pickle fan, but my dad loves bread and butter pickles and Eric eats sweet gherkins (little whole pickles).  We do not like relish, but I am even making relish just for fun.  I have also canned over a dozen jars of dill pickles.  I have no idea who is going to eat all of these pickles, and I will very likely be giving jars away to anyone who likes them.  Here is how I can bread and butter pickles:

This is my family's recipe for bread and butter pickles.  You can also find a ton of pickle recipes on the internet.  I recommend looking for ones approved by the USDA and Cooperative Extension, as there are some unsafe recipes floating around out there.  Here is a USDA Guide to Pickling, with recipes.

I just learned that powdered alum, a common ingredient in traditional pickle recipes because it helps to make pickles crisp, is actually toxic in amounts over 1 ounce.  I encountered alum in a dill pickle recipe given to me by a relative.  I was tempted to use it anyway, but it just isn't worth the risk.  I used pickling lime (Ball Pickle Crisp) instead.  We have not tasted the dill pickles yet to see if they are crisp, because it takes a little while for them to develop a good flavor.

Anyway, back to the bread and butters!  Cut your cucumbers, onions, and peppers.  I was crying so badly after 6 onions that I stopped there.  Anna came in and was watching me cut vegetables and she was even crying; the whole kitchen was fumigated with onion.  After my first batch I picked up a Progressive onion cutter, like this one.  I am in love!  I had way fewer tears using this handy kitchen tool.

Let the cucumbers sit under ice for 3-4 hours.  Drain.  Simmer your pickles in the vinegar/sugar/spice mixture.  The spices I use are celery seed, tumeric, and ground cloves.

Stir the pickles every now and then while simmering for 15 minutes.  It takes awhile for them to come to a simmer.  I snacked on some freshly picked blueberries while I was waiting.

I also prepared my jars and water bath canner so that everything was ready to go as soon as the 15 minutes was up.

Pack the hot pickles and pickle juice into hot, sterilized, jars.  Place the hot lids on them and screw on the bands.  Process in the hot water bath for five minutes. 

Remove the jars and place them on a wire rack to cool and enjoy the sound of jars sealing!

Fresh From the Garden

Eric loves to plant his vegetable garden every year.  I love to eat it.  Yesterday's dinner was as follows:

Grilled chicken on a fresh-from-the-garden salad (literally picked an hour prior), green beans freshly snapped, and oven-fried zucchini sticks.  If you try the zucchini sticks, try adding some parmesan or some other seasonings/flavors.  They were pretty bland in my opinion.  Eric didn't even try them.  Otherwise, they were a snap to prepare and are pretty good.

I discovered that my picky eater prefers raw green beans to cooked.  I don't know how long I've struggled to get her to take one bite of a cooked grean bean.  She was so excited to bite into a raw green bean, and once she started she ate about 7-8 of them!  Hey, it's even healthier raw than cooked, so snack away dearie!