status updates

September is a busy month and not just in terms of gardening.

Two of my three children have birthdays at the end of the month with one turning 15 and the other turning 6 this year.

Also for reason that are long and tedious we have been without massive amounts of cash which has inhibited my ability to can products mostly because I haven't been able to acquire them.

The garden is winding down although I have some jalapenos that are ready to be harvested.

I had a dream last night that I was pulling carrots where I thought I had planted radishes. It was a pretty good dream. (I like carrot infinently more than I like radishes)

We had some power outages earlier this month that lasted for a little too long.

I was pretty happy with our emergency preparedness because we were able to grab flashlights and radio equipment qucikly since they were all in one spot. Most of the lighting is hand crank so that took a little bit of time to do but we sat on the porch in the twlight while cranking. There are worst ways to spend an evening.

The only semi concern I had was AC. It was still pretty warm at night at that point and I could have seen the house getting hotter than comfortable. In our case we would have all retired to the basement if it was a long term outage and luckily we didn't have to but it certainly made me think a little on what else I could do for long term emergency stuff.

Overall September was a good month although it honestly feels like not much got accomplished.

Garden Goodies

So it looks like my first foray into gardening has been a success.

I had cucumbers, although not many. Those are done now though.

My onions continue to grow although they are not going to be massive. I think that's the result of growing in a container with other items. Next year I'll put them in the ground in their own row.

My jalepeno peppers have FINALLY decided to come out and I've picked and used one so far in my peach salasa and have at least 4 or 5 on the plant still maturing.

My cherry tomato plant is ridiculus. I'm pulling ziplock baggies of red tomatoes off that thing twice a week. Sadly, I dont like cherry tomatoes so I've been giving them away after my children eat their fill.

My roma tomatoes have produced 1-2 smallish red fruits per week. Not enough to make sauce which makes me sad.

Mater's and Peno's.

This weekend we finally pulled a carrot from the garden. My helper ate it after we rinsed it off and its' short and stubby. Again, the result of it's container home I think.

Blueberries did not do anything this year (I didn't think they would) and my strawberries are now going crazy with runners but they aren't blooming. That's okay,we had a couple this spring.

Sure, we wont be living off the land this winter with massive food stores but overall it was pretty great watching things grow.

Millions of peaches..but not for free

I totally butchered that song for the title...*sigh*

This weekend I'm getting a case of peaches from my local u-pick and farm. I wont be picking them sadly as they are brought in from another farm for sale at this farm. I will be picking raspberries (hopefully) though.

My plan is to make some spiced peaches (per Wendy's suggestion) and some raspberry jam. The jam and peaches will part of my ongoing hands on canning lesson plan with me as both student and teacher. I will use my "extras" for Christmas gifts this year for co-workers and teachers at the girls school as well as our day care provider for The Boy.

Family will also receive some as gifts along with other small presents this year. I'm trying to make this a more local, more "organic" holiday season and that requires planning to start in July and August.

Luckily I have a massive amount of Strawberry Jam in both "regular" and Strawberry Vanilla flavors.

I'm also thinking of turning some of the peaches into peach butter but we will see how ambitious I get. I STILL need to finish processing some of the strawberries into jam.

On other news my garden continues to thrive and surprise me. My cucumbers are pretty much dead which I had anticipated by this point being that it's so warm here this summer. The tomatoes are doing amazing and daily I am able to harvest a handful of cherry tomatoes. Sadly my picky palate doesn't appreciate cherry tomatoes and so when my eldest daughter isn't around I bring them to work and give them away. (Eldest child loves cherry tomatoes but I think our harvest this year is testing her).

None of the "regular" tomatoes have turned red yet except a few of the Roma's. Next years larger garden I think will contain more Roma's and less cherry tomatoes. I never seem to have enough Roma's to turn into sauce sadly.

I have spotted my first Jalapeno pepper in the garden and am excited to see it although again, not to eat it. Luckily my husband enjoys his food spicy so I will be able to add it to some of his meals from time to time. (Hopefully).

Aside from that onions, carrots and radish all are still in the garden and underground. I'm unsure as to when to harvest those but I'm certain it's not in August.

Goal this weekend:
Pick raspberries
Process raspberries, peaches and strawberries
Clear some space around the backyard and prep for at LEAST 1 tree

The weekend of Berries

This Saturday I rose uncomfortably early and headed to the pick your own located about 30 minutes from my house sans children. While I do normally take a child or three with me on these excursions I decided against it this time since it had been such a tough go of it last time with just the one child.

In June when I picked berries at this same local they were small and tough to find. I was anticipating much of the same but I was determined. My goal was to put up tremendous quantities of strawberry jam. I wanted to make some as gifts for people this year for Christmas and also for my own family.

From my first June batch of jam I had given away 2 half pints of the sweet stuff and it had been well received. In fact I had even received one of my jars back empty it was so well received.

I got to the fields and much to my surprise was met with these kinds of berries:

I was delighted. These were large and easy to reach and they were everywhere!

The woman who drove the tractor out to the fields with us pickers on board informed us that these were "pre-berries" and that the actual crop would come in later this month. I can't even imagine how many strawberries they will have then.

Within 30 minutes I had this:

I took them back to the farmhouse, picked up another flat and 2 smaller boxes and went back out. Within another 45 minutes I had filled the entire flat plus and was done. I was also pretty badly sunburned because my skin is the color of fishbelly and since I hadn't brought children I had also not brought the bag with sunscreen in it. Lesson learned there.

Beginning Saturday night and also Sunday we cleaned and processed the entire first flat plus 2 smaller boxes and made them into Strawberry-Vanilla Bean Jam. I made small 4oz jars and also larger 8 oz jars for gifts and for consumption. Initial home taste testing indicates they are amazing.

I'm unsure if I'll freeze the remaining strawberries or just go ahead and process those as well.

Whatever I do I need to do it soon. The pick your own informed me that raspberries will be ready by August 17th and peaches by the end of the month.

I love canning!

Update as such

The garden continues to produce, albeit not much. I have probably another 3 or 4 Roma tomatoes to harvest tonight and my surprise cherry tomatoes have begun to go from green to orange. My oldest daughter is beyond delighted at the idea of fresh off the vine cherry tomatoes. Well, as delighted as a 14 year old goth can be.

My mind is already racing for the garden next year and what I hope to accomplish. I never did get my raspberries or apple trees in the ground which sets me a year behind my goals for food production. I of course still have time to ready the ground and plant but I'm not sure if planting in 90 degree weather is good for those trees or bushes.

Hubby has agreed to a square foot raised bed next year for the back yard. Again, this wont give us the entire amount of food we need but it will certainly be a little easier. I'm also looking for places/ideas on how to sneak more food crops into that yard.

The front yard has stalled but once the weather cools a little more I hope to get more prep work on that done as well. I think we are going to raise part of the bed there with herbs and helpful insect attractants to the top and possibly surprise root vegetables to the bottom area. But we shall see, my mother in law is a garden/landscape guru so it's just conversations between her and I trying to figure out what we want to accomplish.

I feel a lack of inertia at the moment and also feel the pull of two "worlds" at the same time which makes a lot of this stressful and hard.

One the one hand, I want to be self sufficient with a garden, with home defense, with items at the ready should the world end etc. But if I were to tell my family and friends that I was storing seeds I know I would suddenly become the "odd" duck. I've put out feelers and certainly no one feels the same way about self sufficiently, eating local or prepping.

The other hand, I want to plan for a trip to Disneyworld. I want to live as if there will always be cheap energy and cheap oil and money and food will always be plenty. It's so nice to play like that. But as soon as I get a little money saved toward that goal I worry that I should be focusing that money on other self sufficient items.

It's rough.

Happy Vegetables - or are they fruits?

So last night I could no longer put off harvesting two of my tomatoes as they were a beautiful, bright red which meant they were calling to me "PICK ME NOW! TURN ME INTO GUACAMOLE WITH A NICE AVOCADO!"

They are loud tomatoes. It's the red.

So I picked two of them and a large cucumber. I was hoping to extend my cucumber picking a little longer but this one was good sized and it looked like my cucumber plant was struggling to grow others while providing for this monster.



That is TOTALLY not an upside down happy face that I can't figure out how to fix.

Okay maybe it is. I put the quarter there in the middle for the "nose" to give you an idea of size. I think I did pretty good overall.

Something about sun ripened, on the vine tomatoes smells so earthy and wonderful.

And now I need an avocado.

Locally Grown

I was driving to work this morning listening to my local NPR station which has a Friday segment called backyard farmers. It's one of my favorite programs and one of the main reasons I tune in Friday mornings.

On the way in they talked today about In Season Market which goes beyond, in my opinion. what other local grown vendors do and source their food from no more than 250 miles away. So sometimes they dont have a lot of stuff around although it seems like they are getting more and more stuff week.

They work with local vendors and most of their vendors are found word of mouth. On the NPR program they talked about a lot of their vendors just meeting them at their exits off I-25 to pick up the food for the market.

I'm excited about this store because it shows a lot of what can be provided locally which to me is more important than "organic" because often organic is a buzz word and organic produce from Mexico (or where ever else) still had to burn a lot of oil and energy as well as cause/be a product of question work practices just to get to my table.

Also, food delivery, which is convienent if you can't go to them.

I'm excited about raspberries and beef (not together though). I wanted to plant raspberry bushes this year and it just didn't happen. I also want to buy a whole grass fed cow and store it in my freezer but that is going to take a lot of time and saving to make that happen. In the meantime I can get both at this local store.

I'm putting together a shopping list now for this weekend. At the very least I'd like to get some beef and chicken for dinner next week and maybe some raspberries for canning.