Last summer evening at the farm

Lucy's goal for this summer's visits to the farm was to go "in" and "up!"

Mission accomplished.

It was a lovely evening all around.

Welcome, fall.

Friday's Flowers: Sunflowers

Our CSA had beautiful sunflowers available for pick-your-own this week. They bring a bit of sunshine into our curtain-darkened rooms (we're hiding from the hot hot sun this week.)


See more Friday's Flowers at FIMBY.

A lot of peas

That's a lot of peas...
(for perspective, this is the tub we bathed Lucy in as an infant, and it's filled several inches deep)

...or is it? Took me an hour to pick them, a few hours to shell them, more time to blanch them and can them up for the freezer...all for just 4 pints. 4 pints?!?

That's our new definition of summer.
Pick it, prep it, preserve it. Repeat.

Thank goodness for our CSA, though. I remember the first time I shelled peas to freeze. I bought several pints at the farmer's market, shelled them, put them in a ziplock bag--a sandwich-sized ziplock bag--and realized the bag wasn't even full and it had cost me $10 plus labor!

These peas came pick-your-own at our farm. I was trying to take a fair share, not be too greedy... but the aisles were filled with knee-high weeds as if no one else was walking there, and the plants were loaded down with peas, so I picked a bunch. I kept thinking if I didn't, they'd go to waste. Is that true? I'll have to check it out next week and see how the plants are looking then.

Next up...foraged cherry plums. More on that to come.

Independence Days challenge update: strawberries!

Apparently, I don't blog well on nice-weather weekends! (Didn't help that our camera's acting up and we got no photos of the world's most picturesque strawberry-picking day or our beach-with-friends day...) So, here it is, time again for Sharon's Independence Day's Challenge:

(back from the farm, we set up outdoors to prep the strawberries for the freezer)

1. Plant something:
Hablitzia (climbing perennial spinach)--I was excited to discover a perennial-vegetable plant stand at the farmer's market this week! I asked what would grow in shade, and this is what he recommended; I remembered having read about it in my forest gardening book, once he mentioned it. I added two of them to my fledgling forest garden.

Roma tomatoes, more double yield cucumbers, and light red kidney beans from seed in pots on the driveway. (My neighbor came home from vacation, and seeing our new pots-on-driveway garden, asked if we needed any more containers. Yes, we do! She lent us two ceramic planters and a metal refrigerator drawer, so we put in more seeds. I know I'm getting a too-late start on some of these seeds, but I figure we might as well put them in and see what happens.)

(peas in our under-clothesline planter box)
2. Harvest something:
Eggs. Good King Henry, swiss chard. Chives and mint by the kids, doing their daily garden snacking. Foraged elder flowers. 15 quarts strawberries (After years of looking, we finally found organic pick-your-own strawberries on a wonderful farm. We'll be back soon; 15 quarts is not enough. But it's what Lucy could stand in the heat.) A few peas from our garden. One black-cap raspberry! :-)

3. Preserve something:
I discovered tons of elder growing at our CSA and worked up the nerve to ask if I could take some flowers. They said yes, so I made elder flower tincture. We also froze 12 quarts of the strawberries.

5. Preparation and storage:
Added a jar of water to storage.

(potatoes growing in a trash can in our garden)

6. Build community food systems:
Nothing much, though we did make plans to bring friends back to the farm to pick strawberries.

7. Eat the food:

(happy strawberry-stained baby)
Salad. Kale chips. Strawberries with corn cake (mmmm). Strawberry lemonade (lemons are my one non-local produce exception, but even still, lemonade is a rare treat for us). Tons of just-plain strawberries. Radish sandwiches. Snap peas. Lots of simple picnic-y fare.

Going to the farm

Wednesday is quickly becoming one of our favorite days of the week, because it's the day we go to the farm. I can't even begin to describe how wonderful it feels to go to "our" farm to pick out the veggies we want, surrounded by new people we're finding we really like who share our values about local food and sustainability (and dear old friends, too!), letting Lucy play with the animals and giving her a chance to see our food growing in the fields... Oh, it's too much. I tried to capture a bit of it in photos this evening, but I didn't do it justice. You'll just have to put up with a few posts on our farm visits this summer.

The board that helps us figure out what we can get.

For the most part, we can just stuff a big huge bag with whatever we choose. Tonight, we got spinach, beets, radishes, turnips, Chinese cabbage, fennel, dill, scallions, kale, and peas.

Our little farm girl. She must have known what day it was when she reached into the drawer this morning and insistently announced "this!" as she chose her chicken shirt. (I love that they have farm-themed toys for the kids to play with while we're there.)

One of my favorite parts--shaved ice from this awesome machine! The ice is topped with fruit syrups they make themselves; I chose strawberry today. How awesome is that machine? And you've got to love a farmer who wears his baby on his back...

Lucy, heading off to the fields to pick peas.

Love this old truck!

Mmmm.

Independence Days challenge: first visit to the farm

(my big huge swiss chard "plot"--but hey, I grew them from seed in my shady yard; I'm proud)

Time again for Sharon's Independence Day's Challenge:

1. Plant something:
Beans in a feeding trough atop my driveway.

2. Harvest something:
Eggs. Lettuce. Guomi berries (our first harvest from this planted-last-year bush. Each kid got to taste one.) Chives, lemon balm, thyme, parsley, lovage.

6. Build community food systems:
I went to a town meeting about some nearby fields the town wants to buy, curious about the rumor that part of it might become community gardens. So far, I was just catching up, in my ignorance. But next time, I will be a more vocal advocate.

We went to our first CSA pick up at "our" farm. (In the past, I bartered for food with a organic-farming family in my program, so didn't have need of a CSA; and when that ended, I couldn't get in to the farm I'd chosen, so I stuck with the farmer's market. But I'm thrilled to be there at last.) What an incredible place! We're very excited to meet some of "our people" there--you know, enviro-conscious, local-eating, food-preserving freaks like us. And we're thrilled for Lucy, who gets to hang out weekly with goats, ducks, and crowds of chickens, and to play on the cool play structures they've rigged up for the kids. And me, I get to eat shaved ice with maple syrup while I choose whatever goodies I want to fill my bag! Mmmm. (If I had a spare $1,500, I might have to buy one of those cool machines myself!)

7. Eat the food:
We had a giant bag full of fresh produce this week. What unusual bounty, after the winter! And we bought 6 quarts of strawberries and some asparagus this week, too, so we were in produce heaven. We ate strawberries alone, strawberry muffins, strawberry-oatmeal bake, and strawberry-chard smoothies. We ate roasted asparagus and pasta with asparagus. And fried rice with bok choy, turnips, radishes, and eggs. And green eggs with chard. And stewed rhubarb with honey. Guomi berries off the bush. Lettuce from our garden with dressing made with our herbs.