Happy Acres Blog

Harvest Monday August 14, 2017

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. The past week was a busy one here, with lots of both harvesting and kitchen time. We are at the height of tomato season (or is that the throes?), and I brought in over 60 pounds of them last week in all sizes and colors. I felt like a magician trying to make them all disappear! There’s a big tub of Juliet in the below photo, along with a mix of paste tomatoes in the strainer. We used the processing types to make unseasoned sauce, ketchup, and tomato paste. It was a joint effort between me and my wife that sure involved a lot of stirring on the stove! I also dehydrated more of the small fruited types, and made a batch of marinara sauce for the freezer.

August harvest

We’ve been eating a lot of the big slicing tomatoes either on sandwiches or as a side dish. They’re all AAS Winners in the below photo, and from the top it’s Chef’s Choice Orange, Chef’s Choice Pink and Chef’s Choice Yellow. All have been giving us lots to eat lately, and I’m not sure I have a favorite among the three. More tasting is required!

Chef’s Choice tomatoes

The Chef’s Choice Pink is a lovely pink beefsteak with meaty red flesh. It has a nice sweet taste, with few seeds, and it has starred on several sandwiches so far this year. It met up with grilled eggplant and cheese one day for lunch, stacked on some of my fresh-baked whole wheat bread. That sandwich came back again yesterday for lunch, with the Chef’s Choice Yellow tomato.

Chef’s Choice Pink tomato

The summer planting of lettuce is still giving us decent tasting leaves, despite our hot weather. I often pluck off a few leaves as needed for sandwiches. I’m not sure which one is in the below photo, but it made an appearance on a BLT one day. I need to start some seeds for a fall planting too.

summer lettuce

Another of my favorite slicing tomatoes is Captain Lucky. It is a green when ripe o/p tomato with flesh that is a lovely mix of green/pink/yellow. Pretty only gets you so far though and Captain Lucky has a great taste to match the striking looks. I was forced to eat the first one all by myself one day when Lynda was out for lunch! She got to join in on the second and third ones though.

Captain Lucky tomato

sliced Captain Lucky

A couple of 2017 AAS Winners showed up in harvests last week too, the Midnight Snack tomato and Mini Love watermelon.

Mini Love watermelon and Midnight Snack tomato

Midnight Snack is a new indigo-type cherry tomato that has the anthocyanin pigment, which gives it a blackish-purple look. The first ones on my vine ripened in the shade so the skin is mostly red. Newer ones setting on have the distinctive dark coloring though. I tried Indigo Rose when it was first released and I was not impressed with the flavor at all, but my wife and I both agree Midnight Snack is very tasty indeed. It’s also a nice size, and should prove very useful for all the things we do with cherry tomatoes.

Midnight Snack tomatoes

Mini Love is a personal-sized watermelon with red flesh and a minimum of seeds. The vines are compact, and poor placement on my part had them being overrun by more vigorous neighbors. Still, I’ve found couple of fruits and hopefully the vines will give us a few more. Next time I’ll plant them near less rambunctious growers.

Mini Love watermelon

Other than tomatoes, more of the winter squash are starting to mature. It’s the cream colored Buffy in the below photo, along with Pinata delicata and a big tromboncino. The tromboncino have wound up in a lot of meals, including one where we spiralized and roasted it before covering it with a marinara sauce.

Pinata, Tromba d’Albenga and Buffy squashes

The eggplant are coming on strong now too. In the below photo the Dancer in the middle is sporting a racing stripe, with the purplish-black Nadia on the left and Galine on the right.

Nadia, Dancer and Galine eggplant

That’s a sampling of what I’ve been harvesting. Things have been coming in so fast I’ve had a hard time keeping up with it all , which is not a bad problem to have for sure. I did manage to bake a couple of loaves of bread, one of which was not camera shy. It’s a whole wheat sandwich loaf, made using some freshly ground red and white wheat from Bluebird Farms.

Whole Wheat sandwich loaf

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!

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Posted in Harvest Monday | Tagged AAS, eggplant, lettuce, tomatoes, tromboncino, watermelon, winter squash | 15 Comments

Planting For Fall

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Dave @ HappyAcres

I’ve been busy the last week or two getting things started and planted for the fall garden. I actually replanted the I’itoi multiplier onions almost a month ago. They had died back so I lifted and divided them up. I’ve been using these mostly as green onions, and it is so handy to have a perennial onion around for that purpose. In addition to ones outside in the ground, I have more planted in a container and a small planting in the greenhouse bed. The ones in the greenhouse kept us supplied through most of last winter.

I’itoi multiplier onions

I started seeds for broccoli, cabbage, kale and kohlrabi four weeks ago, and those plants are ready to start going in the ground. I’ve been hardening them off outside while they wait to be planted. That’s kale in the below photo, mostly open-pollinated types like White Russian, Lacinato, Dazzling Blue, Red Ursa and Improved Siberian plus a few hybrids including Darkibor, and Starbor.

plug flat of kale seedlings

I’ve already planted a few of the Darkibor amongst the spring planted Prizm kale. Hopefully the new seedlings can find their way up through the much larger neighbors. I really had planned on pulling all the spring planted kale, but these Prizm plants looked pretty healthy after I trimmed them up a bit. I also spread some compost and organic fertilizer before setting the new plants, and gave everyone a drink of Neptune’s Harvest fish and seaweed fertilizer. Everyone seemed to appreciate that and responded with a flush of new growth.

the old and the new kale plants

A couple of doors down from the kale I set out 30 kohlrabi plants in another coldframe bed. I planted a mix of Kolibri, Konan and Quickstar there. I’ll grow the larger Kossak kohlrabi in the main garden area where I can give them more room. I’ve got another coldframe bed ready for lettuce once I get some seeds started.

kohlrabi in coldframe bed

In the main garden, I’ve got a couple of things planted already. I set out two Red Racer cocktail tomato plants back on July 13th. This is a 2018 AAS Winner that was just announced this summer, and Harris Seeds and Garden Trends Wholesale made transplants available for garden communicators and the media to try out. These compact determinate plants get to about three feet tall, and I’ve got them supported by some galvanized wire round cages. I set out two in the main garden and a third in a Smart Pot behind the greenhouse.

Red Racer Cocktail Tomato

They are just now starting to bloom, and I hope to have the first ripe ones in early September. You can read more about them in a post I wrote when they were announced.

blossoms on Red Racer tomato

I’ve also set out a few late summer squash plants nearby. The spring planted ones were all done for, so I decided to see if I could get a few from a fall planting. Powdery mildew is sometimes a problem here in fall, and Astia is a zucchini with a compact growing habit that is supposed to have PM resistance. I also set out a plant each of Flaminio and Clarimore. I started the seeds about three weeks ago in 3.5 inch pots, so they have a head start and should take right off.

zucchini plant

And lastly I pulled the spring planting of Derby bush beans and resowed them in the same spot for fall. These have been doing so well I hated to pull them, but I believe a fresh planting can do even better. Meanwhile we can enjoy the pole beans.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this update, and I’ll be back soon with more happenings from Happy Acres!

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Posted in Gardening | Tagged beans, fall planting, I'itoi onions, kale, kohlrabi, tomatoes | 6 Comments

Harvest Monday August 7, 2017

Posted on August 7, 2017 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. I have a newcomer in the harvests this week and it’s a squash! A baby butternut squash called Honeybaby, to be exact. Honeybaby is a 2017 AAS Winner and the latest entry in the ‘smaller is better’ squash category. The four in the below photo averaged 19 ounces each, the largest weighing almost 1.5 pounds and the smallest just over a pound. I’ll let them cure for a couple of weeks before we get our first taste. The two plants are still loaded with fruit so I am hopeful for about a dozen or more total. Also hanging out with the squash is a big haul of pole beans.

Honeybaby winter squash with pole beans

Honeybaby squash

It’s still tomato season here for sure. I collected a nice assortment of small fruited types last week for dehydrating. I see Sunpeach, Sun Sugar, Juliet, Black Cherry and a couple of unnamed Artisan seeds test varieties in there.

small fruited tomatoes for dehydrating

We were out of dehydrated tomatoes so I will try and dry enough this year to last us for a while. Drying and slow roasting are my two favorite ways to preserve the small fruited tomatoes, and we use a lot of them that way throughout the year.

dehydrating tomatoes

I got the first two large eggplants last week. It’s the dark purple Nadia and the pinkish purple Dancer. Nadia is a more typical Italian type, while Dancer has a white and mild-tasting flesh. Both of these wound up sliced and grilled. With more coming on, I can see eggplant and tomato sandwiches in my future!

Nadia and Dancer eggplant

And speaking of tomatoes, I got enough paste tomatoes last week to make a batch of Freezer Tomato Sauce. I don’t can tomato sauce anymore, since I like the freezer version better plus it is easier to make. The next flush of tomatoes will probably go into a batch of homemade ketchup, and then I will move on to unseasoned tomato sauce and tomato paste. I’m growing the short-vined determinate Health Kick and Viva Italia this year, two of my old standby hybrid varieties that always do well for me.

paste tomatoes for sauce

The slicers are also coming on strong. One noteworthy newcomer is Cosmonaut Volkov. In the below photo the tomato on top is Chef’s Choice Pink, the two in the middle are Cosmosnaut Volkov, and it’s Dancer eggplant on the bottom. Cosmonaut Volkov was a freebie from Artisan Seeds, and I figured it must be flavorful or they wouldn’t be growing it or perhaps using it for breeding stock. I didn’t know how it would perform here though, and I am glad I gave it a spot in the garden. If I had known how good it was going to taste I would have got a better pic of it too.

Chef’s Choice Pink(top), Cosmonaut Volkov (middle) and Dancer eggplant (bottom)

My two Cosmonaut Volkov tomatoes may not win any awards for looks, but hey – it’s all about taste here for me. And it had a wonderful flavor, a nice mix of sweet and acid. Another plus, it’s meaty with very few seeds. What seeds it did have were scooped out immediately after the photo was taken, and are now fermenting so I can have seeds to grow this one again next year.

sliced Cosmonaut Volkov tomato

The two container eggplants are still giving us lots to eat. I planted Patio Baby and Fairy Tale, and both have been good in stir frys and grilled. The grilled ones are great for a side dish.

Patio Baby and Fairy Tale eggplant

I got another couple of tromboncino squash last week too. I made a chicken stir fry one night for dinner and served it up over the briefly cooked spiralized tromboncino (aka toodles). I’m going to dehydrate some too, but it’s safe to say it has been a great year for the Tromba d’Albenga vines this year and they are not done for yet by any means! The one in the below photo weighed three pounds, and is hanging out with more of the Honeybaby butternuts. It wound up growing outside the garden fencing, and thankfully the deer haven’t developed a taste for it (yet).

Honeybaby and Tromba d’Albenga squashes

Last, and certainly least, I got the first two Mexican mouse melons last week. I was late getting the seeds planted so the vines are just now starting to bear. Hopefully there will be future and bigger harvests in the days to come. They are supposed to be tasty when fermented, but I don’t think I will be making pickles with them just yet!

mouse melons

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Posted in Harvest Monday | Tagged eggplant, pole beans, squash, tomatoes, tromboncino, winter squash | 19 Comments

Homemade Kombucha

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Dave @ HappyAcres

I have to I say I am not a huge fan of commercial kombucha. I have found some local brands I like, but for the most part I find them all too harsh and vinegary. Though anything homemade is usually better, I swore I wasn’t going to make kombucha at home. I have enough cultures to feed as it is, and I felt like I really didn’t need any more. But all that changed when I took the Making Natural Artisanal Sodas learnshop in Berea, Ky a few weeks ago.

The instructor, Jereme Zimmerman, brought several drinks to the class for us to taste, including water kefir, shrub/switchel, and kombucha. I’m familiar with water kefir, and I’ve been making it for a couple of years now. The shrub (or switchel) is a vinegar based drink that was interesting, but not really my cup of tea. He brought his kombucha brewing vessel with him so we could taste the unflavored stuff, which to my taste buds was better than any commercial ‘booch . But his blueberry kombucha was the star of the show in my opinion. It had a lovely flavor from the fresh blueberries he used, and when he started cutting up pieces of his starter/scoby to hand out, I quickly got in line!

kombucha scoby

This is not going to be a how-to on brewing kombucha, since I am just a rookie and new to the whole process. There are several good books available on the subject, and the Kombucha Nation Facebook group is a great source of free information. I will briefly describe the process though. The first step is to make a substrate for the culture to feed on, which is basically sweetened tea. The tea used can be black, green or white, or even some herbal teas will work. I made my first batch with some Luzianne decaf black tea, because that’s the only black tea I had on hand, and sweetened it with white cane sugar at the rate of one cup per gallon of tea. The sugar is needed for the bacteria and yeasts to feed on, and by the end of brewing much of it will be gone.

gallon glass jar for brewing kombucha

In addition to the sweet tea, you also need a kombucha scoby and a cup of finished kombucha from a previous batch. Scoby is short for ‘symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast’, and different scobys are used to make kefir, vinegar and kombucha. The kombucha scoby is pancake shaped and sort of rubbery, and a new one (or two) is formed every time you make another batch of kombucha. I came home from class with only a scoby, and no kombucha, so I used a cup of GT’s Kombucha (original flavor) for my first batch. The kombucha is left to ferment for 7 to 10 days. During that time the sugar is consumed and the pH is lowered as acetic and other acids are formed. At that point the kombucha can be drank as-is, or flavored and left for a few days in airtight bottles to undergo a secondary fermentation and allow carbonation to develop.

scoby floating

One big advantage to making your own kombucha is you can flavor it to suit your tastes. So far I have tried blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, cherry/vanilla and grape using a mix of fresh and dried fruits plus fruit juice. I made one bottle with coconut water and pineapple, and another with half water kefir and half kombucha. All made very tasty kombucha, and I would make any and all of them again. One of my favorite water kefir combos made a great kombucha too, and that’s what I call pineapple upside down cake. It has fresh pineapple, dried cherries and a splash of vanilla. The flavor combinations are truly endless, and I want to experiment with ginger, turmeric and other fruits as well. I am reusing commercial kombucha bottles for my flavored brews, but other glass or plastic bottles can be used. They just need to be strong enough to hold up to the carbonation that results during the secondary fermentation.

bottled and flavored kombucha

I hope you have enjoyed this update on my experiments with kombucha brewing. I’ll be back soon with more happenings from Happy Acres!

For more information about making your own kombucha:

The Big Book of Kombucha by Hannah Crum and Alex LaGory
Kombucha Nation: Cultures, Health, and Healing!

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Posted in Food, Homemade | Tagged fermentation, kombucha, scoby | 1 Comment

Harvest Monday July 31, 2017

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. It’s hard to believe the month of July is almost gone. We got a brief break from the summer heat the last few days, and I celebrated by doing some weeding in the garden and on Saturday morning I went for a run without coming home drenched. The temperatures are supposed to warm up again this week but hopefully the worst of the summer heat is past us. The garden is doing great though, and harvests are keeping me busy. The pole beans are pumping out almost a pound of pods each day, and there’s over three pounds of them in the below photo. The Tromba d’Albenga squash is keeping us well supplied too. I’ve been spiralizing them, and tonight they’re going to be a base for a marinara sauce. If spiralized zucchini is called zoodles, then my wife decided the tromboncino version should be called toodles!

beans and tromboncino squash

And speaking of marinara sauce, the paste tomatoes are starting to come on now. My old standbys Health Kick and Viva Italia are ripening now, as well as newcomer Marzano Fire.

paste tomatoes

I saved seeds from Marzano Fire last year, and one of the plants is not exactly true to type. This rogue plant has more blocky fruits, and some are almost as wide as they are long. I will be saving seed from this one for growing next year to see what I get then.

rogue Marzano Fire tomatoes

The ones last year had the classic San Marzano shape, longer than they are wide and with a pointed blossom end. In the below photo you can see them together. I will use both kinds to make a single-source marinara sauce to go on the toodles.

Marzano Fire tomatoes

The Juliet tomatoes have started ripening too. I’ve been dehydrating the first ones, and later I will be oven roasting them as well as using them for sauces. I have four cages of them planted this year so I am planning on having lots of my favorite tomatoes!

Juliet tomatoes

I’ve been dehydrating some of the cherry tomatoes as well. That’s Sun Gold, Supersweet 100 and Snow White in the below photo.

mix of cherry tomatoes

And I also dried some of the Sunpeach tomatoes which are coming on strong. They are a deep pink cherry tomato and a sister variety to Sun Gold.

Sunpeach tomatoes

I saved out a few of the cherry toms to make a batch of my Green Bean and Bulgur Salad with Walnuts. That’s always a favorite here when we have fresh beans and tomatoes. The salad also featured some of our fresh parsley and a bit of red onion.

Green Bean and Bulgur Salad with Walnuts

The summer squash plants are all done for now except for the heirloom white pattypan. I got three squash total from the two plants last week. This variety seems better able to deal with the annual invasion of the squash bugs, but we have also had a lot of ladybugs show up to start eating the little buggers.

white pattypan squash

I guess this is turning into the tomato edition of HM for me, probably since they are finally ripening. I got the first taste of a couple of new tomatoes last week. Chef’s Choice Yellow is a 2017 AAS Winner with big, meaty yellow beefsteak tomatoes. The first one to ripen was a bit misshapen, but the flavor was great. It weighed over a pound, and I cut it in half and then sliced up each half. I can’t wait for more of this one!

Chef’s Choice Yellow tomato

The other newcomer is one of the Heirloom Marriage hybrids I’m growing this year called Big Brandy. It’s a cross between Brandywine and Big Dwarf, and the first one had a wonderful flavor, sweet and tart at the same time. The plants are semi-determinate, and next year I probably need to grow them in ‘short’ cages away from the more aggressive growers.

Big Brandy tomato

I did find time to bake bread last week. I made another loaf of the San Fransisco-style sourdough bread I made last month. It’s a lower hydration (61%) bread made using a stiff ‘motherdough’ that I fermented in the refrigerator for 5 days. The motherdough is then used as leavening for the rest of the dough. It proofed overnight in the refrigerator in an oval brotform, then I dusted it with flour before scoring in a zebra pattern and baking in the oven on a hot pizza stone.

zebra scored sourdough bread

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Posted in Harvest Monday | Tagged bread, Juliet, pole beans, sourdough, squash, tomatoes, tromboncino, white scallop | 17 Comments

Happy Acres Blog

Harvest Monday August 14, 2017

Planting For Fall

Harvest Monday August 7, 2017

Homemade Kombucha

Harvest Monday July 31, 2017

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Harvest Monday August 14, 2017

Planting For Fall

Harvest Monday August 7, 2017

Homemade Kombucha

Harvest Monday July 31, 2017

SEARCH THIS SITE

Welcome to Happy Acres!

Happy Acres Weather Station

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Recent Comments

NOW READING

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SOME OF THE BLOGS I FOLLOW