Harvest Monday March 3, 2025

Posted on March 3, 2025 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. Thankfully, the temperatures warmed up enough here last week to melt all the snow we had lingering on the ground. It was actually warm enough one day I worked in the greenhouse in shorts. It turned cold again this weekend, but only back to more seasonal temps and not the arctic cold weather we had last month. I have been keeping the bird feeders filled up throughout the winter, and last week I saw a pair of bluebirds visiting them. They are quite happy feeding on the small seeds I put out as well as the suet cakes. They may well begin nesting in a few weeks, if the weather cooperates.

bluebirds at the feeders

I was able to harvest more lettuce from the greenhouse on a rainy morning last week. This is Thai Oakleaf and Cherokee, both of which survived multiple freezes in the greenhouse while they were growing. Cherokee is a red Batavian type that is known for its heat tolerance and slow bolting, but I’ll have to note it also can take the cold! And the Thai Oakleaf was also bred for the heat.

Thai Oakleaf and Cherokee lettuce

The lettuce appeared in a salad we had one day for lunch. We make a meal of these salads, topped with nuts and cheese (and sometimes beans) for protein. I also like to add croutons I make from our homemade bread. The combinations are endless, and we never get tired of them with all that variety of the greens and the additions.

main dish salad

I also cut more of the curly kale I have growing in the greenhouse. This lot went into a batch of Pasta Fagioli. My version is a hearty soup with cannellini beans, whole grain ditalini pasta, potatoes, aromatic vegetables and the kale. I also added a few of our frozen tomatoes from last year’s garden. We ate on this for two nights, and it was just the ticket for our tastes!

curly kale

Pasta Fagioli soup

And I baked a loaf of whole wheat sandwich bread. I mixed in a half cup of King Arthur Harvest Grains blend, which includes grain flakes plus millet, poppy and sunflower seeds. It made a good base for our sandwiches last week, including one I made with steamed broccoli and sliced cheddar cheese. These Broccoli Melt sandwiches are a new favorite, and I can’t wait to make them when we have our homegrown broccoli available.

Harvest Grains sandwich loaf

Broccoli Melt sandwich

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 please check out what everyone is harvesting!


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Harvest Monday February 24, 2025

Posted on February 24, 2025 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, but we got more snow and arctic cold weather last week. Thankfully the temperatures are forecast to moderate here this week and return to more normal levels. The snow has been on the ground long enough for my tastes and I am ready to see it melt away!

mid February snow

snow covered roads

The temps got down to near 0°F last week two nights in a row. Needless to say the greenhouse was frozen up completely inside.

weather station console

Fortunately, I harvested a few things before it got so cold. The Bergam’s Green lettuce hs held up pretty well, and made a nice sized head for our salads. And yes, I was standing outside in the snow when I got the photo!

snowy lettuce harvest

The collards in the greenhouse have held up well too. I had enough to use in a soup and for a side dish.

collard greens

The soup I made was a hearty one with beans and farro. I sometimes use kale for the greens in this soup, but the collard leaves worked just as well this time. I love the combo of beans and greens, and I also love using the whole grain farro in as many dishes as possible.

Farro and Bean soup

Another meal featured some of our stored foods. I baked up  couple of Bonita sweet potatoes, which have a moist and sweet white flesh. And, I found a bag of Lady blackeyed peas in the freezer that I cooked up to go with the sweet potatoes and the main course of fish.

Lady peas and Bonita sweet potato

Yesterday I baked up a loaf of Easy Everyday Sourdough Bread, using heirloom Rouge de Bordeaux flour for the whole wheat flour in the recipe. It baked up tall, with a good crumb and lovely flavor. It should be a great base for sandwiches, and after slicing it up I will freeze it for later use. That end slice didn’t last long though, and my wife and I shared it for a snack.

Easy Everyday Sourdough Bread

crumb shot of bread

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 please check out what everyone is harvesting!


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Harvest Monday February 17, 2025

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. I am surely ready for spring to arrive. We got a bit of snow early last week, and even more yesterday morning when a big rain storm turned to snow. Winter just doesn’t seem ready to go away! With bitter cold temps forecast for later this week, it will be a while before things thaw out here.

February snow

That said, I am getting a few harvests of lettuce of lettuce from the greenhouse. They are welcome additions to the menu for salads this time of year.

greenhouse lettuces

We made one salad last week with lettuce and other greens from the greenhouse. It was topped with nuts and some croutons made from my homemade bread, and a bit of fruit we didn’t grow.

salad with mixed greens

And I made a small cutting of curly kale from the greenhouse to go in soup. The Winterbor and Starbor kales are holding up well so far, with Winterbor doing a bit better.

curly kale

We also used some of our purple sweet potatoes from storage to make hash. Cut into cubes and tossed with a little olive oil, I roasted these in a cast iron skillet until they were crispy on the outside but still soft on the inside. This is one of my favorite treatments for the dry fleshed sweet potatoes like the Purple variety.

purple sweet potato hash

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 please check out what everyone is harvesting!

 


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Harvest Monday February 10, 2025

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. The fresh harvests are still small here, but all are welcome – plus we have lots of food from last year’s garden that we have preserved. I cut some lettuce and baby kale to use in salads last week. We love the sturdy greens like kale and mizuna, and I have a lot of them growing in the winter greenhouse now. We made a salad with these last week, topped with nuts and some croutons made from my homemade whole grain bread, plus a bit of fruit I didn’t grow.

lettuce and baby greens

salad with greens and croutons

I cut some bigger leaves of kale to use in soup. The kale in the greenhouse has held up well in our cold winter weather, but the plants outside are pretty well toast at this point. I don’t bother to cover them up, since I have the plants in the greenhouse that usually survive the winter and keep us supplied.

baby kale

And I made a batch of Moomie’s Burger Buns last week, which are one of my favorite breads. We try and have a variety of homemade breads in our freezer, and I bake more as needed.

Moomie’s Burger Buns

And for dinner one night I cooked up a pot of vegetable soup, made with veggies I froze from last year’s garden. We served it with some of my Seeded Whole Grain bread, and it was just the ticket for a cold and rainy night.

Vegetable soup with bread

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 please check out what everyone is harvesting!


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Harvest Monday February 3, 2025

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time for Harvest Monday, where gardeners from all over celebrate all things harvest related. It’s another year for Harvest Monday, and the harvests around here have been rather modest lately to say the least. To play catch up, I’m going to share some of the harvests I got from last November and December, before the really cold weather got here. In November I pulled the last of the mature Centercut squashes, and cut some dark crinkly lacinato kale to use in soup.

Centercut squash and lacinato kale

I also had a ‘surprise’ harvest of sweet peppers and eggplant. I call it a surprise, since usually we have a killing frost before then. I can’t remember the last time I harvested these warm season crops so late, but it was a welcome harvest indeed. It wasn’t a great year for our sweet peppers so it was nice to finally have some.

sweet peppers and eggplant

Collards are very much cold hardy, and I made a big cutting of them in late November that kept us supplied for several meals. It’s a mix of different heirloom varieties  I’m growing.

assorted collard greens

One of my favorite treatments for the young and tender collard leaves is to cut them up into thin strips and sauté then in olive oil until they are tender. It only takes a few minutes, and my wife and I both love them prepared this way. In the southern U.S. these are called ‘fried’ collards, and usually fried up with bacon and onions. We prefer our treatment, which is plenty tasty without the added grease.

‘fried’ collards

Soup is often on the menu here when the weather turns cold, and that also calls for bread to go with it. I baked a batch of my Seeded Whole Grain Bread recently, and we ate on it fresh then froze the leftovers for later use.

Seeded Whole Grain Bread

In non-harvest news, we have been getting a lot of woodpeckers at the bird feeders this winter. The big Pileated Woodpecker has been a frequent visitor to our suet feeders. One was sharing one day with a little chickadee, which shows the size of the big woodpecker – the largest in North America.

Pileated Woodpecker and Chickadee

And in other news, I am transitioning away from using Facebook and Instagram. You can follow the happenings at Happy Acres on Bluesky here: happyacresblog.bsky.social. I will keep my Meta accounts for the time being, but use Bluesky going forward. The community there is growing fast, and the platform is evolving quickly.

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 please check out what everyone is harvesting!

 


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