Harvest Monday October 7, 2024

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. Harvests are definitely slow here this time of year. I got a bit more of the summer planted lettuce last week, this time one head each of Cherokee and Slobolt. Both of these had gotten a bit long in the tooth but were quite edible. We’ve been enjoying the salads lately, though there will be a gap in the harvests since the next round of plants is still quite small.

Cherokee and Slobolt lettuce

I got another nice harvest of hot peppers, a mix of Aji Rico and Sugar Rush Peach. I’m making hot sauce with the Sugar Rush Peach and pickling the Aji Rico peppers.

Aji peppers

And I also found a Sweetie Pie pepper to go with the hot ones, though Mad Hatter next to it is actually not hot if you remove the seeds and membrane. The red ones are guajillo peppers I dry for chile powder, and the one Will (EightGateFarm) won a blue ribbon for recently. Mine will definitely not win any awards, but they will make tasty powder all the same.

sweet and hot peppers

I let a couple of the Tromboncino squashes to mature, and cut them last week. I put a yardstick in the photo for reference since the squashes are huge! In the past I found the mature Trombo a bit blah in flavor, but I wanted to try it again and see what I think now. I’m also thinking bland is not a bad thing if I use the pureed squash in my morning fruit smoothies. These two weighed a bit over 13 pounds total.

mature Tromboncino squashes

And I got one more mature Centercut squash which weighed over seven pounds. These are my favorite for turning into pumpkin pie and other sweet dessert treats.

mature Centercut squash

In non-harvest news, I baked another batch of Ligurian Focaccia bread last week. This is my favorite focaccia recipe, and I make it with a 50/50 mix of Caputo Pizza Flour and King Arthur All-Purpose flour. I also drizzle it with a Ligurian olive oil before and after baking. The recipe I use is from Salt Fat Acid Heat.

Ligurian focaccia 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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Photo Friday: Our Moab Adventure Part 1

Posted on October 4, 2024 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Last month my wife and I made a trip to Moab, UT to visit Arches N.P. and other sites. We have been planning to go there for years, and it was truly a great trip that we thoroughly enjoyed. We stayed there for seven days, and there was so much to see we could have easily stayed several more days to do more sightseeing. Today I want to share some of the many photos we took of this lovely part of the world.

Arches National Park

Arches N.P. is using a timed entry system to help control visitor’s traffic, and we had several early morning entry passes for our visits. The Moab weather was cool in the mornings, but it quickly warmed up so we were happy to do our hiking early in the day while it was still cool-ish. We visited Arches three days in a row, and saw a lot of beautiful scenery there. The rock formations are amazing, and many are named attractions like the Three Gossips and the Courthouse Towers. The first part of the park includes those two plus the Park Avenue trail and Balanced Rock.

Three Gossips

Courthouse Towers

Park Avenue viewpoint

Balanced Rock

That first day we visited the Windows Section to see Double Arch, which is an amazing formation that was formed by water eroding it from above into two separate arches. There were a few folks climbing up into the arches themselves, but we were content to view from up close and not do any damage to the rocks or ourselves.

Double Arch from distance

Double Arch

We also visited The Windows Section of the park on the second morning, and it includes the Windows arches and the Turret Arch along with the Double Arch and a few other attractions. We did short hikes to see both of those arches. Most of the hikes we did on our trip were from 30 to 60 minutes long, so we could easily do several in a morning before it got hot and we got tired.

the Windows

trail to Turret Arch

Turret Arch

We also visited the much-photographed Delicate Arch that second day as well as the Wolfe Ranch area, which has some well-defined petroplyphs. The Wolfe Ranch was inhabited by homesteaders back in the early 1900s, and it is hard to imagine anyone living in such a desolate area. These glyphs, depicting a hunting scene, were drawn by the Paiute and/or Ute Peoples who are indiginous to this area.

Delicate Arch

Wolfe Ranch cabin

petroplyphs at Wolfe Ranch

Since I’ve got a lot more photos of our visit, I’m going to break this up into two parts and share the rest of the pics nest week. I hope you enjoyed this travel update and I’ll be back soon with Harvest Monday!

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Harvest Monday September 30, 2024

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. I’ll start this week with a weather report, since it is big news in the U.S. The remnants of Hurricane Helene dumped quite a bit of much needed rain on us here. It rained pretty much non-stop for 48 hours, and we got just under four inches total. Thankfully there’s been little to no damage around here and we are lucky because so many others were not so fortunate. It might help the summer veggies a bit, and it will definitely help the fall plantings. The weather station tends to under report rainfall, and I dumped 3.8 inches out of my official CoCoRaHS gauge over the period.

weather station console

As for the harvests, they are slowing down but there are a few new items in the mix. I cut the first batch of the fall planted turnip greens last week to use in a dish with scrambled eggs and other veggies. Topper is a fast growing turnip that makes greens in a short period of time (40 days for this batch). This variety doesn’t make edible roots, and in our garden makes tender leaves with a mild flavor. These had a little bug damage, but no signs of bugs themselves thankfully.

Topper turnip greens

Other harvests included a few small fruited tomatoes, and a cutting of parsley and chives to go in tabouli salad we had for lunch one day.

late September harvest

tabouli salad with curried chicken salad

I’m still getting quite a few hot peppers from the garden, and last week I harvested Aji Dedo di Moca, APS Aji Red Sweet and some gaujillo peppers for drying. It has been a good year for the hot varieties but not so good for the sweet ones.

Aji peppers

guajillo peppers for drying

The summer planted lettuce is giving us enough for salads now. Cherokee is a summer crisp type that I’ve grown before, and it did well this time around. It’s nice to have homegrown lettuce in any season, and especially now in hot weather.

Cherokee lettuce

And speaking of lettuce, I just started seeds for the fall plantings last week. They are coming up now and I will thin them to one plant per cell soon. Next up in my seeding plans are arugula, mizuna and bay leaf kale.

lettuce seedlings

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 September 23, 2024

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. We continue to suffer from moderate drought conditions here, though we did get a few showers yesterday. It wasn’t enough to make a real difference though, and I continue to use the soaker hoses as needed to keep the fall crops going. I did manage to get a few more pole beans picked though, before the vines completely dried up. And I found another mature Centercut squash to bring in and finish curing.

harvest of beans and squash

The hot peppers are still producing loads, especially the one Sugar Rush Peach plant that I started last year and overwintered indoors. I have gotten five pounds of peppers from that one big plant! I also harvested more of the Aji Rico and Aji Colorado peppers, plus a lone Biggie Chile. Most of these will go into hot sauce, and I will dehydrate the Aji Colorados for chile powder. And in case anyone wonders – I make a lot of hot sauce! And since I usually make a ‘thin’ sauce it does take a good amount of peppers. The fermented hot sauces keep well for at least a year or more, and I think they actually get better with a bit of aging.

assorted hot peppers

The container eggplants are still yielding a little bit of fruit, and we’re enjoying every one we get since the in-ground plantings are struggling with the dry conditions. We’ve gotten over 20 pounds so far, which is a bit more than last year.

eggplant harvest

The Aji Delight peppers are producing well for me this year, and these peppers have the usual flavor of a C. baccatum variety but none of the heat.

Aji Delight peppers

We use the Aji Delight peppers much like we would any other sweet pepper, and I roasted some of them last week along with the eggplant. It’s a simple treatment – just olive oil and a little salt, but when the veggies are fresh and homegrown I don’t think the flavor needs a lot of enhancement.

roasted peppers and eggplant

And last but not least, the late summer planting of lettuce is slowly growing and I cut a couple of heads of Tehama last week. The leaves aren’t quite as tender as those grown in cooler temps, but it was quite tasty in a salad I made yesterday for lunch.

Tehama lettuce

In non-harvest news, my wife and I made a trip to Moab, UT last week to visit Arches N.P. and other sites. We had plans to go there last year, but I came down with pneumonia and we had to postpone the trip. It was well worth the wait though, and we enjoyed hiking and sightseeing at several locations. I’ll share more photos later on, since we took a LOT of them!

hiking to the Turret Arch

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 September 16, 2024

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s time once again for Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. The summer harvests are winding down here, I’m that’s not really a bad thing. I will miss tomatoes and eggplant the most, but we have had plenty of both this year and I can’t complain. I’m watering the fall crops of kale, collards, turnips, radishes and lettuce to keep them going until cooler weather and rain return. With any luck, we can feast on them in the months to come. We did get a little bit of rain last week, but not very much.

September harvest

tomatoes and peppers

Hot peppers are still ripening now, and I got a nice mix of the Aji types that included Sugar Rush Peach, Aji Rico, Aji Delight and Aji Dedo de Moca Yellow. We’ve had plenty of the hot ones, even if the sweet peppers have (again) been a disappointment.

hot peppers

I’ve been busy turning the hot peppers into various sauces. I made a couple using fresh green jalapenos, and the rest used fermented peppers. I got 1.5 pints of my Chili Garlic Sauce, and one each of Sugar Rush Peach and an Aji Mixed batch that including several different baccatum (Aji) peppers.

assorted hot sauces

Hot pepper Mojo is another one I’m trialing here this year, from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. The C. baccatum fruits are crunchy with a typical Aji flavor when fresh, and Johnny’s says they “dry into slightly hot, fragrant chile powder”. I have been drying the ones I’ve been getting, and hopefully they will be a good addition to my chile powder lineup. The guajillo peppers are my favorite for drying, with Aji Colorado being another tasty one when dried and ground up.

Mojo pepper

And in non-harvest news, the Downy woodpeckers have been visiting our new suet feeders lately. They seem to like them both, and other birds are occasionally feeding there too. I’ve been feeding the birds most of the summer, and they seem to be enjoying the banquet of feeds I put out for them. I enjoy watching them, so it is truly a win-win situation!

Downy woodpecker

Downy woodpecker

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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