Surprise Harvest(s)

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

I love surprises, especially when they are edible. This week I got two different surprises, both involving root crops.

The first one came when I was tilling the lasagna bed to get it prepared for planting next spring. I grew potatoes there this year, and I figured I had missed a few when I dug them. So when the tiller ‘found’ the first potato, I wasn’t really shocked. Then it found another, and another, and finally I decided to start a little pile of potatoes, most of them wounded by the tiller.

When I was done tilling, I had over three pounds of potatoes! They seemed to be keeping even better underground than the ones I had dug and stored in the cellar. Since I was roasting a chicken for dinner that night, I used the worst looking ones and made some roasted garlic mashed potatoes for a side dish. Next year I really need to be more careful when I dig potatoes!

Then yesterday I decided to make some minestrone soup using a veggie mix I froze in the summer when we had lots of cabbage and zucchini. The mix also had green beans in it, so I needed some onions, carrots, potatoes and tomatoes to go with it. I had everything except carrots – or so I thought.

funky but edible carrots

I had left a few carrots in the bed from a summer planting, but I never got around to digging them. I figured they were probably no good anymore. But I didn’t want to run to the grocery, so I got out my trusty trowel and started digging. Which led to surprise #2, a little over a pound of funky-looking but edible carrots! Now I had everything I needed for the minestrone.

minestrone soup

Well, everything except some crusty bread to go with it. So I whipped up a loaf of half whole wheat/half white French bread. It’s been a while since I made French bread, but this one turned out well if I do say so myself.

whole wheat French bread

Something else I did with the harvest this week was make some green tomato jam. I’ll do a post on the recipe later, but I will say it was pretty interesting, not at all like I expected. I was looking for something different to do with a few green tomatoes (the last of the season), and I really didn’t want to go to the trouble to make relish with them. This jam made for a sweet alternative.

green tomato jam

I finally harvested the second (and last) ‘Ichy’ persimmon off the little tree. My wife and I shared it, and loved it! We’re hoping for more in the future, as our two young trees get bigger. These Asian persimmons are eaten while still hard and crisp, much like an apple.

Ichi Ki Kei Jiro persimmon

Also harvested this week were lettuce, turnips, and some arugula that went in a green smoothie. Total for the week was almost 9 pounds. For more gardener’s harvests visit Daphne’s Dandelions and see what’s growing and cooking!

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Seeing Green

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

My wife and I recently attended a class on making green smoothies. I have to admit, I was a bit apprehensive beforehand. OK, actually I was a LOT apprehensive!

I had flashbacks to the days when wheat grass and carrot juice drinks were popular. My memories of those? Blecchh!!! I am happy to say I was very pleasantly surprised at the smoothies we made. None of them were at all nasty tasting, and some of them were downright yummy! It is definitely a taste that grows on you.

Green smoothies are now all the rage in the raw food movement. Proponents claim a plethora of health benefits come from drinking them. There’s no doubt they are high in fiber and loaded with antioxidants and phytochemicals. Many greens are also high in Omega-3 fatty acids, and blending the greens helps the body digest and assimilate the nutrients more easily.

The general recipe is to mix 60% fruit with 40% greens, and blend in a good strong blender with water or other liquid. The Vita-Mix blenders are popular, but our Osterizer does a good job too. Any mix of fruits and greens can be used. My goal is to get more fruit and greens in my diet, so variety is a good thing. The smoothie in the above photo had apple, banana, and mango for fruit (the banana and mango were frozen), and raw turnips greens and arugula (fresh from the garden). The taste was amazing! I used about 1 cup of cold water for the liquid.

Green smoothies don’t always look green. If you use blueberries or blackberries, the resulting smoothie may wind up purple or even brown. While a nice green color may be visually appealing, it really doesn’t matter. A purple, red or brown smoothie is good for you too!

Basic Green Smoothie Recipe Print This Recipe Print This Recipe

A powerful blender like a VitaMix is best, but any blender will do. The resulting smoothie may just not be as smooth.

  1. Add 1 cup cold water
  2. Add 2-3 fruits, totalling about 2-3 cups. Common fruits are apple, banana, peach, pear, mango, papaya, pineapple and berries like strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, etc.
  3. Finally, add about 2 cups of chopped greens. Mild tasting greens include spinach, lettuce, kale, celery, Swiss Chard and parsley. Stronger greens include turnips greens, broccoli leaves, endive, arugula, chicory, cabbage and mustard greens.
  4. Blend until smooth. (use short bursts if necessary)
  5. Drink and enjoy!

The green smoothie makes for a great liquid lunch, or do like my wife and I do and have it for an afternoon snack. It fills you up without filling you out!

Posted in Food, Recipes | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

Frozen!

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

This week brought our first freezing temperatures. It got down around 25F one night, and below 30F another. All the tender herbs and vegetables are now history.

basket of Sun Gold tomatoes

The Sun Gold tomatoes were still producing in early November. They’ve given us tomatoes for five months now, starting to produce in mid June. I’m going to miss them for sure!

Sun Gold tomato on the vine

There were quite a few blooms still on them. Pretty amazing given the cold weather and several frosts lately!

Sun Gold tomato blossoms

After the freeze they are pretty sorry looking.

tomato blossom and leaves after the freeze

I decided to harvest a lot of the chard leaves before covering them with the cold frame for protection. I’m hoping to get these plants to overwinter and give us some more greens next spring. I froze some of the chard for use this winter. I plan to use it in frittatas and soups. There was a little over two pounds of chard in all.

Bright Lights and Virgo chard

I harvested the last Brown Turkey fig of the season. It wound up on my breakfast yogurt one morning, along with some sliced banana and homemade granola.

figs for breakfast

I will miss the fresh figs, but I did make a small batch of fig preserves. And we dried some of the figs so we can enjoy them later too. I enjoyed some of the preserves on the English Muffins my wife made last week.

fig preserves on homemade English muffin

I picked any ripe tomatoes I could find, and a few green ones that may ripen later. I fried some of the green ones for dinner last night. We don’t eat much fried food, but we love fried green tomatoes! I dredge these in a cornmeal/flour mix and fry them in a little oil.

fried green tomatoes

I also harvested kale this week, plus a cucumber, lettuce and arugula from the greenhouse that went on a salad. The total harvest for the week was a little over 9 pounds, bringing the total harvested for the year to 844 pounds. For more gardener’s harvests, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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A Fresh Look

Posted on November 7, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

This week my wife and I went to a viewing of the documentary Fresh The Movie. The viewing was sponsored by a local food coop. We missed an earlier showing sponsored by our meat CSA), which is how we first learned of this 2009 movie. We joined about 15 others who came to watch this 72 minute film.

The movie examines the current dysfunctional state of our food system, and features farmers, business owners and activists who are trying to re-invent it. It manages to avoid being judgmental or preachy while exploring thorny issues such as agricultural pollution, loss of crop diversity, humane treatment of animals, and the increasing use of chemicals to grow our food crops.

The film visits Joel Salatin’s Virginia Polyface Farm (featured in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and shows his innovative and unconventional approaches to sustainable farming. Joel’s methods include moving his cows from one pasture to another every day to allow them to feed on fresh forage while their manure enriches the field. Then he brings in his chickens in portable coops where they can forage through the cow dung for bugs. We all laughed when he talked of the importance of letting the chickens express their “chicken-ness”, but he made his point.

Also profiled is former professional basketball player Will Allen and his not for profit organization Growing Power. At a 3 acre urban farm in the heart of Milwaukee, Will and his staff have created an “idea factory” to teach and inspire others how to grow food sustainably. The farm uses food waste and other organic materials (including waste from a local brewery) to make tons of compost to feed the soil and their crops. Vermicomposting (using worms to compost waste) is an integral part of their closed loop system that turns millions of pounds of local waste into compost and castings.

Another prominent figure in the movie is David Ball, a Missouri grocer and entrepreneur who reinvented his family supermarket chain by partnering with area growers to sell locally grown food at affordable prices. His success story serves as a model for other businesses to support local growers, and to offer consumers an alternative to food that has been transported long distances.

We had a nice discussion after the movie, which revealed an audience with many different backgrounds. Our host is a nutritional consultant, who purchased a license for the movie and is showing it to any group that is interested. We also had a local produce grower there, who told us of his frustrations in having one local supermarket after the other stop buying from him because he couldn’t meet their price demands and still make a living.

Another topic of discussion was a local farmer’s market that allows sellers to market produce bought from wholesalers and shipped in from who-knows-where. I refuse to buy anything there from a grower who displays pineapples and bananas and out of season vegetables! At another farmers market, across the river in Henderson, Ky, they got rid of the out-of-state-and-season produce by requiring the sellers and produce to be truly local. A newly elected city official has promised to work on cleaning up the Evansville farmer’s market.

I urge everyone to see this movie if they have a chance. While much of the material may not be new to those who have read Michael Pollan’s books, it makes for informative and powerful viewing. Be a part of this grass-roots movement to change our food system, one person and one plateful at a time. Our food system has gotten out of whack just in my lifetime, and together we can work to make it safe and sustainable again.

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This Year’s Garden Winners and Some Also-Rans

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

If there’s one thing I have learned over the years, it’s that gardening requires planning, patience and flexibility. Every year brings different challenges and rewards. This year was certainly no different.

Last year we had unusually wet and cool conditions. That was hard on the tomatoes, but great for beans, peppers and eggplant. This year we had record heat and drought, which was a 180 degree change from last year. And the garden results showed it, with different vegetables playing a starring role. I try and grow a diverse mix of species and varieties, because you never know which ones will perform well given each year’s unique growing conditions.

Fairy Tale eggplant

One big winner here this year was the Fairy Tale eggplants. I started seeds indoors in early March, then planted them outside in large pots on April 28th. The first eggplants were ready to harvest on July 1st, and since then we’ve enjoyed more than six pounds of these little jewels. I will grow them again next year, and maybe try the miniature Hansel variety as well. It is another type with small eggplants that is supposed to do well in containers. Having these eggplants in containers near the house made it easier to keep them watered, while their larger cousins in the main garden struggled with the dry conditions.

Small Wonder squash

Another winner this year were the squashes. A yellow squash called Gentry was extremely prolific here. So was the spaghetti squash Small Wonder. And the winter squash Gold Nugget did very well too, giving us 15 squashes from two well-behaved plants. It appears they liked the large helping of compost I gave that bed before planting.

Apache blackberries

The blackberries we planted in 2007 are producing more each year, and likely still haven’t hit their peak. This year we harvested over 10 gallons from our two 25 foot rows. These plantings should continue to improve for several years, and do well for 10-15 years before they need to be replanted. The three thornless varieties planted are Apache, Arapaho, and Triple Crown. The Apache has been the best yielding, while best-tasting honors are a dead heat between it and Triple Crown. The Arapaho is another story. The berries are consistently smaller than the other two, and have very little taste. It also doesn’t yield as much. We are thinking about replacing it, and perhaps trying either the Ouachita or Natchez varieties in its place – or perhaps even both of them.

basket of fresh figs

A surprise winner in 2010 were the figs. I had never grown figs before I planted one Brown Turkey and one Hardy Chicago in 2008. We got a few figs last year, but this year they really took off and gave us 8 pounds of lovely, sweet fruit. That had me scrambling to figure out what to do with them, which is a nice problem to have! I added a Conadria plant this year and one of Celeste. So far the figs have been an easy to grow addition to our medley of fruits.

some of the 2010 tomatoes

The tomatoes were a mixed bag this year. The early varieties like Early Girl and Champion did very well, continuing to fruit all season through late October. Most of the small fruited varieties also did well, with Sun Gold, Sweet Baby Girl, Juliet, Golden Rave, Sapho and Black Cherry really producing. Principe Borghese and Fox Cherry did not do well, and won’t be back next year.

stake and weave system used for paste tomatoes

The paste tomatoes were grown this year using a stake and weave training system, which worked out real well. Big Mama, Amish Paste, Viva Italia, Super Marzano and Health Kick were our favorites, with San Marzano and Pompeii our least favorite.

The larger slicing tomatoes didn’t fare as well. The heirlooms all produced very little, with even long time favorites like Golden Queen disappointing. The Brandywines did nothing, and neither did Giant Belgium, or Opalka. We got a few Druzba and Magnus, but they were unremarkable. Old standbys like Better Boy, Celebrity and Whopper produced, but not as well as usual. Two varieties that really stood out were Jetsetter and Jetsonic. They will be back next year for sure. I will have to take a hard look at whether we grow the larger heirlooms next year. Our tastes have changed, and we find we get more use out of the small-fruited and paste tomatoes. Our plantings next year will reflect those changes.

Peppers mostly disappointed this year. The same varieties that grew like gangbusters last year have languished this year. Next year I will add some irrigation if conditions are dry. That’s about the only change I can think to make. Other gardeners around here have said it was a lousy year for their peppers too.

fall kale

And to end on a positive note, the fall plantings of greens and turnips have done very well. We’ve had lots of turnips and their greens, as well as chard, and now kale is ready to eat. With any luck they will continue producing for us on into 2011. And 2011, of course, is another year, which no doubt will bring its own set of challenges to gardeners and gardens alike!

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