Robin Hill Gardens – Page 82 – Be joyful though you have considered all the facts

Independence Days – Week 8

Amie’s drawings of a flower and Amie in the garden

Plant. Did that!

First planted the hoop house frame, sewed the row covers together for the quick hoops (3 5×10′ covers make 1 10′ x 15′ cover), and ordered more row cover from Johnny’s.

Started sprouting fenugreek as an experiment – that count as planting, right? – and love it: so easy and yummy, a mini-garden right in my kitchen.

Planted Farmers Market peach seeds (Canadian Harmony) in a bed that will be mulched in Winter – whatever comes up in Spring will be transplanted into a pot.

The big one was transplanting into the hoop house beds the winter harvest seedlings: spinach, several lettuces, broccoli, kale, chard, purslane, parsley, mizuna, and mustard greens. Also the big broccoli plant, the two largest kale plants, and the chard plants from other beds. There also sowed more of the same plus claytonia, mache, tatsoi, and other hardy veggie seeds. Covered all these up with my row covers. I hope the clamps arrive soon so I can put the plastic up.

Harvest. Still chard, kale, carrots, green beans, lima beans, peas. And fenugreek sprouts:

Preserve. Canning has slowed down since my Farmers Market closed. The last apples went into two quarts and two pints of unsweetened apple sauce with peel (a beautiful pink). Froze more vegetable stock. I got our tiny chest freezer going, stuffed with flour, rice and sugar, and tomorrow when it’s really cold will transfer to it some of the foods from our overstuffed over-the-fridge-freezer.

Waste not. We finally wrapped our hot water boiler. We also got a big load of beautiful and well-fitting Winter clothes for Amie from a friend (thank you!).

Want not. Split more kindling. Ordered 10’x 500′ of row cover (that’ll last us a couple of years).

Build community food systems. Our hoop house is extremely visible from the street :)

Eat the food. Ate everything we harvested and the freezer food is getting good rotation. I’m so tempted to open one of those peaches in syrup jars. We did order a take-out pizza one evening, though. Also drank our first glasses of raw milk.

Hoop House Frame is Up, and Winter

Over the long weekend it took us – two adults versus one four-year-old – to set up the hoop house PVC frame. Initially we thought that the simple hoop house might not be high enough on the sides for the taller plants, like tomatoes, that we want to grow in it in summer. So we wanted to make a box with an arch on top, but this involved specialized pvc connectors that we would have had to order online and pay big bucks for. Once it was up, though, the height at the edges doesn’t seem much of an issue, especially if I grow the taller plants in the middle. (These pictures don’t show the door structure, or the reinforcements – don’t want to take a picture in the current rain).

Amie loves it, that big ribcage in the sky, a building yet not a building.

It will cover three beds and leave room for a bin with compost – which we’ll need and which will have to be kept somewhat unfrozen – and several container plants, and tools. We’ll work on putting a bed there in the Spring. We’ll put lots of straw all around, and stack bales on the north side.

Speaking of warmth…

This picture of risa’s kindling box got me outside splitting some of the larger logs into thinner logs and kindling. DH came out to look, and again with the commentary! But I’ll get better at it, with a stronger body and tougher hands and a better aim. Amie understands that, about practice. And besides, even though I’m not especially good at it, I enjoy splitting firewood, inordinately.

DH will be gone for 10 days so I will have to tend every fire – the oil furnace is on standby for nights (at 58 F) – and make sure there’s enough wood. I’ll also be the one draining the rain barrels and stashing them away – we have a frost coming, soon. I’ll clean up the rest of the garden when it stops raining and cover what is still growing with quick hoops and row cover. If the clamps arrive while he’s away I’ll try to put the plastic on the greenhouse myself. I will transplant the Winter seedlings and sow more Winter and early Spring crop.

I will go looking for elderberry syrup to supplement the vitamin D we’re taking daily. I will also start plotting window quilts to keep the draft out in the bedrooms, organize our winter clothes and buy (or make?) flanel sheets and pj’s.

And for peace of mind I’ll call up the farm that supplies the raw milk that is coming this Wednesday to ask how often and by whom it gets tested, and what their milking procedures are (thanks again to Nika). Then I’ll make my first yogurt, and I’ll try butter and paneer.

And maybe I’ll bake some bread…

Winter is coming. It’s the first time I am feeling it so keenly in both body and spirit.

The Ever-Recurring Year

I was talking with a friend today and she mentioned my picture a while back of my canning pantry. She said she certainly understands the feeling of growing, harvesting, putting up and getting the firewood ready from her reading of the Little House on the Prairie books – which I admitted I have never read (all gasp), as it’s not quite part of the European schoolgirl’s library, and as I simply never felt the need to read it after my school years. She told me that especially the ritual of putting up always gave her a sense of security, and how had she lost that feeling?

I said when you live according to the seasons, you live according to the ever recurring year, with its waxings and wanings, its rituals of life and work, its periods of plenty and of less, and its ample pockets of security in rough times… A life, in short, that can count on certain comforts even if they’re not present, because the recurring rituals hold them in place in the future. This gives you a sense of security without however lulling you into a false sense of security. Because it is a whole year, it doesn’t get boring, and the periods and transitions within it cannot be taken for granted.

This unlike “modern life”, which lives not the recurring year, but the recurring day, over and over again the same day, with (as per usual at least) not a one big shift, whether gift or sacrifice, to make us feel alive and the passage of time.

This friend understands what I’m trying to do here, and I appreciate our conversations, however interrupted by kids and “modern life”, more than she knows. I hardly ever write about the emotional side of our endeavors and dreams on this blog, I don’t know why. Perhaps I fear of the dreaded “No Comments” under the entry headings. But most of the time, it is simple exhausting to try to get the maelstrom of emotions to stay still on paper/screen, in neat sentences let alone paragraphs. Easier to let it all come pouring out as a warbled stream of consciousness into the ear of a dear friend. And, later in the evening, to salvage a few choice thoughts.

Pity, but no Mercy

3998910676_cb8bd233ed — sewing machine in bedroom

I finally managed to sow the row covers together. I used these 5′ wide spun covers to shield the beds from the downpours over Summer, but they were a pain to position because they were too narrow for the 4′ wide beds. Some end of it was always coming undone, and because we couldn’t stretch them, they sagged and billowed in the wind. The solution was to sow two strips together into one comfortably wide one that would stretch over the hoops and have some left over on the sides for anchoring.

Not wanting to sew about 40 feet by hand, I got out our sewing machine. It is a hand-me-down from my aunt and makes only one stitch, but that is sufficient for most of our purposes. Both my mom and MIL used it when they were here, and they showed me how to thread it. Many times over. But, not having a head like that, I forgot. So imagine my horror when I opened the lovely red suitcase to find it… threadless!

Well, after a lot of messing about, sighing, cursing, and some foot stomping, I got it done, mostly with the help of DH – okay, he got it done. I got to reflect again on my unkindness to machinery. You should see me kick the vacuum cleaner when it gets stuck behind the corner of some furniture. When my laptop does something weird, I take care to immediately hand it off to DH.

DH was also reflecting on this, but aloud:

– You really have no patience, do you? How come you have no patience with this? Etc. etc.

You know, that kind of commentary. Oh, those poor machines. Lucky for all of us I struck upon the following reaction:

– I have a lot of pity for the machines in this house. But no mercy.

That kind of thing always cracks us up.

Stagnating and Sprouting

It’s Fall. Is that why I feel I’m stagnating? I’ve plenty to do: still a lot of canning and cooking, some harvesting, and a whole lot of work on next Spring’s garden, not to mention our Fall and Winter garden. But I feel the need to do new things, to keep the skill set growing. If only in small ways. The next big one that’s coming up is the chickens, which I anticipate in Spring (we’ll probably start from chicks), but until then…

I’m sprouting. It seems like such an easy and simple and logical thing to do. I have been thinking about it for a while but sometimes a person needs some other person pushing upon her a packet of seeds, just a couple of tablespoons full, and a small leaflet with instructions and saying “Here it is, that’s all you need, it’s simple.” That happened to me at my last Farmers Market on Wednesday and my fenugreek seeds are now soaking in the Ball jar. They need to be rinsed twice a day, which feels right to me: I like that rhythm. I figure I will experiment with seeds and beans and then choose two or three that we like and I’ll buy pounds of it and store them in my freezer.

I feel like lots of good things happened at that Farmers Market. Besides the sprouts I am very excited about the raw milk (great article in Salon here). I read up on the farm that is supplying the milk and am confident it’s the right choice. I want to make yogurt and paneer with it, and later on more “cultured” cheeses. The only downside is that it’s quite expensive ($4.5 per half gallon), so I won’t be able to indulge my milk cravings (I can drink a gallon of the stuff some days).

And sometime this weekend or next week, whenever I find a moment, I am going to bake my first bread. That’s also not a big one, really, not a difficult one, but one that will make all the difference as Fall comes barreling down the pipeline.

Independence Days, Week 7

Plant. Due to a miscalculation of the weather on my part – or the weatherman’s part? – I didn’t get to transplant the seedlings and sow more winter veggies today. Tomorrow, I hope. I did get to clean up the garden beds. Moved the pepper plants inside – but I will not call them houseplants, though, since houseplants invariably die on me.

Harvest. Swiss chard, kale, radishes (though maggots had already munched through most of them), green beans, carrots, peas, lima beans, last scallions, all the potatoes from the towers (Bintje) (made fries, not exactly the most ecological use of oil and electricity, I admit) and the last celery.

dscf7406 — garlic for honey garlic pickles, Caribbean peach salsa and beloved canner in back

Preserve. Started honey garlic pickles: garlic cloves, apple cider vinegar, honey and 12 weeks of waiting (simplest of recipes here). Processed 1/2 bushel (25 lbs) of Farmers Market Cort apples into 9 quarts and 3 pints of unsweetened apple sauce (unsweetened because I want to use it as a replacement for oil and butter in cakes). Canned 12 half-pint jars of apple peel jelly. Froze 90 cubes of vegetable stock made from veg scraps. Made and froze more mirepoix with carrots and celery from the garden.

Waste Not. We pick up every stick that falls on our property for kindling,Â and we learned, with the help of Roz and www.woodheat.org (here and here – the acting is hilarious) how to most efficiently build and maintain a fire (our neighbor’s chimney constantly bellows thick, gray smoke, and we are determined not to do the same).

Want not. Bought 25 lbs of sugar and 20 lbs of all-purpose flour – time to fire up that little chest freezer – the over-the-fridge freezer was getting a bit too full anyway. Reorganized all my seed packets.

Build community food systems. Again not so much “built” as “supported”. I gave my last egg cartons to the egg guy at the Farmers Market and signed up for his raw milk and farm-fresh eggs club. It was the last Market in my town, but there is a bigger one in the next town over that will be going on for a couple more weeks: I might go check it out.

Eat the food. Minced meat out of the freezer with fresh mirepoix, fresh homemade veg stock, homegrown scallions and parsley and (store-bought) tomatoes that were going bad made a nice pasta sauce for a couple of days. Some of the frozen mirepoix went into our seafood stew feast for 10, and we opened the first jar of apple sauce and the first jar of blueberry jam, both of which Amie loved and we’re still alive.

Amie’s Art Gallery

Amie is drawing like a mad woman nowadays – wanting to become an artist and all that requires lots of practice – and she was taping her drawings all over our walls, with lots and lots of tape, of course. Fearing for our paint job, I gave her a large stack of cheapo IKEA frames purchased many years ago. So she has been framing and decorating the living room. I’ll take some closer-up pictures of them soon.

The little bed is at eye level with the wood stove, which it faces directly. It’s very comfy and Amie loves it for her retreat. The intention is, on cold winter days, to all of us be together in the living room, which will be the warmest place in the house. I like that idea of life contracting to a warm, cozy core as winter takes hold of everything around us.

This Is What I Grew Them For

Frietjes, Frites, Belgian Fries.

The Bintje, a very popular European potato but virtually unknown here in the States, is the best potato for fries. It has a starch solid content of about 20%, so it’s neither waxy nor floury. So what you do to bring out the best in it, is fry it twice.

Fry them in small batches in a deep-fryer, first at 320 F (or 160 C), for about 5 to 10 minutes – remove at the first sign of browning. It will come out looking like this:

Pretty greasy, but cooked through and soft. You gently dab off the grease with a paper towel – this is perhaps the only use for a paper towel in our house. Then you let them rest, preferably for a couple of hours. At this point you can freeze them and proceed on to the next stage whenever you want (I find that three months in the freezer is the limit).

Then you fry them at 375 F (190 C) for a minute or two, until they’re nicely brown and crisp.

The thing is, if you do this with a Russet or Idaho or Yukon Gold, it won’t work. The fries will stick to the frying net, they’ll get all mealy and won’t become crisp on the outside, and won’t taste of anything but the oil.

I had mine with an omelet and a dab of mayo. I know! Don’t worry, what with our Bintje harvest, we’ll only have two of these cholesterol laden meals this year, because if there are no Bintjes, there will be no fries.

Spudtacularly Disappointing

In the balmy 60F weather I dug up the last two potato towers. All in all there were three bins, 4’x4′ each and filled up to about 3′ high. In one I had put 2.5 lbs of Salem, in the other two 2.5 lbs of Bintjes each. I harvested 1 lb and 1.5 oz of (terribly tasting) Salems a few weeks back. Yes, that’s a negative yield. We might as well have eaten our $8 worth of organic seed potatoes. And today I dug up 6 lbs 10.2 oz of Bintjes (which were $7.5 for the 5 lbs of seed). At least I didn’t come out negative on the Bintjes!

That was one labor intensive, costly (all purchased compost, and the wood for the towers) and utterly useless gardening exercise. I’m so glad I blog. I was thinking, as I was seeing the disappointment growing on my digging fork, that I could at least get a funny blog post out of it. Well… funny…

Some of the plants had some tiny potatoes in the upper 2 feet of the soil, but most spuds were formed in the bottom foot, and most of these were undersized. I am guessing that if I hadn’t slashed down the blighty plants a month ago, or if they hadn’t caught the blight in the first place, I would have had a little bit of a larger yield, but not large enough to make it worth our while anyway. The soil was also wet and very heavy. Perhaps the tubers couldn’t grow even if they wanted to: too much pressure, especially from above (those useless 2 feet of soil). Maybe we placed the planks too tightly together, so there wasn’t enough drainage. But in the end I think we just don’t have the sun in that location for the sugars to be transformed into starches.

Well, two of the bins will be a depot for compost for more beds next season – they held blighted plants, however, so not for solanaceae.Â The third bin will become a large compost bin. I’ll cover them with straw and a tarp during winter.

So here is my final potato tally:

TOWERS (in shady part of garden)

– Bintje (8’x4’x3′): 5 lbs seed > 106.6 oz (6 lbs 10.2 oz) = RATIO 1:1.33

– Salem (4’x4’x3′): 2.5 lbs seed > 17.5 oz (1 lb and 1.5 oz) = RATIO 1:0.43

BEDS (in most sunny part of garden, all equal amount of sun)

– Banana fingerlings (3’x5’x1′): 1 lb seed > 8.6 ozÂ = RATIO 1:0.53

– Keuka Gold (4’x4’x1′): 2.5 lbs seed > 135 oz (8 lbs 5 oz) = RATIO 1:3.375

– Dark Red Norland (4’x4’x1′): 2.5 lbs seed > 61 oz (3 lb 10 oz) = RATIO 1:1.5

The Keuka Gold, which were great tasting, were the only success. Maybe I should stick to those next time? Maybe I shouldn’t grow potatoes at all next year?

Stories and Drawings of Amie at Just Four, and Jelly

It seems I’m no longer writing in my (analog) journal. Don’t know why, but in any case I am jotting down Amie’s sayings and doings on pieces of paper here and there. Here’s an effort to preserve them.

…

Amie had to have four shots at her four-year well-visit. We did two during that visit, and the two other ones a few weeks ago – the day before school started, actually. Each time Amie jealously guarded the tiny round bandaids that covered the puncture wounds. In the bath and shower she screamed, wanting to keep them dry. When one was hanging on by a thread and DH pulled it off, she became hysterical. We could never quite figure out why. It was a mystery, until today.

When she saw that the last banaid was coming half off, she started crying.

– Does it hurt?

– No.

– Then why are you crying?

– I want to go to school!

– Aaah, I see. But you just need the shot to go to school, the medicine. Not the bandaid.

Glad that’s solved. The connections they make!

…

(In the first drawing Mama is upside down because she is lying down on the bed and Amie is sitting on top of the door with a cat. The second drawing is of a Mama and Baba fish and their tadpole children. The other two are self-evident.)

Amie reiterated this morning that she wants to be an artist – she’s been practicing. DH asked her if she didn’t want to be what he is.

– What am I, again? he asked.

– A new scientist, she said. I don’t want to be a new scientist, but an artist, like Thhaam (grandmother).

(DH is a neuroscientist.)

…

We were having lunch when she suddenly said to me:

– Mama, when you were a little kid you were much older than I was.

– But when I was four years old, I was four, right? Same as you?

– Of course. Everyone has to be four years old at some point, after they’re three.

…

More about time. One day she also came to me to ask me, out of the blue:

– Mama, this day has never been, right? This time has never been before?

I told her the truth. I would have quoted her Jim Harrison, but kept it for later:

“We think of life as a solid and are haunted

when time tells us it is a fluid”

This must be the tenth time I read The Road Home. I love that voice.

…

We’re having a lovely Sunday. We got up at 10 (Amie loves to sleep in and we oblige) for our Sunday tradition (week 5) of DH and Amie making waffles/crepes. Then while listening to seventies music we munched and read, drew, sewed and surfed the net. Then we cleaned up the kitchen after last night’s party (we had a three-course feast with fish stew and risotto for ten). I finished the apple peel jelly (*) while DH chopped wood and Amie played outside in the newly warm weather. Then I split some more wood – I’m getting pretty good with the splitting maul. All this in our pajamas. Now we’re relaxing with a glass of wine, and soon we’ll have our dinner of leftovers.

…

(*) It was a bit of a chaotic business. First of all, the recipe in the Backwoods Home Magazine didn’t mention how many 1/2 pints the 5 cups of apple peel juice make. I doubled the recipe (and still have about 5 cups of juice left) and found I needed more than the 12 1/2 pints I had prepared. In fact, I had a whole quart jar left over (pic), for which there was no room in the canner. The recipe also didn’t mention to stir constantly while you let it boil hard for that one minute – I only found that out when reading another jelly recipe. I didn’t stir it at all… I remember our utter disappointment one winter when we opened the first jar of my mom’s home-canned crabapple jelly and found it still liquid, as well as the next, and the next…