Daily Harvest

Daily Harvest

Daily Harvest

Daily Harvest

No rain today.

We transplanted some artichokes from a friend's garden to ours. I hope they do well with the change!

Daily Harvest

Still raining.

Daily Harvest

Daily Harvest

It's been raining, but the eggs are coming in!

Daily Dinner

Tonight's dinner comes out of the garden except for the lamb from the farmer's market.

I was reading a blog by a small scale meat farmer:

http://www.honestmeat.com/honest_meat/

It really reinforced for me that even meat labeled "free range" in the grocery store doesn't mean that the animals can walk around or live like animals. There isn't really anything in the grocery store that can let you know about the animals husbandry practices of the farms where the animals are raised and the subsequent effect on the land.

After reading Omnivore's Dilemma I realized that it was possible to raise animals in a positive way (pasture, pasture, pasture) but that you have to be really selective and attentive in your meat choices. Both Omnivore's Dilemma and Honest Meat made me feel confident about our choices at the farmer's market.

Daily Harvest

Daily Harvest

Yay! Dirty but existent! Three cheers for the ladies!

Other people's trees

When Dirk came over for dinner he brought us a bag of lemons from his tree. He said he picked three bags full and it had no effect on the quantity of lemons on the tree.
Jonathan made lemon curd with some of them that we had for dessert tonight.

Daily Dinner

We had Jonathan's sister and her husband over for dinner and we had tomato soup from tomatoes we roasted this summer flavored with thyme, sage and cilantro and spicy perennial pepper, and we had a mess of mustard greens with fake sausage, the fake sausage not being from our yard. I made a loaf of bread that didn't bake fast enough.






Ooops! still a little raw! But the wheat comes from the farmer's market and it home ground.

Daily Harvest

We got more worm castings today for a bed we are preparing. The chickens love the crumbled eggshell in the worm bin - a habit that I do not like to encourage. We also found a family of slugs in the bin which the chickens were uninterested in. Why not ladies? Worms yes, slugs no?














Here are more perennial peppers. The plant may not be able to perennial after all, it seems to have been damaged in the frost we had. We'll see. The peppers are delicious- surprisingly spicy.

Daily Harvest

Three more! Things are on the up and up.

Daily Harvest

Woah! 3 in one day! Back like it used to be! Go ladies, go.

Daily Dinner

Souffle with eggs from the yard and dried tomatoes from summer, yard potatoes with yard rosemary, the salad has radishes, cliantro & arugula from the yard. The bread has flour ground at Rosalie's house. We ate with cousins Anne & Grant. Good folks!!

Daily Harvest

Egg! Doctor Wanda
laid one, after haitus
goes with my tie

Daily Dinner

Udon noodles with veggies including mustard and garlic from the yard!

Daily Dinner

Couscous with dried tomatoes from summer and thyme.
Hummus with lemon, garlic and parsley from the yard.

Daily Harvest

What could be nicer than coming home after work and digging potatoes with the help of Dr. Wanda? Hidden among the potatoes I found ancient gigantic radishes. They had actually become rather mild and tasty, like daikon.

Daily Dinner

Curried veggies with hot peppers from the yard. They were really spicy!

Daily Snack

Daily Harvest

Daily Harvest

We started looking up nutritional information about our favorite vegetables on the internet. We discovered that one cup of mustard greens gets us 350% of our vitamin K. At least we'll be clotting well, right?

And we found out that two of our favorites, arugula and cucumbers seem to be the nutritional equivalent of eating nothing. No fiber, not enough vitamins to be worth mentioning. Why? They taste so healthy!

But luckily this finding was balanced by our discovery that one cup fava beans will give us 26% of our protien and 37% of our fiber. More favas in the upcoming year!

New Year's Resolution

This year one of my resolutions is to grow 75% of the vegetables that we eat.

I started this blog with the goal of using it to keep track of the amount of food we produced as well as other garden information that I would need later on: when did the tomatoes start coming last year? For how long? What kinds did we grow? Which green beans did the best? Etc.

But now I'm not too sure how any of the information I have here to measure such a concrete goal. Even if I were to start keeping track of the amounts of food in a more quantitative way I'm not sure what way would help me. What do I mean when I give such a definite answer? Do I mean by weight? Then I should grow more potatoes. Do I mean by price? Then the answer would be grow more raspberries. Do I mean the number of days that we eat veggies from the garden vs. the days that we eat store bought? But some days we mix them!

But I also feel like it is very focusing to have a concrete goal to work towards.

Jayme? Any thoughts? Anyone else?

Daily Harvest

Another egg! Maybe the chickens are not destined for the soup pot after all!

And the greens for tonight's salad.

Daily Harvest

A little breakfast salad.

Garden Planning

While we were gone, the Territorial Seed company catalog came in the mail. (http://www.territorialseed.com) We came home around 9:30 after having been away for almost two weeks. I sat down with the catalog and my beat up copy of Golden Gate Gardening and started making plans for the coming year.

Here is my calendar for the the year so far. We can change the color of the font from black to something else when we actually get things planted.

January:

• Onion seeds indoors
• Leek seeds
• Broccoli seeds
• Lettuce
  

February

• Favas
• Carrots parsnips and radish seeds mixed
• Peas
• Leeks
  

March

• Cabbage seeds indoors
• Mellon seeds indoors, in bottomless pots
• Peas
• Lettuce
  

April

• Butternut squash

May

• Brussel sprout seeds indoors
• Pole beans

June

• Pole beans

July

• Chinese cabbage
  

Daily Harvest

Our first day home from the north, and what did Jonathan find in the chicken coop?

So strange, so rare... eggs!!