Category Archives: Food

Food, Gardening, Homestead, Life in general

Starting over

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The tomatoes got zapped.

This is not for a lack of trying to keep them alive, though. It was simply too cold and the plants far too stressed from the weirdo weather we’re having this “winter”. It got down to 27F by Saturday morning, and while they looked not too bad when I uncovered them that morning, in the bright light of an 80F day today – I told you the weather was weird – they are unrecoverable.

I will say that the makeshift covers to mimic a greenhouse environment were not terrible, however. It kept them safe from the first round of freezing two weeks ago. I’d like to either get my actual greenhouse situated somewhere on the property, or get a design finalized that will make it far easier to pull the covers on and off of the tender annuals here at the ranch – for us, that’s tomatoes and peppers. The second round of freeze was harsher than the first. But, a valuable lesson learned, and ideas for better covering of the rows are on paper and I’ll be looking into the best way to do this – most importantly, the best way it can be done by one person (me) who has issues raises one arm over shoulder height and needs something that is not completely exhausting.

The brassicas – broccoli and cauliflower – didn’t seem to care all that much, covered or not. But the heads were a tad smaller than in the usual spring season; again, a product of the wildly fluctuating temperatures.

Above: broccoli along with cheddar and graffiti varieties of cauliflower. Most of that was sent home with my sister.

A new season is upon us, and it’s time to get back to poring through the seed catalogs, trying to restrain myself from ordering one of everything. One of my goals this year (because I don’t make resolutions) is to post every day to the blog in 2017, even if it’s just a post about the weather conditions. Everything I’ve read on forming habits says that the goals should be attainable – that is, not huge goals, but smaller chunks of the larger, ultimate goal – and not reliant on someone else’s involvement to get to the goal or reliant on circumstances that may never come.  The goals should also not necessarily be on the actual final goal, but on the processes/steps that lead to it, to avoid the dreaming brain from visualizing that ultimate goal from being done, which sends the brain signals that it isn’t necessary to pursue it. This one goal will force me to write something every day, which I hope will feed over into my actual fiction writing as well. It isn’t so bad getting into the mood to write up something once you just get the fingers moving.

I’ve also started a new project that will involve weekly postings to another blog: another attainable goal that does not rely on anyone else, and also involves a deadline, which will require me to get it done.

All those things I studied on for the past month also said setting new habits and/or goals is also easier to do if you announce your intentions to someone/anyone. I’m not certain who reads this here blog anymore, but I am hoping 2017 will be a return to longer-form writing instead of people zipping through useless, inane facebook posts or 140-character shorthand tweets. I have not been on facebook generally at all for over a month now, except to update the pages I am maintaining. I’ve found it to be a great relief not to be sucked into that time pit, and life is better for it.

Read more. Think more. Do more. This is my hope for my fellow travelers on this orb for the year. And it is also my hope for myself.

 

Food, Gardening

Harvest of the day, and cleaning up

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Today was a harvest day, but also a day to do some cleaning. Our season started back in February, so we’ve already had four months of goings-on. For this weekend, it meant pulling the broccoli and cauliflower that did not survive the almost zero transition to mild winter to blazing summer. Those will be restarted in flats and put into a row that has shade cloth over it, along with….

Carrots and cukes

more carrots! Thirteen pounds of carrots pulled and washed today – all that were left in the field. We’ll be shredding these and freezing them in two cup portions, which seems to be the most useful quantity for the produce we can use from the freezer specifically in recipes (soup, carrot cake, etc., in this case).

The cukes were picked during attempts to retrain the vines to trellises instead of believing their only goal in life is to invade other rows and subdue the residents in those rows. There are three varieties of cukes represented there: iznik, homemade pickles, and agnes.

The season is going rather well, even with interruptions by other circumstances.

Cancer, Food, Gardening, Homestead

Running amok

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As promised, a pic of the front gardens cucumbers, who are far outstripping their colleagues in the rear gardens. This is what happens when you get a raging case of pneumonia that knocks your schedule completely out of sync and keeps you from doing the rather mundane tasks like trellising work to keep pace with certain plants.

Cucumbers, front gardens, 2016

This is actually three rows of sown seed: the two middle rows are a couple of different varieties of cucumbers. The right row is green beans (variety: Provider, which is more reliable and productive than anything we’ve tried). This picture was taken a week or so ago, and does not adequately reflect the way the cukes are planning hostile takeovers of the frame to the left or the asparagus  in the background at this time. It’s something I’m going to try to address this weekend, and hopefully the pneumo, which has been with me for more than a week now instead of the more usual five days, will let me out of its grip.*

*Yes, I know, it’s strange to call pneumonia “the usual” in any way, but this is yet another of the ongoing gifts from cancers I should never have had. Fuck you, cancer.

Food, Gardening, Weather

Into every life

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A little rain must fall. Thankfully, that day is today, after another week of zero rain. Just over a quarter inch in less than an hour. Although I’d already watered the rear gardens as part of my todo list, I’ll take it anyway. We are far below the normal levels of rain for this season in our area, so a few more days just like this would be very welcome. Not, I might add, the frog-drowning, five inches of rain in two hours variety. That does no one any good. A nice, steady rain, however, is gold.

This is the first cuke of the season. Last year, we had none at all. Half the seeds did not germinate, the ones that did were anemic at best, and none of those produced any fruit. It was a complete bust. This year, I put cukes again out back, but hedged my bets by putting cukes out front a month later as well. It’s a good thing I did. This little one (it’s specifically for picking gherkin-sized fruit like this, so the size is fine) is from the back gardens. Of those in the rear, just under half made it through from their sowing. I thought, at the time, I sowed cukes in the front gardens, that none of them would flower, much less produce anything. But those that did seem to have gathered their legs under them and are pepping up.

First cuke, 2016

I don’t believe the group out back will do as well as the group out front are doing. I’ll have a comparison picture between the two contestants tomorrow.

Food, Gardening

Fresh salad

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It only took about four months to grow the various participants.

Small salad

It was delicious, according to the person who got to eat that small bounty. The tomatoes are the earliest I’ve ever been able to get at the ranch: sungolds and a variety called 4th of July (meant for northern growers with short summers so they can have their tomatoes by yes, the 4th of July). Here – at least for this year – they have shown themselves to be the absolute earliest of the early varieties I put in, and the sooner the tomatoes start coming, the better, as far as I’m concerned. The lettuce is a straight cos (romaine) variety that I had tossed into a row with potatoes, and the carrots had been hanging around with the kale. Strange neighbors. But tasty vegetables.

Food, Gardening, Homestead

Doing the math

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“I was told there would be no math!”

You were misinformed. All that stuff back in high school you’d thought you’d never use becomes quite handy when making plans.

2016 Planning

These particular plans involve mapping out the gardens, figuring up linear foot lengths, and calculating how much of any X can go into Y.

It’s heady stuff, really, although probably only exciting to farming nerds like me.

Still, it’s a useful exercise to know how much room you have. If we (I) planted out on a one plant per foot basis to fill all the linear feet in the rear, front north, and front south gardens (not including the herb garden), we could put in 2992 individual plants. If we ran the plants out on an 18″ basis, we could fit in 2157 individual plants.

Obviously, this is not something we will be doing. Each set of plants has an area it needs that we’ve seen be beneficial to it. Peppers and tomatoes? Eighteen inches. Summer squash and zucchini? They need about three feet, because they are gigantic. Carrots, onions, spinach, and some varieties of lettuce? Six inches.  When you plant, you have to know what kind of space to give something so they don’t crowd each other out fighting for resources and so there is adequate airflow between them, to avoid things like fungus or rot. The spacing also helps with things like worm control, as it makes it more difficult for them to move from one plant to the next without a good deal of effort.

The aim, overall, is to make as efficient use of the available space as possible, and account for both pulling of spent plants (determinate tomatoes, primarily) and rotating where you plant things not just year to year, but from one part of the season to the next, at least here since our season is long. And that, rancherinos, is why you need to be able to do math and strategically plan the things you want to do.

 

Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Food, Life in general

Let’s do the time warp again

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This day, the first day of the new year, has been an odd one. I was up well past the turn of the year, until almost 3 AM. My oldest dog got me up at 4:45 so he could run out and do some business. We all went back to bed, but were up again just before 8 AM. Since then, it’s been nonstop work, either outside (and I’ll have a separate post about that) or inside. No naps, except for the dogs, and it’s about 7:15 in the evening right now but it feels like late evening. Very late evening. Like “this would be a good time to call it a day” evening and go to bed. But it’s far too early for that, and I still have to eat again today as I’ve only had two so far: my usual to start the day, and then this for the new year, as is traditional.

Beans and rice and cornbread

Beans and rice and cornbread, with diced onion and ham. It doesn’t look like much – the soul eating baby could probably eat three of these – but it’s about what I can handle. I managed almost all of it. The leftover, sans onion, went to the dogs. We could all use a little luck for the new year, I think.

 

Food, Gardening, Homestead

Soldiering on

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The season that has thus far remained unseasonably warm has resulted in the remaining plants soldiering on, happily producing the fruits of my labors even as they have (mostly) been ignored. Case in point:

More tabascos

I had, in all honesty, completely forgotten I’d transplanted these tabascos to the back when the rest were in the front. As things slowly went into crazy mode from May through almost July, the weeds took over virtually everything. When I got myself back in order and hit the frames to get them cleared, I had a rather nice surprise: these were still alive and trying their damndest to flower and put out fruit. Once uncovered, they got themselves going rather well.

The forecast calls for a freeze Thursday night into Friday morning. A one shot deal, really, as the forecast both before and after is rather mild. But that one night is likely to knock out this bunch plus the remaining peppers in the front forty, so I’ll likely just go ahead and harvest them green, either to add to the gigantic batch of tabasco-based hot sauce I’ll be making, or to pickle on their own, for that ubiquitous bottle that’s on the table at almost every BBQ joint in the world.

For now, they continue on.