Good Food Down on the Farm

It almost seems anti-climatic, because you spend so much time preparing the garden, planting, weeding, nurturing those tiny plants, that when suddenly there're many things to harvest, it's almost a shock! We got our garden in very late this year . . . seems odd, but we're actually getting sugar peas in July (and probably now, into August!), because they get morning sun and then are shaded from the very hot afternoon sun by the corn. A serendipitous pairing of neighbors in the garden, I think! Of course, the pumpkins and the squash on the other side of them are trying to overrun them, so it's a race to see how many peas we will get before the pumpkins win . . . beets are just starting, and have been harvesting kale, which makes a fabulous salad (wrote about that before), and, wilted in a little bacon fat is a wonderful green addition to an omelet. Potatoes are close to becoming usable - probably could get some, but I want to make sure the hills are fairly mature before I...

When Darrell recently picked up a small number of feeder pigs, the guy had some gilts that he had gotten from another Berkshire farmer, which Darrell bought to round out our breeding herd. They were supposedly bred - one definitely was, the others we're not sure about. But, Tuesday evening, June 26, the one had 10 little piglets, nine of which survived birthing, which is quite amazing in terms of numbers for a first-time sow. Somehow, four of them got into the sows' mud wallow and Darrell didn't even see them at first - they were not doing well at all, becoming hypothermic, but we washed them in very warm water and dried them briskly to stimulate them, then got them positioned to suckle on their mama. They had not gotten so hypothermic that they had lost the instinct to suck, fortunately, so, amazingly, they survived the night and continue to do well. The photo below was taken a couple of hours after they were born. This morning, we clipped their little teeth (8 per pig) so...

The cold, very wet spring kept us from getting our garden in until just last week. Our garden soil has a lot of clay, so it hangs on to water and you can't till it until it's dried out or nearly so. In previous years, we felt we were "late" with our garden if it didn't get finished up until Memorial Day weekend - this year, in spite of numerous "starts", we didn't get it in until the first weekend in June - yikes! Wonder how many of the tomatoes we'll lose to frost this year? Last year, I had the garden in by mid-May and still lost a bunch of tomatoes to an early frost - rats! Besides tomatoes, we've got corn, red and white potatoes, two types of peas (yes, it's late, but I bought the seeds back in early April!), carrots, beets, two types of hot peppers, broccoli, cabbages, acorn and butternut squash, pumpkins, lettuces, radishes, kale, and spinach. It's going to be awhile before we start harvesting anything, but at least everything...

Our friend Crystal spent the holiday weekend with us, and loves natural "whole" food as much as we do. On Friday, Darrell made his fabulous Stir-Fried Rice with chunks of ham from one of the Berkshires, carrots, peas, and substituted chives and chive blossoms for the normal white onion.  While obtaining the chive blossoms for the stir fry, we were observing and investigating other herbs. The thyme is blooming as well, and we discovered what look like flower bud stalks on the sage. Crystal is an inveterate Internet researcher, so when we got back into the house, she looked up sage blossoms and discovered a delightful site all about "edible flowers", which include chive blossoms, sage blossoms, thyme blossoms, dandelions and many others, including one of my favorite wild flowers, the beautiful little johnny-jump-up. Here's an interesting site to investigate should you be interested in  flowers  as part of cooking. You may be surprised about what's listed the...

It's a good thing they do, because the rest of us are heartily sick of it. We opened up a new pasture area this weekend for the feeder pigs, as they had turned their previous area into nothing but mud because of all the rain and the fact that pigs root constantly. So yesterday, our friend Crystal, who is staying with us for the holiday weekend, took these photos of them turned out on new grass - note the area they'd already started turning up! One of the piggies came over to investigate her boot.

Put up several jars of pickled asparagus tonight - we loved it so much, we hope to put up more this year than last . . . see post from last year for info and a link to the recipe. I cut the sugar in half this year, as we found the original recipe a little too sweet. Hopefully, I didn't cut too much out! I also remembered that the recipe did not provide quite enough pickling liquid for the jars, so I doubled it. I got three jars instead of two, but my liquid was nearly gone. So increase the recipe amounts on everything.

Here in West Michigan we are finally getting spring-like weather . . . everything seems to be running a few weeks behind the norm . . . the swallows came back later than usual, asparagus started coming in a week or two after the norm, garden was too wet to till until last week . . . However, we had asparagus, some pork loin, and then strawberry shortcake for supper last night. The berries were from 2010 . . . our strawberry patch had to be replanted this year, so we won't be harvesting our own. And the asparagus patch is in serious need of weeding - the aftermath of the tornado last summer totally interfered with available time to keep on top of that, and I think some of the crowns have been choked out and will need to be replaced. Oh, and spring has also brought the dandelions out in force - I don't believe I have ever seen such healthy, huge flowers - most of these measure at least 2.25" across, and a few are 3" in diameter! Yowza! Wish they stayed pretty like ...