As some of you may have noticed or pointed out, Farmer Phil
has not made any recent blog posts. I
would love to say this is because he has been off enjoying his summer, lounging
at the beach, building campfires or taking me on a fancy vacation. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending
on how you look at it, we have had a very busy summer. Besides continually rotating the sheep to
fresh pastures, keeping the barn and house standing, catching whoever is loose, fixing whatever is broke and feeding
whoever is hungry we have added some new critters to the farm. We have eight new goat kids, who combined with
the four born this year are providing high quality brush clearing
services. Farmer Phil has recently built
a prototype chicken tractor (it’s smaller scale version of the ones Joel
Salatin uses at Polyface farms, who is a big inspiration for some of our
crazier ideas) which we are using to move 25 broiler chickens around the front yard, and
finally we have our first batch of turkeys getting ready for their big day in
November.
Since Farmer Phil is undoubtedly outside doing something
necessary to prepare for winter, like stacking wood or hay, I figured I would
lend a hand with the blog.  |
| Circa: Not Recently |
It is really hard to believe that it is already September,
but with the cooler breezes and the sun setting earlier every day it is clear
summer is behind us. As with every year
we seemed to have some successes and failures with our gardens. We have beets, Swiss chard, herbs, cucumbers,
peaches and tomatoes by the bushel load.
Our peppers seem to be late but are coming in now and the beans had a
good run early in the summer and we have been successful with the carrots. The onions, garlic and potatoes did well
until the weeds started to overtake them (lesson learned, use mulch). Our lettuce and broccoli seemed to spend more
time flowering and bolting than being productive and the squash beetles found
my pumpkins. Finally there are the peas,
I love peas, I am determined to have peas, they grow, they wither, I replant, and
Farmer Phil laughs, but I will have peas.
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| Dill Cucumber Relish |
With all this overabundance of some things and a desire to
enjoy the benefits of the garden throughout the year I have begun canning. I started a few years ago with a dear friend
and have been trying to branch out into various recipes. I still have not managed the science of
determining how many jars of what we will use until spring and then backward
planning my garden to ensure we will have enough to make the recipes. I have found canning to be part art, part
science and a big part luck. This year I
have made peach salsa, peach jam, maple bourbon peach sauce, dilly beans,
cucumber dill relish, cherry tomato salsa, garlic basil tomato sauce, mint
simple syrup and lemon balm simple syrup with plenty more left to do. Canning tends to be a late night activity
after dinner is made and cleaned up, then the kitchen is free for canning and
somewhere around midnight when even the dog is snoring I am done. Farmer Phil compares my canning season to his
maple season. Despite all the hard work
of harvesting, prepping and late hours there is nothing more satisfying to hear
the lid pop on that last jar in the bunch.
If you haven’t given it a try I highly recommend it. Feel free to send any recipes this way too
(especially ones that deal with giant cucumbers that seem to hide in the garden
until they have grown to the size of baseball bats!)
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| (Farmer Phil is allowed to select all art work for guest bloggers) |
