21st April, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments
Lots of water
4/16/11
It rained. A lot. We got over 3 inches of rain and our yard flooded again for the second time in a month. This time though it is taking a long time to dry out. I spent the day at Hersheypark writing a trip report for my other website and then ran errands in pouring rain and storms. Winds were high and there were tornado watches and warnings out too.
4/17/11
Made our favorite crock pot chili for lunch today. You can get the recipe here. I don’t use the tomato juice, I just use a large can of crushed tomatoes instead.
Got the last of the tomato seeds into the sprouting tray and onto the heat mat tonight. I saved seeds from all the heirloom tomatoes we got from Spiral Path CSA last year so if things go well we’ll have a lot of variety. Also got the first seedlings in trays ready to go out to harden off.
Spinach seeds I planted in a pot on our back deck have sprouted. Some sun would really help them grow but it isn’t in the forecast.
4/18/11
Wee little radishes
Taking a long time for the field to drain this time. Put the lettuce and cabbage seedlings out to harden off on the porch. Windy today but not much rain. Radish seeds I planted a week ago are up as are some carrots. Time to plant a second batch. Jack found a sustainable solution to clean her drum cymbals today – lemon juice. Worked really well.
4/19/11
More rain. We just don’t need it at this point. I was hoping to hang laundry but that didn’t happen so had to hang it to dry indoors. Lots of finches in their yellow feathers at the feeders today. We won’t be feeding birds much longer – draws bears and we don’t need THEM on the deck!
Moonflowers with seed casings attached
I planted Moonflowers this year and they are up and big. Probably planted them too early. One thing about them is their seed hulls get stuck on the leaves. I wonder why that happens. I’ve tried to pry a few off but I ripped the leaves in a few cases so I know that isn’t the answer.
Scott picked up a bunch of clean cardboard last night to continue sheet mulching part of our yard. We’re still waiting for soil test results to come back from the lab. We’re testing for lead due to our location. Hopefully we’ll get good results.
I made a phone call to Kimberly Clark today to ask about their Pull-Ups brand training pants. Our youngest daughter wears them when she goes to pre-school since they don’t allow cloth (no, we don’t beat ourselves up about this; it is just a fact of how things are.) She loves Toy Story so we get her the boy kind with Woody and Buzz on them. Well, the last pack I bought had Woody and Buzz on the package but inside it was characters from Cars. I thought this was mis-packaging but upon calling I was told that they are phasing out the Toy Story characters and are just using up the outside packaging until it is gone. While I commend them for not being wasteful since this packaging is Recycle code 7 and in most places it must be thrown away, I did say they could put a sticker or something on it to note it is not as shown to avoid disappointed kids. Since we bought this brand specifically because of the characters on them I didn’t accept the free coupons they offered and I told them we’d be switching to the store brand which are much cheaper and just as effective. Oh well. Luckily we’re potty training her now and the use of Pull Up type diapers will be short lived anyway.
4/20/11
Lab tests came back A-OK for lead. Whew. That’s a relief.
It was supposed to be 75F and sunny today but it didn’t get there until 4pm. The kids and I made a trip to ZOOAMERICA today. You can read about our trip here. I went outside in the late afternoon to get our strawberry plants in the ground. We plant everbearing varieties because we like to have strawberries on our salads and cereal and we don’t want to have to deal with a glut of strawberries in June. Usually I buy strawberries for jelly and things from the Farmer’s Market. I planted Seascape and another one I can’t remember in our raised boxes.
I also planted out my cabbage and lettuce sprouts. It’s supposed to be in the low 40s tonight, I hope they are going to be OK. Also planted my largest shallots saved from last year. They were lost temporarily in the basement but I found them under two paper bags full of sweet potatoes we want to try to grow.
Quiet Creek Columbine
Last year I visited Quiet Creek Herb Farm for a farm day and they were nice enough to send me some columbine seeds from the red and yellow plant they had in their high tunnel. I finally got around to sending them some of my Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomato seeds today. They are a bit colder than we are here since they are upstate and west, so they should still be able to plant them for this year if they want to. I just planted mine yesterday.
Also planted radish and spinach seeds and some more marigold seeds. You can never have too many marigolds. Did a walk around the yard and saw violets growing and lots of dandelions. I always like that color combination together.
I did some trimming to my perennials and to the butterfly bushes too.
Gee, was their anything else? I don’t think so.
7th August, 2010 - Posted by shawn - No Comments
Normally our roma tomatoes do very well, but this year we had a whistlepig eat them during the flowering stage so they have produced very few tomatoes and now are mostly dead. So sad, but I guess groundhogs need to eat too.
We are lucky though that Spiral Path Farm CSA will be offering 25lbs of organic roma tomatoes for $6 to their CSA members at their next open farm day on August 21st. We are definitely going to take advantage of that and dry some for later use.
Our dehydrator does a great job with the tomatoes, but if we didn’t have one we’d still be able to dry them in the oven. For a well done video on how to oven-dry roma tomatoes check out this video by Keith Snow. He adds thyme to his tomatoes and I don’t like to do that – it can sometimes take on a burnt flavor in the oven. Better to just store fresh thyme in the jar with the tomatoes I think. Garlic cloves can work well here too since the tomatoes are to be kept in the fridge or freezer. Garlic in oil should NOT be left out on the counter or in the pantry. It can go bad even if submerged in oil.
27th May, 2010 - Posted by shawn - 1 Comment
On this very hot day in May I picked up our second box from Spiralpath Farm CSA. This one was lighter than last week so I knew it was full of greens – like I suspected last week’s would be. No picture this week since all you’d see is a bunch of green!
What we got this week was: 3 pints strawberries, 1 bag baby arugula, 1 bag baby spinach, radishes, bunched spinach (it is huge!), red oakleaf lettuce bunch and green boston lettuce bunch.
Lots of salads this week.
We did make the Colcannon recipe last Saturday when we had family visiting and it was a hit. I used smoked sausage and mild cheddar cheese.
Basically you make mashed potatoes. While they are cooking you cook off some sausage with garlic and onion. Then you add a bunch of spinach to wilt down. You spread the sausage/spinach mix in the bottom of a greased 9×13 pan, cover with mashed potatoes and then top with shredded cheese. Bake at 375 or so until cheese is melted, about 30 min. It was awesome!
20th May, 2010 - Posted by shawn - No Comments
Even though we grow a garden, we also subscribe to a CSA with Spiral Path Farm. If you aren’t familiar with what a CSA is, the acronym stands for “Community Supported Agriculture.” With most CSA’s you sign up early in the growing season for a membership with them and you pay them a fee up front. The farm uses that money to plant and grow crops that year and you, as a member, get a share of what is produced.
In Spiral Path’s case they offer half and full shares (you can see their pricing here - it is not too late to sign up, they pro-rate the cost) and in return for our membership fee we will receive a box of organic produce once a week from now until the week of Thanksgiving -that is 28 weeks. We subscribe for a full share since there are five of us and we love it. Our cost works out to be about $20 a week.
In addition to the weekly boxes of produce you have an invitation to visit the farm once a month for open farm days when additional produce is available to members of the CSA only. Herbs, strawberries and peppers are some of the things you can pick yourself to take home with you.
There is some excitement each week as we wait to see what the box will hold – often there are surprises. So this week our box looked like this – filled to the rim with greens and heavier than I expected. Spiral Path packages their produce in a biodegradable plastic bag. Most of the time we just grab the bag and leave the box, but since this was the first week I wanted to show a picture of the box.
Inside the box was our weekly newsletter from the farm. It is always interesting to hear what is going on and usually a recipe is included that features some of the items you received in your box. This week the recipe is a Spinach Colcannon and we are planning on trying it tomorrow night.
The produce we received this time included: 2 pints of strawberries (a surprise, ours are just coming in), 5 1/2 lbs of small red potatoes (Spiral Path purchased these from another farmer as a bonus and this is why the box was heavier than I was expecting), 1 head green lettuce, 1/2 lb of baby lettuce mix (mostly red oakleaf), 1 1/4 lbs broccoli (also purchased from another farmer), 3/4 lb spinach, and 8 spring onions.
The first few boxes of the spring are always greens heavy as we wait for other things to mature. Tonight for dinner we used up half of the baby lettuce mix in a family salad and half of the spring onions – our youngest daughter loves them. I cut up the strawberries and everyone had a few of those as well.
Tomorrow we will use the potatoes and the spinach for dinner in the new recipe plus the onions. That’ll leave us with the makings for salad and broccoli for a side dish for next week until the next box comes on Thursday.
