Quote of the Day: Jessica Prentice
Visiting a farmer’s market gives me a sense of the season and a direct connection with the people who spend their days growing food. Eating seasonally reconnects me to the natural pulse of life, the Earth’s annual cycle of cold and heat, wet and dry, long night and then long days as it makes it’s journey around the sun. These annual cycles make me more mindful of the eternal realities of birth growth, death, decay and rebirth. They keep me aware of my humanness and my mortality as well as my kinship and interdependence with all other life on earth.
Jessica Prentice – Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection
I used up my onions from last year’s garden long ago. Even though we’ve been eating scallions and chives, nothing is quite as good as sautéed onions. The smell alone make me happy. Since we moved late in the fall, I didn’t have any leeks planted in the garden to fill the gap between bulb onions and new onions. Thus, we’ve been onionless as I refuse to buy them if I can’t find them locally.
One of the reasons I refuse to buy them is because it makes it all the more exciting when they start to show up at the farmers market and when they can be harvest from the garden. It has been said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, that is certainly true for the humble onion. I was giddy with excitement when I spotted onions at the farmers market on Friday morning. I purchased 4 large white onions and a bunch of beautiful small red torpedo shaped onions. There’s nothing like scarcity to make us fully appreciate abundance!
My onions in the garden are doing quite well, they are finally starting to bulb, it will be interesting to see how many I harvest and how long they last in the cellar. I have a good number of leeks planted already, with more to go in the ground when I have a clear spot. My potato onions and shallots will also be harvest soon as well. I’m also harvesting ‘Mini Purplette’ onions I planted a few months ago.
This fall I’ll be ordering and planting more shallots as well to increase my allium collection. My goal is to be able to have some sort of allium from my garden on my plate every month of the year without having to grow massive quantities of bulbing onions. I want my diet to reflect the seasonal changes, leeks and overwintered bunching onions in spring and early summer, fresh bulb onions in throughout summer, fall and winter. Big fat leeks harvested from the icy soil in early winter and early spring. Learning to eat seasonally not only increases the variety in our diet, it also helps us stay in tune with the natural cycles.
What food do you miss most when it’s not in season?
Share this:
So Long Peas…Hello Beets
The winter garden seeding is in full swing. I’ve been tearing out peas, broccoli and other spring crops and replacing them with turnips, beets, carrots and spinach.
Of course the pigs are getting the exhausted pea vines, they have a great time searching for any pods remaining. The string from the trellis was saved and I’m using it to tie up my tomatoes.
Hopefully the fall crops will do well, I’m hoping for a good harvest of root vegetables not only for us, but for all of our feathers, hooved and pawed creatures.
Are you replacing any spring crops with fall crops?
Share this:
Friday Favorite: The Meadow
We have a large grassy area that might be considered a lawn. Since we just have a small push mower, we left most of it to grow up into a meadow. It’s been beautiful, filled with wildflowers of all colors, shapes and sizes and a wide variety of grasses as well.
We’re not the only ones enjoying this, we have a doe that’s been grazing regularly down below the house. She’s been coming out and grazing every week. We noticed her first a few weeks ago while she was still very pregnant. She’s since had her fawn, which we’ve heard bleating down in the woods.
What’s your favorite wildflower?
Share this:
Inspired by Thomas Jefferson
You might have thought this post would be about something pertaining to the garden. While I do love Thomas Jefferson’s gardens (see my photos from my visit in these previous postsVisiting Monticello, The Vegetable Gardens of Monticello and The House and Ornamental Gardens of Monticello). This time it’s all about the pet door.
On the upper level of the house, there were round holes cut into the door for the cats to use for hunting mice.
When we decided we needed a pet door to the basement, we considered a few options. We had a conventional pet door back in Ohio, but didn’t want to put one where it would be visible. Then we thought about putting a hole through the floor in the office with a small ramp down to the basement. That seemed a little too involved.
Then we decided it was just more convenient to do what Thomas Jefferson did and cut a round hole in the door big enough for the cats. The cats too to it right away.
This door to the basement is in our dining room, clearly visible when you walk into the room. It will be a good conversation piece no doubt whenever we have someone over for dinner.
There were a few times each one ran into the door on the way through, but that only happened a few times in the beginning. I actually think the cats really love this door. It’s like their own little window, they love sitting on the basement steps peering up or sitting in the dining room peering down. The best part was that it was free!
Do you have anything quirky in your home that was inspired by seeing it elsewhere?
Share this:
It’s HARVEST Time
Yesterday, I harvested the first item from my 5×5 Challenge garden. I could have been harvesting the lettuce for at least a week, but I’ve been eating salads from the main garden. This lettuce was planted en masse and I will simply sheer it off when it’s time to harvest. The zucchini plants are getting HUGE and are starting to crowd out the lettuce anyways.
It’s truly amazing how many salads you can get from four square feet of lettuce. We didn’t eat all that I harvested and I only cut about a tenth of what was out there.
After I cut my lettuce I like to soak it in cold water for 15-20 minutes or so. That really seems to crisp it up nicely, especially when the weather is as hot as it has been around here.
If you did plant lettuce in your garden, make sure you start harvesting it soon. With the heat wave many of you are having the lettuce will start to get bitter and it will be bolting before you know it (bolting = going to seed).
Do you have any tips/tricks to share for growing and harvesting lettuce?
