Eighth of an Acre Bounty

This past week has been pretty busy. So busy that I never got to read the book I was supposed to by this afternoon, I haven’t kept up at all with posting this week and here we are staring down a rapidly approaching Monday. Saturday was another busy day, full of meat grinding and mixing in the morning then straight off to our first 5 hour beginners beekeeping class in the afternoon. After class we headed back home to grind meat again and do a bit more cooking (all of the meat grinding will be detailed in the next post, I promise). So dinner had to be something quick that didn’t take any oven space and was relatively simple.

It is precisely times like these that I realize the value of canning our summer harvests and having jars of goodies readily available. After a quick look at the state of the kitchen and the stores in my office I arrived at Tomato Soup. I diced up several large cloves of garlic along with some shallot and sauteed in olive oil. I added a jar of home-canned tomato sauce and a quart of canned chicken stock as well. Seasoned with salt, pepper, and a bit of smoked paprika. I finished the soup with a bit of cream and stirred in some pesto I made last year and had frozen precisely for a time like this. It could have only been made better by a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches to accompany alongside, but we had not the space or the attention to dedicate to that.

Next up: The great offal experiment of 2009….

Pretty amazing that we are now in week 15 of the Dark Days Challenge, that means spring must be just around the bend! In keeping with a theme that seems to have sprung up among a good portion of the Dark Days bloggers, this weeks meal is once again focused on BEANS! Another bean soup to be exact. I know, I know I should be getting more creative with them and trying all sorts of other dishes. But when it comes right down to it, I love a big bowl of steaming soup or stew. It feels like home, it is an excellent way to use up other odds and ends you have knocking about in the fridge, and you automatically incorporate all of that beautiful ‘pot liquor’ from the simmered beans into your finished product.

The one potential downside to a nice rustic soup – is that the finished product likely will not have many redeeming visual qualities. This was definitely a meal where the sum of the parts did not at all equal the individual parts on an aesthetic scale. The beans soaking above are Peregion Beans. Once again purchased from Full Circle Farm at the West Seattle Farmers Market. From what I read, these are an heirloom bean originally from Oregon. I found them really striking with their black swirls and color variation.

After soaking the beans I set them to simmering with a bay leaf (snipped from the Bay Laurel in the backyard) and a couple of cloves of crushed garlic. The last quarter of an onion soon joined the beans and I prepped some previously frozen chinese broccoli, yellow carrots, butternut squash and sunchokes for adding when the beans were almost done.

I toasted a bit of cumin and coriander, ground them in my mortar and added them to the broth of chicken stock along with a bit of chinese 5 spice, tumeric, salt and pepper. The sunchokes lent an overall sweetness to the soup that I hadn’t quite expected, but it went well with the butternut squash and the spices balanced it nicely.

Local Ingredients – Homemade chicken stock, yellow carrots, chinese broccoli, peregion beans, onion, garlic, bay leaf, butternut squash, sunchokes.

Non-Local Ingredients – Salt, Pepper, Chinese 5 spice powder, tumeric, cumin, coriander.

Yep – this is what I woke up to today. All of the seed planting and gardening glory of last week buried under a couple inches of snow. I know for those readers in the Northeast you are probably tired of listening to me whine about the miniscule amounts of snow that drop upon us here. But this is Seattle! We don’t get snow at the end of February. I’ve got peas in the ground under that white fluffy cover, dammit! I’m hoping that the insulating properties of the snow combined with the cold frames are protecting my beautiful little arugula and spinach seedlings inside.

I don’t know if the broccoli will fare so well without any of the protection afforded by the cold frames. This is my lone broccoli plant (out of an original eight) that survived the earlier winter snowstorms and freezing temps. it was shaping up quite nicely and I was anticipating a tasty head of broccoli sometime in March.

The sun is peeking out though so I can’t complain too loudly. Forecast calls for another potential two inches of snow today and then a bit of warming. Looks like the mud bowl will be in our backyard this weekend!

No – this isn’t one of ours. This is a picture from last May when our rhody bloomed. For living on a small city lot we actually get our fair share of wildlife. The herons seem to have established their migratory pattern right over our house so during the summer we see them cruising by and when they first show in Spring it is a welcome sign. We have all sorts of other birds too, most of which I (embarrassingly) can’t identify, but of those I do recognize we have stellar jays, chickadees, hummingbirds, robins, some sort of wood pecker and the ubiquitous crow. Huxley has a war currently on with the crows – something about his airspace being violated. This year also brought us a bald eagle. I’ve caught him gliding around several times on our Skyway winds and sometimes he alights in a nearby tree to survey the area.

I’d like to think that all of our efforts in planting out the back and front yards have made a nice little habitat for all of the fauna. We also have bees, lots and lots of bees. This past spring and summer I had great fun stalking bees in the yard with my camera. They are fascinating and I am thrilled to have them doing thier business in my backyard. So all of this lengthy introduction is intended to reveal the fact that we are going to try our hand at beekeeping this year!

I am beyond excited about the prospect and have been consuming beekeeping books and articles for a while now. About 3 weeks ago I drove out to Belfair to pick up two deep brood boxes and 4 honey boxes from a beekeeper who had posted on CraigsList. He had a bad shoulder and was slimming down his operation as it was becoming more and more difficult to lift boxes that can get up to 100 pounds when full of bees and honey.

Gary and I took a short intro to beekeeping class at the Snohomish County Extension Small Farms expo last month, and last night we attended the Puget Sound Beekeepers Association meeting. We will be taking a 2 day intro to beekeeping class offered by the PSBA in March and our package of bees will arrive in late April. I just have to say that ever since I started researching and talking to people about keeping bees, I have never met a more friendly group of people who are thrilled to offer you advice and help you get started. I also had the good fortune of hooking up with one of my mothers co-workers who has kept bees for years now. He invited us out to his place and offered to be a sounding board for advice and questions.

It is king of astonishing after so many years of being interested in ‘off-the-wall’ things and having to learn everything by book-reading and trial/error, to find such a willing group of mentors and excellent resources. We still have several supplies to buy – a smoker, hive tools, queen excluder, feeder, the list goes on. But come late April we should be buzzing around here. And talk about a symbiotic hobby – beekeeping and gardening! I am interested to see if there is an effect on my ultimate fruit set this year.

Yes, this is yet another Dark Days post sans pictures. I can’t seem to pick up the camera lately when I am cooking. Add to that the fact that we’ve been pretty active with projects this week so by the time dinner is ready we fall upon it ravenously – no time for a photo shoot. Nevertheless, we’ve been eating very locally lately, and mostly from our own stores (with the exception of two dinners out). I keep a pretty religious tabulation of my spending each month. While updating my anal-retentive spreadsheet this morning I realized that I had only spent a grand total of $17.46 on groceries this month to date. Granted, that amount is about to go up as I am heading out to the farmers market shortly – but under $20 for 22 days ain’t shabby.

This weeks Dark Days featured meal brings back fond memories for me. When I was younger, my brother and I spent a summer traveling around Alaska with my Dad. We camped, canoed, berry picked and even spent a few nights in an Inuit whaling camp. One of the meals we frequently had at night after we set up the tents and my dad fired up the Coleman stove was Shepherd’s Pie. I suppose a true shepherds pie would usually be made with lamb – but to tell the truth, I don’t believe I’ve ever had it with lamb. Ground beef is much more prevalent in this house at the moment. We didn’t order a lamb this year and our quarter beef included over 60 pounds of ground.

I constructed the meal in a cast iron skillet (only fitting as that is the way we ate it in AK). I sauteed an onion and some garlic with the remains of a log of seasoned butter I had stashed away in the fridge. I honestly can’t remember what all I put in the butter when I made it. But there was a definite coriander and cumin element. I added a pound of ground beef to the pan to brown and also threw in the remains of a jar of tomato paste canned from our garden. The last bit to go into the mix was a bunch of diced chinese broccoli, frozen from last summer.

While the beef mixture was cooking I boiled up several russet potatoes then drained and mashed them with a bit of milk (always with the skin left on). I topped the beef and veggies with a fluffy layer of mashed potato and covered the top with some sharp cheddar cheese. The skillet went into the oven for around 45 minutes to meld and melt the cheese. It was a easy, two pot meal and there were no leftovers.

Local Ingredients – Milk, Beef, Tomato Paste, Garlic, Onion, Potato, Butter, Chinese Broccoli.

Non-Local Ingredients – Coriander, Cumin, Salt, Pepper, Cheese (Tillamook, OR. Not so far away – but could be closer)

We’ve had a spate of sunny days this week and they are beginning to show their effect in the garden. I’ve got several volunteer and overwintered violas popping up in the main bed, flashing their colors underneath the straw mulch we left on the bed for the winter.

Out front, the first primrose peeked out this week too. Something out there really likes to munch the leaves and flowers, but the plants always survive and give the first bit of spring.

I direct seeded a portion of the other cold frame this week with Beets and Cilantro. I ran a full surround of peas along the outer border of the same bed (picture at the bottom of this post). I hope to utilize the existing hoop house structure that sits over the top of it to string up the peas for a spring harvest. Gotta figure out a plan for that.

I also started several lines of peas in gutter cut-offs. I can’t recall where I first heard of the idea, but last year I read something about starting peas/beans early by taking a cut section of gutter (the aluminum or plastic variety) filling it with soil and seeding. You can then place the movable sections of gutter in a cold frame/greenhouse and get a bit of a jump on the season. For peas, I see the benefit being a more rapid germination – they are pretty cold hardy, so once they sprout and get their first few true leaves they will be fine. It also works for us as we have not yet completed the addition of the other garden bed, so we are starting the peas and buying ourselves a bit of time to boot.

My experience with pole beans is that they will germinate and grow to about an inch or two, but then will not do anything until the daytime temperatures are close to 75 or 80 degrees. Using the gutter to start the beans will be especially useful for us since we try to pack as much growing as possible into the small garden space. This way I can plant a spring crop of cold hardy greens or radish in the location where the beans will ultimately go this summer, and not worry about the beans being planted too late for a good harvest. When the time comes you just dig a shallow trench the depth of the gutter and pushing from one side, slide the whole column out to it’s final resting place. I will post an update on how it works.

The seeds I started in newspaper pots are taking off. I only have one garden window that I use for seed starting. No heat mats or artificial lights. It has worked out pretty well so far. I started all of our tomatoes in this way last year and didn’t have any issues. The picture above I took a few weeks ago. Below is the current state of growth as of this morning.

This flat includes starts of Leek, Cabbabe (red and green), Pac Choi, Jalepeno pepper, Kohlrabi and Buttercrunch Lettuce. I recieved my final seed order yesterday from seed savers exchange and hope to get two other types of pepper, some mixed lettuce and poppies going within the next day or two. I’ll start tomatoes in March sometime. No sprouting yet from the cold frame, but I think I need to water with all the sun we’ve had lately. The soil inside the frames is actually looking pretty dried out now.

Thats the update from the garden. I am going to head out and soak up some of this sun before the rain comes tomorrow. We are going to pick up some wood this morning for incorporation into the wall of the new garden bed. This is Gary’s baby so I will defer to him to post on it (I’ll give him a week, then I get to blab about it).

We don’t ever celebrate Valentines day around here. In fact, to be honest we are hard pressed to celebrate many holidays. If it weren’t for family events around Christmas and Thanksgiving we might just forget about it all. Birthdays usually warrant a cake and having friends/family over – but that is the height of our observances. Valentines day in particular strikes both of us as such a commercialized Hallmark holiday that it always passes unnoticed in this house. Our obliviousness is how we managed to schedule the great fungus experiment of 2009 on February 14th.

This is a bag of shiitake plug spawn. 1000 plugs to be exact. When I last visited my friend down in Mossyrock in January we stayed up late talking seeds, gardening, critters and grand agricultural experiments. We hatched a plan to go in on the spawn and other assorted supplies for growing shiitake musrooms. The snowstorms of December and early January had left her with massive numbers of downed trees, a good portion of which were alder (one of the preferred hardwoods for growing mushrooms).

I trundled back to the city and ordered the plug spawn and she set about choosing the choicest fresh logs for our experiment. Knowledgeable sources say that a log should be inoculated with mycelium within 4-6 weeks of being cut, while the moisture content is still high in the wood. So we scheduled this past weekend as our day of labor. In the interim, she wire brushed each log to remove moss and other detritus. Saturday morning we hauled the logs onto a table (pickup truck bed) and got to work after cranking up the generator for the power drills – cordless drills just don’t cut it when you have to drill one thousand holes.

Not just a goat/goose/chicken/duck/cat/dog wrangler and grower of things, but also an artist- she freehand marked each log with drill spots in a diamond pattern for those of us less spatially/artistically gifted as we drilled out each marked hole.

The holes should be in a diamond pattern, 6-8 inches away from one another.

Once a log was fully drilled we inserted a plug into each hole, and tapped it down until it was flush with the bark.

Liam supervised Gary to make sure he was doing it right.

Molly couldn’t figure out why were were so interested in the big sticks and wouldn’t throw hers. (If that isn’t the saddest face in the whole world…)

Once the a log was fully plugged, the plugs were sealed off with melted cheese wax – applied with a foam brush.

And that was it! We hauled the 17 logs down to a pallet set up under the some fir. They will be occasionally doused with water to maintain the moisture and now we wait and see. It could be 6 months to a year for the first flush of mushrooms. Each log should give a minimum of 4 flushes before it is exhausted. We took two logs home with us and set them in a shady, moist spot on the side of the house. It will be interesting to see what effect the different climates have on the maturation of the logs.

The whole thing cost somewhere around $99 in supplies, $81 for the plug spawn and cheese wax and another $18 for the foam brushes and extra drill bits.

I’m a bit late in making my dark days post this week. Also – no pictures. We were out of town for most of the weekend (details to be posted shortly) and spent most of Sunday constructing another cold frame and building the long anticipated chicken gate.

Our featured dinner this week was a relatively simple affair (comfort food really). Roasted Chicken, mashed potatoes, roasted carrots and braised red cabbage. The chicken was prepared very simply with a light rub of olive oil and sprinkle of salt before going in the oven. I sliced the last of the carrots from our most recent farmers market trip and combined them with a bit of olive oil, rosemary and salt before throwing them in the oven as well. Mashed russet potatoes from Pasco,WA (a 70 mile over violation of my 150 mile rule) enriched with a bit of canned chicken stock and Golden Glen Cream. The braised cabbage was sliced with a red onion and some butter, sauteed until wilting and then combined with a bit of red wine and apple cider vinegar. Once the chicken was out and resting I made up a quick gravy from the pan drippings, adding in just a bit of thyme and more chicken stock, salt and pepper.

It was all consumed on our laps as we watched the first dvd of the Battlestar Galactica series from netflix. All in all a very good meal and entertaining evening. Everyone else had seen the original Battlestar Galactica. I however, was raised in a cave apparently and had never seen it before- so they were all kind enough to periodically pause the show and fill me in on all the things I was missing.

Local Ingredients – Chicken, Potato, Carrot, Rosemary, Cream, Chicken Stock, Flour, Butter.

Not-so Local – Red Cabbage, Wine, Brown Sugar, Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil, Caraway Seed, Mustard Seed.

Or…maybe it can. How do I tell this little chicken there isn’t a chance in hell that her eggs will hatch?

Dahl has been sitting for over a week now. At first (once again for those loyal readers who have followed the saga of Dahl since last spring) we thought she might be eggbound. She hadn’t laid for several days and was wandering around being even more bullyish than she usually is. Letting out these godawful screeches whenever she went into a nesting box…but no egg. Then, I finally found an egg under her and decided to let her have it if she wanted to set. But apparently the fact that I had seen/touched it made it unworthy – so she destroyed her own egg that same day.

That was Tuesday or Wednesday of last week. For several more days she sat, day and night in the nesting box with no egg. The other two girls laid a few eggs yesterday and Dahl promptly hopped up and switched boxes to sit on their eggs. Gary got those this morning and Dahl is back to sitting in her old box, who knows if she layed or not. The protective motherly screeches anytime we or the chickens come within 5 feet of her nest is killing our curiousity.

I’m not opposed to having a broody hen. In fact, I am kind of pleased to see that she still has that tendency (most chickens having had good motherhood almost totally bred out of them for factory farming). But none of these girls have had the romantic attention of a rooster since last April or so. It seems so sad for her to be putting all this effort in on a zero sum game. Perhaps next year we will get a few fertilized eggs to hatch out. But until then – she will have to get a clue at some point, right?

*Shameless takeoff on The Clash’s “Rudie can’t fail”, but I’ve been humming it since I realized she was broody. Be glad I work from home, eh?