Eighth of an Acre Bounty

My Dad dropped by yesterday with a big surprise. For any of you who have been reading for a while, you have already listened to me whining and complaining about the price and rarity of stoneware crocks. Big crocks are the most useful tool for many of the lactic fermentation projects I want to start. It appears they are such a collectors item that I haven’t been able to find any at a reasonable price for actual use (instead of sitting pretty on someone’s shelf). Well, yesterday my father dropped by with this beauty.

Note the gorgeous lid that he made from Walnut and Mahogany (he does beautiful work – you should see my kitchen cabinets). The crock came from my aunt and uncle who he had just visited down in Eugene, (Thanks Jim and Kat!). I was beside myself with the gift! Now I have the means to do large batches of sauerkraut, salt preserved green beans and whatever else I dream up. I think the first order of business will be to ferment a whole head of cabbage from the spring cabbage harvest. Howling Duck Ranch posted about this earlier in the year and the idea intrigued me. Once fermented, she peels off the whole leaves and uses them for cabbage rolls. I’m already pondering some homemade sausage from our half-pig stuffed inside fermented cabbage leaves with other goodies.

In other news, the first package of seeds arrived from Nichols Garden Nursery and are happily piled in the livingroom waiting thier chance. I’ve gone the route of complete and total OCD this year with the garden planning. Spending hours calculating out days to maturity and fitting in different crops who’s timelines work with each other. I made a to-scale excel template of two of the garden beds and mapped out the first planting too. At the risk of exposing exactly how obsessed I am, here is the first Feb-May garden plan for the year. It isn’t really that readable an image because it is (necessarily) done in pencil and has already been erased and written over a million times. I have two others in states of mid-completion for the summer/fall months.

I am working out a deal with my friend down south to borrow some of her land for growing winter squash this year. We love having squash to take us through the dark months, but it is such a space hog for our little eighth of an acre that I proposed doing a trade of some sort. In exchange for a few plots of ground to grow our squash in, I will start seed for her. We have a consistent warm environment here in the house so she should get a quicker growing season out of the deal. I’ve expanded what we are growing this year so it will be nice to have the space that the winter squash usually takes.

The chickens have started laying again. Apparently all it took was the passing of the solstice and they have kicked in to spring mode. The past several days have yielded us at least one if not two eggs each day. I am once again reminded how much better thier eggs are. Even when we do buy eggs at the store, we buy a local organic free range brand, but they don’t even come close to our eggs. The girls all came through thier molt and are flying thier coop regularly. Hopping over the fence to get at the bugs on the other side. Not a big deal as they stay in the yard, but it puts us in the position of having to do a chicken check everytime we are about to let Hux in the backyard. I clipped wings earlier this morning in an attempt to curb the breakouts, but not an hour later Blume and Dahl were pecking in the yard again. I think a taller fence is in order.

I finally sat down today to go through the various seed catalogs I’ve been bookmarking for the past month and put together a seed order for the coming year. I am still searching for a source for Ozette Fingerling seed potatoes, if anyone can point me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it! No new tomatoes, I have a lot of seed from last year and also saved seed this year so we are set there. I have winter squash, tomatillo, kale, radish, nasturtium and a variety of other seeds left from last year that will round out the garden.

Gary wants to do an experimental planting of the 3 sisters, so he chose the corn variety, the Hidatsa beans and the scallop squash. We don’t usually grow corn, it will be interesting to see how it does on the windy hill. A lot of the seed ordered will be put in for a winter garden. I figured if I put my money where my mouth was up front this year and ordered the seed ahead of time, I will be more likely to get my act together in time for fall planting. Not to mention building the other two coldframes we have the materials for.

We finally started to thaw around here. I went out to the garden to see what survived the snow and it looks like the leeks are going to pull through will little to no loss. We did lose all the cauliflower and the nasturtium greens. A few of the broccoli look like they might make it, and I have hopes that the parsley will rebound. The rutabaga and chard may rally as well, so we may actually be eating some greenery before March if we are lucky.

I ordered from two new catalogs this year, Wild Garden Seed and Nichols Nursery – both based in Oregon. Hopefully they both work out. Wild Garden Seeds I learned of from Throwback at Trapper Creek. They also sell a chicken lettuce mix by the pound that can be broadcast sown. I bought a pound of that for the girls to keep them in greenery when we don’t want to share. I am working on a way to broaden then divide their pen area to grow in one area and range them in the other, then switch. It would be nice to get them more on food grown from our yard rather than feed from the store. Orders also went in to Territorial Seed and Seed Savers Exchange.

Nichols had amazingly good prices compared to the others. If their seed is true and I have a good experience with it this year I can see ordering more from them in the future. On average they pack envelopes by weight, with the average number of seeds much higher for a lesser price than competitors. And it is a second generation family business.

• Golden Bantam Corn
• Sunny Delight Scallop summer squash
• Lagenaria Longissima summer squash
• Hidatsa Shield Figure Beans
• Scarlet Runner Beans
• Giant Musselburgh Leeks
• Arugula (I saved some seed from last year, but am not sure it was mature)
• Ishikura Improved Green Onions
• Broad Windsor Fava Bean
• DeCicco Broccoli
• Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage
• Early Jalepeno pepper
• Chervena Chuska pepper
• Early Radish Mix
• Mr. Big shelling peas
• Razzle Dazzle Spinach
• Envy Carrot (not my first choice, Oxheart was sold out already!)
• All American Parsnip
• 4 color Hierloom Mix Beets (Golden, Chioggia, Albino and Red)
• Ground Cherry
• Lacinato Kale
• Champion Collards
• Sugarloaf Chicory
• Pungent Mix Mustard Greens
• Behana Mustard Greens
• Miners Lettuce
• Machalong Mache
• Jersey Knight Asparagus (25 root crowns, $$$ ouch!)
• Tatsoi
• Golden Purslane
• Mammoth Sandwich Island Salsify

Our featured dinner for the dark days challenge this week was actually our Christmas Dinner. A smaller than average group around for Christmas gave me the opportunity to host at our house this year (tiny house). The Menu?

Roasted Leg of Lamb with Fennel Butter and Red Wine Sauce

Glazed Baby Carrots and Parsnips

Sauteed Kale and Spinach with Shallots and Garlic

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes with Rosemary

Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes

and for dessert a choice of

Pumpkin Custard Tart with Anise Crust

or Espresso Chocolate Pecan Pie

both offered with a topping of maple whipped cream.

The leg of lamb was the last bit of lamb we had in the freezer from last years purchase of a whole lamb from Bradrick Family Farm in Montisano. We didn’t get a lamb this year (for some reason Bradrick has decided not to sell direct any longer) and it was sad to see the last of it go, but a Christmas dinner for 8 was a fitting goodbye. The fennel came from our golden fennel plant this year, I harvested a metric ton of fennel seeds in the fall and this seemed like a great use for them.

Most of the vegi’s for the side dishes came from the U district farmers market on the Saturday before. We ventured out despite freezing temperatures and snow to see if any farmers had anything. We picked up a bunch of sunchokes, some beautiful tiny carrots, and a bit more garlic. It was so cold on that day that all of the meat purveyors simply had thier individually quick frozen and wrapped cuts laying out on the tables, no coolers necessary.

The desserts both turned out well. The pumkin custard tart I made from a sugar pumpkin I picked up a month ago at the Columbia City Market. The pecan pie, decidedly the most unlocal part of the meal – was the bit hit. I worked from a recipe found in a December 2007 issue of Fine Cooking. I had been wanting to try this recipe for over a year and with good reason it seems. Now I will go about tweaking and experimenting to see if I can replace hazelnuts for the pecans for a more local twist. Does anyone know of a workable substitute to corn syrup in pies of this sort?

Local Foods: Lamb, Kale, Garlic, Fennel, Butter, Cream, Flour, Pumpkin, Potatoes, Carrots, Rosemary, Jerusalem Artichokes (sunchokes), Red Wine, Eggs.

Non Local Ingredients: Pecans, corn syrup, salt, pepper, olive oil, proscuitto (in the kale), spinach, parsnips (unknown provenience), Espresso powder and chocolate.

The snow is still falling here. I’ll pull my boots on soon enough to go check on the girls and maybe snap a picture or two. Our meals have trended toward the comfort food variety with the brisk weather outside, featured this week is the lazy womans version of enchiladas.

A few nights ago I broke down a Draper Valley chicken, poaching the breasts and reserving the rest for another dinner. As the breasts cooled from poaching I sauteed some onions and garlic with cumin and thinly sliced some raw sweetmeat squash. I grated several ounces of Tillamook pepperjack cheese as well. After dicing one chicken breast and letting the onions cool, I layered them with the squash, cheese and locally made corn tortillas.

Between the corn tortilla layers I spread liberal glugs of the green tomato enchilada sauce I canned up earlier in the year with our plethora of green tomatoes. I finished the top layer with the last of the cheese and popped it in the oven for about an hour. I probably used a bit too much of the enchilada sauce as the tortillas broke down into thier original components rather than retaining thier structure. But it all held together rather well, the squash merged nicely with the tart sauce and how can you say no to cheese?

And then, this morning I woke up with an urge for a warm breakfast (a rarity around here, we don’t usually even eat breakfast). I decided to make sourdough blueberry pancakes and topped em with butter and local blackberry honey. Yum.

Local Ingredients: Chicken, sweetmeat squash, onions, garlic, corn tortillas, green tomato enchilada sauce, blueberries, sourdough starter, butter, honey.

Non-Local Ingredients: Salt, Pepperjack cheese (Tillamook OR), Cumin.

Check out this opinion piece in the NY Times. I’m posting this bit late as the president elect has already selected a middle of the road candidate who doesn’t seem to show much promise – but I suppose we can hope…

In an earlier post I mentioned that if it was going to be this cold here, it would be nice to have some real snow to accompany it. Well, it came! A day later than the forecast, but here on Thursday evening I am comfortably snuggled in front of the computer, a jelly jar of wine to my left and about 5 or 6 inches of snow layered over everything outside the window on my right. I woke up this morning to a slight dusting, but not long after 8 am it started to snow in earnest and continued all day.

I can’t express how thankful I am to be here in my warm house with my boy home too, all other critters tucked in , and a stocked fridge. A 100 pound lap dog who’s resting body temp is over 101 degrees also helps one to warm up quite quickly after playing in the snow. This time last year I likely would have been in my car, desperately trying to figure out how to avoid the idiocy of other drivers and scale the hill to get home from work. One year I left work at 2pm after it started snowing, and didn’t make it home until 10 at night. It is good to be here, we are warm, dry and the snow makes everything so beautiful. I love the calm and quieting effect it has on the regular ambient noise of the neighborhood. I could duck outside right now and just listen to the silence.

Highlander-hill-dwellers that we are, we may actually be socked in here for a few days. The forecast doesn’t show any warming temperatures above freezing for several days, and packed snow and ice on the roads that lead off our hill make things much more like a slip’n’slide than a thruway.And I haven’t even seen a metro bus go by on the main road today – a clear signal that the road is treacherous. If that is the case, so be it. Maybe we’ll make a snowman on the weekend.

How could you turn away from those faces just wanting a scruff?

I mentioned in a previous post that we headed down south to farmsit for the weekend for a friend who is currently in Kenya. A stormfront blew in on Friday night and rewarded us with increasing snow flurries on our way down. We took the backroads that circle near Mt. Rainier and it was actually a pleasant drive. Not so much snow to make the driving treacherous but enough to make everything very picturesque.

We stopped to look at an old homestead on 5.33 acres in a nearby town as well. The snow was deep there and as we tramped around the property peeking in windows and peering into the barn, Hux bounded around chest deep in the fluffy stuff. He was a very happy dog. The property was pretty neat too, a great old barn in good shape. a number of other outbuildings and some pasture with plenty of space for a large garden. The home needs some serious work to be habitable but it is a nice little spot complete with a little train running through the valley. It’s whistle reverberated off the hills as we were looking around and made it all feel very Little House on the Prairie-ish. So – if anyone has a spare 100K burning a hole in their pockets, I promise I’ll put it to good use!

After stopping at the grocery store we got down to the farm and immediately set about getting a fire going – a task which Gary diligently kept at until the cabin was about 100 degrees (the boy runs either hot or cold, no in between). I went  to do the evening feeding of the critters and break up the ice in their waterers. We were greeted at the gate by Liam, the newest addition to the farm. You’ll see him here in a picture from this summer, cooling his heels in a bucket of water in close to 100 degree weather. He wasn’t so hot in this picture – but look at that tongue!

Molly, the oldest resident on the farm was ever watchful. She has calmed down a bit in her old age though, lost a bit of that manic-obsessive border collie drive.

The geese started honking the minute they saw me and didn’t let up until some cob was dropped at their feet. Sociable, demanding and bossy creatures they are (and I never forget that they could probably break an arm with the flap of a wing). Ain’t nothing quite like a goose hiss.

The poor ducks just try to stay out of their way and follow you around hoping there is a bit of food left for them.

It was chilly out the whole time we were there and aside from tromping about a bit we holed up inside for the most part. Got Liam dried up a bit before he went tearing off into the snow again to make sure the goats weren’t misbehaving (that dog takes his job very seriously).

We returned to Seattle in still freezing temperatures. Not a lot of snowfall while we were gone, but it is still very cold and expected to stay that way for a while. More snow is predicted for Wednesday. The freezing temperatures have just about done in what remains in the garden. I don’t know if the cauliflower, broccoli, parsley and leeks will rebound – they are looking pretty beat down at the moment. If it is going to be this cold I would rather have some real snow to make it fun – but that is rare around here.

Whole Wheat Smoked Eggplant Ravioli with Crispy Jerusalem Artichokes

Apologies in advance for the horrible, overexposed picture. We haven’t quite worked out sufficient lighting in the kitchen yet. But truth be told, this meal just ain’t that pretty even in the best of light. But what it lacks in appearance, it makes up for in flavor.

Earlier in the year we borrowed a friends smoker while he was away fishing. I picked up several eggplants from the local farmers market and smoked them for a few hours. I pureed the eggplant, used half to make a big batch of baba ganouj (promptly frozen),  and used the other half to make up some ravioli. At that time we were rolling in the eggs from the girls and I was trying to preserve as much as possible in the form of pasta or ice cream. I made some ricotta with milk from a local dairy and combined the pureed eggplant with the ricotta, seasoned with salt, pepper and smoked paprika and sauteed leeks.

The ravioli was made with eggs from the girls and flour from Wheat Montana. Montana wheat isn’t exactly local, but we picked up two 50 lb sacks while we were out in Montana earlier this year – so I am going to count it, as it was local when we bought it and no excess miles were traveled to get it from there to here. Besides, it is a really cool thing to see a family of wheat farmers still farming after 3 generations, and they’ve established retail outlets attached to their mills, not only selling raw wheat and flour but any number of breads and treats from their product.

I made a simple sauce for the ravioli from a quart of canned tomato sauce, a bit of smoked paprika, oregano dried from the garden this summer and garlic from the West Seattle Farmers market. I sliced a few jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes) very thin and sauteed in olive oil until crisp.  A whole wheat buttermilk roll to sop up the sauce and push things around rounded it out.

From our home/garden: Eggs, leek,  tomatoes, oregano.

From local farms: Eggplant, milk,  wheat, jerusalem artichokes, garlic. Sources: Greenfresh Market, West Seattle Farmers Market, Renton Farmers Market.

Not Local: Salt, pepper, smoked paprika, olive oil.

These two have managed it – but it seems I have little to share lately. I’ve been doing a lot of mental processing and spinning for the coming year and it seems about all I can do to get my Dark Days posts up on time, much less anything else. I’ve been reading garden porn (seed catalogs) as they come in and am currently trying to figure out how to fit the three thousand things I want to grow in my paltry little backyard. This winter I’ll be breaking out the graph paper to make a to-scale drawing of our backyard and garden beds. Hopefully this will have a positive impact in making me more realistic on what I can cram in where.

We are headed down south this weekend to farmsit for a friend who is currently in Kenya. We will take the backroads down there to take a look at an old homestead up for sale on the way down. It is a little less land than I would like, but depending on what condition the buildings are in – it is a reasonable price for these parts (which isn’t saying much). I’m quite sure a number of you would choke on your cherios to know that the average price for rural land (no structures) around here is well over 10k an acre. It will be good to get out of the city for a weekend in any case. I hope to stop by Raintree Nursery while we are there too. I’d really like to get a couple of dwarf fruit trees going and they should have a decent selection.

Like I said – not much to share. But I figured I needed to post something. I promise to be more interesting next time.