Truely Blessed

Fig preserves. In the back you can see salsa and tomato juice.

This summer has been a blur of visitors and food preservation. How blessed we are to have such wonderful friends and family to visit. With the exception of a few days, we've had visitors all summer. Boy does that ever help to chase away our homesickness. Our home feels so full (in a good way). In addition to being able to visit with and cook for, we've also been able to bring lots of our family and friends to our farmers market and introduce them to the idea of local food. So exciting.

We have also been blessed many times by our neighbors who have shared with us the abundance from their gardens. We've been blessed with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, squash (by the truckload, it seems :), blueberries (literally by the gallon) and this week figs (25 pounds yesterday, plus another 15 pounds last week that we made into preserves to share with our extended family). We have been preserving this blessing as quickly as we can. Most days find the dehydrator going all day. We have veggies for soup, lots of tomatoes, figs, peppers both hot and sweet, potatoes and blueberries all dehydrated and ready to be used in the off season (mmmmm . . . dried blueberries in oatmeal - I can almost taste it now).

We've also frozen lots of fruits (peaches, blueberries, a few strawberries and some figs) and veggies (squash, zucchini, corn and even pesto). The fruit we will use in smoothies, pancakes and pies. The veggies will be used mostly as side dishes.

And it seems that at least a few times a week, we've been firing up the water bath canner to preserve something in canning jars. So far its been mostly the same thing over and over, but I'm grateful because it is stuff we eat a lot of and will need many jars of in the off seasons. We've made peach syrup, salsa - lots and lots of salsa, garden tomato juice (like V-8) and fig preserves. Once we take care of all of these figs we were given, I'm hoping to put up some more salsa and some tomato sauce/ puree. Then we are going to get to work on making some pickles. We've also been offered some pears (they are not yet ready to harvest) and hope to make pear sauce out of what we don't eat fresh. It is comforting to know that we have some locally grown and home preserved foods set aside for the time when there is less fresh produce available at the market or from the garden.

And speaking of gardens, my little garden is growing nicely. We have been able to harvest several cucumbers and yellow pear tomatoes and the peas are growing quite nicely. I think they will begin flowering soon. It has been fun having our garden survive to harvest :)

The chickens are still laying well, even in the heat. We are still getting an average of about 9 eggs each day. It has been such a blessing to have eggs to share with those who share their garden produce with us and to send home with our guests.

Making Salsa

On Thursday of last week, we picked up 25 lbs of tomatoes from a farmer at the market and used some to make salsa.

We made two batches, 11 pints in all. The rest of the tomatoes are going to become juice. Canning season has begun :)

Garden/ Chicken Update June 2011

I can hardly believe it! My very small garden is still alive and is producing veggies!! I know that I am inviting disaster by writing those words, but I can't help it - I'm that excited!! We have tomatoes and cucumbers on the vine and purple hull peas are growing well. The lone strawberry plant that survived the winter is trying valiantly to produce berries. About a month ago, the neighborhood dogs tore out our potato plants (they are why I am cautiously optimistic about the garden). The plants had been growing for about 6 weeks. I assumed that there were no potatoes, but when I dug more compost into the bed, we found a few pounds of new potatoes. Pretty exciting to me :) The fruit trees are doing well. We have an orange and a lemon tree, both which have fruit growing on them. The fig trees have no figs on them this year. Thankfully, we have a another source of figs for this year's preserves.

The chickens are doing really well. We have only one rooster and we've lost a few hens to the dogs, so we have 11 laying hens and 6 new chickens (they are about 3 months old). We get approximately 9 eggs per day, which is plenty for us to use and allows us some to share with our neighbors, friends and family. The new chickens should begin laying around the time the laying flock molts, which is great because then we should be able to keep getting eggs.

Harvested so far this month:
Eggs: 234
Cucumbers: 1
Potatoes: 2 lbs

Farmer's Market 6-18 & 6-23 - Playing Catch Up

This summer is a blur of visitors and we are enjoying it so much. I think we have visitors scheduled every week but one through the start of school in August. What fun! We are managing to get most of our "groceries" from the farmers market and we are also getting a lot of food put up which makes me happy. I love that our fall and winter meals will include some local foods that we are getting from farmers right now.

Last week we were given lots of squash and we dehydrated a good bit of it along with carrots, peppers, and tomatoes from the market to keep as a soup mix. We plan to add it to a crock pot full of our chicken stock in the winter and enjoy local veggie soup. We also dehydrated lots of tomatoes for snacking (we eat them like chips - yum!!) and for pizzas later, and we made blueberry "raisins". We are over run with peaches and squash this week, so I'm thinking peach leather and more dehydrated squash.

Last week from the market, we got, clockwise from top left: Personal watermelons, a big watermelon (one of the BEST I've ever tasted), blueberries, cantaloupe, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peaches, squash, cucumbers (with reddish brown skins), another cantaloupe, basil, zucchini, carrots and not pictured, milk. We enjoyed lots of it fresh and dehydrated or froze some.

On Thursday, a neighbor came over and brought us the lovely veggies pictured above. The tomatoes and peppers became salsa and the squash is in the dehydrator right now. The cucumbers are being enjoyed with meals.

We've been up to a lot at the little cabin. I'll try to post more soon :)

Farmer's Market and Menu Plan

For the last year or so, I have been going to the farmer's market without my older children. It was a nice chance to have some quiet time, plus they had lost interest in a lot of the process of shopping for food and preferred to hang out at home and have some "Dad time". With watermelon coming in to season and me having to shop with the baby, it was either one of them come with me or we have no watermelon . . . so my oldest came with me and, as it turned out, enjoyed himself :)

Most of the above photo contains our farmer's market purchases, though the dairy and seafood (!!!) is not pictured (milk and mozzarella, fresh water prawns and catfish) and the items in the front right corner come from our wonderful neighbor's garden. From top left, clockwise: Cucumber, blackberries, basil (in the baggie), tomatoes, round zucchini, individual sized watermelon, green bell peppers, onions, blueberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, more onions, garlic and potatoes (in the bowl), squash, cucumbers, banana peppers (all three from our neighbor), and peaches. We also bought another fig tree. When we couple these items with the chicken and beef we have in our freezer from past farmer's markets and a few other items with have stored up, there are many meal options. Here is what I've come up with so far (local items are in bold):

Roasted Veggie Omelet - (eggs from our hens, butter, onions, squash, zucchini) with tomato and cucumber salad.

Pesto Chicken Sandwich on homemade foccacia bread - (basil, olive oil, walnuts, Parmesan cheese; chicken, tomatoes, mozzarella) with cantaloupe

Roasted Chicken, squash/ zucchini pasta (cooked pasta, sauted onions and zucchini or squash, butter, basil, Parmesan cheese), peaches

Stuffed Zucchini (ground beef, onions, butter, squash, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, cheese), blueberries

Burgers, browned potatoes, caramelized onions, watermelon

Spaghetti with meat sauce, bread sticks, steamed broccoli (we can't go without broccoli, even if it is not in season or local - oldest ds loves it), cantaloupe

Stuffed Green Peppers (onions, peppers, some of the prawns, rice, butter, some sort of thickener - probably corn starch - for a binder, cheese), peaches

We are also planning to use some of our peaches and blueberries for smoothies. In addition, we have family coming in today and they are bringing tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini from the garden. We will make salsa for snacking (not enough to can) with some of it (using our peppers and onions and some store bought cilantro). I also envision blueberry smoothies in our future.

It is so exciting to be in the early days of summer with so much available to us from local growers. At the market over the weekend, we were told that plums and figs will soon be available. We love these both for eating fresh and also for preserving. Can't wait!! In addition, we have made arrangements to buy "canner" tomatoes from a farmer so that we can put up salsa, spaghetti sauce and tomato puree. We also have blueberries and blackberries in the freezer that are destined to become syrup this week. I used to put up jam, but we don't really eat much jam here. Syrup, I think, will work better (we've already used up all the peach syrup I made a few weeks ago - we use it on pancakes and waffles, plus we use it in yogurt).

What's on your menu this week?

I am submitting this to Menu Plan Monday at Organizing Junkie.

Farmers Market: May 21, 2011

Have I mentioned that I LOVE our farmers market? This was our haul for the week. Clockwise from top left: Milk (seven others not pictured), canataloupe, cornmeal (yes, its local!!), peaches approx. 10 lbs.), sweet onions, yukon gold and red potatoes, butter (wrapped in paper at the bottom), purple broccoli, purple onions, more red potatoes, squash, carrots, English cucumbers, blackberries, black and green olive hummus. Not pictured: several whole chickens.

When I got home from the market, we had eggs (from our hens) cooked in butter with potatoes and onions, blackberries and peaches.

Tonight, we are going to have leftover chicken from last weeks market with broccoli and caramelized onions and squash.

I LOVE the farmers market!!

New Chicks

It seems that all chicken raisers are destined to have some loss. Since we got our first chicks last April, we have lost 5 hens, including one we lost this week. Because I am sure we will lose more before next spring, I thought it prudent to add a few to the flock. We were able to get six 6 week olds from the farm store today. They will begin laying sometime in late September, right around the time our current layers begin molting. Hopefully that will mean we continue to get some eggs this fall and winter.