Hummingbird visitor

A puffy little hummingbird - cold in the evening air, visiting our window feeder.  Taken about 45 minutes ago.  Had to share.

47 degrees at the end of May!

Wow - this is how we roll apparently...I actually had to turn on the heat when I got home this evening.  Poor Sassafrass the cat, she was almost shivering.  The temperature will go up tomorrow and we got an entire day of much needed rain, but still. 

A week off

So I took the last week off - everything!  I just needed a break.  A week off work, a week off blogging...the only thing that didn't stop was the gardening.  We mostly worked on the flower garden though.  We now have additional dianthus, a lupine, two new rose bushes and various other plants and alterations in the front and back beds.

Some changes to the fruit garden include moving one blueberry that wasn't doing great (my daughter tells me I need to plant them in pine bark, not with pine bark, but in pine bark, with little to no soil).  I didn't do that - just moved it - so we'll see how that goes.  It looks pretty happy so far.  We also moved the blackberry and watched as the squirrels devastated our bounty of peaches.  We had over 20 peaches on the tree and 3 are left.  Oh well.  Two bunnies have also invaded our yard, tiny cute ones.  One night as we watched the bunnies bounce about, the hummingbird and other birds flitting around, and a butterfly landing between us, Dianna exclaimed "I feel like I'm in a Disney movie!"  :-)  It was awesome.

Bean plants coming up

The bean plants are coming up now.  I know that 252 plants of bush beans seem daunting to many, but this is what ensures we will have enough for winter.  I'm happy they're already coming up, and of course not all of them will make it, but they will provide for us summer through winter into the spring. I just pick beans every day once they start producing, and what we don't eat fresh I blanch for 2 minutes and freeze.  It takes all of 10 minutes.  I think haricots verts are the staple of self-sufficient vegetable growing.

 I find myself counting the bags of beans we have left in the freezer, crossing my fingers that we will have enough until the spring veggies come into their own - and we will.  The second year of self-sufficiency in veggies.  And in the meantime I'm dreaming of eating them fresh, cooking them on the summer grill, and freezing more for next winter's bounty.

Mint jelly pork recipe

The best pork recipe I have is made with my homemade mint jelly.  And I have a ton of pork recipes, including a wonderful one for bourbon-brown sugar ribs.  But this impresses even the most discerning palate, and it's super easy once you have the mint jelly on hand.  For a package of about 8 country ribs you will need an entire 8oz jar of mint jelly.

Spread a little less than a half jar of mint jelly onto the bottom of a glass roasting pan.  Sprinkle with cumin and Chinese five spice.  Place ribs onto jelly and spice mixture.  Spread most of the rest of the mint jelly onto the ribs (reserving only a small portion to use as a side condiment after grilling).  Sprinkle with cumin and Chinese five spice.  Marinate for at least an hour, spreading the mint and spice mixture onto the sides of the ribs.  Grill until just barely done - so the pork does not get dry.  Serve with a little mint jelly on the side.

This is a wonderful meal, and for it you will need to can the mint jelly.  It's easy, fairly fast, and beautiful once you're done.

Here's the recipe I use from Ball:
1 1/2 cups firmly packed mint leaves
2 1/4 cups water
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 pouch liquid pectin

(makes 4 8oz jars of mint jelly)

Prepare jars and lids
Rinse and chop mint leaves
In a large stainless steel sauce pan combine mint leaves and water, bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then remove from heat, cover and let steep for 10 minutes
Pour liquid through a cheese-cloth lined sieve, measuring out 1 3/4 cups
In a large stainless sauce pan combine mint liquid, sugar and lemon juice
Bring to a full rolling boil over high heat - stirring constantly
Once you cannot stir the boil down, blend in liquid pectin and boil hard for 1 minute (again stirring constantly)
Remove from heat, skim off foam and add to jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace
Wipe rim, put on lid and screw on band to finger tip tight
Put jars in canner, making sure they are covered by at least 1 inch water and process for 10 minutes
Turn off heat, uncover, and let sit for 5 minutes before removing jars

See "The Complete Book of Home Preserving" by Ball (pp. 10-11) for more details.  I keep mint jelly on hand at all times for a quick and easy spontaneous gourmet meal.  

Mother's Day Melon Garden

Mother's day weekend involved creating a new garden - for melons.  Haogen, Minnesota Midget, and Blenheim.  We had two friends over to help us dig the grass out from around our cherry tree.  It only took an hour for the four of us, and we had a new garden area with 5 melon plants.

The cherry tree is in the front yard, far away from the squash in the back.  I've read that melons and squash can interpollinate and make the melons taste more like squash, so I wanted to make sure they weren't planted close to each other.  This might be a bit overkill, but it was a place that we could enlarge and still have it look like intentional landscaping.  It's the first year for melons, and they are so small despite starting them in the basement, that I don't know how this will work, but I have my fingers crossed. 

Spring salads once again

Finally, salads are looking pretty again.  The spring inclusion of radishes, petals from dianthus flowers and johnny jump ups makes the salads a joy to look at.  Today's dinner salad included spinach and tatsoi leaves as well:

The side salad a couple of days ago had the radishes:

I love it when my food is as appetizing to the eye as it is to the palate.  Being self-sufficient and sustainable doesn't mean being plain!

Pickled radishes

Last evening I came home and for the first time realized that we had more radishes than we could eat.  It was almost 7pm, and we still wanted to grill dinner, but I knew I wanted to harvest the radishes and pickle them.  So after dinner that's what I did.  I figured I had enough for two 8oz jars.  After cleaning and cutting off the tops I had 11oz of radishes.

I used 3 cups white vinegar, 1 cup water and 1/4 cup salt.  Brought that to a boil and then put fresh dill and garlic in the processed jars, then packed them with the sliced radishes.  I ladled the boiling water, vinegar and salt liquid into the jars, left 1/2 inch head space, and processed for 10 minutes.  I don't know how they will taste, but they look beautiful:

The second jar sealed, with that wonderful *pop*, during The Colbert Report.  Working full time and making sure we're self-sufficient does make for a long day, but it's so worth it.  I know it's only 2 jars, and it's not even officially spring yet, but I'm excited to have started storing the harvest for winter.  There's something special about putting food up that I can't quite describe.

International permaculture day and my daughter

Today my daughter hosted an international permaculture day at her urban homestead in Tampa FL.  She had guest speakers, a pot luck, and about 50 people came.  She is amazing.  I am so proud of her.  I wish I could have been there!

The garden is in!

Today was all about the garden, and getting everything planted.  A solid day of planting, but it's all in - including the extremely small peppers.  I decided to plant them despite their size because I could "fence" them in with bird netting and keep the squirrels and chipmunks from trampling on them, and they could get a chance to grow in the warmer air.  We did a great job - with time for pizza on the grill!

We planted 12 peppers and 8 eggplants:

8 celery, scattered amongst the self-seeded dill that took up my originally planned pepper location:

19 tomatoes, most in the garden:

But some in pots:

8 summer squash plants, 4 winter squash plants, and 2 tomatillos in the new squash garden:

Also, 28 square feet of haricots verts - 9 plants per square foot, and finally interspersed around the garden - 13 basil plants and 10 nasturtiums.  I'm hoping this will be a very good year.

Time to plant

So I definitely could have planted last weekend, but just as I was talking about getting the tomato cages down on Sunday it started to rain.  This week was another busy week at work and so I have only had time to turn on and off the grow lights and pet the tomatoes, no time to plant after work.  So tomorrow is the day.  I expect this weekend to be garden filled: 

The strawberries are blooming and thus need to be covered with bird netting or the chipmunks will eat them all.

The baby bok-choi is bolting (one of them) so I need to pick the others and cook them (maybe grill with a dash of balsamic vinegar?).

I've already picked and eaten over a half pound of radishes (put on salads and sandwiches) and will have to pick more...

...not to mention the mint that needs to be picked and made into mint jelly...

But most important of all - planting!  This weekend everything will go out except maybe the pepper plants.  Tomatoes, squash, melons, nasturtiums, eggplant, tomatillos - all of it.  And I'll direct seed the beans (french filet of course, yellow and green).  I will post pictures, I am so happy to be planting finally!

Rhubarb in syrup

So the second harvest this spring is rhubarb.  Last year we used it in raspberry jam.  This year we thought there was enough to make a rhubarb something or other all by itself.  Our neighbor Lisa combined her rhubarb harvest with ours, and we had 8 cups of sliced rhubarb.  Nice.  We were thinking 4 pint jars of rhubarb in syrup.  We stirred 2 cups of sugar into the 8 cups of rhubarb.  Then refrigerated overnight.  It's the easiest canning we have done - bring to a boil and put in the jars.  Process for 15 minutes.  It turned out beautiful.

But we only got 2 pint jars.  Hmmmm.  It's very tasty, but one jar per 4 cups of sliced rhubarb - I'm not sure it's the best use of our crop.  We instantly decided to grow more rhubarb - this year we'll plant a couple more plants and have rhubarb in syrup without regretting what else we could have done with the harvest.