Overwintered Leeks

Our freezer got a little too full, and we were a little too burnt-out last Summer/Fall to harvest and process our leeks. I also (conveniently!) remembered that leeks can overwinter well with a little straw or leaf mulch. We finally got most of the garden in by Mother's Day, minus our 12 square foot, would-be onion patch, which was still occupied by last Spring's leeks. 

So, Bill pulled them, I weighed and processed them. The weight before processing was 24#! I trimmed, cleaned and chopped up 2/3 of that, and threw them in the freezer. The remaining 8# were donated to our local Food Is Free table here in Olympia. 

Our take, after trimming them up. 

Our next major harvest is likely to be rhubarb, as we have six plants that are HUGE right now. We are so happy to share our abundance with our neighbors, that we have decided to add another tab to our Garden Yield spreadsheet that keeps track of how much produce we have/will have donated to individuals and Food Is Free tables over the coming year. 

The Art & Science of Meal Planning - Part One: Seasonality & Budget

Our family is just the four of us* - The Hubs, The Teens, and lil' ol' me. So you might be surprised how involved planning our meals and buying our food can get. When I actually took a minute to stop and think about all of the elements that go in to planning my family's meals and groceries I was kind of surprised by how many factors were involved.

The things that influence how I plan and how I shop for my family's food:

• The Season
• Our budget
• Our schedules
• Specific health/dietary needs of family members

Four items - that's not too much in the way of a list, is it? Well, each item contains complexities of it's own. For example - Seasonality. It not only influences what is available for purchase, but the quality and price of the item. It also greatly influences our family's tastes - Fall and Winter call for roasts, casseroles and soups, whereas Spring and Summer are barbecue, salads and stir-fries.

A few of the staple Fall & Winter menu items for our family are things like shepherd's pie, beans with ham hocks and cornbread, green chicken curry, tikka masala, pot roast and potato soup. Basically, hearty fare that is meat and root vegetable intensive.

The Spring and Summer would typically be lighter and fresher - garden salad with roasted salmon or grilled steak, chicken stir-fry with brown rice, baked bone-in chicken with pasta salad, fresh spring rolls, carne asada tacos.

Then you throw the budget in the mix.

As loyal adherents to organic and sustainable farming practices, both on our own farm and in the products that we purchase from other sources, we spend a fair chunk of change on groceries - especially meat and seafood - to support environmentally-friendly and sustainable ranches and fisheries. That translates to us eating less meat and seafood than a typical American family.

As such, I try to be very thoughtful in my meal planning, choosing quality over quantity, without forgoing taste or nutrition in my meals. It complicates my life a little, but I recognize that it is the best choice for all concerned in the equation.

So this means that while I plan my meals around the "protein" element, it doesn't represent the bulk of a given meal. I try to balance the relative expense of the piece of meat or fish with a lower cost, but still healthy and well balanced side dish/dishes. A small portion of steak with a lot of green salad, nuts and veggies on top, or a pound of ground beef with potatoes, carrots, celery, mushrooms and onions in a shepherd's pie. With ravenous teenagers in the mix, stretching a pound of hamburger to feed and satisfy a family of four can present a challenge. Buying meat in bulk from local buying clubs (mine sources its beef/pork/chicken & seafood from local sustainable ranches, farms & fisheries) or growing your own are both fair ways to trim the grocery budget, but both involve fairly substantial upfront costs. Below is the spreadsheet I made for tracking "Pig Expenses" last year.



Like a ding-dong, I didn't note anywhere on my spreadsheet what the final hanging and the cut/wrapped weights were for our pork, but suffice it to say that the take-home cut & wrapped weight was in the neighborhood of 150-200#. Based on that guesstimate, our homegrown pork cost us roughly $6 to $8 per pound, which is on par (and maybe a little cheaper, considering you get the full spectrum of cuts) with sustainably, non-medicated, non CAFO pork sold in farmers markets and butcher shops. It ends up being a fairly intense and expensive six months raising the pigs from weaners to the freezer, but the pork lasts our family of four for a year, eating it 3+ meals per week.

*At the time that I started this post, all four of us were still at home full-time. Now the big kiddo is away at college for 8ish months out of the year. When she is home though, she still eats like a viking. ;)

Critter Census - Spring 2013

For better or for worse, these numbers are likely to change due to either loss or gain - hopefully gain - within the next 12 weeks leading up to Summer.

Chickens - 14

Sir Rosco Peckins - Lavender Orpington roo
Leroy Brown - Splash Cochin roo
Leon - Black-laced Red Wyandotte roo
Lacy - Silver-laced Cochin hen
Coo-Coo - White/Wheaten Americauna hen
Amelia - Dark Americauna hen
Rose - Brown Americauna hen
Gracie - Golden-laced black Polish hen
Puffy - White Silkie hen (currently sitting on 9 eggs at last count)
Ewok - Brown Americauna hen
Miss Bitey Pants - Black "Policauna" hen
Jasmine - Black Policauna hen
Australorp hens who's names I don't remember (2 of them)

The coyote seems to have picked off a few look-alike hens without our notice, based upon our slowly but steadily shrinking flock. 

Guinea Fowl - 2

Spotty & Sylvia - Pearl Grey hens

Rabbits - 1

Prince Charming - Neutered mini-Rex male

Goats - 19 (Aye, chihuahua!)

Blue - 11 year old Agouti Grey, disbudded Nigerian Dwarf doe
Chardonnay - 5 year old Caramel brown, blue-eyed, gopher-eared, disbudded mini-Lamancha doe
  Chardy's twins - dark in color, doelings
Hop - 2 year old Fawn & White spotted, gopher-eared, mini-Lamancha doe
  Hop's male kid - White & Grey, ND "erect" eared, disbudded mini-Lamancha wether
Valentina - 2 year old Fawn colored, elf-eared, mini-Lamancha doe
  Valentina's twins - Fawn/buckskin colored, gopher-eared
Liberty - 1 year old Caramel brown, blue-eyed, gopher-eared, mini-Lamancha doe
  Liberty's kid - Black with white markings, disbudded
Hope - 1 year old Caramel brown, blue-eyed, gopher-eared, mini-Lamancha doe
  Hope's kid - Fawn colored, disbudded
Sidney - 4 year old, White with black markings, erect-eared, disbudded Alpine doe
  Sidney's kid - disbudded wether
Sophie - 3 year old, White with black markings, erect-eared, disbudded Alpine doe
  Sophie's kids - Black & White, gopher-eared, disbudded, mini-Lamancha/Alpine doeling
                         Black & White, erect-eared, disbudded, mini-Lamancha/Alpine wether
Buckley - 2 year old, Buckskin colored, gopher-eared, mini-Lamancha buck

I feel bad that I can't recall off the top of my head all of the pertinent details about all of the new babies, but between my memory issues and the landslide of babies born in the past two weeks, I'm just out of my depth at the moment. :\

Pigs - 3 (I'm not too committed to learning these guys' names, and so I venture a guess at who's who here.)

Baykin(?) - 9 week old spotted gilt
Prosciutto(?) - 9 week old black gilt
Porkchop(?) - 9 week old black barrow

In addition to our livestock, we have the pets - dogs, Rex & Penny, curmudgeonly old box turtle, Bob, and our lone parakeet, Applesauce. That brings our grand total to 43 critters. HOLY CRAP.

Bazaar Season Breakdown

I learned a lot with last year's bazaar season - affordable, useful objects sell, and spendy-ish, upscale items don't, at least for me. I tried to learn something from that and to focus my time, energy and money on making more of the items that seemed to be in demand last year - washcloths and bike helmet earmuffs, while eliminating the high-end (and high overhead!) apparel items that didn't sell - scarves, mostly.

So this year, I made roughly triple the number of washcloths as last year, 35. We sold all but 7 of them. We sold roughly the same number of bike helmet earmuffs as last year, but, same as last year, the "feminine" colors (pink and purple) didn't move. Lesson learned - people like their noggin warmers in gender-neutral brights and earth tones.

Our Booth at Lincoln Winter Market

I did not offer any jars of jam for sale this year, as I'm not sure that a) With new cottage food laws in place, and me not yet certified, that my selling any sort of prepared foodstuff would be be entirely legal, and b) $3 for a half pint jar might sound like a reasonable price to the buyer, but the maker/sellers breaks even at best.

This was our first year making and selling our soaps and accompanying frou-frou. The soaps, especially the Homegrown Lavender, sold like hotcakes, even at $5 per bar, and with a LOT of competing soapmakers at both bazaars. Ours was the only goat milk soap that I saw for sale though, so between that and what I think of as our handcrafted, cute, genuine factor (imperfectly cut bars, hand wrapped packaging), I think we did pretty darn well and recouped our initial investment in soapmaking supplies and materials.

Our very first batch of soap - Orange Cream

The accompanying products (scrubs, fizzes) weren't super sellers, but the profit margin per sale makes them worth keeping. I'll make a few next year, but focus more on the soaps and washcloths, as they are they main attraction.

Another note with regard to the goats milk soap - we made a few potentially valuable contacts with some fellow crafters and soapmakers who expressed interest in buying/trading for some of our goats milk to include in their products (NOT to consume!). Imagine this goat thing actually paying for itself someday - crazy! Maybe I can use this to justify my longing for alpaca/fiber goat/sheep ownership to the spousal unit? One critter at a time...

These numbers are rough, as I'm admittedly a shoddy record keeper. Just to give you an idea of how a tiny, homegrown hobby can maybe(?), someday(?) grow into a small business...

Last years sales - $185
This years sales - $326.75 (Plus another $50 incoming for custom orders)

So, we doubled our sales from last year to this. With any luck, next year we double this years numbers at least.

We hope to get our farmstand up and running sometime between now and next Summer at the latest. Hopefully the products, business cards and relationships that we made and exchanged at these bazaars will be something of a springboard for our little stand. I think we've discovered a niche, now to expand on that, explore further ventures and make a little money while doing what we love. The future is bright. :)

Pickin' & Grinnin'

Over the course of the past week or so, it has become increasingly clear to us that the apples and pears were ready to come down. In fact, Scarlet and I would go and gather the windfalls each evening to add to our goats' rations, and were noticing a definite increase in the amount of apples committing hara-kiri each day. Picking time was nigh.

But picking apples from our non-dwarf, very old apples trees is not a task to be undertaken lightly. This is no picturesque, Pinterest-photo op. This is a bark-chunks-to-the-eye, ladder-teetering, crinked-neck, farmer versus tree, battle royale.

Apple to the cheekbone - coming up!

Our tallest apple tree is in excess of 15 feet high. And in the torturous way of many fruit trees, seems to grow it's biggest, most perfects fruits in the unreachable branches located 15 feet up, dead center. Basically, they're completely inaccessible, which isn't to say that we ever learn to just leave those apples alone. Nope, our cider-greed blinds us to the futility of our pursuit.

This year, we judiciously decided to throw in the towel (for now) after managing to pick and knock down 140+ pounds of cider and sauce-worthy apples, leaving another frustratingly impossible to reach 30-50 pounds still in the trees.

We also managed to collect another 13 pounds of smooshed, bug chomped or otherwise "imperfect" apples to share with our goats.

The goaties' share of the goods.

Our share! :)

As if our epic apple haul weren't enough, we also finally had a pear crop. Granted, at just 20 pounds, it wasn't huge, but when measured against our previous best-ever crop of one lonely little pear, we counted ourselves exceedingly lucky to end up so flush with fruit.

Aren't they purty?!?

With the picking being done, we now enter phase two of the fruit-a-palooza; washing, peeling and juicing. Hooboy!

With 160+ pounds of apples and pears that will need dealing with, I predict a busy week, filled with intense paring knife, apple peeler and steam juicer usage. I'll have to keep my eye on the prize - that first pint of ice cold homemade cider.

Like last weekend's jam-o-rama, this fruit-a-palooza may require a little external motivation to get through. Cue the motivational montage!

:)

The 4th Annual Jam-o-Rama

Someday I'll work up the courage to try "real" canning. By which I mean, using a pressure canner, rather than just a hot water bath to safely heat and seal my jars. After all, water bath canning limits you to canning higher-acid foods, since it isn't able to reach the intense temperatures that a pressure canner can. I've pressure canned salsa and a few other odds and ends before, but only with my Mom present. She has a dandy old pressure canner, which I happen to be terrified to use alone.

Firstly, because there is a right way and a wrong way to use a pressure canner. I have an inordinate amount of fear that I will miss a step and somehow manage to blow up my kitchen. After footing the bill from my car accident, I'm not sure that my insurance agent would be super keen to learn of my dabbling with super heated liquids encased in immanently breakable glass jars either.

Secondly, I'm not a huge fan of mopping my ceiling. My husband's beer brewing mishaps have seen well to that.

So, I'm primarily a jam kinda gal. In fact, my very good friend Jen and I have a yearly summer canning fest that we've dubbed the Jam-o-Rama.

This year, Jen got a great deal on a case of beautiful, locally grown peaches, so we're making three kinds of peach jam/preserves - Spiced Peach, Raspberry Peach and Earl Grey infused Peach. This jam-o-rama is definitely an all day affair, but sooo worth the trouble.

Our jammin' lasted a full 10+ hours this year, and resulted in a total of 78 jars of gorgeous, delicious jam.

My share of the goods

Spiced Peach, Raspberry Peach and "The Earl"

After four years of hardcore jammin', we gals finally seem to know what we're about. I daresay that "The Earl" is our best effort yet. Alas, because this was our first time trying our heavily modified/improvised recipe, we only made a double batch (as opposed to our usual, quadruple), and therefore ended up with just 9 half pints each. We'll definitely make a bigger batch next year, but after peeling and chopping 30 pounds of fuzzy golden orbs, I think we're all peached out for now.

Still on my to-do list: Blueberry, Hawthorn and Apple and maybe blackberry. We'll see how long this wave of enthusiasm lasts. ;)

Trading my Hoe for a Hook

We slipped away from Ye Olde Farm for a few days, up to the beautiful and serene Camano Island. Did I knit while I was away? Yes. Did I knit more baby hats per my one-hat-per-day schedule to meet my goal of knitting 30 hats in 31 days? Err... no.

I'm still determined to meet my goal, I just needed a wee bitty breather from hats and the color purple. So instead I made Scarlet a beret and shawl for her American girl doll, and started a lightweight scarf for Olivia. When and if I get these badboys up on Ravelry, I'll post a link.

Besides knitting like a maniac, I also spent my farm-free vacay fishing and crabbing in Puget Sound. Our little family of four purt-near cleaned the Pacific Sanddab aka "soft flounder" out of Elger Bay. Over three days fishing, we caught something like 18 or 20 of them. We were knocking them dead when our bait wasn't being stolen by bullheads and dogfish. The sanddab average about 1/2 pound each, and are really more bones and guts than meat, but we managed about 6 pounds of fillets, and the remainder was/will be used as crab bait. We are very careful to use every last bit when we harvest an animal, and fish are no exception. We chowed down on our fresh catch nearly every night that we were camping, but we also socked some away in the freezer, to enjoy another time.

We also scored a few good sized Dungeness crab - yum, yum, yum! Though crab are traditionally and most commonly boiled, we prefer to grill them. Bill dispatches the little guys, cleans them then throws them on the bbq, still in the shell. I like to sprinkle a little beer on them while they grill. When they're done, we serve them with seasoned, melted butter, lemon and generous sprinkling of Old Bay. Smokey, sweet, salty - goooood stuff!

We also tried for some pink salmon, but they don't seem to be in the Sound in large numbers yet, so the fishing is very slow still. Bummer, that, because I wrangled the kids into picking me a couple cups of salal berries, and had visions of grilled salmon with a red wine/salal reduction. Alas it was not to be. Bill is going after the salmon again tomorrow, this time in a different area that supposedly has better fishing. We shall see. I may get my salal salmon dinner yet. ;)

Fishing/Crabbing totals-
*8 Dungeness crab
*15 lbs +/- Pacific Sanddab (about 6 lbs cleaned)

Knitting Like There's No Tomorrow

But there is a tomorrow! And if I don't finish at least one hat before then, I have officially fallen behind the curve to reach my goal of 30 hats in 31 days. I'm about 7 1/4 to the good. Here are the finished (but not tucked) seven -


Simple cables, stripes, the eggplant, preemie ribbed stripes, purple knot-top, simple two-color, lavender and navy stripe

I'm having a bit of trouble making primarily purple hats that look suitably boyish. Any thoughts?

Are you knitting, crocheting or sewing along with my challenge? Show us your hats! :)

End of Season Numbers

Since most everything in the garden has lately (or very nearly) given up the ghost, I’ve decided to go ahead and tally up my harvest totals for the spring and summer seasons. My numbers are very approximate being that I am far from perfect in the recordkeeping department, and taking into account kid and chicken pilferage…my totals are of the more or less variety.

Anyhoo, here we go-

Rhubarb – 5 lbs, 2 oz
Cilantro – 6 cups
Mints – 3 cups
Strawberries – 6 pints +/- (These have also just begun fruiting again, but these latest berries will be included on my Fall/Winter totals)
Shelling Peas – 3 cups +/-
Lettuce/Arugula – 7 cups +/- (Most went to seed very soon after planting.)
Kale – unrecorded – but still producing
Wild, foraged cherries – 7 lbs, 5 oz
Basil – 3 cups +/-
Baby Yukon Gold Potatoes – 2 lbs, 11 oz
Wild Foraged Berries (Huckleberries, Salmonberries, Trailing Blackberries) – 1 lb, 4 oz
Zucchini – 24 lbs, 10oz
Blueberries – 1 lb, 10 oz
Raspberries – 3 oz (this was a really bad year for my raspberries)
Delicata Squash – 11 lbs, 8 oz
Vidalia Onions – 8 oz (This is my second year of utterly pathetic onions. I think I’m done with them.)
Hazelnuts – 1 lb, 2 oz
Wild Himalayan Blackberries – 4 lbs, 8 oz
Concord Grapes – 51+ lbs!!!
Cantaloupe – 12 oz (This was our first try. They were tiny, but SO good!)
Tomatoes by type-
Slicing – 32 lbs, 9 oz
Cooking – 30 lbs, 14 oz
Tomatillos – 9 lbs, 8 oz

For a grand total of – 172+ lbs grown and 13+ lbs foraged. These totals don’t include our very modest seafood take for this year, two pink salmon, five red rock crab, plus the odd trout. This being my first year or recordkeeping in detail, I don’t really have anything to compare these numbers to. However, I am certain that this is the single best year that I’ve had for both tomatoes and grapes, both of which went bonkers. Besides being the first year that we have kept detailed records of our garden’s yield, this year’s garden was also a learning experience in that we tried quite a few new crops, used primarily our own compost as soil/fertilizer, and began chicken keeping. We’ve learned at least as much about what doesn’t work in our garden as we’ve learned what does. For instance, tomatoes and squash are obvious shoo-ins for next year’s garden, whereas onions and brussel sprouts will not be returning, due to their disappointing yields.

As a continuation of this year’s experiments, I have, for the first time, planted a few late summer crops for a Fall/Winter harvest, including carrots, arugula, cilantro and snap peas. So, God and weather willing, we will have some fresh veggies and greens to brighten out days in the depths of winter.

I will continue to keep records of my slowly trickling-in fruits and veggies, because my inner Geek compels me to do so, but for all intents and purposes, I consider the garden wrapped up for the year, and not a moment too soon – I’m whooped. ;-)