Strawberry Blossoms!

We're coming upon my favorite time of the garden year!

Last year we had as many strawberries as we could eat, freeze, and preserve for family. I also had enough to make Crooked Gap Farm Jam to sell throughout the year. This year I am looking to have 3 times the berries as last year.

Hmmm. . . What to do, what to do?

Planning Pumpkins and Projects

It's that time of year again. It's time to start planning your garden!

Have you made plans yet on how you can include your kids in your garden? Or if you don't have children at home, how about grandchildren, neighbors, or friends.

After all, growing a crop is wonderful, but what a blessing gardens can be to help grow relationships.

One of my favorite family crops: pumpkins!

If you don't have a lot of space, mini pumpkins are a ton of fun to grow and then decorate with.

 If space isn't an issue, be sure to grow the big ones too!

What a blast the kids will have scooping out a pumpkin they planted themselves . . .

to carve it into a favorite face! 

The kids helped me carve out this cat for our cat lover on his 6th birthday.

A Jack 'O Lantern isn't the only way to carve a pumpkin though. 

Once scooped clean, it can be baked . . .

 

 to be cubed and canned or pureed and frozen.

Seeds can be baked for fun snacks (don't forget to dry and save some for planting next year!), and the pumpkin can be pulled out for delicious baked goods.

Our dog lover was thrilled to get a doggie pumpkin pie to share at Thanksgiving for her 10th birthday.

Not only that, but the kids can learn to bake as well. From our 4 year old up, our kids work together to measure and mix up their pumpkin bread for snack time.

 Our 10 year old has also learned how to mix up and roll out a pie crust from her great grandma's pie recipe.

She carefully forms the crust in the pan to fill with the pumpkin mix she also prepared . . . 

to make pumpkin pies for her dad, his favorite!

And from her trial piece of chocolate chip pumpkin pie, I think she might be on to something!

When you plan your garden this year, be sure to plan for crops to enjoy throughout the growing season and maybe even crops to feed your family for the year.  I encourage you, however, to also use your garden to nurture year round the relationships that you have been blessed with.

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Tools of My Trade

A couple years ago I received a set of pastry rolling pin covers and a pastry cloth from my mom.  She picked them up for me at the Amish near where I grew up and told me about how her aunt use to use them.  Reluctantly, I gave them a try, and now I LOVE using them.  They are wonderful to prevent doughs from sticking and reduce the amount of flour needed when rolling out doughs, which in turn benefits your dough. Not only that, they are great to use with beginning bakers as they making the rolling out process so much easier.

A digital food scale, such as this one, is a very handy kitchen tool.  I will use mine when pre-measuring out my purees for freezing. By filling a baggie set in a container, I can quickly see when I have measured the amount needed without making a mess of spatulas and measuring cups - and my counter!

The Not so Urgencies in Harvesting Garlic

About 10/11 months ago I wrote a post about The Urgencies in Planting Garlic.  I was grateful to not only have the help of my children, but to also have the time together with them.

When spring came, the garlic greens appeared.  As summer progressed, the greens eventually died back.  I knew soon enough that I had missed the prime time to harvest my first ever planting of garlic, but my summer had struck a difficult balance as I was attempting to not overdue things and stay rested with the little one that I am carrying.

Because of this, my garlic continued to rest in the garden soil.

As I have needed garlic this year, I have dug what my recipes call for.  And as the seasons changed to fall, the greens of my garlic reappeared - reminding me just how many bulbs remained from my planting last fall.

Today I headed out to the garden to gather tomatoes and peppers that are tempting the first frost to come. While in the garden, I caught a glimpse of my garlic greens again, tempting me to dig them up.

Although I had decided that my work in the garden was done after the Farm Crawl, to be replaced with a more restful pace and preparation for our little one to arrive in the next few weeks, the call of garlic got the best of me.  So I slowly and carefully dug up my garlic. 

As I mentioned, this was my first attempt at planting garlic.  Because of this, I haven't gathered much knowledge when it comes to garlic growing . . . but I'm guessing that digging garlic when it has started to regrow again isn't the best for flavor or storage.  Even so, I am hoping that it will at least be better than no garlic.

After I dug my garlic, I brought it in the house. There was quite a bit of mud on them so I broke apart the cloves, cleaned them off, and divided them into two piles.  (I'm sure I would have been better off digging them when it was drier and leaving the cloves together - but they they probably never would have been dug. ) The first pile that contained the larger cloves was braided and hung up to dry. The pile with the smaller cloves was put into a breathable produce storage bag in the fridge, in hopes that they can be replanted this fall (maybe after Baby is born??) for some sort of garlic harvest next year (Yeah, I know I'm probably supposed to plant the bigger cloves - but I wanted to use these this year, especially not knowing if I will be able to replant.)

Trial and error is common here on our beginning farm, and with this garlic growing attempt there was probably as much error in my trial as any. I'm sure there are probably garlic experts out there chuckling at me, especially when I have Google at the tip of my fingers telling me what I could do or should have done at this point.  I won't feel offended though if comments are shared to guide me in future garlic growing attempts, and I'd much rather here from my blog friends than from Google anyway. :)

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Preserving Strawberries

One of my favorite seasons in the garden is strawberry season.  I have to say that it is by far my favorite garden crop. 

When I was a young girl I used to sit in my mom's strawberry patch and devour the strawberries. In high school I worked at a strawberry patch for a few summers as a picker in the morning and sales in the afternoon.  I also consumed a bit of strawberries (and strawberry shortcake and strawberry smoothies!) there.

Now I have my own strawberry patch.  And yes, I still sit in the middle of the patch and eat strawberries.  Lots of them.

I have grown to know my habits though, so I have planted a big enough batch to support my in patch strawberry eating, to supply fresh strawberries for my kids to enjoy, and to have extras to preserve.

Strawberry season is now over, but for about 2 1/2 - 3 weeks, weather pending, I bring in a batch of strawberries like the ones pictured here every other day.  (Not pictured are the cups of strawberries that I have eaten in the patch that day.) The best thing is that my patch is still expanding!

It takes around an hour or so to work through the patch to pick the berries.  Remember, I pause often.   When I get them into the house, I find a spot for them in my fridge until I can spend another hour or so preparing them, which is usually the opposite day of picking.

Last year I would freeze or preserve them as jam by the individual batch.  This year, however, I have shaken things up a bit and separate out the larger berries for freezing and the smaller berries for jam within each batch.  This has seemed to work out well for me. 


To start with, I fill my sink with cold water and dump my berries in.  I swish them around a bit with my hands, drain the water, and repeat until the water is clear.  It usually only takes a couple of fills.


Next, I fill my strainer as much as possible to drain some water, followed by placing them in my salad spinner.  I don't have too many kitchen gadgets in the house, but I do love my salad spinner.  Not only does it help my garden lettuce to stay fresher longer, but it has made preserving all of my varieties of berries so much more efficient and improves their quality. (Especially the raspberries which hold water so well in their empty core.)


I spin the water off of the berries, one bowl at a time.  As I remove them from the spinner, I destem them.  I have tried many methods for destemming strawberries, including using many gadgets at the berry patch.  My favorite method is by far using a thin baby spoon which quickly scrapes/pops off the tip with very little berry waste. The berries are then divided into a bowl for smaller berries and a bowl for larger berries. The smaller berries are placed back into the fridge until there is enough for a batch of jam, usually within another picking or two.

The next tool that I use is an egg slicer.  This slicer quickly and evenly slices berries to the perfect size, and held upside down, it drops them right onto my pan for freezing.  I could freeze them whole, but I have found that the berries don't get used up as quickly when they are sliced as you can get so many more berry bites with sliced berries.


For my freezing pans, I just cover cookie sheets with washed cereal box sacks. They are cheap (free), sturdy, and the berries come right off of them.  As pictured, I spread my berries across the pan, being careful that they don't overlap much which helps them freeze individually.


I used to just flash freeze them to the point where the outer layer was frozen, but I have changed to freezing them overnight to where they are completely frozen. I have found that they are just easier to work with this way.  Once they are frozen, I simply crumple up the cereal bag from the outside in, make a pile of berries in the middle, and then lightly push on the pile with the cereal bag covering them in order to separate any berries that have stuck together.

They then get put into sandwich baggies, 2 cups at a time.  Just as I do when canning my sweet corn and other veggies, these sandwich baggies get placed into a gallon freezer bag.  This method allows me to grab out, or shake out, just the portion of berries that I want.

This year I froze a new record of 32 baggies, or around 64 cups, of strawberries.  They will be enjoyed in our homemade oatmeal and occasionally over ice cream.  I'm looking forward to freezing even more next year!

And then there is the jam. As I mentioned, the smaller berries get set aside and used for jam. This year I made 2 batches of strawberry jam, equaling 18 1/2 pints.  I could have made another batch or two, but we had a big event coming up on the farm that needed my attention so we just ate the rest of the little berries, which was just fine!

You can find the instructions for jam making in any Sure-Gel packet, but I thought I would just add some snap shots of my kids helping me and some basics of the process. 

Jonathan, my 3 year old did a great job helping smash the berries for me with a potato masher.

Isaac, our 5 year old, helped measure out the sugar needed.  I have heard that when making jam you want to use 100% pure cane sugar and not sugar which includes beet sugar.  Apparently, beet sugar does not allow the jam (or jelly) to set well, and it can end up runny.  I've never experimented with the sugar which contains beet sugar, but the 100% cane sugar has always given me a nice set.

Once the berries were mashed and sugar measured, Hannah, our 8 year old, added in our packet of Sure-Gel to the berries.

The berries were then heated to a rolling boil, and then the sugar was quickly added in, returning everything to a rolling boil again for the appropriate amount of time.  This is a step where I ask the kids to stay back since there is often some very hot splattering going on.

Once the cooking process was done, preheated jars were filled with jam.

Rims were wiped clean.

And heated lids and bands were placed on the jars as Hannah fished them out of the heated water.


The jars were then placed back into the pot to process which I had them heating in, this time filled with berry goodness. 

And after their processing time was complete, they were pulled out to cool.

Once the jars were cool, I labeled them and had each of the kids who helped put their initials on the rim of the jar as well.  As talked about in a previous post, throughout the year, as we enjoy produce preserved from our farm, we acknowledge who all helped with the meals being served and remember the memories made, something that the kids now find great enjoyment in!

Usually, after strawberry season I am move right along to the next season of my garden. This year, however, there is a bit of a lull due to the garden getting in later than I would have liked - a combination of a rough 1st trimester of pregnancy, a challenging end to our home school year, and projects that needed to be accomplished on the farm outside of the garden.

As I try to remind myself often, I just need to be faithful with what I have been given and trust the Lord to provide in His own way through the areas and times that seem to be challenging as well as the times areas and times filled with ease.  At least I know that this year I will get to enjoy the (strawberry) fruits of my labor!

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Tools of My Trade

I was given an egg slicer as a wedding present, and I don't think I have sliced more than a dozen hard boiled eggs with one. I have, however, sliced gallons upon gallons of strawberries to freeze and bananas to dehydrate with one. My original egg slicer broke a wire, and I tried to replace it with one from a nearby store which quickly broke as well.  After reading many reviews, this slicer went on my Christmas list.  It is a tad more expensive than others, but I give it heavy use and it is holding up great!


This little salad spinner is perfect for spinning water out of berries for freezing, which greatly improves the quality of the berries frozen.  Not only that, but it is wonderful to spin batches of lettuce from the home garden, helping the lettuce to last longer in the fridge.

Storm Shelter Blunders and Waiting Projects

We are now entering our 6th summer living on the farm.  Isaac, just like each of the other kids when they were born, accompanied a major life change. (Which makes me a bit curious to see what will happen with this baby!) We moved into our partially finished house on the farm in October of 2008, and Isaac was born in November.

I would think that after 5 full years of living on the farm, we would be a bit more settled in. With Ethan still working off of the farm, however, and with the kids at home and homeschooling, there is still much settling in to do.

If you would switch one of the above - either Ethan being on the farm full time or myself being on the farm without kids, I'm sure we would be settled in.  The fact is, starting up our farm would be impossible without Ethan working extra jobs, and we have kids.

I have had a number of young couples considering farming and family ask me if it is a good idea to start a farm and start a family at the same time or if it is a good idea to start a farm with a young family.

My response . . . it is hard.  It would be so much easier for me to not have children right now so I could be a better help to Ethan in our farm setup. Either I could go to work and provide more income to allow Ethan to be on the farm more, or I could do more of the farming. Everything would move along so much faster - getting settled in, getting the business established, and turning profits sooner. But I wouldn't trade our kids for any of that. They are a blessing, and they add richness, joy, and fullness to what we are doing. I can't imagine farming without them.

So with that introduction, here are some projects that I worked on today. Projects that I wish were further along then they were, in terms of weeks and years, but they aren't. Projects that I'm sure would be done if we didn't have kids or if I wasn't expecting, but projects that will get done in due time.

First off, the storm shelter. The picture below (sorry for the post in the middle) shows the dirt work around our storm shelter before last spring.  It was roughly done with a skid loader when they installed the shelter in 2010, and for 3 years after that it was used by any animals that made it to the yard (which the cows and sheep did often before we got our yard fence in) for king of the mountain.

The dirt work badly needed to be redone, not just for visual appeal and the ability to plant on it as I wanted, but also to keep the storm shelter insulated properly to be used as a root cellar.  It had been put on hold amidst our settling in for too long, so late last spring I spent 8-9 hours one day with a shovel on the storm shelter moving dirt and shaping the storm shelter mound.  I remember vividly because it was about 98 degrees that day and I ended up sick with mild heat stroke that evening. (Yes, having children slows me down, but I am also very stubborn when I want a project done badly enough.)

Even so, I got the project done.

Or so I thought . . . until this winter.

One day, after a thaw and refreeze, I went to go get some produce from the storm shelter, which was packed with potatoes, apples, carrots, and squash. 

I would soon discover that with the dirt work I had done the spring before, I had made the lowest part of the storm shelter's base right in front of the door. Perfect for melting snow to collect and refreeze into a solid chunk of ice, making it impossible to open the door.

Thankfully, Ethan came to my rescue a couple of times and chipped through inches of ice so that I could gather up a couple week's worth of produce to store in the house to be used, but with his full schedule of off farm work, I only asked this of him a few times.

So the majority of the winter my produce was frozen shut in its cozy root cellar. By this spring, bags of potatoes has sprouted (I used them for my seed potatoes) and the squash and carrots were done for.  Thankfully, the boxes of apples remained good and are making rounds through my food dehydrator to be apple chips now.

This spring has been a slow spring for me.  Since the start, this pregnancy has knocked me down a bit more than the others. I have just entered my 5th month and have been over the sickness stage for a couple weeks now, but I can still tell that this pregnancy is effecting me a bit differently.  The humidity of the last week or so has especially been hard, mainly making the air feel much heavier and more difficult to breath than it has before.

All of that to say, I am a bit behind where I would like to be concerning all things outside. But it is a season, and one that is well worth it.

So this evening, seeing that the forecast was bringing rain, I decided to start my grass seeding - hoping that it isn't too late yet.

Over the last week I have very slowly been trenching out around the storm shelter to provide proper drainage in front of the door. I finished up tonight by tilling the area I trenched to smooth it, and then I seeded it.  My kids by the way, joined me by helping rake seed in and bringing the straw over in a wagon and spreading it. (If you look closely, you will see the rock walls I made last spring on either side of the door to prevent erosion, along with the fence that surrounds the shelter to keep livestock off! There are also marigolds starting to grow which self reseeded from last year's flowers.)

Along with tilling and seeding around the storm shelter, I also tilled up and seeded two areas of hard packed dirt on the side of our house, another project that has been waiting to be done since we built our house, as the construction equipment followed by heavy traffic areas of feet and market loading (from the sliding door) has prevented grass from growing. (You might also notice the tree cages stuck in the straw that I put together in the shade of the porch today - for trees that I wish I could have acquired and planted the year we moved to the farm.)

And then there is the garden. This afternoon, when my lungs were telling me to move at a snail's pace, I did a bit of weeding . . . or mostly eating strawberries straight from the patch. I am kind of embarrassed to put a picture of my garden up. Most everything is planted now, but it is all weeks behind schedule.  I would also like to have it mulched by now, but I will hit that the next cool/non humid week that comes up.

The reason for my post. My personality is one that likes to have my ducks in a row, things tidied up, and checks flying across the checklist of things to do. I often look around at all of the projects I would love to have done here on the farm.  Projects that fall behind running the farm and projects that fall behind being a wife and a mom.  Projects that I wish would have been completed years prior and projects that rely on seasons which are passing quickly.

But more important than seasonal projects are the seasons of life. And as I have been slowed down even more this spring, I have been remembering the gifts of the season that I am in. A season to anticipate another blessing in our family, and a season to invest in the 4 blessings we have already been given. 

A season that I wouldn't trade for a list of completed projects by any means.


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Cancel School - It's Time to Plant!

As I have been trying to balance getting enough rest this trimester, keeping the kids' school moving along, helping Ethan with the farm/marketing as I can, and just managing family life, I have let some prime garden planting days pass by.

Last weekend, after a string of these nice days, we received about 4 inches of rain which made the garden quite muddy. Over the last couple days the garden has been slowly drying, but the forecast this morning showed rain coming around noon - with more rain to follow again this week.

Upon seeing this when I woke I decided that even if we had to tack on another school day to the end of our school year, I was rounding up my troops to plant as much as I could in my garden which has been calling for spring attention.

Even though I had tilled up the entire garden a little over a week ago, I pulled out the tiller to fluff up the soil in the rows that I was able to mark last night.  Some might say this extra tilling is a silly step, but I have found that when dealing with a garden my size I would much rather hoe through powdery soil when I plant.  It might take slightly more time re-tilling planting rows, but it ends up taking significantly less effort.

While I was tilling up the rows, I had the kids gather the sprouting potatoes from our cellar that I had cut last night in hopes of planting this week.  Each potato is cut in two or three portions, making sure at least 2 eyes are on each portion.  They are then set aside to callous over.  This step prevents disease from entering the potato.  Although I should have let mine sit a day or so longer, I decided this morning to take a chance since it might be now or never (or at least a few weeks more).

Once the paths were tilled, I stretched out my line (gotta love having extra stick in fence posts and reels of poly wire free!), started making the trenches for the potatoes and path for the peas with my hoe, and called in my crew who were all excited to help as they grasped the value of our garden from the produce we have been enjoying since last gardening season.

Caleb, who just turned 10 last week, was busy planting peas along the outer fence line using a milk cap I gave him to get the spacing I desired.

Caleb has learned the importance of these peas since I don't let my kids just wander and graze through the garden yet, mostly because of the excited little feet that forget to watch where they are stepping (although the kids do get to enjoy grazing some if they have come in to help.) These fence line peas, along with a couple fence line cherry tomatoes, are free for the taking when they are out playing.

After a quick lesson on positioning potatoes and being careful of the already forming sprouts, Isaac (5) and Hannah (8) helped me fill 4 rows of potatoes using sticks for a spacers that I had broken to just the right length. Jonathan (3) was Hannah's runner, bringing her potatoes down the row to plant as she zipped along.

As you can see, it wasn't the beautiful 70/80 degree sunny days that I missed out on last week, but it was temporarily dry.

Around 10:30 Ethan arrived back home with 2 lamb and 3 hogs from the locker. We quickly covered our 4 rows of potatoes and row of fence line peas so that I could help inventory the new meat.  Caleb and Hannah set to work on their math while Isaac and Jonathan played on Starfall, a wonderful online early literacy site that they get to enjoy during the random school times when Ethan needs my help.

Around noon the meat was inventoried and the rain began.  I still have 2 more rows of potatoes to put in, another area of peas, and some onions, greens, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower that I would like to get caught up on, but I am happy that we were able to at least get a start.

If I'm feeling well enough, we'll also try to plug away at some more school tonight (the older two continue with scheduled independent school in the afternoons while the younger rest) and maybe avoid that extra day at the end of our year. :)

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Tools of My Trade

This book is a wonderful resource on companion planting in order to grow foods without the use of chemicals. It details good and bad companions, how various plants work together for increased flavor, productivity, and pest control.  It includes information not only for the vegetable garden, but also for companion planting with fruits, nut trees, ornamental plants, and much more. Copies of this book can be found used or you can purchase a new copy from the link provided.

This book is a wonderful resource on the technical aspects of seed saving.  It shares about the heritage and classifications of different garden seeds (heirlooms, hybrids, etc) and how the different types of seeds react to seed saving.  It shares about how to effectively maintain pure varieties of seeds with respect to how the plant pollinates and through different seed saving techniques.  Seed clean and storage techniques are also described.  A large portion of the book is given to explaining each type of vegetable family, the classifications of families to avoid cross pollination, and how each vegetable family responds to seed saving and storing.  If you are interested in saving and keeping your own pure strains of seeds, this is a must have book!

Encouragements of Garden Perennials

After having my potatoes, onions, lettuce, and a few other early spring plants in the ground by April 5th last year, I would love to say that I have a decent start this year. Although I have managed to get the garden tilled up, that is really about all I have gotten done.

I was hoping this first trimester morning/afternoon/evening sickness and exhaustion would be fading a bit faster around the time the garden was ready to start planting, but it is still sticking around. And so I rest and wait - wait for that perfect combination of dry enough spring soil and a day where I have a bit of energy.

Today was one of those days where I had a little afternoon energy, but the soil was a bit muddy from the early morning rain. Even so, I took advantage of the energy I did find and stepped out to enjoy the warm day and fresh air.

As I did so, I was encouraged by the perennials crops and plants in and around my garden, the bits of growth in an anxiously awaiting plot of otherwise bare soil. I know that I will eventually get my spring crops planted, but until then I will enjoy the plants in my garden that wintered over and are now greeting me with their fresh spring colors.

Rhubarb

 Asparagus started from seed - Enjoyed over a cup tonight!

Strawberries

Fall planting of garlic

 Red Raspberries in orchard adjoining garden

  Cherry tree in orchard adjoining garden

Peonies in corners of the garden 

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