Wild Things Farm

Any of you that grew up when paper grocery bags were the only option at the store knows just how handy the plastic bags are that we get now.  I know they are annoying and they have a bad habit of multiplying in the cabinet, BUT could you imagine being able to carry in 9 paper bags of groceries at one time?  Nope.

Plastic grocery sacks are recycled here on the farm to hold veggies, bag trash, and even stuff floating row cover in and mark the bag with a marker as to which garden bed it fits.  The latest "aha" moment came when I was wearing lace-up boots and wanted to come in the house without tracking garden debris everywhere........

Voila!  I have hundreds of shoe protectors...........and my floor stays a little bit cleaner :)

All the hummingbird feeders are ready and waiting.......

The bottlebrush buckeye is in full bloom

Columbine is happy, happy, happy!

The coral honeysuckle is on a quest to take over the front porch!

Surely they will be here soon.

I say "new way", but someone had to dream it up--I love Allrecipes.com and when I'm trying to find a different way to prepare a veggie that's the first place I look.  This recipe is Baked Swiss Chard with Feta Cheese and actually I bought some feta cheese last trip to the grocery store.  So, here goes:

1 bunch of Swiss Chard, stems and leaves separated

1 onion, chopped

4 large garlic cloves (I added this part and left them whole)

1 TBS olive oil

salt and pepper

2 TBS olive oil

4 oz crumbled feta cheese

Wash the swiss chard and tear the stems out of the leaves; put these in a bowl with chopped onion, peeled garlic cloves, and toss with 1 TBS olive oil.  Place on an oiled baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes or until onion is starting to brown.

Toss the leaves in the 2 TBS olive oil (I only used 1 TBS here) and salt and pepper to taste.   Careful with the salt; the cheese is pretty salty in itself......Place the leaves on top of the stems and sprinkle with crumbled feta cheese (I only used 2 ounces instead of 4) and put the pan back in the oven for 15-20 minutes longer,

or until some of the leaves are starting to get crispy on the edges.

YUMMY!

It's always fun to get new things to "play" with here on the farm.  This year there's a "sweet 'tater startin' box" right next to the orchard.  The box was constructed right on the ground, much like a cold frame---well, I guess technically it IS a cold frame, but its main purpose in life is to sprout as many sweet potato slips as possible before it's time to plant them in the garden.

The box is made from 4 slabs of Crab Orchard stone, around 12-15" tall, 7' long, and 1.5-2" thick.  They were stood on edge and held in place with metal stakes on the outside of the box.  A pressure treated board was then glued and fastened around the top edge to accommodate fastening hinges to the lid.

A few pieces of aluminum that were left over from the small greenhouse were fashioned into a top, hinges screwed in place, then plastic fastened on the top.

The box was then filled with horse manure and shredded leaves, then mushroom compost.  The potatoes were all placed inside then covered with compost.  2 heat lamps provide heat when the sun isn't shining and a thermometer is stuck in the soil so I can keep an eye on the temperature of the potatoes (wouldn't want to burn them....lol).  BTW the thermometer is a meat thermometer that I normally use for soap making.  Temp is temp, right?  The thermometer doesn't know if it's stuck in a roast or dirt.....or soap for that matter.

Back to the bin......it's located adjacent to an electric fence charger station where an outlet was installed, so an extension cord powers the heat lamps.  Here are some pics.....

The whole contraption is covered with the frost blanket and tarp at night and if it's cold during the day.  The best part about the whole project is that almost everything came from items salvaged.  The only things purchased were the 2 heat lamps, one of the fixtures, some screws, and the mushroom dirt (the horse manure has way too many seeds to be on top exposed to sunshine).  The entire bill was around $30.00.  After the sweet potatoes evacuate the site, something else will occupy the space during the summer.

Today is a very unsettled day here around the Cumberland Plateau.  Last night at 9:30 the temperature was 39 and this morning at 5:00 it was 60!  Wind blowing, occasional lightning and thunder, sun......  I figured out why!  The "winter-to-spring" button is broken and someone is beating on it!

Gotta keep smiling, and make sure the path is clear to the cave!

Although mud is still the most popular flooring in the great outdoors, spring is creeping through the cracks.  A couple of freezer burned hyacinths stand amidst the bones and skeletons of the front perennial garden, and the spring peepers have been screaming out their mating calls for the past several weeks.

Several sunny days have been enjoyed by the resident farm dogs, Angus the boxer and Hattie the Catahoula.  Angus cracks me up the way he sits with all his legs sticking out in front of him.  I've taken several pics of him in this position, but his "plumbing" shows too much.  I was able to catch him in the pose in the flower garden outside the greenhouse.  Hattie is snoozing in the background.  He can sleep sitting up very well!

The warm sunny afternoons beckon me to the woods for a late afternoon stroll.  It's more fun to walk in the woods right now before the ticks, chiggers, poison ivy, and ssssssssnakes start terrorizing the woodlands.  I caught Hattie posing on a bluff just above one of the garden areas:

The small greenhouse is getting full of seedlings on their way to becoming transplants, then to garden plants, then onto some lucky person's plate!

The heart of the farm flows out of the mountain bordering one side of the property.  This stream flows year round and is utilized to water the crops and happy hens that live on the farm.  A resident kingfisher enjoys the bounty of minnows in the small pond and the dogs like to play in the water on hot summer days.  Personally, I think it's too darned cold to get in.

The high tunnel is still producing great fresh veggies for sale and personal consumption.  This winter the tunnel has produced swiss chard, lettuce, arugula, and one harvest of spinach.  For some reason the spinach just didn't grow at all.  I believe the soil got too wet early in the season and just never dried out.  Next year the spinach will be elevated to new heights!

In the right hand side of the tunnel, the stubborn spinach was yanked out and snow peas planted in their place.  The row covers are handy when the weather outside is frigid, but they've only been utilized like two times this past pseudo-winter.  Early tomatoes, beets, carrots, more lettuce and spinach are going into the high tunnel over the next few weeks.

Whew, to be winter time and the "down season", I seem to be awfully busy :)

I’ve not watched any of the new reality shows on hoarding, but once in a while I ask myself that question.  I do have hoarding tendencies for saving plastic plant pots (I do use them, really I do), plastic produce containers, egg cartons, fabric (she who dies with the most fabric wins) and, oh yes, my pantry is stuffed, along with the freezer.

The only thing that would even resemble a New Year’s resolution for me would be to not buy groceries, except for things like milk, bread, and that sort of thing until I get my pantry and freezer cleaned out some.  This morning was a great experiment in using up the rest of a box of blueberry muffin mix.  The muffin tins are, well, serving another purpose right now, so I used a tart dish (about 8? dia) to bake up this really tasty blueberry muffin-type thingee.  The recipe I used goes like this:

about 3/4 cup blueberry muffin mix (whew, that box is gone from the shelf!)

1 fresh egg from the Happy Hens (I eat the ugly ones that I don’t want to sell)

1 tsp veggie oil

about 1/2 cup of (the rest of a bag of) walnuts, finely chopped in the food processor

2 T wheat bran (I really need to be using this up more often)

a big handful of FRESH blueberries (they were on sale, okay?)

a dash of milk

I sprayed the tart dish with cooking spray then put the batter in and baked at 400 for about 30 minutes.  I topped the slice I ate with, mmmmmm, cream cheese!

YUM!

This little experiment got rid of the muffin mix, a partial bag of walnuts, some of the wheat bran and some of the cream cheese that’s accumulated in the fridge.  I’ve been known to go to the grocery store, with a list, and think, “oh, I need catsup or mustard or cream cheese” so I buy it and get home just to find that I’ve already bought it.   Sometimes 2 or 3 times!  During the holidays I was making pumpkin rolls and cheese balls so I’ve got a few packages of cream cheese in the fridge.  I know some of you are guilty of that too, fess up!

During the yucky days of winter the Happy Hoer does a lot of surfing ....... I also subscribe to several blogs of interest.  Just this morning a new USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map was published, with a feature where you can type in your zip code and your map will magically appear :)

Check it out   www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov 

We all could use a little help getting our minimum daily requirements of vitamins, fiber, minerals and all that stuff that our bodies need to thrive.  Recently, during a surfing adventure, I ran across a new website published by the USDA.  It's called ChooseMyPlate.gov and it's a wonderful resource for finding out exactly what's in the food you're eating AND there's a free daily tracker where you can input what you are eating AND it computes your daily intakes AND tells you what percentage of your daily requirements you have eaten.  The miracles of modern technology continue to amaze me......here's the super secret (jk) link     http://www.choosemyplate.gov/ click on "Supertracker" and get started.

Healthy New Year!

OK, so this is supposed to be the "slower" season for farmers.  I still haven't figured out "slow" in what way?  Well, maybe slow in that I don't have to beat the sun up every morning--that's quite a break in itself.  The high tunnel is going great; harvesting greens about every 10 days or so.  The Happy Hens are still busy laying beautiful eggs.  Last week I went to the pen to find two of them laying lifeless in the pen and their heads were gone!  I knew that was a clue as to who did it, so I quizzed "Granny Google" and it was either a raccoon, weasel, or owl.  So, knowing the critters around here, I'd say Rocky Raccoon had chicken brains for supper one night.  No more....I found the breach in security (aka hole in the fence) so now the Happy Hens can rest easy again.  It's amazing how something like that affects egg production.

A couple of months ago I found a really cool blog of a vegetarian chef in Denmark.  I'm always looking for recipes to share with members and customers on creative ways to utilize the bounty of the farm.  Although this particular recipe has nothing to do with produce grown on the farm, it's the holidays and I thought this healthy snack fit right in.  Her website is called My New Roots and the address is http://mynewroots.blogspot.com/.  You know how you get to clicking and clicking and end up, well, in Denmark, reading interesting things.  She had a recipe for Date Balls that is really amazing.  I tweaked it of course, but not much.  She rolled hers in toasted sesame seeds, I used coconut.

2 cups chopped dates (finely chopped would work really well)

2 cups chopped walnuts (again, finely chopped)

Coconut, for coating the balls

Put the dates into a food processor and process until very finely chopped--they are really tough.  Do the same thing to the walnuts.  Mix the two together and roll into 1" balls.  Roll them in shredded coconut.  They are very sweet and tasty and no added sugar!   Note the finely chopped--I didn't chop fine enough and it made the balls hard to get to stick together.  They are delicious anyway.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

This year wasn’t a particularly “great” year for eggplants but there were a few harvested just before the first predicted frost. So, I have a bag of eggplants in the fridge–what do I do with them?

Last year, or maybe the year before (time gets away, doesn’t it?) I made eggplant “meat” balls with marinara sauce and spaghetti. They were totally edible and actually pretty good. So, I took the eggplant–the skinny Asian eggplants–peeled them and sliced them into about 1/4 inch slices or so, sprinkled them with salt and put them on a paper towel for about 20 minutes or so. This draws the moisture out of the eggplant. Then I pat them dry and roasted them for 20 minutes or so until they seemed kind of done.

At this point I put them in the food processor and processed them until they were ground up like, well, hamburger. I added garlic and some onion (I need to go to the grocery store so its flakes, okay?) Mixed this up with about 1/3 package of an 8 oz pack of cream cheese, about 1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese, and 3 pieces of sun dried tomato that were chopped up. Oh, I also chopped up a jalapeno pepper that was laying on the counter, just for a little heat. Mix all that together and stuff it into the pepper. Oh yes, the pepper. As I was harvesting all the eggplants before the predicted frost, I harvested all the peppers as well. I had a couple of “Sweet Diablo” peppers which are just a sweet pepper that is about 5-6 inches long by 2 inches wide at the top and sweet, but not hot. I slit the pepper, removed the pith and seeds, and stuffed with this mixture. Then sprinkle with Panko bread crumbs and bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until they start to brown a little. Yum, yum!

Last year, while in the produce section of the local supermarket, I purchased a rutabaga.  I did a blog about how wonderful it tasted and made a note to grow them this year. 

In mid-July I planted three rows, each about 180 feet long.  The seeds germinated, I dutifully thinned them to 5" apart, the cabbage worms came, I sprayed Bt, and I kept watching and waiting---man do they grow slow!

Botanically speaking, a rutabaga is a cross between a turnip and cabbage.  I'd say culinarily speaking it tastes like a cross between white potato, sweet potato, maybe a tad of cabbage, and a faint hint of turnip.  It's a great taste, anyway.  They kind of look like turnips but they aren't colored as brightly, have more roots on them, and they are harvested at a much larger size than turnips. 

The last CSA delivery of the season was last Friday.  I ventured into the rutabaga patch to see if there were any "early birds" fit to put in the day's delivery.  I was pleasantly surprised!  There were just enough large ones to fill the shares on Friday AND I got 2 monsters to try meselfeee.  One of them is about the size of a cantaloupe and the other was about 5" in diameter. (The big one just to the left of the middle is the cantaloupe size one and it may be like cutting a pine knot.)   I cut the second-to-the-largest one up and roasted it with some sweet potatoes and again, YUMMEEEE!  I peeled and chunked the veggies up into 1" squares and tossed them in a baking pan.  Then I mixed up 2T olive oil, 2T honey, 1t lemon juice and drizzled that over the veggies and roast at 350 for 30-45 minutes or until tender, stirring every 10 minutes or so.  Very tasty and simple. 

This has also been a very good turnip year.  They are firm and sweet and great either raw, mashed, or roasted.  Some people boil them but I don't particularly care for them that way.  Anyway, I love pulling turnips--it's kind of like hunting purple Easter eggs.  When they are ready to pull they pooch up out of the ground so you can see the pretty purple tops on them.

Several of the farm members had never tried them before and said that they actually liked them once they tried them.  It's a good substitute for a radish in a salad too!

Eating in season this time of year is very satisfying because a lot of the veggies are "comfort" food.  Personally, I think any food is "comforting" if I'm hungry!

p.s.  We're having a gorgeous fall here in Tennessee--hope everyone else is too :)

The farm CSA members received sweet potatoes in their shares for several weeks and several of them returned a few really good recipes for different ways to cook them.  I tried this one the other night and ooh, baby!  It's a culinary delight :)

Yummy Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Preheat oven to 350

2 lbs. sweet potatoes - peeled, cubed

throw in a baking dish

Whisk together:

2T evoo

2T honey

1 t. lemon juice

1/2 t. salt

pour over and mix with sweet potatoes

Cook approx. 1 hr. stir several times

The potatoes get sticky and gooey and the lemon juice perks right out of the sweetness and says "here I am". 

We've always heard the expression good guys gone bad, but bad guys gone good?

In the hoophouse, tomatoes were planted in late winter. During the summer they produced and produced bunches of tasty tomatoes. In the process, the tomato hornworms found them, even inside the plastic surround of the hoophouse.

There are parasitic wasps that like to feed upon these giant green monsters that devour tomato plants, and I haven't really experienced them in the hoophouse yet, so I sort of panicked when I saw so many hornworms on the tomato plants, but then I noticed that most of them were decked out with little white globules on them. "Parasitic wasps"! They did venture into the tunnel! I don't think I've ever seen so many hornworms on tomato plants, BUT I've never seen so many parasitic wasp eggs either. The hornworms that had eggs on them got to stay on the plants (it was hard to do, but I left them). These are the "Bad guys gone good". I'm hoping the parasitic wasps will find a place to winter over in the warmth of the high tunnel. The hornworms that didn't have any eggs on them? Well, even the chickens won't eat them, so they must be bad.

By the way, birds fly freely in and out of the high tunnel too. I sure hope they are working on the grasshopper population in there! It's a lively place :)

Fall is my favorite time of year–always has been. I love the colors of the trees, the cooler weather…..and putting on a jacket after hanging it in the closet last season. You know where I’m going–I put on a jacket this morning to pick peppers and tomatoes and stuck my hands in the pockets and found $6.00 AND a pair of reading glasses. I’m a lucky girl