Almost done

Shortly after the previous post, we found out we will be moving to Texas for husband's work. This came as a complete shock and surprise to us, but holds so much opportunity for living in the country and having the farm and garden we've dreamed of. Suddenly, our efforts here seemed a little silly. Our record keeping slacked off, but I did want to finish the year and see what we accomplished. The stars of our garden this year were the avocado, with about 30 huge fruits that we are still enjoying, the pomegranate with a beautiful heavy crop, and the giant purple sweet potatoes that are so delicious. Our little tangerine tree in a pot is bearing huge fruit, and after many years we have a nice lemon crop. The blueberries were delicious, the boysenberries a little slim, and only 2 oranges this year! We are preparing our community garden to return to the city.

Sadly, this summer one of our hens died. The other two went into a very heavy molt in November and still look terrible, though the new feathers are coming in. This accounts for the low egg numbers for the year.

April harvest tally:
10 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

May harvest tally:
28 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

June harvest tally:
39 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

July harvest tally:
42 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

August harvest tally:
25 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

September harvest tally:
39 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

October harvest tally:
72 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

November harvest tally:
6 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

2014 total:
290 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
496 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Spring is in the air



Wow, a lean beginning to the year but now things are starting to look up. The chickens really did take a vacation and decided to molt in January. They wanted to make sure they looked their best for Easter I guess! Now they are laying like crazy and I think omelettes are on the menu for the next few Sunday mornings. Our orange harvest was dismal. We've never had so few oranges. Maybe the orange tree was molting too, because now it is covered in beautiful white blooms. If you've never smelled an orange tree in bloom, it is heavenly. Each morning when I go outside to play with my toddler in the dewy grass I just sit and inhale the fragrance. Then I run and grab the baby out of the strawberries and peas. He loves to pick his own snacks, which I don't mind, but he doesn't check as carefully for slugs as I do. He also doesn't care if the strawberries are ripe, which is good for avoiding slugs I guess, because they don't want the green strawberries! One of the happiest parts of my mornings are finding pea pods for him and watching his chubby fingers pry open the pods to find the cute little peas inside. He carefully sits down on his lawn chair in the sun and eats the peas one by one, then toddles across the lawn to get another pod.

Not fragrant like the citrus blossoms, our pomegranate (shown above,) pear, peaches, plums, blueberries, boysenberries, and avocado are also in full bloom. I added a cute little tangerine to our citrus collection and it is blooming too. Once again our apricot did not bloom.

We've been working very hard in our community garden plot. We cleared out all the weeds, covered the plot in compost, redesigned the irrigation system, and have been visiting diligently every week to plant, harvest, and keep the weeds under control.

After years of seed collecting (buying and saving seeds but never planting them,) I've finally had the patience to start growing them instead of going for the instant gratification of buying starts. Some of the seeds aren't germinating, but thats to be expected since some are over 10 years old. I especially look forward to the interesting tomato varieties someone gave me years ago with names like Mortgage Lifter and Cherokee Purple. It could be a great tomato year.

January harvest tally:
16 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
9 eggs

February harvest tally:
5 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
35 eggs

March harvest tally:
8 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
68 eggs

2014  total:
29 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
112 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Preserve the harvest

I'm not very adventurous when it comes to jams and jellies. One type of fruit, some sugar and Pomona Pectin is simple and delicious, letting the fruit flavor shine through. Pomona Pectin allows for low sugar recipes as well as tweaking of the strict recipes found in other one-box-per-batch pectins. I'm a fan. This year our plum trees had a small yield, but this was only their second year of bearing fruit, so next year I have high hopes. Plum trees do very well in our neighborhood as evidenced by the littered lawns and spattered sidewalks of several front yards I pass on my walks. This year I worked up the nerve to knock on a few stranger's doors and ask them if they'd like some help in picking their fruit. I hate to see fruit going to waste. For one reason, good fruit is expensive! Call it local and organic and you would have to spend big bucks to buy fruit like that. Tree ripened fruit, especially the stone fruits like plums and peaches, have that juicy sweet summer flavor that you can never, ever find in a grocery store fruit. Then there is the problem of overripe, rotting fruit. It attracts undesirable critters like raccoons, possums, skunks, and flies that I want to keep far away from my yard and garden. So when I see a tree heavily laden, I offer to help. Not just out of the goodness of my heart, but for selfish reasons too. The owner of the plum tree explained to me that he was disabled and was having a hard time keeping up with the plums as they fell to the ground. My husband and I picked as many plums as we could carry, probably 20 lbs., and we barely made a dent in the tree. We enjoyed several plum desserts and made several batches of plum jam, delivering two half-pint jars to the plum tree owner. Diverging from my usual single fruit jam mode, I discoverd my all time favorite jam flavor ever; blueberry plum. I won't be passing any of that out at Christmas time. I look forward to the day when my trees produce more fruit than I can possibly use. If you see a tree in this situation, consider contacting an organization like SoCal Harvest or other organizations that pick fruit from the trees of homeowners for them then donate the fruit to local food banks.

 

October harvest tally:

35 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
71 eggs

2013 total:

484 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
208 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Dehydrating persimmons and fruit leather.

This year my fuyu persimmon tree had a great crop. I harvested about 20 lbs. of fruit from this little tree in its third season. I knew the fruit was starting to get ripe when I found several half-gnawed fruit on the ground. By the time they were perfectly ripe, entire fruits would disappear overnight. I wrapped the tree in some plastic dropcloth sheeting that made a rustling noise when moved. I think that deterred the varmints for a little while until I could get around to picking. One night I was up late and noticed an opossum giving me a dirty look as I disturbed her midnight snack. Unfortunately, my older kids don't care for persimmons, and I've found most people I know have no idea what they are. So in addition to educating my friends with free fruit and the baby and I eating fresh persimmon every day, I've been drying them in slices. Persimmons dry extremely easily. Just remove the stemmy/leafy part, the calyx, with a paring knife. Peel off the skin and slice the fruit into 1/4" slices. Dehydrate until dry, but still pliable. The fruit remains a beautiful orange color when dry without any treatment though I've read that dipping the slices in lime juice before drying is tasty. Here in southern California, persimmons are becoming more popular. In addition to farmer's markets, I saw bags of fuyus at my local Von's this week. If you see some, give them a try. This fruit has been very easy to grow in my climate, bearing fruit in early fall.

 

September harvest tally:

27 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

20 eggs

 

2013 total:

449 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
137 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Summer time

July harvest tally:

167 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

5 eggs

August harvest tally:

31 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

0 eggs

2013 total:

422 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

117  eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

So what do I do with all these lovely peaches? Most get canned in quart jars with light syrup, a few pints of jam are made for later use, but some lucky peaches get made into this...

Peach Cobbler

Or this...



 

Grilled Peaches

What is your favorite way to use peaches?

Busy, busy

February harvest tally:
34 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
20  eggs

2013 total:
68 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
47 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

 

 

 

Off to a good start

Broccoli starts

We have a bumper crop of oranges this year, but they're not as sweet as in the past. Maybe because of a cooler winter? We are hoping the cooler winter was good for our stone fruits. Our peaches, pear, apricot, and plums should benefit. We have broccoli, savoy cabbage, cauliflower, and beets planted. I just put in some spinach seeds. We have a little volunteer fennel party in one corner of our community garden plot. I wish I liked fennel.

January harvest tally:
34 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
27  eggs

2013 total:
34 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
27 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

tally catch up

The most precious (and expensive) item we've ever produced arrived 7 weeks early in September. Weighing in at 5 lbs. 2 oz. baby boy is healthy, happy and growing like a weed. Or a zuchinni. You look away for a moment, and suddenly it's huge. We are cherishing these baby months and putting the gardening on a back burner. Nevertheless, we were still able to keep track of what nature gave us even with a few months of neglect.

August harvest tally:
70 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
45  eggs

September harvest tally:
132 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
48 eggs

October harvest tally:
39 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
41 eggs

2012 total so far:
485 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
551 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Where's the beef?

Well, now it is in our freezer. This year we were very excited and fortunate to buy one of Uncle Steve's steers. We learned a lot about the whole process and what it takes to get a hamburger to our table from the field. We split the meat with 2 siblings and a friend of mine took the fat to make soap. Our grass fed beef is delicious and lean. We are excited to try different cuts that we don't usually buy, and learning new cooking techniques such as braising. In general, grass-fed beef is leaner and the cow older than industrial raised beef, so the meat should be cooked slower and at a lower temperature. This cooking guide has been very helpful so we don't ruin this excellent meat.

Here is another helpful guide to figuring out how many pounds of meat you'll actually get from a live cow, and how much space that meat will take up in your freezer (1 cubic foot can hold about 35 lbs.)

General article about grass or pasture fed beef and other meats.

The butcher at Springville Meat was excellent to work with, answered all our questions, and walked us through the process of the decisions we needed to make such as how we wanted our steaks cut and how lean to make the hamburger.

Overall, it was a great experience and we have enough beef to last us a very long time.

Back home, we are enjoying the must-have summer veggies; corn on the cob, tomatoes, and zuchinni. It wouldn't be summer without them. Add a nice steak and you've got summer on a plate.

July harvest tally:
69 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
53 eggs

2012 total so far:
244 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
417 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

This post is part of http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-friday-august-3rd/

May gray and June gloom make me blue

Normal summers for our area start off cool and cloudy. We've learned that our peaches need sunshine to get sweet, and without it, they are just blah. So, if you're thinking of planting a peach in coastal Southern California, get a very late ripener with extremely low chill hours such as August Pride, Southern Rose, or Red Baron.

The good news is our boysenberries (Thornless) and blueberries (Sunshine Blue) didn't seem to mind the lack of sunshine. Both have done extremely well this year. We froze 12 quarts of berries in addition to making multiple cobblers, smoothies, jam, and all the fresh eating we wanted.

After working out some kinks with the water system, our summer garden is planted and we look forward to tomato season.



May harvest tally:
38 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
51 eggs

June harvest tally:
43 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
53 eggs

2012 total so far:
175 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
364 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Smooth move

Homegrown smoothie

The juice of two oranges, (next time I will include whole sections)a handful of spinach, strawberries and blueberries. Yum. All ingredients from my backyard.

April harvest tally:
13 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
60 eggs

2012 total so far:
94 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
260 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Springing forward

Thornless boysenberries in bloom. Ignore the underage quidditch practice.



A lot of catching up to do today. The berries, avocado, plums, and citrus are in full bloom, the peaches and apricots (yay!) have hard little green fruits. Tomato starts are started and the leafy greens are well, leafy and green. We also harvested about 5 lbs of peas this spring and renewed our contract on our community garden plot.

February harvest tally:
16 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
69 eggs

March harvest tally:
24 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
64 eggs

2012 total so far:
81 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
200 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.



Put on a happy face

January 2012 Harvest Tally:


41 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
67 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

A new year of gardening, harvesting, and eating is here. That makes me smile. What are you happy about?

Drumroll, please

End of year tally!

My high-tech and sophisticated November and December recording sheets (the free notepad left on our doorstep by a local realtor) were somehow confused, so I must combine these two months into one tally.

November/December 2011 Harvest Tally:
17 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
108 eggs

Year to date:
484 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
480 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Pretty good numbers! I was hoping for a little higher in the fruit and veggie department, but our 3 new laying hens are right on track, producing eggs all through the winter as this is their first laying season.

Just for fun, a list of the produce we have grown and eaten from our property in 2011:
artichoke, avocado, basil, beet, bell pepper, blueberry, bok choy, boysenberry, broccoli, butternut squash, carrot, cauliflower, celery, chives, cilantro, corn, garlic, lettuce, lime, mushroom, nasturtium, onion, orange, parsley, peach, peas, persimmon, plum, pomegranate, potato, pumpkin, rosemary, sage, spaghetti squash, spinach, strawberry, Swiss chard, thyme, tomato, zuchinni.

In 2012 I look forward to trying some new plants like Jerusalem artichokes and hope that some of our trees will produce for the first time, especially the pear and apricot. Maybe this year we will solve the mystery of the lemon trees. We can't seem to keep a lemon tree alive and have tried 3 different ones in the same spot, and all yellow and die. Obviously, something is wrong with that spot. January and February are our big harvest months for oranges and avocados, and this year our avocado tree has finally borne fruit! Can't wait to add those to our menu. Dh pruned the peach and apricot trees this weekend and offered them threats while he was at it. If they don't produce well this spring, they will be replaced.

We have also been having trouble with veggies being stolen from our community garden plot so we are weighing our options for fencing. Electric barbed wire seems to top the list along with an alligator moat and/or tiger pit. What works well to keep your garden safe? What are you growing in 2012?

A fungus among us

Have you ever ordered anything on a whim?  Was it a box of magical dirt? I didn't think so, but I'd love to hear what impulsive catalog buys are lurking in your past. While looking through an awesome seed catalog at http://www.groworganic.com/ I saw this kids' science lesson/husband gift/entertainment-in-a-box and knew I had to order one. 3/4ths of my family shudder at the thought of eating mushrooms and I still think this is really cool.

Basically, the mushroom farm mails you a box of dirt inoculated with a specific mushroom mycelium (many varieties are available) and you just keep it cool, moist, out of direct sunlight, and voila, fungus grows! Edible fungus right in your own garage, not to be confused with that stuff in the gym shoes. This photo is the second crop and yielded about 1 pound. The first crop disappeared early one morning in an assault of butter and onions before I could document it for posterity. The kids and I had to air out the house for a little while, but we knew exactly where the clothespins are kept for such occasions.

Since the mushroom-ivore of the household couldn't keep up with production, I decided to dehydrate this batch. This photo shows a mushroom that is mature. The veil of the cap has torn open revealing the gills, though button mushrooms are usually seen with closed caps. Don't ask me if it makes a difference in taste. I will never know.

I found an endearing video with step by step instructions on how to dehydrate mushrooms- not that there is anything complicated about it. This guy just cracks me up.  

So I dried the shrooms for quite a while because it was raining and I don't think my dehydrator is very powerful. It may be an antique. I think they turned out okay. I may make a soup or something out of them. I guess you could put them in a red sauce for pasta or something if you liked that kind of thing. Oh, one suggestion I read said if slightly rehydrated they were good on pizza. Whatever. I hope the 25% of my household who actually puts these things in his mouth willingly just snacks on them like the video guy. No smell, no clothespins.

Did I mention the magic box purports to give me about 4 pounds of these things? Check out http://www.mushroomadventures.com/ for more varieties. The blue oyster ones look really intriguing...

October 2011 Harvest Tally:
16 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
48 eggs

Year to date:
467 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
372 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Have you ever grown mushrooms? On purpose I mean.

Musical chickens

Another fun summer on my parent's hobby farm has come and gone. Being away for six weeks is an amazing experience for my kids and very relaxing for me, though I have to rely on others to tend my garden and chickens at home. I do have great support and this year thank Kim and Katelyn for keeping everything alive and well while we were gone.

I'd also like to thank (am I winning an award?) my mom for accepting my recycled chickens. This year I gave up the last of my very first city chickens, Hollyhock. The poor thing insisted on going broody two times a year, for nearly 4 months at a time. After moving to the country, Hollyhock quickly met a dashing young rooster and is currently sitting on a nest of tiny white eggs. Our Polish bantam, Poppy, who arrived at the farm a few months previous to Hollyhock, hatched 4 adorable chicks while we were visiting. That is one proud rooster. Petunia also retired to the farm this summer and is the only one of the city transplants to fit in with the flock. The silkie, Midnight, prefers to live with the goats and has become the roommate of a handsome buck named Milkman. My new pullets, Daisy (layer of the double yolk,) Sunflower, and Lemondrop are starting their egg laying careers.

August 2011 Harvest Tally:
47 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
18 eggs
 
September 2011 Harvest Tally:
40 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
28 eggs

Year to date:
451 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
324 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

Great harvest

July 2011 Harvest tally:
145 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
22 eggs

Year to date: 364 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
278 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

June gloom

Ah, summer! Schools out, it's time to hit the beach! Grab the sunscreen and get ready to join the crowds soaking up some rays on the sand. Unless you live here, then hardy souls don their wetsuits while jackets are recommended for picture-taking moms.
A big thank you to Kirk and Tara Lantz at Alive Surfing for the awesome wetsuits. The sun and the crowds will arrive next month, along with bigger produce numbers.

June 2011 Harvest tally:
23 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
33 eggs

Year to date:

219 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

256 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot and go to the beach even when its cold.

Berry, BERRY good

What happened in May? Not a whole lot besides the first of the berries. We had a large lull in produce picking while everything soaked up the sun and grew, but not to ripeness yet. The chickens were off schedule too; I know Juliet needs to just molt and get it over with. Hollyhock insists on being broody for 3 months at a time, so she is useless. I'm looking forward to Daisy hitting puberty and starting to contribute to the egg business. I am extremely pleased with the boysenberries, they are sweet, tart and delicious and about the only thing we picked this month.

May 2011 Harvest tally

5 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

17 eggs

Year to date:

196 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies

223 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

This month marks a special milestone for this blog- 12 months since I have begun recording my produce and eggs tallies. Just for fun, I've dusted off the old calculator and come up with 12-month totals.

June 2010 - May 2011 harvest totals
542 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
535 eggs

May all your weeds be wildflowers

I just returned from a trip to UT, so last month's tally is a little slow in coming, though I still get excited about marking my little tally sheet.

April 2011 Harvest tally

48 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
49 eggs

Year to date:
191 lbs. of fresh fruits and veggies
206 eggs

We live on a 1/10th acre lot and rent a 20x20 foot community garden plot.

This month we picked the last of the Valencia oranges, broccoli, and cauliflower and ate some beautiful artichokes. My asparagus has started to grow, and the boysenberries are nearly ripe!