End of summer harvest

/

A friend just posted on her Facebook page, “Finish this sentence: If I wasn’t afraid, I’d…” In her comment box, I finished the sentence with “write what I really think.” So I am going to write what I’m really thinking right now.

I resent our garden.

I know it sounds crazy, especially when I love the idea of growing our own food, letting our children experience the process of planting seeds and watching them flourish into colorful, healthy vegetables that we then cook into wholesome, tasty meals. But the truth is, gardening is a shitload of work and I don’t like cooking.

Up until this month I haven’t minded the work. April was fun because I love planning, and that is what one does in Vermont while waiting for the thaw. We mapped out garden beds, organized seed packets, and tidied up the yard and barn for the upcoming change of season. May and June were enjoyable too. I like the work of turning over the soil, weeding out the dandelions and crabgrass, and pruning trees and bushes. The combination of physical exhaustion, fresh air, and a final result of tidiness brought me great satisfaction. In July, the produce began. At first it was fun. Raspberries! Blueberries! Kale! We had salads with dinner and cobbler for dessert. The kids spent their days snacking on snap peas while I carefully weeded in between the delicate plants.

But now, the harvest overload. We have hundreds, maybe even thousands, of beans: long, slender green, yellow, and purple beans, bush beans and pole beans. They are fresh and crunchy, and far more flavorful than any bean I have ever bought from the store.

The zucchini and yellow squash are also piling up. We were fortunate to make it through the beetle infestation, and now we are enjoying freshly grilled squash and sweet zucchini muffins. Broccoli, garlic, carrots, scallions, beets, lettuce, chard, basil, parsley, and finally, tomatoes; I haven’t walked through the produce section of the grocery store in weeks.

Our first year of gardening was a success. I should be filled with gratitude for the good weather and rich soil. After all, this garden was not a hobby, but a necessity in order to cut down on grocery bills over the entire year. We’re depending on this garden to justify other expenses in our lives.

But despite the wonders and good fortune of home grown food, I resent that the garden is driving me into the kitchen on the most beautiful days of the waning summer. I want to spend these splendid weekend days hiking and biking, going for late afternoon swims at the pond, and exploring new trails in the woods behind our house. But I can’t because the hundreds, maybe even thousands, of beans have to be blanched and frozen, or pickled into dilly beans. The zucchini and carrots need to be shredded for soups and breads. Lasagnas, tomato sauces, pesto, broths… the to-do list pertaining to vegetables is overwhelming, exacerbated by the fact that I do not enjoy cooking.

I happily spend hours baking - provided it involves chocolate, but as soon as the task is cooking, it feels like a chore. The mere sight of squash and dirt-covered beets taking over my counter triggers a list of a dozen activities I’d rather be doing. The thought of sacrificing a warm, sunny afternoon to be slaving away over a steamy pot in the kitchen makes me grumpy. I’m even less enthusiastic about giving up my evening time – the only few hours of the week that I can enjoy the quiet of sitting alone at my desk. I love sitting at my desk. I do not love standing in the kitchen.

But we do it anyway, my husband and I. He takes one night and I take the next – so we can both still have some evening time to ourselves. Sometimes we’ll cook together. Our chest freezer is slowly but surely filling up with soups and breads that we’ll enjoy all winter.

I’m hoping that the experience of lower grocery bills and garden-fresh meals in February will make this August-September phase of the gardening cycle more gratifying next year.

In the meantime, I am sneaking in as many chocolate chip zucchini bread and red velvet cake recipes as I can.

A long overdue post

/

The past several weeks have brought a new rhythm to our lives. The garden is bursting and we are often up until midnight washing, chopping, cooking, shredding, blanching, and freezing. We can barely keep up. Also, my semester started a few weeks ago; I love teaching and am pouring all my creative energy into that. And finally, the kids’ school started back up, which means I spend a fair amount of time driving small people around. I have a wonderful carpool schedule, but the lazy, open-ended summer days have been replaced with waking up early, getting kids up, dressed, and fed, and making sure everyone has their respective backpacks, lunches, spare cloths, and, of course, vegetables for soup day and boots for walk day. We organize as much of it as we can the night before, but we are forgetful (tired!) and distracted (cooking!), so it is still a hustle and bustle in the morning.

The trifecta (I’ve always wanted to use that word) of changes – the garden burst, my work, the kids’ school – is exciting, refreshing, fun… and exhausting. The days are full and I don’t have much time or energy to write (or even read) for myself. 

I guess I’m admitting that it might (continue to) be quiet around here for a while. (But I am working on a few writing projects and I hope they make it out into the open at some point)

In the meantime, here is a photo + caption update for record keeping purposes.

This sweet girl turned FIVE last month! 

I finally got around to the garlic. I was a little late getting them out of the ground and several heads burst open. Those cloves are being cooked into soups and sauces, or simply minced and frozen for the winter months. We should still have plenty for replanting and storing, don't you think?

A (very small) glimpse into the produce overload… yes, we are very grateful for the bounty, but it is completely overwhelming. More on that soon.

The lilies are done blooming now, but they were magnificent! 

The littlest has taken on brushing the biggest's hair. 

The biggest has taken on reading (yes, reading!) to the littlest.

To keep up with all the first-day-of-school Facebook posts, here is ours. I took about a dozen pictures, but not one has all three girls smiling normally. Oh well. Notice the cosmos blooming in the background. Mom, they grew! 

And finally, last but not least, the goats! We're learning how to take them for walks through the woods. Clementine (the orangish one below) is rather stubborn and seems to be the leader, so if she gets distracted and heads into the yard (instead of into the woods), there's not much we can do about it. It becomes a bit of a comedy luring them back to the barn… but we're getting the hang of it. And they are so sweet and gentle! They love attention (after they are well fed) and melt right into us when we pet them. The time we spend with these calm souls perfectly balances the current busyness of our days.

Happy end of summer / back to school everyone!

How we ended up with goats

/

Goats

When my husband, David, was little he wanted a goat. His sister had a pony and he thought he should have a pet comparable in size. But his parents, who were out in the barn at the crack of dawn every morning soaking Hazel the pony’s chronically infected hoof, wisely decided a bunny was a better idea. David loved that bunny, but “Pepper” wasn’t a goat.

Fast-forward thirty years… After a decade of city living, David and I were more than ready to move to the country. The home we fell in love with, and subsequently moved into last summer, included a picturesque barn with stalls and a paddock already set up for a variety of farm animals, a flock of chickens, and a large vegetable garden. We settled in with the plan of growing into rural living, and slowly adding to our little homestead. Knowing my tendency towards impatience, we made a concerted effort to pace ourselves. We’ll be careful not to take on too much too soon, we said. After all, we are two working parents with three young children. It would be easy to become overwhelmed. We decided to focus on the garden first, and think about farm animals in a few years.

But now, as we plant, weed, and harvest, we’re very aware of the empty barn. Instead of housing animals, the stalls have become home to bicycles and scooters, a lawnmower, a variety of gardening tools, and old carpets we haven’t figured out how to get rid of yet. We can’t help but think that the barn has become a shed… and isn’t that a shame?

Still, we acknowledge we’re not ready for farm animals. We limit ourselves to casual conversation about what kind of animals we’ll want when the time comes: We don’t eat much meat, so pigs don’t make sense. Plus they’re supposed to be really smart and great pets, could we really butcher a pig? What about a cow, not for meat, but for milk? But a milking cow is a huge amount of work. Sheep? Sheep could be nice. But they need a lot of grass and the fencing would be a big investment. Would there be any payoff? Maybe goats. But what do goats do? They’ll eat the brush... Then we sigh and turn our conversation back to the vegetables, reminding ourselves again that the garden alone is almost more than we can handle at this point.

But the thought of goats lingers in the back of my mind. I start to pay a little more attention when we visit friends who have goats. I start asking questions, slowly building up my knowledge of what it means to keep goats. The picture takes shape and I can see goats being a good fit for our family. The goat people I talk to encourage me, describing each of their goats’ personalities, and declaring that goats make great pets—our children would love them, and so would we.

I visit farms that have “great goat set-ups” and I tour their barns, learning about bedding and fencing, grains, and minerals. I price hay bales and learn the difference between first and second cuts, and why both are important for goat nutrition: the first is higher in carbs, the second in protein.

I’m still just gathering information, I tell myself, but soon the momentum is stronger than I am. I have immersed myself in a crash course on goats. Without realizing it, I have tapped into a community that is full of knowledge, resources, and enthusiasm. I’m starting to feel like a goat owner without goats.

So when a post on our local list serve announces four Nigerian Dwarfs for sale, I reply. I’m just going to look, I tell David as laughs at me. He knows that’s not really true. I’m going to look at what will soon be our goats. But he doesn’t stop me.

Later that night we have an honest conversation. We have no business taking on four goats right now. Our days are already full with work, children, the garden, and a variety of other commitments. We are going to pace ourselves.

But I am impatient and David has always wanted a goat.

Clementine, Mabeline, Temperence, and Caramello arrived on Sunday.

 

Around the Garden: Flower Edition

/

What's in bloom has completely changed over the course of a few weeks. Luckily, I have a very generous friend who took me on a tour of my own garden… so I am slowly but surely learning what is what and how to care for it all. Some of my favorites this week are nasturtiums, shirley poppies, meadow rue, musk mallow(?), clematis, bee balm, and tiger lilies. I have other favorites too, but either don't know or can't remember their names!

Oh, and see the paddock? Isn't it just crying our for a herd of goats?


Around the garden: kitchen edition

/

Kale chips, basil pesto, and raspberry bars are what's happening in the kitchen today. Our goal is to preserve half of everything. Pesto and raspberries are easy to freeze (well, in theory raspberries are easy to freeze… if we don't eat them all straight out of the garden!), but I'm not sure how to preserve kale, or if it is even possible. Anyone have any good (vegetarian) recipes that use kale and would freeze well? Wouldn't it be nice to not have to cook once or twice a week this winter? Instead I could just pull out a frozen meal from this summer and heat it up... 

I have also discovered that garlic scape pesto on a sandwich with tomato, lettuce, and cheese is delicious. 

What's happening in your garden kitchen?


Slow summer days...

/

Around the Garden

/

Sometimes it feels like not much is happening in the garden, and at first glance it looks a lot like it did the last time I took pictures. But things are growing - taller, thicker, bushier - and we are (still) on the verge of a burst of produce. At least I think we are. This is my first garden so I'm not really sure exactly what will happen. 

I'm learning a lot from neighbors and friends, and through trial and error. I now know we need to build the pea and pole bean trellises higher than we think earlier than we think, and then the plants need a little help finding their way up. The squash needs some sort of covering to keep the beetles away, at least early on. I think part of why we're so behind is because the seedlings spent their first weeks battling the bugs. We also need to soak the hoop house soil before planting and then water a lot more frequently, especially during the seedling stage. It gets so dry in there. I still don't know what to do about the critter who is helping himself to our strawberries. Maybe some sort of cover for them too.

But all in all, our garden is coming along. The freezer is starting to fill with various pesto recipes and our salad bowl is now filled with fresh greens. I'm really looking forward to adding in the tomatoes, peas, and carrots!


Vegetables!

/

The garden is on the verge of bursting. In the space of a few days, we went from a stalk of asparagus here and a few spinach leaves there to a sudden abundance of garlic scapes, basil, spinach and lettuce. After such a late spring and the slow - painfully slow - growing of  seedlings, I plain old forgot that these plants would actually produce. Now as I walk through the garden, I feel slightly overwhelmed by what's coming… and how I'm going to deal with all of it so as not to let anything go to waste. Mostly, I realize I'm going to have to set some time aside - not for "gardening", but for picking, washing, cooking, freezing, and canning.

Of course I shouldn't speak too soon. You never know with those pesky beetles who devour squash plants and the little critters (I suspect a mole) who like to take two bites out of every ripe strawberry. But for now it looks like we will have vegetables.

My first summer recipe was garlic scape pesto. The first batch was way too hot, so it went into the freezer to be dealt with another time. The second batch was delicious: scapes, oil, basil, walnuts, and parmesan. I froze half and the other half was devoured in one sitting. We're as bad as the beetles.  

Happy gardening!