A Day In The Life

This last weekend, I helped my friend clear out her mother's garage. It was cluttered and disgusting and there was rat poop everywhere. A lot of the items in there just needed to go to the dump and there were quite a few items that needed to go to Goodwill and there were quite a few items that could still be used but weren't being that they were stored in a rat infested garage. 

My friend and her mother were kind enough to let me have any canning jars I could find and there were a good 20-30 usable canning jars; including a bunch of vintage baling wire glass topped ones.

 Now, I know it is silly to get all gushy about old canning jars, but they are gorgeous! Most a lovely blue and most without chips on the rim.  I see them very overpriced in antique stores on a regular basis and it always makes my bits hurt that they are considered collector's items and not used, like they should be.

I found sizes from half pints to half gallons and all will come in handy as harvest season comes up on us. I still have a few that need to be washed in a strong bleach/soap solution, but the rest are all clean and fit perfectly in paper ream boxes from work.  I am not one of those people that keep what I do not use, so they will all come in handy.

The vintage mason jars use a food safe rubber gasket to seal whatever is inside and you do have to be more diligent about getting the seal just right, but they work as well. The newer jars stack better, seal more consistently and are not as neat to look at, in my opinion.  But it is good to have a mix of bother kinds so that you have a couple of pretty jars in the front and the rest stored behind it in the newer jars.

My beans are coming up gang busters. I planted Scarlet Runners, Dow Gauk Chinese Yard Long Beans and a Burgundy Bush bean that I cannot remember the name to, but it has burgundy in it somewhere...

Carrots are popping up, French Breakfast radishes, I planted some spinach seeds I have had for a couple of years to see if any were still viable and some seem to be sprouting so I did a second sowing to stagger them. The purple broccoli my friend, Sandy, from Urban Land Army gave me are coming back from an attack by the chickens. 

This upcoming weekend, May 5th and 6th, is the Seattle Tilth Edible Plant Sale. There will be workshops and smart garden type peoples there to answer any questions you might have and I will be volunteering a few hours on Saturday morning so I hope to see you all there. Their Vegetable List is AWESOME this year, although it is always pretty awesome since they try for new varieties every year. 

This years I have the Calypso pickling cukes, Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth, Costata Romanesca Zucchini and the San Marzano Tomato on my list, although I am sure I will spend more than I intend. Like I do every year.

I have a very grumpy broody Welsumer chicken who is currently plotting her revenge against me. I keep kicking her out of her nesting box and stealing her eggs, so I am chicken enemy number one.  All the birds are laying consistently and I am getting anywhere from 50 to 56 eggs a week. They are DELICIOUS!

I better get them put away while I am thinking about them...

A Warm Weekend In The Pacific Northwest

 April 23, 2012

Springtime in Seattle

We don't have glorious days all the time, they are interspersed with days that are a lovely shade of grey. This is what makes Seattle, the Emerald City. There is so much green here because we have a nice weekend and then four days of grey and rain.

This weekend was glorious in all its sunshine-y awesomeness! We topped 70 degrees, and I understand that it is over a hundred in Texas, but 70 degrees is perfect here. Just warm enough to work out in the yard, not so warm that you peter out after an hour.  The rain will start on Tuesday.

It is beautiful in Seattle during the spring. Well, it is beautiful most of the time, just varying shade of beautiful. Spring and Autumn are my favourite times of year, although Summer is nice too, but it kinda bleeds into the end of one and the beginning of the other without too much notice.

I like Spring because you can plant things and I like Autumn because you can harvest things. Summer is when you have all the work and weeding and watering.

You stand out in the yard and stare as things ripen and hope.

For now, I work in the garden and yard, taking it close to my dream of a urban farm a little more every year. 

I spent Saturday building a fence that separates the front and back yard. The boyfriends has a chihuahua that loves bounding through my garden beds and I swear by the hairs on my chin-y chin chin I will cook that dog if I find her running over my carrot seeds one more time.

I also pulled up my green cone. It is currently in the way.  The space that it is in, will be the expansion of my backyard patio and so I need to move it someplace else and harvest all the lovely compost that has been sitting in it.

Green Cones

So, let's talk about green cones and food waste digesters. Both are ways to compost your food waste. They work on an anaerobic system to break down the food.

 Bacteria, soil life and insects help break down the waste into humus (No. Not the chick pea mash you eat at your local Mediterranean deli.) Basically it digests the food waste kinda like your stomach does.

When finished, it is black and rich and smells sweet like compost and is a great soil amendment to add to your soil.

But it is a slow process that can take months, it helps take food out of the garbage stream and lets you use it to grow more food. But it takes the time that you fill the digester and the time you let it sit and do its work.


So it can take a year and a half to two years before you get the black gold that some people talk about. 

Some things do not break down as well as you might like; egg shells, avocado pits and rinds. But I just smash up what I can with my hands and sift it through a screen if I can't handle too much texture in my compost, but truthfully, I don't mind a stray shell or pit here and there.

Sift it if it bothers you, don't if it doesn't. Dig a trench or two down the sides of your garden beds then, sprinkle a few inches of your food waste compost in to amend the soil and there you have it, you have now added your food back to your food!

HOW FREAKIN' NEAT IS THAT?!

This weekend I also took the time to start adding a retaining wall to my front beds. I've lived here for eleven years and have been talking about doing this the whole time. Procrastination and I are very close friends....

Anyways, my friend, Wendy, had a bag of gravel that I weaseled out of her and I had about forty retaining wall blocks that I had from a project never started and subsequently never finished. So, since one and one make two, I built a rocket!  No, just kidding, I built part of a retaining wall! Pretty thing ain't it?

Not the hardest thing in the world to build, but will all the work I did this weekend I feel like I have been beaten with a train. 

Hard Working Woman

So this weekend was busy and so will the remaining weekends from now until the end of November. But I look at the list of things I have done and I don't mind the aches and pains as much...

• Dug up and emptied food waste digester/green cone
• Dug up weeds
• Built fence
• Leveled out patio expansion location
• Built part of a retaining wall
• Bring home bacon
• Fry it up in a pan...

Pretty little bean plant.

Spring Is In The Air

April 2012

Royal Chantenay Carrots
French Breakfast Radishes

Scarlet Runner Beans
Royal Burgundy Beans
Dow Gauk Beans

Purple Broccoli

Chocolate Cherry Tomato
Stupice Tomato

Bloomsdale Savoy Spinach
Mesclun Mix
Tom Thumb Butterhead Lettuce

Detroit Supreme Beet
Bright Lights Swiss Chard

I have been daydreaming about my garden since the end of December and this is all I have come up with so far, but then the season is just starting.

Give Thanks

It is that time of year again and to remember all the sappy things that I am thankful for. 

I am thankful for Tillamook Huckleberry Ice Cream. I am thankful for casino buffets and antacid. I am thankful for clean socks and flannel pajama bottoms. I am thankful for fresh eggs, goat cheese and pita crackers. I am thankful for cheap red wine and brandy. I am thankful for Hitachi magic wands. I am thankful for the sound of children laughing in the schoolyard down the block. I am thankful for Netflix and Redbox. I am thankful for lazy Saturdays. I am thankful for good friends who feed me. I am thankful for growlers of beer. I am thankful for korean stores, liquer stores and my favourite coffee cart. I am thankful for friends that tell bad jokes. I am thankful for walks on beaches and camping under starry nights. I am thankful for long drives in the country and a cute boyfriend. I am thankful for hot water bottles. I am thankful for chocolate milk. I am thankful for short commutes to work. I am thankful for wool socks fresh out of the dryer. I am thankful for knitting needles. I am thankful for beautiful cookbooks. I am thankful for hot water and indoor plumbing. I am thankful for camping hatchets and tent patches. I am thankful for games of cribbage and checkers. I am thankful for an unsolicited smile. I am thankful for silly loud neighbors. I am thankful for delivery. I am thankful for an odd mix of a family. I am thankful for a niece and nephew that always make me proud. I am thankful that I don't always act as jaded as I think I am. I am thankful that even though I deal with idiots all day it hasn't rubbed off on me too much. I am thankful for wellies and a good rain coat. I am thankful for hot chocolate and a good book on a rainy night. I am thankful that I still have friends that I have know for about 25 years (that's a quarter century you know) I am thankful for stinky cheese, sweet figs and over-ripe persimmons. I am thankful for a good punchbowl of sangria (until the next morning at least). I am thankful for bus buddies who have become good friends. I am thankful for the smile I got from a little girl carrying her sun parasol on the same day as I was. I am thankful for the Vespa repair manual. I am thankful for cute frocks and high heels. I am thankful for musical theatre and symphonies. I am thankful for Voodoo Doughnuts everytime I go through Portland. I am thankful that I know how to get out of a car without showing off all my bits to total strangers EVEN when I am wearing a super short skirt. I am thankful for potatos from my garden. I am thankful for the kindness of strangers. I am thankful for dirty martinis and morning after pho. I am thankful for those nights I sleep uninterupted by my brain. I am thankful for a good schvitz. I am thankful for a bra that lifts AND separates. 

Mostly, I am thankful for all of you.

Autumnal Blues

In the autumn and winter there is a lot less to do in the garden. Maybe sow some cover crops or keep an eye on your winter crops like kale, garlic and broccoli, but otherwise work is much reduced. This is the time to actually enjoy the fruits of your spring, summer and fall labours.  The garden should be mulched and you should have got your winter and over wintering veggies in the ground, like garlic and shallots. Kale should be planted as well as broccoli.

Right now is the time to begin canning/freezing/pickling like a mad person. All the tomatoes you have should be dried, canned or frozen. You should be making and canning apple pie filling and apple sauce. You should be making and canning pumpkin and squash soups. It is time to prepare for the yearly apocalypse called winter. I stole my mother's dehydrator so I am planning on buying some apples in bulk and making apple chips for snacking.

You have to decide if you want to allow your chickens a rest for the winter. Over winter as the sun sinks lower earlier, chickens naturally produce less eggs. Usually you will get half the yield you would during spring and summer months. You can force production by added unnatural light, even just a light bulb in there coop a few extra hours a day will cause them to lay more during the winter months. I personally don't mind getting only four eggs a day as opposed to eight for a few months, but for those who might need the eggs this is a viable option.

In Seattle, our autumn starts in October, right now the rains have started and it's very quiet outside. I like this time of year. I break out the knitting and cookbooks and just enjoy the whole sensation of being home. The boyfriend and I cuddle up and get lazy.

As I write this I have an apply pie in the oven.

Dutch Apple Pie

Ten cups of tart apples, peeled and sliced
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1-1/2 Tbsp flour
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 - 9in pie crust

Mix apples with sugar and spices, put in pie crust, cover with the other pie crust  and cut vent slits. Bake for 10 minutes at 425 degrees then lower to 350 degrees and back for another 30-40 minutes.

Easiepeasie!

Yes, We Can! Others Can, Too!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/cansacrossamerica/

Dead Computers and Double Yolks

My computer died on me the other week, a friend's fiance' was able to save some of the most important files but once it gave up that information it went tits up. So I have just been able to get back to posting.

 The chickens are now laying more regularly and I seems to have a range in colour and sizes.

The small, spotted, dark brown eggs are from the Welsumer, the medium light brown eggs are from the Buff Orpingtons and the pink eggs are from the Americaunas.

They are quite lovely, actually. The other evening I looked out the window and mentioned to boyfriend that one of the birds seemed missing. He went out to check their coop and yelled back that he couldn't find her.

I joined him outside and we checked the whole yard. The boyfriend thought she may have been eaten, but I said there wasn't any blood or feathers and that I didn't think anything took her. I looked under the porch and in the neighbors yard and finally I was out in the alley, when the boyfriend started laughing, he had found her hiding in the crotch of a cedar tree!

With fourteen eggs!  One was a bit larger and it contained double yolks, I love when that happens!


I had been wondering why there weren't more eggs and it seems that the chickens were smarter than me when it comes to hide and seek. But they couldn't outsmart the boyfriend.

A batch of eggs goes to my coffee pusher in trade for coffee. Another goes to the neighbor as bribery. Some definitely go into my belly and some more will be turned into pickled eggs by the boyfriend.

And now that I have a fixed computer I can tell you ALL about it! Aren't you excited?!