The Last of Last Year's Blueberry Jam

Yes! We Can! Strawberry Jam!

This last Sunday, I took a lovely drive out to Carnation, WA to Harvold Berry Farm for some strawberry picking. The boyfriend was busy fixing the oil pan on a Volkswagon, so I took Olive, The WonderDog, out for a drive in the "country".

When I was a kid, Carnation was in fact all farm land. Actually, a good portion of that area is now suburbs and Microsoft campus and bedroom communities. A lot of the farm land has gone away and it the city/town councils fight over how many chickens people can have in their backyards because of density. There are a couple of larger berry farms in the same area, but they feel like farm theme parks than actual farms to me, so I never go to them. They have train rides and picnic areas and petting zoos. All very geared towards bringing the families who don't really care what a farm is, but would like a good family outing. Great marketing, but not for me.

So I took the boyfriend's dog for a drive and headed to Horvald's to pick some strawberries. Maybe a bit early in the season, they should sweeten up more as it gets warmer, but they have a good flavour for canning if not the sweetness. 

 Harvold's has none of that fancy stuff, it is just a huge strawberry field with a couple of weigh shacks and slightly surly farm hands. They aren't really there to have a conversation with you, they are their to point you to a good picking spot and then to wiegh your berries at the end.

They are pleasant. But friendly, nope. Which works for me, I am not there to chat, I am there to pick berries. I leave Olive in the car with the windows down, since dogs are not allowed in the fields. She may be a chihuahua but she is also all teeth if she doesn't like your looks. I was also close enough to see the car if she were to get into any trouble. I could here her bark from the bed I was steadfastly clearing of berries.


The berries smelled like heaven and there were quite a few families out busily picking. Children in their Sunday best were squealing with joy about finding the most biggest, most beautiful, red ripe strawberries! Parents lugged their huge cameras about and took faux candid shots of their kids, eating a strawberry, picking a strawberry, trampling a strawberry, having a tantrum in the dirt.... But I digress.

Anyways, after about 50 feet of toil and 30 minutes of sweat I had my flat of berries. I do not know how farm labourers do it and I give much props to them for doing so. My knees ached for the rest of the day for that short amount of time of work and the thought of someone doing it for 10 hours a day made them scream. I appreciate those who go out and pick these so that I might enjoy them.

Picking your own berries is less expensive than buying from your local urban grocery store. Twelve pounds of fresh picked strawberries cost me

 

12 dollars. Ok, the drive to the country may have cost me another 8 dollars in gas, but I got to enjoy a lovely morning driving on an idyllic stretch of road.  The drive down the Fall City Carnation Road is a curvaceous split through mostly farm land and when heading north spits you out into lovely Monroe, WA. Home of the Evergreen State Fair and gateway to Leavenworth, WA.  It is a nice drive and makes for lovely daydreams about farm life.

There are quite a few farms that are open to the public for pick your own and educational farms like Oxbow Farms.


Oxbow Farms teaches the public about environmental stewardship and sustainable food practices.

You can find most of the produce provided by these farms at many of the Farmers Markets in the urban area. In the Seattle area you can find information on those farmers markets at Puget Sound Fresh. Quite possibly one of my more favourite web sites. You can find a listing of farms in the area that provide to your local CSA.

Harvold's Berry Farm's Strawberry Field

I can go on and on about the glory, greatness and goodness of the farmers, and I will at some point. But for now I am going to have to tell you about making strawberry jam!

Strawberry Jam

Eight Lbs of freshly picked strawberries
Four (or more) cups of sugar
Juice of one Lemon
2-4 Tbsp of Pectin






Place berries into a large pot with sugar and mix so that they are covered. Allow the berries to throw off their juices for an hour then turn on the to medium high.

Sprinkle in the pectin according to the instructions on their box and allow the jam to come to a full rolling boil.

Add the juice of one full lemon to add some acid to the jam.

As the jam boils a foamy skim will form on the top, scrap this off and discard.

You can check the cooled thickness of the jam by placing a plate in the freezer for about a minute then drop a tablespoon of the jam mixture on the plate and put it back in the freezer for another minute or two.

Once cooled it should give you a true idea of the thickness of the jam.

Pour the jam into sterilized jam jars and process per your preferred method. You can find more information on canning at the National Center for Home Food Preservation

Never On Sunday

Never On A Sunday

I am not one of those people who are able to sit and do nothing on a sunny Sunday. If the weather is relatively fine I will be found outside working on my garden of just putzing around in my yard. Those who are able to relax on their days off are very lucky.

I usually do my normal chores of laundry and general house-cleaning, but on a lovely Sunday I also tend to try to work in the yard as much as possible. For example:

This morning at 8AM, I built a table. Using the legs from an old table I got years ago from a friend and a pallet I got from a garage clean out.

Next, I weeded the garden pathways and laid down burlap coffee bags I found for free on Craigslist. (I tend to find quite a few things on Craigslist for free. I found a claw foot bathtub that the boyfriend and I are planning on turning into a love seat.)

In fact we dragged home this huge rabbit hutch, I found on CL, yesterday! It needs a good scrubbing and some of the chicken wire has rusted through, so they will need replacing, but otherwise in pretty good shape! Woo rabbit meat!

I worked on weeding the veggie and herb beds, 

then proceeded onto relocating a few plants. Crocosmia, Siberian Irises, Death Lilies and Ferns. I worked on clearing out the millions of hyacinth leaves and stems that are turning into mush under my cherry tree. I am not a fan of the hyacinths, but they came with the yard and refuse to leave. 

Then I got a hold of the chainsaw... I really need this thing taken away from me, but it is so freaking HANDY!

AND of course;

Chickens

An article in the Christian Science Monitor from when I was the City Chickens Coordinator at Seattle Tilth.

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2008/1110/p17s01-lign.html

Let's Drink Some Wine and Curk a Tookey!!

I love to cook. When I was younger I had considered going to culinary school. How do you know when I am truly happy? I am in the kitchen. I am not a great cook, but I am a good cook. Nothing I cook will win the James Beard Award, but it will satisfy and make my friends and loved ones smile.

People are surprised when I tell them I can cook (they are also surprised when I build a fence or fix an oil leak in my car or start a campfire, but that is neither here nor there). When asked how I make something taste sooooooo good, I tell them I "put a little Love into it". Yes, I know that sounds all hippy dippy cliched and shit, but it is true. When you love doing something you put every ounce of yourself into doing it. That is when it turns out beautiful. That is when the magic happens and it becomes a shortcake instead of a plain old scone or turns Sunday night beef stew into boeuf bourguignon.

I love cook books, I have a few older ones from the 30s and 40s. The recipes all call for a pound of butter or a half cup of lard or heavy cream and I love recipes like that!! Don't get me wrong, I make my fair share of vegetarian and healthy food dishes, but when a recipe calls for bacon drippings, I start to salivate. I keep a pickle jar of bacon drippings for cooking. I also have a containing of duck fat, specifically for potatoes. You do not know joy until you have roasted potatoes in duck fat!

Occasionally, I can be a food snob. But I have also been known to stop at Popeye's Chicken, because they make an AWESOME spicy fried chicken. I also like Sonic Drive-Ins and have to stop there anytime I go on a road trip. I like little hole in the wall restaurants and I like those places where I must put on my best pair of Spanx. I like good food and I like when I find some weird little restaurant hidden in an alley as much as I like the fanciest roof-top restaurants.
But I mainly like to cook at home, I like feeling all the ingredients under my fingers and the scents mingling. I like how my house smells after baking bread or cookies or roasting a chicken. It smells like a home should smell.

I took an after school cooking class many years ago when I was a latch key kid. It was a way for my mother to have someone to watch over me for a few hours in the afternoons and it was a way for me to learn how to make hobo stew. It was probably the first thing I ever learned how to cook. After that I was on my way to being a home chef. The next item I cooked was zucchini bread, but forgot the oil and my mother kindly ate it and gently said... "I think you may have forgotten something in the recipe..." And I was on my way!

I tend to like cooking from scratch. I like real unprocessed ingredients, most of the time, although I am not above making brownies from the a mix when I am have a choco-attack. But you get a much better product that is healthier for you when you make it by scratch, you don't have the glut of preservatives and colouring or artificial flavours (what is chocolate-y flavour, anyways?!). I admit I have no problems with purchasing things to make my life easier, I do not believe I will try to make wonton wrappers by scratch anytime soon, but simple things like cookies and cakes do not need to come from a box. Trust me, a lemon chiffon cake made from scratch is one hundred times better than Betty Crocker's boxed stuff.

I love to experiment with foods and although I have a shit-ton of cookbooks, I tend to use those as reference books and then take the long way round to see if a pinch of this or a dash of that will make it even better. I have had my fair share of failures. The strata I did not allow to sit long enough to soak up the egg mixture that became a hockey puck. Or the chocolate pudding that wouldn't set no matter what I tried. Or even the chunky creme brulee (still gives me the shivers...).But I keep trying, Julia Child did not learn to cook until she was in her 30s.

I love to cook for my boyfriend and he is a very good eater. He also has no qualms about telling me when something is not quite right, which is the only way to truly figure out if a dish is amazing or just, eh. You need the feedback, I do not like to hear that something is always good as you don't grow as a cook if you do not know if something needs to be tweaked. And when you finally get a recipe correct it is as though you have finally summited a mountain! Ok, maybe not that cool,,, but it is still pretty darn awesome!

All I know is that food brings friends together, heck it brings strangers together. Food makes people smile when shared and good food makes people smile even more. It encourages community and good conversation and laughter and drinking. Good food shared brings joy and everyone likes a bit of joy whereever they can get it.  The best bit of advice I ever got from my mother was "Never say no to a free meal". She was right.

Good Fences

The boyfriend and I spent most of the day working on the fence between my front and back yard. It is now chihuahua proof!

Well, I would like to believe it is, but my boyfriend's dog is a bit of an escape artist and small so she can fit through things I would never have thought of. It is also nice to have a bit of privacy from the prying eyes of the world.

I have an anxiety disorder. So I get panic attacks on occasion. It makes it hard to leave the yard, let alone the house. So it might be nice to have a bit more privacy in my yard so I can wander through it and work in my garden when I feel like the sky is about to fall on my head.

It isn't that I don't like my neighbors, because I actually do. They are awesome, and give me booze and talk philosophy with me and play music. So yes, I do like my neighbors. But when the panic comes on, I just want to hide and try to get my mind out of the worry loop that it gets in. Working on my little farm also puts me at ease, but I admit, I can not/ do not want to interact with people when I am having an attack.

So a fence was partly to keep the chihuahua from running rampant in the vegetable patch and partly to help me feel safe in my own personal space.

The giant metal part on top is the beginning of my boyfriend's arbor. He has big plans and at this point I just smile and nod.

Also, today I have learned that I should never, under any circumstances be left alone with a chainsaw. My lilacs look like they have been ambushed and the odd branch on the fir was taken down in one swift cut. OK, it really isn't as bad as all that. They definitely could use a pruning and they will be much happier in the long run, but it was very hard to stop once I started. I kept thinking about the Bad Pruning pictures on the Plant Amnesty website.

The boyfriend fixed the new lawnmower, we got for free from the neighbor down the alley, right before he broke it. Another neighbor has several lawn mowers in their garage that do not run so we will try to Frankenstein a working lawnmower together. But the backyard got a bit of a haircut.

I volunteered at the Seattle Tilth's Edible Plant Sale On May 5th and got my pickling cucumbers and paste tomatoes in the process. I could have spent a whole lot more money there, but I only took $20.00 to avoid spending a bunch. Some plant sales are dangerous. Seattle Tilth had an amazing selection of things and it is inevitable that I go for three items and leave with fifteen. MY GARDEN IS NOT THAT BIG!

My brain constantly reminds me of this fact, but my heart and soul scream for romanesco broccoli and every tomato under the sun!  My pocket book ends up being the decider in these cases and if I limit it to what is in my pocket then I am limited to what I actually need.

I know you can barely see it, but I have carrots, lettuce and cucumbers. Radishes, scarlet runner beans and yardlong beans. That pile of weeds in the back are actually flowers so "Nyah". There are beets in there as well, but they are sad and will most likely be replaced with chard.

Because, I am also prone to throwing out my back I have but two loves in my life; the boyfriend and

SALONPAS-HOT!

Capsicum Patch!

(the boyfriend and I have an understanding). There are other fancy patches out there that get icy or get hot. Salonpas is just glorious spicy pain, but the good kind. Although I have learned to never put it on directly after a shower... And never accidentally touch sensitive bits after touching the sticky part. Just a warning... do not stick a finger up your nose, in your eyes or on other um.. delicate bits.

My evening will be spent, relaxing as best I can, on my back. But at least I feel as though I accomplished something today.

Tomorrow will be a full solar eclipse in our region but it looks like the weather is coming in and we will not be enjoying feeling infinitely small in the vast universe. Although, working my little plot of land always helps keep my ego in check. I believe I control some of the aspects in my yard, in truth, it controls me.

Day Dreaming in a Cubicle - Mid Life Ramblings

I work in a cubicle. I have, for many years, worked in cubicles all over Seattle. I do not like the term "cubicle farm" because if this is a farm then this is a form of H E Double Hockey sticks.

I am currently AT work, mind you it is break-time, but I am here. Was this what I had hoped to do with my life during my youth? Nah.

I had hoped to homestead in the wilds of Alaska, the back country of Montana or the plains of Oklahoma, my closest neighbors a canoe ride and a days hike down river. Living off the land and my wits... (I feel like I should burst into the Monty Python's Lumberjack Song right about now.) But I never did, I still live off the land, my tiny .25 acre of a yard, and wits, I am pretty darn charming. But my days of homesteading in secluded locations may no longer be viable.

So instead, I sit behind this desk attempting to make ends meet and live a somewhat contented life, Some days I am happy and productive. Some days I feel unfulfilled and trapped. I do not have the luxury of leaving everything behind me and living a life unencumbered. And maybe I really do not want to, many people have done more with less and gone onto live their dream lives.

Consider if the life you lead was the life you expected to have as a child... I remember riding the bus home and looking at all the suits heading into work in the morning thinking "I'm never gonna be like that, man!" Now I am. I am still eccentric enough to not be a pure suit, but I am a suit none-the-less.

I have always been one of those people who like to see things progress. Meaning, I like to watch as things grow or get clean or turn into jam or a lawn turn into a garden bed. Working as a public servant, I do not get to enjoy the joys of seeing something progress very often. In fact, I talk to the same people with the same problem every day. Sometime I work hard to fix the issue just to have the same people call back with the exact same problem a month later. It can be frustrating.

Do not get me wrong, I enjoy my job. It isn't my dream job, but I have had worse jobs and when I did have my dream job I could barely survive. But I am always impressed with those who make a living doing what they truly enjoy. There is something very satisfying about working hard, playing hard and going to bed tired.

I am still relatively young. I am sure that I will have my country life. I just wish it would come a little faster.