It's heating up!

This week the greens really popped! We don't want our lettuce and such getting bitter so now is really the time to harvest. I've given away a few bags of lettuce and still have lots more to eat. This trip out Anthony and I rode our bikes and had Sean meet us at the farm. Poor Anthony and his fixie, definitely not the way to travel out in the country. The main goal of the trip was to make some tomato cages out of old fence from around the orchard. This was not the most fun but had to be done. While in the orchard we scoped out the cherries, in a few weeks they will be ready for picking. I can't wait to make cherry pies and jams!! After we finished making cages it was time to harvest more greens. We took home Lettuce, Spinach, and Swiss Chard. The cabbage is just starting to come up.

Here are pics from this trip:





I'll be heading back this weekend.

Feast for us all

Sean and I had two very special guests for this dinner, in addition to two regular and awesome guests. Sarah and Elizabeth came down with the best dog, Beau Chien. Him and Roux!! had some fun together. She is a BALLSY cat. She was NOT afraid of him at all. He is easily 10 times her size if not more. Oh that cat/kitten.... Anyways since Sarah and Elizabeth had such a long drive to get to Champaign I decided that I had to make a dinner worth the trip. So I had to restrictions use lots of spinach/lettuce from the garden AND it had to be delicious. Not surprisingly I decided to make fresh pasta, but this time I brought it up one notch and made spinach raviolis. The stuffing was a tofu mockatta. The sauce is a simple marinara made from scratch. It's whole peeled tomatoes food processed and simmered with red wine and some fresh sage. I really should write down the recipes I use.... At first the raviolis were turning out sub-par but by the end of rolling/stuffing/folding the raviolis I was pro. To accompany the raviolis Sean made a salad with our freshly harvested greens. The dressing I decided to go with was a spinach vinaigrette. I can't remember exactly what the dressing had it in but the main ingredients was apple cider vinegar, salt, little water, olive oil, and, of course, SPINACH!!! and lots of it. This dressing turned out great. Unfortunately I do not have a picture of the salad.

Here is the main course though:

1st Meal From Our Own Food!

So the first meal I was able to make with our harvest was a spinach pesto. To compliment the sauce I made some homemade white whole wheat noodles.

Approximate pesto recipe:

1/2 cup olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
3 to 4 cups of washed raw spinach
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup of raw walnuts

I just put all the ingredients in the food processor and blend until smooth.

Here's the completed dish. The fresh pasta makes a big big difference. The pesto was very tasty!

No Derek, no problem!

This update is actually at least a month later than the pictures of the previous post. We've planted numerous beans including Dragon Tongue, Speckled Cranberry, and Burpee's Stringless, soybeans, snow peas, peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, ground cherries, dill, and some other things that we planted directly with seed so we shall see if they actually germinate. Here's what it's looking like:
This last picture is the potatoes, beets, carrots, turnips, and rhubarb. The rhubarb won't be ready until next season. The beets and turnips are coing along. The beets bodies are about dime sized. The potatoes are getting enormous!


Here are some zucchini seedlings:


Here is sean and darlene harvesting lettuce, spinach, and swiss chard.


Chicken update:
They are getting much much bigger. Here are some shots of them in the large pen.


We are going to be using chicken tractors so we can have them clear the area in the orchard so we don't have to mow. Here's the first chicken tractor.


Here is a close up of the chickens. They look really cool!


The most satisfying feeling: HARVEST!
Here is what we brought home as our first harvest. The bag of lettuce must be at least 3 pounds worth.


Washed and packed so that it'll last the week.

The first seedling emerge

Here's the first few rows of what we planted. These are lettuce and spinach seedlings.


Here are some pictures of the chicks. The majority of them are black stars, but there are also sussex and cornish hens. All in all we have about 40 chickens. So come July we are going to have A LOT of eggs!!







There will be lots more to post after this weekend. Be excited!

Deland isn't short for where Derek lives

Here is the start to an exciting learning experience. Sean and I were given the opportunity to have a large scale garden that we helped at. The garden is located at Derek/Caity's place in De Land. When I first heard of De Land I thought that it was short for d-land as in land of Derek. Turns out it's the real name of the town.

This blog is going to follow the experience of the garden and how the food we produced is used. We are going to have a large variety of vegetables, eggs, and a few broilers. In addition to talking about the farm I am also going to show what how the food we grew is cooked.

Enjoy!!