Low Hanging Fruit

So we've gotten lots and lots of rain recently. Here's an overall shots of the garden.



Look how big the zucchini is getting!!


Here's our sweet corn. You can see the cats playing around. Also don't compare our corn to the round up corn to the right. It's like three times the size, cheaters!!


Snow snow peas! They are getting close to done :)


The okra is coming along...


LOOK!!!! A tomato!!!!!! I CANNOT for this to get ripe. There are about 3 of these guys.


Eggplant for Sean.


There are a few cabbages coming up. I hope they make it.


Here are the chickens. The cornish hens are getting close...


Sean picking cherries.


Mulberries aren't for birds!!!


Until next post, it will hopefully be some tasty food pics!

The start of my red neck

I officially have started my farmers tan / red neck. Note to self: buy a large brimmed hat, but not a ten gallon hat just to be clear. So I have a lot of exciting things to post this time around. I will start with we finally got another crop! Turnips and some small beets since they needed thinning.

Here is a west and east view of the garden. In the first picture you can see the two rows of sunflowers we have growing. They are to the right of the turnips. Next to the sunflowers are popcorn and broomcorn. Yes broomcorn, derek is going to show sean and I how to make some brooms. I'm pretty excited about it. In the second photo you can see the almost done raised beds. Unfortunately we didn't get these in in time to use them for tomatoes so we'll probably use them for this fall's crop.

This last picture is a better glimpse of the raised beds. These were HEAVY to carry out.

Here is the progress of the carrots, turnips, beets, ground cherry, and zucchini.

Since we are creative and crafty, derek had an old fence he wanted to take down so he had the idea to take the steel fence and make tomato cages out of them. We made 20 cages and ran out of fencing. We thought for sure that would be enough cages, turns out we have 30 something tomato plants.... oh man that's a lot of canning of salsa and tomato sauce.

A week ago Darlene and I planted ~15,000 basil seeds. Derek had the leftovers so we decided to plant them. Here's how they look so far. I can't wait for PESTO!

I hope you were able to read to the end of this post because I have a SURPRISE!!! The next two pictures will let you know the highlight of my weekend.

YES yes yes!!! Cherries! On sunday Greg and I spent 6 hours helping out. Our payment/reward at the end of the day was a slice of derek's homemade cherry pie with a scoop of ice cream. It was delicious, unfortunately I did not get a picture. BUT here is what I decided to make with the cherries that we picked. Cherry Crumble.

What happens when you pit 5 to 6 cups of cherries with your thumbs...

The finished product: DELICIOUS

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.