Actual Text Messages:
Chuck: There’s a bunny in your garden right now. Want me to chase it away?
Daisy: Yes, please. Take a picture if you can.
Chuck strode out to the garden, phone camera in hand, and got a big surprise.
Chuck: It’s a regular wildlife sanctuary back there. 1 chipmunk, 1 mourning dove, 2 bunnies, small flock of blackbirds. Sorry, no pics.
No wonder I’m hardly getting any beans. Come on, critters. Leave the family vegetables alone!
I bought a lot of peppers on Wednesday. Thursday was dill pickle day. I hope the pickles work out this time. I’m close to giving up on dills, at least from my recipe books. I might go to a commercial mix instead.
All set to pickle! And more!
I had already brought in a meager harvest from the backyard.
Peppers (4 kinds), beans, and two more heads of garlic
I mentioned pickles earlier. I’d be a little, no, more than a little bit bummed if I didn’t have a way to use at least some of the fresh dill that’s growing in the backyard.
Dill, not popcorn.
The brine didn’t smell the greatest, so I really don’t know if it worked. Fresh dill and fresh garlic – I hope it all came together. I will have to wait two weeks and then open a jar. Suspense, suspense.
Meanwhile, the Saturday market came by. We took time to listen to some good live music – and I do mean good quality. My fair city plays host to its second annual Mile of Music, and one of the headliners was performing, for free, at the downtown farmers’ market (Hillary Reynolds Band). A little bit down the road we saw one of the lesser known but still awesome bands (Holy Sheboygan) singing and dancing and making people smile. Then we slipped into a coffeehouse and listened to a group of brass players jamming, just jamming.
Oh, the market. We brought home all this – plus corn.
Saturday Market! Fresh food and fun.
My parsnips are not quite ready yet, so we bought some. I also picked up beans, green and yellow, in honor of Packers preseason starting tonight. Packer beans!
There’s my work for the rest of the weekend. Watch Brewers and Packers and prep vegetables for freezing. Ah, summer in Wisconsin.
The big city of Toledo had a disaster of epic proportions recently. The drinking water supply was contaminated with microcystins, a nasty toxin produced by cyanobacteria. Folks with an apocalyptic outlook may be shouting, “Look out! The end of the world is near! The sky is falling! This new bacteria will take over the world!”
Please set aside my sarcasm for a moment. Cyanobacteria is a major issue and a potential problem anywhere there is a large amount of warm, still water. It’s not pollution, per se, but it is dangerous. It’s also not new. As soon as I heard cyanobacteria referred to as “blue-green algae” I flashed back to college and Environmental Science 101. Way back then, I learned that blue-green algae was an invasive species, dangerous because it would take over the ecosystem and force out the native algae and small water animals that provide food for the bigger fish on the food chain. The same fish will not eat blue-green algae because, well, it tastes bad. Even the invasive zebra mussel turns up its nose (figuratively) at blue-green algae, eating other species and leaving more opportunities for the microcystin-producing cyanobacteria.
So, professor, are you proud of me for remembering that? Pat yourself on the back. I also learned quite a bit about water treatment. In my neck of the woods in the Great Lakes region, just like Toledo, Ohio, our local treatment plants have to go to extra lengths to clean and process the water before it goes back into the watershed. The water that enters my home is also treated thoroughly to keep it safe for cooking and drinking.
Blue-green algae and its bacteria do not get filtered out or chemically neutralized, even in the three major stages of water treatment required in the Great Lakes. In fact, boiling will not get rid of it, either. Boiling water makes the toxin stronger.
So here’s the trouble, people. This algae thrives in warm, still water. Climate change has warmed the Great Lakes and made a perfect storm, er, environment for this kind of disaster to happen again and again.
My fair city gets its water not from a Great Lake, but another nearby large body of water. A microcystin water disaster could happen here. Looking ahead, we residents need to consider:
Readers, grab a glass of cool ice water and chime in.
I don’t remember where I read it. A gardening and cooking article stated that rhubarb is past its prime and not much good after July 4th.
My rhubarb didn’t get the message because it’s still growing.
I pulled a few pounds from the freezer to make into sauce. Then I harvested about another pound of the fresh stuff.
Rhubarb, ready for dicing
Here’s the fun part. After harvesting a big stack of fresh rhubarb, the remaining rhubarb looks like this.
Still Growing!
We had rain yesterday, so the soil and the surrounding grass look much greener today. If this continues, we’ll have apple rhubarb cobbler, crisp, and maybe even rhubarb applesauce in the fall!
I’ve never kept track precisely of the cost of gardening. I read The $64 Tomato a few years back, and I was a little disheartened by his cost analysis. Today, while Amigo got a haircut, I browsed a magazine that listed “Grow Your Own Vegetables” as a money saving trick. The featured couple broke even on their backyard garden, but they predicted a better outcome in follow-up years because the majority of their costs were incurred building the raised bed itself.
I had significant expenses in expanding my backyard plot this year. Chuck repurposed the boards, so those were no cost. He used mainly screws and tools that he already owned, so there again was no new cost. We laid down a base for the soil by using home made compost and biodegradable waste from our adorable pet bunny – her litter boxes, if you need it spelled out for you. We bought ten (twelve?) straw bales last fall at about $6 each. Then we built up the soil using commercial topsoil purchased from a local store for a total of about $120.
Seeds and seedlings added to the cost total, but not much. I save a considerable amount when I’m able to start tomatoes and peppers from seed rather than buying seedlings. This year, I lost some of those starter seedlings due to neglect while I regained my health. All that survived are thriving now – and that includes both me and the seedlings.
Then we’d need to figure out a cost estimate for the amount we saved. So many heads of lettuce, parsley (a.k.a. bunny food), radishes, salsa, tomato sauce, etc. – this would be difficult, if not impossible, to inventory and calculate. In general, we eat fresher and better quality when there are foods available in the backyard.
Then there are the perennials: rhubarb, green onions, raspberries, chives.. those incur no new costs. They just grow. Does that balance the produce I buy from the farmers’ market? It’s complicated, it is.
Cost savings? If I really want to, I could keep a spreadsheet next year. Then again, maybe not. It’s such a pleasure to plant seeds and watch them grow, I can’t really quantify it.
Frankly, no matter what the size, a garden is priceless.
In May of 2013, we had a nightmare situation that started when I went to the sink to wash my hands and found No Water. This situation haunts us mainly because it led to an emergency evacuation (gas leak) and months of repair and cleaning. When the water department from my fair city scheduled a time to come over to install a new meter, we combined that with a from a plumber to get a couple more things done “as long as the water was shut off.”
Amigo and I were home. Chuck, lucky guy, was at work and didn’t have to deal with the immediate effects of having no water. Call me paranoid (and you might have a stroke of truth there), but I prepared in advance.
Steamer: full of water
I knew I wanted to cook fresh vegetables in the steamer for supper, so I filled the steamer with water before lunch.
Canner full of water
I was planning to make raspberry jam that evening, so I filled the hot water bath canner in advance, too.
I had rice on the menu for supper, too, so I chose a soup stock for cooking the brown & wild rice mix.
I achieved my goal: I was ready to cook supper, whether the water guys were finished or not. This helped with my second goal: keeping both myself and Amigo calm. Since I had everything I needed for cooking and we had enough water in the toilet tanks that we could, ahem, use the facilities, all was well.
Be Prepared; it’s not limited to Scouts. It works for parents, too.
One good reason for a backyard garden: bunny food.
Bunny likes parsley!
Another good reason for a backyard garden: spinach. Add to salads, omelets, and just about anything.
Spinach! Iron-rich leafy green!
I didn’t have a lot of spinach this season. Who knows – maybe the cold stretch ahead of us will trick the spinach into growing a second crop. I’m hoping the lettuce will do that, too. Salads at the O.K. Chorale! What could be more delicious?
Going to the downtown farmers’ market must be good for my blood pressure. Just by walking onto the main street and seeing the vendors and hearing the peaceful crowd and the musicians…just setting foot into this wonderful market makes me relax and smile. We came home with this.
Delicious Collection!
It’s fun to watch the seasonal foods shift through the summer markets. Very few vendors had strawberries today. I think I bought the last peas I’m going to get. I picked up honey, Michigan blueberries (from the U.P.; I don’t consider that imported), beans in green and yellow, asparagus (the last, I’m sure), and more.
On Monday, I started the charcoal grill with a goal of making burgers for supper – bacon cheeseburgers, if you want details. Don’t judge me; I served them on whole wheat buns, okay?
But back to the charcoal grill. If you’re like me and you prefer the charcoal grill to gas, you know that when the meat is done, the coals are still hot. In my kitchen, that’s the golden opportunity for planned leftovers, or planned-overs. On Monday night, the burgers shared the coals with chorizo (Mexican style sausage) and a Polska Kielbasa ring sausage.
Tuesday I made spaghetti and meat sauce – lots of both. The remaining spaghetti might become part of a side dish with the kielbasa or a batch or spaghetti carbonara. The meat sauce, with a little chili powder and jalapeno pepper, could be the base for a crock pot full of chili. If I decide to make that chili in true Wisconsin chili mac style, diced leftover spaghetti is right there in the refrigerator waiting for me.
Potatoes make great planned-overs. When I jump start a batch of baked potatoes on the grill, it takes hardly any time at all to finish them in the oven or microwave. If I make the planned-over potatoes into twice baked, complete with good Wisconsin cheese and green onions and chives from the garden, they’re not only delicious, but they carry a little of that charcoal flavor into another meal.
In conclusion (did you think I’d say “The moral of the story”?), planning ahead and cooking ahead meant that I only needed to light the grill once this week, and we had the potential for at least three meals from one charcoal fire. Like it? I did.
Side dishes, if you’re curious, included fresh asparagus and a mixed fruit salad, also fresh. Gotta love the farmers’ markets. We eat well in the summertime!
The quote says it all, doesn’t it? There aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the year to read everything I’d like to read. So why am I wasting time on Facebook and Twitter? I’m going to log off and read!