Lunch.
Spinach, strawberries, pea pods: farmers market
Eggs: Also farmers market, organic brown eggs.
Bacon dressing: purchased at a nearby restaurant
Verdict: delicious.
Pleasures of Eating Local(ly)
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Tag Archives: it’s not easy being green
Market Monday
I’m not posting a Harvest Monday because, well, I haven’t harvested much of anything in the past week. I picked a bit of rhubarb to complete a batch of rhubarb-strawberry butter, but otherwise, it’s been a maintenance week for the gardens. In case you’re wondering, here’s the “harvest” from Saturday’s farm market.
This barely fit on the counter.
Some of the goodies are for eating now, and some are for putting up – storing for later. From left to right: blueberries, now; strawberries, now and later; grapeseed oil and smoky sea salt, now and later; carrots, now; tomatoes, now; mushrooms, now; lettuces, now; peas, later; more lettuces, now; asparagus, later. Oh, I forgot the cheeses. Block of cheddar, for eating now. Cheese curds, for sharing with La Petite. We sampled a few to make sure they were tasty.
The Facebook comments on this picture got interesting. I joked (sort of) that I was prepping for the Walker Apocalypse. Many teachers I know are in a Cautiously Paranoid condition; we know the future of public education in our state is shaky, at best. We’re looking to provide for our families one way or another. My method consists (in part) of filling the freezer and the pantry with decent food, mostly organic, much locally grown.
If you want to see harvests that will make you hungry, visit Daphne’s Dandelions. If you want to see more of what’s happening in Daisy’ pantry and freezer, stay tuned. I’m simmering a batch of strawberry-rhubarb butter right now, as I type. The house smells wonderful.
Love Is – a Rain Barrel or two
This year’s rain barrel set-up is complicated. First we didn’t have a garage. Then we had a garage with no gutter or downspout. After that, we had a gutter and downspout, but we didn’t have the right support to get the barrels up high enough to be convenient and easy to use.
We now have the cinder blocks and bricks (Thanks, Home Depot and Habitat ReStore). When we can summon the energy, we’ll pile up the cinder blocks and set the rain barrels on top of them. In the meantime, I give you an encore featuring Chuck’s model train layout. Enjoy.
Chuck, dear husband of mine, models trains in HO scale. For the uninitiated, HO translates as small. Tiny. Put-on-your-glasses and look very closely for details. Itty bitty.
The building below is part of a granary in his layout. The rain barrel is about the size of my pinkie fingernail, if not smaller. Yes, dear readers; he made a rain barrel in his train layout in tribute to his wife’s green philosophies.
Now if only I can stop him from buying the shopping bag that says, “I carry this bag because my wife cares about the environment”!
Container Gardening – a Pricey Trend?
We were picking up blueberry and raspberry canes to supplement what we’ve already planted. In the process, we saw some – oh how shall I say it? – creative mark-ups on planters and containers.
The simple box
The simple box with decoration
Pretty, right? And rather simple. Someone took the time to paint the boxes a nice neutral gray, and then they added a few decorative details to one box. Are you ready for the reveal? The price tag? Are you sitting down?
You read that right, people. $50 for the painted box.
I found Chuck as he checked out and showed him the outrageous mark-up on the simple, no doubt inexpensive boxes. He was shocked, too. And on our way to the car…
The popular raised bed, unpainted
These were on sale.
Ouch.
$250? Sale price?!? Give me a break, folks. This must be the new and trendy Container Gardening for Rich People. No one in my social circles would spend $50 on a wood box, much less $250 on a small wooden raised bed. Maybe I’m in the wrong field; I should be painting and repurposing my garage sale finds instead of planting in them. The profit margin would be amazing.
Harvest Monday – cilantro
It’s June, folks, still June. I have a lot of sprouts growing, but not much to harvest except the ubiquitous rhubarb. The cilantro, though, is reaching for the sky.
I planted small amounts a few weeks apart so it wouldn’t ripen all at once. The batch on the right is past its prime, if I’m honest. I might let it go to seed. On the left, that might be ready just in time for tacos. In the middle, it’ll join me for salsa. I planted in sections because we don’t use a lot of cilantro at any one time. The flavor is quite strong, especially when it’s fresh.
If I have too much, I can always feed it to the pet rabbit.
For more Harvest Monday, visit Daphne’s Dandelions. I wonder if she makes dandelion pesto? I should ask.
Fun with Container Planting
I didn’t call it container “gardening” because it feels more like a small to medium sized planter than a garden. No matter what the label, it was fun to put this together. I think the choice of flowers is better this year. It’s bound to grow and fill in and look beautiful. I won’t mention the struggle to keep it upright – you can find that here.
Done – for now.
In a few baskets sitting on the rock garden, I have spinach, radishes, and onions. I will sprinkle all of them with red pepper flakes to discourage small furry creatures from disrupting the goodies. It’s working – sort of.
Laundry hamper, repurposed – with a cat, an attempt to scare away tiny furry creatures.
This will be radishes.
Spinach will come up here – if I can keep up with the red pepper supply.
Some small critter loves garlic, loves it a lot, loves it so much that as soon as the scapes get two inches above the soil, the critter makes a visit and nibbles like crazy.I can rule out Bunnicula, at least. No vampire rabbit could withstand so much fresh garlic.
The History of the Rhubarb
I never had rhubarb in my yard when I grew up. If we ate it, I don’t remember. I do remember my next door neighbor having a substantial rhubarb plot behind his garage. His youngest had a little trouble saying his R sound, so he called it ‘Woo-bob’.
When dear sweet Chuck and I bought our house, we discovered rhubarb growing along the back lot line. I decided the south side of the garage would be a better location with more sun, so I transplanted the rhubarb plants. With the transplant, they spread.
Then I bought my first rain barrel and set it up under the downspout on the south side of the garage. That entailed moving the rhubarb again, this time to the patch beside the deck that had held hollyhocks. When the hollyhocks came down with rust two seasons in a row, I pulled them out for good.
Now the rhubarb is thriving in this spot. It’s growing so much that I’ve even given away a few small plants. By the reports from my friends, the transplanting worked well for them, too.
Rhubarb is often the first harvest of the year in my northeastern Wisconsin climate. So far this season I froze some, gave some away, and cooked the rest into a rhubarb-strawberry syrup to flavor my first attempt at strawberry-rhubarb ice cream. Mmm, it’s tasty. I’ll definitely do this again.
An Early Harvest
Ready to cook, bake, and freeze.
Want more harvest posts with pictures? Go to Daphne’s Dandelions for her weekly gathering called Harvest Monday.
Wrestling with a Papasan Chair
It was a hazy morning, with the kind of sky that promises a storm. I decided to accomplish a few short goals that I could abandon quickly and seek shelter when the raindrops arrived.
First, I dragged the rain barrels close to the hose and rinsed them inside and out. Trust me. It makes sense. The barrels had been storing water that drained off a crumbling rooftop, a garage roof with disintegrating shingles. The resulting residue was thin enough to get through the screen and thick enough to stick to the sides of the rain barrels. I hope that the new garage and its new roof will drain more cleanly into my clean(er) rain barrels.
Second, I smashed a batch of shells (seafood, mussels if you must know) and spread them on the soil that will become a raspberry patch once again. There’s both chemistry and environmental science in that decision. Again, trust me.
Third, I decided to work with the papasan planter in the front yard. We’d noticed it tipping, leaning to the right, and it needed help to get upright again. Nobody leans to the right for long in Daisy’s household. Trust me.
It looked like this from the sidewalk.
Close up, it looked even worse.
I wrestled, pulled, pushed, and eventually slid the top off its base. Then I reached for the camera – and I laughed out loud. Any neighbors lucky enough to witness the event surely think…trust me, I probably don’t want to know.
It’s all about that base. Whoa.
I tipped and balanced the planter part until it seemed stable, and then added a cinder block to help keep it in place. The base went out to the curb for Excess Garbage Day. Convenient timing, wasn’t it?
Here’s the result. I must say, I won the wrestling match – this round, anyway.
Done – for now.
The Garden Grows
I put in the plants, and I pulled off the masking tape grid. But wait – it’ll be much easier to imagine if I just give you a picture or two.
Beans! Beans on the right, tomatoes on the left.
A thin layer of grass clippings functions as mulch for now. Meanwhile, behind the garage, the pile is shrinking.
Good intentions – the pile was mostly topsoil, so Chuck made a new outline from repurposed boards and started spreading the soil.
The reverse angle image –
raspberry canes!
A few raspberry canes survived the garage construction. I have a few more in buckets; I hope to transplant them to this area to restart the raspberry patch. In a year, or maybe two, we’ll have raspberries again.
Summertime!
I can tell it’s summer because…
I am working the phone, setting up appointments so I don’t have to miss school in the fall.
I am cleaning up messes outside. I’ve planned and planted, but I haven’t had the time to make the yard look neat. Now I do.
I’m enrolling in two graduate classes with which to renew my Wisconsin teaching license. It’s what we do: go to school during June, July, and August in order to renew the license that…you know what, readers? You’ll hear my take on licensing changes, and you’ll hear it soon.
I can tell it’s summer because I’m storing my schoolbooks in a closet along with my fingerless gloves. I’ll bring them back to my desk in the fall.
I can tell it’s summer because I’m making salads for lunch and adding fresh ingredients whenever I can (including radishes, dandelion greens, and whatever edibles are ripe for picking).
I’m also reading gardening blogs and getting a little envious of those who are already harvesting. Daphne’s Dandelions hosts a Harvest Monday group with glorious pictures.
I can tell it’s summer because everywhere I go, I see others enjoying the outdoors. I saw two college-age kids wearing galoshes and stomping in mud on their lunch break from working on a grounds crew.
Meanwhile, I’m catching up on household chores, too. That’s not fun to talk about, though. I’d rather be outside!