Holiday Blooms.

I've started some indoor gardening for gifts and for myself. It's a little early to start paperwhite bulbs for Christmas blooms. I've started them around this time before and had them bloom weeks before the holidays. I did start this Amaryllis bulb indoors the other day to add to our holiday decor. The nurseries usually get the Amaryllis bulbs in around the same time you want to plant them for the holidays, they take around 7-10 weeks to bloom.  Add a bow, some dried moss and even some red berries or rose hips to the pot and you have a lovely centerpiece. 

Here's a Link to an Article from About.com on how to Force and Rebloom Amaryllis Bulbs.

Working House

What my kitchen table looks like now and often. Time for a clean-up, tidy house = tidy mind. 

Enjoying the Fall Garden.

Hens on patrol. Currently loving expired tomatoes, too big leaves of swiss chard, rutabaga tops, carrot tops and general garden clean up. 

Broccoli planted in August. That is not weeds against the fence, it is oats planted over the whole garden, wherever there is bare soil, as a cover crop of green manure. We did a really good job of keeping the soil weed free all summer, the oats will ensure it stays that way. 

The big picture. Lots of oats planted over the garden, straw where oats couldn't be planted. It is really beneficial to protect bare soil from winter elements. The oats will die over the winter and then can be either tilled into the soil, left where they lay or raked off. 

 

High-Five! Swiss chard I am letting go to seed to have lots of swiss chard seeds for next year.

A Video on how to Save Swiss Chard Seeds.  

Old swiss chard. 

New swiss chard! This was planted around August for fall greens. I keep on top of picking my swiss chard so it never gets too large. We much prefer the smaller leaves around here. You can continue to pick the leaves off the plant and it will continue to grow for months. I have swiss chard in my garden that was planted last fall that is still growing as I pick it. 

Letting my favorite lettuces go to seed amongst all the oats. I'll keep a lot of these seeds for next year, free seeds=free veggies, and give some away in personalized packets for gifts. 

A neat christmas idea is to give someone a seed salad. It could be a mix of different seeds that could come together to make a salad, for example, lettuce seeds, radish seeds, tomato seeds and cucumber seeds could work. 

One variety of Brussel Sprouts. 

Another variety. Yum! I would mention how easy it is to freeze brussel sprouts, if I had any intention of freezing these. These will all be fresh eaten. 

Fall kohlrabi. 

My leeks went in too late due to me being swamped with gardening chores. That's O.K. I love baby leeks.  

Thick bed of oats where the peas had grown. 

Corn salad or mache, very cold tolerant. I have a part of a row planted with this, kale, arugula and spinach to cover with row covers. 

Sad, late planted cold frame bed, needing mulch. Arugula, kale, Bok Choy, lettuces, corn salad, radishes, cilantro, scallions, swiss chard and spinach all planted and doing O.K. all things considered. If nothing else, I'm hoping these will start growing again in March for early spring veg. It was not an urgent task this year to get this planted as I have a couple rows and beds with fall greens and other veggies all ready to go and just needing row covers. 

The main garden bed is almost ready for winter, a bit more clean up needed. 

Christmas Cider.

If you are on our Christmas list this year, there is a good chance you're getting cider in your stocking. We pressed another carboy full of the good stuff, and we need to bottle the older one of these carboys on Saturday. We're giving it one last go and picking as many apples as we can to do one last press, hopefully we'll get at least one more carboy. It takes about 3 large feed bags FILLED to press enough juice for a carboy, although it really depends on the size and juice in the apple. Larger apples are the juiciest, smaller ones tend to be drier. The amount of juice that will come out of a sack of apple pulp is amazing. Absolutely nothing is added to the juice at all, period. You put it in the carboy and let it ferment.  When it is time to bottle the cider we're going to mix about a cup of raw sugar or honey into the entire carboy before siphoning into individual bottles. This will give the cider some more effervescence or sparkle. Some people add extra yeasts to the cider in an attempt to up the alcohol content, this is unnecessary unless desired, as the apples have naturally occurring yeasts on their skins and pulp. After sampling our cider that had fermented for over three weeks, I would say the alcohol content is high enough for me. We have the gear from wine making to test the alcohol content and will have to satisfy our curiosity and test it soon.  

My boyfriend John on the press. We have a lot of fun making cider together, I cut the apples, he grinds them and we press the pulp together.  

One of our smaller butternut squashes, perfect for roasting. I roasted this squash and pureed  the pulp with lots of garlic, oregano, basil and sauteed mushrooms, then tossed with kamut penne pasta and fresh parm for a Veg. dinner. 

Planted my garlic the last weekend in September. I planted about 20 bulbs, if I remember correctly, with about 5-7 cloves on each bulb. I covered the bed with straw and will throw some leaves over the straw once more fall. 

Fennel is a questionable perennial in my zone. It came back last year and I think I'll try it again with these two stalks nestled into the straw. I'll cut them down at the base, leaving the roots, mark the spot and protect it with a row cover as well as some leaves or straw. 

Tree Love. 

One of my baking pumpkins, Baby Pam was the variety. I'll either bake with this or make soup. 

Fiddlehead Soup.

I wanted to use up my frozen fiddleheads before they lost all their nutrients in the freezer. I had a chicken carcass to make stock from so I made a fiddlehead soup to sip on. 

Aside from a whole pile of shallots I sauted for the base of this soup, it consists mainly of fiddleheads. Saute the shallots, steam the fiddleheads for 11 minutes, they had been blanched for 3 minutes before I froze them, salt the shallots, add the fiddleheads and top off with flavourful chicken stock. Blend and season if desired. I had seasoned my chicken stock fairly well so I added nothing extra. Fiddleheads are really flavorful on their own.  I had this for dinner last night with a couple pieces of leftover chicken thrown in and for breakfast this morning as is. 

Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce

We have officially reached the point of being overrun with tomatoes. Never a bad thing, I just need to be on the ball to get them all taken care of in a timely fashion. A person needs to either freeze, can or dry tomatoes for storage. I sit on the fence when it comes to canning due to the BPA present on the canning lids. Because there's BPA in the lids, I do minimal canning until I can afford to buy a ton of Tattler Reusable lids. The Tattler lids are fairly expensive to begin with, however the over $20/dozen to have them shipped from the states to Canada is the major deterrent. 

Freezing tomatoes and tomato sauce could not be easier. To freeze whole tomatoes you simply blanch to remove the skins, or not, and freeze. Not too many people bother removing the skins when the tomatoes are going to used in recipes for cooking and, BONUS, the skins will also slip off fairly easily after being frozen. Throw them in the freezer whole or make tomato sauce on the stove-top or in the oven, as I did here. 

To make oven roasted tomato sauce you simply rough chop your tomatoes, I quartered mine, onions, garlic and whatever other veggies you want to use, celery, peppers, etc. Toss the veggies with salt, pepper and any combination of oregano, basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary or other herbs like fennel, cilantro etc. Roast at 400 degrees for several hours, at least 4 or 5, until everything has all softened together into a nice sauce consistency. After you have removed the sauce from the oven and it has cooled, THEN you add your cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil. Heating good quality oils destroys their delicate fats. Then this can be frozen in portions or in bulk.  I'll be making huge batches of this the next few days,  my house will smell amazing, freeze it in portions and use it over the next few months. Makes a great base for a quick or not-so-quick lunch/dinner any day of the week.  

I use plum tomatoes for sauces, they're the best!  

Edited to Include: You can also add handfuls of kale, spinach or other greens to this after it comes out of the oven to wilt into the sauce. Yum!

Sauerkraut is quite fermented, it tastes delicious and it is time to make more.  All that went into this was a head of cabbage, several brussel sprouts, sea salt and water.  Combine with time and patience and voila, sauerkraut. 

Chicken TV.

I could watch these little guys run around for hours. You would be surprised how entertaining they are to watch. It was a really warm day so we decided to let the mischievous creatures out. The tall grass is oats we planted for them about a week ago. Chickens love scratching, digging and eating whatever they find. 

Being brave and venturing away from the group to check things out. 

Figuring out the ramp is another story, some catch on right away and I'm not sure if some will ever get it.

My hen thoroughly enjoying her warm water bath yesterday when she was acting egg bound. I'm not sure which she enjoyed more, sleeping while floating in the sink or being blow dried off. I can't tell if she laid her egg this morning, she was happily walking around off the nest this morning and seems right as rain. I let her out to free range for the day, fed her some yogurt mixed with olive oil and let her be.  

Apple Cider

This is the portion of cider we are leaving to ferment after our first batch of pressed cider. We pressed a little over 30 liters of cider, leaving the rest for fresh drinking. It is delicious. It was quite the mix of different apples we used since we just picked as many wild apples as we could.