Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday!

Oh! Beans!

The weekend was all about bean canning at my house.  I have many pounds of dry beans.  My husband used to be a bean grower and now our son is the bean grower.  Every year he grows several hundred acres of  two to four different dry beans: black-eyed, small red kidney, large red kidney, pinto, garbanzo, cranberry, great northerns and pinks.  I keep the burlap sacks of beans in one of the freezers.  I keep half gallon canning jars in the storage pantry filled with dried beans and I also keep up to 50 quart jars of canned beans.  Yeah, that's alot of beans, but they're sorta' free, easy to cook with and really good for you.  My kids can come into the house grab a jar of beans, a jar of stewed tomatoes, fry up some homemade sausage throw the whole thing together and have dinner for 6 or more in less than 10 minutes...much better than a can of Hormel.  The garbanzos make great Hummus and I also marinate them in good olive oil, minced garlic and balsamic vinegar and add to salads (or eaten out of the bowl: oops!).  I open a jar of pintos, melt some bacon fat in a skillet and mash and fry them up to be added to burritos, tacos, bean dip....I'm telling you...beans are the way to go we eat them hot or cold at least once a week, usually more.

The Way I Can Dry Beans:
If you bought your beans from the store you will need to soak them...dry store beans can be up to or over 5 years old...the farmer will hold them in storage until he gets a good price...sometimes for a year or two, then they are sold and the wholesaler may hold them for a couple years...BUT if you're lucky like me you just need to soak them for a bit or not at all....

I put my beans in a pot and par boil for about 10 minutes...then I put them in the sterilized jars, fill to about an inch and a half to the rim, ladle in boiling water and a bit of salt...wipe the rim of the jar and put the lids on, put in the pressure canner...vent for 10 minutes, put on the weight, let the gauge hit 11 pounds and process for 90 minutes...TA! DA!  I did pintos, small reds and garbanzos today.  I did navy, black, Big Red kidneys yesterday and Tuesday I did cranberries and pinks....and that's enough!  I now have plenty of beans for the year, to give to family and friends and to pass on to the food bank (dry beans).

Another Harvest Monday!

Take a minute and join me and other garden bloggers at Daphne's Dandelions reporting our weekly harvests!
Mine is a bit skimpy...my garden will be ramping up in the coming weeks...now is the time for me to start prepping for the Fall garden.  I'm busy clearing out the spent flowers, pulling a few weeds, feeding the chicks handfuls of chard and treating the bare spots in the bed with nice fluffy compost...

This week's harvest:

A Very Small Swarm In Tomato Alley...Yes I Hived Them

Broccoli One

Broccoli Two

The broccoli are finished until late Fall.  Both of these were off-shoots of heads I'd cut a month before!  They were steamed and served for my husband's birthday...yummy!  I also gifted him with my first two tomatoes: Matt's Wild Cherry...he popped them in his mouth before I could get a picture: he told me it was the best b'day gift he'd had that day.

Cabbage

Herbs: Basil, Thyme and Sage

Chard and Oregano

Rhubarb

One Thing Always Leads To Another

Our nice *new* floors have been finished for about a month now.  We started them, and then needed to stop the process when we drove out to North Carolina.  It took about three weeks to get the floor guy back and another 2 weeks for him to finish up.  They are beautiful...I am in love!  But, as with everything we do, there are glaring must do's staring us in the face....PAINT...we need to paint!  And there's the giant wall crack and window that is falling out that have been hiding behind the curtains for years. I still have not put the furniture back thinking we'd have the repairs and painting done first...so far it has not happened. I have been given outrageous quotes for the interior painting (maybe they aren't, but I have better things to do with my $7,000).  I have decided to do the painting myself.  I'm going to invite the girlfriends over and we'll just do it.  I'll scrub the woodwork first and then tape everything off and we'll have it done by the end of the weekend.  I do have to have the *bad* wall and window fixed first...in the meantime, I'm moving the furniture back into the house.  I told the family I would need 2 hours of their time sometime over the weekend.  I won't be putting anything near the walls, so it will be easier to cover everything when we do paint.  I had wanted to try painting with some color, but I have reconsidered...I'll stick to the white walls, cream trim and blue moulding...same thing we've had for the last 30 years.  I'll save the color for when and if we move to my mother-in-law's home. 

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER



WALL CRACK



WINDOW

MOULDING

FURNITURE ON THE PORCH

FURNITURE IN MEDIA ROOM

My Wordless Wednesday

    My Wordless Wednesday!

Market Monday and Other Great Things

The Farmers Market was good...not the best we've ever had...but it was pretty awesome.  I sold out of mushrooms...portabella and cremini.  I sold out of the portabella's within the first hour and a half!  I don't grow them...they are donated by the local Mushroom Farm: Premier Mushroom.  The sales of the mushrooms help to "fund" the market...advertising, market manager (me), banners, permits. Each person that buys mushrooms get to hear me tell them about Premier Mushroom and their good works throughout the community...not just about the best way to prepare the mushrooms.  Premier donates mushroom compost to the Colusa Community Garden...and my gardens and orchards here at the house. Needless to say, I'm a very big fan.

The vendors all did very well...not much produce left at all.  My favorite cherry vendor came..he'd come on Tuesday last week...thinking it was Monday!  He almost sold out.  He left 4 lugs of seconds at the packing shed he had planned to bring to me...oh well...he said he'd bring me twice as much next Monday...I'll be up to my eyeballs in cherries for sure!  I picked up some yellow squash, very young and tender, some great looking beets, a basket of blackberries and 3 baskets of strawberries...I'll be making a blackberry syrup and a strawberry shortcake and I'll dry 2 baskets of the strawberries.  My grand kids have almost gone through the gallon of berries I dehydrated last week.  I sold 10 dozen eggs for my granddaughter...for whatever reason she didn't make it to the market.  I had picked some cabbage, onion, shallots and chard to take, but I ran off and forgot them.  I'll have to get them in jars or freezer bags in the next couple of days, I don't like seeing anything go to waste.

Farmers Market Beets, Crooks, and Berries

It's been very hot, so the garden has really been drinking up the water, in fact everything looks pretty droopy.  I plan on turning on the soaker hoses every a.m. for one hour...they deliver about a gallon an hour.  I need to make sure everyone gets a good dose of compost tea too...normally that's an every other week event...but I haven't done it for the whole garden in over a month.  Some things I've been treating to the tea faithfully, but others I've just let slide...not good.  I moved my compost operation to a new location and it's just not as convenient as the original...I'm not changing it back...I just need to put in the extra effort to get back on the program!

Front of The Garden Outside of the Fence: Tomatoes and Squash

Side-shot of The Front Garden Outside of the Fence

One of Four Wine Barrels of Potatoes...note the Drawer of Potatoes: Four of Those, Too!

One of Two Large Fruit Bins with Potatoes

I figured the glads were going to take a beating in this heat, so I gathered up an armful of the the older blooms, some chamomile, marigolds and mint and came inside a put together a nice bouquet.  Now I'm going to pour myself a large glass of lemonade, turn on some music and lay under the ceiling fan.....



Harvest Monday

Last week was a good one out in the garden.  I managed to get the soaker hose system set up.  I re-used old soaker hose and added new fittings...it's not the primo system I want...but it only cost me $10...so it'll work for now.  We're having high 90's and low 100 degree weather...hot...I like having the soakers during this heat wave...I keep them on in the a.m. and so far the garden is loving it, especially my Gladiolas. 

I'm harvesting cabbage, celery, broccoli, onions, lots of herbs and snuck the first of the potatoes.  Everything has been delicious.  The cabbage was used in fish tacos, coleslaw and cabbage rolls.  The celery, potatoes and onions went into a lovely Father's Day potato salad.  And of course, plenty of steamed broccoli...and I froze another gallon for the winter.

Join with us and share your Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.

Miss You....Happy Father's Day!

Lazy Day At Claire's

My husband has my mother-in-law's home.  We don't live there, no one does...we just keep it..furnished and everything.  I used it for my birthday get away when the girlfriends and I couldn't get up to the cabin because of snow. The gf's kept saying Bill and I should open it up as a *Retreat*...or a Farm Stay-cation Venue. It's a beautiful home, with a beautiful yard, huge pool and amazing views.  During the summer we spend most late afternoons cooling off in the pool.  A couple of our large fields separate her home from mine (which was her mother's...my husband's grandmother). So it's easy to hop on a bicycle and ride over or take a late afternoon run.  I've had the two little granddaughters for the last couple of days so we took the little irrigators' truck.

The girls swam and I netted the Fruit Cocktail tree my daughter planted four years ago when she was my mother-in-law's primary caregiver. The tree is full of fruit...nectarines, two varieties of plums, and apricots.  The birds got most of the apricots and were starting on the nectarines...but I have them netted now so I should get a bit of a crop. 

There's a nice big spot behind the shop and shed my father-in-law used for a garden, Rudy, my yard helper has planted some corn there.  My father-in-law had wonderful Sacramento River Bottom Loam trucked in years ago...just a beautiful growing medium.  This soil grows some of the best tomatoes I've ever eaten.

We've been talking about moving to her home for about a year now.  Our kids don't want us so close to the freeway (our home is right next to Interstate 5) so they want us to move.  I don't like it either...the worse our economy gets, the more concerned I become, we have noticed an increase in travelers knocking on our door having run out of gas...some have been down right scary looking.  Our home is also a big old (1923) two story and neither one of us enjoy climbing those stairs a dozen times a day, Claire's is a newer (1966) one story rambler...same square footage (5,000 sq.ft.) but easier to close off unused rooms.  I love my home, my gardens, my orchards, my chicken yard, my barns...it has been a happy home for so many years.  Moving is not something we will do today, but it is something that is most likely in our future.  The plan would be to use our home as Ranch Offices...the house is next to the machine shops and the four barns and with both boys working on this ranch and their own farming businesses, the larger office space would be welcome.  My garden and animals would stay at the ranch and new gardens and animal set-ups would be made ready at the new place.  I guess you could say I would have the best of both worlds.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday!

Another Monday Market

We had an OK market tonight.  Not the best, but much better than last Monday.  More vendors and more townspeople.  It was great to re-new acquaintances and share family news.  The first two cases of mushrooms went fast...the last one I ended up giving away *samples*...I figure it's good PR.  So, for 4 big portabella mushrooms I got 6 baskets of strawberries, 3 baskets of blackberries, 2 huge red onions, 3 pounds of green beans, five heads of Russian red garlic and 4 nice looking zucchini.  From another vendor for 2 portabella mushrooms I got a beautiful bouquet of fresh cut flowers (with sweet smelling stock) and then another vendor for 2 mushrooms and a 1/2 dozen of fresh eggs gave me a huge bag of caramel kettle korn and all of the old Maids to grind up for chicken feed (about 50 pounds).  That's one of many reasons why I volunteer to run the Farmers Market...it's wonderful.  We pay $100 a day to the manager...I don't generally take it...not when I get this much produce.  I did buy a flat and 1/2 of green beans for $20.  Next week it may be different...the vendors may sell out and I may not have any leftover mushrooms for trade.  I do know if I pre-order a flat of  "anything" I always get a great deal.  The vendors know I can so they usually bring me "seconds" and that's just great (the price is always next to nothing).  Last year I canned over a years worth of fruit, vegetables, jams, jellies and pie filling for less than $350...and a good chunk of that money was for sugar.  This year I'm using mostly my honey for sweetener.  Wouldn't it be something to can a years worth of product for $100!  I'd better slow down and barter better I've already spent $40 on green beans and cherries!

Harvest Monday June 13

Too crazy of a week to keep close track of my harvests.  I do know we ate a lot of broccoli, artichokes and cabbage!  I harvested most of the chard for the chickens and all of the outer leaves of the cabbages went to them too, they loved it!  I only had a small handful of strawberries that didn't make it to the house.  I wild foraged elderberry blossoms for syrup...that worked out great...I'll post later.  And I pulled out the last of the lettuce...it was all bolting. We had two cabbages and a few onions.  I just pick the onions and cabbage as needed...with the days starting to finally heating up I'm sure the broccoli, cabbage and onions are going to bolt..need to get them out of the garden.  Here's some of my Harvest Monday :

Hop on over to our host's blog Daphne's Dandelions and share in some fantastic Harvest Monday posts.