Agrarian Harvest

Our New Family Favorite

We have not had our first frost yet. It has been cooling down though. We can now feel the coolness in the house every morning, which means that we are now starting a fire every morning to take the chill off. Then I am looking out the window at all the produce we still have growing and start to think of what I can cook using this wonderful abundance of produce.

So I’m going to share a recipe that I have made repeatedly this year. BaBa Ghanoush (pronounced bah-bah-gah-noosh); this amazing dip has become a household favorite. We use it for meat or veggies; great with tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and celery. It can be spread on crackers, sandwiches or put on a salad. The kids have actually gave up ranch and request this dip instead. And it uses several eggplant that I used to look at and wonder how are we going to use all these eggplant. That is not a problem this year. I now make several batches of this at a time and freeze some so we can enjoy this wonderful dip all winter.

BaBa Ghanoush

2 large round eggplant or several of the slender Chinese eggplant (1 pound)

2 TBSP Olive Oil

2 cloves of garlic

2 TBSP basil or if you cook like I do, just use a handful

1/2 tsp salt

2-3 TBSP lemon juice (optional) I don’t use the lemon juice; I don’t like the lemon taste and don’t mind the dip turning brown.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Wash the eggplant and use a fork to prick each eggplant all over. Put them on the baking sheet and place in the oven. Cook for about an hour or until they start to collapse. You will know if they are done if they are soft inside. Let cool, until they are cool enough for you can handle them.

Split the eggplants open and use a spoon to scoop the inside (flesh) out, putting it into a food processor. Add the remaining ingredients and process until smooth. You will still have some seeds in the mixture. If you don’t want the dip to turn brown, then add 2-3 TBSP lemon juice and mix. Scrape the dip into a bowl and serve.

October 24, 2015 0

Farmers’ Market Selling & Spunk

Last week I posted that we were enjoying our Indian summer, well, after posting I did some research and figured out that we actually are not having an Indian summer. An Indian summer is unseasonably warm weather in the fall after a good hard frost. Since we have not had a frost or even a cold spell yet, we are not experiencing an Indian summer. We are a just fortunate to still have warm weather, no frost, and produce still growing and producing.

Thanks to this wonderful weather we still have lots of produce and are still able to participate in our local farmers’ market. This is good in some ways and bad in others. We are happy to still be providing our local community with organic, fresh produce and happy to be eating it ourselves. But we are getting tired and worn out; slowing down just like the produce. We have lost our enthusiasm and spunk for all the harvesting and preparing for the market, but we are still at it.

Most people don’t realize how much work it takes to sell at a farmers market, unless you have actually participated in one. And how much determination it takes to keep at it the whole season, May through October. It takes most, if not all day, the day before market to harvest, package and prepare all supplies and products. We are usually up into the wee hours of the night getting ready; especially in the middle of the summer when there is a lot to harvest and get ready. Some weeks we don’t make it to bed until 2 am and then we’re up at 5 am to finish the last minute harvesting and load all that produce. This takes some critical thinking. We load all our boxes/crates/coolers of produce/product, tables, canopy, signs and the family into an excursion. There have been several weeks I don’t know how we have gotten everything in the excursion. When we unload at market, we look like a little car of clowns. You know the cartoon image of clowns that just keep piling out of a little tiny car. Well, that’s us at farmers’ market, people, boxes, coolers just keep coming out of the excursion. We get looks of how did you get all of that in there? We have hopes of having a trailer to haul it all in next year.

Once everything is unloaded, then there is the set up. We set up the canopy and tables. Next come the organizing of several boxes/crates; making the display cute and inviting. There is the rush of getting all this done before the early bird shoppers arrive and before the vendor meeting starts. Then market starts. If we are lucky it is busy and the time goes by fast. But on some days it is slow and time drags by. It may be a very cool day and we bounce around trying to keep warm, it may be a very hot and there is not enough shade for the produce and people or our worst market day was cold and pouring rain. Whatever the day holds, we stand there and sell for four hours of market.

At the end of market, it is time to take it all down. We like to stay open until all the customers have left the market. Then we start to load all the produce/product that we have left. Lastly, we fold up the tables and canopy. There are usually empty boxes that we break down, so the loading to come home is easier, but can still be tricky to get it all to fit back in the excursion. We drive home and it is time to unload again. This is probably the hardest part because we are all tired and hungry. Once unloaded, we head for the house and collapse in the living room for a family movie and time to rest.

For most of September and October, I haven’t had the energy to keep up with all my domestic duties and go to market on Saturdays. So I have bowed out of the farmers’ market routine. I’m thankful for the Other Half taking on the Saturday market work and sells on his own. I ran out of spunk several weeks ago for the pre-dawn loading, chilly morning air while setting up for market and the energy to do rest of the market. Instead, I have put my energy into canning, drying and preserving produce for winter. Another wonderful aspect of farm life; being able to eat your own produce all winter long!

October 17, 2015 0

Miracles and Good News

We have been enjoying the warm Indian summer days of October. And are thankful for them since we were unable to get the sweet potatoes dug this week. So you have stay in suspense until next week to learn how the harvest of the sweet potatoes goes. Instead of dealing with sweet potatoes, we had ourselves a pipe trailer accident to deal with. We were moving gated pipe from our Jerome property to our farm in Buhl. When we were a few miles from home the tongue of the loaded pipe trailer broke. The tongue of the trailer remained hitched to the vehicle. The trailer veered to the left on its own and went crashing through a fence on the opposite side of the road stopping in a ditch missing a tree by mere millimeters. Although it was scary to see and feel in the moment, we were quite blessed. It was actually sickening to feel the trailer violently pulling from side to side behind us. Then seconds later to see the loaded pipe trailer (in the mirror) fly to the left behind us with a grinding of metal on pavement . . . . metal clashing against metal . . . . and lots of dust flying. As the passenger, I had been reading a book about seeing miracles in everyday life, activities and circumstances. It sure didn’t feel like I had just lived through a miracle, it shook me up a bit to see our trailer driving off by itself. But it truly was a miracle. There wasn’t a car coming in the opposite directions, it barely missed a tree when it went through the fence, missed hitting the power pole, it went to the left and not the right where it would of hit a house, nobody was hurt, there was no damage to our vehicle, there was only the broken tongue and flat tire on the trailer, very few pieces of pipe were damaged, the owner of the property was understanding and didn’t want the fence repaired. Aaahh, I can sign a breath of relief. It took awhile and few trips to load the pipe to another trailer, haul it home, fix the pipe trailer and get it home. What we thought was a simple task turned into a time consuming project, but it is done now.

It has also been a week full of canning. I finished canning plums and went onto apples. We have several apple trees, but they are small and not producing many apples yet. The kids eat all the apples off our trees as soon as they ripen. So this year, we were fortunate enough to get boxes of apples from a neighbor. The house has kept that sweet smell from canning the plums, but we now has a bit of cinnamon spice aroma mixed in. We have been canning cinnamon apples, applesauce, juicing apples and drying them along with baking apple crisp.

More good news; we got our pork back from the butcher. So we now have pork available by the cut: sausage, tenderloin, boneless loin, spare ribs, babyback ribs, pork chops, ham hocks, shoulder roast.

We are looking forward to the coming week and more miracles. Hoping to get a field of winter wheat planted and sweet potatoes dug.

October 11, 2015 0

October Anticipations

October is one our favorite months of the year! The leaf colors are changing, there is brisk morning air, warm afternoons, and everything starts to slow down. October brings with it the anticipation and worry of the first frost. We are ready for life to slow down, but not ready to be done with all the fresh produce. But we have lots of produce canned and ready for winter. So if you are going to can produce to eat this winter, you had better hurry. It is too late to can green beans, but is a great time to can tomatoes, peppers, plums, make sauerkraut and blanch and freeze broccoli.

The beans have been thrashed. Most of the produce is still producing, although, the plants are looking tired and have slowed. But not the plum trees! The plums are ready to be picked and are abundant. The house smells like sweet, juicy sugar plums dancing in the air from all the canning, drying, jamming and juicing of the plums.

This coming week brings the rush to get the “Experiment Sweet Potatoes Project” out of the ground before that first frost. Sweet potatoes don’t handle frost at all. If the vine is frosted, it goes straight down to the tuber or potato and ruins them. So one last push before we can really slow down for the season. We dug a few plants this week and if what we dug is any indicator of what is out there. Then it may be a good harvest. More on sweet potatoes next week!

October 3, 2015 0

Produce Has Slowed, But Life Has Not

The days have cooled and are shorter. It’s been raining off and on most of the week which seems to slow us down. It’s now too cool to sleep with windows open at night, at least it is for us. The house is chilly in the mornings causing us to start our days a little slower. The kids like to start their day curled up in a blanket on the couch doing their reading lesson before breakfast. After breakfast, I busy myself with a baking project or canning to warm the house and take the chill off. It’s the start of another busy September day of harvesting, canning and homeschooling.

While the produce is slowing down getting ready to die off and be done for the year, our lives are still very busy in this season. There is the harvest of the red beans to be done. They have been cut and are waiting to be thrashed when the rain stops and they dry out. There is still the major harvest of the pumpkins, winter squash, daikon radishes, turnips and beets to be done. Most of the late season produce is slowing down except the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. They are still growing and producing strong. We are about done with picking beans for the season, the sweet corn, kohlrabi and cabbage are about gone, and the cucumbers, zuchinni, summer squash have slow their production significantly. The broccoli is about done for the season due to an aphid infestation.

September starts our fall juggling act as I like to call it. We are still harvesting and selling, there is more canning to be done, all the regular inside work and laundry needs to be kept up with along with all the yardwork. Then we add another year of homeschooling into the mix. The Other Half takes on most of the harvesting duties as of September. And I focus on getting the canning done and the family back into our fall and winter routine.

Although, September is busy it feels like life and tasks are slowing down. We are getting settled down for the year and getting ready for the cooler weather. It feels good to be settled! Although, I wish it would stay warm all year, but instead, we are forced to prepare for cooler temperatures and fall.

September 18, 2015 0

Turning A Shed Into A Walk-In Cooler (Refrigerator)

Now that we are picking hundreds of pounds of green beans at a time we needed someplace to put them. It was fine with the neighbor to allow us room in his walk in cooler when we didn’t have that many pounds of green beans or produce that needed to be refrigerated when it is picked. But with having so many pounds of green beans and other produce we felt the need to have our own place to put them . The neighbor (he is a very generous and helpful man) didn’t say we couldn’t use his walk-in anymore, but we felt bad using so much room in his walk-in cooler. And the other half has been dreaming of building a walk-in-cooler, saying it’s simple, I can do this!

So we cleaned out a small shed we were using for storage, ordered an air conditioner and cool bot, bought insulation and went to work. The shed was insulated. Then the hole was cut for the air conditioner. It was installed and the cool bot had to be hooked to the air conditioner. A cool bot hooks into the air conditioner to control the temperature allowing it to go below 60 degrees. We had to do a little work and insulating of the door since it was an old screen door with no latch. Next, turn the air conditioner and cool bot on, program it to proper temperature and we have a walk-in cooler.

I’m the skeptic about everything. So, of course, I had my doubts about trying this method of making a walk-in cooler. And every day is so busy I didn’t know when the other half would have time to make it happen. But he did and I’m impressed. It is really an easy, cheap way to have a walk-in cooler vs buying an actually walk-in cooler or refrigerator.

September 12, 2015 0

Green Bean Picker

One of our new ventures this year has been buying a green bean picker and growing three acres of green beans. The thought and talk of it was crazy to me when the idea came up. The picker saves a lot of work and back ache, but when it picks the beans the plants are done. It leaves the plant in the ground but strips the plant of most of its leaves. So you get one picking off a plant instead of one picking every week on all the plants from July to freezing. I honestly didn’t think it would be profitable to pick the plant just once. I’ve always loved hard work and have always been willing to work. So my thought was to just get out there and pick the beans by hand to get the most out of every plant, the old-fashion way. I’m not sure about new technology. But with picking by hand we can’t raise several acres or even one acre of beans, it was more like ⅛ acre of beans and then it took both of us several hours every week to pick the beans. I could average picking about 30 pounds of beans in an hour, the other half is slower so the pounds of beans added up slowing with hand picking. Then your back would start aching, we would stand up and stretch looking toward the end of the row and it seemed so far away. Hand picking beans would get old in hurry every year, but in my mind that is the only way to do it. So I just buckled down and got it done, even if my back ached and it looked like I would never make it to the end of the row.

The other half was not sold that hand picking is best for us. There is also the fact that we are growing acres of a large variety of produce that needs to be harvested on a weekly or even every other day basis. The other half starts doing calculations, throw numbers out there about profitability and how good this piece of equipment can be. And it will save me lots of time since I won’t have to pick the beans this year. Well, that was an enticing thought. So we bought the Pixall BH100.

The plan was to start planting as early in the spring as possible and plant 4 to 12 rows every week. That way we would have beans ready every week from July to freezing just like if we were hand picking the same rows all season long. Except with the beans picker we have a lot more beans to sell every week. With the picker, we (it takes two people to run it) can pick around 1000 pounds of beans in an hour instead of the 50 pounds or less that the same two people would of picked by hand.

It is very exciting to pick so many beans in a short amount of time. We are able to fill more orders and that is very satisfying. The downside is that I still have to be involved with the bean picking and boxing. Since it takes two people, the other half drives the tractor and I ride on the picker picking out the few leaves, stems or weeds that make their way through with the beans. I also switch the handle from one shoot to the other and stack the crates of beans as we go through the field.

Another downside, or maybe it’s a learning curve, is timing the picking just right. We go out to check the beans and there are too many pin beans on the plants which means we need to wait for them to mature to a good sized bean or if we pick them then there is lots of sorting the pin beans out. And if you pick the beans too small like pin beans then we are losing beans and money. Wait four days and then there are too many overly mature beans on the plants, which also means lots of sorting to get them out. Or the beans are so far gone that we have to just leave rows of beans in the field to disk under. That is very discouraging and disheartening to do when you are trying so very hard and working so hard to make a living at small organic farming. We are still working on mastering the art of timing the pick to that perfect time and praying we can perfect it before we have to leave any more rows of beans in the field.

Since our bean picking season won’t be over until it freezes, we don’t know how profitable it is yet. We have to sell enough beans to cover the cost of the picker, our time, expenses of regular maintenance and then have money left over. We are not sure that is going to happen this year, but the picker has been nice to have. My back doesn’t hurt and I don’t look at those rows like they are never ending anymore.The discouraging part now is having to clean, sort and box hundreds of pounds of beans every time we pick, which has been three days a week. That is still better than having to pick beans by hand for three days straight every week.

September 5, 2015 3

Being A Farmers Wife

Being a farmer’s wife means sacrificing a lot, working really hard, growing lots of food, preserving lots of food, cooking wholesome home grown food and being stuck on the farm all summer. You feel like you are doing good, rewarding even though some people don’t appreciate it and complain about the price. In my opinion, then move on and go buy your food at the grocery store where you can get it cheaper and eat chemical ridden and engineered food. On other days, I feel trapped by what feels like a money sucking farm. We can’t go very far away during the spring, summer or fall because everyday there is irrigating, feeding animals, planting, harvesting or all five at once. It truly feels like a trap by late summer!

It means cooking a meal for a whole crew of helpers for harvest, going out to help with harvest, serving the food, clean up, then going back out to harvest rest the day. It means a full day of canning and preserving fruits and vegetables, then cooking a meal for your hungry family when you are exhausted wanting to simply sit down and put your feet up. It means sweeping your house three times a day because there this so much dirt and mud for the whole family to get into and no one will obey the rule of leaving shoes outside. It means maintaining a yard and garden on your own and then helping with the farm work. It also means the farmer’s wife will be sitting on the porch or deck by herself with no one to spend that special time with or to enjoy the view of some of your hard work with because when the farmer sits down he falls asleep. So he keeps going until well after dark and then collapses into bed. It means not having someone to talk to when you need to talk because the farmer is in the field, on the phone or sleeping. It means not spending a much time together even though you are on the same farm. There is no quitting time or weekend days off on a farm! For this farmer’s wife, it means working my tail off all summer with no vacation and then homeschooling for nine months before we start the whole vicious cycle over again. That means no real easy going down time for me, which leads to burnout and a grumpy wife some days.

Being a farmer’s wife means working twice as hard as the farmer himself because she has all the inside duties and is also the one and only farm hand. I don’t think the farmer even realizes how hard the farm wife works even though he has been told several times. We farm wives or at least this one would like to be appreciated more than just hearing, “I appreciate what you do.” This farm wife wants to be a princess for awhile! Some days I would feel like a princess to have something as simple as a clothes dryer to use instead of having to line dry all the clothes. This farm wife wants to be the one being taken care of instead of doing the taking care of! Especially since it’s my birthday!
Note to Readers: I love my farm life and my husband, but farm work can be hard on a person. Especially when your birthday turns into just another long, hard day of work on the farm.

August 29, 2015 0

Camping

We had our first family vacation away from the farm this summer. We went camping this past week. I know some people don’t think camping is a vacation, but for broke farmers it’s a chance to get away from the farm and that is most likely the only “vacation” they will take. For the family member that has to do the packing, unpacking, and clean up it doesn’t feel like a vacation, but there are perks to camping.

One of my favorite things about camping is the breakfast. It’s always the best tasting breakfast and a bigger breakfast than we normally eat – bacon, eggs, spuds & onions, sometimes toast, or pancakes. All cooked over the fire with coffee boiled in a pot with loose grounds, what we call sheep herder coffee. Nothing compares to how good the food taste in the mountains cooked over a fire.

This leads to my next favorite thing about camping; I don’t do the cooking! Years ago the other half and I made a deal that he had to do all the cooking while we’re camping. That way I can consider camping a vacation – getting away from home, relaxing, having fun, and being taken care of. If I do the cooking at home, then the other half does the cooking at camp over a campfire. Cooking over a campfire is not my specialty anyway, I’d much rather prefer to use a stove. It’s already way more work for me to go camping than it is to stay home. There is all the packing and prep to get ready . . . . . . packing clothes, bedding, tent, and then there’s all the food. Since we live as cheap as possible and homestead like there is no store-bought-canned food to pack. This means I have to spend a full day cooking just to get ready to go so I do the cooking to go, but don’t have to cook while are there. This involves making homemade snack foods like granola bars, caramel corn, muffins, chili, stew, salads, fried chicken, and baked potatoes. I also pack fresh fruits and veggies from the farm, bacon, steak, hamburger,and our indulgence – hot dogs.

Sometimes I wonder if the only reason the other half agrees to get away from the farm is because he sees it as a necessity, a working trip. We don’t just sit, read or enj 20150812_102056 oy hiking. We cut and load the horse trailer with firewood. Yes, another task that has to be done in the summer and fall because that’s how we heat our house in the winter, with a wood burning stove.

Once we are done loading wood and are dog tired, I make the family hike to the top of the mountain in search of every high mountain lake we can find. I have an obsession with high mountain lakes. I would love to hike to as many high mountain lakes as possible i 20150811_121816 n my lifetime. High mountain lakes are such majestic, breath-taking works of art with the only way to view them is to hike into them by foot or horse. There is nothing like a strenuous hi
ke to make a vacation enjoyable, seriously. Even if you have to leave the other half and kids at the lower lake and hike up an over the mountain to the third lake by yourself. You truly feel like a champion when reach the saddle! There is also nothing like standing on top of a saddle, looking at all the peaks in view being eye level and feeling like you’re on top of the
world. And we might just be for just a short period of time.

So, yes, we call camping a vacation. We work, we hike, we sit around the fire and read and, most importantly, we have fun. We may create more work for ourselves by making our vacation a working trip and then more work to unload the trailer of wood when we get home, but I don’t thi 20150811_140325 nk we would know what to do or how to behave on a real vacation

Now to get caught up on the farm work! There is lots of produce to harvest and a ton of very large overgrown zucchini to deal with.

August 22, 2015 0

Agrarian Harvest

Wholesome, Organic, Experience. Our small farm, food, and simple life.

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