Jam, jam, jam

The windows are a bit steamy these days thanks to all the canning that has been going on, starting with a wheelbarrow full of Cox Orange Pippin apples and 20 pounds of crab apples from the trees here at Mucky Boots.

And then there were those 45 pounds of Italian plums courtesy of my dad's plum tree.



Yes, you read that right: 45 pounds. Last week we spent an afternoon picking them and then two days making plum butter and a couple of kinds of plum jam. Kim, bless her heart, split and pitted somewhere between 850 and 900 plums, and together we cooked and mashed and stirred and processed, and now we have 50 half-pints of plummy sweetness filling the shelves in our cold storage room.



The crab apples have been made into juice, which has been canned until either I have time to make it into jelly or we drink it (which, since it is unsweetened, should send the Tart Meter into the red zone).

We have only just begun on the apples: one big bucket-full has given us almost two-dozen jars of dark, spicy apple butter, and there is an awful lot left to process. The rest will go to apple sauce or will be dried. And even though we'll have plenty for ourselves and to give away, we're feeling a little sad that this year's harvest is less than half that of previous years, because our beloved grand dame Pink Lady tree has succumbed to the massive damage done when a bear climbed it last fall to get the two apples we hadn't been able to reach at the top. As Harry, our master-pruner friend said the other week when he had a look, the tree had been living with a minor case of blight which speedily took over the tree once it was damaged, and now even the few limbs that survived the bear are dead or dying. The tree needs to come down, and that will be a sad, sad day at Mucky Boots.

As if to compensate, our other distinguished old tree, the Cox Orange Pippin, presented us with a bountiful barrow-full of big, fat apples. They are a more utilitarian apple than the Pink Ladies: they are naturally much drier, and consequently good for dehydrating and storing. They don't have the sweet, juicy flesh and amazing flavour of the Pink Ladies, but we're grateful for them nonetheless.



And so the pantry is filling up again with jars and jars of jam, jam, jam - far more than we could ever eat. But half the fun is giving them away.

Can you say "Christmas presents?"

Feta

Close your eyes and cast your mind back a few thousand years. You're stirring a vat of milk over a fire, and someone walking by accidently drops in the stomach from a just-slaughtered calf. (I'm sure you could make up an interesting if implausible story to explain that.) And a miracle happens: cheese is born!

There were no calves or camp fires here this week, but I am happy to announce the birth (or coagulation?) of the first Mucky Boots cheese. Yes, we made cheese! Goat's milk feta, to be precise.

Our interest was piqued by our friend Rebecca who began making hard cheeses a few months ago. She has had us over for a couple of cheese-making experiences in the last few weeks, and we came out of them with the confidence to try it on our own.

So I ordered a couple of different cultures (one for feta and one for chevre) and some rennet from Glengarry Cheesemaking, and sourced some local goat's milk just in time for a visit from my dad. Put a Math teacher, a Science teacher and an engineer in the kitchen with pots and thermometers and bacterial cultures, and for sure something interesting will happen!

We followed a recipe from here, but basically this is what happens:

Step #1: Gently heat the milk, add the culture, and let it sit for an hour.

Step #2: Add the rennet, stir, and let it sit for 40 minutes. [Our rennet came as liquid in a dropper bottle, which made me wonder how folks a hundred years ago would have done it. If I remember Laura Ingalls Wilder's account correctly, her ma got a piece of calf's stomach from a neighbour. But does that mean people only had cheese when a calf was slaughtered? It turns out people would dry pieces of the stomach and reconstitute it when it was time for cheese making. Go figure...]

Step #3: Cut the curd and let rest for 10 minutes. During this time the curds will start to release the whey.

Step #4: Hold at a constant heat and stir gently for 45 minutes. This "cooks" the curds and makes them a bit tougher.

Step #5: Pour into a cheesecloth-lined colander and hang to drain for 24 hours. After a few hours we turned the cheese in the cloth, so we would get a more uniform ball.

Step #6: Cut the ball into manageable pieces and let sit covered at room temperature for 2-3 days. Then cover the pieces with brine and refrigerate for 1-4 weeks. 

Step #7: Eat!

We're in the middle of Step#6, so it will be a while before we know if the cheese is any good. Even if it's fabulous, this experiment isn't likely to be repeated soon, since we used about $28 worth of organic goat's milk to get a ball of cheese the size of a large grapefruit. Not so cost effective, but worth the experience. One time, anyway!

Sauerkraut wine

Now doesn't that sound tasty?

Well, not really, but that's what I got.

I was so excited this spring when Kim bought me two old stoneware crocks: visions of fermented deli pickles and sauerkraut buoyed me through the planting season and long summer. The cucumbers I seeded did absolutely nothing, but the cabbages were happy and plump, once the bugs that were nibbling them went on to better things.

I was so excited when I started the first batch of sauerkraut in one of the crocks. I tended that batch lovingly, and if my plugged up nose meant I couldn't smell the fermentation process myself, Kim assured me (regularly) that it was, indeed, filling the kitchen with its distinctive aroma.

I was so excited when I had my first taste. My mom might have made a politely funny face, and Kim might have sworn the kraut was salty enough to fell a horse, but to someone like me with no sense of smell and consequently little sense of taste, kraut that packed a punch was right up my alley. I loved it, and ate a bowl every day. But it was a big crock, filled with a big batch, and in the heat of August I knew it wouldn't keep forever on the counter. So I canned it.

I was so excited when I viewed the quart jars of kraut lined up on the counter. I imagined opening them up in the doldrums of winter, jolting my taste buds awake with every crunchy bite. And then I washed up.

I washed the canning equipment. I washed the crock. It was when I washed the glass plate I had been using to weigh down the cabbage in the crock that I saw that a fair-sized piece of glass had been chipped from the edge, and now was nowhere to be found. Which meant there was glass somewhere in my lovingly canned sauerkraut.

Into the garbage it went. It didn't even make it into the compost - I didn't want to put the chickens at risk, since the compost pile is one of their favourite places to scratch for bugs. And I started again.

I wasn't quite so excited by it all the second time around, and maybe that meant an essential ingredient was missing. Or maybe the cooler weather meant a slower fermentation that I didn't manage properly. But I started noticing a different kind of scum on top of the crock's contents, something more thick and rubbery than the foamy scum I had been told to expect and had been skimming off every few days. And then Kim came into the kitchen one day and said "Phew!"

Since I don't have a functioning nose, Kim has to act as my smeller and taster of things. With the kraut she never got past the smelling part, which is probably just as well. "Smells like wine," she said. "Sauerkraut wine. It smells really bad - I think you should throw it out."

So into the garbage went the second batch. It didn't make it to the compost either - no sense giving the chickens botulism, or whatever that rubbery mold was.

I'll definitely try this again next year, because the first batch was so darn good - at least to me. And I didn't completely wash out in the fermentation department, because the crock of mini cucumbers (bought by the case at our local market) that lived on the counter through the late summer and early fall turned into really, really good kosher-style deli pickles. But the sauerkraut was a failure.

Unless you have a taste for sauerkraut wine, that is.

My crock, full of hope but empty of kraut...

Stocked

You could consider this two shelves full of food's version of accessories (after all, you can't make a meal from pickles or jam), and it may not be much by serious preserving standards, but it still makes me feel rich and a little bit proud.

Bottom shelf, left to right: blackberry jelly, Victorian rhubarb BBQ sauce, pickled red and yellow beets, gooseberry and lavender jelly, gooseberry and rhubarb jam, blueberry chutney, rhubarb chutney, bumbleberry jam, lavender jelly, peach butter, tomato sauce.

Top shelf, left to right: applesauce, crabapple jelly, crabapple butter, more crabapple jelly, pickled zucchini, bread and butter pickles, pickled red cabbage, fermented deli pickles.

Beans

The first year I had a vegetable garden, I grew three kinds of beans: yellow beans, green beans, and some fancy speckled beans that were meant to be harvested as dried beans. When the growing season had finished and all the work was done, I ended up with a double handful of dried beans I then spent hours and hours turning into a single, modestly sized batch of baked beans. It seemed like an awful lot of work for a small quantity of beans, so the next year I didn't bother.

But what goes around, comes around. This year, my third as a vegetable gardener, I was interested to see how much protein I could get from the garden. As Carol Deppe says, all those salad greens are pretty, but they don't provide many calories or much protein for seeing a family through the winter. So I planted quinoa (more on that in another post) and three kinds of beans for drying: Kenearly Yellow-Eye, Vermont Cranberry, and (to my amazement even today) garbanzo beans. I didn't devote a lot of space to them - I really just wanted to see if I could grow them successfully. So each variety got about 16 square feet of space.

Germination was great for all three. The Vermont Cranberry beans were the most vigorous, with much fuller and more robust bushes than the wimpy Kenearly Yellow-Eye beans growing right next door, and the beautiful but spindly looking garbanzo plants. And the yield was much better. There were more pods per plant, and more beans per pod. I ended up with about a pound of Vermont Cranberry beans, and about half that for each of the other two varieties. Not much, but not bad for an experiment. According to John Jeavons, the average yield per 100 square feet for dried beans is about 6 pounds, which means when it comes to Vermont Cranberry beans, I am perfectly average. [Apparently my perfectionist tendencies are leaking through: I can't just be average, I have to be perfectly average. Oh boy...]

I spent yesterday afternoon - a lovely warm, sunny fall afternoon - sitting on the porch swing shelling the beans that had been drying on the verandah for a few weeks, deriving productivity and yield formulas for my bean crop. And I discovered I had neglected one important equation...

Dried up bean leaves + stocking feet = mess.

Verdict

And here is . . . drumroll . . . the verdict.

Second Prize for the bumbleberry jam!

Second Prize for the gooseberry and lavender jelly/syrup/jelly!

Third Prize for the blueberry chutney!

I am chuffed. I am proud. I am . . . a jampion!

It gets better. On the chicken front, one of the Australorp cockerels (Hector Junior Junior, so named because he is a slightly smaller version of Hector Junior) won third in his category. The two Buff cockerels placed first and second in theirs, which is a good thing because they were the only two entrants.

But Hector! Our lovely boy Hector! He won his category, which may not be surprising because he was the only Australorp rooster entered. But he also went on to win the prize for the best rooster of any of the standard breeds (in other words, not a bantam). Here he is, with his fancy blue ribbon.

Kim has been down to check on her chickens at least once or twice a day since the fair began, and she reports that Hector is the object of many admiring comments from all the people who pass by. (Most commonly heard: "He's so big!"). But Hector, being Hector, has not let this acclaim go to his head. He's still our sweet, modest, calm lovely boy.

Way to go, Hector!

Fair

This is the weekend of the Cowichan Exhibition, and all of us here at Mucky Boots are pretty darn excited. Because after being enchanted by all things local and agricultural at last year's fair, this year we decided to pull up our farmer pants and participate.

Kim entered six chickens: Hector the Magnificent, three Black Australorp cockerels including Hector Junior, and two Buff Orpington cockerels. (She decided to leave the pullets at home to save our future egg-layers from what can be a stressful experience.) Here they are, when we dropped them off on Thursday night.

And I entered four preserves: blueberry chutney, in the fruit chutney class; the infamous gooseberry and lavender jelly that turned into a syrup and then back into a jelly, in the jelly-with-pectin class; bumbleberry jam (made with blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb) in the jam-with-pectin class; and peach and cranberry jam, in the jam-without-pectin class.

You're going to have to stay tuned for the results, because the judging hasn't finished yet. But we did go down this morning to check on the chickens and have a good look around before the crowds hit tonight. And I am even more charmed this year than last.

I spent most of my time in the big hall housing the Domestic Science and Hobbies & Crafts divisions. And I became convinced of the genius of the organizers: if there are so many categories that practically anyone can find a niche to fit into, everyone will go home happy. It reminds me of the birthday party hat-decorating contests my parents would organize when I was a kid. There would be a prize for the hat with the most bows, and the most colourful hat, and the hat best exemplifying the party theme, and so on - the big idea being to send everyone home with a prize.

At the Cowichan Exhibition there are prizes for the best decorated cookies (the photo at the top), the best decorated cake (this won Second Prize and was way better than the First prize winner) . . .

. . . the best decorated cake made by a kid (that's the Kinsol Trestle, a local and recently restored historic train trestle) . . .

. . . as well as prizes for the best choux pastry, the best shortbread, the best squares made with cereal, the best cinnamon buns, the best apple pie and my favourite: the best selection of three dainties of any kind displayed on a doily. In all there are fifty-five different classes that have to do with baking. And then there's jams and jellies, and pickles, and tomato sauce, and mincemeat, and canned salmon. And that's just in the Domestic Science division.

In the Hobbies & Crafts division there are prizes for the best model made from scratch, the best model made from a kit, the best submission in the "Bathroom Boutique" category (that would be toilet roll cover, plunger disguiser, towel holder and so on), the best craft article made with a rooster theme, the best ornamental bird house, the best piece of hair jewelry, the best decorated egg, the best doorstop, the best item made with potpourri, the best decorated lampshade, the best item constructed from duct tape (this apron won Second prize) . . .

You get the idea. One hundred and four classes in all, and this division doesn't even include needlework, spinning and weaving, photography, painting, flower arranging, and wine making.

But even better still: if you find yourself with no creative talent of any kind, don't despair. You too, can join in the fun and maybe even be a winner in this class.

That's my kind of fair. But I've noticed there's one significant omission.

There's no hat-decorating.

Tomato accounting

I canned my second batch of tomato sauce today, and I have to say there were a few moments during the three hours of chopping, mashing, boiling, sieving, filling and processing (not to mention the washing, drying and wiping every tomato-spattered surface in sight that followed) that I wondered if it was all worth it.

Don't get me wrong. I love home grown tomatoes right off the vine, still warm from the sun, sliced and piled on a toasted gluten-free bagel slathered with tzatziki - yum, yum and more yum. But canning tomato sauce is pretty labour intensive, as these things go. Roughly chop the tomatoes, mash them to release the juices, bring to a quick boil, add the onions, garlic and seasonings, reduce to a slower boil for about two hours, stirring regularly to make sure it doesn't scorch. Then when the sauce has reduced to half its volume(or, as happened today, you just get tired of stirring and stirring), run it all through a food mill to remove all the skins and seeds. Then back into the pot for a return to the boil. Meanwhile, wash the jars and bring to a boil in a canner. Remove jars from the canner. Fill jars. Wipe rims. Put on lids and rings. Back into the canner for 35 minutes of a rolling boil. Remove and listen for the magical music of lids pinging as they seal. Look down and remember that white t-shirts and tomato canning don't mix.

Organic tomato sauce costs $5-6 a jar at our local store. Today's efforts started with ten pounds of tomatoes and resulted in six 500 ml jars. If I factor in the time spent growing the tomatoes in the first place, and the cost of the seeds, the fish fertilizer, the canning supplies, and the electricity to keep those pots bubbling for three hours (but not the cost of a new t-shirt) is that minimum wage? Barely. But I think that's the wrong kind of accounting to do. I think you have to factor in the sense of security that comes from knowing how to do this, and the satisfaction of providing for your family, and the peace and contentment that rises from an apron (okay, today I forgot the apron), a wooden spoon and a bubbling pot on the stove, and the feeling of a cycle come to completion I get when I look at the finished jars on the shelf and think of the tiny tomato seeds I planted in April, and the soil I patted around the stems as I transplanted the seedlings into the greenhouse beds, and the hours and hours of sunny warmth they basked in. I'm okay with minimum wage, if it comes with all of that.

On another tomato related topic, I have finally organized myself to save tomato seeds for next year. Not for every kind I grew - some were busts, but four were standouts. Granadero, an indeterminate (climbing) plum tomato that produced an enormous quantity of gorgeous, flavourful fruit. Black Krim, an heirloom variety with a quirky shape and a beautiful dark colour. New Girl, which beat out my previous favourite Early Girl for a reliable early producer. And Orange Blossom, a mild, colourful orange mid-sized tomato.

Here's how you save tomato seeds: squeeze out the seeds into a small dish. Mix in a bit of water. Put them in a warm spot, like a verandah railing. Watch them ferment over the next few days and wonder if you've done something wrong. (You haven't. The fermenting is getting rid of the coating on the seeds that would make it impossible for them to germinate). Stir occasionally. When they have done their thing rinse them and leave them to dry out on a paper towel, then put away until spring.

Our first summer at Mucky Boots I tried saving seeds, but forgot them on the railing and by the time I remembered they were past saving. The second summer I forgot completely. This year I am determined that come next April, the tomato seeds I'll be starting will be my own.

Just call me Laura

When I was a girl I loved - I mean really loved - the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I don't have a lot of memories of my childhood, but one that stands out clearly is the day my parents brought home a Little House boxed set for me. I had been a fervent fan for at least a year before that, and had read every one of those books. But to own them all - I can't articulate how rich that made me feel.

I still have those books - me, the one who ruthlessly pares down my belongings every time I move, and who has moved twenty-two times since then, between four different provinces. The box is long gone, and the books are more than a little worse for wear, but I know exactly where they are on the shelf. Those books will be with me forever.

My nine-year old imagination was dominated by those books. I played Little House on the Prairie and made pioneer dresses for my dolls. I had a rag rug in my bedroom, and a washstand, and I dreamed of the day I would have a basin and pitcher to go with them.

I was captivated by the self-sufficiency of Laura's family. Her ma made soap and cheese and bread and sewed clothes. Her pa grew wheat and chopped firewood and built houses from logs and sod. That wasn't all of the attraction for me - I knew all about the magic of homemade music at night by the fire - after all, I learned all fifty-seven verses of "The Fox Went Out One Chilly Night" at my own father's knee as he strummed a guitar in front of a campfire. I knew about the sense of safety and security that came from being with all my family under one roof - in my case it was the canvas roof of a tent when we went camping. But the resourcefulness, the ability to make things instead of buying them - those were awe-inspiring to a nine-year-old and still are forty years later.

So maybe I've been channeling my inner Laura these last couple of weeks. When I look on the porch there are onions and garlic I grew and harvested drying in the summer heat. In the cold cellar are the first of the potatoes, still dusted with dirt and wrapped up in paper bags. On the shelves in the storage room are jars of pickled beets, Victorian barbeque sauce made with rhubarb, blueberry and rhubarb chutneys, gooseberry and lavender jellies, bumbleberry, blueberry and rhubarb jams. Curing on the table in the dining room are my first two batches of handmade soap, and the third, made this morning, is cooling in the milk cartons I used as molds. The first round of tomato sauce is processing in the canner as I write, and in the crock on the counter is my inaugural attempt at sauerkraut, tasting wonderful but still needing a bit more mellowing.

There are good, practical reasons to do all of this. But somehow food security issues and reducing footprints and food budgets don't explain all the deep pleasure I get from growing and canning and making.

I think, when it comes down to it, I have Laura to thank.

Lavender jelly in the window

When I was young, one of the reasons I loved visiting my grandmother in Canmore was that I got to see once again the beautiful bottles that lined the windows of her house. They'd originally been filled with things like wine, or vinegar, or oil, but once they were empty my grandmother had filled them with coloured water of almost every imaginable hue. They looked like jewels to me, with the sun shining through.

This morning I made lavender jelly. Not much to it: cover lavender blossoms with boiling water and let steep for 20 minutes, then strain and use the liquid to make jelly. Ingredients: lavender-infused water, lemon juice, pectin and an incredible amount of sugar. No nutritional value in this one, just jewel-like beauty and a memory of my grannie. That's enough for me.

Jelly mystery

I have had a love/hate relationship with our gooseberries. At first it was hate, because of this.

Try weeding around those thorns. Ouch.

Then it was love, because of this.

Golden jelly, a soft and silky lavender infused gooseberry jelly that I made last year with a recipe from here. It was spectacular, on buttered toast or with cheddar cheese. The only problem was, by the time I grudgingly thought of doing something with the gooseberries, the birds had eaten most of them, and all I could harvest was 3/4 of a pound.

This year I have been watching those gooseberries with an eagle eye, just waiting for the day I could pick them and make a much bigger batch of Golden Jelly. That day came last week, and after an afternoon of picking I had 11 pounds of berries. Visions of jelly danced in my head. But before those visions could become reality, every single one of those gooseberries needed to be topped and tailed. Sigh.

But the job got done, and the jelly got made, and Kim and I looked proudly at the 9 jars of pink gold jelly.

Jelly?

Syrup. It didn't set.

This is a mystery to me. I did the proper tests while it was cooking: I dropped a small spoonful on an ice-cold plate from the freezer, waited for a minute, then ran my finger through it. The jelly wrinkled, just like it was supposed to. But after processing - syrup. Tasty syrup, but syrup all the same.

So I opened all the jars, poured the syrup back into the pot, added some liquid pectin, following the directions for failed jelling, and tried all over again.

Jelly?

Syrup. Sigh.

I left the jars, hoping they might transform into syrup as they cooled. No such luck. Then I had a brainwave. Syrup can be good. Syrup can be a cordial. So we poured a bit of the syrup into a couple of glasses, topped with bubbly water and voila - a refreshing, fragrant summer drink.

We were so excited that the next day we brought along a jar of syrup and a couple of bottles of San Pellegrino when we went to see friends for dinner. We lined up the glasses, cracked open the bubbly water, then opened up the jar of syrup.

Syrup?

Jelly. What?! Soft jelly, to be sure, but definitely jelly.

So when we got home we checked all the jars that the day before were syrup. They were jelly.

It's a mystery.

Forty-seven

We have a chest freezer - a modest one. We thought it was important to get one when we moved out here to Mucky Boots for two reasons: to preserve our fruit and vegetable harvest for the non-harvest months, and to allow us to buy in bulk when things we like to eat are on sale.

But I have learned there is more to using a freezer than just plugging it in and filling it up. You have to actually eat what's in the freezer, at least occasionally.

I first started thinking about this when my darling, wonderful sister came for a visit last month. She made a passing reference to not having a chest freezer because she is trying not to encourage her "food hoarding tendencies." Hmmm......

And about the same time I was working on our finances, and wondering why the heck our grocery bills are still so high, given that we're growing at least some of what we eat. Hmmm...

So this week I decided to go excavating in our freezers (the chest freezer in the workshop and the freezer that's part of our fridge) to see exactly what was in them. And what I found was chicken breasts.

Forty-seven of them.

Kim and I could eat chicken twice a week for 3 months without buying any more. And that doesn't even count the whole chickens (three) or chicken thighs (one big package).

I feel a word of explanation is in order. Maybe I have food hoarding tendencies, too. (Er - yes.) But when there's a 2 for 1 sale on chicken breasts, of course I'm going to stock up. It's all about ensuring that Kim and I are safe and won't go hungry. (Okay, I know that's not entirely rational, but even former Math teachers have an irrational side.)

It's not just chicken. I also found six pounds of butter and eight packages of spicy turkey sausages, plus lots and lots of frozen green beans, blueberries, tomatoes, carrots, beets and strawberries. Some of them were from last year, and still haven't been eaten.

Forty-seven. That must be a record. No wonder our grocery bills are higher than they should be.

So I made an inventory of everything in the chest freezer, and another one of everything in the house freezer, and stuck them on the fridge where I can see them when I make meal plans. Then I made a pledge not to buy any more chicken breasts - even if they're on sale - until we're down to six, and to eat all the wonderful frozen produce from our garden by the time next year's harvest starts rolling in.

We got started last night: I cooked four chicken breasts (two for supper, two for leftovers) and faithfully crossed those four off the inventory list.

Forty-three to go.

Herbs

You may remember that one of my gardening resolutions for 2010 was to be more diligent in harvesting and drying herbs. Never one to procrastinate, I launched the first harvest yesterday.

It was prompted when I offered our visiting neighbour Nick a choice of teas, and he expressed a preference for something we had grown. Fortunately I had the one measly baggie of dried mint that was the sum total of all the herbs I harvested last year - and very nice tea it was, too. And it got me thinking that I better get going, or I'd be forced to serve Nick tea from a box the next time he was over.

So out to the garden I went. I had my eye on a beautiful, rounded mound of lemon balm, and an incredibly vigorous patch of oregano, both growing in the herb bed in the vegetable garden. These two herbs are everywhere at Mucky Boots - I think one of the two previous gardeners of the property divided them repeatedly and used them to fill in empty spots in the perennial beds. There are probably half a dozen mounds of lemon balm and about four times that many patches of oregano here and there. There's even a bunch of oregano growing out of the rock wall near the workshop.

Three minutes was the scissors was all it took to cut enough to fill a really big colander to overflowing. The stripping of the stems and tying of the bundles took longer, but it was a nicely meditative thing to do while sitting on the verandah. I ended up with a dozen bundles which I washed and then tucked into paper bags to protect them from dust and bugs. Kim is going to fasten an old garden trellis horizontally to the ceiling of the verandah so I can hang the bundles for drying.

Mint is already making itself seen in the perennial beds, so some bunches of that will soon join the happy herbal hangout. Once it's dry, I'm thinking lemon balm and mint might make a nice combination for tea, maybe with a few of the lavender flowers I saved from last summer thrown in. The Mucky Boots Blend is born.

Science experiment

This is what happens when the bucket of purple potatoes you left in the cold room three months ago gets lost behind the luggage and forgotten.

Eating the harvest

Harvest? In February? Actually, most of the harvest took place months ago, but I seem to be having trouble eating it.

I recognized I had a problem in June, when the fennel was ready to eat. There were 24 beautiful bulbs, just waiting to be julienned into salads, or steamed under fish in parchment, or braised in broth in a saute pan. But did I eat them? No - I just admired them, regularly. Every day I would stand by the raised bed and admire the fern-like fronds, and imagine how good they would taste when I finally decided to eat them. That went on so long that by the time I brought myself to pull one out of the soil it was past its prime. So there I was, having saved my fennel only to end up with two dozen woody bulbs.

I had the same problem with my canned harvest. I made great pickled beets, but I only opened the first jar recently. And I worked hard to can as many tomatoes as the greenhouse could produce. They're all still there except the one I finally used last week. And when the vast quantities of strawberries kept rolling in I chastised Kim for eating them fresh, insisting we needed to save them in the freezer. And they're still there, for the most part - in the freezer.

What gives? you may be asking. I'm asking myself the same question, and I think there are a few reasons I'm hesitating to enjoy the food we grew.

Reason #1 is that I am saving the harvest for a special occasion. I'm not entirely sure what that occasion might be. Maybe the thought of fresh-from-the-garden produce is so wonderful I figure it shouldn't be for everyday. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of giving up our jobs and moving to a farm. I think I need to get over this.

Reason #2 is pride. Those 24 bulbs of fennel looked gorgeous, and I felt a real sense of achievement that I, the city girl who had never had a vegetable garden before, grew them. Surely they deserved to be admired a while more before being eaten.

Reason #3 is a bit weirder. The third reason I feel a need to save the harvest instead of eating it is a fear of - um - armageddon.

You may have noticed that, what with concerns over meteorites hitting the house and middle-of-the-night flood evacuations, I have a bit of a problem with disaster scenarios. But really, it's not that big a deal, and beyond making sure we have a reasonable earthquake kit (which all Vancouver Islanders should have) I don't think fear of disaster affects my day-to-day life.

But when we moved here to try to grow our own food, we also moved into the sphere of people around the world striving for self-sufficiency. And some of those are people preparing for one kind of armageddon or another: peak oil, climate crises, a day of judgement. When I'm googling "homesteading" or "self-sufficiency" I try to bypass sites with numerous biblical quotes, or instructions about handling small arms. But I think somehow I have been infected, a little, by the fears behind them.

I can see how this might happen. There's a lot of overlap between self-sufficiency and survivalism. What do people who want cheaper organic vegetables and people who fear the collapse of the rule of law have in common? They grow their own food. What links frugal folks trying to be thrifty with certain religious groups preparing for crises? Food stockpiles - you know, buying things in quantity when they go on sale, or preserving as much of the harvest as you can. And whether you're trying to reduce your carbon footprint or you're afraid of having no electricity because society as we know it has collapsed, you might choose to have solar power. Different motivations with the same outcome.

So, I think part of my reluctance to break into the freezer or the pantry for the harvest I preserved last summer and fall might be a semi-subconscious sense that I should be saving the food for harder times.

This year I am determined that this not affect my decisions about eating the harvest - at least not unconsciously. I am determined that every bulb of fennel I plant get eaten and enjoyed, preferably at its prime. We will eat warm, juicy raspberries for breakfast, and if last year's harvest was any indication, there will still be lots leftover for the the freezer. When the greenhouse is full to bursting with tomatoes we'll slice some into salads, dry some for the pantry and make the rest into tomato sauce which we'll enjoy during the months until the next harvest.

The next harvest: what lovely words.

Wildlife adventures

Before I started blogging about our adventures here at Mucky Boots, I was sending "Farm Updates" to family and friends via email. Here is one of them, from August 2009.

Hello everyone!

We have had lots of excitement here at Mucky Boots this week: a cougar was killed on either our property or our neighbour's on Monday night. Both our properties back onto Vaux Road, which was where the conservation officers killed the cougar - but our fences don't go that far, so we don't know which property it was on. Regardless, it was CLOSE! I got a call from Nick around suppertime - he had heard a bunch of dogs barking and went out to investigate, and it turned out he was hearing the five specially trained beagles (yes, beagles) that are used to track cougars. The conservation officers told him to go back home and put his chickens in the barn, which is when he called me to let me know. So I called in the cats and shortly after there was a shot and the cougar had been killed. I don't know why it was killed rather than tranquilized and relocated.

Much less dramatic was the wasps nest I accidentally discovered the day before - it turns out it was a specific species of wasp that build nests under things: decks, floors, and in my case, one of the wooden covers to the septic tank. There I was, cleaning up the dead bamboo leaves in the little flagstone patio, and all of a sudden I got bit, twice. Ouch!

We have just come through a wicked hot spell - 37-39 degrees in the shade every day for a week. Frankie, the smart dog that he is, has fully made the transition to farm dog, and now sleeps under the truck on hot days. The weather has been great for our tomatoes, which are ripening faster than we can eat them. We're using the dehydrator to make sun-dried tomatoes, and are accumulating enough ripe tomatoes to make a big batch of tomato sauce for canning.

It's fun learning how to can - so far I have made pickled beets and pickled beans. The beets were fun: some were golden and some were Chioggia beets, which are striped red and white when raw, but cook to red or pink or even white. So when they were all mixed up, they looked like jewels!

Our perennial garden is a mess - things have been so dry, and we've been unsure how much we can water before we run our well dry. The only things blooming right now are the echinacea and my absolute favourite the globe thistle. Everything else looks brown and ragged. I am remembering the moist, dewy, flower-filled days of May with longing!

Kim and I were out shopping today. New binders: $3.99. Package of pencils: $0.99. New lunch kit: $8.99. Not having to buy any of it: priceless!

Lots of love to you all-

Mir

XOXO

P.S. (Next day) I should have waited until today to send yesterday's farm update! Here is a photo of this morning's encounter with wildlife. Note that the tape measure is in INCHES, not CENTIMETRES!