Harvesting, processing, drying, fermenting, pickling and eating the bounty 2013!

Our apologies for not keeping the blog too active this summer.  we realise as the homestead transforms itself ever more into a functioning farm, and as the number of people who visit us during the summer increases, our time spent on the computer decreases.  Which is a good thing :) and there will be plenty of time to catch up and retell our season's stories during the colder days. 

Like today :) this morning is a beautiful but crisp sunny September morning, with the thermometer indicating barely 40F (4C), so I am inside with my hot chocolate, and while Leo takes his usual morning nap, I will start catching up.

First things first I want to send some big hugs to our friends who came to visit the homestead this summer, and were such a help in keeping on top of everything!  Chantale :) Zane :) Chloé and Nat :) thank you so much for taking the time to come see us even with the long distances that separate us, and for sharing some great meals, and hard work. We miss you and will think of you as we open every jar of preserved food this winter :)

Garlic, Cukes, Basil, Tomatoes and Rhubarb!

Leo and his best friend Chantale, cleaning beets and carrots!

Building the wood shed lean-to

mmmm, vegetable paella

This season had started very slowly, with all the rain and cold weather we received in June, but we managed to still have a pretty good harvest, considering that we have increased the size and diversity of our gardens six fold this year.

HARVESTING:

We regularly take a stroll into the garden for our daily harvest.  Leo is carrying the cherry tomatoes back to the house, in his hands and his belly!

The harvests started with field strawberries, regular strawberries, raspberries, kale, lettuce, radishes, cukes, zuchinnis and eggplants, and then went in full force with basil, chives, herbs of all sorts like lemon verbena, chamomille, red clover and mint, tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, celery, cabbage, oats, ground cherries, blueberries, onions, peppers, carrots, leeks, and winter squashes. And now we are getting into the end: we still have lots of production, the weather has been reasonable so eggplants, peppers, carrots, celery and cabbage are still growing, but we are finally able to start harvesting horse radish and dry beans!  I regret not growing more varieties of beans this year, as Alex and I are realizing that Leo LOVES beans! Oh well, next year.  We do have hundreds of jars of sauces, tomatoes, pickles, pesto, etc. already stored in our cupboards, but the tomatoes and all curcubits have been pulled out by now, as they were infested with septoria and cuke mosaic virus.  We are not complaining, everything else is surviving well.  The only tomatoes which are still growing are the ones in the greenhouse and the cherries, which I actually planted way later in the summer.

We added hay down in July, to suppress the weeds, next time we will do it WAY earlier, it really works, saves so much time and water and protects the plants from soil born illnesses!

The Schimmeig tomato that we are growing for a local seed company is growing strong and green

PROCESSING:

All this food needs to be dealt with in some way.  We grew oats, as a small test field, partially for us and partially to have local grains for our chickens.  Well once the oat kernel is no longer milky, the field needs to be scythed, and the kernels need to be separated from the shaft.  Lenghty process if you don't have access to special threshing equipment.  Chantale and I (mostly her!) ended up spending quite a few hours removing the kernels by hand from the straw (which smelt so good!), and when we ran out of time for this project, we gave the rest to the chickens, kernels straw and all, they had a party!  And it made some good scratch area for a while.  The kernels that were separated for us will one day this winter be turned into oatmeal, ummmm I can't wait to try them! 

 These are the tomato seeds I am growing for a local seed company this year, it is quite a lengthy process from start to finish.  Grow the tomato, when ripe harvest, cut tomato in two, separate the seeds from the flesh (at this point they are in their protective gel sacs), ferment the seeds and gel for one to three days, until the surface of the mixture becomes all white, then rinse so that you remove everything but the seeds, then dry as quickly as possible so that they don't germinate.  Redo this as often as your tomatoes become ripe!

DRYING:

We also have been doing a lot of drying, to perserve some of the harvest, like pears and apples, zucchinis and crookneck squashes, kale chips (I even did Ketchup Kale Chips, yum! a Canadian twist :))

Drying the summer squash for later use in soups and stews

EATING:

And finally eating :)

We have been eating a lot of the bounty right away, fresh from the garden is the best way :)

Leo loves all the veggies, or almost, he's not too keen on horse radish yet, but we are working on him, haha!  It is also hard I find, for him to eat leafy greens, so I have been making him a daily smoothy with banana, yogurt, pears (or any other ripe fruit from the homestead) and kale, and this way he eats plenty of greens.  And he loves his smoothy!

 

 Alright he is awake, so I'll leave it at that for this time.  I still have so much to catch up on (I even have to skip over fermenting and pickling!!!), but I'll be back.
Until then be well,

This photo is too cute :) but its true, he just wants to be outside, rain or shine

Summer Feast

 My little snow man is a constant reminder that winter is near... Already September here in Maine and the Homestead is still in full production.  Since the beginning of August we have been canning tomatoes almost every day, to preserve as much of the fruits as possible, preparing pesto with the abundance of basil, and finding thousand and one ways to eat Patty Pan, the only squash that really did well this year.

Basil to season the tomato cans.

The harvest!!!

We grew many kinds of tomatoes this year, just to see which ones we'd prefer, and I have to say that the Black Sea Man tomato from Russia was hands down our very favorite.  Meaty, juicy, yet not watery and great for slicing and cooking with.  We'll definitely grow way more of those ones next year.

Putting Ira to work!

Boiling bath and Ice bath to remove the skins

Now the fruit trees are bearing heavily, and it's time to pick. We have been waiting for this moment since we moved in, having had no idea what variety of apples the orchard was going to delight us with.  What a surprise it was to also find that we had three different varieties of pears to combine with our many apples.  We had high hopes of making cider with our apples this year, and made a sample test batch which was so delicious, but we have yet to find an apple press to go through a real production, so for this year we'll concentrate on making apple and pear sauce for when bébé Léo hits the 6 month mark :)

Can you tell which egg is a double yolker?

Our earlier apple variety

And an exciting project that has been taking place of late is the set-up of our very first greenhouse (actually, a solarium that will be attached to the south-west facing wall of the house).  After a lot of searching, we found it second hand on Craigslist, Alex is now putting it together, creating the three missing sides with upcycled free windows we found in the trash around our neighbourhood.  The inside will boast in-ground year-round vermicomposting bins, rain catchment watering systems and cob walls below the glass metal frame. Stay tuned to see the development of the outdoor shower, brick patio and parilla :)

The future greenhouse...

 and our loveable cloth diapers :)