My Gardening Goal

As we struggle to feed our family on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis, I am forced to remind myself of reality. Like everyone else it seems, we are forced to tighten our belts even further.  I don't honestly know how much more we can go, but I fear we may find out soon.  We go through mini feasts with prolonged famines.  Which, brings me to my goal for gardening.  The main reason for gardening is for fresh clean food.  Now the more recent realization is simply to help us survive.

No longer will I think it necessary to plant only a couple of zucchini, a few yellow squash, half a dozen tomatoes, easy on the winter squash or scrimp on peppers!  No more.  Now my goal is to plant lots of 'em!  It's time to let the zucchini come out our ears.  Let the tomatoes 'over-produce.'  I plan on freezing as much as possible, while doing some drying, and if I'm ambitious enough, some canning.  We'll see...

I figure, let the heavy producers like summer squash and tomatoes do their jobs and reap the bounty.  Use that to feed the family through as much of the winter as possible.  It's worth a try.  Definitely another learning experience waiting to be explored.

Here's another brainstorm, Edamame.

Judging from my research, I can actually grow several varieties.  These soybeans are so good for you.  My sister turned me on to them because they are tasty, the kids like popping them out of the pods into their mouths, and they are filling.  The plants are about two feet tall, and the pods apparently all ripen at the same time.  So all you do is pull up the whole plant and strip off the pods to harvest them!

 

English Thyme, Marjoram, and a struggling Lavender were all rescued from my old garden.

I have no root-cellar, so I am probably unable to keep carrots long, but I'll grow them anyway.  Winter squash, Butternut is my favorite, is on the list for this summer.

As you can see here, I don't dream on paper much, I scratch around in the dirt instead.

Perhaps I'll have to place nothing but cinder-blocks for garden beds.  Whatever we have, because we cannot afford to buy anything for planters...all way too over-priced.  These lines in the dirt are the tentative plans for this year's garden.  If I can get these done and filled up with good soil (another challenge), I should have a generous space for vegies.  Either way, my plan is to pack in as much as possible for the maximum harvest.

Tomatoes, Peppers, Squashes, Cucumbers, Carrots, Onions (never enough space for them), Green Beans, Tomatillos, Corn, Potatoes, Artichokes, Edamame, and whatever else I can dream up.  I still plan on growing Cabbage, Lettuce, and Spinach.  Along with all this, hopefully a healthy variety of herbs.

My garlic is making an appearance!

All my boys helped with the planting, and are thrilled with the green shoots.

Something else making an appearance, the sun!  It's staying up longer!  It's rising higher in the sky!

Soon after Christmas the hens began laying.  Since they were relatively new to the barn, they began laying in the corners or the horse's feed bins.  Never mind that we laid down buckets for them and even a couple of cat carriers to lay in.  No, too easy.  Now recently, they have taken to laying under a favorite bush outside the barnyard fencing.  Dismayed, I did a little research and found that chickens are a lot like cats, they come and go as they please.  I figure if I want to let them free range for maximum happiness and health, I need to take this in stride.  We could build something special for them, but research tells me they wouldn't take to it any more readily.  The only hens I want to eventually keep penned up will be some brooders.  Hopefully we can begin producing our own chicken this way.

By some miracle, or a constant series of miracles, we're still here in God's beautiful country.  I'm becoming more and more aware of the reality that I am truly, merely, a pilgrim, no matter where, or if, I end up 'settling down.'

Heb. 11:13-16

Eph. 2:19-22

Truffle Experiment

I've always been interested in the process of making chocolate treats.  Until now, I've never had the nice big kitchen to try it in.  Now that I do, I decided to try one of Ree Drummond's recipes over at The Pioneer Woman for easy truffles.  Check out her recipe Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt.  You won't be sorry.  And you'll be in heaven if you actually make these sinful delights!  The best part is, they're so easy to make!

Thank you Ree!  Thank you!

 If you check out her recipe you'll see you need a pound of chocolate.  Like she said, the combination of semi-sweet and bittersweet is, well, awesome.  She said it makes a great deep chocolate flavor without going too far with the dark chocolate flavor.  I agree, it was scrumptiously rich.

Dump in the sweetened condensed milk and heat it all over boiling water.  I am thankful for her suggestion, I won't be buying a double boiler, this worked out just perfectly!  But what I do want to do is get a nice set of Pyrex glass mixing bowls someday soon.

Get it all nice and melty...

And just like she said, it was about the same consistency as marshmallows!  Adding the vanilla added a beautiful gloss to the mixture!  Very difficult not to take some samplings, but I did....don't hate me.  But at least I shared some samplings with my eager boys!

We had a lot of fun! 

Thankfully Ree mentioned she refrigerated the mixture over night.  I needed to know that, since I was drafted by my husband to help load up and relocate equipment for an upcoming job.

So, today I shaped the truffle guts (forgive the goofiness, I live with boys...and we call honey "bee-barf"... just so you know) into balls.  I let it warm up close to room temperature until it was the consistency of firm clay.

This is how easy it is to shape them.

Then I popped them into the freezer to stiffen up and guarantee they wouldn't melt while rolling them in the milk chocolate.  Probably not a necessary step, but I wanted to assure myself as best I could, of some success.

Notice this is only one package of 3oz. milk chocolate....  If you note the recipe, unlike me, you really need 8oz. of this decadence.

Yep, very lacking in the milk chocolate department....

Now here's the surprise, for me at least.  I've never had salt on sweets.  My brother-in-law apparently loves salt on things like watermelon and strawberries.  So I thought, hey, he can't be totally nuts (yes, he can, but that's beside the point...never mind we're both Aquarians, and so is my husband, oh and my nephew... my poor dear sister...).  And since this is chocolate we're talking about, I gotta see what all the fuss is about.

Roll the truffle in the milk chocolate then sprinkle a bit of sea salt as soon as you place it on the wax paper.

Isn't this sad?  Only 15 truffles were coated.  That's how far the 3 ounces went.  The rest will have to await their fate, either go into the freezer until more milk chocolate can be acquired, or eaten with abandon.  I have a strong suspicion the later will be true.

Despite my not reading the recipe carefully enough to note the amount of milk chocolate needed, the experiment was obviously a success!

These are so easy to make, the recipe flexible enough to make on separate days that there is no reason for anyone not to try this out!  Unless you don't like chocolate!  Even though I waited for a large kitchen to do this, I didn't need to.

And here's to you Rick, you're not so weird after all (wink, wink), salt is very good on chocolate!  So you must be on to something with your salt and fruit!  Love you bro!

Thanks Ree!  I'll be back for more recipes, you can count on it!

A Little Gardening Inspiration

As I was visiting Lorie over at Gotta Dig It I was inspired by this photo of carrots in a clay pot.

Don't these look wonderful?

You can find more inspiration here at Reasons for Building Your Own Container Garden

What inspired me the most about this was how this may actually prevent the bunnies from just hoping over and nibbling at anything their furry noses come in contact with at ground level.  Maybe I'm just exercising wishful thinking, but I want to think that it might mean too much work for them to rear-up and nose around in the pot.  The reason I was thinking this was that last time I grew carrots, they simply gnawed at the carrot shoulders.  They didn't seem to bother with the greenery and they seem to me to be lazy foragers, going for delicacies that entice them at nose level.  I don't know, but it's worth a try!  Not only that, but I can start the seeds indoors and simply place the pot outside when the weather permits!

Yeah, I'm inspired!

Sunsets!

Since we are doing this care-taking stint, we now are able to enjoy sunsets!

Living on the West face of the mountain affords this simple delight.

All these pics are from the first two weeks of January, 2011... enjoy!

Sensory overload...I'm almost speechless.  I love this mountain!

Life is to be lived at a level where the norm becomes meaningful in the light of eternal values, rather than interpreting eternal values according to what is normal for us.

                                                                                     -Ravi Zacharias