Our First Official Harvest is Tomorrow!

My sweet friend!  How excited I am!!!  Tomorrow we will have our first, actual, we-are-official-farmers-now harvest!

Our liaison will be coming tomorrow in the morning to pick up our first harvest of Lemonrock Farms Sakura Honey tomatoes :)

YAYAYAY!

It will be a small harvest--these are the first ripeners.  They will not even be sold in stores yet, but rather will be distributed to local restaurants.  However, it is still incredibly exciting :)  I walked by the hoop house today and saw so many little red jewels hanging delicately from soft green vines.  It was such a pretty picture!

Now, since the farm we are working under is new, and our participation is new, I am not sure exactly how this is going to work.  There is some consideration regarding how to pack (because we are growing cherry tomatoes, we will not be getting as much weight sold as those growing full sized tomatoes).  We are going to weigh AND count "dry pints".

Let me tell you about the tomatoes we are growing.  As I mentioned, they are Sakura Honey's.  Well, let me back up.  My whole life I despised tomatoes.  It took me until I was 12 to eat pizza, then into adulthood to eat lasagna, and I have never had a BLT.

One time, though, I tried tomato that was not from a grocery store.  It was ASTOUNDING.  It is like the difference between raw honey and pasteurized honey--like two entirely different substances.  It was incredibly edible!

Ok, it has been some years that I have been eating tomatoes, having developed a taste for them.  The sakura honey tomatoes are incredible!  Firm, SWEET, beautiful.  (And I am not just saying that because we grow them ;).  I could easily see me growing these for my own use even if we switch to a larger tomato for income.  They are really just that good!)

(as an aside, TWS loves fried green tomatoes.  I am dying to use some fruit fall tomatoes and slice them up into teeny tiny little disks and fry them up for him and see if they are good :) ).

Please pray that this goes well, that the Lord is glorified, that our work is purposeful and good, and that the tomatoes sell profitably :)  Thank you!

I will try to get a photo for you!  Thank you for letting me gush about our new exciting step into being farmers :)  You are a treasure!!!

A Technological Blessing

Hello dear one!

I just wanted to praise the Lord for a recent blessing.  I had to stop blogging for a week or two as my ipad had a "grey screen of death".  As I have mentioned previously, if I do not use my ipad for blogging, getting photos to the blog is nigh unto impossible (or at least too difficult for me to want to mess with!).

We went to the Apple store to see if it could be fixed.  I believe I mentioned that the gentleman at the Genius Bar took one look at it and gave me a new one for free!

However, what is wonderful is what I found out after I got home:  I got one with TWICE as much storage as my last one!!  And the camera is better!!  I am so tickled!!!!  What a provision from the Lord to take care of me as I blog!

Just wanted to share my thankfulness of Him and His little gifts to us :)

A Busy Saturday!

Good Morning my dear friend!

 

I hope this Sunday is a blessed day of rest for you and that you will spend a little time just enjoying your Creator who loves you mightily (if you have any doubts or guilt or wondering, please feel free to contact me--I know ALLL of those feelings and can tell you that they are not for you :)  He wants you close to Him because He loves you and in Him there is no shame--no matter what you have done! :) ).

 

Rest.  What a beautiful word!  When I say "rest", I can sometimes feel a desperate exhaling deep in my spirit, a tender, almost crying feeling of gratitude. :)  Rest.  Peace.  Joy.  Such beautiful words!

 

But there is also such a wonderful feeling in the words "work", "industry", "providing from provision", "serving"!  While my spirit loves its downtime in rest, it also LOVES a purpose, a goal, a good thing done with the hands!!  Work is the sunshine while rest is the moonlight--both of them beautiful when balanced with the other :)

 

I cannot thank the Lord enough, dear friend, that He allowed us to move here.  My neighbors are some of the kindest, sweetest people.  Our next door neighbors keep bringing us provision from their massive (and slightly envy provoking ;) ) garden.  We had much that we had to put up, and I spent yesterday doing just that!  Let me walk you through my day....

 

Firstly, I have been longing for blueberry muffins like my mom used to make.  I actually have a nickname for the amount of blueberry muffins I could put away as a young child. :)  We have been blessed with an abundance of blueberries from our own bushes, so yesterday I set to work making blueberry muffins first thing.  Not only did I want them, but I thought the children would enjoy having them ready for breakfast when they awoke.

Because Precious has to eat gluten free, I made hers first.  I had bought a box of gluten free muffin mix--what a time saver!  I added the requisite butter and eggs, then also threw in a can of pumpkin.  Precious had been remarking about how dry some of the breads are...plus pumpkin is so good for you...that I thought it would help take her muffins to a higher level of moistness and nutrition.  Boy was I right!  Her muffins were SO moist from the plump fresh blueberries and the pumpkin that I thought she might not like them!  However, she informed me that "these muffins are going to be problematic" (meaning they were so good that she was having a hard time not eating them all :) ).

 

The can of pumpkin also greatly extended the batch.  It made the gluten free mix a little more cost effective (though I do need to make my own mix for her--another project for another day :) ).

 

Then I made our muffins.  I used my mom's recipe (though added a bit more sugar to balance out the pumpkin I added to ours as well). At the end of the cooking session, I had a couple dozen+ large muffins and many dozen mini muffins!

 

Then I went on to making pickles.  Our neighbors had graciously brought us some delicious cucumbers from their garden.  Truly they were different than store bought--made for pickling but tasted wonderful fresh.  I have not canned much, and never made pickles, so I opted for refrigerator pickles and used Ball's Bread and Butter spice mix.  TWS had asked for bread and butter instead of dill, and I did not mind either way.

 

Below are just some of the cucumbers.  I forgot to take a photo of all of them :).  I used my new mandolin to slice them.  TWS came in and was...curious about a)using a crinkle cut and b)the thickness of the slices (0.5 inches).  Now, at this point I was tempted to say "Y'know, I CAN actually do this without messing up..." lolol  However, I stopped and thought "He had mentioned his grandparents making them...perhaps that has something to do with it".  I explained my choice (I had always seen b and b pickles crinkle cut and that 0.5 inches is what the recipe said) then acknowledged his memories of his grandparents' pickles and asked if he would prefer me make them like his grandparents did, if his heart wanted what he remembered.  He stopped and thought a moment and then assured me that I should follow the recipe. 

I am thankful for that moment.  I usually get defensive (gah!) and sometimes react in a less than gracious way.  I am trying to stop that, though, because he a)did not mean any harm and b)he was touching a memory with his heart.  I am thankful that the Lord gave me the wisdom and ability (and that I USED it lolol) to see deeper and to ask. :)

 

 

 
The mandolin took a bit getting used to but eventually I ended up with this.  It was an incredibly easy process:  boil sugar, vinegar, and spice mix, pour over the slices, then let cool in the bowl.  Pack the jar with slices, put a rounded 1/8 tsp of the crisping granules (see below) then ladle the juice until the jar is full.  Put in fridge for up to 3 months, taste is best after developing for 3 weeks.  Easy!!

 

 

Then it was time for the tomatoes.  I diced them all up and bagged them except for this little beauty that I was going to use for BLT's for supper.

 
What a gorgeous bowl of tomato loveliness!!!

 
Bagged and marked because these look remarkably like the diced watermelon that I have in the freezer...what an unpleasant mix up that would be!  (That reminds me of the saying to tell between knowledge and wisdom :)  Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit...Wisdom is knowing not to put it in the fruit salad :) )

 

 

Speaking of watermelon....I had bought one on sale.  For about $3 I ended up with a ton of fruit, smoothie base, and rind candy!  I will admit I was going to be lazy and just scoop out the wonderful middle fruit.  But then I saw all the left over rind and the light pink, not quite as sweet, part and just could not waste them.  It did not take long to scoop out the good stuff, slice off the light pink/white fruit, then separate the outside rind from the inside.  The light pink/white fruit makes a WONDERF base for smoothies!  It has very little flavor, but much more flavor and fiber and vitamins than using ice cubes!  Add some OJ or lemon juice or pineapple, and there is a hearty, but light, fiber packed smoothie with what would normally be thrown out.

 After cutting up the watermelon, it was time to snap some beans. Fresh green beans are my favorite food.  I used to eat them every day for lunch.  I bought these at a local farm.  They were a little tougher than I like, but still good, so I sat on the porch and snapped off the ends.  I was going to do this in the kitchen, but I wanted the charm of "sittin on the porch, snapping beans" :) 

 
All broken up and ready to be placed in the freezer for a pot of tex mex soup when the weather turns colder :)

 

 

Back to the watermelon rind.  The rest of the watermelon had been put in the freezer and fridge.  I poured off the juice and had a wonderful glass of watermelon juice to refresh me during my work.  Now I decided to try my hand at watermelon rind candy.  I keep my computer close in the kitchen--I am forever needing to google a recipe or something :). 

I found several recipes for watermelon rind candy, but many of them were "pickles"--kept in a jar in fluid.  I wanted dry candy.  I found one for a basil mint and many with anise.  Neither flavor was what I was looking for, so I made my own with key lime juice, powdered ginger, cumin, cayenne (just a dash!), and allspice.

 
Here are the strips I cut of the rind....

Here are the rind strips in water, sugar, salt, and the seasonings.  You boil them until the rinds are translucent.  This took forever!!! :)  I am sure I must have missed something, because eventually I got tired of waiting and just scooped them out onto a sugared tray to be put in the oven to dry and they became more translucent as they cooled.

My first (or maybe second?) oops!  I was going between recipes and missed the "put them on a SUGAR coated parchment".  I had no parchment, but I tumped these off onto another piece of foil that was sugared.

Much better :)

 
This....ah this....:)  This is the wonderful syrup that was left over after  boiling the rind.  It is incredible and will be wonderful over ice cream or as a flavoring or to use for basting pork.  I wish the light was better--it was such a lovely color.

You might ask how the rind candy came out....the flavor was incredible!  It had the tiniest bit of warmth and heat after you ate it, and the citrus was delicate and not overpowering.  It was delightful.  However, after trying to dry it for way too long in a 250 degree oven as a recipe said, it just became sticky, sticky goo--like raw caramel :)  Next time I will:  allow the fruit to macerate in the sugar that the syrup is eventually made of for several hours (as many of the recipes suggested!).  I will boil it for less, and make sure the syrup does not reduce too much--there is no way that I could see for the candy to dry when it was coated in a thick, thick glaze.  Also, I will turn the oven down to 170 (a much better drying temperature).  However, I will not change the flavorings at all--they were wonderful!

 

 

As I waited for the hours to pass for the candy, I googled how to fold paper boxes to deliver the muffins and blueberries in to my neighbors.  It took a few tries until I found directions that were easy to understand :).  I had purchased this pack of paper for $5 at Walmart.  It was an incredibly cute and inexpensive way to present little treats.



These are the finished boxes.  Once I got the hang of folding them, they were very easy and very quick.  I can see myself using this often in the future.  I tied ribbon around the sides to give them some stability and to doll them up a bit.

I had to figure out some dividers as my original idea of using cupcake cups was not working well.    Here they are, all filled :)  I placed these in an adorable "US Mail" basket that TWS had gotten me for my birthday this year, and placed fabric over them to keep the bugs out.  Then we got in the cart and (whilst hoping we had enough battery!) drove up and down the road delivering these to neighbors.  Two of our neighbors were not home, regrettably.

 

After we came home, I was exhausted!  It had been quite the day :).  I did not even get to the eggplant and the peaches that also need to be put up, but that was for another time.  About an hour after we came home, one of my neighbors brought over more cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and such :)  I love living in the country!!!  I hope I can be a blessing to them like they are to us :)



Destruction in the Greenhouse

My sweet friend I am positively sick....

We have been finding some caterpillars and hornworms in the greenhouse and have been working diligently to try to keep them under control.  Precious was out there for hours yesterday!

This is the damage we are getting:

And this is the cause:

Urgent Farm Work

My Sweet Friend!!

I had a few moments as supper cooked, and thought I might catch you up on the day :)  

We have had massive rains the past few days.  Nothing torrential, just almost constant pouring rain.  Sometimes we were getting almost 4 inches an hour!  There was a lot of flooding in the area.  I was wondering (though not worried at all) if we would flood.  Our little farm is in flat low lands (ahem...swamp).  However, for as flat and low as it is, it also has some excellent drainage.  The sudden, rather large, pond that appeared near the orchard disappeared by morning (then reappeared with the next rain, then disappeared again).

The big pond is incredibly full--the water is up to the bottom of the dock!  It confuses one's depth perception to look down on the water from the dock :)

However, the biggest problem with the rain is that it seeps into the greenhouse.  Our tomatoes are planted in the ground and there are some low spots.  We were admonished NOT to level the ground, which we now know is a mistake.  Because the ground is not level and properly sloped, the water will seep in and fill the low spots in which some of our tomatoes are planted.

We went out this morning to raise the sides of the greenhouse and discovered that many plants were soaking in water in the soil.  They were wilting terribly.

Additionally, the rains and recent feeding we did with worm tea and nitrogen has created a growth boom.  So many plants found that their stems were too heavy to support.  We had to act on both problems quickly before the water logged plants drowned and the laying over branches broke.

TWS and I spent a great deal of time tying up the worst of the laying over branches and propping up what we could.  We ran out of twine before we could finish, but I think we hit the worst ones.

As for the waterlogged plants, this is where we can see the amazing creativity of the Lord :).  You probably know this, but tomatoes will root all the way up their stems.  In fact, if you want truly robust tomatoes, and are starting from plants, bury almost the entire plant!  2/3's or even more, so that there are still leaves at the top, but most of the plant is buried.  All the little nubs and nodes on the stem will become roots.

The plants of ours that were drowning started trying to grow roots in the air, above the waterlogged soil.  So TWS and I found buckets of compost and worm casings and piled them up the stems of the soggy, wilting plants as far as we could.  These plants may never be robust, but we hope that this will at least keep them from dying.

Mind you, I had no intention of spending our day of rest in the greenhouse :)  I was dressed in a twirly skirt dress, a wonderful artistic light sweater, and my hair was not fully up.  It was quite the struggle to try to keep the very ...aromatic worm casting/compost mix out of my hair and off my clothing.  I ended up soaking wet anyway, and had to change my clothes when we got in. :)


I sort of love that about the farm--sudden desperate times where we all pull together :).  Tying plants is pretty much "my job", but of course TWS was not going to leave me alone with all that sudden work!  I was so thankful for his assistance!

Healthier Eating

Good Sunday Morning, dear one!!

Today I thought I would share a new eating plan I am trying.  It is called "Vegan Before 6".

First let me start off by saying:  I am not a vegan.  I am not a vegetarian.  I am definitely more carnivore than even omnivore ;).

However, my body is getting old and not obeying me as much :).  I am not good with diets and do not like restrictions per se.

The other morning I woke up and put on a skirt that generally fits.  It was so tight around the middle that the pocket linings were showing.  I know it was from some transient digestive distress (I had just gotten over a bout of lower GI issues), but it was the final straw for me.  I was tired of feeling uncomfortable in my clothing.  My blood sugar and my blood pressure and cholesterol are fine.  Metabolically I am very healthy.  I am not obese, and can be pretty active.  However, I knew I was gaining more weight than I wanted and honestly was looking at having to buy more clothing.  That was a cost that I was not willing to do:  I would rather spend that money on new curtains for the sunroom :)

Additionally, I want to participate in a race, but my extra "Alaska Winter Weight" is, I believe, making my joints sore.  I believe the distribution of my person is throwing off the mechanics of my walking and running and making my shins and such hurt.

Also, it is summer here in Alabama.  There are cherries and watermelons and peaches and I am delighting in the flavor of them.  There are cucumbers that beg a bit of creamy Italian dressing, and sweet potatoes that need nothing but to be cut into fries, broiled, then sprinkled with cajun seasoning. The flavors of the season are amazingly wonderful.

The only problem is that I would buy fruit and forget to eat it.  The cucumbers would mold in my fridge, and the salads would ice and wilt.  I wanted to eat these things, but habit of easy-to-grab meat, cheese, and such kept getting in the way.

I digress...the other morning when my skirt was too tight, I believe I prayed.  Or perhaps it was the next morning--the details are a bit of a blur.  In any case, I heard about this eating plan from two different sources.  I believe that the Lord often sends "affirmation and confirmation" and coming across things twice, from disparate sources, does not mean you must do it, but rather it is worth looking into.

It seemed like a reasonable plan that would hit all of my goals:  to ensure my nutrition is better, to eat more fruits and vegetables, to perhaps lose a little bit (NOT a lot!  I am not trying to be thin or recapture an 17 year old figure), but not be restrictive.  There is no measuring, just eating vegan (no meat or dairy) before supper.  At and after supper, you can have what you like.  You are to eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full (but not stuffed).

So here I am, on day 4 of the "VB6"--vegan before six.  I am enjoying the eating plan (I do not want to call it a diet, because the point is not to restrict calories but to eat HEALTHIER).  I figured I would give it 7 days and then evaluate.

The thing about being "vegan" is that you can find a LOT of junk food that is vegan.  It will do nothing for my health if I load up on sugary fatty "vegan" donuts.  I am avoiding that by being thoughtful in my food choices:  much more fruits and vegetables during the day.  A few whole grains, a couple of potato chips (when I just really want to taste salt and fat), and lots of green tea and coffee and water.

At supper, I have what I want.  Fried chicken, steak, brownies, etc.  I am not that big of a dessert eater, so that has not been a stumbling block at all--if I want a petit four, I have one.  But I never want to binge on them (that is just my personal habit--I am a fat and salt more than a sweet girl).

At day four:  I have lost one lb.  I feel healthy.  I enjoy my food.  It is GOOD to feel hungry, like actually hungry, not obsessive cravings.  That took a bit to get used to.  Fiber does not "fill me up", or so I thought.  Actually I need fiber with fat (salad with dressing, bread with olive oil, etc).

What I found is that I was confusing "hunger" with "craving".  I just WANTED more.  I did not NEED more.  My stomach was actually full, but I wanted a sense of satisfaction.  The funny thing is that now my sense of satisfaction is more because I am not eating everything I want whenever I want.  A brownie, warmed and truly enjoyed at the end of the day, is so much more SATISFYING than snitching brownie bites all day long, not savoring, just chowing.

Will I stay on this?  I do not know.  I know that this season is wonderful for all the delicious fruits and vegetables, so it is a pleasant way to eat.  I like that it is not counting calories:  you eat til you are full, stop before you get overfull.  I like that I know my body is getting micronutrients that do not come in Flintstones ;).  I like that there is not any time that I cannot have something delicious, it is not a hard "diet".  I like that at the end of the day, I can eat whatever.  I like not feeling guilt about food.  I truly like not feeling guilt about food.  I hate guilt about food!

I will keep you posted :)  I hope that this will continue to be doable as I know that I need the fruits and veg, but I know that I will favor meat and cheese over them without some structure :)  It is amazing how wonderful peaches can taste when you are not racing to finish your "healthy" food so that you can eat more fried chicken ;).

Garden and Berries

Good morning!

Here are a few recent photos from the farm.  TWS is putting in an incredible garden for us with high fences (to keep the deer out).  The fence should be about 6 foot high, but we have plans to make it higher if need be.  We have noticed that many of the gardens around here have extremely tall fences.

We also have to make the fence low.  We had bought some plants (more on that later) that were sitting in pots under a tree close to the garden.  We found little rabbit footprints in the dirt of the garden heading straight for our plants!  He did not seem to have nibbled much, but it was an obvious sign that we need to keep those critters out too.

Since the garden will have a tall fence, we can also keep birds out with netting.  We already have to net the strawberries.  They do not seem to mess with the blueberries (yet, anyway!).

I love how the garden fence is coming together.  TWS incorporated a grape trellis that was in that part of the yard into the fence itself.  The existing trellis was decayed and weak so TWS put in a new trellis for the grapes.  That looks so lovely, and we found grapes on sale, that he decided to integrate more grape trellises.  We plan to have two muscadines each on both sides of the end gate.  Then we will have three concords, two on one long side of the garden, and one with the existing grape.  I think it will look beautiful and be functional as well. We are planning to use the fence as much as possible for trellising plants that need it, such as growing beans along it.  The fence will be a "rabbit wire", and the climbing plants should make a lovely green living fence. :)

 He has been working incredibly hard!

Because we moved in late and are a bit behind, we are buying plants instead of starting from seed.  While this is not as price-effective as starting from seed, if the plants produce how they are supposed to, they will still be cheaper than buying from the store.  Since we got our plants late in the game (in fact, not two days after we bought some plants from Lowe's, they took all of their herbs and veggies away!), we do not have as many different fruit and vegetables as we would normally have.  We have several tomatoes, several sweet potatoes, lots of peppers, and lots of melons.  I have some herbs and okra as well.  We were exceedingly blessed when we went to the co-op and found that their vegetables and herbs were buy one, get one!  We were able to get much more than we would have normally.

We will also be able to start some lettuce and such from seed, as that has a short season.  We also are looking forward to starting cool weather crops such as cabbage, broc, cauliflower, etc.  We already have some seed potatoes, and we have many onions that we have had growing in little starter flats, just waiting to be put in the garden :)

Some of our plants we bought.

The beginning of the garden--land tilled and ready to be planted!