Category: Preserving the Harvest

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We have made it through yet another year on the ‘farm’, which sounds better than ‘small scale agriculture experiment’.  We have a cellar full of food for the winter and are looking for to the meat store opening, which to the rest of the world is known as hunting season.  No doubt the coming weeks will outline some of the projects we have undertaken this summer and ones we are looking forward but for now, a list:

  • Our chickens survived another year and continue to lay
  • We have a FULL cellar – and our garlic is fantastic
  • We planted 6 new fruit trees this spring as well as blueberries, black raspberries and strawberries (both June and Everbearing)
  • We got watermelons – first time we have managed to ripen them
  • We grew ARTICHOKES and harvested them
  • We have been working on the house and after many long hours have restored our original pine floors in both the living room and bed room downstairs
  • We installed our first permanent raised beds for the fruit listed above as well as herbs for culinary and medicinal use

Aside from all of that I am sure I will think of more – check back in the coming weeks for some more in depth follow ups.

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Let’s pretend that blogging has a fiscal year that floats from the calendar year, that will make me feel better about this post.  I was looking back at 2015 and realized that I manged three shameful posts the whole year, I apologize.  In my mind I am much more active in the blogging space, telling you all about the changes that are happening around here, what we are eating and how we making it.  But reality is I suck at this whole blogging bit lately. 20151207_212016

So let me give you a little catch up, the blog has been devoid of tasty recipes as of late – with good reason we have been eating lots of the same things, lot’s of venison and vegetables from our garden.  This past year we canned up a lot of food from our garden in all sorts of fun arrangements, we are eating it this winter and hopefully I will tell you about some of those, but in the mean time here is a picture of our canned stash – it is not amazing, but it is sustaining us through the winter.

Since this blog started off as a cooking blog I suppose its only fair to issue a warning, this will probably become more of a generic farmstead type blog in the future.  We still like to eat and cook – but we are much closer to our food now that we are out in the sticks.

Our chickens are doing their job too, giving us eggs and lots of manure, their coop after some finagling, is finally working out better than we could have hoped.  It is still stationary for the moment, but we are hoping to get it mobile here just in time for spring.  The wheels are sitting in the kitchen – just showed up yesterday.

In addition to updates to the chicken coop we will be adding more fruit this year – we have a couple more fruit trees on the way and have purchased blackberries, blueberries and strawberries to plant this spring.  We will be doing a bit of work to create a suitable planting area for them as we live on the worst drained hillside known to mankind.

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I have started to plant seeds in our grow box in the basement and thus far have twelve varieties of peppers planted, artichokes, rosemary and sage.  In a couple of weeks we will start our tomatoes and a couple weeks after that our melons.  I am hoping to get a cold frame in, in our root vegetable garden plot to get some onions started in the ground.  And I am excited to try some garlic scapes when the garlic I planted last fall pops up this spring.

And like that we are off, I promise this year I will do better, if nothing else come and tag along on Instagram

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Pickled Red OnionsWell, the blog neglect has gotten worse and worse.  One of these days I will put it on the calendar and give it a go.  This summer has been busy, way to busy.  But fall is upon us and its time to store what I have harvested or at least purchased from the farmers market.  A couple weeks ago I bought a giant red onion with the sole intention of pickling it and that I have since done.  If you have never had red onion pickled on a taco or a burger you are missing out, its some kind of tangy with a little onion crunch.

This has got to be the single easiest condiment to make, ever.  And they will most likely get some looks should you eat them in public or with company present.

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That’s it, a few minutes of work and you have a condiment for the masses.  What is your favorite off the wall condiment?

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Sun Dill PicklesSadly I have been neglecting my blog, don’t feel alone though, I have also been neglecting my cooking and my diet (meant merely as the consumption of quality food and bacon).  The last several weeks have been crazy busy and finally the combination of my garden and my parents garden while they are on vacation is forcing me to do some canning and cooking.  Thank goodness for fresh produce.

One of the recipes that has been passed down through my family like balding (I hope not) and an attitude are sun dill pickles.  Just like they attitude they are true to form every time.  You put the same stuff in the jar, you follow the same process, you get the same result.  Easy, actually they are really easy, but, also true to form I have tried a few things this year to make them last longer.  One problem we always have they spoil, well they don’t actually spoil they just turn mushy.  No one wants a mushy pickle, they do make great dill relish at this point I must point out.  The best dill relish ever actually.

So this year I am trying the typical alum in half of the jars (I have left the alum in the recipe as handed down) and grape leaves in the other half.  In my reading this year I found that grape leaves are supposed to keep things crisper.  Do they?  I have no idea but come middle of the winter I will crack open two jars of pickles one with each technique and be sure to follow up on here with the results.  Fearful of a funky taste I have tried a few pickles from the grape leaf jars and noticed no difference in taste.

Also new this year to the process in addition to the usual washing I have begun removing the a small chunk of the blossom end of the pick approximately 1/16-1/8″ off the end of each pickle.  I read several places that there is an enzyme in the blossom end of the pickle which makes them mushy…so just to be safe they are all gone.

So with all of that said here is the recipe, it is designed for a gallon of pickles, rarely do I do a whole gallon at once, the left over brine keeps nicely in the fridge until it is needed.

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These are probably the simplest pickles ever and they are mighty tasty, they are no Claussen pickles (more about that to come) but they are great in their own light and did I mention simple to make?

Be sure to check back mid winter to see how the grape leaf – alum throw down shakes out, which will keep the pickles crisper, will either or will they both fall short.

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Okay.  So some things are not quite natural to me yet, like putting a bunch of stuff in a jar with no lid and letting it sit and come alive for a couple weeks, scraping the mold off the top (if it did mold, this doesn’t always happen) and then you are supposed to eat it?  Well the more I do it the more familiar it becomes and it is worth overcoming the mental hurdle this stuff is tasty.

Every spring my parents have an abundance of asparagus from their small garden plot out back, an abundance might be an understatement but it is way more than they could possibly hope to eat and still like it at the end of the season.  As a result I usually end up with a bit of it myself, which is fine with me, asparagus is my friend.  This year I thought I would try something a little different.  I tried pickling some asparagus, I tried three different methods and got three different results.  You will have to check back for the other two types of pickles as I have not yet tried all three.

Lacto-fermented 'pickled' asparagus

The first type of pickled asparagus that I got to try was lacto-fermented pickled asparagus.  It was perhaps the most intimidating of the three batches I did, but I had to know.  Lacto-fermentation is a natural process in which the naturally occurring lactobacilli on the surface and in the vegetables (in this case) convert the sugars and starches in the vegetables in to lactic acid.  This lactic acid inhibits putrefying bacteria and preserves the vegetables.  At first glance.  Scary.

The asparagus pickle recipe I used was adapted from a recipe found over at Awesome Pickle.  Because I was using a pint jar and had enough asparagus to fill the entire jar I adapted the recipe a bit.  I did however find the technique  they used to submerge the asparagus in the jar simple and effective.  You can view that technique at the bottom of the page linked above.

Ingredients
asparagus (enough to fill a 1 pint wide mouth jar)
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
1 c water mixed with 3/4 tsp kosher salt

Instructions
Wash asparagus.  Trim asparagus to fit into a 1 pint wide mouth jar, heads down, with about an inch of head space.  Thinly slice garlic cloves and place them in the jar, add in the spices.  Pout in the water until it entirely covers all of the asparagus.  Use the method shown in the third picture here to keep the asparagus from rising up during the process.  Put the jar in a cool place dark place with a towel underneath and another towel draped over the top to keep the dust out and forget about it for a week or two.  Once its ready in a week or two remove the jar, remove any surface mold and store in the refrigerator.

I initially had hoped to try these before I headed out on vacation a week ago but for some reason they just didn’t seem ready.  So instead I just took off and left them be in the basement and another week later they were ready to go.  These little guys are pretty tasty and still had a good crunch so far.  We’ll see how they are by the end of the jar.  If you can get over the initial intimidation of allowing nature to run its course on a jar of veggies.  Lacto-fermentation yields a delicious product that I am told is easier for the body to digest.

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