Harvest Day!

We have an egg! And a green egg at that! This means that one of the new chickens is part Ameracauna! There isn't any nutritional difference between colored and white eggs, but I like the range of colors. It just screams non-conformist, big-ag egg production and pays homage to home breed poultry diversity.

Now, there is a huge nutritional difference between pasture and true free-range animals. The yolks are vibrant, almost neon yellow-orange. But the difference goes far beyond just looks. Pastured animals are healthier and their eggs show it; less cholesterol, higher omega-3's, overall greater nutritional value.

Think your store-purchased "free-range" labeled eggs are really free-range? Most commercially produced eggs which are labeled free-range in fact have very little outside time on pasture. The birds are kept in a large barn for their first six weeks. After that, a door is opened to the outside, but most birds never actually go outside. If they do, they usually find an empty dirt lot to roam... Not exactly a pastoral process.

What to do? Check farmer's markets to find a local egg source. 4-H kids often raise chickens and have either eggs or extra chickens available for sale. If you have a neighbor with chickens, you can see if they have extra eggs they would be willing to sell.

Besides our first egg, we harvested our fingerling potatoes and the first of our tomatoes. If you look closely, you'll see that the tomatoes have extra protusions on the bottom of the tomatoes. Not sure what it's all about, but very cool and unique. The long, green pepper looking thing is a San Marzano tomoto. It fell off when DH poked at it. Even though it's green it tasted pretty good - you can see where we dared each other to nibble on the bottom end.

Garden Babies

An inspection of the garden reveals the fruits which will be ours, in some cases in a matter of days. We have baby tomatoes on most of the vines, baby watermelon, baby beans. There are the first of the female flowers on the acorn squash plants. Yipee!

In the meantime, look at these beautiful beefsteak tomatoes from Lisa's Petals and Produce, round zucchini from Blossom Hill, and cherry tomatoes from Natural Trading Company. Scrumptious! And then there's the locally produced, hormone-free bacon and sausage from Coffee Pot Ranch. DH is making a vegetable and sausage soup for dinner. It's summer dining at it's best.

And here is my fledgling rooster presenting one of my favorite comfort foods, chicken pot pie! We have been letting the chicks run around in the back before they begin their tour of the property in their chicken tractor. They have become confident enough to explore the front area of the house. One morning I came out and couldn't see or hear the chicks. As I'm listening more closely, Cassie, one of our cats, comes tearing around the corner from the front of the house, followed closely by the chickens! The cat took refuge behind my legs, while the chickens skidded to a stop in front me. When questioned, no one had anything to say, not a meow, nor a peep!

Corn and Beans

As part of my effort to eat fresh produce as well as preserve food for the rest of the year I'm planting a modest patch of corn and lots of beans. Given my husband's love of fresh corn, I doubt there will be much left over to save.

The beans on the other hand are much more exciting. I'm planting several kinds of bush beans and pole beans for fresh eating, drying and freezing. I love legumes for their versatility. Fresh, dried, canned, frozen - the opportunities are infinite. I dream of bean purée dips, chilled beans with pesto, fresh beans with mint and lemon...

My first introduction to Musica pole beans, a type of Romano bean, was through a coworker who brought in several pounds to work. At 8" long, these beans were perfectly tender and fresh, with an amazing flavor. I casually snacked on the beans for several hours, until just before closing, at which point I began to moan, "I don't feel good. My belly hurts!" Yes - there is such as too much of a good thing!

Like most things I plant, most of these are heirlooms, tried and true favorites for generations. Here's this year's lineup:
Bush Black Turtle (dry soup bean), Blue Lake (fresh or dry), mung (dry and sprouts), edamame (aka soybeans, fresh or frozen), Tendergreen (fresh or dry) and Black Kabouli Garbanzo (fresh, dry, hummus).

Pole Kentucky Wonder (fresh, frozen or dried), Musica (aka Meralda, fresh or frozen), and Painted Lady Runner Bean (fresh, frozen or dried).

Artichokes

Our artichokes are still producing, and our three year-old speciman is rather spectacular. Artichokes were a bit problematic in our garden microclimate. We're in the Bear River canyon, which tends to be 4-5° cooler than our neighbors due to the accumulation of cool air. This means that even though we are at a relatively low foothill elevation, we accumulate frost amounts similar to gardens in Nevada City, at double our elevation.


The extra frost we get in winter has previously set back the plants, so that about the time they have resprouted in spring, they do not have enough cool weather to produce flowers. This year I covered them with floating rowcovers, and they kept their foliage though the winter. This spring we have been rewarded with several weeks of artichokes. It looks like we'll have at least one more harvest, maybe two if the weather cooperates!

Potatoes

My potatoes were planted about a month ago and are growing strongly. I'm using the bin method of growing them. The green tops can grow through the holes, and hay is added periodically to encourage the growth of potatoes, which is not a root, but a specialized plant stem. Traditionally, potatoes are "hilled up" to stimulate the growth of tubers. Growing in a bin means growing above ground, and means no digging for the potatoes at harvest time. Just open the bin and the potatoes spill out onto the ground!
You can see that it's time to add another layer of straw. I'm using rice straw which minimizes resulting grass weeds that could be introduced when using another type of straw such as oat or rye.

Oh - what kind of potatoes am I growing? Russian banana fingerlings, a particularly tasty variety with an amazing, creamy texture.

Tomato Time!

I was worried about not getting my heat loving plants in the ground the week of Mother's Day, and then it was too hot to plant. My tomatoes, squash and peppers would have been hard pressed to know if summer was coming or going the past two weeks, culminating in yesterday's rain showers. However, the soil temp is holding steady in the 80's, a great temperature for planting corn, beans, and other items from seed, and is also sufficiently warm for everything else to go in the ground.



So I've been trying to plant something everyday over the last week. Asters, eggplants, bush beans, and today, finally the tomatoes. A friend of mine grows a combination of new (to us) varieties mixed with old faves. Here's the rollcall for this year: Azoycha, Glacier, Siletz, Black Prince, Aunt Ruby's German, Mortgage Lifter, San Marzano Redorta, Sun Gold, and Pink Ping Pong. Most of these, new to us or not, are heirloom varieties, and represent a range of colors, sizes, purposes and maturation times.

Unless you shop farmer's markets or drool over seed catalogs you are probably unfamiliar with these varieties, as they are not grown in conventional, corporate fields. Most of the tastiest varieties do not hold up well during conventional harvesting, packing and transportation processes, and are therefore never known to supermarket shelves. What you get instead are those sawdust grocery store, second rate imitations pretending to be tomatoes.

San Marzano Redorta is an amazing paste tomato which will become canned and frozen sauce. Black Prince, Mortgage Lifter, Glacier and Siletz will probably be dried or canned in addition to fresh eating. Sun Gold and Pink Ping Pong will be lucky to make it into the house as they are some of my favorite fresh eating tomatoes.