There's Life in our Garden!

We spent some time exploring what was coming up in our garden.

Parsley

Horseradish

Rhubarb (we can't wait to use that in a pie!)

Okay, so the next picture isn't in our garden, but is considered part of our garden...

Chives!

We also found a huge ant hill, onions, and carrots left over from last summer! Yummy!

Frozen Dreaming

January in Minnesota can be beautiful and bitterly cold and dangerous at the same time. I do love living here even though I have been known to complain about the weather (Minnesotans are notorious for complaining about the weather All. The. Time.) Before we have our famous January thaw, one of my ways of coping with the bitter cold is to brew a hot cup of dark roast and open up my seed catalogs. I am instantly transported to warmer days. It is heavenly reading. I take notes, draw up diagrams of the garden, research plants. Does any real garden come close the the frozen dreams in January? So many goals, hopes, dreams, and plans. I'm an idea person so I love to let my imagination fly. The gardens of my dreams are lush, beautiful and practical, and there are never any bugs! Though my real garden never quite measures up to the garden in my head, I do believe it benefits from these moments in the middle of January when all is possible.

Yellow Ketchup, Anyone?

Did you know AH's favorite color is yellow? It has been since he was tiny. Well, early this year AH asked me if he could plant yellow tomato plants and use them to make yellow ketchup. Being the *perfect* homeschool mom I, of course, said yes! Anything to get him interested in tomatoes! We found some yellow heirloom tomato plants at our local co-op this spring and planted them in a nice sunny location in our garden. (I meant to remember the varieties, but I cannot find them in my notes anywhere. I believe one was a Russian tomato?!) It took quite a while considering our weird summer (lots of rain and cool days) but last week we had enough to make a yellow ketchup! While the tomatoes ripened I went in search of yellow tomato recipes. There are none. So, I went in search of a ketchup recipe. There are millions!! Most, however, call for 20 lbs of tomatoes. Even though AH did a good job of taking care of his two plants, there was no way we were going to get even 10 lbs out of them! I finally stumbled upon a recipe at this lovely blog, Eggs on Sunday,which called for 2 1/2 lbs. That was something we could do!!!

AH and I chopped up the tomatoes and onion.
Then added vinegar and a spice bag.

We let that simmer on the stove for around 40 minutes.

We removed the spice bag and AH got to try out the immersion blender! He was a little nervous using it, so I helped him instead of photographing it. After that another 30 minutes to simmer down to our desired consistency. And then the final step: tasting it.

I think he likes it!

Well, it didn't exactly turn out yellow, but a kind of orange. We've never made homemade ketchup before and we were impressed with the flavor and consistency of this recipe. It really wasn't too hard. We would change a few things about it, but what a great way to spend a late summer afternoon with my yellow fanatic!

A fun project

AH is a pesto lover. Has been since he was 3. It didn't matter that it was green...he loved it! He still does. Tortellini and Pesto is his favorite dinner in the entire universe. I love to make homemade pesto using our own basil. I grow basil every year, but it just doesn't get as big as I want it to. A while back I bought the book, The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Eric Knutzen . I find stories of homesteading a fascinating read, and I was not disappointed by this one. The fun aspect of this book is that it has projects you can do. I've been looking forward to doing one in particular and have been collecting materials to accomplish it. Today AH and I built ourselves a self watering container(or, as they call it now, a sub-irrigated planter) for a basil plant. According the the authors, basil needs even amounts of water. I am really not known as being the most organized of gardeners and my plants usually have to deal with a bit of dryness between the times I remember to water. So it was with pleasure I had AH help with this project. He is an enthusiastic gardener, is thrilled at the prospect of more pesto, and, besides, he got to use the electric drill!! Of course I have pictures:

AH with the finished project and the book that inspired it

AH filling the reservoir with water (that's Solvay, our Samoyed, making sure he's doing it right!)

What is the deal between boys and electric tools?!

The authors have a website called Homegrown Evolution. Check it out!

Gardening in November?!

I've got a definite theme going with some of the books I've been reading lately. The list includes The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollen; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver; The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen; and the best one of all, This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader by Joan Dye Gussow. I know I'm too busy to do a big garden next summer, but I want to rededicate myself to my existing vegetable garden which has languished the past 3 summers because of our demanding schedules. I would like to try to produce more of our food. Not just a few dinners or side dishes here or there, but really try to make the most out of my garden space. Since I've had such limited time for the garden, the first thing on my agenda is to amend and enhance the soil. What I did today is to layer newspaper over my garden and covered it all up with crunched up leaves. It is a beautiful fall day today, the sun is shining and the temperature is very mild! It felt so nice to go outside and get my muscles moving and blood pumping. Of course I have pictures!

Above you see my main vegetable garden. We had to fence it in to keep out rabbits and other critters that roam our neighborhood.

Along our fence I have a mix of flowers, vegetables, and herbs. This is much more like a cottage garden and I enjoy the way it looks much more so than the fenced portion.

We have been trying to buy locally produced foods as much as possible for the last 2 years. My milkman lives on a hobby farm and raises chickens that we buy each summer. They are field raised and humanely butchered and they taste wonderful! He is offering grass fed lamb right now, so I have ordered a whole lamb that is at the butcher. I have a good store of chickens and, soon, lamb meat in my freezer pantry! It just feels right that our food is seasonal and local. Of course we're not perfect and we also have a budget to consider, but I believe that anything I do to reduce our dependence on industrial agriculture helps our health and our planet.