…it is really fun to go to the feed store!
Coincidentally, spring is when our daughter becomes amazingly hard of hearing, at least as far as anything I have to say to her. “Now, don’t squeeze them honey. Honey?”
We picked up three Ameraucana bantams at the store on Saturday. Yep: tiny birds who lay blue or green eggs.
Posted in chickens, etc.
Wouldn’t you cry too?
On Wednesday, after work, I went into the old greenhouse with my small stash of shallots and I started crying. Sobbing, nearly.
YES: me, hard-headed, tough-as-nails, rationalist, non-sentimental ME, brought to tears by the emergence of the first fava beans, by the gorgeousness of the lettuces, by the thin little green waving sprouts of leek and onion.
Freckles romaine
I cannot tell you if it was merely something hormonal, but I can tell you this: these greenhouses have changed my life, have changed our lives, and not just our food lives. If ever I can convince you to get a greenhouse of your own, please remember this post: remember me sniffling as I tried to harvest our dinner salad! Blinded with tears! Oh, the joy.
Red Sails embracing Green Grand Rapids lettuce
Posted in greenhouses, soapbox
There is nothing easier than planting shallots. Seriously: if you are all thumbs with tiny seeds, then you can reap immense personal satisfaction out of planting shallots. The only problem I foresee is that it takes no time at all so that satisfaction may not last too long.
These are third-generation grocery-store shallots (really!). They started spouting, so that told me it was time to plant them. As you can see, they naturally divide for you; the bulbs usually do come in pairs. Just pull them apart and stick them halfway into the ground. They’ll sprout, then divide. You can harvest them, like all onions, when their tops die back/brown out. If you plant them this spring, that should happen by August: just keep your eyes on them.
I planted them between my greenhouse garlic. Aren’t they pretty? Some are up to their 8th leaf (of 10, where 10 means the scape (flower blossom) happens) so I am excited.
Posted in seeds
One big stack of work
I told myself this weekend that I had no real expectations of garden-ly accomplishment. Instead of having this huge mental task list, I thought: why not ease up a bit on yourself and seek to strike off a few projects, and NOT get sad if you fall short of doing it all?
Well, that worked! But the downside is I still have lots to do. And now I am facing a bit of anticipatory dread: I have taken on our daughter’s school’s garden as a project too. Considering I have worked with some other stalwart parents for years on eliminating processed foods at the school, it makes a huge amount of sense that we practice what we preach and grow more of our own.
Wish me luck; that garden is big.
Posted in school garden, sweat
De gustibus non est disputandum: In matters of taste, there is no argument.
This might be the case for cooked greens, too, but I do believe most resistance to them comes from being served overcooked greens. Sure, creamed spinach might have a special place in one’s heart (it does in mine), but goodness, serving all greens that way would be like boiling one’s broccoli or asparagus or green beans into submission: it’s not recommended!
As far as I am concerned, there are two steps to cooking delicious greens: 1. growing your own and 2. cooking them to the proper consistency as dictated by their texture. Step one is pretty obvious. If you grow your own you have enormous incentive to eat them and they’ll be at the peak of freshness. Step two is a bit more tricky, as it requires a bit of consideration of the leaves. But even that gets pretty easy: the tenderer the leaves, the gentler their cooking.
Warm spinach salad: Wash and dry some new spinach (if there are thick stems, remove them), and place in a glass bowl, and add some crumbles of feta cheese on top. Heat some good olive oil to just shy of smoking: you just want the sweet flavor to leap out. You may add some chopped chives or very thinly sliced garlic at the very end of heating. Whisk in some good balsamic vinegar or lemon juice, and add a pinch of salt and some pepper. Toss over the spinach and adjust seasonings: the spinach should be slightly limp, and shiny, but not cooked. Serve warm.
(Warm salads are entirely adaptable: saute some cubed marinated tofu in some garlic and sesame oil and ginger, and toss them, hot, with clean, slightly damp spinach. Same with lentils, or other savory beans: toss hot, eat warm.)
Bigger, tougher leaves require bigger, tougher care. Many greens through the heat of summer have thicker stems and more leathery leaves: this helps them conserve their energies; this adaptation one of the reasons you won’t find spinach grow for you in the summer! Often, I cut or pull the leaves off the tough ribs and stems and chop the ribs to cook separately. It is here I pull out what my family considers to be the Great Equalizer in making any green palatable: plenty of representation from the genus allium. So, I will chop up the summer-toughened stems of kale, rapini, chard, etc. and throw them in a pan with plenty of onions, leek, and/or garlic; add a glug of olive oil and some salt, and caramelize them together gently. After they look mostly cooked, I add the chopped leaves and a bit of water, cover, and cook; checking on them until they’re (what I consider to be) done. A splash of vinegar at the end brightens them up a bit.
Many greens are from the brassica family (cabbage, kales, rapini, bok choy, turnips, collards) and so share that family’s somewhat offensive sulfurous stink when cooked. Some studies say the longer these things are cooked, the more hydrogen sulfide is released! It is traditional, however, to boil to death certain collards and mustard greens: simmering in a pot with some garlic and maybe a ham hock…frankly, I *love* Southern greens, served up with some butter beans and a side of thick bread to sop up that “pot likker,” but perhaps this is an acquired taste. Actually, many collards and mustards grow so thick and hearty that a long simmering is the only way to make them edible.
Anyway, experiment lots is the best advice I can give you with greens. Experiment, and have plenty of garlic and onions on hand…
Posted in food
Ah! The March equinox! Equal day and night happening for us on March 20th, as well as spring’s putative arrival: after such a winter, I am so happy this day is here. The White House breaks ground on their own kitchen garden today. And our humble greenhouses are both winding down and ramping up on this day. In the old greenhouse, I have been busily sowing lots of seed and transplanting indoor baby seedlings of onion, leek, broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce. Everything is sprouting, everything looks great.
The new greenhouse is a bit of a puzzle to me. Somehow, it is not as warm as the old one, and while this is not a problem (per se) it has me scratching my head. Either way, and just like the leeks, it’s time for many of the existing plants to get eaten. This also marks the end of my general parsimony: eating up a harvest is necessary (as my stinginess won’t let anything go to waste) and it’s also just plain delicious fun. SO I thought I would share with you on what’s moving out of the salad bowl and getting main-course status on our plates.
Escarole: This lettuce-like plant is actually a chickory, so it shares its family’s tang and bite. I do use it in salads (and will continue to do so) but it hates the heat so it will soon mostly end up being quickly sauteed with garlic or–my favorite–served slightly warm with hot bacon drippings on top of it. Add some huge croutons and a poached egg and that is dinner.
Sugarloaf chickory: This plant has many uses, and often I use it the way you’d use cabbage. It continued to grow through the coldest days so it is a definite keeper in my eyes. I used it in lieu of cabbage leaves for cabbage rolls: they’re more stringy but I like their bite. This is also great sauteed, with a splash of vinegar at the end.
Chard: Unlike the enormous fans of the summer garden, winter greenhouse chard is small and tends to hug the earth, reserving its energy. Because this is a biennial, I need to hurry up and eat it before it goes to seed. One of my favorite recipes is a chickpea/chard stew with lots of cumin and cilantro and garlic. Chard is also great braised and wrapped up in a turnover with some stinky cheese, or braised and used as a filling for crepes.
Carrots: I will never rely on storage carrots again, I think: having them grow in the greenhouse was both so much easier for nightly harvests and so much more fresh with nearly no nutrients lost. This is one crop I will be sad to see go.
Kale: The red-leaved Russian kale seems to have been a much happier denizen of the greenhouse this winter; its lacinato (dinosaur, or Tuscan) cousins surely didn’t do so well. It is such a mild plant too thanks to the cold. Like all that I have listed here, it too is a biennial and the oldest, largest plant is just about to flower. Think “broccoli” and you’ll see my plans for these blossoms…
do you see the little spider in her web?
and finally, Sorrel: I have been a happy wanderer with all my plants but when I discovered sorrel at Lucia’s in Minneapolis about 15 years ago I knew I had found a vegetable to call home. They served it as a lemon-y sauce with some baby potatoes…yum. Unlike all the above plants listed, this is a perennial. I moved it down from my Minneapolis garden and have both outdoor and greenhouse plants growing: it’s a favorite of the chickens, too, so usually the indoor one is the only one I get to use. It melts to nothing in the pan and the plant melts to nothing in the heat of summer, reappearing in the cool of autumn.
Posted in greenhouses
We’ve had a string of nice spring days. Though this is a balm for the winter-weary soul, the greenhouse gardener in me is in a bit of a panic. You see, there is such a thing as “too hot for comfort” with the little greenhouse babies.
Happy spinach babies
The upside: things grow fast! The downside: things grow fast!
I do wish this enterprise were as simple as “the greenhouse will simply speed up the growing calendar by two months.” This is a nearly true statement: I am able to seed stuff indoors in February that I would be hesitant to seed outdoors in April, but it would be a very odd April indeed if the daytime high was 105*. If I could somehow bring that high temperature down…life under that plastic would be perfect. So, up go the roll-up sides, and I throw open the doors: within an hour the temperatures in both have dropped to a very acceptable 90*F.
The hot days, however, caused my stalwart arugula to bolt into seed. I pulled the whole row up and made a spicy arugula pesto for St. Patrick’s day, with lots of green onions and garlic and some of last fall’s wild walnuts. Green food rules, man.
Posted in greenhouses
Foggy lens in the hot greenhouse: baby pea shoot from a 3/5 sowing
Sylvie inquired if a photo I had posed recently was of peas growing in the greenhouse. It wasn’t but *smacks forehead* what a stellar idea! The greenhouses are easily a month or two ahead of the outdoor world, so I planted a row of peas along the back wall of the old greenhouse. I also interplanted some lettuces with fava beans.
St. Patrick’s Day is a traditional one for Zone 6-7 folks to sow their first peas, fava beans, and potatoes. The weather has been fairly spotty on this date for this particular Zone 6 homestead, but yesterday was warm, verging on hot, so out came the peas and pea innoculant. In years past, the voles have done in all my baby peas, the little creeps; this may yet be the case this year. Favas tend to come up later and miss the vole surge. So I hedged my bets by also planting a bed of peas in the new greenhouse too. The favas all went outdoors, but I make many sowings of these things: maybe 4 different sets, spacing 2-3 weeks apart because this is the only crop that gets infested with aphids. But potatoes? That planting date is months away.
Green thoughts!
Posted in seeds
Ladies and gentlemen, your days are numbered: the last bed of leeks. I will select 3 to go to seed but the rest will be dinner.
It’s the wind-down of the season for certain garden goodies around here. Leeks are the first up at bat. Like most things around here, and even though they’re the longest-lived garden item, these, too, are seasonal!
Can you see how one is enough for three people? Unlike outdoor leeks, I don’t need to remove nearly as many outer leaves on the greenhouse ones so what you see is nearly what we ate. This variety is Fedco’s Bleu de Solaize but it’s from my own seed from last year’s crop.
I am normally such a scrooge with this one particular long-lived allium. They’re somewhat hard to grow, they’re quite lovely, and they bridge the gap in our calendar between storage onions and garlic to new garden onions and (yum) green garlic. But now, well, now this veg gets the royal treatment! One of these big puppies makes a lovely leek tart atop my own somewhat inconsistent puff pastry. We devoured it.
Babies inside their cat-proof fence
And the tyranny has ended for me for the little indoor seedlings of leek. The greenhouses are warm enough, and the leeklings big enough, that they’ve all been transplanted out to their temporary bed. Ah! Now there’s space for new seeds indoors.
This bill was made for pinching
(Good golly I wonder what kind of blog traffic I will get with that post title.)
Spring! Yes, spring: cute little fuzzy chicks and goat kids and all that; lovely little bulbs poking through cold soil, little seedlings growing under their lights, mild breezes…what’s not to like about SPRING?
Well, around here, this wonderful season coincides with our male poultry’s sexual maturity. For months now, the tom turkey has been strutting his stuff (and mostly ignored). One gander, the Christmas goose who never got cooked, has turned fire-spitting mean. He doesn’t hiss at me as I am She Who Brings Food, but he’s flown at and pinched our daughter and has given both Tom and the dog the bum’s rush any time they come near. I thought: well, fine, that Christmas goose shall soon be cooked, leaving us with the nice gander and the nice goose.
Until this weekend, that is, when I saw the Nice Gander sitting on the nest and laying an egg.
How could I be so wrong? This goose (because that’s what she is) is huge, and also fairly aggressive toward the dog and my husband. The other goose, well, looks like a goose: she’s delicate, she’s actually nice, she sits on the nest box a lot. Ah. What to do now: I still don’t need three geese.
My daughter remains confused by the whole turnabout with the gander’s behavior. In about three short months he went from an easily petted, come-up-to-you-for-food kind of guy, and liked being around the girl. Now, well, now he attacks. “It’s not his fault,” I told her, “he’s actually just kind of sick. He’s got this thing called ‘testosterone poisoning.’”
“Will he get better, or will you kill him, Mama?” she asked.
“Well, let’s hope we all learn to get along, kiddo. You have to be careful around him, and he has to be careful around anyone, or else.”
Posted in chickens, etc.
Crocuses in snow is a phenophase of spring’s arrival
Friday is the best day on public radio in my humble opinion. We get Diane Rehm’s weekly wrap-up in national and international news, and we get Science Friday. This last Friday didn’t disappoint: one topic was back-yard climatology.
I thought of this show on Tuesday when, while on trip to the greenhouse for dinner’s onions and carrots, I heard the year’s first frogs. This is neither early nor late as far as my limited experience tells me, and I did feel a twinge for them because of course the daily high on Wednesday was 25 chilly degrees.
“Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate. The word is derived from the Greek phainomai (φαινομαι)- to appear, come into view, and indicates that phenology has been principally concerned with the dates of first occurrence of biological events in their annual cycle,” according to Wikipedia.
Some of you, I’m sure, are such great record-keepers that the emergence of the first forsythia blooms or the arrival of the first robin has made it into your garden notes. Well! You want to help figure out the effects of global warming on these events, at least as it relates to your piece of the planet? You can sign up and actually make these recordings known. Check out the USA National Phenology Network: they’re looking for volunteers to record just these very same observations.
Posted in nature
The return of the growing season is a fairly level playing field as far as our botanical friends are concerned. The new greenhouse, cleared out of most of its winter contents, is now a wide-open environment for WEEDS. Yipes!
And nine out of ten times these weeds are unwelcome opportunists. But I did have to pause when I saw these little cuties. They are sprouting in one of the now-empty carrot beds, and look suspiciously like carrot seedlings themselves. I do seem to remember seeing two carrots go to seed last year: strange enough in a biennial, especially one in its first season of growth. And as a seed-saver I should never encourage the seeds of something that throws seed so readily. But still, I paused, sparing them the hoe guillotine.
They also look suspiciously like grass seedlings. Their true leaves will tell me the difference: ferny fronds=carrots, or more thin leaves=grass. We shall see. A week might be a stay of execution…or not.
Posted in death
Emptied, cleaned jars await a trip back down to the canning shelves
Last summer I had no idea where the Ancho peppers I’d been gifted were going to end up, meal-wise. I knew I should simply char them on the barbecue while waiting for the coals to cool enough for other items; I skinned them, seeded them and froze them. Likewise, the posole I made early last fall or one of the dozens of quarts of tomato sauce, or one of the 20 or so pints of Great Northern beans that I had cooked and canned had no particular destiny. And the regular red peppers, jalapenos and sweet corn: blanched, frozen, and waiting, they sat.
It was fun to make chili this weekend, adding to it a browned ground pound of our quarter-cow. It’s March, one of the hungrier months in this northern calendar: we are a long way off from outdoor garden bounty. But all that work last summer has paid off in these delicious, somewhat impromptu wintertime meals shared with family and friends.
Posted in food
I had what I consider to be a rather telling moment in the greenhouse this weekend. I was planting out week-old lettuce seedlings that’d seen their first seven days under the lights indoors, when it started raining. Actually, it had been raining all day, not hard, but now it started pouring. As the downpour drummed the plastic, I realized I was getting wet: it was raining on ME. Looking up to see what kind of hole to expect, thus assessing what kind of greenhouse repairs need to be added to that growing list of spring chores I…laughed out loud. Yep: it was merely raining so hard that the ever-present condensation was simply getting knocked off the plastic, thus, raining indoors.
I haven’t had many laugh-out-loud moments in these last few months so this was quite welcome.
Nancy Bubel suggests that the tiny cold-loving seedlings like these lettuces can handle the stress of transplanting better than their bigger siblings, and I agree with her. It is a bit of a tease pulling these little things out of their crowded pots but the longer I wait the more tangled their roots become. The stems, likewise, on older seedlings are taller and weaker and thus are more prone to damage. I simply pry the entire plant out of its cottage-cheese cup with a screwdriver and lift it gently by its leaves to plant it in a waiting hole drummed into the bed with my handy dibber. The hole is about 2″ deep, as are the roots; the plants are maybe an inch tall above ground.
Snow’s gone: it’s now fun to find things like these turnips
Yesterday, it got to be 65* here, and I shoveled about 3 cubic yards of woodchips despite the fact that they were still frozen. I can’t help myself: the snow has melted and I need to get busy!
The ramp-up to the spring planting season is usually a fairly fraught one. The gardener experiences what I term Gardener’s A.D.D. and s/he runs around like a fool, having much to do (and seemingly all at once) but accomplishing very little, especially against that long task list and that short gardening calendar.
In my own grand garden schemes I still come up way short of my goal. It is true. I do.
But time, as I have mentioned before, is a gardener’s friend. If I look at the trajectory of my own gardening path of the last 5 years (city gardener on 1/12th an acre==>country gardener with many perennial beds and a small kitchen garden==>year-round subsistence food-growing crazy person who ignores her flowers) I see that I have accomplished much. Like Rome, them gardens weren’t built in a day. I had to build them bit by bit, little step by little baby step.
(But I still feel guilty when I see my weedy perennial beds.)
Posted in sweat
Red and yellow onions growing in a recycled aluminum pie plate and plastic cover. Notice the crowding: I intend to transfer these (and most of my seedlings) at least twice: once to the grow bed in the greenhouse and finally to their spots in the garden. Growing things in crowded conditions frankly enables me to maximize that lightspace, but yes, transferring twice is a big downside.
Baby steps: seed starting!
Remember that I have openly admitted that I, gardenlover, hate starting seeds indoors. But like many of these necessary things that are…tiresome, if I bite off only a tiny bit at a time then I feel the task is manageable. I could NEVER set aside a whole (or even half) day to start seeds because I would certainly go crazy.
So I cheat: I dump my dirt, compost, worm castings and peat into a large plastic tub and I fill the seed pots when I have the time AND the desire. My gardening calendar has enough flexibility built into it that a few days either way isn’t going to hurt things. I probably won’t wait too many days, though…the calendar won’t accommodate a true slacker. For instance, after two weeks, the leeks I sowed are near no-shows. Leeks are important so I planted a new flat. (In my own time, of course…the next day.)
A big trick up my sleeve is those greenhouses. Granted not all of you have them, but they enable me to use the lights for the first few weeks only and not the six or 12 that some seeds require. I first grow the cold-hardy seeds (alliums, lettuces, brassicas) in small cast-off bits of recycling (Chinese take-out containers, cottage cheese tubs, etc.) and then, once their true leaves come in, out to the greenhouse they go. Yep, it’s still cold outside but 40* nighttime lows shouldn’t hurt them in there. I transfer the seedlings into the dirt and “double greenhouse” them by placing a piece of clear plastic directly atop their bed. And then under the lights go the seeds of warmth-loving plants, and I repeat the process, because by the time they’re ready those greenhouses are hot enough for their needs.
Perhaps this last trick of greenhouse growing is out of reach for you this year. What I’ve done in the past is to grow my bigger seedlings in my sunny front porch. Because I potted things up in individual cups, stacking them on the windowsills worked fairly well. On the one or two severely cold nights that spring, I put a space heater on out there. You can also try making a coldframe outdoors, out of a window and some straw bales, or even of a clear plastic sweater box. You can move the sweater box indoors if you fear a cold snap.
So even without the greenhouse the seed-starting thing can be tackled in a small batches, as you can tolerate it…
Posted in greenhouses, seeds
You want me to pick and eat WHAT: snap peas on a trellis
Certainly, life would be a lot simpler if I (or you) had our way all the time. In many situations, dictatorship ultimately appears to be such a simple solution: my way or the highway, you’d say, slashing greenhouse emissions or implementing universal health care or heck doing WHATEVER it is that’s on your burning agenda. But no. Most of life is compromise, and much of communal living is searching for that compromise, but…it does help to have a burning agenda.
In our house, it’s my husband who’s the more recalcitrant. I think back to when, as a preteen, I was learning to ride horses, and one of the first things you learn is you need to speak softly and not make sudden movements or you’ll spook that horse, losing all trust. Husbands appear to be the same way, and, given their size, they (in my singular experience) can become just as easily spooked AND immediately become as immovable an object as any 1500 lb. quarterhorse, snorting and stomping their feet in indignation. So! Lots of change is taken by baby steps around here. Speak softly, I say. Move slowly. Someone, though, still needs to lead.
But substitute “recalcitrant husband” for whatever your own situation is: perhaps it’s 8 and 10 year old children who resist new foods, or a wife or a grandfather who insists on doing things the way they’ve always been done. Introduce change slowly: over time, say, you can substitute more and more whole-wheat flour in your bread and baked goods for less and less nutritionally empty white flour. New greens on the plate, lovingly grown and harvested and cooked by you: well, tell that 3- or 30-year old that it’s okay, today, to dump ketchup on them to make them palatable, but tomorrow it could be different.
Another thing I know about working with horses: They move away from pressure. Heels in, reins free: they’re going to charge. Right heel in, right side of the bit tight: they’ll step left. Speaking softly all the way, encouraging them: you ARE a team if you work at it. Beating them, screaming, or just being hard on the bit and that’s going to be one resentful horse, and one really frustrated rider. Anyway, family members can be the same way. If your people aren’t happy about the changes you wish to implement overnight, then ease up on the reins, folks!
Baby steps!
Posted in soapbox
Waffles in the toaster this morning
Breakfast remains much more of a grab-and-go meal than any other in most households, ours included. Unfortunately, this mostly means grab-and-go crappy food, or (horrors!) no food at all…all for a few more minutes of precious shut-eye. Well! For those of you control freaks like me who aim for more whole-foods breakfast goodies for your family, I thought I would share a few things that we do.
Okay, you want quick? Certainly there’s nothing quicker than opening a box of cereal and dumping milk on it. The breakfast foods companies have built an industry to convince you that prepackaged “cereals” with unpronounceable ingredients are the best choice for you to eat. I admit it’s quick, but the best choice? Homemade granola can win any taste test and yes it’s made with maybe 7 ingredients, all with pronounceable names. And yes: you (you!) adjust the sweetening and oil content as what you find best for your tastes. I make a batch every two weeks or so, and it takes me maybe 45 minutes of not-terribly-mind-taxing time. My recipe is from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and I have placed it in the comments.
Crunchy goodness
I still haven’t found a way to improve on Pocket Farm Liz’s homemade yogurt. What you’ll need: Milk, yogurt, a pot, a thermometer, two quart canning jars and a small cooler. I make a quart about every week as needed, and make a new batch with the old as the starter. We drink a lot of breakfast smoothies with fruit frozen from last summer, and the child gets yogurt with fruit preserves or jam or simply maple syrup mixed in as a school lunch snack. Recipe, again, in the comments.
Eggs: very quick, but I understand you don’t all have chickens in your side yards. And bread: toast! There’s satisfaction to be had in a slice of your home-made bread as toast the next day. But I’ve beaten you up enough recently about making your own bread…
Sundays have become waffle-making days here this winter. I double my batch so we can have warm waffles on the weekdays (just pop them in the toaster). They last all week because they’re cooked.
And yes, cooking. Cooked items can stay “live” and waiting in the fridge for you to eat them. I sometimes serve us leftover grains like rice with milk and maple syrup in the mornings. We’re also huge fans of (what’s called in this country) Irish oatmeal: steel-cut whole oats, not flakes. I cut down the time it takes to cook it by boiling water the night before and dumping it on the oats, then putting the pot in the fridge for tomorrow’s eating…this shaves about 35 minutes off the cooking time. (I think the ratio is 4 cups water to 1 cup cut oats.) I’ve also put the oats in the slow-cooker overnight, too…but often that requires more of my time to find the crock pot.
Anyway, baby steps. Baby steps turn into big leaps once you add them all up!
Posted in food
I am going to post a theme this week. I will call it Baby Steps. The reason? One, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed by big tasks and two, I find I work better (and am less of a mental wreck) if I bite things off in small pieces.
Today, I wanted to show you how our 5 year old baby’s stomping steps help in the harvesting process.
She loves her cowboy boots. Might as well put them to work in shelling some flageolet beans.
Put on some music and get stomping!
Ah, good work: about 1.5 lbs of beans
If I had to shell all 25 pounds of the dried bean harvest at one time I would be more than a little crazy. Thankfully, this task can be put off, done only when you need the beans. I have about 15 paper grocery sacks filled with dried, unhusked beans that I simply harvested, tied up to dry in the shed, and bagged when I had the time this winter. On Sunday, I looked at the contents of our pantry and said “cassoulet might be nice this week,” so out came a bag of beans and fortunately the child is almost always wearing the boots.
(Incidentally, it’s even easier to winnow beans by dancing on them between two sheets. Then, you can take the bottom, bean-filled sheet outside on a windy day and carefully, with a friend, toss them in the air: the breeze should separate most of the dried chaff from the heavier beans. It is not advisable to take this step with a five-year-old, unless you want to play Bean Pickup in the grass.)
Glad you came to visit!
Got something to say? Email me at fastweedpuller at gmail dot com.
