Tag Archives: Garden

The Recipes

One Thing At a Time

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Yesterday, Farmer escaped his harness, Houdini-like, and galloped down State Road against oncoming traffic with me running behind him shouting and waving. (He’s okay.)

I drove to Connecticut and back for a meeting on Tuesday.

I planted 50 tomato plants last night.

Roy hurt his back lifting a staircase (don’t ask). His clients want to move into their remodeled house in two weeks.

Our friends Scott and Angie came and helped us with the garden and the farm stand last Sunday because they could see what we couldn’t: We needed help.

Today a farm stand customer, a lovely lady who I barely know, came down the driveway with a loaf of challah bread she had baked for the Jewish Sabbath (which begins Friday evening) and wanted to share with me. A very special kind of challah called Chernowitzer, named for a once beautiful Austrian (now Ukrainian) city devastated in World War II, its many inhabitants sent to Auschwitz. Farmer and I ate two slices of this amazing bread for breakfast.

My new book was officially released this week (early). My publisher, Chronicle Books, pushed the date up after the positive review from NPR and went ahead and ordered a second printing.

I went down to Bunch of Grapes bookstore to sign 50 copies.

The Splendid Table excerpted this recipe (Greek Spinach-Salad Pasta with Feta, Olives, Artichokes, Tomatoes and Pepperoncini) from the book, and suddenly blog posts popped up all around from folks making the salad. Amazon put The Fresh and Green Table on its June list of editors’ favorite cookbooks.

I am developing recipes and taking pictures for a new project.

Every morning, I harvest chard, arugula, lettuce, baby bok choy and greens for the farm stand. I pulled the first carrots this morning. The peas—hundreds of them—are just days away.

The peppers and eggplants are not in the ground yet. Many beds to weed and mulch. Irrigation is a bad word. New chicken pens for both ladies and girls still to be built.

I ran into my friend Mary in the post office yesterday. She is a landscaper and garden designer…on Martha’s Vineyard…in June. Yikes. “Everything’s compressed. It’s like there’s no time, it’s all just a little too much. But at the end of the day here we are. So lucky.”

Yes, lucky. And when it all seems like a lot, I take it a little at a time. And I have Farmer to remind me to take it easy and pay attention.

I cinched up his collar extra tight and let him sniff all the daisies he wanted on our walk through the field this morning. (He slept on the bed last night, too. ) A warm soft breeze and bright sunshine made us both stop for a minute and look around. A turkey hen crossed our path with her single baby toddling behind her.

We walked home past the garden gate that Scotty built, stopped to pee on Roy’s potatoes (sorry!), checked on the blushing blueberries, and smiled at the shovel left speared on a mound of dirt. Shovels remind me of my Dad. Always. I know what he’ll be doing on Sunday, and it won’t be sitting down, waiting for the world to come to him. Thanks Dad. It’s all good, even when it’s all a bit much.

The Recipes

Moving Day—The Baby Chicks Get a Big-Girl Coop

Once he got started, it only took Roy two Sunday afternoons to get the new chicken coop built. Just in time, too, as the girls (all 49 of them!) are getting big. Plus, as I wrote about last week, there is so much to do around here that lingering for too long on any one thing just isn’t an option. So after choosing the perfect site for the new coop, Roy built the foundation and nailed the floor Sunday before last, then set to work on the walls and roof this weekend, using salvaged doors, windows, and boards.

I got a kick out of watching the whole thing come together (see photos below) into what looks like a pretty iconic chicken coop to me. (It has a built-in storage area for food and tools, too, which will be particularly handy.) The girls have an excellent spot, under some shade trees and with a killer view of the fields behind us. They’re still a little young to be out grazing, but next up is a big covered pen for them. In the mean time, they seem very happy with their new spacious indoor digs.

We used a plastic harvest basket to carry them, six or eight at a time, from the brooder in the barn to their new home.  All went smoothly, if a bit squawk-ily.

Even Bambi, who we successfully returned to the flock a couple weeks ago, seems happy, hopping up to greet us at the door from time to time when we go down to visit or refill the food and water. Farmer is anxious to see her, too, as he and she got to be pals. Fortunately, we can still identify her by her right foot, which is missing the middle toenail. Sorry for the graphic details, but this is how these things go! When we brought her inside on day two, she had an injured middle toe, which turned black and looked like it might be something fatal (with chickens, it’s all about the feet), but it miraculously healed itself, as you can see in the photo of Bambi on Libby’s shoulder taken a few weeks ago. (Or could see, if the photo were bigger!)

Below is a photo run-down of the coop-raising. Now, we have only three months to wait (and a lot of chicken food to feed) before our 49 new ladies are laying eggs. I can’t wait to see how that is going to work—me collecting four dozen eggs every day is not going to help the attention deficit disorder I already have around this place!

Farm life

Whistle While You Work

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My favorite episode of I Love Lucy is the one where she and Ethel go to work in a chocolate factory and are assigned to wrap chocolates that pass by on a conveyor belt. The belt speeds up and they can’t keep up so they start stuffing candies in their mouths to hide them. Life on the farm is a little bit like that right now. The days speed by, and it’s impossible to keep up. You know what you’re supposed to do, what the next thing on the (mega) chore list is, but just when you decide to go plant that row of beans, a crow flies into the barn and gets stuck in a window, the dog throws up something he’s found behind the barn, three customers come down the driveway looking for eggs (and you’re all out), and Sugar the Aracauna chicken has escaped from the chicken yard again and is digging a dust bath in the perennials. And drat, you realize you forgot to check on the babies (the baby chicks), who are really teenagers now and eat and drink like crazy.

You must look pretty silly, you realize, with a hen tucked under one arm, a jug of water under the other, trying to shake a stick at a crow, and check the inside of the dog’s mouth all at the same time.

You finally decide to go inside and get some work done (work as in recipe-testing, writing, that sort of thing), but pass by the garden on your way in and realize every single bed needs watering, the cover has blown off the arugula, and you haven’t dealt with those earwigs that are eating the bok choy or the weeds taking over the chard bed. There are two hundred tomato plants, half of them knocked over by the wind, staring at you, saying, “plant me, plant me.” You check the farm stand and it is out of lettuce, so you have to decide whether to harvest more or to go out to the road and erase “lettuce” from the sign. There are eight flats of peppers and eggplant seedlings on the work table waiting to get transplanted into bigger pots and a flat of basil begging to go in the ground.

Back inside, you recalibrate and set a very simple goal—a recipe test using three ingredients—rhubarb jam. Whew, you manage to accomplish that, but then complicate your life by trying to pull off a grilled chicken recipe test for dinner. You go collect the last of the day’s eggs, trek to the compost pile, put Sugar back in the pen again, and go inside and start chopping ginger and garlic just as Roy pulls in.

Discussion ensues: Do we work or eat? It’s a toss-up…we thought maybe we’d finish digging the beds for the tomatoes tonight, but Roy also wants to get some work done on the babies’ big-girl coop, which has risen to the top of the priority list. He needs to move some brush, too, so as the sun slowly sinks, he moves from tractor to mower to tiller to shovel. From yard to garden to bed. I finish watering, organize the tomatoes, move bags of cow manure into the garden.

It’s time to lock up the ladies (the hens) for the night, set the rat traps (yes, rats), cover the brooder box, shut the garden gate. Move all the flats of peppers and eggplants back inside. Turn off the hoses. Cover the hay with a tarp. Rake. Pick up odd bits of trash. Watch the bunnies come out to feed. Shut down the farm stand, bring in the sign, record the day’s sales. Plan tomorrow morning’s harvest. Where did the day go? In only a few hours, the alarm will be going off, and we’ll be doing it all over again: Harvest, wash, water, weed, dig, till, plant, mow, tie, clip, cut, cook, grill, nail, sand, haul, stake, scoop, pin, rake, level, sweat, smile, laugh.

publicity, The Cookbooks, The Garden

Beauty and The Book

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Yesterday two good things happened: I spotted the first pea blossoms in the garden, and my new book, The Fresh & Green Table, was chosen as one of NPR’s Top Ten Cookbooks for Summer, 2012. You might wonder that I put those two things in the same sentence, that I seem to weight them equally on the make-your-day meter.

Honestly, I did dance around my office when I saw the NPR list—I was very excited. Two years ago, Fast, Fresh & Green received this same honor, and I couldn’t believe my second book would also get a nod. I have tremendous respect for the reviewer, who is very thorough, so this is something to be proud of. (For anyone wanting to write a cookbook—or another cookbook—you’d be well-advised to read the list of 7 questions she asks herself when considering new books.) She had a ginormous stack of books to look at and to cook from this season, too.

I didn’t dance around the garden when I saw the pea blossoms. But my heart sang. Sheer beauty. It’s hard to describe—the complex emotions that come from pausing on a quiet, foggy morning to witness this crazy miracle of nature. There’s an element of relief, too, knowing you’ve managed to coax something along, that you’re actually growing food that you can eat and feed to others, too.

There’s a much less romantic reason to be grateful for good reviews and pea blossoms in the same breath. Quite simply, I know if I can sell books and sell peas (though neither actually makes me much money and both take an enormous amount of energy), then I can continue to get away with calling what I do a career, or a job, or something official. Ha! When really I’m just having fun. Some time back I decided that life is too short not to enjoy what you do every day. Sure, there are tradeoffs, but as long as I can keep this (old) roof over my head, I’m good.

The farm stand opens tomorrow!

The Recipes

Countdown to Opening Day: Green Island Farm Stand 2012!

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I have been secretly harvesting a few greens here and there for a customer in need. But I’m trying not to pilfer too much as I want to be stocked up for opening day—which is, yikes, 10 days away! Next Friday is the start of Memorial Day weekend, and Green Island Farm Stand will be open for business. (At least during the weekend. We’ll probably close during the weekdays until late June.)

I am both giddy and nervous with excitement. There is such a huge learning curve with growing—and it begins to go up more rapidly as the years pass. So I can’t help but feel good about some things I’ve finally got figured out. (See the photo gallery below.) At the same time, I can already see that despite doubling the size of the garden this year (Roy finished enclosing the “back 40” this weekend while I transplanted tomato seedlings into pots), I still wish we had more of some things—especially our beautiful greens. The salad lettuces are simply stunning, and all of the Asian greens are flourishing under cover of Remay. Hopefully, there’s enough to keep up with demand in June, since greens are the main deal until the early carrots and peas come in. (I sort of never thinned the peas, all of which miraculously germinated, so I hope they don’t strangle each other. If not, there will be a lot of peas!)

The trick to growing and selling greens is to seed new flats every week and transplant when holes open up. Or to transplant some and direct-seed new beds at intervals. (Some greens, like the lettuces, the mustards, and the kale will provide multiple harvests—and we do love them for that—but once a head of baby bok choy goes, it goes. Arugula is good for a couple rounds, but then the new growth toughens.) But knowing these tricks (finally) doesn’t make them necessarily doable. When we get the hoop house built, that will help a lot. But there’s only so much space we can devote to greens, too, since we like having the farm stand—and that means we have to make room for a variety of vegetables and that will yield at different times during the season, filling in gaps when other things wane. It’s a big puzzle, but a very fun one.

Of course the other way to deal with all this is to just dig more beds! And now that we have the tractor, well…we just bought a bunch of asparagus crowns…and more rhubarb plants…and a few strawberry plants. And we turned the old chicken yard into a patch for Roy’s gladiolus. Yeah, we are not too good at saying ‘enough.’ (Witness the new flock of chicks. And yes, they are all doing fine!)

Here’s a photo gallery preview of the goodies to come (and a look at the “Back 40” awaiting a gate, beds, plants, and a new irrigation system!):

Farm life, The Garden

While the Cat’s Away

Under cover of darkness, we stole off the Island last Sunday and whisked Libby away to Florida for five days. It felt very sneaky, leaving the farmette and our jobs this busy time of year. And risky, too, what with hundreds of new seedlings in the garden and many still under lights inside. Not to mention live animals who, unlike plants, need fresh food and water every day, not just occasionally. But I shouldn’t have worried; many good friends stepped in to care for chickens, bunny, lovebird, seedlings, and dog. Despite the heat wave while we were gone, the garden is thriving (see the radicchio and bok choy pics below) and the hens are happy. So is our resident mouse (or mice), who chewed his way through insulation again to come have a party inside while we were gone. Fortunately, he (or them) mostly feasted on bird food.

Considering our Florida adventure, a mouse party was hardly much of a price to pay. Between an airboat ride in the Florida Everglades, holding a baby alligator, petting a sting ray, visiting dolphins, catching baby lizards outside Roy’s parents house, collecting sea shells, and spotting at least two dozen different kinds of birds, Libby got a National Geographic wildlife week—and a visit with her grandparents—to remember for a lifetime. We didn’t come home with a pet pelican, but I’m still not convinced there wasn’t a lizard in Libby’s suitcase.

Favorite Tools, The Garden

Undercover: Health Insurance for Garden Seedlings

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The garden looks like a morgue right now, I’m sorry to say. It’s not that anything’s dead—yet. (And I hope it stays that way, though we are really pushing things this year.) It’s just that most everything we’ve planted is under row cover, for one reason or another, and the billowy white fabric sort of looks like sheets over, well, you get the picture.

It doesn’t help that all the pretty stuff is hidden. At least a couple times a day I have to go peek—usually at the peas, which I find unbearably beautiful and promising as they unfurl their wings. (Plus, I am very proud of how well they germinated and the fact that I’ve managed to get radishes and lettuce into this raised bed, too. So I just have to stare at it all, you know.) I also have to remove the covers to water, but then I tuck everything back in, using clothespins, fabric pins, bricks, rocks—a motley assortment of things to keep the fabric down while the fierce Vineyard wind tries mightily to rip it off.

I had to laugh, because one of my favorite garden bloggers (and another former magazine editor), Margaret Roach, posted about row cover this past week, too. Read her informative interview with Paul Gallione of Johnny’s Seeds to learn some different uses for row cover. I also discovered, when I went looking for a “proper” definition of row cover (“sponbonded polyester” is it), an earnest blog site, Whiz Bang Row Cover Hoop System, which goes into great detail about hoop-supported row cover.

We are not quite so technical. We order our medium-weight row cover (Agribon 19) from Johnny’s Seeds or FedCo in big rolls. Then we go to the plumbing supply store and buy 50 or 100 feet of 3/4-inch PVC pipe and cut it into the right lengths using a ratchet cutter like this. Because we splurged on new fabric this spring (our old stuff has a lot of holes in it—fine for wind and some cold protection, but not for pest protection), I am using mostly bricks and stones to hold down the new fabric right now. The fabric pins are more secure, but you have to be careful about poking so many holes in the fabric, which then let tiny bugs in.

That brings me around to the main reasons we use row cover: wind, cold, and bugs. The bugs actually came first. I experimented with row cover our first season to keep flea beetles and cabbage worms from decimating all the brassica crops—especially my greens like mizuna, bok choy and kale. It worked well as long as I kept the row cover in good shape and securely on most of the time. Last year I wasn’t so diligent, and I paid the price. I never covered the kale at all, and I had some very beautiful Brussels Sprouts stalks until I took the row cover off of them in late August after the storm. A few weeks later, not having paid close attention, I realized the cabbage worms had settled in for a feast.

I’ve also used row cover over newly planted carrot seeds in the past, so I am trying that again this year, only earlier. Theoretically the cover keeps a downpour from washing the tiny carrot seeds away. But we’ve hardly had a shower, much less a downpour, all spring so this may be a mute point.

But the main reason we are using so much row cover this spring is to protect newly transplanted lettuce and greens from wind and cold. The medium-weight row cover only offers a few degrees of warmth, but it makes a difference while the roots are struggling to establish themselves. And protecting them from the dry wind we’ve been having is huge. The wind not only breaks the fragile seedling stems, but it also dries the soil out very quickly. And since the soil is so dry anyway, I’d like the little bit of water I’m adding not to evaporate more quickly than it has to.

Lastly, the reason the peas are under cover is crows (and other birds). Newly germinating peas are delicious bird snacks, so until the peas get tall enough to start clinging on to the mesh we’ve hung for them, they’ll be under cover. Peas love cool weather so they don’t need heat protection, but they appreciate the tiny microclimate under the row cover anyway. And the radishes and lettuce next to them are especially happy. The row cover on the pea bed is a real pain in the neck though. Because the trellis runs down the middle of the bed, hoops are not an option. Instead we wrap the row cover all the way around the raised bed like swaddling and then hold the middle up above the peas by clipping it to the trellis mesh with clothespins.

Is all this worth it? Well, considering we have hundreds (maybe thousands) of seedlings out there right now, I hope so. The goal is a nice harvest of greens to open the farm stand with on Memorial Day. So we’ll keep you posted—there are any number of hurdles (or hoops) to jump through (or over) before we get there!

soups, The Recipes

New Greens to Grow and One Fabulous Bok Choy Recipe from The Fresh & Green Table

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Spicy Noodle Hot Pot with Bok Choy 1Promises, promises. A few weeks ago, I said I would give you a peek at some of the recipes in The Fresh & Green Table (coming in June—preorder now!). Last week I said I’d let you know what new greens we’re growing this year. Time for me to keep my promises, don’t you think? Especially since the green factor is blowing me away right now. The seedlings we started three weeks ago are so fresh looking that it’s hard not to think about eating them right out of the flats! (The new light system has worked beautifully.) But some of those little guys—like the Rainbow Lacinato Kale and the Bright Lights Swiss chard—hold the uh, promise, of growing all summer and fall, with many many harvests along the way, so it wouldn’t be too smart to cut their little lives short just now.

In honor of all these greens—especially the dozens of little baby bok choys we’ve started—I thought I’d include a delicious and easy recipe from the soup chapter of The Fresh & Green Table that features bok choy. (Recipe at end of blog.) I call it “Spicy Noodle Hot Pot with Bok Choy, Shiitakes, Ginger, Lime & Peanuts,” but it’s really just a quick and tasty noodle soup that you could make tonight (with regular or baby bok choy). (I’m sorry I don’t have access right now to the beautiful picture of this dish that appears in the book.) As it happens, this week three more recipes from The Fresh & Green Table were posted on the Internet, thanks to an article in the Spring issue of Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, Home and Garden (by yours truly). The three over there are for main-dish salads—most appropriate for grilling season. But one of them happens to feature asparagus and another Asian green, Napa cabbage, and would be perfect to make right now if you live in an area of the country that is already seeing local asparagus.

On the subject of Asian greens, here are three new ones we are trying in the market garden this year, in addition to tat soi, mizuna, and bok choy. (Most of our greens seeds come from High Mowing Seeds and Fedco.)

Komatsuna: This winter, I read about this intriguing Japanese green (also called spinach mustard) in The Seasons on Henry’s Farm. Then I began seeing references to it in all kinds of places so decided I’d love to give it a try. Supposedly the leaves are glossy and do not really wilt when cooked. A turnip relative, the greens are best picked young and tender to be at their sweetest.

Te Yu Flowering Broccoli: Years ago, Chinese broccoli was on my radar when I lived in New York. But I never grew it. I’m excited to give it a try this spring before the hot weather comes. It is fairly stemmy with little florets, but should be very tasty.

Mibuna: This delicate and very early green is quite similar to Mizuna except that the tips of the leaves are rounded rather than serrated. I’ll plan to use this in salads as soon as I can.

I also got all excited about the new frilly varieties of mustard I saw last year, so I wound up starting seeds for three of those—Ruby Streaks, Golden Frill, and Pink Lettucy. I know, I know, what was I thinking? One would have been enough.

In the lettuce department, here are three new ones I’m excited about:

Pirat Butterhead: A beautiful heading lettuce with pale green inner leaves, lime green outer leaves, and red tips. Sometimes called Pirate lettuce (I don’t know why, matey), this German heirloom is supposed to be very flavorful, so I can’t wait to try it.

 

Revolution: I’m hoping this red frilly Lollo-Rosso style lettuce will grow a bit more vigorously than others I’ve tried in the past. It should be a stunning addition to our farm stand mix.

Kinemontpas Butterhead: This French heirloom supposedly grows into giant deep-green buttery heads if you can resist picking it before then. Yes, I have a knack for choosing the hard-to-pronounce varieties.

Antares Oakleaf: The Fedco catalogue calls this, “A shimmery pink and bronze oakleaf growing vigorously to magnificent size. The extra-frilled finely cut bright leaves are colorful and tender, not bitter even in early July.”  Another one to look forward to!

 

I hate to tell you how many more greens we are growing other than those I’ve mentioned here. Despite doubling the size of the market garden, we are still going to be tight on space. Hmmm… maybe it would help if I promised not to take up too many beds with the greens. Promises, promises. We’ll see!

(Enjoy the soup recipe and don’t forget to pre-order The Fresh & Green Table. Your independent bookstore can order it from IndieBound so please patronize them if you can.)

 

Spicy Noodle Hot Pot with Bok Choy, Shiitakes, Ginger, Lime & Peanuts

For such a quick soup, this one is darn satisfying. Thanks to the bold flavors of ginger, lime, soy sauce, and cilantro—and the intriguing flavor of one of my favorite greens (bok choy)—the soup packs a punch without much fuss. I do take one extra little step of sautéing the shiitakes separately in a nonstick pan; otherwise they can stick before browning or cooking through. I also take a clue from Asian cooks and boil the soup noodles separately. (They can soak up a lot of liquid if added raw to the soup. This works out nicely, as it means you can distribute the noodles evenly among four soup bowls and then add the tasty broth, the greens, and the fun condiments. Heads of bok choy vary tremendously. You can use any size; just cut off a bit of the bottom, quarter lengthwise, and slice crosswise. Use plenty of the leafy tops, where there is lots of flavor. If you can’t find fresh Chinese egg noodles (in the produce section of the grocery), substitute with another fresh egg pasta (such as Italian linguine or fettucine).

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kosher salt

6 oz. fresh Chinese egg noodles, torn into slightly shorter pieces

1/2 tsp. toasted sesame oil

1 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice

1 tsp. packed brown sugar

2 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. peanut or vegetable oil

3 1/2 oz. (1 package) shiitakes, stemmed and thinly sliced

2/3 cup thinly sliced shallots (about 3 oz. or 3 small shallots)

1 lb. bok choy (use both leaves and stalks), cored, quartered lengthwise, washed thoroughly, and sliced crosswise

1 Tbs. chopped fresh ginger

1 Tbs. chopped fresh garlic

1/2 tsp. Asian chili-garlic sauce (more to taste)

2 cups low-sodium chicken broth

3 to 4 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro

3 to 4 Tbsp. chopped roasted peanuts

2 Tbsp. finely sliced scallions

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Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the egg noodles and cook until tender, about 2 to 3 minutes. Drain in a colander, rinse briefly, and let dry a bit. Transfer to a bowl and toss with a big pinch of salt and the sesame oil.

In a small bowl, stir together the soy sauce, lime juice, and brown sugar. Set aside.

In a medium (10-inch) nonstick skillet, heat 2 tsp. of the oil over medium-low heat. Add the shiitakes and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring, until tender and just starting to brown, about 6 to 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and reserve.

In a 4- to 5-quart Dutch oven or other soup pot, heat the remaining 2 Tbsp. oil over medium-low heat. Add the shallots and a pinch of salt, and cook, stirring, just until the shallots are softened and many are browning, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the bok choy and 1/2 tsp. salt, and stir until all the leaves are wilted, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger, and chili-garlic sauce and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the cooked shiitakes, the chicken broth, and two cups of water to the pan. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and let sit for 5 minutes. Stir in the soy-lime mixture and 2 Tbsp. of the cilantro.

Distribute the noodles evenly among 4 deep soup bowls. Use tongs to arrange most of the greens over the noodles in each bowl, and then ladle the remaining broth and soup contents into each bowl, distributing evenly.Garnish each bowl of soup with more cilantro, the scallions, and the peanuts. Serve right away with both a fork and spoon.

Serves 4

The Recipes

Project Central: From Pea Trellis to Eggmobile

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This is the time of year when I start making Roy really nice dinners. Actually, that’s a lie. There isn’t enough time in the day (despite, or maybe because of, Daylight Savings Time) to make really nice dinners. But still I try to be extra sweet. Because there is much building to do. And no little garden elf to do it. (Or cushy budget.) My carpentry skills are extremely limited (okay, you knew that), but I excel at creating situations that need immediate structural solutions.

So as if there weren’t enough on Roy’s list (the new eggmobile for the 50 chicks we just ordered, the hoop house, the new garden enclosure, and, oh, a bigger farm stand), I keep coming up with more stuff. Mostly small things that he can do quickly, but still it means cramming it in after work or stopping a bigger project on the weekend to help me solve a dilemma.

Sunday, after waffling for days on this decision, I chose a bed to plant the peas in. Originally, I had planned to put the peas along a fence on one side of the garden, but the bed there has a cover crop of rye grass in it that hasn’t decomposed enough. I’ve turned the rye over, but it takes three to four weeks to break down, and since rye inhibits germination, I’m wary of planting the peas there. I’ve been eyeballing a couple other beds, but the single enclosed raised bed we have (the one that Roy built for the carrots last year) was the easiest to get ready.

I trucked some of our lovely compost over in my jolly red wheelbarrow (oh how I wish we had acres more of this compost) and mixed and fluffed the bed until it was chocolate-cake perfect. Then I stared at it and began to envision some bamboo-and-twine contraption I was going to create for a trellis. I paced over to the lumber pile and back a few times, thought about whether I could attempt something that involved screws, and finally decided that the most expeditious thing to do was to go ask Roy to build me (us) a pea trellis.

He was cutting wood for a work table he’s building to bend the hoops for the hoop house. But he stopped, came over, got the post-hole digger, dug three holes, sunk three 4 x 4s, found a super-long piece of pipe (above) for the top bar, cut two pieces of extra deer fencing we have, got some zip-ties to attach the mesh, and created a pea trellis in no time. Yeah. At least I had enough sense to ask. This year, with all we have going on, there is no time to waste. Stuff just has to get done.

To be fair, sometimes I get something really nice that I didn’t even ask for. Like the deluxe seed starting shelving this year. This baby holds 16 flats and 4 sets of double lights. (And of course I already have it almost completely filled.) The shelves are adjustable, and Roy built the whole thing to sit on the mudroom counter (the removable bookshelf has temporarily gone upstairs). It works. Mostly I’ve got greens going right now—lots and lots of lettuce, bok choy, chard, kale, tat soi, mizuna, plus a few new greens like Chinese broccoli and mibuna (more on that in another post). Soon it will be time to start the tomatoes and peppers and flowers…and, well, we might run out of room if I don’t get those greens transitioned outside. But don’t tell Roy. He just built this cute little work table for me, too.

eggs & breakfast, Farm life, Sustain, The Garden, The Recipes

Could You Have Nest-Box-Checking Disorder?

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Anyone who works at home should have a chicken coop. Forget rummaging through the refrigerator, surfing Facebook, or even sneaking a spell on the couch to flip through catalogues (I never do that)—checking the hens’ nesting boxes for eggs is the best procrastinating maneuver ever. I should know. I’ve been getting up from the computer about 12 times a day to go outside and look for eggs. I guess I have Nest-Box-Checking Disorder, because I can’t help myself. Finding an egg in the hay—especially when it is still warm and I can hold it in my cold hands like a little hot water bottle—is like Christmas morning, over and over again. (Much better than Groundhog Day.)

During the darkest days of winter, we were only getting a couple of eggs a day. Now that the days are growing longer (we’ll have a whopping10 full hours of daylight on Feb. 11), the ladies are laying more. (Some gals were molting, too, so they were redirecting their energies towards changing their feathers rather than laying.) Sometimes when I go to check, there are three or four eggs lying together—almost always in the same box, as these girls have a strange preference for crowding. We keep a special bowl in the mudroom for collecting the day’s eggs, so that anyone can add to it. (Roy often checks the boxes first-thing when he comes home from work, as he has Nest-Box-Checking Disorder, too. The hardest thing to do for both of us is to refrain from checking when Libby is here, because, after all, it’s not a very nice thing for an adult to usurp this especially kid-friendly activity.) At the end of the day, we count up the eggs, ooh and ah over the different shapes and colors and speckles, and refrigerate them.

Even if there aren’t any eggs in the boxes, I still get a kick out of visiting with the ladies. They make all kinds of clucking noises and rush from their outer pen to greet me, as they know I often have lettuce or hamburger buns or leftover roasted vegetables for them. It’s a good life these gals lead; we just got them a special heated chicken-waterer so their water isn’t frozen over in the morning. (Actually, the present was more for us, as walking back to the house to change the water every morning is a pain.)

While I love checking on the ladies, I have elevated the art of procrastination to include all of the animals on the farmette. Cocoa Bunny literally runs circles around her cage if you bring her a green treat (like these Brussels sprouts), and Farmer is up for a good walk about a zillion times a day. Most mornings, and usually almost every evening around dusk, Farmer and I track the wild bunnies, which thrive here in a Watership Down kind of way. God knows how many there are—maybe thousands? There were so many tracks in the snow this morning that Farmer’s nose was snow-encrusted with all that sniffing.

If all else fails, my last procrastination technique is to look out the window right next to my desk. If there aren’t birds snacking at the birdfeeder Roy has kindly hung within my sight, then a group of six or eight wild turkeys is often strolling by, just a few feet away. They’re good for a glance or two. But I don’t think I’ll ever get Bird-Watching Disorder. After all, looking out the window is not half as much fun as actually getting up from the computer and walking outside. And coming back in with something good to eat.