Fall Harvest

I just pulled up the last of the mammoth snow pea vines today. I should have done it weeks ago, but amazingly, some of them were still bearing until just recently. Even today, a couple of the vines were still green, and I pulled some fresh pods off them. Not very many, but still...snow peas in late September. I also harvested a bunch of lemon cucumbers and a few of the green spacemasters, which I'll pickle tomorrow.

I picked up most of the fallen yellow delicious apples from around the tree, most of which were still green and had codling moth damage. Then I washed them off and cut them apart, separating the good parts from the bad. At first, I thought it might be a case of diminishing returns, but as the good apple parts began to pile up in the pan, I realized that that wasn't the case. The good pieces/parts filled the large pan I had, and after I'd boiled them a while and put them through the Squeezo to remove the skins and turn them into sauce, I ended up with a quart and a half of applesauce. Not only that, but this applesauce tasted so good on its own that I added absolutely nothing to it. No sugar, no cinnamon--nothing but apples, cooked and strained, then cooked just a touch more. I didn't can it, but it'll keep just fine in the fridge and be eaten up soon enough; the kids have been asking for applesauce, and now they have some. I'm just glad that not all of the apples from our tree will have gone to waste after raising a new generation of codling moths.

I also brought in a decent-sized bowl of green beans, and there should be enough to can maybe a couple more quarts. We didn't get as many as I'd have liked, but on the other hand, we did eat a lot more fresh this year than we have in the past, and we still have plenty of canned quarts left over from last year's canning.

Tomorrow I need to hit the bigger part of the garden and get all the tomatoes that are ready--maybe enough to can a quart or two of sauce, or so I'm hoping. The aphids have decimated most of the volunteer kale, but I think there's one plant still in decent shape, and there's self-seeded baby spinach starting to grow in the spinach bed. I brought in a few more of our white carrots, and then had to cut the largest of the new Rosa Bianca eggplants, as it had grown so large and heavy that it pulled the plant over onto its side. I think it'll straighten up gradually, as there are two smaller eggplants forming over on the opposite side. This latest eggplant is even larger than the last one. I'd thought Rosa Biancas would be small to medium in size and more pink and white, but these are nearly as big as the standard large purple eggplants, and they're actually purple and white in color. I'm impressed at what we've gotten from just the three plants--well, technically just the one plant so far, but the other two are forming fruits as well. All told, I'm delighted and amazed by how much harvest we've gotten from our small garden, and how much I've actually been able to put away for winter. We'll still have to buy some things to put away and some to suppliment us this winter, but we've made a huge step in the right direction this year. I ended up harvesting, processing and cooking all evening, but given that it's the Autumnal Equinox and a harvest festival, it seems fitting.

Changing a Carbon Footprint

For several years, my family and I have been setting out items at curbside for recycling. When we moved to our newer house, I asked the recycling service to give me an extra recycle bin for when our to-be-recycled items exceed the capacity of the first bin. We've actually used the second bin quite a bit, especially when plastic and cardboard packaging materials start to pile up.

The last time we set out our garbage can, I looked inside to see just how much garbage we were actually contributing to the landfill. There at the bottom of the large bin I saw two kitchen-sized garbage bags and one smaller bag. That's it--for a family of four, for one week. I'm pretty proud of us. We also set out two recycle bins filled to bursting with used cardboard, paper, plastic, and steel cans. Every so often, we drop off items such as glass at the recycling center, since the curbside service won't pick up glass. We donate miscellaneous used items to a local thrift store, and we have two Earth Machine compost bins in the backyard, tucked away near the back fence between the garden and the roses, which not only help mitigate any odor (which is actually very little, if you have a good composter) but also screen the black plastic from view. I've mentioned before that these composters look like big Darth Vader helmets, but they get the job done. We dump veggie or grain-based kitchen waste into one while the other cooks away on an earlier batch of compost. When that one finishes, we'll switch. It's perfect for a family of four, and for a good three years or so, we haven't had to throw out any kitchen waste into the garbage unless it's meat-based. All the veggie peelings, fruit, grain and the like go into the composter--not to mention any of the lawn clippings that we don't need to lay on the pathways in the garden to help keep the non-edible weeds at bay. With the composters, we've been able to reduce our garbage down to a surprisingly small amount, when even in families of only two people, we've observed huge loads of garbage being thrown out. My daughters and I speculated recently about what the garbage men must think when they come to our house. Maybe they heave a sigh of relief and say, "Oh, good! There's the house where the garbage can is never heavy and never hurts my back." You're very welcome, Sanitation Engineers!

It's not that hard to change a carbon footprint. Recycling and composting can take care of most of the waste from even a large household, and it's so easy that after just a short time of doing it, it soon becomes an old, familiar habit. I really think that if we all just pitched in, cleaned up our acts and houses and recycled most of our waste, collectively we'd make a huge difference for our planet. I hope that soon more people will come to realize just how vitally important this is.

Pickles

Finally there were enough cucumbers the right size at the same time to make pickles. I did them tonight; I got a pint of green cucumbers, a quart of green cucumbers, and a quart of lemon cucumbers. They all sealed--yay! I'm still hoping for a few more this month; there are still plenty of flowers on the plants. One of the lemon cucumber plants is even trying to climb right up the side of the apple tree. It's strange to look into the apple tree and see cucumbers hanging there.

I haven't decided yet whether to buy some pickling cukes from one of the farmers at the market. I'd much rather have home-pickled organic cucumbers than the ones from the big-box stores, but the pickling does take a lot of work and a lot of time, and I still have most of the asparagus pickles I made earlier this spring. I have to think about it and decide while I can still get cukes at the market. Hmm.

Blessed

I am amazed at how well our garden has done this year, despite the few setbacks. The tomatoes have been ripening, and not only are they producing pretty decent amounts of tomatoes, but some are of an astonishing size as well. When I go to pick them, often they practically fall into my hand, and the taste makes me never want to eat a store-bought tomato again. It's like the difference between a meal of bread and water and a six-course feast. The tomatoes in the basket are from the Amish paste plants that I started from seed in my house back in February.



These are my three eggplants, and as you can see, the largest plant has produced an eggplant of enormous size for the heirloom variety called Rosa Bianca. It's bigger than any of the ones I've seen offered for sale at the farmers' market this year!






























The beans are tying for a new batch of flowers, for another producing run before fall frosts hit. The mammoth melting snow peas lasted late into the summer. We're getting cucumbers now--both lemon cukes and the little spacemasters, so I need to do some pickling while they're still in production. The volunteer kale seems to be going nuts as though to make up for what we lost earlier this summer. White carrots are maturing and look good, and I'm able to save seed from the radishes for next year. Just being out there with the plants, looking at all the food they're producing for my family makes me happy. Other than eating out, we've been living off local food all summer with very few non-local items on our table. We all seem to be in pretty good health, and even the kids now turn up their noses at the sickly pale big-box-grocery-store tomatoes. If asked my opinion on the local food experiment and getting more fully in tune with the planet, I'd have to say we've been blessed.

Harvest

Wow, it's been a month since I last posted! It's hard to believe that much time has gone by already. We've been harvesting things from the long planting beds next to the north fence, which helps mitigate the damage to the greens bed from the neighbors' household cleaner a few weeks ago.

I've gotten a wonderful harvest of edible snow peas this year--and I'm actually still getting a few, though they're nearly done now. This was an heirloom variety called mammoth snow pea; they grow very tall and produce long into the season. We'll definitely be growing them next year; their sprout rate was almost perfect. Beans in the north beds are coming on, as are cucumbers, so soon I'll need to be pickling cukes and canning beans. I can't freeze much more right now, as we still haven't managed to clean out the garage enough for a new chest freezer yet--but we'll have to soon as our beef will be ready in a month or two.

The tomato plants are busily making nice tomatoes, but I'm not sure all the Amish Paste tomatoes are actually Amish Paste. Some look different from others, as though maybe someone at the seed company made a mistake and some are a different variety. Oh, well. They look good, anyway, and I'm sure we'll be able to eat them, so no big deal. The Principe Borghese look great--about the size of small apricots and a nice tangy taste even after being dehydrated. I'll dehydrate most of these, except for the ones we use on pizzas over the next month or two. This particular heirloom variety is the one touted as being best for making sun-dried tomatoes, although I did not sun-dry them. I used the dehydrator. Much faster.

We've also gotten what little broccoli was available, but I'll be removing the plants from the bed soon, to give the beans more room and sun. We've got nice sweetmeat squash coming on as well, growing right out of the mound underneath the apple tree, easily watered from the lawn sprinklers. And a volunteer red winter kale has been producing nicely, which also helps mitigate the greens damage. The largest eggplant is getting a flower finally, and there are peppers on some of the pepper plants I put in between the tomato plants, so we'll at least get a few of those.

The greatest gift of all was a windfall of some free apricots--very small ones, but lots of them, from a big old giant tree that was probably planted near an old farmhouse long ago. There are enough of these sweet little fruits, maybe, to help satisfy my older daughter's craving for apricot jam, though they're far too ripe to process as anything but jam or fruit leather. I'm still hoping for some apricots and peaches to can just as fruit in light syrup, rather than making into jam. But at least the jam for this year will be taken care of, much to my relief. The kids won't feel anywhere near as fruit-deprived over the winter if they can still get strawberry or apricot jam or fruit leather from time to time. And there are always the winter apples, which usually hold out a long time--leaving only a tiny gap between the last of them and the first of the strawberries.

All in all, it isn't too bad a harvest, even with the earlier garden mishap.

Poisoned

Our neighbor decided to clean and then re-stain her back fence. So she got some stuff called "household cleaner", mixed it up and put it in the tank of a power sprayer. First, she misted the cleaner all over the fence--a reasonably gentle spray, but still capable of spreading to other places in the vicinity. Then she proceeded to power-blast the supposed dirt off her back fence, sending up a great plume of cleaner/water about fifteen feet high. Some of that hit the back corner of my garden, which isn't very large to begin with.

After my younger daughter came running to me in distress, I went out to see what had happened, and found the leaves on the lambs quarters nearest the fence, plus all the leaves in my three-foot-square bed nearest the fence covered with huge droplets of this chemical-laced water. I yelled to the woman to stop, and asked her what she was using, which she first claimed was just water, then explained that the stuff in the sprayer's tank was the cleaner diluted with water. "But I used a different nozzle," she explained. I looked at the bottle of cleaner, which just said "Household Cleaner" and did not list any ingredients but warned that the stuff could not be eaten, as it was poison. The problem is, the chemical water and the regular water still went through the same sprayer attachment, different nozzle notwithstanding, so even if it was just the "regular water" that hit my plants, it would still have some of that chemical in it. I called Sears, who could not help me at all. Then I called Craftsman, who could not find a chemical list for "Household Cleaner" but who advised that I treat it as you would any household cleaner and DO NOT INGEST. Which of course means that I cannot eat any of my vegetables from that bed.

All of my beets, kale, chard, and collard greens are useless now. I had to pull up the entire bed worth of greens and throw them all away, because there is no way to be sure that even if you wash the greens, that household cleaner would not still be on the leaves. (I also lost that one standard cabbage I had blogged about earlier--it was in the neighboring bed but had water droplets on it.) I don't even know what the case is with the soil underneath the plants--did some of that cleaner run down into my soil, and how will that impact my abilty to replant?

The woman knows that I lost the entire bed worth of greens and that it's her fault. She apologized and agreed that when it comes time to paint/stain the fence in that corner, she'll do it by hand. But it's too late. The damage is already done. She just cost my family well over two month's worth of organically grown greens--what we would have consumed, what the plants would have continued making, and what I might have been able to put away for the off season. If my daughter hadn't seen what happened, what then? Our greens would have sat there in the hot sun, absorbing water laced with household cleaner, which we would later have consumed. In essence, our neighbor poisoned my family and didn't even realize what she was doing.

I feel sick.

Support Your Local Farmer

I know people are concerned about what they consider to be the food crisis. I know they're worried that the government's subsidizing of farmers growing corn for ethanol will mean more food shortages for us, since the farmers will then grow corn for ethanol and not for food. But there is another way to look at that. Maybe instead of a problem, this can be a chance to improve our whole food system and take it in a more sustainable direction.

If you want good, healthy food grown sustainably and in season, consider supporting your local small farmers. You know the ones I mean--the ones who sell their produce at farmers' markets and through CSA's. Quite frankly, the food is amazing. I haven't bought produce other than certain items that aren't grown locally (like mushrooms) from a big box store in months. I've grown lettuce, kale, spinach, beets and beet greens, snow peas, michili, and radishes all in my tiny backyard garden. Lamb's quarters have provided themselves for free, as have sunflowers. I've purchased supplementary spinach, kale, bok choy, lettuce, green onions, green garlic, carrots and potatoes from local small farmers since the farmer's markets opened in late April/early May. I've found no-spray local strawberries and put up jam, and tomorrow I'm going after blueberries. My family has eaten fantastic sausage, pork chops and more from that same farm. My own apple tree in the backyard is laden with apples, and a friend's family has a tree full of cherries. Another friend has grapes she doesn't want, as I've mentioned before, and I've also purchased a grapevine of my own. The food is available, and it's wonderful. It's not that hard to do this. It just takes an open mind and a commitment to quality. The local farmers are wonderful people I would never have met if I hadn't decided to get out of the big-box rat race. If I help support them I'm also helping myself to better food and ultimately, better health. (For one thing, I'm not worried about getting a tomato contaminated with E-Coli. Last year it was spinach, this year it's tomatoes. What next?) In the wake of GMO's, E-Coli, and food labeling problems, supporting my local farmers sounds like a win-win to me.