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gardening

“Avid Gardner”

Ever notice how squirrels stash away nuts in the fall in underground emergency stockpiles? Yeah, I get that sentiment. Every spring. I morph into an avid gardner right around the first of February when snow-fatigue sets in.

Which is why my seed mail orders are arriving this week. Each delivery is like a little party to celebrate spring. A surprise party, as I can never remember exactly what I ordered weeks ago. I’m super into heirloom varieties, apparently. Tomatoes in particular – it appears I love me some tomato seeds.

I oggle over each packet then place it in the box with my other seeds. The ones I got in the mail last year. As well as the year before. Plus the year before that. I have the spirit of a farmer except farmer’s seeds actually make it into the ground. This is not a problem as far as I’m concerned. In a zombie apocalypse I got this thing covered.

Thank goodness for our local farmers who get those seeds in the ground every spring:

by Misty Schutt

Pickles

Frig Pickles

Nerd confession: one of my favorite guilty pleasures is to curl up with a jar of ice-cold pickles, a pair of chopsticks, and binge-watch Doctor Who episodes with The Husband. Crunchy dill and Tardis. Mmmmmm.

Watermelon Cucumbers

We’re refrigerator-pickling fools this year. There’s a constant squirreling away into briny jars every manner of leftover onion, garlic, zucchini and cukes. Poor chickens are getting huffy over the MIA veg scraps to which they’ve grown accustomed. I feel a lawsuit brewing.

I’ve discovered my deep-rooted childhood hate of zucchini can be attributed to the fact that they never came fresh or picked at the peak of ripeness (ours were often over-grown, spongy things ruining an otherwise perfectly good summer salad) but now, oh, I love me some young zucchini spears marinated in tangy cider vinegar and spices.

Boothby’s Heirloom Blonde Cucumbers

On a lark I picked up a quart of watermelon cucumbers at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago. Adorable, mild little buggers but what to do with them? A three-week soak in apple cider vinegar and peppercorns has drawn them out of shy. And if you want to get all fussy about it these look pretty sliced up in a salad or tucked into a bento box.

But my favorite pickle by far comes from our little Boothby’s Blonde Summer Cucumber. These heirloom cucumbers originate in Maine and are the sweetest and loveliest I’ve eaten. They are a squat little yellow veg that puzzled us at first because we couldn’t tell when they were ‘done’ on the vine. As a pickle they are the finest.

And we grew them in our backyard garden which makes them taste even better and The Doctor all the more thrilling.

by Misty Schutt

Mint Tea

By nature I expect things to be complicated. When it turns out a thing is simple it feels like magic.

Do you know what I mean when I say tea possesses a de-frazzling effect? Besides the flavor and aroma, and the pleasing tink of china on china, tea requires us to suspend all other activity and focus on the ceremony of preparing a perfectly brewed pot.

Not long ago The Husband invited me to raid his mint patch for my evening tea regiment. Instant confusion. What was he talking about, using his garden mint for tea? Surely tea-making entailed many complex and expensive steps? Dehydrating leaves? Grinding stuff? I searched the web. The answer was so simple. You’re probably savvy and already know this but for a food-growing newbie like me it was a lovely discovery: brewing homemade tea is easy. The plant simply seeps in the pot. Or, to be more precise:

Cut 3 stalks of mint low on the stem.
Rinse under water; dry with a clean kitchen towel.
Roll stalks firmly and briskly between the palms of your hands.
Form a nest with the stalks in the bottom of your teapot.
Pour boiling water into the pot.
Steep 4 minutes before enjoying (leave the mint in for stronger tea).

The flavor of natural mint tea is light and sweet and equal to any of the commercially-produced teas on which I confess to spending a small fortune. As a bonus, rolling stalks between your palms releases mint oil that aromatizes the air. Sorta like a soothing Glad air freshener, except it’s free and won’t poison your kids or pets if they eat it. Magic, indeed.

by Misty Schutt

Home-grown

This weekend was all about homesteading rhythms and rotations. We moved our third batch of chicks out of a heated corral and into an out door coop; we transferred Cornish Rocks into a new on-pasture paddock; we planted the garden; and after weeks of YouTube how-to videos we harvested our first meat birds. By “we” I mean The Husband and the Mother In Law (MIL); I operated the water nozzle, the most important task in chicken harvesting, ask anyone.

Best laid plans

After spending our winter planning the precise layout and content of our first ‘real’ garden we decided last second to plant elsewhere and give the larger space to our chickens. Call us nuts, but either the trees around the new garden grew exponentially over the winter or the Earth’s orbit around the sun is slightly askew this spring because we definitely remember there being more sunlight in that area. I admit it would have been handier had we made this shade-related observation prior to planting all the full-sun seeds. Eager to find a fix I scoured the web for vegetable varieties willing to thrive in not-exactly-tons-of-sun-like-we-remembered situations and it turns out turnips and beans would be well suited. Thank goodness for that on account of me hankering for a plate of those two things practically on a daily basis.

Plucking

As for the poultry dispatchment and evisceration I will say I took considerable comfort in the predictability of anatomy. Everything was situated exactly where YouTube said they would be and nothing unexpected occurred during the course of harvesting. The tasks I worried most about were accomplished quickly and then the mechanics of the process kicked in. Plus the MIL has an uncanny knack for defusing tense, possibly gross moments with sly and unpredictable humor.

Dressed, our birds weighed in at four and a half pounds apiece. The Husband stuffed one with boquet garni from his herb garden and slid it in the oven. Delicious. We’ve been customers of October Rose Farm long enough to know pastures and sunshine and fresh air make better baked chicken than antibiotics and growth hormones and steroids. Go figure. Unanticipated was our increased sense of independence, security and satisfaction. Home-grown is a powerful liberty. Even when you screw up the garden.

The new hen yard.

Dinner

by Misty Schutt

Little Seed

Imagine my joy when our seed orders arrived in this morning’s mail. To set the mood Mother Nature, coy thing, saw fit to rain. Ok fine: rain on the feather-edge, at times more ice than drops and frequently interspersed with fat snowflakes but rain nonetheless and by dinner the deck was completely bare and we seized a rare opportunity to grill, why not, and savor an unmistakable flavor of summer. Cheers to the last day of February.

Seeds. Is there any other thing more magic in all our world? Toss a bit of dirt over them and in a few turns of the sun they burst forth, able to feed our body and our soul. Is there satisfaction more sublime than food grown in one’s own garden, tended to day after day and ripened by the sun? As I spread the packets across the table I wondered how many canning jars, dinners, platefuls, mouthfuls these seeds represented. How much togetherness? How many kitchen hours spent chattering on and on about our day, laughing, chasing the dog out from underfoot, tossing her clandestine morsels, sampling our own concoctions, coming together tableside to savor our company and the meal we prepared together?

Such an astounding return on investment, seeds.

by Misty Schutt

January 1st Thanksgiving

January 1st. I dearly love the first day of a new year. Before us shines self-fulfilling prophecies, the link between Belief and Behavior so clear on this day that it blazes like the sun and beckons for us to follow.

Thank you, October Rose Farm,
for all the sage advice.

More importantly, hardly any of us have had time or opportunity to really screw the year up yet. It really is a very good feeling.

New Years is my Thanksgiving and on this day I give thanks for the good people and things that 2012 brought into my life:

I am so thankful for my husband, daughter and brothers who are also friends and for friends who have become like family.

Thank you, Elderberry
Pond Farm, for the
gardening tips.

I am thankful for the people who grew or produced the food that nourished us so deliciously this year, and for the friendships we have forged with each of them.

I am grateful that we live in a place where fresh local food is abundant. I am thankful for the little seeds of change that are slowly shifting our thinking about food. And I am thankful for a husband who loves to cook, the obvious disadvantages of this fact notwithstanding.

My NB 510’s: a.k.a. life changers.
For which I am so thankful.

I must also give thanks to the New Balance 510 cross trainer running shoes I bought in August at the Bass Pro Shop for undoing 10 years of burning Achilles pain caused by a pair of badly fitting pink sneakers I bought off the internet a decade ago. To be free of foot pain after so many years is life altering, and certainly one of this year’s highlights. Yes, I bought a second pair of the NB 510’s to replace this pair when it wears out.

Thank you, Wake Robin Farm, for
putting family and community first.

Thank you, Owen Orchard, for
growing our favorite apples.

And I am thankful for the restless internal voice that keeps reminding me I’m not there yet; urges me to keep going; helps me visualize the link between belief and behavior when it doesn’t seem nearly as real nor blaze quite as brightly as it does on the first day of a new year.

Thank you, vendors at the 2012
Skaneateles Farmers Market.

So onward and upward. Vacation is over and the grind is at hand. What better way to get through the awfulness of a New York winter than by preparing for its inevitable concession to Spring? Did you know we northerners have just six weeks before our garden seeds must be started indoors? There are many choices to be made between then and now!

Thank you, Good Karma Garlic, for
turning your hobby into a product
we cannot live without.

I spent the last two days of 2012 plotting and scheming our 2013 Heirloom garden. And I have plans, people, big ones. It is time to find out if we can actually grow stuff in the back yard.

Thank you, Byrne Black Angus Farm,
for raising happy cows.

Of course there is always the possibility that we will look back on these ambitions in September over a glass of wine and guffaw. But just in case, a quick, final note to The Husband concerning our new garden: you know the bench in the corner of the yard that’s all set in cement? We’ll need to yank that out.

Quite possibly the maple tree, too.

My Diabolical 2013 Heirloom Gardening Plans.

by Misty Schutt

Good Karma Garlic

Good Karma Garlic

On October 11^th The Husband and I made our final journey to the Skaneateles Farmer’s Market, lamenting the insufferable shortness of Upstate New York’s growing season. What a delicious summer we had! And what passionate and inspiring people we met. And yet, here we were, at the end.

Since practically everything The Husband and I cook contains garlic (for which we are staunchly unapologetic), and since the folks at Good Karma Garlic grow the very best in our region, we bee-lined to their table to stock up.

“You should come out to the house and see what we’ve been up to,” Marty said with a twinkle in his eye. “We’re experimenting with ways to extend the growing season.”

Extend the growing season? Experiments? Yes, Marty, we will come.

Just four years ago, inspired by Chester Aaron’s book Garlic is Life, Good Karma Garlic’s Barb and Marty purchased and planted a variety pack of garlic bulbs. Just for fun. They planted a second crop from the resulting bounty. Then a third. Four short years later their gardening hobby has blossomed into a fresh-food family farmette of garlic, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce greens, beans, melons and much more from which The Husband and I – and many fortunate others in our area – happily feast.

And now there’s a hoop house.

“We want to see if we can grow our food through late fall and be the first to market in the spring,” Marty said. Inside the warmth of the hoop house we found growing newly-planted rows of peas, carrots, salad greens and beets. We mentioned to Marty how happy all this made us considering The Husband and my plans to take up canning and food preservation to carry us through the winter never actually materialized, and he immediately shared with us his tried-and-true tips for canning. Once again proving food is in his soul.

Now that their property is transforming into large garden patches, and Good Karma Garlic’s reputation for providing real food to the region is spreading, Marty and Barb have new plans for next season: they hope to start a long season, short season, and working share CSA. “We love growing things; it’s weeding we don’t really care for,” Marty confessed. Many hands make light work, and many folks eager to reap the benefits of locally-grown food will likely keep the gardens of Good Karma Garlic beautifully weed-free.

Garlic husks.

Thousands planted;
thousands more to go.

Because we can all use a little good karma in our lives.

To learn more about Good Karma Garlic’s 2013 CSA plans and farmer’s market schedule, contact them on Facebook.

Garlic & olive oil @ 400 degrees
for 45 minutes.

Spread on toast.

by Misty Schutt

How Does Your Garden Grow?

A pallet garden, under construction.

Let me tell you about a serendipitous chain of gardening events that happened to us last weekend: we got an Ace Hardware post card in Friday’s mail announcing free gardening work- shops in Skaneateles Saturday morning. We already had plans for Syracuse First’s CashMob in the city at noon so squeezing in a workshop beforehand was just crazy talk. But, darn it, the Ace line-up included a demonstration by Jackie Coyle on pallet gardens and I’ve been super curious about those things. So we went with crazy.

Jackie Coyle describes the
process of constructing a
pallet garden at Ace Hard-
ware in Skaneateles, NY

Jackie Coyle loves what she does,
and it shows.

What a cool last-second decision that turned out to be! Jackie, an Ace staff member and an ornamental horticultural student at SUNY Oswego, showed us how to use an inexpensive weed blocking fabric to form the base of our pallet garden and gave us tips on the types of plant that would flourish in this environment. Lettuce greens, for example, would be happily at home in our box, Jackie said.

Lou Lego gives a spring
gardening class at Elderberry
Pond Farm, Auburn NY

As fate would have it we were already RSVP’d for Elderberry Pond’s spring garden workshop on Sunday afternoon and that lesson focused on – what else – growing spring salad greens! Far be it from us to ignore the Universe’s call to get moving with our own spring garden. We worked this week on putting together our pallet garden and planting basil and lettuce.

The Husband and I try our hand
at pallet gardening.

Thank you, Skaneateles Town Square Ace, for the complimentary pallets, and thank you, Jackie Coyle and Lou Lego, for the excellent gardening tips. We’ll keep you posted on how things progress with our Pallet Gardens On The Deck.

To be continued…

GARDENING TIPS FROM THE EXPERTS

Lou Lego, Elderberry Pond Farm, Auburn, NY

“Plant smaller batches of the same vegetable in succession – about 10 days apart – and have a continuous supply of fresh produce all summer long.” – Lou Lego

Jackie Coyle, Ace Hardware,
Skaneateles, NY

“Lettuce plants have shallow roots and want to live in soil that holds moisture well, making them perfect candidates for a pallet garden. Don’t forget to water them daily!” – Jackie Coyle

by Misty Schutt

Earth Day at Elderberry Pond Farm

Elderberry Pond Farm, Auburn NY

To commemorate Earth Day The Husband, The Girl and I traveled four short miles to attend an “Early Garden Treasures” workshop at Elderberry Pond Farm. If you’re unfamiliar with Elderberry Pond you are missing out on one of the most beautiful, pristine farms in all of Upstate New York. More important than its loveliness, the farm is a superb example of how high quality sustainable food is grown. Elderberry is certified by the Northeast Organic Farming Association and what is immediately clear to anyone who visits is the passion Lou and Merby Lego – the He and She of the place — feel for what they do.

The Country Food Store at Elderberry Pond Farm

The workshop began with a presentation in the restaurant dining room where Lou discussed the differences between commercial farming and highly diversified organic farming. He shared with us tips for reducing the impact of common garden pests without using pesticides and which plant varieties work best in our region in his [considerable] experience. Afterward we walked over to the barn to take a look at the onion and leek starters waiting there to be planted and at the tomato plants Lou had grafted to produce a plant that is both root-hardy and flavorful. Finally, he took us to the greenhouse where spring vegetables for the restaurant are growing.

Sampling the greens

The workshop brimmed with sage gardening advice and we left feeling inspired to get our own garden going. You need not miss out: there are two more workshops scheduled in May. Check out the details here.

You can eat what they grow! The Elderberry Pond Restaurant is now open for spring. View a sample menu, learn about the chefs and find reservation information here.

The Country Store opens in June. Should I tell you the basil grown on Elderberry Pond Farm is the best on planet Earth? Only if you promise to leave me enough for my pesto.

by Misty Schutt