Official Hayseed

I picked my first ears of shoepeg corn last evening!

Yup, it's official! I'm a hayseed!

My Grandpa Orlin would be so proud of me. :) I sure do miss him, but I know he's in Heaven and healed.

We're having corn with dinner tonight.

Tomato Queen!

Can I just say that I ADORE my heirloom tomatoes, and have thusly declared myself to be Tomato Queen. :) I'm totally in love with these heirlooms that I planted this year!

I'm not much of a researcher. I can barely remember what I did two hours ago, much less remember to write down little things that I notice while meandering through the greens. But I'm noticing some really cool things, and I'm going to try to relay them to my readers who might be remotely interested in learning about heirloom variety vegetables.

When I saw the Pink Accordion in the Territorial Seed catalogue this year, I knew I had to have them. It was love at first sight. So bumpely and awkward, so big, such a pretty color! It had a to be a good choice.

It was!

These vines are absolutely enormous! They are reaching astonishing heights (for tomatoes), coming close to 4 feet tall. I have a green fruit that is probably 4 inches in diameter already, and it isn't even close to being full size. I'm guessing it still has about 2 more weeks before being fully ripe. The picture to the left is almost a month old, I'm just too lazy to go out and get a newer one right now. So imagine this same tomato, double sized.

Some people don't like the smell of tomato vines, but I actually like it. But I also love the smell of marigolds, which I'm told is very weird and most people can't stand them. I have strange olfactory tolerances I guess. Anyway, the pink accordians seem to have a more pungeant odor than some of the smaller variety and the vines are almost.... juicy. The vines are slick to the touch and leave a distinctive green stain on my fingers.

Hope to get a few more pics up of these guys as they progress and more observations when I make them. I really, really believe strongly in growing heirloom veggies though. It may be a stupid doomsday cliche, but you can't eat bars of gold when the economy collapses. You can, however, continue to thrive with heirloom variety plants!!

Corn, cucumbers, zucchini and tomatoes

Now that I've caught up from last week's complete waste - specifically, I'm talking about 4 days wasted practicing and then going to a rehearsals for a show that I was fired from, days that didn't get any cooking, cleaning, laundry or shopping accomplished - I was able to get outside today and go on a veggie hunt. It was exciting to see all the growth I missed last week! Such beautiful things have appeared over 7 days!

The corn is a towering 8 feet tall.  There are a few stalk that have silks coming out, and where there are silks, there are ears of corn! I'll need to spray them soon to keep the worms and other wretched things out so that we can actually enjoy eating the fruits of our labor. Underneath the enormous leaves and stalks are 3 squash vines. I originally thought that I had planted pattypan squash, because that's what the package said, but strangely enough, the fruit I harvested off one of the vines today was NOT pattypan squash at all! It's a jack-be-little gourd! Well, that's just fine, because the other vines do have pattypans on them, and I love unexpected surprises.

I planted the squash because I read that it is a Native American technique that works really well. Planting corn, beans and squash all together provide all three plants with vital nutrients, supports and water retention. It has worked brilliantly! The other thing I have noticed is that my zucchini and pumpkins are struggling with powdery mildew, which I have to spray almost every day. But the squash that is planted with the corn has not had a speck of powdery mildew. Coincidence? I think not.

The tomatoes are FINALLY turning red!! Whew, I thought I was going to go out of my mind waiting! Just one so far, but the others will follow suit soon. It looks kind of funny all by itself though doesn't it? :)  The last 7 days have been insanely hot and humid - perfect tomato weather.

There are tons of zucchini and I'm going to have to make zucchini pickles sometimes this week. I've never tried them, but I'll be using Grandma Betty's recipe. I'm also going to be on the hunt for unusual zucchini recipes. There HAS to be something besides zucchini bread to make with these lovely green squashes! I'll make pickles of course, and I have been working on a recipe of my own that involves stuffing these guys with cheese and sausage. My vegan and vegetarian recipe books are about to get a serious scouring for zucchini recipes.

Last but not least, there are the tiniest starts of cucumbers now! Sweet pickle recipes to be attempted soon!

A Giant Corn Privacy Fence.

I don't know if I have mentioned the neighbor lady who lives behind us. I will call her Patty, which is not actually her real name, but we'll call her that anyway. I really try to be kind to my neighbors because the foundational cornerstone of my faith is "Love God and Love People". I know it's God's little way of reminding me that the world is full of nuts, flakes and fruity folk, because this can be very hard sometimes.

Well anyway, Patty complains ALL THE TIME about her health. She takes 300 pills per week and get 6 injections per week, and has migraines and seizures and so on and so forth. Seriously, this woman should be on death's doorstep and yet she persists to come over and complain to me about her health. If she is that ill, I wish she would stay in the house and stop pestering me. I do try to talk to her at least once a week, because, like I said, I am trying to be kind to my neighbors. I'm not about to be the snooty neighbor that no one wants to help or be around.

Unfortunately, Patty has become a bit of an annoyance. It's getting to where I don't enjoy going past the back door. This is bad because most of the good stuff in the garden is right outside the back door.

The funny thing is that Patty gave me some advice regarding my corn. Like me, she has problems with our mutual neighbor, Lowell, whom I KNOW I have mentioned before in exasperation. Patty's idea was for me to continue digging up my side yard and planting more of that amazing variety of corn that has grown to be higher than the gutters of our garage. "Just like a great big privacy fence!" were her exact words. So that Lowell couldn't see what we were doing on the patio.

Now that's actually not a bad idea. A great big corn privacy fence all the way around my garage and patio to block BOTH of them.

This picture was taken one week ago. The corn stalks are actually higher than the gutters now.

A Few More Images

Obviously I love my little 'farm'. I'd love it better if I could tear the neighbor's house down and expand onto their lot, but that wouldn't be very neighborly, would it?? Anyway, I dug some new potatoes last night, pulled baby carrots, clipped lavender spears, and dug weeds until dusk and I was so happy doing it. Here are a few of the pictures I took:

We Have Food!

"WE HAVE FOOD!"

That's what I hope to say when our economy goes belly-up, the America dollar plunges to worthless and no one can afford food anymore. Or maybe I was listening to a doomsday prophet again. I shouldn't do that.

Anyway, I've been working pretty hard on the pantry and emergency food storage. I'm kinda proud! I think right now, we could probably live for a week on what's in our pantry. It will be better after this growing season. Now what we really, really need is a chest freezer. Everyone in my family had one. It's a critical piece of food storage equipment and we really need to make the investment.

I cored and sliced 8 flippin' quarts of strawberries! Good Lord, when that was over, my hands were frozen, numb and stained red, but I have 2 big bags in the freezer and one in the fridge. (One that is now half empty because I used half of it to bake a pie tonight.

I bought 3 pounds of rhubarb at the market last week, and also used about half of it to bake pie tonight. The other half I sliced up and stuck in the freezer. Vegetarian Times had a 5 recipes to try with rhubarb in the May/June issue. There has to be a use for it besides pie! Alex won't touch it of course, so it will be up to me to give the ol' college try.

Tonight I choked down a pork chop, again, and decided that I am probably heading back to my vegetarian diet. It's hard to eat in my house. Alex, my sweet hubs, is deathly allergic to poultry, so we never eat chicken or turkey. Unfortunately, he is also a picky eater, so he won't touch a veggie with a ten foot pole. (Pretty sure I've mentioned this predicament once or twice before.) But he will willingly eat carrots, when prepared right, corn, potatoes, bell peppers when served with stir fry, and celery (but only raw with peanut butter). He has occasionally been willing to try other things, but by and large, he turns up his nose and frowns at my kitchen adventures when asked to taste-test. I'm not really sure if I am craving my vegetarian ways again because the garden has been so mouth watering, or if I am truly tired of eating meat, but either way, I'm collecting my vegger recipes together and getting ready to plunge into meatlessness soon.

A few updates from the garden:

The corn is almost waist high due to more excessive rainfall. (My waist, not a normal human's waist. So the corn is about 2 and a half feet tall.) I've only actually watered my garden once this year. The rest of the time, it has rained and then I have been sure to mulch with grass clippings to keep the moisture in.

I am going to go out and dig for a few new potatoes tomorrow. No, I really just cannot wait, its THAT urgent. :) I will leave the rest for a main crop, but I think since I have 7 plants and all will produce about 10 pounds of potatoes, we'll be okay this winter minus a few.

It's been chilly again all week. The summer solstice seemed to mock us here in Northern Indiana. My tomatoes, while flowering, have stalled in their growth again. I really need four or five good hot, humid days in a row to get the growth restarted and the fruiting process going.

Got the opportunity to hand-pollinate the zucchini this morning. Hooray for plant sex! (ROFLOL) 3 zucchini plants, all flowering, only one with actual fruit, but that fruit looks like they will be real winners.

I planted a new variety of cucumber a few days ago - a pickling gherkin. I have never liked dill pickles in my life, but strangely, I will eat sweet gherkins, so that's what I'm going to go with. I also planted some large-podded shelling peas, and I planted a LOT of them. I am really hoping for several pounds of shelled peas in the freezer for the winter.

The green beans are still small and weak. This is so strange to me because beans are supposed to be so simple to grow! I have successfully grown amazing things in this garden and the easiest veggie of all is giving me trouble?? Where is the justice?

The garden will eventually be completely overtaken with several kinds of squash vines. Yes, I am aware that I 'could' go and pull them out and I will do so eventually. But right now seeing the gorgeous green leaves makes me smile. I simply cannot bring myself to pulling them out. I purposely planted the zucchini and the pattypan squash. But the pumpkins and the gourds were not intentional and they are getting quite out of hand.

I am experimenting with a type of melon. I planted the seeds - quite late I might add - and I am more or less hoping for the best. If our growing season extends into October, as it sometimes does, I will probably have a few melons. But I am not wagering any money on having prize winning melons this summer. But wait until next year....

I will have a handful of ripe red raspberries in about a week.

My sunflowers are being devoured by earwigs. Time to break out the diazanon - which is a repulsive, but effective way to get rid of them.

I pulled a carrot out of the dirt two days ago. It was still a little short, but a perfect shade of orange and quite sweet, with just the right amount of bite.

Savory Leek Soup - Straight From The Garden

This morning was one of serious productivity. I had the grass mowed before 8:30 this morning and just now I dug up all of the onions and most of the leeks. The leeks were an interesting experiment for me from last year. They have been in my yard for almost a year now and I believe they struggled to grow almost as much as I struggled to lift them from the dirt. I unknowingly sowed their seeds in an area with heavy clay very close to the topsoil. The poor roots had nothing helping them achieve their fullest potential.

Though my leeks never got more than a half inch in diameter, they still had a fine flavor and sweet onionish fragrance. My plan all along for these babies was to make them into a savory leek soup with potatoes and freeze them for a day in the future winter when I can warm it up and think fondly back to this hundred degree, 100% humidity day in early June, when my deepest cares were simply the abundance coming out of the garden.

So this is the recipe. It would have been smart to take some pictures, but alas, I didn't think about that today. I just had digging and cooking on my mind.


Savory Leek and Potato Soup

6-8 small leeks (white and light green parts only), chopped
5 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed with a spoon
salt, pepper
two pinches of dried basil, or 4 fresh leaves chopped
3 cloves of fresh garlic
2 tablespoons butter
One can of vegetable broth (16 ounces)


In a saucepan, saute the leeks and garlic in butter until crisp tender.

After boiled and mashing the potatoes, add the broth to them and bring to a boil. 
Add leeks and garlic. Boil, stirring continuously. Mixture will be lumpy.
Season with salt, pepper and basil to taste.
Once the soup mixture is heated thoroughly, transfer the mixture to the food processor in batches and process until thick and smooth. Add milk if desired, to make the soup creamier and thinner.
Enjoy immediately, or put in freezer containers to enjoy at a later time! Especially delicious in a bread bowl, sprinkled with fresh cheese. :)

Creative Inventory Part 5

What activates your creative energy? What deactivates it?

I don't think I can even list all the things that get me in the mood to create!! I am inspired always by beautiful things. Now wait, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so what can I possibly mean by that? I guess it's more complicated than simply "I am inspired by beauty".

Remember how I said I have a natural talent for seeing the possible? It goes along with that. I am inspired by blank canvasses. A raw, uncut piece of fabric. A huge open stretch of land that has nothing growing on it yet. Entire days where I have nothing that has to be done! (I can't wait for Wednesday, my day off this week!) A basket-full of balls and skeins of yarn that haven't been woven into anything yet.

Sunny days inspire my Earthiness and pull me out-of-doors into the sunshine to dig in the dirt, to design gardens of flowers and vegetables and fruits and to adore the beauty of Creation.

Stormy days bring out my 'hand-made' creativity. All things fine arts are produced on stormy days - new dresses, new crochet designs, new tales of haunted house, pirates, and best friends, new drawings and worst of all - encourage me to redecorate a room of the house. (This occasionally gets me into trouble.)

Days that are in between stormy and sunny make me want to play the piano for hours and sing. Cloudy days don't give a lot of leniency for sitting around, nor do they make me want to coax seedlings to grow taller, and so my heart begins to sing the blahs away.

BUT I begin to feel drained when the project has carried on for too long. This is my creative downfall and why I am so terrible at follow-through. I begin projects with gusto, anxious to bring the thoughts in my head into reality. Once they begin to take much longer than I originally planned - especially sewing projects if they must be ripped apart and resewn - I begin to lose my creative spark toward that project and it will become just another statistic in my pile of things unfinished. When something no longer stimulates my eye for the possible, I lose interest, and, often, move on to the next stimulus. This is something that makes me believe that I need a partner to work with - someone to hold my nose to the grindstone.

Deadlines are especially effective for me. If I promised to deliver something the next day, you can bet I will pull an all-niter to finish it!

Beauty of the Earth

Spring has finally arrived to northern Indiana! And those greenhouse seedlings have been thriving in the warm, humid weather. We've had some great thunderstorms in the last few weeks as well.

Today is one of my rare days off from the bank, and instead of being beautiful outside for me, it's gloomy and they're calling for severe storms. So I have made a nice long list of things to be accomplished. I am discovering that it helps me to make lists - so that I can physically see what needs to be done and worked on, and that it isn't really as much as I think, and therefore keeps me from becoming to overwhelmed.

My darling Alex bought me a new lawn mower for our anniversary, and girls out there, I know that you might be a little put off by an anniversary gift like that, but it was a gift I really appreciated. Alex and I have an agreement when it comes to caring for our home. I do the outside work (that I am physically capable of doing, since I'm only 5 feet tall and weigh 100 pounds) and he does the inside chores that I don't like to do - like vacuuming. Yuck. So I was really pleased with the new mower, which has a catch bag on it, which now means that I can finally collect the grass clippings to use for mulch around the veggie garden.

I had some gorgeous red leaf and buttercrunch lettuces growing in the back garden, and imagine my shock yesterday in the morning when I stepped out the back door and found a family of bunnies muching away on them! So much for our fresh salads! But I'm not discouraged, because Alex finally said we would stop putting off the building of the fence and it's officially on the to-do list for this weekend. Sometimes it takes a loss to get other things accomplished.

I got the corn planted this weekend, and transplated the Early Girl tomatoes into bigger pots. They're almost 6 inches tall now, with 6-8 leaves, so they made it out of that brutal cold snap and are very healthy now. Still not ready to leave the greenhouse, but soon!

Had one of my little impatient moments the other day and got frustrated over my sugar snap peas, because they haven't shown a single sign of bearing yet! So Alex said "When did you plant the seeds?" and I pulled out my journal and was reminded that I planted them on March 30, instead of March 17, like I've done in the past. They take 60-75 days to bear, so I've still got about 14 days before they will show signs of flowers and pods. Silly me, getting impatient. :) I apparently forgot that the principles of sowing and reaping are not just for my spiritual life.

There are tiny buds on the raspberries, flower heads on the onions and leeks, and lots of broccoli, carrot and beet tops pushing out of the dirt. The potatoes are simply astonishing - about two feet tall now and a gorgeous emerald green. I've been building up the mounds around the plants so they will have plenty of growing space. I'm pretty sure I'll have spuds to spare this fall, but I'm also looking ahead to winter, and anticipating quite a haul for the root cellar.

Well, there's a lot to do today, so I'll leave you with these few pictures, which I snapped quickly this morning before the storm blew in.

Anonymous

I don't like not being able to keep up with the things that I love. I love my handicrafts, my writing, my experiences in the kitchen and the garden. It's been difficult not to keep up with them. I feel as if I am losing my identity.

Sugar Snap Peas

I am happy to be working again, and I am satisfied with the job. But there are things I am not happy about. I have to push loans, credit card applications and other unnecessary things on customers every day, and yet, I have a moral gut check about it when I do. I am strongly against debt. I don't use credit cards anymore, and I am working hard to pay off all of our debts. We no longer make purchases with loans and credit - we go without if we can't afford it at that moment. I feel like many people feel this way too, and yet it is now my job to convince them otherwise. It makes me feel conflicted. I'm earning my paycheck by leading others into something I don't believe it myself.



Very healthy potatoes!!



So a few updates over the last few weeks - the weather has not improved at all. It has rained nonstop here in the midwest, although it isn't quite as bad as the south, where tornadoes have been wreaking havoc. Thunderstorms and unseasonable frosts have plagued our spring, and my seeds have struggled to come up. Few of them have actually germinated at all. I have several broccoli (which thrive in the cool weather), and a handful of carrot sprouts. The potatoes are marvelously healthy and growing taller every day.

The peas are 5 inches tall, and a perfectly delightful, shiny pale green; their little tendrils are vining around the cages and reaching toward the sun when it occasionally is so inclined to come out.



Raspberry Canes



Broccoli sprouting

 There are two strong seedlings of Early Girl tomatoes in the greenhouse and believe me, I am nursing them like sick babies. I pray for my heirlooms, since they haven't germinated yet. Even the beans and zucchini are refusing to put out any sprouts because of the temperatures.

I planted a few canes of raspberries, which will probably not fruit this year, but by next summer, it will be lovely to have fresh raspberries, and perhaps even make some raspberry jam.

I've spent my entire day off digging up weeds and nursing the greenhouse. There is so much to be done. There are new beds to be dug out and a lot of crabgrass that needs to be dug out. My lawn looks terrible - bald patches, mole hills, and lots of weeds.

Oh, and the sourdough starter was an EPIC FAIL. Shameful really. So much for that.

El Dorado Heirloom Seeds

I was clicking through some of the advertisements on my blog this morning, which I do from time to time to see what kind of companies are using my space for their marketing, and I was excited to see a company called El Dorado Heirloom Seeds. As I am a sucker for organic seed companies, and always researching and looking for the best companies to purchase my seed from, I began to research and delve into their story and their product offering. I was delighted with what I found.

This is just a small excerpt from their 'About Us' section of their website, and it has the heart and soul of this company wrapped into a few paragraphs:

We are honored to live a simple life. We lived in a chicken coup for six months while we passionately built our tiny straw bale cabin in Montana. With no electricity or running water we forced ourselves to learn how to raise our own food and live by our own efforts. Those eight years were as hard as it gets and we value them more than all other years because they molded us into what we are today. Because of the rough times and the doubts and stress then, we laugh more today.

Just six years ago, our dad started over again, this time by himself. He cut his way into a wooded five acre property he bought for almost nothing, pitched a tent and built a chicken coup, which worked as his home five days a week, while he built another small cabin, this time with wood.
This simple and somewhat humble lifestyle fits us well and if you ever gave it a try, you’d discover how much we have in common.

Our Mission at El Dorado Heirloom Seeds is simple:
To get American’s to return to growing their own healthy food and thus eliminate unhealthy GMOs and sterile hybrid vegetables grown by corporate farms.


Our Personal Philosophy is rather basic:
Accept yourself and the responsibility of making yourself a little better each day. Then no matter where you start it’s only a matter of time before you are worthy of the greatest rewards and respect. And what goes for you should go for others, meaning, all of us have the right to be wrong and broken, so don’t force your beliefs and desires upon others. Be an example! Plant a powerful idea.


The world would improve in every way if the people grew authentic and organic heirloom vegetables out the back door and down the street and on the rooftops. The next step would be to start eating our meals together.



Are you impressed yet??

Check them out for yourselves!

The Official Start

Although I technically seeded my spring cabbages back in December, today marks the first official day of the Peek Family's 2011 Vegetable Garden! Hooray!

I have BIG fat plans for this year's garden, including turning my front yard into a virtual haven of edible landscaping when not only will the vegetables flourish, but the wildlife (except for that wretched mole!) will be welcome and enchantment abounds. My magnolia tree is about to have its own special raised bed and the days of those 3 Bradford pear trees (that serve no purpose except to shade important parts of my yard that need the sunshine and drop nasty inedible fruits all over the sidewalk in the winter) are numbered!

I had to scrub under my nails and pick dirt out of my nose of course, but these annoyances actually made me smile because I got to spend 2 hours out in the dirt.

I started today's efforts by digging all the leaves out of the front flower bed. Friends, autumn's leaves are nature's way of protecting things over the winter. I piled up the autumn leaves around all of my perennial herbs in the front flower bed this winter, and while they hibernated under 6 feet of snow (we had 5 snowstorms over this past winter) the leaves kept their roots warm and safe. I just cleaned out all the leaves and I am delighted to see the new growth coming in on the lavender, parsley and thyme. I intend to intersperse basil, oregano, marjoram, sage, lemon verbena, chamomile, comfrey, tansy and angelica around in the front and make a tea garden envious of the most austere British gardener. I'd like to have a row of sunflowers along the porch wall as well, but I tried that last year and was not successful. This year however, I am using a new seed company, and will try it one more time.

I went to our backyard and extended the bed that I used for lettuces last year and joined it to the bed that formerly held pumpkins. I now have blisters on my thumbs, but they are trophies of my hard work. This bed is now four feet longer than it was previously and will hold an heirloom variety of sweet corn called 'Country Gentleman' or shoepeg corn. It is an open pollinated variety, not a hybrid, and I am planting it so that I can save seeds for next season as well as enjoy fresh sweet corn this summer. But I can't plant corn until the beginning of May, as the ground is simply to cold right now to ensure proper germination. So instead, I direct seeded sugar snap peas and seed potatoes into the far right third of the bed, since they are relatively cold tolerant and the peas will germinate and grow quickly.

In the green house, I sowed a lot of seed today, including several for the heirloom tomato pictured above, which is a variety known as a pineapple tomato. These tomatoes are heirloom, so their seeds are savable, and they grow to be about 5 inches in diameter and I am told they are sweet enough to eat for breakfast. I also seeded another heirloom variety called the Pink Accordion, which also grows to be quite large, and has a rosy pink hue instead of red. And of course, I seeded my Early Girls, which I am just dying to get out into the garden itself. Early Girls germinate in less than 10 days and then grow and ripen in about 60 days, and I hope I can wait until the beginning of June to taste my own sweet tomatoes. And tonight I plan to pay a visit to the garden center to pick up a few more peat cups and another bag of seed starting mix, so that this weekend I can get the rest of the produce started. The lettuces and broccoli didn't get the early start I was hoping for this year, due to all the frosty weather and snow that wouldn't let up.

If you're in my neck of the woods, do stop by and see what's springing forth from the ground!