Hoop House Line-Up

We've had a busy summer! Even though things stayed cool this year, we harvested a HUGE amount of produce from the front yard. These pictures are only a small representation of the bounty we have enjoyed.

Yay for eggplant! This was our first year seriously trying out eggplant and peppers, and they were both a tremendous success. Thank you hoop house!

We grew four varieties of eggplant and four varieties of peppers, sweet and hot, and everything was successful. The peppers didn't turn red until they were picked (more on that later), but the flavor has been awesome. As for the eggplant, we had to give tons of it away because there was just so much!

Who knew we could get actual raspberries the same year we planted canes? These went in early in the spring (March to be exact), and they started producing ripe berries in September. We're still harvesting them this week. I expect they'll continue until the first frost hits, which we expect to see in the next two weeks.

Have you been thinking about constructing a hoop house for your garden? We're still harvesting ripe tomatoes off the vine, and once they're out we'll use the plastic to cover one of the winter crop beds. Hoop houses and cold frames are a great way to extend the season in your area, and they allow you to grow hot weather plants in the cool Pacific Northwest.



The Seed Catalog of My Dreams

If you haven't gotten on the mailing list for a seed catalog from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, let me tell you why you should.

Have you ever seen a Backpacker tomato?

Seed catalogs get gardeners through the cold months, the rain, the snow, the wind, and the lack of eggs from lazy chickens. Right about now, when the last few struggling plants have blackened and shriveled back into the mulch that covered their roots through the first freezing nights and blankets of snow, the mind of a city farmer turns to thoughts of spring.

Our trusty Subaru beneath a cozy blanket of snow. Heated seats and all-wheel drive make snow like this a pure joy.

Well, almost every city farmer thinks of spring. There are many weeks to get to that phase, and in the meantime..... I love winter. It's such a wonderful season of darkness and slowing down (when we can), of warm fires and hot chocolate, baking and simmering, twinkling lights and the smell of snow in the air. We took a day trip to Leavenworth last weekend. It snowed at least fifteen inches in five hours. We shopped and walked through the bustling streets of the small tourist town, aka Bavarian Vegas, which was the description offered by one group of people who slid past us on the icy path. The lights came on in the early evening, and we watched children sled down a small hill in the center of town. It sealed the deal that the holidays were really upon us. We might just make that trip a seasonal tradition.

What happens in Leavenworth, stays in Leavenworth.

And while I'm off the subject, let me also mention that I am especially grateful for the three week break from college. I apologize for my lack of presence lately, but essays and exams take over my life at times. Working full time and going to school full time leaves room for little else, so I'm trying to savor as much of the season as I can before the rush comes back to our day-to-day.

But back to the seeds. And spring. I do love spring, despite the fact that I must give up winter to get to it. Spring always starts with a stirring desire to plant seeds in little pots. I get to the point in winter where I genuinely need little green things around me. It's like a desire to nest. I get broody and need to feel dirt under my fingers.

See what I mean? Centerfold. I thought about taking this on my train ride to work, but I think I'd actually blush if I got busted staring at the winter squash.

I know this is coming, and I am armed with catalogs. This year I was especially on top of things, and the seeds are not only ordered, they have indeed arrived. They'll sit in the shortbread tin on the counter until the days begin to warm and the planting itch starts. If only I had known a new catalog was on its way.

Enter Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

In all honesty, I cannot say that I have ever seen a more beautiful seed catalog in my many years of gardening and farming. It was more like a magazine, a full spread of lingerie-like-lettuces and centerfold squashes ready to jump from the pages and plant themselves in the waiting raised beds of my imagination. Page after page of sweet and hot peppers made me salivate for the salsa I've never made but dreamt about. Clusters of bright red, striped green, flat, skinny, round, ripe tomatoes tempted me and made me forget, if only for a moment, that the more tropical plants barely survive in our cool, northern climate. Nine types of rutabaga, twice as many turnips, mysteries from Siberia and parts of Russia, stabilized and imported for you to welcome into your vegetable rows amazed me. I began to rethink that seed order, paid for and received, planned, simply waiting for an opportunity, sitting in a shortbread tin with stray packets of those little dessicants they put in shoe boxes. How could I not include these new (old) heirloom plants? Would I find satisfaction with my meager stock of plain cukes and ordinary beans? More importantly, how could I get away with making another seed order without my girlfriend catching me?

Maybe you don't need this kind of conflict in your life. If that's the case, forget I mentioned this HEART-STOPPINGLY-GORGEOUS seed catalog. Spare yourself the agony of choosing between the hundreds of varieties of names like Hero of Lockinge Melon, or Little Fingers Eggplant, or Crapaudine Beet.

But if you're at a friend's house, and you see this catalog lying around, tempting you with glimpses of full color photographs and delectible descriptions, resist the urge to pick it up before you're ruined like me. I don't think I can ever go back to the pale, two-dimensional life of other seed catalogs again.

Is La Niña Code for "Start Baking"?

That's not dandruff, folks. It's been snowing!! And we all know that snow is one of Aengus' favorite snacks. 

We covered the garden with straw just a few short days ago, knowing that cold weather was on the way.

Boy was that good timing! It doesn't snow very often in the Pacific Northwest. Sure, the mountains get covered with it this time of the year, and the ski resorts are always happy when the icy winds begin to blow, but we live extremely close to salt water, so snow is a rare treat for us.

Year-round gardening is usually simple in this region. We currently have one cold frame to see some plants through the winter, but you can see the leeks (in the bed on the left) holding up well even in this sub-freezing weather. The strawberries, just to the right of the leeks and garlic (which has yet to sprout), were still giving us ripe berries only last week. The blueberries (in the foreground) have turned a lovely shade of deep red. There are carrots, turnips, rutabaga, and kohlrabi growing in the uncovered bed, and a few small pots of strawberry runners are in the cold frame bed. Everything else has been put to sleep for the winter.

Straw is a really simple way to cover raised beds and garden space this time of year. It's very inexpensive (usually about $7 per bale), and we use lots of it in the chicken coop anyway, so it's always on hand. I only wish the bales weren't so messy. In the spring, we'll pull all that mulch off the beds and toss it into the paths for extra weed control. It sometimes sprouts a little hay grass when it rains, but it creates a very effective weed barrier.

Is it time to pull out the doggie sweaters, too? We've been baking brownies and making homemade chicken noodle soup all weekend to keep the house toasty warm. It's supposed to drop down into the very low 20's tonight, and it probably won't get above freezing until Wednesday. Here's to hot cocoa and fuzzy wool sweaters!!



Happy Anniversary to Us!

Where has the time gone? Really, folks. I mean it. I wake up and it's dark, my train ride to work is dark, the ride home is dark... It's no wonder the hens refuse to lay eggs when the days get shorter. But the specific time I'm referring to today is the year of blogging we've just completed! The first blog post here was on November 7th, 2009, and we've come a long way since those early days. Ready for a trip down memory lane?

Six tiny chicks showed up at the local post office in the late part of summer 2009. It was August, we had just gotten home from a great road trip vacation to Yellowstone NP, Grand Teton NP, and Glacier NP. (This was the vacation where Aimee really got to get in some serious "wheel time" driving the Subaru. I napped in the passenger seat and woke up to find her cruising along at 83 mph in Montana. Yikes!) The coop was nearly finished, and the brooder box was warm and waiting. Portia, Ellen, Raquel, Ursula, Ingrid, and Norma Jean all thrived in those late summer weeks. By December we had our first eggs.

Sadly, we lost one of our chicks in early 2010. Norma Jean, tragically named after Marylin Monroe, died young of an overdose. If only we could have sensed the foreboding in her name. It was a terribly sobering event after such initial success, and it forced us to come to terms with how attached we had become to our little ladies in the backyard.

Bartering eggs around the neighborhood opened up new lines of communication, friendship, and sharing, and we credit the chickens and the garden in the front yard for much of this. One neighbor was so caught up with the beauty of our hens than he asked us to raise a few for him. He built a great little coop and run, and his three chickens are now happy and healthy, and I think they're probably a bit spoiled.

That same batch of chicks brought three new lives into our own flock, though we could never have guessed how much they would teach us or force us to grow over the course of a summer. Winona, the luckiest (or unluckiest) little Wyandotte I have ever known, started out a little slower than her brooder box mates. I dropped a board on her and nearly killed her, but she simply refused to give up. After a few days in isolation under a heat lamp, she rejoined her sisters and has grown up to be pretty close to normal. As it turns out, her inability to prevent getting whacked by me is probably related to her scissor beak condition. To this day, her beak must be clipped regularly, her eyesight leaves a lot to be desired, and she's extremely shy about portait shots with the camera. Though she consistently peck an inch to the left of snacks on the ground, she's a fighter. In other words, she's really darned plump.

Dark Meat is the embodiment of pure joy. I have yet to capture a video of her antics, but believe me that it will be worth the wait when that movie shows up. Perhaps a dedicated post to our funniest chick is in order soon. Neither of the two youngers chickens have started to lay eggs, and this Friday they will be 33 weeks old. They seem to have the support of the toughest chicken union I have ever negotiated with.

Rusty, formerly known as Milla, was the most robust, beautiful, and biggest chick we had ever seen. We remained firmly in denial about his gender until the infamous "borkle" sound I heard one afternoon. We struggled with our decision to slaughter him, and we learned so much about respect and personal limits, none of which were anticipated. Though we have received some criticism about butchering our own animal, it was an important step for the future farm we will someday own. On a personal level, slaughtering an animal I genuinely loved has changed my internal compass for eating, and it has opened my eyes to behaviors and practices I feel I can no longer ignore.

We cut down the massive, very old, and incredibly frail douglas fir in our front yard during the peak of the summer heat. That seemingly simple act has opened up a world of possibility for our small raised bed garden, and we are now looking forward to more work, more harvesting, and more sunlight in our future.

What's to come in the future? If we have learned anything in the last year of urban farming it is that planning is fun, but the farm will make its own decisions with or without our input. Below is a list of hopes, and some of them feel a bit like New Year's resolutions, which is to say that fulfilling or ignoring them are both viable options.

• Honey bees are the next big goal. We'll be starting out with a single hive in the front yard in the spring, and we hope to learn much about the lives and organization of bees, pollination, listening to the weather, and collecting honey.
• Meat birds are the next logical step after Rusty. Though this particular item is under some heavy scrutiny at the moment, it will eventually happen in the coming years, even if next year is not good timing.
• The garden shed will be getting a concrete floor, and we hope to have this completed before the end of 2010. Both it and the garage could use a lot of love and work, but we'll handle that one project at a time. In the meantime, we need a safe place for storage, and we're looking forward to growing more of our garden starts under cover.
• The reclaimed "acreage" in the front yard needs to be converted into beds and a mini orchard. Building raised beds can be a lot of work, but we've had such great success with those that we already have, and Aimee really wants a place to grow raspberries. I'm hoping to rig one or more of them to accomodate a mini hoop house for tomatoes, cukes, and possibly some other fun veggies.
• The line of stumps in the backyard is gone, thanks to the fine efforts of the chickens. A second mini orchard may find its home there.
• Our parking strip is the last vestige of grass (by which I mostly mean weeds and clover) in front of the house. One bed of herbs is already planted, and at least four more are planned. In my mind (as idyllic and ridiculous as it is known to be), I imagine our neighbors casually wandering over to clip oregano and parsley for their dinners in the summer evenings. In reality, I am prepared for more than a little cat poop.
• Many of the bedding plants around the house are going to be removed and re-homed to make way for rhubarb, berries, and who-knows-what-else. We both agree that the calla lilies are waning, the single mum doesn't get enough light, and the dhalia always gets infested with aphids. It's time for edible permaculture.

Are we too ambitious? Probably, but it's always funny to watch us try. Stay tuned over the next year to see what really gets done. What are your plans for gardens, farms, animals, and such?

Return of the Punchcumber

You might not remember. It was a long time ago now.

And I think we all conveniently forgot, too, because they got so orange and looked so much like pumpkins.

But can you see that green tint? It's not the camera (though our camera is due for an upgrade).

When I cut into them, the kitchen began to smell like fresh cucumber. I roasted them anyway. One hour in the oven with a tray of water beneath. They're waiting for me in the fridge. I need to scoop out their insides and take a taste. But seriously, what do you make out of a punchcumber?

At least the girls were happy to get the sloppy, seedy insides for a snack. They might get more than that!

I Heart Pumpkin

It's that time of year. October has arrived, there's a crisp edge to the air in the afternoons, mornings are foggy, and pumpkins abound!

They start out small, flanked by tendrils and bright yellow blossoms. Their skins are green and striped, delicate and impressionable. Some start out yellow. Some are fat, some are squat, some are lumpy, but they're all bound to be the highlight of autumn to come.

The growing season for pumpkins is pretty much over, even though we have a very mild climate in the Pacific Northwest. Leaves will be covered with powdery mildew, vines will shrivel and dry, and exposure to sunlight will turn pumpkin rinds orange. We've cut ours back and harvested all but the last two. Several have already found homes on neighbors' porches and front steps, but the rest will stay on as decorations, snacks, and chicken treats.

Photo courtesy of Charlesbridge.



So, now that you know what our pumpkin patch provides, let me continue to profess my love for punchkins. I love their bright orange glow on drizzly mornings. I love watching them darken after being cut and propped up on the porch railing. I love carving them and scooping out their guts. It's slippery and messy and disgusting and the most fun you can have late at night in your kitchen the week before Halloween. I love roasting (and eating) the seeds. Did I mention I love the seeds? They're plump and smooth, and the thick border that runs around their little almond-shaped border reminds me of old book bindings. I love pumpkin pies (and I hold the record in my family for most pumpkin pie consumed in a 24 hour period, a memorable trophy from the Year of Pies at Papadon's house one Thanksgiving). I love pumpkin flavored foods. Too much. Pumpkin scones are perhaps my favorite naughty treat. I even love pumpkin shaped candy corn. But the plants are where the affair begins. The sight of the first pumpkin sprouts in late spring and early summer gives me a thrill. Will they run wild and grow a string of little pumpkins on the path? Or will they devote themselves to one or two monstrous specimens? I love the disarray and abandon with which they conquer the yard. Pumpkins know no boundaries, nor do they respect a hefty pruning. Yep. I love punchkins.

It's been mistaken more than once that my favorite holiday is Halloween, which it is not. I remain faithful to Thanksgiving, a holiday devoted to food. I do like Halloween, however, and I always feel a nagging regret when work or other responsibilities get in the way of pumpkin carving, cookie making, candy eating, and the annual neighborhood candy bowl party (complete with bonfires, pop-up tents to keep out the rain, tons of food, loads of candy, and more than a few cans and bottles of brew). There are plenty of people who get into Halloween way more than I do, despite my affinity for bats, strings of candy corn lights, and those little paper ghosties people hang in their trees. I'm sorry if it disappoints, but my heart will always be in the pumpkin patch first.

Hungry for more pumpkin fun? Check out Small Measure, Pumpkin Muffins and How to Roast a Whole Pumpkin over at Veggie Venture, and more muffins at Farmgirl Fare.

Chicken Vacation!

You may have noticed that the girls haven't posted anything exciting for a while, but that's only because we've all been on vacation for a week! What's been going on around our urban farm?

The garden has been growing like crazy. We've gotten several days of rain over the last few weeks, and it's worked more than a few wonders. Hmm.... How did this pumpkin get here?

A funny thing happened in the compost pile... We always throw in lots of veggie scraps and leftover bits from growing things, and sometimes things sprout up from the compost after it gets spread around the yard. At least two pumpkin vines were determined to grow this year, despite the fact that I did not plant any.

We hit the motherlode! This lovely specimen was growing OUTSIDE the fence along the sidewalk. Bad idea. I harvested him a bit early, but we were afraid he would get victimized or vandalized by someone walking by. We joked about these pumpkins (affectionately called punchkins in our family) as they began to grow and mature. As many of you may know, cucurbits are extremely promiscuous plants, and they'll cross-breed with anything nearby. Last year we grew three varieties of punchkins and one type of cucumber, so our early plants were named punchcumbers. Thankfully, it appears that the pumpkins are indeed pumpkins, and they are most likely a cross between Jack-Be-Little and Rouge vif d'Etampes, better known as Cinderella pumpkins.

We've eaten a LOT of cole slaw lately...

And I cannot wait to taste my first home-grown brussels sprouts!

Our tomatoes are the talk of the 'hood. No one else has red ones yet, and we've already collected over three pounds of ripe cherry, grape, Vintage Wine, and Brandywine tomatoes. What's our secret? Pruning, trellising with twine, snapping suckers, and generous heaps of crushed egg shells for each plant. Okay, okay, and we bought FABULOUS starts at the farmers market in the spring.

We've had lots of visitors and friends in the garden, and many of them are keen to hold still for a photo op. Can you believe I grew this Echinacea from seed last year?

There's been lots of vacation time just spent lounging and sun-bathing.

A little work got done, too. Look at that brave contractor replacing windows upstairs! Almost all the windows in the house are now energy efficient. Best of all, they open and close and they don't leak!

The girls have had lots of fun, too. They've been out in the yard nearly every day, they've gotten lots of veggie scraps, and the coop got a good cleaning. You can see here that the straw on the floor is all gone. When we clean the coop out, we give the hens a few days to scratch around in the dirt and clean up the extra feed and seeds that fall through their bedding. When fresh straw goes down, they go crazy! It's fun to scratch, fluff, and play with new bedding, so this is a pretty exciting time to be a chicken. By the way, make sure to wish our older girls a happy birthday! They're officially one year old now!

The babies are still babies, however. Winnie and Dark Meat never get to roost on the pole with the older girls, so they sit on top of the nest boxes every night. And no, they have not started laying yet. Portia (pictured in the background) has been looking for creative places to hide her eggs. We found one in the compost bin earlier in the week. Bad chicken!

No vacation would be complete without a few tasty treats. The hens get their own designer pancake this morning. There was a little leftover batter and some raspberry seeds from the compote I made, so a fancy chicken brekky was born. Happy vacation!

A Brekky To Remember

Have you ever had a breakfast that stuck with you until dinner? If not, the kind folks at Farm Kitchen can help you out. We took some friends there a few weekends ago.

What's for breakfast?

Seriously? Thick. Cut. Bacon. I had been dreaming about that all week long. It was well worth the wait. The five of us did not hesitate to order nearly everything on the menu. This place serves food in an a la cart style. Menus get passed around while you stand in (the long) line to get in, you tell the nice lady what you want, she rings you up, you sit and wait for the feast to begin.

We're so hungry we're all looking at pictures of thick cut bacon on iPhones.

And then you get inside and they tempt you with more baked goodies! Honestly, resistance was futile.

After breakfast, the misty farm grounds beckoned. We went for a stroll through the garden.

Farm Kitchen mostly does catering and events, but once a month they open their doors for a Saturday breakfast. Ordering is simple; there's really only one thing on the menu. Come hungry. The portions are generous, and the food is divine.

After you're done, smell the lavender, take pictures of the baby lettuce and spinach plants, and wander down to find the horses.

The acreage Farm Kitchen sits on is leased to a local farmer, and everything they serve is locally sourced or made by hand in their own kitchen.

The next Saturday Breakfast will be on September 4th. The menu is as follows...

Fresh Basil & Tomato Egg Scramble, Roasted Potatoes & Bakers Choice Pastry

Pastries of the Day

Yummy Orange Rolls

Marionberry Kuchen

Hollis's Original 8-Grain Pullaparts

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oatmeal Cranberry Walnut Cookies

Banana Walnut Bread

It's difficult to drive back to the city after seeing something so beautiful as Farm Kitchen. If you're out on the Kitsap or Olympic Peninsulas anytime soon, look them up.