What to Do When the Zucchini Fairy Visits

Whether you planted too much zucchini again or you forgot to lock your car, this time of year you really can't have too many zuke recipes. Here's a recipe we tried last night and really liked. 

Zucchini Fritters

2 cups shredded zucchini-drain if  it is watery

1/2 c diced onion

3  eggs slightly beaten (you might could do with 2.   I just have lots of eggs)

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup bread crumbs

1 tablespoon Italian herb blend

salt and pepper

oil for browning

Mix the first six ingredients together in a medium bowl.  You want the mixture to stick together.

Heat a small amount of cooking oil in a skillet over medium heat. 

Drop the zucchini mixture onto the skillet about 2 tablespoons at a time and flatten slightly. Cook until one side is brown and crisp. Flip fritters and brown the other side. When browned, remove to a plate with paper toweling and salt and pepper to taste.

Accompaniments and variations: I served this with Imagine organic tomato soup topped with homemade croutons last night. A green salad would have been nice too.

I think maybe a dill sauce would have made a nice spread/dip for them.

Other spices (cayenne instead of the Italian?) and vegetables (diced bell peppers?) could be used to change the flavor profile.

They were even good warmed up for lunch today!

Kids On The Farm

The kids have finally arrived.  Beatrice gave birth to quads on June 27.  They are all boys (sigh).  Hermione gave birth to two pretty little does on Saturday, July 7.  Both does birthed without my assistance, which suits me fine. I was around for clean-up and to make sure everyone had figured out where the milk came from, and then to move mom and babies into private quarters for awhile. 

Three of Bea's babies were various shades of brown and one, the smallest, was white.  Whether it was his color or his size or the fact that she just couldn't deal with all four of them, I don't know, but for some reason, she rejected the little guy.  She just refuses to let him eat.  So we have a bottle baby.  I have been raising goats for about 12 years and this is the first one I have had to bottle feed as we always let dams raise their kids.  So here I am washing baby bottles and heating milk, and it has been how many years since I did this for any kind of a kid? 

My family came up for the fourth, and we had a wonderful visit.  Lots of good, old-fashioned food like chicken and dumplings, vegetables from the garden and homemade ice cream.  It was so good to have my mom, dad, sis and her kids here.

My niece and nephews enjoyed visiting the animals. My niece helped me feed the bottle baby...

And my nephews gathered eggs...

And hung out with Peaches, the cow.





Solstice

Something about the solstice intrigues me, feels like something that should be celebrated, and so I had made plans, important plans mind you, to piddle in my garden last evening and then sit on the porch and drink in those last long rays of the longest day of the year.

Instead, I came down with this awful summer cold complete with aches and chills. I caught the fading rays of the day through my window as I sat wrapped in a blanket watching "American Pickers" on Netflix. Not the celebration I had planned. Sometimes I think life is made up of the"insteads".

But summer proceeds with or without me. The garden is starting to produce the warm weather vegetables now: squash, beans, zukes. I even had a salad the other day that included our romaine and our first grape tomatoes. I think this is the first year I have ever had both ready at the same time. Usually the lettuces are gone long before the tomatoes come in. For sure the romaine won't hang on much longer in these ninety degree days.

The peaches that the late frost and hail storm spared were stolen by a marauding squirrel. I caught him in the very act. He also boldly visits our front porch every day looking for a way into the squirrel-proof bird feeder. The varmint stands his ground until I am within a couple of feet of him, and I have to follow him off the porch to get him to leave. Very cheeky. I had to buy peaches this year.

The pullets are growing and the layers are laying, or most of them are. We have eight layers currently and are getting about six eggs a day. I have never been any good at discovering the slackers. Heidi, the duck, has decided she is a chicken and lays her pretty blue-green eggs in the nest boxes with the others.

Goat babies are imminent. Bea is as wide as she is tall. It has to be soon. Next week probably.

The katydids are already clacking away in the trees. Really early for them. During the day, haze hangs over the mountains nearly hiding those farthest away, muting and smearing the colors in the nearer ones.

Last night just after dark, which came around 9:30, I pulled myself off the couch and stuck my head out to listen to the night sounds for just a moment. There in the dark the crickets chirped, the toads trilled and the tree frogs sang their summer song. The longest day of the year had passed.

Bunnies and Chickens and Cows, Oh My!

It has been a wild and wonderful spring at our place. So busy that I haven't found time to write about all that goes on here...

Like the March 2 tornado that thankfully missed our farm completely, passed just yards from where our daughter was housesitting and devastated houses and businesses in our town.

And the weeks of beautiful, warm weather that has the garden jumping out of the ground.

 And the return of my feathered friends, like this bright goldfinch, the ruby-throated hummers, and just today, my favorite indigo buntings.

The batch of pullets is growing fast. It will soon be time for them to join the bigger birds.  Hobley, the drake, disappeared while we were away Easter weekend.  Whatever got him was large enough to just take him out of the pen without leaving much of a trace.  So now the only duck left is Heidi,who has been moved to the chicken house for safety where she maintains an uneasy peace with her new roomates. 

The menagerie grows.  We have adopted our niece's huge rabbit, Baxter.

More big news, and I do mean big,  is that a cow now lives at Pleasant Places--  A pretty, friendly Jersey named "Peaches".  She belongs to a friend, and is just staying with us temporarily.  Besides just the fact that I am enjoying having her around,  I am hoping she will cut down on the summer mowing and provide us with some good fertilizer. 

The Season Begins

The non-event winter and early, early spring are conspiring to make me feel behind.  I am not fond of cold weather, but winter does keep you inside where you might, perhaps, clean out closets or the pantry or the freezer.  There are a dozen inside chores that simply did not get done this winter-that-never-was because it was just too nice outside.  In fact the weather was so inspiring that I started too many projects: the new herb bed (about 3/4 ready), a place for a small three sisters garden down by the barn (about 1/4 ready), more raised beds by the fence (started in my head only)...to name a few.  Not to mention the more mundane things like stringing new electric fence that should have been done.  And now with spring flowers blooming in February, it feels like the gardening season has begun.  In fact, it has.

I have lettuce coming up in the garden.  I bought a couple of really cheap packets of  an Italian mix at the Dollar General.  I thought it would be a really skimpy amount of seeds, but I was pleasantly surprised.  They seem to be germinating well too.

I have also become intrigued with a new (to me) seed-starting method called winter sowing.  The idea is not so much to push the season as it is to use the winter downtime to pot up seeds and then leave them outside to sprout on their own schedule.  I have read that the result is hardy seedlings that you don't have to harden off before transplanting.  So I bought handfuls of dollar store seed packets to experiment with.  So far the bachelor buttons have sprouted and look good.  A vine called cardinal climber sprouted but then got nipped off by cold.  Possibly not all seeds are suitable for this.  It is frightening to me to be sticking tomato seeds outside in February, but winter sowing experts admonish beginners to "trust the seed".  You can read more at WinterSown.Org.  Below are my wintersown seeds in all manner of  repurposed containers.

By The Numbers

Crocus are blooming at Pleasant Places

We are doing a walk through the Bible theme with our church this year--well, really, hitting a book every week is more like a run through the Bible, but you get the idea.  This week we were in Numbers, which sounds like one of those books you might just be tempted to skip, but it was really interesting. 

Numbers:  In the second month of the second year since they had left Egypt, Moses was told to number the people, which he did.  There were a lot of them.  They had manna to eat every day and God's presence in the cloud to lead them around, but they grumbled anyway.  They grumbled about the food: So God gave them quail..lots of quail.  Miriam and Aaron grumbled about Moses: So God gave them a "talkin' to" and gave Miriam leprosy.  They sent 12 spies into the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey and huge bunches of grapes....and also huge people.  Ten frightened spies gave a bad report; only two, Joshua and Caleb, had faith to believe in God's plan.  More numbers:  Because of their unbelief, God said the Israelites would wander in the desert 40 years  until everyone over 20 died (except Joshua and Caleb). That averages to be about 82 deaths every day for 40 years.  The rest of numbers: more wandering, more grumbling, a lot of years--but they still always had food and always had God to guide them.

And here are some of my own numbers:  Today is the 5th day of the 2nd month of 2012 and I am 49 years old today.  It was 58 degrees today -- the sun felt warm on my face.  I didn't have quail or manna, but I did have local beef,  winter vegetables, homemade bread and a scratch cake for dinner, which was delicious.  And I don't have a pillar of fire or a holy cloud, but I do have God's word and His Holy Spirit to guide me, for which I am very thankful.    No grumbling here. 

On the farm since I last posted, construction on the garden beds has continued.  I have dug up the spot where I intend to put my culinary herbs this spring. The fruit trees have been pruned. I borrowed my neighbor's buck to breed two of our does, Bea and Hermione.  It continues to be warm and wet and the crocus are blooming.  We passed a little pond coming home last night and the peepers were already peeping...this is the earliest I ever recall this happening.  I am trying to decide what plants to spend my budget on this spring--grapes? more blueberries?  cherry or pear trees?  I just don't know, but it is time to decide.

Site for new culinary herb beds.  Duck pen in the background

"And the Lord said to Moses, 'Is the Lord's power limited? Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not.' " Numbers 11:23

Crepe Murder

There was a break in the rain today and we tried to take advantage of it.  It wasn't exactly warm, but it was warm enough that I shucked my faithful Walls jacket and worked shirt sleeved. 

Sprout and her dad began construction on the boxes for the raised beds in the new market garden.   This is a new enterprise here . Phase one will consist of several beds on this south-facing hillside.

Since they didn't seem to need my help, I decided that it was as good a day as any to start pruning.  I started with the crepe myrtles in the duck enclosure.  Most everyone else has already cut back their myrtles, but I don't think it matters that I am a bit late.  Dormant is dormant, isn't it?

Sprout came around the corner and saw what I was doing.  "My horticulture instructor called that practice 'crepe murder', "  she observed.  I have to admit it does look violent, and I normally wouldn't cut anything back that severely, but that seems to be the common practice here and well, everyone does it this way. ( And if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?)

Even in today's gloom, I can tell that, murder or not, this opens up the small kitchen garden to more sun.  I don't think Hobbly and Heidi, the ducks, care for it too much.  They act like they miss the cover and are hanging out around their hutch.  I guess they don't realize that their whole pen is covered over with bird netting to protect them from owls and hawks.  Come summer I may need to add some shade cloth, though.

Everything is soaked through.  The ground squishes and sinks when I walk on it.  It is risky to take even the four wheel drive truck down to the barn, so I walk it...but that can be risky too.  It seems I slide down in the mud almost daily.  And warm!  Supposed to be in the fifties all this coming week.  My bulbs are up.  Some even have fat buds ready to bloom.  I try to tell them it is only January, but they don't listen. 

 More storms on the way tonight.

Of Mud and Bean Soup

This morning I was awakened by, of all things, a thunderstorm.  It was so warm I took my coffee out to the porch for a few minutes, a rare treat on a January morning.  It isn’t cold at all, but it is very dark and dreary and the fire in the fireplace is comforting. 

The weather is going to change, of course.  That is one thing we always know here in our mountains.  We can have three seasons in one day.    Late winter is always especially confusing for the plants, and of course, all the freezing and thawing and rain turns roads and farm paths to mud, mud, mud.  Can’t even drive the four wheel drive truck down to the barn at present.  

We ate the last lettuce in the garden last week.  It did finally get too cold for it.  Amazing that we had lettuce in uncovered beds this late.  My kitchen garden is truly in a very  protected spot.  We still have carrots and kale.  If the bunnies leave us any, we will have broccoli and spinach as soon as the days lengthen a little.  This is my first attempt at a fall/winter garden.  May I just say brussel sprouts alone were worth the effort! (Not that anyone else in my family agrees with that sentiment.)  If I had put forth a little more effort and covered everything every time I should have, it would have been even more of a success.

The seed catalogs are here again with their bright and hopeful photos and descriptions, and it is time to plan the next garden.  This year  will be very different in that our daughter plans to plant her first market garden on the farm in the spring.   I am helping her with the planning aspects of the project.  Her dad will be helping with the marketing.   I can tell already that while related to growing a family garden, it is different in ways other than just scale.  It will be an interesting undertaking, and will hopefully grow into a business for her.

The chickens were still managing to get themselves picked off by unknown predators.  In light of that and the fact that they will need to be kept out of the market garden, we have built them a bigger run and tightened their house so now they are back to being confined.   As soon as I think they have learned to come back to the hen house to roost, we will start letting them range for a few hours in the afternoons in good weather.  It’  a compromise on being free range all the time, but we can’t afford to feed chicken to the wildlife or garden seed and produce to the chickens.

The goats are in their  little pen as well.  We will be expanding that as we get funds.   We have found that for us the only truly reliable goat fence is made of sheep panels.  They are expensive and we will probably only be buying a few at a time.  We will keep the goat herd small as a result.  I have arranged to breed the three does in February which should give us July babies-- An odd time for kids, but February is when I can get the buck, and the kids will come during summer vacation from school so I will be here to help if needed.  We won’t keep all the kids for sure. 

Another storm is rolling through as I write this.   Thunder and wind.  Rain driving against the house windows.   For supper tonight it’s 15 bean soup and cornbread—hearty and cheap.  A good meal for a rainy night.