Pickles & Cheese

You can pickle just about anything. Yes, we all have an idea of what "a pickle" is... but for each of us it could be something different. It usually conjures up some version of a pickled cucumber- for me, its a garlicy dill pickled cucumber. So far this summer, I have pickled black radishes(on 7/8/12) and dill pickles (today). I jarred 9 pints of pickled black radishes and 4 quarts and 4 pints of dill pickles. I adapted a pickled beet recipe with black radish inspired spices to create the recipe for those bad boys. They came out well, but in the future, I would recommend peeling the skins off. I left them on, because I like the skins when they are cooked, but it turns out that the skins get chewy when pickled. Edible, but not ideal. I'll have to wait at least 2 weeks to try my jarred dill pickles, but I always make sure to make extra for refrigerator pickles to tide me over.
Pickling is essentially fermenting foods in a certain way- the way that you like, and doesn't kill you. In that way, it is very similar to cheese. I would never be able to keep all these cucumbers for more than a month or so without pickling, just like there's no way to keep milk around without cheese. So far I have made Mozzarella, Ziegerkase, Farmhouse Cheddar, Whey Ricotta, Milk Yogurt and Soy Yogurt. However, I haven't tried all of these yet! Cheese is about patience. Aging makes one cheese one way and another another, so we'll have to wait and see if my cheddar and ziegerkase are successful! Mozzarella is quickly becoming a household norm, and the soy yogurt is vastly more popular and easier than the milk yogurt.

Read more about pickling here!

The Second Half of July

Oh boy. Looks like I haven't updated in a while... The garden looks like a jungle again, but at least I know in which areas things are, even if they are under the weeds. There are no no-mans-land areas like we had last year. I at least have access to all the rows, even if you wouldn't be able to tell where the row ended and the walkway began without having been in there everyday for the last several months.
Here's the Harvest report:

• 7/16:
• boston pickling cucumbers: 3 lb (11, 2 were munched :/ )
• beans (type unknown): 1 oz (3 pods) - these fell off in the storm and were recovered, not really harvested
• nest egg gourd: 1 WAY too large gourd. picked and given to chickens. 
• 7/17:
• garlic. 
• bp cukes: 10 oz (4)
• 7/20:
• kale: 4.5 oz
• red beet: 1 lb (5)
• kohlrabi: 6.5 oz (1)
• bp cuke: 2 lb 2 oz (8)
• chard: 13 oz
• rat tail radish seed pods: 3 oz (40)
• 7/21: 
• bp cuke: 12 oz (4)
• 7/22:
• green tomatillo: 11 oz (7)
• pickling onion: 2 lb 11 oz (48)
• crookneck summer squash: 1.5 oz (1)
• kale: 3 oz
• kohlrabi: 10 oz (1)
• beans: 5 oz (6) 
• rtr seed pods: 1 oz
• lemon cuke: 1 lb 8.5 oz (7)
• bp cuke: 1 lb 13 oz (9)
• 7/24
• lemon cuke: 6 oz (2)
• bp cuke: 1 lb 13 oz (11)
• tomatillo: 3 oz (1)
• 7/25
• cn squash: 10.4 oz (3)
• bp cuke: 1.4 (1)
• 7/29
• lemon cuke: 1 lb 11 oz (10)
• bp cuke: 6 lb 3 oz (20)
• kale: 4 oz
• cn squash: 1 lb 1 oz (3)
• lazy wife beans: 1 lb 12 oz
• scarlett runner beans: 9 oz
• chard: 10 oz
• beet: 3 lb 10 oz
• kohlrabi: 15 oz (3)
• tomatillo: 1 lb (11)
• strawberries(everbearing?): 2 oz (12)
• 7/30:
• cn squash: 1 oz (1)
• rtr seed pods: 1.75 oz
• lw beans: 7 oz
• tomatillo: 11.5 oz (11)
• beet: 1.75 oz (1)
• red wethersfield onion: 4.5 oz (5)
• yellow onion: 2 ob 1 oz
• 7/31: 
• yellow onion: 1 oz (1)
• beet: 4.5 oz (1)
• 2 strawberries... didn't make it inside. CHOMP
• ground cherry: >1 oz (3)
• bp cuke: 2 lb 9 oz (3) (bigger is not better)
• cn squash: 5 oz (1)
• lemon cuke: 1 lb 4 oz (8)

I love lists. :)
Happy growing! <3

Harvest Record 7/6-7/14

I'm sitting here, munching on a cucumber and listening to the rain fall. We've been needing it bad, and I'm so grateful for it! I hope our garden perks up from all this great H2O! One downfall from the rain is that one of the chickens seems to be unhappy about it. From what I gather, she's not sick or injured, just grumpy about the rain. Will and I gave her a look-over, and she seems fine, but we'll keep an eye out tomorrow when it's not raining to make sure she perks up after the rain, too.

• 7/6:
• boston pickling cucumbers: 15.1 oz (4 cukes)
• 7/7:
• bp cucumbers: 5.1 oz (1 cuke)
• chinese turnip (?): 3.4 oz 
• Will's dad was given seeds from one of his Chinese co-workers, who has limited English. We grew them, and they looked like a cross between a red globe radish and a purple top turnip. It also turned out that it was rotten on the inside, so we didn't get to taste it. Bummer.
• romaine lettuce: 8.9 oz (1 head) 
• Despite the heat, the lettuce is still doing fine, since it is well shaded under the cucumber plants. Some of its garden leaves are bitter, but that's to be expected. The chickens don't seem to mind these outer leaves.
• black radishes: 24 lbs.
• This group + the other already harvested black radishes got pickled and jarred up, making 9 pints of pickled radishes! Yum!
• 7/8:
• blue potato: 2.2 oz (1 potato) - test potato! 
• red potato: 1 oz (1 potato) - test potato!
• bp cucumbers: 1 lb 4.6 oz (6 cukes)
• fava bean: .7 oz (2 pods)
• Our fava beans were kind of pathetic this year, but we asked the farm-stand lady to ask her farmer his secret to big beautiful pods, so maybe we'll have better fava beans next year!
• rhubarb swiss chard: 1.4 oz
• 7/9: 
• beets: 5.4 oz (3 beets) - test beets!
• bp cucumbers: 14.3 oz (4 cukes)
• 7/10:
• bp cucumbers: 6.9 oz (3)
• 7/11:
• kale: 2.7 oz
• rhubarb swiss chard: 2.1 oz
• killarney red garlic: 3 oz (1 head) - test garlic! 
• Ready to come up! Just need a dry day where we're home!)
• 7/12:
• sad cucumbers: 6.8 oz (1 lemon & 2 bp)
• These cucumbers were the victim of a 'friend' with a tiny mouth. I suppose I will never know for sure who the culprit was, but it was most likely either the juvenile woodchuck or the baby bunny. I cried in the garden when I found these unfortunate veggies.
• 7/14:
• creole red garlic: 2.9 oz (2 heads) 
• The stalks on these heads were totally dead, but they made little heads anyway! I think we'll be the garlic king and queen from now on...
• romaine lettuce: 8.7 oz (1 head)
• One head of lettuce a week is perfect for our 2 person family! 
• rat-tail radish pods: .1 oz (3 pods)
• The pods are the edible part of the variety of radish, not the root. They are very prolific, but we wanted to test them out to make sure we didn't die or throw up upon consuming them. We had them in spring rolls, and I'm not dead yet!
• bp cucumbers: 13 oz (4)

Happy growing! <3