Christmas at the Farm

It has been a very wet winter. Wet and too warm. Yesterday, we spotted a frog hopping around the dykes. Last night the rain sounded like a monsoon coming down. This morning, a noticed a newly hatched round of flies in the kitchen.



Even in this unseasonable weather, we had an enjoyable Christmas.

Birds Around the Farm

The bird feeder is up and the fall birds have settled in. I always like when the fall visitors arrive. It helps to relieve the monotony of the grey weather. We have seen all sorts of ducks and geese coming through. During the cranberry harvest we saw an American Kestrel haunting the fields. This year there have been many raptors of all descriptions. There are harriers, grey and red hawks and the little sparrow hawks. We have heard an owl at night but we haven't seen it yet.


Scot took this great picture of the now resident king fishers. They are fishing along the canals right now and will hopefully stay here for a while longer. I love to hear their little chittering call.

Cranberry Harvest Time

Suddenly it is winter. I have missed the gloomy grey of the west coast fall. It is when I get the most writing done, and when I remember my dreams the most.


At the farm, they have begun to harvest the cranberries, It is like living in the middle of an island (of course we are on an island), but now it is a much smaller one with all the fields flooded.

The flooded fields have attracted all sorts of ducks. It is lovely to see them. There have been so few of them coming through this year. I am not sure why they have been so scarce. The eagles have killed many of the ducks around the farm, but it seems to me there are fewer in general.

In fact, I think the eagles were pretty desperate for food, because they hunted all the herons this year.

Drying Apples in the New Dehydrator

We had an unexpected windfall, so we decided to use the proceeds to buy a dehydrator. We probably should have bought a new fridge, but we decided to be whimsical instead. I am not sure if the dehydrator will pay for itself. It does have a ten year warranty, so maybe it will. Anyway, it sits where our fridge used to and it does use much less energy.



I love apple chips, so we went to the UBC Botanical Gardens Apple festival and bought around 12 pounds of apples for drying. We have Czech, a King, and a long keeper apple. I read somewhere that if you planted all the seeds of an apple, each seed would produce a different variety. I am not sure if this is true or why this would be the case.


As you can see the apples turned out really well. I used a mandolin cutter to speed up the task and to get even portions for consistent drying. After cutting, I put them in a citric acid water bath, rinsed and then dried them at 135 degrees F for 8 to 15 hours. I made various thicknesses, so the drying time varies. The dehydrator costs between 4 to 8 cents an hour to run, and it heats up the kitchen and makes it smell nice. It also attracted wasps, but they have now gone to ground for the winter.

The Fall

Making Dolmas: What to do with too Much Chard

If you plant kale or chard, you know you will always produce more than you need, your friends need and your family needs. But if you have to buy wither in a grocery store, they ask for a princely sum. Something is wrong the the supply and demand side of this formula.

Anyway, the following gives a general recipe for how to make dolmas. If you don't grow your own chard or kale, find a local grower/seller or make friends with a gardener.

Pictured below is my very large colander full of kale, chard, herbs, onions and celery straight from the garden.

To make the dolmas, I cut celery, onion, mint, oregano and dill very finely and then mix it with a pound or two of ground meat.

Finer than this even...
Then I blanche the chard or kale in boiling water and then cool it in ice water. The ice always melts half way through and it doesn't change the the success of the recipe so don't worry about it. Once the leaves have cooled, add a tablespoon of the meat mixture and roll it in the centre of the leaf like the picture below...
Pack the dolmas in a casserole and add broth and cook for about an hour. I freeze them after and then eat them as a treat throughout the fall and winter.I do this about two or three times a year and I always run out sometime near Christmas.

Garlic Harvest

It was time to dig up the garlic this weekend. The garden is looking so lush and lovely, but the garlic has been getting browner. This is when you know it is time to harvest, when all the green dies back.

I planted most of the garlic in October, but we lost almost all of our crop in November because the weather as so wet and cold. I replanted with some Russian red garlic I bought at a winter market in December. Although it was late in the season, I decided to plant it.


I had to drill into the frozen soil in order to plant the cloves, and I was afraid it wouldn't work, but it did! It was a good thing too, because I wouldn't have any garlic this year. Maybe I will plant all my garlic in December from now on.

Blueberry Time

Everybody should have a secret berry picking spot. I know I do. I have several, depending on the berries I am seeking at the time. I have included photos of my top secret blueberry picking spot. (All identifying markings have been removed in order to ensure secrecy. )

I remember going berry picking with my family. I kind of hated it as I recall. It seemed like a lot of work with very little reward. Now I look back fondly on those times I spent with my family. My parents are dead now, but I like to think they are there in the bog with me, as I fill my stomach and my bucket with blueberries.

The Garden July 15th

It has been a cold spring and summer, which means all the plants are a growing a little slower, but so are the aphids and cabbage moths, so the garden is looking really beautiful right now. I am especially proud of my cabbages, which look like display cabbages they are so beautiful.

Learning to Fly

Polish Rose Petal Jam

Every year, we make a mint rose petal jelly. To do this, we combine wild rose petals and mint to make a tea, and then use the tea to make jelly.

Mint jelly is one of our most popular jellies, so we do a few batches, when the roses are finished. we use lavender as well.




There are lots of strands of wild roses, so we were looking for ways to make just a wild rose jelly. We had tried doing this with the Certo recipe but the roses' flavour is too delicate and the heat destroys it.



This year, scot found a recipe that doesn't use heat. It essentially involves grinding the roses with sugar. The sugar preserves the roses and the roses liquifies the sugar.


When the roses and sugar are completely ground (this is hard work). We put the jelly in sterile jars, turned them upside down to create a vacuum, and stored them in the fridge for good measure.

How to Build a Paper Mache Owl

The starlings, cedar wax wings, robins and crows are fighting over the rainier cherries. We would like to have some too, so we decided to build some paper maiche owls to scare away the birds.

Supplies:
flour
water
salt
newspaper
balloons
notion of what an owl looks like


Step 1.
Use a one part flour to two parts water, but then you need to improvise to find the thickness you like. I found a batter consistency worked well. Add a little salt--the theory is that salt will prevent mold.

Step 2.
Cut up lots of strips of newspaper. You can use a ruler if you want straightish edges. Start ripping. You should rip more than you think you need--try the business section of a daily newspaper-- as it is hard to rip once your hands are covered in batter. You may want to wear gloves as the ink in newspapers are generally unhealthy.

Step 3.
Make a form for the owl. A balloon is easiest and almost owl shaped.


Step 4.
Dip, smear, paste the newspaper to the form.

We painted eyes on the owls. There are a couple of species of birds that have markings on the back of their head that look like eyes, so we painted eyes on both the front and back.

Always something to do Around a Garden

The garden is already producing. Yesterday, I picked quite a lot of chard and kale. Normally, both the chard and kale over winter here, but last year they were nipped off by an early frost. We had to go without last winter, so I decided to freeze some this year, just in case.


I was surprised that the cabbage butterflies haven't found the kale yet. Soon they will get into the crop and it will get pretty wormy until the early fall. Then it will be beautiful again. In the meantime, the chicken have learned to love kale.


I plant all the different coloured varieties of chard, although in the end, I prefer the the white stemmed variety. I find the orange and red, get a little tough.

I quickly blanched the chard and kale in boiling water, and then put it in a cold bath. I always start with ice water, but it ends up lukewarm.


Once they were cooled down, I gently squeezed the kale and chard into balls and placed them on a cookie sheet and put them in a freezer. After about 12 hours, I put them in a freezer bag.

The theory is that I can just take a bundle as I need them.