simple-phat

potato digging in January

2008-01-16T10:25:00.001-07:00

seed sorting

2008-01-16T10:22:00.001-07:00

December snow

2008-01-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

trombe wall- free heat when it's sunny

2008-01-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

Cold air from the kitchen tile floor enters the bottom of wall, is heated by the sun, then re-enters the kitchen through the windows

beets, beet greens, carrots, and parsnips our winter staple

2008-01-16T10:11:00.001-07:00

November sweet pepper processing

2008-01-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

these peppers were all harvested in October, put in a cooler and left on the porch for about a month, only two were moldy

warm

2007-11-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

i was able to work in the garden after dark yesterday in shorts and a t-shirt, i was watering!, harvesting, and putting up row cover hoops, it is colder today

Chicken Coop Construction

2007-11-05T14:56:00.001-07:00

All salvaged materials except for a gallon of paint.

Deer Hunt Oct 22nd- the long drag

2007-11-05T14:54:00.001-07:00

Hops Harvest October 4th

2007-11-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

Bulb Planting in front park strip 1st week of Oct

2007-11-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

6 gallons to 6 quarts

2007-10-03T08:09:00.000-06:00

6 gallons of peeled and cored apples made 6 1/2 quarts of apple butter, with one cup of honey needed for sweetening. I finished processing at 11pm and left in the oven at 200 F overnight. It was ready to can by morning. I have to admit that i didn't sleep too soundly, there were a couple stirring sessions in the middle of the night to ease my mind but next year, no worries...

honey stores for the year

2007-10-03T08:02:00.000-06:00

this is the official sweetner stash for the next season, thank you bees. the extra 100 lbs will be sold to buy better beeing equipment.

when to harvest sweet potatoes

2007-09-29T10:40:00.000-06:00

sweet potato vines nipped by frost this last Monday but Nancy Bubel in her book Root Cellaring said if vines aren't completely black the tubers will still put more size in Oct. so I'm waiting, because they are pretty darn small, we'll see...

getting started with the solar oven

2007-09-26T09:17:00.000-06:00

so far, my solar oven has cooked :

lasagna

several spagetti dishes

manicotti

pumpkin pie, homemade crust prebaked with cinderalla pumpkin from the plant the squash bugs killed

millet

beet greens

tomato sauce

hmm, what else...

I'm off to browse the cook books i checked out from the library: cooking with sunshine by anderson & palkovic and cooking with the sun by beth and dan halacy

2007-03-12T20:17:00.000-06:00

2007-02-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

Home-made pasta!

garden in February

2007-02-21T17:32:00.000-07:00

Sheet composting needs workers to mix things up...

Garlic is coming up!

2007-02-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

Look! Peppers!

2007-02-15T07:11:00.000-07:00

NO KNEAD BREAD RECIPE http://www.kitchengardners.org/2006/no_knead_bread.html
-make sure to check out the video
-my variation after experimenting with the no knead recipe is to bake my brioche and easy french bread recipe the same way, in a cast iron pot with lid. I typically make the dough for these breads in the food processor.

sprouts

2007-02-14T20:27:00.000-07:00

our new bioset sprouter that I scored on Craig's list for $5. we've been eating continuous rounds of sprouts for weeks now. my favorite feature being that you pour the water in the top dish and it flows down through the rest of the trays until it reaches the bottom catch tray. having fresh sprouts made the 21 days of below freezing in January bearable, since I couldn't get in my hoophouses to harvest our salad and stirfry greens.

2007-02-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

paneer (a home-made cheese/tofu thingy from India, thanks Suneal!) with a traditionally spiced sauce made from our home-grown bottled tomatoes with the addition of our fresh kale... yum. The paneer is made from whole milk that we regularly get from a local family-run dairy who have pasture for their animals.

soil blocks created

2007-02-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

tomato and pepper seeds will be planted in these soil blocks tomorrow