Well it has been a while since I have written. The combination of so much to finish and the diminishing daylight both conspire to keep me from the blog. We have been involved in a few new adventures around here. First Jess has started a blog about food, life and song over at Lefse and Kimchee: A life in Meals and Song. My wife is a much better writer than I will ever be, so I urge you to give her blog a read if you have the time.
Also it is now hunting season here in Minnesota and I have spent a few days in the fields looking for some high quality protein. There is an ancient native american word for the type of hunter I am and it is "Vegetarian." Truth be told I have had to press upon my friends to teach me to hunt and they have graciously obliged. But I can't always prevail upon them to take me hunting and so I have had to learn much of it on my own. I think it will be a craft that I will continue to improve upon for years to come. I have had some successes over the years, there were a few white tailed deer, a coot and a goose or two. This week I have been to a game farm and came home with 10 pheasants for the freezer but duck opener success alluded me this year. I also spent an afternoon last week walking the woods and looking for squirrels, they must have had other plans that day.
In addition to all this we have had a near frost and had to spend an afternoon/evening trying to gather it all in. We gathered quite a bit of raspberries and beans as well as the last of the tomatoes.
Now just to finish getting ready for our harvest festival in the barn.

Rick

Seeds

Well we are busy gathering the seeds for next years garden. We have so far saved dill, coriander, scarlet runner beans, some white pole bean, dragon tongue beans, 4 kinds of tomato and seeds from our Red Russian kale.

More posts this weekend.

Late summer insect plague

I get these insects every year. I think they are some sort of cucumber beetle but not sure which one.








This year they seem to be more prolific and more voracious. I am sure if I could let my chickens free range a bit more they would be less of a problem. I am also thinking about growing no curcubits for a year but that would be pretty extreme and besides they seem to be willing to eat anything.

Siding and my crystal ball.

Well we are just about complete with all our siding upgrades. We have significantly upgraded the weather tightness of our house by adding sheathing under all our siding. We also upgraded some of the insulation on the south side of the house as well. This combined with the work done for us by TCSP earlier this summer really has us excited about our energy bills this winter. I am kind of amazed that I am saying that.
Around here we believe in a coming energy crunch. I am sure that at some point soon oil will be less available at anything near the prices we have gotten used to. The truth is that on a pure energy per dollar basis it looks like we will be unlikely to see anything else come along that is even remotely close to oil.
So what to do? First and foremost we as individuals need to cut our demand while we still have the resources to invest in the changes necessary. If we are still overly dependent on oil when it begins to get scarce most of us will be too busy looking for extra shifts to make energy upgrades around the home front. If we wait untill it is painfull to continue we will have missed our opportunity to make a significant change in our fortunes. Like in personal finance the time to start saving is before you need it. Once you are up against the wall it is too late to look for places to cut back. Also like in personal finnance reducing your investments made during a time of plenty will pay you back many times when things get tight. So my advice to my readers is simple, find ways to cut back on your energy usage now before you have to.

Rick

A glut of plums.

We decided today that it was time to gather in our harvest of plums. We had quite a few of them. There were a few that were damaged by insects so we gave those to the chickens.



My wife did most of the heavy lifting in making this sauce. I was more of an adviser. First she cut the plums in half and put them in a saucepan with just a pit of sugar.




After a bit of stewing and breaking them up with a wooden spoon it looked like the following.




That was looking pretty good but once you have made tomato sauce using a food mill you start to look for other things to put into it as well.



The finnal sauce ended up glossy and smooth. We left it mostly unsweetened for use in sauces and possibly sorbet. I am thinking of making a batch of barbecue sauce with some of it.



After all that we still had all these plums left over for fresh eating and cooking with.

A food weekend in pictures.

We made and processed a bunch of food this weekend.

Friday evening we started by mixing up a couple of batches of no knead bread. One was destined for for pizza dough and the other was to be baked for bread.


Saturday was a bit busier.
First my lovely bride made a batch of scones.





We then processed a batch of tomatoes into tomato sauce.







We also worked on canning some cucumber relish.








We also made a gallon of quick vegetable stock. I didn't get a picture of the stock vegetables simmering but here is the extra stock ready for the freezer.



We decided to make a recipe for corn soup that I can't find the source for now. It is basically a fresh corn minestrone.

First we cut some corn from the cobs


Then we then put the cobs into the vegetable stock to simmer.



After the vegetables were added to the stock it really started to look good.



We had the soup with a bit of the no knead bread.



We also made pizzas with our fresh vegetables and our home made tomato sauce. I didn't get
a good picture of those either but they turned out fairly well.

Jess started another batch of heirloom tomato sauce Sunday afternoon.






Soon we will have to make sauce from our abundance of plums.



All this and we cleaned house and the garage and the pole barn a bit. Can you tell that the internet was out for us almost all weekend?

Rick

Great video

I found this video over on Permaculture TV that touches on many important topics like sustainable farming, peak oil and permaculture. It is worth your time to watch all 5 parts.

Update

Well we are finally starting to get our tomatoes. It seems like they are starting a bit late this year. We had a cool first half to summer this year. No days in the 90"s since May up till this month. For Minnesota that is quite cool. But now that we have moved into August the temps and humidity have come up to our usual summer standards. We also started the the growing season this year as quite dry and now we have had rain almost every other day. This has resulted in a few split toms and a bit of mildew on the squash. Nothing fatal yet but I am ready for it to dry out a bit.
I am hoping to make a lot of tomato sauce this year. I hope to make a bit of heirloom tomato sauces a la Hank at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.

In other news the insulation and siding on the house is nearly finished and should really help cut down our energy bills this year.

Rick

Dragon Tongues

This year we are trying a few new types of beans. One of the new beans is the Dragon tongue beans. The have a great color and are so easy to harvest. The purple really helps you to spot the beans in the plants. They are an heirloom bush bean. The have a taste reminiscent of wax beans but better.



We decided to can some according to the dilly bean recipie in the Bells Blue book. You really need that book if you plan to start canning. We also added one of our small dried Thai peppers to each jar so I hope they end up extra dragony



Rick

Renovation

One of the challenges of moving to an old farmstead is the inevitable old farm house. Ours had som issues that had been concerning us for a number of years. Among them was the ancient siding and the lack of sheathing behind it. Well after years of paying massively every winter to keep the place above freezing we finally have the opportunity to do something about it. So a while back Jess and I set out to find a siding contractor to remove the old siding and then insulate before putting up sheathing and siding. We had heard good things about Twin Cities Siding Professionals. Well today was day one and I am impressed so far. The team showed up on time and set to the days work. They stayed in contact with us if they had any questions the asked us what we wanted to do and listened to our wishes. They removed the siding and the cellulose and deteriorated foam insulation underneath. There were also some repairs made to areas of the house that had some rotted wood as well.We had made agreements to have the house insulated with spray foam insulation and that was also finished today. We should definitely have a much warmer and more efficient house this winter.
If it all goes this well from here on out we will be quite happy.