Archive for Harvest

28 Jun 2010
Dairy recipe • Desserts • Fruit recipe • Harvest • locavore log

Blueberry Season

Yesterday I knew summer was here.

icecream-blueberry-005

How did I know it? No, not because the temperature was – again! – over 90 (over 32 C) in the shade; 116 (47 C!!!) in the sun insisted the thermometer (wish I misread that). Not because the creek is drying up – although it is and we need rain badly. Not because it’s muggy, because it surely is and it has been feeling like August for too many days (somebody actually installed a small fan in the new chicklets’ pen – that’s how hot and stifling it is).

No, it’s  because the day before yesterday the first empty cicada shell was spotted, still hanging onto the smoke tree trunk, split open in the back -  the cicada who lived in it for many years under the earth now gone to live in the sun for a few months, singing. Yesterday I heard the first cicada sing. The sure sign of summer. Cicadas do not make mistakes.

Yesterday morning I also picked blueberries at a small pick-your-own bramble farm, a few miles from me. I suppose that’s another sign of summer Read more

sylvie | 10 comments | Tags: ,
20 Jun 2010
Garden • Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

The June Garden

The June garden can be quite overwhelming. There is a lot to seed still, a lot to rip out, a lot to build, a lot to maintain,  a lot to harvest, and a lot to clear and get ready for the next crop. We plant continuously here at Laughing Duck gardens, and try to put something in as soon as we rip something out.

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Lets see… We have harvesting mustard greens (still. again!), strawberries, Swiss chard, beets, zucchini & summer squash, all kinds of herbs, and green beans. We are seeing the last of the kale (there was not much to start with anyway). We just finished harvesting  the last of the shelling peas and, all the currants. And I have picked the last of the asparagus for this year ( I am now letting the fern grow). Read more

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags:
16 Jun 2010
Cookery • Harvest • locavore log

Le Temps Des Cerises

It’s sour cherry time – or rather, sour cherries are just over here in the Virginia Piedmont. A kind cherry tree owner offered me their tree to pick, and I gratefully enjoyed the privilege. But as the garden is going gangbusters (with  planting, harvesting, cleaning and maintaining – ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!!), I have little time to write down recipes, so photos is all we get. Maybe I’ll scribble down some of the recipes in the next few posts…

When sour cherries are in season, one rushes to pick, pick, pick and then pit, pit, pit and process. Because the season is very brief: on Memorial day they are blushing, on June 15, they are over!

So what to do with sour cherries:

- pit them, toss them with sugar, other berries and enjoy as a sweet-tart refreshing dessert

- pit and freeze for later use

- sour cherry preserves

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Read more

sylvie | 5 comments | Tags: ,
13 May 2010
Harvest • herb recipe • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Vegetable recipe

When The Garden Gives You Lots Of Greens…

… start a vegetable weekly subscription and make Mongolian-style sauce (lots and lots of it!)

I certainly grow more than we can eat – and we eat lots of veggies! Yet I don’t grow enough for selling at a Farmer’s Market or to a restaurant. But even with all the preserving I do, it’s too much just for us. And let’s face it: some things don’t preserve that well anyway (lettuce sauerkraut, anyone?). Or I have no need to preserve them, because I’ll be growing them through the cold months. Why preserve when you can eat fresh? You know: the mâche, arugula, mustards, lettuces, onions, kale, turnips, spinach, Swiss Chard, and other greens.

So, what’s a girl to do?

Find a few people who don’t have a garden, are interested in super fresh food, and are willing to receive whatever I grow. That’s what a girl does.

So my mini (or rather “nano”) subscription scheme started last year. I am not a professional grower, so I do not want to commit for the entire “growing” season, and I want to give myself, and my clients, a way out if  I can’t sustain it – or if they don’t like it. So I offer the  subscription in 7 to 8 weeks increment (Spring, early summer, high summer, fall) and only to a handful of clients. A chef’s CSA.

So far so good.  We are in week 2 of spring, and that’s what my Thursday subscriber got today:

csa-2010-spring-week-2-005

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: , ,
22 Mar 2010
Garden Technique • Harvest • locavore log • vegetable

The Taste Of Green

I simply love this time of the year when the days are clear, the nights are cool, the maples are blooming, the buds are swelling on the trees, and so many green things – good to eat too – are poking out of the ground, or just starting to grow for real.

Witness:

  • The acid green of sorrel. Lemony flavor in our salads and tart soups and sauces. Lovely with potatoes.

2010-03-22-044-sorrel

sylvie | 9 comments | Tags: , , , ,
10 Mar 2010
Garden Technique • Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • vegetable

On Spinach

A month ago, we were under 2 feet of snow with night temperatures in the single digits. This week we garden in short-sleeve shirts and harvest mache, baby lettuce, just-emerging sorrel, baby arugula, escarole and… spinach – lots and lots of spinach. Finally!

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The spinach was not planted in the hoophouse but outside. Last spring we simply did not have enough spinach, not having planted any the prior fall. So this past fall, I did 2 separate sowings, a small one in September to give us some fall spinach, and three long rows in November. We covered the bed with wire hoops, and Reemay. The bed was buried under snow for several weeks, the hoops crushing in the process – they’ll have to be reshaped. Yes, the larger leaves of the spinach are somewhat tattered (but fine enough for the chicken who are happy enough for anything green), but the 2nd planting – much smaller plants – did very well and is starting to grow again. Happily so, too. With enough water, that should provide us with spinach through May. Maybe I’ll even have enough to freeze some later this spring. Read more

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: ,
07 Feb 2010
chicken • Harvest • locavore log

On the Value of a Hoophouse

Cost: $100 (mostly recycled materials).Value? priceless.

hoophouse-inside-2010-02-180

After a hard day of trampling paths up & down the hill or shoveling the 22″ of snow that have graced us since Friday (or plowing snow for Keith, including the road and the driveway of several neighbors), we have worked quite an appetite. Tonight dinner is homemade pizza (the dough was rising while I was – of course! – shoveling snow; canned tomato sauce from last summer) and a big mix green salad of lettuces, arugula, mache, parcel, frisee endive – freshly harvested at 4:00 pm today. Dessert? Quince fool (canned quince from last fall). We may even try the quince liqueur. That’s probably still too rough though, so we may have to settle for strawberry liqueur instead… sigh…

Like El at FastGrowTheWeeds, I see my pantry as the traditional dry pantry, the freezer and the fresh outdoor pantry that the hoophouse is. Not only do we eat fresh, but the chicken get to have something green too. Rather precious at the moment. And you know, chickweed grow really well in there, really really well…

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It’s a good thing we build the with metal arches – PVC would have collapsed – and we put the arches closer than suggested…

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I trudged up through the snow to clean it off the hoophouse before the thaw and freeze cycle started. I mostly had to clear by hand. For sure I got exercise today! The garden was blanketed by 20″+ of snow, but inside the hoophouse, it was as beautiful as ever… and smelling so good…

hoophouse-cleaned-2010-02-1621

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , ,
26 Dec 2009
Garden Technique • Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Soups

Snow, What Snow?

2 feet of snow last week-end, temperatures in the lower teens (F/ about -12 C). I have not been in the hoophouse for about a week, and frankly I was not sure how it was going to be in there. Would I have mush? It after all, got cold quite suddenly after a long mild fall, and I was not sure the plants had a chance to harden off.

But it all looks good when I went in today to harvest a big bouquet of cilantro and leaf celery for a Vietnamese-inspired rice and goose. In winter, I often do a version of my basic “Chicken Soup with a Twist” varying the vegetable and the meat.

Since we had a roasted goose for Christmas (I needed after all to replenish my store of goose-fat), I simmered the carcass and the bones with some aromatics for a dark rich fragrant broth. Sautéed some carrots, shallots, lots of ginger. Added a handful of already cooked rice, some chopped goose meat, a little fish sauce, and some braised cabbage to the pot. Covered with goose broth, simmered for 15 minutes, added handful of chopped cilantro and leaf celery, some hot sauce, and voila, a very tasty and warming lunch!

sylvie | 5 comments | Tags: , , , ,
03 Nov 2009
Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

Still Harvesting

Last evening I saw the man in the moon. In the incredible Hunter’s Moon that hanged, powerful and enormous, for a short while. As I was driving home, the sun sinking behind the mountains at my back , the majestic Moon was rising in the Eastern sky, capturing and reflecting the dying light from the sun. I was moon-struck. You don’t get to see such moons very often.

It’s the moon that give the hunters light to finish their task, even as the sun sinks down. It can also be used by the harvesters to finish gathering the crops (although they got their own harvest moon, 28 days ago).

In between those moons, we’ve been harvesting.

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Read more

sylvie | 8 comments | Tags:
29 Sep 2009
fruit • Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

On Ground Cherries

Shall we talk about ground cherries?

mmm… say you politely, really? Ground cherries?

You are not the only one to wonder… the year I gave ground cherry jam to friends for Christmas, I got some puzzled looks: this is cherry? you grind them? why? that’s an unusual color… and what about all the seeds?…

Yes, it needed a better name, and it actually goes by other names. But “ground cherry” is the name under which I initially encountered the fruit in English.

Curiously enough, it was in Quebec.

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Many stores were selling ground cherry jam. I tried it. Clearly not cherries (you know, Prunus cerasus). It did not take too long to find out this was the tiny fruit of my childhood, tomate poc-poc, Physalis peruviana. It’s also goes by the name of Cape Gooseberry. But it is no more a gooseberry than it is a cherry. A close cousin of tomatillo Physalis ixocarpa), it belongs it the nightshade family, along with tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and eggplants. Read more

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: , , , ,
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