The Bees in Winter
It’s been a hard winter for the bees. Harder than usual. We have lost 1 of our 3 colonies and it’ll be a few more weeks at best till we see reliably clement temperatures and blossoms for them. How can we help them?
Quacking from Rappahannock (our blog)
Winter Tomato Soup
As far as I am concerned, I grow tomatoes for winter eating. In fact, this year, I am mostly growing paste tomatoes: Roma, Amish Paste, San Marzano, and Grandma Mary’s Paste Tomatoes in summer? oh, sure, I like a good tomato sandwich as much as …
Local For the Holidays… Of Course!
Heirloom vegetables are a familiar term – conveying the idea of plants bred and selected over years of patient work for specific traits and local conditions, as well as the resulting seeds carefully passed down generations. The livestock equivalent is “heritage” breed.
When it comes to turkeys, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy is specific: heritage turkeys must reproduce and be genetically maintained through natural mating; are able to live outdoors a long productive life (5-7 years for hens, 3-5 years for toms); and grow “slowly” (by modern commercial standards), naturally building a robust skeleton and internal organs before they grow meat — reaching marketable size in 28 weeks or more. And those birds are magnificent!
Contrast that to most turkeys sold in the US: Continue reading Local For the Holidays… Of Course!
On Cardoon
My husband says “cardoon” sounds like something out of The Lord of The Rings. I say it’s more like Deep Space 9. Either way, we love it here. It’s beautiful in the garden and it’s delicious (recipe at the end of the post) While I …
The Other Quince
Japanese quince flowers are truly enchanting in the spring. But the fruit that ripen in mid-fall sure aren’t pretty: hard to the touch and to the teeth, gnarly, pitted, inhabited often. Raw they are so tart that they’ll make your mouth puckers (if you don’t …
Chestnuts?
Chestnut time!
Yes, it is time consuming to shell fresh chestnuts. There, I said it. But if it’s not difficult – provided you blanch the chestnuts and peel them while still warm.
Besides chestnuts are a treat, made all the rarer because the trees take a long time to grow and bear fruit; the nuts must be harvested almost daily to avoid chestnut-eating worms. In fact, best if you can put a cloth on the ground, shake branches with a long pole and move away fast to avoid the rain of thorny shells. Thick gloves and stout boots are helpful too.
As well, true American chestnuts are a rarity. Once a mighty tree that provided rot-resistant timber & fence wood; fire wood through coppicing; tannins to tan leather; abundant flowering for honey bees; fresh nuts for humans, pigs, and wild life; and dry nuts and flour for winter food, chestnut trees may have constituted as much as 25% of the Eastern North American forest. Alas an imported blight practically wiped out them in the 20th century. Some remain west of the Rockies and a few specimens in rare pockets in the East. They generally don’t live long, and the most promising trees (in terms of disease resistance) have been crossed and back-crossed with the immune Chinese chestnuts through the efforts of organizations such as The American Chestnut Foundation and the American Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundation.
So local chestnuts, whether cultivated or foraged are likely to be the Chinese or even Japanese chestnuts, or hybrids. Chikapin chestnuts (another native that grows on a small tree) are really tiny – so ignored by people. The large chestnuts sold in the store are imported from Europe.
By the way, when buying or collecting chestnuts, carefully inspect them for tiny holes. They are the sign that the nuts are inhabited. Discard them. I collect fresh chestnut, and as I soon as I get home, I dump them in water and discard the ones that float, on the theory that the flesh has been eaten or has started to rot.
Chestnuts are versatile, used with equal success in desserts and in savory dishes, as the lovely recipe below.
Chestnut and Onion Braisée Continue reading Chestnuts?
Leeks & Goat Cheese Crostini
Leeks, one of my favorite cold weather vegetables, are the stars of many slow-cooked comfort dishes. They are however often used in combination with other vegetables, where they silkiness and mellowness have a supporting role: think soup, especially leek & potatoes. But they are superb …
Blackberries, Sweet & Tart
Blackberries are producing madly. They have been loving this more temperature summer. Me too! And so they have rewarded us with beaucoup berries since mid-July. For a few weeks in fact they were producing along the Saturn flat peach. ahhh… Loads just got bagged and tossed …
Postcard from The Garden
The bumble bees – I have really been noticing them this year – and how hard they are working: on the tomatoes, the cucumbers, the squash, the blackberries and the raspberries – and yes on ornamental too, like this sulfurous cosmos. Thank you, my ladies!
Postcard From The Hedgerow
End of season for the blossoms – they are now drying for later uses. The bees love linden too. That’s the other name for basswood aka American linden, Tilia americana. The British call linden “lime” which used to confuse me to no end. But …