F is For Fall -Part 1: Farm

 I LOVE Fall! There is so much to enjoy and feel grateful about during Fall: 

Those last warm and sunny days before the cooler weather sets in for the remainder of the year. Reminding us to enjoy them like we did in Summer, or maybe, to not take those sunny Summer days for granted because they won't last all year long. We took the opportunity on a recent day like this to head to our favorite farm: Jubilee Farm

I love the gorgeous drive through the trees...

 

Seeing the sweet farm animals and the fields of pumpkins. Piggies and pumpkins, Oh My! Had we not grown our own carving pumpkins this year, the one pictured above, would have been my choice to bring home. This time, we were after some cooking pumpkins and quality farm time. 

The kids were willing to head to the opposite end of the fields, almost to the river, just to visit the chickens at their tractors. Normally, I feel pretty lucky to get 5-10 minutes watching the farm chickens before at least one kiddo gets impatient, but maybe they matured, or having been home more than usual, we stayed happily for "some time" as my youngest put it. 

The view at the farm is incredible too, with the sounds of the Snoqualmie River nearby, the gorgeous Cascade mountains in the background, and all of the farm's offerings surrounding us. I think this is where my farm dreaming truly began, as I can always find peace, grounding, and a smile after a trip here. 

Of course, here are the edible beauties we brought home from the farm to cook up and use throughout the season in baked goods, soups, and maybe a new recipe or two!

Frosty Apples

We had our first frost of the season, a light one, but it covered everything and made me question whether or not I had done all that I should to get the garden ready for Winter. It also alerted the spidey-senses, telling us that apple harvest time was near. Once upon a time, we were told that you should wait until after the first frost to harvest them, so that the sugars could concentrate. We have a dwarf Fuji that is about 5 years old and has been producing well the last few years. Hence, excitement for apple picking. 

 

 After the frost melted (it didn't take long), I headed out with a big bag and collected all of the apples that hadn't already been sampled by our local wildlife. We ended up with a nice collection of almost 40lbs of these beauties which will go into the freezer, sauce, a crisp tonight, and many just straight down the hatch. Did I mention that I LOVE apples?? Next to raspberry season, this is my favorite harvest time of the year. 

Well, I read into the "picking after the frost" method. None of the readings I found supported this idea. In fact, most articles discussed the danger of allowing apples to freeze before harvesting. Fortunately for me, apples, in general, require 28 degrees and lower for at least 4 hours to cause damage to the fruit. Ripe apples and apples with a higher sugar content (read: Fujis) require lower temperatures to freeze, closer to 24 degrees. 

I did finally find an article regarding the sugar concentration, because that really is a thing. Apparently, it is warm sunny days and cool nights that make the apples amazingly sweet. I guess we have been having just what the apple doctor ordered, because look at the inside of this apple I collected!

It didn't last very long! We've probably been through nearly a dozen apples since harvest, just eating them by the slice. I don't have a picture, but they are so beautiful when you hold these sugary pieces to the sun as it just shines through them. My youngest was fascinated. 

Here's the haul:

Alright, may you be blessed with delicious apples and a beautiful day!

Bee Harvest

 With the first frost approaching, we knew it was time to bring in the bees. This was our second year with Mason Bees, and we had learned much from our first season. 

This year started with a new bee house that hubby built. He designed it so that parchment paper inserts could be placed into the back of the house with excess folded outside of the holes for ease of harvesting later, and it would then mount with brackets onto the fence facing east to get good sun all day.

My son brought the house in before the first overnight freezing temps, and we kept it in the garage for a couple of days while I made sure I knew what to do for the harvest.

First, was removing each of the parchment rolls from the house and sorting them. Most of the tubes had filled (Yay!), I think we ended up tossing about 8 that had no occupants. Then we had to figure out which ones were the mason bees. We had noticed in June, after about 20 tubes had been filled there was a pause, so we assumed that the mason bee season was over. Then about a month later, we found that tubes were starting to fill up again. This time they looked quite different. With Mason Bees, you generally get a consistent mud texture that dries to a grayish brown. These tubes were bright green, red, orange, and some were quite rocky. Turns out, they are quite likely leaf-cutter bees. These are another beneficial bee that has a later season and are good pollinators. Anyway, we needed to sort out the Mason Bee vs. Leaf-Cutter Bee tubes. It worked out to be about 50/50 between the two, about 20 tubes of each. 

Next, we opened each of the Mason bee tubes and removed all of the healthy cocoons, and discarded anything else. After all of the tubes were opened, the cocoons went into a bowl of room temp water for an initial rinse. Then, they went into a dilute bleach solution to kill off any harmful bacteria or parasites. Finally, one more final plain water rinse and onto a paper towel to dry briefly. Soaking in the water will not harm the cocoons, unless they have already been breached. Just don't leave them for long. 

   Finally, after the cocoons are dry, it's time to head to the refrigerator. We put ours in a container (a small coated box is fine) lined with fleece. As refrigerators nowadays are frost-free, they tend to be dry. These cocoons will need some humidity, but you don't want them sitting directly in water. You can keep them in a drawer that has a humidity setting, and/or keep a bit of water in your container. This is how I was shown by a neighbor who got us started on Mason Beekeeping. She lines her container with foam (like the kind you would use for crafting, not styrofoam or packing foam), puts a small amount of water in, then the cocoons on top of the foam to keep them from being in direct contact with the water. We didn't have foam, so I am trying fleece instead. 

These bees are AMAZING pollinators, and we have noticed a big increase in the amount of apples we have harvested the past couple of years. We started the season off with just under 30 cocoons, and ended up with 37 harvested to start next Spring. 

We found this link at Crown Bees to be super helpful for our bee harvest. They have some great resources for all aspects of raising Mason Bees and other beneficial wild bees.

These bees are very docile and so interesting to watch. We enjoyed time spent near their house just watching them do their thing. I would encourage anyone who is interested, to find out more about keeping Mason Bees. It's great for all ages and the benefits of bees is unlimited.

Soup-er Sunday

 Fall is here and so is hearty soup season!

My family loves soup. I love quick and easy recipes that they will ALL eat. Knowing that I was going to be busy with chores, errands, a Girl Scout troop meeting, and Sunday Night Football, tonight's dinner needed to be quick, easy, and good. 

We tried this recipe for Rustic Potato Soup, from Jill Winger's Prairie Homestead Cookbook. It checked all of the boxes. I liked that I only needed  to make one substitution for household intolerance -oat milk for heavy cream. In the future, I probably would just skip that ingredient, or use cashew milk to give it a creamier texture, but it was good, regardless. 

The only garden element I was able to include in this recipe were the greens. I wasn't able to collect enough kale from the garden, so I threw in some chard along with it to make up the needed quantity -substitution #2. 😉

It also worked out really well that I just happened to finish making a pot of chicken bone and veggie broth as dinner prep started. I had cooked up a couple of whole chickens the other day (they were on sale!) and had put the meat in the freezer for quick and easy meals another day. I saved the carcasses and added veggie scraps that I save up in the freezer to make an awesome stock. Look at that color! Yum. I put the needed amount into the soup and stored another several quarts for later. If you have never tried making your own stock, I highly recommend you try. It is easy and so good for you, as you can control the ingredients including sodium and fat quantities, not to mention the nutrition from cooking the bones down. 

Voila! Delicious, hearty, and so easy to make.

There are no leftovers of this dish to speak of. 

Success!

Putting the Garden to Bed

 Happy Friday, 

Fall has definitely arrived around here, the days are so much shorter, and getting more gray and drizzly. 

A couple of weeks ago, we got our first real rains of the season. I still had a ton of green tomatoes on the vine that I didn't want to go to waste. I have been able to successfully ripen tomatoes on my kitchen windowsill and counter, but pending at least 20lbs of green tomatoes coming in, that would not work this time. After reading up on the subject, all of the unripened tomatoes were placed in a cardboard box together in the garage. The idea behind this is that fruits produce a gas called ethylene which is what helps them ripen. When all of the fruits are placed in close (breathable) quarters they will ripen faster when picked green. So far, it's looking pretty good. As they ripen, I will skin and freeze them until I'm ready to can them.

We're supposed to our first below-freezing overnight temps this weekend. I wanted to make sure that I had harvested all that I could, and gotten my beds ready for the season. Because I do have a little more time at home than usual, we are really trying to maximize this by upping our garden game. 

One bed has been planted with alliums: Yellow Onions, Egyptian Walking Onions, and Garlic. I learned this year that these are best planted in Fall for a following Summer harvest. They have been covered with a thick, cozy layer of grass clippings to keep them safe from freezing temps. 5 other beds have been harvested, turned, weeds cleared, and replanted with a cover crop seed blend. We have cover cropped before, but not for at least 10 years. I think, when we did it the first time, we let them go too long and they went to seed and became more hassle than help. 

What is a cover crop? A cover crop is something that you plant in your garden, most often in the "off-season", to help your soil, either by supplementing it with needed nutrition, fixing those nutrients, or by breaking up impaction to aerate it. We opted for a Garden Blend Mix from Mountain Valley Seed that seems to cover all of the bases and includes Clovers, Vetch, Wheat, and Radish, among others.

I get a lot of "help" from my feathered friends. They like to add a little extra fertilizer to the beds and make sure there aren't too many worms left before they get tucked in for the season. To the left, you can see the allium bed covered in clippings, our rhubarb hanging on, one last pumpkin vine, and a stray upright fuschia that are not in our raised beds. 

Do you tuck your garden in? I'd love to hear about it!

ReCrafting in 2020

 Welcome, or for a few, welcome back!

2020 has been a year to craft! During our current pandemic and shelter-in-place phases, I have taken the opportunity to enjoy extra time with my family, delve a little deeper into my hobbies, think outside the box, and dream ahead.

Along the way, I decided to revive the blog with the hopes that sharing my craftings may bring some inspiration to someone else walking a similar path to increased self-sufficiency while living in the 'burbs.

I plan to share new projects, garden experiments, recipes, and of course chicken "nuggets". For better or worse, you'll see them here. 

Here we go!