August 2015 – Peacock Orchard

Straw as mulch in the garden

This years garden has been a pretty good success. Some failures but mostly awesome success. So I want to expand. I want more, always more. Our soil is a problem and so are weeds. The soil I imported for this years garden was infested with lambs quarter. That has been a real challenge. I have used straw in the raised bed with good success so I wanted to do it all with straw this fall and plant into it this spring a la Ruth Stout.

The problem for me is finding straw. The straw I bought for my straw bale garden may have possibly been sprayed with something, leading to it’s failure. I didn’t want hay because of the seeds, of course. I thought I wanted wheat straw. As an organic wheat selling mega house state I knew I could find that. In fact it’s stacked up in front of our house some years. Wouldn’t it figure that the only seller I could find was in Colorado then. What a trial.

We decided we’d drive down and grab a bunch of straw for our driveway (that will be another post) and my expanded garden areas. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive. It’d be about an hour round trip which isn’t too bad if you don’t have to take 2 toddlers with you. So, about a mile from our house has been sitting an estimated 8 large round bales of straw. They have exploded everywhere and been abandoned for a little over 2 weeks. They obviously fell off of someones truck and they decided it wasn’t worth it to pick them up. Luckily, it’s worth it to me. I grabbed the kids this Saturday, put all our rubber boots and work gloves on (yes my children have adorable tiny work gloves) and a tarp and set off in our SUV.

I did 6 loads on Saturday (2 without the kids) and 3 loads today. I have accumulated a nice stack of straw in one of my garden areas. TONS more to pick up still. It’s almost free (I’m counting gas as a cost) and it’s AMAZING. It’s chock full of bugs at this point which thrills my birds. It amuses the kids to grab a few loads and I couldn’t be more pleased with someone else’s misfortune. Now to finish grabbing what I need and spread it around evenly.

Ambiance Pinot Grigio 2013 and Courenne Double Cream

Wine:

Ambiance Pinot Grigio 2013 $9.99

[Sourced from Wine Express] Fruit for the Belle Ambiance Pinot Grigio was harvested in the cool hours of the night, delivered to the winery and then immediately pressed into fermenters. A slow, low-temperature fermentation on very low grape solids and aging that took place entirely in stainless steel allowed us to capture all of the delicate fruit and floral aromas that a Pinot Grigio can deliver. Delicate aromas of lemon blossoms, honeysuckle, tropical fruits, white peaches and jasmine flowers. It shows luscious flavors of white nectarines, tart lemons and sweet honeydew melon. This medium-bodied wine is crisp and bright, with a tangy and lingering finish. It scored 92 points in the Critics Challenge Wine Competition.

Cheese:

Courenne Double Cream $6.99/lb

Ah now this is a tough one. I Googled this cheese to see how it is described and found quite a few descriptions of Brie Courenne. We bought this cheese at a local cheese shop in Ft Collins, CO.

Wine Review-

This wine was nice. Crisp. Enjoyable. Not my favorite white wine but certainly lovely all the same. I thought the cheese went well with it (but the cheese was awesome). I think this would be a great bottle of wine to bring to a dinner of fish or chicken. All around good wine.

Cheese Review-

This cheese was amazing. Seriously delicious. It was like a flavorful butter. We ate it with a hot baguette and we ate ALL of it. I don’t usually eat the cheeses, I leave that to Husband. However, even I loved this cheese. We are most certainly going to get this cheese again.

Fall planting plans

Last week was unseasonably cold. I was becoming concerned we were going to have a freeze before my garden was done. Thankfully we did not. It did have us thinking about our fall planting plans though. So much to do before winter and I keep adding seeds to the mix. Here is a short list of what we are going to plant:

Egyptian Walking Onions

I purchased the bulbs off of Etsy and I’m hoping the reviews were correct and they work wonders for me. We have issues growing onion and I’m not quite sure why. They never get particularly large, if they grow at all. I’m hoping this variety changes that!

Garlic

These little bulbs are the result of letting your garlic scrapes grow and go to seed. Purchased from the same Etsy seller as the onions I realize I’ll be waiting 2 years to get the benefit of this planting. Still, the quantity is enough that when I get a harvest it will be huge.

Winter Barley

https://greencoverseed.com/species/1054

We bought an acres worth of winter barley. It is an experiment for us. I am hoping to get some for eating, some for animal forage and my husband wants some for beer.

Nitro Radish

https://greencoverseed.com/species/1060

I bought nitro radish as an experiment in loosening our farm compacted land. I’m interested to see what it does for our soil quality and if it distracts the ground animals from my trees, all the better.

Dryland pasture seed

I bought this seed last year and threw out 2 acres this spring. I still have 2 acres of seed sitting in my garage. I’m going to spread it around the parts of our land that are not growing much of anything. I’m interested to see how successful winter sowing pasture is here.

Alfalfa

Alfalfa is another seed I bought quite a few acres of an simply didn’t plant all of in this spring. I’m going to be seeding it in areas I think can use the nitrogen (like our tree line) and areas that simply need something more than dirt growing. So that is all we have going on for winter sowing. We have about acres worth of seed. Should be an interesting experiment

Country life

Pumpkin — This pumpkin has been eaten by the turkeys since this picture was taken.

Kitchen garden is having it’s ups and downs. I have a squash bug infestation. This is made a bit better by the spider that has taken up residence at the bottom of the squash. The squash that have managed to grow are getting eaten by the birds. Turkeys I think. I’m going to have to make that fence a priority.

The wine bottle hot box looks good. Things are really growing now. Flowers have bloomed and we are excited!

Corn is growing well as well as the tomatoes, peppers and green beans. Green beans have been harvested twice already and are still growing strong.

We took a nice walk last night. Son was excited to wear his boots and walk in the puddles from the rain the day before. Daughter rode in the backpack. That thing is a life saver.

We have purchased a new macro lens and I’m having a heck of a time figuring it out. Tried to take a nice picture of one of our many sunflowers and this is the best I could get. Ugh!

Vetch pod

I have a few random plants growing around the property. Wind blown seed, never watered. I’m impressed with the fact that this has grown at all.

Pig Roast Fun

August 8th was a big day for us. It started early, well to be honest we just never went to bed. We got the pig ready Friday night and Saturday at 1a.m. it was on the grate cooking. Ok, let me start from the beginning.

We cooked our pig in a sort of makeshift grill made from cinder blocks and expanded metal. A roof was fashioned from metal sheeting and 2×4’s. Holes were drilled in certain blocks to fit rebar supports.

We ordered our pig from a butcher fairly close to where we live. They went and picked up the pig and butchered it. Unfortunately they did not cut it right, gave us the wrong pig (our pig went to someone else and the pig we ended up with was even bigger than expected) and then laughed and blamed the whole thing on us. As if we are responsible for them writing “split” instead of “splayed” and giving us the wrong pig. We won’t use them again. So it started rough. We salted the pig up and waited for Husband’s family to come assist in pig surgery. We could not have the pig split like that, it wouldn’t flip well at all. So wire was used to sew it up.

We used hardwood coal to keep the temperature in the pig around 260 degrees.

There was no wind when we started the pig and getting the coals going was difficult. It came up fierce in the morning though and the coals were burning hot and fast. Everything else was also blowing away. I tried to get some sleep and woke up around 8 with Daughter’s foot in my face. We went out and visited the Pig and brought Husband breakfast. All was good until the turkeys arrived. They were biting us, trying to get on the table and eat the food and generally testing our limits. We ended up holding a fly swatter and whacking them until they gave up and went away, temporarily.

PIG IN THE MORNING — This is after 8 hours of cooking.

Then Husband went to bed and I babysat the pig. I tried to watch a movie but……

I gave up.

After 14 hours of cooking the pig was done. Everything was set up and we awaited guests. The party was wonderful. However, we have TONS of left overs. We will be eating pig for the rest of our lives I think.

Oh, here is the pig being consumed by guests. The legs came off on the last flipping.

Daughter had a grand time once she decided she was ok with eating Pig. It took some doing. She felt like they were friends and wouldn’t eat it to begin with.

We had some rain and quite a bit of wind which graced us with a lovely rainbow and a beautiful sunset.

Zucchini Tian- An amazing way to use squash

My husband and I stopped at Safeway to pick up a few things on Monday. A few things turned into me spending our entire lunch in the produce aisle picking over the vegetables. I had no real idea how I was going to cook anything, just that I wanted to try it all. Husband just shook his head as I loaded up our basket and told him I’d look online for recipes later. That is why I love Pinterest. I find some of the best recipes and ideas there.

Zuchini Tian — This is one of my favorite finds now.

This Recipe from feastingathome.com is absolutely amazing. I’d never made anything like this before and I didn’t have high expectations. The recipe was easy to follow and thanks to my nifty Mandoline,
prep was quick. Just make sure you wear these gloves. I’ve harmed myself pretty severely with the mandoline before. We made it in our fairly new cast iron skilletas suggested and it worked pretty well. I think I might slowly transition all of my cooking pots and pans to cast iron. The cast iron dutch oven I have is a dream! I also really love just going from the stove top to the oven.

I used 2 small yellow squash, 1 zuchinni, 1 super large black krim tomato, 1 yellow onion and parsley picked from the new planter box. My quantities didn’t match with the recipe exactly. I don’t tend to be great about following recipes to the T. Still, turned out amazingly well!

The squash was served with grilled pork tenderloin and wine, of course. I got distracted looking at all the peppers I have growing and the pork got overcooked. It was pretty darn dry actually. My husband should be sainted for eating all of the food I forget I’m cooking.

We are all about making enough dinner to have leftovers for lunch at work. This packed up beautifully and reheated really well. I did under cook the squash slightly so it would not be too soggy when microwaved. I will be doing this again for sure!

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